Category: Unfinished

My Lovely Wife

Have you ever seen the show Dexter? It’s about a serial killer who hides in plain sight as a police forensics analyst and kills bad people to satisfy his psychological urges. I watched the first season and then none of the rest. It was so long ago that I remember deciding that the finale to that season was so good that I didn’t need to see more. An individual with a terrible tendency turned it into something “good” and I was 100% fine with that.

When I started reading My Lovely Wife it was the same kind of feeling. Millicent has a terrible past that her husband helps her…well… deal with. Their first murder is her sister who abused her as a child. The next is someone who worked with the sister who remembered the husband. It feels like what they are doing, while terrible, has a greater purpose.

Then the couple discovers they now have a hunger for murder. In the midst of low-paying service jobs and harried family life (they have two kids!!), they decide to continue doing this one thing together that makes them feel connected and in control when in so many areas of their life they are not. So the third murder is someone they choose via social media, and we enter the story as they are choosing the fourth.

This story put a hook in my mouth and I allowed myself to be led through the first 40% of the book. The suspense was killing me. Our narrator is the husband and he’s doing all this to impress his wife, but the wife seems way more into it than she should be and so I had some questions that I wanted answered. Since the book is told through the POV of the husband, I began to realize that I wasn’t going to get those answers until he got them, and he obviously wasn’t going to get them soon because he was kind of stupid and impulsive.

Suddenly my excitement and suspense turned to boredom as I watched this ineffectual jackass get bribed by his son, revive an actual serial killer which scares his daughter enough to bring a knife to school, and chase his wife around like a small puppy dog hoping to impress her at every turn. I wasn’t about to spend any more time with this guy than I had to, I don’t care how terrifying Millicent turned out to be. I set it down and won’t be going back.

Usually I say something like “I didn’t like it, but you might!” but for this one you might want to just skip it. I’m sure there are better thrillers out there than this.

Gingerbread

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi was provided to me as an eARC by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Publishing Group, via Edelweiss+ in return for an honest review. Gingerbread is scheduled to release for purchase on March 5, 2019.

I usually don’t review books of which I have experienced less than 30%. Most of the ARCs I am provided with come through to the Kindle, so I’m able to work to hit that threshold. With Gingerbread, I only made it to 9%, but I would like to explain why, and then encourage you to read it.

There are certain kinds of books that are not my cup of tea. Among these are the kinds of books that simply take you through the mundane workings of a suburban family’s day and try to show you the magic hidden within. I cannot stand that kind of stuff. Plus, it links to another kind of story I can’t stand, which is suburban politics or mommy wars. Examples of this are things like battles for PTA president or calling child protective services on someone as payback or HOA meeting pettiness. All of this kind of stuff just misses me, mostly because I think it’s so stupid and meaningless, but also because I can’t relate. If the protagonists own a home and have kids the book is already two circles out from my bulls eye. That’s not to say I won’t read a story about people who own homes or have kids – it’s the story that surrounds that setting that makes or breaks it.

Gingerbread is steeped in this “trying to belong in suburbia” kind of tale and I jut couldn’t get into it. The main character mom brings her famous gingerbread to a PTA meeting as gifts for the other moms and they just leave it there scattered among the chairs when they leave. I have no patience for that kind of cruelty.

Another kind of story that I won’t invest time in is one where someone clings to their family tradition even in the face of trauma or abuse or even just basic disrespect. Gingerbread represents past, present, and future for this family, and its presence in the story is a symbol of how this mom will carry her family’s legacy and traditions into the future in a strong way (spoiler, she’s not doing so hot).

I say all this to say that this simply wasn’t a book I would read because I wouldn’t enjoy it. That is not to say that it was poorly written, or that the story isn’t structured well – it was. If these kinds of stories are your cup of tea, you should absolutely pick up Gingerbread, because you won’t be in better storytelling hands than Helen Oyeyemi, who is at the top of the field for this kind of book.

Just because something isn’t for me doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just not for me. Look into the book, read the blurbs and the synopsis and a few reviews, and feel comfortable picking it up. I’m not shooing you away, I’m just letting you know that it wasn’t my cup of tea.

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We Cast A Shadow

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin was provided to me by Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley as a digital review copy in advance of publication in return for an honest review. We Cast a Shadow is scheduled to release on 1-29-19.

Ah yes, we have reached the first “did not finish” book of the year. We Cast a Shadow follows a young, black lawyer as he attempts to climb the corporate ladder while navigating the inherent racism in the system. While I recognize that these books bring important truths into the world and allow black voices to be heard, if I’m reading fiction I cannot immerse myself in the evils that I am already drowning in every day in the real world.

The very first chapter describes a party in which the four black junior associates are being asked to be as stereotypically black as they can in order to earn a promotion. The narrator arrives at the party dressed as a normal lawyer, and discovers he must perform or be fired. The host offers him an African garb costume from her in-house museum-esque collection, and through a silly African dance and subsequent nudity when the costume falls off, he runs out of the house and into a promotion to the head of the diversity committee for community outreach. There’s so much there to unpack that I was completely stunned but also not surprised when I read the scene.

And that’s just his work life. At home he is married to a white woman and they have a biracial son with a birthmark that gets bigger every day; the blackness that he has given him that grows to overtake the whiteness. The father/narrator uses creams, bleaches, and is pursuing this promotion at work to be able to afford an operation to have his son’s birthmark removed. He seems to be the only adult involved that is concerned about it, and the son goes along because he loves his dad and doesn’t completely understand what the problem is.

I see all the symbolism here that is relevant to the struggles with race and society that black people face every day. The idea that a father would become nervous the darker his son became resonates with me in a world where unarmed black men are killed so often we don’t even see them on the news anymore. Where I decided that it was enough was when drugs and squalor entered into the story, and suddenly everything became a hallucination that the narrator had to describe life through to me, the reader. I just…I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m in a position to see this all presented in this way and be able to appreciate it. It is important to understand the difference between when something is not good and when something is not written for you.

We Cast a Shadow is well-written. The stories told present a plethora of black diasporic experience and struggle in a way that doesn’t preach, it shows you what it looks like in practice. I simply do not think that it was written for me, and that’s why I cringed my way through about 32% of it and then gave myself permission to put it down. Please do not see this review as a non-endorsement. This book is good and troubling. It was not boring and the story was very compelling. It just wasn’t for me.

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Kill the Farm Boy

Kill the Farm Boy

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #1)

The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #2)

When I began reading this new release that I grabbed on a whim at the library, it was a really fun start. A nobody that cleans up dung on his family’s farm is chosen by an ugly, drunk pixie to be a Chosen One and he sets off with the goat that the same pixie gave the gift of speech to in order to exact revenge on the lord that killed his brother. There is an aspiring dark lord and even a large woman in a chain mail bikini – and it was when I reached this point that I remembered I had seen this before.

In the spring of this year (2018) I attempted to read the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, but put it down after the second book. I love the silliness, but in books like these it tends to get stuck on level 10 and never deviate, creating a situation where you get bored even though the setup is silly and bucking the tradition. There’s no give and take or normal versus silly – you just go from zero to sixty silliness per hour, the authors don’t let up on the gas, and it’s tiresome.

Sorry for the short review, but I didn’t read very much of the book and so I don’t want to mess with your opinion too much. If you like the Discworld books you will LOVE this novel. It’s just not for me. It’s too much and trying too hard all at once and my brain shuts down. But you might like it, so give it a try.

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

Ka Dar Oakley

On my way home from my ultrasound last week I stopped at the library to check on a book that hadn’t been checked back in properly and decided to also browse the shelves. I grabbed two or three books and one of them was KA: Dar Oakley and the Ruin of Ymr off the New Releases shelf. I’m a sucker for crows and also for good cover art so I took it even though I had never read anything by this author before. I figured it was worth a try.

The gist is that the main character, a crow without a name, comes to make a connection with a tribe of people that lives near his family’s nesting location. He learns the language of the people and he teaches the one girl the language of Ka and they come to be friends. Something happens to her and he travels to what we are led to believe is the land of the dead to bring her back to be the new leader of her tribe.

This book was interesting at first because it was dark and so different from anything I had ever read. It’s presented like a Plato’s Cave awakening – we slowly see the crow becoming less of a crow and more of a human. It’s a really cool concept.

The problem was that it was SOOOOOOOOOOO boring. I managed to get to about 25% through (page 100 or so, it’s 441 pages long) and I gave myself permission to stop. The reason it was boring is that the storyline is so slow. Four whole pages are given over to describing his mother and father building a nest and how a rival crow tries to fuck his mom but his dad manages to chase him off and then he watches his dad fuck his mom multiple times to make sure the brood is his and…well…I just wasn’t seeing any payoff anytime soon. So back to the library it went.

Now usually I would cushion the blow of an unfinished review with a statement about how it just wasn’t for me but you might like it because it seems really popular, but I haven’t heard of this book before now, nor the author (who is also from Maine originally), and I feel comfortable letting you know that you can probably safely avoid it. Skip it. Do it for me and do it for yourself.

 

The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles #3)

The Beauty of Darkness

The Kiss of Deception (#1)
The Heart of Betrayal (#2)

I have terrible news.

This book is SEVEN. HUNDRED. PAGES. LONG.

But that’s not all. I put it down at page 369.

I cannot remember a trilogy I have attempted to read that has begun so intensely yet left me uncaring enough to leave it unfinished. I don’t even know what to say. I’m so disappointed.

Rafe and his band of merry men have helped Princess Arabella escape from Venda, but they have also escaped with the knowledge that the Komizar has an army 150,000 strong and is planning to march on the other kingdoms. Kaden and Griz catch up to them and are taken prisoner, only to be freed to help them fight off a band of Rahtan sent by the Komizar to kill them all. They escape and make it to a Dalbreck outpost, where Rafe discovers that both his parents have died in his absence, leaving him as the new King.

Lia still needs to press on to Morrighan. She sees it as her duty to save her parents and to uncover the snakes in her father’s cabinet and in the Royal Scholar’s employ. Rafe insists that she not go, to the point that he has her under guard everywhere they go at the outpost. This eats at their relationship until Rafe decides he has no choice but to let her go. So she and Kaden and another person that isn’t important right now end up getting into Civica (the city outside the castle) after a brief stop in Terravin, the city she ran away to in the first book.

We see Rafe fighting battles to maintain his control over Dalbreck and Lia trying to stay alive long enough to uncover the traitors in Morrighan and Kaden continues to pine for her to no avail and…well…I just realized that I don’t care how this ends.

Lia’s character arc ended at the end of the second book. If anything, in this third book she goes past the strong, independent female lead into the bitchy, drunk with her own independence, jerk character. I mean, she’s really shitty to everybody through almost page 400 and part of why I stopped is that I discovered I wasn’t rooting for her anymore. I didn’t care if she lived or died. All the tension surrounding her success was completely gone for me.

I loved Rafe as a character. He had the same misgivings Lia did about their marriage but, under the cover of a false identity, he came to love her for who she was and I wanted to see that love story continue and work through their differences. But I’m not gonna read about them whining at each other for 300 pages and wait another 200 more before they even see each other again. That’s not fair to set up that kind of love story and then just kill it in the third book.

Oh and this gift she has – oh boy do I not care even a little about it. It’s like it’s just her gut talking to her about what she should beware of, a little warning system that’s like an overactive conscience. I was nosey and looked at how the book ends and BARF. No thank you. To give me this turd of a third book and then Deus Ex Machina the battle scene with her up-until-this-point pointless gift? Nah.

Also, for a girl who escaped to find her own destiny, she sure lets holy texts determine her every move, breath, and thought. I did not expect that this would be an independent woman turned religious fanatic trilogy but I am not the one for that nonsense.

I mean, I’m glad I read the first book because it was such a ride, but this would have worked just as well as a duology: make the second book a little longer and detail their escape and return to Dalbreck. They make sure his throne is secure and then move as a united front to defend Morrighan. There’s a kind of Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies moment where kind of enemies come together to fight the larger evil, and then all is well in the end. I don’t know, I don’t usually say how a book should have been written but this third book was just about as unnecessary as that fourth Hobbit movie.

Back to the library it goes. If you’re a completionist then please finish this third book and let me know what you think, but for me it’s a no go. I have other things waiting to be read.

Fruit of the Drunken Tree

Fruit of the Drunken Tree

Expected publication date July 31, 2018

Advanced copy provided by publisher in return for an honest review.

Fruit of the Drunken Tree is a story told in alternating points of view, between the privileged Chula and her family’s housemaid Petrona. They are growing up in Columbia during the time of guerrillas, Pablo Escobar, and political upheaval. Chula is able to escape to America with her mother and sister, while Petrona is left behind to make her way with her boyfriend and newborn baby.

The story is mostly about the events that led up to Chula and her family fleeing the country. It includes some pretty blatant socio-economic discrimination that I wasn’t real wild about. I got about halfway through and realized that I’m basically watching this story happen in real life in the news. I wasn’t feeling any suspense or urgency. I hate to say it, but I read for fun. I’m okay with a little angst or bad things happening, but I’m all full up on babies in cages with deported parents that were originally seeking asylum and now they have no way to reunite them and when they can, sometimes the kids don’t remember the parents…I don’t know man, I get enough of these stories in real life, I don’t think I want them in my fun times. Self-care, angels.

If you like international stories and understanding historical events through fiction, the writing is very good and the story was good too. I only put it down because of the subject matter. You should give it a try and see what you think.