Book Reflections

Content Tags: Alcoholism, Self-Harm, Suicide "Between life and death there is a library. [...] Before time runs out, [Nora] must answer the ultimate question: What is the best way to live?" This book is an exploration of parallel universes when you (or in this case the main character, Nora) are between life and death. Reviewing regrets from your "root life" and making adjustments to try and locate your best life.  TW: Suicide. This is touched on a few times throughout the book and Nora's journey through the multiverse - suicide attempts, references to self-harm scars, and anti-depressants. (Alcoholism is also mentioned and discussed a couple of times.) The concept for this book sounded very intriguing to me, even though this is a bit outside my usual wheelhouse with the sci-fi ish element. The way the author integrated the sci-fi elements worked well without being too overwhelming or confusing or trying too hard. Overall, even though it was the main element, th...

Content Tags: Violence, Disordered Eating, Fatphobia, Domestic Abuse, Child Abuse This book is told from the point of view of Trisha who is training at a Muy Thai gym and also dealing with the emotional turmoil of her abusive father's accidental death. Oh, and she's also finishing her senior year of high school on top of it all.  Because of the element of Muy Thai fighting there is an abundance of disordered eating (in the name of "making weight" for competitions) and fatphobia. The fatphobia reads to me mostly as a coping/defense mechanism for Trisha feeling like she doesn't have a lot of control in her own life. I long for the day when writers find other ways to show those emotions without resorting to comments like: "Sharp eyes in their soft faces. Soft bodies, too, moving like sludge through the hallways" (pg 195). In a similar vein, there were comments Trisha made disparaging the women who chose to be ring girls (or date fighters) instead of being  ...

Content Tags: War, Death, Historical Fantasy, LGBTQIA+ A book-toker I follow included this book on a list of books he is planning to read in January, so I decided to check it out from my library. (Mostly because it was the only one on the list that my library had or that I didn't already own.) I don't usually read historical fiction, so I was a tad worried I wouldn't really be interested or drawn into the story. My worry was completely wrong in this case though - I was almost immediately pulled into the story and needed to know what was going to happen to the main two characters. Shelley Parker-Chan crafted a wonderfully, interesting alternate/fantasy history story with queer representation and emotional themes surrounding identity, shame, and fate. Most stories have clear "good" and "bad" people and perspectives; in this case though everything was a bit more gray. People are capable of good and bad actions, but those actions don't always distinctly ...

Content Tags: Abuse, Trauma, Physical Abuse, Child Abuse The synopsis for this book felt a bit misleading to me. How I read it, I expected there to be a much bigger build up or progression in time than there ended up being. But aside from worrying there wouldn't be enough time to build up as much, this really wasn't a big deal. Most definitely I would include trigger warnings for anyone who might consider reading this book for child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and the resulting trauma. That was the main theme of the book among other struggles. The book was presented shifting back and forth between the perspective of two sisters, but the storyline for each sister wasn't being told in the same timeframe. This added a lot more suspense and uncertainty to me as different parts were revealed at different times. I really appreciated that approach. Without spoiling anything, this story was heartbreaking, very personally relatable in many ways, and real. By real I mean,...

Content Tags: Abuse, Death, Trauma, Racism, LGBTQIA+ Taking inspiration from my sister, aka copying her exactly, I decided to write blog posts to track books I'm reading in 2023 (and maybe beyond, who knows). My newest reading goal beginning this year is to read more books from my TBR pile. You'd think this would've been a goal all along, but I seem to avoid reading my TBRs... no more. I even got a new bookshelf just for my TBRs to go in my living room, so hopefully them being front and center will make me more likely to read them. I started off the year with a relatively new addition to my TBR shelf: We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds. Technically I started this book at the end of 2022, but I started off the year by finishing  this book. ;) This is where I struggle, I'm not sure how to put into words my thoughts about books. Hopefully, this will get easier the more posts I make.  The book was great! (That's good insight, right?) There were a lot of aspects to thi...