Category: Reviews

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted July 31, 2021 in Reviews // 0 Comments

Boy, Snow, Bird was… fine. It was fine until the end, at which time it become abhorrent for the last few chapters. The kindest thing I think I can say about Boy, Snow, Bird is that it is extremely forgettable. This book is touted as a Snow White retelling, but I don’t think there’s any resemblance beyond the fact there’s a girl named Snow whose mother has died and she has a stepmother. The similarities end there. Boy, Snow, Bird has an interesting commentary on race through the eyes of two different characters. I also thought the conversation about identity from each […]

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Posted July 30, 2021 in Reviews // 1 Comment

Cemetery Boys is a wonderful not just because it’s magical. It has great friendships, complicated but loving families, a misguided villain, and romance scenes that will make you heart flutter. Best of all, it’s a book about a Latinx trans gay character written by a Latinx trans queer author and it’s always so wonderful to hear a story from someone with that lived experience. But I don’t want to break down Cemetery Boys as just a book about LGBTQIAP+ youth. Yadriel’s identity was a large part of the plot, but it wasn’t all of the plot. And I loved that. It’s […]

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

Posted July 26, 2021 in Reviews // 0 Comments

The City of Brass is a refreshing YA fantasy story. This is one of those series that has garnered so much hype over the last few years, and it is well-deserved. There are still a lot of familiar (and tired) tropes, but the world is different and the magic excellent… and I really enjoyed the way Chakraborty slowly peeled back bits and pieces of the land’s history. Nahri is an interesting protagonist. She has some snark and big dreams and is surviving by her wits alone – fairly common in a YA fantasy heroine. She’s likable enough, but I […]

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

Posted July 25, 2021 in Reviews // 1 Comment

When I started listening to Waking Gods, I did not expect ten years to have passed since the end of Sleeping Giants. As much as I was looking forward to this sequel, that simple fact threw me off for the first couple chapters while I reacquainted myself with the characters, the world, and the events at the end of the first book. I’m usually okay when I read book two a few years after book three, but because of the time jump, there was a lot to catch up on. Once I caught up, though… Waking Gods is just […]

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Posted July 23, 2021 in Reviews // 1 Comment

Stamped From the Beginning is a hard-hitting account of racist ideas in America, starting with colonization and working forward through the Obama administration. Kendi discusses the different approaches to racial equality – segregationists, assimilationists, and antiracists. He also picks apart famous historical figures and shows the complexity of them – that the good ones had racist thoughts too. I thought Stamped From the Beginning was an enlightening account of our history in this country. It’s not the story we’re told in high school history courses, but it should be. This three-dimensional painting of America’s racist ideas reveals a country that […]