Reading from just one genre is boring! So here’s a quick roundup of various thoughts on various books from various genres. Tada!
Title: The Dark Tide Author: Alicia Jasinska
Published: August 4, 2020
Genre(s): Fantasy
Page Count: 336
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Every year on St. Walpurga's Eve, Caldella's Witch Queen lures a boy back to her palace. An innocent life to be sacrificed on the full moon to keep the island city from sinking.
Lina Kirk is convinced her brother is going to be taken this year. To save him, she enlists the help of Thomas Lin, the boy she secretly loves, and the only person to ever escape from the palace. But they draw the queen's attention, and Thomas is chosen as the sacrifice.
Queen Eva watched her sister die to save the boy she loved. Now as queen, she won't make the same mistake. She's willing to sacrifice anyone if it means saving herself and her city.
When Lina offers herself to the queen in exchange for Thomas's freedom, the two girls await the full moon together. But Lina is not at all what Eva expected, and the queen is nothing like Lina envisioned. Against their will, they find themselves falling for each other. As water floods Caldella's streets and the dark tide demands its sacrifice, they must choose who to save: themselves, each other, or the island city relying on them both.
Yeah, I…did not like this.
Jasinska starts things off in medias res—which is fine, but she never does the work required to fill in the gaps that necessarily arise when you choose to forgo traditional preliminary exposition. As a result, The Dark Tide is woefully confusing and lacking in impact. The reader doesn’t know the stakes or the context of any of the drama, and the characters are just names on a page. Because the plot isn’t grounded, it fails.
The author probably had a great idea here, but because she didn’t flesh out that idea for the benefit of readers, it’s difficult to evaluate.
Title: The Rogue of Fifth Avenue Series: Uptown Girls #1
Author: Joanna Shupe
Published: May 28, 2019
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 400
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:In serving the wealthy power brokers of New York society, Frank Tripp has finally gained the respectability and security his own upbringing lacked. There’s no issue he cannot fix…except for one: the beautiful and reckless daughter of an important client who doesn’t seem to understand the word danger.
Excitement lay just below Forty-Second Street and Mamie Greene is determined to explore all of it—while playing a modern-day Robin Hood along the way. What she doesn’t need is her father’s lawyer dogging her every step and threatening her efforts to help struggling families in the tenements.
However, she doesn’t count on Frank’s persistence…or the sparks that fly between them. When fate upends all her plans, Mamie must decide if she’s willing to risk it all on a rogue…
I liked this book…I guess. But I had to literally shut off my entire brain for it to be enjoyable. The most I can say is that Joanna Shupe made the wise decision to prevail upon the literal mountain of lawyers who live in Romancelandia in order to research her murder trial and make it procedurally accurate. Love that. Otherwise, this is a romance about two characters who have obvious hang-ups that are resolved in completely predictable (and emotionally vacant) ways. There was an utter lack of internal consistency and follow-through in characterization, and the sugary-sweet resolution in the final chapter just made me roll my eyes.
There seems to be a growing trend in historical romance to write books about “plucky” high-society maidens who buck convention by doing “scandalous” things such as visiting casinos and who wind up in falling in love with alleged rogues/rakes with tortured pasts. These types of stories often have a lot of outrage on behalf of the rich white heroine for the “injustice” of life as a woman (but little recognition of her own extreme privilege); and they also have a lot of angst on the part of the “morally bankrupt” hero who typically comes from the lower classes and nurses a secret trauma, but “reforms” himself under the good influence of his lover’s delectable vagina. See, also, Sarah MacLean.
In my opinion, these books are just…bad. The Big Feelings, the Tortured Hero, and the Defiant Heroine are all so popular, but to me they feel shallow and awkward, and I find that the quality of the writing that accompanies these novels is inferior. I yearn for softer romances where two people take time to understand each other and work together to solve problems, where social injustice is dealt with thoughtfully and with nuance. But it seems that the current market is more interested in overblown drama. Joanna Shupe and other authors of her ilk make no attempt to truly delve into the complexity of either history or of the human mind. So instead we get a trite love story wrapped in pretty dresses and grand gestures. It’s not satisfying in the least.
I prefer romances that don’t require me to check my common sense at the door in order to semi-like the story. The Rogue of Fifth Avenue was barely tolerable, although good fun in certain respects.
Title: Block Seventeen Author: Kimiko Guthrie
Published: June 23, 2020
Genre(s): Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
Page Count: 288
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:When Akiko "Jane" Thompson first met Shiro Yamamoto, she knew they were meant to be. Five years later, their happiness is threatened. An intruder burgles their apartment but takes nothing, leaving behind only cryptic traces of his or her presence. Shiro risks their security in a plot to expose the misdeeds of his employer, the TSA. Jane's mother has seemingly disappeared, her existence only apparent online. Jane wants to ignore these worrisome disturbances until a cry from the past robs her of all peace, forcing her to uncover a long-buried family secret.
As Jane searches for her mother, she confronts her family's fraught history in America. She learns how they survived the internment of Japanese Americans, and how fear and humiliation can drive a person to commit desperate acts.
Essentially, this is as if a Murakami imitator decided to adapt Morrison’s Beloved, only instead of the intergenerational trauma of slavery, it’s Japanese internment during WWII. (Literally, Guthrie writes about all the same themes as Morrison—is it intentional?) I liked this book, although the explanationless blend of surreal/paranormal with the mundane was a bit disorienting in places.
Why do some memories persist, no matter how much we try pulling them by the roots, while others fade or disappear entirely? The most persistent of all seem to be those we don’t understand—those that keep nagging at us because we’re still asking ourselves: What happened, exactly? Whose fault was it?
Title: The Glass Woman Author: Caroline Lea
Published: September 3, 2019
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 400
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Rósa has always dreamed of living a simple life alongside her Mamma in their remote village in Iceland, where she prays to the Christian God aloud during the day, whispering enchantments to the old gods alone at night. But after her father dies abruptly and her Mamma becomes ill, Rósa marries herself off to a visiting trader in exchange for a dowry, despite rumors of mysterious circumstances surrounding his first wife’s death.
Rósa follows her new husband, Jón, across the treacherous countryside to his remote home near the sea. There Jón works the field during the day, expecting Rósa to maintain their house in his absence with the deference of a good Christian wife. What Rósa did not anticipate was the fierce loneliness she would feel in her new home, where Jón forbids her from interacting with the locals in the nearby settlement and barely speaks to her himself.
Seclusion from the outside world isn’t the only troubling aspect of her new life—Rósa is also forbidden from going into Jón’s attic. When Rósa begins to hear strange noises from upstairs, she turns to the local woman in an attempt to find solace. But the villager’s words are even more troubling—confirming many of the rumors about Jón’s first wife, Anna, including that he buried her body alone in the middle of the night.
Imagine you’re reading some weird cross of Gaslight, Rebecca, and Jane Eyre—only set in 17th century Iceland. Now imagine that you’re really invested in the heroine’s life, in her struggles with her new husband, living under the shadow of his mysterious first wife. The author’s prose is gothic and emotive, and you can’t wait to find out what’s actually in the damn attic!
Okay, but now imagine that all of a sudden, the author thrusts you into the pseudo-Rochester’s point of view. And all of a sudden we’re told that, YES, he is cruel and manipulative to his second wife. YES, he is keeping secrets from her. YES, he did lock his first wife in his attic, and YES, he did lie about her death. And YES, he would send his new wife out to the wolves if he thought it would serve his purposes.
But but but! He’s not a bad guy! In fact, everything pseudo-Rochester does is, apparently, 100% justified. Why? Oh, because he’s gay! Obviously.
Ah yes. A story that’s ostensibly about a woman but is ACTUALLY about her cruel, manipulative gay husband who is cruel and manipulative because he is gay and who then must die tragically with his lover (who is also cruel and manipulative).
Respectfully, the straights should not be writing LBGTQ characters if this is what they’re going to do.
I can’t quite tell if this book is outright homophobic, or if it’s just badly written and relies on too many cliches (bury your gays, evil gay trope, etc.) Either way, it’s not a great look.
