Spring is here, which means I can finish books again. As soon as the April sun hit my skin, and I started reading Shakespeare again, my mind is invigorated– and ravenous– for the printed word (though I prefer to read on my phone– don’t tell anyone). The books I have completed so far this Spring vary widely in quality and content, and however, two themes prevail in all of them– blood-thirsty men (literally and metaphorically speaking 😉 ) and duality. Some of these books moved me, some of them affected me on a subconscious level. Either way I felt compelled to provide my short personal reviews of each one in chronological order starting March somethingith ending in May 8th, when I finished my last book. There might be spoilers. I’ll try not to, but I don’t know what you consider a spoiler. If it seems like I’m going to say something that you don’t want to read– just scroll. I won’t take it personally.
The Pisces
by Melissa Broder
I started reading a lot of books in the “emotionally distressed (and potentially deranged) woman finds herself experiencing something other-worldly” genre when I started finding books on Pinterest. I’ve read the heavy hitters like Paradise Rot and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I really really enjoyed Touch of Jen Mona Awad’s Bunny. The Pisces is one of those books. In fact, I found it particularly reminiscent of Bunny. For one, in both books, the main character is a woman in grad school (in Bunny the main character is in a Creative Writing MFA, in The Pisces it’s a literary PhD on the work of Sappho), something that I find particularly touching because I was also once a woman in grad school.
The protagonist Lucy is an absolute trainwreck. She’s lovesick for her non-committal ex-boyfriend. She’s lovesick because even though she broke up with him, he has moved on from the relationship quicker than her. When she tries to take him back, he doesn’t want her anymore and she handles this loss really poorly. She has fits of rage and she takes heavy dosages of sleeping pills, until finally she’s found by the police passed out in her car. She’s sent out to California to house/dogsit for her sister and attend court mandated group-therapy for sex and love addicts.
Instead of confronting her issues head-on through therapy, she starts meeting up with guys from Tinder to hook-up, her experiences vary in action and intensity but all ultimately leave her unfulfilled. That is, until she starts a flirty, beach-side, will-they-won’t-they romance with a fine young gentleman she believes to be a cute surfer dude (but actually turns out to be a merman). The merman, Theo, is a real sweetie (and there are some sex scenes that are unbelievably errotic for being about a fish–and I’m really not a smutty book reader). However, over the course of the relationship, Lucy discovers that even sexy merman Theo, who appears to want her desperately and endlessly and magically, has his flaws, even he, in a way, is human. I won’t say too much, but the ending left me feeling disturbed and sad, but also relieved.
Along the way Lucy builds friendships that are both toxic and enlightening. She kills her sisters dog out of negligence and abuse, yet somehow manages to rebuild her relationship with said estranged sister. She’s a trainwreck, the kind of trainwreck that leaves you with a pit in your stomach when you look at it for too long, because you know that if you let go just a little bit, if you let yourself slip into the lunacy of life, you could become one just like her. I know that’s not just me, because that’s sort of what all these crazy woman books are and always have been. It’s the Bell Jar and I eat it up like Esther Greenwood eating chicken and caviar. I love a deranged woman, I love and emotional transformation, and I love to feel a little disturbed (but this one left me shaken).
tl:dr disturbed woman falls in love with merman instead of going to therapy. Dog dies. Emotionally strenuous but potentially worthwhile read (for the right audience).
Grade: 84%
Score 3/5 stars ***
Sunrise on the Reaping
by Suzanne Collins
I think The Hunger Games (the original trilogy) is a YA masterpiece and a modern classic for children and teens. The Hunger Games accomplishes everything that many of its counterparts of the time failed to.
- It established an interesting world, giving the reader enough details to entice but leaving enough out to beg questions (and leave ample room for prequels and sequels 😉 ).
- It creates circumstances extreme enough to be readable, yet believable enough to be compelling.
- It has a protagonist who is motivated by tangible things from the real world like family and privacy. She feels empathetic and real in her struggles. She’s morally just, but her path is not obvious or direct or linear.
- Collins successfully conveys several complex messages about class inequality, over-consumption, the struggle of the working man, and showed how it all ties back to corruption in government and industry in a way children can comprehend. In a way children– dare I say?– relate to?
In short, the novels are well-written, but the messaging is clear. Many Gen-Zers (cringe) refer to the novels as a source of early political radicalization, and I do not hesitate to believe that sentiment is true. As for the prequels? To me those are mostly just for brain candy and lore-building. I thought Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was particularly corny (villain origin story with a manic pixie dream girl– Um, I’ve already seen (500) Days of Summer!). Still, I was fresh-off a trilogy reread/watch when I read it, so I was totally there for the Panem post-war history.
The characters in SotR are much more compelling than the ones in BoSBaS (which is to be expected, considering that very few of the characters in this book are actually evil). There was certainly more of focus on character/family tree lore than there was on history lore, and I think that’s probably interesting to the right person, but personally, I’m less interested in learning about Katniss and Peeta’s parents than the overall history of Panem as a nation. Despite that, I still think this book was written better than its predecessor, and I think it’s a good starting point for new readers, if they want to take an alternative rout to the series. The ending was fine, considering that it was essentially pre-written by the other books, and expectedly, it was sad.
Overall, not a bad YA novel, not as good as the originals.
tl:dr: another addition to The Hunger Games universe. Good for lore, better than the last one, not as good as the original three.
Grade: 79%
Score: 3/5 stars ***
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
I went into Gone Girl with impressively little knowledge on what it was actually about. I remembered Gone Girl being a cultural phenomenon of my late tween/early teen years– when the movie came out. There was a lot of buzz around that release, a lot of discussion and references. A couple years ago, I saw the “cool girl” scene from the movie clipped in a video essay about online femcel culture. That’s all I had going in, a vague title and knowledge of a resentful, messy haircut.
Interestingly enough, Gone Girl was actually recommended to me by my boyfriend. My boyfriend loves Gone Girl. My boyfriend wrote an entire paper on Gone Girl. Before I read it, he would tell me all the time how much I would enjoy Gone Girl too.
I guess it had been one of those things I’d avoided for its popularity. Like I said, it was at the peak of its popularity right when I was leaving middle school and entering highschool, a period of time when I was dedicated to appreciating older and more niche media and making myself ignorant to what ever was “popular” at the time (these are the reasons I would really enjoy Gone Girl haha). Even though I don’t practice pop culture alienation anymore, I still hadn’t been compelled to pick up Gone Girl until it was recommended to me multiple times, and it was cheap enough for me to use my free Thriftbooks reward on.
So I read Gone Girl and I did like it a lot, but similar to The Pisces it left me feeling dark and dreadful. I think that is the book’s mission and it does well accomplishing it, but unlike The Pisces the theme of the book is not clear.
There is no one to root for in Gone Girl. Nick is a shitty husband, Amy is fighting fire with fire. She takes matters into her own hands, she makes herself the arbiter of justice, she (spoilers) frames people for crimes they did not commit, but these individuals are still not innocent. And the degree to which these people are not innocent is unclear because there is no reliable narrator.
Gone Girl strikes me as the inversion of a traditional true crime narrative. It’s a study on the pressure girls and women face to be the perfect idealized versions of themselves in order to be accepted. Amy isn’t sick or deranged so much as she has reached her breaking point. For Amy, life is a never ending masquerade, and in the face of poverty and desperation and betrayal she uses that to her advantage. She gets even, she dishes out retribution in a way that she deems just. She uses the biases and unfortunate truths of the world to her advantage. I don’t think what Amy does is right, by any means, but I understand the impulse to see people face consequences for their actions. Definitely an interesting read. A lot of layers– a lot of ethical questions.
I didn’t love the ending, but I don’t know how I would change it. It’s status as a cult classic is warranted. It’s a good read that will keep you on your toes.
tl:dr: a compelling and invigorating mystery. Deep commentary on different societal expectations for men and women (and husbands and wives). Definitely a work that left me pondering.
Grade: 91%
Score: 4/5 stars ****
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slaying
by Grady Hendrix
I purchased this book from Thriftbooks too. It was one of their top Thriller recommendations, so I got it sort of on a whim. Within the first few pages I could tell that the book actually takes place in the same suburb of Charleston, South Carolina that I lived in for a period of time. That immediately worked in the book’s favor to draw me in. As I read the first few chapters, I built a map of their neighborhood in my mind, I tried to imagine where places I would have gone lined up with places in the book.
Above all, this book is corny. It follows a suburban housewife named Patricia as she manages two kids who are growing into their tween/teen years and a husband who is never home. Patricia joins a book club with some other women in her area, they read true crime and horror books almost exclusively. This is Patricia’s only source of refuge and community in life, it is something she cherishes.
When a mysterious man moves in down the street from her, Patricia begins the standard rituals of southern friendliness. She tries to bring him a casserole, but when she tries to drop it off, she finds this man (James Harris) apparently dead. He wakes up after she performs CPR on him and he ushers her out. After that he becomes a fixture in her life, she helps him run errands around town because it’s hard for him to move around during the day time, he comes over to her house regularly, he gets to know her kids and her husband. Patricia’s Mother-in-Law, Miss Mary, has dementia, but everytime she sees James Harris she calls him Hoyt Pickens and she curses his name. This is all the way until she is killed by a swarm of ravenous swamp rats.
James Harris is very obviously a vampire from the time his character is introduced. It was so obvious that I almost thought he was a red herring, but alas he was not. This could be seen as a flaw, but I see it as a strength. Patricia spends half of the book oblivious to the fact that James Harris is obviously a vampire, because it would be impolite to judge her neighbors’ quirks. Then, when she can no longer deny that he’s a vampire, she has to spend the rest of the book convincing her friends and neighbors that this man who moved in down the street is a certified blood-sucking fiend. All the while, he is corrupting the men of the neighborhood, turning them into exaggerated versions of their worst selves, thus maintaining control of the wives as well.
An important and potentially problematic element to this books plot is the fact that James Harris takes his victims from the predominantly Black neighborhood. The author uses this as an opportunity to highlight how crime is addressed (or not addressed) in areas with more Black residents. The missing person(s) cases are not cases at all and many incidents are written off as being the result of general irresponsible behavior or drug use. This is an interesting perspective, but I think to use your vampire novel as a foreground to highlight this sort of issue, as a white author, is a little opportunistic. Furthermore, even if I didn’t think the former was a little tacky, this book is also guilty of several cringy motifs such as a.) Black characters dying first, b.) mystical Black character who holds the answers, c.)white-savior narrative.
All in all, I read this book quickly, it was fun, it made me think a lot about whether or not I would know if someone in my life was a vampire, I had a vampire nightmare or two, and I meditated on the flaws in the book’s narrative. Again, the ending was mid, but endings are hard, so I get it.
tl:dr: fun, but corny, vampire thriller where suburban moms have to take down the monster. Easy to get through, but it is vaguely problematic/ white savior-y.
Grade: 67%
Score: 2/5 stars **
All of these books left me feeling rather grim, though they were fun to get through. In most of these books, none of the men can be trusted, many of them are violent or resentful or oppressive (or any combination of the three). The women (and Haymitch) are forced into corners, they’re called crazy, they are made crazy. They are pushed to the edge, often forced to kill to escape. In the process, these characters are all forced into morally ambiguous places. They are all forced to reckon with what it is to be good and whether or not that is something they even care to be. It’s interesting to me that all of these books, though each one was picked in isolation, kind of tells the same story.
If you are going to read any of the books I’ve reviewed, I suggest you read all of them, so that you too can have this revelatory experience.
I am currently reading Rouge by Mona Awad. As I said, I thought Bunny was captivating and so far I have found Rouge to be just as entertaining and weird. After Rouge I have Frank Herbert’s Dune and Earthlings lined up, then who knows! If you have any recommendations or books you think I would enjoy (not that you know me like that) feel free to leave a comment or shoot us an email. If you liked this book review be sure to subscribe to our email list so that you can know when I post another one!
Leave a Reply