myrtosfullybooked's reviews
156 reviews

Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Sabrina & Corina, Kali Fajardo-Anstine 🌼🥀💧

I've decided to stop giving star reviews to story collections because as we all know, each story will be different and some will hit a chord more than others, but for this book, I couldn't resist.

The stories in this collection deal with painful themes like intergenerational violence, abandonment, and discrimination, but they are written gently, and they flow easily. If anything, the writing felt minimal but, just like the women whose stories it portrayed, hid many deeper layers - not all of them meant to or being fully revealed to the reader. I feel like I learned a lot about the experiences of Indigenous and Latina women in the American West without the book ever becoming didactic or compromising the atmosphere of the story told.

Tomi, Any Further West, and Ghost Sickness were my favourites from the collection. Any Further West, especially, felt like a punch in the stomach, but it was so beautifully well-written. I may not be able to explain it very well, but we see characters lost, self-destructive, desperate, or perpetually in pain, and yet somehow what stayed with me was their strength and their survival. The cycles of violence and pain sometimes seem endless and inescapable, but every now and then a daughter will get away and make it; a grandmother will leave a legacy to be honoured; a cousin will be remembered for more than her beauty even if it's by only one person; a lost girl might be found... Normally, these would have been the type of stories I would have found so grim and depressing, and I was really surprised to find myself not wanting the book to end. It is all the things sad girl literature (or the samples of it I've read at least) is trying to be and fails.

I am so grateful to @bouebooks for putting this book on my radar. I will certainly be reading Woman of Light too.

Content Warnings

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

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challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The book was an okay read but I was not blown away. The writing is good, even beautiful at points and the plot is to some extent interesting. Though I'm not a fan of true crime as a genre, I've enjoyed seeing more works reclaiming victims' voices and critiquing the romanticisation of serial killers. Allegedly, this book aimed to do the same by focusing on the narratives of three women associated in different ways with Ansel Packer, a serial killer awaiting execution. This goal, for me, was not really reflected in the actual story. Yes, we read about the three women and they each have a number of chapters focused on them but Ansel always feels like the main character. For me the chapters focusing on him, his thoughts, and his struggles end up overshadowing the female characters in the story. I liked the fact that Kukafka didn’t seek to pass moral judgment on Ansel, who clearly struggled with developmental trauma and a sociopathic lack of empathy; someone who could have had a different life with the appropriate support in place. She didn’t make him outright evil, a reminder that serial killers can look completely ordinary, charming even, as we well know from real-life cases. I will acknowledge that the way Ansel is written serves as a great reminder to stop glorifying or looking for meaning in horrific acts of violence -primarily perpetrated by men. All that said, I did not love the writing in Ansel’s chapters and struggled to remain interested in the storyline. The story is overall character-driven but there is no major character development in case that is what you are after. Also, I read that the author wanted the book to be a statement against the US penal system and the death penalty. I 100% support that agenda. People like Ansel most of the time just need more appropriate support; simply killing instead of rehabilitating them just feels like a weird cheat for any justice system. Yet, I am not sure how (if at all) such a topic can be compatible with the goal of not focusing on Ansel and emphasising the women characters' narratives. I felt that this attempt ended up spreading the book a bit too thin with both aspects ending up weaker for it.

Content Warnings

Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood

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3.0

Send Nudes by Saba Sams

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I want to start by saying I think it’s really important we start expecting (dare I say hold accountable even?) more publishers and authors to include content or trigger warnings to their books. This book deals with potentially quite traumatic themes for some people and I feel there should be a preface or designated CW area to list those.

Short story collections tend to be a mixed bag. Very much in that spirit, I found ‘Send Nudes’ average; neither disappointing nor outstanding. The majority of characters exuded a passive, resigned vibe and many of them were caught in depressing or, let’s say, suboptimal situations and, admittedly, I do not usually love that type of story or character trope. Some of said situations also felt quite easily escapable, and generally, writing characters perpetuating or remaining stuck in those, tends to annoy me; though I do take time to interrogate why that is.

That said, I did actually quite enjoy ‘Overnight’, ‘Here Alone’, and ‘Blue 4eva’; I found the characters a bit more relatable, and felt the stories managed to convey a strange type of optimism despite the main characters’ often hopeless circumstances. These three stories managed to celebrate life’s small victories the best and create that much coveted wink of unspoken understanding or shared experience between author and reader.

Overall, sad girl literature –I am not using the term derogatorily or belittlingly by the way– is not really my thing, and predictably enough I was not blown away by this collection. However, I do expect it to gain quite a cult following, if it doesn’t have one already…

Finally, even though the collection has been promoted as featuring ‘coming of age’ stories and exploring the complexities of growing up, I felt that was inaccurate. Many of the characters are in their late 20s, 30s, or older, but even the teenage characters did not necessarily seem to be going through a ‘coming of age’ experience. I think it would be more accurate to describe these stories as ‘slice of life’ instead.

No favourite lines from this one I am afraid…

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNINGS:
• Abortion
• Toxic Relationships
• Alcohol & substance (ab-)use
• Adult/minor relationship
• Child neglect
• Body shaming (internalised and external)

Content Warnings