pinkiereads's reviews
23 reviews

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? No

2.75

sorry to all my lesbians but i did not like this book… it was slow and boring and i didn’t like the main characters much and the most interesting part was the ocean but we never got to really know about it or explore it further and i just felt it fell flat. i wanted to like it i really did but the writing style also felt tiring to me… i probably won’t be reading salt slow after this even though it was on my reading list. 

The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

dark mysterious tense

5.0

forever my favorite short story. i could read it a million times.  occupied a place in my mind when i read it 5 years ago and hadn’t left since

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

4.0

read this back in highschool and i wanted to add it to my reading history because i still think about it. truly an incredible book i should read more zora neal hurston. i will always remember the passage about internalized racism and the worship of false idols… some of the most hard hitting prose i’ve ever read

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

challenging dark funny 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? Yes

3.25

i wish i could have liked this book but i just didn’t… there was just something missing or some disconnect in the writing. the premise was interesting but it honestly didn’t feel like it went anywhere? i really liked the statistics and i can say parts of it were good, like how the separate stories entertained. simon j craft and hendrix young were probably my favorite perspectives because they felt more real. the two main characters…. idk. something wasn’t working and i hate to say it but it might have been the fact that the author is a man but they just felt so unreal and one dimensional even as he was clearly trying to write them as complex. anyway, not my favorite. also dragged on really long tbh… i really wanted to like it but i just wanted it to be over 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Police brutality, and Murder

The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn

challenging funny mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

such a fun read - took me some time to get into it because it was so vague? but then i didn’t want to finish it so i stopped reading for a bit it was so good. sooooo descriptive and sensory, probably the most in a book i’ve read. imagery was insane and it was also unexpectedly very funny! i will be thinking about this one for a while…

edit: upon second thought a month after finishing this book i’m upping it to a 5. that shit was crazy and i’m still thinking about it 

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

incredibly hard read. at first i was frustrated, and unable to get into it. but towards the end as the relationship between dana and rufus truly developed and became more twisted, i began to not enjoy it per say but to appreciate it. heartbreaking and painful, weirdly at times funny? sometimes not my favorite pacing, but in the end i understood why it was so important. the nuance and contradictions were as hard to accept as a reader as it was for dana to accept them living it… i feel i may be thinking about this for a while. a different approach and kind of dignity than, say, the heaven and earth grocery store, but dignity in slavery would have to look different to survive, as dana learns. i’m glad i read it

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery

it’s a book about slavery, so don’t go into it expecting it to be gentle. it doesn’t hold back, and it is truly painful to read at times. be prepared if you want to read it, it’s worth it but it’s not something to pick up on a whim

Family of Liars by E. Lockhart

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

lollllll this book was bad. but it’s ok bc it was entertaining enough and i will say i did not expect that twist at the end. so there’s that! but yeesh it was lacking in subtlety… it felt like it was whacking me over the head with a board (so to speak) of the points it was trying to make about money and privilege and race and all that. like… oof. lowkey the woke mob got to this one. but not terrible bc hey i was entertained

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Death, Sexual violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, and Classism

Moderate: Homophobia

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

a bit too fast paced/short imo, i felt i could have had a longer ending but a really interesting premise and setting and it was captivatingly written. plus what’s not to love about BOG BODIES!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Murder

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.25

not my favorite, started out super promising but tbh i was not satisfied with the ending… i would like to read more books with old main characters though, i enjoyed that aspect of looking back. and moshfaegh’s writing does always have a way of hooking you

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

sooooo good. truly informed so much of my world view and was wonderful to read in conversation with alexis pauline gumbs’s Undrowned. there is so much to be learned from the natural world around us! i loved the themes of entanglement and contamination, i will be returning to those. also, i always love a deep dive of a book. the section on ethnic minorities of pickers and how that influences their picking and world making, the section on japanese timber trade history, the section on pine trees around the world, the attention to relationships between species in the matsutake universe, the sections on the differences between us and japanese and chinese matsutake science… ALL SO INTERESTING!!! def a hard book to read on account of just how much information is in it and how completely unfamiliar with the subject i was beforehand, but so worth it. only .25 points off for being a tricky one but also i’m not mad about it. i <3 socially informed and revolutionary science and i <3 mushrooms and soon i may learn to <3 living in the apocalypse