probablyjenna's reviews
358 reviews

Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon

medium-paced

3.5

Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie Rendon is a hard book for me to review, so I’m going to split it into a list of what I liked and disliked. 

Quick summary: Quill is an Indigenous woman who has lived on the Red Pine reservation her entire life. She’s married to a great man, and together they have two small children. She has a passion for running, and is training for the Boston Marathon with two of her close friends. But one day on a run, she hears a scream in the woods and from that day forward, she finds herself falling deeper into a dark conspiracy happening on the reservation.

Likes:

• We need more books by Native American women to hit the mainstream, and this one has a lot of the marks to do that. Rendon writes about the disappearances of Indigenous women, a topic people are often ignorant of or simply don’t know enough about. I am glad this book exists.
• While I didn’t find Quill likable, I feel like she was a well-developed character who found herself in a really difficult situation. Her choices sometimes bothered me, but they made sense for her character in those moments.
• Some readers may dislike this, but I love that Rendon sprinkled a lot of Ojibwe words/phrases into the story. The context is there to figure out the meaning, and it truly centers the community this book represents.
• Rendon knows the story she’s telling and is not afraid of showing how dark it is. She does not hold back, and I appreciate that.

Dislikes:

• This is almost all telling rather than showing, and it really makes the book feel dry. The writing is quite simplistic: person does this, then this, then this. There is very little attempt to show this world to us.
• There is so much superfluous information. I tested to see it I could skip big chunks of chapters and still understand what was going on, and yup, it was easy to find spots in the book that were skippable because they added nothing to the plot or characters. I would go back & read the sections I skipped just to be sure I hadn’t missed anything - nope, just unnecessary paragraphs of telling.
• Random PSAs. Yes, this topic is of massive importance but there is a way of showing that through craft that does not involve the characters delivering lines about MMIW without it feeling as if they are speaking to an audience. It made several sections feel inauthentic because characters seemed to be breaking the third wall and talking to readers rather than the other characters.

Overall, I’m glad I read this and I hope more people pick it up. While it has its issues (in my opinion), the actual story is really compelling and one that needs to be told.

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

emotional reflective fast-paced

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

3.5

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans is easily one of my favorite books of all time, so I was really excited when I saw Villavicencio’s first foray into fiction.

Catalina is a Bildungsroman that follows titular Catalina in her final year at Harvard, against the backdrop of the recently failed DREAM Act vote in 2007. Catalina is undocumented, and growing increasingly more depressed as graduation looms because she has no idea what future awaits her without legal citizenship. 

There is a lot to like in this book. Villavicencio is a phenomenal writer with a really distinct voice, and her style really shines through in this character. The topic of the book is one we need to see more of, and we truly experience Catalina’s mounting despair as her senior year trudges forward. 

Ultimately, though, this fell a bit short for me - and honestly? I think it’s because it is just far too short. At 199 pages, I felt like I was just getting to know and understand Catalina right as we were coming up on an ending. The ending itself felt abrupt, and the epilogue didn’t do much at all besides feel like a summary of closing events. Catalina is a difficult, complicated young woman - I needed to be with her longer to feel her full effect. 

This is not a bad book by any stretch, it just felt incomplete to me. I think a bit more of a dive into Catalina’s backstory would have added so much to the spiral we clearly meet her in. I recommend this, but also hope Villavicencio does a bit more with whatever work she delivers next. 

A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings

4.5

I love books about unpacking religious trauma, and that is absolutely what you’re going to get if you pick up A Well-Trained Wife. WOW, did my heart just break for Tia right from the start!

Tia Levings starts with a dramatic opening, then eases us backward in time to help show readers how she reached that point. From childhood, church serves as more of a point of fear-mongering than a source of comfort for her. As a child, she has extreme anxiety about the rapture and her general wickedness, despite being so young. As she grows, her people pleasing and conflict aversion tendencies lead her further into very fundamentalist church sectors. By the time she’s married with four children, her life is a terrifying picture of a woman living through domestic violence.

I found this fascinating right from the start, and really appreciated the vulnerability Levings employed as she shares her story. I also appreciate that she shares the aftermath of leaving as well, although I do think it dragged out just a bit. But seeing what her life shaped into after fleeing a dangerous situation was really wonderful, and I imagine was quite healing to write.

There are some big trigger warnings for this, so be kind to yourself and check those out if needed.

Overall, I recommend this one. It’s a frightening look at a world that is far more common than we think. 

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

dark emotional mysterious sad fast-paced

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

4.0

Melissa Albert knows how to write spooky, chaotic, likable female characters. I really loved The Bad Ones, and it absolutely highlighted Albert’s ability to spin intricate world of magic

The premise of this book feels really fresh. There’s a story about a girl who died years ago and a local game that kids in town play without knowing its darker history. Our main character, Nora, has a complicated best friend and the two of them are deeply codependent. And then the best friend goes missing, kicking off Nora’s descent into figuring out what has been lying on the surface of her hometown all this time.

There is so much I loved about how this book portrayed female friendship, especially in the teenage years. Albert never loses sight of who her characters are - messy girls who love each other above all else.

This would be a perfect October read; it isn’t scary, but certainly maintains a spooky atmosphere as Nora learns more about what’s really going on.

Highly recommend, and will continue reading whatever Albert writes next!

The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma

4.0

This is a hard book for me to review because objectively speaking, it is a great work of fiction. The prose itself is beautiful, the character study of Kunle is thoughtful, and the subject of the story (the Biafran War) is one that deserves far more attention. On paper, this is a book I should have devoured and deeply enjoyed.

However, I really struggled with it. It took me more than two months to finish this book because I rarely wanted to pick it up. After reflecting for a bit, here are the main reasons:

1. This book is brutal with few, if any, moments of levity. It is a war book filled with battles, losses, and pain. While I don’t expect a book like this to have cheerful interjections, there was a human piece that felt missing. We’re told that Kunle has grown deeply attached to his fellow soldiers, yet we don’t really see those moments on the page. Interjections like that between the darker battle scenes could have added those small moments where readers can catch their breath & not become entirely numb to the violence.
2. The magical realism element needed a bit more development in order for it to feel less out of place. The chapters with the seer felt jarring, and were too short for me to really invest in. The concept was very cool, and I loved how it played out in the end, but I wanted more throughout the novel. 

The writing itself is beautiful; I definitely plan to check out Obioma’s backlog. I also think this will be a perfect book for many people…it just wasn’t quite for me.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng: A Novel by Kylie Lee Baker

dark emotional mysterious 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

4.5

Cora Zeng is going through it. The setting is NYC, peak COVID-19 pandemic. She lives with her older sister, who she idolizes yet seems to also resent. She seems to struggle with a mixture of anxiety and depression, though it’s hard at first to tell exactly what’s going on with her. And then, right in chapter 1, her sister is murdered right in front of her in what appears to be a hate crime.

I absolutely loved this book and the layers it contained. Cora’s loneliness and grief are so deeply explored, and the backdrop of the pandemic was such a powerful plot device. Cora is not only dealing with the death of her sister, a worldwide pandemic, but also the extreme xenophobia & racism that made itself abundantly clear during that time period. Cora, a biracial Asian-American who is not close with either parent, grew up caught between the two worlds of her identities, and she spends much of the book trying to connect with each side.

So there is all of that, which on its own would make for a strong book…but this is also a really well done, legitimately scary ghost story. I’ve never read a haunting like this one, and there are some truly terrifying scenes.

This is a fantastic book with a lot of depth. Highly recommend if you like light horror with purpose. 

The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington

3.5

The Blonde Dies First tricked me because I expected a slasher, but it’s actually a supernatural storyline. I almost quit reading when I realized that because I just wasn’t in the mood, but I stuck with it & found myself mostly enjoying the book.

It’s one you can’t take too seriously, which was hard to adjust to because I think Joelle Washington’s book Their Vicious Games was a story with a lot more meat on the bones. This one has attempts at deeper social commentary, but overall it felt a bit repetitive and heavy handed. 

BUT again, you just can’t take it too seriously. I think this will be a fun October read for lots of people who want a lightly creepy story about a demon. 

One thing I think this book suffered from is being too precious with main characters. Considering a demon was hunting them, the main group of friends really didn’t suffer too much. It took me out of the story a bit because it never felt like they were in true danger; that could be a selling point for some people, but it just made the action scenes a bit boring to me.

I’m giving this a 3.5 and plan to read whatever Washington comes up with next. It was entertaining and had some true moments with creep factor; I just wanted a bit more. 

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Model Home by Rivers Solomon is a really clever, thoughtful rework of the haunted house genre. Solomon holds us at arms length the entire book, letting the slow burn haunt of the home make readers question just exactly what is going on. The novel doesn’t even take place in the house, which is a unique choice - much of the haunting is done through flashbacks and current processing of the main characters.

I think this is a book for people who enjoy slower, contemporary horror. The writing is really beautiful, carving out the clear trauma main character Ezri has lived through. As a reader, we don’t quite know what the trauma stems from or how Ezri has become the person they are in the present day. Solomon asks you to trust that they can take you on this journey, and that the story will bring you to the side of understanding. They do not overindulge or over inform; I really respect an author who can maintain that balance of leaving readers confused while also still moving the plot forward in a way that will eventually make sense.

While there are some tangential parts of the book that I think could have been edited down, I think the content itself is brilliant and unique. It’s hard to talk too much about the plot without giving things away; this is one best experienced blindly, although if you are sensitive I’d recommend checking trigger warnings. 

I am grateful to have read an eARC, and excited to purchase a physical copy once it comes out! Solomon is absolutely someone to watch. Also, a major shout out for their authors note, where they remark on how pointless things feel given the current state of the world, specifically commenting on the need for a freed Palestine. I am grateful they finished this book, but also grateful to know this is an author not afraid to speak truths about the world. 

The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher
Did not finish book. Stopped at 40%.

Bored 😭

We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride

4.0

This is a really poetic, surrealist deep dive into depression. It totally submerges you in the brain of someone who is truly struggling, using fairy tale imagery to make it clear that depression is something that often makes you feel far from the “real world.” It was strange, dreamy, sad, and hopeful; I found myself tabbing the book quite a bit because the writing itself is so ethereal & lovely.

I read this in one sitting, then had to sit and think about it for a while. While some of the more fantastical magic elements might not work for every reader, I think most people will find themselves deeply enchanted by the character of Whimsy.