I've probably seen Get A Life, Chloe Brown on the internet more than any other book this year. Based on the blurb, I could tell it would be a humorous read, but it in a lot of ways it wasn't the romcom I expected.
Chloe Brown wants to get a life. After having an almost near death experience when a drunk woman nearly runs her over, Chloe vows her life is painfully dull and decides to do something about it. Emboldened by her brush with disaster, she etches out a list of experiences to help spice up her life. And she finds no one better than her seemingly annoying, bad boy superintendent, Red, to help. One thing that isn't on Chloe's list is living an unremarkable life. This book wasn't the romcom read I expected it to be for a lot of reasons, with that being said it surprised me in some ways and let me down in others. The representation in this story is one facet I have no complaints about, and the inclusion of a main character with a chronic illness gets a roaring round of applause from me. Chloe has fibromyalgia, yet it isn't depicted as holding her back or defining her entire existence, and it isn't handled in a way that makes her seem undesirable. Too often illnesses are cast in a negative light, both in society and in literature, but Talia Hibbert did a wonderful job writing Chloe's experience living with chronic pain. The story doesn't only bring to light the reality of living with a chronic illness; it also deals with the aftermath of being in an abusive relationship. If you're familiar with my other reviews of books billed as romances then you know I'm pretty critical of fictional relationships. I need to feel like the connection between two characters makes sense, which brings me to Chloe's romantic interest, Red. I loved Red as a stand-alone character, but his relationship with Chloe was a slow burn that exploded into fireworks too quickly. The story spent more time in their heads than they spent having any sort of meaningful conversation. I didn't expect them to start spilling their trauma and having heart to hearts 50 pages in or anything, but it felt like they went from lightly despising each other to full blown thoughts of marriage faster than a couple of teenagers. Red and Chloe would have made great friends in my opinion. At the end of the day I didn't believe their chemistry as much as I wanted to. Hibbert's humor was absolutely spot on and I found myself chuckling often. We have all been Chloe at moments in our lives, caught off guard in very awkward situations (and probably shrinking into ourselves out of embarrassment). Some of the banter between Chloe and Red reminds me of the quips I've shared with my best friends. I wanted to see more of them together having late night talks or sharing a bit more about themselves. How can two people be convinced they're in love when at the end of the day it seems they've barely learned much about one another? Red and Chloe's individual storylines with respect to their past relationships could have been fleshed out more, and maybe that's why I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, they were still cute together, and I think Chloe is an absolute badass. I didn't need to see how awful their ex's were to care about their trauma, I'm just noticing a misuse of real estate when it comes to how the almost 400 pages were used. I can understand how this lives up to the hype in terms of representation, but the romance element was lacking for me, and that's supposed to be a decent chunk of the story. My opinion seems to be a fairly unpopular one from what I can tell. Get a Life, Chloe Brown gets a solid 3.5 stars from me. I enjoyed the read and would recommend it for all the positives noted above, but it's not a story I'd read a second time.
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After a ballsy plan to attend NYU goes awry, Pablo ends up working at his local 24 hour bodega serving New York's finest yuppie customers. With student loan bills piling up at an apartment he can barely afford, and with no idea where to go next, Pablo is barely skating by. The one thing he has going for him is the mildly successful Instagram account where he pairs shoes with obscure snack foods. Every day for Pab is more of the same, until wildly successful pop star Leanna Smart stumbles into his bodega in the middle of a snow storm. Her life is a tornado of private planes, crazy fans, and lonely hotel rooms. When Pab and Lee are thrown together by complete chance they know it would be crazy to let their brief encounter go beyond just one night, but you know how it goes when you're young and dumb.
I hit a roadblock a few chapters into this book, and because I started it so long ago I can't remember exactly why. The story got off to a bit of a slow start in order to set the tone and dig into the many problems facing Pablo when we meet him; without sugarcoating it, he's a bit of a mess. I've yet to see a story handle what it's like to be 20 with immense debt looming over your head and dealing with crippling self-doubt the way Permanent Record does. There's an important conversation happening about the "prestige" of attending college and what it truly means to fail. Sure, this is a YA romance of sorts, but not in the traditional sense. Mary H.K. Choi presents two flawed and imperfect characters with their own needs and desires that will frustrate the hell out of you (mostly because they're human). In a lot of ways, Leanna and Pablo fit into the stereotypes they represent perfectly, but Choi creates moments to challenge those preconceived notions. As a reader you get to see them at their highest highs and lowest lows. The biggest disappointment of this book was the romance. Maybe it was my mistake for assuming the connection between Leanna and Pablo would be the most important part of the story, so if you're looking for a feel good love story then this isn't going to fit the bill. There's no way to make it not sound cheesy, but Permanent Record is more of a story about learning to love yourself, flaws and all. We get an unobstructed view into the chaos of Pablo and Leanna's lives as they try to figure out what is going to make them happy at the end of the day. Their story may have played out more believably as a friendship instead of a romance considering how little time they actually spend together throughout the book. I appreciated the narrative turn this book took in the direction of Pablo finally figuring out what he wanted to do and taking responsibility for his reckless decisions, but it was too little too late for me. I couldn't bring myself to care much about Pablo and Leanna unfortunately. Both of them were living in their own fantasy worlds which contributed a lot to their existing problems. There were more than a few times when I wanted to pull my hair out due to the forced romance and ridiculous decisions between the two of them. If Pablo would have started to come around closer to the halfway mark this would have been a stronger story about turning setbacks into opportunities. It took over 3/4 of the book for me to feel sympathy for Pablo and my feelings toward Leanna are still very up in the air. The secondary characters are definitely a redeeming factor in this story though. Pablo's roommates are the kind of friends you'd love to have and his family was lovably absurd during the moments they shared. Overall, I give this a 3/5 stars. The story was fine and it was a quick read you could take to the beach (I just happened to shelve it for many months before I wanted to pick it back up again). I didn't hate it and I didn't love it, but there were aspects of the story I really enjoyed even if it was only briefly. I know I'm not the only one that got caught up in the gaudy madness that is the Crazy Rich Asians movie adaptation. It isn't an exaggeration when I say at one point I watched this movie a couple times a week. If I couldn't decide on something to turn on before bed or use for background noise, Crazy Rich Asians became the default. I'm going to say something that you won't hear from me often...the movie was better than the book.
Let me set this up for you. When Rachel Chu's boyfriend, Nicholas Young, asks her to spend the summer with him in Singapore, she imagines a laid back vacation full of sight seeing and eventually meeting the family of the man she loves. What Rachel didn't bargain for, and what Nick neglected to tell her, is that his family is among the richest of the rich in Asia. Rachel is thrown headfirst into a world she doesn't understand, where Nick's relatives and their friends swarm like sharks, waiting to tear her apart. While Rachel struggles to keep her head above water, the rest of Nick's relatives face their own struggles in order to keep up with appearances, and keep up with each other. I'm going to begin with my overall impression of the book. I can't deny it was entertaining, and at times ridiculously funny. I never cease to be amazed by how consumed wealthy people are with protecting their image, even if it comes at the expense of being a terrible person. Kevin Kwan really went all out to illustrate the lengths rich socialites are willing to go to in order to cement their status among others and stick to the status quo. There was plenty of glitz and glamor, but beneath the gossamer sheen of wealth lies a persistent sadness, the result of working tirelessly to maintain a façade of perfection. I was most disappointed by the shift in focus from Rachel and Nick to a growing group of characters caught up in the madness of high society. Kwan sets us up to believe Rachel and Nick's relationship will be the main narrative of this story, the thing we will become invested in by the conclusion, yet I never found myself genuinely rooting for them. They got lost among the lengthy descriptions of opulent shopping sprees, drama between other characters, and explanations of how Singapore developed over centuries (mostly relating to economic prosperity). The characters weren't fleshed out enough to connect with, except for Rachel, though there were moments I felt sympathetic to their personal struggles. Kwan was working with a few storylines that collided instead of coming together to tell a complicated story of how familial expectations and societal rules can affect individual and their relationships. What the movie got right was putting Rachel and Nick at the center of everything, placing emphasis on their development while subtly including bits of other characters' stories. Less time could have been dedicated to the fine details of how the crazy rich spend their money, which made a lot of them unlikable almost by default. It functioned in the most basic sense to show us all the ways in which the characters were attempting to live up to the expectations of others. Their faults and sins were exposed as a product of the environment they were brought up in, painting them as both victims and inadvertent perpetrators. Maybe I'm being a little harsh because I tend to lean toward character driven stories, and I wouldn't consider this one of those by any means. A lot of the first half of this book read like filler to set up the events in the second half, when the plot picks up considerably. That being said, there still weren't many moments later in the book that stuck out to me or made it anything extraordinary. My final verdict for this one is a 3/5. I didn't hate it and I didn't love it; this is the kind of book you can pick up on a vacation and devour fairly quickly, but probably won't think of much after. Go watch the movie if the premise of this book interests you because it captures the glamor, drama, and relationships in this story the way I hoped the book would. My first read of 2021, The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker, was oddly fitting given the global pandemic we're facing. I had some previous knowledge about the book going in, but wasn't prepared for the eery similarities between the events in the story and the ongoing crisis we're all facing right now.
When a mysterious sleeping sickness appears in the small town of Santa Lora, the community is thrown into a state of fear and chaos. The outbreak begins at a local college, where a freshman slumps into her bed after a night out, and drifts off into a sleep from which she never wakes. In the beginning, no one knows what to believe when they hear the reports of students being carted out of dorms on stretchers, plagued by an unknown illness. The community thinks maybe it's an exaggeration, or maybe it won't reach them in the comfort of their own homes. The only information infectious disease experts are able to work out is that the sleepers are dreaming, and their brain function is higher than ever recorded. As all hell breaks loose in the California town, we hear the course of the epidemic from multiple perspectives; each character with their own theories and emotional turmoil in response to the unknown. I think speculative fiction is a genre I need to explore more. This book hits a bit close to home at the moment, but I was fully invested in the story of this fictional virus. The strength of this narrative comes from the structure of being told from multiple perspectives, which is generally hit or miss for me. The story follows an academic couple with a newborn baby, a single father with two daughters left to fend for themselves after he falls ill, two college students thrown together with opposing views of the world, an aging college professor, and a psychiatrist quarantined miles away from her young daughter. I enjoyed the glimpses into the personal lives of each character and how their stories overlapped subtly on a larger scale. Being able to see what's going on inside everyone's heads made it easy to form an emotional connection, and I started wondering what I would do if I were in the situations they were faced with. Mysterious illnesses aren't a new trope in fiction, but there's something especially freaky about falling asleep and never waking up, or even falling asleep for a prolonged amount of time. It doesn't sound threatening at first, but to me the thought became terrifying. When some of the dreamers begin to wake up there are more questions raised than answered, especially when a select few are convinced their dreams are premonitions of the future. This revelation causes some characters to question what is reality and what they've only dreamed (it's a bit of a mind fuck at times). Where this hit close to home was the slow burn of fear as news trickles in about the dreamers, and it very much mirrored what we saw happening across the world last spring: hoarding supplies, self-isolation, and placing personal needs over the needs of others. Walker did a great job showing how an epidemic affects people in big and small ways, especially psychologically and emotionally. If you're not a fan of unresolved endings, then The Dreamers might not be for you, because by the end there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Nothing is wrapped up in a neat little bow, and there's never an explanation of how the virus swept across the town or why it induced a deep sleep. In this way I think the story mirrors our reality, because there is so much we will never know or understand about how and why things happen, both in our own lives and in the world as a whole. We never really get to know what happens to everyone when the the sickness seems to vanish, but maybe the ambiguity of the ending is simply a reflection of the way life is sometimes. I highly recommend this book for anyone a little afraid to dive into classic science fiction, mystery lovers, and those who like pondering big questions about the universe. The Dreamers earns a well-deserved 5/5 stars from me! To be honest, most of this year I've been in a major reading slump. Attending virtual book club has been the one thing keeping me even slightly on track to reach my 30 book reading goal for the year. So, thank you Female Authors Book Club, you have been one of the few bright spots from the past nine months.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was our most recent book club selection, and it didn't disappoint. The story is an updated take on a classic gothic novel, drawing inspiration from the dreary English novels preceding it, and unfolding into a unique horror-thriller standing on its own. When Noemi receives a disturbing letter from her cousin, Catalina, accusing her own husband of attempting to poison her, Noemi sets out to investigate. Leaving behind her glamorous life in Mexico City, her journey leads to a dilapidated home called High Place; the residence of Catalina, her husband Virgil, and his unusual family, the Doyles. The longer Noemi extends her stay in search of clues to explain what is happening to her cousin, the more she is pulled into the macabre mystery of the Doyle family. And when she begins to have strange dreams, it gets more difficult to tell what's real and what isn't. Noemi is a witty, intelligent, and complex character I couldn't help but be charmed by–she's a powerhouse. She is sure of herself and completely trusts her instincts while attempting to uncover the truth about what is really ailing Catalina, refusing to let the Doyles distract or derail her with their odd rules and expectations. Everything Noemi is and believes goes against the Doyles; considering their interest in eugenics, viewing women as inferior, and taking advantage of native people for their own gain, this story has more than a few layers of conflict at its core. Moreno-Garcia deftly crafts a story handling horror in its many forms, from a house that seems to have a life of its own to what it means to be a woman whose value is tethered almost entirely to her relation to men. The first 3/4 of this book was a slow burn, and I don't think I fully appreciated this aspect of the story until after I finished reading it. The slow pace added to the sense of discomfort Noemi feels while staying at High Place, and kept me wondering when something big might happen. Moreno-Garcia knows how to reveal just enough information to keep the reader interested without giving them the ability to put the pieces of the puzzle together prematurely. Despite this, my one complaint about Mexican Gothic is how long it took for the big reveal. I can see how drawing out the days leading to the most shocking moment of the book contributed to the creepy, unsettling atmosphere, but there were a few lulls toward the middle where I skirted the edge of boredom briefly. The twist reveal at the end was *chefs kiss* for me, because while there were plenty of moments that pointed in that direction I was never able to guess exactly what was going on. I give extra points to Garcia-Moreno for originality and creep factor. I can't believe it took months for me to pick this one up for book club, but I'm happy to have this book rounding out my 2020 reading list. Overall, this one gets a 4.5/5 stars, with only a half star deduction because of the very slow pace toward the second half. I recommend this for anyone who likes an underrated feminist read, thrillers with a unique edge, and for those who aren't afraid of a bit of the grotesque. |
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