Category: Read This Book

In Rachel Heng’s second novel, she tells the story of Ah Boon, the son of a fisherman living in a small village. Ah Boon is a quiet boy, an outlier of his family. But when his family struggles to catch enough fish for the family, Ah Boon discovers a mysterious island that has plenty of fish for everyone.

Ah Boon meets his best friend, a young girl named Siok Mei. They both attend the small village school, where they meet a teacher who has very specific ideas of the future of Singapore. As he grows older, the Japanese army invades, and Ah Boon finds himself living in a world of political change and British Colonialism. He wants a better world for his family, and his country. But what is he willing to sacrifice for that possible future? Would the costs outweigh the benefits?

Going into this epic of a book, I didn’t know what to expect. I found myself swept away by Heng’s story. She’d created a world filled with magical islands, political intrigue, and love. Ah Boon seems adrift in the world. He is inquisitive, but unsure of what direction he wants his life to take. There’s the world of his family, their lives as fishermen. There’s the life that Siok Mei aspires to achieve, in face of political opposition. With English colonialism comes a new world of Oxford educated men determined to make Singapore more Western.

Heng’s storytelling sweeps you away, and for over 400 pages, I became invested in Ah Boon’s story. The Great Reclamation has intrigue, drama, suspense: everything one could hope for. The audiobook edition is brilliantly performed by Windson Liong, and he brings the story to life in such an incredible way. So if you’re looking for a novel to sweep off to your feet, this is it. Get ready to be wowed.

Georgina has such a perfect life, she knows she has to be careful not to come across as insufferable. She’s a successful lawyer and partner at her NYC firm, she works with her handsome husband, their marriage is great, and she has awesome friends. And then she walks in on her husband having sex with her mentee, and desperate to save her marriage, she decides to give swinging a try. She convinces her best friends Norah and Felix, both having relationship struggles as well, to join her. And soon they’re embarking on a wild adventure through sex parties and sex clubs, which lead Georgina straight back to her college boyfriend. Suddenly, swinging is looking like it might torpedo her perfect life.

This is a very smart and engaging book, and Hahn nails the voices perfectly. It’s a perfect balance of smug yet self-deprecating that really evokes that Emma vibe for me, and even though Georgina is a walking disaster (not that she’d ever admit it), I found her to be a fairly sympathetic character as she confronts her misconceptions and assumptions one at a time. The classic set up from Austen is here, and there are lots of parallels between characters, but this isn’t a super loyal retelling, which means that Hahn can play around with her contemporary setting a bit more. This is a breezy read, one you can easily pick up and inhale on a plane or by the beach, and I enjoyed being immersed in a completely different world from my own while sticking with a familiar storyline. I think this is one both Emma fans and those who aren’t familiar with Austen will enjoy in equal measure!

I adore middle grade. There’s just something special about the worlds middle grade authors create that captures my imagination and makes me want to read more. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or somehow end up in a reading slump, I reach for middle grade.

I fell in love with Ortega’s work when I read Ghost Squad, an adorable story about a girl who can see the spirits of her ancestors. But when her family’s spirits start disappearing, she must find a way to save them.

Now Ortega is back with Witchlings, a middle grade novel that focuses on a girl named Seven, who couldn’t be more excited for the ceremony that will finally assign her to a coven. All the witches who turned 12 that year gather together and are assigned their covens. But Seven finds herself as one of the three Spares, witchlings who don’t end up in a proper coven. 

Now Seven and her two potential coven mates must find a way to bond together and create a coven of their own or risk losing their powers all together. The novel follows the three witchlings as they try to problem solve and find a way to band together in friendship and collaboration.

This book is so adorable and centers around understanding that the people around us might not be as terrible as we assumed. It focuses on friendship, what that looks like, and how to determine who our ride-or-die friends truly are.

The second book in the Witchlings series is The Golden Frog Games, which just came out recently. Now the once-in-a-generation witch games are happening, and our beloved coven of Spares —​ ​Seven Salazar, Valley Pepperhorn, and Thorn Laroux — find themselves, once again, the center of controversy. The second novel focuses on Thorn, who wants to compete, but when other contestants start turning to stone, people lay the blame at the feet of the three spares.

Rebekah Taussig tells very personal stories and through them, teaches readers so much about her experience as a person who uses a wheelchair and about ableism and how ableism punishes all of us. The author does not pull punches when she writes about how awful people can be. She breaks down a lot of really crap behavior in films and television, such as when a character with a disability has that dream sequence where they suddenly don’t have that disability anymore which is based on the audacious assumption that all people with disabilities would be happier without them. There is also the common thinking that they would do anything to get rid of them, even evil things. I’m looking at you, Detective Pikachu.

She also tears into “inspiration porn” such as the promposals of the captain of the football team asking the disabled girl in class to prom. “Inspiration porn” is a term for using disabled people as props for videos for likes and clicks because “everyone” wants to see the heartwarming videos of these heroic people being so heroically kind. The rest of that chapter is absolute fire as well. Kindness is complicated and this book makes readers take a step back and think about acts of kindness and when they are actually selfish acts versus when they are something someone actually needs. Taussig gives the example of seeing a person using a wheelchair trying to reach a napkin from a pile of napkins on a high counter. The world doesn’t need the sort of kindness of another person handing them a single napkin. We need someone who will move the whole pile of napkins to a place where they are accessible to everyone all the time.

The author talks about how she was around a group of women and they were talking about experiences that are assumed universal experiences for women, such as catcalling or being told to smile; however, the author hadn’t because what, she’s less of a woman? Because the assumption that a person in a wheelchair has no reason to smile? This is not the author saying all women deserve to be harassed but what she is saying is that we really need to think about all women when we start to assume things about all women.

In another chapter I really appreciated she writes about the capitalist equation that hours + production + wages = value but when a person is disabled, their production amount might be different, the hours you can work might be different, and the wages you’re getting paid are likely to be different which, in a capitalist society, means they are valued less.

This book was thoughtful, enraging, and an absolutely essential read.

CJ isn’t really good at very many things, and she’s not the academic prodigy her mom hoped for. But she does love spending time in her family’s flower shop, learning about arranging flowers and the many meanings behind the plants her aunt sells. The flower shop is more than a safe haven — it is deeply meaningful to her family. Her grandfather was swindled out of the shop by the wealthy white MacAllister family when Japanese Americans were forced into prison camps during WWII, and CJ’s grandfather spent decades after the war saving to buy back the shop. So that’s why CJ is horrified when her mom, who disapproves of the shop, wants to sell to the McAllister descendants. CJ and her aunt leak this development to the news…and what comes next surprises even them.

I really enjoyed that this novel was about the tangible effects of the racist policy to imprison Japanese Americans in the 1940s, and that it goes beyond the story of imprisonment to show the longterm effects, even after the war. CJ is a very relatable character who doesn’t feel like she has found her thing or that she fully belongs in her family. She’s reckoning with a lot in her past — the absence of a father figure, her complicated family legacy, a sometimes contentious relationship between her mom and aunt, and her own romantic tribulations. But one thing she cares about is the flower shop and a sense of justice, and she can’t abide by the idea that her family business should end up back in the hands of those that cheated her grandfather. As the community rallies around her family, she learns that this fight is a lot bigger than just her family’s injustice, and she also has to navigate the sometimes fraught interpersonal politics that come with a group of very different people advocating for a cause together. CJ isn’t perfect, but she’s always sympathetic and her growth is gratifying to watch.

Definitely pick this book up if you want a well-written YA novel about friendships, family, and the importance of understanding history and correcting injustices in your community.

Ever since I listened to the audiobook of Irby’s essay collection We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, I have been a huge Samantha Irby fan. Irby is a self-described fat Black woman who lives with her wife in the Midwest. And her most recent collection, Quietly Hostile covers the time in her life right before and during the pandemic.

Irby’s essays use humor in so many different ways. In some essays, she describes difficult moments in her life, like her television show being canceled after YEARS of work on the concept. Or that time she started writing for the Sex in the City reboot and received intensely aggressive messages.

She also features funny moments like when she and her wife adopted one of the worst dogs in the world or that one time she accidentally started dating that guy who got turned on by hearing her pee. Irby is the queen of horrible date stories. 

In one essay, she describes how one night she found herself having a severe allergic reaction to some unknown substance. While sitting on the toilet in intense pain, she talks to the helpful person on the phone who informs her that she needs to head to the hospital NOW. As someone who’s also found themselves in the emergency room having an allergic reaction to random substances, I laughed so much at this essay. Irby has perfected dark, chronic illness humor.

One of the things I appreciate about her the most is her approach to her experience with inflammatory bowel disease. Talking about diseased colons always seems to make people uncomfortable, but Irby is having none of that. She gives her colon as much space as she wants to give it. She leans into the grotesque humor, unapologetic.

Like I mentioned earlier, I LOVE Irby’s audiobook performances, and Quietly Hostile is no exception. She combines her perfect delivery and spot inflections to create this tension in her performance. I found myself holding my breath at yet another ridiculous scenario or darkly funny moment. I cannot recommend the audiobook enough.

In this time-travel historical fiction, Kiku imagines herself as a teen. She and her mother are visiting San Francisco from Seattle. They go to Japantown to try to find the home where Kiku’s Japanese American grandmother and her parents lived in the city before they were forced into an incarceration camp during World War II. We learn that Kiku and her mother don’t really talk about Kiku’s grandparents or her mother’s upbringing much. Her grandmother passed before she was born and she never got to know her. Kiku knows very little about her grandmother’s experiences.

At one point, Kiku’s mother goes into the mall and Kiku gets sucked back into time for the first time. She describes it as “displaced.” Once she gets her bearings, she realizes she is seeing someone who might have been her grandmother, having a violin recital. She is able to look around briefly before being shoved back into the present. Kiku gets displaced another couple of times, again, back in time to her grandmother’s experiences. Kiku ends up being in the same incarceration camp as her grandmother, age 17, and great-grandparents. Kiku quickly realizes that there is so much she didn’t know about this completely heinous act by the U.S. government and she is learning it all firsthand.

Personally, I learned nothing about this in school. The only reason I knew about the Japanese incarceration camps is because my grandmother’s half-sister was forced into one. If a person was 1/16th Japanese or more, they were forced into a camp. My family was also in San Francisco and I wonder if they were sent to the same camp as Kiku’s family. As Kiku explores, she learns there is so much shame around what happened, especially by the people who experienced it and it doesn’t get talked about in many families nor taught in schools.

I had no idea that people protested within some of the camps and that some folks refused to sign paperwork that said they would join the U.S. military. I didn’t know that there were a lot of differences of opinion between the older generations who immigrated from Japan and the younger generations who were born in the U.S. Reading this was enraging on so many levels, from the fact that this happened, to the fact that this kind of awfulness continues to happen in different ways to different groups by this same government, and the fact that most of us were taught so little about it. This graphic novel is so important and a great read.

In a fantastical world where a witch’s carefully tended garden has yielded sentient vegetables and fruits that help her tend to the produce, we find Garlic, a fretful little bulb with a lot of anxieties. She is often late and has big questions about her existence and purpose. When a far away castle in the woods shows signs of inhabitants, the other vegetables and the witch become fearful the vampire has returned. Everyone knows vampires hate garlic — so who better to send to discover the truth? But Garlic isn’t so sure she’s cut out for such a big task.

I loved the illustrations of all of the vegetables, and I really enjoyed how Paulsen gradually revealed the world and the magic, hinting at the backstory and showing off the relationships between the vegetables. Garlic is very sweet and relatable, even as she struggles with anxiety and uncertainty and is afraid to face the vampire. She finds courage in the belief of her friends and the witch, and discovers that sometimes the things we’re most afraid of offer wonderful opportunity. The magic system and the vibes of this story are wonderfully cottagecore, with an earthy color palette, charming vegetable characters, and humor that is sweet. This is a lovely little story about friendship, bravery, learning to be open minded, and second chances! I could read many more volumes about the adorable Garlic, and lucky for us there is a sequel called Garlic and the Witch!

Back in 2016, I read Roses and Rot by Kat Howard. It was a delightful dark fairy story based in a prestigious artist residency. A year later, Howard came out with An Unkindness of Magicians, a novel about a secret society of magicians who use dark methods to create their magic. The novel begins with The Turning, a competition between different houses of magicians. The winner becomes the ruling house of the Unseen World.

A mysterious magician named Sydney shows up and is hired to compete in The Turning. She’s incredibly powerful, and the leaders of the different magical houses are determined to take her down before she can win the tournament.

Now I LOVE a good magical competition, and The Turning is so dark and mysterious. In the final rounds, the magicians fight to the death. Sydney is a character full of steel and determination, and as we learn more about her difficult past, we begin to understand why she’s so invested in the outcome of The Turning.

Sydney survives and returns in Kat Howard’s latest novel, A Sleight of Shadows. Sydney’s magic just isn’t the same, and for the first time in her life, she feels cut off from magic completely. But the dark power that provided the Unseen World with its magic begins regrowing while Sydney remains powerless.

Since first reading about Howard’s world of magicians, I’ve read a lot of similar stories. But Howard’s captures my attention in such a unique way. It examines class, and what the privileged are willing to do to hold on to their power. 

If you haven’t read any of Howard’s work, I highly recommend you start with An Unkindness of Magicians and move straight on through to A Sleight of Shadows. Madeleine Maby narrates both audiobooks, giving such a wonderful performance and perfectly capturing the mysterious feel of the stories.

For folks who are socially — and/or environmentally — minded, trying to “do the right thing” is a never ending battle and it is really easy to fall into despair from overwhelm and hopelessness. While major changes need to be made via policies and business practices, this book gives readers some insight as to how we can each be consumers more mindfully and in ways that do the least amount of harm.

Fair warning, this book may tell you a lot of things that you don’t want to hear, like how much of what you put into your recycling bins doesn’t actually get recycled and goes into landfills. This is also true for items that are donated to thrift shops. While the primary advice is to consume less, that is, to buy fewer disposable items and to reuse what you already own, the author recognizes that it is impossible for most if not all of us to live a zero-waste lifestyle. Such a lifestyle is not what the author is promoting anyway and that’s what I appreciate about this book. We are in a capitalist society and so, how do we make decisions that do the least amount of harm while also remaining realistic for us to do as individuals?

The answers to how we consume are going to be different for each of us and this book offers resources for us to make the most informed choices. Is being vegan actually better for the environment? What if I can’t avoid fast fashion? Is buying organic important in the grand scheme of things? Am I causing harm by buying things from large department stores or multi-billion dollar websites? Is the bank I use evil? This book helps readers tease out the often complicated answers to these questions and more while giving us additional questions to ask ourselves when we make decisions about how we spend (or give) our money.

While so many folks are very heavy-handed and “black and white” about these things, this book does an excellent job of exploring the grey areas to help us each make decisions that we can feel good about.