Category: Review

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Daughters of Eville Series, Chanda Hahn

“What is broken can be fixed.”

Chanda Hahn, Of Thorn and Thread

Because my last few reads have been quite heavy and intense, I decided I needed something lighter this week. I was also feeling under the weather. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to think too hard when I’m sick. So I was looking for something easy and fun when I stumbled across the Daughters of Eville series by Chanda Hahn.

I’m going to level with you. This series isn’t brilliant, but it’s cute. Perfect for reading when you’re sick. The premise is that there’s a woman, Lorelai Eville, who is wronged by the rulers of seven fantasy kingdoms. She vows revenge and raises a group of adopted daughters to be instruments of her vengeance. As you may have gathered from the titles, each book is a fairy tale retelling that highlights a different daughter. It’s an interesting concept, which is sometimes more compelling in theory than in actual execution. That said, it’s fun and entertaining, which is all that I was looking for this week!

Of Beast and Beauty centers on Rosalie, the eldest adopted daughter of Mother Eville. She’s taken to the kingdom of Baist to be wed to their prince, sight unseen. The prince is upset that he wasn’t able to wed the woman of his choice. He’s also heard rumors that Rosalie is a witch who will bewitch him if he looks upon her, so he insists that she wear a veil wherever she goes. Meanwhile, a murderous beast haunts the kingdom. This was honestly the strongest of the series, in my opinion. I felt like the themes of of prejudice and overcoming obstacles were well done. I also enjoyed Rosalie as a character. She took crap from no one.

Sadly, Of Glass and Glamour strikes me as the weakest of this series. It’s a Cinderella retelling with Eden Eville sometimes acting as Cinderella and sometimes as the fairy godmother. It has its moments, and I liked seeing Eden portrayed with having a lot of insecurities because I think that will resonate with people. While Rosalie is kicking butt and taking names, Eden is good at only one thing—magically changing her appearance. She grows throughout the book, but honestly, this one fell sort of flat for me.

Of Sea and Song was pretty fun. If you haven’t guessed it, it’s the Little Mermaid. Merisol goes on the run after she accidentally kills someone while trying to protect one of her sisters. She pretends to be a boy and joins the crew of a ship called the Bella Donna. When the Bella Donna anchors at a mysterious island, Meri finds herself making a deal with a sea witch in order to save the crew. This, of course, does not go well. It was a fun take on the classic story.

In Of Thorn and Thread, Aura Eville is an empath who is constantly bombarded by the thoughts and emotions of everyone around her. She joins with a knight from the kingdom of Rya to save his people from a mysterious blight that’s covered the land in fog and poisonous thorns. This book has some heavier topics, such as mental illness, human trafficking, and abuse. In some ways, this made for a nice change, but sometimes the way Chanda Hahn included these issues was a little clumsy. Still, a perfectly enjoyable Sleeping Beauty retelling.

These books turn a lot of the fairy tales on their heads. They’re not too faithful to the originals, so Hahn gave herself a lot of space to play around and make the stories more character driven. I was pleased that the overarching theme of the books is that sometimes what you think is evil is just misunderstood. As we get to know the daughters of Eville, feared throughout the seven kingdoms as evil witches, what we learn is that more often than not they’re trying to right wrongs and see justice done. They’re not simply seeking vengeance; they’re actively trying to make their world better.

That said, these books all suffer from massive instalove. In pretty much every book, the hero and the heroine hate each other until they’re suddenly violently in love and pledging eternal devotion. I rolled my eyes hard several times. In my opinion, Hahn missed the opportunity to develop those relationships in a more meaningful way. It’s not ideal, but it’s forgivable if you’re just looking for a fun read.

There should be three more books in the series focusing on the three remaining daughters: Maeve, Rhea, and Honor. The next book, Of Mist and Murder, is scheduled to be published on June 22, 2021. I’m planning on checking it out when it’s released.

Happy Reading!

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The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The tree of our family was parted – branches here, roots there – parted for their lumber.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer

Every once in a while, a writer comes along who can tell a good story in prose so exquisite that it makes you want to weep. It’s not purple prose. It’s not inflated and self-important. It’s just beautiful. Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those authors. He has a true gift, and I’ve been privileged to read two of his books so far. I look forward to lots more.

The Water Dancer tells the story of Hiram Walker, the son of an enslaved woman and a plantation owner. He has what we’d probably call a photographic memory, but he can’t remember his mother. All he knows is that she was sold away when he was nine. Tied up with his lost memories is a mysterious power which saved him in the past, but which he struggles to understand and control. He will find that the bonds he forms, his love, his relationships, his memories, his past, all allow him to unlock the potential within himself.

What I loved about this book is how family-centered it is. Many of the historical novels I’ve read that deal with slavery focus on the cost of slavery to the individual. We read of cruel punishments, hard labor, rape, torture, and death. What I feel is missing in some of these novels, and what The Water Dancer illustrates so beautifully, is the cost of slavery to the enslaved family. The children ripped from parents. The parents torn from children. The spouses who never saw one another again. The people who spent the rest of their lives wondering where their brother or sister was, whether they were still alive.

What Ta-Nehisi Coates taught us in this book is that slavery didn’t just destroy individuals. It severed bonds. And even when the enslaved enjoyed times of relative peace, they knew that it couldn’t last. Every moment was poisoned by the thought that their children were not their own to keep. They could not protect them from the block, just as they couldn’t protect their husbands from the lash or their wives from the lusts of their enslavers. Coates paints the psychological pain of these atrocities in painstaking detail. Sometimes it’s difficult to read, but Coates demands that we do not look away.

The whole injunction of The Water Dancer is to remember. We, as individuals, as a nation, must remember. We must remember the people who were lost, the lives that were destroyed, the sins that were committed. I read an article recently that listed some of the major U.S. buildings that were built by the labor of enslaved people: Mount Vernon, Wall Street, the White House, the Capitol Building, the Smithsonian, Trinity Church, Harvard Law School. There are more. We live in a society that was literally built on the backs of people, men, women, and children, who had their lives and their families stolen from them. We forget this at our peril.

I’m not sure why I’ve been reading such heavy stuff lately, but it all seems important and it all seems incredibly urgent. I knew The Water Dancer couldn’t wait any longer. You’ve got to read this one. I know it’s hard, but we can’t look away. We’ve got to remember.

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Know My Name, Chanel Miller

“The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”

Chanel Miller, Know My Name

Let me tell you a story before I get into this review, and please be aware that this may be triggering if you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault. Honestly, this whole review may be triggering, so it may be better to skip this one if that’s something you’re sensitive about.

I had been married for a year, maybe two, when the women at my university started to be terrorized by a man we all called “The Groper.” It was a male student who would walk by, seemingly innocently, but then grab the body of a nearby woman, then take off running. We went to a pretty “safe” university, but there was a hill on the south of campus we all called “rape hill” because there had been a few assaults at night, and students were cautioned to avoid the area if they were walking alone. There were little signs and emergency telephones and everything. Even so, we felt pretty safe there. I’d never heard of anyone actually getting attacked until “The Groper” came on the scene. His assaults got bolder until he finally broke into some girls’ apartment. As far as I know, he didn’t harm them physically, but he robbed them of their feeling of safety.

At this time, my husband and I lived in a crappy little apartment near campus with a creepy parking garage, terrible lighting, and a few seedy neighbors. I was getting ready for work one morning and I asked my husband if he would walk me to my car since I was nervous about the parking garage with “The Groper” on the loose. He assured me that I’d be fine. He wasn’t dressed yet, it would be inconvenient, and there was really nothing to worry about after all. Now I don’t want you to hate on my husband, because he’s truly a caring and thoughtful partner, but in this situation he just didn’t understand how scary the situation was for me. I went to my car by myself clutching my keys between my fingers. I was fine. Nothing happened.

But that was the day that I realized just how different my experience of the world was from my husband’s. I lived in a world in which women carry pepper spray and hold their keys between their fingers like Wolverine. We avoid certain areas, especially at night, and try to never walk alone if we can avoid it. Meanwhile, my husband lived in a world in which he could pretty much go where he wanted without ever thinking about it. He’d never bought pepper spray. He’d never checked the backseat of his car for lurking danger. He could walk through a creepy parking garage and not give it a second thought. Since then, he’s learned about the sort of vigilance expected of women and why I act the way I do sometimes.

This sort of blindness is endemic to men in our society, I think. They tend not to see the ways in which women mold their lives around the possibility of sexual assault, and when they do see our precautions they mock us as being paranoid. That is, until a woman is assaulted, and then she was stupid for [fill in the blank.] She should have known better than to get drunk. She should have dressed more modestly. What was she doing walking alone at night? Why was she in such a rough part of town? What did she think was going to happen?

Chanel Miller’s incredible memoir, Know My Name, shines a glaring light on this type of attitude and shows us just how damaging it can be. For many years, I didn’t know Chanel’s name. I knew her as Emily Doe, Brock Turner’s victim. In this book, she courageously steps out, tells her story, and challenges the world to be better.

I can’t tell you how much I loved and hated this book. I hated the things that happened to her. I hated having to read about her assault and how the court system continually revictimized her over the course of years while Brock Turner fought his felony charges. I hated Chanel’s sleepless nights, her isolation, her pain. How her very hometown had been poisoned for her by Turner’s actions. I hated that the trial kept getting postponed, causing Chanel and her family to have to rearrange their schedules time and again to accommodate other people. I hated Stanford’s patronization of her, their too-late attempts to help her.

But I loved Chanel’s fighting spirit, how she was drowning but kept swimming toward the surface anyway. I loved her refusal to be silenced. How, when Stanford insisted she put a “hopeful, affirming” quote on the plaque in the memorial garden, she told them to just forget it. She’d rather say nothing at all than empty platitudes. I loved reading about the love of her family, the support of her friends, the steadiness of her boyfriend. There was beauty in the ugliness, and we’re privileged that she let us see it.

Chanel Miller is a talented writer. Period. She’s not a talented writer “for a rape victim,” or a talented writer “for someone so young.” She’s just good. Her voice is fresh and powerful, her words impactful. I listened to this on audiobook (which she narrated herself! Seriously, I don’t know how she got through it.) and I found myself whispering her words to myself to try to remember them.

Can I share some of my favorite quotes with you? I know I’m gushing, but I just want everyone to read at least some of her words.

“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”

“I did not come into existence when he harmed me. She found her voice! I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. I just used it like I never had to use it before. I do not owe him my success, becoming, he did not create me. The only credit Brock can take is for assaulting me, and he could never even admit to that.”

“What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”

This book isn’t an easy read. If you don’t have the mental or emotional space to read it right now, that’s okay. But someday, if you’re feeling up to it, I really want you to pick this one up. Especially if you’re a man. Not so you can feel guilty, but so you can understand. So you can see the importance of being one of the Swedish bicyclists who saved Chanel, not the gross Freshman taking advantage of her behind a dumpster. So you can be the elderly man manning the booth to get signatures for the judge’s recall, not the judge who gave a young man six months (actually three, because of good behavior) for sexually assaulting a woman because he was more worried about the cost of accountability for the rapist than about the damage to the victim.

Be better.

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A Study in Scarlet Women, Sherry Thomas

“Please don’t think that my circumstances stand between me and a full stomach.” At least not until lately. “It has been all for vanity, of course. I can sustain somewhere between one point five and one point six chins. But the moment I have more than that, my looks suffer catastrophically.”

Mrs. Jebediah laughed, startled. “But surely you exaggerate, my dear.”

“I assure you I do not. Via scientific trials, I have determined the precise weight, to the ounce, at which the shape of my face changes to my detriment.”

Sherry Thomas, A Study in Scarlet Women

I think my love of the Sherlock Holmes type started when I watched The Great Mouse Detective as a child. If you haven’t watched it, you must. Now. That was my first exposure to the concept of a brilliant, slightly mad detective and his stalwart doctor friend. As an adult, I discovered Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Martin Freeman’s Watson. They remain my absolute favorite incarnation of the duo. But never before have I encountered a female Sherlock and a female Watson. I never knew what I was missing until Sherry Thomas’s A Study in Scarlet Women.

The thing I really enjoyed about this book was the fact that, when Thomas reinvented Sherlock Holmes as a woman, she didn’t just slap a dress on Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero. Instead, she made thoughtful and relevant changes to the character, transitioning Sherlock to Charlotte in a way that makes sense. Charlotte Holmes (alias Sherlock, when assisting Scotland Yard) has all of the original’s brilliance, but with a femininity that is neither forced nor false. And Thomas doesn’t ignore the fact that Sherlock Holmes would have a much more difficult time operating as a woman in Victorian England. She acknowledges the obstacles that could stop Charlotte from reaching her full potential and gives her the tools she needs to overcome those obstacles. All together, it makes for a very believable female Sherlock.

I also loved female Watson. In this case, Watson isn’t a retired army doctor, but a retired stage performer. It works very well for the character, and I loved Thomas’s take on Sherlock’s sidekick. What really worked about Watson in this capacity is that she’s able to take on the role of surrogate mother, business partner, and cheerleader for Charlotte. Whereas the original Doctor Watson, while useful, is mostly just there to be in awe of Sherlock, Thomas’s Mrs. Watson helps Charlotte realize the worth of her gifts. She helps Charlotte see what’s possible. It makes the relationship seem more even, gives it a feeling of give-and-take that’s missing in the original.

The plot, while good, was secondary to the character development here. You get a good mystery. I hadn’t a clue who the killer was until it was revealed at the end. It’s a satisfying read. But what I cared about most was Charlotte, Mrs. Watson, and Livia (Charlotte’s beloved sister). I cared about how Charlotte and Mrs. Watson were going to keep pulling off their charade. I cared about how Charlotte was going to help Livia escape the confines of her life with their parents. I cared about whether Charlotte was going to be able to remain free of male influence, living her life as she saw fit.

Really, I just loved this book. It kept me hooked from beginning to end. If you’re in the mood for a feminist, feminine, female Sherlock Holmes (no, those aren’t synonyms), pick this one up. I’m so excited to get my hands on the next one.

Happy Reading!

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The Mother-in-Law, Sally Hepworth

Who are we after we’re gone? I wonder. It’s a good question to ponder. Most people can’t come up with an answer right away. They frown, consider it for a minute. Maybe even sleep on it. Then the answers start to come. We’re our children. Our grandchildren. Our great-grandchildren. We’re all the people who will go on to live, because we lived. We are our wisdom, our intellect, our beauty, filtered through generations, continuing to spill into the world and make a difference.

Sally Hepworth, The Mother-in-Law

While men and women the world over bemoan their fate when they think of their mother-in-law, I have to say that I can’t join them. I’m being honest when I say that my mother-in-law is wonderful. Of course, she’s human and therefore imperfect, but she’s a lovely person who welcomed me into her family and her heart, no questions asked. (Well, a few questions asked. I was about to marry her son, after all.)

That said, I know that I’m one of the lucky ones and that not everyone has a warm—or even cordial—relationship with their mother-in-law. The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth tells the story of one such individual, Lucy, whose mother-in-law Diana is a pillar of the community but quite cold towards her daughter-in-law. This all becomes very relevant when Diana winds up dead of an apparent suicide, but inconsistencies at the scene make investigators suspicious that she may have actually been murdered. Who would want to kill Diana? Maybe the daughter-in-law who’d been butting heads with her for years.

This is a murder mystery, and it’s a pretty good one at that. I certainly didn’t see the ending coming, although in retrospect it all became very clear. But I didn’t like this book only because of a decent mystery. I enjoyed it most because at its core it’s the story of two women who just don’t understand one another. If you read this, you’ll find that neither Lucy nor Diana has bad intentions when it comes to their relationship. Sure, they both do stupid things, but neither one of them is malicious about it. They’re just two very different people bound by marriage who have to rub along together and figure it out. I think that that scenario is true to life for many in-law relationships.

“Someone once told me that you have two families in your life—the one you are born into and the one you choose. But that’s not entirely true, is it? Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don’t, for instance, choose your children. You don’t choose your brothers- or sisters-in-law, you don’t choose your partner’s spinster aunt with the drinking problem or cousin with the revolving door of girlfriends who don’t speak English. More importantly, you don’t choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.”

Sally Hepworth, The Mother-in-Law

When I was first starting to seriously look for a life partner, my mom warned me to pay attention to the man’s family. “You don’t just marry the man,” she told me. “You marry the family, too.” It’s true, and for every daughter- or son-in-law who loves their spouse’s parents, there’s another who can barely stand their presence long enough to white-knuckle it through a holiday meal. I feel like The Mother-in-Law speaks to how hard those relationships can be while also giving hope that even ties that you think may be permanently broken can be fixed.

I can’t say that I’ve ever cried at a murder mystery before, but I cried hard toward the end of The Mother-in-Law. If you’re in the mood for a mystery with a heavy dose of family drama, give this one a try. I think you’ll like it.

Happy Reading!

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The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

“To forbid the thought of escape, even that slightest butterfly thought of escape, was to murder one’s humanity.”

Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

A few years ago, I was driving through Marianna, Florida when we passed by a piece of property that felt wrong. That’s the only way I can describe it. It just felt wrong. I asked my husband what it was, and he shrugged. Neither of us are from Marianna. We didn’t know. I found out later that it was the Dozier School for Boys, the reform school that Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys is based on.

The Nickel Boys is not a happy book. It follows Elwood Curtis, a bright, idealistic Black boy from Tallahassee. Elwood is on track to go to college and make his grandma proud, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time lands him instead at the Nickel Academy. It’s supposed to be a place to mold troubled boys into productive young men. Instead, it’s a living hell in which the boys are ground down, twisted and bent in ways that they’ll never escape even long after they’ve left Nickel behind.

Elwood and his friend Turner are both fictional characters, but Colson Whitehead borrowed heavily from the experiences of men who had attended the real-life Dozier School. Knowing that gives this book a real/not real feeling. On the one hand, there was no Elwood Curtis, but on the other hand, there were hundreds of Elwood Curtises. Hundreds and thousands of boys, black and white, who were beaten, raped, humiliated, tortured, and even killed at the very institution that was supposed to help them find their way in life. All while the surrounding community looked the other way.

What struck me the most was the thought, “What are today’s Nickel Academies. Where are the Dozier Schools of my time? What modern atrocities do I turn a blind eye to?” We like to think about stuff like this—people being mistreated and beaten by government officials—as something that happened in the distant past. That that sort of thing happened in the ’40s during the Holocaust, or during the ’60s in the Jim Crow South, but not today. All of the pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. are in black and white, after all. But the hard truth is that these things weren’t all that long ago, and they’re still happening today. We need look no further than the U.S. border with Mexico to see examples of children being mistreated. We can walk the streets of any city in America and see examples of Black men and women being dehumanized by those who are supposed to serve and protect. These things still happen. I guess it’s up to us to decide whether we, like the fictional citizens of Eleanor, Florida (or the real citizens of Marianna), are going to look the other way.

The Nickel Boys is intense—lots of violence, lots of swearing—but its a story that needs to be told. I hope you’ll pick it up when you’ve got the mental space to deal with a really heavy topic. In the meantime, take a look at The Official White House Boys to learn more. This is the website put together by the real survivors of the Dozier School.

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Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

“This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russian Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.”

Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

A couple of years ago, I saw a trailer for a new Cate Blanchett movie titled Where’d You Go, Bernadette? It looked mildly interesting, so I looked up more about it and discovered that it was based off of a book of the same name by Maria Semple. I shelved it on Goodreads and went on my way. It was only this past week that I finally got around to reading it, and I’m so glad I did.

Bernadette Fox is a creative genius living a humdrum suburban existence in Seattle complete with all of the irritating minutiae that comes with it. Her neighbors hate her, her house is crumbling, and her husband is concerned that she’s losing her mind. One day, she disappears, and her daughter sets out on a journey to find her. If that makes it sound like a run-of-the-mill quest plot, let me assure you that it’s not. In fact, the search only takes up the last little bit of the book. Most of the book is spent showing us how Bernadette got to this point.

The story is told mostly through letters and emails, which I usually hate. I just don’t like epistolary novels, but the format worked for this particular plot.

This book has several wonderful things going for it. First, it addresses the issue of mental illness in a way that shines light on it without making fun of it, downplaying it, or romanticizing it. It also shows how mental health isn’t an exact science. Throughout the book, I vacillated between being convinced that Bernadette was having a major breakdown to being sure that everyone was exaggerating that there was nothing wrong with her. Maria Semple did a great job of showing situations from various perspectives while maintaining that air of mystery around Bernadette. Even when you see what happened clearly, you’re never sure that you are seeing it clearly. It was fascinating and very well done.

I also liked the fact that, for once, a woman has a problem that has nothing at all to do with her body. In fact, I don’t remember female bodies being discussed much at all in this book. There is some talk of miscarriage and the resultant feelings of loss and depression, but I can’t think of a single instance of a woman in this book talking about her weight or her looks. Even the teenage girls talk about other things. There was also zero discussion about sexual assault. I’ve often remarked that it seems like rape sells in literature. If something bad happened in a woman’s past, it almost always seems like it ends up being rape. I was almost certain that that’s where this was heading, and I was delighted to find that that wasn’t the case. The fact that the focus of Bernadette’s discontent was her career instead of her body was simply a breath of fresh air.

The characters in this book almost universally behave badly; no one comes off looking all that great. That said, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? has a theme of second chances. People who you thought were beyond redemption turn around and surprise you. Everyone gets a shot to make things right, and they mostly take it. It made for an uplifting read.

However, there was one character who I can’t get behind. Soo-Lin Lee-Segal. I hated Soo-Lin. She was just the worst. A deluded, conniving, myopic, opportunistic little tramp. You could argue that she gets her redemption, too, but I didn’t accept it. If she were a real person I’d have to allow for the fact that everyone should get a second chance, but as a character in a book I’m free to hate her.

Anyway, you should give Where’d You Go, Bernadette? a shot. I think you’ll like it.

Happy Reading!

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The Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani

Just as when we step into a mosque and its high open dome leads our minds up, up, to greater things, so a great carpet seeks to do the same under the feet. Such a carpet directs us to the magnificence of the infinite, veiled, yet ever near, closer than the pulse of the jugular.

The Blood of Flowers, pg. 359

Are you familiar with the biblical story of Jacob and Esau? It’s found in the Old Testament book of Genesis, chapter 25, verses 29-34. There are twin brothers, Jacob and Esau. Esau was born before Jacob, so as the oldest son he will inherit his father’s right to the priesthood and he’ll be the patriarch of the family after their father dies. Esau is an outdoorsy type of guy, and he comes in from hunting one day to find that his brother Jacob has made a bunch of “pottage,” or soup. He’s been out all day and he’s hungry, so he tells Jacob to serve him some of the soup he made. Jacob tells him he’ll give him some soup only if Esau sells his birthright for it. Esau agrees. He gets some soup and Jacob gets the right to his father’s priesthood. Now, this does not seem like a good look for my guy Jacob. It’s super sneaky, after all. But really, Esau is the jerk here, because he sells his birthright for literally a bowl of beans, and then later he gets mad about it when Jacob claims the birthright. It was his own shortsightedness that causes himself to sell his most precious possession for nothing.

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani brought this story to mind. The protagonist is an unnamed teenage girl in 16th century Persia. Her loving parents have raised her to expect marriage to a man who will “pave [her] path with rose petals,” (11). But when her father dies unexpectedly, she and her mother are left destitute, and they leave their small village to seek refuge with her father’s half-brother is Isfahan. Her uncle is a renowned, well-to-do carpet designer. The girl is a fledgling carpet designer herself, and her uncle, recognizing her potential, takes her under his wing and instructs her on how to improve her designs and select just the right colors. Her aunt, however, sees her and her mother as a drain on the family’s resources.

When a wealthy man proposes marriage to the girl, they are ecstatic. That is, until they learn that he is proposing a sigheh. This was an interesting piece of Persian culture to learn about. A sigheh is a temporary marriage. In the girl’s case, she would be married to the man for three months, with an option to renew for another three months if he was pleased with her. Additionally, he would pay her family, as opposed to requiring a dowry from them. If this sounds like legalized prostitution…it kind of is. From my research, at that time a sigheh could be made for almost any length of time, even for just an hour. It was legal, but definitely not looked upon as a marriage of equal value and honor as a permanent marriage.

Her aunt encourages her to accept the proposal, but the girl is hesitant. To her mother, she says, “It feels as if he wants to buy me cheaply…You and my Baba raised me to expect better,” (123). But her mother insists that they need the money, and orders her to marry him. Like Esau, the girl’s family sells her for the equivalent of a mess of pottage.

Despite her marriage, the girl continues to create carpets and learn under her uncle’s tutelage. As her skills grow, so does her confidence, and eventually she realizes just how unjust her family has been to her. “…I have skills enough to join the royal workshop, if only I had been a boy. But rather than let me ply my craft and find a virtuous marriage, you sold me for next to nothing,” (278). She takes steps to reclaim her dignity, but in doing so she angers her aunt and uncle and finds herself struggling for survival.

I wanted to cheer as the girl began to value herself highly enough to take risks and take charge of her own life. This is a story of hope, of finding your voice, and of deciding what you really want out of life. This unnamed protagonist teaches us that we don’t have to accept other people’s assessment of our value. We need to know our own worth, and not allow fear to convince us to sell ourselves cheaply.

Happy Reading!

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Popular Books You May Have Missed But Should Definitely Read

If you’re like me, your To Read list has become so long as to be completely unmanageable. I’ve always got my ear to the ground on the lookout for a good book, but it’s impossible to to read all of those books I see on the bestseller lists. If I do ever get to them, it’s like five years after everyone else has already read them. The Girl on the Train? Still haven’t read it. When Breath Becomes Air? Nope. I have every intention of reading these books, but it’s a Sisyphean task. There’s always another book that I feel like I should have already read.

That said, there are a few books that I’ve gotten to in a (relatively) timely manner, and if you haven’t read them yet, you should move them to the top of your To Read list. ASAP. When I want to recommend a general fiction book, these are the five I find myself recommending again and again.

  1. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

I first read A Fine Balance in high school as part of my AP English Literature class. We had a list of several books to choose from, and I pretty randomly chose this one. It’s been well over a decade since I first picked this up, but it has left an impression on me that few novels have.

A Fine Balance is a tremendous achievement in literature. It follows the stories of four people in India in 1975: Dina, a widow struggling to get by; Ishvar and Omprakash, an uncle and nephew duo who rose above their low caste to work as tailors; and Maneck, a college student who finds the idyllic world of his childhood disappearing. Fate brings these four people come together and they form a kind of family as the forces of greed, hate, and corruption work to tear them apart.

I will tell you that this book isn’t a light read. There some pretty heavy themes, vivid depictions of life in the slums, and some strong language. However, if you’re looking for a book that will make you love literature again, this is that book.

2. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amore Towles

When I first heard the premise of this book, I was skeptical. The entire plot of A Gentleman in Moscow takes place within the confines of one building. The main character, Alexander Rostov, is a Russian aristocrat sentenced by the new Soviet government to spend the rest of his life in the Metropol Hotel. If he steps foot outside the hotel, he will be shot. I had doubts that the author would be able to pull this off, and yet within the confines of the hotel, Amor Towles was able to build a full life for his protagonist. It was masterfully done.

What impressed me most was how Towles managed to bring the experience of Soviet Russia into the Metropol Hotel so Rostov, who never leaves the hotel, still feels the weight of what is happening to his country. Towles brings in several characters who give Rostov insight into the changing world outside, and it’s the relationships between these people that truly drive the story. It’s incredible writing, and if you pass on this one, I’m telling you that you’ll be missing out.

3. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine first seems like simply a quirky book about a quirky woman, but by the end you’ll find yourself reveling in the depth of the character development Gail Honeyman was able to create. Eleanor is such a well-rounded character. She is strong. She managed to survive some really traumatic things in her past, and in the beginning she has herself, and you, believing that she really is, on the whole, completely fine. Her weakness is that she wrapped herself in a blanket of isolation, thinking this would protect her from pain. It did the exact opposite. I think this independent loner character type is often glamorized in literature, but EOICF shows us that people are stronger when they have fulfilling and reciprocal relationships. People need people.

There are themes of abuse, mental illness, and neurodiversity, along with the importance of relationships. It’s deceptively heavy stuff in spite of the fact that you’ll also laugh out loud at some of Eleanor’s antics, and Honeyman is able to balance it perfectly. People have been talking about this one since it came out in 2017, so it’s probably on your To Read list. Bump it up on the list.

4. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman

Okay, first let me put you out of your misery. The name is pronounced “Oo-veh.” It’s not “Ovie” and it’s not “Oh-vay.” It’s a pet peeve of mine and if you’re going to read this book, then gosh darn it you’re going to pronounce the man’s name correctly.

This book is relatable on so many levels, first of all because we all know Ove. I can guarantee that you’ve met Ove at some point in your life. He’s the crotchety older man who starts sentences with “Kids today….” and will argue with a sales clerk over minutiae. He’s got weird feuds with his neighbors that go back years. He can fix your air conditioner and thinks you’re an idiot if you can’t too, but also has zero idea how to turn on his computer. You know him, right? I know you do, and unless he’s your grandpa or something, you probably can’t stand him. A Man Called Ove humanizes him and gives him a backstory. It also challenges him and changes him, and is just generally one of the most heartwarming things I’ve read in a long time.

5. The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I know two other people who have read The Language of Flowers. One of them loved it, as I did. The other one was so stressed out by it that she was unable to enjoy it and we still argue about this book to this day. You know who you are.

Let me tell you why I love The Language of Flowers. First of all, you get to learn about Victorian flower language, which is fascinating. I think we all know things like “red roses mean romance,” but truly the language of flowers was a language. (Okay, maybe not in the strictest linguistic sense, but the point is that it’s much more complex than “red rose = I love you.”)

We meet the main character, Victoria, as she ages out of the foster care system and has to strike out in the world on her own. She…struggles (hence my friend’s stress). But we get to watch her learn to trust herself and others. We see her find her confidence and her competence. We find out about the heartbreak that she’s caused and endured, and we see her learn to forgive and be forgiven. It’s a beautiful story, and if it sounds at all appealing to you, you should grab it from your local library. Then let me know what you think of it, since this is one of the more controversial books on my list (at least in terms of my own social circle).

If you’re looking for something to read, I hope you’ll give one of these a shot. And if you do, let me know what you thought about it!

Happy Reading!

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The Forbidden Wish, Jessica Khoury

“Give me thy hand,” said the Queen, “and let us be friends. For does not the poet say, one true-hearted friend is worth ten thousand camels laden with gold?”

This the Jinni pondered, before replying, “The poet also says, woe to the man who befriends the jinn, for he shakes hands with death.”

The Forbidden Wish (pg. 12)

While modern English has only one word for love, the ancient Greeks had several. Eros is the kind of romantic, heady, passionate love that we tend to find in YA romance novels. It’s the kind of love that is intoxicating and often dangerous. Of course, we all need a dash of eros in our lives. What’s life without a little romance? But there’s another kind of love. Philia. Philia is platonic love. Fraternal love. It’s the kind of love you feel for your closest friends. It’s the love that turns strangers into family. And though The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury certainly has its share of eros, I believe that the core of this book is philia. At its heart, this is a book about friendship.

The Forbidden Wish turns the story of Aladdin on its head. It transforms the princess into a cloak-and-dagger freedom fighter. Aladdin remains the lovable thief of the Disney film, but he has a vengeful streak that I thought really rounded him out as a character. The jinni, a girl in this version of the story, is an embittered creature of smoke and flame nursing 4,000 years’ worth of pain and regret. Zahra, whose jinn name is Curl-of-the-Tiger’s-Tail, Smoke-on-the-Wind, Girl-Who-Gives-the-Stars-Away (isn’t that just lovely?), winds up bound to Aladdin when he takes possession of her lamp, and she helps him become a prince in an effort to avenge his parents. Throughout their time together, the two form a deep friendship that turns into something more. But, though Aladdin and Zahra’s romance is pivotal to the story, Zahra’s friendships with other women in the story are just as important.

When Aladdin first meets Zahra, he quickly learns that she is known in the annals of history as the Fair Betrayer, a jinni who double-crossed a mighty queen and brought about the ruin of an entire civilization. We find out, of course, that there’s more to the story, but Zahra was involved in the death of her dearest friend, and the pain and joy of that friendship are as central to Zahra’s character as her status as a jinni. It is the love she bore Roshana, the queen, that makes Zahra wary of becoming attached to Aladdin. She has hurt a human she loved before, and she lives in fear of destroying another. It was a nice departure from the tired YA trope of a young woman who doesn’t believe in love because she doesn’t have time for it or doesn’t think it’s important. How many YA protagonists have we read who are “different from other girls” because they think romance is stupid? That isn’t Zahra. She believes in the power of love and she is terrified of that power. In her 4,000 years of experience, love has only ever resulted in destruction.

The other beautiful example of philia is the love between the princess, Caspida, and her “Watchmaidens.” They’re a group of young women who serve a dual purpose as her handmaidens and bodyguards. They fight fiercely and they love fiercely. The bone-deep friendship they show for one another, and for the princess, struck me as the kind of thing I wish I could see more of in literature, especially YA literature. There’s no competition among these friends. They don’t begrudge Caspida her role as princess, nor do they jockey for position at her side. These are friends that have lived their whole lives together and, if they die, they will die together. The author makes it clear that their trust in one another is absolute. In media, female friendship is often portrayed with a healthy dose of gossip and backstabbing. In The Forbidden Wish, every example of female friendship is pure and unadulterated. It was a joy to see.

In the end, Zahra is able to triumph, and she gains the strength to do so through love for Aladdin and love for her friends. Having once failed her dearest friend, Roshana, she finds the power within herself now to save herself and everyone she cares about. The friendship she lost, once the source of so much bitterness, becomes the catalyst for her to make different choices this time around.

I enjoyed this refreshing take on the Aladdin story. There’s a lot more to it than what I’ve talked about here. There’s political intrigue, magic, terrific world building, and adventure. But most of all, there’s philia.

Happy Reading!