Category: Book Reviews

“The Deep Sky” Book Review

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General Information

Author – Yume Kitasei

Genre – Science Fiction

Publication Year – 2023

Synopsis – They left Earth to save humanity.  They’ll have to save themselves first.  It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse.  A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space.  But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course.  Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

 

Review

For the Interstellar Book Club for the month of November, we chose the debut novel ‘The Deep Sky’ by Yumi Kitasei.  When one of the members of the book club said this was a thriller murder mystery with components of Among Us, I was immediately hooked.  And it turned out to be one of my favorite books of 2023.

 

Told from alternating timelines form Asuka, Earth is no longer as stable as it used to be, so EvanStar has taken a crew to travel to Planet X in hopes of saving the human race.  We see Asuka as a student training in the hopes of being selected to this elite crew aboard The Phoenix a decade in the making and during present day after launch.  After witnessing an explosion, she becomes responsible for trying to figure out what happened after three end up dead.

 

From the beginning, we are introduced to a fast-paced story that keeps you on your toes the entire time.  Everything is complete chaos after the explosion happens because it is discovered that this was not an accident.  The remaining crew members are now on edge as there is a murderer among them.  It goes from traditional science-fiction to thriller in a blink of an eye, and that is what keeps the story moving the entire time.

 

With the constant alternating between school-aged Asuka and her present role on their ship, we get to learn a lot about not just her but her friends and coworkers as they grew up.  You learn how their nationalities and sense of identity plays into their personalities.  Some are more competitive than others because countries are given a certain number of slots on the ship depending on how much they have decided to pay for.  The competition is already tough, but the slot number plus the boarding school setting brings out the worst in everyone, making each of these characters more compelling to dive into.

 

This novel has a stunning story on how complex it is to be a human.  How do you even evaluate what is important for survival when people can offer so much beyond the typical classroom setting?  That is explored in detail and really makes you think about what humanity needs to sustain a reliable future.  There is so much to love about people even though we see so much negativity but if you give everyone the chance to prove themselves they are going to not just survive but thrive.  The novel wanted to show how humanity can show its ugly side when there is competition, but in a time of crisis, everyone can bring something special to the table.

 

Overall, this novel has a fun story that turns into a thriller real quick with characters you can never stop questioning until the very end.

“The Left Hand of Darkness” Book Review

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General Information

Author – Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre – Science Fiction

Publication Year – 1969

Synopsis – A groundbreaking work of science fiction, “The Left Hand of Darkness” tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender.  His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization.  But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Review

It is crazy to think how monumental a science fiction novel can still be sixty years after its publication.  There are a few that are able to stand the test of time, especially in this genre.  When this was selected as the monthly choice for The Interstellar Book Club, I was excited to dive in and see what all of the hype was about.  While I can see what made this novel so impactful at the time of its release, it felt like something was missing from the story overall.

 

Genly Ai, a human representative travels to the icy planet Gethen (also known as Winter) to convince them to join the coalition of humanoid worlds, Ekuman.  Upon arrival, Ai notices that the individuals of Winter are genderless, assuming this is the reason why their society has a lot of issues politically.  Throughout his mission, we see Ai travel to many worlds, experience hardships and learn to move past his biases as they are the prevention to his future safety.

 

This novel has been studied time and time again for its messaging that was so ahead of its time.  A big focus of the novel was the idea of what sex and gender mean in a society.  Those who live on Winter find the idea of gender pointless.  How one identifies should not be how we are judged when there are so many more important traits that make a person who they are.  With the novel being written in the late 60s, there are a lot of traditionally masculine traits that Ai has.  Over the course of the story, we learn alongside him how irrelevant it is of how someone identifies.  There are some moments when it seems like this well-meaning theme falls flat, bringing down the story as a whole on an enjoyment level.  While the credit is deserved for branching out and being one of the earliest works to focus on the message of gender identity, it still suffers from stereotypes of its time period.

 

The first half of the story is mostly focusing on Ai and him trying to complete his mission and a lot of it feels like it drags.  At times, it was a true struggle to get through.  But when everything goes wrong for Ai, the story picks up a lot.  Most of that is thanks to the side character we meet, Estraven.  The connection and bond they form is the best part of the novel, reminding you that there are good people out in the world.

 

With good themes and messaging, the story takes a while to build to its impactful moments, making you question if the journey was completely worth it in the end.   

“Spare” by Prince Harry Book Review

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General Information:

Format Read — Audiobook

Synopsis — In his memoir, Prince Harry details his life in three main sections of importance — when he was a young boy who lost his mother, when he was a young man in the army and when he fell in love with the woman the press hated from the very beginning.

Review:

I have never really been a big fan of the Royal Family — I do not care either way for or against them — but I am always down to read a memoir with potential family drama in it.  I also wanted to listen to it on audiobook as I am a sucker for a memoir read by the author.  The only things I have really know about Prince Harry is what the media and press puts out about him.  Because of his family’s past, I wanted to hear from his perspective of everything that has happened to him.  But his memoir, while I like how it was divided into three parts, adds nothing new or interesting to this traditional genre and needed to be edited down as it began to drag in multiple places.

What I liked most about Harry’s book was that he decided to break up his pretty eventful life into three major eras.  When you have a life like his and try to talk about as much of it as you can, breaking it up can help your reader.  That was what kept me invested into his story; I always knew a new chapter of his life was coming up next.  That is an interesting way to divide and conquer your story and that helped Harry with the story he wanted to tell.  But I wish that along with breaking it up into different parts of his life that he did something like Jeanette McCurdy and speak from the perspective of him at those ages.  Instead of having his current voice reflect back on his time as a child, if he approached this section by writing from a more child-like voice or style of writing, that would have made this a more interesting memoir.  Without that, you just have someone doing the bare minimum for what is required for this type of novel.

It is interesting to hear about goes on on the opposite side of the tabloids.  People take everything they see online as the true and only fact, but most of the time, there is so much more to the story.  What I liked about Harry’s book was that he was not afraid to get personal about how some of the stories told by the media affect his life.  I think that was the general premise for Harry writing this memoir — to get his voice out there.  He is still pretty young and can accomplish a lot more in his life but now he felt was the time to release it.  There have been enough false or dangerous statements made about him and his family, I would want to put out my truth as soon as I could too.  But even if that is the case, that does not mean you need to add every small detail of your life.  This was not a “Buckingham Palace Tell All” like some people may have wanted, but it was still too long.  As intrigued as I was I got easily bored with all of the small details he felt like needed to be in there and that is when I checked out.  Interesting stuff did pop up here and there, but it took a lot to get to those parts.

If you are a fan of the Royal Family or want to know some more details about Prince Harry’s life, this is the book for you.  But as an average-knowledgeable person like myself, you will learn some interesting stories but they will be covered by pages of not needed details. 

3/5

“Now is Not the Time to Panic” by Kevin Wilson Book Review

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General Information:

Format Read – Audiobook

 

Synopsis – Aspiring writer and outcast teenager, Frankie is expecting to have another boring summer, until Zeke enters her life.  Together, they create a poster combining their talents to post around town.  It’s all fun and games until more and more of their posters start popping up not by their doing, causing the small Tennessee town to panic about potential Satanic meanings behind their work.

 

Review:

This was one of the sweetest and simplest books I have read all year and I enjoyed every second of it.  While it is not very long, Wilson is able to greatly capture that feeling of being young and an outcast while finding that person that is just like you.  This has been one of the GoodReads Choice Awards nominees for Fiction that I have been able to relate to the most.  The characters are fun and enjoyable and I was captivated by their journey.

 

Frankie is a teenager who wants to be a writer and just likes to keep to herself as she sees herself a little bit as an outcast.  She has been writing a novel all summer and it is her pride and joy but also does not really show it off to anyone else.  She is expecting to have another boring summer until Zeke moves in with his grandmother, changing the course of both of their summers.  While Frankie is an aspiring writer, Zeke wants to get into the field of illustration.  Both of them hit it off right away, bonding over their love for their crafts while finding the meaning behind what they are creating.  One day, they decide to make a poster combining her writing and his art and post a few around town.  It was just meant to be a fun creative project to keep them entertained over the summer, but it turns into so much more.  They begin to notice that their posters are being posted all over town in greater quantities than they have put up.  More people their age are talking about the saying on the poster, and it is making Frankie and Zeke feel like rebels; their work is getting out there and means something to the masses.

 

This is a story that anyone can read and relate to, especially if they have felt left out at some point in their lives.  That is what I loved most about this novel; it is simple but means so much.  There is nothing really special about the way it is written but because it is so simple, that is what makes it accessible to a wider range of audience. What pulls me out of the story a bit is when we see these same characters in the future when a reporter comes in contact with Frankie inquiring about the Panic that took place in her hometown.  It was something about how the characters were written during this time period that just seemed off.  They were not as enjoyable as their younger selves were and I think that is what pulled me out of the story for a bit.  But there was enough good and young love and inspiration that overtook the lack of character building in the final act.

 

Everything about the characters made me fall in love with this story and to just keep reading on.  As simple as it may be, I think that this is something everyone should pick up.  If you have ever felt like you do not belong, there is someone out there that will match your energy that also needs you.  

“Lucy by the Sea” by Elizabeth Strout Review

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General Information:

Format Read – Audiobook

 

GoodReads Choice Awards – 2022 Fiction Nominee

 

Synopsis – Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William decide to leave New York City and head up to Maine to wait out the pandemic over the next few months, learning what it means to be isolated and how to look at all the positives that life has to offer.

 

Review:

Another book I picked up on my quest to read all of the GoodReads Choice Awards nominees, I am not surprised that we had another one that focused on the pandemic.  I feel as though we are going to be getting a lot more of these kinds of stories that focus on either the actual pandemic that took place in 2020 or stories having themes of a disease or pandemic (like in “To Paradise”).  While I think that a lot of these authors found a creative outlet in writing about what was going on, it can begin to feel repetitive, especially when you are doing a challenge like myself where a lot of these types of books are getting published around the same time.

 

I did not know that this story was the fourth in a series going into it, but I did not find any issue jumping into the story without having the appropriate background knowledge of who the characters were.  I really like that about a story that may be a part of a literary fiction series but you do not need previous books to catch up.  I bet if I had read the three former books –  which I do plan on reading now – I would probably have more information on the relationship between Lucy and William with their children and their relationships, but I felt as though I knew enough about them from what I was given in this novel to know what was going on.  That means a lot to someone like me who is new to reading adult literary fiction and gives me confidence in the series as a whole.

 

Overall, I think the book was just pretty average.  There was nothing that took me out of the story too much that made it hard to get through but also there did not seem to be a lot of uniqueness or creativity that made it an absolutely amazing read.  The main idea behind the story was something that I have gotten a lot of recently with pandemic-focused books, but I also took a lot away from it and was something I needed to hear during the time I was listening to it.  The characters had their own unique personalities but nothing too different that separated them from the average family going through this time like everyone else.  I enjoyed a lot of parts of the book with Lucy just contemplating the simple things in life that she had not noticed before.  Going through an event like the pandemic changed a lot of people; they were more focused on the little things that happened every day in their lives as they were missing them.  The basics of seeing someone cross your path or people watching as individuals do their jobs became such a rarity during 2020 that hearing what Stout had to say about them through Lucy made it all worth it.  Those were some of the best aspects of the book and the reason why I was able to enjoy it the way I did.

 

Overall, there is nothing too different about an average family set during the pandemic, but when you think back and listen to Lucy explain the simple things in life, it makes the novel all worth it.   

“Idiot” by Laura Clery Book Review

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Format Read: Audiobook

 

From YouTuber Laura Clery, “Idiot” is her memoir written in the form of comedic essays.  She tells us her story of her being broke trying to make it in the Hollywood scene, her addiction, problematic romances and how she got to where she is today.

 

I have never heard of Clery before this – I guess her videos never made it on my recommendation on my YouTube homepage.  I picked this up because my sister and cousin have started a mini book club and this was our monthly pick.  I love memoirs as they are one of my guilty pleasures. I usually pick up the audiobooks for memoirs because they are usually narrated by the author themselves.  This was the case for Clery and I think that is what made her story even more enjoyable.  Because her background is in comedy, she gives her stories so much more energy and you can feel how much fun she is having through the narration.  It is fun to hear a celebrity read their own book, but if they can make it their own story as if they are talking to me directly, that is when the story can be elevated.  And Clery nails that with her comedic timing partnered with her somber moments when she describes what dangers she has been in with her past.

 

The essays are fun and entertaining, but at the same time do not really seem different than a typical celebrity memoir.  I actually did not know they were supposed to be essays as I was listening to the book as I could not see them being broken up so it just felt like I was going chapter to chapter.  Each essay was also formatted in the same style – nothing changing from story to story – which also made it feel like I was just reading a traditional style of memoir.  I wish that with each essay you could tell when it was something new instead of just going through chapter by chapter style.  So many of these memoirs are the same kind of format and hearing that it was essays, if anything, made me more disappointed that she did not put a fun spin on it.  Overall, I wanted more from this format of storytelling that we do not usually see.

 

While Clery’s stories are full of heart and her narration draws you into her storytelling, this is nothing new outside of a typical memoir.  If she was able to pull more from her creativity online and comedy aspect, it could have been more enjoyable, but I feel as though the only reason why I liked it as much as I did was due to the audiobook. 

“To Paradise” by Hanya Yanagihara Book Review

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From the author of the popular book “A Little Life”, Hanya Yanagihara is back with her next novel “To Paradise”.  Broken up into three stories during three different alternative time periods of American history, we follow a family through the years of 1893, 1993 and 2093 who all have one thing in common besides their bloodline: a townhouse located in New York City.  We follow three different stories from different generations of the Hawaiian family living in NYC, and how illness can impact them the same way even when they are living hundreds of years apart.

Now I have yet to read “A Little Life” so this is my first time reading any book by Yanagihara.  A lot of people seemed to like “A Little Life” so I was excited when I saw her newest novel was nominated for the GoodReads Choice Awards for Fiction.  I am on a journey of reading all of the GoodReads Choice Awards winners and this is the second one I have picked up.  This is a large book, over 600 pages, and I listened to it on audiobook, which I think is the way to approach it as there are a variety of voice actors for the different characters we explore.  Without the audiobook, I am not sure if I would have been able to make it through as easily as I did.  But there is a lot to unpack with this book and I wish it would have been adapted in a different way that Yanagihara did.

The book is broken up into three major storylines, each taking place 100 years apart.  The book is over 600 pages, but it is not evenly spread out amongst the different time periods.  There were a lot of interesting aspects of each of the stories, but my major issue with it was that even though they all had similar themes and locations, there was not really a reason why all of them had to be told in one book as one story.  It was way too long to be one novel; I wish it was broken up into a trilogy because it would have made the individual stories flow better and give them their time to be expanded upon.  I was interested in what each time period had to say about the state of America and the illnesses that were running through each of the stories, but the first two took up the first half of the book and the third was the other half.  If it was broken up into three novels as part of a series, the first two books would have had their chance to be better fleshed out and much more enjoyable than they were. 

Each of the stories were written in a way that kept me entertained in its high moments and really dragged in its low points.  It is hard to describe, but I wanted to keep reading because in certain moments I was so invested in the characters and what they were doing, but then it would take a complete 180 and I would be bored in an instant.  I am not sure if this is Yanagihara’s writing style or if it was me, but as much as I wanted more from these stories, the times that dragged really dragged.  I think this book would have been better as a series, even if I thought that some moments could have been cut out.  Maybe this was because Yanagihara was limited to staying within one book.  The best of the books that did not have me bored was the third story as it was the one that was the most fleshed out and was given the most opportunity to be a complete story.  While the characters and story were there and entertaining, I was not fully engaged with all of the parts evenly.

An heart-wrenching and interconnected story that can keep you entertained from time to time, but the unevenness of the stories makes the book drag more than it should.

 

“Thing I Should Have Said” by Jamie Lynn Spears Book Review

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Nickelodeon child star Jamie Lynn Spears opens up in her first memoir touching upon all of the major moments in her life, her family and how she was able to overcome some of the hardest moments in her life.

I was a huge fan of “Zoey 101” when it was on the air and like every other young teenager during late 00s, was shocked to hear that she had gotten pregnant at such a young age, thinking that was the reason the show ended.  I was also a huge Britney Spears fan as she was the first artist I was able to recognize and sing along to.  In recent years, like many other, I was interested in the release of Britney from her conservatorship and was shocked at what Jamie Lynn’s involvement (or lack there of) was.  When I heard this book was coming out, I wanted to approach it with an open mind as that is how I want to take an approach to media and critiquing it.  So any opinions I have of this book and this review are coming from a place as a book reader and lover of celebrity memoirs and my personal bias was not a factor.

There is nothing new added to the celebrity memoir genre with this book.  It is your typical recounting of major events in the life of the author.  Where some celebrities like to bring in guests to write sections of the book or tell their life story through a series of poems or other creative medium, none of that was here.  There are so many celebrity memoirs out in the world now for people to pick up, so authors need to learn that the same old same old is not going to fly anymore.  Write a book of poetry about all of the majors events in your life you want to talk about or tell the story from the perspective of you as a child going through your childhood events and keep maturing the writing style as you grow up and mature through your life.  Being a famous name is not going to be enough anymore especially when you add next to nothing for the genre.

The biggest issue I had with Spears as an author was that I felt like she wanted to tell so many different stories from so many different aspects of her life but was not given the breathing room in terms of page length to tell it all.  In a short 240 pages, we learn so much about Spears and her career from being a child star, to being Brittney’s little sister and everything Britney went through, to the events that led up to her being a teen mom and eventually finding her future husband with a little bit of recent Britney events sprinkled in for good measure.  This is a lot to go through and the page length did not do it justice.  Reading this book felt like getting whiplash with how quickly Spears covered the major events in her life.  There is a lot she went through, I am not going to deny that fact, but there was not a central point that brought all of her stories together besides her.  Yes, it is a memoir a lot of the focus should be on yourself, but I have read so many others that focus on a specific person other than the author or focus on a bunch of people that is the reason they are were they are today but this one felt like it was very selfishly written.  It seemed as though Spears wanted to capitalize off of the media attention Britney was getting from fighting for her right to leave the conservatorship that this memoir was an easy cash grab.  Now she may have wanted to release a memoir for a long time and I understand that, but the whole book felt very selfish and it turned me off from a lot of the stories I was genuinely interested in.

With nothing new added to the genre while feeling very money-hungry, “Things I Should Have Said” did not really say much of anything.  While the little bits of her life we did get were interesting, the book’s page length deters it from being an adventure for the reader to join alongside the author in question.

“Lark Ascending” by Silas House Review

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Set in a somewhat near dystopian future, Lark finds himself in Ireland as he and his family attempted to flee America due to fires and religious takeover.  Being the last survivor of a boat crash, Lark ends up alone not knowing what the future holds for him, until he finds a partner in Seamus, one of the last remaining dogs in the world, and Helen, an Irish woman on the run since the war began.  This unlikely trio travel to find a community that will accept them while trying to avoid those who want them dead.

Dystopian is one of my favorite genres and while it seems that the fad of these kind of novels has come and gone, I was so happy to stumble upon this one published so recently.  Like other dystopian novels before it, what draws me in are the parallels to present day events.  Fires take over America, forcing Lark and his family to flee from their original home in Maryland and flee to Maine, showing us the impacts that climate change can have on those who are just trying to live their lives.  The takeover of religious extremists is also what pushes Lark and his family to eventually flee all the way to Ireland.  There is a lot of political discourse going on nowadays that seems to be attacking people of the LGBTQIA+ community in America and a lot of it seems to stem from those who want to use their religion to say that people of this community cannot exist as they truly are.  The past dystopian novels I read back in my middle and high school days really focused on the government and how they like to tell us they are working with us but sometimes you need to peal back the curtain and see what they are really doing.  This novel, however, turns away from the government is bad trope and focuses on the actual people behind what makes the world go to war.  There are people who think differently and want to ignore what is happening around them and those are the ones that have the biggest impact on how things go down.  I like how instead of focusing on the faceless people that were the ones that took over, we focus on the family that was impacted by it.  We do not need to bring attention to those in charge all of the time, because most of the time, they are the ones who have the greatest stories.

Most of the time, we are reading from the first-person perspective of Lark, but every now and then, we are brought into the mind of Seamus the dog.  I love having this break up of narrative perspectives especially when the story moves so quickly.  These chapters are never very long, but it reminds us that just because animals cannot speak to us does not mean that they do not experience the same things we do.  Dogs have for the longest time been called “man’s best friend” and we are able to explore that and how Seamus is feeling during his perspective chapters.  This is the second book that I have read recently that has chapters that let the dog speak, and both have been favorites of mine.  Coincidence??

What makes this novel very enjoyable for me is that because of its length, there is not really a lot of room to have a lot of breaks and it is just all action the entire time.  Even if intense and high-energy action scenes are not taking place, everything the characters do mean something and have some kind of impact with usually pretty quick results.  Sitting at around 275, we are dropped right in the middle of the main inciting incident — traveling along the boat from Canada to Ireland.  We have an immediate idea on who the characters are and what their main motivations are.  It is nice to read a book that knows how much it wants to accomplish and does not need to add page length to drag it out.  The quick-pace of the story was what made me connect and enjoy the story more.  I did not feel like anything was missing from the characters or their motivations while also not feeling like the story was dragged down due to wanting to expand the page count.   If you like a story that gets right to the point right away, this is the book for you.

A found family story for the dystopian lovers, Lark Ascending is a refreshing and new take on the genre, proving that these kind of stories are more than just a fad.

 

“The Hotel Nantucket” Review

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I like to give myself challenges because I like the feeling of completing something.  I have decided to read all of the books that were nominated for a GoodReads Choice Award in 2022.  I started with the fiction category as that is the first category listed and picked The Hotel Nantucket as my first book in this challenge because it was the only one available as an audiobook that was checked in at my library.

“After a tragic fire in 1922 that killed 19-year-old chambermaid, Grace Hadley, The Hotel Nantucket descended from a gilded age gen, to a mediocre budget-friendly lodge to inevitably an abandoned eyesore -until it’s purchased and renovated top to bottom by London billionaire, Xavier Darling.  Xavier hires Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton as his general manager, and Lizbet, in turn, pulls together a charismatic, if inexperienced, staff who share the vision of turning the fate of the hotel around.  They face challenges in getting along with one another (and with the guests), in overcoming the hotel’s bad reputation, and in surviving the (mostly) harmless shenanigans of Grace herself — who won’t stop haunting the hotel until her murder is acknowledged.

One of the major things that stood out to me about this book was that we focused on a whole cast of characters.  There are a few characters that we focus more on, but this story is driven by the ensemble we are following.  All of these characters connect back to the hotel in some way, which I found very entertaining.  But, I also think there were too many storylines that I personally got lost with some of the smaller characters and their plotlines.  It reminded me a lot of the movie “Knives Out” with all of the moving parts between the staff and guests of the Hotel Nantucket.  I just think it was not for me at the moment of reading it with how lost I got at times.

This was also my first Elin Hilderbrand book that I have read.  I have seen a lot of her novels available as Book of the Month choices so I have always been intrigued to pick one up.  I think that Hilderbrand has a nice and simple style of writing that can bring any type of reader into her universe.  I have never been to Nantucket, but I felt like I was there thanks to this book.  It was the writing style that kept me reading and I can greatly appreciate that especially since I personally got confused with the cast of characters but that was all my fault.

I do not think I gave this book a fair chance when I was reading it.  While it was a fun story with an interesting batch of characters, I felt lost trying to keep up with everything that was happening.  I want to give this book another chance in the future but this is where I  stand with it at the moment.