"I had caught a glimmer of myself as someone who dug into her life with teeth and let the juice run down her chin. It was worth it to feel sticky afterward."

The good: gorgeous writing, gorgeous descriptions, gorgeous cover. The rest left me feeling flat. It Is Wood, It Is Stone is about an American woman, Linda, who accompanies her husband to São Paulo for a year while he teaches at university. Besides a brief affair that goes nowhere and Linda's obsession with her maid, not much else happens. Nor is Linda terribly likable, sympathetic, or interesting. I need either plot or character to draw me in and felt both were missing. As much as I hate to give a debut a ho-hum review, I feel like this could have been a much more compelling read. It's written in 2nd person, as Linda pens a retrospective letter to her husband at some point in the future, but I'm not quite sure what the point of that was other than to use an atypical POV. I hope if I were given a year in Brazil with no kids to take care of and no job to tend to, I would make a much more interesting go of it than trying to wrestle my housekeeper's duties away from her.