leahtylerthewriter's reviews
462 reviews

"...she'd lain in bed the night before and been so pleased as she counted in her head how many African American guests would be present at her Thanksgiving table."

Just finished Such a Fun Age and am digesting my feelings, of which I have many. Strong social message but, for a Booker longlist, I missed experiencing deep and beautiful writing. In my opinion it's satire strong but literature light. I certainly enjoyed the well-developed and deeply flawed characters. It evoked strong emotion in me, pissed me off significantly, and kept me anxiously awaiting to find out what happens next. I loved how Emira wasn't an ambitious young woman on a mission but still struggling to find her path, even at the end. And the portrayal of Alix's White performative allyship was oh so real and another source of my irritation. But for all the racism and hypocrisy we encounter, both blatant and masked, I missed truly knowing how it made the characters FEEL. All in all absolutely worth reading and a great book to discuss.

"Sometimes events happen that people can forget. But the landscape does not."

Wow, just wow. I just finished this book and my heart is as full as my head. Pike did an exceptional job of weaving together forgotten history and magical prose. For lovers of historical fiction and strong heroines, "The Lost Queen" is a must read. Can I wait two weeks for "The Forgotten Kingdom" to come out?

"God is not for women. He is for the fruit. He makes you want, and he makes you wicked, and while you sleep, he plants a seed in your womb that will be born just to die."

The best way I can describe this book is raw and uncomfortable. Raven Leilani's shocking debut is beautifully written and her insights are as heartbreaking as they are real. As I ventured into this novel, I found myself thrilled to be out of my twenties and the jumble of uncertainty that is partnered with youth. This is a sad book full of lonely people who don't quite know how to fulfill themselves. There was a layer of emotional connection to the characters that was missing for me but I feel was indicative of the story itself. I am excited to follow Leilani's career to experience how she grows as a writer.

I'm about an hour into the 8-hour audiobook and had to stop and read the reviews to figure out if I should keep going. I appreciated the forewarning about the animal dying that a number of reviewers referenced. It is one of my biggest hot buttons and I feel a very cheap author technique to evoke emotion. If it's Charlie I will be pissed if I keep reading. Decided to DNF this one and save myself the anguish, as well as utter boredom at the vomit of stream of consciousness.

"I had a lot of fun but I don't know if it was truly me. I took what was given and didn't ask for anything more or different."

"God is love!" Love After Love is a heartwarming, tender, and rich story about three dear people in Trinidad and their quests to find and experience...love. Betty, her son Solo, and the glue that holds them together, Mr. Chetan, will stay with me for some time to come. Persaud's lyrical and representative prose immersed me in a world I had not visited before. She told a complex story with a simplicity I appreciated. Her characters struggled and at times prevailed and other times succumbed. Ultimately, Love After Love is a raw and powerful depiction of the trials of the human condition that left my heart full.

"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.

"You're from a people who took and took and took and took. And from a people taken. You were both and neither."

An intricately woven tale about twelve interconnected Native Americans who are headed toward mayhem at the the Big Oakland Powwow.

I loved this book! And not just in a "woke white woman gets a glimpse into a multicultural experience" kind of way. There There is so thick with plot, I felt compelled to devour it in one day!

Orange's writing is simple and direct and incredibly effective. It had to be, given not only the complexities of the characters themselves but the many shared relationships between his diverse and divergent cast. Exploring endless facets of how the human condition intersects with the Native experience, from the occupation of Alcatraz in the '70s to the feeling of disassociation that is a byproduct of being mixed race, to addiction, adoption, abuse, and abandonment, Orange wrote a fresh, raw, and action-packed tale that is my fifth 5⭐ read so far this year.

"It's not just the past you think of as you ride these fields. It's what's latent in the soil, what's breeding. It's the days to come. The wars unfought. The injuries and deaths that, like seeds, the soil of England is keeping warm."

Bring Up the Bodies tells the story of Anne Boleyn's epic demise, as experienced through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell.

I loved this book as much as I loved Wolf Hall. Mantel's writing is transportive and her research impeccable as she recreates the kill-or-be-killed experience of surviving life in 16th century England. She makes Cromwell such a human while Queen Anne remains a total mystery! Talk about the power of point of view.

This story provides deep insight into a barbaric, dishonest, and misogynistic time. AKA history. Once Henry VIII severs his country from Catholicism in order to sink his teeth into what he wants, he blames the woman when things don't go right. Simply because she did not have a son, Anne Boleyn was branded a witch and adulteress. Her tale is one of the most famous examples of gaslighting and slut shaming in modern history.

But at the end of the day, dontcha wanna know if Elizabeth I was Henry's daughter or not?

"A very violent need for degradation was growing inside me, a fearless degradation, a yearning to feel heroically vile. And it seemed to me that Corrado had sensed that need and was willing to support it without a fuss. "

An adolescent Giovanna overhears her father tell her mother that she is developing the face of Vittoria, his despised and ugly sister who Giovanna knows little to nothing about. Paranoid that she too is becoming ugly, Giovanna starts down a path to discover Aunt Vittoria for herself.

This book was not for me. It was agony to get through, actually. Whenever it was time to start reading again, I was overcome with an internal sense of dread and reluctance to return to Giovanna's world. Yet I did not DNF.

The good: Ferrante's writing is exceptional. Her ability to convey teen angst and the confusion surrounding budding sexuality was spot on. My struggle was more the characters and storyline. I did not connect with either.

Aunt Vittoria is an astoundingly accurate representation of an oppressed woman who becomes the oppressor. She is angry and erratic and aggressive and raw. At times in my life I have been Aunt Vittoria. Perhaps being forced to visit the ugly version of myself is why I did not enjoy my time in her presence.

As Giovanna grows, her character does indeed start to resemble Vittoria. Her role models are sad and amoral people, which does nothing to help guide her through the turmoil of adolescence and deliver her into womanhood a secure and stable adult.

After a few days of reflection, I have decided the soul of this story was sick.