carleesi's reviews
746 reviews

Such beautiful writing, but the frequent references to Christianity really broke the magic for me. As a book from the 90s it’s also quite heteronormative. 

bell does a wonderful job of making little light bulbs flick on as I read and understood so much of how our society has messed up our understanding of love. 

Look, I’ll be honest, I knew this would have big labor shill energy but I enjoy getting annoyed at people so here I am.

There were some really interesting and important points raised in this book about being a woman in politics but I just could not get behind Kate’s staunch labor centrist view on things. 

To discuss how hard it was for Pauline Hanson to explain needing a security detail to her children without addressing the number of children who faced racist violence because of that woman is violently ignorant. She had the immense privilege of sending her children to a protected boarding school while Asian, Muslim and First Nations parents across the country had to speak to their kids about racism and how to stay safe in a post- Pauline world. What a ludicrous addition to this book.

But Pauline is just one example of this. Kate frequently speaks about how she yearns for bipartisan women groups, girls supporting girls, and many other white feminist ambitions. I think it was Tanya Pliberseck who Kate quoted as being strongly against this and anyone with strong morals would have to agree. I can’t sit across a room from someone who is supporting laws that will actively harm our society and then chat over a few drinks about TV shows, or family, or whatever politicians actually care about. People in those positions have the power to change lives for the better, it’s not about personalities and bonding. I agree that politicians would cooperate better with more chances to see each other as human, but when we value someone we also put effort into stopping them from harming other people.

She also quoted Penny Wong as saying how hard it is to have queer people, Asian people and women come for her so hard when she does a fucking god awful job of supporting marginalised identities. We will never forget how much she has support Israhell.

I think this rant is long enough. I think the most interesting part of this book was in sharing stories and experiences rather than in the attempts to unite a nightmare sisterhood.

I love memoirs for hearing someone’s life as well as their perspective on the world. Like others have said, I feel like Robert’s career as a journalist makes this read more like a collection of stories rather than a memoir with a clear narrative thread. 

That being said it was pretty disappointing to hear Robert repeatedly use the coloniser name for Uluru when he wrote this in the 2010s, especially considering that as a journalist he wrote about race a lot.

Also, don’t mention Pauline Hanson unless you’re going to talk about how awful she is. Otherwise it sounds like you’re bragging about meeting her and having a signed copy of her book! Robert even shared some of her backwards beliefs without criticism which was just not it.

Whoof were those some incredibly unlikable characters. Misogyny, manipulation, homophobia…. All in the first 20 pages. Zero impetus to keep reading.

I loved the characters and the focus on relationship building. It was also cool to see a world that was seemlessly LGBTQIA+

At times the perspectives confused me, it wasn’t always clear who was the POV of each section until a few paragraphs in. I also felt that some of the conflict built and resolved too quickly to understand why it was significant/ to get a full feel of what was happening.

That being said I love me some space opera so I will absolutely be reading more.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

I ADORE the premise, the social commentary, how Daisy uses her magic. 

I enjoyed the nuance of the discussions of feminism, having a hyper femme feminist MC who talks about the importance of social change on an individual level, looking out for the people who are being destroyed by the system until the system can be destroyed.

But I also felt the feminism a bit empty sometimes. Noel’s comment about how “it’s not political it’s just a pie contest” that gets left completely unchallenged - even supported multiple times throughout the book. Two things can be true, something can be silly and fun and traditional AND reinforcing unhealthy gender norms. Engaging critically is feminism. Whereas we only get the feminism that dismisses the sexism with a laugh and the feminism that dismisses the fun. I guess that made it appropriate to the 20 somethings in the book early in their feminism.

It was also annoying that Daisy acknowledged that she was acting like she had the final say on how someone was punished

and then denying a survivor her own wishes???

All that said, I loved the first half of this book and enjoyed the second.

It felt like there was too much set up at the start of the book and yet very little character development. I could not understand why Sophia was into Erin because she was bland as hell.

The same conversations/thoughts kept happening over and over again. It felt like there was no story progression in the first quarter of the book, and yet it also felt pretty clear exactly where it was going.

Some of the themes lacked subtlety, the misogyny was painfully obvious and Sophia’s speeches about it were similarly full of bull in a china shop energy.

A fun, sweet, easy read.