sarah984's reviews
628 reviews

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson

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lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

This was a quick read with a breezy, conversational style I liked, and the setting and most of the characters are pretty charming. 

The plot and the main character were just really, really bad. The protagonist, Maggie, hates classics and makes no effort to learn about or sell them and then is disappointed when no one buys them. She has a little bet with her boyfriend where she reads a book he recommends and he does an activity she chooses, and while he at least tries everything she doesn't take her part seriously at all and doesn't even read one of the books. She lies constantly, including in a cover letter for a job she applied for (about her availability!!! Girl if they hire you that's the one thing they need to be true!), things that affect the livelihoods of people she claims to care about (including stealing something from her boyfriend), falsifies her sales reports at work
and breaks into her boss's office to blackmail him about his grandfather.
No one stays mad at her for long about this, which is absurd. 

No idea how the "society" that runs the businesses in town was supposed to work, since it seemed like one guy just calling random shots and not a board or anything. No place in the history of the world would operate like this.

Also this is more pedantic but the author apparently majored in English and this bugged me: the bookstore didn't carry any books published after 1968 for Reasons (for a guy who wanted to make money the boss was really into making it hard to sell anything) and another character (who likes classics) implies that the only books by Black authors that it's possible for them to carry are slave narratives. I can buy Maggie not knowing about the Harlem Renaissance because she's stupid but Malcolm? Come on.
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Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality: Stories by Lindsay Wong

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dark funny

3.0

A darkly funny horror collection, the stories mostly feature Chinese immigrants in North America (though there are a couple of stories about men and/or set in China). I loved the concept of most of the stories but a few of them felt like they didn't really go anywhere and by the end of the collection the tone felt a little repetitive.

Favourites: Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality, Furniture, Sinking Houses
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I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee

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challenging reflective slow-paced

3.0

I think this was a really courageous thing to publish but the book itself is not organized very well - it's transcripts of therapy sessions and some seemingly unrelated short essays - and the psychiatrist honestly didn't seem very helpful aside from prescribing medications.
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Out There Screaming by Jordan Peele, John Joseph Adams

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dark
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

There was a nice variety of types of horror stories in this book. Most of them were pretty good but a few didn't feel like horror stories to me and some were a bit overly didactic or unfocused to me. Overall recommend.

Favourites: Reckless Eyeballing by N. K. Jemisin, Flicker by L. D. Lewis, A Bird Sings By The Etching Tree by Nicole D. Sconiers
Warchild by Karin Lowachee

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adventurous dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I thought the last 20% or so of this was pretty good, space action, catharsis without being too pat, but the rest of this was a slog. I'm assuming from how graphic it gets with sexual violence that the intended audience is adults but the main character is a child so it feels very YA in parts. The cyberpunk stuff feels goofy and pointless. The aliens are basically just cobbled together Japanese stereotypes which is kind of weird when there are theoretically Japanese people in this universe (the main character's home ship has a Japanese name!). Zero plot important female characters. Weird time skips. A whole chapter in second person for some reason.
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Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

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dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

Deeply silly and predictable, this contains a lot of images that the author clearly thought sounded really cool, and some very weird thoughts on women. I wasn't surprised to see in the afterword that this was her debut.
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The Whitewash by Siang Lu

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funny informative slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The subject matter was interesting enough but the humour only landed about half the time for me, and it was kind of annoying how all the women were written in relation to men only. I wish the author had trusted the reader a little more instead of spelling everything out.
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Linghun by Ai Jiang

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challenging reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A really interesting novella about being unable to move on from grief and about immigration and how it affects people and their families. There was a little too much going on for me - the book was already so short and the character I found most interesting wasn't featured much until near the end - but a thought provoking read overall.
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There There by Tommy Orange

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challenging reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really liked this a lot: a story of various interconnected characters converging on a tragedy that is foreshadowed early on but impossible to look away from. Each character had a unique voice so they were easy to tell apart even though there were so many. It bugged me a bit that some chapters were in first person and some were in third (one even in second!) but not enough to really affect my enjoyment. I'll think about this book for a long time.
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Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

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dark

3.0

This anthology was interesting to see what the different takes on "dark fiction" were. Some were straightforward horror stories, some were noir type stories of people being awful to each other, and others were kind of a mix. I found the first and last few stories to be the strongest, with some weaker ones dragging on for a bit in the middle. There's something for everyone, except maybe the faint of heart.

Favourites: Capgras by Tommy Orange and The Longest Street in the World by Theodore C. van Alst Jr.
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