April 2021 books

Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book! I have two minor complaints. First, it takes a bit too long to get going. I almost stopped reading because I was tired of hearing the main character's internal monologue about the last day of school. And second, it stressed me out SO much that these people were in a time-sensitive scavenger hunt but kept taking breaks to do non-essential things! The book would sometimes mention specific time frames, like "we had to be back at such-and-such place in 23 minutes but there was still time to walk to the cafe and get a cinnamon roll and then eat the cinnamon roll and then walk back to the car and then drive to the place", which stressed me out even MORE. 23 minutes is NOTHING. Maybe it's just been winter too long in Finland but I feel like it takes me 23 minutes to put my shoes/coat/hat/gloves on! And the book takes place in Seattle, which is a big city! And they're usually driving a car and have to find parking!!!!! I AM SO STRESSED OUT JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!

But overall the book was good. There was something very real about the situations and conversations these characters found themselves in and that was fun to read.

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm giving this five stars but it's not without reservations. I mean on the one hand, I DEVOURED this book and enjoyed almost every page. It is a fascinating story and the author really lets it breathe (ummm this book is 500 pages long) so that we understand all the nuances and stakes of the deal Addie made.

But on the other hand, the ending didn't really land with me, and I am not sure why. And there were a few moments in the book where I was confused about (view spoiler)[what was going on with Henry - at one point he mentions something about fae and I thought, "oh, ok, this book has fairies in it" but no, it doesn't. And even though the limits of Addie's curse are explained well, it never addresses what happens when someone has to go to the bathroom (and presumably shuts the door). I couldn't stop thinking about it every time Addie talked about spending all day in someone's presence so they wouldn't forget her. With all the care and attention the author spent on framing the conditions of the curse, I wish she would have thought of a loophole for bathroom needs. Writing this now, I realize how dumb that sounds but it was honestly distracting for me! Why bother pointing out what Addie can and can't do with fire, ink, charcoal, fabric, paint, food, body temperature, etc. but not put in a line about her and her companions magically never having to pee or poo? (hide spoiler)]

To sum up, this book isn't quite perfect but it is definitely a good time and will give you lots of things to think about!

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Sherwood by Meagan Spooner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one started off kind of slow and occasionally hokey but I still enjoyed reading it for a few chapters every day because it reminded me a lot of that (also kind of slow and occasionally hokey) BBC Robin Hood adaptation from the mid-2000s. But at some point it picked right up and I found myself staying up late to read it! I really liked what this book did with the basic Robin Hood premise - it's very faithful in some ways but the changes it did make were interesting and exciting.

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The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There was something strangely compelling about this book, and it wasn't the fact that I got to read about a pandemic during a pandemic. It was that these women (sick with the Spanish flu in a maternity ward in Dublin in 1918) were being cared for. There were hot compresses and camphor rubs and sugared whiskey in sippy cups and hot lemonade and cold packs for traumatized perineums. It was mesmerizing. Oh and yes also there was a pandemic and a world war raging, I guess.

This book belongs solidly to the category of Dramatized Wikipedia Entry, and I suspect that the timeframe (multiple women having their dramatic symptoms and labor in the space of just a few hours) miiiiight not hold up to scrutiny, and I think maybe some of these women hold sliiiightly anachronistic views for their time period/personal background, but it's fine. (Definitely did not need that romance, though.)

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Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars? This book was really funny (I laughed out loud a lot) but I didn't really like either of the main characters (no, not even Perfect Oliver). It was also a little out of my wheelhouse, content-wise, in the sense that I had to spend all my f-bomb budget on this one book. I almost stopped reading after the first chapter but I would say that is the roughest bit and then it gets sweeter from there.

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The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 stars. Not as fascinatingly disturbing as A Short Stay in Hell and not as lyrical as The Ten Thousand Doors of January, but it has something of both of those books. Reading this right after The House in the Cerulean Sea means I have read TWO books in a row that are just loveliness itself.

(There should be a pretty hefty CW for suicide on this book, though!)

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Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is like The Westing Game for grown-ups! My heart grew three sizes while reading it, I don't care who you are, you will at least like this book and probably love it.

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King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Second reading April 2021. The parts with Elizaveta and Juris are unspeakably boring so I skimmed those and it was fine.

3.5 stars.

I was a little bit puzzled by this one - I love every single one of Bardugo's books that I've read, and Nikolai is one of my favorite characters, so it was weird to be reading this book and...not be into it? Then I started wondering if this book began life as one of those interstitial novellas that are A Thing these days and someone told her to bump it up to its own duology and it all made sense. I don't know if that is exactly what is going on here, but it would explain a lot: the hitting of emotional beats almost by rote, the highlighting of secondary (and even tertiary) (and even previously completely UNKNOWN) characters from previous works, the retreading/rewriting of previous events, and the padding out of some relatively thin plot lines.

But ultimately I was glad to be hanging out with these characters again even if some of the more padded stretches of the book were less than compelling. There was some surprisingly moving stuff here, too, and I will definitely read book two.

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Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this one better than King of Scars, but this duology still reads like a series of padded-out interstitial novellas strung together. If you MUST know what happens to every single character from the Grishaverse, then these are the books for you!

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