Claire Stevens's Blog, page 3

The Falling In Love Montage by Ciara Smyth

Oh.  My.  God.  I loved this book so much.  If it doesn't get made into a Netflix film I'll be personally devastated.

So the basic premise of the book is that our MC Saoirse lives alone with her dad and refuses to have any romantic entanglements for spoilery reasons and instead acts as a weird-ass public service person, offering snogs out to straight chicks who want to see what it's like to kiss a girl which sounds like a surprisingly good plan and what could possibly go wrong.  OBVIOUSLY things go wrong when Saoirse meets a hot girl who likes her back and wants to have a legit relationship.

It's hard to know what I liked most about this book.  I read it in just over a day - the writing is so funny and sharp and just keeps the pace up fantastically.  I loved that it parodies the rom-com genre and points out how utterly sexist and heteronormative it is whilst at the same time time being totally mushy in places and funny with a whole 'some kind of misunderstanding' section.

And the characters.  All of them, even the super minor secondary characters, were nuanced and interesting and deserved their place in the book.  

The ending had me in pieces.  And that is all I have to say about it.

All in all, I just *sigh* I can't even.  This is pretty much the best book I've read this year.  So good.

5 stars

Like A Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

Huh.  Not really sure where to start with this book.  It's the story of three teens in New York in 1989.  Reza is an Iranian boy - he's gay and is convinced that being gay will inevitably lead to his death from AIDS.  Judy is an aspiring fashion designer, watching her uncle slowly die of AIDS.  Art is the son of rich conservatives; the only out pupil in his school, he documents the AIDS crisis through the photos he takes.

I guess I should start by saying this was a book I needed when I was younger, and I'm super envious of anyone who needs it today when it's available right there in Waterstones.

The 1980s in Britain were great if you were white, straight, male and rich.  If you were from any kind of marginalised group, the eighties were a lot less fun.  Just take a look at some of the newspaper headlines the gay community were faced with over their morning cornflakes: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/11/30...
 
I was nine in 1986 when the AIDS: Don't Die Of Ignorance campaign (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2...) was launched.  Fun times.  To say all this had an impact on me would be something of an understatement, as my therapist will attest.  

The story weaves over the course of about a year changing POV between the three MCs and you see the grow and develop as people and make the decisions that will ultimately shape their adult lives.  The three MCs are beautifully flawed and ultimately hopeful.  There was plenty about them I didn't like but I never stopped rooting for them.  I mostly identified with Reza - I don't know what it's like to be Iranian, or a dude, but I do know what it's like to lie awake at night convinced that you're going to die of AIDS and this was really well portrayed.

The only small criticism I'd have of this book is that it is written through a modern lens, knowing what we know now about AIDS/HIV.  For all that Reza is shown as being terrified of AIDS (and this is portrayed really well), for me it didn't quite capture how pervasive AIDS-terror was for society as a whole and how high anti-gay sentiment ran.  Maybe this was something to do with the book being set in New York and not in the small, redneck town in East Anglia where I grew up.

This is a really small criticism though and doesn't detract from this being a five star book.

5 stars

Period. It’s About Bloody Time by Emma Barnett

Well, goodness me. I don’t think I’ve ever read quite so much about menstruation in one sitting. 

Honestly, barring a few stats and anecdotes, it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Period poverty is at shocking levels, even in wealthy countries like the UK. Endometriosis would have a bunch more research cash chucked at it if men suffered from it. If you’re one of the many women who suffer from agonising period pain, you’re more likely to be believed if you visit a female GP. Periods costs beaucoup cash when we’re already at a disadvantage from the gender pay gap. 

I really liked the author’s voice and the broad range of period-related subject matter she covered. The subject matter was clearly laid out and narrated and it held my interest. 

For me, what raised this to a four star book was what this could do for other people. I know about endometriosis, period poverty, having to stuff your knickers with loo roll when you’re caught short, but plenty of people don’t. And yes, but plenty of people I mean men. I don’t expect many men will pounce on this book with glee in Waterstones, but I sincerely hope that this book will be read by women who currently only have vague, nebulous ideas about the inequality surrounding menstruation and will give them a voice to speak up. They need to speak up to their husbands and boyfriends so that they don’t cringe and freak out when they’re asked to buy tampons, to their boss to get the proper support at work if they are in pain, to their dude GP to get them to bloody listen. 

This book ought to be read a lot. By lots of people. That is all. 

4 stars

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Wow. This book was so good!  It’s the story of two sisters, one living in New York and the other in the Dominican Republic, who are unaware of each other’s existence until their dad dies in a plane crash. Their dad is married bigamously to both of their mums and lives a frankly creepy double life, spending most of the year in New York and summer in the Dominican Republic. 

The book is written in free verse and I listened to it as an audiobook. The author was one of the narrators, which was great because I guess she had the chance to  read the verse exactly how she meant it to be heard. The writing is lyrical and flowy and there’s some really awesome use of language. 

A queen
offers her hand to be kissed,
& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.

Perfection. I love it. 

After their father dies, the sisters discover each other, but they also discover the man their father really was. Before his death they both hero worshipped him, but they come to discover that he was, like all humans, imperfect.  Because, you know.  Bigamy. But we also see their development as characters and the way they come to terms with their father’s pretty serious flaws. 

I loved the world building too.  New York was pretty much just New York, I’ve visited and read about it in hundreds of books. But I’ve never visited or read a book set in the Dominican Republic and I was glad to read about it here. 

All in all this was a really lovely book. Recommended. 

5 stars

Here Is The Beehive by Sarah Crossan

I’ve read nearly everything Sarah Crossan has written and this is the first book I’ve read of hers that is aimed at an adult audience. As usual, the writing is lovely - she is such a talented author. However, the plot was all about a married woman who was having an affair with a married man, and it was all about miserable marriages and toxic dinner parties. Totally not my kind of subject matter. 

The writing was five stars; the content was one star. Averages out at three stars, so still an ok book, but not one I’ll go back to. 

3 stars

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Cinderella is my least favourite fairy story/Disney film, mainly because the perfectly able MC lets herself be pushed around and literally sits in a pile of dirt moping about how unfair life is without actually doing anything to change her situation, before relying on first a fairy godmother and then a dude to pluck her from obscurity, all the while being judged purely in terms of her looks as opposed to her personality or intellect. 

Imaging my interest, therefore, when I read that this would be a vamped-up, feminist retelling of Cinderella with diverse characters. That’s more like it, I thought. 

It wasn’t the five star read I was hoping for. 

I loved the diverse characters. The MC, Sophia, was headstrong and stubborn and really didn’t want to marry a guy (what with being gay). She rushed into things without thinking at all, which was super frustrating.  She was in love with her childhood best friend, until she she gets dumped and meets Constance, who she falls in instalove with.  Like, literally one day after meeting her she’s all enraptured and has all but forgotten her previous love. 

The twist on the fairy godmother trope was really cool and the plot twist was unexpected. 

The biggest problem I had was that there wasn’t enough world building. I had no idea what was going on, beyond ‘It’s 200 years since Cinderella died and dudes pick wives depending onto posh their dress is’. I got the whole Men Are Evil Now thing, but the toxic masculinity was possibly the most heavy handed depiction I have ever read. The male characters completely lacked nuance, they were just pantomime baddies. And every single man, with the exception of maybe two of them, were outright horrors. Like, all they did was use, abuse and discard women, but no reason for the systemic abuse was given. 

This was a fairly good read, but for me the diversity was the best thing about it.  There could have been swathes of narrative taken out and replaced with some world building or layering of the baddies and this would have been an easy five stars. 

3 stars

The Confusion of Laurel Graham by Adrienne Kisner

Click to set custom HTMLThis was like 25% cute f/f romance and 75% birdwatching. I was totally there for the f/f romance, but not so much for the birdwatching. Other than playing Wingspan a few times, I have no knowledge of/interest in American avian wildlife so I think that made this not the ideal choice of book for me. 

The romance was cute; very slow-moving (so slow-moving that for large portions of the book I couldn’t work out whether the MC and her love interest actually liked each other) but otherwise ok. 

I liked the activism the MC and her cronies got up to. All good stuff. The baddies were sufficiently evil (maybe a bit too evil? I prefer it when the baddies are more nuanced). 

The swearing was a bit odd. I’m really sweary, but the f-bombs in this book seemed a bit misplaced?

Overall this was an ok read. Not one I’d rush out to recommend to anyone, but ok. For me, the fact that it was an f/f romance and not an m/f romance elevated it to three stars instead of two and a half. 

3 stars

Invisible Differences by Julie Dachez

​This was a really beautiful graphic novel about the reality of living with Asperger's Syndrome / high functioning autism.  Marguerite is 30 - she loves her cats, she has a boyfriend and a job.  She finds social situations really uncomfortable and exhausting.  She doesn't really understand what people mean when they talk sometimes.  After being laughed at by her GP, she finally gets a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome and everything changes.

I found Marguerite's story heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting.  It's so sad that so many people, especially women, go for so long thinking that there's something wrong with them.  The story is straighforward and the artwork was really clean and clear and gave the script more impact.  

4 stars

The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Over The Top by Jonothan Van Ness

I

I enjoyed this so much- it rattles along really well and JVN writes exactly as he speaks so it had me laughing out loud a bunch of times.

4.5 stars

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings

"También de este lado hay sueños." (There are dreams on this side too) - Mexican street art

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.  They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” - Donald Trump, 2015

This is probably the most powerful, heartbreaking book I'll read this year.

Lydia, her son Luca and her journalist husband live in Acapulco and although the cartels have a hold on the city, they have a pretty nice life.  That is, until Lydia's husband writes an expose on the jefe of the newest drug cartel which shatters their world apart.

It's hard to know where to start with this book.  I'm tempted just to start gushing and fawning, but I also want to get my thoughts in order.

I think this is a classic case of something being so much more than the sum of its parts.  This book has great characters, an eventful, unpredictable plot and superb writing, but other books have those qualities too.  There was something in this book that pulled all these factors together and made it so much more than I thought it was going to be.  The experiences of the characters and the journey the go on physically and emotionally, is just mind-blowing.  Even at the end of the book, when Lydia and Luca are in the US, their future is by no means certain.

As someone living in the UK, my knowledge of what life in Mexico is like is filtered through the BBC - all we see is Trump's views on Mexico, which are pretty horrendous.  This book isn't a documentary, obviously, and I don't know what research the author did, but it has really inspired me to find out more about migrants in Central/South America.

I've just discovered that there's been a ton of controversy surrounding this book.  I picked the book as a freebie on Audible (the narrator is awesome, btw) because the cover was pretty (shallow) and because the blurb looked interesting.  I don't want to comment on the controversy, or whether it's right or wrong for a white woman to be writing about others' experiences.  As a white woman, I don't think it's ok for me to either be downplaying other people's concerns or to be decrying something as racist when I don't experience racism myself.  I think it is important for potential readers to know that this was written by a white woman though, in case it turns out to be something you'd rather give the swerve.

5 stars