May 2020 Reads
I think it's time for me to put YA fantasy/paranormal romance, as a genre, aside. It's not that I think I've "outgrown" it (I don't believe there are age limits on joy, and the concept of being "guilty" over life's pleasures is abhorrent to me), I just can't find any satisfaction in shallow "boy meets girl, supernatural stuff happens, the end" romance anymore. I thought I could like Serpent & Dove because of the 'enemies to lovers' element-- I enjoy a good bodice-ripper every now and again-- but by the time any sexy business took place, the hate and tension had already evaporated into the tepid budding of young love. If you liked Nina and Matthias's romance in "Six of Crows," you'll like these two... Unfortunately, I HATED Matthias, and now I hate Reid, too. Neither of them deserve the girls who love them. If you want some bloody witchcraft, stake-burning, bawdy ballads, and culty human sacrifice between your pages upon pages of pining and kissy-face, you MIGHT enjoy this. While I do like those concepts when executed well, the characters and story just didn't have enough depth or sex appeal for me.
While paranormal YA romance grates me the wrong way, for some reason I don't mind CONTEMPORARY YA romance quite so much. Five Feet Apart tells the story of Stella, a teenager frequently hospitalized for her Cystic Fibrosis, and Will, who has the untreatable B. cepacia bacteria permanently infecting his lungs. Maybe it's because I grew up friends with a girl who had this same condition, but I found the exhausting life of cannula tubes and oxygen tanks and vibrating vests an achingly familiar one. I think the main difference between this kind of YA lit and what Serpent and Dove had to offer is the perspective-- I can't relate to a teen aching for heterosexual love, but I CAN view stories ABOUT teens from the perspective of a sympathetic adult. And I WAS sympathetic... I cared for Stella; I wanted her treatments to be a success. I wanted her to get that lung transplant. Unfortunately, this story lost me in the third act, which should be retitled "Supposedly Smart Teenagers Make Very Bad, Stupid, Out-of-Character Choices for No Reason Whatsoever." It left me frustrated and annoyed.
For mother's day, I read... Mother's Day; my first Renée Knight tale. It's only a few pages long, and is available for free on Amazon. A spooky little story about a child and her parents in a beautiful hotel that isn't all that it seems. It didn't leave much of an impact, but if you want to bring some spookiness into your saccharine holidays (and really, who DOESN'T?), maybe give it a shot?
My big sister used to love the '91 Kathy Bates movie, Fried Green Tomatoes. We watched it all the time when I was a little thing. Of course, the movie did nothing to prepare me for how wonderfully, blatantly, UNAPOLOGETICALLY gay the novel is. What the heck?! Why didn't I get folksy Southern lesbians in the movie??? The book is WAY more ballsy, and I loved it that much more for it. Like the film, the book explores issues of femininity (including menopause (and the ensuing hormone changes, including suicidality), old age, social responses TO women in certain age groups, female friendship, lesbianism, the women's' lib movement and those it left behind). Also like the film, the topics of domestic/spousal abuse, marital rape, ethical euthanasia, anti-black racism (the KKK, etc), and homelessness/poverty in the time of the Great Depression. While I'll always love the movie, the book is just so much richer.
I know it's a little early to pick a favorite book of 2020, but A Cosmology of Monsters might very well be it. I stayed up until 3am reading it, and then til 4am freaking out, on a work night. I BOUGHT it, and I NEVER buy books; I'm a library gal through and through. It was a gorgeous multi-generational love letter to classic horror about a family haunted by monsters both literal and figurative. I ran the entire emotional gambit, from tears to laughter to tension. It was carefully woven so that everything came together, all minor details synched, sometimes in a time-loop fashion. Immensely satisfying.
Written to cash in on the Gone Girl trend, The Silent Patient is... trash. It's so bad it actually made me angry. The world is full of twisty strange dark complicated wonderful books, and THIS is what becomes a bestseller?! The writing was childishly simple, the characters were completely flat and irrelavant, the lack of research or care was blatantly obvious, and the whole thing was a punchline setup for the Big Twist (completely unsupported by the rest of the text, by the way) that all thrillers these days live for, even when it comes at the cost of a worthwhile story. Drop the whole thing in a landfill.
Very Nice was FUN. It was bitter as a lemon, with a large cast of despicable characters, wallowing in the white privilege of the one percent, yet insisting they're liberal and hip. Vapid and fluffy, though it included the questionable subjects of school shootings and child molestation that seemed a bit out of its range. It just didn't fit the otherwise light summer beach-reading, and it wasn't resolved in any meaningful way... The plot would have been stronger without going on those uncomfortable detours. I enjoyed it, but I suspect readers who can't handle an irredeemable cast of 100% unlikable douchebags would have a hard time with it. (For me, the fact that they're SUPPOSED to be douchebags; that they were written with that intent, is what makes the difference between an amusing book and an unbearable one. Marcy Demansky was being satirical and snarky throughout, inviting the reader to mock these disasterous characters.)
I've wanted to read Rosemary's Baby since I first saw the film some years back, and Cosmology of Monsters, which is all about classic horror, cemented the decision for me. Man, this was a stressful read... I felt growing frustration throughout at all the men in Rosemary's life failing her time and time again. She was smart; figured everything out; came up with plans and did everything right (with the limited information and resources she had), and still she was dragged ever-closer to tragedy, both by general public misogyny and the overwhelming gaslightting/manipulating tactics of those close to her. ROSEMARY DESERVED BETTER. (Great book; excellently crafted, but it made me so angry...) PS: Anyone interested in how horror and feminism often go hand-in-hand should read this electricliterature article about women + food consumption in horror media.)
The Monster of Elendhaven was very short, very fun, and had a little bite to it. I was delighted to find a book that matches my dark sense of humor... I laughed and grinned quite a lot through this novella. (Also: it's gay! Yay.) Set in an alternate version of Victorian Europe, where End Times have already begun; the sea so polluted that all its inhabitants are mutants and monsters, a nameless boy rises to pilliage and murder. On adulthood, he meets another monster... Though he, a reputable dandy on the surface. Together, they construct a very literal plague of vengance. TW for child rape (non-graphic) and gore (very graphic). The ending surprised me!
I have seriously mixed feelings about Darling Rose Gold. On one hand, it's probably the best thriller I've ever read, and I typically don't like thrillers (see The Silent Patient above). It was complicated and twisty without being ridiculous or random. It was well written. The characters felt three-dimensional and realistic, like (horrible) people I know in real life. But it was also heavily derivative of the real-life case of Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. And I don't mean it just pays homage to this event; I mean it did everything but copy-paste directly from the Wikipedia article, names and all. All I could think is, "This happened less than five years ago. This must be super triggering to everyone involved." In fanfiction culture, writing RPF ("real-person fanfic") is frowned upon. It's important to keep a strong boundary line between fiction and reality. Even then, there are all sorts of rules, such as DO NOT SEND THIS TO THE ACTUAL PEOPLE INVOLVED. Somehow, that all goes out the window when you publish it professionally, ESPECIALLY when, rather than being murdered, Dee Dee/"Patty" is instead tortured in a personally crafted purgatory, as though the author believes herself an avenging God.
