Key > Recent Status Updates

Ah yes, we’ve gone back full circle to “we are not just chemicals”…now what?

Still admired by the main character, still predictable. Still written slightly awkwardly. But I admit, I did chuckle and pause while reading some of the misunderstandings. Not all meh!

The big secret and pending romance is revealed and I’m very underwhelmed. It’s so…basic? Textbook, psychologically interesting sure, but on a high-school level. A little let down

Circadian Rhythm dictating the day—intriguing idea, will try to keep people stuff in the morning and detailed stuff for the afternoon

Cringy funny, but ever since I glimpsed that it’s also a romance, I keep guessing who it’s with. Kind of spoiled some of the experience for me

Cheap tricks, some silly and some too manipulative for me, but a good reminder to help myself, mixed with cute tidbits of information.

History of psychiatric treatments is grisly, as we know. And the doctors doing this were at least a little bit sadistic, not to mention narcissistic.

Okay I actually laughed out loud at her carpool music being completely inappropriate

Still depressing, but getting a little funnier. And I’m sensing a romance…

Depressing so far, and cringing at some of the language about the other office folk

Syphilis was quite the disease-didn’t know it played a role in the fight for a biological basis of psychiatry

We Eat Our Daughters: Jamaican mothers’ love is unconventional by white colonial definitions, wrapped up in and around everything like a vine that swaddles and chokes you simultaneously (funny enough, it’s how I feel about my father rather than my mother: “afraid of not being who she wants me to be...raise(d)…to be obedient, and some of us don’t know how to be any other way even when we are woman.“)

On Shelf: be “too picky” about men and you’ll end up happy?

Ugh this book continues to be delicious! I love Henry, relate to him both before and after the curse: never being enough, finding it difficult to commit to a life path, and then being everything everyone wants to see, not truly being seen. Glad they found eachother.
I still savor every word. I’ve resolved today that this will be a book for my collection. A top read, as enthralling at page 300 as it was at page 3.

How to Love a Jamaican: titular story—about a Jamaican man cheating, bearing a son and not telling because he doesn’t want to see people look at him and think he’s a different kind of person…unfortunately common. Also had a moment claiming that apparently, all a Jamaican man needs is some good food, a clean house and someone to hug up with at night. Wonder if my grandfather was thinking the same

Still engrossing, fantastic, love the telepathy I’m getting from it. I find myself re-reading sentences I skim or don’t properly take in—a first in a long time

The Ghost of Jia Yi: Jamaicans go to college on a track scholarship…to be haunted

Mermaid River: Grandma’s taking care of children left behind with the promise of being sent for once everything is settled in foreign

Island: Your desires find you in the end, people aren’t meant to be islands, and the Caribbean is homophobic

Bad Behavior was a delight; Slack not so much, because of the harsher topic. Still a simple, fun read that’s relatable as a Brooklyn-born woman with Jamaican heritage and strong ties. I see myself, my family, my friends, and my fellow Jamaican Brooklynites in these stories.

Enthralling, feels like I’ve entered another world. Well written and captivating in voice. Love so far

Mash-Up Love: Another quick and easy read with the message of: it doesn’t pay to fulfill familial roles.

Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands: Great relatable depiction of Black women relations in college, what with the clashing of different levels of awareness of race at the forefront, and economic disparities that also support this. Would’ve liked it in college but am a bit removed now, so I read as a mother might before suggesting it to her child to read.

Ugh, seems like the author forgot she had to end the book, and hastily threw something together. Did not do the meticulous putting-together of the first 80% justice. And the point of the book is…what? Forgiveness and hope are time travel? I’m not convinced. Read more like a lazy romance novel that didn’t sell as a manuscript, so the time-travel plot was (half) developed to broaden appeal.