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Victor Hugo’s tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Inspector Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.
My online book club had a reading challenge and we get points for thicker books, and this book also happened to be a buddy read, plus it’s been on my TBR for years!
The Quotes
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”
The Narrator(s)
Frederick Davidson. He was a great narrator; he was very easy to listen to and helped me sail really smoothly through a huge book with no issues.
My Thoughts
This is a tale of miserable wretches, alright, the title does not lie. I ended up enjoying it so much more than I thought I would, and I got really invested in the story and the characters. Having said that, I don’t necessarily like any of the characters. I thought Valjean and Javert were both quite annoying and overly dogmatic in their individual approaches to life. It was a whole lot of unnecessary drama, but I was very much pulled into the story, and I couldn’t look away!
Although I didn’t like the characters very much, I absolutely loved the experience of reading the book. There were a lot of digression by the author towards other historical events that happened, and he writes about them in detail. It took me away from the main story but it was also interesting and made me want to learn more about those events. The story also reminded me a little of The Count of Monte Cristo – which is one of my all-time favorite books – they had similar elements in both stories. However, it cannot compare to The Count of Monte Cristo for the place it holds in my heart.
I do believe that this is one of those stories I’d enjoy rereading again. It’s a huge book with a ton of details I’ve probably skimmed over on a first reading, so I’m sure I’ll get more out of it each time I reread. It’s not one I’ll want to reread anytime soon though, but I’ll have fond memories of reading it the first time.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band – and meeting the man who would become her husband – her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.
It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
This book was highly recommended by one of my friends who’s also a fan of the author’s music.
The Quotes
“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”
“There was no one in the world that was ever as critical or could make me feel as hideous as my mother, but there was no one, not even Peter, who ever made me feel as beautiful.”
“Some of the earliest memories I can recall are of my mother instructing me to always “save ten percent of yourself.” What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10 percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. “Even from Daddy, I save,” she would add.”
“Now that she was gone, I began to study her like a stranger, rooting around her belongings in an attempt to rediscover her, trying to bring her back to life in any way that I could. In my grief I was desperate to construe the slightest thing as a sign.”
The Narrator(s)
The author herself. It was great!
My Thoughts
This book was easy to read in terms of writing, but very hard to read emotionally for me. I have a lot of negative feelings and memories coming up while reading this book, and I’m struggling between having both compassionate feelings and mean feelings towards Michelle.
I relate so much to a lot of her feelings and experiences with her parents but I feel like I have a completely opposite realization about those experiences than she does; she seems to make excuses for them, and blames herself for not being a better daughter, thinking herself the problem, and for me, I know now that my parents are the problem. I do have compassion for my parents and realize they might have been doing what they believed was best because of the whole cycle of normalized abusive Asian parenting, but that doesn’t make it right regardless.
My mean feelings towards Michelle is because her thought processes with excusing her parents and blaming herself, reminds me of me when I was younger and doing the same thing, and I’m so angry at myself for not wising up sooner because it messed me up so much, and yet I feel compassion too because it was hard to go through that too. Obviously, I need therapy!
All the family trauma aside, I did really enjoy reading the book. I love the talk about food and culture, and learning to make comfort cultural food. I’ve also recently been looking into making kimchi myself and I’m excited to try it out. I love that maangchi was featured, I’ve definitely watched her videos before but I’m going to pay more attention now. I love that Peter was so loving and supportive towards Michelle and I thought their “proposal” was both hilarious and romantic, even while the circumstances were sad. I haven’t actually listened to a lot of her music except for Be Sweet, but I’m curious and I’ll check out more of her music.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
I was intrigued by the premise, and it was also a buddy read which motivated me to read it sooner.
The Quotes
“Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road.”
“Belief has very little to do with rationale. Why demand a map for uncharted territory?”
“You can’t trauma-proof life, and you can’t hurt-proof your relationships. You have to accept you will cause harm to yourself and others. But you can also fuck up, really badly, and not learn anything from it except that you fucked up. It’s the same with oppression. You don’t gain any special knowledge from being marginalized. But you do gain something from stepping outside your hurt and examining the scaffolding of your oppression.”
“Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future.”
My Thoughts
I had high hopes for this book but initial reviews had me tempering my expectations. Even then, I continued hoping that it might turn out to be a good read after all but I was disappointed.
The one good thing I can say about the book is that I really enjoyed the banter between Gore and the narrator. Other than that, I don’t feel like I ever got to know the characters deeper, nor the narrator’s relationships with them. None of the characters got fleshed out enough, and I just didn’t care about them. I also thought it was weird that we saw a lot of Arthur and Margaret but not their bridges, and yet the narrator as Gore’s bridge hangs out with them a lot. It felt convenient to have this set cast of characters while the others hardly ever made an appearance.
The philosophizing was interesting at first but got more and more tedious. It’s funny that I loved the banter and the jokes, but didn’t much like the rest of the writing. The ending felt rushed and incomplete, almost like a DNF by the author, and I didn’t even care at that point.
It feels so mean to say all of that, but I genuinely did hope to like it and I am disappointed. I liked the idea and the beginning felt so promising but I feel like it didn’t live up to its potential. The whole bit with not telling the narrator’s name also felt unnecessary, there wasn’t any reason or meaning for it. The whole thing felt pointless and I don’t know how to feel about the book.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Books I’d Like to Re-read
It’s been some weeks since I’ve done the Top Ten Tuesdays and I’ve missed some really great topics. I’ve had some things going on but I’m hoping to get back some semblance of normalcy and do the TTTs regularly again. Please bear with me!
I am big on rereading because I tend to rush over details when I read books the first time, and rereading helps me appreciate the books more and see things I didn’t see before. I’ve previously done a TTT for Books I Love to Reread, so I won’t repeat the same titles. The ones below are books I intend to reread soon. Hopefully before the year is over!
Top Ten Books I’d Like to Reread
The Long Walk by Stephen King – The movie is coming out and of course I have to reread this before then!
The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel – I might leave this until later because I want to reread the whole series and that means I need to have dedicated time for all of them.
The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan – I’ve mentioned this author many times as one of my favorite underrated authors. This may be my favorite book he’s written.
Momo by Michael Ende – The author is better known for writing The Neverending Story, which I love, but I love Momo more and I need to reread it.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – I was enchanted by this book when I read it the first time and it’s been a long while.
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood – This one touched me in a visceral way and has been on my reread list for a while. I need to make it happen.
Grass by Sheri S. Tepper – I love this author but haven’t read a lot of her works. This book is one of my favorite books.
Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman – This is another series I need to allocate dedicated time for. I love the characters and it’s been too long since I read it.
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber – I remember thinking that every married couple needs to read this. I don’t remember why, but I guess that’s why I have to reread it.
The Season of Passage by Christopher Pike – I used to reread this regularly as a teenager, but I can’t remember the last time I read it. It’s time!
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?
Welcome to the Monthly Wrap Up hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction to share our monthly wrap-up posts that summarizes our month in books, our favorite books of the month, what we did on our blogs, and anything noteworthy we want to share.
May and June 2025 Wrap Up
Hello my friends, I have been so very absent on the blog to the point that this month’s wrap up is actually a combination of May and June. I have posted some book reviews but only because I have a compulsive need to keep track of the books I read and record my thoughts about them. Even so, I’m far behind on keeping up to date on writing the reviews, and I haven’t replied to any comments in the last couple of months. I am so sorry!
A lot of things have happened that have kept me busy, but only two worth mentioning right now;
First, we lost one of our beloved cats, Loki, very unexpectedly earlier this month. One day, he was fine and perfectly happy as usual, the next day he started having seizures and vomiting. We took him to the vet in the afternoon, but he wasn’t getting better, and we ended up having to go back later that night to put him to sleep.
It was a horrible day.
He was the most vocal and active of our cats, and it’s very noticeable that he’s gone now. We miss him every day, and it still hurts to think of him. The worst thing was how sudden it was. He was only nine years old and had no signs of any health problems. I don’t know why this happened. We’ve been cuddling our other two cats, Button and Pepper, a lot more than usual lately, and they’ve been more receptive to it as well. They notice he’s gone too and have been more affectionate with us.
The second thing is a happier thing, although it has me nervous. I’m going back to school for an Accounting certificate this fall. I had been busy with paperwork and applications, and recently just got my acceptance letter! I am very excited and nervous at the same time. It’s been a long while since I’ve been in school but I also love learning new things and once upon a time, my biggest aspiration was to be a “professional student”.
I still have a lot of things to organize and prepare for going back to school but there’s a couple of months to go. Being so absent from the blog these last couple of months, I do worry that I might not be able to keep up with the blog once school starts, but I like fixed schedules and routines and I’m expecting things to settle down once I adjust to the student lifestyle once again.
Now on to the book updates;
My May 2025 TBR Intentions
I did manage to finish all the books on my TBR intentions in May. Yay! The ones on the list were the priorities and I wanted to leave space for mood reads, and I got some in.
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (The Wayfarers #4) by Becky Chambers
Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My June TBR intentions were chosen because my online bookclub was having a friendly competitive read-off event, where the team that got the most points for books read would win. There were exponentially higher points for books over 1000 pages and 1500 pages, so I made my list with that in mind, although some books were chosen because they were BOTMs, and/or had end-of-June deadlines. I also did end up reading a lot more than expected because I was trying to distract myself from Loki’s passing.
For May, the notable books were Perdido Street Station, Rose Madder, and The Ghost Bride. For June, the notable books were Les Misérables, Gone with the Wind, Scarlett, and Oz: The Complete Collection. I won’t go too much into detail about the books here because these are two months’ worth of books and I’m somewhat rushing this post as well.
In brief, Perdido Street Station is a little wordy but the world-building is incredible, and the story is haunting and heartbreaking and lives in my head rent-free. Rose Madder is a Stephen King book and everyone knows I’m a fan. It’s not gory horror, but it’s psychological horror and that really gets me. The Ghost Bride is a reread and written by a Malaysian author about the early 1900s’ in Malaya. It’s so reminiscent about my life, family, and culture in Malaysia, and I love that it incorporates our folklore into such a vivid fantasy story.
I listened to Les Misérables on audio and absolutely loved the experience of it. It is a little long-winded but I enjoyed it still! The whole story infuriates me but it’s told so well that I can’t help but love it, and I feel like this is one of those books where I’ll come back to and get more out of every time I reread.
Gone with the Wind, and Scarlett, are two of my favorite books that I’ve read over and over again. My experience and thoughts about them have changed over the years, but this last read was very nostalgic and I appreciate them for the works that they are.
Oz: The Complete Collection is the collection of books 1 through 14 of the Oz books. I have never read them, not even the first book, and I had no idea there was so much to the stories! Reading them as an adult, I’ve fallen in love with the stories and the characters, and it makes me wish I had read them as a child. They are just so magical and imaginative, they were so fun to read!
July 2025 TBR Intentions
My online bookclub is continuing the competitive read-off event in July, so I’m planning to continue with the big books, plus also July’s BOTMs and other buddy reads with July deadlines.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
How was the last couple of months for you? What were your most memorable bookish moments? I hope you have a wonderful July with lots of great books!
A startlingly original voice makes her literary debut with this wondrous coming-of-age story infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, adventure, and fascinating, dreamlike twists.
‘One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride…’
Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.
Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.
After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.
This is one of my favorite books by a favorite Malaysian author. It’s my in-person bookclub’s BOTM and I’m excited to discuss it with them!
The Quotes
“The problem with the dead was that they all wanted someone to listen to them.”
“It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.”
“The contrast between the realization of his neglect and the fondness I had for my father was painful”.”
“If I had known how easy it is to lose your life, I would have treasured mine better”.”
The Narrator(s)
The author herself. I love her! She’s got such a gift for writing and storytelling, and is also such a talent with voices!
My Thoughts
I’ve read this book and loved it before, but it had been a while and I had forgotten a lot of the details. Sometimes when I reread a book, I get scared that I might not like it as much as I used to, but if anything, I think I loved it more this time around!
It’s such a joy to read about my own culture and heritage, through the lens of both real life and folklore. Our culture is so filled with superstition, but also so rich in flavor and imagination, it’s sometimes difficult to explain it to people of other cultures. But Choo’s storytelling is wonderful and sublime, and her portrayal of 1900’s Malaya and the Chinese’s idea of the underworld is just perfect.
The story itself is wonderful too. I can’t stop using all the positive adjectives to describe this book. It’s good, amazing, incredible, gorgeous, delightful, magnificent. It’s all the things I love in a fantasy, historical fiction, folklore and mythology, romance… everything! I just love it!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Rose Daniels saw the single drop of blood on the bed sheet and knew she must escape from her macabre marriage before it was too late.
But escape was not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, lucking out with a new man. Her husband, Norman, was a cop, with a cop’s training, a cop’s technology, a cop’s bloodhound instincts. And even worse, Norman was – well, Norman. Rose knew she had been married to a savage brute. Now she realized she was being tracked down by a terrifying monster – but the only place she found to hide could be the most dangerous of all…
I’m reading all of King’s books and this one was very highly recommended.
The Quotes
“But she stayed where she was a moment longer, like an animal which has been kept in a cage so long it cannot believe in freedom even when it is offered.”
“This man saw women like her all the time, women hiding behind dark glasses, women buying tickets to different timezones, women who looked as if they had forgotten who they were somewhere along the way, and what they thought they were doing, and why.”
“For gals like these, paranoia was a lot more than a way of life; it was full state-of-the-art.”
“It’s best to be ruthless with the past. It ain’t the blows we’re dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.”
The Narrator(s)
Stephen King, and Blair Brown. Blair Brown does most of the narration, but Stephen King does the parts where we see from the eyes of the MMC. I loved both of them.
My Thoughts
This one came highly recommended even among Stephen King fans and I got curious. I know it’s about a battered and abused woman, and knowing that King’s works tend to explore the human psyche, I really wanted to see how he wrote about this very important and sensitive topic. I was not disappointed.
It’s interesting to me that some critics have said that King doesn’t write women well, because I haven’t found that to be the case in many of the books I’ve already read, and with this book focused on Rose as the main character and seeing things from her POV, I thought it was written incredibly well. All the fear, the hypervigilantism, the little things that women do to protect themselves that men never think twice about; they’re represented very well here.
As I said about King’s storytelling tendencies, this isn’t an action-packed, plot-heavy story but rather, an exploration of the human psyche, and in this case, the battered woman and the abusive husband. We see a lot of their thought processes, we feel a lot of their feelings, the evolution of their relationship instructs the evolution of their feelings, thoughts, and then actions. It’s scary and thrilling, but also really emotional. I loved reading about Rose as she navigated her journey. This book deserves its hype.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Long ago, Earth’s terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered.
Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel following fragmentary radio signals. They discover a system in crisis, warring factions trying to recover from an apocalyptic catastrophe arising from what the early terraformers awoke all those years before.
The next book in the Children of Time series. I enjoyed the first book, so I thought I’d read this one too.
The Quotes
“We’re going on an adventure.”
“Advance science as far as you like, the human mind continued to place itself at the centre of the universe.”
“An inclination to play God was part and parcel of wanting to go out and terraform other worlds, but good practice was to at least play nicely with the rest of the pantheon.”
“Senkovi’s personal theory was that the pressure of being in the middle of the food chain was an essential prerequisite for complex intelligence. Like humans (and like Portiid spiders, had he only known), octopuses had developed in a world where they were both hunter and hunted. Top predators, in Senkovi’s assessment, were an intellectual dead end.”
The Narrator(s)
Mel Hudson. I continue to enjoy her narration.
My Thoughts
This book went simultaneously faster and slower than I expected, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like so many things happened, but they happened slowly, and most of it was anticipation waiting for things to happen than things actually happening.
There are new sentient organisms in this book, in addition to the spiders from the first book; octopuses and slime parasites. The slime parasites were scary and the octopuses were mysterious, and I feel like we still haven’t gotten to know either of them well yet. There seems to be a continuity with the books though, so I am curious to see what happens with them in the next book. I’d love to see their adventures and everything they learn and whatever comes out from that!
I am also happy to see the way the humans and spiders work together in this book, two species evolving together and learning to live together, work together, etc. I loved seeing it on the page. These books span centuries and generations of life, so we don’t always have the same characters from the start of the story, but the stories and characters really bury themselves into your heart, even so! I’m excited to read the next book and see what happens next!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop.
At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.
When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio—an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes—are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.
This is the fourth book in the Wayfarer series. I’ve read the first three and loved them, so of course I’m reading this one too!
The Quotes
“And sometimes fear is good. Fear keeps you alive. But it can also keep you from what you really want.”
“Because I didn’t want to. And when it comes to a person’s body, that is all the reason there ever needs to be. Doesn’t matter if it’s a decision about a new pair of legs or how you like to trim your claws or—’ she gave Pei a piercing look ‘—what to do about an egg. I didn’t want to. You don’t want to. That’s it.’ Speaker leaned forward. ‘That. Is all. It ever needs to be.”
“He’d been taught that if one person had more than another, feeling guilty about it was the least productive reaction. The only proper way to approach such inequities was to figure out how best to wield them, so as to bring others up to where you stood.”
“This did not mean that laws and rules were not helpful, or that explanations should not be sought, but rather that there should be no fear in changing them as needed, for nothing in the universe ever held still.”
The Narrator(s)
Patricia Rodriguez. As perfect as the first three books!
My Thoughts
I don’t know why I enjoy forced proximity stories, I’m not sure I’d enjoy it happening to me in real life, but I think I love seeing how people interact with each other in “what if” scenarios and Becky Chambers is just so good at writing diverse people. I loved the other books in the series too, but in a way, I feel like it’s a disservice to link them together as a series. They’re very different books, set in the same universe and with relating characters, but the stories are just completely different.
What is the same, is the exploration of different cultures and beliefs, and even physiology of all the different species, and the way they learn about each other and respect each other’s cultures. I love the conversations especially about their differences and similarities. I love it all! I find it so fascinating, learning about each different species’ language and how things are expressed and/or translated, how their beliefs and practices are shaped by their culture and physiology because of what their bodies allow them to do or not do, there is such a rich world-building here!
I love all the characters. Every one of them were so distinct and had such interesting personalities. I don’t know if there’s going to be a book 5 but I feel like I can’t get enough of these books and these characters, and even though we see new characters every book, I still want to keep reading about every one of them. Small mentions of past characters make me so happy! I’m so glad I finally caught up with the series, and I do hope there will be more. I still loved this one and I’m sure I’ll love any new stories set in this world!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
“Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.”
“How many times in her life has she said yes to a boy or a man just because it was the easiest thing to do? How many times has she let a man take what he wanted, instead of taking something for herself?”
“To panic, said T.J., was to make an enemy of the forest. To stay calm was to be its friend.”
“She wasn’t – frightened of him, exactly, though there had been one or two incidents that caused alarm. It was more that she had come to see herself nearly exclusively through his eyes, and therefore being in his good graces was the easiest way to achieve a sense of well-being.”
The Narrator(s)
Saskia Maarleveld. I enjoyed her narration very much.
My Thoughts
While I was reading this I was simultaneously annoyed with the fact that there were so many characters and so many jumps between them plus also jumping between different timelines, and yet also loving how interesting all the different characters were and the way the story was unveiled through the timeline jumps. I can’t make up my mind if I love that aspect of the book or hate it!
I think that overall I do love the story and the characters, but there was so much in so little space and it’s hard to know where or who to focus on. Another paradox was that it felt simultaneously deep and shallow. There were a lot of deep topics that were touched upon, but because of all the characters and side stories, they were spread too thin and shallowly explored.
There were a couple of characters I loved more than others and I would’ve loved to read more about; Judy in particular. I felt like if this one book was turned into a series instead, we could’ve explored each character’s story more in depth, and we could’ve tied the series together with Judy as the investigator. Still a great story with great character building.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
