Ayesha might be a little lonely, but the one thing she doesn’t want is an arranged marriage. And then she meets Khalid…As for Khalid, he’s happy the way he is; and was set on leaving his love life in the hands of his mother until he met Ayesha.
Review:
This book is a Muslim romance comedy. There was good character development, real tension between the two lead characters and a beautifully written and smartly executed resolution. There was suspense, surprise, and shenanigans. The plot was engaging, the issues addressed in the book were given great justice, and the humour was appropriate. In addition, it is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice! It was so good that I read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it!
Through a kaleidoscope of women – a mother, a sister, a homicide detective – we learn the story of Ansel Park’s life, a serial killer who is scheduled to die in twelve hours.
Review:
The latter half of the book was what raised my initial four-star rating to five stars and why I would recommend this book to others. The commentary on the prison system, mainstream media craze about serial killers (especially when they are young and attractive), and how victims are usually remembered at their last living moment (often how they were brutally murdered).
I think the plot was brilliant, as we moved from the perspective of all those whose lives were impacted by the main character’s actions. Furthermore, it was pretty interesting how the main character’s perspective, the serial killer, counted down in hours to his execution and shifted from first-person to a narration (in which a narrator speaks directly to the readers, almost as if they were the murderer themselves).
The author was cautious in how they wrote each character and addressed the sensitivity of serial killers being psychopaths, sexual violence, loss, and murder. I appreciated how they were no violent descriptions of how the victims were killed.
George Woodbury, a well-liked teacher, beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual impropriety at a prestigious prep school on the birthday of his seventeen-year-old daughter. The arrest leads to a series of events for his wife, Joan, his daughter Sadie who is a student at the school, and his son Andrew, a lawyer in New York. The book follows the family’s journey of coming to terms with the allegations.
Review:
This book engaged with what happens to the family of a sexual assault offender/predator, how they gripple with the scrutiny, the deceit, and their lives changing forever. The author did a good job of engaging with the plot and issues addressed sensitively. However, I did not like the element of fatalism – several characters not speaking up for themselves, several characters easily getting away with questionable character and the lack of critical dialogue required in a book that engages with sexual violence.
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mythology, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 471 pages; 13 hours (audiobook)
Level of difficulty: 3/5 Dictionaries
Rating: 5/5 Stars
Brief Introduction:
Two couples. Hazel, a classical pianist from London and James, a British would-be architect-turned soldier. Colette, a Belgian orphan with serious emotional scars that fail to hide behind her beautiful voice, and Aubrey, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the U.S Army. Their love story is told in first-person perspective and by goddess Aphrodite as she faces judgement on Mount Olympus for her interference with mortal love.
Review:
Romance, History and Mythology – a wonderful intersection! This is one of the best historical fiction I have ‘read’; it was funny, honest, hopeful and historically accurate. A beautiful tale that reveals that though War is a formidable force, it’s no match for the transcendent power of true love. I highly recommend listening to it as an audiobook. It is quite an immersive experience with different voices for different characters and the music the characters play in the background.
Lowen Ashleigh is a writer who gets a big break when the husband of a severely injured author, Verity Crawford, seeks her to help continue the author’s beloved thriller book series. Lowen, struggling financially, accepts the opportunity and goes to their house with their husband, Jeremy, to read over Verity’s manuscripts. However, she ends up stumbling upon an unfinished autobiography that paints Verity in a terrible light. As Lowen realises that Verity is evil and grows suspicious of the author’s current medical condition, all while developing feelings for Jeremy, she battles with what to do.
Favourite Quote:
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Review:
Unfortunately, this thriller had so much potential but failed to deliver.
At the very beginning of the novel, Lowen and Jeremy meet in a traumatic manner, but the weight of that incident is brushed upon, which seems very unrealistic (despite the impression that since they both have had the worst traumatic experiences, they could look past the one that had happened in the beginning scene). This situation is very concerning since it’s a romance that grows on the foundation of (unresolved) trauma.
Furthermore, the romance that brewed between Lowen and Jeremy seemed very instant-love. There wasn’t any significant reason why Lowen liked Jeremy so much, apart from the fact that he was nice to her (which I would argue is a low standard). Considering Jeremy’s situation and the other issues in his family, I was surprised that Lowen was not even a bit concerned about a healthy relationship with Jeremy (until towards the end of the novel) and thus began questioning her feelings just lust or infatuation.
Regarding the thriller aspect of the novel, Hoover tried hard to add every stereotypical element for a thriller novel without genuinely exploring them. Many deaths, toxic relationships, and mental health issues could have been better analysed. Sadly, the medical condition that Verity was in and Lowen’s suspicion of it was severely tackled.
In addition, Jeremy’s lack of first-person narration made him quite an unrealistic character. There were many questions left unanswered about him, especially how he was dealing with all the tragic events happening to him and his family.
Hoover added a chapter that turned the whole novel/storyline on its head. While there is nothing wrong with such an element in a novel, it left a bad taste in my mouth with the nature of the story and its issues. In addition, it felt solely for shock value and thus very unnecessary.
Nevertheless, Colleen Hoover is a beloved romance writer, and while I might not pick up another thriller by her, I would definitely give one of her romance novels a chance.
In the revolutionary book Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era by the Historian Ashley Farmer, the political, social, and economic impacts, and significance of Black women to the formation and development of the Black Power Movement was documented, accounting for the perspective of Black women who usually get silenced in history. The author does so by arguing that formations of womanhood by Black women were crucial sites of Black Power expression and investigates how they portray Black women’s intentional efforts to reformat racial, and gender hierarchies not only within the movement but in society at large (Farmer, 2017). Farmer achieves this intervention by using the gendered imaginary to study Black Power and centering the research on the “theoretical, textual, and visual representations of black women’s ideas” (Farmer 2017, 2).
Farmer defines the concept of “gendered imaginary” as “activists’ idealized, public projections of black manhood and womanhood” (Famer 2017, 2). This concept considered Black women activists to be independent intellectuals, and thus the diverse yet overlapping works of literature and artwork they created to broaden public opinion of Black womanhood became a window to their notion of liberation (2). By using different resources and data from those that originally claimed Black Power as a male-dominated era, Farmer was able to move the conversation of the Black Power movement and create a different conclusion about the era. As such, Remaking Black Power is a significant contribution to Black history, Black feminism, and intellectual history.
Remaking Black Power was a timely work with the increased rise of the Black Lives Matter movement after its three female co-founder activists were vocal during the 2016 United States presidential election and illustrated the influence of Black feminism in political organizing. Farmer’s brief introduction of Black nationalism, ideologies, and organisations along with a brief history of Black Power and discussion of key figures during the movement, and a brief history of Black feminism in the book was a good foundation of her research for the audience, especially those who found her book by exploring ideas regarding Black feminism after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the introduction chapter of the book, Farmer acknowledged that there are limitations in her research is addressing all the nuances of identity politics, and in the sources chosen considering it biases the book towards recognized organizations and print media. Chapter 1 focused on how the gendered redefinition of Black women was the development and evolution of the Black Power era, and thus much more than a response to the sexism of male activists in the 1960s. This was followed by a clear portrayal that the writing of Black womanhood was crucial sites through which Black women created inclusive application of political theory in chapter 2.
The next chapter explored how cultural nationalism in political organising created a push to redefine Black womanhood and re-understand gender roles. Chapter 4 on the other hand, situated Black power as a movement that had global scope by discussing the intersection of Pan-Africanism and Black womanhood, and thus highlighted the significance of gendered imaginary as Black women’s intellectual activism. The final chapter widened the scope of Black feminism in political and cultural work and countered the notion that Black nationalism and Black feminism were in oppositional theoretically and in terms of their activist pursuit.
Farmer’s research illustrated that any future works on the history of the Black Power era that do not include Black women’s gendered experience are incomplete. This illustration has the power to influence other works of Black history and other areas of history by pushing Historians to ask themselves whether women were missing from the narrative because they did not play any role, or simply because they were not included.
Emira is a twenty-five-year-old who isn’t sure of what she wants to do in life, nor is she fond that she is depending on babysitting to pay her bills. Nevertheless, she loves spending time with Briar, the four-year white girl she babysits. Unfortunately, an emergency babysitting session one night in a nearby grocery store leads to questioning by a security guard and a kidnapping accusation. This incident leads to a chain of events that has Emira questioning what used to be.
Favourite Quote:
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Review:
Such a Fun Age is a beautiful work that accurately portrays how racism creeps into the everyday lives of Black women in the United States in direct, indirect and unknowing manners. It also touches on themes such as purpose and belonging. It is a short yet gripping read. I highly recommend it!
Li Lan, the daughter of a once reputable but now bankrupt family, gets a marriage proposal from the Lim family, a highly respectable and wealthy family. However, it is a marriage proposal for their recently deceased son, Lim Tian Ching. Despite Li Lan’s refusal to be a ghost bride, she finds herself haunted by Lim Tian Ching and losing her health at the same time.
Favourite Quote:
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Review:
It was a fascinating idea and had so much potential, but the execution was sadly disappointing, in my opinion. I think the first problem was that the intended audience was not clear. Was it for Malaysian or other Asian readers? A non-Chinese audience? Teenagers or adults? As someone very familiar with Malaya and Singapore history and Malay and Chinese culture, there was too much explaining of certain concepts, names, food and places in the novel. While I understand that the explanation might have been primarily for non-Malaysian readers to follow the storyline better, the way the explanations were woven into the story felt forced instead of a ‘show not tell’ manner. In addition, I don’t think there is a huge problem with readers doing their ‘Googles’ and actively learning more about a culture if they happen to be reading a book based on an unfamiliar culture to them.
My second problem was that the plot twists in the books were very predictable, and many aspects of the novel felt too convenient. For example, the story’s main character’s love interest was not believable. As a reader, I could understand the infatuation with the first love interest; however, they barely had any interactions to portray the implied deep love between them. In addition, there were even fewer interactions with the second love interest to understand why the main character would so easily choose them over the first love interest. In addition, the motivations for certain characters’ betrayal, help, and the reasoning behind certain characters’ talents were weak. ( I am trying to be vague to avoid spoilers).
The third problem was the execution of Chinese culture and its beliefs in the afterlife as the basis of the fantasy/paranormal elements in the book. I was disappointed because that was a huge motivation for picking up the book. I was a little nonplussed when one character in the novel became a mystical creature. I thought to myself, why them and why all of a sudden and why this creature? Since there was little justification/explanation for the world-building and certain fantasy elements (despite being based on cultural beliefs and not just make-believe), they fell flat and, as a reader, a bit unbelievable, especially when there were some inconsistencies.
Nevertheless, I still think it was a worthwhile read as I was intrigued to find out how the story would play out and end (though quite conveniently), and I greatly appreciated the representation showcased in the novel.
Other
The book was recently turned into a Netflix show; however, the trailer for the show hints that the series is a little bit different from the book. Here it is:
poetryandproze 