I know I've recently posted a January - June Recap, but I also wanted to give you my thoughts on the books that went unmentioned. Some of these reviews will be repeats of that previous post, so if you'd like an in-depth rambling on some of my favorite books, short stories, poetry collections, fanfics, songs, and more, check out that post!
Books Mentioned
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- Chainsaw Man by Fujimoto Tatsuki
- Jade War & Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee
- Know My Name by Chanel Miller
- You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
- Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
- The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
A wonderful exploration of family set during the Japanese occupation of Korea and the effects of it on future generations. It follows a family through many generations, and we watch the main character, Sunja, from when she is a child all the way to when she is an elderly woman with children and grandchildren of her own. Pachinko is heartbreaking; it’s a very honest and realistic depiction of a family torn apart by war, personal circumstance, and poverty, and how each of them react to very real threats against their family. Min Jin Lee transitions through time extremely smoothly, and spends just enough time with each person and in each time frame to inspire love and sympathy from the readers for each of her characters. It is hard not to feel for these characters when you watch them grow up from when they were infants. One of the most amazing things about this novel is how Min Jin Lee explores different facets of identity and all of their nuances. I loved the exploration of motherhood and womanhood during this time period, as well as the discussion of what it means to be a minority in the country you have always thought of as home.
Chainsaw Man (Vol. 1 - 11) by Fujimoto Tatsuki
Rating: ★★★+(0.75) (3.75/5)
I binge read this manga so fast. I think binge reading manga is both fun but also a bad idea, because now all of the scenes and plot points have gotten so muddled in my mind. But regardless, Chainsaw Man is a dark fantasy story about a world where humans live alongside demons. Some demons are vicious and a danger to humankind, but others work alongside humans to abate the terror of these demons. Fujimoto's art is wonderfully detailed, but also extremely gory so proceed with caution if you are not comfortable with gore. The concept of this fantasy world is extremely interesting, and I really loved many of the characters and their relationships. Denji, Power, and Aki had such an amazing found-family dynamic, and I adored every bit of their domestic shenanigans. Aki and Angel also have such an interesting dynamic, given that Aki hates demons and Angel Devil is one. One thing I would've loved more of from this manga was a focus on some of the other characters introduced, since there are a lot of characters and a lot of deaths and sometimes the deaths felt gratuitous since we never got to really know these characters very well. The deaths of characters we did spend a lot of time with, however, were a punch in the gut.
The Green Bone Saga (Jade War & Jade Legacy) by Fonda Lee
Ratings
Jade War: ★★★★★ (5/5) // Jade Legacy: ★★★★★ (5/5)
I breezed through Jade War and Jade Legacy, the second and third books of the saga, in record time. I read Jade City a while back in 2020, but I couldn’t find the time and the headspace to read Jade War since Fonda Lee’s world building and politics are always so complex, I felt it important to read Jade War with a mind that has the energy to sift through every detail and allow it all to marinate in my brain. Both Jade War and Jade Legacy were unputdownable. Jade War admittedly started off a little slow. New characters are introduced, the world expands beyond Janloon to include the many nations surrounding it, and it is all a little overwhelming at first. But once all the information began to settle, I found myself really enjoying how large-scale the story became.
It was really amazing how I came to really love and care for such a large cast of characters. Jade Legacy spans years and years and grows to cover the next generation, and though it moved through time so quickly I grew to care for these characters too. We watch them grow from infancy to adolescence to adulthood, and we watch the characters we started with learn to grapple with parenthood and its additional responsibilities. It was a marvelous ending to this saga, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more satisfied with a series in my life. I laughed and wept throughout Jade Legacy, and it was truly a testament to how amazing Fonda Lee is at developing her characters and the world.
The Green Bone Saga has quickly become one of my favorite series of all time, and I highly recommend this series to anyone and everyone.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Wrapping it all up with yet another book by an AAPI author. Proof that women really are killing it out there. I don’t really read a lot of non-fiction, and that includes memoirs, but reading this one makes me feel like I really should because it was that amazing. Know My Name is wonderfully well-written and full of extremely poignant and cutting prose. There were lines that really took my breath away, or really gutted me where it hurts. Chanel Miller is truly such a wonderful writer and such a strong soul, and she doesn’t hold back from letting us know exactly how much this experience has affected her. She tells us everything—from her good times to the absolute worst. And it is truly frustrating to read how people have treated her, both the media and the American Judicial System. I highly recommend everyone read Chanel Miller’s memoir, it is truly amazing and eye-opening and profoundly harrowing.
You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
Rating: ★★+(0.75) (2.75/5)
I speak of high expectations and its detriments pretty often, and I have to say that while I wasn't too surprised to be let down by this one, it was still very disappointing to say the least. You've Reached Sam is a contemporary YA romance that has hints of the supernatural. The story kicks off with the protagonist, Julie, realizing that she can still talk to her recently deceased boyfriend, Sam, through phone, but she's the only one who can contact him. The premise sounds like the perfect setup for an in-depth exploration of grief and moving on, but personally it fell flat for me.
I think a lot of where this story didn't appeal to me was a difference in opinion. A lot of the story talks about how Julie and Sam had this "special connection" and how their relationship to each other was "special" in relation to Sam's relationships to his family and friends, and that didn't sit very right with me. Not that there is anything wrong with a romantic relationship being special in relation to other relationships, but the story didn't convince me that they were anything extremely special. Because of this, I wondered why that same "special quality" didn't apply to Sam's family and friends, considering he had a great relationship with his family and he was well-loved by his friends.
Along that same vein, I wished the characters were a lot more fleshed out and I wish we had less of a focus on Julie & Sam and learned more of how this grief was affecting Sam's family as well. We got a glimpse of Sam's family towards the end, and I loved that short bit with Sam's younger brother, but I wished it was weaved in more throughout the story because it felt more like a throwaway plot point at the end.
But in all, it was a decent story. I just wished there was more depth overall, in both plot and characterization.
Alone With You In The Ether by Olivie Blake
Rating: ★★★ (3/5)
One fun fact about me is that I am an original cover haver! I love the simple aesthetic of the cover and I think the spine is really pretty, but as for its contents, I thought it was very aggressively okay. I'm actually really sad about this, since I desperately wanted to love this book.
I am in agreement with everyone that the writing is extremely well done. It seemed very experimental with how stylistic it was, and I am always pro-experimenting. I am a bit torn, though, between whether I was okay with how inconsistent the style was or if it was too much; the book was split into different parts, which helped with the stylistic inconsistencies, but there were so many different styles within just 300 pages, which is a little excessive. I thought it was interesting that there was a switch of tenses in the very middle, going from past tense to present tense then back to past again. I'm usually okay with tense switches, but I wasn't a fan of the usage here since I couldn't wrap my head around why this was employed. I wasn't super sure of the reasoning behind placing that middle part in the present, when the future parts after that are in past tense again. I think the same stylistic flair could still be achieved in the past tense.
A lot of the language is extremely poetic and symbolic, but I do think there is a point where it is a bit too much. The language in AWYITE has been described as "pretentious" and while I do love books that are pretentious in language, I didn't think AWYITE had the substance to back up this stylistic choice. Usually, stories that employ "pretentious language" and metaphors and symbolism have the setting and the atmosphere to back it up, but I thought this book was lacking that. The only thing this story had to back up the writing style were the two main characters Aldo and Regan, but characters aren't enough for me to enjoy this type of writing. And as a bit of nitpicking, I felt like the metaphors and symbolism used throughout jumped around a lot, leading to further inconsistencies and often standing out like a sore thumb.
Overall, there were parts of Alone With You in the Ether that I liked, and others that I thought dragged. But this is such a popular book, and I'm very much an outlier here for finding it very okay, so I think it is very much worth checking out if you're a fan of contemporary romance.
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊 (4/5)
Right when I was starting to really doubt whether the romance genre was for me, I read this delight of a book! This is a great book for the summer, full of summer vacation vibes and just lots of fun. I really enjoyed the first 75% of the book; Olive and Ethan's attempts at enjoying their free luxurious vacation even though they honestly despise each other, and their blatantly obvious attraction for each other. I was pretty prepared to rate this a good 4.5 or 4.25 stars at this point.
The story did lose me a little towards the end. Without spoilers, I feel like I could sympathize with what Ethan felt, but at the same time some of the things he said to her as well as some of the glimpses of truth that he's had should have led him to handle the situation a little better. I don't think I'm a third-act-breakup hater—I don't think I've read enough to claim this and I also believe that it can be done well—but I thought this was a very huge shift in tone, and one that personally did not work for me in this story.
The banter was really well done in this story, but I have to admit some of the dialogue did not work for me. Some of their lines were a little over-the-top, and some of Olive's inner-thoughts were a little over-wrought (especially her descriptions of Ethan's musculature).
Overall, The Unhoneymooners was a very fun read and I definitely recommend it as a book you take with you on your summer vacation—it would pair very nicely with the beach and a glass of mai tai.
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