memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines by Efrén C. Olivares

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The absolute horror of the parent-child separations at the border during the Trump administration has stayed with me. I cannot even begin to fathom the horror, the terror, and the fear that this must have caused parents and their children (infants! Even nursing infants!!!), and the lasting trauma this is still causing. I knew as soon as I learned about My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines by Efrén C. Olivares (Hachette Books, 2022), I needed to read it. These are stories that need to be heard.

Efrén Olivares was born in and grew up in Mexico, moving to the US with his mother and siblings to live with his father (who had citizenship) during his middle school years. His was a life of not just poverty, but of family togetherness, of parents who worked way harder than they should’ve had to in order to provide Efrén and his siblings with opportunities, but who also provided them with examples of hard work and humanity. Efrén grew up to become a lawyer, and, as it turned out, one who helped fight to document the atrocities at the border perpetuated by the Trump administration.

He and his very small team interviewed the separated parents, getting what information they could on paper so that hopefully, the parents and children could be reunited at some point in the future. This wasn’t an easy or simple task; they weren’t given time or space for this and were frantically trying to interview detained migrants in the small bits of time before court proceedings began. These were desperate parents who had no idea where their children were: if they were safe, if they were being taken care of, WHO was taking care of them, if they would ever see their children again. Mr. Olivares and his team used the information they collected to reunite some of these parents with their children; he alternates their stories with his own story of immigration, pointing out that there’s no real difference: anyone who leaves one place for another is only looking for a better life.

An absolute heart-wrenching book. The descriptions of the parents’ tears, of how they’d cry and barely manage to speak at all is soul-crushing. It drives home the purposeful cruelty of not just the previous administration but of the American government as a whole throughout history. This isn’t a new story; we have a foul history of separating parents and children, and imprisoning them, for a multitude of reasons (orphan trains, anyone? Those weren’t all orphans; many of them were just children of poor parents. Japanese internment camps? Can we please just start calling them what they were, which is American concentration camps? We hold no moral upper hand at any point in time). Efrén’s story of his youth and the work it led him to as an adult is moving, and I think it’s the responsibility of all Americans to read stories like this, to look at who Americans (those born here and those who became American later in life) really are, to find the humanity in these people and in themselves, because it’s only by viewing others through the same lens as we view ourselves that we can stop treating other people as less-than.

A moving, painful read, but a necessary one. I’m so thankful there are people out there like Mr. Olivares, who have both the necessary credentials and the heart it takes to see such injustice and to do something about it.

Read Efrén C. Olivares‘s profile at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome by Ariel Henley

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I think it was a BookRiot email that alerted me to the existence of A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome by Ariel Henley (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021). The description of the memoir piqued my interest; I haven’t read all that much by or about people born with facial differences, so I was intrigued from the start, and, luckily, my library had a copy on the shelf.

Ariel and her sister Zan were born seemingly ‘normal,’ but within a few months, it became obvious that something was drastically wrong. Many doctor appointments later, the twins were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome, a medical condition that’s usually genetic, but in the twins’ case, it’s merely a fluke of nature. This syndrome causes the skull to fuse together prematurely, leaving the brain with no room to grow. Surgery is needed to allow for space, and constant reshaping of the face is necessary. People affected have noticeable facial differences, including bulging and/or wide-spaced eyes and a protruding chin.

Ariel and her sister grew up knowing they were different. They were stared at constantly in public and treated terribly by their classmates and teachers. Their lives were marked by constant painful surgeries (over sixty of them), and middle school began a whole new level of hell for them. They became constant targets for their classmates; certain teachers actively made their lives more difficult; even their friends’ parents and coaches worked hard to make them miserable, simply because they looked different. And all this time, both girls were struggling with pain, constant medical appointments, and all the heavy emotions that come with being a young child and dealing with hardcore medical issues.

Ariel and Zan struggle. Ariel lashes out; she develops bulimia and PTSD from both the medical problems and the emotional difficulties. But along the way, she begins to learn who she is underneath it all, what she’s capable of, and she ultimately finds her voice.

Whew, this is a painful memoir. My heart broke again and again for Ariel and her sister, for the necessary medical torture they were put through, for the absolutely unnecessary mental and emotional torture the people around them put them through. I hope every last asshole who treated them poorly recognizes themselves in this story and feels well-deserved shame every day for the rest of their lives. Who acts like that???

I hadn’t read anything like this before, so I’m grateful to Ariel for being able to open up and share what living with Crouzon syndrome has been like. I had no idea what such intensive surgeries were like, and what the recovery period would be like. I’m so sorry that anyone has to go through that, especially children. I hope that hospitals and their social work departments will take note of this book and maybe develop better programs to help support families and patients going through these procedures, and living with these medically intense conditions.

Incredible memoir by an incredible young lady who has had to fight so much harder for any bit of normalcy that anyone should.

Visit Ariel Henley’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

graphic memoir · graphic nonfiction · nonfiction

Book Review: Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting by Kindra Neely

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I usually wait until I have a few graphic novels under my belt and then do a mass review, but this book deserves a review all its own.

I learned about Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting by Kindra Neely (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022) from, I think, Twitter a few weeks ago, and it immediately went onto my TBR. My library was in the process of getting a copy, and I got the email that it was ready for me fairly quickly. I knew this would be an important book, and it’s exactly as powerful as I expected it would be.

Trigger warnings exist here for, obviously, mass shootings, and a suicide attempt.

In this stunning debut graphic novel, Kindra Neely describes her account of the 2015 Umpqua Community College Shooting. She was a student there at the time, just a regular, average young adult, when her life changed entirely. Eight students and a professor were killed, and the shooter committed suicide.

Kindra and her friends weren’t wounded – not bodily, anyway. That doesn’t mean they weren’t affected. Kindra finds herself struggling with the symptoms of PTSD, having difficulty being in public, affected by panic attacks, depression, and numbness. And what seems like almost the greatest insult is that instead of being allowed to heal, she’s forced to return to the incident again and again as nearly every day, news alerts appear on her phone, informing her of the newest mass shooting, of the latest creation of more victims, more deaths, more people grappling with how to move on from this kind of life-changing terror.

It’s an ongoing process, and Kindra makes many efforts to heal. It’s not easy, though: therapy isn’t always easy to come by in this country (cost and availability are a massive problem), and it’s really difficult to talk to even our closest friends about emotional struggles. And collectively, our country has decided that owning guns is more important than human lives, or the ability to live our lives without fearing death at every turn, so the fear of this happening again never really goes away, something Ms. Neely addresses when she brings up the fact that someone who survived one mass shooting was killed in another here in the US. Utterly horrifying.

But this book talks about it. This is an in-your-face, colorful, art-filled book that talks about the horror that our indifference to mass shootings has wrought. It shows in full color what the aftermath looks like years out. It demands to be heard, and I think this is going to be one of the most important books of the year. This book should be on every library shelf; it should be accessible to every student out there. It should be in the faces of every weak-willed member of Congress who laugh awkwardly at questions about why they continue to force us to live like this.

Kindra Neely is amazing and so brave to use her voice and her talent to bring her pain to the forefront. I’m beyond impressed, and grateful that she’s taking this stand, when she shouldn’t have to.

Read this book as soon as you can, and start demanding better for all of us. We all deserve it.

Monthly roundup

Monthly Roundup: November 2022

Stephanie1 Comment

It’s the most wonderful time of the yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaar! (Mostly because I get a break in a few weeks, and there will also be LATKES. YUM.)

Welcome to December, my fellow readers! So strange to think that the next time I’ll post one of these recaps, it’ll be 2023. This is a year that has gone by in a blur of worry and stress, of new discoveries and reshuffling, of mindfulness, tears, and determination. And books, of course. Lots and lots of good books! (I’m still behind in reviews. That’s okay!)

Speaking of books, I also found out this past month that my town’s new library will be opening up in April of 2023. We drive by it often, as it’s on Main Street, and they recently posted a video walk through so you can see how the construction is going. The outside is mostly done; they’ve got lighting in there (and there are TONS of huge windows; seriously, sitting in this place is going to be so full of light and gorgeous!), and they’ll be starting to work on all the inside full-force soon. I’m so excited about this, I could scream! It’s SO much bigger than our current functional (kind of; the A/C breaks down constantly, the walls leak, the building is so old, it’s impossible to be ADA-compliant, etc) but way-out-of-date building. I’ll miss this old library, but I’m more than thrilled to welcome our new, updated library in April!

Anyway, let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in November 2022

1. Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber

2. America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility by Rajika Bhandari

3. Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon

4. Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting by Kindra Neely (review to come)

5. A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome by Ariel Henley (review to come)

6. My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 by Ann Rinaldi (no review; read out loud to my daughter. SO problematic)

7. Looking for an Enemy: Eight Essays on Antisemitism by Jo Glanville (no review)

8. My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration From the Front Lines by Efrén C. Olivares (review to come)

9. Ban This Book by Alan Gratz (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

10. The Summer of Lost Letters by Hannah Reynolds (review to come)

11. True History: Indigenous America by Liam McDonald (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson (review to come)

13. Shores Beyond Shores: From Holocaust to Hope, My True Store by Irene Butter (review to come)

14. Talking to Strangers: A Memoir of My Escape from a Cult by Marianne Boucher (review to come)

15. True Identity: Cracking the Oldest Kidnapping Cold Case and Finding My Missing Twin by Paul Joseph Fronczak (review to come)

16. How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing (no review)

Not a bad total for this month! I’m yet again behind in posting reviews, but that happens. I should be able to get caught up over our winter break. It’s just so hard to get everything I need to get done in the morning before we start homeschool work, and then suddenly it’s like 4 pm, and I’m all, “Ehhh, I’ll just post it tomorrow.” Lather, rinse, repeat!

I don’t count everything I read to my daughter – certainly not the smaller nonfiction books we read for her schoolwork, but once in a while, there’ll be something more substantial that I really get something out of, and that’s when I count things like the True History: Indigenous America by Liam McDonald. I almost always count the chapter book read-alouds, however. I earned those! : )

Thirteen of these books were mine alone. Twelve of the books were nonfiction (including memoirs); four were fiction. Twelve came from my TBR.

State of the Goodreads TBR

I started off this month at 133 books. I read twelve books from this list, putting me at…127 books.

TBR math sucks. But I made it to the 120’s!

And it’s only downhill from here (or uphill, in terms of a growing TBR)! NPR has already released part of their Best of 2022 book list, and all the reading challenges will be out soon, giving suggestions and posting gorgeous full-color covers, and I assume my TBR is just going to explode. OY.

Books I Acquired in November 2022

Other than some books for gift, and a few books on Jewish history I picked up from a used book sale at the library, I grabbed this stack from someone on a local Buy Nothing group. (Zero clue why WordPress won’t allow me to adjust the size of the photo here. Weird.)

Bookish Things I Did in November 2022

My son and I popped into a used book sale at a local library. I picked up a book or two on Jewish history, and a few holiday gift books for my daughter, but that was really the only bookish event this month!

Current Podcast Love

All over the place here!

So I started the month out listening to Freakonomics. It’s more about the narration style for me (that calm, cool NPR-type style!), since I listen when I’m falling asleep and during the 234893749823 times I wake up at night (this has very much been a thing lately, sigh), but the subject matter of some of the episodes started to annoy me after a few weeks, and I began to search for something else.

I attempted a few other true crime podcasts and a homeschooling podcast, none of which worked well – seriously, people, a good portion of your podcast shouldn’t be you and your cohosts just laughing. (ANNOYING.) I listened to two other homeschooling podcasts (desperately trying to get ideas and inspiration to switch things up for my daughter, because there are some things right now that just aren’t working for her), and while they were okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, it gets bothersome to constantly have Christianity injected into every. little. thing. I need ideas about how to help my daughter get through math; I don’t need a lecture about how to relate novels to Jesus. (I’m Jewish; a homeschooling podcast isn’t going to change that. Nothing will, which is just how I like it!) I truly don’t mind if the podcast hosts or guests talking about going to church, or incorporating Bible lessons into their homeschool day, that’s fine. I don’t want to listen to how the moms won’t let their kids read books where a character has gay parents. NOPE. Unfollow, immediately.

So currently I’m trying out Honey I’m Homeschooling the Kids. So far, it seems really diverse and has an interesting spread of guests who span the homeschooling spectrum, from unschooling to much more structured. I’m *really* wanting to delve into Book Riot’s For Real, a podcast just about nonfiction books, but my TBR is already crying for mercy at the thought of that, so I WILL get to it, I just don’t know when!

I’ve also been poking into Conspirituality, which is so far over my head, but it’s still pretty fascinating.

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

So, not really much time for this right now. I’ve pulled my copy of Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin upstairs to the pile next to my bed, and every night before beginning my regular reading, I read an entry in this book. It covers over 300 subjects and is 688 pages. I read a lot of it for my conversion class but not all of it, and now I’m reading the whole thing. I like reading it this way; it gives me something to think about all the next day. I’d eventually like to read all of Rabbi Telushkin’s writings.

Real Life Stuff

Right now, I’m basically up to my eyeballs in homeschool stuff again. Math isn’t working out for us, so I’m having to change things up a bit and also relax a lot more, which basically goes against my entire personality, so it’s not easy for me. I’m more of a, “Let’s get everything done NOW NOW NOW so we can do EVEN MORE later!!!” And my daughter just doesn’t work well under those conditions, so this is very much a growth moment for me. It’s hard. I’m still trying to figure out a way – if there even IS a way – to parent this child without her blowing up at me constantly. It’s her anxiety and her perfectionism that causes so much of this, so I try not to take it personally, but it’s really, really hard.

My son is still doing awesome in college and really liking everything, which is a relief! It’s nice to see him blossoming academically. High school classes just weren’t his thing, but he’s all about the stuff he’s learning here in college, so I’m absolutely thrilled for him.

That’s really about it. Nothing else new for me. Hanukkah starts on the 18th (which is a Sunday), so I’ll be over here cranking out some amazing latkes (seriously the best potato product out there, hands down), but other than that, I’m just trying to maintain my sanity with my pile of books.

Wishing you a lovely December, however you spend it! See you in January for next year’s roundup! 🙂

fiction · YA

Book Review: Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Stephanie1 Comment

You know that feeling when your TBR is empty and you have absolutely nothing to read, so you’re just wandering around the library listlessly?

Yeah, me neither.

What really happened was this: I had a stack of like five books or so that I needed to read, but my daughter wanted to get some library books, so I took her over, telling myself, “I’m not getting anything for me! I have way to much to read already.”

And then the library had a lovely display of books that included Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon (Simon Pulse, 2020), whom I LOVE, and, well, it went into my bag, because I have no self-control when it comes to Jewish authors I love. And this was such an excellent moment of weakness, because I ADORED this book.

It’s the last day of high school, and Rowan Roth is ready to finally best Neil McNair once and for all by being awarded valedictorian. She and McNair have been battling it out every single minute of the last four years, each trying to outdo the other for grades, awards, status. The day isn’t starting out great, though; a fender-bender has Rowan slipping into the office late, only to face – who else? – Neil, who works there. Ugh.

The whole last day of school is strange, and when the senior class game – Howl, a Seattle-wide scavenger hunt that will award the last student standing with $5,000 – starts up that evening, Rowan quickly finds herself paired up with Neil, who…maybe isn’t quite as awful as she’s made him out to be the past four years. He’s maybe even kind of cute. And – holy shit- he’s Jewish, too???

What else has Rowan missed???

As the night goes on, Rowan and Neil grow closer, and she learns so much about him that she hadn’t known before, since her focus had been solely on competition. But things change, people change…and with everything else changing at this moment in time, maybe it’s time for Rowan and Neil’s relationship to change as well.

This is such a fun YA novel. Rowan is driven, almost single-minded, and that causes her to miss out on a lot, something she’s only really realizing on this last day of senior year. Her love of romance novels is endearing; I love the growth and openness she attributes to her admiration of the genre, because it makes her a far more interesting character than it would have otherwise. There is one scene I didn’t care for at all; Rowan goes too far and uses something she learned about Neil to lash out and hurt him the way she felt he hurt her, and…it was too far. I was honestly a little surprised Neil moved on from that as quickly as he did. I don’t know that that was a choice I would have made as an author. But really, everything else in this story is perfection; it’s a straight-up love letter to Seattle (a phrase I thought of early on, only to read it in Ms. Solomon’s afterword. *high five*), a city I’ve never been to, but which Ms. Solomon made come alive. I truly felt like I’d spent the day racing around the city with Rowan and Neil.

And Neil! What a great character. Awkward, determined, quirky, hardworking, Jewish – what’s not to love? I had a somewhat similar relationship with a guy friend in high school, though nowhere near as competitive (we were into very different things, for one). This was long before the days of texting, so I had to wonder throughout this book what our texts would have looked like, if they would’ve been as snarky as Rowan and Neil’s (likely worse; we were pretty brutal at times). I enjoyed their friendship and their blossoming romance, and the optimism for the future that this book absolutely bursts with.

Such a great read. Rachel Lynn Solomon absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one.

Visit Rachel Lynn Solomon’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility by Rajika Bhandari

Stephanie1 Comment

I never got the chance to study abroad, but I was friends with people who had, or who were currently foreign students. The amount of courage that takes is incredible, and I’m even more in awe of the people who make the decision to study abroad in today’s political climate. I also have a friend who works with foreign students, and her job always sounds so interesting, so when I heard about America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility by Rajika Bhandari (She Writes Press, 2021), I knew I had to read it.

Rajika Bhandari grew up in a middle-class Indian family. Her parents weren’t rich, but they managed to give her an excellent education at various schools, including boarding school, around the country. When it came time to get her graduate degree, she decided to follow her fiancé to the United States, studying psychology at North Carolina State University. While she’d grown up speaking English, the language was still a barrier. Money was a constant struggle. The locals struggled to understand her foreign-ness, and the culture shock was massive. Studying abroad is a massive change of pace, and Ms. Bhandari illuminates every last difficulty in this eye-opening memoir.

The difficulties don’t end after graduation. Making the decision to return home or stay in the US is a challenge; finding an opportunity to stay is even tougher, with mounds of paperwork and years of waiting (and sometimes employers back out after realizing just how much work it is for them). This all takes a toll on Rajika’s relationship, but it helps her understand the students she later goes on to study and serve.

This is a really great memoir. I had no idea of the sacrifices most foreign students undergo, the difficulties placed in their paths, in order to receive an education in America. And staying in the US after graduation? The entire process sounds like a nightmare; I’m kind of in awe of anyone who makes it work. The US makes this process way more difficult than it needs to be.

This is one of those books that’s going to stick with me, especially the images of Ms. Bhandari’s first small shared apartment, learning to drive, learning to cook and struggling to afford the basics. We ask a lot of our foreign students, making it way harder than it should be merely to survive (my God, the US really seems to delight in that for just about everyone, doesn’t it?). It doesn’t have to be that way.

Visit Dr. Rajika Bhandari’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter.

nonfiction

Book Review: Consumed: On Colonization, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber

Stephanie1 Comment

I’m not a minimalist – you’d laugh if you see how overrun with stuff I am – but my mindset is definitely heading that way. I rarely buy things that take up permanent residence in my house (books being the one exception, of course, and then most of them are read and passed on). It’s because of all of the reading I’ve done over the past ten-plus years about how bad capitalism has been for the planet. We’re trashing it at an insane rate, and the fast fashion industry is a massive part of the problem. I need that constant reminder to keep up my ‘you don’t actually need that’ mindset, so that’s how Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber (Brazen, 2021) ended up on my TBR. Thanks to interlibrary loan, it landed at my house a few weeks ago. It’s an intense read, with a lot of information, but despite the immediacy of its message, it’s also a fun one.

Aja Barber understands your love of fashion, because she feels it too. She loves clothes, she’s worked in the fashion industry, she gets the pull of a new outfit making you into someone new. But she’s also come to understand the environmental and human damage the industry causes: the waste, the mounds of trash produced every single second, the ooze poured into rivers, the overworked, sexually harassed garment workers, the damage caused to their lungs from inhaled fabric particles and chemicals, the low pay, the death that comes from fires and collapse of poorly-constructed buildings. If you’re into fast fashion, you’re part of the problem. Aja Barber is here to help you learn how to be part of the solution.

This is such a necessary book. I love that there have been so many excellent books in the past decade that expose the fast fashion industry for the nightmare that it is. Ms. Barber keeps the tone light, however (a few of the Goodreads reviews complain about this, but I think they’re confusing lack of editing with Ms. Barber’s style). Don’t be mistaken, however; this isn’t an easy read. There’s a LOT of information here; some of it is the story of Ms. Barber’s journey from fashion fan to fashion industry critic (and yet still a fan! We SHOULD be critical of the things we love!), but the rest is about the dangers of the industry, and the devastation. It’s something all consumers should be aware of, so we can make the most responsible choices possible every time we open our wallets.

Visit Aja Barber’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears by Farah Stockman

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I don’t remember when I learned about American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears by Farah Stockman (Random House, 2021), but I do know it appealed to me right away. A few years ago, I read Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein and really enjoyed it, and that was the book that really opened up my eyes to what the economic landscape of so much of America looks like. I read it as part of a reading challenge; it’s not something I would have picked up on my own, but I’m eternally grateful that I did, and my picking up American Made stems directly from my having read hat book.

So much of the image America has of itself involves people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, getting a job that allows them to work with their hands and earn enough money to live a good life, and to feel pride in what they do. And a large part of this story involves jobs in factories, jobs that you can learn from the ground up and walk into straight from high school, then not leave until you retire at 65. But the landscape has changed. NAFTA opened up the world to trade with Mexico and China, and one by one, these factories picked up and moved overseas. They could pay their employees far less there; operating costs would be less; safety measures wouldn’t be as stringent (thus, upping production); the company wouldn’t have to deal with stupid unions and expensive health insurance. Win-win, right?

Not for the American people who were losing their jobs. The exodus of these manufacturing centers leave the towns they’re located in economically depressed; the former employees are left scrambling to survive. Often, their skills aren’t transferrable, and the only other options for employment leave their pocketbooks nearly empty long before the end of the month. Those jobs most presidents brag about creating don’t often pay a living wage.

Journalist Farah Stockman follows three people who flounder in the wake of the closing of the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis: John, a white union head; Wally, a Black man who dreams of opening a barbecue joint; and Shannon, a white woman caring for her disabled granddaughter and schizophrenic son. The moving of the plant to Mexico disrupts their lives in every way imaginable, and the consequences stretch far and wide.

Farah Stockman covers their stories with sympathy and understanding. There are times when the people she follows aren’t entirely sympathetic, but Ms. Stockman never wavers in her work to understand what they’re thinking and feeling, and why they’re reacting and making the decisions they do. Her exploration of the reasons behind Rexnord’s move to Mexico opened my eyes to the long-term consequences of NAFTA, something I hadn’t been fully cognizant of before, and I so appreciate that new understanding. I’ll definitely be reading these stories of plant closings around the US with new eyes from now on.

American Made is an incredible look at the devastation wrought by a more expanded world trade. There are human consequences to what we think of as progress, and it’s so important to understand the whole story. What a great book.

Visit Farah Stockman’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · romance

Book Review: Well Matched by Jen DeLuca

Stephanie1 Comment

I absolutely adore Jen DeLuca. I loved her Well Met, enjoyed Well Played, and have been waiting for her latest book, Well Matched (Berkley, 2021), which I finally checked out of the library this last trip. All the books in this series are set against the backdrop of a town that holds an annual Renaissance Faire, and as someone who has been known to enjoy a good Ren Faire once in a while (still didn’t feel comfortable enough to go this year, sadly), I’ve really enjoyed living in the world of Ms. DeLuca’s stories. Well Matched was absolutely no different.

In Well Matched, we hear from April, the single mother sister of Emily from Well Met. She’s spent the last eighteen years raising her daughter Caitlin on her own, ever since her ex-husband decided he didn’t want to be a dad and walked out on her. It hasn’t been easy, and April has built some serious walls around her heart in order to survive, but she’s managed, and now Caitlin is preparing to graduate high school and head off to college. Finally, April’s real life can begin! She can sell her house and get the hell out of the small town she’s been raising her daughter in.

But first, the house needs to be updated, and that’s where Mitch, the himbo gym teacher of the friend group comes in. He’s there to help her paint and repair, and in exchange, April agrees to pretend to be his girlfriend for a family get-together, so that his judgmental family can finally start to see Mitch as someone who has his life together. The family gathering turns out to be a little more complicated than April expected, though, and so do her feelings for Mitch, who is also turning out to be a little more complex than she originally thought.

When their fake relationship goes from pretend to is-this-really-happening, April’s more than a little panicked: those years of brickwork she’s constructed around her heart are making it more than a little difficult to accept that Mitch’s feelings – and hers– are real, and safe. There’ll be a little heartbreak on the way, but there’s magic at the Ren Faire…

GAWD, I loved this book. I can’t say I loved Mitch or April in the other books, but I ended up absolutely adoring both of them throughout this whole thing. April is prickly as hell, but with good reason, and I truly related to her introvertedness and desire to hide away in her house (something I’m trying to change, but this frickin’ pandemic won’t let me *grumblegrumble*).

Visit Jen DeLuca’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction

Book Review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

StephanieLeave a comment

I somehow missed the nightmare Turpin case when it broke, but I’ve followed it ever since I learned about it (my God. Those poor kids). So when I learned about Girl A by Abigail Dean (Viking, 2021), a novel that seemed like a fictionalized account of the Turpin story, set in Great Britain, it went onto my list. It took for-ev-er for this to actually be in at the library, however; seems as though everyone in my town is just as horrified by that story as I am.

Girl A is Alexandra, or Lex, the eldest daughter and second eldest child of the Gracie family, where eight children were discovered, chained and emaciated, living in unbelievable filth. She’s the one who escaped, who dropped from a second-story window and broke her leg in the process, but who saved her other siblings. Her father poisoned himself before the police showed up, and Mom went to prison; now, at the beginning of the story, Lex is an adult, a lawyer, traveling back to England from New York City, to deal with her mother’s death.

The story jumps back and forth in time, from what happened leading up to the dramatic rescue of the Gracie children, to how growing up in such terrible conditions affected the children as adults. Some have fared better than others; no one has made it out unscathed.

This is a hard book to describe. None of the adult Gracie children are particularly likeable; some of them are a bit frightening in their ability to manipulate. Several are just tragic. It’s hard to get a full read on Lex, since she’s so damaged and deals with that damage by drinking a lot. A revelation later on in the book had me questioning pretty much everything about her, and the murky conclusion didn’t help matters at all.

I enjoyed the storytelling of this novel, but I wish there had been more concrete conclusions, and that it had felt more solid as a whole. If you’ve read this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Visit Abigail Dean’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.