Alexa Reed

No endings!

Reviewed: 10-04-23

Story without an ending

CW: murder, death, dead body, injury detail, fire, violence (brief), panic attacks, mental illness, hallucinations, blood, poison, kidnapping, grief, talking skeletons and ghosts

mentions of: loss of loved one, ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, bullying, colonization, war, generational trauma, gargoyles, spiders

At a floating magical school, a professor has been murdered. He was evil, bigoted against anyone who wasn’t a straight, white, cis man with sorcerer powers.

Although that character is a bit one-dimensional, the characters of the book are very diverse. There are multiple points of view and they are each written by a different author, which gives the readers a cast that includes 2 Muslims, two physically handicapped people, several non-binary people, as well as people who are Black, Filipino, Korean, Argentinian, and First Nations.

One down side is that it’s hard to keep track of this cast. Someone is mentioned in passing in one chapter and becomes a character a few chapters later. It became really hard to keep track of them all.

Another downside is that each chapter, I got attached to a new character but I didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing their story end. Do these two characters find out that they have crushes on each other? How does that character deal with the truth about their parents? Do these kids who have so much in common become friends and help each other feel less alone? Does that character ever get home?

I DON’T KNOW!!! And I probably never will.

I would like to think that this is the first of a series, but it would be really hard to get all these writers back together and even if they did, I would have trouble remembering all the backstories for these people.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book, but I hated finishing it.

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Prettiest traumatizing

Reviewed: 05-14-23

CW: kidnapping, rape, torture, being owned by men, sex trafficking, disassociative catatonic state, love = ownership and power, finding out you were adopted, finding out your parents didn’t love you, child molestation, revenge porn, and incest. When you need hospitalization, but the man who “loves” you doesn’t tell your best friend.

Also, a lot of talk about chess and what the pieces mean. Same for mythology.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I kind of ended it in my own sort of disassociated catatonic state.

I do like the introduction to Penny. I already bought her books, so I plan to read them soon. I’m not sure if I can read them now. I think I need to be alone for a bit. I think I might need to recover from this book.

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fun story about some white criminals

Reviewed: 08-20-20

I really enjoyed listening to this well-acted story (with narration that was emphatically not too cute from Meg Ryan) about some good people who commit crimes with some good intentions.

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Wonderful from start to finish

Reviewed: 03-07-20

This book was a joy to read. It was inspiring and it was eye-opening.

This book is such a wonderful gift. Elaine explains so well the effects of racism and colorism throughout her life. Sharing so much of herself shows bravery and kindness. She left out the names of people who had caused her harm, but told us all about how hurt she still was.

There were times that I was reading about her as a child or a teenager and I wanted to hold her and comfort her. I realized that in part, I wanted to comfort myself at that age as well for having experienced something similar and holding onto it for far too long.

As she got older in the book, I felt like I had made a new friend. I especially enjoyed the audio version, read by Elaine herself and featuring the voices of her parents. At the end there’s a very touching interview where she asked them about how they felt about the book and their parenting styles.

It was wonderful, from start to finish.

CW: racism, colorism, drugs, imprisonment of a loved one

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Not recommended.

Reviewed: 12-07-19

I think the narrator did a great job. There was a lot of emotion in her voice and you could tell when she was pleading or near tears. That helped bring me further into the story.

This book held me kind of captivated for most of the story but left all the questions I had unanswered. We find out that the woman who is speaking is upset because her husband had an affair and got in a car accident on the way to his mistress’s house, and is now brain dead. She spends the whole book talking to him. I was disgusted a lot about how helpless she sounds without him in her life, how much of her self worth is tied up in whether or not he loves her.

(Spoilers)

But I was listening because I was hoping to hear about how her relationship with her daughter would progress from this point. And if she pulled the plug, if her daughter would understand.

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Helps to know lovecraft

Reviewed: 11-16-19

Once I started this book, I kept thinking about it after I left it. I would read a couple of chapters and then have to do something else but be constantly curious about what was going to happen to them next. When I finished it, I had to reflect on it for a while before evaluating it. I think it will stay with me for a bit still.

As someone not familiar with HP Lovecraft, I was a tad confused by the story. Reading this article afterwards helped me with that. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/02/17/the-big-idea-victor-lavalle/

I thought the narrator did an excellent performance. His voice is easy to listen to and he would vary tone according to what was being said. It was helpful that he altered his voice slightly for different characters.

I loved the prose. I frequently thought that a particular sentence had great significance for me, but didn’t want to stop and reflect on it because I was so focused on the story and worried about what would happen to the main character, Tommy Tester.

After reading the above article, I had more of an understanding for the ending of the book and why certain characters made the decisions they made.

I would definitely like to listen to another book written by this author.

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1 person found this helpful