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Book Review: ‘Piecing Me Together’ by Renee Watson

Piecing Me TogetherPiecing Me Together by Renée Watson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Piecing Me Together” by Renee Watson is a relatable story of a Black teen girl so focused on what she wants but doesn’t realize what she has can still get her to where she wants to be.

Jade is a high school junior/multimedia artist who attends a private school in Portland, nowhere near her impoverished neighborhood, so she makes a few bus transfers each way to get the best education. But she doesn’t have any friends at her school until she meets Sam, a white girl, who lives in a neighborhood near her. Now Jade’s mom can get off her back about making friends since she still is close with her childhood friend, Lee Lee, who attends the neighborhood school. Regardless of her socioeconomic status, Jade, gifted in Spanish, wants to go on a field trip to Costa Rica. But students have to be nominated, so when she gets called into the counselor’s office she thinks she’s got a nomination but instead she’s got into a mentoring program for Black teen girls. Jade is not entirely sold on the opportunity but attends the program’s first meeting, only to be stood up by her mentor, Maxine. It turns out Maxine, a Black 20-something professional who graduated from the school, can barely commit to the program with boyfriend drama. Jade picks up on this and takes their relationship with a grain of salt until they become closer the more they spend time together. As she visits museums in Portland, Jade is looking forward to hearing back on the Costa Rica opportunity, but she learns some opportunities won’t be given to her because of who she is but other opportunities will come her way because of that.

This story is a good read with smoothly showing Jade gain her voice when she feels it doesn’t matter because she’s Black, poor, and obese. She sees how not speaking up affects her relationships with one example of Jade and Sam having a temporary falling-out because Jade feels she’s not being heard when she isn’t saying exactly how she feels. It also shows the trauma of a Black girl being in a predominantly white school and how she becomes invisible despite her hard work. Jade sees there are other ways she can succeed, and once she sees that, the law of attraction will lead her to what she really wants.

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Book Review: ‘With the Fire on High’ by Elizabeth Acevedo

With the Fire on HighWith the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“With the Fire on High” by Elizabeth Acevedo touches on the struggle girls of color have when opportunities come their way because they live in a place where such opportunities never come or they feel they can’t handle those opportunities due to where they live and how they live.

Emoni Santiago is a 17-year-old high school senior with a passion to cook. She’s always cooking at home for ‘Buela and Emma aka Babygirl, the daughter she had at 14. A culinary experience class opens at her charter school and she gets a spot, but she realizes her usual rule-breaking in the kitchen at home won’t cut it in class. She tries to ignore the hiccups and wallows in the successes of the class since they have the opportunity to go to Spain at the end of the semester. It takes a fancy dinner at a restaurant to convince Emoni to take the class more seriously since it can lead her to a culinary career. Once she refocuses, she becomes the head of the donation drive for the Spain trip. And she also finds herself somewhat falling for Malachi – they like each other but Emoni wants to put Babygirl and school first, especially when she senses something off with ‘Buela, deals with a father going in and out of her life by flying to Puerto Rico, hands off Babygirl to her father Tyrone and his family, and sustains a relationship with her deceased mother’s sister.

As a teen mom, Emoni feels guilty about opportunities that would take her away from Babygirl because she knows not only she but also her family had to make sacrifices for her daughter because of her unplanned pregnancy. She wants to stay home and cook dishes her way because that keeps her close to ‘Buela and Babygirl, which almost derails her from continuing with the prized culinary class and going to Spain. There are chapters focusing on her time in Spain and she brings up the disbelief a girl from North Philly ended up in Seville. It also helps her find a way to attend college and stay close to home for her family. But the worrying about how the opportunities could mess up her current life when her current life may not be ideal but comfortable sticks with her as she tries to decide what’s next.

The theme of motherhood resonates in the novel with Emoni taking care of Babygirl while also wondering what her mother would’ve been like. Her mother died during childbirth and her father, Julio, gave her to his mother ‘Buela to raise. So while Emoni is working hard to be the best mother she can be on top of high school and college preparation, she questions why Julio is not around when he’s alive. And ‘Buela starts to be secretive over the stress of raising Julio then having to raise Emoni then helping raise Babygirl. Her mothering becomes endless in a way, and Emoni wishes she could change things to make it easier for her grandmother.

Overall, the book has remnants of an Americanized modern-day version of the classic “Like Water for Chocolate” with each part opening up to a recipe Emoni wants to conquer. Throughout the book, her cooking is heightened with ingredients she chooses for home and school to make her food pop. Then her family and class experience deeply-rooted emotions when she cooks and those emotions are even seen with the restaurateurs in Spain. Food is magic. Every other chapter being dedicated to what we already know about her past is annoying; it was already weaved into the story and additional details could’ve been weaved. The story stalled with those chapters and elongated it for no reason, but maybe for other readers that technique works. It’s a new perspective on YA lit with the teen mom lifestyle and school being a big part of the story like the author’s first novel, “Poet X.” The theme of a girl of color trying to figure out her dreams is still present in this novel and is elevated with the new perspective of culinary dreams.

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Book Review: ‘The Farm’ by Joanne Ramos

The Farm by Joanne Ramos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Farm” by Joanne Ramos is a suspenseful novel around surrogates impregnated by embryos belonging to the uber-rich confined to a farm in upstate New York. But the main character feels she’s being deceived by the farm’s staff and comes to the conclusion her presence there may mean something more sinister.

Jane is a young mother who’s living in a dormitory in New York mostly with other Filipina women, including her cousin Ate. They both take care of 6-month-old Amalia to the best of their abilities with their surroundings. But Ate is a well-known baby nurse constantly recommended for her newborn sleeping method. She’s able to connect Jane with a job with a family, but Jane ruins that opportunity with her motherly instincts. So Ate suggests Jane should be a surrogate mother at this resort called Golden Oaks, where she will receive a bonus for delivering a healthy baby for a very rich family. Jane leaves Amalia in Ate’s care as she embarks to the resort for 9 months. At Golden Oaks, ambitious Mae is running the resort as it’s still in its trial run with the investment of an aging Chinese billionaire, so she’s gentle with Jane, which makes Jane question if she’s carrying the billionaire’s baby. But Mae’s forced kindness is part of the system, Jane learns from her newfound friends, Lisa, who’s in her third surrogate pregnancy at Golden Oaks, and Reagan, also a first-timer who comes from money but wants her own independence for her art career. As Jane confides in her new friends, she finds herself getting in trouble and risking her future paycheck. She tries to lay low until she senses something is wrong with Amalia. Then she is desperate to leave the premises and see her daughter.

This novel does an excellent job with mild suspense as in it plays on motherly instincts and how they can be tested and what a mother would do if she gets a read on a situation.

It also shows the plight of many immigrant women who find work in baby nursing, cleaning, and other jobs as servants of rich families. This story focuses on the Filipina community in New York. Jane arrived in the U.S. when she was a teenager only to live with her mother in California who let relationships with men run her life. When Jane later leaves her husband Billy with Amalia in tow, the only person she can rely on is her older cousin, Ate aka Evelyn, who despite experiencing success in the Manhattan baby circuit still lives in a dormitory with other Filipinas struggling to find steady work since she sends her money to her four grown children in the Philippines, including a disabled son.

Class is another issue. While Jane and Ate work for rich families, Reagan comes from a rich family. Yet she doesn’t know what she truly wants with all the opportunities she has received. She seems to be spiteful about her friend, Macy, who’s black and considered at the top of her game in investment banking though she had a rough upbringing. They both went to Duke, but Macy is in another stratosphere compared to Reagan. As Mae runs Golden Oaks, she’s constantly feeling pity for Jane because of her circumstances as a low-income single mother yet knows she has the power to hold things over Jane’s head with the paycheck for the baby.

The book appears long, but the story is engaging with the situations inside the farm and outside the farm along with backstories of the characters, so this piece of literary fiction is well-conceived.

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Book Review: ‘Gingerbread’ by Helen Oyeyemi

GingerbreadGingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Gingerbread” by Helen Oyeyemi takes the dessert’s role in fairy tales and turns it into a convoluted story between two families and one girl seeking the truth about her father.

Harriet Lee is a teacher but has a specialty in making gingerbread and sharing it whenever she can. Her daughter, Perdita, yearns to eat the gingerbread, but she has celiac disease. Soon Perdita makes a life-threatening decision, and Harriet realizes it’s because her daughter wants to know who her father is and where Harriet’s homeland of Druhástrana is since it can’t be found on a map. While Perdita recuperates, Harriet tells her daughter the family history and how she ended up making gingerbread as an expertise. The tale starts in the farmlands of Druhástrana and heads to London where Harriet becomes a star gingerbread maker with a group of girls, including her friend Gretel. These girls seem to be used for child labor to create the desserts for mostly hungry men. Eventually Harriet and her mother, Margot, move in with the rich family, their distant cousins the Kerchevals, who brought Harriet into the gingerbread world and their destinies intersect and result in Harriet’s independence.

First, this book starts describing the characters and their histories quickly and then it becomes a rabbit hole of overdone character development that doesn’t feed the story. When you hear about a novel like this based on the legend of gingerbread in fairy tales, this is not what you expect. The story can be followed, but there’s too much detail that doesn’t move the story forward. For example, groups of characters are introduced from the Parental Power Association to Perdita’s talking dolls to the Kerchevals, where there are several people named but not all the characters are developed enough to add anything to the story.

Overall, the story collapses into too many other stories that may be hard to follow for some or may not be interesting enough.

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Book Review: ‘Queenie’ by Candice Carty-Williams

QueenieQueenie by Candice Carty-Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Queenie” by Candice Carty-Williams surrounds a protagonist going through a breakup and myriad other situations that send her on a downward spiral. It’s one of the first new adult novels I’ve read where mental health is brought into the storyline for a woman of color who’s on a dangerous path to destruction, yet it’s relatable and comical at times.

“Bridget Jones’ Diary” meets “Americanah” is how the publishers are describing this novel since Queenie is a 25-year-old, 2nd-generation Jamaican Brit struggling to get over her boyfriend, Tom. Some reviews complain about Queenie’s obsession with Tom since he’s white, but she’s a millennial who thought she found her soul mate and has a dating preference. The story opens to Queenie in a clinic where she learns she’s had a miscarriage, even with her IUD in use. But she can’t go home and tell Tom, and he’s tired of the lack of communication, so he asks Queenie to move out of their apartment. She ends up renting a room while trying to get ahead in her journalism career. She pitches stories but keeps getting distracted by her colleague, Ted, who seems persistent in workplace flirtation. But Queenie believes she and Tom would get back together with her friends Darcy, Kyazike, and Cassandra trying to convince her otherwise. While fending off Ted, Queenie falls into a one-night stand habit with men from OKCupid and other places who have objectified her body as a BBW. All her bad decisions around men explode in her face. The explosion then stimulates her anxiety until she has a breakdown where she has move into her grandparents’ home and ask for professional help to get her life back on track.

The novel opens up to Queenie’s miscarriage, so there’s a theme of making bad sexual health decisions with unprotected sex and multiple partners within a short amount of time. Also, there’s a theme of bigger black women being objectified for only sex due to their size and race. Queenie feels she’s not worthy of a relationship, especially when she deals with non-black men; the reason why she chooses men outside her race coming up later in the book. Mental health surfaces through her depression and anxiety with the roots of her pain stemming from her own mother’s bad decisions around men. Depending on her religious Jamaican family, we see the first- and second-generation issues from immigration that linger with Queenie being the first to graduate from college but unhappy that the career of her dreams is stalling because she’s a black woman seeing her white colleagues moving forward.

Overall, the book may slowly grow on the reader since it’s one bad decision after the next, but once Queenie’s layers come undone, there’s a deconstruction of why she’s making these decisions. And these actions could be interpreted as “wild” and “promiscuous” for a woman of color, opening up to judgment, but many women period like men deal with sex and love differently, especially in their 20s. That’s why this novel stands out for portraying a very imperfect character. Though you might not agree with her actions, there’s a level of realistic growth in Queenie identifying, understanding, and rectifying her issues.

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Book Review: ‘The Sun Is Also A Star’ by Nicola Yoon

The Sun is Also a StarThe Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What I love about Nicola Yoon’s young adult novels is they simplistically explore pure teenage love. This novel touches on timely issues with Natasha, who’s being deported with her family back to Jamaica, and Daniel, who’s dealing with academic pressures brought on by his Korean parents.

They both live in New York with immigrant parents and are trying to find their own version of the American dream. They meet on the street, like so many other New Yorkers, and totally connect despite Natasha scientifically explaining how love doesn’t exist while Daniel uses poetry to explain it does.

Despite their cultural differences, they find themselves interconnected as Daniel tries to help Natasha fight back the deportation order while they fall in love all in one day.

To stretch a book in the span of one day is a feat, and the author does it well, with short chapters from viewpoints of Natasha, Daniel, and the others they come into contact on that fateful day. It’s a feel-good love story that brings up issues of the day such as Daniel’s parents owning a Black hair store and Natasha’s parents coming into the country illegally. It can be devoured quickly with satisfaction.

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Book Review: ‘Queen Sugar’ by Natalie Baszile

Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First of all, the writing and pacing is really good. But the drama dragged. The actual sugar cane business overshadowed the interesting family situations occurring between characters. And because it went into detail about the business, there were all these miscellaneous characters the reader doesn’t care about. I read it because Oprah is doing a show on it, but I have a feeling OWN changed a lot for the book to be remotely entertaining on TV.

Charley Bordelon is a single mother raising her 11-year-old daughter Micah in Los Angeles, where she can’t keep a job as an artist though she enjoys the fruits of her ophthalmologist mother’s labor. When Charley’s father dies, he leaves her a sugarcane field in Louisiana, where he’s originally from. So Charley packs her things up and moves to Louisiana with Micah. They live with Charley’s grandmother Miss Honey while Charley deals with her troubled half-brother Ralph Angel, who has a son named Blue.

While Charley tries to figure out how to run a sugarcane farm, her bullheadedness leaves her making some business mistakes as Ralph Angel grows jealous that the business wasn’t left to him. As Charley gets on track with the help from Remy Newell, a competitor, she finds herself falling him though she doesn’t realize how much she’s neglecting Micah. Ralph Angel’s actions eventually lead to a timely Black Lives Matter ending, which brings the family closer.

The OWN TV series is better but totally changed characters and situations. The show added a sister, Nova Bordelon, to add even more tension between Charley and Ralph Angel. Violet is a preacher’s wife who only shows up a few times in the book as a confidant to Charley; now she’s a waitress with a knack for baking. Miss Honey doesn’t exist, like her character is combined with Violet. In the show, Violet’s love interest is Hollywood, but in the book Hollywood is an old classmate of Ralph Angel who’s a little slow (he gets his nickname for loving tabloids) yet wants to be there for his friend while having a crush on Charley. Remy is an older white man, so Charley has reservations about dating him at first since she would be in an interracial relationship in the South. Micah is a boy in the show while his father is alive and well as a star basketball player who Charley leaves in the season premiere over a cheating scandal. In the book, girl Micah’s father is dead, which is the reason why Charley has been financially desperate to the point where she relocates to handle a sugarcane farm without experience. Also, Ralph Angel returns to town with Blue assuming his son’s mother died of a drug overdose since he abandoned her in a crack house in the book. The TV counterpart has the mother as a recovering addict but still alive and trying to make amends with her family. Prosper, the old farmer who helps Charley get her business moving, is probably the only character who’s stayed the same. And maybe Blue (though the Power Ranger he played with in the book evolved into a Barbie doll in the show).

Though the book sets a good layout for the TV show, it’s one of those stories fun to compare and contrast because there are multiple changes.

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Book Review: ‘The Favorite Sister’ by Jessica Knoll

The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Received a copy from NetGalley for an honest review

“The Favorite Sister” by Jessica Knoll, who arrived on the scene in 2015 with her debut best-seller “Luckiest Girl Alive,” is an enthralling sophomore novel that doesn’t quite meet the stature of its predecessor but stands on its own.

The story surrounds the “Goal Diggers,” a reality TV show starring successful millionaire millennials like Brett, the mastermind behind SPOKE, a bicycle fitness startup, who just brought Kelly, her older single mother sister on board with the show, along with her beloved niece, Layla. But Brett is dead. This is not a spoiler because it’s in the first paragraph, so the story builds up to how Brett died and how the spotlight contributed to it. She’s dealing with the blowback of her twisted relationship with her frenemy, Stephanie, a top memoirist and novelist, and Jen, a vegan food entrepreneur. In the background are the other cast members such as Lauren, an entrepreneur with a forgettable company; Jesse, the 40something executive producer and show creator, and Vince, Stephanie’s brawny yet empty-headed husband.

The premise in itself sounds frivolous since it’s around a reality TV show, but the characters are withering by the moment from their narcissism and the secrets behind the lives they choose to present on camera. At first, the characters and their lives and careers get entangled in each other with the excess descriptions and witty language, but as the story progresses, the characters who emerge from the verbose debris are Brett, Kelly, and Stephanie. They each get more chapters than the other characters who fade as supporters to the story.

I like Stephanie the best. She’s the lone black woman on the show, but she’s hyperaware of her race and gender and how it affects her reputation. For example, she spends a lot of time constantly pointing out the flaws of her castmates and how it’s impossible to support other women because she’s 34 and will term out of the show for her age. The concept, done in a way buried with trendy verbiage referring to every pop culture reference out today, is something to ponder. Along with the issues of domestic violence, body shaming, single mother shaming, vegan shaming, infidelity, race, eating disorders, and others interlaced in the plot. All of these are thought-provoking issues yet the mask of reality TV world may or may not conceal the seriousness of these issues for the reader.

Mentioning Stephanie as the black woman on the show raised by a single white mother and married to a white husband, the book had diverse characters rare to find in a traditional chick lit novel written by a white female author. At the end, Knoll admits her first novel didn’t really show any diversity and seeing it there and in Hollywood made her want to add more unique characters to this book. Other examples include Brett being a lesbian, Layla being biracial, Jen being vegan cancer survivor, Lauren being an alcoholic, the castmates choosing their trip of the season in Morocco for charitable reasons, etc. The characters show depth with realizing what’s at stake because of what makes them different.

When I started this book, I had a difficult time keeping up with the characters. I actually stopped reading it to read other books due to time restraints, and I thought I wouldn’t return to it. But I had to find out what happened to Brett, and I’m glad I picked it back up. With a fresh perspective, I absorbed the story and the characters popped off the pages. So this book is great for someone who loves those women-oriented reality TV shows like the “Real Housewives” franchises and guiltily imagine things going too far. It’s a more elevated beach read because of the setting mixed with the issues successful women face.

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Book Review: ‘You Are a Badass at Making Money’ by Jen Sincero

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“You Are a Badass at Making Money” by Jen Sincero is another straight-talk self-help book that does make you think about your issues with money and how to overcome those issues to become what you define as financially comfortable.

Like Sincero’s first book in the Badass series, I was fighting with her in my head. In this scenario, I didn’t think I had an issue with money and that it was stopping me from making more money. I audio read it, so her voice kept going on and on about how I might have issues with money. Then I realized I do have issues with money. I grew up in a low-income family where we mastered bargain shopping, which I still practice today though I live in a world-class metropolis with a decent job in a low-paying field like journalism. And I still deprive myself of luxuries I could afford because I’m so focused on keeping money in my bank account. Sincero made me realize I could splurge once in a while and I’ll still be able to pay all my bills.

The downside to this book is the obsession of wealth, the mantra that you’re going to be rich if you believe it. Yes, the word is in the title, but I read it to learn how to move forward in my career to make more money whether the traditional way or the freelance way. This book may not be for that reader who wants more money but not obsessed with it because the way she tells the stories she wants you to be obsessed — or least that’s how it comes off. I’d rather be obsessed with my passions that I hope will bring me money compared to the money itself.

Overall, the book helps you brainstorm ways to make more money with accepting your current relationship with money and improving that relationship to reach your monetary goals.



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Book Review: ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“Children of Blood and Bone” is an overhyped young adult fantasy that follows a stereotypical storyline with substandard writing and dialogue but shows the struggles of an oppressed people trying to fight the oppressor.

Zelie is a teenager who is conveniently training for battle in the beginning of the novel when she gets whisked in the ultimate battle for regaining magic for her people. Zelie comes from a line of maji, a group of people who had extraordinary powers that had been suppressed by the kingdom. Her mother and many other maji had been killed in the Raid years earlier. But when Amari, the crowned princess witnesses the death of her maji servant, she flees the castle with the one thing that could bring it back: a scroll. In her pursuit, she runs into Zelie, who has the maji marking of long white hair, to help her bring back magic for peace. They embark on a long journey with Zelie’s brother, Tzain, while Amari’s brother, Inan, follows their moves with his army to make sure magic never comes back.

First of all, the story doesn’t come off as unique and one of the reasons why is the turning point of the masked princess escaping her castle walls — which she never had done before — to save magic. That’s been in too many stories and films. The characters are undeveloped with Amari, for example, avenging her servant Binta’s death as her only reason to go on the journey. The death is the only memory that comes up, along with Zelie’s memory of her mother’s death. The repetitiveness of these same memories impeded character complexity since it seemed like they didn’t really have any others. Zelie, Amari, and Inan get chapters while Tzain never does because he’s reduced to the supportive brother though he’s on the same journey.

The most interesting character is Inan because he’s conflicted with pleasing his father, the king who lost his previous family to a war with maji, and his realization that he himself is evolving into a maji. He goes back and forth while Zelie and Amari remain boring, especially Zelie who relatively stays the same throughout the story with finding confidence that she’ll save her people then losing that confidence and going back and forth with this. On the other hand, Amari starts weak then becomes stronger, but at the end her strength progress comes too quickly that it doesn’t seem authentic.

With the hype around this book, I wanted to love it. But honestly it was the first book in a long time where I kept falling asleep from boredom at all the battles that just become a blur. The writing is offensively simple with more focus on the story that’s too fast-paced with the characters and settings never really receiving the proper attention they should. The dialogue is atrocious, especially with the cursing. All the characters just keep cursing like they barely have any other words in their vocabulary. It’s pretty bad how many times the reader will come across “skies,” “gods,” and “dammit,” the last one seeming out of place with the setting. Though I’m not a big reader of fantasy YA, I do know when I read a great novel in the genre, and this is not it.



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Book Review: ‘The Pisces’ by Melissa Broder

The Pisces

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“The Pisces” by Melissa Broder is a surprisingly refreshing twist on a character falling in love with a mythical creature and it blowing up in her face.

(Read on audiobook so some names might be spelled incorrectly with comments on the mediocre performance by the author) After a breakup with a longtime boyfriend while floundering on her doctoral project in the Phoenix desert, Lucy switches out her environment to head to sunny beach paradise Venice, California to dog-sit for her older sister. As she sort of bonds with the sickly foxhound Dominic, she nurses her heartbreak with a support group. The group bores her but she finds a friend in Claire, who in her awful accent convinces Lucy to try Tinder since she herself prefers a “harem” of men amid her pending divorce. Lucy decides a harem might be what she needs too, but it turns to uncomfortable situations such as sex on a hotel bathroom floor and sex in a cramped car. But to find solace, Lucy goes to the rocks at the beach and one night the perfect man appears. The lovemaking is amazing, and as they become closer, Lucy finds out Theo, whose voice needed male narration because the author’s voice made him come off even more feminine according to how she described him, is a merman. As Lucy tries to figure out how to fit Theo into her life such as dragging him in a wagon to her house where Dominic senses something funny about the merman, she believes he’s the medicine for her pain until Theo inflicts even more pain.
First of all, there are a lot of bad reviews on this book. I worried about reading it since I couldn’t get into the author’s last best-seller. But the rawness in this book makes it stand out. There will be criticism over the very flawed character Lucy, who at 38, is still lost and acts more like she’s 28. She lost her mother when she was young. She’s taking almost a decade to work on a dissertation on Sappho. She’s looking for a quick fix after her relationship falls apart. She’s not responsible enough to care for a dog. Her journey, though messy most of the time, seems authentic. Also, Claire, who Lucy freely takes advice from, is also battling her own demons with depression.

The book spends a lot of time establishing Lucy’s environment and the characters in it, but many of the characters don’t really last such as the university community or the Tinder dates. So it takes time to get to the merman erotica parts, and the merman needs a bit more believability, but he does come off as a possible figment of Lucy’s imagination as she becomes so enthralled with him that she’s willing to lose it all to be with him, as in she battles the focus of all merman/mermaid tales of if she’s going to live underwater to follow her heart or stay on land. This book has deeper elements to it if you can look beyond the graphic sex scenes and questionable mythical creature description.

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Book Review: ‘Marriage Vacation’ by Pauline Turner Brooks

Marriage Vacation

Marriage Vacation by Pauline Turner Brooks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“Marriage Vacation” by the fictional Pauline Turner Brooks is from “Younger” on TV Land, one of my favorite shows surrounding the literary industry, but this book was not what I expected from the Millennial imprint as in it’s not up to par.

Background on the show is it’s about Liza, a 40something woman who’s masquerading as a millennial at a publisher because she had trouble reentering the workforce after raising her daughter and going through a divorce. She works with Kelsey, an actual millennial, on the Millennial imprint that produces books targeted for millennials, but they took a chance on “Marriage Vacation” conveniently by their boss’ ex-wife, Pauline Turner Brooks. And now the novel is a best-seller — on the show.The book is about a woman similar to Pauline who abandoned her Upper East Side life along with her two daughters and publisher husband to save her sanity and found herself in the jungles of Thailand at a retreat. She spends her days helping a local doctor from Australia with her Doctors Without Borders clinic. She becomes besties with the doctor and the doctor’s younger brother as well as bonds with a refugee mother with two girls who’s looking for her husband in the city. So Pauline goes into the city to find the woman’s husband with the doctor’s brother. One thing leads to another as Pauline still tries to deal with her broken marriage.

The story itself is rather boring with the writing maybe a step up from mediocre but not exactly what I would call good though Pauline is a writer with an MFA from Columbia, which is something she struggles with because she abandoned her writing career for housewifery and motherhood. The premise sounded interesting via the TV, and with how the show promoted it, I expected a better constructed story. I liked the emphasis of a mother becoming overwhelmed with sacrificing her dreams for her family. The book does give insight of the Myanmar refugee crisis in Thailand and other useful information, but I had hoped Pauline experienced a more entertaining adventure.

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Book Review: ‘The Idea of You’ by Robinne Lee

The Idea of You

The Idea of You by Robinne Lee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“The Idea of You” by Robinne Lee is an unexpected well-conceived story about an older woman falling for a boy band member. It sounds like a fantasy ripped out of the tabloids, but it captures the complexities of such a relationship and how the world reacts to it.

Solene Marchand is dealing with the emotions before a 40th birthday when she gets stuck with taking her daughter, Isabelle, and friends to an August Moon concert with backstage access in Las Vegas. As the teen girls stay enamored on the British boy band, Solene finds herself flirting with the bandleader himself, Hayes Campbell. While living her life as an LA art dealer, Solene meets up with Hayes when he’s in town as he flies her out to where he is until they have a full-blown love affair that surprisingly develops into an authentic relationship. Except Solene feels the relationship threatening her art gallery business with her partner Lulit, her relationship with Isabelle, her relationship with her ex-husband Daniel who’s of course having a baby with a 30-year-old model, and her reputation in general with fans sending threatening messages via social media and postal mail. But Solene and Hayes try to beat the odds amid the craziness.I’ve been disappointed with some of the recent women’s fiction/romance books because in many cases the issues and characters become stereotypical and the storyline is forced into a happily ever after. This book actually shows the progression of a modern-day fairy tale relationship and the rockiness that comes with it. The ending is refreshingly unexpected yet emotional. The writing is fantastic, which again in other recent works seemed to be either missing or the only upside to the book.

What’s great about this book is the reader travels with August Moon, a fictional mashup of One Direction/The Wanted/and all those other recent boy bands out of the U.K., since Solene gets a first class ticket and hotel suite with Hayes everywhere. It covers Aspen, Miami, Malibu, Paris, Tokyo, the Hamptons and so many other destination cities, so it feels like you’re there admiring the scene though Solene and Hayes spend a lot of time in their suites. Also, the stakes of the romance are high. Not only are Solene’s relationships feeling the heat, but so are Hayes’ with one of his bandmates vengeful of destroying the romance and past hookups continually making appearances around the world.

Overall, there are great elements throughout the story, and the book is a great piece of women’s fiction with serving up the steamy sex scenes and drama on every corner. And Lulit is the best because she’s Ethiopian, and we’re rarely in books, especially books like these, so the whole time I envisioned her as me, and that was fun.

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Book Review: ‘A Kind of Freedom’ by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

A Kind of Freedom: A Novel

A Kind of Freedom: A Novel by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“A Kind of Freedom” by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is a multigenerational novel that follows a family overcoming and adapting to obstacles specific to their eras. Though the stories of families may be seen as one-dimensional, it still emphasizes how wealth in the African-American community could disappear based on circumstances.

The story starts with Evelyn and her younger sister, Ruby, in 1940s New Orleans as the daughters of one of the only black doctors in the city. Evelyn has her as eye on Renard, who also likes her and has dreams of going to medical school. But her father doesn’t want Evelyn to marry Renard because he doesn’t believe he’ll become a doctor because he lived as an orphan with a friend’s family.

Then the story fast forwards to the early 1980s with Evelyn and Renard’s two daughters Jackie and Sybil. Jackie is unexpectedly raising her son on her own with her husband dealing with a crack cocaine habit working at her parents’ daycare center.

The third part focuses on a post-Katrina New Orleans with Jackie’s son, T.C., all grown up just getting out of jail before his son’s birth.

To most readers, it might seem like a dull tale around a family, but it makes you think about how this black family was on top decades ago only to lose that wealth and status when a white family would’ve more likely stayed on top generations later. It’s a thought-provoking novel.



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Book Review: ‘Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now’ by Dana L. Davis

Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now

Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now by Dana L. Davis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now” by Dana L. Davis is a wonderfully complex YA novel about a girl from Chicago dealing with her mother’s death who moves to California to be with her biological father when there’s another man claiming to be her father.

The story starts with Tiffany Sly, a 16-year-old from Chicago, arriving at LAX in Los Angeles to meet the father she never knew. Instead a driver is there to pick her up to whisk her away to Simi Valley where her wealthy doctor father and his family lives. During the ride, Tiffany’s anxiety revs up and has been up since her mother died from cancer. Once she arrives at the home, she meets her new stepmom and four other sisters she didn’t know about. After meeting her father, who’s fair-skinned with blue eyes, she’s doubtful about the genetic connection with her dark brown skin. Then she recalls how another man, whom she believes she looks like including the complexion, had showed up at her apartment in Chicago the day before claiming to be her father, too. He even threatens legal action in a week, so Tiffany has a week to see if her California life will work in that matter of time before coming clean to her new family.

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Book Review: ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ by James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“If Beale Street Could Talk” by James Baldwin is a soft story about a woman and her family trying to get her wrongly accused fiance out of jail. Though I’ve only read one other Baldwin work — “Just Above My Head,” this one pales in comparison with less passion and pain and thought-provoking moments.

Tish and Fonny plan to get married and have already found a place to live after so many rejections due to racism in 1970s New York City. But Fonny is unexpectedly jailed for a rape he says he didn’t commit. His religious mother refuses to help him get out of jail while his alcoholic father can’t seem to get his life in order to help his son. So that leaves Tish and her family to stand up for Fonny, especially when Tish learns she’s pregnant.

The urgency of the time is missing. The story is told from Tish’s point of view, but what you expect to happen does happen. The racism is unsurprising when it comes to Tish and Fonny’s previous encounters with police to where they are with their legal troubles. But the story unfortunately has become timely. It’s similar to “American Marriage” by Tayari Jones, though that story too did not reach its full potential. With “Just Above My Head” — a totally different story, I still think of those characters and what they were enduring in that story. It was that powerful, so I expected an encore reaction with another well-known Baldwin work, but I didn’t get that. I won’t be thinking of Tish and Fonny like Roy and Celestial failed to make an impression.

Overall, it’s a love story of a young Black couple in a time of racism yet what they experience doesn’t deter their love nor do they advance from that experience.

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Book Review: ‘The Belles’ by Dhonielle Clayton

The Belles (The Belles #1)

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“The Belles” by Dhonielle Clayton revolves around a fantasy world built on beauty with a species of women responsible in making the entire kingdom beautiful as looks fade into greatness and they inject the color. Though a unique way to take on society’s obsession with what constitutes as beauty, this typical fantasy YA novel designed for a series has so much great descriptions that they may have slowed the story down.

Camellia is a Belle in the kingdom of Orleans, which means she has the power, her arcana, to bring color and vitality into people’s appearances since they lose both after some time. Like their hair dries out and their complexion drains out of color or even their heights can shrivel. Through beauty appointments mostly the rich can afford, Camellia works her magic to restore the look desired by the individual. For now, she and the other five Belles she calls her sisters, have this great duty as they are scattered to different posts on the main island. Camellia becomes the kingdom’s favorite where she works in the palace with Princess Sophia, the sole heir as her mother, the queen, ails and her sister is still in a yearslong coma. While Camellia hears disturbing news from previous Belles and her sisters about what’s happening in the kingdom and in the palace, she realizes the princess is evil and is trying to reproduce her own Belle power, which could destroy the kingdom.

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Book Review: ‘The Seas’ by Samantha Hunt

The Seas

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Jude is in love with something watery
My father told me I am a mermaid.
Therefore Jude must be in love with me.
But the above logic is faulty. Lots of things besides me are watery. Alcohol is watery. Water is watery.”



The unnamed narrator believes she’s a mermaid, and her fantasies increase as she tries to capture the love of an Iraq War veteran while finding signs within the wet footprints she believes belongs to her father who disappeared at sea years before. “The Seas” by Samantha Hunt paints a portrait of a 19-year-old woman who’s not quite the same after losing her father but lives in a town always in mourning mode due to its proximity to the ocean.

Her father would tell her she was a mermaid, so her reasoning strengthens as she falls for Jude, a veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder in his 30s. Their connection is strong but faulty as in she feels like Jude should be in love with her though Jude is in his own world. The woman’s mother is also in a depression because of the yearslong disappearance of her husband coupled with miscarriages from the past. The woman’s grandfather focuses on breaking down words in the dictionary since he used to be in the printing industry with his long-lost wife. The heartbreaks while living in a sleepy seaside town affected by people being lost at sea enhances the story more.

The poetic rhythm reminds me of Francesca Lia Block’s style in a way. I first heard about this book in one of Block’s writing groups, where I started my own mermaid novel. The mermaid mythology can be taken to so many different levels, and I enjoyed this rendition that didn’t quite go into detail with the stereotypical features such as the siren voice and scaly fin but showed how the myth can affect a woman’s mind and change how she perceives her problems. The novel does the first-person voice well as in you get to know the character, sense the character’s personality without knowing her name.

Overall, it’s an engaging story with writing that matches its essence, but the melancholy doesn’t overpower.




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Book Review: ‘The Hate U Give’ by Angie Thomas

The Hate U GiveThe Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas looks into the Black Lives Matter movement from a personal viewpoint of a Black teen struggling in two different worlds, and it’s done perfectly.

Starr lives in Garden Heights, the predominantly Black side of the city riddled with crime, but attends Williamson Prep in the ritzy white suburb. While she balances her two personalities in these two different places, she gets caught up at a party where a shooting breaks out. She runs out with her childhood friend, Khalil, and they drive off. A police officer soon stops them for something trivial, and for showing attitude, Khalil gets shot and killed for reaching in his car for his hairbrush. The officer mistook it for a gun. And now Starr as the witness struggles with what comes after.

Starr deals with her nurse mother and ex-con father who owns a grocery store in the neighborhood; her old half-brother Seven who feels he has to take care of his other family under siege by a ganglord; her cop uncle; her white girlfriend Hailey who makes racist comments at school; insecurities around her white boyfriend Chris; and all her friends and neighbors in Garden Heights she feels she’s hurting somehow for not knowing how to approach the situation.

The novel explores a real young Black girl perspective unheard of in the young adult genre, so it was exciting to read that voice. Her voice is raw, so at first it’s wonky to get used to the slang and how she explains her world, but it comes through fast enough to the point where the reader can get devoured by what’s going on. There are a lot of elements, but it shows real-life situations for a teen girl living in two worlds and seeing her friend die at the hands of a cop. Definitely a must-read for being a genre standout and looking forward to how the book will play out on the silver screen.

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Book Review: ‘The Mothers’ by Brit Bennett

The MothersThe Mothers by Brit Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brit Bennett’s “The Mothers” takes on a controversial issue that is usually viewed as an issue between two people but can impact an entire community as the secret unravels with the passage of time.

Nadia loses her mother unexpectedly to suicide and begins to ditch school. She finds herself at a restaurant by the beach where Luke waits tables since they live in San Diego. He’s the pastor’s son at the church they grew up in, and Nadia always had a crush on him, so they begin to have a relationship though Nadia is underaged at 17 while Luke is past 18. During their steamy stint, Nadia becomes pregnant. But she has dreams to go to the University of Michigan and become a lawyer, so she decides to get an abortion. She asks Luke for the funds because he has a job, but he gets the money from an unexpected source.

They move on with their lives, but the impact of the lost child lingers in the background, especially for Luke, who lacks ambition due to football injuries and believes a child could’ve changed everything for him. Nadia acts relieved about the decision because she believes her mother’s future was destroyed by having her at a young age and that’s why her mother shot herself in the head without a suicide note. Years later, when Nadia returns home to visit her lonely father, she finds out her best friend is going to marry Luke. The secret haunts her then. How can she tell her best friend what happened? These dilemmas build up for both Nadia and Luke until they explode and ripples shake up them, their families, and the rest of the church community.

This debut novel is heartfelt with the characters dealing with the impacts of abortion, depression, suicide and other everyday issues but trying to move past them with making strives and missteps along the way. It also shows how home may not be a source of comfort because that’s where the bad things happened, and every time you return, the bad things resurface in a different way.

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