Tag: #BookReview

Posted on

In The Nook With… Because I Could Not Stop For Death

“Working with your hands will drive your hardship away.  Tears will make it worse.”

Hello Adventurers!

Long time, no write.  Between facing health challenges (which eventually led to having surgery), hunting for and moving into a new apartment, and taking courses to hopefully change careers, life has been extremely busy.  I haven’t had much time for reading.  Luckily for me I was invited to join a murder-mystery-themed book club (which I might talk about more in another post), which introduced me to today’s read.

And what a treat of a read it was!

Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower takes us to Massachusetts in the 1850s, where we follow Willa Noble, a humble and diligent young housemaid as she begins work in the home of Emily Dickinson.  When Willa’s brother dies in a stable accident and she suspects foul play, she and Emily become a somewhat unlikely investigating duo, uncovering a more complicated plot than either would have imagined.

I am so glad that I encountered this book, as there is so much to love about it.  Those of you who have read my previous posts will know that I have never been much of a murder mystery reader.  It’s not that I hate the genre; it just never actively piqued my interest before.  Last year it had been my goal to venture out and try other genres, but as always, life got in the way.  If it hadn’t been for the book club bringing this to my attention, I would never have read it, and I definitely would have missed out.

I am a sucker for a period drama, whether on the stage or the page, and this book does not disappoint.  Amanda Flower transports us to 1855 Massachusetts in such a way that you feel at home there.  It’s not that you feel that luxurious sort of ‘home’ that period pieces give you when they focus on the lives of the wealthy.  Instead, it’s more of that feeling you get when you put on an old, tattered sweater that you’ve worn a hundred times to get things done around the house.  The picture of the past painted for us feels easy to slip into, and it’s facilitated by the likeability of the protagonist. 

Willa’s disposition and her station in society make her easy to sympathize with.  I also happen to love seeing a historical figure reimagined, so I thoroughly enjoyed the portrayal of Emily Dickinson here.  The two are a pleasant pair to follow.  Emily’s forthrightness and bucking of traditional roles plays well against Willa’s more conservative and uncertain way of walking through the world, and both women are clever and sincere.  They make for great companions in this investigation.

Flower walks a bit of a delicate balance, keeping the story from becoming too dark even while dealing with the difficult subject of runaway slaves.  She focuses on the plight of our main characters while still treating the subject matter respectfully and giving it a significant presence.  And the mystery is satisfying, too.  You’re provided with enough breadcrumbs to puzzle things out as Willa and Emily go on their journey without being hit over the head.  I won’t say that I was kept guessing entirely to the end, but it was pretty close. 

Apparently this is the first in a series, so I am looking forward to the rest.

Have you read Because I Could Not Stop for Death?  What did you think?  Let me know down below in the comments, and I’ll see you on our next adventure! -Cozie

Family Friendly Content Considerations:

Recommended for Middle School and Up

Mild Warning for Light Violence and Adult Situations

Email: chat@nookandbook.club

Twitter: @TheNookAndBook

Instagram: @nook.and.book

Posted on

In The Nook With… Thoughtreal

“Desire can lead to good things, things that must be and should be pursued.  Like love.”

Welcome back adventurers!

I know that I said I would post this review Sunday evening, but I have been awake since Sunday evening working on it, so that still counts, right? Anyways, today you are in for quite the strange trip, and I don’t think the writer intended it to be as strange as it was.

Michael Gryboski’s Thoughtreal tells the story of Detective Brittany Johnson as she investigates a seemingly impossible triple homicide in Washington, DC with few clues. In the process she meets a man with incredible powers, a tragic past, and a brother that he is scared to face but will ultimately have to, despite the danger.

I was so anxious about writing this review.  You guys have no idea how long I debated with myself about whether or not I should even do it.  You see, this would be my first ‘bad’ review on the blog, and I hate writing negative things about someone’s work.  I know that this person put a lot of time and effort into their story and I don’t want to discourage that.  The concept of this tale was really intriguing to me.  The idea of two brothers going through the same terrible events and coping with them in completely different ways drew me in.  There are a few gripping sequences in the book as well, including an armed shootout that was genuinely exciting.  For the most part, though, this book turned out to be a disappointment.

At 299 pages, this book isn’t very long.  There is nothing wrong with that, of course.  When I saw the length, I was excited to read a succinct and fast-paced science fiction novel.  I am a slow reader to begin with, so short and sweet is okay with me.  But unfortunately, you don’t get a lot out of those 299 pages, in plot or character development.  All we get to learn about Brittany is that she has trouble with men and she stopped going to church.  All we learn about Adonijah and Absalom, the brothers at the center of this mystery, is that they had a specific tragedy in their past (that I won’t reveal here), they like books, and they have studied different religious philosophies.  That’s it.  The characters all feel flat.  It’s hard to engage with them.  There is more time spent on describing different physical locations and their rich history than on the characters’ inner life, motivations, and emotions, so its hard to care for them. There is an attempt at writing romance, but it feels forced, and you don’t feel enough for the characters to want to see it happen.  Aside from the relationship between the two brothers, there is little emotional development in the book at all. This not only leaves you disconnected, but it also has you perplexed, wondering why characters choose to do or not do things that would easily get them what they want.

On top of that, very little actually happens in the book. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there is very little to spoil.  There are some murder cases, a short and relatively uneventful investigation, a lot of discussion, and finally a big showdown.  It feels like such a long journey to get to the end, but once you’ve gotten there, you realize that you haven’t traveled much at all.

On a smaller note, the language itself makes the book difficult to read.  Gryboski takes more words than necessary to describe minute actions like swiping right or left on a dating app and details the same environments for us at length multiple times.  Some of the word choices seem bizarre, and the ordering of scenes can be a bit disorienting, so it’s hard to develop a flow while you’re reading. Overall, it was quite a difficult read and took me longer than usual.  Gryboski has some great ideas but they are not well fleshed out here.

Have you read Thoughtreal? Do you agree with me or was I too hard on him? Let me know in the comments below! See ya next time! -Cozie

Family Friendly Content Considerations:

Recommended for Older Teens and Adults

Violence

Mild Sexual Situations

Twitter: @TheNookAndBook

Instagram: @nook.and.book

chat@nookandbook.club

Posted on

In The Nook With… The Nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

“In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are.”

Welcome back adventurers! I hope you’ve had a good week and a great 2021 so far.  I have just finished quarantining because my family member tested positive for COVID-19, so this year is already fabulous. Today’s book was a good quarantine companion, though, so it wasn’t so bad.

Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale tells the story of 2 sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, as they navigate life in France before, during, and after World War II, each dealing with their circumstances in their own way. 

I have to admit that this book was quite a slow start for me.  I didn’t want it to be because a friend of mine recommended it and I didn’t want to tell her that I didn’t like it, but I just didn’t connect with it right away.  I am not sure if the language felt too flowery or if it was the pacing, but I just couldn’t get hooked in. 

But I have a rule for myself when it comes to any type of art that I take in.  For each type, I ask myself to stay open and absorb a certain amount of the work without truly connecting to it before I decide that it’s not for me.  With a book, I try to give it at least 1/3 of its pages before I call it quits.  In a way, I feel like a work of art is a life in its own right, and just like with a new friend you need time to get acquainted.

I am very glad I followed my rule with this book.  It was well worth it.  This story that I initially felt distant from soon became a story that I could not put down, even when my body was begging for sleep. I will warn you that this tale is not for the faint of heart, especially the second half, when our characters are deep in the midst of the war. But if you can handle the dire circumstances and if you are patient, you will be rewarded with a story so rich you can’t help but be changed.

The Nightingale shows us the day-to-day life of citizens in German-occupied France in stark, excruciating detail. We see them suffering through rationing, the destruction of home and personal property, harsh winters, constant surveillance, and the looming threat of abuse or loss, all the while trying to protect themselves and the ones they love. Hannah brings to life the fear, desperation, and hopelessness of these characters and you cannot help but feel it.  There is a heartbreaking beauty in following Vianne and Isabelle as they face impossible choices and grow to understand who they really are.  Most importantly, she reveals to us how the extreme pressures of this war affect the relationships of the characters. 

Some of the relationships took a while to sell me on.  At first I felt some indifference toward the relationship between sisters Vianne and Isabelle, mainly because to me it seemed as though the women felt somewhat indifferent toward each other. Wild child Isabelle has a more rebellious approach to the war while nervous Vianne takes to doing whatever she can not to make waves, and they clash over this. I didn’t feel much for them in the beginning, but as the story went on and more layers of their relationship are revealed, I found myself rooting for their bond to grow.  I was captivated, however, by the relationship between the sisters and their cold and distant father, not only in how they related to him, but how that relationship colored all the other relationships in their lives.  I didn’t quite enjoy the romance between Isabelle and the young man she meets while fleeing Paris.  Maybe it’s because I’m not a teenager anymore like Isabelle or because it takes a lot for me to buy into a romance in any story, but I felt as though she fell in love too fast to be believed.

Have you guys read The Nightingale?  If so, what do you think? Did you get hooked in right away or was it slowing going at first? Or did you even like it at all? Let me know in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter or Instagram. I would love to hear from you! See ya next time! – Cozie

Family Friendly Content Considerations:

Recommended for Older Teens and Adults

Violence Associated with War

Sexual Situations

Twitter: @TheNookAndBook

Instagram: @nook.and.book

chat@nookandbook.club

Posted on

In The Nook With… Kindred

Amazon.com: Kindred (0046442083690): Octavia E. Butler: Books

“My back had already begun to ache dully, and I felt dully ashamed. Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.”

Hello Adventurers!

This book was also recommended to me by a friend and after reading this one, I needed a moment. Or two. Or a couple hours.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred tells the story of Dana, a black 26-year-old woman from 1976 who finds herself pulled backward through time repeatedly to save the life of Rufus, a young white boy living in the ante bellum south. On each trip back, she becomes more and more enmeshed in the dangerous world of American slavery, and it becomes more and more difficult to maintain her sanity, or obtain her safety.

There is no comfort for you in this one.  I’m not the kind of person who believes that all stories should have a happy ending or should make you feel good.  I believe that stories should take you somewhere, and when you get there, if they’ve spoken well and you’ve listened well, they should leave you changed.  But I can say that from a couple chapters in, I found myself looking for a light at the end of the tunnel for these characters, and after a certain point, I knew that there wouldn’t really be one.

This story is hard.  That’s kind of a plain way to put it, but it’s true.  When Dana is amongst the slaves, being treated like a slave herself, we observe them speaking about the nature of their situation – how they work, what they aren’t allowed to do, what the masters will do to them – so casually.  No, casual is not quite the right word for it.  They are not at ease with their situation.  They speak in hushed tones. They have rage, and fear, and desperation, and despair.  But there is no surprise in it.  It’s very matter of fact. These emotions are everyday life to them.  And what makes this tale so different from our limited school education or many slavery stories we are told is that Dana is a free woman from a time where she is not conditioned to think of herself as a slave.  When she is thrown into slavery, she can’t readily conform to the cruel ways of the time, she struggles over and over again with what is expected of her and what is done to her in that time, and through her we experience the era with a sickening newness.  It tears the bandage that time has slowly placed over the historical wound and asks you to actually examine it, bloody and gaping. And you experience Dana’s mental, emotional, and physical battle with others and herself as the expectations of the time slowly threaten to change her.

The other element of this work that cannot go without mention is the relationships between Dana, her white husband, Rufus, and the other slaves.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but Butler does not let you get away with simply hating all the white people and loving all the black people.  Time and time again she shows you how you can have complicated, intense feelings for someone no matter how much you have been hurt by them, and how these feeling may not all be negative.  Chapter by chapter, you see these characters care for one another, be abusive, trust each other, betray each other, hate each other, and question their hate. I wouldn’t even begin to say that you will love the slaveowners of the ante bellum south, but you will see them fully.  And you will see the slaves fully. As ugly as it gets, you see them because Dana sees them. And just like Dana and her husband Kevin, you must reconcile what you see with what you’ve been taught.

There are so many more gems in this amazing story that I would love to talk about, but if I did, this review would literally never end. I think I must be a glutton for punishment, because despite the fact that there is so much anguish and fear in these pages with very little break from it, I could not put it down. It is a truly gripping page-turner, and I could not recommend it more.

Family Friendly Content Considerations:

Best for older teens and adults

Violence (including sexual violence)

Have you read this one? If so, what do you think?  Leave a comment below or hit me up at chat@nookandbook.club. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Posted on

In The Nook With… Akata Witch

Hello Adventurers!

I just read Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor, which tells the story of Sunny Nwazue, a young, American-born Nigerian albino with a difficult home life who is looking for her place in the world. We meet her at a time in her life when she is about to discover her magical powers, her history, and her role in a world that she never knew about before.

This book was recommended to me by a friend when I was looking for something new to read.  Although I will read pretty much any genre, I especially love fantasy/adventure, and this turned out to be right up my alley.

The first thing that struck me about Akata Witch was the truly rich and immersive world that Nnedi Okorafor creates.  There is such a strong, earthy feel to it, while at the same time taking you beyond the physical world into a spiritual one.  Between the exploding tungwas raining guts on the unsuspecting, the awe-inspiring and surprising spirit faces, and the spicy local treats like pepper soup, there’s plenty of sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and even smells that draw you into both the culture of Nigeria and the otherworldly space of the Leopard people. She truly amazes.

Before I read the book, I had heard many people describe it as the ‘black girl version of Harry Potter’, and I can see where they are coming from. Both stories center around a pre-teenaged protagonist being dropped into an overwhelming new world of magic, about which they know nothing. Both characters have a history that connects them to this new world which they need to learn about in order to understand who they really are.  Both books gather together a rag-tag group of kids and saddles them with the very dangerous adult problems of this other world.  And there are a number of smaller ways that parallels could be drawn (juju knives instead of wands, or leopards and lambs instead of wizards and muggles).

But I wouldn’t say that they’re the same. The world that Sunny is thrown into starts out much darker, much scarier.  The Leopard world values knowledge and rewards its community for gaining it but doing so comes at a cost.  There is no safe place for these children.  The use of magic often has difficult consequences or requires the sacrifice of personal comfort and even safety, but gaining that knowledge is not negotiable and the characters have to be willing to risk it. Both Harry Potter and Akata Witch ask these young children to face evil that is much bigger than them. But while the teachers and mentors of Hogwarts try to shield Harry from that danger, those of Leopard Knocks thrust Sunny and her friends into it full force, accepting that they have a role to play and pushing them to face it, no matter the risk.  I wrestled with this theme in the book, and honestly, I still am.  On the one hand, I felt anger at those adults for not protecting the kids as they should, but on the other hand, maybe you can’t protect someone from their journey, even if it might be perilous.

There is a truly beautiful aspect of the world of the Leopard people, however, in which the part of someone that non-magical people would consider a hinderance or deformity is actually a source of unique power for each leopard.  I won’t go into too much detail, but I felt really comforted and inspired by this, and I think many other readers will also.

Family Friendly Content Considerations: Recommended for later teens and up

Violence and Fear

Discussion of Magic/Juju

What did you think about Akata Witch? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll meet you back here with the next book. (Hint: There will be time travel.)