**Many thanks to @CeladonBooks and Peter Nichols for an ARC of this book provided via NetGalley!**
THUD.
No, that isn't the sound of a large chunk o**Many thanks to @CeladonBooks and Peter Nichols for an ARC of this book provided via NetGalley!**
THUD.
No, that isn't the sound of a large chunk of granite being hurled into a harbor. (And yes, though that has little to do with this book, that IS one of the images that came to mind when I first heard this title.)
I'm sad to say that instead, that THUD heard round the world....was the sound of my head slamming into the wall after finally (and I mean FINALLY) finishing this book.
The premise of Granite Harbor is quite simple, albeit not that unique: a serial killer has ravaged a small coastal town (yes, you guessed it: Granite Harbor) and the denizens of the town are desperate to get the maniac off the streets. In a historical landmark known as The Settlement, where reenactments take place, a body has been hung for all to see...with a cryptic message INSIDE, spilling out. (Ick.) With such a small population, there aren't many who are willing (or ABLE!) to take on the case...save for the town's only detective, Alex Brangwen. As a former novelist, he's feeling more than a bit shaky and insecure about being able to suss out the killer...but with no other volunteers, he bravely steps up to the plate to give it his best shot.
Meanwhile, the mother of one of the murder victim's friends, Isabel Doerr, might be living the single parent life...but she's more than willing to try to assist Alex in finding the perp. Her child wasn't the only friend of the victim that's close to the investigation: Alex's DAUGHTER is also part of this former trio, making these two fast allies against the evil that is lurking in the shadows of Granite Harbor. Could these two have just the insight needed to get to the bottom of this bizarre and disturbing case? Is anyone inside - or outside - of the Settlement safe? Or is the first murder only the beginning -- and perhaps an ominous warning -- of the horrors to come?
I'll be honest, it's been a minute since I had the pleasure of putting this book in the rear-view mirror...and even after the WEEKS that have passed and time to reflect and step away...I have to admit that of ALL the adjectives that come to mind?
'Pointless' is probably the first.
The story starts with a long, plodding description of some characters interacting at the Settlement before the body is found, leading me to believe that reenactment was going to be a MAJOR part of this story. Well...it isn't. I suppose it served as atmosphere (?) to put our characters here, but they could just have well been hanging out in someone's backyard for all of the effect they had on me. What authors like Stephen King do SO well when describing places like Maine is to set the scene and allow what is already a creepy environment sort of get under your skin and function as another character - always lurking, menacing, in the background. Nichols instead worked so hard to try to make this book sound Literary with a capital L that any chance for this sort of brooding creepiness to take center stage got lost amidst a sea of clipped sentences and 'fancy sounding' words.
And trust me, there is PLENTY of that to go around. We spent so much time randomly diving into backstory (like the mostly irrelevant backstory of Alex's wife, for example) that I figured it just had to be leading somewhere, and all of the attempts at highbrow wordsmithing would SOMEHOW pay off. Nichols gives us gems like "His dour, mordant Mancunian wit" AND phrases like "He noticed the play of pronounced but firm buttocks beneath the flapping vent of her jacket."...on the same page. The writing is truly all over the place, and I had a hard time keeping pace with what the 'tone' of the book was supposed to be throughout. I kept waiting for things to get scary, or interesting...but they were just sort of off-putting and strange. There's nothing wrong with a literary book that weaves a mystery in, but I'm not even sure I can call this THAT...I truly just don't know WHAT to call it.
Nichols also needs to take a page from the psychological thriller writers of the world and figure out HOW to end a chapter. The number of times this book sort of randomly trails off, seemingly mid-thought, felt like he just decided he was done writing for the day and said, "Eh, I'll just start a new chapter in the morning." I honestly just didn't get it. I'm not saying each chapter's ending needs to feel like a punctuation mark on everything preceding it, or even necessarily be leading somewhere specific...but I think most readers would agree the reading experiences FEELS much better when this happens. I didn't find the 'twists' (if you could call them that) that surprising, the perp that surprising or interesting, and the number of times I thought "is this ever going to end" was innumerable.
There is also a bit of animal cruelty that is pretty horrible (even for me, and as much as I adore animals I usually am able to stomach reading fictional stories about such things) and yet AGAIN...I just questioned WHY. There is a fine line between disturbing and distasteful, and Nichols all but steamrolled that division here. I think what bothers me most about it is that most of the ickiest parts of the book felt sort of gratuitous and frankly, didn't serve the plot at all. There is even a section of the book where characters have bowel movements on another character's face in order to degrade them...so you've been warned....more
**Many thanks to NetGalley, @CeladonBooks, and Ursula Villarreal-Moura for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 3.26!!**
Can you imagine how it wou**Many thanks to NetGalley, @CeladonBooks, and Ursula Villarreal-Moura for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 3.26!!**
Can you imagine how it would feel to get close to your favorite author...to consider them a friend, a mentor...or even something more?
It's been many years, but Tatum is still reconciling her feelings about JUST such a situation. Years back, in New York City, she had the fortune/misfortune of building a relationship of sorts with the enigmatic, 'brilliant', Mateo (also known as M) Dominguez...and the two had a bond she still can't fully explain. Although life has taken her to Chile, and she is happily dating a woman named Vera, there's just something about the unfinished business of her past that pulls her back into her memories...and to leads her to reflect the messy, complicated nature of the relationship that helped to shape the woman she is today.
But when a reporter comes a-calling, asking for Tatum's corroboration on #MeToo related charges being filed against Dominguez, her reminiscing takes a different turn...and she's forced to revisit the complex, beautiful, and sometimes dark nature of the relationship between 'teacher' and student...and just HOW MUCH of what went on between them had an air of impropriety about it. How much was manipulation...and how much was pure affection? How could what started as a simple fan letter from adoring reader to adored writer turn into something impossible to deny? Was Tatum blind to her OWN manipulation then...AND will she still allow herself to gloss over the true nature of Mateo...even now?
Grooming, #MeToo, and stories of inappropriate relationships between teacher/student, fan/idol, and mentor/mentee are nothing new, but have certainly seen a resurgence in the literary landscape as of late. The exploration of power dynamics, and perhaps the even more sinister power of gaslighting and manipulation is not only a hot button issue in society, but is ripe for exploration on the page, as authors look to peel back the curtain on the dynamics between the manipulator and their prey, and of course to illuminate how EACH of these situations is far from black and white...at least, in the eyes of the characters. Books like the absolutely stunning My Dark Vanessa and others I've read in the past year or two, including My Last Innocent Year, have done this beautifully.
But when it came to this novel, it felt more like reading an essay that COULD have been really interesting...but was unfortunately missing a thesis sentence; I just couldn't fully grasp the point.
Villareal-Moura structures most of the novel as a letter from Tatum to Mateo, revisiting the events of their past in great detail, while cutting back to the present day in Chile intermittently. To be honest, I'm not really sure why much of the present day narrative was needed at all: we don't learn enough about Tatum's current partner, Vera, to be too invested in her, and the general #MeToo conversation and allegations with the other victim sort of play out in the background as well. Although it seemed clear from early on (at least, to me) that Mateo is Not the Greatest Guy, Tatum is just SO obsessed with his writing that she basically ignores all of his character flaws and leans into the hero worship.
At first, I assumed this was going down the (somewhat obvious) path toward romantic entanglement, and it did...but only to an extent. This sort of incongruity made it very confusing as a reader to understand the conflict: it almost just seemed like Mateo was a friend that Tatum had an unhealthy amount of admiration for, rather than a participant in a 'leading' relationship that wasn't going to go anywhere...so it made it hard for ME to grasp why she couldn't just let it go.
This book is also on the slower side, which is always tough for me anyway...but throw in a plot with an ending that didn't seem to 'fit' the whole tone of the story, and it just felt like I'd spent a lot of time waiting to exhale rather than to breathe a sigh of satisfaction. I kept hoping that along the way something was going to happen to make me feel more connected to Tatum, but aside from her love of The Bell Jar, I didn't feel like we had too much in common...and frankly, the years didn't seem to have made her much wiser either. By the end of the book, I honestly didn't care if Mateo faced the consequences of his actions when it came to her or not. Outside of his literary prowess and blatant manipulation, there wasn't much there to like, and he didn't quite have the balance of likable-yet-detestable that is necessary for a character like this to be BELIEVABLE...and this left the third act conflict (and predictable behavior) unsatisfying.
And though I'd hoped to come out of this read feeling something 'like happiness'...I think what I felt was a lot more 'like' disappointment.
**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Ray Bradbury for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!**
To Harry Potter fans and Shakespeare afi**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Ray Bradbury for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!**
To Harry Potter fans and Shakespeare aficionados alike: I would wager these words in this title are MORE than a bit familiar. It's hard to even read it aloud without thinking of some of the most enduring works of our time, and to say this book is legendary in the genre is to do it an injustice. Often considered Bradbury's best and most enticing tale, Something Wicked This Way Comes COULD have been just another dark, macabre story...but managed to influence the pantheon in ways NOBODY saw coming!
The tale itself is fairly simple: two 13 year old boys, Jim and Will, are the best of friends and just plugging along in their day to day lives in their small Illinois town, Green Town. On one particularly eerie autumn night, however, the boys discover that an eerie carnival, Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, is rolling into town...and it's like no carnival they've ever seen before. With a haunted carousel, terrifying mirror maze, and a creepy 'ringmaster' Mr. Dark at its helm, Jim and Will MAY have landed in the middle of more than they bargained for...but can Will's father Charles Halloway save them with a bit of well-timed wisdom? Or will the forces of evil be too strong and unrelenting to let the boys make it until the circus once again rolls out of town?
I understand why this book was influential and popular and yet, at the same time, learning more about it in the second half and its origin story illuminated exactly WHY this book didn't quite work for me.
In short...it started as a screenplay.
Of course, in subsequent years film adaptations popped up regardless...but this finished product of a novel still had the ring of 'meant for the screen' coloring all of its pages, and combined with some portions of overly heavy prose...this book took me entirely TOO long to read. You can tell it was originally meant for a somewhat wide audience, with somewhat short chapters and of course our two adolescent protagonists at the helm...but once the allusions to religion, et al got a bit heavy, I had trouble losing myself fully in the creepiness of the premise. Aside from the GENIUS carousel bit (and that part is definitely memorable), the weird and wonderful setting descriptors got a bit long, and many of the passages a bit verbose for my personal taste so it took what could have been a lighter read and made it drag quite a bit.
The flip side to this, however, is that this particular edition has a fascinating 'epilogue' of sorts, with essays from other authors and the history of the book, as well as excerpts from original drafts included and THIS expository content alone was worth the price of admission....more
**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker for an ARC of this book!! Now available as of 10.3!!****Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker for an ARC of this book!! Now available as of 10.3!!**
Rumack: "Can you fly this plane, and land it?" Ted Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." Rumack: "I am serious... and don't call me Shirley."
Whether you're a casual fan who may have heard the above exchange in passing, or a diehard who giggles nonstop when Rex Kramer launches into his rambling speech to no one at the end of the film ("Do you know what it's like to fall in the mud and get kicked... in the head... with an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does. It never happens. Sorry, Ted, that's a dumb question... skip that.", which coincidentally was my Twitter byline for AGES) and have seen this movie more times than you can even count, the crazy-but-true story of how the ICONIC film Airplane! was made is the behind-the-scenes deep dive you never knew you needed...until now!
Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker (or Team ZAZ, as they are affectionately called) take you on a bumpy ride as twisted and unpredictable as the airplane's journey itself. From their early years in the midwest, to their Kentucky Fried Theater live show to the Kentucky Fried MOVIE...and on to the MASSIVE success of Airplane! itself, this book covers a LOT of ground--some already tread in the film's commentary track, but with in-depth perspectives and hilarious behind the scenes stories that haven't come to light until now. And most of it is fun, once you get into the rhythm of the book.
However, this takes a while...so if you're a fan of linear progression, be prepared to be patient.Whereas most memoirs etc. might take you from point A to point B in someone's life in pretty straightforward, chronological way, this book kind of turns that concept on its head. We pop from the lives of ZAZ to making of the film, then back in time 10 years, then forward 10 years to learning about Leslie Nielsen, then back to meeting Stephen Stucker and working with him in Kentucky Fried Theater, and then forward again...etc. With all of the turbulence, I was half expecting to see the Fasten Seatbelts (or Putanadaseatbeltz, if you prefer ...more
**Many thanks to @CeladonBooks and Henry Winkler for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 10.31!**
"I wasn't trying to be better than anyone else. **Many thanks to @CeladonBooks and Henry Winkler for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 10.31!**
"I wasn't trying to be better than anyone else. I was just trying to be my best self. Which in itself was problematic, because I was, in my head, always a little boy. Without any real handle on who my adult self was.
What a strange secret to be carrying around when you're supposed to be the coolest guy in the world."
There are very few actors who can say they developed and portrayed a character that literally became its own archetype, the epitome of cool itself: but Henry Winkler can. But do you know the man BEHIND the effortlessly hip, chill, and commanding Fonz? Henry's here to tell you his life story...and he isn't afraid to peel back the curtain.
Growing up under two strict parents who demanded nothing short of perfection from their children, Henry's journey towards self-actualization was a long one. Henry has severe dyslexia, but in his younger years this affliction helped to color his parents' opinion of his intelligence (they even called him a nickname in his childhood years that translates to "Dumb Dog"...which was so heartbreaking to read! ...more
**Many thanks to @CeladonBooks and @AlexMichaelides for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 1.16!!**
"I know what I will do is wrong. But stronger**Many thanks to @CeladonBooks and @AlexMichaelides for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 1.16!!**
"I know what I will do is wrong. But stronger than my conscience is my Fury." -Euripedes, Medea
Meet Elliot Chase. He's about to tell you a story about his life...but he's going to tell it to you his way, in his time, and on his terms...and it's up to YOU to decide if he's leaving anything out...or if he's even telling you the truth. This tale involves a cast of characters you might think you already know, with glamorous, A-List movie star Lana Farrar at its center. Lana lives a bit of a reclusive life, but every year around Easter, she invites some of her nearest and dearest friends to her private island in Greece for respite and camraderie.
On this particular year though...the privacy this island affords turns out to be deadly...and once a body turns up, this formerly tight-knit group wonders who they can truly trust. With so many suspects in one place, and lies and secrets swirling furiously around them...who will end up dead? Who will live to tell Lana's tale? And by the time the 'final curtain' comes crashing down...will ANYONE be left standing to take that final curtain call?
First of all, I have to say aside from novellas, graphic novels, and perhaps a short story or two, it has been TWO YEARS (prior to the birth of my lovely and wonderful son) that I have finished a thriller in ONE DAY. The fact that I picked this up on a Sunday morning and COULD NOT go to bed at night that evening until I'd finished it speaks to the absolutely compelling nature of this one. Where Michaelides fell down with the Maidens, he bounced back with a VENGEANCE in The Fury! Unlike his last effort, The Fury's formatting and pacing is SPOT on. I never felt compelled to read a chapter just because it was short, but because I just HAD to know which way the narrative was going to turn next. There is a certain alluring nature about this read, a sort of sinister charm that oozes from Elliot...you never know QUITE where he's going with his story, but when he begs you to remain on your metaphorical bar stool while he buys you another drink...you feel compelled to DO it.
And that brings me to the second reason this novel was so successful: it is a love song to the theatre, where Michaelides presents the story as a play, with all of the gravitas and panache you'd expect from a Henry James or Arthur Miller...but with a touch of Greek tragedy AND a gentle nod to Agatha Christie thrown in. The book is even split into Acts, blurring the line even further between fact and fiction, theatricality and practicality. There's no doubt that your journey is being curated by Elliot, and presented in a certain way for a certain purpose...but should you envy him? Fear him? Pity him? Trust me when I say you'll be changing your mind over and over again with each revelation...and a week after finishing this one, the jury's STILL out in my mind! ...more
**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and @CarolynMacklerBooks for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 6.27!**
Accord**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and @CarolynMacklerBooks for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 6.27!**
According to recent research, it is estimated that stay-at-home moms provide around 98 HOURS of unpaid, unseen, invisible labor a week; some estimates are even higher than this.
...But what if there were a way for moms/wives to FINALLY get paid?
Lauren, Madeline, and Sophie are three best friends with a lot in common...and now they can add one more shared attribute to the list: they are all divorced. After a sneaking suspicion that something was just off, mom of twins Lauren finds something very disturbing on his phone: her hubby is paying for sexual satisfaction elsewhere. Feeling numb, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back in her marriage, and Lauren is ready for a divorce.
At Lauren's divorce celebration with her two besties, the women lament the pains of the mental load and how much they do for their spouses that not only goes unappreciated, but entirely unseen: everything from keeping track of doctor's appointments to party planning to making sure their kids have the clean clothes they need before school on Monday morning. After a few round of cocktails, the group jokingly decides that they need to find a way to make this free labor a little less free and propose the Wife App, an app where women (and men, and any interested gender!) can sign up to be a Wife and command top dollar for these undesirable tasks.
It sounds like nothing more than a passing fancy at first, Lauren gets some legs (and some finances) behind the project and before they know it, the app is up and running...and has a growing customer base! Madeline starts to resent being a wife for pay, however, as it cuts into her free-wheeling Samantha Jones-like escapades...AND her once tight-knit relationship with her daughter is threatened when her ex-husband across the pond wants to bring her to London for an entire YEAR. Sophie tries not to feel FOMO when she looks at her husband's beautiful new SO, Beatrice and family...but are her feelings MORE than just feelings of jealousy?
As the three women navigate their individual struggles and fight to keep up with the app's demand, can they HANDLE the extra burden of being wives for hire...and is the bountiful cash incentive enough to keep them going? Can these friendships stand the test of time and added pressure...or are they the next relationships destined to fall apart?
I'll be honest, I was worried at first that the concept of The Wife App might read as a bit silly, much like many books centered around social media, influencers, or the like. But what became quickly apparent after the first couple of chapters in this book is that these are three dynamic, interesting women who, despite their life circumstances as NYC dwellers, were WHOLLY relatable..and wholly lovable! The POV cycles neatly between the narratives of Sophie, Madeline, and Lauren, and the characters never felt too similar to one another and were equally enticing and fun to read. Although I personally struggled the most with Madeline, I even grew to care about her struggles by story's end, despite the occasional disconnect.
But characters aside, the best aspect of this book is its premise, and despite the mild suspension of disbelief required, Mackler did SUCH an expert job covering the depth, breadth, and impact of all of this invisible labor...and how it not only affects women mentally, but physically and emotionally as well. The characters didn't bemoan their plight, but rather, just gave it a voice, and sadly, the people who probably need to read this most will never pick it up. However, despite the topic, this book is full of laughter and fun to balance out all of the heavier discussions about divorce and the emotions that follow such a dramatic shift. You genuinely root for the women to succeed AND the app to succeed, while realizing the two are not mutually exclusive.
Despite the room for it, Mackler never resorts to man bashing or making jokes at anyone's expense: she also takes the care to include some representation from the LGBT community, and to make it clear that this is not an app designed to include romantic 'favors' or entanglements. I appreciated the balanced approach, and it gave further credence to an idea that is a bit fantastic in some respects. This was a bit SATC, but mom style,and any book that gets me this invested is one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend!
There have been books popping up aplenty in the 'females take their revenge' subgenre lately (many thrillers, some not) but it was a joy to find one that was simply 'females use their VOICES' to send a message loud and clear: we all deserve to get paid for the work that we do...and if we're going to bear the brunt of the invisible labor, we STILL deserve to be seen. ...more
**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Kyle Dillon Hertz for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 8.1!**
"There are**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Kyle Dillon Hertz for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 8.1!**
"There are some things that once you've lost, you never get back. Innocence is one. Love is another. I guess childhood is a third.“ - John Marsden
Dylan is 2 for 3: he lost his childhood AND innocence as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Vincent, a man who promised him love when he turned 18 in the form of a proposed marriage. Of course, this never came to pass, and all of the men who took advantage of Dylan still haunt him...but none have been brought to justice. To make matters worse, once the statute of limitations has passed, prosecution seems even further out of reach. Dylan is struggling to make life work with his husband, Moans, and tries not to think about the horrors of his past, as though reliving the trauma will make his current existence come crashing down.
When a new law is passed, however, the Child Victims Act seems like a beacon of hope: Dylan now has a one year window to sue his abusers. But in order to move forward, he's got to go back...and reliving some of his trauma takes him down a dangerous road. Will Dylan keep his secrets from the past a secret...AND keep his marriage intact? Will justice be swift..or is this chance at recourse too little, too late?
Anytime you're dealing with trauma...things get messy. Feelings are complex animals, no matter how you slice it, and I went into this read expecting to feel a sort of gut-wrenching empathy for our main character, as he rediscovered his past and attempted to find a future. I expected there to be descriptions and perhaps even graphic depictions of some of the abhorrent acts committed in his past.
What I didn't expect? Page after page after page of messy, overly descriptive, and at times NEEDLESSLY graphic stories of the MC's sex life. And this didn't focus solely on the events from his past, even...MUCH of this book is set in the present, which means long and wordy and frankly GROSS passages that were hardly even necessary. For instance...if someone is performing bodily functions in someone else's orifice, hearing about it once is already too much. I DO NOT need to keep reading things like that over and over. I almost DNFd this book soon after starting for this very reason, but I kept hoping things would get better...and sad to say, they did not.
Despite the blurb and what you are led to believe about this story, Dylan doesn't really even begin to fully tackle his issues until the book is 80% OVER...which means for the duration, you are mainly treated to all of the aforementioned loose behavior he is currently exhibiting in his life with husband Moans...and some other men too. (Sidenote: WHY would you call a character Moans? Just weird. ...more
**Many thanks to Scribner and Jesmyn Ward for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 10.24!**
Lush and lyrical, sweeping and sorrowful, and tragic**Many thanks to Scribner and Jesmyn Ward for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 10.24!**
Lush and lyrical, sweeping and sorrowful, and tragically beautiful!
Annis and her mother had always planned their escape: it was only a matter of time. Growing up ensconced in the clutches of slavery, Annis' mother has given her daughter every bit of knowledge she has tucked away, from what mushrooms could be dangerous to how to use a spear. Much of this knowledge came down from yet another generation...Annis' mother Mama Aza. Athough Mama Aza has long since passed away, her spirit seems to linger, and when Annis' mother gets sold, Annis clings to the memory and strength of the women in her lineage.
Before long, Annis herself gets sold...and so begins a long trek that will take her from the Carolinas to New Orleans to end in Louisiana. With her friend Safi no longer by her side and her mother and grandmother so far out of reach, Annis begins to despair...until she hears voices in the trees and whispers in the water. She comes to learn this is the spirit of her warrior grandmother Mama Aza incarnate, urging her both to continue and at times of her greatest adversity to give in and "descend", in the words of Dante Allegheri. Can Annis discover the deep and dark secrets the earth and its spirits hold...or like her grandmother, will her indomitable spirit be forced to fade in the shadow of unspeakable cruelty around her?
Although there is plenty that remains unclear to me after finishing this book, one thing was evident after about the first 20%: Jesmyn Ward is a stunning writer. Her prose is full to bursting with lyricism, a rhythm that sways you, and characters who instantly draw you in to their worlds. I now know why so many have gravitated towards her books and why Ward has been a National Book Award winner, the YOUNGEST ever winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and MacArthur Fellow: no writer has those sort of accolades dropped in their lap. Ward's writing is effortless, searing with sadness and yet soaring with hope.
So much of this tale is bleak, as resource after resource gets taken away from Annis and she endures one hardship after another...with only spirits to guide her way. At first, I felt like I kept up well with Mama Aza as she popped in and out of the narrative. As time wore on, though, this journey does ascend a bit into muddled and muddy territory. Annis has a love interest that I thought would stick around until the end of the story...but this plot thread got cut short. Once Annis made her way out of New Orleans and on to her last destination, I felt the story took a turn from the balanced approach it had in the beginning and got into more of a transcendental bent that felt more inaccessible and less engaging. I had a harder time discerning Ward's carefully constructed allegory and longed for the 'simpler' feel the story had at the beginning, of the enduring love and strength of the women in Annis' family.
Despite this dip in the third act and an ending that felt slightly less satisfying than I had hoped, Annis' journey is one worth taking. As Ward herself states on the cover of my advanced copy by way of introduction, "It is difficult to walk south with Annis. Her narrative descends from one hellscape to another, but I promise that if you come with me, you will rise. It will be worth the walk, worth the walking."
And when it comes to Let Us Descend, I can confirm that it is worth the walk, worth the walking, and worth the WAIT, indeed.
4 stars, rounded up from 3.5
Nominated for Best Historical Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards!...more
**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Lara Love Hardin for a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 8.1!**
"Escape w**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Lara Love Hardin for a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 8.1!**
"Escape was always my real addiction, the one true high. Books were just my gateway drug. Sex just got me pregnant. Food just made me puffy. Vicodin just helped me pretend I was happy. The heroin, though, that gave me everything I had ever wanted--peace, joy, escape.
Until it didn't.
And everything I knew and everyone I loved was gone.”
Lara Love Hardin was the model Mom Next Door: good job, fancy house, lovely family. Until one day she finds herself leading a very different life, stealing credit cards out of her neighbors' mailboxes to help fund her drug addiction. Hardin would do anything for her kids, so she attempts to shield them from this lifestyle and outrun the law. But when the cops show up at her door, she ends up convicted of 32 felonies...and set to potentially lose custody of her youngest son forever.
The year in confinement passes slowly for Hardin, but she struggles to find her way and her place in the hierarchy of the jail, eventually earning the moniker "Mama Love." But with her opportunity to hold onto custody hanging in the balance and a certain man in her life encouraging her to go right back to drugs, can Mama Love embrace the possibilities and potential of a brand new life? Or is the pull of addiction enough to keep her held tight in its deadly snare?
I knew very little about Hardin going into this book, but by the end of the first chapter, that feeling was but a fleeting memory. Hardin is a deep and reflective soul, a word nerd, and she has struggled with insecurity and feeling out of place for much of her life. In other words? We have a LOT in common...and I was INSTANTLY enraptured by her story. This memoir is the kind of read that ALMOST feels like fiction, because the narrative was SO compelling. Hardin takes the reader on such an intense journey in such a short amount of time, and as a reader, you genuinely have no idea where she's headed next!
Hardin explores the shame and stigma that society places on those who have been incarcerated AND systemic problems surrounding recidivism all while never holding back the good, bad, and ugly of her own journey, and she does so with a beautiful vulnerability that will touch your heart. Her journey isn't linear, and neither is pain: but when I tell you it ends with the Dalai Lama and Oprah...well, you have to read it to believe it!...more
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