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687 reviews

Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice by Elene Lam, Chanelle Gallant

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emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was published in the US on November 12, 2024 by Haymarket Books.

Few books dismantle dominant narratives with as much precision and urgency as Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice by Elene Lam and Chanelle Gallant. This is not a book about victimhood. It is a book about power—who has it, who doesn’t, and how the state weaponizes law, borders, and morality to control racialized, migrant sex workers under the guise of protection. It exposes the violence of the so-called rescue industry, the dangerous conflation of sex work and trafficking, and the carceral feminist frameworks that ultimately harm the very people they claim to save.

Lam and Gallant refuse easy binaries, insisting that sex work is neither inherently empowering nor degrading—it is labor. And like all labor, its conditions are determined by structures of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and colonialism. The authors demonstrate how sex work, for many migrants, is not a last resort but a strategic choice, one often safer and better-paying than other exploitative industries available to them. Yet, because of the racialized criminalization of both migration and sex work, migrant sex workers are treated as disposable—targeted by police, denied housing, and placed at constant risk of deportation. The state, not the work itself, creates the greatest danger.

The book excels in its analysis of the intersection between sex work and border politics, revealing how immigration laws are used to regulate and punish laboring bodies. The authors meticulously deconstruct anti-trafficking policies, exposing how they function less as protective measures and more as tools of surveillance, exclusion, and incarceration. Through case studies and firsthand accounts, they reveal the everyday realities of migrant sex workers—resisting, surviving, and organizing in the face of relentless criminalization.

One of the book’s most powerful interventions is its critique of white feminism’s role in the anti-sex work movement. Lam and Gallant illuminate the racialized moral panic surrounding sex work, tracing it back to colonial histories of controlling and policing women of color’s sexuality. White feminists, they argue, often uphold a framework of rescue that reinforces carceral power, echoing the same paternalistic logic as imperialist interventions that have come to dominate our world. The book rejects this model entirely, aligning itself instead with abolitionist and decolonial movements that prioritize self-determination over state intervention.

Not Your Rescue Project does not just challenge misconceptions about sex work—it demands a complete reorientation of how we think about justice. It calls for decriminalization, not tighter restrictions. It advocates for solidarity, not saviorism. It insists on listening to sex workers rather than speaking over them. At its core, this book is an indictment of the state’s role in manufacturing violence against migrant sex workers—and a call to action for those willing to fight for a world where justice is not defined by policing and punishment, but by autonomy and collective care.

📖 Recommended For: Readers invested in abolitionist and decolonial perspectives; those interested in the intersections of sex work, migration, and criminalization; activists, organizers, and anyone challenging carceral feminism; fans of Harsha Walia.

🔑 Key Themes: Sex Work as Labor, Criminalization of Migration, Anti-Trafficking Myths, Carceral Feminism vs. Abolition, State Violence and Surveillance, Worker-Led Resistance.
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Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together by Dean Spade

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informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was released in the US on January 14th, 2025 by Algonquin Books. 

Dean Spade’s Love in a Fucked Up World is not a self-help book in the traditional sense—there are no quick fixes or easy affirmations to soothe our romantic woes. Instead, Spade offers something more valuable: a radical reimagining of love and relationships, grounded in activism, accountability, and collective care. This is an anti-self-help book, one that interrogates the myths we’ve been sold about romance and urges us to step off the relationship escalator in favor of something more liberatory.

Spade meticulously deconstructs the cultural scripts that tell us one person should meet all our needs, that romantic love is the pinnacle of human connection, and that marriage and nuclear families are “natural” structures rather than social constructs designed to uphold systems of power. By tracing how these ideas have evolved over time, Spade reveals how they function to isolate us, keeping us tethered to capitalist fantasies of scarcity, consumption, and individualism. The book challenges readers to decenter romance, making space for deeper forms of care and intimacy beyond monogamous or hierarchical partnerships.

What sets this book apart is Spade’s ability to weave together structural analysis with deeply personal reflections and actionable exercises. Self-inquiry prompts throughout the text encourage readers to interrogate their own conditioning, expectations, and attachment patterns. Spade asks hard questions about why we desire what we desire, why the new relationship phase inevitably fades, and how we can move beyond cycles of conflict and punishment into more value-aligned ways of relating.

A particularly striking section examines how capitalism and technology teach us to numb ourselves, ensuring that we neither resist the horrors of the world nor stop chasing the impossible highs that consumer culture promises. In contrast, Spade calls for emotional presence and accountability—not just within romantic relationships but across all forms of intimacy. Through a transformative justice lens, the book offers strategies for conflict resolution, boundary-setting, and navigating consent, even (or especially) when the answer is “maybe.”

Spade’s prose is sharp and urgent, but never detached. The writing is direct, analytical, and deeply reflective, seamlessly blending political critique with relational introspection. Repetition, rhetorical questions, and declarative statements drive home key insights, making the book both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant. This is a text that does not just critique existing structures but provides a roadmap for building something better.

Ultimately, Love in a Fucked Up World is a call to action: to unlearn, to resist, and to reimagine love outside the constraints of capitalism, patriarchy, and isolation. It is an invitation to cultivate relationships rooted in interdependence, solidarity, and care—ones that nourish rather than deplete, that liberate rather than confine. Spade doesn’t just ask us to love differently; he challenges us to love in a way that transforms the world itself.

📖 Recommended For: Readers invested in radical relationship models, transformative justice, and the intersections of activism and intimacy; those questioning the romance myth and seeking liberatory approaches to love and connection; fans of adrienne maree brown, bell hooks, and Mia Mingus.

🔑 Key Themes: Decentering Romance, Mutual Aid and Interdependence, The Impact of Capitalism on Intimacy, Transformative Justice in Relationships.
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The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole

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challenging emotional reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released on February 4, 2025 from Tin House Books in the US.

Olufunke Grace Bankole’s The Edge of Water is a lush and haunting intergenerational saga that explores the tension between fate and self-determination, weaving the lives of three Nigerian women across continents and decades. Esther, her daughter Amina, and her granddaughter Laila navigate the weight of tradition, migration, and survival, their stories punctuated by the voice of Iyanifa, an Ifa priestess who serves as a guide. With lyrical prose and a deeply introspective narrative, Bankole crafts a tale that is at once intimate and expansive, honoring the resilience of women who forge their own paths despite the burdens of history.

The novel opens with Esther’s teenage years in Ibadan, where a traumatic event binds her to a life she did not choose. Forced into marriage with Sani after he assaults her, Esther loses her first child, endures years of abuse, and eventually escapes with her daughter Amina. Their journey is marked by struggle and perseverance, as Esther builds a life from the ground up, finding stability in her catering business while clinging to the hope of a different future for Amina. But even as Esther breaks free from one set of constraints, she cannot help but impose others—her pragmatism shaping the expectations she places on her daughter.

Amina, ever the dreamer, sees America as an escape, a place where she might carve out an identity beyond the rigid expectations of marriage and duty. Yet, even as she reaches for independence, disillusionment follows. Bankole captures the painful complexities of migration—the promise of reinvention shadowed by struggle. Amina’s reunion with Joseph, the man her mother once loved, and the birth of her daughter, Laila, offer glimpses of hope, but the devastation of Hurricane Katrina alters the course of their lives. The novel does not flinch in its portrayal of loss
, particularly as Amina’s life is claimed by the chaos of the storm, leaving Laila to be raised in the fragments left behind
.

What sets The Edge of Water apart is its fluid, almost ethereal storytelling, where the past and present blur, and fate lingers as an omnipresent force. Bankole’s prose is rich with sensory detail, evoking the smell of Nigerian markets, the weight of humid New Orleans air, the ache of longing that stretches across oceans. The interludes from Iyanifa offer a spiritual and philosophical dimension, grounding the novel in Yoruba cosmology and the unbreakable ties between the living and the ancestors.

At its heart, this is a novel about the choices women make in the face of societal constraints, about the dreams that persist despite hardship, and the legacy of love and sacrifice that travels through generations. Bankole does not offer easy resolutions—Esther’s faith in destiny is both vindicated and complicated, Amina’s independence is both triumphant and tragic. But in the novel’s closing moments, as Laila returns to Nigeria to meet her grandmother, there is a sense of continuity, of a story still unfolding.

I was slightly disoriented at the start, but once I reached Part 2, I could not put it down. The Edge of Water is a stunning meditation on migration, motherhood, and fate; I was surprised by how much I loved this one and can’t recommend it enough to fans of diverse literary fiction!

📖 Recommended For: Fans of intergenerational family sagas, lyrical and introspective prose, and narratives exploring migration and identity; readers interested in Yoruba spirituality, mother-daughter relationships, and the complexities of diaspora; lovers of Akwaeke Emezi or Yaa Gyasi.

🔑 Key Themes: Fate vs. Self-Determination, Cultural Heritage and Diaspora, Motherhood and Inheritance, Faith and Spirituality, Survival and Resilience.
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Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe

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adventurous funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Amanda Lee Koe’s Sister Snake is a sharp-fanged, lyrical retelling of “The Legend of the White Snake” that slithers between myth and modernity, immortality and the mundane. With thrumming prose, Koe unspools the tale of Emerald and Su, two snake sisters who have shed their scales for human skin—but not their hunger.

Emerald, the green snake, is a restless sugar baby navigating the neon-lit corridors of New York’s Upper East Side. Jaded, immortal, and unapologetically feral, she siphons qi from her wealthy clients, feeding off their life force in a way that makes capitalism feel almost honest. Her sister Su, the white snake, has spent the last decade in Singapore, subsuming herself into human life with Botox and marriage to Paul, a powerful politician. Su has renounced her immortal self, believing civilization to be a salve, while Emerald scoffs at the idea that humanity is anything but a fragile masquerade. “Assimilate all you want,” Emerald tells her, “but don’t pass your self-loathing off to me.”

The tension between the sisters is as hypnotic as it is heartbreaking. Su’s desire for stability is haunted by past trauma—a violent assault by male snakes that first brought the sisters together—while Emerald’s rejection of human norms is less reckless than it seems. The novel hums with a desperate yearning: for safety, for connection, for something real in a world of artifice. When Su discovers a video of Emerald, in snake form, being shot by police in Central Park, she boards a plane to New York without hesitation. What follows is a reunion laced with betrayal, murder, and the reawakening of long-buried instincts.

Koe’s storytelling is mesmeric, weaving visceral imagery with biting humor. She writes with the sharpness of a fang sinking into flesh, making every line pulse with urgency or dark humor. The novel wrestles with identity and transformation, asking: How much of ourselves can we abandon before we become unrecognizable? Is survival worth the cost of erasure? Su’s carefully constructed human life begins to unravel, especially when she discovers she is pregnant and fears the child will be born a snake. Her decision to terminate the pregnancy is complicated by a primal, unexpected protectiveness, and as the sisters return to Singapore, the boundaries between past and present, self and other, human and beast blur beyond recognition.

Like Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Sister Snake is a feral, feminist meditation on the wildness that civilization tries to tame. Koe unflinchingly critiques conformity, particularly within the rigid expectations placed on women. Su and Emerald are bound not just by blood but by the shared burden of navigating a world that demands their submission. But where Su seeks invisibility, Emerald demands to be seen, sharp teeth and all. Their love is bruising and relentless, shifting between tenderness and violence, much like the ever-changing nature of identity itself.

For readers who revel in lush prose, mythic reinvention, and stories of women who refuse to be caged, Sister Snake is a must-read. It coils around you, tight and unrelenting, until you feel its stinging bite.

📖 Recommended For: Fans of mythic retellings and feminist speculative fiction; readers drawn to themes of transformation, sisterhood, and rebellion; lovers of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder or Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.

🔑 Key Themes: Identity and Assimilation, Primal Instincts vs. Civilization, Sisterhood and Betrayal, Power and Survival.
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Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It's really hard to critique this book because I respect Nicola as a writer so much, and it's also difficult to verbalize why I didn't like it. So, I leave you with my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend's review: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/0bf6f308-99aa-4463-b180-acd5ed0f1d52. They said everything I would've said but better!

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted ARC. 
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Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

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adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was released on January 14th, 2025 by William Morrow in the US. 

Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author is a breathtaking exploration of identity, autonomy, and the power of storytelling. At its heart is Zelu, a Nigerian American, paraplegic author grappling with the intersections of her disability, creative ambition, and cultural identity. Interwoven with chapters from her bestselling debut Rusted Robots and interviews with her family, Zelu’s journey reflects an intimate yet universal struggle for self-determination amidst societal and familial pressures.

Zelu’s character is richly drawn, capturing her frustrations, vulnerabilities, and triumphs with poignant realism. Her decision to pivot from literary fiction and academia to science fiction after a cascade of personal and professional setbacks feels both inevitable and revolutionary. Rusted Robots—a story of self-aware machines rebuilding a post-human Earth—is a perfect metaphor for Zelu’s life, filled with echoes of her quest to reconstruct and define herself after the life-altering trauma of the childhood accident that left her paralyzed. The narrative deftly explores how Zelu’s paraplegia shapes her sense of independence and identity, particularly through her relationship with her wheelchair, autonomous vehicles, and the exoskeleton study she participates in.

The novel’s nuanced approach to disability is deeply resonant. Okorafor parallels the empowering and dehumanizing aspects of assistive technology, crafting a story that acknowledges the layered complexity of navigating the world as a disabled person. Zelu’s swimming scenes, where she feels free and untethered, are especially striking, offering a reprieve from her struggles and underscoring her profound resilience.

While Zelu’s personal arc is captivating, the chapters from Rusted Robots add a rich meta-textual layer. Ankara’s journey from isolation to leadership as a Hume robot mirrors Zelu’s quest for recognition and autonomy, emphasizing the transformative potential of community and storytelling. The novel’s exploration of identity—be it racial, cultural, or technological—is seamlessly integrated into a larger conversation about belonging and self-expression.

That said, the novel’s ambition occasionally works against it. The sprawling scope, particularly in the final third, leaves some plot threads unresolved and could have benefited from tighter editing. Still, these minor issues do little to detract from the book’s emotional and intellectual impact.

Okorafor’s prose is as introspective and emotive as ever, blending sharp social critique with poetic reflections on identity, family, and resilience. Death of the Author is an extraordinary achievement—a layered, deeply human story that cements Okorafor as a master storyteller and a beacon of contemporary speculative fiction. This is a book to savor, ponder, and revisit.

📖 Recommended For: Fans of introspective speculative fiction, disability justice narratives, and multi-layered storytelling; readers interested in the intersections of technology and identity; N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, and Rivers Solomons readers.

🔑 Key Themes: Identity and Autonomy, Cultural Heritage and Family, The Power of Storytelling, Humanity and Technology.
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The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei

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mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“In the end, who had the right to decide what happened to a person’s body? To their life?”

Cracking open The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei is like stepping into a lucid dream—immediately strange, unsettling, and utterly transformative. At just over 100 pages, this novella packs a breathtaking amount of critique into a story that can easily be devoured in a single sitting. It’s astonishing to consider that this prescient work, grappling with themes of climate collapse, capitalism, queerness, and the ethics of technology, was written in 1996. The future it imagines, however, feels disturbingly close.

At the heart of the story is Momo, a dermal care technician living in an underwater dystopia called T City. Momo’s life is defined by layers—of skin, of identity, of memory—all of which are called into question as her 30th birthday approaches. From her fraught relationship with her mother to the revelations about her existence, Momo’s journey is as much about peeling back the literal and metaphorical membranes that confine her as it is about reconciling with the world’s horrors.

I loved The Membranes's refusal to tether itself to traditional apocalyptic narratives. There’s no glorification of heterosexual reproduction or insistence on humanity’s survival as the ultimate goal. Instead, Chi Ta-Wei offers an unflinching critique of the human race, which continues to destroy itself even in the face of its own extinction. The novel’s queer futurism is radically defiant, challenging assumptions about identity, intimacy, and what it means to be human.

Momo is a fascinating protagonist, isolated both physically and emotionally. Her longing for connection is palpable, whether she’s tending to clients or reflecting on her lost childhood friendship with Andy, an android designed to save her life. But as the plot twists reveal, Momo’s reality is mediated by corporate control, reducing her to a literal piece of intellectual property. The implications of this are chilling, a stark reminder of how capitalism commodifies even the most intimate aspects of our existence.

Saying I “loved” this book feels inadequate. It’s a fever dream of a story—dense, disorienting, and deeply affecting. While not everything is fully explained, the novella’s speculative brilliance lies in its ability to provoke more questions than answers. I picked this up on a whim, and the impact it had on me was massive. I can’t recommend this enough to fans of translated, speculative, or science fiction books. 

📖 Recommended For:  Fans of speculative sci-fi, queer futurism, and thought-provoking storytelling; anyone intrigued by critiques of capitalism and climate dystopias. 

🔑 Key Themes: Queer Futurism, Climate Collapse, Capitalism and Corporatization, Identity and Memory, Technology and Intimacy, Autonomy and Connection.
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We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition by Maya Schenwar, Kim Wilson

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

“If we care about kids, then we must destroy the bars and walls and chains that forcibly separate people who love each other. And we must also dedicate ourselves to abolition’s central commitment, which dovetails profoundly with caregiving: the creation and growth of practices, resources, and ways of being that are life-affirming and generative instead of death-dealing and violent.”

Thank you to NetGalley and Haymarket Books for the eARC! This collection was released in the US in November 2024. 

We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson, is a luminous and crucial collection of essays interrogating the intersections of parenting and abolition. This anthology does not simply advocate for a world without prisons—it insists on the creative, imaginative, constructive, and generative potential of abolition, showing how parenting itself can be a radical act of world-building.

What makes this collection so compelling is its commitment to interdependence as a guiding principle. Many of the contributors are directly impacted by incarceration, whether they are currently or formerly incarcerated or have loved ones trapped in the carceral system. Their essays expose the cruelty of state-imposed family separation, raising essential questions: Who benefits from the destruction of families? What does it mean to parent from behind bars? How do we extend our care beyond our own children and into the wider world?

One of the strongest throughlines in this collection is the assertion that children naturally embody abolitionist conflict resolution strategies. Several essays reflect on the ways children instinctively seek repair, how they model care, and how they offer blueprints for futures rooted in justice rather than punishment. The authors explore how to respect and honor children's autonomy, suggesting that learning to defer to children can be a crucial exercise in dismantling power imbalances. This challenges deeply ingrained hierarchies within families, positioning parenting not as an authoritarian role but as a practice of solidarity, reciprocity, and communal care.

The book is unflinching in its critique of the family policing system—what is often referred to as the “child welfare system”—and its entanglement with carceral logic. Many essays explicitly confront the racism inherent in these institutions, exposing how they disproportionately harm Black and brown families. Parenting toward abolition, these writers argue, is not just about raising individual children with abolitionist values; it is about resisting the state’s relentless attempts to surveil, control, and destroy marginalized families.

Perhaps one of the most moving aspects of this collection is its insistence that abolition is fundamentally about love. Several authors explore parental love as an act of resistance, a force that refuses disposability and insists on the dignity of all children. Others highlight the role of solidarity in parenting—solidarity with incarcerated parents, with Palestinian mothers, with all caregivers resisting state violence. This expansive definition of love is not sentimental; it is rigorous, urgent, and revolutionary.

Ultimately, We Grow the World Together is a testament to the transformative potential of caregiving as a political practice. It calls on us to reject carcerality in all its forms—not just in the prisons we recognize but in the punitive, hierarchical relationships we enact daily. It reminds us that abolition is not only about dismantling the systems that harm—it is about growing new ways of being, loving, and caring. It is about making mistakes, learning, and trying again. For our children, and for ourselves.

📖 Recommended For: Readers invested in abolitionist thought, caregivers and parents reimagining justice, those drawn to lyrical and urgent prose, anyone seeking radical visions of care and interdependence, fans of Mariame Kaba and Adrienne Maree Brown.

🔑 Key Themes: Abolitionist Parenting, Interdependence and Mutual Aid, Anti-Carceral Justice, Family Policing and State Violence, Child Autonomy and Power, Love as Resistance.
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Trans and Disabled: An Anthology of Identities and Experiences by Alex Iantaffi

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

“Personhood is conditional; monstrosity is a bed you sleep in for eternity.”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This collection releases on January 21st, 2025 in the US from Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 

There is a raw, undeniable power in Trans and Disabled: An Anthology of Identities and Experiences, edited by Alex Iantaffi. This collection of essays offers a deeply personal and politically urgent exploration of what it means to exist at the intersection of transness and disability, a space where visibility is both necessary and dangerous, where care is often conditional, and where survival itself is an act of defiance. Through lyrical prose, philosophical musings, and candid reflections, the contributors dismantle binaries, reject imposed hierarchies, and carve out space for identities that refuse to be neatly categorized.

One of the most striking themes of the anthology is the pervasive sense of unbelonging—both in medical settings and within broader social structures. Many of the authors grapple with the ways cisgenderism and ableism work in tandem to deny them adequate care, understanding, and legitimacy. The essays expose the exhausting reality of having to “prove” one’s gender and disability to systems that fundamentally distrust lived experience. Impostor syndrome, the burden of masking, and the relentless pressure to conform to normative expectations weave through the narratives, illustrating how trans disabled people are often made to feel as though they are fabricating their own realities.

Yet, amidst this struggle, there is also a profound celebration of fluidity. These essays embrace the shapeshifting nature of identity—of gender, of ability, of self-perception. The authors resist the pathologization of their existence, instead offering a vision of transness and disability as sites of expansive possibility rather than limitation. Through metaphors of galaxies, bending light, and the tension between structure and movement, they articulate the beauty of liminality, of being in constant conversation with oneself and the world.

H Howitt’s essay stood out to me in particular, offering a deeply resonant meditation on the relationship between queerness, neurodivergence, and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). As someone who shares those intersections, I found their exploration of hypermobility as both a physical and existential state profoundly moving. The way they frame EDS as a neuro(queer) identity—one that resists rigidity while still yearning for stability—perfectly encapsulates the paradox of existing in a bodymind that is simultaneously boundless and fragile. 

Trans and Disabled is not just an anthology—it is an offering, an act of defiance, and a testament to the resilience of those who live at the crossroads of transness and disability. It is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand, and more importantly, to affirm and uplift these voices. In a world that so often insists on erasure, this collection insists on presence. And that, in itself, is revolutionary.

📖 Recommended For: Readers who appreciate introspective, lyrical prose; those interested in the intersection of transness and disability; anyone who values personal narratives on identity, community, and resilience; fans of Eli Clare and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

🔑 Key Themes: Medical Neglect and Institutional Barriers, Masking and Impostor Syndrome, Fluidity of Identity, Community and Mutual Aid, Resistance to Binaries and Hierarchies.
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Esperance by Adam Oyebanji

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

4.0

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! Esperance releases in the US from DAW Books in May 2025.

Adam Oyebanji’s Esperance weaves together a detective mystery and a speculative exploration of history’s darkest legacies. Opening with a chilling homicide in Chicago—a father and son drowned in saltwater, the mother left comatose by an unexplained neurotoxin—the novel immediately grabs your attention. Detective Ethan Krol’s investigation pulls readers into a web of unsettling murders across continents, intricately tied to a centuries-old slave ship and the horrifying fate of its passengers.

Parallel to Ethan’s narrative is the story of Abidemi, a futuristic human navigating a contemporary Earth that feels alien to her. Abi’s mission to track down descendants of the Esperance’s captain adds a layer of sci-fi intrigue, seamlessly integrating elements of advanced technology and alternate worlds. Abi’s strange electronic devices feel almost mythic, blending her connection to the past with the high-tech future she represents. As her path converges with Ethan’s, the narrative builds to a tense crescendo that spans Chicago, Rhode Island, and Edinburgh, ultimately culminating in revelations about a planet called Ibi Aabo—a home to the descendants of those the Esperance’s captain so cruelly discarded.

What struck me most was the ambition of Oyebanji’s world-building. The concept of Ibi Aabo and the hauntingly poetic notion of a planet populated by the descendants of enslaved people resonates deeply. It’s a premise that could easily become heavy-handed, but Oyebanji balances the speculative with the personal, grounding the narrative in Abi’s and Ethan’s dogged pursuits.

However, I found some aspects lacking the depth they deserved. The racial and historical themes—so central to the novel’s core—felt underexplored at times, almost overshadowed by the fast-paced plot. Ethan’s character, too, left me wanting more; his personality seemed serviceable to the mystery but lacked the complexity to make him truly memorable.

That said, the novel’s brisk pacing and binge-worthy intrigue more than compensated. Oyebanji keeps the reader hooked with sharp twists, compelling stakes, and the unrelenting question of how history’s ghosts manifest in the present. While not a lyrical read, the writing is crisp and functional, serving the plot’s intricacies without distraction.

Ultimately, Esperance is a thrilling exploration of intergenerational trauma, justice, and the lengths to which vengeance can stretch across time and space. For readers who enjoy genre-blending stories with high stakes and deep ethical questions, this book will not disappoint.

📖 Recommended For: Fans of genre-blending mysteries, readers intrigued by speculative fiction tied to historical trauma, and lovers of high-stakes, fast-paced narratives with a touch of sci-fi.

🔑 Key Themes: Historical Reckoning, Intergenerational Trauma, Justice and Vengeance, Racial Identity, Futuristic Technology, and the Legacy of Slavery.
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