dckathleen's reviews
268 reviews

Weyward by Emilia Hart

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Three timelines of women in a family. They have very different lives, with some parallels. They each struggle with being powerless in the face of male violence and then finding their own powers. It's really well done and I particularly love the connection to the natural world. 

Check out content warnings if those might be an issue for you. 
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Life and Other Love Songs by Anissa Gray

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The story of a family before, during, and after a life-changing event, except it's events, plural, because the second is an echo of the first. Several characters narrate from their point of view, the skipping around in time got confusing a few times, but mostly really works. I genuinely wanted to know what happened to everyone, I wanted them to be happy. It's a good story, even if it didn't always go my way. 
How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

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challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

4.5

I came for the sea creatures, but stayed for the autobiographical aspects of Imbler's story. Imbler is a science writer who describes their experiences with their own identity and relationships and community in essays that also describe bodies and experiences and communities in the ocean. Both threads are mostly well integrated.


Some trigger warnings. 
Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson

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hopeful reflective fast-paced

4.0

Pam Anderson reclaims her story here. She has been exploited and commodified, sexualized and objectified. Here she tells us about her childhood (of course she was attracted to Tommy Lee), her philosophy, her relationships, her kids. She loves her kids so much. 

She's obviously smart, but has been portrayed as a dumb blonde so much that she feels the need to tell us that she's smart. She has a weird sense of chivalry that I don't share (Tommy had to punch paparazzos to protect his family, High Hefner was a gentleman), but it makes sense when we learn about her parents and the patterns she partly repeated. She has gone through a lot and learned even more. She loves animals and has worked on animal protection causes. 

Funny note about privilege and immigration - she was initially denied entry into the US because she lacked proper work documentation, so she took a bus instead of a plane. 
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman

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emotional funny hopeful reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a good read. A Mom feels her life unraveling and starts to baby wear the family dog. Will her marriage survive? Will she write again? Will her child stay in his crunchy private school? Will the human puppets ever leave? Will the dog walk again? Who has been pooping in school? These and other questions are answered along the way. 
Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A little girl disappears in a rural Australian town. The story is told from various pov. It's a mystery and a reflection on relationships and small town life, on keeping secrets, and how kids experience things. It was sad but good.

Definitely some trigger warnings to consider here. 
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Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes

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funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Okay, so the premise is bonkers. If you're willing to just go along with that, then this is a fun read. 

Two women grab each other's bags at the gym. They end up with drastically changed lives at that exact moment. Hijinks ensue. Ultimately it's about female solidarity and getting what you need in life. 
Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure by Menachem Kaiser

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective fast-paced

4.0

This is a memoir, though the author said he was tempted to write it as fiction. He's the grandson of holocaust survivors from Poland. He never met his grandfather, but knows that his grandfather spent years trying to reclaim ownership of his family home. Kaiser takes up this effort and takes us through the Polish court system (he has to have his relatives officially declared dead, which proves more challenging than he imagined). He also meets people livibg in the building that he believes his family owned. Another story woven throughout is that of Polish treasure hunters who search a strange Nazi building project built by Jewish slave labor. He finds a family connection there as well and follows it. He talks about memory, and history, and genealogy, and property, and mythology in a way. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, and really liked it. 
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 25%.
After 4 hours nothing happened and I don't care what happens in the next 12 hours.