michellereadatrix's reviews
786 reviews

Quill is jogging in the woods on the reservation where she lives and she hears a scream. She drops down and exits in order to report the scream, but can't let it go. The story broadens to be about missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women and the power of community. 

I didn't initially find it plausible that Quill would cling to so little evidence and feel compelled to investigate on her own without at least a little more indication the scream meant something. Shortly after this impression I realized that this was my upbringing and privilege. 

Of course white women are vulnerable and preyed upon, but not to the extent of women from marginalized groups, and white women are also thought to trust authority and to not overstep. I hear a scream, and don't feel safe investigating, I tell the authorities, send up a prayer for the best, and hope it's all okay.

That's not Quill, and, really, thank God that's not Quill. She feels an obligation to her friends, family. and community and knows that her choices might lead to the only justice any of the missing girls and women will receive. 

As a Northern Minnesotan, the setting was fun, especially the scenes in Duluth which I could vividly imagine. The accuracy of the constant effort to dress appropriately for winter, especially when there's a giant lake making the cold colder. Knowing this only increased the concern for those missing. 

I enjoyed so many of the characters: Quill and Crow and their kids, Punk and Gaelyn, Barbie, and the more minor characters who make up this community. 

Marcie Rendon has so many important things to say about trauma, the toll of living with anxiety and heightened vigilance, and how communities can build their own safety nets when those in power can't or won't help. 

Note: I listened to the audiobook so what do I  know about spelling anything? 

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a story about the dread that a lot of of walk around with every day, the sense that family and friends who've become increasingly beholden to "conservative" media for their news. 

But it's also about influencer culture and the envy we see at perfectly curating images of health and happiness, the notion that it's no longer clear who is a bot and who is a human, and out inability to know if the person or "person" on the other end has an agenda. 

In truth, no matter where you get your news, or which social media outlets you frequent, you're quite likely to see at least a little of yourself reflected. 

The character we spend the most time with is Noah, who grows concerned over the increasing strangeness of his parents, primarily his mother. Noah is a well-meaning liberal guy in an interracial marriage and a daughter. 

I find Noah to often be an idiot, but I also think Noah knows he's an idiot and not built for the whole survivalist thing. Can I really judge when I believe that if a zombie or someone zombie adjacent charged me my go to would be to close my eyes and hope if I can't see it that it can't see me. 

Still, this book would be really different if Noah were a bit brighter.  I appreciate he goes through wild amounts of trauma, but there is a decision he makes ... never mind. 

We also spend considerable time with Noah's brother and his family, allowing the reader to see other portals of entry to what we'd have to call mass possession. There's also a family dog named Rufus. 

Look, you're a horror reader. You know if the dog lives it's either YA horror or a miracle. I kinda hate the trope, or at least like to be forewarned it's there, but I do think it made sense in this and serves a purpose. And as a darkly inevitable punchline. You were a real one, Rufus. 

A lot of the tone is satirical, and on occasion this undercuts the horror, but some of the events are too horrific to have any joke detract from the moment. 

I enjoyed myself with the story quite a lot,  but the ending felt a bit rushed and generic. I feel there was a point to it, even a good point, but I felt a bit underwhelmed. I also felt Noah's journey home was very late era Game of Thrones, where we toss out the logistical realities and gloss over most of it, except for the epic orgy that happened at a place you might have on your camera roll.

Pluses: Sapphic rep, type 1 diabetes rep, a medical alert dog, an old house. 

Format: audiobook

I really didn't vibe too well with the main character and had questions about her podcast. 

Dare is a teen girl planning on spending part of the summer remodeling an old house. She has a haunted house podcast, and this house is allegedly haunted by a girl who'd drowned in the lake. Dare has diabetes and brings her dog with her her to alert her to blood sugar fluctuations, although Waffles is a bit flighty in his duties, we are told. 

Dare meets a girl who becomes a friend and another who becomes a bit more. 

The thing is, Dare is very skeptical and almost completely convinced the supernatural isn't real. That she feels this way is news to the various people who've listened her her podcast, and she is presented as pretty honest, so I'm perplexed as to what she says during the thing. 

I expected her to act like a podcaster, but there was very little of that. Moments that it seems you would document go barely remarked upon. She has some hidden cameras. But I don't think it was until 65% she takes a picture that makes sense. The podcast thing felt like a reason to get her there and to provide a couple clues, and that's about it. 

Because she is absurdly skeptical she sucks the fun out of the room. I think it's great to look for a practical solution or trickery, but it just got dumb after a while. Because she believed in nothing until late in the day, the book lacked chills because she wasn't ... chilled. 

By the time she got in the game, I had largely checked out. And then the ending seemed tonally odd, but that might have been the narrator. However, the narrator I realized is the reason I'd given Dare the benefit of the doubt as long as I had. She made Dare sound intelligent and curious in a way that didn't feel backed up by the words. 

Reviews are always subjective, and another reader might not care about how the podcast was treated as a plot device more than a reality of the character's life, and might like Dare being very much a "Scully." While I felt the tone at the end was odd -- this feels, again, like the narrator -- that might be in part because I was no longer all in with the story.

The romance was cute, the friendships were cute, the mystery was interesting, with an okay twist. I always enjoy a dog, especially since the YA of it all made me feel he was pretty safe. The history of the house is sad, and a couple events at the end are also sad, so there's some weight there.

I enjoyed the time spent here and remained interested. Kelly Bishop has had an interesting life, and worked on projects that I find interesting, and I appreciated her insights. Because it was the audiobook, her voice only added to the quality. 

She keeps her snarkiness pretty anonymous, but that's okay. Her sense of being formidable and outspoken still came through. 

What stands out for me is what a lovely marriage she had of true partners. Her late husband was clearly her biggest fan and vice versa. And they were both pet lovers, which I truly think creates a special bond. (Like Betty White and Allen Ludden, or the olds.) 

Recommended if your a fan of show business memoirs, A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing -- although not a huge portion, by any means -- and OF COURSE Gilmore Girls! 

Attracted to Roy Kent? Here's your book. 

In the first pages, I considered I might have grown out of the screwball nature of the story, or just wasn't in the right place for it, but then I kept laughing out loud in a most undignified manner. One time, I sounded like a diseased goose. 

And so, jokes on me, I had a great time. 

Jemma Barker's life as she knows it is over in Chicago, including her teaching job. When she gets an offer for a very well-paying position in New Orleans, she assumes she's being hired as a tutor. Upon arriving, she finds out the family that hired her has a different task in mind -- for her to break the curse that causes a member of the family to die tragically on a specific date. Jemma's birthday. 

Did I mention Jemma sees ghosts? Has always seen ghosts? 

The story is set during Jim Crow, which will make the depiction of segregation in New Orleans jarring for anyone who has been there in the modern age. However, the vast majority of the book takes place at the family's mansion/former plantation. 

The Duchon family are all varying degrees of horrible, wearing their light skin -- they're Creole/mixed -- as proof of superiority toward everyone that has darker skin, including Jemma. They both claim pride in being "colored" and have no use for the civil rights movement. 

Their house is built metaphorically and literally on family secrets that trap them, and Jemma, in a place of stagnation and trauma, but not so stagnant that the date of the next death doesn't edge closer. 

The pacing tripped me up a little, and it felt like one of those books with an important deadline that the characters talk about incessantly, but perhaps don't treat as important as you feel they should. Jemma is there for months, but we're left to assume more than see she is making the curse breaking a priority. 

This is a pretty minor issue for me, though. I'm doing this review weeks later, and the impatience I felt has mellowed, and what I remember best is the atmosphere and the family secrets and the sense of creeping disintegration of this family and their house. 

Some of the secrets in this house of family secrets are obvious. At least 2. A few others are more surprising. The obviousness didn't take anything away because it's satisfying to be right! And then you add in the details that were a surprise and it's nicely enough done. 

Do read this book if you like the New Orleans setting -- although, again, most of the story is set in one place -- themes of racism, colorism, wealthy people using money for shady ends, and family secrets. Ghosts. 

Don't read it if you don't want those discussions. The horror is mildly gory and morally gross. If you want the big scares, this isn't it. This is more about the evil men do, although the ghosts are Not at All Happy! 

The book was good, I just don't think this was the right time.