Review: The Cartographers (by Peng Shepherd)

My Rating:  4 stars

Peng Shepherd's The Cartographers is one of those books that surprised me in ways that I wasn't expecting.  I will admit that I probably would not have picked this one up if it had not been chosen as a book club read — mostly because I have little to no interest in maps (or anything related to it), plus I'm not really into books with magical realism because I don't really understand it, which means I will likely struggle through it and risk detracting from the reading experience.  With this book however, as soon as I started reading, I was instantly absorbed and quite honestly did not even think about the magical realism aspect until I got to those specific sections — and even then, the scenes didn't go completely over my head like I thought it would.  Basically, those scenes made logical sense to me in the context of what was happening in the story up to that point.  The premise itself was quite unique, the story overall was well-written, the plot moved along at a relatively fast pace, and the characters were well-drawn. 

This book captivated me, probably because I've never read anything like it.  I mean, I've read "genre mashup" books before, but this one was done in a way that felt so different, especially thematically.  There were elements of fantasy and magical realism (as already mentioned), but there were also mystery and intrigue, thriller-seque suspense, history and geography, contemporary realism, and even a dark academia and gothic vibe at certain parts. They're was also a literary bent to this with the setting of the New York Public Library, where much of the action takes place.  All of this came together in a mesmerizing, gripping story that I thoroughly enjoyed, even though this kind of book normally wouldn't really be up my alley.

If my review sounds a bit vague, it's definitely intentional, as this is the type of book where knowing next to nothing makes for the best reading experience.  Having said that, this one wasn't perfect by any means — I was actually able to figure out the ending as well as the various correlations between past and present quite easily, and yes, there were moments where I had to suspend disbelief a bit, but I was fine with that, since I knew going in that there would be some magical / fantastical elements to the story, so I was prepared.

I definitely recommend this one, especially if you're a fan of stories with magical realism.  This also made me curious about Peng Shepherd's other works as well.  Looks like I will need to check out her backlist at some point!

Review: Tomorrow in Shanghai (by May-lee Chai)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

While I liked this short story collection overall, the problem I had with it was similar to what I usually experience with short stories — the way the stories begin in the middle of an event and then break off suddenly, created a feeling of "incompleteness"  that honestly made it difficult for me to truly enjoy this collection the way I would a complete story or novel.  When I read a story, I'm pretty big on character development — which, for me, means being able to follow a character (or characters) through their journey and watching them grow and evolve in the process.  Unfortunately, most short story collections naturally lack in this area due to the short amount of time the reader gets to spend with the characters.  Oftentimes, as soon as I start to warm to a character, the story is over - the abruptness of it makes me feel like I've been left hanging and that I'm perhaps missing something. It's a feeling I never enjoy having, which is why short story collections are oftentimes a hit or miss for me (the ones where the same characters "show up" throughout the collection or where there is some sort of connection between all the stories usually work better for me).

With this latest collection from May-lee Chai, one of the things I really liked was the variety of the stories in terms of type and genre — there were ones that explored modern day issues realistically while others veered more into the science fiction and fantasy realm.  Having said that though, this became a detriment when it came to the stories that felt inadequately short, as it felt particularly jarring when I was suddenly being plucked out of one world and dropped into an entirely different one.  This was made all the more frustrating when it would happen each time the story started to get interesting (or, as mentioned earlier, when I was starting to warm to a character and wanted to read more about them).  By the time I got to the end of the collection, I felt dissatisfied and (I hate to say it) also a bit cheated.  

Overall, I felt like this collection had potential, and based on the premise of this being about the global Chinese diaspora, I was actually quite looking forward to reading it.  The content of the stories were good, but the overall feel was too choppy, causing this collection to fall a bit short in the end.  I think if Chai were to take these short stories and expand them to be more complete (like perhaps turn them into novellas?), that would've worked better, at least for me (I would definitely read them if that were the case).

Received ARC from Blair Books via Edelweiss.

Review: A Map for the Missing (by Belinda Huijuan Tang)

My Rating:  4.5 stars

Belinda Huijuan Tang's debut novel A Map for the Missing is a moving story about family, forgiveness, identity, loss, and the weight of cultural expectations versus personal ambition.  

When we first meet Tang Yitian in 1993, he is a mathematics professor at an American university in California, where he has lived with his wife Mali for nearly a decade.  One day, he receives a phone call from his mother, who still lives in their ancestral family village in China, informing him that his father has mysteriously disappeared. Yitian is estranged from his father and as a result, he has not set foot in the village in 15 years — yet Yitian agrees to return to his child home home to help look for him.  When he arrives in China however, he feels like a fish out of water and has no choice but to seek out the help of his childhood friend (and his first love), Tian Hanwen, who is now a housewife to a mid-level bureaucrat. Together, they begin the search for Yitian's father, but along the way, they end up discovering truths about themselves and their families that change long-held perspectives about their lives.  Through a narrative that switches back and forth between the 1970s and 1990s, we eventually learn the characters' backstories and the link between their pasts that impact their lives in present day.

It's been awhile since I've come across a book that resonated with me on so many levels. Throughout the story, both Yitian and Hanwen struggle between pursuing their dreams and forging their own path in life versus following cultural expectations of filial piety that require them to fulfill their obligations to their families. This is a struggle that I'm intimately familiar with, which is why reading this book was quite an emotional experience for me.  Reading about Yitian's feelings of inadequacy in not being able to reconcile his ambitions and the trajectory of his life with his responsibilities toward his parents (regardless of how they treated him), I found myself nodding along in understanding and sympathy.  I was also able to relate to his experience returning to his hometown after so many years away, and the unexpected culture shock that made it difficult for him to navigate a world that used to be familiar to him.  This was actually one area that I felt the author did an especially great job with:  conveying the unending struggle that immigrants like us have with reconciling the meaning of "home" and feeling like a "perpetual foreigner" in both worlds.  

There's actually quite a bit to unpack with this novel — the themes of loss and forgiveness, reconciling past and present lives with future, social mores versus personal values, the price of ambition and trying to forge a better life for oneself versus the obligations of family and cultural inheritance — it's impossible to cover all aspects in such a short review.  With that said, I appreciate Tang's realistic yet deeply nuanced portrayal that quite honestly continues to give me much food for thought even now, several days after having finished the book.  

This was an absolutely worthwhile read — one I definitely recommend.  Of course, given the cultural elements, the experience reading this will probably be different for each person, but with the variety of themes it covers, I don't think it will be difficult to find something relatable in the story.

Received ARC from Penguin Press via NetGalley.  

Review: Carrie Soto is Back (by Taylor Jenkins Reid)

My Rating: 4 stars

The first Taylor Jenkins Reid book I read was last year's Malibu Rising. Overall, it was an entertaining book and I did appreciate what TJR was trying to accomplish with it, but unfortunately, I couldn't stand most of the characters (it wouldn't be a stretch to say I hated most of them), plus "the party" storyline (which I felt was written too OTT for my tastes) nearly derailed the entire story for me.  Not surprisingly, given this experience, I was definitely more than a little wary going into TJR's latest work, Carrie Soto is Back. We were first introduced to Carrie in Malibu Rising and while she was only in a few scenes in that book, her brash behavior and outsized attitude were enough to make her stand out (not necessarily in a good way, in my opinion).  I certainly didn't have the best impression of Carrie after that book, and for the first half of this one, I actually liked her even less (if that's even possible).  To me, Carrie was the epitome of the type of entitled, arrogant, self-absorbed character that never ceases to frustrate me — and yes, there were quite a few scenes where she was downright mean (and that's putting it nicely). To be honest, throughout most of the first half, there were so many moments when I was tempted to just throw in the towel and call it a day (it also didn't help that I'm not into sports at all, so all the tennis lingo and references went completely over my head) — what kept me going though was the writing, which flowed beautifully into a well-crafted, emotional story (with a satisfying ending).

I definitely was able to connect more with this story than TJR's previous one (even though I know absolutely nothing about tennis or the elite world of professional sports). I think the reason for that is because, in this case, there wasn't a huge, revolving door of annoying characters that detracted from the main story.  Instead, we actually get to see Carrie grow and evolve in different areas — from her oftentimes fraught relationship with her father/coach, to her romance with Bowe Huntley, to her business relationship with her agent Gwen, and most importantly, her attitude toward her sport as a whole as well as her fellow competitors.  These are the types of stories I enjoy the most:  where the characters are well-developed, often flawed and far from perfect, even largely unlikable throughout most of the story, but they grow in subtle ways that are most meaningful when we as readers get to journey with them from the beginning of the story to the end.  

This book made me excited to read TJR again, and while I look forward to her next book, I should probably also get cracking on her backlist works as well (almost all of which have been on my TBR for while already).  Hopefully I'll be able to get to at least one of her other books before the next new one comes out!

Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley.

Review: Mika in Real Life (by Emiko Jean)

My Rating:  4.5 stars





What a delightful read!  In her newest book, author Emiko Jean brings us a poignant yet ultimately uplifting story about a woman who, after experiencing trauma and setbacks in her life, goes on a path of self-discovery that helps her to overcome her insecurities as well as better understand who she is "in real life."  

Mika Suzuki's life can only be described as "a mess" — she keeps getting fired from job after job, her love life is in shambles after a bad breakup with her latest boyfriend, she has a strained relationship with her traditional Japanese parents whom she can't help but perpetually disappoint, and she lives in a messy house with a potentially cracked ceiling that belongs to her eccentric but lovable best friend Hana (who, by the way, may or may not be a hoarder).  Oh and she's also broke and, as much as she hates doing it, has to repeatedly borrow money from her parents for basic daily necessities.  It is at this time, when she is at the lowest point of her life, that she receives a surprising phone call that catches her completely off guard — the call is from Penny, the daughter she had placed for adoption sixteen years ago.  Penny wants to get to know her birth mother (which is something Mika secretly yearns for as well) and so the two of them start slow, with phone calls and video calls every couple days.  In her curiosity about Mika's life, Penny asks a lot of questions, but Mika isn't keen on letting her daughter know about the sorry state of her own miserable existence, so she decides to embellish the facts about her life just a little.  But one lie leads to another and soon, Mika has fabricated an entire life that is opposite of the one she is actually living.  When Penny tells Mika that she wants to fly to Oregon (Penny and her adoptive father Thomas live in Ohio) to meet her, Mika panics — but luckily, her devoted friends come to the rescue and help her turn the fake life she created into a reality.  Will Mika be able to sustain these lies throughout the entire visit or will things eventually blow up in her face?  More importantly, what will become of the newfound but fragile relationship with her daughter? 

I honestly didn't expect this story to grab me as much as it did.  I'm usually not tremendously keen on romances (which I erroneously thought that's what this book would be), but the more I got into the story, the more I realized that's not what the book is about at all.  Sure, there is romance (and in case it matters for some, heads up that there are a few "spicy" scenes in here, though they are very brief), but the crux of the story is actually about the complexities of parent / child relationships, especially in mixed race families, which, for me, gave the story unexpected depth and meaning.  In juxtaposing the various parent / child relationships within the narrative — between Mika and her parents Hiromi and Shige, between Mika and her biological daughter Penny, between Penny and her adopted parents Thomas and Caroline — Emiko Jean explores the complicated dynamics of parental love and how it not only can manifest itself in different ways, but also can be heavily impacted by culture and upbringing.   This made the story relatable on so many levels, but for me specifically, what resonated most was Mika's relationship with her mother Hiromi, the nuances of which, having myself grown up in an immigrant household with traditional Asian parents, I also struggled with at some point — for example:  the emotional distance caused by lack of meaningful communication between family members, the cultural expectation to keep silent about matters deemed "shameful" to the family, the pressure to be successful in both life and career in order to "repay" the sacrifices that our parents made in choosing to immigrate here, the feelings of inadequacy and never being able to live up to their expectations, etc.  There's also the exploration of how that relationship impacts Mika's relationship with Penny, and the struggle with understanding better where her mother was coming from but at the same time, wanting to forge a different path with her own  daughter.

In addition to parent / child relationships and love in its different manifestations, the story also explores topics such as adoption, race and identity, interracial relationships, cultural expectations vs societal conventions, etc.  Even with the heavy topics however, the overall tone of the book was lighthearted and hopeful, with humor playing a significant role in the narrative.  In fact, that's one of the things that stood out the most for me — how Jean was able to strike such a perfect balance throughout the story between the serious and humorous elements without verging into melodramatic (not an easy feat with these types of stories).  I also loved the way the characters were rendered, especially Mika herself, who came across so realistically for me, with her insecurities and flaws and the various struggles in life that she has to deal with.  

This book surprised me in a good way and I'm really glad I read it.  Of course I definitely recommend this one, but with the caveat that each person's experience reading it will be different.  On that note, I also wanted to share this interview that Emiko Jean did, where she talks about her inspiration for this book — it’s a very insightful read: 

https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/a40799854/mika-in-real-life-captures-a-complicated-portrayal-of-a-mother-daughter-relationship/

Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.

Review: Daisy Darker (by Alice Feeney)

My Rating:  4 stars

Let me start off by saying that this review will be super short and super vague, as it's very hard to talk much about this book without giving something away.  To get the full experience of this one, it's necessary to go into it knowing as little as possible (and yes, that includes NOT reading the blurb if you can help it). Pretty much the only thing you need to know is that this is a murder mystery that revolves around the Darker family, who come together to celebrate the 80th birthday of family matriarch Beatrice (known as Nana throughout the story) at Sea Glass, her decades-old crumbling estate that is only accessible when the tide is low.  What happens from there, you will need to read the book to find out.



Having read all of Alice Feeney's books, there's no doubt in my mind that she has absolutely mastered the art of the plot twist.  Her newest work, aptly titled Daisy Darker, is yet another dark, twisty thriller that takes readers down the path of the unexpected, leaving us guessing every step of the way.  Similar to last year's hit Rock Paper Scissors, Feeney creates an atmospheric setting through the gothic-style,isolated "estate-on-an-island", though this time around, the house is as much a "main character" in the story as the Darker family that occupies it.  I'm not sure if it's just me, but each book Feeney writes seems to get creepier and creepier, though that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just something to be aware of for those who might be sensitive to such things.  

While I'm not a fan of dysfunctional family stories where every single character is deplorable in some way (to the point that I honestly couldn't bring myself to like anyone, even for a little bit), that didn't prevent me from being so absorbed in the story that I basically finished this in one sitting.  With that said, even though I did "enjoy" this one overall, I wouldn't consider it a "favorite" (that would actually go to Feeney's first and fourth novels, for me at least).  Even though not all of her books work for me (there's one in particular that left such a bad taste in my mouth that it almost turned me off to Feeney's works at one point), I still look forward to reading them  (mostly for the story, not the characters), but especially to see what twists she will have up her sleeve next!

Received ARC from Flatiron Books via NetGalley.