Review: Before You Were Anne (by Emiko Jean)

My Rating: 4 stars 

This is the sequel to Emiko Jean’s bestselling mystery / thriller / suspense novel The Return of Ellie Black, which I read when it came out back in 2024 not knowing that it was the start of a series.  In that book, we were introduced to Detective Chelsey Calhoun, a small-town cop from Washington State with a passion for solving missing person cases due to her own personal experience with her sister’s disappearance many years ago.  As I mentioned in my review of that book, I absolutely loved the fact that the main protagonist Chelsey is a strong, smart, competent, no-nonsense cop who holds her own time and time again in a cut-throat profession that is not always kind to a woman of color like herself.  I mean, how often do we see an Asian female as a kick-ass lead detective (in a mainstream mystery/thriller) who is the one doing the heroic work of saving lives rather than merely being a sidekick (often to a male detective who is usually the “hero” of the story).  Given how much I loved Chelsey as a character, I was of course thrilled to be able to read more about her in Jean’s newest release, Before You Were Anne, even though I will admit that I was caught a bit off guard because I thought Ellie Black was a stand-alone novel and had no idea it was the start of a series until recently.  When it comes to series, especially ones with the same characters that continue the previous book’s storyline, I usually prefer to read the books back-to-back one right after the other rather than spread out over long periods of time because I have a bad memory and especially can’t remember details unless it’s fresh in my mind.  In this case, since I last read Ellie Black 2 years ago, I would’ve liked to re-read it before picking up the sequel, but given all the other books I have on my list to get through (this has been a phenomenal year for books, to the point that I’m still working my way through a ginormous summer and fall reading list that I’m determined to finish before the year is over), of course this was not possible.  Regardless though, I still enjoyed being reunited with Chelsey, who is now married and expecting her first child with husband Noah.  Chelsey has moved on from the small-town of Coldwell and is now a lead detective in the Seattle police department, partnering up with Detective Montoya whom she met while working the Ellie Black case.  As the Japanese daughter of white parents who adopted her when she was a baby, Chelsey’s struggles with her identity run deep, but now that she is expecting a daughter of her own, understanding her past and where she came from is even more critical for her.  So when she and Montoya are assigned a new case involving a murdered Japanese woman named Rika Takahashi (who went by the alias Anne Walker) and her missing sixteen-year-old daughter Naomi, it hits a little too close to home for Chelsey, who becomes more invested in the case than she bargained for.

I don’t want to give too much away, since it’s important to go into this one knowing as little as possible, so I’ll keep the details brief.  Overall though, I felt this sequel was very well done and I enjoyed it as much as I did the first book.  I especially appreciate the nuanced way that Jean continues to portray Chelsey – while she is still the kick-ass cop from the first book, we also get to see the vulnerable side of her, specifically in her relationship with her family, which is somewhat strained due to some things that happened in the first book as well as the circumstances around her adoption, which are finally brought to light in this book.  I also really like the way Chelsey’s partnership with Montoya was built on mutual respect and admiration for each other’s abilities, but most importantly, how they are portrayed as equals who trust each other and work well together as a cohesive unit.  This was especially refreshing because the default with stories like this that feature a male/female cop partnership usually involves some type of romantic entanglement trope or some form of insurmountable tension / conflict stemming from gender disparity.

Emiko Jean is quickly becoming a favorite author for me, as I’ve read three of her books so far and enjoyed all of them.  In exploring her backlist, it’s obvious to me that Jean has range as an author, as she writes across multiple genres – from YA to fantasy to romance and now mystery/thriller/suspense.  While I’m most interested in her mystery/thriller series, I also read her stand-alone romance Mika in Real Life, which I also loved, so I’m keen on trying her other books as well, which should hold me over until the next installment of the Chelsey Calhoun series comes out (based on how the sequel ended, I’m pretty sure there will be more books) – I just hope I won’t have to wait too long for it!

Received ARC from Simon and Schuster via NetGalley.

Review: American Fantasy (by Emma Straub)

My Rating: 3.5 stars

I’ve actually had a copy of Emma Straub’s latest release since it came out in April, but I really wanted to listen to the audio version narrated by the fantastic Marin Ireland, so I waited until my library hold came through this weekend to read this.  I’m actually glad I did because I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed this as much otherwise, seeing that I was never really into boy bands growing up (though I was surely familiar enough with them due to one of my childhood friends being obsessed with her favorite band NKOTB back in the day).  With that said, I do understand what diehard fandom looks like, since I’ve worshipped my fair share of entertainers over the years (and admittedly there are a few celebrities whose careers I still closely follow) – but even so, in the event of a celebrity meet-and-greet, I’ve never been the “screaming fan” type, preferring instead to hang back and bask in the feelings of awe and wonder at being in the presence of someone I admire.  It’s no wonder, then, that the part of the story I related to most is the idea that how we approach fandom can change in complex ways as we grow older.  Despite being obsessed with the 90s boyband Boy Talk when she was a teenager, the story’s main protagonist Annie, now a woman in her fifties, can’t help but feel like “a fish out of water” on this cruise where she gets to be in close proximity to all 5 members of the band for 4 days.  The main reason for her unease is the simple fact of her tastes having matured and so she is no longer the fan that she once was.  In fact, she only agreed to go on the cruise to appease her sister Katherine (still a die-hard fan of the band) who originally signed them up but had to pull out last minute due to an injury.  The constant thought that runs through Annie’s mind is “What am I doing here?” – yet as she becomes more immersed in the environment around her, the long-buried feelings of nostalgia slowly re-emerge, culminating in the unexpected happiness of being able to reconnect with the youthful part of herself, even if only briefly. 

Through a structure that alternates between the perspectives of Annie (a guest on the cruise ship), Sarah (who works for the company organizing the cruise), and Keith (one of the boyband members), we get to see the same event sometimes experienced from different viewpoints, which I found interesting. Having come off a cruise myself last year (family vacation), I was able to appreciate the various details that Straub included in the story – the familiarity of the environment (minus the boy band of course) made the story feel particularly atmospheric for me.

Overall, this was a fun, light read that I found entertaining and enjoyable (and I was able to finish quickly, which is always a plus when I already have an insanely long TBR to get through).  Even though this is the first Straub book I’ve read, it certainly won’t be the last, as I have several of her backlist titles on my TBR that I’m hoping to get to at some point.  If you’re a fan of boy bands or cruises (or perhaps both?), or just want a feel-good read that recalls the nostalgic feelings of youth, I definitely recommend picking this one up.

Review: Lake Effect (by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

My Rating: 3 stars

My first exposure to Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s work was through her second book Good Company, which I remember reading and finding relatively entertaining, but disliking the characters quite a bit.  With her newest work, Lake Effect, Sweeney once again populates the book with unlikeable characters who pretty much spend the entire story completely oblivious to the myriad ways in which their actions and behavior hurt one another. 

The dynamics of the two families at the center of the story – the Larkins and the Finnegans – are complicated at best, dysfunctional at worst, and all the characters seem to be stuck in a frustrating loop of resentment, anger, and regret that honestly became exhausting to read.  To be clear, I have nothing against dysfunctional families, as I come from one myself, but the way that Sweeney crammed every annoying dysfunction imaginable into these two families with seemingly no redeeming qualities to balance things out made it truly difficult to feel sympathy for any of the characters.  The men all behaved like jerks, the women were mostly caricatures on opposite ends of the spectrum (i.e.: the fanatically religious yet morally hypocritical housewife versus the radically apathetic, sexually promiscuous and morally corrupt “modern” woman), and the teenaged children all continue to behave childishly even into adulthood.  I’m the type of reader who needs to have at least one character to root for, so in this case, not having a single character that I could feel even an ounce of sympathy for made this a bit of an unpleasant read for me. I read some reviews that posited perhaps Sweeney was being satiric with her portrayal of some of these characters and maybe it is the case that she was poking fun at the ridiculous behavior of privileged suburbanites, but I honestly didn’t see the humor in any of these characters’ actions or behaviors (or, perhaps, this was just a case of me not “getting” the joke). 

With all that said, this wasn’t an entirely disagreeable reading experience in that there were some contentious moments where the fallout from the “scandal” (the main driving force of the entire story) came to a head, which did make for some entertaining reading.  Overall though, I would say that this book wasn’t really to my taste (or perhaps I’m just tired of the “privileged people behaving badly” trope that seems to make its way into so many books nowadays) and if this hadn’t been a book club selection, I probably would not have picked it up.  While I don’t regret reading this one, the fact that I wasn’t keen on both of the books I’ve read by this author is probably a sign that her works don’t jive with my tastes, so I should think twice before picking up another of her books.

 

Review: The Seekers of Deer Creek (by Thao Thai)

My Rating: 4.5 stars

After reading and loving Thao Thai’s debut novel Banyan Moon when it came out in 2023, I’ve been excitedly waiting for her next book, which finally arrived last month with The Seekers of Deer Creek. Thai’s sophomore effort is just as beautifully written as her debut, with so many profound moments that not only resonated with me, but also were sources of thought and reflection that continued to linger long after I finished the book.  Banyan Moon was a family saga about mother / daughter relationships and the complicated cultural dynamics that can inform these relationships in ways both positive and negative.  This time around, with Seekers, Thai centers her story around the Nguyen sisters, Vivi and Calla, and the complexities of a sibling relationship that is strained and emotionally fraught, yet also deeply loving.  The two sisters couldn’t be more different: Vivi is practical and sensible, the protector and “responsible” one whose job it is to constantly rein in her free-spirited and “frenetic” younger sister Calla who can be reckless and unpredictable to the point of worry. Yet both sisters share more in common than they think, especially in their struggles with addiction (both literal and figurative) and surviving a tumultuous childhood that ended up having a huge impact on both of them, though in different ways.  After the death of their father, Calla finds a letter and sketch in his home that is eerily similar to a painting created by reclusive Vietnamese artist K.P. Ly. -- the letter mentions an “offering,” which Calla believes is meant for their family.  She brings this discovery to Vivi in the hopes that she will accompany her on a search for this supposed relic from the past and while Vivi reluctantly agrees, the decision is a difficult one to make given the dissonance in the sisters’ relationship.  Indeed, the journey to understand their family’s past ends up having a profound impact on both sisters.

I have to say that I loved this novel nearly as much as I did Thao Thai’s debut, though I found the mystery aspect a little lacking, which is why I rated this one 4.5 stars instead of 5.  With that said, I actually connected with the part of the story that explored Vivi and Calla’s sibling relationship more than the mystery involving K.P. Ly and the lost artwork.  I related so much to Vivi, with her reticent personality and myopia when it came to her own needs.  Calla hits it on the nose when she reprimands her sister: “You like having the answers, working in the shadows so no one could judge your heart and mind.  You’d sooner vanish than leave yourself vulnerable.”  Vivi resents her sister for seeing through her, and yet, deep down, Vivi recognizes that, at the end of the day, she “didn’t want to win, she only wanted to be understood.” Vivi’s struggle to reconcile what she wants versus what is expected of her resonated with me deeply – true, some of Vivi’s behavior frustrated me to no end (such as the way she repeatedly hurts the people who love her by saying cruel things to them in efforts to push them away – her inability to allow anyone to love her was akin to a lingering illness that she could not overcome), but I still found myself rooting for her.  Perhaps one of the reasons why I’m so drawn to Vivi is because I see so much of myself in her, whether it’s the inherent flaws that she struggles to overcome or the attempts to navigate her different roles in life (“steady sister, dependable daughter, supportive best friend”).  To this point, I found this quote from the book particularly relevant and meaningful: “Some humans come with a price.  You accept them in their entirety, because learning to love their flaws is easier than not loving them at all.”

Thao Thai writes in a way that is both profound and perceptive, with so many gorgeously rendered sentences that I ended up having something to highlight on nearly every page.  With this book, I also did something I hadn’t done since grad school: close read and take notes.  While doing this took me longer to get through the book than normal, it was well worth the effort, as I picked up on so many nuances that I probably would not have otherwise. One example is Thao Thai’s allusion to the poem “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti, which I had written a paper about in one of my English Literature classes – as soon as I saw the reference, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels between the sisters’ relationships in both works and it completely changed how I engaged with the story.  That said, as much as I loved the experience, I probably won’t do this type of close reading analysis with every book, at least not upon the first read, as I see now that there is a benefit to reading a book straight through and then doing a closer read upon the second go-around when I already know the main beats of the story.

If you loved Thao Thai’s debut as much as I did, I would definitely recommend reading her sophomore novel, though I must be clear that both books are very different in story and tone, despite sharing similarly emotive and beautiful prose (and absolutely gorgeous covers).  I can’t wait to see what Thao Thai will write next!

Received ARC from Mariner Books via NetGalley.