The Prince and the Dressmaker

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A lovely book about being yourself and learning to love who you are. Frances and Sebastian have a sweet friendship that naturally turns into something more as they become more and more comfortable being themselves around one another. Sebastian finds himself in the uncomfortable situation of having to choose between what his family, whom he loves, expects of him, and what feels right to him as a person. Although it takes some time to figure out, and he ends up being outed by a self-righteous jerk in the process, in the end, his family loves him and supports his decisions to dress in whatever way he wants and love whomever he wants in the most epic way possible. I was also happy that Frances stood up for herself when Sebastian disappointed her and tried to control her for his own personal interests, but I was even more happy to see her stand up for her own designs. Frances and Sebastian make a great team, supporting one another and encouraging one another to greatness. They would be great role models for any kid, or adult, for that matter.

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We Are the Ants

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SPOILERS AHEAD

Both a deeply touching story of loss, grief, and misery, and an existential journey of self-discovery. Henry starts and ends the both saying the same words: "When we're gone, the world will forget we ever existed. It doesn't matter." What changes over the course of 6 months and this book is what he *means* by those words.

For much of the book, Henry wrestles with how to live in a world where his boyfriend, his other half, doesn't exist. What's the point when nothing we do matters in the grand scheme of the universe? When faced with the decision to save the universe or let it be destroyed, Henry figures the world is better off dead. Eventually, through his relationships with his family, with Audrey, and with Diego, Henry realizes that life can go on and HE can go on, but not without admitting the truth to the ones who love him: he is not okay, and he needs help.

While Henry lived in the past, Diego was focused on ignoring it. He didn't want to be the guy who went to juvie for beating up his dad, the guy whose own mom wouldn't support him, and kept returning to her abuser. Diego wanted to focus on the future, and figure out who he was and who he wanted to be. Diego wanted Henry in his future and didn't necessarily understand why Henry couldn't let go of the past.

What these guys learned together was the mantra Henry had inscrinbed on the journal he gives Diego: "Remember the past, live the present, write the future." It's all about balance: you can't live in the past, but you can't ignore what you've been through. You need to live in the now, and look to the future, and write your own story of who you want to become.

I don't want to talk about Marcus, but I feel like I need to mention him. As much as he is the villain in this story, I do have a tiny piece of understanding for him. Let me be clear: Marcus deserved everything he got, and much, much more, but his actions definitely came from a place of desperation and self-loathing, and I hope he gets the help he needs so that he learns from his actions and never hurts anyone ever again. And that's all I'll say about him.

I can't imagine that any of these characters are completely over their issues. Henry might always feel guilt over Jesse's death and moving on (I wasn't good enough, I loved him too much, I didn't love him enough), Diego definitely has some overprotective anger issues to work on, Charlie and Zooey will always mourn for and miss their Evie. But no one is perfect, and no one has everything all figured out. Like Audrey tells Henry, you might not be good enough for Diego, but he's not good enough for you either, and maybe that makes you perfect for each other.

In th end, it doesn't matter if the world forgets who we are, what we did, who we loved. "The universe may forget us, but our light will brighten the darkness for eons after we've departed this world. The universe may ........ we may not get to choose how we die, but we *can* choose how we live."

So the big question: was Henry really abducted by aliens? Was there really a button to press? Did the world end on January 29, 2016? Despite my curiosity, I can only conclude one thing: it doesn't matter. Like anything after the ending of this book, our future is unwritten, and you can change, grow, and be who you want to be, the best version of yourself.

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Paper Princess

Paper Princess by Erin Watt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

SPOILERS AHEAD

This was... not what I expected. To be honest, I can't believe this is consider YA, with all the over-the-top hookups and sex talk. It's totally unsurprising to me, now that I've read this and done some research, that this is a collaboration between 2 authors who primarily write adult romance. I definitely see a lot of those common romance tropes here.

I like Ella well enough, but her instant attraction to Reed was unbelievable, and her reactions to pretty much everything that happened seemed oversize for each situation. I wish she would stick around and try to trust at least Callum, instead of running, despite the insanity she was facing at the end of the book.

I'm more annoyed, though, with Reed and the rest of these Royal boys. Can you please start acting in rational ways, or at least explaining yourselves? It makes absolutely no sense that Reed would go from loving, supportive boyfriend to unapologetic sex toy of a woman whom he hates in a span of a few hours. I honestly don't see any explanation that would justify or forgive that behavior. Gideon also makes no sense, trying to warn Ella off without actually saying anything. And the evil Brooke - what does she have over these guys that allows her make them her sexual play things? Based on the pec scratches, which I'm guessing is her calling card, she's also been having sex with Gideon.

I'll probably read the next book just because the way this one ended was so unsatisfying and I want at least some good thing to come for Ella, but I can't imagine what that could possibly be at this point.

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Krampus

Krampus: The Yule Lord by Brom
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SPOILERS AHEAD

This book was so much different than I expected, and so great. Not that I expected it not to be great, but I was quite surprise and taken by the Krampus/Santa connection to Norse mythology. It really makes me want to read more about the topic, because as a person of 50% Scandinavian heritage, it's pretty sad that the most I know about Norse mythology comes from Marvel comics and movies, and now this book. Luckily I've already picked up a couple books, and I can't wait to read them!

I really appreciated the shifting narrators of this book, as it allowed me to understand and sympathize with each character's unique perspective. I just wanted to give Jesse a hug and some encouragement. Every time someone called him a loser, I wanted to yell, "don't believe it! They don't know you!" If nothing else, his time with Krampus gave him the confidence to know what kind of person he truly was, and what he was capable of. I hope he pursues his music, and I hope Linda can recognize how much he has changed. I don't blame her for leaving him in the first place, though Dillard was a particularly terrible choice as a follow up, but it seems like they still have a lot of love for one another, and most of all, they both love Abby and want what is best for her. Also, there's nothing like being saved from your murdering boyfriend by your ex to make you reconsider your relationship status. I enjoy thinking of them living happily, together. They've earned a little peace.

I have so much love for Isobel. That poor girl - she never had a family to support her, and the one person who ever truly loved her died before they ever got to become a true family. I'd like to think that his parents would have taken both her and the baby in, but I get the fear and sadness that drove her to want to end it all. Thankfully, Krampus was there to save her, and give her a second chance at life. She might not have aged physically in those 40 years, but she Grew Up, and she knew her priorities this time around: finding and having a relationship with her son, even if he was "25 years older" than her now. I'm curious if they'll buy it, but I hope they will learn to accept her.

The Krampus vs Baldur debate: who is the good and who is the evil? That seems to be the big question posed in this book. In a way, I can see each of their sides. The truth is, none of us got to know the old Baldur - all things considered, he appears to have mellowed and truly turned towards good over the years, but it's hard to reconcile that person with the same one who would chain Krampus in a cave for millennia, all because he wanted power that was not his to possess. Krampus is full of righteous, justified anger. When he is finally free, he is due his revenge, and I was happy for him to see it realized, even as I knew it couldn't last long. It was hard to see Krampus as he realized how the world had changed in the years he was in exile, and try to find his place in it. That last night was so perfect: the candy in the shoes, the party at the tavern, all of Mother Nature rejoicing with Krampus. It's sad that Krampus and Baldur couldn't co-exist, but it didn't seem that their history would allow that. Whoever the God is in this story, She made sure of that, and chose Baldur as Her victor because he amused her the most. A sad way for a proud, majestic god to end.

Luckily, that wasn't the true ending! Krampus had planted the seeds in the minds of Boone County, and once planted, they were hard to remove. "If enough folks believe in a thing I guess it becomes real enough." Krampus was not forgotten, and thus, he lived. In the memory of those who loved and honored him, in the belief of the children, in the spirit of Yule, and maybe even in body: Krampus lives.

The only person for whom I felt no sympathy for in the end was Dillard. To paraphrase Santa: "F--- that guy. The world is a little less evil now without him here." That guy was truly scum, and even living in his brain for a bit and hearing all his justifications for murder didn't make me sympathize with him. I just wanted to punch him. His end was truly fitting.

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The Wedding Date

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been reading a lot of heavy books lately, so I wanted to take a break and read something a little more light-hearted. This was a funny, sexy romance that had the perfect amount of tension. I also appreciated Alexa giving Drew a look outside his own privilege, and providing some education on what it's like to be a black person and woman. Drew might be an idiot about some things, but he shut down people's racism really fast, and believed Alexa, no questions asked, when she told him about someone's racist comments. Their relationship wasn't perfect, but I liked how they listened to one another, paid attention, and always tried to understand where the other was coming from. If I have one complaint, I didn't necessarily need to read about ALL the sex - it feels like about 50% of the book was descriptions of them either having sex, wishing they were having sex, or remembering having sex. That's just personal preference, though. It was very tastefully written, just frequent.

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The Radium Girls

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating story, and it's truly disgusting and disheartening how these women were treated by men who valued their own profits and companies over human life. It's also extremely frustrating that radium regulation wasn't put into place until a rich, white man died from radium poisoning, despite women suffering and dying from it for over a decade by that point. These companies, and the people who own them and work for them, are truly deplorable, and I get more and more angry the more I think about them.

I appreciate so much that author Kate Moore gave voice to these women, and both their physical and mental struggles and their battles in court. For women who died too young, for no other reason than they were doing their jobs, she told their stories and immortalized them for all time. I kept flipping to look at their photos, to remember their stories, and to match faces with the many names.

My only complaint about this book is the attention to detail was so excessive that it moved very slowly for me. For a book I was invested in, it took me a remarkably long time to read - 12 days. I just wasn't motivated. Maybe I was too sad? Maybe I could sense how it was going to go? Who knows. In the end, I feel like the story could have been tightened up, and still maintain it's authenticity and truth.

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Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maybe it's because I have struggled through my own body issues for many years, but a lot of this book really spoke to me.

I want to thank Roxane Gay for sharing so many intimate details of her own personal story. I can't imagine that is an easy thing to do, especially when you have been hiding those parts of yourself for so long. As she writes in the introduction, "Mine is not a success story, but it is a true story." Thank you for sharing your truth.

In many ways, Roxane's story is vastly different than mine, but there are parts of her story, of the experience of being overweight, and being overly conscious of the space your own body takes up, that really resonate with me. People that have always been small don't always seem to understand the impact your physical size has on your life. It's not even about health, it's about wondering if you'll fit in a chair or a rollercoaster or a plane seat. It's about wondering if the people that end up near to you in public spaces are going to be annoyed at the extra space you take up, and constantly trying to minimize your physical footprint. It's about wondering if you'll ever find something to wear that you like, and seeing all the clothes you'd like to wear not come in your size. I've experienced all those things, and I weigh several hundred pounds less than Roxane.

I've seen some criticism that parts of this book can be repetitive, and yes, I'd say that is true. But I think that can be attributed to the fact that these parts that are repeated are significant to each essay they are included in. For me, listening to this book over the space of a week, it wasn't an annoying repetition, it was appreciated.

If nothing else when you read this book, I would hope that your eyes would be opened to the world that so many people live in; to the biases, whether conscious or unconscious, that larger-sized people face. We need to be sensitive to the way we interact with and speak to one another, regardless of size. As Roxane puts it towards the end of the book, it's about inclusion and acceptance, not just tolerance.

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Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SPOILERS AHEAD:

A story about life and death, race and privilege, family and home. This story benefited greatly from it's alternating narrators. If all we knew was Jojo's perspective, it would be easy to classify Leonie as just a selfish person and a terrible mother. As much as those things might be true, when the story is told from Leonie's perspective, we can see that she is much more complicated than that. The violent, senseless, and unvindicated loss of her brother Given as such a young age left a lasting hole in her life. Not only did she desperately miss her brother, but her parents were wrapped up in their own grief, and she was left on the outside, alone, until Michael came along.

This story is also about Jojo becoming a man, and awakening more and more to the reality of the world he lives in. As much as the world changes, it seems some things stay the same. His grandpa, River, was sent to prison just for being black and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Richie died because he was taken by an evil man and ended up black in the wrong place at the wrong time. Given was killed because he was black boy and was better at something than a white man. Jojo, as 13 year old, is handcuffed and thrown to the group for no reason other than he is black and a cop has decided his family is suspicious. Jojo also has to listen to the racist rants of his white grandpa.

The only good thing I saw Jojo's father, Michael, do is defend Leonie to his parents. I almost wish we could have had some chapters from Michael's perspective, because I honestly don't know what that man was thinking. Who even starts dating the sister of the boy his own cousin killed in cold blood? I can't tell if he ever loved his kids or if he just loved Leonie.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of the mystical elements of this book. What makes a spirit stay around instead of heading to it's final resting place? It seemed like Given was staying for his mom. Richie seemed to stay because he needed some sort of closure on how he died, but even when he knew, he didn't seem to be satisfied. That tree of ghosts at the end was certainly creepy, and just made me really sad. Also, what is it about Jojo's family that lets them see these spirits and communicate with them? His grandma seemed to imply that it came down through her family line, but what is the purpose of their powers? To help the spirits move on? It the end I guess we'll never know.

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1984

1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Finally it's done!! It's taken me so long to finish this book (well over a year) partly because I just stalled out over the doublethink and newspeak and the philosophical treatise Winston spends so long reading in middle, trying to understand the why of it all. There's a lot of good nuggets in this book, and it definitely makes you think about society as a whole and your place in it. What makes something real? Even if you know something to be true, is it really true is everyone else says it's not?

In the end, I wanted to enjoy this more than I actually did. If I wasn't so stubborn, I probably never would have finished it. We read this in school, but at this point, I'm not convinced I had even finished it. These days, it almost feels TOO real: I can actually imagine our society and government turning into this, and it's terrifying. Part of me wants people to read this as a cautionary tale, but the other part of me is afraid there are people out there who would read this and think, "these are great ideas, let's do that." No, how about let's not?

Here are some things I underlined while reading:

"This - although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense - is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace."

"It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done thins, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

"In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news in untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious ans is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world."

"Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards and organization."

"The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it an nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields the power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same."

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It's Okay to Laugh

It's Okay to Laugh by Nora McInerny Purmort
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Of all the cancer memoirs I've read recently, this is the first one written by a surviving family member instead of the patient themselves. Nora writes with humor, honestly, and truth about what it's like to lose the ones you love to soon. Beyond just putting in to words some of the things I have been feeling over the past 6 months, though, Nora gives great advice and insight in how to be a good friend to your own people who are grieving.

The line that sticks with me most is this: "You may be the one who says the wrong thing, but that's better than being the one who says nothing at all." As a perfectionist at heart, sometime's it's hard for me to do or say anything if I fear it might not be the "right" or "best" thing for the situation, but in the end, it's not your perfect words that are going to matter to your friends, it's the fact that you texted, or called, or sent a card, or a facebook message; that you SHOWED UP and said, in your own imperfect way, "I'm here for you. I care about you. You are important."

One of my friends recently lost her husband to cancer, and through this whole process, she has been a pillar of strength and faith, especially for her kids. My friend immediately came to mind when Nora said, "You don't do it because you're superwoman, you do it because it's your life, and no one can live it for you." Life doesn't just stop, and you can't just stop either - there's still bills to pay and kids to feed and showers to take. You're strong because you have to be. That doesn't make that strength any less amazing, but that's just the way life is.

Another insight that sticks with me is the uniqueness of grief, and how isolating that can be. "Grief is lonely, no matter how many other people feel it. Each is different, because we lost different people." I take that thought and to it that you can't expect anyone else to grieve the same way you do. You have to allow people to grieve in the ways they need, even if it doesn't make sense to you.

I've never been married, so I don't know what it's like to contemplate losing the love of your life, but I can relate to the fear and anxiety that comes with the thought of losing your parents. I am extremely close to my parents, and they are getting to be an age where they have major health issues, most recently my dad's own brain cancer diagnosis. Every day, I worry about what life will be like without them, and what I can do to make their lives better every day I have with them. I loved (and also sobbed through) Nora's story of her last words for her father as he passed, and I pray that I'll not only be able to be the same comfort to my parents one day, but also that I'll tell them these things every day along the way: "You are the best dad."

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