First third reviews

Happy Friday, friends! Today is my first review round-up of the year, where I’m giving you some mini reviews on the books I’ve read in the first four month of the year. I’ve read a total of nine books so far this year, most of which either got 4 or 4.5 stars. So without further ado, let’s get into the reviews!

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion: 4 stars

I don’t have much to say about this book, honestly! I overall enjoyed it, as much as you can enjoy a book about such a difficult topic. Didion’s writing is clear and concise, and it’s clear how she was able to have such a successful career. This book was truly heartbreaking in places, and as someone who recently lost a parent, was very relatable at times. The concept of “magical thinking”, of being convinced your loved one will return and forgetting they’re gone, was one I really related to. So overall, I’m glad I read this book, but it didn’t have a super long-lasting impact on me and isn’t one I’ll think of frequently.

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Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin: 4.5 stars

I really really enjoyed this book, and it was such a fun book to read at the start of the year! The concept is super interesting: people one day receive a notification that they once elected to have a memory deleted from their brain, and they can choose to have it reinstated if they want. It follows five people deciding whether to get their memory back or not. It was super fun and interesting, with lots of twists and turns. It also had a lot of super interesting moral questions and really made me think, without being overt with a message or trying to sway you either way. Some of the characters are really morally grey, and it was just super interesting. I cannot recommend it enough.

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Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney: 4.5 stars

I loved this book a lot. I just really enjoy Rooney’s characters; they’re so real and relatable, almost to a disturbing amount. I, perhaps unfortunately, really saw myself in some of the characters of this. It’s very classically Rooney in a lot of ways, so if she’s not typically your thing, you probably wouldn’t enjoy it. I remember telling my boyfriend I was so frustrated with the characters because they were so obviously in love and just had to be honest with themselves and each other. But it’s sososo good, I really recommend it.

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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See: 4 stars

I finally read this book!! It’s been on my TBR for the better part of 15 years, and I read it with my book club earlier this year. Like all Lisa See novels, it was super well written and researched, and I really enjoyed the characters and their relationships. I loved how See always focuses on women and their stories, and how she does so much research for her books. I felt like I learned a lot and really enjoyed this book. Overall, I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of historical fiction.

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Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzalves: 4 stars

I also really enjoyed this! It’s such a fun premise: the ex-girlfriends of the brother-in-law of a European princess are competing on a Bachelor-style TV show to receive a second chance with him. It was so silly and fun, and I had such a great time reading it. My one complaint is that the characters are 18 or 19, and I think this would have been so much stronger if they were mid-20s. I think the relationships would have had more weight and the stakes would have been higher (marriage as opposed to a second chance at a relationship). But overall, I just had a really fun time with this and really enjoyed it.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz: 4 stars

This is probably the book I’ve thought about the most since reading it this year. It was just such an interesting, intriguing book and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. You know when you read a book and immediately feel like you have to reread it? It was one of those. It follows a group of women who have been kidnapped (?) and are living in a bunker. Our unnamed narrator is the only child out of the group and doesn’t remember anything pre-bunker. I don’t want to say much more about the plot, other than that the second half was insane. I just,,,,, I don’t even know. I’ve thought so much about it and think I’ll keep coming back to it. It does require a bit of a suspension of belief, so if that’s something you get hung up on, just know that going in. But I highly recommend this. It was really well written, super interesting, made me think so much. It was just so good.

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Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui: 4 stars

I really, really enjoyed this book! It’s about the history of Chinese food restaurants in Canada, how so many of them popped up in small towns across Canada and how they have so many similar dishes. It also discusses the author’s parents, how they came to Canada, and their own experience with owning a Chinese restaurant. It was super interesting to hear the stories of different people across Canada and how similar yet different their stories are. It also featured my boyfriend’s parent’s neighbour! She owns a Chinese restaurant in Vulcan, Alberta, and when I got to that point in the audiobook, I literally sprinted home so my boyfriend and I could listen to it together.

My one complaint is that the audiobook is not super well produced; there are times where the author, who narrates the book, stuttered over her words or said the wrong word, and those issues weren’t edited out. That didn’t affect my rating of the book, but it is just something to know about the audiobook before going in. But if you want to learn about a kind of interesting and niche part of Canadian history, I highly recommend this!

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Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related by Jenny Heijun Wills: 3 stars

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, and I honestly can’t quite put my finger on what I disliked about it. It follows the author, who is from Korea and was adopted by a Canadian family as a baby. She eventually goes back to Korea to find her birth family, and reconnects with her birth mom and dad, and forms somewhat of a relationship with her half-siblings. Overall, I really commend the author on her honesty and for discussing her raw emotions. She’s so open and vulnerable about her struggles as an adoptee, from how it affected her physical and mental health, to how she views her adopted parents, to how she’s viewed by other adoptees and other Koreans. She opens up about a lot that would be very difficult to discuss, let alone publish knowing the people you’re discussing will likely read it. And I think her openness and vulnerability really make this book stronger, because you really understand how being adopted impacted her entire life.

That being said, there was something about this book that just didn’t quite click with me. I think the authors writing is too flowery for what I typically like in memoirs. It also wasn’t in chronological order, which I think would have been fine if I’d read this with my eyes, but made it somewhat hard to follow while listening on audio. But like I said, I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t like this. I still recommend it, as I think it’s super interesting and an important discussion on adoption, particularly trans-racial adoption. It just didn’t totally work for me.

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I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy: 5 stars

I, like everyone else, loved this book, and I don’t really have much to say about this book that hasn’t already been said honestly. I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by McCurdy, and I highly recommend it. Her narration is amazing and it really added to the book. I really liked how she described things as they happened, without imparting judgement onto them and letting the reader come to their own conclusion. This was a difficult read, but I’m so happy I read it and I cannot recommend it enough. I will be really interested to see any other work McCurdy does in the future.

So there we have it! Overall, it’s been a good reading year and I’m excited for what’s to come!

What books have you read so far this year? What were your favourites? Have you read any of these? What were your thoughts? Let me know!

Ally xx

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