Accidentally Engaged

 Accidentally Engaged

By Farah Heron

When it comes to bread, Reena Manji knows exactly what she's doing. She treats her sourdough starters like (somewhat unruly) children. But when it comes to Reena's actual family—and their constant meddling in her life—well, that recipe always ends in disaster.

Now Reena's parents have found her yet another potential Good Muslim Husband. This one has the body of Captain America, a delicious British accent, and lives right across the hall. He's the perfect, mouthwatering temptation . . . and completely ruined by the unwelcome side dish of parental interference.

Reena refuses to marry anyone who works for her father. She won't be attracted to Nadim's sweet charm or gorgeous lopsided smile. That is, until the baking opportunity of a lifetime presents itself: a couples' cooking competition with the prize of her dreams. Reena will do anything to win—even asking Nadim to pretend they're engaged. But when it comes to love, baking your bread doesn't always mean you get to eat it too.

This one wasn't a keeper for me.  It was eh - alright - fine - but I probably won't remember much of it six months from now, and I'm not going back and picking up others in the series. Reena as a heroine is not my cup of tea.  Feeling perpetually harassed by her family and very much the failure she assumes the worst a lot (which, to be fair, is pointed out and addressed in the book) and it's kind of a downer in the book. Instead of celebrating the things she can do well - and I kept thinking she would transition over to a bakery job instead of finance and she just... never even considered it? despite having a food blog and applying for a bread scholarship - she just circles round and round the things she's unhappy about.  It's maybe a more honest approach, but not only is that not really the bread-and-butter of the romance genre, it married very weirdly with some of the more slapstick/cliche aspects of the genre, i.e., the cooking show videos, which seem to exist mainly as a plot device to get Reena and Nadim to realize how cute they are together than have any realism or introduce any real tension or obstacles for our couple.  

And yes, they get married despite knowing each other for all of what, two months (about 95% of which they acknowledged they were lying to each other about significant things)? Some of the belief in a happy ending is the suspension of disbelief about mundane life things, so having a depressed heroine is fine, but trying to pair it with a quickie wedding/elopement that magically solves all problems and it becomes a very hard sell. 

This might just be a personal pet peeve, but I had a very hard time remembering that Nadim had an English accent, even though they mentioned it every other page - they way he's written doesn't sound that English, I guess, which, YMMV, but was an unnecessary distraction. And the way he keeps referring to his being from Africa instead of Tanzania. I don't know any Tanzanians, but that seemed "sus" to me. Yes, I'm trying to pick up the newfangled slang. And the foot fetish! That absolutely did not work for me. Sure, fetishists need love too, but what a thing to introduce. This book takes some weird turns, for sure: foot fancying, orgies (not a joke), green card marriages. 

What did I like about it? Descriptions of food.  There's some recipes in the back that I actually wanted to try, except then I read them and it seemed like more work than I want to do, cooking-wise, at this stage of my life, i.e., I ain't cooking nothing when I got this baby hanging on me. 

I liked that everyone did disclose things (although, geez, what a family of hypocrites) and that even talking about some things that had been very hurtful (Reena telling her sister Saira that Saira's anti-fat screed had kiboshed her own book deal and blog) didn't wind up with people falling into each other's arm - which is also the case in real life when you tell someone you've been holding a grudge against them for months and months. 

Overall, I would have preferred something where the main characters are a little more self-confident, a little more adult, and a little less unnecessarily complicating things for themselves. I did think this quote was both amusing and a perfect summary of that: 

"Anderson, before we film the segment, Nadim and I have a confession. We weren't really engaged when we entered the contest." She explained everything, their parents setting them up, their refusal to be married, and the fake engagement to enter the contest.

Anderson frowned. "So you're not really married?"

"Yeah, we're married now, but we weren't engaged when we made the videos," Nadim said.

"So you weren't a couple back then?"

"No, we were a couple." Reena said. "Just not engaged."

Anderson shrugged. "You guys are making this more complicated than it needs to be. Your parents set you up, you were a couple, and now you're married. Sounds like you were engaged to me. I'd like to start in five minutes. Are you ready?"

18 - A Romance Novel by a BIPOC Author

 

 

Honeycomb

Honeycomb

By Joanne M. Harris

An entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales. The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. Dark, gripping, and brilliantly imaginative, these magical tales will soon have you in their thrall.

 

 This collection of fairy tales feels, well, "real" is the wrong word, but maybe "lived in"? It feels like these have been sitting around for a few hundred years, maundering through Europe and getting jotted down by Perrault in passing.  Well, for the most part.  Some of them (the barnyard animal voting series) are fairly heavy-handed comparisons to the current American political environment.  

The book contains a multitude of short stories - and here it's important to note that this version at least (and hopefully all of them) is exquisitely illustrated and put together, feeling both whimsical and substantial - generally no more than three pages each.  Periodically, we'll catch up on the latest doings of the Lacewing King, a faerie king who starts off  terribly cruel, but then faces a series of punishments and setbacks (mostly orchestrated by people whom he's pissed off) and tries to find love and redemption. It's interesting, but not really what I wanted from a book of grim fairy tales. I wanted all of the stories to be short, pointed, and harsh.  I mean, the first story ends with some eye-snatching. That is some quality dark content!

The book itself is very nice, the illustrations are top-notch accompaniments, and the paper quality is weighty and feels rich.  I was a quarter of the way through when I bought a copy as a gift for someone, it impressed me that much.  We'll see if they like it though!

47: A Book Featuring a Parallel Reality

Kindred

Kindred

By Octavia Butler

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Woof, this one was heavy.  I had some vague idea that Butler's biggest series was about vampires (unclear how I came by that impression since I literally shelved her books when I was sixteen and worked at a bookstore) and then I kept seeing this one pop up, and thought it might be new, and what actually happened is that this was published in 1970, and is about a time-traveling black woman, and Octavia Butler died in 2006 and her last book was a vampire novel (but couldn't have been the vampire novel I was thinking of), but bears absolutely no resemblance to what I thought she wrote.  Anyway, this is to say that I had some vague impressions about what this was, but I was really not prepared for this to hit this hard.  

I did find myself comparing it to Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, mostly in the sense that an under-prepared young woman finds herself stranded in an unexpectedly dangerous time period, although obviously Kindred's Dana is at more risk than Kevran was - except, of course, of dying from the bubonic plague.  Also, that time period was not specifically dangerous to her, i.e., being a black woman on a plantation was a little more targeted than a white lady traveling through medieval England.  But both books build tension and horror really well, and in Kindred, even though we open with Dana in the hospital with Kevin, and sans arm, I still found myself cheating ahead, trying to make sure that she didn't face too much awfulness.  

So basically, Dana gets called out of time (and place) unexpectedly, discovering that she's being called to the side of Rufus Weylin, a young white boy/man in times of his personal danger.  She's returned to the 1900s when she feels in life-threatening danger herself.  While she may be in the 1800s for hours or months at a time, little time passes back in 1976.  Her trips back occur in quick succession in the 1900s, although years pass between calls in the 1800s.  Her 1976 husband, a white man named Kevin, is pretty fast to accept this once she disappears and reappears in front of him, soaking wet/banged up/etc.  We soon find out that Rufus is Dana's ancestor, and she needs to preserve his life at least long enough for him to continue her family line.  This is complicated, obviously, because she's a black woman and everyone who sees her basically sees "uppity should-be slave".  For all of my lengthy explanation, it's a surprisingly straightforward plot in many ways: the core of the book is the character development and emotional beats.  

Dana does feel some  - affection, at least at first, which then turns into dependence (if only because he is her way out, both to her own life as well as from the worst of slavery in the past) for Rufus.  Her influence on him wanes, as we see him becoming his worst impulses despite an early and positive relationship with Dana.  How much can one fight against a society which says: "You can take" that which you would otherwise not be given?

We also have the interesting side-story of Dana's marriage with Kevin, which takes a (not literal) beating as well.  Although he does accept this is happening, he doesn't understand her position, her feeling of responsibility and care towards Rufus. It becomes somewhat moot, as Kevin gets separated from her and stranded in the past for, oh, you know, like ten or fifteen years, until she can call him back again. I think it was meant to give Kevin the ability to empathize with Dana from having experienced it himself, which feels very intentional - although a white man in the 1970s may have some sympathy for the black experience, it would have been far more unusual for him to be empathetic. Or perhaps that's my own bias towards the past. The Civil Rights movement would have been a recent memory for Kevin and Dana, even if Black Lives Matter would not be born for another fifty years; but Kevin has a benevolent ignorance of Dana's reality.  Although he certainly loves her, and is very worried for her (he comes up with some very practical ideas about how she can protect herself if she gets called back, haha) he has no trauma of his own, before going back. 

In the end, Dana escapes, and Kevin escapes, and we're left with the memories.  The idea of "What do we owe each other?" is one that winds its way through the book, on all sides. It's a somewhat simple book, in idea and execution, but one that has stuck with me for much longer than it took to read.

46 - A Book about Someone Leading a Double-Life

This is How You Lose the Time War

This is How You Lose the Time War

By Amal El-Motar and Max Gladstone

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?

Okay, so I kind of hated this book.  Not for any "good" reason - it's not poorly written, or full of plot holes (although how would you even be able to tell) or stupid, or badly characterized or anything simple like that.  It's just way too much High Literature in my Fantasy/Sci Fi. 

You're dropped into a, well, I guess it could be futuristic world, except that all the places the two soldiers visit are clearly historical versions of Earth in some way, and we start with alternating chapters between a person from each faction, called Blue and Red.  

The conversation is initiated in a gloating kind of way, but quickly becomes a real connection between the two and then they turn into, I guess love letters, and then the very last few chapters are basically the two of them trying to evade capture and deprogramming by their respective groups. 

But it never felt to me like we, as readers, were properly introduced or welcomed by the characters. First of all, a bunch of times there's referrals to things that the characters deal with that are just sort of alluded to without ever actually touching on why or how they were important.  Which I guess makes sense for people who are actually writers letters, but for people who are simply fictional characters using letter writing as a way of telling a story, it's annoying and off-putting. It feels like we're watching from a distance rather than being welcomed into this tale.

Plus, they start getting into shenanigans about being together, and it feels like performance art. There's much made there about inscribing stones that are ground up into dirt which is then rubbed onto the side of your car and driven to an junkyard and scrapped for metal which is made into earrings and it just becomes so much dross by the end of it. Maybe it's a complement, but it's like hanging out with a real pair of lovers who are so interested in themselves and their love affair, they can't find anything else to talk about. Eventually, the only people who want to talk to them are each other.

#41 - A Book with a Reflected Image on the Cover or "Mirror" in the Title

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

By Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar 

From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.

This book somehow manages to be incredibly funny despite just being a horrible, awful, putrid list of racist shit that happened to Lacey (and sometimes Amber, but mostly Lacey).  And recently! It's a bit like The Witches Are Coming (and that other one she did) by Lindy West, but more intentionally funny than angry.  I showed just the first page to some people last week and they cracked up laughing, but in an incredulous way. 

Although both Ruffin and Lamar are technically co-authors, and Lamar has her own voice, Ruffin does all the heavy lifting, taking Lamar's stories and then adding a wink and a nod, like, "Can you believe this shit?!" which are sorely needed to lighten the mood.  Ruffin's career as a comedy writer clearly shows here, giving it a very conversational tone, like you're just gabbing with friends and then they start busting stories out.  (I feel like "conversational tone" gets overused, but it definitely fits here).

It defies belief that these stories happened (a) to one person (b) recently!  I cannot say enough good things about the way that Ruffin presents these stories, which are truly awful.  She manages to tread the fine line of being amusing while also being educational and not making you want to go out and kick the nearest person, which is a FEAT after some of these, I swear.  

I can't recommend this book enough. Go out and read it!

 

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

 When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

by Nghi Vo

The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.

 

 How many times have I said I expected and wanted a book to be better? Add this one to the list. I enjoyed the first one, albeit in a quieter way. For all that's it's very short, it felt like it dragged in the middle, while also not much happens. The framing storyteller mode is charming, but then everything is filtered through Rabbit, so we're getting a story of a story, and it doesn't really come together until the end, but it feels like more of a "Ah, okay" than a "Whoa, really?!" moment.  Anyway, I was interested enough to pick up this one, which I hoped would improve on the series. It did not. 

Vo plays around more with the storyteller trope and the unreliable narrator.  Here, both Chih the cleric and the Tiger take turns telling the story, which changes (drastically, in some cases) with the teller.  And that sounds like a great idea, but in practice, it falls very flat for me, mostly because there didn't seem to be much point.  There's a lack of cohesiveness in the way the intertwining parts of the story pull together. For example, what happens in one installment doesn't seem to affect or tie in much with what happens in the other installments.  Basically Chih goes, "This is how I heard this part" and the Tiger goes, "No, it was like this." and after you finish reading both parts you're not left with any kind of sense that maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle, it's like you just read two different stories about different things.  

Now that I've typed it out, I think that was my biggest problem, that lack of feeling like both stories were self-serving but different reflected versions of the truth.  Think of this like a divorced couple (or any couple really) or a lawsuit - both sides have their own versions of arguments and grievances, which present their own protagonist in the best possible light (or the most logical light, etc).  So it's a really interesting idea to create this dueling POV.  But it just wasn't that successful for me.  I didn't finish it and come out with more than the stories themselves, no greater insight for having heard both halves.  Maybe Vo should have tried that old chestnut and added a third storyteller: "His side, her side, and the truth".  

Vo is part of the new wave of sci/fi/fantasy authors who are including more varied representations of gender/sexuality/etc, which seems like it would be a natural fit for a story about a Tiger and her wife, but again, it just didn't seem to have that much to say about it.  I was intrigued enough from the first one (and of course, the length is a bonus - not much time commitment!) to get this one, and I'm still intrigued, but not so anxious for the next one to arrive. We'll wait and see. 

04 - A Book with a Tiger on the Cover or "Tiger" in the Title