Firekeeper's Daughter by Angleine Boulley

 

Frist of all, I knew promising a weekly review would be risky.

I just didn't think I'd fail in the third week.  Sigh.  So, I am going back to promising random reviews, especially in light of some super fun and super time consuming family projects going on at the moment which will unfortunately negatively impact my reading and writing time.  Please bear with me!!

On to the Book of the Week!

Remember way back when when I was so anti Audiobooks?

Welcome to the first time I have thought, man, I should be listening to this one instead of reading the book.

Wow.

I will come back to that in a minute.  First of all I want to say that I am firmly in the camp that this is NOT a YA book.  I cannot believe it was categorized that way.  There are some really hard themes here, lots of loss of family and support and stability, and drug abuse and reservation politics and a violent sexual assault on a young woman that was almost skimmed over it was written so fast, but still was very disturbing to me.  Did it have impact on the story?  Well, yes, but still, that doesn't mean I had to like it.  I have two teenage/young adult daughters so that sort of thing is a trigger for me personally. 

Ok, moving on.  I wish I had listened to this one because of all the beautiful names and hard pronunciation problems I had with reading it.  My book club will review this book soon so maybe I will take that opportunity to listen to a book I have already read! I took a lot of notes on this book, trying to keep the family and the scandal Daunis was born into straight.  There are a lot of characters in this book!   Her two grandmothers - one white, one Native American Anishinaabe - push and pull her between two worlds and we see that relationship and identity strain from the very start of the novel.  We learn about the difference between a descendant and an enrolled member of their community, about how dreams are so important, about sacrifice and secrets and doing the right thing.  There is a murder, a witness, and some undercover cops, and Daunis is asked to go undercover too, to help them break up a meth ring, which could end up backfiring on her already fractured family.  There are overbearing parents and there is racism and prejudice against a biracial girl who has trouble finding her place.  We do get a nice full circle ending, but this is a hard read.  Fascinating in its description of life on an Ojibwe reservation, the injustice of tribal laws and/or the US Federal law's inability to prosecute crimes on reservation land, too.  There is just so much going on.

Welcome to Life.  

I gave this one five stars on Goodreads, so I don't mean for this expanded review to sound negative.  I would direct you to other reviews on Goodreads by Brandann Hill-Mann, luce and Jessica Woodbury and don't miss the comments under those reviews; there is a lot of good information and explanation from Hill-Mann, whose hometown is Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, where the book is set. 

UPDATE:

My book club met last night.  We all LOVED this book and two members said it was now one of their all time favorites.  We all heartily agreed that this was not really a Young Adult book, and had a great discussion about what a YA book really is. For us, it is not solely defined by having a teenage protagonist (see: Demon Copperhead.  I would not give that book to a 12 year old.  An 18 year old?  Maybe.  But I know 50 year old women who had a hard time with that brilliant, wonderful, heartbreaking book - and still my favorite of the year).  One definition I found for YA was: a book for ages 12-18.  Say, What???  In what (modern) world is a 13 year old considered an adult?? Just call it what it is - teen fiction - and keep the adult themes for adults at least 21.  I mean, yes, I understand that every kid has a different maturity level and that we should never ban books and parents should encourage all kinds of reading.  But can we at least keep them age appropriate?  Do we want 12 year old girls, or boys, reading about violent or even non violent rape, for a perpetrator who legally got away with it, and having them think that is ok?  Impressionable minds and all that.  Just my humble opinion.  What is yours??

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

 

Happy Wednesday!

Last week I promised myself I was finally going to get more organized and scheduled with my reviews and blogposts.  I was going to publish them once a week on Tuesdays!!

Yeah, well, again, happy Wednesday.  Sigh.

I will try to keep publishing on a more regular basis.  If you are receiving this review via email, thank you for subscribing, and please do visit my site to see other reviews from years past!  Click the Read More link at the bottom of the email to see all my reviews!

Now, on to this week's review:

I plucked this book out of the Goodwill pile my daughter made when she went off to college.  She graduates next month.  So yeah, it has been on my TBR for a few years now! 

The great/unique thing about this book is that the author is himself a character in the book.  He mentions real things that are happening or will happen in his actual life. This makes it a little bit difficult to figure out what is real and what is actual fiction; I may or may not have been googling his tv show work as I read!  

Otherwise, what we have here is a pretty traditional whodunnit. A woman with a famous actor for a son plans her own funeral on the same day she is murdered.  Coincidence?  They think not. Horowitz follows ex-Investigator Hawthorne around as the brilliant detective chases the clues in his nontraditional way and writes down everything Hawthorne does so that "they" can write a novel about the case.  Horowitz asks a few questions of his own, which earns him frowning disapproval from the crotchety Hawthorne.  Same result when Horowitz tries to learn a little bit about Hawthorne the man, who thinks that since that information is completely irrelevant to the murder, it is irrelevant to the book.  So we continue to plod along and follow Hawthorne, until Horowitz decides to branch out on his own with his own idea of whodunnit. 

Disaster.

There are definitely a lot of twists and turns and misdirections in the story.  It gets a bit convoluted but keeps you guessing, if you care.  I found that I didn't really care.  There was no energy to the story, no real connection to the victim(s), and it read a bit dry honestly.  I did like the originality of the author being part of the story; it was like a shock to the system to be reading along in first person and then BAM he mentions something out of real life.  So that was fun.  There are three more books in this series.  And maybe it isn't fair that I read this so close to another murder mystery series with original characters that I REALLY liked.  But for my reading life, I think I will stick with Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club series.  They are a lot more fun!!!

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

 

About this book, author Kevin Wilson said, "A beautiful examination of how loneliness can be transformed, cracked open, with the slightest touch from another living thing."

Shelby Van Pelt said, "This is a story about getting unstuck."

I had heard that the audio version of this book was amazing, mainly because one of the main characters has a British accent.

I was in.  (Have you met my husband???  ;-))

Performed by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie, this story is about an octopus living in (and out of) a tank at an aquarium, a lady who works at the aquarium, and how they form a friendship of sorts that ends up with each of them helping the other out with their loneliness.  Set in Washington State, we learn about Tova's life and heartbreaks and her friend group, the Knit Wits (haha! They are actually based on a group of friends the author's grandmother had!  I loved that!).  We also learn that Marcellus, the octopus, is VERY observant about the humans who observe him through the glass.  So, pay attention.

I don't really want to say much more about what happens here.  What I really want you to know is that this is an AMAZING debut novel.  Yep, this is Van Pelt's first novel!  Do WHAT?  I was amazed.  This is such good writing, and weaving of a story, and she keeps the direction she is going tightly bound.  She writes about living with grief and about life as an older person and what it is like to have your life go in a direction you were not planning on.  I can hardly wait to discuss this with my book club.  There is a LOT to talk about here with the structure and the storyline and just the fact that we get inside the head of a giant Pacific octopus.  And yes, I did google the videos of how octopuses can squeeze themselves through the smallest of spaces. Then I went to an author event with Shelby Van Pelt and learned even MORE about octopuses!  She is a very bright creature too, so bubbly and excited about her first novel, and very cagey about what she might write next. Marcellus started as a character for a creative writing class she took ten years ago.  I asked her if there would be another animal featured in her next book, and while she didn't think she would write a sequel to RBC, she did not deny the possibility of having another non-human character featured in the future.

Remarkably Bright Creatures with its fantabulous cover is ultimately a book that will leave you smiling and wishing you could read it again for the first time - and wanting to go to the aquarium.