Reviews and Comments

It is quite surprising to note that the author is still working on their MFA at San Jose State university. The book is super compelling read. The story is about two sisters who have a bad experience as very young children in a home that they come back to after 10 years or so and confront their fears. There are ghosts & monsters.

The author transitioned after writing this book (so they go by M. M. Olivas now and not what this book club instance tells us). Do read as it's written by a Bay area author too!

locusmag.com/2024/11/spotlight-on-m-m-olivas/

I did devour this book. It was super compelling. The book covers a future world that feels significantly more miserable than what we live in today. It does cover how AI can be abused for domestic violence. Ultimately it is a positive outcome for the protagonist. I felt the end outcome was a bit contrived. Nonetheless if you want a distraction this is a good book.

For Native American Heritage month, i am reading a bunch of books by indigenous authors. This is a fantasy story where witches exist but are being hunted out of existence by witch hunters who are basically harbingers of capitalism. 7 spoons find the right group of women who are necessary to bring about the end of capitalism & the witch hunters.

The author tries to make this inclusive by having a trans woman as one of the protagonists but really why would a witch have to have something femme about them? It doesnt quite make sense to me really. Somehow it feels like this book is veering towards terf-ness by having such a narrow focus on who can be a witch.

Otherwise this is a very compelling read. Easy to keep reading and the trashing of capitalism is a plus.

The story is about a SFPD (lol) police psychologist who moves back to Nigeria after a racist encounter with the US police and starts helping his sister try to find out who is trying to frame the mega church pastor there. During the course of this we encounter colorism, outsized influence of church & rampant corruption. The book was really un-putdownable and I had to turn the pages to finish it.

I am deducting two stars for showing police as having a "few good apples" and ending too neatly with politicians & the criminal behind bars thanks to vigorous police. I also didnt like how the only Nigerian character with muslim name has a "funny" way of pronouncing words in English and how the lower class people language is shown to be pidgin and not in a respectful way.

The book features a world where people with testosterone get an incurable disease that makes them kill & eat all estrogen-having people. Meanwhile trans people are being persecuted for either having testosterone or wanting testosterone by the TERFs. I am not surprised at all that the Wachowiski sisters decided to make this into a movie. This is gonna be an AMAZING one.

It also ends in a very satisfying manner (with a cameo featuring the most famous TERF alive). I really enjoyed reading it especially the day after the 2024 elections. I am squeamish about reading sex scenes in books and this one has a LOT of them.

Loved this book. This is how you write people working in police without pretending like there are a "few good apples" and pretending like police is what keeps sanity. This book tackles heavy topics of child abuse in churches. I also learned about Larry Casuse who kidnapped the mayor of Gallup (Larry does not have a Wikipedia page) to highlight the plight of Navajo nation people who are tormented in Gallup and he was shot dead by the police. A+++

I really wanted to like this because it was a paranormal mystery set in Haight Ashbury featuring amateur detective who sold second hand clothing. Sadly, there was just too much racism & transphobia for me to get over. Granted this was published in 2009, but I do think we all deserve better than this representation of San Francisco.

When I picked up this book it has everything going for it, not copaganda, has a Black woman protagonist, written by Black author. But the romance part of this somehow felt way off to me. This man who is a school employee comes on to her  – a parent – way too strong, almost giving me stalker-y vibes. But otherwise, really enjoyed the friendship portrayed between two mothers & all the gossip in the school parents Facebook chat.

People with wombs are selected to colonize a new planet (yuck) because people on earth are too busy destroying themselves & climate change has become too violent at scale. They travel with thousands of specimens to be used for artificial insemination.

I really liked this plot twist on how people get chosen. It's a murder mystery that is sorta melancholic that ends on a more hopeful note. I felt really sad reading about the climate change and how the last hummingbird was caged in a zoo that was then hit by a missile. It really gutted me because thats what is happening now in Lebanon & Palestine.

Otherwise, my only criticism is that this book is too kind to fascists.

This book is about a housekeeper planning a heist of all luxury goods from a mansion that she works in. But there are plots within plots. Built around some very sordid history that nobody talks about when they talk about the "good old days" when lords were lording. I really enjoyed reading this book.

one of the annoying parts of the steampunk universe, to me, is how white it is. Luckily for us authors like P. Djéli Clark & Valjeanne Jeffers are here to offer worlds that are more authentic without erasing the racism, classism & homophobia but simultaneously offering courageous Black women protagonists. Really love this even though there is a touch of misogyny in this series (man wont marry a woman who is "better" than him).

Ostensibly about a Filipino-jewish woman who lives in Monterey who has a high powered real-estate agent & Filipino American mother with cancer who joins her in solving a murder. I really do not like copaganda and sadly this book tries to include a Native American cop who does the "right thing" but still how is that not copaganda? Also there is almost nothing Filipino in the book about ostensibly 3 Filipino American protagonists.

The book is very readable though. My quest for mysteries without copaganda continues.

Not only did he operate with great financial constraint but he was also constantly ignored by sociologists of his time. This pioneering work won a gold medal at the exposition where these charts were showcased. What a beautiful set of charts. Worth learning from and seeing in detail. I was gutted by the chart that showed how dramatically Black population increased after civil war. To me that was the sign that a lot of violence / death impacted the enslaved people. So much pain hidden in one chart.