"The Hazel Wood" by Melissa Albert

This book has been receiving great reviews from early readers months before its scheduled publication date (January 30, 2018). So I was really excited to get an e-ARC of this fantasy YA novel that promised to be set in a creepy fairy tale world. Unfortunately, this book was a disappointment for me. I think more than anything else the writing style was just not my cup of tea.

Here is a quick summary of the plot. The main character, a seventeen year old girl named Alice has spent much of her life moving from place to place. Her mother Ella grew up in the Hazel Wood, a secluded estate owned by Alice's grandmother Althea Proserpine. Althea had written a book of fairy tales that brought her much fame. However, it is almost impossible to get a copy of her book and Alice had never read her grandmother's work. She also never met her, a fact that makes her even more curious about her famous relation. One day, Alice's mother disappears and Alice is convinced that the key to finding her mother is to finally venture into the Hazel Wood.

Now to the reasons why I did not enjoy this book. First of all, we spend over half of the novel in anticipation of getting to the Hazel Wood. Weird things start happening to Alice, but nothing is fully explained. I think the author was trying to keep the reader in suspense. Instead, I was just bored and tired of waiting for something interesting to happen. When we finally do get to the Hazel Wood things start moving along much faster, but in snippets such that again nothing is fully explained.

In addition, the most interesting and unique part of this book are the fairy tales which are extremely dark and are unlike anything I had ever read. However, the author fails to explore that angle fully. We get only bits and pieces of some stories and never, for example, get the full tale of Alice-Three-Times.

Overall, it was difficult for me to stay invested in the story. I just could not get into it and struggled to finish it. 2 out of 5 stars. 

"Future Home of the Living God" by Louise Erdrich

This is a dystopian novel set in not such a distant future in the US, although the author does not provide any definitive dates. We are told that lots of changes are happening to various species of animals and plants, that the evolution has reversed itself somehow and all the living species are moving towards some primal/less evolved state. The novel begins at the point when the human species are also affected, and newborns start to exhibit traits of this reversed evolution. There are rumors of pregnant women being detained, of martial law instituted in the country and of religious zealots taking over the government.

The novel is written from the point of view of a young Native American woman who is newly pregnant. Cedar was adopted in infancy and is now on her way to meet her biological mother, an Ojibwe living on the reservation. We see the world through her eyes, and this I think makes this novel so unique and interesting. Cedar has vague notions of what is going on in the world. She is dealing with a lot in her personal life: a new pregnancy, relationship with her baby's father, meeting her biological family and in the midst of it all, she is trying to develop some plan to survive as society breaks down and panic ensues. Pregnant women are being detained and confined. News are scarce and unreliable. She often does not know what is going on, who is in control and how to stay safe.

As I was reading this book, at first I kept getting frustrated that I was not fully understanding what was happening in the country politically. Clearly, some religious organization/group took over the power, but we never get the full story. People are being spied on. Pregnant women are kept isolated and in the dark about their future. The novel kept getting darker and more hopeless as things moved along.

I then realized that the author did a great job capturing a dystopian scenario as experienced by a single individual. We see the world through Cedar's eyes who does not have the full picture, perhaps no one does. And the reality she is living is grim and disheartening but also so very realistic. I ended up really enjoying this novel. It is definitely thought-provoking and would make an excellent choice for a book club discussion. 4 out of 5 stars.

"Artemis" by Andy Weir

Just like everyone else who has read the book or seen the movie The Martian, I was very excited about reading Artemis, Andy Weir’s newest release. This novel takes place in late 21st century when humans had successfully established a colony on the moon. Artemis is the name of the lunar city where our main protagonist Jazz Bashara lives.

Overall, this is basically a heist story. Jazz works a porter/delivery girl by day, but makes her real living by smuggling prohibited goods into Artemis. This is a fast-paced novel that can easily be read in a day or two (and I am a fairly slow reader). Below is the list of my overall impressions after reading the novel:

• The heist plot was fairly engaging. It was also interesting to read about how things “worked” on the moon (the science-y aspects of the story).
• Weir’s female point of view was not convincing at all. Jazz sounded more like a teenage boy than a 26-year old woman. Quite a few of her remarks were cringe-worthy.
• One thing that annoyed me the most about the story was the familiarity between Jazz and the billionaire (Landvik?). I just thought their relationship was not very believable. How could two people, coming from and living in such vastly different circles, be so ridiculously familiar with each other (name-calling/friendly banter, etc)? Weir should have at least provided some background to justify this level of casualness. 
• I also did not quite understand what went wrong in Jazz’s childhood to the point that she refused to get an education or a decent job. For someone who has so much potential/intelligence, she basically went from a rebellious teen to a loser in her late twenties with no real job or prospects in life. So she trashed her dad’s workshop at 16. What was she doing for the next 10 years? Weir did not present her back story in any sort of convincing way. 
• Overall, the characters were not well-fleshed out. I appreciated Weir’s efforts in terms of making his characters diverse, but most of the time he did not move beyond caricatures or over-used stereotypes (a stern female Russian bodyguard, a crazy Ukrainian computer geek, Kenyans who are happy to break the rules and participate in/endorse smuggling operations).
• Bottom line: this was definitely not as good as the Martian. I rated this book at 4 out 5 stars purely for its entertainment value.

"The Immortalists" by Chloe Benjamin

In this novel we follow four Gold siblings, Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon. It is 1969, the Golds are a Jewish American family living in New York. One day the four kids decide to visit a fortune teller who is said to predict the exact day the person will die. At the time they visit her, the youngest, Simon, is only seven years old, next is Clara - nine, Daniel is eleven and and the oldest, Varya is thirteen and a half. The woman sees them one at a time and each of them gets the date of their death. What follows after this are four separate stories in which we follow each individual sibling as they make decisions that ultimately lead to fulfillment of each of their respective prophesies.

Each story is heartbreaking in its own way. Simon lives his life at a neck-breaking speed, fiercely and greedily. Klara seems to be trapped in her own mind where reality and magic blur and make living unbearably frightening and painful. Daniel is rational and methodical, but even he at his core is unable to dismiss the prophesy the fortune teller made and snaps at the very end. Finally, Varya, who was told she would live to be eighty-eight, is wrecked by guilt that she is meant to outlive her siblings and ends up painfully watching as all them one after another slip away.

It appears that the Gold children all believed the prophecy with childhood trust and proceeded to live the rest of their lives in a way that made the prophecy come true. So the novel poses the question: is there such a thing as the gift of fortune telling, or are our deeply rooted beliefs and fears drive us to live in a way that makes fortune telling seem real.

Overall, I gave this book 4 our of 5 stars. It is fast-paced, thought provoking and well-written. Trigger warnings: suicide, explicit sex scenes, animal suffering.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

2018 Reading Goals

Happy New Year!

As in previous years, my first post of 2018 is the one in which I set some reading goals for the year. This year, I am going to keep it pretty simple and to allow more flexibility I am not going to name any specific books or authors to read in 2018. Instead, I am going to stick to broad categories of books I would like to pick up in the next 12 months.

1. Read 100 books
2. Read mostly the books I already own (50% or more)
4. Read 10 classics I've never read before
5. Re-read 10 books
6. Finish off 5 series I had started prior to 2018
7. Read and review 7 ARCs
8. Read 5 non-fiction books

Here is to another great reading year!