My Year of Rest and Relaxation

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This is a very weird book. I'd say it's a mix of You by Caroline Kepnes and The Idiot by Elif Batuman. I expected something different and I think I wanted something different as well. This is just a very negative book tbh and the only reason it's not depressing is because the MC herself is so far removed from her own emotions you can't feel them with or for her. I also don't see the point in this book. The plot is literally just "pretty, rich, privileged, unhinged white girl struggles with life and decides a year of medical drug abuse is going to heal her". I'm going to assume the ending is supposed to make it obvious that that wasn't the case and that she actually worked through her shit when black-out high but... I don't know. It was funny and absurd from time to time but if you have any anxiety regarding medication or have sleeping issues yourself this book is kind of exhausting.
It's not a bad book it's just really pointless in my opinion.

The Near Witch

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So I guess since this is technically old YA it's not really helpful to bash it for reading like one but... Daaamn this just dragged on and on and all men are horrible, most women are cutouts for something, Wren is just there for the drama, the romance is subpar at best, the MC is such a YA heroine from like 2012 and the plot is, to be frank, extremely uninteresting. There is also basically no reason given for any of it and for some reason every character is okay with doing absolutely nothing to further the story or help themselves or just DOING NOTHING. I didn't even read The Ash-Born Boy (Cole's origin story at the back of the book) because I honestly don't care. At all.
I mean.. it's good to see V.E. Schwab has evolved a lot with her plots and characters so maybe just skip this one.

Black Stories Matter: The Black Flamingo

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Something about Atta's writing makes it so very accessible and it's just drenched in love, hope, pain, pride and everything in between. Atta's words grab you by the heartstrings and don't let go. This really is an absolutely gorgeous novel about queerness and race and it's so important and so lovely and I kind of just want to read it again immediately.

A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope

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Overall I liked the collection well enough, but my expectations were probably a little too high. I am however a European white woman in her early twenties, so please take everything I said with a big grain of salt. I love this anthology for what it does: collecting black women's and non-binary stories, lifting up woc and queer authors and stories, which is brilliant and we desperately need more of in the world! I do however want to see more queerness in these stories. There was only one character I think who used they/them pronouns and none of the queer characters used any labels, but if they were queer coded they were women interested in women and I would just like to see a little more nuance to that.

That's Not What Happened

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TW for gun violence, depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, panic attacks, verbal abuse

Let‘s start with the diversity. An asexual MC, a lesbian latina MC with a wlw Asian American girlfriend, a blind black MC, a very young mother and obviously a whole bunch of mental health rep. It‘s just great to have these characters be diverse without that being the main focus of their story at the same time. I loved that the blind MC gets to talk about how his school isn‘t doing enough to actually help him and that no one ever simply asks him what he wants and needs, which is obviously a very big problem for disabled people.
I loved that the latina MC got to have issues with Spanish. I loved that all the characters got to tell their version of the story and none of them were judged by the other characters, quite the opposite. These friends were thrown together by a tragedy but they fought hard to stay friends and even though they had fights and not everything is resolved at the end (which felt very realistic), they never judged each other. I absolutely adored the way this book challenged usual retorics, humanizing the shooter, glorifying the dead and either making the survivors out to be heroes or tragedies.
The overall story is just so full of emotions and the characters all seem so human, they‘re flawed, they struggle and they can only do what they think is right. I also loved the „truth vs. story“ narrative because it‘s one that‘s especially important in today‘s world where almost everything is filtered through so many kinds of media and biases. Also the narrative about how the truth is always important, it‘s the truth after all, but sometimes it‘s not good for anyone except you and more often than not people don‘t really want to hear the truth, is always an important one to have.
I loved that the shooter‘s name is never mentioned, that he‘s actively blacked out of the conversation, that he‘s simply not important in this story. It‘s just a very conscious choice, a deliberate one that is so often taken away from victims. Especially in recent years, how many narratives around shootings were so focused on making the shooter seem human- making him (let‘s just call it the way it is, right?) the victim, the victim of bullying, of mental health, of a bad upbringing, of circumstances, of anything and everything out of his control. But he made the choice to pick up a gun and shoot other people for it, while billions of other people with the same background manage not to make the same decision. He‘s not made out to be a monster, his humanity isn‘t questioned, he‘s just put where he belongs: nowhere.
The MC isn‘t the most interesting one in my opinion, but I think she was the safest choice as main character and I liked her well enough. I also really appreciated how guilt was woven into her story because it‘s such a big part of depression and anxiety for me and seeing that represented in a character was comforting and it fit her personality so well.
The kinda obituaries for the victims were well done and so heartbreaking, because the characters were once again just so very human and one of the main goals of this was to not make them out to be something holy and unreal.
Overall it‘s just such a moving book and it feels like this could be a real story, written by real survivors of a school shooting. Why do we live in a world where this isn‘t horror or speculative fiction? Where a story like this doesn‘t feel so far off?

Human Acts

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The story definitely packs a punch and is super impactful- as any violation of human rights should be. The stories told are all horrific, the description of corpses, the description of torture, of what it took for people to survive and what it did to the family members of those who were murdered. It's moving and terrifying and really makes you feel for every character who gets to tell their story.
The writing fits the story, it's flowery but in a kinda hard to read way. It's not bad or anything, it just takes a while to read, which is hard to describe.
However I didn't really enjoy the way the story is told- the second person narration somehow distanced me from the story and the abrupt changes between the characters put me off as well, but I know why it was written this way. None of these people got a proper ending or a comfortable glide into another part of their life, so it makes sense that the chapters don't comfortably lead you into the story and then out of it again.

Overall it's definitely a book worth reading and many stories worth being told, I just wish it had never been necessary to tell this in the first place.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

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If you liked The Hunger Games for the action and the character growth, you're not going to like this book. This is a book about the guy who is literally never evil in a way that makes you enjoy it, he's always just evil to make sure he gets the best out of everything. He isn't evil because he's insane, or because he was made evil by some sob story, he isn't evil because Katniss needed an antagonist- Snow is evil in the way privileged, rich supremacists usually are. Which is exactly why this is a very timely and very clever book. Snow gets all the chances to learn and to grow and every time you expect him to finally accept other people as just as human as he is, he doesn't. This, again, is the brilliance of the book and exactly what makes it so timely.
The real evil is always considering other people less than what you are, because this means you think you're better, which in turn breeds supremacy and the belief that you get to do whatever you want to the person who is less. As soon as you consider them less than human, you can do literally anything to the other person and think you're in the right. Which is such a huge part of this whole book, it's actually stunning how subtly and then how violently obvious Collins makes these distinctions.
And what is especially brilliant, because it's revolting in its simplicity, in its base on modern life, is the romance. Because of course, of course Snow will never be able to love someone who is equal to him. That is the whole point of the romance, why it's in there. I love this commentary on power balance, toxic relationships, sexism and what it always comes down to: supremacy. This book isn't supposed to humanise Snow, it's not supposed to make his villainy cool or spectacular. This is a book about heteronormativity, about white supremacy, about privilege, about patriarchy, about power, about police brutality, about how people can put other people in a situation where they have to kill to survive and still pretend that was a choice made out of free will.
Like I said, if you enjoyed The Hunger Games for the action, this book is not for you. Snow and his entire generation have grown up during a war, a war they were told was started for no reason. They are also constantly told they are the elite, they are the best of the best. Most of them probably own slaves or know someone who owns slaves. They are constantly being told the Capitol is all powerful and the only thing keeping the world from descending into another war. Also a really great commentary on "America is the greatest country in the world" and what growing up with that kind of propaganda will do to a person.
So to me, these characters made a lot of sense, they fit their world. Was is super interesting and fun to read about their lives? No. It's supposed to make you think and it really made me think and will probably keep making me think for a good while to come.

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Bunny

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I think this is the last Mona Awad book I'm going to try. It's not you, it's me and whatever, but Awad just doesn't work for me.
First of all, what is even the point of her books? I've read two of them now and every time I wonder, because there is no point to any of it. You don't come of it having learned anything or gained any new insight or even just having had fun reading her books. You're just left wondering what and why the f.
My next big issue with her stories is that they always semi-claim to be feminist stories and women focused and whatever, but the fact of the matter is her female characters are always taken down, ruined, defiled, even dehumanized by men. Her strong female friendships splinter at merely the sight of a hot guy. Where is the feminism in that?
I don't want to read another story about women literally cutting words into their skin, turning completely against their best friends, changing everything about themselves for some random dude sexting them?! What even was the plot in this book?
And like, I get that this is supposed to be some kind of horror story, and I guess it is unsettling, but to me it was unsettling for all the wrong reasons. The relationship between the main character and her best friend is very weird, at first you think the best friend is kinda in love with her, then you think the main character is kinda in love with the best friend, then the best friend is suddenly really mean to her, then she's kinda trying to save the main character, gives up randomly, f*cks some hot guy because this is an Awad book, so of course, still kinda has this romantic vibe with the main character and I was just so over it.
The bunnies are overall really weird and bad people, but they were just such a cliché group of mean girls who were just pretending to love their friends that I just have to ask, aren't we over that?
Then this hot guy comes along and he's kinda mostly just the main character as a dude and everyone goes nuts about him and wants to sleep with him and the MC is pushed aside for him when he is basically her... and just what is the point of the story, Awad, what is it?! Like the book is unsettling because every character, pretty much aside from the one dude who is so amped up on drugs he's basically a normal person, is awful. Just straight up horrible. The women are all just harmful stereotypes of women, which I would personally say is the true and only horror in this book. Even the plot and the supposed horror elements are so far out there and just not written in a believable way, like not even the main character believes or understands what's going on at all, so how is the reader supposed to understand or even care? Also the sheer amount of drug and alcohol abuse in this story.. mind-blowing. Is that what going to university is like? Is the campus made of hallucinogens?
I keep remembering horrible stuff about this book that I've already pushed to the back of my mind the more I write here, so I'm just going to stop. Awad is definitely not an author for me, I find her horror boring, since she's only trying to do it via "mindf*ckery" which I think is not only boring but poor writing, and I find her portrayal of women harmful, annoying and outdated, so I will be skipping her books in the future.
(Why did they waste this adorable cover on this book?!)

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Disfigured

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Leduc certainly makes a lot of interesting and important points, especially for those who, like me, haven't thought about disfigurement and disability and their presentation in media to such an extent. Her points on the social model of disability, where society needs to change to accommodate the disabled instead of the disabled doing everything in their power to fit society, are absolutely vital to hear for an able bodied person. Especially since society at large still doesn't act or even think that way. Disabled people aren't getting "special treatment" when there is a ramp for accessibility or an interpreter, it's quite simply exactly what is needed for them to be part of the action. It's insane how we as a society have managed to exclude so many people from so many things and whenever they get one stop closer to achieving equality people are like "okay, but do you deserve it? Have you killed yourself getting here? Are you worthy of having this same right? Do I need to make room for you, because if so then that is special treatment and I will not do it." As if we loose anything instead of gaining something.
Anyway, like I said, Leduc asks a lot of interesting questions as well, includes some of her own medical history, what her parents and doctors thought, and she even includes some interviews with other disabled or disfigured folk, which was also super interesting and engaging.
Like a lot of other reviewers said, I think this is a great book to start the conversation and to start thinking about how much the stories oh so far removed from reality still form our reality, but I think it's not without flaws. Leduc kinda moves the goalposts for her criticism whenever it fit her and while I mostly understood where she came from, it still frustrates a little when there would still be room for valid criticisms without having to move the goalposts. There are also some structural issues, I remember one time towards the end of the book she suddenly picks up a point she made at least 100 pages earlier, out of nowhere. I also think she sometimes overgeneralizes a little bit too much, she acts like disability is the only reason you get bullied in school, she heavily insinuates that trying to heal (in the real world) or having a magical cure for disability (in your book/movie) is inherently ableist and she kinda lost me on the whole superhero tangent. I think I even sometimes struggled with who or what exactly she characterizes as disabled or as a disability, because those definitions seemed to change as well. As other reviewers have pointed out Leduc focusses mostly on Ariel's lack of legs as her disability instead of her muteness, which didn't make much sense to me since Ariel was never supposed to have legs and she wasn't disabled in the environment she was born (and supposed to be) in. Overall I definitely think this is an important book that will hopefully start the important discussions we need to have to finally make our world(s) more inclusive.