Review: My 5-Star Book Roundup for 2018
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| Escape from 2018 Source |
I don’t know about you, but I spent every single unscheduled minute with my nose buried deeply in a book, intent on escape into exotic realms or adventures. On the plus side, that means I read a lot of books that enthralled me. So I want to share four that I thought were particularly good, but never had time to review, before embarking on a new year of discoveries.
These books were deviations from the usual types of urban fantasy and dystopian sci-fi I read most of the year. They were from four different genres, led by strong but quite diverse female characters: an immortal witch goddess, a socially awkward orphan, an identity-swapping avenger, and backstabbing corporate ladder climbers. I wasn’t specifically looking for books about women, but isn’t it great that there is such a variety of female protagonists to choose from nowadays!
This book topped a lot of best-of-2018 lists, so I finally decided to do more than admire the intriguing cover art.
In The Odyssey, Circe had a bit player part as the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs. In this book she takes center stage, and her tale is mesmerizing, eloquently crafted, and an absolute joy to read.
Circe is the daughter of Helios, who is the Titan god of the sun, and an Oceanid nymph named Perse. Circe and her siblings grow up to be witches, which makes the competing Olympic gods feel threatened, so their parents are forbidden to have more children.
When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.Genetic inheritance is a bit of a crap shoot amongst the gods. They never know what traits their offspring will manifest. So when teenage Circe develops a power that turns her romantic rival Scylla into a monster, she’s banished to an island. It’s not a terrible place to be confined; it’s beautiful and lush with the herbs and flowers she uses for her magic.
Circe occasionally deals with family issues or entertains visitors, including a romantic dalliance with Odysseus that produces a son. She befriends the legendary craftsman Daedalus, whose son Icarus one day flies too close to the sun, and he designs for her a special loom that other gods envy. She serves as midwife while her sister gives birth to the Minotaur. She spends years fortifying her island with protection spells against the powerful Athena.
Whether or not you know much about Greek mythology, this book is enchanting. I squealed with delight every time I made the connection between a character and what I learned in Humanities 201, but the way the stories fit together seamlessly as a dynastic soap opera unfolding from Circe’s perspective was completely original and engaging.
As entertaining as Circe’s story and family squabbles are, the prose deserves special mention. It has a timeless lexical beauty, like a lovely classical painting composed with words, that is somehow also intimate and contemporary.
But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
Eleanor Oliphant is a 30-year-old orphan who grows up in the foster care system. She now lives alone, works in an office, and carefully structures her life to avoid the big things that make her uncomfortable (like people), savor the small things she enjoys (like vodka), and talk to her mother once a week (on Wednesday evenings).
It’s obvious right away that Eleanor is extremely repressed. She has no social skills to speak of and, therefore, not much of a filter on what comes out of her mouth. But the first time her mother calls, I began to recognize the bottomless well of pain at the center of Eleanor’s heart. She is deeply scarred, internally and externally.
She seems at once highly perceptive and willfully obtuse, strongly independent but very vulnerable. She has delusions of flabbergasting proportions about a musician on whom she sets her romantic sights. And yet she rattles off a nonstop, brutally-snarky-but-often-astute-AF internal monologue about everyone and everything that annoys her — which made me LOL a LOT and piqued my curiosity to learn more about what made such a fascinating mind click.
“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.”In a moment of random timing, Eleanor and Raymond, the “deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office” per Goodreads, have the opportunity to save the life of a stranger who collapses on the street. This binds the three characters together in ways that affect each one profoundly. Eleanor experiences healthful human connections for the first time ever and realizes the new dimensions they add to life. This doesn’t sound like anything particularly special, but it absolutely is.
I felt increasingly heartbroken for Eleanor as her story was revealed, but I couldn’t stop laughing at her often spot-on takedowns of the people around her. By the end of the book, I was in love with Eleanor and utterly transfixed by her amazing metamorphosis. This isn’t a sad story; it is marvelously uplifting. It’s hard to describe how beautiful this book is — it really sneaks up on you at the end and wraps you in a warm bearhug. It might leave you gobsmacked at the transformative power of random and small acts of kindness.
There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.
Here’s an unexpected gem that Wenches Zee and Shau recommended. It didn’t sound like my normal reading fare, but Real Life wasn’t being normal either, so I gave it a shot after several Wenches raved about it.
A deceptively mild-mannered young woman shows up for what appears to be an insignificant temp job in an unfamiliar new city. Which turns out to be only one step in an intricate, meticulously researched plot to avenge her dearly departed best friend, which soon has readers cheering her along and reveling in her dastardly deeds. She’s clever. She’s unapologetically irreverant. She attains heights of audacity that my alter ego can only aspire to. This was hands-down my Favorite Guilty Pleasure of the year.
Several of the Wenches absolutely loved it, but no one had time to write the kind of review it deserved. Head Wench Barb’s reaction on Goodreads is what finally inspired me to take a chance with this book, so I thought I’d just steal her words here:
This is the kind of fucked-up book I’ve been looking for all summer. The protagonist is my favorite kind of antihero, utterly aware of who she is, doing bad things for all the right reasons, and entertaining as hell while she’s doing them. We also get a villain you love to hate, and a surprising love that sneaks up on you and that is absolutely perfect in its imperfection. Adding to my love of this book, the author sprinkled throughout these sparkling gems of lines that hit a little too close to home, the kinds of things I never even let myself acknowledge about my heart, but now I can’t unrealize them, and that is pure magic in literature.I found a number of similarities between Jane Doe and Eleanor Oliphant, despite their surface differences. Jane might be brash and self-assured, and Eleanor a contrasting complex of festering insecurities, but both are keen observers who wield tight control over their interactions with others and aren’t shy about ruthlessly (and spot-on hilariously) judging the unsuspecting world around them. Jane also flaunts a seasoned, sexy side that Eleanor will take a while to develop.
So if you’re looking for a quick, engrossing read and a fiery, no-nonsense, rule-breaking heroine — or a tale of sick, twisted revenge porn gone oh so right — Jane Doe might be just the book for you!
“You’re sexy as hell,” he says. Lots of men have said this to me. They like a woman with no shame. We’re rare, you see, because we’re told to be ashamed of everything every day by everyone. Ashamed to give them what they want, ashamed not to want to give it to them. Ashamed to show our average bodies, ashamed not to have a perfect one. I have no idea how normal women date. The world seems like it’d be an unbearable place for people with real feelings.
This is a murder mystery set in the rugged Giralang Ranges of Australia, not too far from the setting of Harper’s last, equally excellent murder mystery, The Dry. A group of women who work at the same company embark on a team-building exercise that is way more strenuous and dangerous than anything I’ve ever heard of at my office. (And the only thing in this story that seemed unrealistic to me. If my boss assigned a weekend of extracurricular bushwacking, I’d expect Legal to shut it down over the high cost of liability insurance, if nothing else. But I soon forgot this quibble, because it set up a great story!)
The idea is that they must work as a team to navigate a maze of unmarked trails through dense undergrowth over rough terrain, then rendezvous with another team at an appointed day and time.
Five women go into the trees, four women come out. What happened to the woman who set out on her own?
It’s the panic that gets you. Makes it hard to trust what you’re seeing.Turns out that some of these co-workers have been at odds over family issues and office politics. In fact, the missing woman might know some company secrets that fall under the purview of Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk, whom I was already familiar with from The Dry. As Falk and a team of rescuers search frantically for clues, in hopes of finding the missing woman alive, we get to know each character and ponder who might have wished her harm. (Surprise, it’s practically everyone!)
Force of Nature is an expertly crafted and paced mystery with fine character development. As in Harper’s previous book, the Australian landscape is a fully fleshed-out character in its own right. I felt completely immersed in the vivid sights, sounds, smells, scratches, and treacherous temperament of this little slice of the world. The authentic Aussie accent of the audiobook narrator was just icing on the cake!
Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two, Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you.
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Looking back over my year in books reassures me that I’ll remember my literary exploits — if not much else — fondly, so the year hasn’t been a total disappointment. Isn’t it wonderful how our visits to fictional worlds enrich our lives!
Unexpectedly, after I wrote this review, I read what turned out to be my very favorite book of the year! Maybe the most beautiful book I’ve ever read. What could knock Sarah J. Maas out of my #1 spot for 2018? That’s a review for another day, and I can’t wait to get started on the sequel and tell y’all all about it!
What good books did you read last year, Saucy Readers?
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