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Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff
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Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff
Allyyys finished reading and wrote a review...
I took an incredibly long time to read this but I'm so glad I finished it. The story does a beautiful job of telling stories of the past, present, and future and how stories intertwine. All it takes is one story to engender hope into the lives of different characters living in different time periods. The only thing I would say is it was a bit slow in the middle (which is why I was stuck in a bit of a reading slump) but if you power through you will find that all the details are worth reading.
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All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
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Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
Allyyys commented on lucyPagebound's review of The Fetishist
I was sold on the hook--a Lolita retelling exploring the fetishization of Asian women...and this novel delivered. Beautiful prose with a farcical build up of events at once entertaining and confronting, The Fetishist was published posthumously this year (Jan 2024), but Min actually wrote the manuscript a decade ago and "abandoned" it. Incredible how the novel feels prescient today given post-Covid Asian hate crimes and the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. This book captured so many aspects of my lived experience as an Asian American woman and presented no clear answers, which I actually prefer because it's real. As someone who has spent a long time thinking about these thorny topics--white supremacy, internalized racism, misogyny--and had to make life decisions in a world shaped by it, the multifaceted perspectives and complexities presented on "yellow fever" resonated deeply. It's hard to do that and present a well-written, engaging story that is pulsing with forward momentum. The Fetishist is a must-read for anyone navigating interracial relationships.
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Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
Allyyys finished reading and wrote a review...
I felt like something was missing (hence the title maybe?). Characters weren't as deeply explored as I would've liked to see and the ending didn't sit quite right.
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Intermezzo
Sally Rooney
Allyyys commented on a post
I'm a huge Sally Rooney fan but more along the lines of her earlier work (Conversations with Friends and Normal People). I didn't vibe as much with Beautiful World Where Are You. I don't know anything about Intermezzo! I saw a profile on Rooney where she said she didn't believe artists had to evolve and she's not afraid to keep writing along similar themes, so I hope that means we're back in the world Normal People vibes.
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The Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett
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Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Coco Mellors
Allyyys finished reading and left a rating...
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Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Coco Mellors