Wow, this was an incredible book. Honestly close to perfect. I love horror, in this case a haunted house and city, as a metaphor for grief, trauma, and violence. It is such a poignant way to represent the themes of immense loss and suffering from colonialism and genocide.

I was hooked from the opening lines until the last lines. I am a huge fan of Intergenerational stories like this. We hear narratives from the late grandmother (Nuhad) as well as her living best friend (Raina), daughter (Haifa) and granddaughter (Marina). So many strong and loving women, all fully fleshed out character with flaws that make them human.

Marina is living at home after not getting a job after earning her degree—a situation many of us recent graduates are facing right now. But in addition she is grieving the loss of her grandmother and craving to learn about her Palestinian culture and family history. She decides to take a trip to Palestine, the colonially occupied Haifa and Nablus in the West Bank. She desires to learn more about herself by exploring her family’s homeland.

“Marina wants what everyone wants. To be seen and known by others. Fully. Not in halves or pieces or disjointed sections” The exploration of Marina’s identity as someone both Palestinian and white is well executed. She is scrutinized and given a number ranking by colonial security guards who determine she is a moderate terrorist risk. The dehumanization of Arabs is disgusting to read. Later in the book she has a conversation with a settler who is so out of touch and feels so entitled to the stolen house she occupies on stolen land, and it is just so realistic and infuriating. She bears witness and experiences both microaggressions and gun violence throughout the book. The racism is a very accurate and heartbreaking portrayal.

”Salt has become my revenge”. Haifa has anxiety and insecurity about her relationships with her late mother and daughter. She knows some stories and cultural practices from Palestine, but her mother was emotionally distant and guarded, so she was always wanted to know more. She discovers writing from her mother about the resistance and revenge she took against invading settlers, using salt. Salt becomes a recurring theme in the book, calling forward elements of the sea, bitterness, indigestibility, sickness, bones, and land.

“The settlers say that the house in Haifa is evil. Rania knows that stealing homes and land, lives and histories; and then erasing them as if they never existed: that is evil” Rania and Nuhad are best friends who experienced The Nakba firsthand as children. Witnessing and/or experiencing displacement, violence, loss, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Nuhad and her family are forced by their home by settlers they let move in with them out of hospitality and care—a horrific betrayal. They lost all of their belongings inside the home, all their cherished mementos. Soldiers murder a member of their family, something Nuhad could never tell her daughter or granddaughter in her life, the pain being too extreme. The grief and trauma are all consuming of both the people and the home. The haunted house and revenge are justified and understandable responses to colonialism, genocide, and violent loss.

“This resilience is forced on us . . . You have to remember that we’re just people. What’s the alternative? To stop living? To stop growing plants? Or drinking water? Of course not.” Marina finds Nuhad’s childhood journal and Rania translates it. This reveals untold secrets and brings all of the women together. The love and closeness between them is beautiful to read. The resilience all Palestinians, including those in the diaspora, have forced on them is a heavy burden. Resistance is the only option.

“These were all people. Every bag, every bone. They all had lives, hopes, dreams, memories, wishes, inside jokes, favorite recipes, plans for the future.” The humanization of every individual is an act of resistance to genocide and defiance of colonialism and ethnic cleansing. Each person is a vital part of the world and each life stolen by Israel’s genocide is an incalculable loss. The personal and powerful author’s note at the end honors all the lives stolen, including highlighting the amplified genocide in Gaza of the last few years. This book is timely, raw, gorgeously written, and so important. I highly recommend this book, and I look forward to reading what Helm writes next.

“The only life I can choose is my own. I will never give in.”

TL:DR: We Dance Upon Demons is an amazing book!!! Highly recommend reading this one. It deserves to be regarded as a modern classic.

My favorite part was the realistic, informative, passionate writing about abortion access and the danger of antis. The main character works at an independent reproductive health clinic in Chicago, Illinois that provides abortions. This book addresses antis harassment and violence outside of and trespassing into clinics, ICE and police raid fears, bomb and shooting threats and attacks, the ever changing legal battles post-Dobbs, the attitude that “only my reason is justifiable” when it comes to reproductive health decisions, the fact pregnant people are DYING because of bans and having to travel across the country to receive basic care ex. miscarriage treatment, the Turn Away Study’s comprehensive research, learning and changing your mind to from being anti-choice in the past, the public health risk and moral depravity of disinformation from crisis pregnancy centers, media permissive and passive language minimizing and justifying violence, etc. This reads like a memoir almost because it’s just so real.

I felt so seen and held in my anger about reproductive injustice. It was an empowering, cathartic, vital book about the necessary rage we should be feeling right now, and the difficult but necessary hope we need to cultivate to build a better world. But it doesn’t minimize the very real hopelessness being felt right now. People that want to believe in change but are watching the undemocratic fall of Roe (which was never enough to begin with), the murder of Black people despite millions of Black Lives Matter protestors, ongoing genocide despite masses opposing it; it’s hard not to be disillusioned. But losing hope is not a solution, we can’t give up on each other.

I am not a frequent fantasy genre reader, but I really enjoyed those themes. It’s a contemporary urban setting with the addition of ancient demons featuring historic flashbacks. The descriptions of the demons were well written, long teeth, curved necks, unsettling expressions, horns, hooves, red skin, tails, auras of unease. It was easy to picture the creatures in my mind. The powers of seeing demons, communicating with them, and influencing change, are all really cool. The flashback story of Layla especially is sticking with me, incredibly impactful and well written.

I loved her mom and the community they create together. The book addresses anti-Islamic Hindu-supremacist, anti-immigrant, and patriarchal attitudes in certain Indian community spaces—and the importance of fighting those harmful beliefs. The main character’s mother ultimately chooses to follow her feminist beliefs and defend her daughter even when powerful male community members are the perpetrators. The temper and the compassion these women share is so badass and tender and lovely to read. Their relationship is not easy, but there is love and care that brings them together in the end. The Aunties, uncles, and elders showing up for her was so sweet and powerful :’) The themes of relationships and culture were great; as well as themes around mental illness and trauma.

This was an emotional read, but ended with so so much hope. I really loved it. I think this will be a modern classic. I highly recommend reading.

This book was made for me. I loved it so much. Gorgeous art, fun animal facts, so much heart.

“Humans exploit [animals] for their attributes yet despise them for exhibiting their natural behavior and simply adapting to the environment we created”

Read this to learn facts like these:

• Opossums have 50 teeth, which is the most of any North American mammal
• Star-nosed moles have around 100,000 nerve endings in their nose, almost 6 times more than human hands. Giving them the best sense of touch of any mammal.
• Star-nosed moles are the fastest eating animal on earth, identified and consuming pray in less than a quarter of a second, about half the time it takes a human to react to a green light when at an intersection
• Groundhog burrows are complex structures that have multiple entrances and dedicated rooms for sleeping nursing and waste
• Groundhogs have aided in multiple scientific discoveries, including treatments and vaccines for hepatitis B and, thanks to their excavation skills, some culturally significant archaeological sites”
• The Florida alligator population stands at 1.3 million individuals: that’s roughly one alligator for every 16 people living in the state
• Alligators have the strongest bite of any animal measured about 2000 pounds per square inch that’s over 12 times stronger than a human bite
• Armadillos always give birth to identical quadruplets the only known vertebrae to do so
• Prairie dogs live in complex networks of burrows called coteries which function as our neighborhoods do and can span across square miles
• Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin Texas is home to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, making it the site of the largest urban bat colony on the planet. The bridge draws over 100,000 tourists each year.
• Texas is home to 33 of the 47 species of bats that live in the United States more than any other state
• Bats can consume more than half their body weight in insects each night
• Mexican free-tailed bats fly at speeds up to 99.4 mph making them the fastest mammal on earth
• Pronghorns or the fastest land animal in North America, second only globally to the cheetah. They can reach speeds up to 60 mph.
• Pronghorns can see up to three miles away
• Magpies enjoy a symbiotic relationship with cattle, often seen perching on their backs in search of ticks to eat
• Magpies are expert builders who fortify their nests with a layer of mud, making them last for years and allowing them to be utilized by other birds for shelter during the winter
• Bears have a sense of the smell 100 times greater than humans and can smell food over a mile away
• Cottontail rabbits can run up to 18 miles per hour
• Squirrels teeth can grow up to six inches a year—hence the need to chew to shave them down
• Turkey vultures have potent stomach acid that makes them impervious to diseases like tuberculosis, anthrax, rabies and distemper when eating infected carcasses
• Turkey vultures can detect the presence of carrion from over a mile away

(Can you tell I love bats?🦇) Highly recommended this amazing book!