Gingerbread - Helen Oyeyemi

Hmm.

Confession: I am not sure what to make of this book. It's kind of a magical realism story that is also kind of a play on fairytale tropes. At times, it held my interest quite well but then it would get rambly and start to feel like a rough draft from a Creative Writing MFA candidate or something. It was a little all over the place. I was hoping to love it but that didn't happen. Oh well.

The cover of this book is really nice, and it's not brown, but because gingerbread is usually brown I am going to claim it for that category in the Color-Coded Reading Challenge.

Before We Were Yours - Lisa Wingate

This book was another book club choice, and it was a doozy. It's a fictionalized version of the harm a real (and really evil) person inflicted on people in the early 20th century, which has repercussions that linger to this day (but that rant* is outside the scope of this blog, unfortunately). The characters were well done and I liked the changing points of view between events that took place in the 1930s and the impact they have in the present day. As the two stories converge, the truth emerges, and I thought that part of the novel was really well done. I read this book compulsively, wanting to find out what had happened and how the stories came together. There should be a lot of good discussion of this book.

*One thing I will allow myself to say here is that evil people like Georgia Tann make me hope there is some kind of judgement in an afterlife, as she is someone who should be punished severely for the horrible things she did.

The Refugees - Viet Thanh Nguyen

Joined a book club, and this was the first read for me - and it was a great choice. Each story in this collection was full of potential for discussion, so much so that we ran over our allotted time and could have kept talking. Standouts for me were "War Years," "The Americans," and the first story, "Black-Eyed Women," which was startling and a perfect way to set the tone for the book overall. Highly recommended.

I'm using this book as my choice for Blue in the Color-Coded Reading Challenge, too: