Read with Jenna: Chain-gang all-stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

“𝙄𝙩 𝙗𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚. 𝘼 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙙 𝙢𝙚 𝙨𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙩. 𝘼 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙫𝙚.
𝙄’𝙢 𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙥𝙖𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙠.
𝙊𝙧 𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧, 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙙. 𝙅𝙪𝙨𝙩 ‘𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙙 𝙙𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖 𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙫𝙚. 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣’𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙗𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩. “

The hype is based on the first quarter and dies a slow and gruesome death right after that.

The first blow to the story was that it was very difficult to get into a reading flow. The writing is choppy and you’re constantly pulled out of the story by notes and commentary. And the second you start to enjoy a piece, a new piece starts and you have to pick up a new thread.

Which leads to the second blow – there are too many first person narrators and it takes you a minute to figure out who is speaking and where the story is. Constantly having to do orientation on the page is exhausting. Not all of these characters are going to be interesting, I personally only liked to follow Thurwar and Staxxx and the couple that watches the games because I thought those two opposing angles were cool.

The third blow is never building the world and keeping the lines between our world and their world too blurry. We are simply thrown into this dystopian reality that is just a slippery slope from our own, but then there’s also historical facts that push this into historical fiction? We are constantly pulled into our reality and pushed back into the book world. Was this a deliberate effect to show how close we are? Probably. Did it work? Not really, it just pulled you out of the story.

The final death blow was the ending. It leaves you with a question mark instead of a resolution you can hang your emotions on. Which I felt was a little bit of a cop-out. You want us to invest in these characters and feel for them, and then you leave us hanging? I was ready to bawl. I wanted an ending. I ask myself if this was another effect used to push us into the dystopia – I don’t know. Again, maybe. But it was anticlimactic to me.
I’m giving it three stars and that’s being generous, and only because I thought the first quarter was five star until it dwindled. ⭐⭐⭐

GMA: The Nigerwife by Vanessa Walters

One line review: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐰𝐢𝐟𝐭.
𝐈 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫.

Nicole, the nigerwife of Tonye has disappeared and her estranged aunt goes to Nigeria to find out what happened.

“𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙩𝙤 𝙤𝙛 𝙏𝙤𝙣𝙮𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙉𝙞𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙙 𝙖 𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙛𝙚, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙥𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙚. 𝙈𝙚𝙣 𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚. 𝙈𝙚𝙣 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙖𝙧𝙢𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙙.”

It’s clear auntie Claudine doesn’t trust Tonye, but she also doesn’t understand quite how the culture works, so she’s trying to work a system she doesn’t understand. This leads to a lot of dead ends and wrongful assumptions. Some of these worked for me, others didn’t.

I liked the parts of the cultural isolation, both for Nicole and Claudine, but the generational trauma that is touched upon was just confusing to me and didn’t really work. This separate narrative pulled me out of the story for no reason. These elements also felt forced in the story where they didn’t really belong.

Also aside from the mystery and cultural aspects we have friendship, relationship and marital issues. It’s a lot! Maybe the book just tries to do too much?
At the same time, it does very little in the middle, so huge chunks of this book was kinda boring to get through.

I like the idea, and the writing is good, so I wish it would have been edited better to lay out the story, cause I actually think it’s pretty good.
I’m not sure I would have landed in this ending, haha, but I’ll take it as comic relief for the otherwise serious tone it is played in. ⭐⭐⭐

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Probably the most anticipated book of the year and the most celebrated. I have seen nothing but rave reviews on this one, so mine is just one in the long line of admirers. So all I can say is:

DRINK THE KOOL-AID, IT TASTES SO SWEET!!!

An instant all time favorite! Just read the reviews, they all say the same :it’s meta, merciless and magnificent!

This is my first RFK book, and I know it’s outside her regular fantasy genre, but with writing as good as this, I’m running to the bookstore to buy all her books!

I just have one comment: read it now! It’s full of references that set it to the times, so this is one best read fresh! (I think, but I might re-read at a later time too actually, cause it was just that good!)

If you haven’t heard anything about it: It is about an author stealing a manuscript from her friend after she dies and passes it as her own. The only problem being that the story is based on chinese history and she is not chinese. Yellowface ensues. Racism is radiating from every page! It’s brutal and raw and REAL! And if you’re familiar with Kuang, her history and her work, you’ll be able to draw straight lines from her real life to this one. She’s said so herself, it’s all her experiences from the publishing industry in nice yellow packaging!

Dare I say this is my favorite of the year already? Yes! Absolutely! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Poppy war by R.F. Kuang

This book is divided into 3 parts and I felt different about each of the parts.
Part 1: was strong to me, I got a good introduction to the characters, history and system. She spends this time at the military academy learning and we’re learning alongside with her. Easy to read and it flowed well towards Rin’s goals. It was exciting to see where it was all headed and it had me engaged. Solid 5 stars!

Part 2: this is where I fell off the train. And also where I’ve seen the most people DNF. And I get it. I lost focus and interest in what was going on. I mixed up the characters and started to skim parts. (Which always bites me in the ass later.)

Part 3: The trigger warnings that should come with this book! Wow! The details, so brutal and grotesque. But as I understand this is based on real history. And I sometimes think what humans are capable of is more disturbing than anything you can make up!
Chapter 21-26 had my jaw drop, brow frown and spine ache several times. I thought this was just so brilliant! And I regret skimming the parts that I did (knew it!) because I missed the connection to a few of the side characters here. But the ending set it up well for book 2!

Full disclosure: I want to love these books more than I do, and that’s because fantasy is not my genre, even though I want it to be. I rarely enjoy it, but I really really want to. It’s a curse really. So I’m giving it 4 stars as a whole, even though I’m sure it deserves 5, my enjoyment wasn’t all there. But I will say this, it is probably the most well reasearched book I have ever read with certain parts taken straight out of the history books – I learned of this later. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The love hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

I’m rounding up on stars because the banter is really well done and it saved it for me. The rest was mediocre at best, a very thin plot, repetitive writing, very little character development, flat secondary characters and a heroine that constantly second guesses and contradicts herself.

Our protagonist is the weakest character in this book, she hates professor Adam Carlson even though he’s been nothing but nice to her. She falls in love with him and proceeds to push him away! Makes sense? No. She also obsesses a lot, and repeats the same sentences to herself over and over. Which is more than a little annoying.

Adam on the other hand is the sturdy and straightforward guy we all wish for! Prince Charming! And he’s supposed to the the grumpy here in this grumpy X sunshine trope? I don’t buy it.

What saved the book was that the antagonist and bad guy is very believable and the author has said that she writes about the power balance and abuses in academia. This part drove the book deeper for me. I wish there was more of this and less of the repetitive obsessing over a “jerk with nice abs” when he’s actually a nice guy with all the fixings.

All in all it was okay, a cute romcom with witty banter. Easy to read, I got what I came for. ⭐⭐⭐⭐