Tag: POC

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The Bookish Mutant’s Books for National Latine Heritage Month (2025 Edition)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

TW/CW: there are mentions of gun violence/school shootings as well as deportations/racism in this post. If those are sensitive topics for you, scroll down to the bold, underlined text to see the book recommendations. Take care of yourself!

Happy Monday, bibliophiles! Looks like I’ll be back for the foreseeable future, now that I’ve adequately got my stuff in order life-wise. As much as I can.

I’d like to take a moment before I get into this post to talk about something nobody seems to want to talk about. I hate to start this off on a somber note, but I have to get this off my chest. I was planning on coming back to the blogosphere earlier, but last week happened to be a dumpster fire like no other. On Wednesday, September 10th, Evergreen High School—the high school I attended—was the victim of a school shooting. Yet nobody seemed to care, solely because a certain conservative influencer happened to be louder and more favored by Trump, and therefore more important, than my community. Days after this tragedy hit my community, it seemed to disappear from the headlines, even when it was revealed that the shooter, like so many in this country, had been radicalized by neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies online. I’m livid. I’m heartbroken. I’m only just now coming down from the horrific mess of feelings that came about on Wednesday. If you take anything from this part of the post, it’s that none of these shootings are nameless. This happened in the town where I grew up, where I made friends and had crushes and went through awkward high school stages, just like the rest of you. I beg of you: remember that school shootings are neither abstract nor nameless. End gun violence now. To everyone in the mountain community that I’ve called home for so many years, I love you. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

If you’d like to help out, the Colorado Healing Fund is taking donations to support repairs for EHS and to help the families whose children have been affected by this tragedy. Please chip in what you can. If not, keep speaking out. Remember Evergreen. Remember every other victim of gun violence.

…

Now, then…here in the U.S., September 15th-October 15th is Latine Heritage Month! Regrettably, I never got around to making a full blown recommendations list like I usually do. September-October is a dicey time as far as getting my stuff together for school, but it is a little embarrassing, given that I’m half Latina. But there’s no time like the present.

Though I’m proud as ever of my heritage, I can’t help but find difficulty in being celebratory now, as with…well, any other specific identity-based post I’ve made in the past year. But this one feels especially raw, given how wantonly carelessly this country has treated its Latine diaspora for the past decade. It’s never stopped, but the fire has only grown greater this year, what with the inhumane ICE raids disproportionately targeting Latine immigrants. Just a week ago, the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional (if that word means anything anymore) to racially discriminate, especially against Latine individuals, during immigration stops. Somehow, our country has come to a place where powerful people can casually suggest that the entire Latine population of the United States be fed to alligators and face no consequences. It’s hard to be celebratory when a key part of my heritage and community is under attack, continually without consequences.

But as with any marginalized community, even in times of such strife as these, we must resist the fact that our lives are defined only by suffering. Every time I learn more about my Colombian heritage, I feel fuller. More me. Even though it’s only a half of me, I feel like I’m discovering more of myself. And that brings me so much joy. Reading beautiful books by Latine authors brings me joy. Eating food from my culture brings me joy. If nothing else, we must remember that joy is an act of resistance. No amount of slander and hurt from the government will make us less Latine. They can never erase us. So I hope we can come together and celebrate what makes us fuller and celebrate the joy of community, because that can never be extinguished.

For my past lists for Latinx Heritage Month, click here: 

NOTE: I’ve switched to using “Latine” as opposed to “Latinx” from now on, as there have been criticisms that “Latinx” is more Westernized; though Spanish is a gendered language, the suffix -e is frequently used to denote gender neutrality. Personally, I use Latina to refer to myself since I’m a cis woman, but I generally use Latine to refer to the community at large. If you’re in the community, use whichever language suits you best. I’m just too lazy to change my header…oops.

THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR NATIONAL LATINE HERITAGE MONTH (2025 EDITION)

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC FICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you like them? What are some of your favorite books by Latine/x authors? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/12/25) – The Full Moon Coffee Shop

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Apparently today marks ten whole years since I started with this blog…granted, it was a pretty far cry from what it is today, but it’s a marvel that I’ve kept it going for this long. Thanks for tagging along, everyone! 🫡

In my ongoing quest to read more translated books, I’ve stumbled upon a lot more Japanese books about cats than I anticipated. Granted, they’ve varied greatly, but it’s a pattern. Not that I’m complaining—I’ll read most anything involving cats! Which is partly why I decided to read The Full Moon Coffee Shop. It sounded downright whimsical, and to some degree it was, but ultimately, that quality was dulled by the formulaic nature of…well, pretty much everything else.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Full Moon Coffee Shop – Mai Mochizuki (translated by Jesse Kirkwood)

The Full Moon Coffee Shop is no ordinary café. It only appears during the night of the full moon. Its waitstaff are talking cats, and you can never order what you want—they only serve you what you need. And if you find yourself in the Full Moon Coffee Shop, you’re in need of direction in life. Weaving together the interconnected stories of five unlikely strangers, the Full Moon Coffee Shop may be the answer to their burning questions—and the healing they desperately need.

TW/CW: cheating/affairs, sexism, grief

One of the biggest letdowns in reading: finding a book that seems super cute and whimsical, and then said whimsy is there in name only. You can’t just give us an incorporeal coffee shop manned by talking astrologer cats and then be so unconvinced by your own whimsy! God.

The worst thing that a cozy book can be is preachy. Having a low-stakes novel centered around life lessons, healing, and character growth doesn’t mean that you have to have a Learning Moment™️ worded like a PSA every few chapters. It’s a pitfall that’s easy to fall into with cozy fiction, but it’s one that takes away the magic for me. For novels that are meant to be about taking quiet moments that are often taken for granted and giving them more weight and value to the narrative, having everything explained to you seems so contrary to what “cozy” means to me. I just resent books that try to show character development decently, and then ruin it all by assuming that the reader doesn’t have the capacity to figure out what just happened and regurgitating it word-for-word. This was the main problem with this novel—it assumed so little of the reader and spelled everything out in the least subtle way. Every chapter of The Full Moon Coffee Shop pulled a “And what did we learn today, kids?” moment at the end without fail, and it just got so tedious so quickly. It just felt so preachily worded and repetitive, dulling any emotional impact this story could’ve had.

I feel so conflicted when talking about the writing of The Full Moon Coffee Shop. I read it in translation, so I really don’t know who’s to blame for the quality of the writing. I don’t know if Mai Mochizuki’s original text was dryly written to begin with or if Jesse Kirkwood’s English translation somehow dulled some of Mochizuki’s writing style and rendered it blander than before! I have no clue! Gaaaaaaaah! In any case, The Full Moon Coffee Shop was written so stiffly for a book that billed itself as so whimsical. The characters’ inner monologues all feel very rote and one-note and there’s hardly any sensory descriptions to immerse the reader in the setting. The writing let me down the most when we were introduced to the coffee shop itself, the most unique part of the novel; while I enjoyed the concepts of everything, from the celestial-themed desserts to the talking cat waitstaff, it was all described with the sparsest possible detail, the bare minimum word count to get the reader to visualize a new image. The Full Moon Coffee Shop is a slim novel, so it’s not like more detailed descriptions would’ve made it overly long—I was barely immersed in both the real-world and magical settings. The same can be said for the characters, who were barely developed beyond a problem they needed solving. The writing just felt like the bare minimum of describing…well, everything.

For me, one of the main issues with The Full Moon Coffee Shop was just how formulaic everything was. I had the same issue with What You Are Looking For is In the Library, a similarly cozy book about finding direction in life, but in that case, the stories were so repetitive and short and seemed to be saying the exact same thing, so my patience ran thin much earlier than with this novel. Once again, cozy doesn’t necessarily mean predictable—it should mean something that’s low-stakes, not repetitive. The Full Moon Coffee Shop felt like hearing the same story three times over; character is dissatisfied with life, character discovers coffee shop, character gets their natal chart read, character has a revelation and magically figures out how to fix their life. Rinse and repeat for 200 pages. You can see how tired that got. I appreciated that Mochizuki at least attempted to switch things up for the last story, but it didn’t do much to my interest in the story. All that changes is that it’s framed through the characters thinking that the coffee shop experience is a dream. Sadly, that amounted to little more than a perspective change and a switch to a handwritten font. It just got so repetitive and boring after a while, and even though the stories focused on different problems, Mochizuki rarely had anything new to say.

I hadn’t read a ton of reviews of The Full Moon Coffee Shop going in, but it seems a lot of people had problems with the heavy emphasis on astrology. The presence of astrology in and of itself wasn’t an issue for me, but it was more how said astrology was woven into the novel that got on my nerves. “Woven” is a generous word—even as someone who’s at least sort of into astrology, I felt absolutely sledgehammered over the head with every minute detail of it. After a certain point, The Full Moon Coffee Shop just became Astrology for Dummies. You know that meme of the kid pretending to read the Bible, but there’s a Minecraft book peeking out of the Bible? That’s what it felt like. It’s less of a novel and more somebody talking at you about the natal charts of complete strangers for 200 pages. I guess it might be beneficial to assume that your reader doesn’t know much about astrology, but Mochizuki got so bogged down in explaining every minute detail of every character’s astrology that the real meat of the story got lost. For me, it took away from the heart of the story, which should’ve been getting insights into the characters and their healing journeys. I feel like astrology easily could’ve been a fascinating aspect of the novel if not for how unsubtly it was shoehorned in—there could’ve been a chance to give it some narrative significance rather than spending 50 pages explaining astrology to the reader like they’re 5 years old.

Despite the formula of The Full Moon Coffee Shop getting on my nerves, I at least appreciated some of the messaging that the cats gave to the characters on how to fix their lives, particularly in the second chapter. However, the advice that the cats gave Mizuki seemed downright weird. I get that she’s not having success in her career, but the cats telling her to get with the times and not write what she loves just seemed so odd to me. There could’ve been something so poignant about success not being everything and her failures only being a small part of her career, but the cats were just talking to her like they were corporate executives telling her to be hip with the kids! Not only did that rub me the wrong way, the story itself seemed to refute the cats’ advice as well. Mizuki ends up finding success when she injects her signature style into a project that she was only doing for the money, thereby finding success in being herself and putting her own personal spin on things! Crazy concept! So why even have the cats tell her that in the first place, if that’s not even the lesson that the novel leads us to believe that Mizuki takes away from it?

All in all, a cozy novel that billed itself as tender and sweet, but ended up being unsubtle, preachy, and unconvinced of its own lessons. 2 stars.

The Full Moon Coffee Shop is the first in the Full Moon Coffee Shop series, followed by Best Wishes from The Full Moon Coffee Shop. Mai Mochizuki is also the author of the Holmes of Kyoto series.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/22/25) – The Ephemera Collector

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Continuing with Disability Pride Month, here’s a fascinating 2025 debut! I love books about libraries and archives, both for personal reasons and because of the possibilities that they hold. Add in the queer, science fiction aspect of it, and I was instantly hooked. The Ephemera Collector turned out to be one of the more unique books I’ve read recently, both in its mixed-media approach and the sprawling nature of its vision.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Ephemera Collector – Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

2035. In a divided, polluted Los Angeles, Xandria Brown pours her passion into her work as an archivist. Collecting ephemera from prominent Black authors, artists, and activists, she fights to preserve her work as the threat of corporate encroachment in her library looms. After the death of her wife, only her health bots, which monitor her symptoms of long COVID, keep her company. But when the library goes into lockdown for undisclosed reasons, Xandria and her health bots must get to the bottom of the mystery—and make sure that her collections are unscathed.

TW/CW: ableism, eugenics, racism, violence, medical content

Though not without its flaws, this is one of those novels where you can really feel how much of a labor of love it was for the author. The Ephemera Collector is Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s debut novel, which he published in his 60’s (!!!). It’s a mix of prose, poetry, and visual media, and I honestly wish I’d read a physical copy instead of an ebook in this case, because I feel like my Kindle couldn’t grasp the formatting fully. Nevertheless, The Ephemera Collector is a unique novel in all senses: a unique dystopia, a unique Afrofuturist novel, and a startlingly original piece of sci-fi.

Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s vision of the United States 10 years from now was certainly bleak, but his worldbuilding was what made The Ephemera Collector stand out so much to me. No stone was left unturned in terms of what happens to America in the next 10 years, from the threat of corporate oversight on Xandria’s archives of Black history to the COVID-34 pandemic that occurs a year before the novel is set. It was bleak to me, but not necessarily cynical to me; yeah, us going into a second global pandemic only 14 years after “getting through” the first one seems a bit cynical, but given how this country absolutely bungled how we handled COVID-19, it feels somewhat realistic. Yet the weirder and further you get from the center of what makes Jackson’s dystopia a dystopia, the more imaginative the worldbuilding gets. Xandria is followed around by health bots that all have distinct personalities. There’s a whole Atlantis 2: Electric Boogaloo situation with a group of POC separatists who settle underwater off the coast of California. The weirder Jackson gets with it, the better the worldbuilding becomes; those unique touches are what stuck with me the most.

Yet even though Jackson’s vision of the future is full of polluted air and government corruption (not too far off…oof), it never fully felt like completely gloom and doom. In the end, I feel like this novel was about the importance of preserving history, and the main character’s fight is to keep corporations out of her exhibition of Black history, namely a collection of ephemera about Octavia Butler. Our protagonist is a queer, disabled Black woman who comes from a line of disabled Black ancestors, and she is standing her ground when it comes to preserving their history as a fundamental thread in the fabric of our country. Xandria putting up this fight, for me, was what kept The Ephemera Collector from being fully cynical. To imagine a darker vision of the future is one thing, but to have a character fight it, win, and outlast said corruption and hatred (somehow, she lives to be 300 years old? I assumed it was the gene editing, but it’s never fully explained) was what gave me hope in the end. Xandria, a battered woman who faced threats to her archives, non-consensual gene editing and eugenicist practices, and the death of her wife, comes out the victor in the end, triumphant over everything she fought to defeat. She is alive to preserve the history of her ancestors, but she is also proof that even the groups that America is most determined to erase will survive no matter what this country throws at them—and outlive them by centuries.

Going into The Ephemera Collector, I knew it wouldn’t be the easiest book to digest. The reviews warned me of a novel that frequently went on tangents that didn’t relate to the main storyline, and a novel that was disorganized in general. Having that in mind, I went in with low expectations. While I do think this novel was a bit disorganized at worst, I think it was partially the point. This is a book about an archivist poring through artifacts in a massive library. Jackson’s style is very stream-of-consciousness, and I feel like it uniquely reflects what Xandria’s mindset would accurately be if she spent most of her waking hours as an archivist. It reminded me vaguely of The Library of Broken Worlds, a very different book from this one, but still a sprawling, magnificent at best, deeply convoluted at worst novel set in a vast library. Maybe that’s just what you’re in for if you write imaginative books about sci-fi/fantasy libraries. There were some sections that strayed too far from the main plot for my taste (more on that later), but overall, I enjoyed the breaks in form, whether it was the switches from prose to poetry to the anecdotes about Xandria’s ancestry. It really put me in mind of an archivist, and that seems exactly what Jackson set out to do. For me, it also tied back into the theme of preserving history—all of what we see is the history that Xandria fought so hard to keep alive and non-sanitized by corporations.

Here’s the thing, though. I was fine with the earlier tangents because I could see the thread that connected them to the rest of the novel. But around 60% of the way through, The Ephemera Collector quite literally loses the plot. Without warning, it switches to an entirely new story that’s barely connected to the main story—and that’s being generous. The only possible connection I could find was that one of the characters was a relative of Xandria, but that’s it. There’s no connection to her or the library. My dilemma is that although it was very distant from the rest of the novel, it was still a compellingly written storyline. It dealt with one of the more fascinating parts of the worldbuilding: the separatist community who created an underwater settlement, and later became pseudo-climate refugees when it became untenable to live underwater for any longer. It was so strange and lovely to pick apart, but it didn’t connect to the main narrative until the very last minute. Even in the context of Xandria looking through the archives, there wasn’t a clear thread. I’m tempted to give this less than 4 stars, because although this frustrated me, the writing was just that good. In my more arbitrary system, I guess it would be more in the 3.8-3.9 range, if we’re getting really specific, but I like it more than a 3.75. It’s a weird dilemma, but so is the whole novel, really.

All in all, a deeply imaginative Afrofuturist novel that pushed the boundaries of what a dystopia can be. 4 stars!

The Ephemera Collector is a standalone and Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s debut.

Today’s song:

NEW GUERILLA TOSS, WOOOO

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/8/25) – Something More

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve been looking around for books to read for Disability Pride Month, and in general, trying to find some books by Palestinian/Palestinian diaspora authors. Something More fit both of those, so I figured I would give it a go! Though it wasn’t a perfect novel, it had all of the qualities of a classic YA romance novel—angsty, romantic, and heartfelt writing.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Something More – Jackie Khalilieh

Jessie is determined to turn over a new leaf. On the precipice of starting high school, she wants to show the world that she isn’t the girl who she was in middle school—lonely, awkward, and more importantly, autistic. Keeping her diagnosis a secret, Jessie quickly makes new friends—and new crushes—at Holy Trinity High. But when her friendships begin to unravel and her relationships start to crumble, Jessie questions whether it’s worth it to keep her authentic truth a secret after all.

TW/CW: ableism (external & internalized), xenophobia, racism, substance abuse, bullying

Dude. Jessie and I would’ve been best friends in high school. I would’ve gladly welcomed another neurodivergent Radiohead girlie to go sneak off to the library with during my lunch period.

Though I can’t speak to the accuracy of the representation, I loved how Something More explored Jessie’s identity! It’s something that I assume has a lot of personal importance to the author, and Khalilieh’s explored all of the facets of Jessie’s identity with such sensitivity and love. I’m not autistic, but I am neurodivergent (I have SPD), and I deeply resonated with a lot of her struggles with fitting in and adjusting to high school while being neurodivergent. I loved the arc of Jessie realizing that there’s no reason to hide her autism from her friends, and I also appreciated that a lot of her friends, despite their flaws, were respectful and accepting of her identity. The same goes with her Palestinian-Canadian identity—again, I can’t speak to the representation, but Something More had such a lovely exploration of Jessie’s experience growing up in an immigrant household and feeling like an outsider because of her Palestinian roots. It’s a deeply refreshing intersection of representation in YA literature that I adored!

I normally don’t advocate for things becoming Netflix movies, but I swear that Something More has the perfect recipe for becoming that kind of YA classic that gets a cute streaming movie. I can already see the Clueless-esque ’90s soundtrack from here, tailored towards Jessie’s special interest and the music integrated in the novel. From Jessie’s diary full of friend and boy-related (and getting her parents to get her a phone-related) goals to Jessie’s unique spark as a protagonist, it’s got the classic tropes down to a science, yet never makes them feel tired. She injects the right amounts of both the sass and the vulnerability that comes with a lovable YA rom-com protagonist. Khalilieh perfectly captures the awkwardness of entering high school and the rocky path to fitting in and finding your place. Jessie has so much great development, from realizing her self-worth in the face of her crush being dismissive of her, to realizing that she needs to stand up to her toxic “friends.” Jackie Khalilieh has clearly done her homework on YA, and with a little refinement, is well on her way to making a classic.

Despite what I loved about it, Something More suffered from a few key flaws. The most glaring of them was that…oh my god, there were so many wild, random subplots and side tangents that didn’t contribute much to the plot. Jessie’s grandma, who was almost never mentioned, randomly dies towards the end of the book, one of her friends gets involved with a creepy older man and gets dumped in a parking lot, and the rest of the friend group continuously gets tossed between several skeevy guys, seemingly with no resolution. Yeah, high school is weird, but by the end of the novel, the relationship/ex statuses between Jessie and her friend group looked like that one panel in Diary of a Wimpy Kid with the massive relationship diagram. And that’s just her friend group of FOUR PEOPLE. It was wild. Other than the gross Mel subplot, which…at the very least, I guess it gave some depth to Jessie and Levi’s relationship, none of them added to the plot, and nor did they have any ripple effects throughout the novel. I guess there was only so much time for Jessie to reflect on her grandmother dying, but if they were as close as we were blatantly told in a handful of sentences, why did it barely have an effect on Jessie? Wouldn’t she be…y’know, experiencing some form of grief? It all just felt rushed and took away page time that could’ve been used to develop the more central relationships in the novel.

Speaking of relationships…thankfully, as the cover might lead you to believe, there really isn’t much of a love triangle. (Cue a sigh of relief.) I guess you could technically make an argument for it, but honestly, up until the 80% mark, I fully thought that things between Jessie and Griffin were going to stay completely platonic. Yet even then, Levi would’ve been the worse choice…LEVI. What a piece of work! I know that Jessie had to learn, BUT GIRL! YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN HIM! Just because he’s vaguely nice and looks like Kurt Cobain doesn’t mean that he’s not a flaky, disrespectful asshole! I get that Jessie had to learn both her lesson and her self-worth when it comes to falling head-over-heels for guys, but I feel like the writing of their relationship needed some work. I feel like the time between them meeting and having their first kiss was way too fast, even if Jessie was infatuated; their dynamic over the rest of the novel felt repetitive, and it didn’t serve much to the novel save for building the case for Levi being insufferable. As for Griffin, I did like their relationship, but I honestly think it could’ve worked romantically or platonically—I did like them getting together at the end, but I also would’ve appreciated him being part of Jessie’s (abandoned) goal of getting a guy friend and having a healthy depiction of friendships of the opposite gender.

Overall, a diverse YA romance that nails all of the factors for a classic formula, but faltered in its overabundance of subplots and awkwardly-paced relationships. 3.5 stars!

Something More is a standalone and Jackie Khalilieh’s debut novel. Khalilieh is also the author of You Started It and the forthcoming Everything Comes Back to You, which is set for release in 2026.

Today’s song:

I love this song, it sounds like being in a goldfish bowl…

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourself!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/1/25) – The Library of Broken Worlds

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy Disability Pride Month! I’ll have something up for the occasion later this week, but for now, here’s the first book review of the month.

I’ve had this novel on my TBR for a few years. I read Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Trouble the Saints several years ago and remembered it being on the denser side, so I was hesitant going into this novel, especially with the low ratings on both Goodreads and Storygraph. I understand those ratings now—this book is not for the faint of heart, but it was also victim to some serious mismarketing, in my opinion. It’s a sprawling novel that hops between worlds and genres, and despite its flaws, it’s one of the most ambitious novels I’ve read in a while.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Library of Broken Worlds – Alaya Dawn Johnson

Centuries ago, tesseract technology made travel and connection across the stars. Now, in the Library, where all of the tesseracts are held and all of the political machinations go on, Freida spends her childhood wandering amongst all kinds of strange magic and technology. She was artificially created by the Library, and has access to all of its texts. But as she grows older, she begins to understand the corruption deep within the Library. Her friends face persecution from all sides, both from mortal people and the gods beyond their reach. To save them, she must dig deeper than she’s ever ventured into the Library—and what she finds there could change her life.

TW/CW: genocide, loss of loved ones, sexual assault, colonialism/imperialism, violence

Right off the bat, let me just say: this is truly a weird book. For the most part, I mean that affectionately. It’s weirder than most YA I’ve read, and even weirder than some adult books. It’s also one of the more ambitious books I’ve read in quite some time. Straddling the line between hard sci-fi and full-blown fantasy, The Library of Broken Worlds is an ambitious—if not incredibly messy—novel.

I’ll start off by saying this: The Library of Broken Worlds really shouldn’t have been YA. Even though Freida is about 17 here, all of the concepts jammed in here really don’t feel like they should be for the 12-18 crowd. That might just be another consequence of 12-18 being a ridiculous jump in maturity for a single age range, but I digress. There are a lot of aspects that feel more well-suited for the more adult crowd. You sit in on a lot of court hearings, the politics get both deeply philosophical and intricate, and you’re dunked into the worldbuilding like one might be dunked face-first into a bucket of ice water. I think you can still work with a teenage character in an adult story (see: The Fifth Season), so I feel like it wouldn’t be much of an adjustment. As voracious of a reader as I was when I was in the peak market for YA books, I feel like I would’ve DNF’d this book in my teens. But that’s not to say that I didn’t love The Library of Broken Worlds. Had it been adjusted for an older audience, I think it might have been more successful—if not in marketing than anything else.

The case of the worldbuilding in The Library of Broken Worlds is a complicated one. It’s both the biggest strength and the biggest weakness of the novel. The worldbuilding itself is marvelous—what I could get of it. This novel is such a unique blend of sci-fi and fantasy. You have a Library as the central hub to travel to other parts of the galaxy, and the main characters is an artificially-created being created by the will of the Library itself. There’s lots of intergalactic folktales, extinct alien civilizations, a triad of nature gods that preside over the universe and form the basic divisions between its people, and a ton of worms and grubs. Gotta love the grubs. There’s a lot of ’em. The world is also refreshingly queernormative, with a variety of characters with different neopronouns and a young sapphic couple at the forefront of the story. In the acknowledgements, Johnson said that Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki were the biggest inspirations for the book. The comparison didn’t fully make sense to me, but in a way, I can see that the blend of sci-fi and fantasy, along with some of the more imagery, could feel like a darker, more convoluted version of Miyazaki. It’s such a lovingly created and multilayered world—I just wish we could’ve explored more of it.

Now, let’s go back to that word, convoluted, because it applies to…well, everything. I often talk about how writers often have the issue of vomiting all of their worldbuilding in chunks that distract from the story. This book has the exact opposite problem. From the start, you’re thrown headfirst into an exceedingly complex and convoluted world, expecting to know all of the terms and political divisions as they’re thrown about every which way. It felt like the scene from The Big Lebowski where The Dude is repeatedly getting his head dunked into the toilet (“WHERE’S THE MONEY, LEBOWSKI?”), but each time, you get a face full of completely wild fantasy terms that only get the most barebones explanations. By the time you’re sort of acclimated to the world and you think you’re getting a break, somebody’s pissing on your rug that really pulled the room together (more unexplained worldbuilding out of nowhere that overcomplicates things further). I still don’t fully know what a “broonie” is, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask. This book was in desperate need of a glossary, Jesus Christ. And a lot more exposition, as well as less convoluted and all-over-the-place explanations for what little was explained beyond the basics.

The characters in The Library of Broken Worlds were also a treat to explore! I wish we got more of some of the side characters, since there were so many, but it was Frieda’s story first and foremost. Though some parts of her were underdeveloped, Frieda was a solid protagonist; although she almost falls into a very typical mold of the YA protagonist whose life is out of her control and is different from the others (and is understandably angsty about it), these things are for reasons that are fully fleshed-out—the weight on her shoulder never feels manufactured, and the way that Johnson writes her trauma, from various sources, was very sensitive. I don’t think we got enough of Joshua (he’s almost forgotten about halfway through and only comes back in the last few bits of the climax), but I did like Nergüi’s coldness and eventual insightfulness as a counter to Frieda’s passion and hunger for knowledge.

There are some fascinating themes, political and otherwise, at play in The Library of Broken Worlds. In an attempt to be more utopian, the main government has built its government and legal system on the basis of freedom from and freedom to, and the discussion surrounding that, especially where those definitions get dangerously misused (justifying planetwide colonialism and genocide). Johnson didn’t shy away from getting into a ton of moral dilemmas. However, aside from that theme, I loved how The Library of Broken Worlds handles cycles. Simply by existing counter to her original purpose, Freida is breaking a cycle of her sisters being created for a specific purpose, and embracing empathy and love. But by doing that, she is also breaking a multitude of other cycles—the personal cycles of being traumatized and taking it out on others, and the vast, historical cycles of injustice and mass cruelty. The tesseracts also felt a bit like the interconnectedness of actions as well as events throughout history, and Freida exists at the confluence of it, making her able to fully see how she is able to reshape both her destiny and the unjust system that she lives under. As rocky and convoluted of a road Johnson takes us to get there, I appreciate that it was taken in the first place, because the payoff was mostly worth it in the end.

For most of what I just detailed, I nearly gave The Library of Broken Worlds the full 4 stars. But given the state of the book, I just…couldn’t. For all of its boundless creativity, timely themes, and observant insights, this novel was just a mess. I think this could’ve been the second-to-last draft before sending it off to the publisher, because as good as it was, the writing was all over the place. You’re unceremoniously thrust into the worldbuilding, and the only reason that I ended up acclimating (and even that’s a stretch) to everything was that this novel is nearly 450 pages long. It desperately needed more exposition, as well as clearer explanations of the key terms that come into play throughout the novel. The pacing was off—though I enjoyed the explorations of politics that Johnson employed throughout, I think we could’ve spent more time getting to know the world and less time sitting in space congressional hearings. There were a multitude of loose ends that didn’t fully get tied up. I guess that’s a consequence of such an expansive world, but The Library of Broken Worlds needed some serious refinement. I don’t normally find myself saying this, but give this book 50 more pages and a glossary, and I think some of these issues could be fixed.

All in all, an expansive piece of sci-fi/fantasy with highly commendable worldbuilding and themes, but which needed more page time and another round of edits to fully achieve its purpose. 3.75 stars!

The Library of Broken Worlds is a standalone novel, but Alaya Dawn Johnson is also the author of several novels for teens and adults, including Trouble the Saints, Love is the Drug, Moonshine, Racing the Dark, and The Summer Prince.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (6/10/25) – When the Tides Held the Moon

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I found this novel in an Instagram post about upcoming queer releases in 2025, and this one immediately caught my eye. You put a comparison to The Shape of Water in the tagline, and you bet I’m in. (If anything, it’s right between The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley, given the setting.) Venessa Vida Kelley has delivered a vibrant and sensitive story of queer love and solidarity amongst weirdos.

Enjoy this week’s review!

When the Tides Held the Moon – Venessa Vida Kelley

Orphaned and far from his homeland of Puerto Rico, Benny Caldera makes a living as an ironworker in 1910’s New York City, barely scraping together enough to stay afloat and out of reach of the taunts of his white coworkers. But when Sam Morgan, the owner of a sideshow, notices his handiwork, he commissions a strange project for him: a tank whose contents are unknown to him. Benny takes the opportunity for a new job, and finds an unexpected family in the sideshow’s performers. He soon finds out that the tank holds an impossible marvel: a captured merman. As Benny gains the merman’s trust, he finds himself drawn to him—and the merman to him. But when Morgan’s abuse to the merman turns deadly and the sideshow begins to crumble, it’s up to Benny to hatch a plan to save them all.

TW/CW: racism, homophobia, abuse (emotional and physical), violence, blood, ableism, xenophobia, mentions of sexual assault (off-page)

art by Venessa Vida Kelley

I may be a somewhat critical consumer, but listen…you dangle a comparison to The Shape of Water in front of me like a carrot, and goddamnit, I’m eating it right up. God forbid that a weird girlie such as myself consume even more media about found family, fish people, and the nature of marginalization!! That being said, nothing comes close to The Shape of Water, but that’s not the book’s fault. When the Tides Held the Moon is a beautiful novel in all of its parts.

When the Tides Held the Moon boasts a vibrant cast of characters, and it really felt like a feat for Kelley to balance all of them and still give them unique and complementary personalities. Besides Benny and Río, the cast is mostly rounded out by the fellow performers in the sideshow, of which there are many. Yet out of the nine (I think?) primary side characters, none of them ever felt like an afterthought. Each of them were not only rounded out, but had such thoughtfully planned interactions with all of the other characters—sometimes clashing, and sometimes meshing perfectly. There were individual romances and special friendships between the nine of them, but they were a shining example of found family done well. Despite their individual differences, their solidarity and kinship shone through on the page, making for a narrative that had no shortage of tenderness and heart.

The romance between Benny and Río shone in When the Tides Held the Moon. There was such a tenderness to both of them that gave the novel so much of its heart. I’m always a sucker for narratives about two outsiders falling in love, but I love the ways that their separate senses of outsiderness intertwined; they shared music, stories, and tales of their respective homelands. The slow burn romance was paced well, and never felt rushed. I do feel like the ending was a tad bit too close to The Shape of Water, without spoiling anything, but I think their individual way of solidifying their romantic relationship at the end of the novel separated itself enough in the end, making for a resonant, vibrant end to the novel and to their respective arcs. It was all just so wonderfully sweet, but never in a way that felt insincere or cloying—I just loved them!

When the Tides Held the Moon is an incredibly diverse novel, which was exactly how it should’ve been; even without nearly as much knowledge as Kelley has (this was a very well-researched novel and it shows), it would’ve been a disservice to show either New York City or the culture of sideshows as places that don’t have a history of diversity. Immigrants from many different countries (Puerto Rico, Ireland, India, and Russia to name a few) are at the forefront, as well as lots of queer people, disabled people, people of color, and people who overlap within these intersections. However, some novels have a tendency to have a very 21st century view of all of these things. When the Tides Held the Moon felt very historically sensitive in terms of the language it used around these characters, but not in a way that was sanitized. In fact, it didn’t hold back from depicting the kinds of horrific oppression that these characters faced. Yet it wasn’t straight-up trauma porn either—it was honest about the struggles marginalized people faced during this time period, but never in a way that felt like their trauma was being exploited for emotion. That emotion shone through naturally in the interactions that the characters had and the solidarity they fostered in the face of mutual oppression.

That being said, the major thing keeping When the Tides Held the Moon was some of the writing, particularly the dialogue writing. Even from someone with a fairly high tolerance for bombastic, dramatic dialogue (I love Ray Bradbury and the Claremont run of X-Men for similar reasons, if that gives you a good idea of where I’m at), Kelley’s dialogue often bordered on too much. As sensitive and nuanced as everything else about this novel was, the dialogue trended towards excessively cheesy and overdramatic more often than not. Though I adored Río as a character, his voice very much fell into that overly verbose, “wise”-sounding dialogue that you could slap on any fantasy character. Benny in particular had some of that pathetic “aw, gee, mister, gimme a break, why don’tcha” kind of overwritten voice that was in-character at best but almost grating at worst. The side characters had varying degrees of this affliction, but none of them necessarily jump out at me save for the very stereotypically New York mobsters (“he’ll be sleepin’ with the fishes,” etc…wait, there was SUCH a missed opportunity them to say that). The only exception I can think of was Matthias since it was established that it was his genuine personality and not a consequence of the writing. If this were any other novel, I would’ve tolerated this much less, but Kelley’s story had so much heart that I could partially let it slide…but not all the way.

All in all, a beautiful, sensitive novel about love and marginalization with a big heart. 4 stars!

When the Tides Held the Moon is a standalone and Kelley’s debut novel. She is also the author of the forthcoming graphic novel Manu Faces the Music, which is set to be released in 2026.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/20/25) – Rebel Skies

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Update: I do have something nice to say, so I’ll say something. Beyond the heinous Studio Ghibli AI trend (and if anybody here thought that was “cute,” even when the White House twitter did it, get thee away from this blog), people tend to narrow Studio Ghibli down to a very shallow, cutesy aesthetic that discounts the heart of Hayao Miyazaki’s incredible visions. Rebel Skies was one of the few pieces of media inspired by Miyazaki that clearly gets him—rich worldbuilding with whimsy and darkness in equal measure. Yet even if you take that comparison away, Rebel Skies is a YA book to be reckoned with, full of heart, spirit, and skyships.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Rebel Skies (Rebel Skies, #1) – Ann Sei Lin

In the Sky Cities, no one is more revered—and feared—more than Crafters: those who possess the power to draw magic from paper and make creatures come to life. Kurara, a young servant aboard a flying ship, has barely honed her powers, only using them for party tricks. But when her best friend, Haru, is revealed to be a Shinigami—a creature made of paper—and grievously injured, Kurara flees to a skyship in order to find answers. There, she hones her Crafting with Himura, an ornery Crafter with secrets of her own. As she gets to know the motley crew of her ship, Kurara discovers that Haru’s identity isn’t the only secret that’s been kept from her—and that there are enough to bring down the Empire.

TW/CW: fire, animal death, torture, death, descriptions of injury

Ann Sei Lin seems to know as well as anyone that we need a bit more whimsy in YA fantasy. The edgelord stuff has gotten boring. It’s fantasy, come on now! I get that if magic was the norm, people might not be impressed by it, but there has to be some wonder in your life, right?

First off, the worldbuilding was tons of fun! Though the Studio Ghibli-inspired elements are plentiful, if I had to summarize the world of Rebel Skies, it wouldn’t be with that. If anything, it’s more of a steampunk version of Kubo and the Two Strings. You’ve got Nausicaä-esque airships and floating cities (which both felt very Philip Reeve as well) combined with paper-based magic, and all of the possibilities you can think of along with it—paper animals, paper people, and monstrous paper beasts. (Oh, and the paper animals can talk. Gotta toss some talking animals in there.) I’m not usually one for steampunk, but this isn’t your garden-variety “slap gears and tiny hats on everything in Victorian England and call it a day” steampunk—not only is the world inspired by Asian cultures (mainly Japan), the blend of magic and machinery married easily, and often whimsically. Though the colors I imagined trended towards rusty and earth-toned, Lin couldn’t have made her world more vibrant—and multilayered; not only were there base-level divisions between the people who lived on the ground and the people who lived in the sky, there were all sorts of customs, stereotypes, and quirks that were given to each, which in turn influenced how all the mismatched patchwork of characters interacted with each other.

For me, it doesn’t get much better than the worldbuilding informing the themes of the book. Not only did I love all of the intricacies of the paper magic in Rebel Skies, I love how Lin used it to explore the theme of autonomy, and especially the lack of it. Kurara herself has been ordered around as a servant, and she sees the same thing being done to the magical beings around her; she sees how Himura treats Akane, his shikigami fox, and questions whether or not he’s really so content to devote his entire existence to serving Himura. Add that to the visceral trauma of discovering that her best friend is made of paper and has been seemingly puppeteered from afar, and the reigning empire is performing cruel experiments on its shikigami, and Kurara’s ultimate motive to both her personal journey and her journey to wrong the rights of her world lies in autonomy, and having a reciprocal, ethical relationship to her magic. It’s an excellent metaphor and an excellent addition of nuance to the worldbuilding—if the world relies on unbalanced relationships, how can I shift them so as not to do to others what others have done to me?

You all know by now how much of a sucker I am for a good found family story, and while Rebel Skies didn’t completely fulfill that promise, I love the group dynamic between all of the characters. Even though the subplot of Sayo and Kurara warming up to each other felt a bit rote, I liked the progression that their characters had. Kurara and the rest of the pirates were lots of fun, and they gave the skyship a lively, lived-in feel. I’m also a sucker for the trope of older, gruff characters taking excitable younger characters under their wing; Himura was a solid addition to the canon, but I feel like he’s hiding too much to truly be a mentor to Kurara. I’m interested to see where it goes in Rebel Fire, but my gut says that it’s going to be some kind of subversion. We’ll see. Either way, Rebel Skies’ motley crew lived up to its description, making the setting all the more lively and adventurous.

As someone who read voraciously in my childhood and longed for some kind of bridge between middle grade and the too-broad age range of YA (12 to 18 is so arbitrary and baffling, you’ll not hear the end of it from me), Rebel Skies automatically won me over. It’s categorized as YA, but it feels right in the middle of MG whimsy and adventure and more YA stakes and themes. Kurara, even as a teenager, has a childlike sense of wonder, and although some of her interactions came off as slightly more childish than her age, it hits a charming balance of innocence and discovery that feels like the ideal bridge between the age jump between the two categories. As a longtime YA reader, it hits a natural sweet spot, but in its balance of darker, more YA elements with the same kind of voice as older MG, Lin has written a book that could serve as both a younger YA reader’s introduction to the genre and an easy pleaser for the YA reader.

That being said, the one major flaw in Rebel Skies is that I didn’t see why Himura’s POV was necessary. He was a solid character, but this novel was clearly Kurara’s story. I enjoyed hearing his voice and Lin wrote it well, but I don’t think his input to the story served a purpose other than giving his side of events…that we’d already been shown through Kurara’s POV. We get that Kurara’s been slow in her training, and then Himura repeats it as such. We do get plot information that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten from Kurara, but if that’s the only reason that Himura gets his own chapters, then what’s the point? There could be multiple interesting ways for Kurara to get this information that could deepen or complicate the relationship she has with Himura—she could overhear a conversation or sneak a look at some of his documents, for instance, and he could catch her in the act, adding more conflict to the plot. Again, he was a perfectly fine character, but aside from the interludes, Rebel Skies wasn’t meant to be a dual-POV novel. It’s the Kurara show, c’mon!

Overall, a memorable fantasy book with lush worldbuilding, a lively cast of characters, and a unique voice that balances middle grade adventurousness with the more matured nuance of YA. 4 stars!

Rebel Skies is the first book in the Rebel Skies trilogy, followed by Rebel Fire and Rebel Dawn. Rebel Skies is Ann Sei Lin’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

I’m totally new to BCNR, but I saw them open for St. Vincent the other night, and they were great performers!! this was probably my favorite of theirs.

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/13/25) – The Knockout

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I always feel bad whenever I come back after period of hibernation only to come back with a negative review. I just have to get it all out sometimes! I’ll probably have something nice to say by next week.

Say it with me, kids: just because a book has diverse representation doesn’t erase the flaws in its writing! Sadly, The Knockout was not the one-two punch that the title promised: it tried to hard to sound hip and teenager-y, and nosedived spectacularly.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Knockout – S.A. Patel

Kareena Thakkar knows her power. She’s been building up her skills in Muay Thai, and she’s good enough to qualify for the US Muay Thai Open—an event that could take her to the Olympics if she wins. But even though it’s where her passion lies, Kareena is divided between her Muay Thai world, her peers’ desires for her to be traditionally feminine and act the way a good Indian girl should. With her ill father and the Olympics on the line—as well as a cute boy, Kareena must decide which world she’d rather stay in—or if she needs to divide those worlds after all.

TW/CW: bullying, terminal illness, misogyny, medical content

Look. I read YA frequently, knowing that it’s a market of books about teenagers mostly written by adults. Even by that standard, I haven’t read a book so deeply how do you do, fellow kids? as The Knockout in some time. I wanted to badly to root for Kareena, but her insufferable voice—and by extension, Patel’s writing—made it a real ordeal.

Kareena’s voice was the most glaring issue that The Knockout had. Firstly, she didn’t sound or act like a 17-year-old. If anything, between her language and her maturity, she sounded closer to 13 or 14. The kind of stiff, teen movie comebacks she doled out to her bullies were nowhere near the kind of experience a person would have at 17—especially someone who had been through as many struggles as her. In my experience, what you need to do when writing teenagers (or any character who’s younger than you) is to emphasize how you (or your peers) remember feeling—what you’d prioritize, what was important to you, how you would react to situations, etc. Writing like a teenager is about the emotion, because there are a lot of them running around your brain at that age. Sure, it’s hard to nail the voice, and granted, I don’t have the age distance from Kareena that Patel has. But there’s lots of easy ways to not do it, and some of those are a) extensively leaning on what you think is “hip” slang, and b) automatically skewing the character’s voices as young as possible within the teenage range. Between the unnecessary censorship of cursing here and there and her childish outbursts, Kareena was not believably 17. Additionally, Patel’s insistence at integrating what she thought to be “current” Gen Z slang was painfully bad. If anything, it dated The Knockout leagues more than making it relevant. It’s not the teenage experience, but instead the teenage movie experience, simply parroting what adults think teenagers sound like. It positions itself as current and relatable while never encapsulating what it was like to be a teenager, making what should’ve been the heart of the novel hollow.

As with Kareena’s supposed 17 years of age, I was never convinced of the stakes in The Knockout. When Patel established how good Kareena was at Muay Thai, all it did was make Kareena feel unnecessarily overpowered. I normally only say that about fantasy or sci-fi novels, but she was just too good to the point that every fight she did seemed to be a fleeting moment of struggle before she absolutely pummels her opponent. This continued throughout the duration of the novel. Even though Kareena had the Olympics on the line, I never once got the sense that this was hard for her. Her training seemed to be the only time she struggled—other than that, she just flew through the US Muay Thai open without a problem. If she actually experienced tangible setbacks within her practice or the Muay Thai open, I would’ve been more motivated to root for her. Yet everything seemed to be handed to her on a platter, making the stakes feel almost nonexistent. I knew from the start that Kareena would get everything that she wanted, and while I appreciate the value of having diverse characters succeeding in their narratives, it made for a book with no stakes.

Bullying is a major plot point in The Knockout, but I don’t think that Patel succeeded in making all of it completely believable. As far as Kareena getting bullied by her other Indian-American peers for not being “Indian” enough went, that was one of the few parts of the book that was successful; unlike the main plot, it gave Kareena’s struggles some tangible weight. However, I wasn’t fully convinced that her doing Muay Thai was something so outrageous that she thinks that she’ll be bullied by the whole school for it. I get that it’s not a traditionally feminine sport, but with the way that Kareena talked about Muay Thai, you would think that she’s coming out of the closet. Even with the cliched interactions between Kareena and her peers, I just couldn’t imagine her being bullied for it, and not just because if someone were to slam her into a locker, teen movie-style, she’d slam right back. Kareena being a Muay Thai champion didn’t feel nearly as dirty as a secret as Patel lead us to believe, which made some of the novel’s more personal stakes less believable as well.

Additionally, I have mixed feelings about the romance between Kareena and Amit. It didn’t fully sidetrack the book for me, but I wasn’t fully invested either. I did like that Amit was instrumental in helping Kareena reconnect with parts of her Indian culture, but I don’t think he had much of a personality beyond what he did for Kareena. They seemed to have almost all the same interests, and Amit didn’t have anything to distinguish himself other than not doing Muay Thai. He was just a blank slate with similarities to Kareena baked in so that there could be some instant “chemistry” between the two of them. The only tension in the romance was when Kareena met his more traditional family, so the tension didn’t even lie with him—it was all outside factors that threatened the integrity of the relationship. The only differences I can really think of about Amit and Kareena is that he comes from a more traditional family and he’s…well, a different gender. That’s it. He wasn’t a person, he was just a boyfriend. I do think that this kind of story is good with a romantic subplot, especially considering that it’s YA realistic fiction, but like almost everything else in The Knockout, I could not get invested whatsoever.

That being said, I do have some positives for the book. I’ve seen a lot of books, especially YA ones, where the main character has to choose between their traditional culture and the more “appealing” American culture. The Knockout, by contrast, had Kareena be raised by two parents who weren’t connected to their culture in a conventional way—they were flexible with letting their daughter be who she wanted to be without sacrificing their Indian heritage in the process. Kareena was disconnected from her roots in some ways (which she begins to remedy in this novel), but both she and her parents emphasize that there’s no single way to be Indian. I can’t speak to any cultural accuracies, of course, but I loved this as a message for a YA book in this context—there’s no one way to be any identity, be it in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, or anything else. Paired with the expectations of femininity that society puts on Kareena, it’s a wonderful message. I also really liked that Kareena had a combination of multiple interests that weren’t traditionally feminine—in addition to Muay Thai, she’s also passionate about computer science. Sadly, all this was overshadowed by the flaws in most of the novel, but if you took all that away, at least The Knockout has something beneficial to say. I just wish it was said in a less cliched, more authentic way.

All in all, a book with a positive message if you soldiered through it, but was bogged down by childish dialogue writing and characters (even by YA standards) and a lack of all-around believability. 2 stars.

The Knockout is a standalone. She is also the author of several books for teens and adults, including Isha, Unscripted, The Design of Us, First Love, Take Two, The Trouble With Hating You, Sleepless in Dubai, My Sister’s Big Fat Indian Wedding, and the Venom series (A Drop of Venom and A Touch of Blood).

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/15/25) – Afrotistic

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and although I probably won’t have time to make a whole post about it (blame finals), I figured I would review a book with an autistic protagonist and an autistic author! This one’s been on my TBR for a few years, but I was only able to find a copy more recently. Although it wasn’t perfect, it’s a great book to introduce a younger audience to autistic issues, especially from a more diverse perspective.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Afrotistic – Kala Allen Omeiza

15-year-old Noa Ohunene Jenkins doesn’t know where she fits in—or if she can fit in at all. All of her life, she’s never felt Black enough or autistic enough. And now that she’s moving to a new high school, she doesn’t know if she’ll fit into either communities—much less her new school. Noa has her mind set on one thing: a place in the Dean’s Merit Society. The problem is, the only way she’ll get in is if she has leadership experience. Scrambling for answers, she decides to gather up fellow autistic teenagers and forms a group to discuss autistic issues. But will it be enough to show her peers and teachers that she’s just as worthy of praise?

TW/CW: ableism, racism, bullying, mentions of suicide (past), brief mentions of police brutality (in reference to police violence towards autistic people)

Afrotistic has been languishing on my TBR for way too long, but even though it wasn’t a perfect book, I think it’s a great book to introduce people—especially kids and young adults—to autism, ableism, and the intersection of race and disability! It’s already difficult to find neurodivergent representation in literature, but rarer within that category is autistic people of color—for that alone, Afrotistic is such an important book.

For some reason, I misremembered Afrotistic as being middle grade. Who knows why. I kept that assumption going in, and then I of course found out that Noa is 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. Whoops. That being said, going in with that mindset wasn’t all that bad, because I really feel like Afrotistic hits that sweet spot between middle grade and YA that’s so often unexplored. It appeals to a mid-teens age range because of its protagonist, but the writing is accessible enough that I feel like kids as young as 12 or 13 could comfortably read and relate to Noa and the other characters. (The fact that 12-18 is such a huge range of maturity for a single age group is whole can of worms, so I’ll save it for another time.) There are some more mature and sensitive topics that are briefly discussed (police brutality against autistic people of color, for one), but it’s brief enough that I feel like that age range could process and learn from it. Neurodivergent representation is hard to find in books aimed at all ages, and I feel Omeiza’s accessible writing style, as well as the relatability of Noa as a protagonist, makes for a book that could teach tons of pre-teens and young adults alike about Black and autistic identity.

Another reason I’m glad that Afrotistic exists is because of the intersectionality! The primary focus is on Noa’s identity as a young, Black, autistic girl, and how she’s struggled to make her voice heard because of how little attention is paid to neurodivergent (and disabled in general) people of color. Both through the essay excerpts in the story and through her real-time experiences not being believed by her peers and teachers, it was a poignant narrative about how neurodivergent people of color have to fight even harder to have their needs met and understood. Going off of that, I appreciated that within the Roaring Pebbles, there was a lot of intersectionality as well; as well as all of them being autistic, there was a mixed-race character with cerebral palsy, as well as men and women being present.

That being said, I wasn’t as charmed by the characters as the characters themselves seemed to be. I loved Noa and was rooting for her throughout the story, but I found myself less compelled by some of the other characters. It was clear that the friendship between Noa and Brayden was supposed to be one of the core friendships in the novel, but I really didn’t feel any kind of friendship chemistry between them. All Brayden seemed to do was make jokes that didn’t land and make awfully pushy remarks to Noa joining his youth group. I get that Noa is also Christian and doesn’t necessarily mind, but I feel like even if I was also Christian and I had somebody trying to get me to join their youth group that persistently, I’d snap. The issue with most of the other characters is that they were rather underdeveloped; this was inevitable with the amount of characters that were focused on in the Roaring Pebbles, but even the ones that had more page time were boiled down to one or two traits at most. I get that it’s difficult to juggle that many characters, but even the ones that were relatively more in the spotlight weren’t given enough traits to make them stand out. Going back to the whole pushy youth group thing with Brayden, I found it hard to believe that every single member of the Roaring Pebbles were completely fine with their group being filtered through said youth group and having a name with biblical inspiration. I get that if you’re strapped for resources, any venue you can have to gather is essential, but I would imagine that at least one of these characters isn’t Christian…

Additionally, what also soured me to some of these characters was the random side plots that weighed the story down. There’s a whole, completely unnecessary thread of two of the boys in Roaring Pebbles fighting over a girl that gets entirely too much page time and only served to derail the plot. About half of the conflicts that occur throughout Afrotistic felt of this nature—some of them were natural (like the inevitable issue that some of the autistic people have different triggers, which was something I appreciated being included and discussed), but others felt like filler. Here’s the issue: Afrotistic is only about 250 pages (on my Kindle edition), so there could have been so many more opportunities to discuss more aspects of Noa’s friendships, identity, or even her home life. Instead, we got problems that were solved far too quickly and didn’t contribute anything to the plot.

Also: I’m not completely sure how to feel about this, but I had to mention it. At some point, when Noa is surveying the different cliques in the lunchroom, she labels two of them the “woke kids” and the “cool woke kids.” It was…odd, to say the least? I can kind of see it as being a factor of her not feeling autistic/Black enough for those crowds, but I’ve never once heard cliques described as “woke” unless it’s some weird, insecure conservative person. I guess I’m so used to seeing “woke” being lobbed at anything vaguely liberal (or considerate of basic human decency) these days, but Afrotistic was published in 2022, and the same was true then. I’m just not sure how I feel about that.

All in all, a timely novel that deftly highlights the issues that autistic people of color face, but stumbled in terms of its characters and frequent plot digressions. 3.5 stars!

Afrotistic is a standalone novel, but Kala Allen Omeiza is also the author of Autistic and Black: Our Experiences of Growth, Progress, and Empowerment, and The Worst Saturday Ever.

Today’s song:

SO glad I found this song!! Brian Eno never gets old

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (3/18/25) – The Teller of Small Fortunes

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

You know it. You know I’m all for cozy literature. I wasn’t particularly in a moment where I needed cozy fantasy, but these days, I love to space them into my regular reading rotation to keep things lighter, if need be. I’m usually more for sci-fi than fantasy, but I love a good fantasy every once in a while. The Teller of Small Fortunes wasn’t the best cozy fantasy I’ve read, but like a mug of tea, it was great for a momentary hug of warmth and love.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Teller of Small Fortunes – Julie Leong

Tao is an immigrant from Shinara, making a living far to the west in Eshtera. She makes a living off of fortune-telling, but hers are not like the grand tales that people expect from those with Shinn heritage. But Tao’s fortunes have a catch: they are small fortunes, minor events that seemingly have no consequence, but will add up towards a life of crucial choices. She cannot stay for long in one place, lest these fortunes pile up and her customers start to expect more complex predictions. But when she crosses paths with an ex-mercenary and a thief-turned-poet on the road, Tao has to keep a promise to the fortune she gave them: they’re looking for a missing girl, and Tao knows that she’ll be reunited with them. What’s unknown, however, is how it’ll happen…

TW/CW (from Julie Leong): political conflict, death of a parent, parental neglect, racism, grief, alcohol

While The Teller of Small Fortunes wasn’t the best cozy fantasy I’ve ever read, if you’re looking for something sweet to tide you over, look no further! In the mood for found family, cats, spells, and wonky pastries? I’ve got just the book for you.

Given the crowds that I hang around with, it might surprise you that I’ve never actually played DnD. I’ve always been adjacent to people who are into it and frequently play it, but I’ve never played myself. By osmosis, I know enough about it to discern that anyone who loves DnD will absolutely eat up The Teller of Small Fortunes! Somebody with more DnD knowledge could probably sort each character into a class, but I’m illiterate in that department; yet even still, I can tell that it came about in the way that many DnD campaigns seem to: out of love and out of friendship. Leong’s cozy fantasy has the perfect balance of wholesomeness, levity, and more serious themes, and overall, it’s an ode to the friends we find in unexpected places. The contrasting personalities of Tao, Mash, Silt, and Kina made for a delightful found family with goals that often got in the way of each other, but twisted to form a journey across a fantastical land that taught them lessons about identity, friendship, and individuality. It’s just so sweet. Admittedly, it did border on a bit cloying at times (even for me, both with my cozy fiction proclivities and my merciless sweet tooth), but overall, cozy fantasy fans will be more than satisfied. Plus, there’s a cat. Automatic win in my book.

Tao’s character arc and the themes around it were the heart of The Teller of Small Fortunes. This novel focuses heavily on her immigrant identity, but it explored something that I haven’t often seen with these narratives. In order to make a living outside of her home country, Tao has to perform a stereotype—in her case, being a seer. She relies on this preconceived notion of her people all being able to see the future, and knows that she’ll be able to make money off of it, yet she tries so hard to make it define her. On the other side of the coin, there’s the Guild of Mages, who physically want to use her as a pawn, fitting her into their similarly superficial stereotype of what a magic-user should be. Yes, The Teller of Small Fortunes is very much a “be yourself” narrative (I will always hate Disney for making people trivialize this kind of message), but it’s one that’s complicated by the nuance of the aspects of Tao’s identity. For her, being herself is a lifelong fight, held up by several systemic forces of oppression. Her journey is a mental one just as much as it is physical, and it required the same labor, with a satisfying conclusion: the conscious effort by her to not let other people box her in.

However, the writing sometimes got on my nerves. For me, cozy fantasy can sometimes fall into the trap of being almost condescending in its writing style; it veers to strongly into the “and what did we learn today, kids?” kind of storytelling, even if it’s often aimed at adults. There is a marked difference between having a low-stakes plot and dumbing down the language for your audience. The Teller of Small Fortunes didn’t completely fall into making the language overly digestible, but every plot point and side quest (of which there are many) tended to have a very clear, obviously stated lesson that accompanied the ending. Even if said plot points were well-executed—which they often were, especially the scene with the phoenix egg—their impact was often lessened by the regurgitating of what the scene was meant to mean for the characters and the message, as if we couldn’t figure it out. I honestly didn’t mind that these plot points, especially the ending, were wrapped up in notably kind, easier ways—that’s almost a staple of cozy fiction, at this point—but we didn’t have to get their message shoved in our faces on a neon sign. Additionally, as a character, Kina also erred on this side of saccharine—she was sweet in the way that some cozy fiction characters are, but like the pastries she made, it got a little too sweet in a grating way.

I also found the worldbuilding to be quite generic. The Teller of Small Fortunes was one of those fantasy novels that took existing countries, copied and pasted them into the narrative, and added magic and mythical creatures; Shinara was clearly an analogue for China, which, while it was great for the themes of anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia, didn’t make for worldbuilding that was interesting or novel in any way. The same can be said for most of the other places that Tao and the gang pass through—most of them fell under the “vaguely European, I will not elaborate” curse that plagues high fantasy, and the only things that distinguished them, if any, were some of the exports/trades that they had. I will say that I loved the system of the Guild of Mages, and they served as great commentary for tokenization and a distant but tangible source of corruption in the world, but they didn’t have enough of a presence for them to have an effect on the world for me. It all felt very lackluster to me in contrast to the care that was put into the characters. I also would’ve liked more clarification on the regional magic. It’s implied through some of Tao’s background that magic is often associated with/endemic to particular regions (hence the stereotypes of Shinn people being seers/fortune tellers and whatnot), but we don’t get a clarification of whether or not the rule also applies to the surrounding regions.

Overall, a cozy fantasy that had lovely, poignant characters and themes, but was less fortunate in the worldbuilding department. 3.5 stars!

The Teller of Small Fortunes is a standalone and Julie Leong’s debut. Her next novel, The Keeper of Magical Things, is a companion novel set in the same universe as The Teller of Small Fortunes, and is slated for release in October 2025.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!