Welcome to Litsy!

Well this was pretty beautiful. There was a plot but it felt really meandering. I read it slowly, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of American Gods, but wayyy more serious.

Third and final #roll100 read for Jan done!

A study in mourning, grappling with tragedy. Grief as both a paralytic delaying development, and an acid, prompting destruction. Grief for the loss of people, for cruelties visited, for the loss and corruption of nature, community. How miserable people looking to make other people miserable is even more dangerous when there's a power imbalance involved. 1/?

The time line of this story ebbs and flows as it rubs up against shifting shores. The Kinwell family reigns over and help merge the land of the living with the land of the dead. Multiple characters and storylines weave together as each person tries to find peace. Beautifully written.

This book is definitely not for everyone. It is full of trigger warnings, and the subject matter is dark and depressive. However, it's a commanding read that uses a ghost/haunted story to explore generational traumas. There's also some truly beautiful writing in this book.

People in the remote area of Anacostia don‘t deal with the Kinwell: Nephthys, her niece or nephew. Nephthys drives a haunting car, Amber can predict future deaths and Dash sees ghosts/creatures. But all these characters are tools to show part of the history during the 70‘s: racism, violence, murders and rapes against black people, poverty. Beautiful written. Author is the narrator with a beautiful voice. 4⭐️It has mixed reviews but worked for me

Morowa Yejidé manages a glorious feat: her prose is lyrical without being purple. At first I was convinced I was in for a gripping, atmospheric read, but as the book wound on I found everything too spread out. There wasn‘t enough focus on each character for me to form real connections with them, and the atmosphere couldn‘t carry me through. I drifted away from it around 160 pages in.

Thanks for the #wondrouswednesday tag, @Eggs and @Avanders !

1. 🚙👻🌫💦

(That ghost is way too peppy to fit this book‘s vibe.)

2. I don‘t need it to be a direct sequel, but I‘d love another book set in the same world as Robin McKinley‘s SUNSHINE.

3. 4 stars (my Loved It rating) for WE WERE DREAMERS by Simu Liu.

April Reads
🌟 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Creatures of Passage: Morowa Yejide 🎧 Womens Prize
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Sorrow and Bliss: Meg Mason 🎧 Woman's Prize
The Swimmers: Julie Otsuka 📖
🌟🌟🌟.5
Remote Passage: Catherine Chidgey 📖 Women's Prize
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine Anna Reid 📖
Crying in H Mart: Michelle Zauner 🎧
🌟🌟🌟
Junket: Lauren Groff 🎧
Pure Color: Sheila Heti 🎧
🌟🌟
One Italian Summer: Rebecca Serle 🎧

I greatly admire Yejidè‘s creativity, but there is an awful lot going on here and she didn‘t quite convince me that it all belongs in the same novel.

Wow! 5 🌟. Beautiful. Reminds me of The Prophets, Beloved, The Water Dancer. Mystical and mythical. Trigger warning for child abuse and sexual assault. The best of the Women's Prize long list that I have read so far. I can not imagine any of the others being better. Best book I have read so far this year.

Original, well written, exactly why I love the WPFLL the books this year are so different from each other! This story was less about Nephthy and her haunted taxi then I was hoping for, and TW for pedophilia and hate crimes. But honestly this is not scary the haunting is clever and helpful or benign. While the elements of the story are dark there is a lightness and hope to the storytelling that makes this a quick and engrossing read.

Seven books in and I liked them all well enough to think they deserve a shortlist place. This has *never* happened to me before (that I can remember).

#FabulousFiction #WomensPrize #Longlist

The wolf watched the people at the picnic, busy with distraction....most of all, he'd always wondered, down through the ages and in different realms how these creatures of passage could be so careless.

How could they see and not see something so precious as their young?

Rosetta knew that Nephthys wanted her to read the Lottery, Amber Kinwell's unmistakable proclamations of death. People were afraid of her but they still wanted to know what she dreamed... God no, please don't let her tell about a police raid rounding up black boys. We got any crimes of passion? What about accidents on the job? Who would be shot? Stabbed? Who would be found in one of the rivers this time? Or in an alley?

Many years later, there would be other foot soldiers and commanders in race wars that never started and never ended, just as in centuries past. And there would be latter-day nationalists and citizen circles and patriots who from the forgotten fiefdoms of the territories heard the claxon bells of an orange-skinned king. And they would clamor ever louder to end the bloodlines of others to stem the end of their own.

#WomensPrize2022

Well, I didn‘t think Id like this one and I was right! Got about an hour in on the audio and *no clue* what was going on, so sent it back to Audible.

That means I won‘t read the whole #womensprize longlist but, hey, I tried… And, look at me, bailing on another book!

Dreamy. Expansive. Digressive. Mythic. These are just some of the words I‘d use to describe this fascinating novel. Amber predicts her son Dash‘s death and his great aunt sets about making sure the prediction doesn‘t come to pass. Think Stephen King by way of Toni Morrison.

Don't let the bleakness and despair keep you from this truly unique novel. The fantasy and myth is the vessel the author uses to deliver an unforgiving glance into the evils humans inflict upon each other, especially children.

The prose is brilliant and this is definitely an author I would love to read more from.

It should be mentioned though, this book contains a lot of trigger warnings, the biggest one being child abuse.

whew! this book is a lot... i admit that i struggled through much of the book because it seemed to focus on Black pain but ultimately it is a lesson about community, the strength we lose, give and empower within families and the journey of finding one's self.

there is so much to unpack. i may add more to this review later.

I can appreciate things that are different if they work. A haunted car, visions, blurred reality, loss, death, and grief. It‘s ambitious and interesting, but there were times when I felt like the author was too busy crafting the perfect sentence to follow the story. It meandered a lot. Admittedly it came together again, but it was one of those books I felt was more about form than content. Not bad, but disjointed.