![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: How We Fall
Author: Kate Brauning
Published: Simon Pulse, 2014
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 329,385
Text Number: 1158
Read Because: on this list of books with incest as a main theme, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Jackie's rocky romance with her cousin is complicated by the disappearance of her best friend. Inserting a mystery into a taboo romance certainly differentiates this from similar books—but not gracefully. The middle stagnates in a morass of petty rivalry that overshadows more interesting tensions, while the mystery plot ticks along; the mystery climax hurries the romantic drama into a timely, polite ending, leaving no room for the protagonist to process her experience and neatly sweeping away the supporting characters.
The way the romance is resolved isn't bad (it's surprisingly mature and ethical, especially for this type of book), but I still want to rewrite it: I'd love to see the outside relationships continue as strong friendships and informed, effective beards. Doing the work to pull that off would give the protagonist space to process and would better reward the way the romantic rivals grow into complex, likable people; moreover, it would maintain more of the tension while building complicated, interesting relationships.
In lieu of my daydreaming, this is fine. However clumsy, it's consistently readable, particularly in the first and final thirds. It has an evocative sense of place and late-summer atmosphere, while the origins of the romance nod at predecessors like Forbidden and Flowers in the Attic. Like them, this is tropey and engaging melodrama.
Title: Are You Listening?
Author: Tillie Walden
Published: First Second, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 329,705
Text Number: 1159
Read Because: fan of the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I love Walden's style. Her use of color is unusual, her fluid panels convey tone and pacing so well. Queer strangers bonding while making a roadtrip through the surreal landscape of rural Texas is an evocative, sympathetic premise, and I love the atmosphere. But everything comes together with more repetition than epiphany—the climax needs an emotional charge that it sadly failed to strike in me. And—and this breaks my heart, but—it's weirdly difficult to read. I read On a Sunbeam digitally and wish I'd done the same here, as a consistent backlight makes the dark-on-dark art more legible; in lieu of that, I wish the margins and text bubbles weren't stark white, which turns the panels into unfortunate dark voids.
Title: Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States
Editor: Maya Schenwar, Joe Macaré, Alana Yu-Lan Price
Published: Haymarket Books, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 329,930
Text Number: 1160
Read Because: free from the publisher after the George Floyd murder
Review: These are collected essays, successfully selected/edited to prevent excessive repetition, and therefore able to provide diverse introductions to specific issues within the larger topic of police violence, ex. gendered police violence; overlaps in Black and Native experience and advocacy. But that format prevents a larger cohesive argument, which is felt most in the briefer second half, which struggles to answer the question "where do we go from here?"
Author: Kate Brauning
Published: Simon Pulse, 2014
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 329,385
Text Number: 1158
Read Because: on this list of books with incest as a main theme, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Jackie's rocky romance with her cousin is complicated by the disappearance of her best friend. Inserting a mystery into a taboo romance certainly differentiates this from similar books—but not gracefully. The middle stagnates in a morass of petty rivalry that overshadows more interesting tensions, while the mystery plot ticks along; the mystery climax hurries the romantic drama into a timely, polite ending, leaving no room for the protagonist to process her experience and neatly sweeping away the supporting characters.
The way the romance is resolved isn't bad (it's surprisingly mature and ethical, especially for this type of book), but I still want to rewrite it: I'd love to see the outside relationships continue as strong friendships and informed, effective beards. Doing the work to pull that off would give the protagonist space to process and would better reward the way the romantic rivals grow into complex, likable people; moreover, it would maintain more of the tension while building complicated, interesting relationships.
In lieu of my daydreaming, this is fine. However clumsy, it's consistently readable, particularly in the first and final thirds. It has an evocative sense of place and late-summer atmosphere, while the origins of the romance nod at predecessors like Forbidden and Flowers in the Attic. Like them, this is tropey and engaging melodrama.
Title: Are You Listening?
Author: Tillie Walden
Published: First Second, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 329,705
Text Number: 1159
Read Because: fan of the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I love Walden's style. Her use of color is unusual, her fluid panels convey tone and pacing so well. Queer strangers bonding while making a roadtrip through the surreal landscape of rural Texas is an evocative, sympathetic premise, and I love the atmosphere. But everything comes together with more repetition than epiphany—the climax needs an emotional charge that it sadly failed to strike in me. And—and this breaks my heart, but—it's weirdly difficult to read. I read On a Sunbeam digitally and wish I'd done the same here, as a consistent backlight makes the dark-on-dark art more legible; in lieu of that, I wish the margins and text bubbles weren't stark white, which turns the panels into unfortunate dark voids.
Title: Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States
Editor: Maya Schenwar, Joe Macaré, Alana Yu-Lan Price
Published: Haymarket Books, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 329,930
Text Number: 1160
Read Because: free from the publisher after the George Floyd murder
Review: These are collected essays, successfully selected/edited to prevent excessive repetition, and therefore able to provide diverse introductions to specific issues within the larger topic of police violence, ex. gendered police violence; overlaps in Black and Native experience and advocacy. But that format prevents a larger cohesive argument, which is felt most in the briefer second half, which struggles to answer the question "where do we go from here?"
