We're an Open Book
I inadvertently read two local-to-me authors last month a while ago. I didn’t plan to review these books together but I found that one informed how I thought about the other. Both explore what it means to exist outside of the cis-heteronormative identity in the South.
Though they are coming from VASTLY different perspectives.
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On Rotation is as close as I’ll ever come to medical school.
This novel follows twenty-something Angie Apia as she tackles her third year of medical school, demanding residents and her parents’ high expectations. To top it all off she can’t stop pining over a charming sensitive artist… who has a girlfriend. Talk about a quarter-life crisis.
This was a fun slice-of-life with an angsty emotional romance subplot that will appeal to Kennedy Ryan fans. Medical school is not glamorized at all and I felt like I was being let into a world I will probably never experience. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Shirlene Obuobi is a physician. Obuobi is also a cartoonist and I believe she designed the book cover.
Angie is supported by her group of wild and successful friends. A large part of this book is about how those friendships can change and grow. The pace of the book was a tad slow for me and we probably could have dropped a few side characters.
My only other critique is that the first few pages of this book had a much different tone than the rest of the book. The book starts with Angie confidently monologuing about her body and curves…then it never comes up again. I mean the cover has ‘peach’ earrings on it so I sort of thought her relationship with her body would play more into the book. Instead, her biggest hurdle is overcoming her imposter syndrome.
Urban fiction is a genre I’ve always wanted to explore. Going in, I was expecting this book to be about hustling and doing what it takes to make it big on the streets– but this book takes a slightly different perspective. It focuses on three women searching for stability and success decades after their lives intersected with the high-powered Brooklyn drug game.
Ivy has spent 16 years supporting her incarcerated husband Mikey and raising their sons, but she’s ready to start over in Staten Island along with Deja, who became a suburban mom instead of holding down her wrongfully convicted boyfriend. Ivy’s sister-in-law, Coco, is a top executive whose education and success are owed to Mikey but she is ready to strike out on her own.
The book is compulsively readable and you get sucked into the melodrama. The character’s backgrounds feel real and complicated. I don’t know if this is a function of the genre, but I found the book does reiterate plot points and character relationships quite often. It was a little jarring
You also never have to worry about trying to figure out what a character is thinking because this book seamlessly shifts POVs in the middle of scenes in a way I don’t think I’ve read before.
My favorite character was Deja’s sister Nikki–an Instagram model and professional party girl. She brings a lot of humor and provides plenty of unfiltered advice to the characters. She doesn’t have a storyline but is played up as a main character in the marketing for some reason ? I’m curious if she will get her own book.
The last 20% of this book focuses on police brutality and the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. The shift was sudden but I think the plot line was well done.
I can’t wait to read more urban fiction and maybe dive into Tracy Brown’s backlist.
Brown was getting her feeling out about 2016 in this book. Tr*mp supporters get dragged (one literally) left and right in this book.
This book is also not the Lifetime movie of the same name. I’m sure the publishers must have been annoyed by that.
Part mystery, part coming-of-age narrative this is a captivating story of friendship, found family, and what it means to belong.
There have been quite a few new developments in 12-year-old Alberta Freeman-Price’s life. Her best friend is suddenly more into boys than surfing, her surrogate mother is moving in and, most exciting of all, a Black girl moved in across the street. Alberta is ecstatic to have another Black girl in the majority-white oceanside town of Ewing Beach. But Edie Whitman, with her Brooklyn pride and goth aesthetic, is not at all what the sunny, surf-loving Alberta expects.
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In this revealing memoir, the bubbly grooming expert from Netflix’s Queer Eye shares their past struggles with addiction, childhood sexual abuse, and disordered eating. Van Ness takes readers along on their often messy and deeply complicated journey to becoming the on-screen persona adored by millions of fans.
Needless to say, this is a heavy read.
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I didn’t make any official goals this year but one thing I’m trying to do is read more “literary fiction” and books by men of color.
The Bad Muslim Discount is a carefully observed coming-of-age story of two young Muslims–Anvar, a sarcastic Pakistani immigrant in San Francisco, and Safwa, a young Iraqi woman burdened with endless tragedy in a country torn apart by war.
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