bookreviewswithkb's reviews
592 reviews

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

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emotional funny reflective sad
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

this is a novel about family, about women, about aunties and mothers and daughters, about love, the way women hold each other across generations, the power of culture, the beauty of the Dominican culture. about returning home over and over again, about grieving loss in all its forms, about making each other’s lives full in each moment we have 

this novel is absolutely mesmerizing. if you haven’t read any of Acevedo’s books, please do yourself the honor of picking up any and every single one of them immediately 
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

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emotional informative medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

read this as my first ever buddy read with my booksta bestie @makealongstorycount 🫶🏼

“[we] were choking under the weight of something larger than us, something heavy and weighty, the weight of tradition and superstition and of all our legends.”

my ratings can almost completely be interpreted based on what level of emotion i felt while reading said book and let me tell you, i felt A LOT while reading this beautiful and important novel 

it’s about the lengths we go to to conform to the expectations of society, of cultural norms, of religion. of how the more we try to put ourselves into these narrow confines, the more we create tiny fissures of ourselves, the more difficult it becomes to simply exist. about the power of finding our way, of living a life aligned to who we truly are 

(could have been a 5 star with more character development)
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Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.0

this book was high key SO boring 🥱 
i only finished it because it filled a spot in two of the reading challenges i’m doing this year. romance is just not it for me i don’t know maybe i’m broken or something??? 

it gets a generous rating because it was a good storyline in terms of the historical and cultural aspects

sorry Isabel Allende 😓
If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So

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emotional hopeful
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

love me a little queer YA novel with a protagonist who is learning to fully embrace themselves 🏳️‍🌈

this book has complex friendships, challenging family dynamics, and a whole lot of love. i think a lot of us can find ourselves in the characters here 
Devil Is Fine by John Vercher

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emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

thank you SO much to @celadonbooks for sending me an early copy of this one - out on June 18th! 

i’m having trouble articulating how i feel about this book; i don’t know if i have the right words to describe it. our main character is a flawed father, who identifies as a biracial Black man, trying to raise his Black son through all of the struggles of his own identity, that make him resent his son and drive a wedge between them. this wedge comes fully to life with the inheritance of a plantation where human remains are uncovered, and our main character starts on a journey to search for his soul 

this book is BRILLIANT - it is witty and moving and absolutely heartbreaking. the prose is breathtaking. i don’t know y’all, you just really need to read it 

“there are so many means for me to stitch the wound we suffer together, but i have convinced myself that the edges are too old, the skin necrotic, too fragile to knit, no matter how much thread i use.”

i now want to immediately read Vercher’s other fiction novels, Three-Fifths and After the Lights Go Out. i didn’t know i was sleeping on such an incredible author 
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Can We All Be Feminists?: New Writing from Brit Bennett, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and 15 Others on Intersectionality, Identity, and the Way Forward for Feminism by June Eric-Udorie

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informative

5.0

can we all be feminists is a collection of essays exploring the limitations of white feminism, of the ways feminism feeds right back into oppression when it’s not intersectional, about how all systems of oppression are bound together. focusing on the “empowerment of women” without considering religion, immigration, race, ability, etc. becomes useless and harmful 

i randomly saw this scrolling through @bookoutlet for books and between the title and seeing there were essays by @nicoledennisbeen and @britbennett, it was a no brainer for me 

i think this is a great book to add to your list to understand feminism in a more meaningful way, and taking steps to ensure the fights you’re fighting are intersectional 
Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

“having barely escaped death, they carried its atmosphere around with them. but what they didn’t say the camera caught glimpses of in lifeless gazes, in the silence between words, […] in the sounds of nightmares that broke from sleeping lips. the camera caught glimpses of it in the women who held themselves as though broken, in listless limbs that had lost the will to move.”

FREE SUDAN 🇸🇩 

this is such a beautiful and moving novel that centers the experiences of 5 interconnected characters living in Saraaya, a border town between north and south Sudan, as the war begins to unfold . each character has such a different lived experience and it brings a very nuanced exploration throughout the book. the language is lyrical and descriptive and the characters are flawed and so very human 

the maps at the end were so impactful - if you’ve read this, tell me i’m not alone in how much i loved them 

war continues in Sudan presently, with 7 million people displaced and 20 million people experiencing food insecurity, amongst uncountable other atrocities. go to eyesonsudan.net for actions you can take 

follow for updates ⬇️
@sudan.updates 
@thesudanpage
@red_maat
@yassmin_a
@kandakat_alhaqq
@forsudaneseliberation 
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Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

what does the revolution look like? what will it take to rid our society of oppression and racism in all its forms? is violence a necessary part of the equation? these are the questions Bitter grapples with in this beautiful young adult novel. i enjoyed reading it and the writing is spectacular as per usual for Emezi 

but i wish Emezi had left more room for the reader to try to determine for themselves the questions around the role of violence in revolution

it is good, but it’s not amazing 
The Grandest Garden: A Novel by Gina L. Carroll

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medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes

3.0

thank you to @booksparks for the review copy of this debut novel! 🫶🏼

The Grandest Garden is a coming-of-age story about Bella, the main character, who has just graduated from college and moved to NYC to pursue her dreams of being a professional photographer based on a promise made to her by a gallery owner. Bella is intricately connected to both of her grandmothers, who have cultivated a love of gardening within her, which is an essential theme throughout the book. it explores family bonds, the process of healing, and the transition from childhood to adulthood 

this book has so many lovely elements that kept me connected to the storyline, especially the relationship Bella has with her grandmothers and the exploration of gardening. that being said, much of the story felt unfinished or unexplored in a meaningful way and because of that, it didn’t have much of an impact on me emotionally, which took away from me loving this one 
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The Round House by Louise Erdrich

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dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

the more i sit with the finishing of this novel, the more i understand what a masterpiece it is. the round house is about justice - what justice looks like when the “justice” system doesn’t include injustices against your own family. is justice retribution, an eye for eye, an end to the terror of the victim? who gets to choose what justice is and what purpose does it serve? 

still to this day, tribal courts are not allowed to prosecute crimes committed by non-Natives for most crimes. according to Amnesty International, 1 in 3 Native women will be raped during their lifetime and at least 86% of perpetrators of these crimes are non-Native men. Erdrich tackles this topic in the round house, highlighting the complex nuances of tribal, state and federal laws and the very real and devastating impacts this has on Native people 

this novel tackles A LOT. it is extremely nuanced and character driven. this is only my 2nd Erdrich novel and i’m looking forward to reading more of her work