camscornerbooks's reviews
261 reviews

This is a powerful book for anyone who has a piece of their heart tied to Hawaii. And NOT the people who just love the "paradise" of the islands on vacation. Hawaii isn't the land nor is it just the native peoples. Hawaii is both. It is history and beauty and struggle and strength. It is poetry in life and community and the story of its history is brutal and heartbreaking.

Stolen from its rightful people, like all of the Americas, this book so beautifully expresses the struggle of those whose blood and breath is from the land. Their homes were stolen by not even the US government but the tricksters of capitalism pulling the strings of everyone and everything around them. This book isn't a history lesson though. It's the story of those true Hawaiians, by blood or by birth, looking to retain their identity, their dignity, and their future. According to the government you must have a certain amount of "blood quantity" to really be Hawaiian and therefor entitled to any part of the land that is rightfully yours. But Hawaiians don't see blood as the defining factor in who is Hawaiian and with the influx of non-Hawaiians to the islands making it their home generationally the line between Hawaiian and non blurs according to the government's definition.

A historied family with the most direct claim to the throne of Hawaii that was stolen from the people find themselves at odds not only with the US government but with each other, with their feelings, and with their hopes for the future. One wants to work within the system to bring change, claiming that the US is too powerful to simply resist. Her daughter wants to work against the system, knowing that the US too often tells you what you want to hear while doing the opposite behind your back. And the granddaughter struggles with her identity as really Hawaiian or not as she looks purely haole but was raised from birth within the descendent royal family and larger Hawaiian community. Is she Hawaiian? Does she have any right to claim a lineage of a people she's not sure she's from? Why doesn't she look like her relatives but feel in her bones that she is Hawaiian?

This book made me cry a few times, not because it's overly sad in it's writing, but because it makes you angry. At least, it should make you angry. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to learn a little more about Hawaii, not the geography or the surf report, but the actual Hawaii which includes it's history and it's people. Those that care for the land and in return the land cares for them.

3.5 ⭐️

Three creepy 17 year old girls at a reform school and a socialist/communist-friendly unmarried female teacher in the height of the red scare looking for the daughter she gave up when she was their age. Intriguing premise but I didn’t love the execution.

This is supposed to be someone who is on her toes when it comes to, we’ll, everything. This mid-thirties unmarried woman with socialist ties in her past watches her every move knowing the disaster that could happen in the new witch hunting days of McCarthyism. And yet… she’s dumb. She’s intelligent, but gosh she makes so.many.stupid.decisions. I really hate when a character makes out of character decisions simply to push ahead the plot. That’s what this felt like to me. This woman knowing the dangers all around making some of the dumbest moves she could make. This to me was really distracting and frustrating to read each time it happened. I don’t expect characters to never make mistakes but the mistakes have to fit the character.

Overall the pacing at the beginning was a bit off in my opinion though. We got a LOT of Rosemary’s backstory before we really got any of the present day story and to me it felt like too much. It was told in flash backs but the volume of it and details we got made the beginning of the book feel heavy and the pacing dragged. I think the same background info could have been given better over time and with less unnecessary detail.

It wasn’t all bad but I like to explain why I rated a book lower than perfect for anyone looking for information that might influence them to read it or not read it and I find the negatives more informative, at least for me, in that regard.

The author had a good grasp on the atmosphere of the reform school, she wrote the girls and their creepiness really well. The overall plot and mystery was strung along at a good pace and each person in the story felt believable. Overall I enjoyed the story, the mystery of which girl it was and how would this trio of sirens would wreak destruction on everyone around them in the end.

I liked the pressure of the red scare and the atomic panic that provided the background of the book. It added palpable fear and consequences to everything that happened and provided a malevolence without a villain. That pervading fear and threat lent a lot to the atmosphere without a ridiculous foil for the protagonist.

Overall I did enjoy this, the drawbacks didn’t take it down too much for me. This is a dark academia adjacent story I’d recommend to those looking for one.

I knew I was not in the right mental state to read this book. But I did it anyway. This is dark. Not like horror, where you’re seeing blood and gore. But psychologically dark. What people are capable of, how the most defenseless are abused and abandoned, and how you can never truly know anyone.

I think I’m gonna be messed up for a little bit now to be perfectly honest.

But this book was GOOD. It was so well written. Each character felt totally real, frustratingly so. The narrator’s struggle to speak up for herself and answer questions and make decisions in her own best interest were infuriating but so understandable. A little girl at 9 years old accused of a horrific crime where her mother told her to take the fall because “they’ll go easier on a little girl”… a girl who had to be the parent starting at 6 years old. A girl who had to keep her own mother alive at times. A girl who had to fight for her life when her mother hooked up with violent men. And the other girls in her group home… they did awful things to each other but you could see how badly they had been treated, no one cared about them, no one tried to help them, they were monsters of someone else’s making.

And Miss Bahni Turpin as the audio book reader! Can we just appreciate this artist?! Phenomenal reading.

I would recommend this book for sure, but only when you’re ready to read it. When you can handle the way it will mess with your head.

I think this book had both an easier time and a harder time getting 5 stars. It’s interview style so it doesn’t have to have beautiful lyrical writing and a cohesive plot. But it also has to maintain your interest without those things and make you invested through tiny snippets of commentary about an era most readers weren't even born yet.

It impressively strikes this balance. I listened to the audio book which I highly recommend if you’re going to read this. Each person was voiced by a different actor and it made it so easy to follow and feel differently about each character. They all did great jobs too.

The story of a rock band in the mid 70s making music and doing copious amounts of drugs didn’t actually sound at all interesting to me but I kept hearing how great this book was. I finally decided to try it, especially since I’m much more comfortable DNFing books that don’t hit me right. This one….hits.

The struggles with addiction, self worth, loving someone who can’t stay clean, finding out if your dream is really what you want in life… these all hit so hard. They’re so well developed and each person felt completely real and believable and likable. Well, mostly likable.

I read Evelyn Hugo last year and I thought the “twist” here was funny. TJR has some weird thing about surprising the reader with who the biographer turns out to be.


I honestly liked this book waaaay better than Evelyn Hugo. I think the topics and the characters made more sense for this author to be writing about. Her use of race in Evelyn Hugo never quite sat right with me and I wasn’t sure I’d like anything from this author which is also partly why I avoided this book. I’m glad in the end I gave it a try. It impacted me far more than I expected and I appreciated the way that addiction was handled. Maybe not the best rep ever but it showed it for what it is: ugly, hurtful, destructive, alluring, enthralling, freeing, imprisoning, and above all, a disease, not a moral judgement.