dobbsthedog's reviews
1663 reviews

Oh my god, this book utterly destroyed me.  But the writing was so damn beautiful, I couldn’t really care.

The story is about a couple, who are Syrian refugees, and they’ve now been living in Canada for forty years, and one of them is dying.  Each night he asks his partner to tell him a story, which he does.  It’s a take on 1001 Nights, but instead of Scheherazade telling a story each night to keep herself alive, our Hakawati is telling stories to keep his partner alive one more night.

It is so sad, but the writing is so beautiful, which actually makes it even more sad.  If I hadn’t somewhat hardened my heart while reading, I likely would have just cried through the entire book.

Through the storytelling we get to learn more about these men’s lives, mostly prior to coming to Canada; their childhoods in Syria, some glimpses of their time spent in Beirut, and more.

What I found really interesting thought the book is that our narrator and his partner don’t have names.  The narrator is often referred to as Hakawati, which means storyteller in Arabic.  And the narrator never calls his partner by name, it’s usually ‘my love’ or something similar.

Throughout the book and the stories, death is almost always there, waiting, as a third character that is regularly interacted with.  I think that really added to the feeling of urgency of the book, that the partner really is close to the end.

This book is absolutely remarkable as a debut novel.  It just absolutely blew me away, and I’m honestly feeling a bit bereft, now that I’ve read all of Danny Ramadan’s books.  Even though The Clothesline Swing was emotionally exhausting to read, I would reread it in a heartbeat.

Received from NetGalley, thanks!

CW: sexual assault (historical, not on page), suicidal ideation, dissociation, more

This was a really tough book to read.  It deals with a lot of really heavy topics and I think it does a really good job discussing those topics, but I certainly wouldn’t say that I enjoyed this book.  If you decide to read this book, please do take a look at the content warnings, because this book is A LOT.

This book is about Nathaniel and how his past trauma and guilt have completely shaped the person he is now.  As I said, it’s really tough to read, because, as Nathaniel is the POV narrator, we are seeing how very not okay he is, but how desperately he’s trying to be.  Or at least trying to appear okay.

I really liked this little friend group, who were able to at least partially see past the mask he was constantly wearing.  I liked how he was able to reconnect with a friend he’d thought he’d lost.

I likely would have given this five stars, except that I just couldn’t buy anything positive to do with his family. 

The way they initially reacted when they found out that his cousin had been sexually assaulted by their uncle (they didn’t believe her at all and defended the uncle), how they constantly blamed Nathaniel for acting out without ever asking why he was acting out.  Throughout the book Nathaniel is saying that his family never asked the right questions, and they didn’t.  So, to see their reaction when he disclosed that he was also sexually assaulted by the uncle, their outrage didn’t seem believable to me.  The way they couldn’t accept Nathaniel in any way except for the way that they wanted him to be (forcing him to dye his hair to it’s natural colour, removing his nail polish and jewelry) and forcing him into situations that he said he didn’t want to go to.  As a parent of an older teen, I can’t imagine doing any of those things.  His parents just seemed really terrible, so to have them just accept everything and be super supportive when he disclosed; I just didn’t buy it.

This is a very different book to Graziadei’s first book, which isn’t a bad thing, just something to be aware of.

This book was recommended to me when I speaking to an acquaintance about having trouble sleeping.  I honestly found the book to be fascinating, but it felt like it was right on the edge of quackery.  Like, some of the things the author discusses about the power of breath and breathing is kind of bonkers?

I have ZERO medical training/knowledge, so that’s why I chose not to give this a star rating.  I truly don’t know if I should be at all thinking any of the suggestions in this books are good or not, because, you know, breathing is pretty fucking important and I really don’t think that breathing in a certain rhythm with cure asthma (which I do not have).  But then it seems like the benefits of changing the way you breathe are quite positive: better stamina, better sleep, lower blood pressure, fewer headaches, etc.

Overall, I think I will pick and choose what I take from this book and approach everything with caution.  You know, trying to focus on breathing through your nose rather than your mouth seems pretty safe to me.  Attempting to limit air intake while running, not so much.

CW: suicide (on page), attempted suicide, transphobia

This book was fucking terrible.

Dammit, Allegreto has won me over. 

While I find Kinsale’s books a bit on the plotty side for me, to point I have trouble following what’s going on, I did enjoy this one!  The action climax at the end was fantastic, I loved it.

I didn’t entirely love all of the Catholicism at the end, but it was a fairly major plot point throughout the book, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

This might be my fav Kinsale that I’ve read to date, so, of the 3 that I’ve read. 😆

I was thinking that I wanted to read some more histroms, as I haven't read many het histroms, and a friend suggested I try some Lisa Kleypas.  This one was also a contender in Alexandra Vasti's Historical Romance Sex Scene Battle, so I decided to give it a go!

So, overall, I enjoyed this one!  I wasn't sure about jumping into the middle of a series, but on the whole, I felt like it stood it's ground and I wasn't really missing anything from not having read the others in the series first.  Though I am definitely going to go back and read the others in the series.

Phoebe (who is named after a North American bird, it actually specifies, so my little birder heart was so happy!) is a young widow with two small kids who meets West at a family wedding.  West used to bully Phoebe's now-dead husband while they were at school together, and then went on to become quite the scoundrel.  He's now reformed and is working managing the land for his family's estate.  At the wedding Phoebe and West get to know each other, and the sparks start flying almost immediately.  Truly, this is a fairly cookie-cutter romance, imo, but it's a very well done cookie-cutter romance.  Very low angst (which I always appreciate), fairly low drama, everything is quite neatly wrapped up at the end.  I don't always love single parent romances, but this one worked for me.

I enjoyed this book, though not as much as I enjoyed the first in the series.  I am not at all a fan of slow burn romance, and this one honestly felt like it was kind of dragging.  Still liked it, it was just very slow…