shrutislibrary's reviews
188 reviews

A must-read for people who struggle with self-worth and finding their place in a world full of people who are afraid to be vulnerable. The author breaks down key attitudes and perspectives on how to live a life in the company of people who truly care for and respect you. She talks in-depth about setting boundaries and raising standards of accepted behaviour in different aspects of your life whether in friendships or romantic relationships. One must undergo deep self-reflection to know their self-worth and identify what is acceptable and what isn't and that can only come from a place of self-respect. Always choose yourself and your company first, your needs and emotions first. 

Some key pointers from the book that resonated with me:

1. Confidence is the key to being self-sufficient. Often people feel threatened by confident people & put them down.
2. Don't focus on being the best, but focus on being irreplaceable. 
3. Don't compare yourself to others or their journeys. Time spent scrolling on others' social media is time lost on improving yourself or working on your goals.
4. Don't fear change, embrace it. If you don't change, you won't grow.
5. Don't be a stoic. In a world where being too cool to feel feelings is a pattern, don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Loving is not losing.
6. To care is to be vulnerable.
7. If you aren't losing you aren't learning.
8. Choose yourself, always.
9. People treat you not how they feel about you but how they feel about themselves.
10. Vulnerability means putting your ego aside.
11. Jealousy in a relationship especially in friendships means that the other person has unresolved issues of their own which are reflected in the way they treat you or your successes. 
12. Never lower your standards.
13. Lower your expectations of others. Raise your expectations of yourself.
14. Cut out friends, lovers or people who are flaky, who are never there for you when you need them the most.

'Magma', a word I searched desperately throughout this book trying to decipher its meaning: is it lava? a girl's name? a dream lost? an unbridled rage?

Just like the narrator of 'Rebecca', Mrs De Winter who is haunted by the ghost of the lingering Rebecca at Manderley, Lilja is threatened by the ever-present ghost of a girl online, the titular red-haired Magma - the object of her lover's desire, lust and undivided attention. 

'Magma' is the story of a 20-year-old college girl named Lilja and her descent into a dark void to which she is inevitably drawn and can't resist until she falls. Until she has reached the end of this dark crevice and she has broken and shattered her very being.

The novella starts with Lilja's heady, whirlwind romance with a man she meets online while travelling in Central America 
(whose age we don't get & he has crazy unimaginable fetishes) which quickly turns into a manipulative, co-dependent relationship in which she loses her identity, her dignity, her life and herself and from which she is unable to come out. 

The short chapters read like fragmented diary entries by Lilja tracking her psychotic breakdown as we bear witness to her nagging suspicions of her lover's infidelity, her growing jealousy, her resentment, her overlooking the warning signs and disregarding the gaslighting, her denial in thinking she can somehow 'fix' him. Lilja feels lust, love, jealousy, obsession, anger, humiliation, rage, disappointment, denial, erasure and in the end a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness or so we are told. The author has painted a brutally raw picture of the twisted cycle of emotional & psychological dependency on the abuser to the point where Lilja is capable of seeing & acknowledging the gaslighting, the subtle violence and who he truly is but can't will herself to come out of that abuse. For Lilja, the abuse and the manipulation is the normality that defines the dynamic of her relationship.

A book about the three stages of relationships: dating, loving and the healing stage- Toni Tone imparts some insightful to-dos and advice from her personal experience of being in several relationships in her teens and 20s. Each relationship has left its butterfly moments and heartaches and she is all the wiser for it. 

I loved her discussions on self-love, setting boundaries, and keeping your expectations grounded. Don't fall for the potential of someone but rather get to know them in the present. Try to communicate feelings between each other. Each section can be revisited and bookmarked based on your own journey to find love. 

"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘺."

'Convenience Store Woman' is a first-person narrative of a 36 yo convenience store worker, Keiko, whose sole reason for existence is to serve the titular convenience store she works at. In all her 18 years of service at the convenience store, Keiko has religiously abided by the store rules, reciting her "welcomes" and "thanks for your customs" with a flourish: acting as she did as an almost self-erasing entity called 'an obedient & hardworking employee' in a capitalist system.

Born not in a dysfunctional family but an affectionate & loving environment, her teachers, parents & even her therapist fail to plumb the depths of the reason or cause why Keiko can't act 'normal' (what does normal even mean & who defines it?) Branded a strange child for always getting in trouble, she grows up completely withdrawing from social circles,  a recluse among her peers with no husband, children or even a full-time 'respectable' job (all the traditional markers of 'success'), she is often at the receiving end of being violated by people's prying noses meddling in her life. 

'Convenience Store Woman' in its 160 odd pages doesn't pull any punches delving ruthlessly into sensitive, taboo subjects like misogyny, gender roles within a patriarchal system, identity politics, sexuality and how the private individual is a political entity in a late-capitalist, patriarchal society. Anyone who fails to 'perform' their designated roles in the hetero-normative, capitalist framework (the centre, the 'normal') is branded an 'outsider' (the margin, the 'abnormal'), an outcast shunned to the periphery of the society: a fate worse than death. With this 'death', Keiko is reborn as the convenience store woman twice: completely shedding her human identity, being reborn as that primal, animal instinct that breaths in tandem with the Convenience Store, the cells coursing through her body finally becoming one with it.

"You had me at Hola" follows the story of two Latinx stars, a soap opera queen and gossip's poster child Jasmine, hot on the heels of a messy public breakup & the other, Ashton, a nearing-40 telenovela actor whose fame is dying a slow death after building up his reputation in Miami, only to feel like an outsider & imposter in the sets of a newfangled streaming service. Both are desperately attempting to fix up their public image, trying to keep a safe distance from the gossip mills. Jasmine comes up with a "leading lady plan", a set of rules to layout her roadmap to stardom & achieve her professional goals of being a leading lady. But what if to gain her status as a leading lady, she must resist the abundant charms & her brimming desire for her co-star? Will she walk the path of her carefully laid plans or self-sabotage herself, falling head over heels in love with him & dig a grave for her reputation as a messy, emotionally needy woman who throws herself at men the first chance she gets? 



The steaminess can't make up for the predictable third act miscommunication trope and the characters being insufferable.  It felt like the stakes were never high enough, only to be quickly resolved in the next chapter. The epilogue felt like a rushed kind of info-dumping by the author without much forethought. The issues such as PTSD, anxiety, attachment issues mentioned in the epilogue are never addressed in much detail & depth in the book. Also, the thing that bugged me was that these two MCs are so wrapped up to get inside each other's pants that they don't grow as individuals. Both feel like cardboard cutouts especially the male lead. The miscommunication trope was forced & overdone. They could've easily talked it through like the mature adults they should be. In the Latinx representation, the dynamics between the crew could have been better explored in its nuances. The crew were just there hanging in the background, not doing many services to the plotline except to feed the hungry tabloids unwittingly.

Rachel, silence, liquid and weird just became the most hated words for me in the English language after reading this book. 😵 Such a cringe plot with predictable character choices. This comes no way close to "It Ends With Us" which still had a beautiful meaning behind all the abuse and emotional trauma. This book was utterly cliched with all the stereotypical romance tropes thrown into the mix like trauma porn: forbidden teenage love, unwanted teenage pregnancy, losing a child, fucking the hunky sexy neighbour, falling for the said neighbour. The dual storyline was such a turn off for me unlike in "It Ends with Us" where it gave me all the feels. I didn't feel shit for any of the character's miseries. They literally had no defining features about them except for the tragic past which the main guy refuses to let go of (I get it's hard for him to talk about it but still he is more cardboard than a human being). The main chick Tate, DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW SHE GOT ON MY NERVES. Her talk about turning into liquid when Miles ( and I quote "laundry folding hunky pilot neighbour") was near her was vomit-inducing. The ending is just a nicely packed present with a red ribbon to it. No stakes, no emotional payoff. Just fucking and fucking for 90 per cent of the book.

"𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦. 𝘐 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘥𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴. 𝘐 𝘯𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘨𝘳𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘴, 𝘙𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘴." – 𝘊𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘥𝘰𝘮 

In this showdown of the SoC duology, the Bastard of the Barrel, Kaz Brekker & his motley crew- the infamous Crows run a game in the cold cobblestone streets in their backyard- Ketterdam, on a mission to tear down one of the kingpins of the Barrel, brick by brick. But what happens when the six Crows get entangled in a game far bigger & grander than they reckoned- with kings, bosses & leaders of nations- all for 30 mill kruge, freedom & retribution? Will they find they got something more than they bargained for?

Ck picks up the pieces of where SoC ended. Kaz is still hot on his heels of the Ice court job but even he hasn't plumbed every depth of unpredictability that is Ketterdam. Even Kaz Brekker can be bested. But he is nothing if he doesn't like a good challenge, his wits & his crew to back him. Ck introduces us to new characters, backstories of the Crows, provides satisfactory character arcs all in the span of 540 pages. While it wasn't quite "on-the-edge-of-your-seat-thriller" that SoC was for me on my first read, it was charged with emotional currents. The best thing about this series is its shifting stream of consciousness that keeps us interested & invested in the characters. We want them to escape, to outsmart & to win. Even when their backs were against the wall, the crew & I as a reader could depend upon Kaz to take them out of a sticky job.

I could guess some of the plot twists & if you are intelligent & paid attention to Leigh feeding us little hints like Inej feeds her crows, you would see them coming too. While ch-40 didn't break my cold heart as I thought it would, it certainly left me a little misty. The ending was bittersweet cuz all the thrill was in the journey, the heist, the schemes. It's one of those where I don't know what should've been in store for the Crows cuz any ending would've been unsatisfactory to me. I just wanted them to go on another heist lol.

"𝘐𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦. 𝘖𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵, 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴."

Fun fact: Angela Carter was Ishiguro's mentor when he was taking a creative writing class back in 1979 in Norfolk. 

The speech is aptly titled "My 20th century evening & other small breakthroughs", after an evening in 2001 when Ishiguro had a huge epiphany watching this titular film and made him the writer he is today.

He takes us by the hand & walks us through the vignettes of the breakthrough moments he had in his life. The first significant one was in the autumn of 1979 when he embarked on a creative writing course at the University of East Anglia at 24. Ishiguro muses that writing for him was an act of self-preservation. Because he was so far removed from his birth country & his 'roots', he subconsciously began to write stories about Japan, without having set foot in the country after age 5 when his family left Japan for England. What he constructs in his mind & his writing is a Japan of yesteryear, a place not accessible by hopping on a plane or to be pointed on a map but rather hidden in the words of his stories. Japan to him is a memory contained within a cypher that he is trying to decrypt.

Towards the latter part of his career, what he failed to notice was missing from his works was an intricate sense of relationships between the characters and his recent works tried to mirror this shift in his style & perspective. Variously influenced by Proust, a Tom Waits album & a John Barrymore film, Ishiguro is a writer of his generation uniquely poised as a foreigner in a country far from home, yet he couldn't be more British in his manners and style. Through his early prose, he has tried to create a sense of belonging to this place called 'Japan', which only exists as a figment of his imagination.