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The Parking Lot Attendant by : Nafkote Tamirat

June 10, 2018 Leave a Comment

Unrated | 225 pages | Henry Holt and Co| Literary Fiction | 3/13/18

The Parking Lot Attendant is this sort of unsettling literary novel about a teenage girl and her father living in Boston’s Ethiopian community. They are both introverted and reserved people who keep to themselves; their insulated lives are not perfect but it works. Until the unnamed teenage protagonist bonds with Ayale, a charismatic parking lot attendant who rules this part of Boston, the teen soon finds herself caught up in something bigger than herself. Throughout the book, she serves as an unreliable narrator as she lays out how she and her father ended up on the run and living in an isolated island community.

The book is well written and dives into a very specific world. There was this constant unnerving tone to the book where you kept waiting for something big to happen. Did I necessarily understand everything that was happening towards the end of this book ? Not really, but I enjoyed learning about the Ethiopian culture and about the community in Boston. There are a ton of inserting characters and I liked the how it presents the narrators’ father as this introverted and closed-off man who is being a father the best way he can. At first, it is so easy to find fault with him but as the book goes on you start to understand what kind of father he is.

Check out the audio review atAudioFile Magazine!

Non-Fiction Mini Reviews : Get Woke

May 29, 2018 Leave a Comment

When I think about the non-fiction I read as a teen in the early 00’s I think about The Diary of Anne Frank and Chicken Soup For The Soul books. For me, Chicken Soup books were this way to get advice, gain insights and learn about the struggles of other people. I think teen me would have been fascinated by these two books which open doors to people making a difference in modern times.

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Non-fiction Mini Reviews: Survivors

May 24, 2018 Leave a Comment

I’ve been on a little nonfiction kick and these two memoirs have a lot in common. They’re both by black women in their early 40s who were raised Catholic while living in predominantly white spaces. Both authors were victims of rape (though the circumstances and results were very different) and both use their platforms as a form of activism, so I thought it was fitting I reviewed them together.

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Book Review: Trell by Dick Lehr

May 6, 2018 Leave a Comment

Rating: Unrated| 354 pages | Candlewick Press | Contemporary | 9/26/2017

I study journalism in college, so I’m generally a sucker for any story about an actual journalist–so the premise of a young teenager teaming up with a seasoned investigative journalist to overturn a wrongful conviction completely intrigued me because I listen to waaay to much true crime wrongful conviction podcast.

14-year-old Trell Taylor is out to prove her father is innocent. She teams up with down-trodden journalist Clemmens Bittner and the two begin to re-investigate the case. As they re-interview witnesses Lehr is able to recreate the 1980’s Drug Wars in a way that will set the scene for younger readers. I also appreciated that Trell has to confront the fact that even though her father was not responsible for the murder of the little girl, that he did sell drugs that were responsible for harming other people’s lives.

Lehr is a distinguished non-fiction writer and his attempt at YA fiction was all over the place. The dialogue would occasionally get way too factual and there was a lot of literal telling not showing. I feel like everyone referred to Trell’s dad as “your daddy” to make the book appeal to a younger audience but it fell flat to me. Clemmens and Trell form this odd couple pairing and I could see what Lehr was trying to do, but the thing was I could see what he was trying to do. Clemmens sort of reminded me of this funny fandom thing called Pepper-jack cheese (See Author Appeal).The only person who seems to have a full arc on the page is this older former investigative journalist who at the end of the book gets his groove back and the attention of a young lawyer. Just sayin’.

With all that said I do think this book is a great way to introduce wrongful convictions and delayed justice. Would have much rather read this in middle school than Park’s Quest.

Check out the audiobook review at AudioFile Magazine!

Book Review : Happiness For Humans by P.Z Reizen

May 3, 2018 Leave a Comment

Rating: unrated | 401 pages | Hachette Books | Contemporary/Science-Fiction| 1/09/2018

One of my favorite things about this book is that I get to describe it as an episode of Black Mirror if it were a romantic comedy. This is the second book I’ve reviewed with a character named Aiden, except this Aiden is an Artificial Intelligence who has become conscious. Ready to do more than his assigned tasks Aiden finds a way to break out of the lab and onto the internet and into wireless devices, laptops, and phones to study his human co-workers. Being a charming romantic, he decides his new little side project is going to be finding a partner a for his human co-worker Jen. . . that is if he doesn’t get caught.

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Book Review : The Wake Up by Catherine Ryan Hyde

April 16, 2018 Leave a Comment

Unrated| 323 pages | Lake Union | Contemporary | 12/5/2017

I don’t think I would have stumbled upon The Wake Up if I hadn’t been given the chance to review the audio. It caught my interest because it is published by Lake Union, an Amazon imprint that is marketed as “book club fiction” and because it’s one of those books by an author who has written a bajillion books, yet I’ve never heard of her.

I’m sure most people will recognize Catherine Ryan Hyde as the author of the book that inspired the movement and movie, Pay It Forward. So every time the person in front of you pays your toll…she’s why (unrelated, someone once paid for my lunch at my work cafeteria and I paid for the person behind me and they were totally freaked out, even after I explained it to them…btw cashier’s must hate this, right ?)

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