February 2024

This month I read 5 e-books and 1 e-audiobook from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 6 books.

As there were no Dishonourable Mentions this month, let's get started!

Denison Avenue by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes

Synopsis: After her husband Henry is killed in a car accident, Wong Cho Sum slowly becomes unmoored from the world around her. She and Henry have lived in Toronto’s Chinatown neighborhood for years, but Henry spoke the most English and was the most sociable. Without him, Cho Sum is forced to exist in her own world with few friends, in a city that doesn’t care about its Chinese residents. This book is a poetic account of Cho Sum’s life in the years following Henry’s death, and how she is able to move forward.

My thoughts: This book definitely felt like a prose poem. It wasn’t written in verse, but there was a lot of lyrical observations about the world, as well as unusual sentence structures. It also definitely paid homage to Toronto’s Chinatown, (Readers will know that shortly after reading this book I co-incidentally visited Chinatown 3 times in 8 days, which really deepened my appreciation of the book) with descriptions and illustrations of many local landmarks. (The illustrations themselves were lovely, but I feel like they would have had a lot more impact if they were scattered throughout the story as direct references and illustrations of the plot, not just all stacked together at the end.) Cho Sum talks primarily in Cantonese, and the book does a great job of getting all the meaning across by having the Cantonese words spelled out phonetically, and then the English translations in brackets afterwards. A good friend of mine also noticed that the font used for the Cantonese transliterations was larger than all the others, ostensibly to make it more prominent to English-speaking readers. Although this book was not my favourite Canada Reads nomination, I think it should have won. It was a stark commentary on gentrification, ageism, racism, and social isolation within communities, and I thought it was quite good even though it wasn’t super enjoyable or entertaining for me to read.

3/5 cupboards covered in grocery store fruit stickers

Island Queen by Vanessa Riley

Synopsis: Island Queen is a novelization of the real-life historical figure Dorothy Kirwan Thomas. Dorothy was born into slavery on Monserrat, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. Her father (an Irish plantation owner) owned her mother (a Black slave). In addition to doing the work required of her enslavement, Dolly began selling goods and picking up extra work in order to buy the freedom of herself and her family. She was a lifelong entrepreneur, and opened up housekeeping businesses and hotels across the Caribbean, all while raising (and fighting for) her 10 children. Although the book itself is fiction, and the details of many of her relationships, thoughts, and motivations are speculative, it's grounded in a lot of facts about Dolly's life, and was a very engaging and powerful read.

My thoughts: Considering that Dolly Kirwan Thomas was such a successful entrepreneur, I was pretty disappointed that the book focused so little on her professional activities. It mainly made vague references to her businesses, and all the action happened off-screen. I have to assume this is because the author didn’t know enough about it, but considering all the research she did I find this hard to believe. Instead, the book focused a lot more on her personal relationships with various boyfriends, which to me felt pretty sensationalist. The main message that I took away from it was how much Dolly could have benefitted from reliable birth control. This isn’t because she had 10 children, especially since she was never shown to be struggling to provide for them. Instead, I think that birth control would have allowed Dolly more freedom in deciding who she wanted to conceive children with, considering she constantly lived in fear that some of her children’s fathers would (and did) use the children to hurt or manipulate her. The book was told in a series of flashbacks while Dolly is trying to organize an important meeting, but I didn’t find the present-day plotline to be compelling (in fact I thought it was a lot less interesting than the other parts of the book). Overall this book was very long and wasn’t super enjoyable to read, and it almost put me into a reading slump.

2/5 white silk turbans

Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Synopsis: Andromeda is a debtera, someone trained to exorcize curses from the Evil Eye. Unfortunately, she's a debtera without a license, since her mentor kicked her out for refusing to enter an arranged marriage, and she's been living on the streets ever since. But when she hears about Magnus Rochester, it's the opportunity she's been waiting for. If she can successfully cleanse Magnus' house then he'll become her patron, and it won't matter that she never was officially licensed. Unfortunately, Magnus has already hired and fired 10 other debtera; none of them were able to cleanse the house, because it's the strongest Evil Eye manifestation that they've ever seen. Will Andi be able to overcome the impossible and cleanse the house? Or will she become just another victim?

My thoughts: This was a really interesting read, with a lot of engaging world building and lore. I particularly liked how the books was obviously set in an unnamed African country, and any characters and perspective from the UK were viewed as foreign, considering a lot of what I read has the inverse perspective. However, the strong beginning gave way to a weaker second half, and eventually left me a bit disappointed with the whole thing.

3/5 piles of long, pale things with a red sauce smothering them (pasta)

Shut Up You’re Pretty by Tea Mutonji

Synopsis: This is a book of short stories, each a snapshot of the life of Loli, who immigrated from Central Africa to Eastern Toronto as a young child, and who eventually grows into a young woman. Normally I would review each story in a collection, but because they were all about different moments in Loli’s life, it definitely felt more like one larger novel, so I won’t do that.

My thoughts: This book has a lot of references to and depictions of sex, but in a decidedly non-erotic way (actions are described very clinically and without much enjoyment, the way one might brush their teeth or do other chores), and it was pretty jarring and overwhelming. However, there was a specific quote that really stuck with me: “I don’t know why he was so kind to me. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or sexual. I tried not to make everything about sex, every act of kindness, every well-wish, every hello. But you go through life being touched, you go through life being looked at, you go through life with an uncle commenting on your breasts, or your brother’s friend giving you a condom for your birthday then denying it, you go through life being called a cunt on public transportation, you go through life being followed at midnight, you go through life being told you’re pretty, you’re pretty, you’re so fucking pretty — it gets complicated.” And she’s so right. It’s very much giving All-American Bitch by Olivia Rodrigo. This book was also a portrait of Scarborough, and covered themes like racism, classism, poverty, and mental illness quite well (almost hauntingly). It wasn’t necessarily an enjoyable book for me to read, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth reading.

2/5 diy concoctions for waxing body hair that really should have been left to the professionals

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose

Synopsis: One year after the events of The Maid (see my January 2023 review), Molly Gray is doing well. She’s been promoted to head maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, and she has a small but mighty group of friends to boot, including Lily, the painfully shy but astoundingly efficient new Maid-in-Training. The Regency Grand has finally recovered from the unfortunately death of a guest last year, and to celebrate they are hosting the legendary mystery author J. D. Grimthorpe at a luncheon in his honour, where he will make a special announcement. But unfortunately, J. D. Grimthrope dies at the luncheon, before he can make his announcement. The police are on scene, and they think it’s murder. Thankfully, Molly is not the prime suspect again. Unluckily, Lily is, and so Molly will have to do whatever she can in order to prove Lily’s innocence.

My thoughts: I do like the dramatic irony that is interspersed throughout this books narration, where the audience understands more about the social cues going on than the narrator (Molly) herself does. And overall, it was a good read. However, I really don’t want Molly to join the police force as the ending implies. She only ever solves mysteries because her (or her friends) freedom depends on it, not really because she enjoys it all that much. I know that leaving her maid job for something else is supposed to be a sign of character development and moving up in the world, but frankly I would much rather that happen while Molly is still a maid (ie quitting the hotel in order to start her own cleaning company). Otherwise it gives the impression that cleaning is a much worse profession than being in the police department. I also don’t want Molly to be the “token autistic person” (like the token queer or token BIPOC person) that the allistic police staff will use to “educate themselves” about autism.

3/5 (fake?) fabergé eggs that simply must be cleaned even if the patina makes it more valuable

Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz

Synopsis: Alex Rider has been through a lot lately, including dismantling the operations of SCORPIA (a global crime syndicate) and getting shot by an assassin. It’s only right that he get some time to rest and recuperate in London’s best private hospital. But when Alex encounters a group of kidnappers trying to capture Paul Drevin, his teenaged neighbor at the hospital, Alex has no choice but to involve himself in order to save Paul’s life. Unfortunately, that results in Alex getting captured by the kidnappers, who are representatives of a new eco-terrorist organization known as FORCE THREE (named after Earth being the third planet from the sun). FORCE THREE is determined to take down Paul’s father, Russian billionaire Nikolai Drevin, for his crimes against the environment committed while building his businesses, especially Ark Angel, a hotel in space that Drevin is building in partnership with the British government. Fortunately, Alex survives his encounter with FORCE THREE. As a reward, Nikolai insists on treating Alex to a vacation, partially so that he can become better friends with Paul. But Alex has no idea what he’s about to get himself into.

My thoughts: The entire Alex Rider series is kid kino, and Ark Angel is no exception. This was one of my favorites of the series as a kid, and it definitely holds up when being re-read in adulthood (even if the villains have questionable ideas and motives). Readers will know that I have never been a fan of the James Bond franchise, so I was pretty surprised (and actually a little disappointed) to learn exactly how James Bond-esque these books are (A reliable source has informed me they are absolutely filled with tons of Bond tropes, including female minor characters having puny names and villain lairs in the Caribbean). But all-in-all the books are a lot of fun, and I look forward to reading the next one.

4/5 diamond-edged shoelaces that would have been a lot better if they were actually exploding earrings instead

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa