Author: Jessica Crawford

Book Review: ONE ITALIAN SUMMER by Rebecca Serle

| Jessica Crawford

Well color me pleasantly surprised!

For a while I thought this would be an average 3 star read for me, since some truly insufferable characters were being pretty evenly balanced with how well this book made me feel absolutely transported to Italy 🇮🇹🍝🌊☀️

But then, lo! The story includes the protagonist recognizing what about her life is problematic, and then her decision to address it, making it a more satisfying read.

Katy is 30 years old when her mother, Carol, dies. She is lost without “the love of her life”, the woman who had all the answers, the person she defined herself in relation to. She decides to go by herself to Italy on the trip she and her mother were supposed to take together. While there she meets, among other people…her mother, 30 years ago!

Katy is emotionally stunted, has dysfunctional family relationships, and makes some poor choices while grieving. But by whatever magic her trip to Positano has created to allow her to see a past version of her mother, Katy begins to see that Carol was also only human. She learns that she’ll need to work on herself and learn who she is now that her mother is gone before moving forward.

“She made me in her image, but she forgot the most important part. She forgot that one day she’d leave, that she already had, and then I’d be left with nothing. When you’re just a reflection, what happens when the image vanishes?”

This was a touching story featuring personal growth, set against the flavors of the Amalfi Coast. A great summer read!

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Top Ten Reads of 2023 (So Far)

| Jessica Crawford

The year is halfway over, and I’ve been reading more than ever! My goal was 60 books, and I’ve met that already in early July.

In no particular order, here are my top ten of the books I have read so far this year:

  1. “What Moves the Dead” by T. Kingfisher was the first book I read this year, and the first of this author’s work I have ever read, and she has since earned a place as an “auto buy” for me! This is a queer novella retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher”
  2. “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” by Holly Jackson was a book club pick this year, and this YA murder mystery was perfect for fans of true crime
  3. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt is heartwarming contemporary fiction featuring found family and a curmudgeonly octopus
  4. “Invisible Monsters Remix” by Chuck Palahniuk is one wild ride about loneliness, boredom, beauty, and attention, conveying important messages through the maddest of methods
  5. “Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries” by Heather Fawcett is darkly delightful fantasy about a socially awkward academic who must learn to become part of a community, and featuring a charming romance (tbh, I enjoyed the ARC of the sequel even more, but the publish date for that one isn’t until January of 2024)
  6. “The Golden Spoon” by Jessa Maxwell is a cozy mystery that mixes Clue with The Great British Bake-off, with a dash of historical family saga
  7. “The Ferryman” by Justin Cronin is a standalone science fiction novel that deals with climate crisis, dystopia, and what makes for a meaningful life
  8. “Trust” by Hernan Diaz is literary fiction with a very creative structure about whose voices get heard, and what affords the power to effectively shape reality to one’s liking
  9. “The Mountain in the Sea” by Ray Nayler is science fiction that examines communion, consciousness, and control through the lenses of AI and a hyper intelligent octopus species
  10. “A House with Good Bones” by T. Kingfisher is Southern Gothic horror with wonderful characters, amusing narration, and a perfectly spooky vibe

Let’s see what the rest of year brings 📖📚

Book Review: THE HALF MOON by Mary Beth Keane

| Jessica Crawford

But it turned out people didn’t want things to be nice, they wanted them to be familiar.

“The Half Moon” by Mary Beth Keane is contemporary fiction about a married couple in crisis.

Malcolm and Jess are in their forties. They’ve spent years, and a small fortune, on trying to get pregnant. Malcolm owns a bar, The Half Moon, but thanks to some unsound financial decisions and the struggle to compete with the newer bars and microbreweries, things are not going well in that department, either. Dreams are crumbling, mistakes are made, and these two find themselves facing some really tough decisions. 👰‍♀️🤵‍♂️👶🏼🍻📉

He stopped himself from saying it aloud, but they knew each other so well that the air between them became legible, and she could read it anyway.

My minor gripes: 1) I believe Malcolm’s attraction to Jess was explained on three separate occasions (if not more) as because “she was different from other girls”, and 2) the fact that people who assume that everyone thinks New York City is the Best Thing Ever just because they do is a big pet peeve of mine (and the assumption here that no newly single person might actually want to live in the suburbs).

Lastly, I have no idea what half the words in this quote mean: “[he] shaped for per diem work with the sandhogs. He was a little on the old side, but he had a hook…” Shaped for work? Sandhogs? A hook? Huh?

But overall the writing was very good, and the characters felt quite real, as did their experiences. I didn’t necessarily enjoy how the feelings the story engendered were mostly depression and claustrophobia, but there is certainly hope here, as well, and a theme throughout of starting anew and choosing to redirect the story of your life.

The things they didn’t end up doing, the places and people they decided against, all defined them as much as anything else, in the way negative space defines a photo or a song.

TW: Infertility, miscarriage, infidelity

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Book Review: THE FERRYMAN by Justin Cronin

| Jessica Crawford

From Justin Cronin, author of The Passage trilogy, comes a science fiction standalone, The Ferryman.

The end had been ordained in the beginning, the way the final chord was built into the first measure of a symphony

The people of Prospera aren’t sure what lays beyond the Veil that surrounds their archipelago state, but they know they’re lucky to be where they are. Prosperans live out idyllic lives, retire to the Nursery when their bodies begin to fail them, are overhauled both physically and mentally, then get reiterated into society as blank slates. This isn’t the case for support staff from the Annex, however, who perform menial labor for the Prosperans, while everyone is controlled by a police state. This world is dystopian for just as many as it is a seeming utopia for others. But how were these lines drawn?

I got The Truman Show vibes from the early parts of this book, not in tone, but in knowing that the world is not what it seems. But in this case, the reader is as clueless as to the truth as are all the characters. Most Prosperans are content in their ignorance, living happy life after happy life, though they may lack real love or anything to make it at all meaningful. On the other hand, the people of the Annex have built a religion around the idea of a day of Arrival (who will be arriving where?), and some people, like protagonist Proctor Bennett, want to learn the truth after being plagued by troubling dreams that are echoes of past iterations.

It was what the world taught us to do, but it was no way to live, and now, for the first time, I felt like I was waking up.

Proctor finds himself in league with others who are not satisfied with the status quo. Can they find their way out of what, for all intents and purposes, is the world itself? If so, what will they find outside its limits?

This book features some beautiful writing. I really loved it in the beginning, it fizzled out a bit for me in the middle, but then the final revelations were pretty good. I definitely had some questions, but to list them here would be spoilery. Overall it’s very well done.

TW: death of a child, suicide, adultery

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Book Review: SEA CHANGE by Gina Chung

| Jessica Crawford
I’m trying my hand at book annotation! Pictured is Sea Change by Gina Chung (with a sleeping German shepherd for scale)

Sea Change is literary fiction about Ro, the thirty year old daughter of Korean immigrants. A history of loss has shaped her into a rather dysfunctional adult. Her marine biologist father disappeared on a research trip while she was a teen, she and her BFF are at odds, and her boyfriend left her (and the planet) on a mission to colonize Mars. Now Dolores, the giant Pacific octopus at the aquarium where she is employed, and one of her last remaining links to her father, is being sold. Ro deals with all of her loneliness and fears that anything good is only going to be taken from her by neglecting everything in her life except for her quest to stop feeling anything at all (with the help of a drink or two, or ten).

This is the story of Ro discovering that if she wants to escape the rut she is stuck in, she’ll need to learn to appreciate the things she does have without constantly tiptoeing around the possibility of losing them. I may have teared up during a scene about saying goodbye to the octopus…

Book Review: ZERO DAYS by Ruth Ware

| Jessica Crawford

The comps for this book to The Fugitive crossed with Mr. and Mrs. Smith are spot on.

Jack and Gabe are a married couple of pen testers who work as a team when companies hire them to test their organizations for any weaknesses in security. When Gabe winds up murdered, suspicion automatically falls on his spouse, and Jack finds herself Suspect Number One. While the police are focusing their efforts on her, if Jack wants to figure out who is actually responsible for her husband’s death, she’s going to have to go on the lam and do some investigating of her own. On the run from the police and with few resources at her disposal besides a particular set of skills, Jack must try to uncover what her husband may have gotten mixed up in…and what it might mean for her.

As propulsive as this story was, it is far from Ware’s best work in my opinion (I am still waiting for another The Death of Mrs. Westaway!) The writing here seemed very plain and uninspired, making it a bit boring to work through at times. The dialogue was often overly simplistic, kind of silly, or straight up unbelievable, like when police officers discuss very pertinent details of a case in the corridor just outside the room where they have been questioning a person of interest, where they are easily overheard. Jack is alternately described as making herculean efforts to hold back tears at inopportune times and wondering if there is something wrong with her for not having cried yet–we are told how broken she is by the turn of events, but I never really felt that was the case. And I guessed the baddie the moment they were very first introduced in the story.

Things did pick up in the second half of the book, and it kept me flipping pages like a good thriller should. By then I was engaged by the balanced mix of mystery and tension. Overall I’d say this was a 3 star read for me.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Book Review: REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt

| Jessica Crawford

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is heartwarming literary fiction about the relationships that sustain us throughout the course of life.

POV alternates among three characters:

  1. 👵 Tova Sullivan, an elderly widowed Swedish immigrant whose son drowned in the sea under mysterious circumstances when he was 18 years old, and who works cleaning at the Sowell Bay Aquarium because she feels the need to keep busy even if she doesn’t need the money
  2. 🤷‍♂️ Cameron Cassmore, a highly intelligent yet deadbeat 30 year old whose search for a means to pull himself up out of the rut of his life leads him to Sowell Bay, Washington

and

  1. 🐙Marcellus, a(n even more?) highly intelligent Giant Pacific Octopus who resents being captive at the aquarium and who just can’t even with humans anymore

The relationships that develop among these characters are quite touching. Family and growing old are themes throughout the book.

The parents will grow old atop this mountain of a family they’ve built, and even if parts of it crumble from time to time, there will be enough left to support them.

The characters that comprise the Knit-Wits, the groups of septuagenarians who get together for regularly scheduled lunches, were each so realistic—I could picture people from my real life who matched each of them almost to a T.

Overall this is a sad but ultimately heartwarming tale, and it gets bonus points for naming a secondary octopus Pippa the Grippa!

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Book Review: NETTLE & BONE by T. Kingfisher

| Jessica Crawford

Nettle & Bone is fantasy from T. Kingfisher, and it’s lovely! There’s a good deal here that is more original than your standard fantasy fare these days.

Marra wants to protect her sister, even if that means killing a king. She isn’t some chosen one with supercharged powers, just a concerned relative and almost-nun who can embroider a mean stitch. It’s her determination that sees her completing unpleasant and even “impossible” tasks in order to recruit allies that can help her with her Quest.

The resulting fellowship is just plain wonderful: a wicked fairy godmother who enjoys gardening and animal husbandry, and who chooses blessings over curses; a warrior enslaved in the goblin market; a dust-wife who can communicate with the dead and who is accompanied by a hen possessed by a demon; and one Very Good Boy resurrected from bones. They must deal with a sorceress cursed with immortality and a catacomb filled with the royal dead, among other things.

And it’s FUNNY! If you like humorous cozy fantasy that still has high stakes, you should give this book a try.

How far would you be willing to go in the name of protecting your loved ones? And, perhaps more importantly, are you for or against demon chicken?

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Book Review: THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA by Ray Nayler

| Jessica Crawford

🐙 Come for the octopuses, stay for the story about communion, consciousness, and control!

The Mountain in the Sea is science fiction set in a near future when many industries are fully automated with AI. The Con Dao archipelago of Vietnam is a wildlife sanctuary for many species, including octopuses so intelligent they just might rivals humans. A tech corporation with a vested interest in seeing what can be learned from these animals has sent in researchers and sealed the area off, protecting it by deadly means if necessary.

The characters that this book primarily follows are:

Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist who struggles with the indifference people feel for the things that don’t personally affect them, and who learns the importance of connection, making oneself understood, and striving to understand others even if it doesn’t mean always agreeing with each other.

Rustem, a Tartar hacking genius who may have gotten involved in something bigger than he realized.

Eiko, a young Japanese man enslaved on an automated fishing rig.

Other characters include a badass mercenary security specialist from a nunnery, a scientist seeking mastery of creating consciousness in an attempt to fend off her own loneliness, and an android whose very existence puts them at risk from those who feel threatened by the idea of a nonhuman mind. Some of the verbal exchanges between the android and the security agent were a joy, very funny!

The octopuses feature a lot less in this book than I thought they would – I mean, a good portion of it is ABOUT the octopuses, but they actually only show up in a handful of scenes. It’s more about the people studying them, and how the world both exist in has been shaped by conscious ingenuity and all the good and bad it creates.

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