Gay the Pray Away - Natalie Naudus

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn't know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life - centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group - is thrown into question.

And to make things even more complicated, there's a new girl in town. Riley is rebellious, kindhearted, and impossibly cool. As the two bond over being multiracial teens in their very white and very religious community, Valerie finds herself falling in love.

Soon Valerie and Riley are exchanging notes in secret and stealing kisses behind the church. But even as their romance blooms, Valerie knows that they're trapped. If Valerie wants a chance at writing her own story, she must choose between staying with a family she fears will never accept her and running away with the girl she loves."

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While I thought this was a bit heavy-handed and would have benefited from some subtlety and better development, character and story-wise, overall, I really enjoyed it. To the uninitiated (aka people who were lucky enough to NOT grow up in a cult), some of the interactions with Valerie's parents and other "Institute" members may seem overexaggerated or almost like a caricature, but rest assured, all of that is very real and not what I found heavy-handed. (Example: while my parents didn't forbid me from going to college the way Valerie's would have, it was with the expectation that I quit when I got married. There were some Big Feelings when I made it clear that wouldn't be happening.) 

I also very much identified with "close" friends cutting you off the second you weren't acting the way that they wanted you to. So real. Oh, and dudes getting to do cool shit during church activities while the girls had to sit and quietly learn how to best take care of the menfolk? My godddddddddddddddddd, let me tell you about all the cool hiking and rappelling and whatnot that my male church friends got to do while I did shit like learning how to iron button-down shirts and tie a tie so I could be of service to my future husband. The culty stuff was very real and infuriating. And don't even get me STARTED on her fucking brother, that absolute douche of a human.

Anyway, all that ranting about the shittiness of cults out of the way, my favorite character was far and away Riley. I adored her. She was very clearly going through her own shit, yet she was so supportive and optimistic and really lifted Valerie up. She was also unapologetically herself, even under immense pressure to conform, and she refused to make herself small to appease the fragility of others. While a very minor character, I also loved Mrs. Batra, Valerie's neighbor. She was so sweet and thoughtful, and I wish she played a bigger role in the story. Honestly, some of the most minor characters ended up being my favorites, I wish they all featured a little more! This book was relatively short, and I think it could have benefited from a little more development at the beginning and more wind-down at the end. And then we could have seen more from several of those minor characters who rocked so hard.

One of the most bittersweet parts of this book for me is a huge spoiler, so don't read ahead if you're planning on reading this.

Spoilers ahead, don't keep scrolling.

Seriously, stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled.

Have you read the book?

Are you not planning to?

Do you look ahead to the endings of things anyway and don't care one whit if you get spoiled?

Okay, then here we go.

At the end, on the day Valerie leaves home, I was so shocked that her mom supported her, but the more I thought back on it, the more sense it made. (Incidentally, I was SCREAMING at her to not tell her parents, if it hadn't been so close to the end of the book and the book as a whole hadn't been so positive, I would have been genuinely afraid of what her dad would do to her.) Like, her mom was so suffocating and bought-in to everything in her interactions with Valerie, but at the same time, you could see that she felt similarly suffocated herself. I saw a lot in her that I see in my own mom. 

On the one hand, she's a person who desperately wants some kind of scaffolding to dictate to her the "rules" of existing in our random, often fucked-up world and give some kind of meaning and sense of community without having to go through what it takes to develop a real, healthy, supportive community. On the other, she's a person who is intelligent and strong-willed and knows that she is in a situation where she has to make herself smaller so other people *coughmencough* can feel bigger. It's an inner conflict that I can't even begin to understand, because I couldn't do it and I left, but it has to be hard. It gave me a little bit of home that Valerie's mom recognized that she didn't want her daughter to live like that and helped her get out - and hey, maybe at some point she'll realize that she doesn't deserve to live like that either and get out herself. We can only hope.

I'm a bird person now

Welcome to another episode of Puzzle Pals! Or...something else. I haven't really come up with a name for it. Anyway, this month's puzzle was State Birds of America, created by Cobble Hill Puzzle Company.

The thing about puzzles is sometimes the effort is frontloaded and sometimes it's backloaded. This is definitely a frontloaded puzzle. For starters, this was possibly the first time I've done a puzzle and thought it might have been easier starting with the center instead of the border. Except for the bottom, it was all just green, and we still had a couple of edge pieces we weren't sure what to do with when we finally thought we had it all together. I ended up just working on it and eventually figuring out where the border was wrong and fixing it WAY into the process. 

After some initial legwork, though, I thought it was a delightful puzzle. Very unique piece shape, things fit together well, and it was fun seeing all the different birds. It would have been a solid 5/5 puzzle, were it not for one heartbreaking thing, spotted on the box after we finished it. "This image was produced with the assistance of AI." That's a hard no thanks from me, so I guess I'll have to pay closer attention to where I source my puzzles going forward. Le sigh. Jazz hands for cool state birds (and a new haircut). Not so jazzy hands for using AI to create art instead of actual artists.

August Mystery Book

July's mystery book turned out to be excellent (and a dang series, of course, so I had to request the next book from the library), so I've been looking forward to the next one and hoping it's just as good, so I could start a streak. After starting the book, I'm not sure it's going to happen. But I'm getting ahead of myself!

August's mystery read is Murder of Crows by K. Ancrum. Cool, I like K. Ancrum. Seems intriguing.

But then I started reading it, and it's immediately apparent that this is a sequel of some sort. Even though it's listed as "Lethal Lit #1" on the Storygraph. Soooooo what is it a sequel to? 

A PODCAST. 

Yeah, apparently the events in this book take place between the first and second seasons of a scripted podcast called Lethal Lit. And I just...do we think this is a good idea, pals? I guess technically so far (four chapters in) it doesn't seem like it's a requirement to have the context from season one to understand the plot of the book, but events from the podcast are HEAVILY referenced, so it's such a weird vibe NOT having that context. Plus numbering a book as the first in a series when there is already existing story, just not in book form, rubs me the wrong way. I don't know the correct way to denote that this is set in an existing podcast universe, but like...it just all leaves me feeling a little offput. 

I looked it up, and the first episode of the podcast is six episodes, pretty short, so listening to it and then reading the book would be an option. But if I'm being honest, pushing readers to the podcast is part of what I don't like about this whole concept. Listening to the podcast feels like rewarding bad behavior, and if you know me you know one of the things I love to say is "I don't reward bad behavior." So no, I shan't be listening to season one of the podcast. I SHALL give the book a few more chapters and see how I feel about it. And then we can go from there.

No lie, Read Harder went great in July

Hey, do you want to hear something exciting? I finished Oathbound! Turns out that while the first roughly 200-250 pages could have been whittled down (and, let's be real, possibly a little bit more further in), the rest of it was GRIPPING. It ended on such a cliffhanger, too, which is VERY rude given that I first thought this would be a duology and then when I realized it wasn't crossed my fingers that it was a trilogy, but hey, what are you gonna do? It was a solid ending, and I can't wait for the next one. I just hope it isn't another 600+ pages that could have been shorter.

I also finished The Third Gilmore Girl, which made me cry so many times and also made me rewatch Gilmore Girls to admire Emily with fresh eyes. Also need to rewatch Bunheads because...Bunheads. It's so great. Seriously, I had no idea what an incredible, tough, tenacious badass Kelly Bishop was, and wow. She's a marvel.

Next up, I finished The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, which I discovered is not a standalone, so...that's annoying. It was a solid read, but I also have like four books that I recently read only to discover they were part of a series, so I'm really on the fence about if I liked this one enough to add ANOTHER sequel to my stack of books waiting to be read. Man, my kingdom for fantasy/supernatural/spooky books that are NOT a series.

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For August, I'll be reading books for challenges #12, #16, and #21. 

Prompt twelve is read a recommendation from a (preferably local) indie bookstore. Look, I don't know about "indie" but I picked my favorite local bookstore, Palabras, and will be reading Like a Hammer by Diana Marie Delgado, a book of poetry about mass incarceration.

Prompt sixteen is read a genre blending book, which...I accidentally already read. I picked My Lady's Choosing by Larissa Zageris and Kitty Curran, a historical romance choose your own adventure book (sorry, not choose your own adventure, that's trademarked...but you know what I mean.) It was also available at the library when I went to pick up my books for last month, so I grabbed it while I was there and then was like oh yeah, this book looks interesting. So, hey, check this one off! It was quite the experience. Very funny, such wild euphemisms for genitalia. I'm not sure if it was meant this way, but it was a wildly successful parody of a historical romance. If it wasn't intended as parody, my apologies to the authors for taking it that way - if it was truly meant as a tribute to the romance genre, they would have benefited from fewer storylines and better development. But hey, regardless of intent? I had fun.

Aaaand finally, prompt twenty-one is to read a book about a moral panic. For this, I chose It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful, by Jack Lowery, which is about the AIDS pandemic. Growing up mormon, AIDS was kind of something we were shielded from because god forbid your kids hear anything about gay people, and after I read another book about it I was blown away by how little I knew and how much I thought I knew was incorrect. I've started reading this one but not gotten far, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it and how activists fought for change (particularly relevant right now, given the fascism of our current "administration" sooooooo...yeah).

One of the Good Ones - Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover: 

"When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even the phrase rings wrong in her mind - why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed? Happy and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there's a twist to Kezi's story that no one could've ever expected - one that will change everything all over again."

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Well, already talked a tiny bit about this, since it's my June mystery read, but now I've read it, so I'm going to talk about it some more. As predicted, it was very emotional. Heartbreaking, frustrating, and intense. It clocks in at 330 pages, and there is so much packed into each of those pages that I wanted more. I thought it was excellent, but with such nuanced content (and so many details to get into), while it was handled well, I think it would have been even better with more time to develop everything.

My one gripe, possibly born out of the fact that I finished the last half of this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep and was therefore very scared reading it alone in the darkness, is how the last few chapters played out. I don't want to spoil anything, but there were opportunities seeded that never came to fruition, and I thought doing more with those opportunities would have built toward a more satisfying conclusion than the abrupt ending we got. Other than that (and even with this gripe, the ending was mind-blowing), incredible writing. I can't do half stars...maybe I could figure it out, but I haven't...but this would be a solid 4.5, maybe a 4.75, from me.

Visiting the ole' General Store

That's right, puzzle pals, it's time once more to piece together a work of art. This time, we assembled Country Store, manufactured by Buffalo Games & Puzzles.

Y'all...I fuckin loved this puzzle. The picture? Idyllic, beautiful sunset (or sunrise, I don't know what time it is), so many animals, just adorable. The pieces were all kinds of different shapes and stayed together pretty well. The style was fantastic, and it was challenging without making me want to headdesk and unleash a stream of profanity. Real talk? I put the border together and then started organizing the rest of the pieces, and when I did I decided to separate out the sky pieces and sign pieces to work on first. I sorted all the pieces, decided "you know, I could put some of these signs together before I go to bed," and somehow ended up accidentally doing like half the puzzle in one go. Sooooo, yeah, 5/5 for this one! Would do again.

July Mystery Book

Ooh, July's mystery book seems bound to be a good one, with lots of mysterious threads coming together to tell a great story. It's Threads that Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou - the story of Io, the youngest of the Ora sisters, all three descendants of the Fates themselves.

Io's work as a private investigator leads her to a job where she has to work with Edei, right hand to the Mod Queen, and the boy with whom she shares a fate thread linking them as soulmates. It also leads her to an encounter with her estranged oldest sister, on the arm of one of her top suspects. Io must unravel clues leading through the darkest corners of the city before her own world unravels.