May 2024 - Reading and Review Roundup

Heading back to work and diving into revisions on my novel meant I moved at a much slower pace this month. It was definitely a quality over quantity month, though, with everything rating a four and up.

The Roundup

Star rating on a scale of 0 - 5. Titles in BOLD link to full review in a new page. ✨ indicates a 5 star read

• So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

• ✨ Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Batman: Knightfall, Vol 1 | Not Rated

• ✨ How to Align the Stars by Amy Dressler | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Reviews

How to Align the Stars by Amy Dressler | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Releasing June 4, 2024. This review is of an advanced reader copy and details of the text may have changed prior to publication.

The debut novel from Amy Dressler, HOW TO ALIGN THE STARS re-tells Shakespeare’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, updating the setting to academia at a small college in the northwest US. I have a soft spot for anything Shakespeare, but a very high bar for anything MUCH ADO, it being my favorite of his works (and the basis for my own in-progress novel). This book not only met the bar, but leapt over it.

Dressler’s Beatrice is a college professor at odds with former classmate and current colleague Ben. Her Hero (now Heron) is a senior at the same college, in starry eyed love with her boyfriend Charlie. Told from the alternating perspectives of Beatrice and Heron, Dressler leans into the crossing of this romance with women’s fiction, building two fully formed, complex women into her story. Beatrice struggles with conflicted feelings about her own body — she is a strong, independent woman at heart, but she is aware of the fatphobia directed at her by so many in her past and present. While she is clearly happy with who she is, the walls she puts up to avoid being hurt might be doing more harm than good. Sweet and kind Heron harbors lingering anxiety from the trauma of her mother’s abandonment as a teenager. She clings to Charlie, molding herself and her life around him, something she doesn’t realize until it’s too late. Both of these topics are handled with care and consideration.

A full cast of secondary characters, used in perfect doses, builds a full image of Messian University and the other settings in the characters lives. The banter, something absolutely necessary in any adaptation of MUCH ADO, is sparkling. Every Shakespeare play has “problems” that its adaptor must tackle when approaching a re-telling. MUCH ADO has one of the biggest ones in its resolution, especially to a modern, feminist audience. Without venturing into spoiler territory, I can say that I found Dressler’s solutions to these problems extremely satisfying from a modern lens. They felt true to the characters and the growth I wanted to see from them.

HOW TO ALIGN THE STARS is the first in a planned “Shakespeare Project” by Amy Dressler. After reading this one, I’m excitedly looking forward to the next retelling.

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Releasing June 11, 2024. This review is of an advanced reader copy and details of the text may have changed prior to publication.

THE ROM-COMMERS is Katherine Center’s latest heart-tugging, quick and witty romance. When an acclaimed screenwriter (Charlie) drafts a truly terrible rom-com script, his agent sends Emma, a diamond in the rough and rom-com expert, to revise it. And, obviously, the best way to work together is for her to live in his mansion with him for six weeks. It’s a screwball concept, intentionally reminiscent of the forced proximity in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (which happens to be the film they’re tasked with updating), but a classic for a reason.

Center’s dialogue sparkles and builds the relationship between Charlie and Emma so genuinely, leading to the truly cathartic payoff in the third act. She never shies away from tough subjects, building out the past trauma of her character’s lives and weaving it in to the story in ways that feel authentic and drive true character growth. That’s especially true of THE ROM-COMMERS, so much so that if you have any triggers around parental illness/death I would highly recommend you make sure you’re in a very good mental head space before diving in. Because once you start, this book moves along at a brisk pace. Like Center’s THE BODYGUARD, this was a one-day read for me, and had me sobbing quietly in bed next to my partner at 2 in the morning in order to finish it. I wanted to live in this world and with Charlie and Emma so much longer, which is one of the highest compliments I can pay a book.

All that delightfulness said, there are a couple of points that kept this from being a flat out five-star read for me.

• Emma’s neediness — the number of times that she pushes Charlie, practically begs him to love her — felt repetitive, rather than something she was growing out of.

• [SPOILER] The climactic confrontation between Emma and Sylvie was so well written and devastating on both sides. While we seem Sylvie later apologize for the hurtful things she said to Emma, we never see Emma return the apology… she never even acknowledges that she said something just as hurtful as what she was holding onto from Sylvie. It’s just brushed over and feels like an unintentionally hanging thread.

Despite these little peeves, I did love this book in the end and would definitely pop it out as a comfort read in the future.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy | Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

In obvious statements: whoooooosh was Jennette McCurdy’s mother a piece of work!

I’m a little late to reading this one and I was past the iCarly and Cat and Sam generation of Nickelodeon, but this was still worth the listen. I got the audiobook and I’d highly recommend that as the way to experience this one. Hearing McCurdy’s voice break as she discussed finally having someone point out to her that her mother’s treatment of her was abusive is absolutely heartbreaking. Unlike the similar memoir THE WOMAN IN ME by Britney Spears, you leave this one feeling that at least McCurdy is on the path to healing and optimistic for her.

And that’s it for May! As always, if you want to follow allow with my reads in real time, you can add me on The Storygraph (a Goodreads alternative) or on Instagram: @crystal.writes.