Every Other Weekend, or, The One Where My Sarcastic Sense of Humor is Satiated

Every Other Weekend

by Abigail Johnson

Pages: 512

Publisher: Inkyard Press
Publication Date: January 7th, 2020

Cover Comments: 

I love this cover! The adjoining balconies are perfect and spot-on for the story. This does give me the feeling that the book is just a rom-com, but I'm okay with it.

First Lines: 
"The pigeons blanketing the parking lot took flight into the setting sun when we pulled up to Dad's apartment." 

               Goodreads丨 Amazon

Adam Moynihan’s life used to be awesome. Straight As, close friends and a home life so perfect that it could have been a TV show straight out of the 50s. Then his oldest brother died. Now his fun-loving mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can’t talk without fighting, and the father he always admired proved himself a coward by moving out when they needed him most.

Jolene Timber’s life is nothing like the movies she loves—not the happy ones anyway. As an aspiring director, she should know, because she’s been reimagining her life as a film ever since she was a kid. With her divorced parents at each other’s throats and using her as a pawn, no amount of mental reediting will give her the love she’s starving for.

Forced to spend every other weekend in the same apartment building, the boy who thinks forgiveness makes him weak and the girl who thinks love is for fools begin an unlikely friendship. The weekends he dreaded and she endured soon become the best part of their lives. But when one’s life begins to mend while the other’s spirals out of control, they realize that falling in love while surrounded by its demise means nothing is ever guaranteed.

Review

Every Other Weekend is a poignant story at times heartbreaking and at times laugh-out-loud funny. There’s the joy and terror of new love alongside the portrait of two families, broken in very different ways. This is an important story for many reasons - almost too many reasons to fit into one book, which is where my main criticism comes in. But I’ll start with the positives!

The romance featured in the novel was built on slow-building, genuine friendship. I love seeing this and wish it were more common in YA novels. These two really went on a journey throughout the book, ending up with a deep understanding of one another. I enjoyed their dynamic, the “in between” sections where the two text, and the barriers that they had to break down in one another to become close. I also personally love sarcastic, "fake mean" flirting hahaha, so this was right up my alley.

It’s hard to say who had the worse family situation in Every Other Weekend: Jolene has an abusive mother and an absent father, and Adam’s entire family, while sweet, are immersed in grief and anger. The issues just within the two families were quite enough to unpack in one book. However, the story adds on more and more until it’s too much to keep straight, much less delve into in any sort of satisfying detail. Not counting the core family dynamics at play here, this one novel explores:

1. A side character who is in a co-dependent, mentally abusive relationship
2. A main character who emotionally cheats for months
3. A relationship between Jolene’s mom and a new man that just feels sinister
4. A relationship between Jolene’s dad and his girlfriend that has history and emotional drama concerning Jolene
5. A side character related to Adam and his family with some emotional baggage to resolve
6. A sexual assault

Because there was so much going on, it was hard to really get into any of these storylines. Of particular concern to me was the sexual assault storyline. It’s an extremely important topic, but is only introduced close to the end of the book, and is used as a plot point to move the storyline towards a resolution. As such, it made me uncomfortable and felt like a passing nod to a serious issue rather than a deeper exploration. Many of the other extraneous storylines could have been cut too, to make room for more coverage of the main storylines. Other beats dragged out for way too long, like Adam’s extreme anger and attitude towards his dad. 

The resolution of the story was good though - no neat bows on the storyline, but things end in a place that makes sense and that I enjoyed reading. All in all, I liked Every Other Weekend and would recommend it for its sweet and unrushed romance and examination of some really complicated family dynamics. Cut 100 pages and it would have been golden!

☆☆☆

*Thanks to Inkyard Press and the author for the chance to read Every Other Weekend before its publication date.

Kingdom of Souls, or, The One Where Everyone Dies (Really, Everyone)

Kingdom of Souls

by Rena Barron

Pages: 496

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: September 3rd, 2019

Cover Comments: This cover is fantastic. I love the font of the title, the clothing the girl is wearing, and her throne-type setting.

First Lines: 
"Be still, Little Priestess." 

               Goodreads丨 Amazon

THERE’S MAGIC IN HER BLOOD.

Explosive fantasy set in a world of magic and legend, where one girl must sacrifice her life, year by year, to gain the power necessary to fight the mother she has never been good enough for.

Perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas, Tomi Adeyemi and Black Panther

THERE’S MAGIC IN HER BLOOD.

Arrah is a young woman from a long line of the most powerful witch doctors in the land. But she fails at magic, fails to call upon the ancestors and can't even cast the simplest curse.

Shame and disappointment dog her.

When strange premonitions befall her family and children in the kingdom begin to disappear, Arrah undergoes the dangerous and scorned process of selling years of her life for magic. This borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal and a danger beyond what she could have imagined. Now Arrah must find a way to master magic, or at least buy it, in order to save herself and everything she holds dear.

An explosive fantasy set in a world of magic and legend with a twist you will never see coming.

Review

I was really excited to read this one, thinking the setting and world-building seemed fresh and interesting. And it was. I loved the mythology behind all the events happening in the novel, and the way the plot twists and turns. However, I feel like there was way too much crammed into this one book. There was one "big bad" that seemed to rise and fall much too quickly. Despite the packed nature of the book, the first part dragged on, while the second half seemed too hurried. The set-up for the next book is definitely intriguing, but I think if there had been some more breathing room to develop the characters and delve into the world-building in this one, I'd be more interested in continuing the series.

It was also quite a bummer of a book. The protagonist, Arrah, basically keeps sacrificing more and more and getting knocked down at every turn. The girl just can't win, and there's a ton of loss of major characters in the book. I don't mind a little darkness, but there's gotta be some light too.

I did enjoy the world and characters in Kingdom of Souls, and hope the next installment is a bit more evenly paced.

☆☆☆

*Thanks to HarperTeen and the author for the chance to read Kingdom of Souls before its publication date.

Throwback Titles (2): Tender Morsels, or, The One with All the Man-Bears and Squeamishness

Throwback titles are books that I've been meaning to read for a very, very long time, but have just now gotten around to it. In other words, it's that book you picked up in middle school that may have been a little bit above your reading level, and also happened to have 14 sequels. And what do you, a rational adult do now that you've realized that you stopped a mere five books from finishing the series? Continue, of course.

That's most of my stories, but I consider a throwback title to be any book 5 or more years old. Let's clear these babies out of to-be-reads and remind people of their favorite 2005 novel! I'll be posting a throwback title every Thursday (naturally). Please join in the fun by adding to the linky below and adding my graphic (or one of yours, as long as it links back here) above to your post!

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Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Pages: 436
Publisher: Knopf Books
Publication Date: October 14th, 2008
Cover Comments: This is a beautiful cover, and one of the reasons I was attracted to this novel. It even gives subtle clues about what sadness lies within, in the expression on the girl's face, and the claws digging into her back.
First Lines: "There are plenty would call her a slut for it."

Tender Morsels is a dark and vivid story, set in two worlds and worrying at the border between them. Liga lives modestly in her own personal heaven, a world given to her in exchange for her earthly life. Her two daughters grow up in this soft place, protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever—magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga’s refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?

Review

I read reviews on Tender Morsels before I started it, so I thought I was prepared for the nastier elements of this dark fairy tale: rape, bestiality, etc. Even so, I wasn't prepared for those first few chapters of hopeless cruelty. After I got through that part, I was so relieved for Liga and I was able to settle in and enjoy Margo Lanagan's writing. And y'all, it is gorgeous. So beautiful, in fact, that this book can almost get away with not really having much of a plot for 3/4 of the book. Almost.

Tender Morsels is very much a dark, Brothers-Grimm esque fairy tale, with unpleasant topics out the wazoo. That 3/4 part of the book that I mentioned where nothing much happens? Basically the only thing that happens in that section is the main characters of the book making friends and perhaps a little bit more than friends with bears. To be fair, these bears are men in the true world, but Liga and Branza have no way of knowing that. Not being in a society of any sort, Branza, I suppose, would have no idea of the wrongness of it either though. This whole section made me pretty squeamish, so obviously I tried to intellectualize myself out of the discomfort. Here's what I came up with: Liga would not allow a man with any sexual intentions of any sort into her dream world, especially since she created it after traumatic events involving men. But the growing Liga, who has come to feel safe in her world and perhaps wanting more to life now, is curious about the idea of romance - maybe not even consciously. So in come the bears who are men, but not really men. Her world is trying to find a way to grow with her without breaking the no-men rules of young Liga's world. I also think there must be something symbolic about how only men break into Liga's dream world, and only men of no real threat, either being a "littlee-man" or men in the skin of bears. Anyway, wanna-be English major rant over.

I really enjoyed the last part of the book, in which everyone makes their entry into the true world (I don't feel that that's a spoiler since it's in the synopsis). I love love love the character introduced around this time. As Urdda describes her:

"She had a different kind of boldness, a strength that did not defy that of men so much as ignore it, or take its place without question beside it - Urdda wanted some of that boldness."

Lanagan's writing really shines through this character. Liga and her daughters adjusting to the true world after their dream world reminded me of Room, in which the young boy has to adjust after being trapped in a small, never-changing room. Branza especially can't fathom the cruelty that exists in this true world, although she does have a bit of a bite to her, as we find out. I love this gem of a paragraph below about adjusting to the world:

"Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to."

Verdict: First off, I certainly would not recommend Tender Morsels to anyone under the age of 17, possibly 18, or with anyone who might be triggered by rape scenes. Those scenes are not all that graphic, but they do paint a very clear picture emotionally, which is even harder sometimes. If you are one who devours pretty prose and doesn't mind a meandering plot or themes of bestiality, I'd give this a shot. I give it 3 stars for the writing and the achingly lovely ending.

3/5