Rainy Day Reads

Challenges: Diversity Bingo 2017: Biracial main character This book is about Rachel who literally falls from the sky one day. Her mother takes her and her two siblings to the roof and Rachel is the only survivor. Throughout the story we follow a number of characters as people try to make sense of what happened. Rachel tries to adjust to her new life living with her grandmother and struggling to find an identity when people don’t consider her as belonging, because she is considered alternately white or black. We also slowly figure out what happened to bring her mother to the roof with her children that day. As for the challenge this book fits perfectly. Rachel is half black and half white and there are a number of instances in the book where this issue comes to the forefront. Having said that I do wish we saw more of Rachel’s struggles with it. It is like she just brushes it off when the black girls at school call her white or other people tell her she is not like “ot

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo 2017: Main character with underrepresented body This book follows a soldier who wakes up in hospital after a bomb has hit his posting. Slowly he realizes that he is deaf and blind, and then to his horror he discovers that he has also lost his arms and legs. We follow his musings as he slowly comes to term with these findings and tries to find a way to deal with it. He spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to keep time and then he tries to find a way to communicate with the world around him, but the world doesn’t seem too interested. In between his hard work to communicate he dwells on memories of his life before the war and daydreams about his family finding him again.  This book was absolutely heartbreaking. Here is this man who has been saved when everything else around him crumbled to dust, but the people who saved him (or condemned him to a life trapped in his own mind) aren’t interested in him as a person, only as a trophy

This story is told in verse and from two different view points; Nicu and Jess. Jess is an English girl and Nicu is a Romanian boy, who has come to England with his parents to earn money for his wedding back home. Together they get caught up in some trouble and the have to decide how to handle it best. I can’t really say too much more without spoiling it, as it is quite a short book.  I don’t normally go for books written in verse or shorter stories, but I decided to try this on a whim and I really enjoyed it. Even though it is short we get to delve pretty deep into the characters minds and feelings, mostly because they are the narrators. I think it would be hard to get the same feeling with a single narrator, so this works really well.  I gave this book 4 stars out of 5. 

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo 2017: Displaced Main Character Everyone has raved about this book since it came out and once again I am disappointed. The premise was interesting but it just didn’t work for me.  We follow two half-sisters, however they don’t know they are sisters and they never actually meet in the story. Each chapter tells the story of one of their descendants, so we only get to know each characters for quite a short while in their lives.  At the beginning of the story set in 18th century Ghana one of the sisters is married to a wealthy Englishman, a commander at the fort, while the other sister is taken and sold as a slave in America. As mentioned we follow their descendants through time and see how life pans out for them right up until present day.  As for the challenge there were certainly a number of displaced characters. The sister sold as a slave is of course forcibly removed from her homeland, but a number of the other characters are al

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo: Main character with an invisible disability.  This story is told from Griffin’s point of view, Griffin who has just suffered a major loss. His ex-boyfriend Theo has died, and while people think it’s tragic they also seem to think that Griffin should move on, because after all they were EX-boyfriends and Theo had found someone new. But Griffin always considered himself and Theo endgame, so the loss hurts just as much as if they were still together.  We follows Griffin’s struggles with grief and his escalating OCD, while all his relationships tangle and untangle around him. He meets Theo’s new boyfriend Jackson, who is just as crushed as Griffin, and while they at first seem to be competing in grief for Theo they soon find out that the other one is the only one who can really understand them and they become tentative friends. Meanwhile Griffin and Theo’s old friend Wade tries to help Griffin, but Griffin rejects him.  We slowly figure

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo: Main Character on the ace spectrum This book is about Frances who finds herself playing two different roles in life; School Frances and Normal Frances. These two are very different, but she prefers not to mix the two halves of her life. When the creator of her favorite Youtube-podcast contacts her to start making art for the show she is ecstatic, and her accepting is the start of a new life where School Frances and Normal Frances begin to merge and coalesce into one person.  As far as the challenge goes I have to say I don’t really think this fits 100%. You have to accept that Frances is not the only main character at least, and I don’t know about that. But one of the more important characters is on the ace spectrum and while it takes a while for them to “come out” we do get an explanation of what it means and the relationship they are in also seems like a good representation of asexuality. Aside from that this book is quite diverse in g

I almost gave up on this book before I really got started, because I didn’t feel like reading another badly written WWII book. I assumed this would be a book with a number of family anecdotes tenuously tied up with the actions of the war. But luckily I was wrong. This was really well written and in no way boring or disjointed. It is based on Albright’s experiences during the war, but more so her father’s as she was only a very young child at that point. Her father meanwhile, worked for the displaced Czechoslovakian government in London during the war and he was a diplomat before and after the war. Albright ties together his work and musings about their country with events in the war in an engaging and instructive way. I learnt a lot about the war, a subject which I considered myself pretty well versed in, before I read this book. But reading about the lead up to the war and the events that took place in Central Europe while Hitler aggressively moved his plans along and the Wes

Challenges: Diversity Bingo: Romance with a trans main character This book follows Amanda who used to be known as Andrew. She moves to a new school after she no longer feels safe in her old town due to an attack in a women’s bathroom. She moves from her mother’s house to her father’s and her father hasn’t really talked to her or seen her since her transition, and he struggles a little bit, but he does his best.  Amanda starts her new school and soon she finds a group of friends and a potential new boyfriend. She struggles to decide if she should tell these people her secret, but knowing who to trust is hard and trusting the wrong person can turn out to be dangerous.  I found this entire story interesting and enlightening. We see things from Amanda’s point of view and that gives us an insight into the thought processes that brought her to where she is today and her struggle trying to decide just who to trust with her secret, if anybody. I found all the characters

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo 2017: Visually impaired main character 52 Books Around the Year: A New York Times Best Seller This book is set before, during and after World War II in France and Germany. We follow two perspectives; Marie-Laure in France and Werner in Germany. Marie-Laure goes blind at a young age and her single father makes a monumental effort to teach her how to navigate her world, building her a model of their entire neighborhood to help her find her way. Meanwhile Werner lives at an orphanage dreaming of escaping the small town and the coal mines that will swallow him up as soon as he turns 15. His extraordinary capabilities with radios and mathematics gives him a ticket out, but he soon learns that that ticket comes at a heavy price. When war breaks out Marie-Laure and her father must leave Paris, and with them they bring something that will make them a target for the German forces.  This story is definitely a slow burn. I liked it, but not a whole