FUNNY STORY by Emily Henry, read by Julia Whelan
Click on the cover for my review on Goodreads.
This is my third Emily Henry book, and maybe it’s because I just finished it and the memory is still fresh, but I might love this more than Happy Place and Book Lovers.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston, read by Natalie Naudus
Click on the cover for my review on Goodreads.
AUDIOBOOK REVIEW
Chloe and Shara are both so terrible, and I love them dearly.
When Shara Wheeler disappeared after prom, her nemesis (kind of, they are fighting for valedictorian) Chloe Green (lesbian), boyfriend Smith Parker, and neighbor Rory Heron embark on a journey of tracking her down. What do they have in common? They all kissed Shara. In the small-town Christian high school run by Shara’s father, Chloe has to figure out this puzzle Shara left behind without being caught, and maybe she will find out more about Willowgrove, too.
SPIRITS ABROAD by Zen Cho, read by Emily Woo Zeller
Click on the cover for my review on Goodreads.
Because Laura loved the previous version of this book (her review), I couldn’t wait for this rerelease of Spirits Abroad. Just when I was going to preorder it, I found out that the audiobook is narrated by Emily Woo Zeller. THE Emily Woo Zeller who narrated Last Night at the Telegraph Club (my review). So I had to listen to the audiobook.
And yes, this short story collection is magnificent.
I don’t know how to review this book because there are 19 stories in it, but I’m going to talk about a few of my favorites and their hidden meanings. If you’re here for a review, I’m sorry to say this “review” would probably be more of an analysis.
EDINBURGH by Alexander Chee, read by Daniel K. Isaac, Josh Hurley
Click on the cover for my review on Goodreads.
Somewhere between a 4- and a 5-star.
The central theme of the book is pedophilia. It reminded me of the biographical movie Spotlight in the sense that both instances of church-related child molestation happened on the East Coast around the same time. Edinburgh was published the same year the original The Boston Globe’s “spotlight” team started the investigation (2001), way before the team won a Pulitzer Prize for it (2003). I picked up this book because it’s queer and Asian, and I expected it to be sad and disturbing but I didn’t know it would also be beautiful in both the writing and the perverseness of the characters.
SWIM by Eric C. Wat, read by Feodor Chin
Click on the cover for my review on Goodreads.
This book blew me away. I didn’t know what to expect when I started SWIM. That it was queer and Asian sold it for me, no questions asked. And I got so much more out of it than I could ever have imagined.
At first glance, the story felt somewhat mundane, but I happen to love fiction that shows us people’s everyday lives, no matter how unexciting, so I loved it from the start. Sometimes, I needed to remind myself that this wasn’t a memoir, because Carson Chow (周遠和; 40, gay, Hongkongese American) speaking to me in first-person made it feel like one. His family immigrated to the US from Hong Kong when he was a child, and the nuances of an immigrant family are threaded throughout the storytelling.