Hi guys! How are you? I hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend! A couple of weeks ago I did a post of 5 star predictions and now that I’ve read them all, it’s time to take a look and see how accurate my guesses turned out to be:
The Word for Woman is Wilderness by Abi Andrews
This was the first 5 star prediction I picked up and I had a good feeling about it right from the start. It follows a young woman who’s fed up with the lack of female led wilderness narratives and travels to Alaska to make a documentary about about her own experience in te wild. It touches on so many topics I’m interested in such as: feminism, nature, wildlife, space-travel, cetaceans, first nations cultures, the myth of the mountain man… But despite my interest in all these themes, the protagonist’s philosophical musings eventually overshadowed the rest of the narrative to the point where I struggled to stay invested in Erin’s journey toward the end.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Pride by Ibi Zoboi
The next book I picked up was Pride, a modern remix of Pride and Prejudice set in Bushwick, with a Haitian-Dominican protagonist. There was plenty of things I liked about this book, the family dynamics, the strong sense of place and community, the themes of gentrification, race, class and education. But while I felt Zuri’s love for her sisters, her neighborhood, her poetry, even for Howard University – I didn’t feel the love between her and Darius at all. Usually that wouldn’t bother me, I don’t think romance is the be-all and end-al of a book. But since Pride and Predjudice is one of literature’s greatest love stories, I do think a retelling should have a compelling romance at it’s core.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland
I was so charmed by this book’s opening chapters, in which the protagonist finds a lost book of poems on the sidewalk and puts a found-poster up in the window of the bookstore she works in. A poet wearing mismatched doc’s comes in to claim it and she scolds him for being careless with his books. Basically it was the perfect set up for a slightly quirky rom-com set in a bookstore, but that’s not what this book is. It reads like a feel-good story, but deals with heavy topics which I felt could’ve been explored with more nuance. I enjoyed this, but I couldn’t get over the tone of the book not matching the subject matter.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Milkman by Anna Burns
Milkman is a coming of age story set in Belfast during the troubles. It’s told in a stream of consciousnesses from the point of view of an 18 year old girl who’s being stalked by the milkman, a republic terrorist with high standing in her community and trying to navigate this while the whole community assumes they’re having an affair. That might sound straightforward enough, but it’s not. This book is strange, challenging, original, dark, frustrating, dense, brilliant, claustrophobic and very funny. There’s no names in it, people are referred to as their part in the story. There’s middle sister (the protagonist), her ma, wee sisters, maybe boyfriend, the milkman (of course), the real milkman, Somebody McSomebody, as so on. It’s not the easiest read, but it’s worth the effort.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Vasilisa the Wise and Other Tales of Brave Young Women by Kate Forsyth and Lorena Carrington
My final 5 star prediction was this book of fairytale retellings. Each story’s been chosen for it’s brave, clever heroine and I think that’s a fantastic premise. The stories themselves are beautifully written, but stick very close to the original stories (at least the ones I know do) Forsyth expands upon, rather then re-imagines, the source material and she does so beautifully. By giving depth and complexity to characters most often portrayed as fairytale archetypes and adding richness of detail to the backdrops, she bring these stories to radiant new life. This is a wonderful book of fairytales and Carrington’s photographic illustration are truly stunning, but personally I prefer less faithful retellings.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Conclusion
Well, I think in conclusion we can all agree I suck at this. I have no idea what books I’ll love and I should probably make someone else pick my books for me cause I have no idea what I’m doing. To be fair I did really, really like 4/5 of these. But still, only one was a 5-star read.
I have Pride on my TBR for December, so I’ll be interested to see what I’ll think of it. And I hadn’t heard of Vasilisa the Wise, but I love fairy tale retellings, so I’m definitely interested. Btw, I’m also terrible at predicting what I’ll rate 5 stars 😂
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I love fairytale retellings too! I hope you enjoy Pride, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it! And I’m happy to hear I’m not only one who’s really bad at this 😂
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SO happy to see that Milkman was your 5 star read! What a brilliant book that was.
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I’m so happy your review pushed me to pick it up! It was a wonderful read, challenging in the best way possible.
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I’m glad you liked most of these and that one of them was five stars! I’m not that great at predicting either, I two-starred a five star prediction a few weeks ago.
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Thank you, I’m glad too! Sometimes covers and blurbs can be so deceiving.
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At least there weren’t 1 and 2 stars! 😀
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True! 😊
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I think 4 star rating is still a fairly high rating. I would be happy with that pick despite not being quite the 5. 😊
I do like the sound of The Word for Woman is Wilderness as well as Vasilisa the Wise. I am making a note to check those out! 😊👌
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this has me SUPER excited for pride, it sounds like such a FUN book and i cant wait to see how it goes. im glad to see that they all turned out pretty well!! good job on your predictions!
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Thank you so much! I really hope you love Pride, it’s a very fun read 😊
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I love this post! I did a 5-star prediction post too, but I haven’t read the books on it yet… Oops. Milkman sounds like such an intriguing read, I think I’ll add it to my to-read list.
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Thank you so much! I’m surprised I got through these so fast, I’m usually such a mood reader. Milkman’s the most interesting reading experience I’ve had in a while, I hope you enjoy it!
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Event though you think you suck, I have to say I think you were pretty successful! I know I wouldn’t do this well for sure guessing 5 star reads 😂
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Haha, thank you Carly! You should try it sometime 😉
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Awesome!! I love reading these update posts!! The word for woman is wilderness sounds great overall- definitely sounds fair as to why it wasn’t a 5* read. That’s kind of disappointing that it was harder to invest in the romance in Pride- cos like you said the original is one of the greatest romances ever written. So glad Milkman was 5 star though! Great post!
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