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It's the destination and the journey.

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Book Review- Emily Layden's All Girls

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Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a copy of Emily Layden’s novel, All Girls, in exchange for an honest review.

When a scandal from 1995 surfaces and threatens to damage the reputation of Atwater, a prestigious all-girls boarding school in Connecticut, the current students are left wondering who they should trust. All Girls is set during a single school year and each chapter focuses on a different student, high school girls with different dreams and personalities, all trying to navigate the complications of adolescence.

As the girls are being dropped off at Atwater in the fall, they encounter a series of yard signs alerting them to a rapist living on campus. In 1995, a student named Karen Mirro was raped by a teacher and subsequently expelled from Atwater based on an unrelated incident, with no repercussions for the rapist. Now in her late thirties, Mirro has brought a lawsuit against Atwater, and although none of the students firmly know which of their teachers is a rapist, the rumors run rampant and distrust is high.

The school year proceeds with its usual traditions and events, as the administration struggles to keep the lawsuit on the down-low, including none of the staff being removed from their positions. The student paper tries to publish an edition regarding sexual assault and they are barred. Just as the signs mysteriously appear, so do other reminders of the case, such as flyers and unusual artwork. Atwater is awash in the mysterious identity of both the rapist and the person calling attention to Mirro’s case. But even more, the girls all worry if their beloved school, which is steeped in their identity, would protect them if they were in Mirro’s shoes?

I was initially drawn to All Girls because the blurb likened it to one of my all-time favorite novels, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. I can see the reasons for the comparisons, but All Girls was especially timely due to recent revelations about my high school years.

I graduated from a prestigious arts high school in 1995 and during my time in school, I did not realize boundaries that were being crossed between teachers and students. Sure, I saw things that seemed borderline inappropriate, but like Layden’s characters, when you are a teen, sometimes the lines are very blurry. Since graduating, I have heard stories from close friends of very, very inappropriate behavior towards them from some of our male teachers. More than one story, more than one teacher, and certainly more than one female student being affected. It hurts to realize this was happening and that friends were hurting in silence.

All Girls highlights an issue that has been raised recently among my friends, that there has been a shift in the current generation. Mirro was of my generation, which now I realize, we didn’t feel that we had the ability to speak up. She files the lawsuit decades later, because now, during the “me too” movement, she feels like she has a voice. The current Atwater students may still have some uncertainties regarding boundaries and inappropriate behavior, yet they are also raised during a time when they know the power of their own voices. They know that it is vital to hold Atwater accountable for protecting its students.

Layden’s novel took me right back to my teen years, not that I attended a boarding school or grewup with social media, yet the teen emotions were similar. I enjoyed how she framed the novel with focusing on a different student for each chapter and how the book took us through a single school year. I liked having different voices tell their experiences of Atwater and Mirro.

I’m in my early 40’s, and I feel that hindsight gives me a different perspective then if I had read All Girls during my teen years. I have a stepdaughter who will soon turn fourteen, and I couldn’t help but see her in a few of the younger characters, particularly cringing with some of the cruelties that the girls inflict upon each other, hoping that she will make true friends and that her “bad decisions” are mild.

All Girls is poignant and beautifully written. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading Layden’s future works.

tags: All Girls, All Girls Book Review, All Girls Emily Layden, Emily Layden Author, St. Martin's Press, NetGalley, Novels About Rape, Novels About Boarding Schools, Like Prep, Like Curtis Sittenfeld, Novels About Teacher Student Relationships, Novels About Teacher Misconduct, Novels About Scandals, Karen Mirro Character, Novels About All-Girls School, Novels Set in Connecticut, Novels About Teenager Girls, Teenage Girl's Perpective, Teenagers in the 90's, Best Novels 2021, Novels About MeToo Movement, Sexual Assault in the 90's, Traditions in Prep Schools, Atwater All Girls
categories: Book Review, Read
Tuesday 05.25.21
Posted by Karen Lea Germain
 

Book Review- Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge for providing me with a free copy of Sarah Gailey’s novel, The Echo Wife, in exchange for an honest review.

Evelyn, a scientist who is a pioneer in the field of cloning, is married to her job. Her dedication and singular focus is so fierce, that she is blindsided when her husband, Nathan, asks for a divorce. Soon after they begin to live separate lives, Evelyn discovers that Nathan, a fellow, albeit somewhat lazy scientist, has been stealing Evelyn’s work for very personal reasons. Nathan has created, Martine, a clone of Evelyn.

Even more shocking, Martine is pregnant, giving Nathan the one thing that Evelyn denied him; a baby. Theoretically, Martine’s pregnancy should be impossible and morally, it is dubious, as Nathan programed Martine to both be compliant and to have strong desires for a baby. Should a clone have the same rights as humans, and if so, does this pregnancy violate Martine’s rights?

The existence of Martine threatens to damage Evelyn’s credibility and research funding. The threat level is dramatically increased when Martine calls Evelyn in desperation, asking for help that only Evelyn can provide. When Evelyn and Martine connect, they begin to unravel the depth of Nathan’s deceit and Evelyn begins to question what it means to be human.

I throughly enjoyed The Echo Wife. Admittedly, early on, I thought, “Oh, I know where this story is going,” but I couldn't have been more wrong. It’s surprising and fresh. Set in the near future, the plot has shades of West World, Black Mirror, The Stepford Wives, Frankenstein, and Ex Machina.

The story is sharp and fast-paced like a thriller, yet it is dotted with questions that make you consider what it means to be human or what is the morality of creating a life? Is a clone life the same as human life and do clones have agency? Should they have agency? When Evelyn is confronted with interacting with a clone in a real world setting, she has difficulty in seeing her life’s work as just science experiments. She is surprised by how Martine interacts with the world, sometimes against her programing.

Gailey’s characters are engaging, especially Evelyn, as The Echo Wife is told from her first-person perspective. Gailey does an excellent job at scene setting, in particular the laboratory scenes where she is describing the process of creating a clone. Several scenes in The Echo Wife are quite graphic and hard to stomach, but they are not gratuitous. They serve to build the greater story and play into the theme of humanity.

I was also surprised to discover that The Echo Wife is a kick-ass feminist story. Evelyn and Martine are strong women. Martine was created to be a sweet, “Stepford Wife” for Nathan, but that is certainly not where she views her destiny. Evelyn, as strong as she is in many ways, also admits a prior weakness for Nathan and a jealousy towards Martine. The arc of the story sees her handling these emotions and learning what it means to be both a better scientist and a better person.

I can’t praise The Echo Wife enough. Gailey is a “new to me” author and I look forward to reading her other books!

tags: Like The Stepford Wives, Like Black Mirror, The Echo Wife Book Review, Sarah Gailey Author, The Echo Wife Sarah Gailey, Books About Human Cloning, Ethics of Human Cloning, Should Humans Be Cloned, Novels About Clones, Novels About Divorce, Novels About Abusive Relationships, Macmillian Books, Tor Books, Forge books, NetGalley, Novels About Pregnancy, The Echo Wife Sarah Gailey Review, Domestic Science Fiction, Near Future Science Fiction, Best Novels 2021, Novels About Revenge, Stories Like Ex Machina, Field of Human Cloning, What does it mean to be human, Like Frankenstein, Like West World, New Author Discovery
categories: Read
Tuesday 05.11.21
Posted by Karen Lea Germain
 

Book Review- Melissa Broder's Milk Fed

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Thank you to Scribner for providing me with a copy of Melissa Broder’s novel, Milk Fed, in exchange for an honest review.

Rachel is in her mid-twenties and living the fast life in Hollywood, California. She works for a talent agency by day and moonlights as a stand-up comedian with a weekly gig. However, Rachel’s primary job is her all-consuming obsession with staying skinny. Her life is ruled by a sadistic exercise and calorie restriction routine. This singular focus leads to not only incredible unhappiness, but also isolation, as she prefers to eat alone and fears social events due to food.

Rachel’s life changes when she meets Miriam. Miriam is the daughter of the owners of a frozen yogurt shop that Rachel frequents. It may seem contradictory, but Rachel has a sweet-tooth and she has worked out the exact order size/combo of a low-fat frozen yogurt that gives her a treat that doesn’t kill her calorie count. Previously, Rachel had only met Miriam’s brother, who was precise with Rachel’s yogurt order, no questions asked. Miriam not only dares to question Rachel’s order, but pushes her to try a different, calorific combination. Rachel caves and indulges.

This experience sends Rachel into a spiral of overconsumption as she lets go and experiences all of the food pleasures that she had been denying herself for so long. She also becomes infatuated with Miriam, who is seemingly innocent and inexperienced.

The two women are polar opposites. Miriam is from a strict and observant Jewish family, while Rachel is lapsed in her Jewish faith. Miriam is tightly bonded with her parents, while Rachel’s parental situation is beyond complicated. Physically, Miriam is overweight, living in a body that Rachel fears. Yet, despite their different lives, there is a mutual sexual attraction. Will Rachel learn to love herself? Will a new romance with the magnetic Miriam change Rachel’s perspective?

Milk Fed is a force of a novel, a lightening-fast read that I found impossible to put down. The primary question of the story is whether or not someone has the guts to live their authentic life. When we first meet Rachel, she is an absolute mess, which goes far beyond her eating disorder. Rachel is desperate for validation. The relationship that she has with her mother is so toxic ( including childhood weight related trauma) that Rachel’s therapist encourages Rachel to take a detox from her mom, which involves a temporary cut in contact. This might have worked, except for Rachel has latched on to a “mother substitute” in a friendship that she has with an older coworker, a woman who constantly praises Rachel’s methods of depriving herself. It might be even more messed up than Rachel’s relationship with her real mother.

On the surface, Miriam seems to be happy in her own skin. She indulges in the things she enjoys and she is open about the love she has for her own family. She has qualities that Rachel so desperately wants. However, what Rachel initially mistakes for innocence, is actually fear and repression. Miriam knows that the only way to remain in her family is to follow expectations. She must eventually marry a man and bear children. She cannot have a future with Rachel, without being rejected by her family. In Miriam’s eyes, she sees the ease in which Rachel can love another woman and wishes that she could be more like Rachel. Miriam sees freedom in Rachel’s life.

In Miriam and Rachel, Broder has create two strong and complex women. Rachel’s journey is inspiring and the story ends on the right note, a realistic note.

There are magical and dream elements in Milk Fed,and many times, I stopped to admire Broder’s vivid descriptions and lush prose. I felt mixed emotions with the love story aspect. I’m a heterosexual, middle-aged married woman who does not have very much experience reading erotica. I may be off-base, but I would define large sections of Milk Fed as erotica. It was steamy. I don’t want to offend Broder with the comparison, but the erotic scenes in Milk Fed, were what I was hyped-up to expect the much milder, Fifty Shades of Grey to be.

To be clear, there are no comparisons at all between these two novels!

That said, I did not find the erotic sections to be very stimulating, but I suspect that comes down to personal taste. I found the romantic moments, where they were testing the waters to be very sensual and sexy. For example, when Rachel first holds Miriam’s hand in a movie theatre or when she helps Miriam put on lipstick. These awkward moments when neither woman can admit to their desire, yet the desire is palpable, were intense. I think this is where I responded because I prefer the intimacy of the indirect, uncertain moments early on, to the blatant erotic images. When I mentioned personal taste above, I’m speaking more to this, rather than the fact that I’m heterosexual. I think think anyone can appreciate and embrace a great love story or sex scene no matter their orientation.

Milk Fed is an original story involving the various things we can long for in our lives, especially relationships, both with others and ourselves. Although, thankfully, I cannot relate to Rachel’s myriad of troubles, I can relate to her quest to live her authentic life. I felt empathy for Rachel and Miriam, ultimately rooting for both of them to choose the life that will bring them happiness.

tags: Melissa Broder Author, Milk Fed Melissa Broder, Milk Fed Book Review, Novels Set in Los Angeles, Novels about Stand-up Comics, Novels About Anorexics, Novels About Eating Disorders, Novels with Lesbians, Novels with LGBTQ Characters, Novels About Religious Families, Novels About the Jewish Faith, Novels About Mothering, Novels About Learning to be Yourself, Novels with Characters who Transform, Novels About Daring to be Yourself, Erotic Novels 2021, Best Novels 2021, Shocking Novels 2021, Sensual Novels 2021, Novels About Dating in Los Angeles, Erotic Novels, What do you Find Erotic in A Novel, Novels with Magical Elements, Novels About Choosing Your Life, Scriber, NetGalley, Book Review 2021, Book Blogger, Like Fifty Shades of Grey
categories: Read
Thursday 04.15.21
Posted by Karen Lea Germain
 
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