All about the books we love

Blade Girl 1 by Narumi Shigematsu

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I needed something for Popsugar's run club challenge and found this (so it's not my genre, keep that in mind). I think this is well drawn and has the best of intentions. Rin is a young woman who has lost her leg to osteosarcoma (a common childhood cancer) and is naturally depressed, thinking about all the things she'll never be able to do like other girls her age because of the prosthesis she has no interest in learning to use.

Her physical therapists, in an attempt to get her to engage and heal, introduce her to other kids her age in the same situation who are part of the amputee blade run club. And within minutes she's enthralled with the blade prosthesis (setting aside this is not how depression works or amputation recovery either of which I can speak to since I was a foot/ankle surgeon who had to help patients with this in my practice) but okay we need to get her engaged.

Rin is determined to run.

Kazami, whose lab this is, is determined to use that. He needs to get a runner into the paraolympics in order to keep his job because the company doesn't see the point in the blades because they're more expensive to produce.

So this is a lot of let's train to run and then run and fail and run again (honestly a lot like the typical shonen fight type of manga of train fail train harder which inevitable bores me) It's not my thing but it wasn't bad.



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The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake by Rachel Linden

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In full disclosure, I have no idea why I requested this from Netgalley and feel a bit guilty because it should have gone to someone who likes contemporary romance. I do not. I think it was the Italian setting (I've been getting into my roots lately) or the magic realism of the cookbook.

The blurb basically gives away most of the plot so I don't need to go over much of that. Jules leaves in a small apartment with her friend Drew and since Covid they've been making cooking videos, her cooking vintage recipes and him dancing in the background but when the tv show producers want only him, her dreams are dashed. To top it over her cookbook publisher wants their 10K advance back if she doesn't deliver on the recipes (they hated their first attempt and I'm SO eyeing that advance. While I never wrote a cookbook I can tell you my publisher never offered me an advance like that, perils of indie publishing I suppose)

Heartbroken, Jules' day gets worse when her overbearing mother wants her to take her half sister, Alex to Italy for the summer to visit Jules' nonna, who is not Alessandra's grandmother as she's a half sister Jules never bothered to get to know (Her mom should never have had one child let alone three). In fact my favorite moment is when Jules introduces Nonna Bruna to Alex calling her a half sister and Bruna verbally slaps her about it.

Jules has reasons for not going to Italy, her father, Bruna's son, died in Lake Garda there but she wants Nonna's recipes to save the day. Naturally she runs into her first love Nicolo, now a lawyer turned olive farmer who is trying to save the family olive farm. And weirdly enough Nonna's cookbook only shows one recipe at a time, whatever one you need most to make your heart's desire to come true that day. And of course the farm is in financial trouble too and needs new caretaker as Nonna and her brother in law Lorenzo too old at this point.

Not going to lie. I was going to give this a weak four star because I'm so out of my genre and that's not the book's fault. It's mine. However, I realized it wasn't the romance or the contemporary setting I didn't like much. It's Jules herself. Loved her sister and Nonna but Jules left me very meh and let me tell you why.

Let's start with money. Jules needs 10K back if she fails at the cookbook. Nonna needs money. But you can NOT keep crying poor if you give Jules not one, but two rich relatives. Mom's second husband is a blindingly rich surgeon but I can see why you wouldn't ask her for money. Jules' sister with the farm and six kids is married to a tech bro millionaire. While you can say there is no reason Sis should bail Jules out (how about nonna? Does she not care about her?) there is NO mention of Jules even thinking to ask. I got to the 50% mark and it never occurs to her to bring it up to her sister. Never occurs to her to ask her boutique farming sister how to work a farm in order to help nonna (and don't get me started on the whole flowy dress, picture perfect sister while working the farm. I've done this work and that doesn't fly). Just a simple sentence or two about why she doesn't want to ask her family for money to help would have helped but as is it's like how foolish are you to not ask your rich sister/mother for help?

Jules is incredibly selfish especially where Alessandra is concerned. So yes, I can see why she'd be upset about how her gold digging mother left her dad and remarried but that's not the girl's fault (and yes of course, this does happen in the real world) Jules' reason for being so indifferent to Alex is when Jules had to live with her stepdad and half sister after dad passed when she was 16 was Alex didn't bond with her. The girl was 2. Jules has been carrying a decade long grudge because a two year old didn't react the way she wanted her to. And she keeps being rather awful to her, making it clear Alex is a burden (until she realizes Alex's TikTok and photography savvy will help her career)

And Jules really makes zero character growth and has little agency until like the last 20% of the novel after everyone basically knocks sense into her (Nonna, Nicolo and Alex) after they're all fed up with her. The whole ending really is not her idea (it's Alex who comes through there) and while I'm not sure telling the world about this cookbook was smart, I was also disappointed in the idea that she had to choose Italy or LA. It's not like you shoot cooking shows 365. Never occurs to her to spent a month or two in LA and live in Italy....

I wanted so much more out of Jules and never got it. Notice I haven't mentioned Nicolo, mostly because he's stock romance love interest and in the days between me finishing this and me sitting down to review it, I've forgotten most of his scenes.



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ブルーロック-EPISODE 凪- 1 [Blue Lock: Episode Nagi 1] by Kota Sannomiya

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was not much of a fan but rated it a bit higher to offset the fact I could care less about soccer manga (I'm reading this for a reading challenge prompt) so maybe it's better than I think. It's hard to argue with the success of Blue Lock that this is spun off of. That said both boys were highly irritating to me.

Both are h.s. students. Reo is a wealthy student who doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps. He wants to be a soccer star and has decided that Nagi is a prodigy and drags him along for the sake of his own dream. How he's decided this I have no idea. Nagi's only goals are to nap and play video games. He thinks even eating is too much of a chore. He's goal less and doesn't seem to be the brightest of bulbs.

Reo is, of course, right about Nagi's abilities (how? It's anyone's guess). Reo's father aims to squash his son's dreams and sets up a team of bruisers for Reo's newly formed soccer club to face and you can imagine how this goes. Reo and Nagi are unstoppable.

They're recruited for the Blue Lock program and you get to suffer through tedious speeches about them becoming the best striker in all of Japan (the one hint we have that Nagi knows what's going on, he correctly assesses it as he and Reo will eventually have to turn on each other). The Blue Lock program puts them through a weird challenge that Nagi wants to fail out of (so you do have to feel a little sorry for him. He's being forced into this) but Reo won't let him.

Obviously I'm in the minority of not enjoying this much and if you liked the original series you'll probably like this. At least the art is very nice.



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K-pop Confidential by Stephan Lee

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I probably should have rated it higher but it wasn't a book I enjoyed that much. That is no fault of the author. I didn't think this was badly written at all. It was the subject matter. To be fair, if not for the popsugar K-pop challenge, I would never have read this. I love music but these days I listen without watching (what a difference from my teen years) so the whole pop icon aesthetic is lost on me and I was never one to lose it over entertainers.

Candace Park, a Korean-American girl living in New Jersey has always wanted to be a singer. She was tiger mommed into the viola instead but with the encouragement of her two friends she auditions for S.A.Y. one of the biggest K-pop companies who produces one of Candace's fave's SKL and their front man One.J. Surprising no one but Candace she's selected as a trainee (and I think that might be one of my issues with the book, we know how this is all going to play out from the get go)

Candace and her mother go to Korea for her training and that's the rest of the book. It's part training, part cut your throat competition to find out which girls from the multiple teams will be part of S.A.Y.'s first all girl band. You don't find out til the last chapter.

And here come the warnings: fat phobia and forced unhealthy eating habits, colorism (you have to be dead white apparently), misogyny (the guys get away with far more than the girls), forced solitude (the idols must appear free to date for the fans) , mental trauma, physical trauma, bullying, gas lighting.

So it's a few hundred pages of watching young people being tormented. They're not allowed more than 4 hours sleep for weeks, insane, unhealthy food restrictions reinforced for the girls with a clear glass gender barrier in the hopes girls will eat next to nothing is boys are watching, being constantly bullied and gas lighted by adults.

At the end of this, my only thought was if any of this is even remotely close to the truth (and I would not be surprised) I couldn't in good conscience even listen to K-pop and contribute to this sort of treatment. The weird thing is I know other groups are similarly hard, like figure skating, ballet and a plethora of sports but somehow this is worse and I think it's because in my head it should be about the music. If you have a beautiful voice, you should be able to take a stage as an icon regardless of your size. Maybe because it reinforces unrealistic expectations of women that I was so bothered. I can't really say but all I know is I felt unhappy after reading this and would have respected it more if Candace had given them the finger and walked off.



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The Golden Hour by Niki Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I generally don't read contemporary stuff but the cover of this graphic novel caught my eye. Manuel was a witness to gun violence in his school and understandably has PTSD and anxiety as a result. As life at school goes back to something akin to normal, he's put into a group project with two other students he doesn't really know, Sebastian and Caysha.

Manuel's therapist has given him the idea of grounding himself by finding 'anchors' whenever his anxiety/PTSD is spiking. He finds his in taking cell phone photos. As he gets to know Sebastian and Caysha he begins to open up. Like him, Caysha is a townie but she does raise fancy chickens out at her grandmother's place. Sebastian is pure Kansas cowboy material and is given a newborn calf to hand raise.

Spending more and more time with these two helps Manuel to begin to heal. Credit where credit is due, this is not some magical elixir. Manuel has his bad moments (one of which is a turning point in the story) But getting involved with them and in the ag club (a 4-H clone), he begins to find solace and friends. There is something sweet and wholesome about this friendship. Honestly though, if the blurb didn't say first love, I might have missed it. I think there's a kiss (as I sit there squinting at it) so it's subtle.

I was a tiny bit disappointed in Mom, not that she's overprotective. That's understandable. It's that she didn't listen to Manuel when he needed her to (and that is addressed in the story with this faint broken inking that was the chef's kiss). The art is great and does a wonderful job of capturing the derealization Manuel undergoes when he's having an episode. I will need to find more from both this author and the artist.



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A Silent Voice, Vol. 1 by Yoshitoki Oima

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've wanted to read this one for years but haven't mostly because I'm not one for contemporary fiction. However this one had themes I wanted to see how they handled them (deafness, school bullying) and the library had it so I picked it up.

Shoya and his two buddies are straight up little brats always in dangerous trouble. We first meet them as they're leaping off a high bridge into the river (technically we see Shoya first six years after the main action as this volume is done in a story frame style). He's bored and without direction. What little we see of his home life, his mother is always working (and making excuses for him, being very permissive of his behavior), dad's nowhere to be seen and his sister is only seen as a pair of legs in her room with a revolving cast of boyfriends. He's acting out to stave off boredom and he's self aware of that. He has no interest in school.

Enter Shoko a deaf girl who communicates with a tablet (paper tablet given this was written almost 15 years ago now) Shoya finds himself a new, easy target, especially since she just takes the abuse without complaint. Shoya is a nasty little brat but to be fair, so's the rest of the class. They egg him on. They take active part in the bullying. They do their own bullying. The teacher knows about it and turns a blind eye.

It escalates to a costly episode (literally given the expense of her hearing aids) where everyone leaves Shoya hanging. They make him the lone culprit in the bullying when a school higher up shows up to see what's been happening. He calls them out, including the teacher to no avail. Shoya is now isolated and abused himself. While it's hard to have too much sympathy for him, it wasn't fair for him alone to be punished and he knows it.

What happens afterward is done rather masterfully. We see glimpses of the next six years after Shoko has left the school. Shoya remains ostracized. We see his depression, isolation and the desire to strike out. We're primed to see a young man either kill himself or turn into a school shooter (well if we were in America we would be) He goes from resentful to blandly accepting of his fate.

And then Shoko reenters his life and there ends volume one. In many ways this is a hard point of view character to get behind because he's the author of his own misery. What makes him interesting is that he does understand why things are the way they are. Can he or will he change? Should he be forgiven? Will he continue to lash out? As someone who had been mercilessly bullied in high school, I find myself asking, what could those bullies do to earn my forgiveness (it's been nearly 40 years so I'm thinking the answer is nothing but then again they never tried) It'll be interesting to see what happens next.



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聲の形 2 [Koe no Katachi 2] by Yoshitoki Oima

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was exactly what I was hoping for. No easy answers. We finally get to see Shoya attempt to make up for his bullying but it isn't (nor should it be) easy. It's six years later. Shoya is still friendless (and content warning, suicidal planning and suicidal ideation is discussed) . There is a wonderful artistic choice in this. Shoya sees the students around him with Xs over their faces, showing his isolation.

His attempts to apologize to Shoko is thwarted by himself, by her mother and by her highly protective little sister (whom Shoya mistakes as a boy). No one even wants him to attempt to talk to her because of the damage he's done but we catch glimpses of who Shoya is growing into.

For one, he's not as dumb as he comes off in the first volume. He has taken on sign language in hopes of one day he might be able to talk to Shoko in her language. He accepts his isolation and anything her family can throw at him as his due. (and without spoilers, it's a lot, like prosecutable a lot)

Again, no easy answers here but an act of kindness on Shoya's part nets him a new friend, another isolated young man (who is frankly weird and distracting). I forgot to mention in my other review, the art in this is fantastic as well.



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Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've been hearing about this for years now and when I saw the library had it, I needed it. I wasn't sure I'd like a contemporary story about hockey players but you have to give it props for being the highest funded crowd funded webtoon.

Bitty is down right cute as hell. Eric Bittle formerly of Georgie is more figure skater than hockey but he makes the Samwell hockey team. A tiny boy (Bitty is a good name for him), Bittle lives in fear of being checked by the much more brawny players so much so he's barely non functional on the ice.

This covers his first two years on the team with all his other players, Shitty, Ransom and Holster (nicknames are a thing here) and Jack Zimmermann who is sort of hockey royalty, his dad a pro legend. Jack is the only one without a nickname.

Most of the story is told through Bitty's eyes and more often than not his vlog on baking. The boy can't stop baking his team pies. Bitty is openly gay now that's up north and feeling more able to be himself in college than he could in high school (a feeling a lot of us will jive with).

This omnibus comes with a bunch of afters like illustrated hockey terms and pages upon pages of Bitty's tweets, all of which are every bit as much fun as the comic itself. I loved it. The art is fun. the story is sweet as Bitty's pies. I want the next volume.

The only thing that fell a little flat for me is Jack himself. I didn't see in him what Bitty does. He's very reserved and laconic which means he doesn't really get to say much and it's harder to connect with him. His saving grace is his concern for Bitty and trying to help him past his mental blocks about being checked because if he doesn't he'll be cut from the team, lose his scholarship and probably won't be able to continue at Samwell. Bitty is a sweetheart of a character and you just don't want to see him (or his oven) hurt. Looking forward to more.



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The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


There was such a gentle sweetness to this graphic novel. Tiến is a young boy of immigrant parents who shares something very special with his mother, the way they tell fairy tales to each other. It embodies their time together and their hopes but Tiến has a secret and he doesn't have the language with which to tell his parents. He doesn't know it in Vietnamese and isn't sure his parents would grasp it in English.

But really it is more than that. Tiến is a young boy struggling with the idea of coming out to his parents. He's naturally afraid of what could happen. This is playing out against the background of his grandmother (back in Viet Nam) getting more and more ill and his mother's worries over her.

I loved the subtle ways the fairy tales change their narrative to fit what Mother and Son need to say to one another. (I mean how many different endings have you seen for the Little Mermaid?) It's very inventive and there is a nice mix of western folk tales and Vietnamese.

Tiến's friends are very special too. The teachers are his school are much less so.

The art is lush and lovely. My only quibbles with the book are that dad is so minor a character he could almost not be there and that Mom is drawn so young looking I thought she was a kid at first but those are little things. It was a lovely read.



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Nights with a Cat, Vol. 1 by kyuryuZ

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


You don't hear me say this often (probably because I don't normally read this sort of thing) but this manga is just so cute and wholesome, like a warm cup of cocoa. It reads like it was a web comic once (and from the afterword I gather that is pretty much is). Fuuta-kun lets his sister P-chan move in with him and she brings a cat.

We rarely see her. It's her cat, Kyuruga who is the star. Fuuta has never lived with a cat or even touched one until Kyuruga moves in and he is absolutely taken with the cat (that's it that's the plot. Cats are weird and we adore them).

The stories are micro-slices of life with cats and I'm there for it. The art is simplistic which often doesn't work for me but it does here (Fuuta for instance only has eyes and no other facial features) The art has nice clean lines and Kyuruga's expressions dominate it.

It's just a sweet relaxing read for cat lovers.



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