Thank you to Scribner, Simon and Schuster, and Netgalley for an early review copy of Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon, which will publish February 6, 2018.  All thoughts are my own.

From the publisher:

Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet.  Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation.  One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures on film a boy falling past her window to his death.  The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made.  It’s an image that could change her life…if she lets it.

But the decision to show the photograph is not easy.  The boy is her neighbors’ son, and the tragedy brings all the building’s residents together.  It especially unites Lu with his beautiful grieving mother, Kate.  As the two forge an intense bond based on sympathy, loneliness, and budding attraction, Lu feels increasingly unsettled and guilty, torn between equally fierce desires: to use the photograph to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love.

Set in early 90s Brooklyn on the brink of gentrification, Self-Portrait with Boy is a provocative commentary about the emotional dues that must be paid on the road to success, a powerful exploration of the complex terrain of female friendship, and a brilliant debut from novelist Rachel Lyon.

I have to be honest, I didn’t exactly know what I was getting into with Self-Portrait with Boy.  I was initially drawn in by the stunning cover, and I’ve been craving an artistic read since I read I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson a few years ago, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

One of the things I appreciated most about this novel was the characters.  None of them were exactly likable, and Lu was probably the biggest anti-heroine I’ve ever read, but I became invested in each character and their relationships.  They felt remarkably real; even Lu’s loft came across as a character of its own.  For me, the best kind of story is that in which the atmosphere feels essential, and Self-Portrait with Boy is definitely one of those tales.

It was difficult to adjust to the quotation-less dialogue, but once I got past it I was able to immerse myself into the story and fully enjoy it, if “enjoy” is the right word.  Self-Portrait with Boy was slow moving at first, but it eventually picked up at full speed and I found myself flying through it.

What really worked for me was the supernatural element.  Lu is haunted by the ghost of the falling boy as she struggles to decide what to do with her self-portrait, either destroy it or find a place for it in a gallery; I believed this haunting to be a manifestation of her guilt, having grown close to the boy’s mother, Kate.  It was a nice addition to the story, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.

All in all, Rachel Lyon’s debut, Self-Portrait with Boy, makes her a powerful voice to look out for.

You can find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.

Thank you to Pamela Dorman Books, Penguin Viking, and Netgalley for an early review copy of Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee, which will publish January 16, 2018.  All thoughts are my own.

From the publisher:

Two sisters- Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister’s protector; Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses are huge and, often, life changing.  When their mother dies and Lucia starts hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister.  But Lucia impetuously plows ahead, marrying a bighearted, older man only to leave him, suddenly, to have a baby with a young Latino immigrant.  She moves her new family from the States to Ecuador and back again, but the bitter constant is that she is, in fact, mentally ill.  Lucia lives life on a grand scale, until, inevitably, she crashes to earth.
 
Miranda leaves her own self-contained life in Switzerland to rescue her sister again- but only Lucia can decide whether she wants to be saved.  The bonds of sisterly devotion stretch across oceans- but what does it take to break them?
 
Told in alternating points of view, Everything Here Is Beautiful is, at its heart, the story of a young woman’s quest to find fulfillment and a life unconstrained by her illness.  But it’s also an unforgettable, gut-wrenching story of the sacrifices we make to truly love someone- and when loyalty to one’s self must prevail over all.

Everything Here is Beautiful is simply a beautiful book, inside and out.  Mira T. Lee writes with a style reminiscent of Celeste Ng and Hanya Yanagihara; she clearly knows how to craft a story.  The book is told from multiple points of view, including the two sisters, Miranda and Lucia, as well as Lucia’s husband Yonah and later her boyfriend Manuel.  Lee changes her writing style according to the character- she jumps from short, abrupt sentences, to long, flowery ones.  She even changes between first and third person at several points during the novel, which is a pet peeve of mine and normally seems too stylistic, but here it’s smooth and successful.

At its heart, Everything Here is Beautiful is about the sisterhood between Miranda, the hardworking and reliable older sister, who is seven years senior to her younger counterpart Lucia, the energetic, enigmatic one of the pair.  Miranda has always acted as Lucia’s caretaker, from their immigration to America to their mother’s death to Lucia’s battle with mental illness; Miranda feels haunted by the promise she made to her mother before she died, that she would always look after her baby sister.  In a way, Lucia almost resents Miranda for this, and the seemingly perfect life she has with her husband in Switzerland.  It’s a complicated relationship, both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

Mira T. Lee’s debut novel Everything Here is Beautiful is eye-opening, introspective, and moving.  The portrayal of Lucia’s illness, a complicated combination of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and manic disorder, is alarmingly accurate, and Lee handles mental illness as a real health problem without being too preachy.  The themes of sisterhood and mental illness lie at the forefront of the story, but Everything Here is Beautiful is also about immigration and the struggle to obtain a green card in America.  With these major themes, Lee packs a lot into one novel, but it never seems like too much.

Mira T. Lee is definitely an author to look out for, as Everything Here is Beautiful might just make my 2018 favorites list!

You can find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for an early review copy of The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin, which will publish February 13, 2018.  All thoughts are my own.

From the publisher:

Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early twenties, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school.  Now they’re happily married wives and mothers with successful careers- Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon.  Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.

As chief resident, Nick Xenokostas was the center of Zadie’s life- both professionally and personally- throughout a tragic chain of events in her third year of medical school that she has long since put behind her.  Nick’s unexpected reappearance during a time of new professional crisis shocks both women into a deeper look at the difficult choices they made at the beginning of their careers.  As it becomes evident that Emma must have known more than she revealed about circumstances that nearly derailed both their lives, Zadie starts to question everything she thought she knew about her closest friend.

Kimmery Martin’s charming debut, The Queen of Hearts, has been pitched as Grey’s Anatomy meets Big Little Lies, a statement that could not be more accurate.  It’s a smart, sweet, and witty novel about friendship and forgiveness, with emergency room trauma at the center of it all.

The Queen of Hearts is real and refreshing, but it has its faults.  One thing that stuck out to me immediately was Martin’s overuse of SAT vocabulary, which made for awkward language and broke the flow between sentences.  The pretentious-sounding diction didn’t mesh well with the otherwise not-so-pretentious story, and the story itself is full of predictable plot twists.  Not only that, but Martin jumps right into it, which may be a great strategy to captivate the audience, but it severely hindered the character development.  I found that by the end of the novel, after all the major events had happened, I didn’t exactly care about the characters and their tragedies.  Perhaps I am just spoiled by long, character-driven novels in which there is nothing but pages and pages of development.

However, what The Queen of Hearts lacks in style and strategy, it makes up for in humor.  Martin writes dialogue-heavy prose that’s sure to make you laugh out loud at least a few times, most likely due to Zadie’s interactions with her three year-old daughter Delaney.  The Queen of Hearts is light and airy, and a quick, easy read; I devoured its entirety in just a few hours.  It’s a perfect book to pull you out of a reading slump.

Fans of medical dramas like Grey’s Anatomy will fall in love with The Queen of Hearts.

You can find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.