I’ve been in a funk lately, so please keep that in mind while reading my moody reviews! 

[26] Call the Canaries Home by Laura Barrow
Fiction/Women, Amazon First Reads buddy read with Courtney, read on Kindle

Synopsis: Three estranged sisters reunite in their rural south hometown to dig up a time capsule from twenty-five years ago, and hope the contents will give them clues to the childhood disappearance of their sister.

Review: That premise sounds interesting, right? Well, it’s not. This book is a slow burn that goes nowhere. It needed more character development or more plot, and we got neither.  I kept reading it thinking “surely this will go somewhere! The missing sister is going to be more of the plot!” And no. We get glimpses of their challenging upbringing with notes about how hard it was but not many examples of how or why, other than knowing their mom died, their dad pretty much abandoned them, and they lived with their hoarder grandmother.

Themes that would have been more interesting to dive into:

• What is means to be born a twin, but lose your twin sister at a young age and struggle with that your whole life (i.e. feeling incomplete, and being the reminder of the missing identical twin). We get glimpses of this, but it’s not very deep.
• What it’s like to live in a hoarding house and the psychological reasons the grandmother hoards things.
• Why people feel like they need to escape their hometown and avoid going back.

Recommend? No

[27] Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family by Rabia Chaudry
Memoir, saw in “Available Now” on Libby, read Kindle version

Trigger warning: eating disorders, abuse

Synopsis: Rabia Chaudry (well known for being a friend and advocate for Adnan Syed, the subject of the Serial podcast) tells her life story as a Pakistani immigrant with a focus on food and the joy it brought her until she realized her size brought shame to her entire family.

Review: Chaudry’s writing is beautiful and rich. She deftly describes the food and the places where she’s eating it in such a way that you feel you are there, tasting it. I loved learning about Pakistani culture, what it’s like being an immigrant, and all the different amazing foods from their culture.

This is a tough read though. This is not a body positivity book. This is someone who was purposefully fattened as a baby, taught to overeat and go to food for joy and comfort, then relentlessly and harshly teased about being big. Spoiler, but Chadury develops a very unhealthy relationship with food, and you can tell, even at the end of the book, that she’s still working through a lot of it. I finished this feeling down and immediately had to start another book.

Recommend? If you’re in the mood for that sort of hang, yes

[28] Georgie, All Along by Kate Clyborn
Fiction / Women, saw on Lauren’s bookstagram, read Kindle version

Synopsis: Georgie returns to her hometown in Virginia after being let go (on good terms) from her personal assistant job in Los Angeles. She feels lost and unsure of what to do with her life, and being back in her hometown, where everyone sees her as a failure, doesn’t help. When she finds the old “fic” that she and her high school best friend wrote with all their high school goals and dreams, she decides now is the time to do them and see if she learns anything that might give her a clue on what to do with her life. Her plans get a bit shaken up when she realizes her out-of-town parents also invited Levi, who doesn’t have a great reputation or seem very friendly, to stay at her childhood home as well.

Review: Well, you already know this, but this book was not for me. Georgie and Levi were fine, but I just didn’t care too much about what happened to them. I found the premise of living out high school dreams stupid. I didn’t want to wait in the book to see why Levi so damaged. I just wanted to finish and get to next book. Ha. I will say though, the writing is good (well, what I read, I was skimming a lot at the end) and I liked that while there were plenty of opportunities for miscommunication tropes, most were not taken.

Recommend? No