Category: Feminism

These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights #1) by Chloe Gong

So there are some really good bits in Chloe Gong’s retelling of Romeo And Juliet, set in 1920s Shanghai and featuring the scions of two rival gang families needing to team up to defeat a supernatural threat to the city. First and foremost is the lived-in character of Juliette Cai, heir to the Scarlet Gang, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/17/these-violent-delights-these-violent-delights-1-by-chloe-gong/

Mad, Bad & Dangerous To Know by Samira Ahmed

I am very grouchy about this book, even though I was very excited at first to finally get my hands on this YA novel featuring feminist Muslim heroines. Samira Ahmed’s Mad, Bad & Dangerous To Know marries an intriguing high concept with a narrative that prefers to tell instead of show and relentlessly strikes dramatic …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/12/mad-bad-dangerous-to-know-by-samira-ahmed/

Of Salt And Shore by Annet Schaap

This is like The Secret Garden but with mermaids and pirates instead, and with characters that I, at least, liked from start to finish (as a pragmatic child, I found it hard to care for any of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s insipid and annoying creations.) Billed as a sequel to The Little Mermaid, Of Salt And …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/23/of-salt-and-shore-by-annet-schaap/

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe

It’s been so long since I’ve read a standalone YA novel that I barely know what to do with myself at the end of A Golden Fury, in no small part due to Samantha Cohoe’s gifts as an author. Despite the ending being quite firmly The End, I’m so invested in these characters and their …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/16/a-golden-fury-by-samantha-cohoe/

An Interview with Sharon Doering, author of She Lies Close

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did She Lies Close evolve? The inspiration for She Lies Close came from my family’s move to a new neighborhood years ago and finding out that a guy down the street was being prosecuted for …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/08/an-interview-with-sharon-doering-author-of-she-lies-close/

Parachutes by Kelly Yang

I am absolutely wrung out after reading Parachutes by Kelly Yang. I cried — which is a given considering the subject matter — a lot — which is not. Ms Yang crams into one book so many of the traumas that I’ve either endured or been adjacent to by virtue of being or having been …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/03/parachutes-by-kelly-yang/

Girls Of Paper And Fire (Girls Of Paper And Fire #1) by Natasha Ngan

I unreservedly loved the first half of this book. I’ve had a problem recently with books claiming to represent the various of my identities and doing a pretty shitty job of it, so it was something of a relief to see how meticulous Natasha Ngan and the team behind Girls Of Paper And Fire were …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/23/girls-of-paper-and-fire-girls-of-paper-and-fire-1-by-natasha-ngan/

The Golden Key by Marian Womack

If you’re looking for a book with atmosphere, The Golden Key has it in peat-filled, gas-lit spadefuls. Set just after the end of Queen Victoria’s death, it travels from the fenlands of England to the spiritualist parlors of London, where seances are once more all the rage. Samuel Moncrieff is a young man adrift after …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/17/the-golden-key-by-marian-womack/

More Becoming by Michelle Obama

“Becoming Us,” the second part of Michelle Obama’s memoir tells how two very different people, two nearly polar opposite people in fact, came not only to love and cherish one another but to build a life and a partnership that would work from Chicago to the whole world. One of their first social functions together, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/26/more-becoming-by-michelle-obama/

The Silence Of The Girls by Pat Barker

The Silence Of The Girls by Pat Barker

Gosh, I still can’t get over how clunky that title is. That said, I was disappointed with this novel. Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy is one of the all-time best examinations of the horrors of war, and her skill at writing about armed conflict and the toll it takes on the men who fight in it …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/28/the-silence-of-the-girls-by-pat-barker/