Hi everyone. I'm rincey and this is rincey reads. Today i'm going to be doing
part two of my September wrap-up. Last week I posted in my part one because
I've read a lot of books this month. I decided to break up my wrap-up into two
parts, which I normally don't do. But I figured this would give me a chance to
talk a little bit more about the books and not feel so like super rush to get
everything in within like a 20 minute time frame. These videos are still long
because I still have a lot of books to talk about, so let's jump right in.
So the first book I want to talk about is Joyland by Stephen King. This is,
I think it's technically a novella. Actually I'm not sure about that. Don't
take my word on that. For the read or dead podcast which is the mystery
thriller podcast that I co-host for book riot, we were doing a Stephen King
specific episode and so I wanted to read a little bit more Stephen King. I haven't
read a lot of Stephen King by any means. Joyland was recommended to me by a
couple of different people. And I knew that it wasn't like one of his like big
horror novels, which is not something I'm interested in. I am a big, big baby so I
don't generally read like most horror books. So I decided to go for Joyland
because I heard relatively good things about it. This is basically
a coming-of-age story which was not what I was expecting. I was expecting like a
mystery or suspense book. You are following this guy named Devin who is in
college and over the summer he ends up getting basically a summer job at this
carnival called joyland. There are some like mysterious elements that are
happening here. There's this woman who was murdered on one of the rides and so
supposedly it's haunted. But the majority of the time you're basically just
following Devin as he like figures out his life. You know, they pitch the story
as it like solving this mystery of this woman who was murdered a long time ago
or at least years ago and that is definitely part of the story. But, like I
said, it's mainly a coming-of-age story which was okay. I thought this book was
just like okay. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great. It didn't really pull me in.
I didn't find the mystery particularly engaging. It was fine. I can't really
like recommend it. I won't say that it's a bad book because I don't think it's
really a bad book. It's just kind of there. The one thing I will say is that
it seemed like the main character Devin was really obsessed with his
girlfriend at the time. So the way this book is structured it's,
Devin's telling you the story, like a present-day version of Devin is telling
you this story of what happened to him over the course of this like year.
And assuming that this guy is probably you know in his like 50s or 60s when he's
telling this story, they don't really say that but you know he's older.
He's definitely like grown up. He talks about how like people in his life have
passed away because you know they've grown up. So you know that he's
significantly older. He still seems really bitter about this girlfriend
which was like my one main turn-off about this book, I will say that. The next
book that I finished was chemistry by Weike Wang. In the story, you are
following this unnamed narrator. She is getting her PhD in chemistry. She is just
under a lot of pressure in order to get the results that she needs in order to
like complete her PhD. She's dating someone who wants the relationship to
move faster than she's really willing or wanting to she's constantly comparing
herself to her peers and the other people working at this lab. She has a lot
of pressure. The main character's Chinese. I believe she's also a Chinese immigrant.
And so she feels a lot of pressure from her parents to succeed and to do great
things and all this stuff and all of this pressure is really getting to her.
And then suddenly like basically she cracks one day and she's forced to
figure out what she's going to do next after this major episode happens.
This was a really interesting reading experience. This is a really short book
and it split basically into two parts. And I was really into the first half of
this book and I was not so much into the second half of this book unfortunately.
I think that the author explores some really interesting things in terms of
living your life sort of wanting to fulfill your parents expectations and
not being able to do so and trying to figure out how to live your own life or
how to live a life that's fulfilling to you and realizing that that might not
like go towards what your parents want in your life. There's also a lot of
really interesting discussions in here in terms of like love and relationships
and especially how different cultures sort of deal with that. The main
character in here, like I said, she is a Chinese immigrant and so the way that
she deals with people is very different than the way like her American boyfriend
does. Her boyfriend is very like loving and expressive and shows his feelings.
And she's very much like an inward person. She's not as
expressive with her emotions. She's very like logical and things just very limit
linearly. And there's even just like a little bit of just stilted-ness in terms
of her understanding just because she's also Chinese immigrant. So there's like
language barriers also happening. There's a lot of things about like various
metaphors that don't make sense to her because obviously she didn't grow up with
the language and such. But after this sort of like major episode happens,
the story starts to like fall apart a little bit. It loses a lot of structure and then
it feels like it rushes in the end to just kind of wrap everything up and I
feel like the way it wrapped up was like a little bit too neat and nice for the
way things were going. um I think that if this were maybe a little bit of a longer
book, it would have been nicer to just kind of like spread out that ending a
little bit more to make it feel more natural. The writing in here is very
stilted and again I think that has a lot to do with like the narrator's point of
view. English is in her first language. And she's a very you know not into like
flowery language or metaphors or anything like that. There's a lot of
references in here to like chemistry and scientific methods and things like that
which I actually really like. Like I like that sort of play on what's happening in
her life and how she views it through the lens of a scientist. But yeah I just
kind of wished everything was developed a little bit more. By the end, again, it
just felt like it was all being rushed to be finished and it didn't really like
have an organic ending to it. So yeah I gave it a 3 out
of 5 stars. It's not a bad book. It's a relatively short book. But if it sounds
interesting to you, I would check it out. But I know that this is not going to be
everyone's cup of tea. So yeah liked it, didn't love it. All right next up I got
bluebird, bluebird by Attica Locke. This is probably one of my most anticipated
books of the year. This is a brand new release. It just came out in September
and I got it from the library immediately. I love this book. I'm
actually gonna do a full review on this book so I'm not going to talk about it
too much here. But if you have read Attica Locke before and you enjoy her
books, then you should definitely pick this one up. It's not my favorite. Cutting
season is still my favorite out of her books but this one is now a close second.
In this story you are following this character named Darren who is a Texas
Ranger. He left his hometown to like go to school and he was like on his way
of being a lawyer and then stuff happened and he ends up becoming a Texas
Ranger. When you started off, he's like in the middle of this big case
and trial and you kind of see what sort of state his life is in. And then he gets
pulled into this case in a small town which just like reminds him a lot of
like his home and the things that he had to deal with.
Yeah Attica Locke is just like a really great writer. She intertwines the ideas
of like a general mystery along with what it's like to be a black person in
the United States right now. Even beyond that, like the characters in here are so
so complex. Darren is that a great person by any like measure. I mean, he does good
things but like he's also done some really bad things as well. um And so
Attica Locke creates these sort of characters who very much live in the
gray area of the world and I think it's just like a really interesting
exploration of that. So yeah, that's all I'm gonna say. I gave this book a 4 out
of 5 stars. And I will be doing a full review on it
next month. All right then the next book that I finished this month was one dark
throne by Kendare Blake and this is the sequel to three dark crowns. This book I
believe is gonna be a four book series. And I'm not going to talk too much about
the synopsis because it's literally impossible to do this without spoiling
things about the first book. I really enjoyed the second book. If you read the
first one and you really liked it, you're going to like this one as well. If you
didn't like the first one, you're not gonna like this one either because it's
literally like along the same lines as the first book. This is a very like slow
paced, character driven fantasy story, which i think is my personal favorite
type of fantasy stories. It reminds me a lot of the queen of the tearling series.
Queen of the tearling is a lot more like violent and a lot more in-your-face and
yeah just like a lot more adult. But if you like that series and you also like
young adult books I think that you will like this series as well. Kendare Blake
just does a really great job of just creating this really interesting cast of
characters. My one complaint would be that there are a lot of characters that
you have to follow in this series. But I really love the three Queens a whole lot
and just seeing how things develop is crazy to me. I was so surprised. Like
there are certain things where I was like okay it's very clear certain plot
points are going to happen in the second book just based on the way things are
unfolding. And I was reading this going, how is she going to accomplish this and
still make this a four book series? And then the events
happened and I was like completely in awe of Kendare Blake. So yeah, I'm
really enjoying the series. Feel free to talk to me about it down in the comments
below if you read these books as well because I would love to talk about it.
Just make sure you mark your comments like spoilers for the series and stuff
so that way people don't get spoiled if they haven't read it already.
But yeah, if you are someone who likes slow paced character driven fantasy
series, I recommend checking these out for yourself. I'm also going to link to
my favorite books of 2016 video just because I talked about three dark crowns
in that one. I believe it's that video. I'll find their video where I talk about it
because yeah it was one of my favorite books of 2016 and this is just
continuing on and it's still one of my favorites. I very rarely love a series
this much anymore and this is still one that oh I'm so excited for the next two
books. I'm very upset that they don't come out for like another year. Although
there are prequels coming out. I think their novellas. But yeah, I want the real
books now or not, you know, they're all real books book. Whatever. You know what I mean.
Next up, I finished a kind of freedom by
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. This is a book I picked up because it was longlisted
for the National Book Award. I don't know if I talked about it on this channel yet.
I talked about it on Twitter that's for sure. When the long list for the National
Book Award was announced, I was really excited by the fiction long list, as well
as a young adult fiction long list. So I decided to try to read as many of
those books as possible because I've already read three out of the ten.
This will be four out of ten now. So I figured I might as well just read as much of the
long list as I can. Some of them aren't out yet
so I can't read those. Although I guess I could try to get ARCs but I don't care
that much. Anyways. This is a multi-generational novel that spans from
the 1940s through about present-day. I believe the last year is around like 2010
or 2011. And you are mainly following three characters within this family.
The first one is Evelyn who is this Creole woman living in New Orleans.
She is growing up in sort of like the midst of World War Two. I believe that the
story for her starts around like 1942 I want to say. And then you follow her
daughter Jackie who is living in about like the 1980s and then you're following
Jackie's son named TJ who is again in sort of like present-day. Yeah this is
one that's a very, very short. It's less than 300 pages long. I will say
the one like complaint I have is that I wish it was longer because I think
they're still like so much with this family that could have been explored.
But I did give this book a 4 out of 5 stars. It's really, really moving, really, really
heartbreaking. You can definitely tell it has like debut novel-ness on it.
And another thing is that it doesn't follow the family like linearly. Like you start
with Evelyn in the 1940s but then you jump to you Jackie and then you jump
to TJ and then you jump back to Evelyn and you kind of like go through all of
them in cycles. And I just realized the character's name is not TJ it's TC.
Which is a really interesting way to tell the story. And sometimes it was nice because
you at least know that like things are going to come. But there are certain like
links that I wish were made. There are, you know, kind of big gaps in between all of
these different decades and so there are big parts of this family's history that
you don't necessarily get. But I think that this novel does a really great job
of sort of showing how the things that affect sort of like one generation sort
of like trickles down through multiple generations. This is a black family so
you definitely see a lot of like how society changes and how they are treated.
There's a lot of like discussions in terms of like forgiveness and what
family means and expectations and just all of these different things are
explored in here. It's just, if you're someone who likes multi-generational
novels then I think that you will like this book. Again it's on the shorter side
and I kind of wish it was a little bit longer so it could have been like
slightly more developed with all these different characters. But I think that
all of these characters were really interesting. It's one of the rare
instances where I actually liked all of the different points of
views. A lot of times either multi-generational novels or with just
like multiple perspectives in general, there's usually at least one where I'm
not really that thrilled by. But I found all of these characters completely
interesting and I wanted to see what was going to happen and I wanted to see sort
of like how the dots were going to connect between these different
generations. And just even seeing how like obviously like people from
different generations are obviously going to show up in these different
characters stories. So sort of seeing how different characters, like even side
characters, progressed over time was really well done. So yeah, I gave this
book a 4 out of 5 stars. Again, if you like multi-generational family stories,
this is definitely one you should put on your list. Alright, and then the final
book that I finished this month was the finder by Rene Denfeld. I was really
excited for this book because the enchanted is one of my favorite books of
all time. If you've been watching my channel for a couple of years, you will
know that because I talked about it a lot. It's one of the few five-star
ratings I gave. This one I gave it 3 out of 5 stars. I found it to be again just fine.
In the story, you are mainly following this character named Naomi who
is dubbed sort of like the child finder. She is someone who goes out and looks for
children who have gone missing for various families. Like she's hired
independently like a private investigator.
The main investigation that she is doing in this story is for this girl named
Madison who disappeared in the woods one day. The parents are obviously very
much believing that their daughter is still alive and she's hoping that
Naomi will be able to find her out in the woods. There's also like a secondary
storyline in terms of an investigation but that one isn't given quite as much
importance again because it's secondary. Yeah this book was a little bit of a
mess in my opinion. It's relatively short. This is another one, I read it as an
e-book so I'm not completely sure, but I think it's less than 300 pages. It just
felt like it was a little bit all over the place. You see things from multiple
points of view. So you see Naomi's point of view as she's like searching for
Madison and you also see things like about her own life and like how she
became an investigator in her relationship with different people.
But you also see things from Madison's point of view. And like the way that they broke
up the chapters, like sometimes I would be chapters where half of it was from
Naomi's point of view and half of it was from Madison point of view. When I was reading
that I was like, why wouldn't you just break this up into separate chapters?
That would make more sense for me logically. Because there would just be
sort of like the large paragraph breaks and I wouldn't realize that it was like
switching perspectives because there was nothing that really indicated that until
you started reading. It wasn't like the large paragraph breaks indicated
switching perspectives because sometimes there would be a large paragraph breaks
and you'd still be in the same perspective. The story is also like too
good or like too saccharin. I don't know how to explain it. But it's like the way
that they talk about love sometimes is like super cheesy in my opinion. And even
the way they described things like abuse and missing kids and all of that just
felt too simple. I don't know if that's just me being too critical because
obviously I'm not someone who's been in those situations and Rene Denfeld works
as an investigator and I believe has experience
with even just like foster kids and stuff like that. But yeah, it just felt
like too cheesy I think and it lacked like nuance and complexity. And I don't
know. It feels like this should have been a book that it was worked on a little
bit more or just edited a little bit more. Like I said, there's a secondary
storyline which while interesting I don't think really added much to the story.
Naomi is a very damaged character for understandable reasons. And I feel like
even the way that she deals with her own sort of baggage is very too easy, too simplistic.
I can't highly recommend this book the
way that I do the enchanted. If you want to read Rene Denfeld, go read the
enchanted. This book again it wasn't bad but it just wasn't great either. It just
was. And I think that there are some like good ideas and concepts and stuff that's
talked about in here, especially dealing with children who are fostered. I really
like the fact that there are like good foster parents in this book which is
really hard to find in stories. Let me tell you because I look for them.
I just was disappointed. So yeah that's everything that I read in the month of
September. If you've read any of these books, feel free to leave a comment down
below letting you know what you guys thought of them. Or if you have any
questions feel free to leave a comment about that as well.
Or if you don't have any of that, feel free to let me know when your favorite
read of September was. Mine was either sing unburied sing, which I talked
about in my last video, or it was bluebird, bluebird, which was also fantastic.
Or maybe Orhan's Inheritance. Oh man, I don't know. I read a lot of great books
this month. So yeah that's all I have for now and thanks for watching.
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