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I lived my life entirely unaware of YA and its trends, but after this year of subscribing to boxes there’s now a whole list of YA book series I vehemently don’t want to have anything to do with, even without reading them myself, even though they appear on my instagram feed every single day. It is because they seem so popular that I had to open goodreads pages to see if I would want to read them too, and after reading reviews and seeing what they were about… all I got was ‘I don’t understand humans and I’m not sure I want to’ whiplash, which sent me looking for boxes that would focus on something else.

Unfortunately, they were not easy to find. Most of those that do exist don’t ship outside US. Or don’t even include bookish items, which does take out half the fun. The Bookish Box seemed like a great choice at first, because they have an adult option, but soon enough I found out that not only the adult books are unrelated to monthly themes of their boxes, they are more often than not contemporary fiction paperbacks (and all those I received were by female authors, and at least one of the books I received was actually YA disguised as an adult novel). I just couldn’t see the reason to create an adult option if the book included would be completely unrelated, and all of the items and t-shirts would still be focused on YA fandoms.

I’d also like to confess that I find it difficult to keep my negative opinions on the fandoms to myself. Almost every subscription box is having a ‘special box’ for the sequel of The Cruel Prince that is coming out, and they keep showing up in my feed talking about how much they loved it, and I feel like I need to clench my teeth to not write them ‘But I kind of thought it was disgusting and I don’t understand why are you acting like everyone should be hyped about it.’ (And this one was actually one of those I did read, because it was in a box last year.) On one hand, I know in my head that commenting on someone’s post to say ‘But I hate this thing you like’ is a stupid thing to do, but on the other… I kind of wish people who provide a ‘service’ like these boxes would consider opposing opinions as well. As in, as a subscriber, I would like to be able to kindly ask for them to stop only including items related to a small selection of fandoms (ACOTAR, Raven Cycle, Six of Crows, Shatter Me, etc.) and focus on something else. But as usual, I have to come to terms with the fact that my opinion will be a minority no one would care about. The clear answer would be to look for different people and services, but the selection is just not there… If you want to get pretty special editions of newly released books with goods – you’ll have to deal with people hyping out about and pushing to you a lot of fandoms you dislike. You want to have more freedom of genre selection – resign to choosing book-only subscriptions and likely older paperbacks.

Another subscription box just announced an adult fantasy option, and I for sure will try it out, but the first box is yet to arrive, so I can’t really say anything.

Also, sadly enough, 2 out of 4 of the boxes I subscribe to right now have announced their November themes and after reading the descriptions of the books to be included I was torn between skipping a month for both or giving it a shot even though both of them sounded like something I’d clearly hate to spend my time on…

In the end, I made a choice to save some money and skip… (Just to forget about my reasoning and order 2 new boxes to try out instead the next week.)

Honestly, it feels like a waste of money in more ways than one, because I clearly can’t read this fast to actually read all the books I receive and not add them to a quickly growing TBR pile, and also because I don’t even feel healthy enough to read anything but fluffy fanfiction most of the days anyway… Not to mention that YA subscription boxes more often than not focus on fandoms I have no real use for. I put away the books I don’t feel like reading, but also can’t get rid of them before I even try, and they just pile and pile… And then there’s also the fact that shipping costs as much as box itself.

But this state of my mind is also the exact reason I keep ordering them because it’s kind of like receiving a small present every time and it feels like I need that feeling to keep myself afloat every month. And the more I receive something I can’t really feel any positive emotions about, the more it makes me to look for more of boxes to order… (I know it sounds pathetic and not exactly effective, but beggars with chronic depression can’t exactly be chooser of what we use to keep ourself from the very rock bottom.)

So next month (or more like the beginning of December, considering the shipping time) I will receive 3 new boxes and will have to choose which ones I want to keep, and whether or not I want to cancel those I put on hold this month… And how to stop myself from wasting money on things I don’t need just because I’m getting brainwashed by pretty instagram pictures.

 

 

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I’m subscribed to about 4 different monthly bookish boxes (and always in the process of looking for more/exchanging for new ones).

I treat them sort of like a ‘blind date with a book’ system, and a way to get to know new releases while living in a non-English speaking country. Because usually, to buy a new English book, I would have to decide that I really want it, make an informed decision carefully, read all about it on goodreads or elsewhere, and be sure it’s worth spending that money, because ordering on Amazon from Japan is not always cheap and not always quick (they have a lot of books in stock to be delivered next day, but half of the time they ship them from UK.)

Unfortunately, even though there’s a ton of subscription book boxes out there, and there are many lists that talk about them to help you choose, I very soon found out that no matter how many there are, none of them (at least as far as I could see, having  searched online a few times) really match what I’d really want from a subscription book box.

My wishes are pretty simple:

  • Worldwide shipping.
  • Bookish goods.
  • Fantasy, sci-fi (maybe historical fiction, detectives, mysteries).
  • Preferably new releases, but not critical.
  • Not YA.

I don’t really remember how did I first found out about book subscription boxes, but then very soon they flooded my instagram and I couldn’t help but want to subscribe to more and more.

The thing is, most of subscription boxes, and certainly the most ‘loud’ ones, are all about YA. And to be honest, I don’t think I would read a single YA book if not for them.

Not that I was too biased, since I never really knew about them to form an opinion other than ‘it means they are for kids’. And I hardly ever read books for kids when I was one. Save for Harry Potter, but I don’t think that really counts. That is also why I didn’t really feel too cautious about YA when I ordered my first subscription box, because I simply decided that (after seeing on instagram that a lot of seemingly adult people were enjoying them) maybe I misunderstood the categorization, and people just called all new fantasy and sci-fi books YA (sort of like people in Japan call literary fiction ‘literature’ and most of genre fiction ‘light novels’).

It wasn’t before I received my first few boxes that I felt like I seriously needed to look into something that wasn’t so focused on YA. I can’t even say what exactly it is about YA… Well, to be honest I still kind of unclear on what makes YA so YA, but the books, even where I could like the story itself, seemed… too shallow, too thinly connected… more like an overly simplified summary of a book that could happen, but didn’t because someone either rushed it out or was told to make it more simple… And at first I thought that it was just those books and those authors, but after this year it seems to be the only thing that I can attribute to YA as a unifying factor. Along with tiny chapters and the feeling that it was made to resemble a movie more than a book, and to be read in few hours–take only slightly more time than it would take to watch a movie.

I can’t say that I regret subscribing to YA boxes entirely… With my current mental and emotional state, light reads that I can be done with in few hours are sometimes actually exactly what I need. And some of the books I received were exactly that. But sometimes… There is also this another thing that bothers me about YA – it’s the ‘trendy themes’ that too many of the books I receive seem to be focused on. I have mentioned some of them in reviews I’ve written: girls kept in captivity (or under someone else’s authority in other way) and humiliated by sadistic/narcissistic people; people falling in love with their former captors or with equally narcissistic jerks; palace intrigues and spies… The overall normalization, or more likely romanticization, of humiliation and lying that are featured in 90% of YA books I received (or researched after receiving a bookish item based on).

I honestly hate it and don’t even want to think about the underlying psychology of their popularity.

 

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SadieSadie by Courtney Summers

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Beautifully written heart-crashing experience

This is considered YA? Really?
There are several reasons why I doubt it. Firstly, is that that while it shares the ‘reads like a movie’ aspect with most of YA novels, its writing goes at least one lever deeper and better than any YA I have read (and yeah, maybe this is the exact reason I haven’t read enough to know otherwise). It reminded me somewhere of reading Dorothy Allison, and not only because of the obvious topics, but because of the vivid images and excellent attention to details, and especially emotional ones.
Secondly, I, at least, would consider the topic to be a bit too heavy for YA.
While I can’t call this story exactly unique or say that is shows something shocking we’ve never seen before, (it says it itself – girls go missing all the time; and again, people like Dorothy Allison immediately come to mind), especially since most people probably watch shows like Criminal Minds and LAO SVU, it is an artfully created experience.
It is not a long book, and it feels shorter still because of the podcast format most of it takes, and maybe that is why it is considered YA. But I don’t think it loses any depth because of its format, and I haven’t once felt like there were holes left in it. Its characters all come alive in front of your eyes, and you can feel every single one of them as if you are looking right at them. As does the scenery, and every town, even if you’ve never been to the States.
What I also appreciated about it, is that this was a story about love.
It would be easy to pull it apart, picking up at every human flaw and misguided decision, but… This book is written well enough to stop me from wanting to do it, and that is the most important point for me personally.

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Contagion (Contagion, #1)Contagion by Erin Bowman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Survival thriller with possibly promising sequel.

I rate it 3.5-ish, but rounded it up simply because I will actually be looking forward to see where the next book goes.

I must say, this books gets better towards the end, and not because you might think (not because that’s where the real action in this kind of books begins to happen).
Unfortunately, I almost missed it, because I had a lot of trouble getting through the first half, and here’s why:
1) “A bunch of screw-ups and kids-who-don’t-deserve-it get thrown into a deadly dangerous situation without responsible adult supervision. Who do you think will survive, if anyone?’ is how it reads for the whole first half, and I kept thinking “well, isn’t it ironic that this book tries to make fun of stupid horror movie stories and then basically follows in their steps”? Enter a dozen of unbelievably stupid decisions that are likely to make a few of less tolerant people close this book forever.
2) The writing is inconsistent at best. Sometimes it bordered on the ‘okay, yeah, fine’, with an occasional sentence making my editing fingers and eyebrows twitch, and sometimes it fell entirely into the field of ‘someone really should have edited this a few more times before getting it out…’. It’s the odd word and phrase choices that don’t really fit and ruin immersion, it’s the fact that the interludes feel like they weren’t thought through enough to feel organic… It was simply speaking… too rough to be read smoothly, and it irritated me a lot.
3) More even than the surface lack of polish in writing, it really bothered me how this book treats character development descriptions. It tries to raise some issues and give its characters interesting back stories, but it kind of fails to do a good job of it – it fails to do it organically. It chews on everything extensively, explaining what people feel and why exactly, instead of showing it. Ideally, a book is supposed make its reader aware of a character’s ‘issues’ without actually spelling them out in a way that gets you thinking ‘does it really make sense that this person is aware of all their inner issues and actually name them to themselves, yet still behave the way they do…?’.
In short, it does this thing where, for the most of the story, instead of letting readers pick up on things on their own, it says ‘here, I’ll spell every psychological issue out for you, name it and explain every little thing, like you’re too stupid to understand on your own’. It tries to employ interesting issues, but pretty much fails to present them correctly.

It’s hard to talk about this genre without much spoilers. So I’ll probably leave it here.
Overall, while some of the story decisions I find questionable, it gets actually interesting enough to make you want to read the sequel, even if only out of curiosity, and that is what matters.

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Mirage (Mirage, #1)Mirage by Somaiya Daud

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

 

Confusing world-building and all chicle YA trends in one bottle.

I will be honest: as a rule I do not read summaries and descriptions when I receive books, because I don’t want to be spoiled. And if I did, I don’t think I would have even opened this book.

At first, I was actually excited to begin to read it – I liked the writing, I liked the world and how it was described, I liked the feeling of it, I thought it was something unique and new.
It lasted for about 30 pages, until I understood that this just YET ANOTHER book about a ‘girl captured to be humiliated, kicked around, and used in one way or another, so that she can be “strong” about it’. Yet another YA novel about nasty royals who like to be sadistic to people. Yet another story abut losing freedom and learning to play in palace intrigues.
I don’t understand, is it the most popular kink among young people nowadays, or what is the deal here? Haven’t we had enough of this same topic chewed on over and over?

Another point that didn’t really sit with me, is how emphasized women were in this story. I simply genuinely don’t like it when one gender is put above the other in writing like this (like saying ‘oh, bad white male literature focused on men so much, so now we must do the exact opposite!).
In this book, everything seems to be about women. Most of important characters (good or bad) are women, including important religious figures. It is all ‘my father’s whimsy, and my mother’s strength’. And most of the male characters, including the love interest, appear almost faceless, insignificant, and soft-spined compared to women. Or at least that was the impression I received.
Not that I’m saying it is bad to focus on female characters, it is just that the whole idea of ‘women are much stronger, more interesting, and important than men’ was so ‘in your face’ it was very tiring.

After the first half of the book the world I thought was interisting and original turned very confusing, in a way that it was difficult to remember if this was supposed to be sci-fi or fantasy… The elements of ‘old’ and ‘new’ are mixed in such a way that it feels inconsistent at best.

I’m giving this 2 stars and not 1 mostly because of the writing and the world-building in the very beginning, they were very good. I couldn’t stop thinking that I wish I could read a different kind of story written in this way, but alas…

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the literature that makes a point to tell people of evil (and other disgusting things) that exists can’t attract me…
because we already know that evil exists
what it needs to be telling is that evil can be dealt with, destroyed or overturned

and overall, I prefer to read about things I want more in my life, than about those I don’t really want to exist in it at all

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found this going around the Internet once
Reasons for admitting women into an asylum:

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I find a few other points also interesting.

Menstrual deranged?
Over action of the mind?
Tobacco and masturbation?
Bad whiskey?
Excitement as officer?
Time of life?

Might be a fun idea to count how many of them I currently match.

(Also, when I read ‘congestion of brain’ I always imagine something less ‘stroke’ and more ‘constipation inside the head’ for some reason… )

 

 

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The Way You Make Me FeelThe Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A very simple teenage summer story.

This is not a book to read if you’re looking something insightful and ‘timeless’ (as it might have been described on the cover), or something to learn things about people from. At least not if you’re older than 12.
It’s a simple story. As a glance on teenage life, I would even say simplified.
The protagonist is a ‘softly rebellious’ girl who is supposed to find better things to care for in life by the end of it. And that’s all there is too it.
The protagonists is also, in fact, extremely difficult to emphasize with. And not even really because of her behavior, which is very questionable as it is, but because of her language and how she expresses herself. All the ‘yeesh’ and ‘sheesh,’ and her other reactions were generally very annoying. I don’t think I could have emphasized with her no matter how old I was.
Her relationships were either all very shallow, or very shallowly described. People who were supposed to be her friends were very easily dismissed less than half-way through and it seemed very strange. She just suddenly ‘gets’ a love interests who is ‘very hot and rich’ and who cares much more about her than she about them, and that’s that.
Were we supposed to care about cultural details? Or about food? I honestly couldn’t tell.

There’s not really enough in this book to hate it, though.
If you’re looking for something very simple and light to take your mind of things, and can read shallow stories without feeling a need to question everything or get annoyed with it, then this book maybe is what you’re looking for.

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I give up on reading good books more often than I’d like to admit.

Because some more pain is not what I’m looking for in life right now.

I also prefer books that try to give and create things that our world is missing. The good kind.

Not focus and show us the worst things that do exist or can exist in our world.

I’m sure there are people who wouldn’t know that they existed if they didn’t read about them, and that’s why those kind of books should exist, but…

…there is just never enough good, and too much of negativity and people are not focusing on the right things.

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Sky in the DeepSky in the Deep by Adrienne Young

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNFed this, sorry. I don’t know if I’m going to come back to it when I’m feeling more tolerant and patient… (because somewhere inside I’m maybe still hoping that I’m wrong about this) but probably not.
I really like the setting, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to like what was done with it. When I saw a ‘novel in a viking-like setting with a strong female protagonist’ I thought I’d love to read it, simply because I usually love to read all things to do with winter lands and warriors.
However… First, I couldn’t really feel anything pleasant towards the first person POV and the voice of the protagonist in this. Something just felt really off to me about her and I couldn’t get into reading at all. (I believe the general opinion is that because the writing is extremely bland and boring.) I left this in my desk at work for months. Then, I saw where the story was going… and I’m sorry to say, but I really, really, really hate this current YA trend where every second book features one or more of main characters being captured and treated like slaves, or prisoners, or spies, who have to suffer through beatings and humiliation for the large part of the story. And besides, it also became obvious that this was going to feature an enemies-to-lovers trope with a bonus of him kicking her around bloody for a while. And maybe you modern kids are into stuff like that but I’m honestly not.

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Heaving the right book with me, helped me through every one of those times
when I felt it was far too much to go through by myself,
when I would have given up otherwise.

And that is the bigger part of the reason why I still try to write.
Despite every contravention.

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I read this book as part of my postgrad research (which you can tell by the number of sticky notes), but I actually have enjoyed it more for personal reasons.
I would recommend it to anyone who writes or plans to write, regardless of being male or female, because even though it does touch on a subject of being woman writer, I personally felt that the most interesting things were written on being writer in general, and dealing with yourself as a writer.
Even though you can put sex or race in front of some things, to claim or insist on some ideas, if you take them out you will realise that those ideas are true for more people than you tried to include.

Even though every essay had very interesting things to take out, I would personally recommend the “What Is It I Think I’m Doing Anyhow” by Toni Cade Barbara

 

 

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On flirting:
“It brings out in me the most profound feelings of anxiety and exasperation. I was not raised to subtlety.
Why do people have to make such fuss about something so simple?
I say, “Talk to me. Tell me who you are, what you want, what you’ve never had, the story you’ve always been afraid to tell.””

“Two or Three Things I Know for Sure” by Dorothy Allison

“Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that no one is as hard as my uncles had to pretend to be.”

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“… For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

And now the priests, thinking that this infringed upon the power of their God, who created the world once and for all to be unchanging, have closed those doors (which were never doors, except in the minds of men),…”

Marion Zimmer Bradley “The Mists Of Avalon”