What I Never Expected by Jennifer Archer
Goodreads Review
currently reading ... review to come ....
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
All Fours by Miranda July
Not sure how to write this review. I DO NOT want to be the one to recommend this book to anyone I know. I did finish reading it though and can't say I hated it, even though I am a prude. It's just very artsy, in an LGBTQ explicitly sexual, spoilt California millennial, weird way.
As I started to read, the novel and its characters' actions and dialogue seemed sort of Wes Anderson style; as in empty, quirky, different and for my reserved self, the whole backdrop seemed alien. As an example, I'm embarrassed to say that it took me until the third or fourth page before I realised that the protagonist couple's kid was non-binary and that Miranda July was using 'they/them' pronouns. Once I got that, I was fine and little Sam, the seven year old kid is a welcome addition to the narrative. Thankfully kids learn quickly how to lead the way as shown in one scene towards the end about Lego and scale.
The narrator is 45 at the start of the novel so I empathised some emotions and thoughts (NOT the experiences or wants!) about peri-menopause. Here are a couple of my favourite quotations that struck a chord or made me laugh.
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"This was my first experience of being too old ..."
"If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. whereas falling ended the same way for everyone."
"Well, in life there are Parkers ... and Drivers...Drivers are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring. They don't need applause for every little thing ... Parkers, on the other hand ... need a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause. ... they're bored and fundamentally .. disappointed."
"The slight decline of the dotted testosterone line looked like a change one might hardly notice. While I was falling off the sheer face of a mountain, Harris would be ambling along a gently sloping country road with a piece of straw in the corner of his mouth, whistling."
"Exercise-wise I'd never done more than buy ten yoga classes and take two of them. I was so weak that sometimes my arm got tired brushing my teeth. I nodded instead of waving - hands are heavy!..."
But then ...
"Wasn't this basically what Hell was? People forced to endlessly lift and lower heavy things for no reason?"
"Okay, here's my take," she said. "Just ride it out. A lot of women destroy their lives in their forties and then one day they wake up with no periods and no partner and only themselves to blame." That had a ring of truth to it."
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HOWEVER, there are way too many (to me) incomprehensible, gross and LGBTQ scenes for me to have liked this book. There are TRIGGER warnings re: suicide, polyamory, obsessive desire, underage sex, incestual thoughts and more. I'm not the intended audience! Difficult to know exactly who it is aimed at, but it wasn't for me.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
The Last Bear by Hannah Gold
Goodreads Review
Hannah Gold's debut novel is wonderful! My 8 year old fraternal twins and I LOVED this story. It reads beautifully and although of course it is an implausible premise, Gold does a magnificent job at making the young protagonist's April Wood's journey completely believable! The emotional relationship that arises between April and the polar bear is so touching. We were gripped by the descriptions of the setting and the tension in the story built towards the climax in such an engaging way.
This novel totally deserves its many accolades:
Winner of the Blue Peter Book Awards 2022
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards - Children's Book of the Year
Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2022
Shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2022
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards - Children's Book of the Year
Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2022
Shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2022
The novel is also illustrated by Levi Pinfold and they are perfect, adding a fantastic additional dimension to the narrative.
The book is set in the Arctic Circle where April and her father travel to live on uninhabited Bear Island so that April's father can collect data and weather measurements. She had hoped to be able to spend time with her father, but he's busy and her time ends up being spent with a stranded near-starving bear who she helps back to health.
Climate change is a central point for discussion presented with great importance in the novel.
Finally, this is the UK edition and front cover, so if you're looking for the US edition you'll find it has a more brightly coloured image on the cover! Highly recommend this novel for children and adults alike.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Closest Kept by Kitty johnson
Kitty Johnson uses a perfectly chosen Shakespearean epigraph from Two Gentlemen of Verona "Fire that's closest kept burns most of all", which I love as a starting point for this novel. It hints at the secrets held by the protagonist Lily as well as the problems that arise throughout the novel when further relationships become tainted by secrets.
The characters are great and Johnson does well to bring them alive on the page. She uses a lot of dialogue so it's easy to listen to the characters and their relationships. I think my uni friends and I would have loved reading this sort of drama in our 20s since it's escapist and a sort of dismissive, almost lackadaisical attitude towards parenting and dating. Of course now I am a parent the characters' attitudes towards relationships, family planning (or not) and postnatal difficulties (and depression) did seem a little distant to me. Nevertheless, there's a lot going on in this novel. Kitty Johnson moves the reader through the periods of her characters' lives so that the story spans a number of years and periods in the central characters' lives: Lily, Inga, Matt and Alex.
For my reading preference, there is perhaps extraneous detail of objects and people, but here's the thing ... it helps the novel read more like a screenplay so that I could imagine this as a series of some sort on screen. There's enough going on with the relationships and hidden family secrets for it to grip viewers. And on that note, although I don't like to listen to novels, I do think Closest Kept would be a good one for audio.
And the ending is cute and emotive with a powerful nod to the character who I loved the most in the novel!
Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC copy. Happy to have had a sneak peak ahead of publication in May 2025.
#NetGalley #LakeUnionPublishing #KittyJohnson #ClosestKept #readabitofeverything
Added notes for ARC - not for Amazon or Goodreads
-I was hoping to come across the Shakespearean quote in the narrative somewhere, but didn't find it, which seems a lost opportunity.
-A lot of the narrative could be edited even further to cut extraneous details and unnecessary 'telling'.
-Definitely feels like it could be watched or listened to, rather than read.
-Typos: p20 - replace 'the' with 'to' ; p53 - typo remove 'r' from 'your' at bottom of page ; p262 - extra 'pleas' on line
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
