Tag: fiction

What’s a synonym for charming?

Isla and the Happily Ever After

What’s it about?
Isla and the Happily Ever After is a YA romance. Which means there’s a boy and there’s a girl and it takes place in freaking Paris. Of course. That said, it’s also about impostor syndrome. Josh and Isla, our couple, get together quickly for a romance. Most of the rest of the book is Ilsa convinced that her own insecurities make her an unworthy person. She is unique in the Stephanie Perkins books in that she doesn’t have a driving passion in her life, and that makes her feel less than worthy. So the rest of the book is about her learning to love herself.

Why should you read it?
Isla and the Happily Ever After could easily be schlocky, but it’s not. Isla isn’t as charming as Perkins’ other heroines (they’d be Anna and Lola), but the book is noticeably better written. Anna was a charming book, but you could see the outline in the story. Isla is slightly less charming, but a much more robust book. If you’ve read the first two, it’s worth picking up.

Darkness and Light

A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama

What’s it about?
A Hundred Flowers is about a family in a formerly well-to-do section of Shanghai. The grandfather is a retired professor. The father has been arrested, taken away, as part of Mao’s Cultural Revolution because he wrote a letter suggesting improvements to the local government. It is amazing how much he’s in the story, given his absence. The mother is a healer. She has patients, prescribes them herbs and remedies, and sends them to the doctor when their problems are serious. The son is young and ambitious and climbs a tree, which he then falls out of. He breaks his leg and is bedridden for months. There are neighbors who help out. Another young woman, homeless, gives birth in the house and is taken in, adopted along with her baby.

Why should you read it?
Because Gail Tsukiyama writes about terrible, heavy subjects lightly and gracefully. She takes a huge thing – China during the Cultural Revolution – and turns it into a lovely story about a family and how much they love each other. The seriousness – the Cultural Revolution, sexual abuse, loneliness – combined with her light, lilting writing style is a wonder. Her characters are people whose anger and love are both portrayed intimately and realistically. Her books are amazing.