“Stranger Things” meets Lord of the Rings in a new generation’s classic fantasy epic. I had the pleasure of reviewing the new fantasy novel, Children of Madness, for Independent Book Review a few weeks ago! This is probably one of my favorite reads of the year, and it was my first starred review for the website.
After famously going missing as children in the West Virginia wilderness, Jeremy and Rafe reunite fifteen years later as adults to find a lost girl in the same woods and discover something magical had been waiting for them.
From the first page, The Lost Story is teeming with magic. It starts from an outsider’s perspective of the moment Jeremy and Rafe are found after being missing for months, and they’re described as older than their “missing” photos, as well as strong and nourished—pretty much the opposite of people who were lost in the woods for that long. It sets up a mystery really well: where were they, and how did they get back home?
As I went on into the first half of the book, I really enjoyed the rising tension as Emilie reaches out to Jeremy for help to find her sister and in the drama between Jeremy and Rafe as they’re forced back together. I also really enjoyed the urban fantasy elements surrounding Jeremy’s strange power to find lost things, as well as Rafe’s vivid dreams and how it translated into his artwork. However, as the answers to the questions I had started to reveal themselves and the novel shifted into something less urban fantasy and more fantasy fantasy, I felt like the novel lost some of its hold on me. Some of the high fantasy elements were a bit elementary to me, and the constant references to C.S. Lewis, Narnia, and other “classic” fantasy did not help.
Still, I felt very invested in the characters and to what happened to them. I fell in love with Jeremy, Rafe, and Emilie from the moment they appeared on the page. Their easy banter was fun to read, and I was ecstatic to see them get their happy endings.
Feels like: Playing castle on a plastic jungle gym, adding cinnamon to your coffee, jumping into a pile of leaves.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
On a breezy, New York morning, Theo Decker and his mother take a detour to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, not knowing that the choice will change their lives forever. An ill-fated incident leaves Theo motherless at thirteen and in possession of Carel Fabritius’ most famous works, a secret he takes with him through the fog that follows right after his mother’s death, the hapless days wandering the Las Vegas suburbs, then back to New York where, as an adult, he finds himself and his painting at the center of dangerous dealings.
To be honest, it took me months to finish The Goldfinch. It wasn’t because I didn’t like it—it is beautifully written, strangely addictive, but also just incredibly dense. Each sentence is packed with details and information, so I could only read it in little bits for a long time.
The novel is broken into five parts. The first four parts follow Theo through the accident at The Met and the first few year after his mother’s death; his life with the Barbours in the Upper East Side, his tumultuous relationship with his father when he’s whisked away to Las Vegas, and his friendship with Boris. The rest of the novel focuses on Theo’s adulthood, including his work at the antique shop with Hobie and the intrigue surrounding “The Goldfinch” as he tries to figure out how to come clean about it.
Through the first four parts of the novel, I felt very invested in Theo, a child that found himself helpless to his very incredible and sad circumstances and did his very best to survive. I spent a lot of time feeling scared for him, because even if he was doing his best, he wasn’t making the best decisions, from something as small as ignoring advice to take up a hobby from his guidance counselor to his blackout nights after underage drinking and drug use. Through Theo’s journey, I was also very drawn to the gorgeously rendered characters that popped in and out of his life, especially Hobie, the warm and steady vintage shop owner and later guardian, Boris, the wild and charming fellow loner, and Pippa, the seemingly carefree love of Theo’s life.
As the novel progressed, Theo’s bad decision-making has even bigger consequences, and I admit I found myself more and more disinterested as I kept reading through the novel’s final, climactic events. Theo himself isn’t unlikeable, but I felt as though I wanted more for him, especially in the concluding events surrounding “The Goldfish,” the precious painting that he works so hard to keep safe and agonizes over throughout the novel. The painting has such a strong presence throughout the story, so I was curious about what would happen with it, but when the painting changes hands unexpectedly in the latter part of the novel, I felt as though the resulting events took away from both Theo’s agency surrounding the painting and his long-awaited confession to Hobie.
Even if the ending wasn’t quite right for me, I still enjoyed The Goldfinch very much. I was in awe of Donna Tartt’s incredible gift for perfectly describing the feeling of a certain day, as well as the tangible essence of her characters. The Goldfinch is discomfiting, mysterious, and full of heart.
You can find The Goldfinch on Bookshop or wherever books are sold.
It’s the last days of summer on Long Island, and Alex is alone with a bag of clothes, a water damaged phone, and no place to stay. Determined not to be sent back to the city where she’s burned all her bridges, Alex decides to out wait out the six aimless days until Simon’s Labor Day party—her absolute last chance to get back in his good graces—by using her charms and talent for reading people to keep herself afloat.
The Guest is tense, measured, and morbidly gratifying in the ways Alex easily wins people over and just as easily cuts them loose.
For more quick stats and observations, I wanted to include a Storygraph-Style Q+A, with a little more added detail:
When Yeongju opens her bookshop on a seeming whim, she is sure that it will be out of business in two years. At least, that’s what she tells her only employee, Minjun, upon hiring him as a barista. Still, while Yeongju lacks know-how in the bookshop business and Minjun hasn’t ever kept a job for more than six months, both are similar in their jaded outlook on the idea of a “career” and their strong desire to create an inviting space where everyone can enjoy books. As they start to see the fruits of their labor come together in their highly curated selection of books, the quality of their cafe drinks, and their offering of bookish events, the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop starts to attract likeminded people who want to ease the sometimes harsh rhythm of life with a good story. Told through multiple points of view throughout, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop is filled with ruminations on life’s seemingly unanswerable questions: How do you give a good book recommendation? Does work make you happy? How do you decide what to do with your future? Yeongju and Minjun, whose lives were formerly dominated with achieving success at a professional level, are melancholy in their reflections on a meaningful existence. While the flashbacks to both of their pasts lacked a certain sharpness and dialogue felt stale and long-winded at times, I found myself savoring the methodical descriptions of the present—the day-to-day tasks of bookshop owners, learning to make the best brew with baristas, and the quirks of the readers and writers and coffee-lovers and neighborhood busybodies who enjoy idling their time in their local bookshop.
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop is charming slice-of-life novel that had me contemplating what it means to work, professionally and personally, towards a happier existence.
