In Honor of Saint Agnes | Review: Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclare

As the year begins to wind down, I’ve been looking back at some of the books I’ve read. This debut novel by Celine Saintclare was different from what I usually read, but left an impression that has made me curious to see what she writes next.

Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a twenty-one year old cleaner working alongside her very religious mother and living in what she calls “The Wasteland” just outside of London. When she meets Emily, the daughter of one of her wealthy employers, Agnes is introduced to the world of “sugaring.” Although the lifestyle offers her more money than she’s ever had and the affection she craves, it also begins to make her question what exactly it is she wants out of life.

I picked up this book after first seeing it on Aardvark Book Club, and it’s a pretty good read that I almost read in one sitting. Despite what the title may suggest, it is more about identity, touching on race, privilege, and religion, and about finding yourself in your twenties. The premise however is there, and is a central part of the character’s journey. 

What I like most is how Celine Saintclare does not turn this into a cautionary or purely salacious tale. Instead, she looks at all facets of Agnes’s new lifestyle and how it affects her — the luxuries she gets to experience for the first time, her relationship with her friends and family, the situations she gets herself into, but all as she tries to figure out her life. The connection to religion as well, especially her namesake Saint Agnes, is an interesting note that aligns with some of the themes and what Agnes goes through. The ending left me wanting to know more, but actually works in giving some closure to where this part of her life ends and where she may go from there.

If you’re looking to read something different that is messy, complex, and falls into the genre of navigating your twenties, Sugar, Baby is worth checking out.

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Strangers at a Wedding | Review: The Wedding People by Alison Espach

I think I’ve been reading less compared to last year, but in return I’ve discovered a lot of great books that have become new favorites. The Wedding People by Alison Espach is one of them. 

Phoebe Stone is a professor who has run off to the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island. Her husband has left her and she’s decided to have one last getaway before ending it all. When she arrives however, she finds herself in the middle of a weeklong wedding celebration. She ends up forming an unexpected friendship with the bride Lila, while also getting to know the other people in attendance. As the week carries out, Phoebe begins to have a new outlook on life, rediscovering parts of herself that she never knew existed, but might have always been there.

I know I have been saying this a lot, but I really love this book. It’s humorously honest and introspective featuring a cast of characters that could exist in real life. I was hesitant to pick it up at first because I worried that it might be too dark, but it ended up pleasantly surprising me as I found myself laughing and relating to much of what Phoebe and Lila were going through. Once I neared the end, I wanted to go back and read it again.

I love Phoebe and Lila’s relationship throughout, especially the conversations they have. I think the fact that they are strangers, with or without judgment, is what made them want to confide in each other rather than go to the people who know them. Lila is young and entitled, but I could see there is a loneliness to her that Phoebe connects with or at least understands. For Phoebe as well, Lila bolting into her life throws her in for a loop, but also brings her back to life (quite literally too). They make an impact on each other’s lives more than they realize.

Then, there’s Phoebe and Gary. I don’t want to spoil too much on what happens between them because it’s some of the best parts of the book that align with its themes. I’m already smiling just thinking about that “Free the books” scene. 

This is a 10/10, 5 star read for me. It’s everything all at once about life and chance encounters and how much that can change or affect us.

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Mindful Book Buying - And These 3 Were Worth It!

I’ve been trying to be mindful about how many books I buy this year, and have to say that these three were worth the purchase. 

I recently read Lang Leav’s Others Were Emeralds on Libby while on vacation and I was so completely absorbed by the writing and the story that I’m still thinking about it. I immediately bought a physical copy (thank you to my cousin for the birthday gift card!) so I could properly tab and annotate some pages. *Full review to come*

And since I still had some leftover birthday money, I also bought Ticket to You by Florence Fields. This is an indie pub that has been on my radar, and is said to be perfect for fans of Emily Henry, about a fashion journalist and a photojournalist who end up traveling to Europe together to save their careers.

Lastly, I came across Wild Life by Opal Wei at an airport bookstore and @ambershelf’s review convinced me to pick it up. I immediately started reading it and am really enjoying it. Some reviewers have likened it to the Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, so that’ll be fun to read the more I get into it.

What is a book you recently bought and read?

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An Ode to Girlhood | Review: Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades

This is a book I want to give to my cousins and friends to read; the Filipinas and brown girls and daughters of immigrants and to those who grew up in New York and in the effervescent neighborhood of Queens.

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades reads like poetry in its reflections of girlhood, the trials of adulthood, and the weight of it all as a young woman of color, that feels personal and familiar. The writing is evocative as Palasi Andreades captures the running inner thoughts of her amalgamated characters in these vignettes of time as they navigate life and its pressures, while also trying to hold on to themselves and their roots. 

There are the friends you grew up with and the antics you would get up to thinking it would always be like this, unaware of how you will slowly become strangers. Applying to high school and then college outside of Queens and the pull between the allure of the city and the streets where you live. The overbearing mother who chastises your choices, constantly reminding you of what they sacrificed, but doesn't give enough credit to your dreams that are bigger than what they expected. How we rediscover our identities after visiting the motherland, seeing both worlds blend our past and our present. The questions we ponder and ask ourselves about who we are now and who we are after.

There are so many passages that stood out that I want to save them all. These are just a few lines that resonated with me:

“‘A career in healthcare is the best you could have,’ our mothers, medical professionals themselves for twenty-five, thirty years, assured us… Our tears, pathetic and hot, slide down our cheeks. A practical, safe job for a dutiful daughter.” 

“Funk when we feel we are never, will never, be enough.” 

I really love the chapters “Duty,” “Art,” “Trish,” and “Our Not-Reflections,” with “A Trip to the Motherland (Fatherland)” and “The Things We Carry” being my favorite. Yet every page is poignant, embedded with subtle but heavy emotional chords.

Brown Girls is one of those books that I’m still thinking about long after I finished reading it and where in more ways than one I felt seen.

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The Wonder of You | Aloha, Vietnam by Elizabeth Nguyen MD

“If you don’t remember your roots and connection to the past, how can you expect to live the right way and make decisions in your life for the future?”

Mother-daughter stories always get me emotional. I find them personal in how they are able to look at two individuals, their bond, and that bridge in between that brings two generations together. I felt this while reading Dr. Elizabeth Nguyen’s Aloha, Vietnam. This story about Xuan and her daughter, Anh, explores mental health as Xuan tries to understand Anh’s bipolar disorder diagnosis just as Anh learns how to cope with it as she comes of age. 

Mental health can be a sensitive topic, especially within the Asian community. There are some cultural taboos surrounding it that are different from how we’ve come to accept and acknowledge it today and this was an aspect that stood out to me in Aloha, Vietnam. I cannot recall reading a book that touches on mental health in realistic detail through an Asian perspective and Dr. Nguyen handles it with great care. By telling it through Xuan and Anh’s point of view, I was able to understand what Anh was going through and the concerns Xuan felt. It is also through this that the story adds another layer. 

As a mother, Xuan worries about Anh, while also blaming herself for Anh’s diagnosis believing it to be karma from her steadfast intention of immigrating from Vietnam to the US. Meanwhile, Anh, a first generation American, wants to be a regular teenager just like everyone else and her struggle to accept her diagnosis makes her feel more of an outsider than she already feels. It becomes not just about Xuan and Anh coming to terms with Anh’s bipolar disorder, but about a mother giving all of herself for her daughter, and a daughter growing to accept every part of her identity and her origins in order to move forward.

Aloha, Vietnam is a quick read and the relationship between Xuan and Anh leaves so much between them left unsaid near the end, but it tugged my heart and left me empathizing for the characters and those in real life who struggle with mental health.

Thank you so much to Book Publicity Services for sending me a gifted copy of the book. 

This post is not sponsored. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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It's Now or Never | A Thousand Miles to Graceland by Kristen Mei Chase

Not many people know this about me, but I was a HUGE Elvis Presley fan when I was about 14 years old. I would listen to his music timidly on my iPod and did my own research about his life after watching the TV biopic starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I was lowkey obsessed and to this day, “Suspicious Minds” and “If I Can Dream” are still some of my favorite Elvis songs. So, I was very excited to read Kristen Mei Chase’s A Thousand Miles to Graceland. A story featuring an Asian American mother and daughter going on a road trip to Graceland - sign me up!

The book had heavier themes than I expected going in, but I appreciated the story and its focus on Grace and her complicated relationship with her Elvis-obsessed mother, Loralynn. From an initial standpoint, the two women are vastly different and you believe that is the crux of their relationship. Loralynn is outgoing and zany, preferring to wear bouffant wigs and sequins emulating Elvis’s spirit and that era, whereas Grace prefers a safe and simpler livelihood much different than her mother’s. As the story progresses however, you begin to learn that there is a painful past that still affects both women. They each have handled it differently, but throughout this literal journey to confront their shared traumas, I found Grace’s growth into coming to terms with her childhood, and slowly learning more about her mother and accepting her as she is, raw and real. This felt like a personal story and it didn’t hold back in showing how difficult it was to heal from old wounds and the work it takes to rebuild that relationship between a daughter and her mother.

The road trip was a great setting for this story. I liked the unique places they visited as well as some of the stopovers from El Paso to Memphis. My favorite was when they got stuck in Louisiana and met a father and daughter, who were almost a reflection of Grace and Loralynn once they confronted their problems. I kind of wanted more Elvis references (as if this book didn’t have enough), but after reading, I now want to visit Tupelo and see Elvis’s house and the diner he frequented, along with Graceland, of course.

⚠️ Content Warning: domestic abuse, racism, cancer, death of a parent

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23 Books for 2023

One of my main goals for this year is to read most of the books I own, and there are plenty! Some are by authors I love or sequels I did not get to read yet. Others were bought out of pure curiosity. And the many more were recommended by the wonderful bookstagram community (seriously, it's a great community and they all have such good taste. I sincerely mean that).

Here are 23 books I want to read in 2023, in no particular order. 

1. This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
2. Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory
3. Mustique Island by Sarah McCoy
4. Exes and O’s by Amy Lea
5. Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca
6. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
7. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
8. A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp
9. The Shimmering State by Meredith Westgate
10. Must Love Books by Shauna Robinson
11. Two Doors Away by Elle Spellman
12. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
13. Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu
14. Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum
15. Ramon and Julieta by Alana Quintana Albertson
16. Lucy on the Wild Side by Kerry Rea
17. The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian
18. The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett
19. Space Hopper by Helen Fisher
20. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
21. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
22. The Martian by Andy Weir
23. Artemis by Andy Weir

Have you read any of these? Do you see any favorites?

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Our Infinite Days | Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Okay, I get it now. This book is amazing.

I’m still trying to process what I just read, but it was wholeheartedly a beautiful and moving story about friendship and time using video game creation as a metaphor for life and all its complexities. That was my takeaway from it. I’m sure like so many others who have read it saw something else (kind of like the Magic Eye that was mentioned in the beginning), but you cannot deny that there was so much depth and care in every page and every sentence Gabrielle Zevin wrote. It was subtle at times, but completely felt throughout the entire novel.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is about video games, but most of all it is about love and friendship. Before they were known as the designers behind some of the greatest video games made, they were just Sam Masur and Sadie Green. Two friends from childhood who stopped speaking after a miscommunication, but reunited years later by happenstance when they decide to work together on a video game. From that moment forward, the course of Sam and Sadie's lives were forever changed. Along with their dear friend, Marx Watanabe, the trio go through the grief, heartache, and loss grappling with their past, present, and future. "Yes, it is a love story, but not one you have read before."

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Who Am I? | Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean

Have you ever loved a book so much that you started taking your sweet time reading it? That’s how I feel right now with Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean. I’m not ready for this book to end and to let any of these characters go.

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Captivating Magic | The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Let me introduce you to my new favorite book: The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I previously read her other book, Mexican Gothic, which I loved, and yet she still continues to amaze me with her writing, especially with this one. 

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Conning an Illusion | Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen

There are times when you go into a book expecting it to be one thing, but then it surprises you by giving you just a little bit more beyond its plot. That’s how I felt with Kirstin Chen’s Counterfeit. This book begins with a fascinating look into the counterfeit luxury goods industry told from an outsider’s perspective. Then as the story progresses, it becomes more of a character exploration littered with underlying themes about success and status in America.

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Reflections in Tokyo | Fault Lines by Emily Itami

Fault Lines by Emily Itami is such a beautiful book. The prose in her writing felt transportive and made me want to visit Tokyo again. It is a simple story that is almost like a collection of honest journal entries documenting the main character's stream of consciousness compiled with all her anxieties, regrets, and hopes.

The story follows Japanese housewife, Mizuki, who has been living day to day as if they were all the same in the beautiful city of Tokyo. She has a good and stable life married to her hardworking husband and raising their two small children. Yet, she has been feeling frustrated lately on the mundanity her life has taken compared to the woman she was before and the risks she used to take. On one rainy evening, she meets restauranteur, Kiyoshi. He is charming, handsome, understanding, and with him, Mizuki's life feels whole again. They soon embark on an affair, but between her new relationship with Kiyoshi and her life at home, Mizuki must make a choice between what she wants to keep and what she must give up.

There is no over the top drama or anything like that in this novel and the real magnitude of the story is everything Mizuki is internally going through. Her affair with Kiyoshi, in my opinion, represents a part of herself she felt she may have lost and still misses, and it’s tied with everything else that has led her to where she is now. Her home life has become dull, but you can tell that as she begins to go back and forth between her affair and her life as a wife and mother that there is an inner conflict because she genuinely loves both her family and Kiyoshi. I also liked the substory about her fear of being trapped on a subway during an earthquake. It can be interpreted to mean several things, one of which I think is tied to her inner reflections about all her life choices about how if she had made a different choice she would have ended up somewhere else.

This book may be short but it is full of many relatable reflections, subtle humor, and heart. It's perfect as it is and may even evoke a feeling of wanderlust to Japan.

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Jacqueline Susann: The Queen of Roman à clef

I was never always an avid reader, but all that changed the minute I picked up Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls. She was one of the authors who got me hooked into reading and whose stories were inspired by her time as an actress, featuring complicated characters based on people she knew, including herself. Some would call her books trashy, but to me they were addictive and engrossing. If you have never read her books before, I highly recommend these three: Valley of the Dolls, Once Is Not Enough, and The Love Machine.

I first read Valley of the Dolls after much curiosity when a writer mentioned it in their review for an episode of Mad Men. To quote one critic, “I devoured this book in one greedy gulp.” I was so engrossed in the story about three women, Anne Welles, Jennifer North, and Neely O’Hara, who climb, fall, and climb again in the entertainment industry from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, while going after their “dolls” (barbiturate pills) to deal with it all. The ending also made me mad, but left me thinking about it for days. The film adaptation does not do this book justice, in my opinion, but I understand the appeal. Sharon Tate was the perfect casting choice as Jennifer North.

Once Is Not Enough will forever be the first book I associate the name January with before the name took prominence after Emily Henry's character in Beach Read. This father-daughter story was tragic and wild, especially towards the end. Yet, I could not get enough of the main characters, January Wayne and her film producer father, Mike Wayne, who only had each other but tried to find dependency from others though none could compare. This book was also made into a movie starring Kirk Douglas and Deborah Raffin that also featured George Hamilton. I actually liked this adaptation and is by far the best out of Susann's books turned into a movie.

I remember my cousin mentioned, and I quote, “The Love Machine is dire. Couldn’t put it down! Felt so dirty afterwards.” I guess that is what you can typically expect from a Jacqueline Susann book of its time. This is probably the only book of hers that has a fairly happy ending and features a male lead. Although this was publish right after Valley of the Dolls, it was the last one I read after reading the first two books mentioned back to back. It made me really sad right after because there were no more. 

Jacqueline Susann wrote three other books: Dolores, which was unfinished and published posthumously that was based on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (I read it and it was fine); Yargo, a sci-fi with a love interest inspired by Yul Brynner; and Every Night, Josephine! about her dog, Josephine. However, the original three best-sellers are the ones that kept readers like me glued to the story even once it was over.

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Love and Marriage | Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

I was eager and curious to read Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors just by the title alone knowing nothing yet about the plot. Although Cleopatra and Frankenstein are not the actual characters of Mellor’s debut novel, they still seem like a mismatched couple to imagine. And that alone is already an indicator for what this book had in store for its two main characters, Cleo and Frank.

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Like Father, Like Daughter | The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith

So far, I have enjoyed every single book I read this year, including this new one coming out soon: The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith. I had been wanting to read this book since I first heard about it and was so excited when I won an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) from Goodreads. In the end, I loved it so much more than I expected.

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The Start of Something New | On a Night Like This by Lindsay Kelk

One special night can change everything, but it is ultimately up to you on what happens after. 

I really enjoyed reading On a Night Like This by Lindsey Kelk. It’s sweet, funny, lighthearted and yet grounded and self-reflective. It’s a modern day Cinderella story, which you can probably see why I gravitated towards it, with a main character anyone can relate to.

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What Are You Reading?

One of the things I find enjoyable after graduating from college is reading. To be honest, I was never an avid reader growing up. I found more enjoyment in watching movies and television. I did however like some of the required reading we had to do for school, but other than that I was never really someone who would read a book for fun.

After college, I began to reflect on my educational years from elementary school to high school to college, thinking about all the books I had to read. There were the usual requirements, such as Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and To Kill a Mockingbird, and of course the many works of Shakespeare (I have read Macbeth three times and A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet twice). Then one day, while I was looking at my bookshelf I began to wonder about all the books I did not get to read during school. By this I mean the books that we were never required to read. After all my years at school, I never got to read Hamlet. Hamlet - a  Shakespeare play that is often assigned to students! Some of the other books I never got to read for school were Lolita, 1984, The Age of Innocence, Of Mice and Men, and Shakespeare's King Lear and The Merchant of Venice. Instead of just leaving it as a passing thought, I realized that with all the time I have now since graduating I should start reading some of those books as well as more books in general. Since May of last year, I am happy to report that I have become an avid reader.

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