Domestic Girlfriend

 This anime is probably right up there with a good Jackie Collins book. It's SCANDALOUS!! 

I had so much fun watching this one. From the available description, my first thought was that the main character and his new step-sister were going to get into a relationship behind the parents' back. And I was right. Only, the sister I expected him to get tangled up with, was not the sister he ended up with.

I'm not sure how to entice you to watch this one without spoiling the story for you. The basics are as follows:

Teenage boy goes to a mixer with his friends and leaves with a girl. He and the girl have a one night stand. After a week or so, he comes home and finds out that his father has been dating one night stand's mother and the parents are getting married.  If that's not awkward, I don't know what is. 

Well, turns out there is another, older sister. The older sister just so happens to be the school teacher our main character has been secretly in love with for his entire time in high school. But the elder sister is tangled up in a messy relationship of her own: she's in love with a married man.

At some point, just as the leading man is trying to get over his unrequited love for the teacher and get under (or is it on top of) the younger sister, the school teacher starts hinting that she wants a relationship with him. That she wants to shed the unhealthy side chick status and date her student instead (because that's soo much better...NOT!) 

Really, she just gets jealous when she sees him getting close to the little sister. And so, well, I'm sure you can guess. Anyway, if you like the occasional dose of guilty pleasure in your life, then I definitely recommend this one. 

Five stars! This one does not have an English dub at the moment but that doesn't make it any less worthwhile. 

Severance

This novel by Ling MA had high and low points. 

One high point is chapter 7, when the main character flashes back to a time when she visited her family in Fuzhou and spent an evening wandering the streets with her favorite cousin. We get a glimpse of family grievances on display when her father and his brother get into a fight. This chapter was beautifully written and truly transported me to a hot, sticky night in a foreign land. 

One of the low points, about 5 pages in an earlier chapter where we get an indepth tour of how a bible is produced. That chapter almost made me give up on this story. But the redeeming quality of chapter 7 reminded me about my personal compulsion: once I start a story, I have to finish it. Good or bad, I'm compelled to know how it ends. 

Of course, as endings go, the book leaves me hanging. Sure, our main character manages to extricate herself from one problem and find a sort of freedom in going it alone again. And then that's it. She just starts walking. In my mind I'm screaming, "And Then What!!!"  LOL

I have a love-hate relationship with books that leave me with unfinished business. I spend too many hours thinking about what the character would do next. If I were the author, where would I send them? If I were the character, what would I do?

And to her credit, Ms. Ma gives us ample opportunity to get to know Candace Chen. We know that she is capable, an inherent loner, and likes routine. Even without the author telling us, we know that she will find a place to settle, develop a routine for herself and create a new life. But, that doesn't mean I don't want specifics. 

Overall, the story is well done. We are given a female protagonist who has to live with some extremely unusual circumstances. And the real irony is the severance that she received that she never gets to spend.

I gave the story 3.5 stars because of the ending and because there were too many flashbacks into the main character's life. The synopsis on the cover led me to believe I was getting a story that was more about the dystopian world the characters were left in after the collapse of everything. Instead, I felt as though I spent more time living in the main character's personal dystopian lifestyle before society fell apart, because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life.

A Deadly Education

The premise of this book was exceptional. The execution, less so. The work reads more like the author's notes. Rather than allowing the reader to experience the story, we are told again and again the same repetitive information (as if we were goldfish with 3 second memories).

The book is first person, written from the perspective of the main character and I take no issue with that. My issue was that the author over explained and still somehow managed to leave out descriptions that would let you form a clear mental image of the world she built. It was really a waste for such a creative design.

Now, there is a heated discussion happening on goodreads reviews about the book being racist. There were many different cultural references that were cited in one person's opinion. As a reader, as a woman of color, I didn't get that feeling. Many of those issues about the character not stopping to appreciate the culture of the languages she was learning was explained (about 100 times too many) about how there were no teachers and that information was simply a means of survival. 

At best, the author was culturally insensitive. When people, marginalized groups, see themselves represented in a work by someone moderately successful, they have hope that you have done your research and are going to showcase them in a new and brighter way to the rest of the world. When they see themselves as after thoughts or regurgitations of stereotypes that have been thrown at them in cruel ways on a daily basis, they will be first disappointed and later, infuriated. 

For those who love this book and this author, rather than saying others are stupid for feeling that way, take a step back and remember that your world view has been shaped by different experiences. You feel and think differently and that's okay. Someone else will read the same passage and relive traumas from their past, much like the main character of this book whenever she thinks about all the people who fear her and tried to kill her simply because of her affinity. 

Overall, I give the book 3.5 stars. The second half being slightly less tedious than the first. Helped along by the character finally coming out of her shell and opening herself up to other people.