Book Review: The Mis-Arrangement of Sana Saeed

The Mis-Arrangement of Sana Saeed by Noreen Mughees
Publisher: Alcove Press
Publication Date: October 10, 2023
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Thirty-three-year-old hijabi Sana Saeed has put away her childhood dream of ishq—an all-consuming, sweeping love. The arranged dates she’s agreed to have failed time after time, and she has responsibilities to consider—namely her sweet, autistic younger brother, Zia. Sana and Zia are a package deal, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. But their traditional mother won’t allow Sana to be named as his future guardian . . . unless she’s married.

When Daniel Malik walks into Sana’s office at the Department of Environmental Conservation, she’s astonished—their childhood friendship has been a cherished memory ever since a feud between their families put an end to it eighteen years ago. But there’s no chance of them becoming close again; Daniel may be as hot as a Bollywood heartthrob, but not only is he Sana’s new boss, her mother would disown her if she ever brought him home.

With the clock ticking, Sana agrees to a marriage arranged by her family. She’s seen plenty of arranged marriages grow into love; maybe that will happen for her too. But when a high-stakes case at work forces Sana and Daniel to team up, they find themselves less able—and willing—to play their parts of “good desi children.”

Now Sana must make a choice: family and security, or the one man who claimed her heart long ago.

Sana Saeed is in her 30s and still not married, which is stressing her mother out. In addition, she won’t appoint Sana her autistic brother’s legal guardian unless Sana is married. Sana loves Zia with all her heart and eventually agrees to an arranged marriage to Adam. Just as she does, her childhood friend Daniel enters her life. Sparks fly but their families are feuding and would never approve of the two of them having a relationship. What’s Sana to do – stay with the practical Adam or risk it all to be with Daniel?

This was a cute romance. A tad predictable but I think most romances are, aren’t they?

SPOILER ALERT: I was actually rooting for a different ending. I thought Daniel was a jerk and couldn’t see what Sana saw in him. Adam was so sweet and seemed perfect for her. Even so, I enjoyed this book.

(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)

Audiobook Review: Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega

Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega
Narrator: Almarie Guerra
Publisher: Scholastic Audio
Release Date: April 7, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

For Lucely Luna, ghosts are more than just the family business.

Shortly before Halloween, Lucely and her best friend, Syd, cast a spell that accidentally awakens malicious spirits, wreaking havoc throughout St. Augustine. Together, they must join forces with Syd’s witch grandmother, Babette, and her tubby tabby, Chunk, to fight the haunting head-on and reverse the curse to save the town and Lucely’s firefly spirits before it’s too late.

Lucely is the only one who can see the ghosts of her ancestors. When they start to seem sick, she’s worried that they will disappear. She and her best friend Syd find and cast a spell, thinking it will help the ancestors. But instead, it unleashes a lot of evil spirits. They must enlist Syd’s grandmother Babette to try and banish the evil spirits before Halloween or they may destroy the town.

This is a great middle-grade book for Halloween. It’s spooky and suspenseful but not enough to give kids nightmares or anything. The audiobook was a quick listen. Recommended.

Audiobook Review: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton
Narrator: Kevin R. Free
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: March 27, 2018
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. 

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor Black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence – full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next 27 years he was a beacon – transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, 54 of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and best-selling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015. 

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic 30-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy. 

This program includes a foreword written and read by Bryan Stevenson.

I recently read Lara Love Hardin’s book The Many Lives of Mama Love, in which she wrote about co-writing The Sun Does Shine with Anthony Ray Hinton, who was falsely convicted of murder and spent 27 years on Death Row before he was exonerated.

When Hinton was 29 years old, he was arrested for murdering two people. Even though he had a rock-solid alibi, he was found guilty and sentenced to Death Row. This was due to an incompetent court-appointed attorney and corrupt law enforcement officers and Attorneys General, who cared more about a conviction than making sure they had the right person. Through it all, Hinton maintained a positive attitude and even helped keep his fellow inmates’ spirits up. Eventually, he was put in touch with Bryan Stevenson, the attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and wrote the book Just Mercy. It was Stevenson who eventually won Hinton’s release.

I learned a lot about the legal system reading this book and what I came away with is most of it is complete BS. The simplest things take years to get done and half of it doesn’t even make sense. The disregard for human life – Black life to be specific – was horrifying. Sentencing a human being you know is innocent to death just to get the case closed? Disgusting. And if you don’t have money, you can forget about getting a fair trial. I know there are some good public defenders out there but I think most of them are just phoning it in to get the case over with. I know Hinton’s sure was. I think I could have done a more thorough job. Now that I’ve read this book, I want to read Just Mercy, which I actually have on my bookshelves. I wonder if Stevenson writes about Hinton’s case – it would be interesting to hear his perspective.

Hinton is an amazing man who deserves the very best in life. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Publisher: Random House Audio
Cast List: Daisy Jones, read by Jennifer Beals; Billy Dunne, read by Pablo Schreiber; Graham Dunne, read by Benjamin Bratt; Eddie Loving, read by Fred Berman; Warren Rhodes, read by Ari Fliakos; Karen Karen, read by Judy Greer; Camila Dunne, read by January LaVoy; Simone Jackson, read by Robinne Lee; Narrator/Author, read by Julia Whelan; Jim Blades, read by Jonathan Davis; Rod Reyes, read by Henry Leyva; Artie Snyder, read by Oliver Wyman; Elaine Chang, read by Nancy Wu; Freddie Mendoza, read by P.J. Ochlan; Nick Harris, read by Arthur Bishop; Jonah Berg, read by Holter Graham; Greg McGuinness, read by Brendan Wayne; Pete Loving, read by Pete Larkin; Wyatt Stone, read by Alex Jenkins Reid; Hank Allen, read by Robert Petkoff; Opal Cunningham, read by Sara Arrington
Release Date: March 05, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Daisy is a girl coming of age in LA in the late ’60s, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s 20, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the ’70s. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

Daisy Jones and the Six is the story of the 60s and 70s rock band The Six and their eventual lead singer, Daisy Jones. The band bears a striking resemblance to Fleetwood Mack – I’m not sure if that was intentional or not. Billy, the lead singer, is a hard-partying drug addict. When his wife becomes pregnant, he knows he has to sober up and become a better man. Daisy Jones is the it girl of the moment. She wants to be a songwriter and write and perform her own songs. A record producer pairs her with The Six and magic happens. However, there is tension between Daisy and the rest of the band, primarily Billy.

Daisy Jones and the Six is written as an oral history, which made it perfect for audio. It’s read by a full cast and was like listening to a play – really well done. I was pleasantly surprised. Malibu Rising was the first TJR book I read and I didn’t think it lived up the hype. Everyone told me to give Daisy Jones a try anyway. It was also super-hyped when it came out so I was nervous. But I really liked it and will definitely read more of TJR’s books. People love her so maybe Malibu Rising was a fluke.

Recommended – especially on audio.

Book Review: The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing by Lara Love Hardin

The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing by Lara Love Hardin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: August 1, 2023
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,” showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.

Lara Love Hardin seemed like she had the perfect life but behind the scenes, she and her husband were doing heroin. She was stealing credit cards, even from her neighbors, to fund her habit. It doesn’t take long for her crimes to catch up to her.

She’s convicted of thirty-two felonies – each transaction on each card counts as one crime. Although the maximum sentence was several years in federal prison, she is able to get a deal and serve around a year in jail. Even with a relatively short sentence, life in jail is still hard. Luckily, Lara learns to navigate the system quickly and becomes known as Mama Love to her fellow inmates because of the good advice she gives them and her caring nature.

After Lara is released she faces one obstacle after another. It was eye-opening how hard it is for former convicts to find a job and housing while keeping up with all of the required appointments for drug tests and with probation officers, etc. Lara is white and was coming from a place of privilege when she was released. She earned a master’s degree and was a business owner before she became an addict and she still struggled immensely after her release. I think it would be near impossible for someone without an education to stay out of jail after having been once. Also, if she were Black, I’m sure her sentence would have been much longer.

Eventually, she finds a job with a literary agency and works her way up to being a successful ghostwriter. She still has to work through the shame and guilt she feels about being an addict and being away from her children while in jail. As an aside – her husband (now ex-husband, thankfully) was unbelievably terrible. When she was in the hospital with an infection, he came to visit her and shot heroin into her IV! That’s just one example. Ugh.

I found Lara’s story inspiring. I was impressed with her attitude. She took full responsibility for her actions and didn’t make any excuses. I learned a lot about how the judicial system and prison work, especially what happens after someone is released. I’m glad I chose The Many Lives of Mama Love as my Book of the Month pick for August.Highly recommended.

You can join Book of The Month here for just $5 for your first book, cancel any time!

Book Review: Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton

Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton
Publisher: Penguin Classics: September 29, 2009
First published in 1973
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In October 1967, one year after the founding of the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton was involved in a shooting during which an Oakland police officer was killed. Newton spent three years in prison before being released and having his charges dismissed, and his jailing brought cries of “Free Huey” from supporters around the world. This engrossing and well-written autobiography recounts the forming of a revolutionary and shows how the degrading and psychologically destructive penal system forged Newton’s already growing spirit. When Newton was a child, his father instilled in him a sense of dignity and pride; as an adolescent, he was torn between religious principles and life as a hustler; as a young man, he founded the radical Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale, and finally, in solitary confinement in the Alameda County Jail, he reached deep within himself to find the strength to face adversity; and even death without fear.

I didn’t know much about the Black Panther Party or Huey P. Newton before reading this book – only what I was “taught” in school. And I don’t think Huey P. Newton was mentioned at all. He was an amazing human being. He was functionally illiterate when he graduated from high school and taught himself to read using Plato’s Republic. Not Dick and Jane – Plato! After that, he read widely and formed a lot of the Black Panther’s philosophy from the books he read – Karl Marx, Mao Zedong and the like. He was very intelligent and a great strategist.

In many ways, Black people’s interactions with the police have actually gotten worse since that time. The Black Panthers openly carried firearms in public. Can you imagine if Black people tried to do that today? They also carried law books with them and would read from them to police officers when police officers were trying to wrongly arrest somebody something or otherwise violate a person’s rights. If a Black person tried to pull out a law book today during a police encounter, it would not go over well. The policeman would get mad and the situation would escalate. But back then, it actually worked sometimes.

Sometimes the Black Panthers would come across a policeman stopping a citizen and they would stand at a distance with their weapons to let the police know that they were being watched. Today, people do the same thing by pulling out their cell phones to record these situations. It’s sad that over forty years later, the police still need bystanders to hold them accountable for their behavior.

I learned a lot about Newton and the Black Panthers from reading this book. I still have more to learn and plan on seeking out more books about this topic and time in history. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
Publisher: ‎ Berkley
Publication Date: June 13, 2023
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.
 
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.
 
Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

Elsie Hannaway is an adjunct physics professor. To supplement her measly income, she moonlights as a fake girlfriend. When she interviews for her dream job at MIT, she discovers that one of the physicists she’ll be interviewing with is the brother of one of her clients. He’s also the person who ruined her mentor’s career. Will being a fake girlfriend ruin her chances of getting the job?

Love, Theoretically was a cute romance. I loved that Elsie is an intelligent, career-driven woman. Ali Hazelwood brings the spice. Parts of it were laugh-out-loud funny too. And Adam and Olive from The Love Hypothesis have a cameo. We get to find out what they’ve been up to since the end of their story!

I’m loving Ali Hazelwood right now. I plan to read all of her books! Highly recommended.

Audiobook Review: Making a Scene by Constance Wu

Making a Scene by Constance Wu
Narrator: Constance Wu
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: October 04, 2022
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Growing up in the friendly suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Constance Wu was often scolded for having big feelings or strong reactions. “Good girls don’t make scenes,” people warned her. And while she spent most of her childhood suppressing her bold, emotional nature, she found an early outlet in community theater—it was the one place where big feelings were okay—were good, even. Acting became her refuge, and eventually her vocation. At eighteen she moved to New York, where she’d spend the next ten years of her life auditioning, waiting tables, and struggling to make rent before her two big breaks: the TV sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians.

Here Constance shares private memories of childhood, young love and heartbreak, sexual assault and harassment, and how she “made it” in Hollywood. Raw, relatable, and enthralling, Making a Scene is an intimate portrait of the pressures and pleasures of existing in today’s world.

I know Constance Wu from her starring role in Crazy Rich Asians. She also starred in the TV series Fresh Off the Boat. I never watched that but I remember there was a big to-do when she tweeted that she was disappointed that the show was NOT canceled. People thought that she was an ungrateful brat and she got a lot of hate for it.

One of the reasons I chose Making a Scene is because I wanted to hear Constance’s side of the story. She does address the tweet towards the end of the book and is very apologetic about it. And her explanation of her feelings at the time makes sense.

The rest of the book kind of feels like an apology tour. Several of the essays are about situations that she wishes she would have handled better and apologizing to the people affected. Conversely, some of the essays are about people who should be apologizing to her, like one of the producers of Fresh Off the Boat who sexually harassed her and a couple of really awful boyfriends.

Speaking of boyfriends, she is very candid and descriptive about her sex life. I didn’t mind but it did take me by surprise for some reason. Maybe because I was assuming she would be more demure like her character in Crazy Rich Asians. I actually love it when celebrities give me the down-and-dirty.

Recommended.

Book Review: Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane

Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: May 30, 2023
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Two grooms. One mother of a problem.

Barnett Durang has a secret. No, not THAT secret. His widowed mother has long known he’s gay. The secret is Barnett is getting married. At his mother’s farm. In their small Louisiana town. She just doesn’t know it yet.

It’ll be an intimate affair. Just two hundred or so of the most fabulous folks Barnett is shipping in from the “heathen coasts,” as Mom likes to call them, turning her quiet rescue farm for misfit animals into a most unlikely wedding venue.

But there are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don’t want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle. It’ll be the biggest, gayest event in the town’s history if they can pull it off, and after a glitter-filled week, nothing will ever be the same. Big Gay Wedding is an uplifting book about the power of family and the unconditional love of a mother for her son.

Barnett’s mother Chrissy runs the Polite Society Ranch. Her husband recently died and she assumed that Barnett would take over the family farm someday so she could retire. When Barnett comes home with his boyfriend and tells her that they are getting married, she knows that her dream of having her son run the farm is over. She also has to come to grips with the fact that Barnett is not going to just outgrow this gay thing like she hoped he would.

Big Gay Wedding has two main plot lines going. One is serious. Chrissy and the rest of the town are having a hard time with a Big Gay Wedding happening on the farm. The other is the planning of the actual wedding. Barnett’s fiancé comes from money and his sister-in-law is planning an extravagant and outlandish wedding. It was just a touch too zany for my taste. I did appreciate how Chrissy’s struggle with Barnett’s sexuality was written. Lane did a good job of portraying her inner turmoil when trying to accept Barnett’s marriage. I liked that there was nuance in her feelings even though I didn’t always agree with them.

Recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Byron Lane’s debut novel A Star is Bored.

Audiobook Review: Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays by R. Eric Thomas

Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays by R. Eric Thomas
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: February 18, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went – whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative Black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city – he found himself on the outside looking in.

In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Thomas reexamines what it means to be an “other” through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents’ house was an anomalous bright spot, and the Eden-like school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election for Elle online, and the seismic changes that came thereafter. Ultimately, Thomas seeks the answer to these ever more relevant questions: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Thomas finds the answers to these questions by reenvisioning what “normal” means and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.

Here for It will resonate deeply and joyfully with everyone who has ever felt pushed to the margins, struggled with self-acceptance, or wished to shine more brightly in a dark world. Stay here for it – the future may surprise you. 

Here for It is a collection of essays by writer R. Eric Thomas. Most of them are about his struggle with finding his true identity. He’s Black but he went to an all-white private school. When around a lot of Black people, like at church, or later at college, he never felt like he was Black enough. He’s also gay but didn’t let himself acknowledge that for a long time. Even when having a relationship with a man in college, it was hard for him to accept that he was gay.

Being gay also put him in conflict with his Christianity. He grew up in a Black Baptist church where being gay was so taboo it wasn’t even talked about. There was no need because no one in the congregation would ever be gay.

Even though those sound like heavy topics, this book is mostly hilarious. I’ve actually read it twice. I rarely reread so that’s saying something. The first time I read it in print and it was funny. The next time, I listened to it on audiobook and it was next level. People at the gym probably thought I was a weirdo seeing me laughing to myself while on the treadmill. His voice and comedic timing are perfect.

Highly recommended.