Quickie Review: Wild Conquest

Wild Conquest by Hannah Howell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

I wish the bear had won the battle. 

This guy was trash-y

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Review: The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History

The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

“But what about Grandma?” 

The Swans of Harlem was a reclaiming of historical Blackness in ballet as told through five women who were at the forefront. Lydia Abarca, Sheila Rohan, Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Karlya Shelton-Benjamin, and Marcia Sells were part of the founding core at Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theatre of Harlem. If you're a fan of ballet, then you've probably heard of Arthur Mitchell, a dancer himself who broke color barriers and after Martin Luther King Jr's assassination, decides to start and build DTH, with a board including Cicely Tyson, Brock Peters, George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, and Charles De Rose. Such powerful figures helped to contribute to DTH's success, along with philanthropists' donations, that the company was in constant need of, but the heart of the success lies in the dancers who sacrificed, worked, and understood the importance of what their mission was. Told in three acts, the book successfully tells their stories and brings you back to a world of the Civil Rights Movement, it's lingering effects, and the reclaiming of history. 

He would build a ballet school in Harlem, the neighborhood that had raised him up. And because children deserve role models who show them what is possible, he would simultaneously establish the first permanent Black professional ballet company. 

Art is activism. Let the gorgeous lines of his dancers’ bodies serve as fists in the air. 

The first Act was all about the building of the DTH and how each of the five women entered Arthur Mitchell's world. I enjoyed how we really got to not only know these women's individual stories but a part of their families. One thing is clear while reading this, rarely does anyone do it alone and the support these women's families gave them, made all the difference; it's not just the story of these women but generations. I also enjoyed how, while Mr. Mitchell was celebrated for his strength and perseverance, he wasn't canonized, he was a living breathing man who's personality was formed in a different era and had all the highs and lows of it (colorism is discussed). It added to the carrying over and intertwining of generational butterfly effects. 

“We all understood this to be a higher calling,” says McKinney-Griffith. “Suddenly that step on pointe made a difference. We were a group of brown people, of all different shades from different cities and countries. For those of us who’d felt for so long adrift and like a lonely standard bearer— to look around and feel the power of numbers was just extraordinary. We were en masse, so we were protected. Can you imagine the energy that freed up? The freedom to just focus on our craft. We never had to justify to each other our right to ballet.” 

The second Act, focused more on the five women's individual stories and when they finally left DTH to move on and explore other avenues in life. Intermingled with the individual women's stories were chapters that also continued the timeline of what was happening at DTH. This timeline see-sawing tripped me up as a reader a few times and I thought hurt the flow of the book. 

When the evening’s moderator, WBUR culture and arts reporter Cristela Guerra, asks the members of the Legacy Council to discuss the importance of telling their stories now at this moment in history, McKinney-Griffith responds with terrific gravity. “Because we all have a voice,” she says, looking intently around the room. “And we all need to project that out into the world. Otherwise someone else is going to write our history. Or not.” 

Act three and the conclusion of the book brought the eventual closing of Dance Theatre of Harlem (due to lack of funds) but the creation of the 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy Council. After seeing Misty Copeland hailed as the first Black ballerina (Copeland often works to praise those that came before her), erasing all of DTH's successes, which are accounted in the book, had these five women wanting to reclaim their spot in history, along with the many others that worked to make DTH a success (there's a touching moment where the women talk about the men of the company and how hard the AIDs crisis in the '80s and '90s hit them). Through their work with the Council, new names and trailblazers are being rediscovered and their history brought to light and preserved. Even if you're not a fan of ballet (there's terms used that assume you have at least a rudimentary understanding of the world) this was a great cultural and historical door into a moment in time that helped build and feed into the next generation of Black dancers. 

He wasn’t a Black man who dared to dance ballet. He was a dancer who dared ballet to see and celebrate his Blackness.

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50%

After reading reviews that referred to the miracle of his success, Mitchell was circumspect. “It is absolutely a miracle,” he said. “But it’s a miracle of purpose and dedication, not something that just happened and makes no sense. It is not a miracle for Black people to be fine classical artists. I have to laugh when people get excited about our dancers, as though a Black girl in toe shoes is a creature from outer space. Some of the reactions to us when we go out on the road are just incredible. People come expecting Super Fly and switchblades because, after all, it is Harlem. And then they see disciplined young dancers and they can’t believe it right away. But it’s not incredible at all. There were always Black classical dancers in America. They just never got on stage.”

Review: After Hours

After Hours by Cara McKenna
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.7 stars 

Trademark McKenna HOT, nails emotions, and takes place in a setting definitely not often found in contemp romance. 

Never pass-up a McKenna book if you can. 

For my thoughts, comments, and quotes: After Hours Buddy Read

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Reading Update: Page 1

 

One of my secret desires in life was to be a ballerina, unfortunately, I live the awkward clumsy life instead. Fortunately, I get to enjoy the talent of others. 

Everyone knows Misty Copeland, but the first to break out is usually not the First. Lydia Abarca had major success during her time but I've never heard her name before! 

Time to learn about the Dance Theatre of Harlem and all their accomplishments that helped pave the way for others. 

The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valley preorder (April 30th) link

Romano Chicken with Lemon Garlic Pasta recipe

Review: Here We Go Again

Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

She’d been publicly ridiculed and dumped, Joe was injured, and she’d rear-ended the shit out of her childhood best friend turned nemesis’s car. 

Here We Go Again was a story of second chance love, grief, and shedding those childhood hurts. Logan and Rosemary were childhood friends who's friendship ended when a kiss throws confusion and misunderstandings into the mix. Now, as adults teaching at their old high-school, they carefully try to avoid each other. Logan wanted to travel and see the world but when her mother up and left her father, she didn't want to hurt her father by leaving him too, so she still lives at home and has a string of meaningless relationships. Rosemary was the dedicated student who left and taught at a prestigious school, until her dedication was amplified by her anxiety and always having to be perfect, all leading to her having a break down and coming home. When a teacher that made a huge difference in both their lives, ropes them into a cross-country trip, they're forced to confront each other and themselves. 

She is thirty-two, crashing into Logan. Always crashing into her. Three years of friendship, four years of hating each other, ten years of not talking, and then this. 

I'm not going to lie to you, you're going to hurt when you read this. The teacher, Joe, has cancer and he's decided to not do another round of chemo, so he only has a few weeks to live. The road trip starts in the first half and we get “I've made a binder for the trip” Rosemary and “Let's detour!” Logan and Joe, butting up against each other. The clashing personalities help readers learn more about the characters, Rosemary is scared of not being perfect and her ADHD plays into this, her father dying young, and having a workaholic mother, have made her insulate herself because she can't handle surprises. Logan also has ADHD and with her mother just leaving and not staying in her life, she's scared to really get close to someone in fear of the hurt she'll endure if they leave. Individually, these two have issues to work out and then there is the hold-over of the “kiss”. Logan doesn't even know that Rosemary is a lesbian until a little before the midway point. 

Because Logan was everything she wasn’t: tall and loud and goofy; brave and unfiltered, quick to laughter, quicker to tears, every big feeling inside her worn boldly on the outside. 

The road trip has Logan and Rosemary calling a friendship truce for Joe and as they detour more, their walls start to break down. This was told in povs from Logan and Rosemary but Joe is a big part of the story and half-way through, he gets his own second chance when one of his life's regrets takes them to Mississippi and an old love. Rosemary and Logan have their own break through and we get an open door scene as they come together. I thought the story slowed some as they stayed in MS but then it rushes as the reality of Joe's illness hits and they quickly make their way to Maine where he wants to die in his cabin on the water. 

Rosemary kisses Logan Maletis in the rain outside an Albuquerque hospital, and dammit, she tastes like strawberries. The grief that's been building hits hard in this last half ending and while Rosemary has pretty much dealt with her issues after a session with her therapist, Logan still struggles, especially with Joe's reality finally hitting her. We get, kind of a rushed, moment with Logan seeking out her mother and finally trying to put that pain to bed. 

Everything is beautiful and painful. 

Even though some levity pops up here and there with Logan and Rosemary playing off each other, there is so much grief in this (not that romance can't have grief!) and Joe plays such a big part, that I hesitate to strictly call this romance genre, it's more fiction with romance to me but your mileage may vary and all that. The, still, realities of being gay in America were a part of the story instead of being ignored and added a fabric layer, there were some flashbacks to Logan and Rosemary in high-school that I thought helped fill out their background, and we got an epilogue that showed these two were on the HEA road. If you want to read a road tripping, second chances, putting childhood hurts away, with it's going to make you hurt grief, then you should pick this one up.

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15%

It took her papou a decade or so to come around to the idea of having a lesbian granddaughter, but her dad embraced it instantly, kept the delicious food, and ditched the religious trauma. 

On leaving the Greek Orthodox Church. 

IMHO, the way to do it regarding culture and religion. 

*loukoumades getting a shout-out!

Reading Update: 50%

“There’s four things a real man has to be able to do for a woman.” 

“Exactly how many man-lists do you have?” 

He let my wrist go and ticked the items off on his fingers. “Fix her car. Grill her a steak. Kick the ass of any guy who makes her cry. And fuck her so hard she wakes up half-crippled.”

I started the After Hours Buddy Read over on GoodReads and, well, I've read half the book already. McKenna can pull me in like no other. 

Review: Morning Glory

Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion. 

WANTED—A HUSBAND. Need Healthy man of any age willing to work spread and share the place. See E. Dinsmore, top of Rock Creek Road

April's TBRChallenge theme was No Place Like Home, so I chose Morning Glory, a book on my tbr for decades. A drifter who's never had a home but works hard to make one with a widow, sounded like a perfect fit to the theme. The first half of this, I raced through. There's a prologue of a young mother bringing her baby home and her parents locking her up in the house because they're ashamed of her “sin”, it's 1917 and unwed mother's are not looked upon kindly. The story then quickly jumps to 1941 and to a drifter named Will about to be fired from a sawmill because it's found out that he served five years in prison for murdering a woman. I had to pause to imagine one of those graphics with arrows pointing at the book listing tropes, “Murderer!” “Shut-in recluse!”. 

Will Parker's eyes were drawn to her stomach as she rested a hand on it. He thought about how maybe there was more than one kind of prison. 

Will starving and having no money, decides that he will check out the widower at the edge town “Crazy Elly” and her newspaper ad asking for a husband. When I tell you, the pain of these two, gah. Will's constantly thinking, please let me stay, knowing he looks like a half-starved vagabond, who Elly knows, because he told her, that he served jail time for killing a woman but drawn to something warm in Elly's aura. The house and property are run down but Elly and her two small boys seem happy and for someone who was abandoned as a baby and on his own his whole life, Will can't help but want to be welcomed into that magic, even if Elly is pregnant with a third child. Elly for her part knows she needs help and is constantly thinking, please stay, even though she knows she's not pretty, has children and pregnant, run down farm, and is called “Crazy Elly” because of her past. They're both yearning for what the other can give and I honestly felt like a voyeur reading their relationship this first half as they slowly grew to trust one another. 

She was a good mother, a fine woman who'd been locked in a house and called crazy, and if he didn't tell her she wasn't, who would? 

The first half also gives a pov from a woman in town called Lula, who is said to run “hot” and wants Will but he rebuffs her because he knows those kind of women can lead to trouble because of his past. Readers do learn about the murder he went to jail for and it's, probably of course, nothing that makes him nonredeemable. Lula is that classic “other woman” villain that makes you uncomfortable reading because she's backed by a whole lot of slut-shaming, but it's, pretty obvious, why she's included and while she disappears for the majority of the middle of the story, her set-up comes into play for the last half. There's also a Miss Beasley, librarian, that was a great character (Mentally, I've given her a novella HEA with the lawyer) but, geez, yeah for women with facial hair being talked about but did the hair on her upper lip have to be mentioned, SO MANY times? Like, damn, give the gal a break. Anyway, by midpoint, Will and Elly have decided to marry and they have grown to the I love yous. I can say, even if it didn't feel over-the-top passionate (which can be considered better by some romance readers) I did believe they loved each other. Elly growing up locked up in her home, constantly being told she's a sin, until the law forced her grandparents (side question: I thought it was going to be directly said but am I the only one who thought her grandfather raped her mother and that was what was with the “drawn shades” business?) to let her go to school, but she was considered “crazy” because of her lack of socialization, and only getting befriended by her first husband (he died a'la Bridgerton, bee stings) had never really had a man care for her the way Will did, or turn her on. Will was never cared for either and had no one to care for, so when they meet, it's a pretty simple scenario of two people deserving love and finding the person that connects with them to give it. It felt real their feelings and why I said it gave a voyeuristic feeling for me. 

She smiled into the bluebird's painted eye, her own shining with delight. "A bluebird...imagine that." She pressed it to her heart and beamed at Will. "How did you know I like birds?" 

He knew. He knew. 

The second half is where things really slowed down for me. Pearl Harbor gets bombed and Will gets drafted. There's a couple chapters of letter writing between Will, Elly, and Miss Beasley and then a really great scene where Elly has to rush to see Will before he gets shipped to the Pacific. She's had the baby by now (the birth scene was something else with Will playing doctor) and while they managed to have sex once before he left for boot camp, these two are ramped up. I love how the author described their attraction, from how Will was sitting in the chair and Elly eyeing him up and Elly breastfeeding with Will seeing her exposed boob, could definitely feel the tension in the air. Will gets injured and he's eventually sent home after being medically discharged because of shrapnel in his leg. The townspeople view him differently and he gets the respect he's craved but he's also suffering from PTSD and that delivers some strain between him and Elly until he eventually opens up to her. We're at around 80% when Lula comes back into the picture and Will's suddenly arrested for her murder. The ending was the court case and Elly trying to help prove him innocent until the last 5% gives us the HEA. 

He wanted to take her close, cradle her head and rub her shoulder and say. "Tell me...tell me what it is that hurts so bad, then we'll work at getting you over it." 

The first half, a slower moving but pulling you in with these two and their hurts and pains, learning to come together but the second half was a slower moving left me kind of disinterested ending. I read this in almost one shot and kind of glad I did, because even though slower moving usually calls for savoring, pacing out, I feel like this would be one that would be hard to pick up again, so my two cents of advice. These two will linger with me because of how real they felt but I'm not sure I could recommended, maybe just the first half and that meet-up in Augusta. Hope springs eternal for a Donald Wade, Thomas, and Lizzy P. spin-off series! (Elly's kids) 

Guess what I'm watching tonight? (Hint: check out what's on Tubi)

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Reading Update: Page 1

 

Monday calls for a jazz up, so Firecracker Chicken dipping and a road romance! 

Logan and Rosemary were childhood bestfriends, but an incident in the summer before high school turned them bitter rivals. 

Which makes being teachers in their thirties at their hometown high school awkward. 

But when a former English teacher they both loved, only has a few months to live, they're forced together for a cross-country trip. 

I have a feeling this is going to be emotional, old hurts and buried deep feelings, all while forced proximity makes them deal with these issues. 

Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun purchase link

Firecracker Chicken Wraps recipe

Review: Orphia And Eurydicius

Orphia And Eurydicius by Elyse John
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

Snuffing out the voices of women. It was how they set up the game so that we would lose, even as we convinced ourselves that it was our fault. If we could shout for help, then we might take the hands of our sisters, swim ashore, and manage to win. 

Orphia and Eurydicius was a gender swapped Orpheus and Eurydice myth reimagining that had Orphia battling her father Apollo, men (gods and human), and systematic sexism. The beginning shows us an early twenties Orphia as she was taken by her father and placed on the Whispering Isles to learn combat and battle the men. This has lead to Orphia being looked at with some sneer in regards to, what is perceived in their society, as a more man like build, features, and mannerisms. Told she won't be able to leave until she beats the Prince, Orphia does have one friend Jason, who then introduces her to Eurydicius, a shield maker. 

What I was looking, I realised, was a man who appreciated my manner. The desire in his eyes mangled with awe and something surprisingly soft. 

Respect. That was the word. 

It's instant attraction between the two and he gives Orphia some confidence to explore her wanting to burst free poetry side. Even though it's one of her father's powers, Apollo has forbid Orphia to take up the lyre, so when she does, she understands the danger but can't contain that part of herself any longer. Apollo, of course, finds out and it's godly anger, he whisks Orphia away to Mt. Olympus and destroys the Isle, leaving Orphia to think Jason and Eurydicius are dead. With a new setting of Mt. Olympus, numerous gods and goddesses come into scene and it becomes apparent that the goddesses also live in a sexist world, their stories, only told by men, are skewed and told through a lens of sexism. Orphia learns her mother is Calliope, Chief of the Muses and Orphia was not given up by her but taken. With some help from Hera, Orphia gets her wish to tell poetry and goes to live with the Muses. 

The thrill of expressing myself had driven me into fresh imaginings, until I could not see the risk I took. 

The middle of the story was a lot of Orphia spending time with different Muses and learning from them, always discussing how sexism comes into play. It's then learned that Jason and Eurydicius did not die on the Isle and we get some romance interludes, focuses on how Eurydicius likes to be lead by Orphia, exploring the general societal gender swapping, which eventually leads to them quietly and hurriedly married. While the story was mostly focusing on Orphia and introducing other characters through her journey, the second half begins with Orphia being betrayed into going with Jason on his quest (Argo, Golden Fleece) and separating from Eurydicius. I thought some of this veered a little bit too much into “see how much mythology research I did” and it felt less like Orphia's story. 

I wanted to tell stories of men who were soft when they were supposed to be hard; of women who were loud when they were supposed to be docile; of people of every nature who felt scarcely visible, and wished to make themselves whole through my stories. 

The ending brought us back to more of the love story and we get Orphia trying to rescue Eurydicius from the Underwold, the Underworld providing some good atmospheric setting. The vast majority of this followed the traditionally known myths, some events mixed around here and there but all told through a focus on sexism. A gender swapping adds some new angles and layers to this myth and if you're interested in some goddesses getting their due, some righteous anger, and challenging of sexist norms, then this could be a new one to pick up.

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