What I’m Reading (5.3.21)

Well, what a weekend I had. I was down for the count after my second COVID vaccine on Thursday. I was one of the unlucky ones who got to experience all of the blasted side effects, starting at 5 a.m. on Friday and lasting until Sunday afternoon. Most of Friday was spent with flu-like symptoms: body aches, headache, a fever, nausea, and chills. I couldn’t do anything on Friday. I just laid around in bed, ate some chicken soup, drank copious bottles of Gatorade. I didn’t want to read or watch TV, but I did scroll through about 10,000 Instagram Reels (approximately). The fever and the body aches were the worst of all my symptoms. They were miserable! Saturday, I woke up feeling much better, but my energy was still very low and I was dealing with a headache and some weird mid-back pain. I think I must have strained it from the way I was lying in bed, maybe? But let me tell you: give me sciatica pain over that mid-back pain any day. It was super uncomfortable! I also didn’t have much of an appetite, and all I wanted to eat was plain food (like all I wanted for dinner was mashed potatoes… so weird.)

Just as I figured I was on the mend, I woke up on Saturday around 11:30pm with excruciating pain in the arm that got the injection. It radiated down my arm to my wrist, up into the back of my shoulder, and even into my armpit and the side of my breast. It was so intense that I was nauseated from the pain and I honestly thought I was having a stroke. I was very close to calling my mom to take me to the ER, but since it was happening in the injection arm, I tried to calm myself down that it was most likely vaccine-related. I took ibuprofen and spent about 30 minutes icing my arm in all the different places it was hurting, and then slept on the couch since I couldn’t get comfortable on my bed. And that seemed to help because I woke up around 5:30am with the pain gone (just some soreness in my armpit). I took myself to my own bed and fell asleep pretty quickly, waking up around 11:30am and feeling back to my normal self. My arm was still a little tender (especially my armpit), but my energy levels were back, my back wasn’t hurting anymore, and my headache was gone. Woop!

So while it seems like everyone I know has had a mild reaction to their second shot, I was one of the unlucky ones who got to experience the full force of my immune system at work. It was not fun, but COVID would have been a million times worse, and for a much longer time period. So, absolutely, I would get the vaccine again in a heartbeat, even knowing what I’d have to go through. It’s 100% worth it.

Okay, enough about my vaccine reaction! Let’s talk about a much better subject: books. Unfortunately, this is going to be my “spicy opinions” week on the blog because I read one great book and two “blah” reads.

Refugee by Alan Gratz (★★★★☆)

One sentence synopsis: Stories about three children who became refugees: Josef in 1930s Germany, Isabel in 1990s Cuba, and Mahmoud in 2015 Syria.

This book was excellent and really drives home the true grit of refugees and the incredible sacrifices they make to seek a better life. I wish that anyone opposed to asylum seekers and immigration reform as a whole would read this book—these are human beings who are often trying to flee dangerous situations and they deserve our compassion and understanding. The book travels between Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud’s stories, as they leave their home countries with their families in search of a safer place to live. Josef and his family board a ship destined for Cuba after his father is released from a concentration camp and told he must leave Germany in a matter of weeks. Isabel, her pregnant mother, her father, her grandfather, and a neighbor family leave Cuba for Miami on a DIY boat, traveling through the waters of the Caribbean. Mahmoud, his mother, father, brother, and baby sister start trekking from Syria to Germany by any means necessary: taxi, car, boat, train, etc. Each story is harrowing and dangerous, but necessary because staying in their home countries is more harrowing and dangerous. Definitely a book to add to your TBR, friends!

American Street by Ibi Zoboi (★★☆☆☆)

One-sentence synopsis: Fabiola and her mom are traveling to Detroit from Haiti when her mom is detained in customs, and Fabiola must integrate herself in this strange land—with the help of her aunt and three cousins—alone. 

You guys, I just don’t think Ibi Zoboi is for me. I read Pride by her at the end of last year and while other people rave about that book, I gave it 2 stars. And while many people raved about this book, it was another 2-star read for me. There’s just something about the way she writes her characters that doesn’t work for me. I found most of this book to be rather meandering and boring; I didn’t really like any of the characters; and I found the portrayal of violence against women to be graphic and abhorrent (especially considering the “hero” of this novel was complicit in the violence). There was a lot of girl-on-girl hate in the novel and some problematic stereotyping that I think has the potential to reinforce racial biases. In the end, the plot of Fabiola’s mom being detained was such a small part of the novel that nobody but Fabiola seemed to care about—not her cousins, not her aunt. I thought this storyline would be a bigger part of the novel, and there would have been an exploration of immigration and detention centers, but it played the tiniest role. It almost felt like an afterthought, which is just crazy to me. Anyway, this is not a novel I would recommend and I’m honestly scratching my head as to why it has such a great Goodreads rating. Meh.

Rebel by Beverly Jenkins (★★★☆☆)

One-sentence synopsis: When Valinda is saved by Captain Drake LeVeq after her schoolroom is trashed by white supremacists, she must lean on him and his family for help.

And here’s another author who just isn’t for me. So many romance readers rave about Beverly Jenkins and I really want to like her writing because she has an extensive backlist and is one of the few Black romance authors, but nope. This book was “just ok” and I never felt compelled to pick up. I found the writing to be stilted and overly formal, and a lot of the drama to be rather anticlimactic. I did love Drake’s character, though, and I felt like Valinda was a great heroine who was feisty and opinionated and oh-so-charming. I also think this book does a great job of giving historical context to the time period (Reconstruction Era), and I’d love to read more romances set in this time period from Black authors.

What I’m Reading This Week

I just started The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, which I’m reading for the Unread Shelf Project’s May challenge (read a book you bought as a new release). I’ve heard some mixed reviews about this book: many people raved about it, but just as many people talked about how dark and depressing it is. I think I’m in the right headspace, though, to take on a depressing read. We’ll see! To offset that book, I’m reading a historical romance from one of my faves, A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare. No audiobook for me this week, as I need to catch up on my podcast feed!

What are you reading?