a little too spare

Daughters Who Walk This Path by Yejide Kilanko

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Although both plot and characters are written with very little embellishment, Kilanko is a very effective storyteller.  However, there are some puzzling gaps in her narrative.  She makes sure we know that it is a big deal that Morayo, the main character, must go far from home, to a different state on the other side of the Niger River, for the training for her National Youth Service Corps year.  The distance heightens the element of surprise when she meets Kachi, her teenage beau, at the training site.  After only a few pages, though, Morayo informs Kachi that she has been transformed to serve her year much closer to home.  As a plot device to remind her readers about Morayo's relationship with Kachi, this is all well and good, but as part of an actual narrative it leaves something to be desired.  For the most part, omission of such details doesn't detract from the overall sense of the story, but I found each omission distracting as I had to flip back through the pages to see if I actually had missed something.  Finding that I hadn't, each time I could only wonder why Kilanko chose not to add the very few lines that would have provided the missing details.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

ironic contrast

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Challenge: 100 Book Challenge 2011

Review: This is a good book. But it could have been a great book if Clayton had been both less heavy-handed in her feminist discussions and less coy in her descriptions of her characters. This book is not chick-lit by any means; it's themes are far too serious. But it's true, I suspect, that most of it's readers will be women. And most of those women will not need the kind of tutorial on feminism in the early 1980s that Clayton seems determined to provide. Not that we should forget the sacrifices made and hardships endured by our mothers and grandmothers, but a lighter touch might have better served the narrative here.

In contrast to her need to spell her feminism out in great detail, Clayton seems reluctant to give details about the relationships between and among her characters (and their mothers). It's certainly a valid literary technique to leave certain details to the reader's imagination, but it can be frustrating when the emotional crux of the story hinges on relationships that the author hasn't allowed one to get a clear sense of.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

nothing new

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: There is very little that's original in this book, which is a shame because it's quite well-written. But overall, it's a fairly standard abduction story, told from the point of view of an adult abductee. There are a couple of plot twists thrown in along the way, both during the time she was abducted, and once she returns, but overall her reactions and thoughts are a little too predictable. Combine the vivid and compelling writing with just a little more of something to distinguish this story from other abduction stories, and it could have been a really good book.

FTC disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.