judging books by their covers

#1. All of This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews · ✦ ✦ ✦ ✧ ✧
Review by: Keke Genre(s): Contemporary fiction I wanted to give this book a 3.5/5, but I didn't really have the option to half fill in a bubble and I don't want to change the ranking from 5 stars to 10 for one book. We follow Sneha (who goes by "S" for about half the book, and gradually reconnects with her name) in her first job after graduation. She works as a consultant and has an apartment paid for by her boss, which sounds like a dream, except: 1) It's in Milwaukee (no hate! I mean she's very isolated), 2) She's closer to a contractor than an employee (i.e. she's paid as a self-employee), and 3) her apartment is managed by a very uptight woman who seems to dislike people. Without spoiling too much, Sneha takes to coping with her loneliness and separation from her family (both in a literal and mental/emotional sense) in ways both good and bad, but the central point of the story is that she always has community around her. "All of This Could Be Different" is a story at its core about how community can save us all, which I enjoyed, but Sneha and her story specifically sometimes lost me. I sympathized with her, especially considering her lens on gender, coming out to her family (she is a lesbian), race and immigration status, and mental health as an Indian immigrant (she moved to the US with her parents as a child, and due to poor business through no fault of her father's, she was the only member to remain in the country), but there were times where I felt that the story dragged on or that I was hearing about fluff and it could be parsed out. Of course, Sneha is 22 (as am I at the time of writing), and there is certainly a lot of extraneous material in my own life that I would think other people would cut out had my life been novelized. Quotes of note (to me): (all my annotations were deleted when i returned the book...kobo...) section on hold until i get the annotations back Review in progress... ⏎

#1. All of This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews · ✦ ✦ ✦ ✧ ✧

Review by: Keke
Genre(s): Contemporary fiction

I wanted to give this book a 3.5/5, but I didn't really have the option to half fill in a bubble and I don't want to change the ranking from 5 stars to 10 for one book.

We follow Sneha (who goes by "S" for about half the book, and gradually reconnects with her name) in her first job after graduation. She works as a consultant and has an apartment paid for by her boss, which sounds like a dream, except:

1) It's in Milwaukee (no hate! I mean she's very isolated),
2) She's closer to a contractor than an employee (i.e. she's paid as a self-employee), and
3) her apartment is managed by a very uptight woman who seems to dislike people.

Without spoiling too much, Sneha takes to coping with her loneliness and separation from her family (both in a literal and mental/emotional sense) in ways both good and bad, but the central point of the story is that she always has community around her. "All of This Could Be Different" is a story at its core about how community can save us all, which I enjoyed, but Sneha and her story specifically sometimes lost me. I sympathized with her, especially considering her lens on gender, coming out to her family (she is a lesbian), race and immigration status, and mental health as an Indian immigrant (she moved to the US with her parents as a child, and due to poor business through no fault of her father's, she was the only member to remain in the country), but there were times where I felt that the story dragged on or that I was hearing about fluff and it could be parsed out. Of course, Sneha is 22 (as am I at the time of writing), and there is certainly a lot of extraneous material in my own life that I would think other people would cut out had my life been novelized.

Quotes of note (to me):

(all my annotations were deleted when i returned the book...kobo...)
section on hold until i get the annotations back

Review in progress...

⏎

wip!