Avasthi, Swati - Split

(review courtesy of an ARC from a friend, details on how to get it below)

Jace Witherspoon has just been kicked out of the house for daring to hit his abusive father, and he lands on the doorstep of his brother Christian, who got out years ago and never looked back. Christian's not too happy to have his past in his present again, and the two of them have a lot to work through, especially since their mother is still with their father.

Warning: given the subject matter, there are some scenes in the book that may be extremely triggery in terms of emotional mindfucks and physical abuse.

This is a YA book about domestic violence and child abuse that goes way beyond problem novel; it reminded me a lot of Fruits Basket in how Avasthi looks at how the consequences of abuse and the way silence can be a prison. Nothing is easy. Jace is resentful that his brother was able to cut him and his mother off, Christian almost cannot bear to talk about the past he left behind, Jace is afraid of being around the girl he's attracted to for fear he'll turn into his father, Christian is afraid the new information about his past will hurt his relationship to his current girlfriend. And through it all, Jace still loves his father despite the abuse, and although he is trying his best to get his mother out of the situation, he also resents her for not protecting him.

The book's center is the relationship between the brothers, but I loved the female characters as well. The boys are white, but Jace's girlfriend Mirriam is Asian, and I was trying to figure out if Dakota is Native or Latina (she is described as having blue-black hair, they're in New Mexico, and at one point she feeds Jace fry bread). There's also Jace's ex-girlfriend Lauren; Caitlyn, a stereotypical slutty cheerleader who is less stereotypical than she seems; and of course, Jace and Christian's mother. In a book like this, they could very easily become props for the boys' emotional development, but I think Avasthi manages to avoid that. Sometimes Mirriam felt a little too much like a healer character for me—she's a teacher and a social worker—but I very much liked how she had her own relationship with Jace independent of Christian, albeit not uninfluenced by him.

Despite deepad's comments, I was originally wary that the book was about two white guys, but after reading the book, I think the author made the right choice. Making them POC gets a little too close to all the POC problem novels I've read, and it would feel too much like all the media stories about POC broken families. Also, because the book does a lot of questioning of masculinity and abuse, having the guys and their father as POC could have read as "dangerous, scary, and/or misogynistic POC guy."

ETA (this paragraph): Also! I forgot to say that the one thing I did find missing because the family was "normative" was an acknowledgment of the way the legal system and the system of shelters don't work and are frequently dangerous for trans people, PWD, lower-class people, gay and lesbian people, POC, etc. I was thinking specifically of Andrea Smith's discussion of overturning the "shelter" idea in Conquest and the essays on South Asian women's grassroots movements against domestic violence and looking for a different kind of solution in Dragon Ladies.

Mostly I want to give this to guys for the way it examines masculinity. There was this interesting thing in which I was completely invested in Jace's journey and sympathized with his anger issues and his violence, and yet, when it came to him as a romantic lead, I could totally see why a woman would be afraid of him. Because I was. And the tension in my own head between wanting to forgive him and say it's okay versus being afraid and also saying, "No, never okay," the way it so echoed the way abusers get forgiven, was fascinating and a bit chilling.

( Spoilers flail and squee )

And finally, the book is about silence and giving voice to things, on the way abuse takes place behind closed doors, how it's perpetuated when you don't talk about it, when you make polite little lies, when you've told so many lies that you no longer know what's healthy, so much that your very body reacts differently.

Highly recommended.

---

I got this book from deepad, who's friends with the author. The book's publication date is 2010, but Deepa's currently trying to get word around the blogosphere:

I'm going to send my ARC out into the wild, into the world of book bloggers. There are only two conditions -

1. You have a month to read it, after which you must pass it on.
2. You must, if you read it, blog about it. (Which means at least two paragraphs, in fairness to reviewing standards.)

If you're interested in reading, comment on her post and let her know! I have already been trying to sic this on several people, muhahaha.

Duran, Meredith - Bound by Your Touch

Lydia Boyce is a spinster interested in her father's archaeological expeditions in Egypt. James, Lord Sanburne, somehow gets his hands on some Egyptian stela for purposes that I have completely forgotten. Lydia exposes Sanburne's acquisition as a fake, and sparks ensue.

I read the first three-quarters of this while not in the mood for romance, and as such, I do not remember much of what happens at all. Also, it didn't help that the spinster-meets-wastrel is one of my least favorite tropes right now in romance. And finally, I spent the entire book ranting in my head about how these people were just going off and stealing Egyptian property to study, that it was all about Egypt as this distant land way out there where these things happened, that the action was as usual all about the white people.

Yes, it was nice to know that the heroine engaged in Egyptian-government-sanctioned trade, but given the power dynamics of the time (Victorian England), how much leeway did the government have, really? Especially since this book takes place after the construction of the Suez Canal.

When I managed to not be overcome by rage, the prose was indeed lovely, and the character growth was interesting, although I am completely unconvinced of the resolution of Sanburne's storyline re: his sister.

Overall, it may be a very good book, but still. RAGE.

Links:
- oracne's review

Duran, Meredith - Written on Your Skin

This related to Bound by Your Touch in that the heroes know each other, but they barely show up in each other's stories (I like that, although YMMV).

British spy Phineas Granville meets American flibbertidget Mina Masters in Hong Kong (why all the "exotic" settings WHY?), where she saves his life at some cost to her own. Four years later, Phin wants out of the spy game, but Mina is in trouble, and he's the only person she can think of to go to for help.

Thankfully for my blood pressure, the book gets out of Hong Kong fairly quickly, so I can not have British colonialism shoved in my face again. That said, there are still mentions of Phin's older spy missions, all of which are exactly as imperialist as you might think and focus on his white man angst instead of the brown people being screwed over, but at least it's not the main plot. It's so sad that nowadays, I almost prefer that romances stay all white and all in America or Western Europe and ignore the POC there, because when they don't, there's so much fail. I managed to not think about it so I could enjoy the book, but it's still there.

Anyway! With all that in mind, I actually loved this. Mina is an excellent heroine: she is stunningly gorgeous and knows it and uses it to her advantage, she detests being caged, and she is incredibly smart. One of the most frustrating yet most rewarding parts of the book is watching Phin find this out. At first, he suspects her of pretty much everything, leading to some standard "I loom over you to threaten you and make you talk" scenes, but Mina won't have any of it. I loved her description of one of their kisses, in which she mentally notes that it's very skilled, but forced seduction is both boring and predictable.

She has constructed an entire facade that almost everyone buys into because no one, not even Phin at first, believes she could be as intelligent as the evidence shows. I was so happy when she calls Phin out on how he assumed someone had to be behind her because of course she couldn't possibly have done it herself.

I also love her entire brainless bombshell routine, as it feeds into my love of the Scarlet Pimpernel fop-hiding-something trope. Here's Mina telling Phin of when a priest ran over her dog Mongol and she used it to blackmail the priest for chocolate:

"Blackmail? We called it a friendly agreement. By the end of the year, I wished I had another terrier for him to kill. But not really," she added quickly. "Wouldn't that be too bad of me! I much preferred Mongol to chocolate. Dogs are always much better than chocolate, of course, because they're alive." She paused to frown. "Then again, if one counts mold, I suppose some of the chocolate was also alive in the end... the cherry-filled ones, you understand; I never liked cherries. Well, it's all rather confusing."

After Phin gets over his misunderstanding, he turns out to be a rather nice hero, even though I still wanted to bash him over the head in the final conflict. I liked how he actually bothers to listen to Mina, that he understands her jokes and what it means for her to call his body "beautiful" and to comment "Why you're a pocket Venus write large, Ashmore."

Sex-wise, I wish Duran had gone farther. I feel bad for pushing for dominant heroines in every single romance review I do ever, given that it's not for everyone, but there's just such a lack of them! I can still count the number of dominant heroines on one hand. It was especially frustrating because Mina clearly gets off on it in an earlier scene: she's bored until she makes Phin lose control, backs him up against a wall, and marks him. She also makes a move to blindfold him and possibly tie him up later, but then Duran turns the tables on her. I did appreciate Mina thinking that even blindfolded and tied up, she was still choosing what to give and what not to, but it was so close! I'm so frustrated by how almost all the romances I read never have the hero tied up, or even if they do, they still manage to give him control. Even with these complaints, Duran still manages to pack character and relationship development into the sex scenes, which impressed me given how hard it is to do.

And as mentioned previously, the issue of control isn't a passing one for the book. Mina has fought tooth and nail to control her own life, which is one reason why I would have liked to see more of that in the sex, as well as why I was so annoyed by the final conflict and how it's all about Phin's issues and resolving them instead of Mina's.

In conclusion: I loved this, even though I wanted it to go farther and wished it hadn't had scenes in Hong Kong. I'm also extremely frustrated, because Duran is clearly a good writer doing interesting things, but she also seems to be very into the whole "exotic" setting with white people frolicking about, which means I will probably avoid many of her books. (I couldn't even get past the first chapter of Duke of Shadows because it pissed me off so much.) These settings are not exotic, they are not backdrop, they have people who live there and speak the language and grew up there and have relatives there. And the time period these books take place in is one that devastated the places being used as mere stage settings, these places that are people's homes.