Ponder: House of Eve

House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson ©2023 tells the story of two young black women. Ruby is in high school striving to win a scholarship to college and become an optometrist. Eleanor, slightly older, is in an all Negro college as a history major and is aiming to specialize in a field she loves as a library archivist. Both come from poor backgrounds and will be the first in their respective families to earn a college degree. Both women struggled with unplanned pregnancies complicating their lives.

Since this is a black-themed novel, prejudices were to be anticipated; but I found the story stereotypical and predictable. Note: stereotypical and predictable do not equate to acceptable. In raising awareness to the plight of blacks, however, I encountered only one bias I found to be a surprise and that came from an unexpected source. Eleanor had stellar grades and a great deal of community service to her credit when she applied to be a member of Alpha Beta Chi, a campus sorority. She was rejected because her skin was too dark and her hair was not straight enough. This  example did make me question if internal racial prejudices are also an issue.

Eleanor married into a fiscally privileged lifestyle but still suffered from emotional snubbing due to skin color. Ruby struggled financially and suffered physically from biases in a home for unwed mothers. House of Eve was an angst filled book, and far from pleasurable. The minimal insight I gained into the plight of the Negro did not offset the drudgery of the read. House of Eve was a recommendation of the Reese Witherspoon Book, whose selections I usually like; Amazon rated this book 4.5 stars out of 5. Both of these indicators let my down. I rate House of Eve...

★★☆☆☆ Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it

Ponder: Night of Cake and Puppets

Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor © 2017 is a companion book to the Daughter of Smoke and Bones trilogy reviewed in my blog posts for 5/31/23 (Smoke & Bone, Blood & Starlight)  and 6/17/23 (Gods & Monsters). I needed to request it from a sister library since mine did not have it. After picking it up from my local library Saturday morning, I read it in its entirety after dinner that night. At less than 200 pages, its brevity was a welcome relief after the 500-600 page tome of each of the trilogy books. 

Enchanting and sweet, Night of Cake and Puppets is a simple tale revealing how two human characters out of the Daughter of Smoke and Bones trilogy, Mik, a violinist, and Zuzana, a puppet maker, meet and become boyfriend/girlfriend. It is sprinkled with the awkwardness of first introductions between young adults and frosted with just enough magic to be delightful. A treasure hunt, complete with map and clues takes Mik throughout the City of Prague to say "Hi" for the first time to Zuzana, a tiny wisp of a girl he has admired from afar for quite some time. Those who like scavenger hunts will like this aspect of the tale. Softly falling snow adds the perfect ambiance for a first kiss.

Night of Cake and Puppets has black and white renderings throughout created by Jim Di Bartolo, the author's husband, a mixed media illustrator, painter. and visual storyteller in his own right. I enjoyed these few sketches inserted at the chapter beginnings. Per the table of contents there is a graphic novel at the end that is relevant to an excerpt from the first book in the trilogy. I only glanced at this. I am not fond of graphic novels. Plus, I wanted the images in my mind of the creatures in the trilogy to stand strong, unblemished, and unaltered by another person's concepts.

This book was a fun read. It can stand alone but is very much enhanced by having read the trilogy and seen the roles these two characters play later in life. There are texts between Zuzana and her best friend Karou, heroine of the trilogy, that are bemusing. Knowing no more than that Karou and Zuzana are a best friends, does not diminishing enjoyment of the tongue-in-cheek texts. The texts contain a few obscure references that leave the reader scratching her head if unfamiliar with the trilogy, but those are a minor inconvenience.

I rate Night of Cake and Puppets five stars. It is not deep literature but I thought it was dessert-like escapism very much worth the read. It put a smile on my face.

★★★★★ Great! Read it!