Currently Reading: Privilege, by Mary Adkins
News
CW: violence against trans women, transphobia, murder
I don’t normally share trans news that’s not book-related, however because this story is local and has touched my community, I want to post a short note that on December 22nd, a local trans woman and activist for trans rights, Julie Berman, was murdered in Toronto. Coming on the heels of transphobic violence being allowed to take place at Toronto Public Libraries, this death feels particularly poignant to me personally as I knew Berman through my work with Re:searching for LGBTQ2S+ Health. One of my colleagues recently described her as smart and sarcastic, beautiful and hilarious.
If you are in Toronto, please also keep in mind that the bookshop where I work, Another Story, is co-sponsoring an upcoming teach-in for trans allies featuring incredible trans women speakers Kai Cheng Thom and Gwen Benaway. Click on the image below for details.
One last note is that the Emerging Writers reading series in Toronto (recently voted the best reading series in the city) is hosting a trans and non-binary writers event in March. The deadline to submit has been extended to January 22nd! If you are Toronto local or adjacent, and you have not published a book, get in there!
Karen McManus and How I Learned I Love Thrillers
In late 2018 and early 2019, I was doing a lot of long distance driving. And I mean long distance. I routinely made the trek from Toronto to Denver, which takes a pretty steady two days on the road, with, in my case, an overnight in Des Moines, Iowa. What that drive means for me, especially when I do it alone or with my dogs, is a lot of audiobooks. I’ve become a Libby expert over the past few years, and I usually listen to most of them at 2x normal speed, especially when I’m on the road and trying to avoid drowsiness.
I have an audiobook routine. A few weeks before the trip, I’ll sit down with Libby, and put a selection of books on hold. Because I know I’ll be listening to the books straight through, I typically pick a type of book that’s a little different than what I might pick were I to spend a couple of days or weeks with a luxurious hardback. I pick things that are a little lighter, a little faster paced, sometimes things that seem extra engaging.
In January of 2019, I was making the drive back to Toronto, and it was a snowy one. It ended up taking me an extra day, because I got caught in a whiteout a few hours outside of London, and one of my dogs was injured. My brain was super foggy, and I had to be on my toes in the nasty weather. I decided to listen to a book that I’d seen on the shop shelves at Another Story, the indie in Toronto where I work. It had caught my eyes a couple of times, and I’d never read a YA thriller as an adult, so I figured it would probably keep me interested, and it would be good research for our teen, educator, and caregiver customers. The book was One of Us is Lying, by Karen M. McManus.
This book was McManus’ debut novel. A bunch of things about it surprised me. It felt raw. It felt more graphic than I had expected for a book written for teens. It felt just a little bit kitschy, in a way that I couldn’t decide if I liked or not. And also? It totally had me hooked. I listened to the whole thing. I wasn’t the only one who liked McManus’ work. At the end of 2019, this title had spent 100 weeks on the NYT bestseller list.
I had a rough 2019, as so many people did. About halfway through the year, after going through a lot of ups and downs with my psychiatric disabilities, some of my personal struggles had come to a head, and I was having trouble focusing on anything – least of all, books. I looked back at what I had read throughout the year, and I thought back to McManus’ book, and I thought… she has another title, right? I listened to it on audio again, and truth be told? I liked it a lot more than her first book.
I originally thought that this was the sequel to One of Us is Lying, but it quickly became obvious that I was mistaken. I stuck with it, and was pleasantly surprised. I had been reading a lot of spooky stories and YA horror through the first half of 2019, and the amusement park in a small town setting struck a gothic chord with me that high school detention had missed in McManus’ first book. The characters were richer, and the story took more twists and turns.
As 2019 progressed, I decided to embrace the small joys that I was experiencing. I leaned hard in whenever something made me happy. I collected Pokémon cards and started playing PoGo after the release of the nostalgic and charming Detective Pikachu. My partner and I bought an ice cream maker, and a book called *Incredible Vegan Ice Cream* by Deena Jalal, and we made (and ate) so much inexpensive ice cream. And when I realized that teen thrillers were the kinds of books that I could read quickly, and that would suck me in and distract me from the rest of the world? Well.
I read a bunch of them. Some of them speculative, and others just good old fashioned thrillers. I don’t really read books written by white cis men very often, so most of them had female authors… and the best ones had tonnes of plot twists. I started reading adult thrillers, with a particular interest in queer, feminist, domestic, psychological, and gothic novels. And soon, I realized that, whatever it says about me… murder is my comfort read.
These realizations completely changed and shaped my reading for the rest of the year. From realizing that this unsettling genre was my wheelhouse, my TBR swelled, I burned through so many fantastic and entertaining reads, I processed emotions, I made friends, and I discovered new authors who I had never considered picking up before.
During the #VillainAThon, a Halloween reading challenge I participated in this year, I crossed paths with Jennifer Donaldson and L. E. Flynn on Twitter, after being positively blown away by their books. They are both incredibly skilled female writers, and a pleasure to know. At the time, Flynn recommended Kara Thomas’ books to me, which I got from the library as quickly as I could, and gobbled them up. I’m so excited for Thomas’ book The Cheerleaders, which was the last hold to arrive, and for Flynn’s forthcoming title, All Eyes on Her.
I also discovered some mainstream adult authors who I honestly never thought I would enjoy. I admit, I’d seen these women on the shelves at the bookstore where I work, and I had written them off as likely too normative for my tastes. What can I say? Sometimes I just call it wrong. In the last few months of 2019, I have read three of Liane Moriarty’s books, and two of Ruth Ware’s, and I guarantee that the rest of the titles that these two authors have produced are high up on my list for 2020 reading. Not that they need my endorsement, but Big Little Lies, and in particular The Death of Mrs. Westaway were fantastic, and the latter quickly made it onto my favourites’ list.
So… that brings me back to Karen McManus. I was lucky enough to get an ARC of One of Us is Next, the actual sequel to One of Us is Lying, by @PenguinTeenCA earlier this year. Looking at McManus’ progression from her debut to her third book, the difference is staggering. This sequel takes place among the younger siblings and friends of the cast of her first book – a more diverse, nuanced cast, and a story that’s more tangled and engaging than before. It’s not surprising that McManus is now an international and NYT bestselling author, with yet another book on the docket following the January release of One of Us is Next. And I have her to thank for not only shaping my reading this past year, but also to opening my mind to a whole genre of literature that reflects my experiences and emotions in unexpected ways.
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Books Beyond Binaries 