What I will say, is that as a transracial & intercountry adoptee - and I'll preface this by saying obviously people with life experiences closer to Shane have a better take - but reading Shane, kinda reminded me of my own personal inner monologue. Because I'm so divorced from my ethnicity and heritage and culture, and I just mostly really go through life following my adoptive culture which is white/western/British. You know, like, I don't specifically have any memories or habits or knowledge, that connect me to a culture that reflects my outward appearance. Kinda like how RR wrote Shane lol.

Which, two things. 1. Maybe it would be cool to see more transracial /intercountry adopted characters in romance stories or outside of like, idk, a coming of age genre. But 2. And - this is probably my main point (and one that my parents also failed to grasp) despite being 'culturally devoid' I'm still super not white - and I was and am treated as such!

Wildly, despite being culturally "white british" like - there's so many assumptions and reactions that are made based on my race and visual appearance. And by not having that cultural component actually, I kinda experience a weird "Uno reverse" where a lot of people will then react to me in a sort of racist-colluding way where they're like openly anti-immigrant, sometimes openly racist towards other races, but it's fine because my lack of cultural connection and tells (accent/food/etc) kinda puts me solidly in 'one of the good ones' camp. And actually interestingly, JT touched on this in *his* script a little, when Shane told Rose in the show, that he didn't catch as much flack as the other Asian kid growing up because of his Western last name. So that was cool to see, because I feel like that does reflect real life.

I have found myself thinking a lot about Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick lately. Every time I return to it, I am struck by how deep the novel is and how, once you peel away the 19th-century trappings, it feels almost unsettlingly modern. For a book about whaling ships and harpoons, it speaks with surprising clarity to the world we are living in right now. The settings may be old, but the people,…

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle Book Review 

This book has so many things to love. 

Too bad I disliked almost all of them because of other glaring issues in the book. 

I still give Lacelle so much credit. Her book had so many dreams (literally) and tried to tackle so much for a debut YA novel. However, I really think she could have benefited from a more succinct editor, by changing up her timeline, and by shearing off a good 200 pages or so. 

This book’s plot is ambitious. It switches POV’s between two main characters: Emory and Baz. Emory, a student at Aldryn College, specializes in healing powers. Used to being mediocre and constantly standing in the shadows of her best friend, Romie, Emory is suddenly the recipient of every power after a near death experience that leaves several dead, including Romie.

However, in the aftermath of the event, Emory learns that she’s a mythical tidecaller. Baz meanwhile, is an eclipse-born, a person who receives his powers from being born on a lunar eclipse.

Known for their horrific and “evil” powers that combust in an event called “collapsing”, Baz is ostracized and alienated by the other students at Aldryn, but also the world at large for his incredible, but frightening ability to control time (another big issue that I won’t even get into). 

The setting of this book is a world based on the idea that people receive abilities depending on the moon they were born under. There’s lore galore, colleges dedicated to honing special abilities, rituals, language, and mythology–all based on the tides and the moon. 

The details that Lacelle includes in this is really interesting, as is the concept of magic based on the moon phases itself. A dark academia setting based on the tides and lunar alignments? I love it.

However, the magic system was needlessly complicated and Lacelle spent way too much time describing events, world-building facets, and societal elements that had nothing to do with the plot and only succeeded in making the book longer instead of pulling me into the story more deeply. 

In addition, a lot of Lacelle’s writing was incredibly repetitive. She hit the same points over and over and over again: eclipse-born are evil and everyone hates them, everyone loves the moon, Kieran is hot, Romie is great, Baz’s memory of his father’s printing press blowing up, Emory feeling inadequate compared to Romie, and Baz thinking or describing the children’s book Sorrow of the Drowned Gods. 

No joke, the items I listed up above were about 75% of the book. The remaining 25% was action, too-in depth details about the college that didn’t matter—like what all the different halls were called and what they looked like in each dormitory, more flashbacks of Emory and Baz’s past, and interactions between the characters. 

Even though Emory and Baz are at a college, their classes don’t matter whatsoever. Honestly, I have no idea why they’re even at a college other than to have them all in one place. Emory’s classes are described once, briefly, and we see her go to about two classes. Otherwise, it’s not mentioned at all. 

The characters themselves were okay. Not great. Just…okay. Lacelle tried way, way too hard to give her characters depth, but only succeeded in telling instead of showing.

Instead of me figuring something out about Emory, Lacelle would have a huge, descriptive paragraph of Emory realizing that she compared herself to Romie too much and that she had her own self-worth. Moments like this aren’t bad per se, but they were way too frequent for my liking. 

Let me, the reader, figure things out about the characters and come to my own conclusions. Don’t spell out every single detail for me and hold my hand. It’s tedious and it’s boring. Lacelle did this constantly. 

In addition, for a nearly 600-paged book, about four characters mattered: Emory, Baz, Kieran, and Kai. Emory and Baz are the main characters so it’s hard to discount them, even though they’re not that interesting due to having every single personality trait of theirs spelled out and analyzed by the author itself. 

Kieran and Kai, although important characters, were very one-dimensional. Kieran’s power-obsessed manipulative personality was not a secret whatsoever.

Lacelle reveals his “true” nature at the climactic end, even though the signs showing his megalomania were painfully clear to a ten-year-old. 

I liked Kai the most, but he’s in very little of the book. We see him mainly in flashbacks and then at the very end. Lacelle, why lock up your most interesting characters and hide them away for most of the novel?? She does this with Romie too, a more egregious error. 

Romie dying is the catalyst for this whole story. It’s what changes Emory and makes her a tidecaller, it’s what invigorates Kieran and sets him on his master plan, it’s what influences Kai to collapse—the whole story starts with Romie dying at Doveremere Cave. 

Yet…Lacelle starts the story after this event. Why would an author do this??? It’s excruciating. Your most important part of the whole novel isn’t even included in the novel. She inserts it later as a flashback, but I don’t want a flashback. I want the real thing. 

The book should have started with Romie and Emory going to Dovermere and then 

progress from there. It easily could have been the first chapter and it would have introduced us to Romie’s character more, set up Romie and Emory’s friendship, and acted as the catalyst for the whole story. 

Even better, it could have even started with Baz’s memory of his father’s printing press blowing up, then the three of them starting at Aldryn, them going to Dovermere, Romie dying, and thennnnn continuing.

That already would have been a better book. It wouldn’t even have to be longer. By cutting out all the repetitive and useless bits that I already mentioned, Lacelle would have had plenty of room to include these essential moments. 

I truly don’t understand the choices she (or her editor) made about the plot timeline and pacing because they were all terrible.

This is a true injustice when you take into account how original and fascinating the initial concept is and how much time and effort she put into the world and its lore. 

Recommendation: This book had all the right ingredients for something truly great, but fell short due to verbose, albeit beautiful writing, a slow plot, choppy pacing, predictable characters, and too dense world-building that added nothing to the story.

If you want dark academia, look elsewhere like If We Were Villains or the Atlas Paradox. These stories have much better plots with much more interesting characters and it doesn’t take 600 pages to get to the end. 

It is important to be assertive at times in order to fulfill your needs

Finding people with similar backgrounds or whoa re in similar stages of life can be helpful in navigating adulthood

There is nothing wrong with seeking counseling

It is necessary to use the platform you have to help those who are less fortunate

focusing on small topics that you are passionate about can lead to more impactful results (Ex: promoting healthy food, supporting military families)

Treat those who work under you or are less fortunate than you with respect

You don’t need to understand others’ lifestyles. Just respect it.

Know your priorities

If you focus on your principles, success will come to you. Sticking to your principles is the most important thing

Exercise is needed for energy and the ability to control emotions

do NOT respond to criticism

Be mindful of your “optics” (optics: the way you present yourself to the public/ the way the public perceives you) but also know that “optics” do not define you as a person

Woman Dressing in Deep Blue  -    Torajiro Kojima , 1923..

Japanese  1881-1929

“They seek him here, they seek him there Those Frenchies seek him everywhere Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That demned elusive Pimpernel”

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic novel that was first published in 1905 by the Hungarian Baroness, Emmuska Orczy. It's always great to read books written by women at this time because they have a different perspective from the many male authors of the time period. She was a prolific author, but this was by far her most popular work.