I don’t read biographies all that often, but this one caught my eye, and I’m so glad that I read it. Once a Girl, Always a Boy follows Jeremy Ivester, a trans man who was born as Emily. We follow his journey as he struggles with his identity, knowing all along that something is not quite right with the way he perceives himself.

What’s compelling about this book, however, is that it’s written by his mother, and the author represents the entire family via multiple points of view. In this way, it’s not just Jeremy’s journey we’re reading about but that of his entire family. There is such a strong sense of love and family throughout the book which rendered it all the more endearing.

The story is told in short, vignettes of Jeremy’s life presented chronologically by him and his loving family. We follow along with Jeremey at each stage of his journey, and I loved being privy to his thoughts, feelings, and questions as he struggled to discover his identity and deal with the enormous repercussions of all of his decisions.

Additionally, the everyday gender issues that Jeremy had to deal with were quite eye-opening, things such as sleepovers with his friends, shopping for clothes, getting hair cuts, standing up at weddings, puberty, presenting your ID when asked, prescriptions, passports, which bathroom to use, discrimination and prejudice by others, getting a job, and hateful legislation aimed at trans people. My heart went out to Jeremy as he tried to figure out how he fits into his world, and I applaud his bravery and tenacity as he made many tough decisions, remaining true to his heart in the process.

As a reader, I loved that Jeremy and his mom shared his entire story with us, beginning from around the age of six or so through his adulthood in his 20s. I loved hearing his voice and being privy to his thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams every step along the way. What was also interesting was his family’s own journey, as they tried to understand and support him and work through their confusion about what their son was going through.

This book is ultimately about the power of saying – and living – your truth, without fear. It’s not just a story about being trans, but it’s also about discovering one’s true self in the face of the expectations of society and family.

It’s a powerful and compelling story that needed to be told and needs to be read and talked about. This was a surprising read that took me places I very much didn’t expect. It’s the kind of book that makes us think about who we are and how we want to live our lives, and I don’t think I’ve ever read such an intimate and moving portrayal of gender issues like this before. It actually moved me to tears in several places.

Once a Girl, Always a Boy succeeds in doing what you hope every book will do – it pulls you in from the first page, holds you captive in the middle, then leave you satisfied and thoughtful — and perhaps a bit wiser — at the end.

What I especially found riveting about Jeremy’s story is how he was able to discover his true self and move to his place in his life where he was happy, all with his family’s love and support. It was evident how having a loving and supportive family like Jeremy’s made all the difference in his life, and it hurts my heart to realize that not all trans people are so fortunate.

Ultimately, I feel that Jeremy’s story should be a welcome addition to everyone’s bookshelves, regardless of whether you fall somewhere on the LGBTQIA+ Spectrum or not. This is a lovely story about a family accepting their son’s transition and illustrates perfectly how we should all be supporting our children and loved ones. At the end of the day, it’s a story of being human. It’s about unconditionally loving our kids, regardless of how challenging and painful that move toward acceptance can be.

I always find it difficult to rate biographies because, after all, what we have is a true story/snippet of someone’s life. But I don’t hesitate in the least to rate this one five solid stars out of five.

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Jo Ivester for providing me with a review copy of this book. This title will be released on April 21, 2020 but you can preorder it from The Book Depository or from Amazon.

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I Found You follows a single mother and artist named Alice living on a British seaside. One day she spots a stray man who is sitting on the beach near her house and staring at the ocean. He’d been there for hours and has no coat and no idea what is name is or why he’s there. Against her own better judgment, she invites him to stay with her until he gets his memory back and nicknames him Frank for the time being.

Meanwhile, in a London suburb, we’re introduced to Lily Monrose, a recently-married young bride who, originally from Ukraine, moved to London to marry her husband, Carl. They’d only been married for a couple of weeks when one day, he doesn’t come home from work, so Lily calls the police.

After she brings them her husband’s passport, she’s shocked to learn that the passport was purchased on the dark web, and according to police, her husband, as she’d known him, doesn’t exist.

Then the story moves twenty-three years in the past where we’re introduced to the Ross family, specifically their two teenagers, Gray and Kirsty, who are on summer vacation with their parents. They meet a young man named Mark Tate who’s in town visiting his Aunt and who develops an obsessive interest in Kirsty, which troubles Gray. And Gray isn’t surprised when things take a dark turn.

So these are the three storylines and the multiple POVs of Alice, Lily, and Gray, and we move back and forth as they become closer and closer to intertwining. I loved this method of storytelling, and I found myself immediately engrossed in each of the three plotlines as each of them slowly increased the suspense throughout the course of the novel.

It was so much fun trying to guess how these stories would eventually come together. Now I will say that this wasn’t a particularly action-based story but rather delved deeply into the development of the characters, which worked really well for me.

They were so compelling, well-fleshed out, and multi-layered that I ended up feeling as though I know them personally. They felt like ‘real’ people.

The tone of the story started out lightly, shifted to a bit darker, and then to downright ominous as we delve into some serious subject matter. I thought this story was tightly plotted with the surprises coming at just the right time.

Franks memory slowly begins to return, Lily meets people who can help solve the mystery that is her husband and the events in the past unfold, revealing their connection to the present day. I enjoyed how I was never quite sure who to trust as part of the story was like a spider web of lies, each woven tightly only to reveal yet another layer of lies underneath.

So for quite a while, we weren’t sure who to believe and who to trust, which rendered the story all the more exciting for me.

Jewell writes a wonderfully atmospheric, compulsive chiller of a thriller with overtones of horror. I found this story addictive, compulsive, dark, and sinister, and the writing is taut with a gloomy black cloud hanging over our cast of characters.

I loved the delightful, pervasive feeling of menace that lingers over the story, especially when we had no idea who was the true villain in the story. I think that one of the things that I liked most about this book is that I was never sure who I was “rooting” for at a given time.

There’s real depth to the story, which delves into themes of grief, loneliness, regret, crippling emotional suffering, double lives, and second chances. There’s even a bit of romance thrown it.

The development and progress of the plot were very curious and thrilling and felt to me like I was unearthing some long-lost treasure. I also thought that the short chapters and alternating POVs kept the story moving along at a brisk and satisfying pace.

All in all, I found this to be brilliantly devious, dark, and emotionally riveting — at times creepy and violent — but definitely propulsive, another standout gem by Lisa Jewell.

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This is the second book by Jess Kidd that I’ve read, the first being “Mr. Flood’s Last Resort,” which I loved.

Things in Jars is a Victorian-era thriller that follows the red-haired eccentric pipe-smoking Bridie Devine, who is referred to as “female detective extraordinaire.” It’s funny, I read her name in my head as “Birdie” during the entire novel. It was only after I finished it that I realized it was Bridie and not Birdie. So if I call her Birdie, bear with me.

So Bridie has been called in to solve the kidnapping of a little girl named Christabel Berwick, the secret daughter of Sir Edmund Berwick, a powerful and wealthy baronet.

Yes, I did say secret — nobody supposedly knows about her, meaning that he must have had the little girl locked up in the house all these years. Smells mighty suspicious, to me. In fact, he insisted that Bridie not call the police because he doesn’t want them involved.

Moreover, Christabel is reputed to have some sort of supernatural powers, so she’s captured the attention of all sorts of unsavories, especially criminal collectors of “curiosities.”

So Bridie’s search begins.

What’s fun about this book is that Bridie is assisted by her 7-foot tall bearded lesbian parlor maid called Cora, a former circus giantess and a ghost named Ruby Doyle, a champion boxer who has living tattoos on his skin that reflect his mood a champion boxer.

And that’s just a sample of some of the eclectic and imaginative characters in this story.

When Bridie first encountered the ghost, she informed him that she doesn’t believe in ghosts, and he said something to the effect of “Yet, here we are,” which gave me a cackle.

As Bridie’s search intensifies, she uncovers a lot more than she had bargained for, such as mythological sea creatures.

So in this way, the book incorporates superstition and Irish folklore into the story, adding extra intrigue to it. I loved the fantastical elements of this story.

We also enter into the criminal underbelly of Victorian England, complete with nefarious types obsessed with collecting grotesque oddities both living and dead, as well as those performing unethical medical research and practice, dodgy doctors, grave robbers, creatures of legends, anatomists, sadists, murderers and of course, strange things in jars.

The narrative is told from two different timelines, the present, during which Bridie investigates the little girl’s disappearance, and Bridie’s childhood, through which we learn how she came to possess her current skills and the people, both good and bad, who’ve had an effect on her life.

So I really, really enjoyed her backstory on Bridie and felt that it really added an extra emotional impact of the story, especially once Bridie encountered the ghosts from her past.

There was always a sense of menace and eerie unrest, and the shadowy-feeling story does dip into some pretty dark and disturbing places.
But though parts of the book were dark and sometimes even a tad brutal, a good majority of it was fun and playful, some parts even frivolous and silly, which got me to chuckling on more than one occasion.

One running joke throughout the story was Bridie’s ugly bonnet, which everyone seemed to comment on. Saying such things as “My god woman, where did you get such an ugly bonnet from?” I also especially loved the witty banter between Bridie and her ghost companion, Ruby.

Now it’s worth mentioning that in a previous and recent kidnapping case, Bridie was too late — by the time she found the child he was dead. So she’s a little bit guilt-ridden, and she is determined that this is not going to happen this time around. Thus, there is a desperate race against the clock to find the girl before something terrible happens to her.

This Dickensian book about dark and gritty filth-filled London was both atmospheric and ethereal and provided an excellent sense of place. I loved the detailed descriptions of Gothic London, which really came alive on the pages.

The lyrical prose was beautiful. I also thought the magical realism aspect of the story was extremely well done — mysterious, dark, creative with a touch of humor. The author really crafted a memorable and unusual world here.

I adored Bridie’s larger-than-life character, who goes from orphaned street urchin, where she worked with a man named Gan as a resurrectionist (that is to say, they sold body parts from corpses) — so she went from that to a medically-trained Sherlockian detective.

So Bridie — she is no-nonsense, tenacious, sassy, tough-as-nails, clever, observant, nearly fearless. Hell, she even performs minor surgery when needed. And her habit of cross-dressing and smoking “questionable” tobacco concoctions endeared her to me as well.

The eccentric, unique, and colorful supporting characters are also a delight. The author describes their characteristics and motivations vividly, and in so doing, really brings them to life on the page.

They were so much fun to watch, even the nasty low-lifes, rakes, and rogues, all of whom had a quite complex and intertwining relationship. Speaking of low-lifes, I loved the depraved, predatory, and dastardly villains in the story. They were delightfully repulsive.

There are so many elements that come together in this bold story: there’s folklore, gothic historical fiction, magical realism, the paranormal, and a mystery to solve. Sensitive readies are warned, however, as there are some shocking and gory descriptions of murder scenes as well as those things in jars.

But yeah. This is quite the imaginative and fantastical journey that I found utterly enthralling. I hope we see Bridie and Cora again in future books.

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