I have finished the first book I opted to read for this year's Sapphic Book Bingo, Remember Me by Syd Parker. Though I won't be slotting squares until later, this is probably going to go into the Inheritance square.
I plan to do two reviews, one spoiler-free and one not. This is the spoiler-free review, suitable for anyone considering reading this book for Sapphic Book Bingo or for any other reason. The spoilery review will be in a separate post.
Fair notice: I don't read very much. I'm trying to fix that by participating in this challenge, but it's worth keeping in mind that I don't have much else to compare this book to when measuring how good it is.
And I don't think it was very good.
Story Premise
Sam(antha) Adams has just received a letter notifying her that her grandmother, Louise Barrett, has passed away. Sam never got to know her grandmother over the course of her lifetime, because she was informed by her own mom that Louise had callously abandoned the family. However, this new letter implies that her grandmother loved her, if only from a distance, and wished she could have gotten to know Sam better.
Louise's will stipulates that Sam can receive her inheritance by going on a trip to visit people and places that were important to Louise, all connected to Louise's time as a women's baseball player in the wake of WWII. Sam isn't certain at first, still hurt over the idea of someone having abandoned the family, but with the encouragement of her best friend Ellis Hudson, she decides to go on the trip to see if she can learn more about herself through a previously lost and forgotten family connection.
Story Themes
Importance of Family
Parker mentions in the foreward of the book that her inspiration for the story came from the fact that her own grandparents are so important to her, she wondered what life would be like for someone who never got a chance to know them.
As soon as I read this, I wondered if I would experience a disconnect from the story, because I knew most of my immediate family and never felt a connection to any of them, and I've never seen what I would've described as love between any of them. I've left my own family due to experiences closely tied to being transgender, and met others who have been through similar. So I'm not the kind of person who can be convinced that family is an inherently good thing in and of itself.
But I didn't feel as much of a disconnect with the book on this issue as I would've thought. Sam feels like she doesn't have a full understanding of herself, and she ends up seeing someone very similar to herself in her grandma, once she starts learning more about said grandma. I have my own found family with whom I've had similar experiences. I can understand how sometimes those similarities just happen to come from genetics.
The book also doesn't present family as always working this way. In particular, Sam's mom Vivian is outright awful, and I did relate to that aspect of the story. It was probably the aspect I related to the most, actually.
The story still put more of an emphasis on family than I was personally comfortable with. There's a recurring sentiment of Sam having a semi-permanent hole in her life because she never got to know this one specific family member. There's a recurring sense of fate throughout the book, and I'm uncomfortable with the idea of fate being connected to genetics. Also, even though Sam's mom does some honestly reprehensible stuff, the story still somehow considers her deserving of a lightning-speed redemption arc in the last few pages of the book.
I also feel like there's a bit of hypocrisy in the fact that grandparents are presented as so important to one's life, but we barely hear anything about Sam's other grandparents. Maybe that's just me being nitpicky at this point, though, I dunno.
Following Your Heart
The premise of taking risks in service of following one's heart is reinforced through various characters in the story.
- Sam is taking a month off from working as an attorney in order to learn more about this family member she never got to know, and learn more about what it is she wants in the process.
- Ellis is considering quitting her own job in order to start her own law firm.
- Louise took the risk of losing ties with some of her family (like Sam) in order to be with someone she loved.
- It's stated that basically everyone in the baseball teams did it out of love for the sport, even though they weren't sure they'd be successful with it.
- There's a family that Sam and El meet early on that follow dreams in their own way, but I guess it's... spoilerish? To go into more details than that?
In addition to the above points, the book spends AMPLE time hammering this message home the further you get into the story. I daresay it actually gets a bit excessive.
Unlike the previous bit on family, I do relate very strongly to this message here. I don't have an issue with the book emphasizing the importance of it as much as it does. I just think it handles the message a bit awkwardly.
For one thing, there's something to be said for time and place, ebb and flow. The idea gets enforced so many times throughout the book that the impact of the message gets lessened. I do think the book goes even harder on the message later in the story in order to prevent that from happening, but this leads to a problem of oversaturation, and then the message becomes weaker for that reason. People need some space to breathe, you know?
Another issue with this is that I feel the book never really does anything new with the message after its initial introduction. The complexities of why it's a good message, or why it might not always work, are never really explored. Sam and El are presented as experiencing difficulties in following their hearts, but it basically comes down to self-esteem issues and worry of the unknown each time, and this, too, simply gets reiterated over and over again.
Actually, let's stick on this topic to segue into the next point.
The Romance
I'm going to assume it's not actually a spoiler to say that Sam and El eventually get together, because that's how romance novels work. It's all about the "how" of the getting together, right?
Well, I found the "how" to be extremely painful. I've read a few other sapphic novels at this point, and in none of them did the protagonists take this much time waiting before communicating their interest in each other. And although I think there can be good ways of handling a romance where the confession doesn't happen until late in the story, I don't think this book handled it gracefully.
I feel that, in this situation, ideally the feelings would gradually build up to a bursting point, then the confession happens. Here, though, feelings between Sam and El are basically at maximum intensity from the first third of the book onwards. It's another case of oversaturation. Every time we get insight into their personal perspectives to see how they're feeling, it's the same level of writhing in agony wishing they could just kiss the other person or even just say something but they just can't, man. So instead they just laugh it off, "jokingly" flirt with each other, and/or change the topic. It pissed me off so much.
Because the feelings are this intense for this long, it eventually builds into a kind of resentment before the confession is finally made. And that really sucks. It made the moment of confession feel bad when it should've been a moment of relief and celebration.
It doesn't help that literally every other character in the story sees their chemistry before they do, and not only do these characters comment on it, but frequently take Sam and El aside and say, "Boy, it sure sucks when you don't act on your feelings, huh?"
Someone I know commented that it's the kind of story where you wish you could just grab the characters and tell them to talk to each other already. But what if the other characters in the story are already doing that and it still isn't making any progress happen?? What then??
The Mystery
I'm throwing this section in here as maybe a recurring element of my reviews, to focus on the "what happens next!?" factor of the book.
There wasn't really any of that in this book for me. There was one "twist" at the end and I saw it coming from nearly the beginning. I'm not interested in baseball and I wasn't interested in the road trip. Characters were kinda samey and polite. I couldn't even get excited wondering how Sam and El's relationship would develop, because like I said, it basically started off as "developed" as it was gonna get.
In addition, sometimes Sam and El would come to conclusions or experience certain feelings that would then be forgotten, outright contradicted, and then eventually repeated, so I couldn't trust any progress I did perceive.
Conclusion
I have some other stuff I could complain about, but it would be either spoilery or just excessive. I got the major stuff out of the way.
To bring the previous sections together into a single summary, ultimately I just feel like the story doesn't really know how to deal with exploration of emotion other than just taking simple emotions and making them as big as possible. This leads to a certain level of sentimentality that I admit is kind of cute and charming at times, but it's also overwhelming in an uncomfortable way, and sometimes contributes to some questionable messages on morality.
I do think I actually got a fair bit out of reading this book, because it got me thinking about these same kinds of emotions and what would be healthier ways of handling them. But I see that as something I'm bringing into my reading of the book given my unique position in how I'm approaching it, and I can't credit the book itself with purposely encouraging that kind of examination.
But I guess I do give Syd Parker credit in focusing on the importance of the heart. I can't criticize the goal, just how well the goal was actually achieved.
