The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno Garcia
Moreno Garcia’s novel, loosely inspired by H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (a book I have not read and clearly will never read, so don’t feel bad if, same), follows Carlota and her father, who live in the Yucatan peninsula, and what Carlota calls the ‘hybrids’ – part-human, part-animal results from her father’s experiments. Carlota loves them as brothers and sisters, but her father has created them in the hopes of creating workers for his patron. As the years go by, running out of funding and not knowing what else to do, when his patron’s son shows up at their farm, Carlota’s father pushes her to accept him as a potential suitor, and from there secrets begin to come to light that explain mysterious parts of her childhood that she did not previously have explanations for. Like all of Moreno Garcia’s work, I found this novel both enjoyable and finished too soon.
Body Positive Power, Megan Jayne Crabbe
I have followed Crabbe, or @bodyposipanda, on Instagram for years now, and reading her first book was to remember a time before body positivity got lost to mainly white women with normal body types, a time that felt more hopeful. Crabbe intertwines her personal experiences with eating disorders and body dysmorphia with a breakdown of the body positivity movement and how to escape the restrictive image of the perfect body that all women have been, and continue to be, subjected to. While her writing style can come off as naive and overly simplistic at times, it is easy to judge from the present day, considering the book was published almost a decade ago. She has since published another book, and I look forward to seeing how she has grown as both a person and a writer in the intervening decade. Also, the art that begins each chapter is simply lovely to look at. I have included a picture of it below!
