Book Review: Ashley's War, The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

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Ashley's War:  The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a non-fiction book published in April 2015.  The story follows several women and their quest to become the first women to be in combat along the Green Berets and Army Rangers. This is a book that was selected in my workplace for discussion between women and/or veterans.  The book discussion was broken into three parts much like how the story was broken up.  It garnered great conversations. Some of the things that happened in the book didn't surprise me, such as how physically demanding the tryouts were to be part of the special operations.  It's a demanding job that requires people to be not only physically strong but mentally strong.     What did shock me was that it took the military so long to allow women to fight along men on the battlefield.  Another thing that astonished me were how accepting most of the men in the Army Rangers were of the women fight
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Book Review: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

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book review yellow face r f kuang

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is about Yale classmates and friends, June Haywood and Athena Liu, debuting their novels at the same time with both expecting to become well known authors.  When Athena suddenly dies in front of her friend, June makes a rash decision and steals Athena's manuscript, pawning it off as her own in hopes of attaining some of the fame Athena found.  Will June be caught?

This novel was the October selection for the book club I belong to.  Although the synopsis sounded intriguing, I was afraid I was going to be dissatisfied with the direction that the story would take.  My assumption was correct.  

June ended up being as unlikable as I thought she would be and literally had no redeeming qualities.  She kept making excuses and trying to rationalize the reason for stealing Athena's manuscript and publishing it as her own.  I kept waiting for her to get caught or reveal what she had done, but neither one really happened, which just made my blood boil.

The ending made me almost as angry as the ending of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  Since I read Yellowface on my ereader, I refrained from throwing it across the room like I did with Gillian Flynn's book, which was a paperback.  With that being said, R.F. Kuang has a way with words that kept me wanting to read until the very end.  It was engaging and entertaining while bringing up very real things like racism and plagiarism.  Five out of five stars.

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