2021 book 200

 Aden Polydoros' The City Beautiful 

This book should have been my catnip—queer, historical, VERY Jewish fantasy? I mean, yes please! But it didn’t totally work for me. Maybe because it’s a lot darker than I usually go for—I’m fine with dybbuks, but serial killers and serial child rapists are not fun to read about. I also did not enjoy reading the several lengthy anti-Semitic speeches where villains talked about how Jews are vermin. So content warnings all around, I guess. Anyway, this is the story of young Alter Rosen, whose father died on the way to American (1890s Chicago, to be precise) and now he is struggling to get enough money together to bring his mother and little sisters over. And then his friend (and crush) is murdered, and weird stuff starts happening, and a cocky thief from his past turns up…. Parts of this are a little slow, parts are kinda upsetting. I was one hundred percent here for loud socialist downstairs neighbor Raizel, a wannabe journalist. It was interesting to see which Jewish phrases/concepts were specifically defined and which were left to context (or I’m just a nerd about these things). I wanted to love this, and did love how rooted in Jewish history it is, but it was just a little too dark for my tastes. B+.

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 A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on Tuesday.