This novel is gloriously brave. It was maybe little too brave for me. I was exhilarated, and disturbed in equal measure.

this is the darkest, saddest, awfulest, most unbearable story, but it is so very real and so important.

the magic comes at a far second and there is no loveliness here, but once i overcame my confusion over my initial expectations, i was able to appreciate this for the light it brings to untold stories. in the end i loved this very much.

TW: child abuser, rape, drug use, pedophilia

Before reading this novel, I was not familiar with any Tagalog or Filipino folklore. Because of this, I had to pause a few times and research terms and phrases to get a better understanding of what was happening or being said. It was a very small inconvenience that was well worth the time it took. Marina was born to a Filipino mother, Mutya, and an unnamed Black man. She was raised by Mutya, or “Ma” and her grandmother, Lola Virgie, and they were Marina’s entire world.

Marina grew up in her grandmother’s house, The Plastic Palace. This was her place of refuge, stability, and love. The only family she had and knew lived within those walls and they meant everything to her. But Mutya wanted more, she didn’t want to just be a wife and mother like Lola Virgie. She had her own dreams but was poor so she put her hopes into men. And those hopes eventually led to her and Marina moving out. Over time, Mutya lost control of her life and her decisions affected Marina in the worst way possible.
Now living in a group home called The Pines, Marina is struggling with being away from her family and thrown into a world that she quickly learns isn’t stable nor safe. She no longer knows her life and yearns for what any child in her situation would- love, affection, and family. Then she and Alex became friends and her new life begins.
This is such a haunting and tragic story. Melissa Chadburn tore my heart out with her words and then ripped it into a million tiny pieces. My heart went out so many times while reading and yet I could not put this book down.
Before reading A Tiny Upward Shove, I had never heard of Willie Pickett and all of the victims. I was unaware that there were so many missing, murdered, and kidnapped indigenous folkx. This story does an excellent job of showing just how awful of a job that the United States has and is doing of keeping children that are in its custody safe and failing at providing them with any true chance of a better future. It absolutely breaks my heart because even though Marina, Alex, and others in the story are fiction, there are real people who have endured or are enduring similar or worse trauma. Willie Pickett didn’t just one day decide to be horrible, his shitty life ultimately made him that way, and because nobody truly cares about the welfare of people of color, the poor, the disabled, the marginalized- more Willie Pickett’s are being created today. Hurt people, hurt people.
Every main character in this story has a sad story.

Beautifully written and emotional, this is a book to be savored.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a gem, a beautiful work of art. Completely authentic and nothing like you have read before.

I wouldn’t be being honest if I didn’t admit that the first third of the book had me second guessing my decision to read this. The frequent use of Filipino words and slang tossed into English sentences had me constantly checking my dictionary. Add in the folklore of the Aswang and I was confused and had a difficult time trying to follow where the author was leading me. Those two things made me go back and read reviews on Goodreads to see if I’d misjudged this one, made a mistake. But nope, no mistake, everyone is loving this book! What’s all the fuss about? I decided to keep going. Wow. Again, I repeat, a work of art.

We follow Marina through her tragic young life, living with a mother who puts her own self first. She basically abandons a little girl to mostly fend for herself with little to no food, heat, money, supervision, often left alone and scared. The crazy but typical thing is, Marina loves her mother and would rather be with her in a roach infested one room apartment with no food or heat then any place else. After all she’s goes through when Marina is released from child protective services, it is her mothers face she searches for in the crowd. Of course Mutya is incapable of being there.

Marina gets her strong Filipino roots, culture and folklore from her grandmother Lola. Sadly Lola is in her life for only a short time. It is her grandmothers voice, guidance and stories that carry her through her darkest days.

The author ties the circumstances of both Marina and Willy together, making us consider how they were both victims of their own circumstances. Be sure to read the authors notes at the end. Thinking back to most of the characters, Alex (who I loved) her friend at The Pines where she is sent to live after her mother is arrested, Mutya, Marina’s mom, were ALL only striving to be loved, although their attempts were dysfunctional and unorthodox, never allowing them to accomplish what so many of us take for granted.

The traumatic atrocities and neglect that happen to children while under the care of the state are unimaginable and disturbing especially for a country as wealthy and educated as ours. We must do better, in my mind, there is NO excuse.

The book is troubling in places, one you won’t forget any time soon. The plot is like no other. I really enjoyed it.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Farrah, Straus & Giroux and the author for the privilege of access to a First Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I did not finish A Tiny Upward Shove, so I can't in good conscious give a full review of the novel. However, I can explain why I didn't resonate with this book. I found the narrator's tone of voice and use of certain words to be crass. Whether intentional or not, this pulled me out of the story and made me not want to finish.

Note: This Review contains NO spoilers

Wow! What a gripping and vivid debut novel by acclaimed writer and activist Melissa Chadburn. Filled with Filipino folklore and mysticism, A Tiny Upward Shove is a graphically dark and disturbing narrative of Marina Salles's life. Although this story contains haunting and horrific situations, the author brilliantly writes a riveting narrative which will immerse reader(s) into Marina's dark and twisted preternatural world and atmosphere.

I was definitely one reader that got lost in this book as the author took me on an eerie exploration through Marina's life with a good amount of Filipino folklore and superstition woven throughout. A Tiny Upward Shove is a definite page-turner that will keep reader(s) at the edge-of-their-seat.

I do have to say it was not an easy read due to the unsettling situations throughout the book, but well worth the read.

Reviewed by: Jasmine

I have to admit that I had to put this book down at times because it was hard to read, AND what made it hard to read is also what makes it such necessary reading. You need to know that there is violence and sexual violence in this book. You need to know that there is a main character who is so engaging with such a powerful voice that it makes her unjust treatment by society and the man who ultimately kills her hurt even more. You will learn about Filipino culture and myth in this book. Nothing about this book takes it easy on you--tagalog is spoken in tandem with English, and no one is perfect of infallible. As a matter of fact, everyone, and the corrupt systems in which they live, is challenging and challenged. I love the scope of what Chadburn is doing with this story.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the digital ARC of this book.

I very much appreciate Chadburn's attempt to draw attention to the plights and humanize both minors destroyed by attempts of state care of minors and missing sex workers and Indigenous women. I think this would actually have been stronger had it *not* focused on this specific historic serial killer, but instead brought that part of the story closer to the rest. There is another novel waiting for the victims of this Canadian serial killer that confronts the issues of missing First Nations women.

Marina's story is the meat here. And it will wrench your heart out repeatedly. If you can think of a trigger warning involving young women, then it is likely here. We watch her evolution from a bouncy elementary school child that is in the gifted program to a sex worker and addict. Her family is her Filipina lola, whose tagline is various combinations of Muhammad Ali's killa thrilla in Manilla, her mother, a young, lonely woman who chases affection in all the wrong places, and an unnamed and erased black father. Marina's Filipona/black heritage is woven into the story and just is. It's part of who she is, and shows up with how people braid her hair, or the words she uses for various things, etc. The use of Tagalog threw me at first, and I struggled. But then you let it go. It also lessens as she is torn away from her Filipino family.

So many people fail her in so many ways, and also every person around her. The author knows her stuff here, and has extensively researches the cracks in the foster care system and the devastation waiting for anyone who falls into them. And it is heavy. This is not a light or easy read. I alternated chapters with a cozy mystery, and did not read this one after dark. So I could sleep.

But you will still think of this one the whole time you aren't reading it. The aswang is key here. She is a piece of Filipino folklore that inhabits Marina's body and narrates her story. To free herself, she must finish Marina's biggest unfinished business that weighs the heaviest on her soul. She is an agent of vengeance and justice.

But what is it? That question is really the heart here. Is it revenge against the person who murdered her? Is it completing an act of love to save the person who means the most to her from her own fate? That fate isn't about being the victim of a serial killer. It's about all of the other things. Falling victim to a murderer just seems irrelevant. Like one of many things that could happen, and have already been happening, that are all broken and neverending trauma.

Pick this book up and read it. And think of what you and we can do.

Thank you Melissa Chadburn, Farrar, and Netgalley for the ride.

One Sentence Summary: Marina’s life doesn’t end when she dies; instead, she’s given the chance to fulfill a mission and look into her heart and the hearts of others to figure out how she came to be where she ended up.

Overall
A Tiny Upward Shove is a novel about those who slip through the cracks every day. Anchored by Filipino culture and folklore, it follows the short life of a young girl named Marina who was one of those who slipped through the cracks and ended up meeting her fate when she’s picked up by a serial killer. This novel is intense and shines a bright light on dark corners. It’s horrifying at times and difficult to read, but I loved how it really exposes what happens every day, exposes the parts of life most people don’t even want to think about. Unfortunately, the serial killer part of the story fell flat and was, overall, such a small part of the narrative, that I wasn’t a big fan. But I did like what this novel worked to accomplish.

Extended Thoughts
The victim of a serial killer, Marina’s body has the chance to come back to finish her mission, as an aswang, a thing of Filipino folklore. As the aswang, who has accompanied Marina’s family for generations, stalks Marina’s killer, debating revenge or following through with Marina’s mission, it takes the opportunity to examine not just Marina’s life, but her killer’s, seeing just how these two souls were on a collision course with each other.

A Tiny Upward Shove is a serious, dark, gritty, intense story. It features the people who slip through the cracks, the children who become wards of the state, the children who go missing, and the victims of murder who go years without justice. This isn’t an easy read, peppered with child and sexual abuse and rape, neither does it hide behind any pretty prose. The words hold intensity and honesty, painting the world in harsh colors. As hard as it was to read at times, I appreciated how it didn’t try to hide, how it gave the silent and missing a voice, exposing the horrors that many live through today.

At the heart of the story is a young girl named Marina. Raised by her single mother Mutya and grandmother, whom she referred to as her lola, Marina had been a happy child. She was close to her lola, cared for by her lola, until Mutya decides to follow a guy and they leave Northern California, and Lola, behind for LA. When it quickly becomes just Marina and her mother, Marina must grow up fast, loved and forgotten by her mother in turns. She’s a smart girl who longs for the warmth and love of her younger childhood days. The things she was forced to face and deal with broke my heart. But she’s tough and motivated. She fights back whenever and wherever she can, but she slips through the cracks just like so many others.

A Tiny Upward Shove follows Marina through childhood and into young adulthood. Her changes into adolescence felt real, her questioning was grounded in reality, and her exploration was timid and sure in turns. I loved how determined she was, how she did with her life what she could. But there was always something that felt softer in her, something that longed for something of her own, a life of her own. She was real and flawed and wanting. At every turn, life challenged her, threw good things and bad things in her path.

Alex is her one good thing. As teenagers, they both find themselves living and learning in a place called The Pines, though Alex has been there much longer. Alex was such a fun character and their relationship was the sweetest and most beautiful part of this story. It felt honest and stripped bare, both yearning for something, both dancing around the same thing. There was pain in their friendship, but also really beautiful, soft moments.

But A Tiny Upward Shove isn’t just about Marina, or Marina and Alex. It’s about the people who have slipped through the cracks. It reveals a broken system, one that hurts people and keeps them down even if they have the spark in them to try to survive. It makes the children tough, makes them grow up too fast. And so many don’t know about them. I really liked how this novel put the spotlight on them. Mostly, I loved that it’s set in LA, where I live, and helped shed light on things going on around me that I didn’t even know about. The most striking thing to me was reading about a place, about certain proceedings, and knowing I had witnessed them, been there, and still all this happened without my ever knowing. A Tiny Upward Shove gives a voice to those who have been lost in various ways, and what a powerful voice this novel is.

A Tiny Upward Shove was definitely not easy for me to read through, but I also couldn’t stop reading. At times it was horrific to me, but I needed to keep going, to find out more, to read more. Sometimes, it felt like I was seeing a soul that had been lost. Sometimes I wished it had been toned down, but, by the end, I appreciated how raw it was, how it didn’t skirt around the dark corners but went there instead.

As much as I liked this book, as enjoying reading the material was simply not possible, I did wish for more of the Filipino culture to come through. I forgot about the aswang a lot because I was so consumed by the story of Marina’s life. It was there in the words and phrases, in how Marina referred to things and people. There were subtle references to it threaded throughout the story, but I wished it had had more of a presence. Marina felt like she could be any girl who had to live through the horrors she did, so I wish more of her heritage had been woven in, had guided her a little more. A Tiny Upward Shove is also supposed to encompass the story of a real life serial killer, but his story was only lightly peppered in. I wanted so much more of his story, especially since the description hinted at it being more prominent than it actually was. It felt more like a detailing of Marina’s life than showcasing a collision course between two souls.

A Tiny Upward Shove is dark and gritty, serious and intense. It doesn’t hold back, nor does it come off as wanting to. Chadburn went where the story led and shone a light on all the dark corners and hidden drawers. She managed to give a voice to those who didn’t have one, who would never have one, and left it in the hands of readers. It’s revealing, and difficult to read, and I’m glad I did. Literary fiction isn’t my preferred genre, but this felt so much more than that to me. It’s fiction ground in reality that plays out every day in various forms.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

Filipino folklore meets serial killer lit in A Tiny Upward Shove. Marina is killed by a man who has killed many women, but her body is taken over by an aswang, an inherently evil shape-shifting spirit, But this spirt has been with Marina's family for a long time, and as it gathers strength to avenge Marina, we learn of Marina's family tragedies and failures. Ultimately, the aswang gets vengeance for Marina and the other victims of the killer. The author uses a non-fictional killer, Robert Pickton, as a character in the book, and this makes me really uncomfortable. Family members of his victims are still living, and this book exploits their stories and pain. It's unclear why the author draws on Filipino culture when so many of Pickton's victims were First Nations Women. And while I appreciate the author's dedication to showing how federal and state institutions fail young people, especially people of color, but there's a strange blurring of the US and Canada. Why does Marina go to Vancouver? Finally, readers should be aware that the book contains rape, including child rape, and other forms of violence that will make it hard for some readers to deal with.

A Tiny Upward Shove is a fictionalized account of a real life serial murder case that occurred in British Columbia, Canada. Canadians will instantly recognize the name Robert Pickton and 'pig farm, Port Coquitlam,' in association with a very grisly crime scene, the victims missing and murdered women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/robert-pickton-case A wider government inquiry was launched from the lengthy serial killer investigation, into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) in Canada, with a lengthy report and recommendations released on this critical human rights issue and systemic failures.

Accordingly, this novel has disturbing content which includes rape, sexual violence toward women and minors, drug use, separation of mothers from children by the state, sex trafficking, child neglect and abuse, racism, confinement, murder.

Onto this real life case, Melissa Chadburn has grafted a fictional backstory for Willie Pickton's forty-ninth victim - biracial American Marina Salles with a Filipino mother and Black absent father in the military. The text is liberally peppered with Tagalog. An omniscient narrator of Filipino folklore, a ferocious aswang, tells of how she has been in the maternal family for seven generations since the Spanish colonization of Phillipines. Young Marina grows up amid the teachings and admonishments of her lola (grandmother); how to behave as a female, how to get ahead in life.

I appreciate that the author is trying to highlight the socioeconomic disenfranchisement that led Marina to her ending. The issues confronting Vancouver Downtown Eastside then and now of prostitution, trafficking, drugs, mental illness are complex. The women who went missing were met with official apathy and indifference, falling through society's cracks.

I do have a few concerns:
1) This is a real life case with family and friends of the missing and murdered still suffering the pain and trauma. Some of the proposed memorializations of the victims in different forms have been shelved on request by the victims' families or community groups https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/healing-garden-pickon-memorial-port-coquitlam-1.3580342 Note in particular that a painting exhibition and artist illustrations were both deemed distressing to the families. Did the families give permission for this literary rendering of their personal tragedy?

2) The main character Marina spends the majority of her teen years in Los Angeles, United States. She is in placement in her later teen years and after emancipation, lives on her own in LA before heading to Vancouver for a nebulous plot reason. A significant number of Pickton's victims were from First Nations communities
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2007/01/22/who-were-picktons-alleged-victims/ and small Canadian towns.

a) I noticed in the text that Canada was written as if it was an amorphous blob country eg 'Early the next morning, Sabine and Alex left the house and drove home to Canada. Their house sat high on a hill where trees whistle,...' and 'First she knew she needed money for rent, then money for a train ticket to Canada.' Where in Canada?! Ten provinces, three northern territories. Very different distances.

b) For MMIWG, the discussion would have to be about the Indian Act of 1876, broken land treaties, reserves, residential schools, sixties scoop, intergenerational trauma. Because of the Filipino American backstory that the main character is given, we get instead Spaniard colonialist history and the Rodney King LA riots.

c) If we're going to delve into socioeconomic inequalities that ultimately led to the tragedy, then it should be about these Vancouver Eastside dwellers. The vast difference in worlds between East Vancouver and West Vancouver. The harm reduction tactics in use there like safe injection sites. The First Nations child welfare system. Housing unaffordability. The attitude and policing by the RCMP in the area, their ignoring of the initial reports of the crime because the witnesses were deemed 'unreliable.' Instead we get a detailed examination of the child welfare system in LA, child placements by the state and even exactly how much an emancipated teen gets for a stipend there. There are significant differences in the Canadian welfare system, Canadian health-care delivery, Canadian political systems, Canada's laws governing prostitution, Canada's labour standard regulations. Even if the author is more well-versed in American inequalities and the LA child welfare system, it is disingenuous to shoehorn and graft that onto a Canadian national tragedy.

3) A thirteen-year-old Marina <spoiler> is raped and deliberately lies to the police about the identity of her rapist, naming instead her mother's boyfriend </spoiler> I don't think I have to explain why this storyline is disturbing especially when police are already disinclined to believe rape victims.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have to be honest - I almost walked away from this book in the beginning. And that would have been a massive mistake. A raw, genuine approach that tells the story of so many women, both real and fictional. A Tiny Upward Shove is a heartbreaking, culture infused journey that will stay with me for a while. I'm so glad I kept reading.

I had the great privilege of working with Melissa Chadburn when publishing her essay "Things That Come in the Night" in Issue 15 of the Los Angeles Review (2013). I knew then that her distinct voice -- that of a survivor -- would make for gorgeous, grab-and-shake-you-awake literature. That is exactly what *A Tiny Upward Shove* does. In writing about two socially castoff characters that collide in dark, dark places, she has created a novel from which you cannot look away.

[Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy of this book.]

What do you think happens when your life flashes before your eyes? Where does that term come from and is that for the ones that survive?

As Marina lays dying she calls to the spirits for help with her last breath and her body is then inhabited by an Aswang. The nightmare creatures that every child heard of growing up. The reason you never left the house at night or did bad things cause you would get taken by one or turn into one.

This book tells the story of how Marina ended up in this horrible position from her childhood till now and it's raw and heartbreaking. Her journey from living with her loving but flighty mother to being separated into the horrific foster care system and what happened from there was just a nightmare of drugs and prostitution. Her mother still just didn't get it. I want to find people like her friend Alex's bio mother and give them a taste of their own medicine. I am still processing. How can there be monsters like this? I know there are but why, why pay the crap forward?!

This book makes me want to scream in the collective voices of all the women with no voices, that were lost to violence, that were not important enough to look for, that weren't the right color to put a sign up for, I hate that there are such things as grievable numbers or substantial enough numbers to investigate. Why isn't one enough and why does it matter if they lived on the street? Why does that invalidate their life at all?

There is a list of all the missing women at the end of this book from the Vancouver area because of this man. And just seeing all those names brought tears to my eyes.

I requested this book for the Filipino folklore but stayed  for the gripping social commentary. Marina could be any of us at any time if we had been born in different circumstances or couldn't pay our rent or just ended up around a bunch of pakshets and they took advantage. No one is safe and until we all are safe we need to speak up for those who can't.

Thank you fsgbooks and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.
TW: A lot

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐚’𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲, 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬.

This story brings a Filipino mythical creature to life in an incredibly original way. Eighteen-year-old Marina Salles is strangled to death by a man named Willie on a pig farm, there is no peace in her final moments, her death is torturously painful, but she prays, making an invocation that turns her into Aswang. This author doesn’t shroud the brutal truths from the reader, not the abuses and crimes perpetuated against women and children, nor the rotten choices that put her characters on the trajectory for collision. Murder is not peaceful, it is a violent end and to make it anything less is the real fiction. Aswang are a myth spun to life in Filipino folklore, a monstrous creature, flesh eating shapeshifters who live as women during the day and appear as something different at night. It is the stories the lolas (grandmothers) tell, serving as warnings or lessons, as fairy tales in many cultures do, and each have their own version about the origins of aswang. Though there are three ways to become aswang, for Marina it is her unfinished business with life and family ties (going back to 1742). Why Marina is tied to this creature is explained as we discover her ancestor’s past. The aswang that has ‘passed through the doorway and stepped into Marina’s life’, can now see inside the body, mind and spirit. It is privy to visions, memories, Marina’s entire history, and every feeling she has ever had but the hunger for vengeance against the man who wronged Marina, that is the aswang’s own. What about Marina’s own want, far greater than bloodlust for her killer?

Melissa Chadburn has written about the horrors that most people turn away from. It is unsettling reading about inhumanity, there is a hidden part of our world that is just as ugly, violent, and immoral. It is a true story somewhere, the author tells us this herself. Ignoring it, denying the victims a voice, is to bury the crimes deeper. The world that the ‘throwaways’ exist in is revealed with each turn of the page. Marina wasn’t always lost to the streets, to dope, she once had a mother and father that made her, even if that fell apart. Back we reach into her past. For a time, she and her mutya (mother) live with her lola, in a small house in Seaside. Dazzled by Lola Virgie’s stories and superstitions, she learns about the spirit world. Lola teaches her about all the bad things that can happen, it stays with her always. She doesn’t have memories of life with just Ma, nor her deadbeat dad. Life is secure, if very controlled with her Lola’s lists of how to be, as no one has suffered as much as she has in life. Then her mutya meets a man named Mike, who looks through Marina, and it’s not long before the three of them move to Los Angeles, away from the only happiness she has known, under her Lola’s care.

Time gets harder, food more scarce, her mutya is becoming unstable, coming and going, leaving her alone- it’s a life of poverty. Just when she is back again, unsavory men enter the scene and what follows is a defilement of body and soul. While she is caught up in Child Protective Services, Marina’s one salvation is Alex, her bunkmate and fellow ward of the courts at The Pines. The facility feels more like a prison, a place of burning resentments and pain, luckily Alex is there to show her the ropes. Alex isn’t just a throwaway, her own history is just as dark and full of injustice involving an adoptive mother. As Marina’s mutya fails her, it is Alex who is always at her side. She learns things watching Alex hustle, that would likely break her Lola’s heart on the spot, and this is how life becomes about survival. Like all the children who disappear in the world, Marina is hungry for love and touch. It’s a sad life, but there is light. When she leaves The Pines, she is going to help Alex reconnect with someone special to her, it is her one duty, for the person she has come to love. But once she’s out, darkness fills her empty center. She turns to drugs, and men using her for their twisted desires, if only she can get clean enough to fulfill her promise.

Willie’s own life is purged on the page, how did this man who stores bodies and feeds them to pigs become such an evil villain? What sort of cruelties gives birth to such a monster? It isn’t easy to digest. Somehow he and Marina are tied. Does clarity about his own sufferings distort a call for vengeance?

This is exposure, of life in the underground, which exists outside the bubble so many of us live in. It is about children who never get to live in the light, who if lucky enough to survive into adulthood at all are forced to the streets, walking into the belly of the beast. It is also about women who put their faith in bad men. Mother’s who severely neglect their children. There is so much degeneracy throughout this tale, is it any wonder people numb themselves, sometimes the only escape? Children are the light and there isn’t any excuse under the sky for what happens to victims of violence and sexual abuse. Not ever. I don’t know that I would be capable of mercy.

Publication Date: April 12, 2022

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Special thanks to Farrar, Stroud and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for my own opinion.

First trigger warning: there is Copland rape and very graphic in young girls so if that's upsetting to someone personally, I don't advise reading this.

Moving on, secondly, I could not believe this was a debut, author Melissa Chad burn weaves a tale o deftly, I'd have never thought this was a debut book.

Third, I love folklore and myths and the fact and fiction of this story. Marina dies at the hands of a serial killer who lives on a pig farm, that's the fact in this book the author picked a real serial killer. He's killed close to 50 women. Marina is a Philippine woman who has died at his hands and in death becomes an aswang, A folkloric being told to her by her grandmother, A kind of shape shifter who can go back in time and see peoples thoughts and memories.

In her short life, Marina had it tough. She always had it tough, living on the outside of life, watching other people. She winds up in the system of Child Protective Services and then the streets. But always remained on the outside of things. In death, as aswang Marina saw all peoples memories leading up to her death, even the man who killed her.

I liked the message in tis book of victim and killer,. Can a killer be a victim too.?
I have to say, I'm taking a star off because there were so many Filipino words thrown in, without their meaning.

I am a sucker for folklore. A good book, not for everyone.

I’m still trying to get over that A Tiny Upward Shove is Melissa Chadburn’s debut novel, I’m blown away. In this book the author manages to pull off an ambitious story revolving around spirits, family and the real case of a serial murderer on a pig farm in British Columbia responsible for killing 50 women. The story carries us through the life of Marina and how she ended up on the Highway of Tears, a place where thousands of women have been abducted and murdered in real life and largely ignored by the public because of their nationalities and lifestyle. With haunting prose, the author uses personal experience working in welfare/child services, to bring us a brutal reality check into how vulnerable children are in the system and how ruthless the world can be when they don’t have anyone to protect or care for them, especially for young girls. The storytelling and writing is really impressive, but mostly I’m still left with these characters and what they’ve been through, the author pulls no punches in forcing us to look and acknowledge these women. I highly recommend.

Trigger warnings: rape (including, but not limited to, child rape), drugs, abuse


This begins with the death of Marina Salles, a death that transforms her, that follows the myth, the stories, that come from her grandmother’s Filipino heritage. As she realizes her death is imminent, she says a prayer. A prayer she'd heard over and over. A prayer for light and love in the minds and hearts of men, for love and light to keep evil from prevailing. A death that transforms her into an aswang, a shape-shifting creature associated with myths, legends and stories.

We know this from the first words on the first page, as the story continues to share her story of her leap from one form of life into another, tracing her life back to her early years, before her life began to unravel. Her early childhood was spent with her grandmother and mother, and then their move away, leaving their home and her grandmother in Monterey, and the years that followed. The unraveling of her life. One event leads to another, the night spent left alone while her mother pursues other interests. Soon she ends up under the care of Child Protective Services, although that is just another wound for her to bear. While there, though, she meets the one person who will give her a reason to hold on to hope.

This is a beautifully written, if disturbing and dark story. It shares moments that sound minor as they begin to unfold, a parent’s refusal to see the truth, a desire to have a moment that is their own. A moment that ends up leaving lasting, life changing scars. The scars that create the myth that we are not worthy of love, of a better life or a chance at a better life. We are not worthy of love. We are not worthy.

There’s an element of this story that, for me, was reminiscent of Rene Denfeld’s writing, the beauty of her prose balancing the darkness, the injustice and abuse heaped on those who are unable to defend themselves, balanced by the breathtaking beauty in the way the story is shared.

The world can be a dark, disturbing and dangerous place. It is important to recognize and rail against the darkness hurled by the world. To seek the light, to extend grace, compassion, mercy and offer charity is essential to shine a light on the darkness.

A Tiny Upward Shove is intense!!!

Trigger warnings: child rape, child abuse, domestic abuse, murder

Chadburn tells a story that is heartbreaking, sobering, and that weighs on the mind. It covers the revenge of a life taken too soon, with an unfiltered and acute look at trauma and the ways in which even through love, there lies harm. The women that walk across these pages have all been used, abused, neglected, and loved in ways that have left scars that are mental, emotional, and physical, that affect the way in which these women interact with themselves and others.

We are introduced to the folklore and supernatural connections that follow Marina's grandmother from the Philippines to America, how this entity has been yoked to these women until the pact is fulfilled. I love that Chadburn has chosen to use the embodiment of the 'Aswang' to be the vehicle through which justice can be achieved for WOC, who in this time and world are endangered and in danger. A totally affecting read that will blow the horn at the systems that take advantage of and place women of colour in environments that breed harm and trauma.

I would have preferred if this had been cut down, as it was hard spending so much time in these pages as a Black woman.