Premee Mohammed’s We Speak Through the Mountain
Very cool sequel to Annual Migration of Clouds—lots of near-future post-apocalyptic action! And philosophical discussions! And seeing how the other half lives! I did have my frequent complaint with novellas— I think this would have been stronger if there was more to it—but I liked it a lot and hope for more books in this series! A-.
Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds
This novella is set in a semi-near-future sort of post-apocalypse—a few generations from now, after we inevitably destroyed the climate. Totally compelling narrative voice—the protagonist is a teen who’s gotten an acceptance letter to a college in a mysterious high tech dome, but her mother doesn’t want her to go. Plus she’s infected with a maybe-intelligent fungal parasite? Really fascinating world—looking forward to the follow-up! A/A-.
Mackenzi Lee’s Lady Like
Hooray for more queer historical romances! This one involves two women trying to marry the same Duke*—one, a pants-wearing actress, has to make a respectable marriage to get her inheritance, and the other, who was once caught in a scandal, wants to find anyone better than the horrible old man she’s engaged to—and of course they fall for each other! It’s all very cute even if the ending is a little fantastical. A-.
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* Everyone CALLS him a Duke but he’s actually the son of a Duke and this annoyed me—like all these people care about is shit like that so why aren’t they being accurate?
Moniquill Blackgoose’s To Ride a Rising Storm
Hooray for the second book in Blackgoose’s series about an alternate version of the US with dragons! (And founded by Vikings? Once again I found the different names for everything distracting.) I love all the characters here, humans and dragons alike, and there are some great new ones—I of course was partial to a girl who’s this world’s version of Jewish!!! But there are also some fun philosophical discussions and some progressions on the romance. Of course there is still all the COLONIALISM and racism going on, so there are some tense moments for sure, but I was totally along for the ride and the ending made me very eager for book three! A!
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on January 27th.
Jo Firestone’s Murder on Sex Island
I’ve been meaning to read this one for a while, but after three mentions of Firestone in the last week, it felt like time! This is a mildly goofy mystery involving a women who has an alter ego who’s a private eye (unclear if she is licensed lol), who is hired to go undercover on a hit reality tv show (the titular “Sex Island”) to find a missing contestant. It was fine! It would be a really funny movie. B/B+.
Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby
For my first book of the year, I had to read the ARC of the latest novel from one of my favorite authors! The only downside of an ARC is that I can’t discuss it with my fellow Rowell-heads for a few months! I don’t want to even hint at spoilers so I’m not gonna do any kind of summary, I will just say I love Rowell’s writing, and even though I was hesitant about some of the plot, she had me all in by the end. I especially loved all the sister relationships (Cherry is one of five girls!) and text threads between them. This also really goes in on the Ozempic discourse (I felt a little weird about this as someone who is on it for medical reasons and I also feel weird that I feel like I have to say that?). I am gonna have to reread this one soon. A.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in April.