3025 book 104

 Juliet Marillier’s The Amber Owl

I can’t believe I missed that a new Juliet Marillier book came out back in February! (It hasn’t gotten a US release yet, but still.) Anyway, this is the story of a young woman living a simple life in a small village, and oh yeah SHE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH ANIMALS, the best power!!! But obviously she keeps it secret so she’s not burned as a witch, just chilling with her small dog companion, who is a shapeshifter! And that’s when the Ruler sends a team in to try and cut a path through the mystical forest to find its treasure, and the woman is sucked into a bunch of political shenanigans and adventures. Really great characters here, lots to do with storytelling, which I loved. This is the first of a duology and I can’t wait for part two! A/A-.

2025 book 103

 Uzma Jalaluddin’s Detective Aunty

Ok, this was a GREAT mystery. It centers on a fifty-something Muslim widow in a small town in Canada, who rushes to Toronto when her daughter is accused of murder! But she hasn’t returned to Toronto since her youngest son died and she fell into a deep depression. But soon enough she is using her skills to suss out what really happened to prove her daughter’s innocence, and figure out all the secrets her family has been keeping. I loved her relationships with her family and friends and the community in general (especially her granddaughters), and the mystery itself was pretty solid. Really satisfying read, I hope there will be more! A.

2025 book 102

 Edward Eager's Half-Magic

My friend Sarah was talking about Ivanhoe on Bluesky the other day, and it reminded me of Edward Eager (the second book in this series has quite a bit about Ivanhoe, which is how I learned about it!), so then of course I wanted to reread some Edward Eager. Classic mid-century children's low fantasy with hilarious characters and goings-on. Pure nostalgia for me--I read these over and over as a kid. Obviously there is some dated stuff but it’s still a nice brain reset. I’m gonna save the others for a rainy day, I think.

2025 book 101

 Tashan Mehta’s Mad Sisters of Esi

This book is VERY cool and a little weird! It’s fantasy and sci-fi??? There’s a pair of sisters raised inside a whale swimming through the universe, full of infinite worlds. There’s another pair of sisters, one who created the whale, and one who created a museum of collective memory—and also an island where her descendants are fated to await her long-lost sister. There’s stories and folklore and academic papers. It’s slow and dreamlike, a little bit more than I prefer, if I’m honest—I was impatient by the end—but really INTERESTING. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in August.

2025 book 100

 John Wyndham’s Foul Play Suspected

Before Wyndham was a classic speculative writer, he apparently tried his hand at mysteries! This one was written in 1935 and involves a woman returning from India to find her scientist father’s house abandoned and no one has seen him in months! Can she and her cousin and his friend and the family lawyer figure out what’s going on with the help of the lawyer’s detective friend??? This book was not /great/, per se, but it was a fun read, almost a thriller at times. Some interesting political discussions too. Not nearly as interesting as the author’s other stuff though. B/B+.

2025 book 99

 Charlotte Runcie’s Bring Down The House

I’ve read a lot of books lately that were just FINE, so I was psyched that this one grabbed me right away. It’s about a theater critic who writes an absolutely savage review of a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, then ends up picking up the show’s creator at a bar and having a one night stand, knowing full well who she is. And the next morning, she sees the review and realizes what he’s done, and reworks her whole show to be about him and what an asshole he is. And the whole thing is narrated by one of his colleagues who’s been on hand for the whole thing, and has her own stuff going on with her marriage and new motherhood and grieving her own mother. I really liked this—the end was maybe a little too meditative for me? But I read it all on one go and might add it to my book club list. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in July.

2025 book 98

 Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral

This is really short compared to the other Christie novels I’ve read, so there’s not a lot of character buildup or anything. The central plot involves a woman who thinks her brother was murdered, and then she herself is murdered. It was a quick read and entertaining enough. No racism but there is some weird mental health stuff. B/B+.

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When I went to log this book on StoryGraph, it said it had 258 pages, but the version I bought on Amazon was listed as 120 pages???? Public domain shenanigans?

2025 book 97

 Vivian Valentine’s Beneath Strange Lights

This is set in 1954 and centers on a girl who’s been raised in a government facility due to her mysterious abilities, but now that she’s almost 18, she’s being allowed more freedom, and befriends a couple of girls in town (sidebar: this book is super queer, the protagonist is trans and one of the girls is her love interest). But they know a dude who’s working on a mysterious device and it’s bad or whatever, and they have to figure out what’s going on! I liked the friendships between the characters, though the romance was REALLY rushed, and the plot didn’t totally work for me. Too much fictional math/science/alien babbling. I might check out the next in this series and see how it is. B.

2025 book 96

 Kate Elliott's The Nameless Land

This isn't out till November, but I got the ARC and wanted to read it while the first in this duology was still fresh in my mind! This one is a little more action-packed--secrets are revealed, there's lots of politics, etc. I loved the characters and their evolving relationships. I still was not super into the romance, but there's a lot of humor here, and I did love how things wrapped up. Satisfying for sure. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in November.

2015 book 95

 Caitlin Rozakis’ The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association 

I wanted to read something on the lighter side, and this fit the bill. It’s about a woman adjusting to her child’s new school and their life in a new town, because it’s a magical school and the town is full of magical people (their daughter was bitten by a rogue werewolf). Lots of drama involving mean moms and a magical prophecy and marital problems. Fairly predictable but pleasant and entertaining. B+.

2025 book 94

 KJ Charles’ Copper Script

This was fine. It involves a policeman in the 1920s who’s trying to figure out if a handwriting analyst is a fraud, and falls for him, but his conflict is that gay sex is illegal. The plot is all over the place (mafia, murderers, evil cops [acab], weaselly cousins) but I enjoyed the characters’ chemistry. B.

2025 book 93

 Kate Elliott’s The Witch Roads

This is the sort of long epic fantasy that I enjoy reading but don’t particularly have anything to say about. Very interesting world and characters, I did not care about the little bit of romance and wished there was less of it. This is the first in a duology and the second is out in November (and seems like it will involve court politics!), which is cool. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on June 10th.

2025 book 92

 Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory

Rereading this for book club and it’s totally the sort of book that is even better on a reread (and this was one of my favorite books of whatever year it came out, so that’s saying a lot). Here’s my initial review.

2024 book 91

 Malka Older’s The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses 

HOORAY for a new Mossa and Pleiti book! This one starts a bit odd, something is up with Mossa, but soon we’re involved in a mystery where an academic friend is anonymously accused of plagiarism. I loved everything about the pettiness of academia here, though the mystery itself is kind of whatever. Still, I mainly read these for the characters and loved their relationship in this one (and seeing Pleiti with her friends), and the story moves at a quick pace. Another very entertaining outing and I can’t wait for more! A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in June.

2025 book 90

 John Wiswell’s Wearing the Lion

There are soooo many Greek myth retellings now that normally I wouldn’t bother, but Wiswell’s first novel was interesting and cool, and this grabbed me from the first line, which finds Hera calling Zeus her “dipshit husband” lol. Anyway, this is a very smart take on Heracles and his Twelve Labors, and of course Olympus and its gods, told in the alternating POVs of Hera and Heracles. I was totally a child way too into Greek mythology and really enjoyed this. It’s funny and tragic and has an amazing found family. I did think it was kind of slow, but nothing wrong with that! A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in June.

2025 book 89

 Stephen Spotswood’s Murder Under Her Skin

Not sure if it was the book or my brain, but I wasn’t as into this second one. It involves the murder of the tattooed lady from the circus Parker used to work at, and her old mentor the knife-thrower has been arrested, so of course they have to go set things straight! But the mystery felt like it was just spinning its wheels until near the end, when I correctly guessed almost all of it. I mean, it was fine, and I do plan on reading the rest of the series, but first I’m going to get back to my ARCs. B+.

2025 book 88

 Stephen Spotswood’s Fortune Favors the Dead

Oh hooray, it’s a new mystery series (to me) to get into!  This one involves a young woman who is the assistant detective to a famous lady detective in 1945 New York. (The narrator is the assistant, she has a circus background, she is very queer, and I love her.) Solid mystery involving the death of a wealthy woman in a locked room after a seance, and really great characters. I really liked this and can’t wait read the next one. A/A-.

2025 book 87

 Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise 

I feel like I’ve read several books with this basic premise—a girl raised in isolation with her paranoid father who is obviously keeping secrets from her—but this is a pretty solid entry in the genre. It’s set during the 90s dot-com boom, which was a fun nostalgia trip. I liked this enough to read in one sitting, but did find parts of it overwrought. I think this author usually does mystery/thrillers, but this feels like more of a coming of age story with some weird/bad stuff happening offscreen, and also thoughts on technology. Shrug emoji? A-/B+.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in June.