Kristen Lepionka’s Once You Go This Far
Still love these characters, but I wasn’t really into the mystery here, which involves a woman who dies in a fall, but was it really an accident, and also there’s a creepy evangelical church. It was all very over the top. B.
Kristen Lepionka's The Stories You Tell
Another entertaining outing in the Roxane Weary series. This one involves Roxane trying to track down an acquaintance of her brother who seems to be in trouble, but things of course are more complicated than that. I did think the conclusion to the mystery was kind of eh, but enjoyed the ride, and loved the characters as always. A-.
Kristen Lepionka's What You Want to See
This was way less grim than the first book (though there are several murders and more than one shootout) and was another interesting and satisfying mystery. Anyway, things kick off with Roxane on the tail of a woman whose fiancé thinks she’s cheating, but when the woman ends up dead, Roxane is sucked into something way more complicated (perhaps too complicated but I enjoyed it nonetheless). I also can’t decide if I’m rooting for her to get with her on-again/off-again girlfriend or her late father's cop partner which adds another level of interest. Fun series. A-.
Kristen Leipionka's The Last Place You Look
THE Malka Older recommended this series to me, with the note that it probably was grimmer than I was looking for—and it was, but still a solid mystery with great characters. Our heroine is a queer PI whose hard-drinking cop father has recently died, and she’s not really coping well, when she gets a job looking into a long-missing woman and a death row case. Like I said, the mystery here is totally solid and I really enjoyed this characters and her family/friends/associates. I was super frustrated with how reckless she gets toward the end, but I will still be checking out book 2. A-.
Julie E. Czerneda’s A Play of Shadows
This is the second book in the Night's Edge series—I read the first a couple months ago, and this did a pretty good job of catching me back up. A lot happens, the plot is all over the place, but also this book is SO SLOW. I definitely need to take a break before the third book. B.
John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos
Rainbow Rowell has been raving about Wyndham lately, and I trust her recommendations, and also enjoy classic sci-fi/horror, so here we are! I started with this one because it has an intro by Kelly Link, another one whose recommendations I trust. And it was great! Really great writing/narrative voice, telling the story of a small town in England where there is a weird event and all the women of child-bearing age (including at least one who seems to be in a lesbian relationship) become pregnant. Compelling and unsettling. A-.
Betsy Lerner's Shred Sisters
This has been getting so much buzz! It was fine. I mean, I liked it enough to read in one sitting, but didn’t think it was doing anything especially interesting? I’m surprised this hasn’t been picked up by one of the big book clubs because it had that kind of vibe to me—fiction for book clubs that actually want to discuss the book. Anyway, it’s the story of a family, told through the POV of the younger sister, whose older sister is wild (and maybe mentally ill). And the younger sister, though academically gifted, also struggles to figure her life out. But like, I felt like the story skimmed over all the /details/ of her life—maybe if it was longer it would feel more fleshed out? But also it is kind of about a depressed woman in unhappy hetero relationships, which just isn’t super compelling. B+.
Melissa Caruso's The Last Hour Between Worlds
The worldbuilding here is kind of complicated and I’m not going to try and explain it! Basically this is about a woman who’s on maternity leave in a fantasy world, and she takes a break and goes to a party, only a bunch of weird magic stuff is going down, and the party keeps sinking into layers of reality, and people keep getting murdered, and she has to stop it to save the city. And the only person who can help her is her nemesis-slash-sort of ex girlfriend. (And a mysterious little girl.) A fun read, looks like the start of a series, I will probably check out the next one. A-/B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in November.
Louise Erdrich's The Beet Queen
Reading this for book club—I’m not sure I’ve actually read it before! It's Erdrich's second novel, and shares some characters with Love Medicine (it’s also set in the same town as her new one, The Mighty Red, which is an interesting companion/bookend, but not a direct sequel). It’s also surprisingly queer for a book that came out in 1986! I enjoyed the characters here (some better developed than others), though the writing is a bit more disjointed compared to some of Erdrich's later books. Still, obviously great. A-.
Sarah Gailey's Have You Eaten?
Is there such a genre category as “cozy dystopia”? Because this book features a queer found family group who is on the run but also every chapter revolves around a meal they’re cooking. I mean there are definitely non-cozy elements—one of their group is missing, perhaps detained. But it has a cozy hopeful feel anyway. Plus there are recipes! I was hoping for one more chapter to really tie things up, but I liked this a lot. A-.
Lev AC Rosen's Rough Pages
Hooray for a new book in the Evander Mills series, which involves a gay ex-cop solving crimes for queer people in 1950s San Francisco (so content warning for a fair amount of homophobia directed toward the characters). In this one, Andy is investigating a missing bookseller, who has a queer book subscription service--and the list of subscribers could cause problems for a lot of people. I really love this series—great characters and solid mysteries, and such a cool atmosphere. And the discussion of forbidden books is very timely. A.
H.G. Parry's The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door
Parry's The Magician's Daughter was one of my favorite books of 2023, so I was eagerly awaiting this one. I was mildly dubious about the plot, which involves a) a secret magical school and b) a scholarship girl seduced by the friendship of a group of wealthy, powerful students, and then it all goes wrong. I mean that is fine for a plot, but it's kind of a cliche? But once again Parry's writing drew me in, and the post-WWI setting made things interesting. I did think the ending was reminiscent of another somewhat recent fantasy book involving a magical school (being vague for spoiler reasons). I’m not sure how intentional all those similarities were? I did really enjoy reading this, though. A-.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on October 22nd.
Agatha Christie's Crooked House
This was on a list of “best Christie books” that I saw one time, it was on sale for kindle today, and I’ve been jonesing for mysteries, so I decided to give Christie another try, hoping for a lack of racism (there is one ethnic slur towards a Greek man). Anyway, this doesn’t involve any of her famous detectives—the narrator is a young man who wants to marry a young woman, except her wealthy grandfather has just been murdered. Luckily his dad is the head of Scotland Yard, so he’s dispatched to hang out with his fiancée and see if he can get to the bottom of things. I DO love a mystery like this and this did have an interesting conclusion, though I didn’t really love the way things wrapped up (Christie is prone to having her characters moralize). Very entertaining though and just what I was in the mood for. A-.
Louise Erdrich's The Mighty Red
Erdrich is one of my favorite authors, but this was kind of a stressful read! It’s set in 2008-2009, and the economic downturn is affecting a lot of the characters, particularly one woman, whose husband embezzled the church reconstruction fund and secretly mortgaged her house before running off. But the main storyline involves her daughter's marriage to the son of the wealthy family who owns the local beet farm—a marriage no one is on board for, besides the groom and his mother. I will say there is a fairly sprawling cast of characters, plus some interludes about history and the environment, so every time I was frustrated with one chapter, the next usually turned things around. It was a slow start for me, but my halfway through I was hooked, and of course the ending was lovely. Erdrich does endings so well. I think this is set in the same corner of Erdrich's literary universe as a few of her other books (particularly The Beet Queen)—someday I’ll reread them all and figure out how they all fit together. A-.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on Tuesday.
Margaret Tabor's Unity Penfold
What a JOY to go from reading a book where you’re like “I’m not really into this” to one where you’re like “I AM SUPER INTO THIS!!!” Originally published in 1980, and set in the 60s or 70s (I didn’t do the math), it’s the story of a woman (the eponymous Unity) who comes home from spending time with friends—except her house isn’t there. And apparently she, and her children, and her husband, don’t exist. Eventually the authorities determine she’s a missing woman named Sarah who's had a nervous breakdown, and she has to settle into Sarah's life while figuring out what’s real and what happened. It’s narrated in turns by her and by a musician she befriends, and it’s totally gripping. Apparently different versions of this novel were published, so this includes an added-on ending to one of the later editions, and it kind of weakened the story for me. But otherwise I loved this. A.
