2026 book 178

 Catherine Newman’s Sandwich 

I’ve been meaning to read this forever, and somehow this late summer season felt like a good time, as it’s a story about a (menopausal) woman and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, the same beach house they visit every summer. But it’s also really funny and moving! They’re somehow nothing like and exactly like my family. I’m. It even a mom and I was still like oh wow yes about her motherhood feelings! Also there’s a cat! Newman is really nailing the vibes here. Can’t wait to read the follow-up. A.

2026 book 143

 Claudia Gray's The Murder of Mr Wickham

All right, trying out some Jane Austen fanfic here, lol. (There has been a lot of Pride and Prejudice discussion on Bluesky recently, and these were recommended--and I have enjoyed books by Gray before.) I can't tell if the audience for these is die-hard Austenites (who probably don't want fanfic!) or more casual fans like me, though it definitely assumes a lot of knowledge of her less-popular works that I only vaguely remember. Anyway, everyone is married blah blah, there's a house party at Emma's with all the main couples and some of their kids, and Darcy Jr and the daughter of the main character from Northanger Abbey have to solve a murder! I actually love murder mysteries set at British house parties, so ok! The victim is, of course, Mr Wickham, who seems to have invented Ponzi schemes and shows up unannounced for a spot of blackmail—and many of the guests have reason to hate him. Solid mystery, and I liked the main characters a lot (Darcy Jr seems to be on the autism spectrum). The solution is a little eh but I don’t think there was a way to make this really work. Entertaining anyway, I’ll definitely be picking up book 2. A-.

2026 book 81

 KJ Charles’ All of Us Murderers

Rereading this for book club (finished with 15 minutes to spare lol), it remains a delightful confection of mysterious gothic tropes and a sweet queer romance. Here is my original review! 

2026 book 9

 Alexis Hall’s Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot

Alexis Hall can be hit or miss for me, but this one was pure hit!! I didn’t love the first in this series, and never read the second, but Christina said I’d love this one and I DID! The series is set on basically GBBO and the romance here involves a couple of lesbians—a cute, chubby journalist who’s a contestant on the show, and the show’s foul-mouthed, curt producer (grumpy/sunshine is my fave!). There is also a b-plot involving a 96 year old contestant on the show who worked in the house decades ago and had a secret lesbian affair with the daughter of the manor. Great balance between the stories, great characters, the romance had so many funny moments….just really a good time! A.

2024 book 178

 Kate Elliott's The Traitor's Gate

Ok, this was super slow and I don’t think it needed to be 900 pages. I was more interested in some characters than others, or course, but some parts reallllllly dragged. The last quarter was solid and I did like the end, even if a lot of stuff that came before was a major bummer. Interesting series for sure but I think if it was more streamlined,it’d have been stronger. B+.

2024 book 136

 Janice Hallett's The Examiner

So Hallett's whole thing is mystery stories involving collections of documents, text messages, etc. This one involves six students in a new arts MA program, and the examiners who are supposed to judge whether their grades are fair or whatever, but instead are reading their assignments and chats with increasing horror and it becomes clear something shady has happened. I did like this, but I think it had some major pacing issues, and the end was all over the place. B/B+.

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

2024 book 95

 Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape A Dragon's Breath

Rereading this for book club and I think I liked it even more the second time. There are still some bits that I think could have been pared down/more subtle, but I was way less distracted this time trying to translate all the words/places. I was like it’s just a fantasy novel, it’s fine, go with the flow! I mean, also I knew that I loved the characters and was way more focused on them. Anyway, this is the story of an indigenous girl in a version of North America that was colonized more by Vikings/Northern Europeans, and what happens when she bonds with a baby dragon and has to go to a dragon-training school run by white people (because her people have lost their dragon raising lore). A lot of people are super racist to her but she also makes some cool friends and continues to buck the system! With a baby dragon! So good and I hope the next book is announced soon.

2024 book 31

 Ann Aguirre's The Only Purple House in Town

This was VERY cute, definitely for fans for Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. It centers on a young woman from a family of psychic vampires, except she’s never figured out her own powers, and her family judges her for not living up to her overachieving older sisters. And her love interest is a dude who’s a were-hawk who had a crush on her when they were little kids! Things kick off when she inherits her great-aunt's house and decides to rent out the rooms, and he takes one, along with a fun cast of other characters. (The main couple is straight but all the other characters are queer in some capacity, including several elderly people.) So there is a romance, and it’s sweet (until the inevitable last stage annoying disagreement), but this is just as much about the found family vibes, which I loved. GREAT characters, very fun. A-.

2023 book 196

 Victoria Goddard’s At the Feet of the Sun

I knew I would like this more the second time I read it, when I wasn’t so impatient to find out what was going to happen and could just relax into the story. And I think it flowed better for me this time too, though there are still a couple slow parts (metaphysical journeys into the soul etc) and I find Rhodin's turn into a conspiracy theorist obsessed with psychic dinosaurs to be weird. But still very enjoyable, perfect escapism, SO MUCH happens and as always I am eager for even more!

2023 book 137

 Cat Rambo's Devil's Gun

So I loooved the first book in this series, but liked this one a little less. I am still into all the characters and their inter-relationships, and I LOVE the ship, who is hilarious in this one. But the plot is kind of all over the place, one plotline is a bummer, and the ending is not super satisfying because it’s clear another book is on the way. THAT BEING SAID, I will definitely read that book, because I am invested in everything at this point! I think this one laid out a lot of things that will be really interesting, it’s just very second-book-in-a-trilogy. B+.

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

2023 book 88

 Rachel Neumeier’s No Foreign Sky

I think this is Neumeier’s first sci-fi novel, and I really liked it! One of the things she does really well is the meeting of two disparate cultures, and that is definitely at the forefront here. To back up, this is about a far far future where an abandoned human colony merged with a nearby alien civilization (made up of boar-centaur people) to form a new society. Out story begins with a ship from that society fighting a losing battle with some vicious enemy aliens, when they’re rescued by an unknown ship—a ship full of other humans (more directly tied to Earth and its ways). Soon they have to form an alliance to fight the bad guys. I am super here for outer space politics and diplomacy—this maybe leaned more on the space battle side of things, I would have preferred more of the talking, but that’s just me. I did love all the characters here and hope Neumeier writes more in this world. A/A-.

2023 book 75

 T. Kingfisher’s Summer in Orcus

I had gotten pretty well into two different books that I wasn’t gelling with, and the only cure for that mood is to reread something you know is good. And I had been wanting to reread this one! I think it’s very underrated as far as Kingfisher's books go—it’s one of her middle grade books, about an eleven year old girl with a difficult and overprotective mother, and what happens when she meets Baba Yaga. AMAZING animals in this one—a no-nonsense weasel, a foppish bird, and one of the best fictional wolves of all time—plus a heroine who is very relatable as she undergoes adventures. So good.

2022 book 62

 Claribel Ortega's Witchlings

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted it to be the new Harry Potter, with a non-gross author. But this needed an editor with a harder hand. It’s about a little witch girl about to be sorted into her coven, but it turns out she’s a Spare, a coven-less witch treated as a second class citizen (this society makes zero sense), and she and her fellow Spares have to complete an impossible task to keep their magic or else they’ll be turned into toads. But like, nothing in this story is SUBTLE. All the plot beats are obvious, the villains are all mustache-twirling bad guys, even the friends we made along the way feels rote. There are some cool moments and characters (I was partial to the librarian and the super strong baby) but so much of this was just formulaic. Plus the word “smirk” is used about 87 times. :( I just don’t think middle grade books need so much hand-holding. B.

2021 book 255

 Fonda Lee's Jade War

Lots of interesting character and plot developments in this second volume, though it was even more exposition-y than the first! There were so many lengthy descriptions of wars that their foreign allies were involved in and my eyes kept glazing over. That is balanced out with plenty of action scenes, nice character moments, and badass women. I'm definitely interested in seeing how Lee wraps this up. B+.

2021 book 237

 Margaret Rogerson's Vespertine

I don’t really feel like trying to explain the plot here, as it’s tied to the (very interesting and cool) world-building, so I’ll just say it’s mainly about a girl who wants to be a nun in this fantasy religion, but then she gets possessed by one of the most powerful spirits, except he’s chill and wants to help her save the day from bad magic! It’s like Penric and Desdemona (yay!), but not really funny. Except this makes everyone believe she’s a saint, and she’s bad at dealing with people and does not WANT to be a saint. Eventually she begrudgingly (and adorably) makes friends and allies and they fight the bad magic etc. There are hints of a burgeoning romance for later books. This was hella fun, I’m psyched to see what she and her spirit get up to next. A-.

2020 book 185

 Beth O'Leary's The Flatshare

Taking a brief break from epic fantasies to slide in this month's book club book under the wire! This is sort of a romance/women’s fiction-y thing, but it’s British, and I always like those. This centers on a woman, an editor at a craft book publisher with an eclectic personal style, who has to move out of her Extremely Bad ex's apartment, and winds up flat sharing with a (male) night nurse. So they have opposite schedules and communicate via post-it notes. That part is all very cute. There’s also a whole plotline where the heroine realizes she has ptsd and deals with that, and another plotline with the nurse's brother in jail for a crime he did not commit. Much of this was a little bit too on the nose, but I think the side bits about the gay WWII vet and the crochet designer becoming an Internet celebrity help balance things out. A-/B+.

2020 book 44

Rae Carson's The Bitter Kingdom
The third book in this series is a satisfying wrap-up, for sure. Politics, romance, adventure, magic, holy quests, etc. Not much else to say about it, but I am excited to see where the author is taking things with this new one.

2020 book 42

Rae Carson's The Girl of Fire and Thorns
Carson has written a new book focusing on one of the secondary characters in this series, but since I didn't remember who that character was, I decided I had to reread this trilogy for CONTEXT. I like this series a lot though (aside from the fatphobia issues, which really bother me), so no complaints here. It centers on a teenage princess, being married off to a foreign king and having to navigate court politics, while also trying to figure out what her destiny is (because she has a special God-given destiny). Which sounds like the cliche of all cliched YA books, but Carson makes it work. Again, aside from the fatphobia. Meh.

2020 book 40

K.J. Charles' A Flight of Magpies
The third Charm of Magpies book (and the last focusing on these characters) finds our heroes investigating a series of attacks on policemen—and also find someone plotting against the heroes! This is another fun book, though I can’t call it fluffy really as the violence is a bit gross. I also admit to being slightly disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be a book focused on Esther (yet?), who is sidelined a bit here. But still, great characters, and I love a historical-fantasy-mystery-romance! A-.

2020 book 11

Magda Szabo's Abigail
Abigail is apparently Szabo's most popular novel in her native Hungary, but it took fifty years for an English translation to appear. Well, I'm glad it did! It's centered on a young Hungarian girl, the daughter of a widowed General, who is sent to a very strict boarding school in the provinces as WWII gets underway. The girls there do their best to make things livable—helped along by the statue in the garden, the titular Abigail, who reads their letters and comes to their aid. But who is behind Abigail, and what will happen as political tensions rise? That is not really a mystery to the reader; this is much more of a coming of age tale, and it’s a powerful and moving one. I was completely engrossed, and can’t wait to read more by Szabo. A.