en-US Thu, 17 Apr 2025 18:22:48 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 2479687 The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd railed against Australia's decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American. His concerns are as important now, in an era of sustainability, suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago. Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. Robin Boyd's original sketches and an afterword by major contemporary architects complement this handsome anniversary edition. 'Effortlessly readable, sharply observant and wittyâ ¦an Australian classic.' Brenda Niall]]> 304 Robin Boyd Lucy 0 currently-reading 3.86 1960
author: Robin Boyd
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 208430658 Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.

An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.

What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power.

Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance?

A standalone dark academia brimming with mystery, tragedy, and the damning echoes of the past. For fans of Leigh Bardugo, V. E. Schwab, and Fullmetal Alchemist.

(Content warnings for gore, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation)]]> 430 M.L. Wang 0593873351 Lucy 0 currently-reading 4.40 2023
author: M.L. Wang
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 221267741 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton college, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 452 Alexis Henderson 0857506889 Lucy 4 3.5 ⭐️ 3.41 2024
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️
]]> 177148776 128 Anne de Marcken 0811237850 Lucy 0 to-read 3.70 2024
author: Anne de Marcken
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200555182
Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, capturing both her bird and her imagination like a villain. Albeit a handsome and charming villain, but that's beside the point. As someone highly educated in the ruthless discipline of ornithology, Beth knows trouble when she sees it, and she is determined to keep her distance from Devon.��

For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Professor Beth Pickering. She's so pretty, so polite, so capable of bringing down a fiery, deadly bird using only her wits. In other words, an angel. Devon understands he must not get close to her, however, since they're professional rivals.��

When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning.��Now keeping their distance becomes a question of one bed or two. But they must take the risk, because fowl play is afoot, and they can't trust anyone else—for all may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology.]]> 384 India Holton Lucy 0 to-read 3.90 2024
author: India Holton
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.��]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Lucy 0 to-read 4.39 2024
author: Elif Shafak
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221081944 From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan.

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan �� today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma �� who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods �� the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.

You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.]]> 240 Álvaro Enrigue 0593544803 Lucy 4 3.76 2022
author: Álvaro Enrigue
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 211004124 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.

Where there’s a will, there’s a war.

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.

Or at least, so they like to think.

Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You're welcome! If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.

Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.

Eilidh, once the world's most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth—by confirming she'd been his favorite all along.

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins—but which Wren will come out on top?]]> 512 Olivie Blake 1250883407 Lucy 0 to-read 3.90 2025
author: Olivie Blake
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43263680
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs�� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]> 461 Leigh Bardugo 1250313074 Lucy 0 currently-reading 4.00 2019
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 55503201 Brotherhood, not ostracism,
Black advance, not white
Make us equals, not dependants. This collection of poetry and prose is a reminder of Oodgeroo’s contribution to Indigenous culture and the journey toward reconciliation. All Australians should be proud of this poet who dedicated her life to her people and her land.]]> 144 Oodgeroo 0730391086 Lucy 5 4.19
author: Oodgeroo
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 34785405
Mysterious and subtly erotic, Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.]]> 204 Joan Lindsay 0143132059 Lucy 0 to-read 3.81 1967
author: Joan Lindsay
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36174657
Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic, straining his partnership with Norrell, and putting at risk everything else he holds dear.]]> 1006 Susanna Clarke 1408891468 Lucy 5 paused 4.10 2004
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: paused
review:
Finished this like a Dickensian serial over a two year period and it was a dream the whole time
]]> 18335634
THE INFERNAL DEVICES WILL NEVER STOP COMING

A net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Mortmain plans to use his Infernal Devices, an army of pitiless automatons, to destroy the Shadowhunters. He needs only one last item to complete his plan: he needs Tessa Gray.

Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, is desperate to find Mortmain before he strikes. But when Mortmain abducts Tessa, the boys who lay equal claim to her heart, Jem and Will, will do anything to save her. For though Tessa and Jem are now engaged, Will is as much in love with her as ever.

As those who love Tessa rally to rescue her from Mortmain’s clutches, Tessa realizes that the only person who can save her is herself. But can a single girl, even one who can command the power of angels, face down an entire army?

Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment, and the tangled threads of love and loss intertwine as the Shadowhunters are pushed to the very brink of destruction in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy.]]> 567 Cassandra Clare 1406321346 Lucy 4 4.5 ⭐️ 4.55 2013
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️
]]> 7171637 New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters—including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them...]]> 479 Cassandra Clare 1416975861 Lucy 4 4.31 2010
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves:
review:
missed this in my teen years which is good because i would have been insufferable about it probably
]]> 56376963 In her first novel since The Quick and the Dead (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), the legendary writer takes us into an uncertain landscape after an environmental apocalypse, a world in which only the man-made has value, but some still wish to salvage the authentic.

Khristen is a teenager who, her mother believes, was marked by greatness as a baby when she died for a moment and then came back to life.

After Khristen's failing boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and she finds that her mother has disappeared, she ranges across the dead landscape and washes up at a resort on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call Big Girl.

In a rotting honeycomb of rooms, these old ones plot actions to punish corporations and people they consider culpable in the destruction of the final scraps of nature's beauty. What will Khristen and Jeffrey, the precocious ten-year-old boy she meets there, learn from this baggy seditious lot, in the worst of health but with kamikaze hearts, determined to refresh, through crackpot violence, a plundered earth?

Rivetingly strange and beautiful, and delivered with Williams's searing, deadpan wit, Harrow is their intertwined tale of paradise lost and of their reasons—against all reasonableness—to try and recover something of it.]]> 224 Joy Williams 0525657568 Lucy 0 to-read 3.19 2021
author: Joy Williams
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 257845 224 Charles Portis 1585673692 Lucy 0 to-read 4.15 1968
author: Charles Portis
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10025305
With the help of the handsome, self-destructive Will and the fiercely devoted Jem, Tessa discovers that the Magister’s war on the Shadowhunters is deeply personal. He blames them for a long-ago tragedy that shattered his life. To unravel the secrets of the past, the trio journeys from mist-shrouded Yorkshire to a manor house that holds untold horrors, from the slums of London to an enchanted ballroom where Tessa discovers that the truth of her parentage is more sinister than she had imagined. When they encounter a clockwork demon bearing a warning for Will, they realize that the Magister himself knows their every move—and that one of their own has betrayed them.

Tessa finds her heart drawn more and more to Jem, but her longing for Will, despite his dark moods, continues to unsettle her. But something is changing in Will—the wall he has built around himself is crumbling. Could finding the Magister free Will from his secrets and give Tessa the answers about who she is and what she was born to do?

As their dangerous search for the Magister and the truth leads the friends into peril, Tessa learns that when love and lies are mixed, they can corrupt even the purest heart.]]> 498 Cassandra Clare 1416975888 Lucy 4 4.42 2011
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
this cover is giving incredible 2010s vibes
]]> 214986234 A thrilling historical mystery about a young woman searching for her father, a young man trying to solve an impossible problem, and the quest for the power to transcend time.

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father's sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows.

He has told her this event might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers?

In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the university. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Circle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been targeted by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out.

There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it's a rumor or true. And the only people who know firsthand are not talking.

Between the young woman, who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online, and the circle of intellectuals debating space and time in Vienna on the eve of World War II, lie years of history that might easily be erased—unless old secrets are unraveled. Kirsten Menger-Anderson's beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.]]> 256 Kirsten Menger-Anderson 0593798309 Lucy 0 to-read 4.04 2025
author: Kirsten Menger-Anderson
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199798066
Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns jail is a class system with a power structure somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes, and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,�� showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. She must learn to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.]]> 336 Lara Love Hardin 1982197676 Lucy 0 to-read 4.36 2023
author: Lara Love Hardin
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201751300 An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.]]> 416 Evan Friss 0593299922 Lucy 0 to-read 3.93 2024
author: Evan Friss
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203164415 From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing.

An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world.

Add two children. And a horse.

From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.]]> 288 Ali Smith 0593701569 Lucy 0 to-read 3.95 2024
author: Ali Smith
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59808037
Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz’s most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.]]> 195 Angie Cruz 1250208459 Lucy 0 to-read 3.87 2022
author: Angie Cruz
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127281143
At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out.

No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore.

So Veris will travel deep into the Elmever to face traps, riddles, and monsters at the behest of another monster. One misstep will cost everything.]]> 160 Premee Mohamed 1250881781 Lucy 0 to-read 3.87 2024
author: Premee Mohamed
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.��

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters�� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 Lucy 0 to-read 4.20 2025
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 594139 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780380730407.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. . ."

With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.

This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more.]]> 410 Daphne du Maurier Lucy 0 to-read 4.25 1938
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 Lucy 0 to-read 3.80 1925
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58200109
Four years before she shoots her husband and walks to a café for a coffee, a lonely young woman living in a boarding house meets an older man called Alberto. They go for long walks along the river and on the outskirts of the city; they look like lovers, although they’re not.

Alberto doesn’t tell her anything about himself and she asks few questions. Still, with little else to distract her, she lets her imagination run wild and convinces herself to fall in love. Though he doesn’t feel the same, Alberto asks her to marry him and they have a baby. But Alberto is a man who tires quickly of everything.

The Dry Heart is a short, dark and psychologically rich novel that forensically examines how an unhappy marriage comes to end in murder.

‘In sparse, economical prose, Ginzburg portrays the emotional and social limits placed on women.�� �� Observer

‘Written in cool, detached tones but propelled by fierce emotional currents, it’s no surprise that Ginzburg’s books are adored by everyone from Sally Rooney to Zadie Smith.�� �� Stylist Loves

‘This book is a Roman candle �� quick and explosive.�� �� New York Times

‘A feminist classic that exposes the dark side of marriage in clean, captivating prose.�� �� Chicago Tribune

‘It’s good to have The Dry Heart back.�� �� The New Yorker

‘I’m utterly entranced by Ginzburg’s style �� her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear.�� �� Maggie Nelson

‘Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.�� �� Rachel Cusk]]> 108 Natalia Ginzburg 1911547607 Lucy 0 to-read 3.98 1947
author: Natalia Ginzburg
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210411871 A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine

2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever.

1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies.

A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.]]> 352 Emilia Hart 1250280826 Lucy 0 to-read 3.84 2025
author: Emilia Hart
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51191000 Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.

When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.

And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 528 Jeff VanderMeer 0771020856 Lucy 0 to-read 3.79 2024
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212293975
Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western,��part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.]]> 348 Susan Barker Lucy 0 to-read 3.86 2025
author: Susan Barker
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218674082 Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse��

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?

As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever��

Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance and the untamed magic of the sea.]]> 336 Sarah Penner 0778308006 Lucy 0 to-read 4.31 2025
author: Sarah Penner
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 73971348 A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three

Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535715 Lucy 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60209475 A new work of philosophical suspense.

Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents.��

Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?

At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old.]]> 289 Iain Reid 1982169354 Lucy 0 to-read 3.76 2022
author: Iain Reid
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13456414
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck 098374842X Lucy 0 to-read 4.17 2011
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 64414866 An Education in Malice is a dark academia tale of blood, secrets and insatiable hungers from Sunday Times bestselling author S.T. Gibson, author of the cult hit A Dowry of Blood.

Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua's College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold.

On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine, who holds her own dark obsession with Carmilla.

But as their rivalry blossoms into something far more delicious, Laura must confront her own strange hungers. Tangled in a sinister game of politics, bloodthirsty professors and dark magic, Laura and Carmilla must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in their ruthless pursuit of knowledge.]]> 352 S.T. Gibson 0356519325 Lucy 0 to-read 3.51 2024
author: S.T. Gibson
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199358003
It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.

To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.

When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.]]> 432 Tigest Girma 1444974378 Lucy 4 3.5 ⭐️ 3.76 2024
author: Tigest Girma
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️
]]> 196241667 From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller and viral TikTok phenomenon, The Pumpkin Spice Café, comes a brand new spicy romance set in Dream Harbor!

When a secret message turns up hidden in a book in the Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, Hazel can't understand it. As more secret codes appear between the pages, she decides to follow the trail of clues�� she just need someone to help her out.

Gorgeous and outgoing fisherman, Noah, is always up for an adventure. And a scavenger hunt sounds like a lot of fun. Even better that the cute bookseller he's been crushing on for months is the one who wants his help!

Hazel didn’t go looking for romance, but as the treasure hunt leads her and Noah around Dream Harbor, their undeniable chemistry might be just as hot as the fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns the bookstore sells��

The Cinnamon Bun Book Store is a cozy romantic mystery with a HEA guaranteed!

Tropes:
�� opposites attract
�� small town
�� forced proximity
�� he falls first]]> 384 Laurie Gilmore Lucy 3 2.5 ⭐️ 3.67 2024
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
2.5 ⭐️
]]> 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
��
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence �� a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Lucy 0 4.19 1966
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 214392466 A thrilling new novel from the bestselling, award-winning, visionary Akwaeke Emezi

Five friends. One weekend. No one escapes unscathed.

Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over all of them.]]> 276 Akwaeke Emezi 0593852818 Lucy 0 to-read 3.27 2024
author: Akwaeke Emezi
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216789462
For her entire life, Lucinda's mission was to look as hot as possible. She nipped, tucked, bleached, cut, plucked, plumped, shaved, lasered, tanned, crunched, squatted and starved. Then, she broke.

All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot is a funny, provocative retrospective on the last thirty years of Western beauty standards. From Victoria's Secret to Extreme Makeover, Playboy Bunnies to the Australian media's fascination with Lara Bingle, Lucinda unfurls the tentacles of a culture hellbent on making women feel like happiness is always just five kilos away.

With her offbeat humour and incisive cultural commentary, Lucinda tells the unfiltered story of someone overcoming an eating disorder and rebuilding, illuminating our enduring obsession with appearance by holding a bedazzled mirror up to her own beliefs.

A hilarious, insightful deep dive into self image, desirability, pop-culture and power.]]> 320 Lucinda Price 0645869031 Lucy 5 4.15
author: Lucinda Price
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 216602917 A shield maiden fights to break the shackles of prophecy—and to overcome the betrayal of the man who broke her heart—in this searing conclusion to the Norse-inspired fantasy romance duology that began with the bestselling A Fate Inked in Blood.

The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future—the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her.

While Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war. Her magic draws her to the front lines of an old enmity, embroiling her with Nordeland’s Unfated—children of the gods who serve the king she was raised to fear. The same king who, unlike Bjorn, is now willing to fight at her back. For despite the desire that burns hot between Bjorn and Freya, his growing distrust of her chosen path threatens to drag them further apart.

As war approaches, gods and mortals must choose their weapons. Yet the fiercest battle will be the one Freya wages within herself. With the magic of two goddesses burning in her veins, she must weave the threads of destiny to decide her own fate: Will she be the shield that protects her people or the curse that destroys them?]]> 416 Danielle L. Jensen 0593599861 Lucy 0 to-read 4.33 2025
author: Danielle L. Jensen
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151301 Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing story about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, she realizes there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. She’s determined to change her life if she can just make it home.]]> 229 Emma Pattee 1668055473 Lucy 0 to-read 3.79 2025
author: Emma Pattee
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42201411
Born in Austria to an affluent Jewish family, he fled the looming Nazi threat at the age of 15. Separated from his parents, Harry escaped to England as a refugee, only to be imprisoned with his older brother as an enemy alien during the war and sent to Canada. Within the confines of internment camps, architecture became both his passion and his salvation. Upon his release Harry studied in Canada and at Harvard in the United States under Bauhaus master Walter Gropius. In 1948, he agreed to come to Australia, where his family had found sanctuary, to design a home for his parents.

That dwelling, Rose Seidler House, represented a huge shift in Australian modern domestic architecture. It was followed by 
a succession of innovative house designs and landmark office commissions, such as Australia Square and the MLC Centre, which changed the skyline of Australia's cities.

A Singular Vision is the compelling story of a brilliant and controversial architect's extraordinary life, his vision, his influence, and his many towering achievements.

Shortlisted for the 2015 National Biography Award

'O'Neill's book deftly brings together these two sides of Seidler - the personal and professional - in a way that makes the book's main protagonist more human and more flawed but at the same time, admirable and formidable in the professional battlefield that was and continues to be architectural practice'�� Australian Book Review

'A wonderful biography ... sharp and illuminating ... O'Neill has breathed fresh life into Seidler's legacy ... [this book] has ample appeal for both the architecture world and general readers'�� The Australian Jewish News]]> 384 Helen O'Neill 1743099002 Lucy 0 3.00 2014
author: Helen O'Neill
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band �� and meeting the man who would become her husband �� her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 Lucy 5 friend-recommendations 4.25 2021
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: friend-recommendations
review:

]]> 19719536 36 Daryl Dellora 1743483236 Lucy 0 4.00 2013
author: Daryl Dellora
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 35098761
Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers�� used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. This audiobook brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African-American women who lived through the Civil Rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the movement for gender equality, and whose work forever changed the face of NASA and the country.]]> 384 Margot Lee Shetterly 0062798952 Lucy 0 to-read 3.92 2016
author: Margot Lee Shetterly
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 125201142 A girl with dangerous magic makes a risky bargain with a demon to be free of her monstrous power in this young adult fantasy perfect for fans of An Enchantment of Ravens and House of Salt and Sorrows.

Liska knows that magic is monstrous, and its practitioners are monsters. She has done everything possible to suppress her own magic, to disastrous consequences. Desperate to be free of it, Liska flees her small village and delves into the dangerous, demon-inhabited spirit-wood to steal a mythical fern flower. If she plucks it, she can use its one wish to banish her powers. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to unknown horrors, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood—called The Leszy—a bargain seems better than death: one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower and its wish.

Whisked away to The Leszy’s crumbling manor, Liska soon makes an unsettling discovery: she is not the first person to strike this bargain, and all her predecessors have mysteriously vanished. If Liska wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her taciturn host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts—figurative and literal—of his past. Because something wakes in the woods, something deadly and without mercy. It frightens even The Leszy…and cannot be defeated unless Liska embraces the monster she’s always feared becoming.]]> 368 A.B. Poranek 1665936479 Lucy 4 4.13 2024
author: A.B. Poranek
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 218624103 448 T. Kingfisher 1250400228 Lucy 4 3.5 4.09 2018
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:
3.5
]]> 207293850 A cozy and uplifting debut novel about three clairvoyant sisters who face an unexpected twist of Fate at the bottom of their own delicate porcelain cups.

Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves, and cardamom at the bottom of their customers�� cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune intertwined with the sound of cinnamon shortbread being snapped by laced fingers.

That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters��, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus—and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet. It seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect.

With dwindling time to rewrite their future and help three other witches challenge their own destinies, the Quigleys set out to bargain with Fate. But in focusing so closely on saving each other, will they lose sight of themselves?]]> 336 Stacy Sivinski 1668058391 Lucy 3 3.5 ⭐️ 3.63 2024
author: Stacy Sivinski
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️
]]> 210395729 The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.

They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

Evelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul―and survival―is tethered to hers.

The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to:

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.]]> 352 Laura Steven 1250333881 Lucy 0 to-read 3.78 2025
author: Laura Steven
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55311334 From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a sweeping romance with a dash of magic.

They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.

When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him.

But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina—and himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins. The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.]]> 299 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 125078557X Lucy 0 to-read 3.84 2017
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211003759 In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most �� love and work, community and knowledge �� will survive.]]> 304 Eiren Caffall 1250353521 Lucy 0 to-read 3.57 2025
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58521374 Shortlisted The Stella Prize 2020
Shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2020
Longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020


Knowing that he will soon die, Albert ‘Poppy�� Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind.

August Gondiwindi has been living on the other side of the world for ten years when she learns of her grandfather’s death. She returns home for his burial, wracked with grief and burdened with all she tried to leave behind. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends she endeavours to save their land �� a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.

Profoundly moving and exquisitely written, Tara June Winch’s The Yield is the story of a people and a culture dispossessed. But it is as much a celebration of what was and what endures, and a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity.]]> 342 Tara June Winch 0008437114 Lucy 5 4.5 ⭐️ 3.87 2019
author: Tara June Winch
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️
]]> 211639209 A dark and enchanting fairy tale-inspired historical fantasy combining elements of "The Little Mermaid" and "Cinderella" into a wholly original tale of love, power, and betrayal.

Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758.
For Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of one of Saint-Malo's wealthiest ship-owners, the high walls of the city are more hindrance than haven. While her sisters are interested in securing advantageous marriages, Luce dreams of escaping her elegant but stifling home and joining a ship's crew. Only Samuel—Luce's best friend and an English smuggler—understands her longing for the sea, secretly teaching her to sail whenever she can sneak away. For Luce, the stolen time on the water with Samuel is precious.

One stormy morning, Luce's plans are blown off course when she rescues Morgan de Chatelaine, the youngest son of the most powerful ship-owner in Saint-Malo, from the sea. Immediately drawn to his charm and sense of adventure, she longs to attend the glittering ball held in honor of his safe return and begins to contemplate a different kind of future for herself.

But it is not only Luce's hopes at stake—the local fae are leaving Brittany and taking their magic with them, while the long-standing war with the English means Saint-Malo is always at risk of attack. As Luce is plunged into a world of magic, brutality, and seduction, secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface. The truth of her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper.

Or the scales of a sea-maid's tail.]]> 417 Kell Woods 1250852536 Lucy 5 ⭐️ 4.5! 4.36 2025
author: Kell Woods
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:
⭐️ 4.5!
]]> 210630910 Every home needs a little magic . . .

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people, and as librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she hasn’t had to.

She and her assistant, Caz, a sentient spider plant, have spent most of the last eleven years sequestered among the empire’s precious spellbooks, protecting the magic for the city’s elite. But a revolution is brewing and when the library goes up in flames, Kiela and Caz steal whatever books they can and flee to the faraway island where she grew up. But to her dismay, in addition to a nosy �� and very handsome �� neighbour, she finds the town in disarray.

The empire has slowly been draining power from the island, and now Kiela is determined to make things right. But opening up her own spellshop comes with its own risks �� the consequence of sharing magic with commoners is death. And as Kiela starts to make a place for herself among the townspeople, she realizes she must break down the walls she has kept so high . . .]]> 416 Sarah Beth Durst 1761562576 Lucy 4 4.11 2024
author: Sarah Beth Durst
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 195791063 Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met after the war, but before the peace. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind. But their journey will not be easy. In every lifetime, oppressors narrow the walls of possibility, shaping reality to fit their own needs. And behind the walls of history, the witches of the red web swear that every throne will fall.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.]]> 304 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847680 Lucy 0 to-read 3.34 2024
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63876709 USA TODAY BESTSELLER

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Happened One Summer and Hook, Line, and Sinker comes the last sexy and hilarious novel about three broke and beautiful best friends...

Construction worker Russell Hart has been head-over-work boots for Abby Sullivan since the moment he laid eyes on her. But he knows a classy, uptown virgin like her could never be truly happy with a rough, blue-collar guy like him. If only she'd stop treating him like her personal hero--a role he craves more than oxygen--maybe he could accept it.

With the future of her family's company on her shoulders, Abby barely has time to sleep, let alone find love. And her best friend Russell acting like a sexy, overprotective hulk any time their Super Group goes out in public definitely isn't helping her single status. But after a near-tragedy lands Russell in her bed for the night, Abby's suddenly fantasizing about what he looks like shirtless. Chest hair and tattoos--who knew?

As Russell struggles to keep Abby at a safe distance, she begins to see through his tough-talking exterior--and acknowledge her own feelings. Now she's ready to turn the friend-zone into foreplay...and make him lose control.

"The women share fun banter, but the repartee between Russell and Abby is especially enjoyable... depth, heart, and a lot of playfulness." - Library Journal (starred review)]]> 248 Tessa Bailey 0063329417 Lucy 3 2.5 ⭐️ 3.41 2015
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:
2.5 ⭐️
]]> 63876708 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Happened One Summer and Hook, Line, and Sinker comes a sexy and hilarious rom-com trilogy about three broke and beautiful roommates...

When Honey Perribow traded in her cowboy boots for stilettos and left her small Kentucky town to attend Columbia University, she never expected to find a dirt-cheap apartment or two new best friends. No stranger to hard work, Honey's sole focus is a medical degree... until she sees newly-minted Professor, Ben Dawson, and her concentration is hijacked. Honey is fascinated by her gorgeous, young English professor and vows to find a crack his tweed-wearing, glasses-clad exterior.

While at an off campus party, an accident lands Ben in a dark, locked closet with a sexy-sounding southern belle...and their chemistry is explosive. But when he discovers that the girl in his arms is the same beautiful college student he can't stop thinking about, he is stunned. Yet no matter how hard he tries, Ben can't stay away from Honey.

And when his attempts to fight their attraction nearly ruin the best thing that ever happened to him, Ben will do anything to prove how much he needs her.

"Bailey puts a fun, super-sexy spin on the classic "hot for teacher" trope... The love scenes in Need Me are practically incendiary..." - Booklist]]> 237 Tessa Bailey 0063329379 Lucy 2 1.5 ⭐️ 3.38 2015
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
1.5 ⭐️
]]> 63876707 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Happened One Summer and Hook, Line, and Sinker comes a sexy and hilarious rom-com trilogy about three broke and beautiful strangers who share an apartment in NYC...

College drop-out Roxy Cumberland moved to New York with dreams of becoming an actress, but her dwindling bank account is quickly putting the kibosh on that fantasy. To make some quick cash, she signs up to perform singing telegrams. Her first customer is a gorgeous, cocky Manhattan trust-funder if she ever laid eyes on one. And what could be more humiliating than singing an ode to his junk, courtesy of his recent one night stand? Maybe the fact that she's dressed in a giant pink bunny costume...

After a night out to celebrate winning his last case, lawyer Louis McNally II isn't prepared for the pounding in his head or the rabbit serenading him from the front door. But the sassy wit and sexy voice of the girl behind the mask intrigue him, and one look at her stunning face--followed by a mind-blowing kiss against his doorjamb--leaves Louis wanting more.

Roxy doesn't need a spoiled rich guy who's had everything in life handed to him on a Tiffany platter. But there's more to Louis than his sexy surface and he's determined to make Roxy see it...even if it means chasing her all over NYC.]]> 251 Tessa Bailey 0063329344 Lucy 3 3.25 2015
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
A generous 2.5/5, this is certainly a product of the mid 2010’s
]]> 211051402
In Unfortunately, She was a Nymphomaniac, Smith pieces together the stories of these women, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. It is not a conventional history but an interpretation of the original texts informed by what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. There are no ‘nymphomaniacs�� here but the picture that emerges is one of spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny, but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.]]> 359 Joan Smith 0008638829 Lucy 0 to-read 3.95 2024
author: Joan Smith
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210214266 Sister. Rival. Protector. The spellbinding story of a forgotten daughter and a forgotten goddess.

Quiet and reserved, Clemmie is happy in the background. But although her parents may overlook her talents, her ability to read hieroglyphs makes her invaluable at the Egyptian relic parties which have made her father the toast of Victorian society.

But at one such party, the words Clemmie interprets from an unusual amulet strike fear into her heart. The beautiful and dangerous glyphs she holds in her hands will change her life forever.

Five years later, Clemmie arrives in Egypt on a mission to save what remains of her family. The childhood game she used to play about the immortal sisters, Isis and Nephthys, has taken on a devastating resonance and it is only by following Nephthys' story that she can undo the mistakes of the past. On her journey up the Nile she will meet unexpected allies and enemies and, along with long-buried secrets and betrayals, Clemmie will be forced to step into the light.]]> 320 Rachel Louise Driscoll 1529924243 Lucy 0 to-read 3.86 2025
author: Rachel Louise Driscoll
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 139391940 A spicy small-town romance and TikTok phenomenon, perfect for fans of Hannah Grace and Stephanie Archer.

When Jeanie's aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor's gossip at all costs. But Jeanie's arrival disrupts Logan's routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie's happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won't fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes��

The Pumpkin Spice Café is a cozy romantic mystery for fans of Gilmore Girls, with a grumpy x sunshine dynamic, a small-town setting and a HEA guaranteed!

Tropes:

�� grumpy x sunshine
�� small town
�� found family
�� spicy]]> 373 Laurie Gilmore 0008610665 Lucy 3 3.36 2023
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 41104077
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women��, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.]]> 448 Caroline Criado Pérez 1419729071 Lucy 4 4.35 2019
author: Caroline Criado Pérez
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 30969741 Every enchantment has a price.

With a flick of her paintbrush, Isobel creates stunning portraits for a dangerous set of clients: the fair folk. These immortal creatures cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and they trade valuable enchantments for Isobel’s paintings. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—Isobel makes a deadly mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes, a weakness that could cost him his throne, and even his life.

Furious, Rook spirits Isobel away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously amiss in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending upon each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, perhaps even love . . . a forbidden emotion that would violate the fair folks�� ruthless laws, rendering both their lives forfeit. What force could Isobel's paintings conjure that is powerful enough to defy the ancient malice of the fairy courts?

Isobel and Rook journey along a knife-edge in a lush world where beauty masks corruption and the cost of survival might be more frightening than death itself.]]> 304 Margaret Rogerson 1481497588 Lucy 4
Some small criticisms, some of which I won’t outline for the sake of spoilers, including the fact that there is simply no reason she needed to be seventeen (sorry Margaret!). I simply elected to ignore that and make her somewhere in her mid 20s in my mind ]]> 3.64 2017
author: Margaret Rogerson
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️ Adored this! Atmospheric, lush and a touch whimsical (ha). I’ve read some criticisms that the story runs a bit predictable - I think so long as you understand what you’re in for (a fairytale romance) it hits those notes perfectly and delivers on exactly what it promises.

Some small criticisms, some of which I won’t outline for the sake of spoilers, including the fact that there is simply no reason she needed to be seventeen (sorry Margaret!). I simply elected to ignore that and make her somewhere in her mid 20s in my mind
]]> 61111298 Her search begins with an ending....

The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.

Away from Providence, she begins a desperate search to find her children--the five who survived birth and were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel has to know. The grueling, dangerous journey takes her from Barbados then, by river, deep into the forest of British Guiana and finally across the sea to Trinidad. She is driven on by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear. These are the stories of Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. But above all this is the story of Rachel and the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to find her children...and her freedom.]]> 322 Eleanor Shearer 0593548043 Lucy 0 to-read 3.97 2023
author: Eleanor Shearer
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217461532 A reluctant warrior goes on the run with an ancient goddess through a lush world full of wild magic, wondrous creatures, and hidden enemies in this beautiful epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds .

In the land of the Strangled Throat, the people suffer under the rule of a despotic Emperor. His sons, the Three Terrors, despoil the countryside and oppress its citizens. When Keema Daware--a fierce warrior who lost his left arm in battle--finds the mythic Empress, who has escaped from her royal imprisonment, at his sentry outpost, he must make a choice: turn her in and evade the wrath of the Three Terrors, or help her overthrow the government and free a nation.]]> 582 Simon Jimenez 1837863261 Lucy 0 to-read 4.86 2022
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Lucy 5 4.12 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 60041932 True love is at stake in this charming, debut romantic comedy.

Cassie Greenberg loves being an artist, but it’s a tough way to make a living. On the brink of eviction, she’s desperate when she finds a too-good-to-be-true apartment in a beautiful Chicago neighborhood. Cassie knows there has to be a catch—only someone with a secret to hide would rent out a room for that price.

Of course, her new roommate Frederick J. Fitzwilliam is far from normal. He sleeps all day, is out at night on business, and talks like he walked out of a regency romance novel. He also leaves Cassie heart-melting notes around the apartment, cares about her art, and asks about her day. And he doesn’t look half bad shirtless, on the rare occasions they’re both home and awake. But when Cassie finds bags of blood in the fridge that definitely weren’t there earlier, Frederick has to come clean...

Cassie’s sexy new roommate is a vampire. And he has a proposition for her.]]> 341 Jenna Levine 0593548914 Lucy 4 3.46 2023
author: Jenna Levine
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
I had a few little issues with the plot that are fairly typical for the genre (why do her friends seem to disappear when she suddenly gets the guy?) BUT this was a fun, silly, easy romance and for that reason I thoroughly enjoyed it. 3.5 ⭐️
]]> 75607890 In a dazzling new fantasy world full of whispered secrets and political intrigue, the magic of women is outlawed but four girls with unusual powers have the chance to change it all.

The Nightbirds are Simta’s best-kept secret: Girls with a unique and powerful magic they can gift with just a kiss. Some would kill to possess them; the church would kill them outright. But protected by the Great Houses, the Nightbirds are well-guarded treasures.

As this Season’s Nightbirds, Matilde, Æsa, and Sayer will spend their nights bestowing their gifts to well-paying clients. Once their season is through, they’re each expected to marry a Great House lord and become mothers to the next generation of Nightbirds before their powers fade away. But as they find themselves at the heart of a political scheme that threatens not only their secrets, but their very lives, their future suddenly becomes uncertain.

When they discover that there are other girls like them and that their magic is far more than they were told, they see the Nightbird system for what it is: a gilded cage. Now they must make a choice—to remain kept birds or take control, remaking the city that dared to clip their wings.]]> 480 Kate J. Armstrong 1760526908 Lucy 4 3.63 2023
author: Kate J. Armstrong
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 59651553 It will take the frosty terrain of the Arctic to show these rival scientists that their chemistry burns hot.

Mara, Sadie, and Hannah are friends first, scientists always. Though their fields of study might take them to different corners of the world, they can all agree on this universal truth: when it comes to love and science, opposites attract and rivals make you burn��

Hannah’s got a bad feeling about this. Not only has the NASA aerospace engineer found herself injured and stranded at a remote Arctic research station—but the one person willing to undertake the hazardous rescue mission is her longtime rival.

Ian has been many things to Hannah: the villain who tried to veto her expedition and ruin her career, the man who stars in her most deliciously lurid dreams…but he’s never played the hero. So why is he risking everything to be here? And why does his presence seem just as dangerous to her heart as the coming snowstorm?

To read Mara and Sadie’s stories look for the novellas Under One Roof and Stuck with You available now from Berkley!]]> 112 Ali Hazelwood 0593437837 Lucy 0 3.57 2022
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 197711454 A near-future Australia.

The death penalty is back. But if the victim’s family wants the perpetrator to die, they have to do it themselves. Twenty-four hours alone in a room with the condemned. No cameras. No microphones. Just whatever punishment they decide befits the crime.

Ten-year-old Lucy was murdered.

Through counselling sessions with their court-appointed psychologist, we learn the stories of her family Lucy’s two mothers �� Stella and Matisse �� her much older brother and her bookish teenage sister, who is too young to participate in the execution, but who has plans of her own . . .

Secrets and grief threaten to break the family.

As the execution date nears, already-struggling Stella remains adamant that she must carry out the punishment. But it becomes clear that if she steps into that room, the family may lose her too.

What would you do?]]> 323 Georgia Harper 1761342134 Lucy 0 to-read 3.86
author: Georgia Harper
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17203110 158 Shirley Jackson 0141194995 Lucy 0 to-read 3.96 1962
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59532092
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival.

This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.

**PERFECT FOR FANS OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, STATION ELEVEN AND THE MARTIAN

VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.]]> 246 Marlen Haushofer 1784878030 Lucy 4 3.94 1963
author: Marlen Haushofer
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 54999411
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.

Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants.

Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva's. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.]]> 419 Christopher Buehlman 1473231183 Lucy 0 to-read 4.39 2021
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 125486611 A dazzling new collection of short stories, spanning 15 years of writing, from Yiyun Li, the prize-winning author of The Book of Goose and Where Reasons End A dazzling new collection of short stories written over a decade, spanning loss, alienation, aging and the strangeness of contemporary life �� from Yiyun Li, the prize-winning author of The Book of Goose

A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. A professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and grand mysterious forces �� death, violence, estrangement �� come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many years, until it must be seen.

Li is a breathtakingly original writer, an alchemist of tender and unsentimental, metaphysical and blunt, funny and horrifying, omniscient and yet acutely aware of just how much we cannot know. Beloved for her novels and memoirs, she returns here to her earliest form, gathering short stories and a remarkable novella never before published in the UK. Taken together, the stories in Wednesday's Child articulate the true cost of living with all Li’s trademark unnerving beauty and searing wisdom.]]> 237 Yiyun Li 0008531889 Lucy 4 3.55 2023
author: Yiyun Li
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 217896248 From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing, intensely atmospheric fever dream of medieval horror.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters�� or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.]]> 352 Caitlin Starling 0063418819 Lucy 0 to-read 4.03 2025
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219838837 From the author of��There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, a piercing debut novel following two families in alternative timelines of the Salvadoran civil war—a stunning exploration of the mechanisms of fate, the gravity of the past, and the endurance of love.

“An important voice in U.S. fiction. Ruben Reyes Jr. is a wonder.�� —��Héctor Tobar

Cambridge, 2018.��Ana and Luis’s relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, and against her best judgement, Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is.

Havana, 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters, but soon, as the devastating war rages on, forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.

Ruben Reyes Jr.’s debut novel is an epic, genre-bending journey through inverted worlds—one where war ends with a peace treaty, and one where it ends with a decisive victory by the Salvadoran government. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It’s both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.]]> 288 Ruben Reyes Jr. 0063336316 Lucy 0 to-read 4.36 2025
author: Ruben Reyes Jr.
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215570667
Years later Tom makes a decision that ripples through their families' lives in ways he could not have foreseen. As the consequences of that fateful choice unfold, two women's paths become irrevocably intertwined. But when old love clashes with new, who will be left standing? And what happens when your secrets come back to haunt you?]]> 336 Loretta Rothschild 1250381827 Lucy 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Loretta Rothschild
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217245618
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 Lucy 0 to-read 4.35 2025
author: Florence Knapp
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216522711 They didn't know they would change each other.

Following the unlikely friendship of four of the first ever women to matriculate at Oxford University in the aftermath of the First World War, a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination and the many forms courage can take.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world's most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne and Otto (collectively known as The Eights) have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Politically-minded Beatrice, daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way - and some friends her own age. Otto was a nurse during the war but is excited to return to her socialite lifestyle in Oxford - where she hopes to find distraction from the memories that haunt her. And finally Marianne, the quiet, clever daughter of a village pastor, who has a shocking secret she must hide from everyone, even her new friends, if she is to succeed.

But Oxford's dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.]]> 384 Joanna Miller 0593851412 Lucy 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Joanna Miller
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212806648 A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms.

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.

When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests�� coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.

With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?]]> 368 Erin Crosby Eckstine 0593725115 Lucy 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Erin Crosby Eckstine
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217896281 A poignant, tenacious memoir by musician Greta Morgan about rediscovering her artistic voice after losing her ability to sing.

In 2019,��Greta��Morgan was on the rise. She had toured with Vampire Weekend, collaborated with Jenny Lewis, and garnered critical acclaim with her own musical projects. But in March 2020, after contracting COVID-19, she was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder with no known cure that left her unable to sing. Her once crystalline voice now reduced to a hush, she saw her career come to an abrupt standstill.

Beyond��the physical ramifications, what does it mean to cultivate a true voice? Morgan’s loss launches her into a journey of grief and self-discovery, forcing her to broaden her artistic horizons and reconstruct her sense of self.��Her narrative takes us on a whirlwind tour of music studios, band buses, and celebrity-filled backstage parties, but it also takes us to the red canyons of Utah and the spacious wilderness of the American southwest. In these vast landscapes, she finds unexpected community. In the silence, she learns how to listen to parts of herself she has neglected.

Questioning the purpose of creativity and what defines artistic passion, The Lost Voice is a raw and intimate portrait of grief, self-discovery, and the choice to keep living and creating.]]> 304 Greta Morgan 0063411962 Lucy 0 to-read 4.79
author: Greta Morgan
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.79
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59807975
An exiled auspex who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist―the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves.

To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.]]> 136 C.L. Polk 1250849454 Lucy 4 3.5 �� 3.80 2022
author: C.L. Polk
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:
3.5 ��
]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin Lucy 5 favourite-other A triumph!!! 4.29 2015
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: favourite-other
review:
A triumph!!!
]]> 209594872 The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in this standalone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.

By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.

When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs—the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.

For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.

As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing.

And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.]]> 384 Ava Reid 0063211556 Lucy 0 to-read 3.86 2025
author: Ava Reid
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 156023123
She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?]]> 231 Sierra Greer 0063312697 Lucy 3 3.5 ⭐️ 3.81 2024
author: Sierra Greer
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️
]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Lucy 0 to-read 4.21 1993
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200121772 I’ve been rejected by my mate and banished from the fae realm. But nothing will keep me from my princes��. And nothing will keep them from me.

I was living the most ordinary life�� until I found myself in the fae realm, imprisoned in an enchanted castle by four princes who turn into deadly beasts at night. As I grew to understand them and their world, I couldn’t stop myself from falling for them. But living in a fairy tale isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Especially when Keldarion, the prince I know to be my fated mate, forces me back to the human realm. I don’t know what he’s hiding, but I’ll do everything I can to get back to him and my other beasts.

And I have to hurry, because my princes need me. When Ezryn, Dayton, and Farron discover Keldarion lied to them about my disappearance, fur will fly. And we have to be united to face the coming challenges. A frost has fallen over the Autumn Realm and the blame is placed on Keldarion. Farron, the High Prince of Autumn, has been accused as a conspirator and lost all control of his lands and people. Unless the four High Princes can stop the terrible winter and prove Keldarion is not to blame, open war will tear across the Enchanted Vale. Throw in a wicked bargain with the Prince of Thorns (who won’t stop talking in my head), my jerky ex-fiancé who doesn’t understand the word ‘no��, and the terrible curse that gets worse each day�� Yeah, we’ve got problems. Not to mention that every day that passes, I’m losing more of my heart to each of the princes, despite the fact I know it only puts me in danger.

Now, more than ever, I will need to find my courage and help Farron, the High Prince of Autumn, stop this war. And I will be right by his side�� as long as he doesn’t kill me first.

WOVEN BY GOLD is the second book in a steamy adult Beauty and the Beast retelling multi-book series set in a fantasy fae realm. In this version, our beautiful bookworm doesn't have to choose between the four sexy fae princes. It is a full-length novel that ends on a cliffhanger. It includes MF, MM, and MMFMM content. It is intended for mature readers only. ]]> 569 Elizabeth Helen 0008670617 Lucy 3 3.99 2023
author: Elizabeth Helen
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:
2.5 - absolutely nobody out here is doing it like elizabeth helen, two SISTERS who wrote smut together and then in the acknowledgements thanked their parents - ‘WHO READ EVERYTHING.�� unreal. this book is objectively a 2.5 but i can’t decide whether or not to give it five stars purely for that.
]]> 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Lucy 4 4.04 2023
author: Amanda Peters
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 57028269 320 Natasha Lunn 0241448735 Lucy 0 dnf will come back to this!! 4.23 2021
author: Natasha Lunn
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: dnf
review:
will come back to this!!
]]> 60111080 For fans of The Bridge Kingdom and A Deal with the Elf King, this arranged marriage romance about a human princess forced to wed a dark and desperate Shadow King is sure to entice!

A shunned princess. A reluctant king.
A marriage that could save both their kingdoms . . . but destroy their hearts.

Though she is the oldest daughter, Princess Faraine lives in the background, shunned from court and kept out of sight. Her chronic illness makes her a liability to the crown, and she has learned to give place to her beautiful, favored younger sister in all things.

When the handsome and enigmatic Shadow King comes seeking a bride, Faraine is not surprised that her sister is his choice.

Though not eager to take a human bride, King Vor is willing to do what is necessary for the sake of his people. When he meets the lively Princess Ilsevel, he quickly agrees to a marriage arrangement.

So why can’t he get the haunting eyes of her older sister out of his head?

When disaster strikes and the marriage alliance is compromised, Faraine suddenly finds herself forced to take her sister’s place . . . regardless of her new husband’s desires. Can she find a place at Vor’s side as his queen? Or is his heart forever closed to the woman who deceived him so cruelly?

Passionate and alluring, Bride of the Shadow King is an arranged marriage tale with dual point-of-view (his and hers). It’s perfect for fantasy fans looking for a touch of spice to go with the sweet in their next swoony, slow-burn romance.]]> 498 Sylvia Mercedes Lucy 0 dnf DNF at 31% 3.75 2022
author: Sylvia Mercedes
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: dnf
review:
DNF at 31%
]]> 208930495 (Publishers Weekly) that’s set in the 18th century. “As incredible a feat of research as it is a daring work of fiction�� (Elle).

A sweeping epic in the vein of Philipp Meyer’s The Son and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and inspired by a true story, this stunning US literary debut captures the never-before-told journey of the Baleine a ship full of young women plucked from a Paris asylum and sent to marry settlers in North America's rough Louisiana Territory.

Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France’s colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a hundred female “volunteers�� of childbearing age—orphans, prisoners, and mental patients—to be shipped to New Orleans.

Among this group are three unlikely friends: a sharp-tongued twelve-year old orphan, a mute ‘madwoman,�� and an accused abortionist. Charlotte, Pétronille, and Geneviève, along with the dozens of other women aboard La Baleine, have no knowledge of what lies ahead and no control over their futures. Strangers brought together by fate, these brave and fierce young women will face extraordinary adversity—pirates, slavedrivers, sickness, war—but also the private trauma of heartbreak and unrequited love, children born and lost, cruelty and unexpected pleasure, and a friendship forged in fire that will sustain through the years.

At once a gorgeously written work of startling depth and emotion and a gripping drama marrying high-seas adventure with pioneer grit, Pelican Girls is a powerful, thought-provoking novel about female friendship and desire and the daunting compromises women are forced to make to survive.]]> 368 Julia Malye 1472298217 Lucy 0 dnf 3.11 2024
author: Julia Malye
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: dnf
review:
will come back to this, just stopped at an awkward time and now need to forget what i read so i can start again
]]> 52722079
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.]]> 295 Emma Donoghue 0316499013 Lucy 4 3.91 2020
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 54976986 An alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780525656975 can be found here.

Spanning Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles, Great Circle tells the unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost.

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There—after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes—Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates—and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times—collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.]]> 608 Maggie Shipstead Lucy 0 to-read 4.06 2021
author: Maggie Shipstead
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219342433 A grim and gothic new tale from New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can't stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.]]> 448 Alix E. Harrow 1529061148 Lucy 5 favourite-ya 3.91 2023
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: favourite-ya
review:

]]> 203835107
Amid the rising tension and via the voices of four compelling characters—the sceptical teacher Vetur, the influential psychologist Óli, the businesswoman Eyja, who fails the test, and the school dropout Tristan, who is fighting for the right not to be tested—we are confronted with urgent ethical dilemmas, prejudice, injustice, and private trauma. The suspense intensifies as these four individuals try to navigate a brave new world. The rules of the game have changed. What are the consequences?

For fans of Black Mirror, or readers of the novels of Jennifer Egan and Naomi Alderman, The Mark is a brilliant, topical novel by an exciting new writer. Fríða Ísberg’s book asks: do we want to live in a world defined by our faith in each other, or by our fear of the future.]]> 272 Fríða Ísberg 1922790613 Lucy 0 to-read 3.63 2021
author: Fríða Ísberg
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200121869
I’ve always loved fairytales. I never imagined I'd actually be in one.

When my father wanders into the enchanted realm of the fae, I know I have to go after him. And when he gets imprisoned, I'll do anything to save him... Even trade my freedom for his. I had no idea I'd end up imprisoned by four sexy fae who turn into beasts at night.

I have to win my freedom, and that means making a bargain with them. They must find their mates in order to break the curse. If I can help them do that, they'll set me free. Sounds simple, right?

It's not. Because against my better judgment, I'm starting to fall for these beastly princes. One is smart and sweet, the other mysterious and deadly, another flirty and confident, and the last prince... He's handsome, strong, has a wicked temper, and is dead-set against breaking the curse. Why does he want to keep me here forever?

But it's not just my freedom on the line. If I don't break the princes' curse soon, all the magic in the Enchanted Vale will be stolen by the evil—and stupidly hot—Prince of Thorns. And I'm not letting my princes stay cursed.

Not after I've fallen in love with them.

BONDED BY THORNS is a steamy adult Beauty and the Beast retelling set in a fantasy fae realm. In this version, our beautiful bookworm doesn't have to choose between the four sexy fae princes. It is a full-length novel that ends on a cliffhanger. It includes MF and MM content. It is intended for mature readers only.]]> 382 Elizabeth Helen 0008670552 Lucy 3 3.83 2023
author: Elizabeth Helen
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 58639322
**A Book of the Year in The Times - The New Statesman - Observer - Financial Times - Irish Times - Irish Independent - Times Literary Supplement **

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CILLIAN MURPHY!
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS!

'Exquisite.' Damon Galgut
'Masterly.' The Times
'Miraculous.' Herald
'Astonishing.' Colm Tóibín
'Stunning.' Sunday Independent
'Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas Stuart]]> 116 Claire Keegan 0571368719 Lucy 4 4.23 2021
author: Claire Keegan
name: Lucy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 209220917 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 464 Asako Yuzuki 0008511683 Lucy 4 3.54 2017
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 206101583 'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe. Featuring an introduction by Susanna Clarke and gorgeous illustrations from Victoria Sawdon truly worthy of the magic of this story, this is a mesmerising, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.]]> 64 Susanna Clarke 1639734481 Lucy 4 3.47 2024
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Lucy
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]>