Molly's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:46:24 -0700 60 Molly's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Under the Eye of the Big Bird 205673377 From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity.

In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.

Unfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, Under the Eye of the Big Bird presents an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it.]]> 288 Hiromi Kawakami 1593766114 Molly 0 to-read 3.77 2016 Under the Eye of the Big Bird
author: Hiromi Kawakami
name: Molly
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Starter Villain 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Molly 0 to-read 4.09 2023 Starter Villain
author: John Scalzi
name: Molly
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Molly 3
Not the easiest classic to get through. It really slogged at times (for someone without unlimited free time). I did really, really enjoy Jane and Rochester’s relationship and conversations though.

Also what’s up with Clergymen wanting to marry their cousins (named Jane, or Elizabeth)? Especially cousins they aren’t very interested in.

Jane was overall a good and interesting main character. I appreciated that neither of our main characters were very good looking. ]]> 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Molly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
I read the first 1/3 of this book in a few days, the second 1/3 in a few weeks, the final 1/3 in a few months except for the last 130 pages or so which I read in about an hour and a half.

Not the easiest classic to get through. It really slogged at times (for someone without unlimited free time). I did really, really enjoy Jane and Rochester’s relationship and conversations though.

Also what’s up with Clergymen wanting to marry their cousins (named Jane, or Elizabeth)? Especially cousins they aren’t very interested in.

Jane was overall a good and interesting main character. I appreciated that neither of our main characters were very good looking.
]]> We Could Be Rats 214152505 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668085518 Molly 4
Then the real twist came. Talk about unreliable narrator. It wasn’t HER. And then we got the first conversation with Sigrid and it was like an out of body experience because we barely know Sigrid, the main(?) character. AT ALL. And I enjoyed it so much from there. Getting Margit’s experience. Sigrid (written by herself this time). I found them both very relatable and interesting. I still felt the first part of the book was a bit of a slog but now it was WORTH IT.

Greta broke my heart for sure. I really liked this book overall. Not as sad as my friend had prepared me for (not a bad thing!) and still excited to read other books by this author even though this didn’t work *quite* as well for me as I had hoped.

Quotes

“I felt like I was guck, and my body was a cocoon. I felt like I was absorbing myself, becoming a whole new bug, and I didn't want to be. I preferred to be a worm. I liked my worm-thoughts. My worm-body. I didn't want to change.
I wasn't the type of kid who wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to be a kid. I felt sort of trapped inside my new adolescent form, and worried about how torturous the rest of my life would be, jailed in a grown-up's body. I grieved for my toys, and for the person I was the year prior. I felt like I was dying and being reborn as someone dead-me couldn't stand.�

“At eight, I thought of our dank basement as paradise. I built dollhouses out of what others thought of as garbage. I used flower-egg cartons, and shoeboxes. I looked through our recycling bias regularly, pulling out anything that could be transformed into something for my toys. I made tissue-box beds, and bottle-cap stepping stones. Every inch of the basement was covered in mini streets and neighborhoods. I pretended that the insulation in the walls was cotton candy, and that my toys lived in a utopia where the clouds were made of Barbie-pink spun sugar.
I told Jo about my toys at home. Most of them came from thrift shops or were hand-me-downs from people my parents knew. I had a name, a history, and a thorough biography for every toy I owned.
I collected Barbies, troll dolls, stuffed animals, Polly Pockets, Play-mobil, and other little plastic animals and dolls. I told Jo that there was a Lego bridge currently under construction, and a new community garden —which was the corner of the basement where real clover sprouted through the crack in the floor. I described the cotton-candy clouds.
After my grandma finally selected her new shoes, we approached the cash register. I asked her in my purest voice if we could please buy Jo. She replied no, and my heart sank. I thought I heard Jo gasp too.
I was the type of kid who believed that toys had hearts and souls. I felt like I was ditching a new friend, abandoning Jo in that Walmart. I begged Grandma to reconsider, like I was begging her to allow someone who was drowning into our lifeboat. She said, "No, you have so many dolls already," so I left Jo on a rack with magazines, covered my face with my hands, and cried.
About a month later, on my ninth birthday, Grandma gave me a yellow gift bag. I pulled the white tissue paper out, spotted Jo's sparkling eyes, and sobbed. I clarified that she was the Jo I met; she wasn't a different version of the same Barbie. My grandma laughed.
"Yes, I bought her the day you asked for her. …”�

“Every time there was a bomb threat near the Dollar Pal, I got a text from my dad. He listens to a police scanner while he putters around in the garage.
He'd write me,
Are you okay?
Dad's not much of a texter. I've witnessed him attempt to type on his phone, and it's like watching a hooved animal try to play a string instrument. I knew that every time he wrote me, Are you okay?, it took him fifteen minutes.
If I didn't reply, he'd call me. When there was a bomb threat, I usually left with that girl I was seeing. I rarely looked at my phone when I was with her. I wanted to disconnect from my real life and be who I was with her.
I have a bunch of messages on my voicemail that he accidentally left by not hanging up fast enough. In one of them, I can hear him muttering to himself, unaware he's recording.
"I hope she's okay.”�


“When I first spotted the raccoon, I thought he was a stuffed animal. I knew all my stuffed animals, so he stood out. I thought maybe he was Margit's. Maybe she had accidently left him down there after plundering my city.
I didn't realize he was a real raccoon even when he moved, because everything moved for me in the basement. I had a lively imagination. The dolls' mouths opened and closed when they spoke.
The tinker cars drove up and down the streets. The miniature plastic dogs rolled in the grass. There was wind.
I screamed when I saw him, not because I realized he was a living wild creature, but because he was holding my doll Jo under his armpit. He was carrying her like he was King Kong. Even while I screamed, I didn't know he was real. I thought he was just a mean stuffed animal. I thought he was some villainous toy who had broken into my utopia to attack Jo and fuck shit up.
My mom rushed to the basement. She said, "What happened? Are
you hurt?"
I pointed at the raccoon.
With zero hesitation, she ran to get our hamper off the dryer.
She stormed downstairs, grabbed Jo from the raccoon's armpit as if he were a shoplifter, threw the hamper over him, and sat on top of it. The raccoon scratched at the basket like a prisoner clanking a tin cup against jail bars.
My dad arrived home shortly after the raccoon had been trapped, and he and my mom figured out a way to release him outside. I remember them shouting at each other the way football players do, as if getting the raccoon out of the house was a tactical play in a game. After he was released, he scuttled across our lawn like a freed hostage. I remember him looking back at us over his shoulder.
After he was gone, my parents came back down to the basement.
They helped me prop my toy fences and trees back up. Marg came downstairs to help, too. Jerry and Grandma stopped by later, and they also joined the cleanup. Together we sanitized my plastic toys and tossed my stuffed animals through a gentle cycle in the wash.
Everyone helped me put my little world back together.�

“When I was a kid in the basement, I channeled Jo. I experienced the toy world through her perspective. My voice was hers when I spoke.
When I played with other toys, I considered them side characters. I put on voices that weren't mine for them. Occasionally I tried channeling other toys. I held my stuffed unicorn Francine and tried on her personality. I looked around the toy world, pretending I was her.
Doing that gave me a deeper understanding of the place. I would rearrange the gardens so Francine could more easily graze through them. I would identify the toys that Francine was closest with and sit them nearer to each other. Over time, I did that for all my toys, but I always came back to channel Jo.�

“The man who lives above me had another temper tantrum last night He stomped around like an enraged baby elephant. I think he wear steel-toe boots or tap shoes. His girlfriend was shouting his name, which is either Dan or Stan. She was crying, "Stop it, Dan (or Stan) I love you!"�

“The man upstairs was once again on his bullshit last night. Their fights are becoming more frequent. It used to happen once a month, then once every other week. Now it feels like it's every day.
He was yelling at his girlfriend, "You don't love me!"
I can't imagine how anyone could resist loving a man who yells at them so often. It sounds like he punches holes in the walls of their rented apartment.
I find it so strange that he is responding to her supposed lack of love for him with violence. It seems so counterintuitive. If I worried someone didn't love me, I would sink into myself. I would become as small as possible. I would be silent. Inoffensive.
Why does he behave like that? What is his goal? Does he think through his actions at all, or does he just act on his angry compulsions?�

“My grandma died of blood cancer over two years ago now. She was old, but it still knocked the wind out of me. We knew she had cancer for years. I knew it was coming, but somehow, it still took me by
surprise.
Id never experienced someone close to me dying betore. I thought I knew what it would be like, but I didn't.
I'd considered Grandma to be an immediate family member.
She was always at our house. Sigrid and I spent a lot of time in her garden. We could go to her place and walk inside without knocking.
We felt comfortable opening her fridge. Eating her food. Taking a nap on her couch. Running a bath.
I was surprised by some of my feelings when she died. I knew I'd feel devastated, and I did, but there were other feelings I didn't expect. One thing I really wrestled with was feeling like there was less love in the world for me. When she died, I felt a shift in the universe.
It was more than her absence. I felt the cosmic void where her love for me used to be, like an empty stomach after puking. On top of feeling shattered by her absence, I felt less important with her gone, and also guilty for feeling that way. I wasn't just mourning her life.
I was mourning her love for me. When she died, I felt selfishly less important, and every time I lose someone, I'll have less purpose. I will degrade in value the longer I live, until there is no point to me.�

“After my grandma died, I found myself scowling at old women. I felt affronted by their existence. I know that's unreasonable. It's ri-diculous. But when I saw any lady over eighty, I thought, Fuck you.
Why are you alive when my grandma isn't? Do you deserve to be here
more than her?
I went to Walmart to buy nylons for her funeral. Before I got out of the car, I watched an old lady hobble through the parking lot as if she murdered my grandma with her own arthritic hands. I gripped the steering wheel and felt incensed at the sight of this frail, elderly woman. I had to take deep breaths.
After the initial blow of her death, I got over hating old women. I convinced myself I was being ridiculous. I decided it was just a weird reaction to my grief.
I had never felt anything like that before. It was strange for my worldview to shift like that. I didn't realize I could think so differ-ently, and in a way that left me feeling disturbed.
I wonder if old people are often crotchety because they've dealt with so many atrocities, they can no longer tolerate anyone. Maybe they ask to speak to managers, hold up lines, and drive at a snail's pace because theyre at the end of their ropes. Maybe all their people have died, gotten sick, or tried to kill themselves, and it's irksome to see the rest of us tottering around, breathing air, taking up space.�

“She said, "I'm okay. Thank you. It's weird. I can hear him pacing over your room, I think. I can hear him talking on his phone." I nodded. "Yes, the floors are thin. Ive been hearing you for a while. I was really worried about you."
"I should have known that," she said. "I can hear you too."
"What do you mean?" I frowned.
"I heard you crying the last couple weeks. I was concerned about you, too. Are you okay?"�

“Marg entered the room around this time. She brought a plater of sugar cookies and marshmallow peanut butter squares. She asked,
"What's so funny?"
Rather than reply, Sigrid was just telling me about how her friend was raped and is a lesbian, Billy said, "Oh, were just laughing at the dog."

The dog was sitting in front of us. She looked at me in a way that made me feel like, somehow, she understood what we were talking about. I could sense that she didn't think highly of Billy.”]]> 4.16 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Molly
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
I spent a lot of this book dreading picking it back up. I was having a hard time getting into it. There were a few things I found really relatable but overall I wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t even find it particularly sad, just tedious. Then sometime around lizard eyes poster I was like “okay this is getting Good.� A friend lent me this book whose opinion I trust, after I asked him about it. It has been in my TBR for a while and we live in the same city as the author. He also lent me Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead which I *loved*. So I was like ‘Oh Crap. I am gonna have to tell him this is, at best, a three star read for me. Great�. I need to at least finish it because he was nice enough to lend me it. And I do still like it enough.� So when we got to lizard eyes I felt like it was really picking up! And then none of it was true. And I was like “Oh okay unreliable narrator.� Which is fine. I can work with that, that can be interesting if done well.

Then the real twist came. Talk about unreliable narrator. It wasn’t HER. And then we got the first conversation with Sigrid and it was like an out of body experience because we barely know Sigrid, the main(?) character. AT ALL. And I enjoyed it so much from there. Getting Margit’s experience. Sigrid (written by herself this time). I found them both very relatable and interesting. I still felt the first part of the book was a bit of a slog but now it was WORTH IT.

Greta broke my heart for sure. I really liked this book overall. Not as sad as my friend had prepared me for (not a bad thing!) and still excited to read other books by this author even though this didn’t work *quite* as well for me as I had hoped.

Quotes

“I felt like I was guck, and my body was a cocoon. I felt like I was absorbing myself, becoming a whole new bug, and I didn't want to be. I preferred to be a worm. I liked my worm-thoughts. My worm-body. I didn't want to change.
I wasn't the type of kid who wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to be a kid. I felt sort of trapped inside my new adolescent form, and worried about how torturous the rest of my life would be, jailed in a grown-up's body. I grieved for my toys, and for the person I was the year prior. I felt like I was dying and being reborn as someone dead-me couldn't stand.�

“At eight, I thought of our dank basement as paradise. I built dollhouses out of what others thought of as garbage. I used flower-egg cartons, and shoeboxes. I looked through our recycling bias regularly, pulling out anything that could be transformed into something for my toys. I made tissue-box beds, and bottle-cap stepping stones. Every inch of the basement was covered in mini streets and neighborhoods. I pretended that the insulation in the walls was cotton candy, and that my toys lived in a utopia where the clouds were made of Barbie-pink spun sugar.
I told Jo about my toys at home. Most of them came from thrift shops or were hand-me-downs from people my parents knew. I had a name, a history, and a thorough biography for every toy I owned.
I collected Barbies, troll dolls, stuffed animals, Polly Pockets, Play-mobil, and other little plastic animals and dolls. I told Jo that there was a Lego bridge currently under construction, and a new community garden —which was the corner of the basement where real clover sprouted through the crack in the floor. I described the cotton-candy clouds.
After my grandma finally selected her new shoes, we approached the cash register. I asked her in my purest voice if we could please buy Jo. She replied no, and my heart sank. I thought I heard Jo gasp too.
I was the type of kid who believed that toys had hearts and souls. I felt like I was ditching a new friend, abandoning Jo in that Walmart. I begged Grandma to reconsider, like I was begging her to allow someone who was drowning into our lifeboat. She said, "No, you have so many dolls already," so I left Jo on a rack with magazines, covered my face with my hands, and cried.
About a month later, on my ninth birthday, Grandma gave me a yellow gift bag. I pulled the white tissue paper out, spotted Jo's sparkling eyes, and sobbed. I clarified that she was the Jo I met; she wasn't a different version of the same Barbie. My grandma laughed.
"Yes, I bought her the day you asked for her. …”�

“Every time there was a bomb threat near the Dollar Pal, I got a text from my dad. He listens to a police scanner while he putters around in the garage.
He'd write me,
Are you okay?
Dad's not much of a texter. I've witnessed him attempt to type on his phone, and it's like watching a hooved animal try to play a string instrument. I knew that every time he wrote me, Are you okay?, it took him fifteen minutes.
If I didn't reply, he'd call me. When there was a bomb threat, I usually left with that girl I was seeing. I rarely looked at my phone when I was with her. I wanted to disconnect from my real life and be who I was with her.
I have a bunch of messages on my voicemail that he accidentally left by not hanging up fast enough. In one of them, I can hear him muttering to himself, unaware he's recording.
"I hope she's okay.”�


“When I first spotted the raccoon, I thought he was a stuffed animal. I knew all my stuffed animals, so he stood out. I thought maybe he was Margit's. Maybe she had accidently left him down there after plundering my city.
I didn't realize he was a real raccoon even when he moved, because everything moved for me in the basement. I had a lively imagination. The dolls' mouths opened and closed when they spoke.
The tinker cars drove up and down the streets. The miniature plastic dogs rolled in the grass. There was wind.
I screamed when I saw him, not because I realized he was a living wild creature, but because he was holding my doll Jo under his armpit. He was carrying her like he was King Kong. Even while I screamed, I didn't know he was real. I thought he was just a mean stuffed animal. I thought he was some villainous toy who had broken into my utopia to attack Jo and fuck shit up.
My mom rushed to the basement. She said, "What happened? Are
you hurt?"
I pointed at the raccoon.
With zero hesitation, she ran to get our hamper off the dryer.
She stormed downstairs, grabbed Jo from the raccoon's armpit as if he were a shoplifter, threw the hamper over him, and sat on top of it. The raccoon scratched at the basket like a prisoner clanking a tin cup against jail bars.
My dad arrived home shortly after the raccoon had been trapped, and he and my mom figured out a way to release him outside. I remember them shouting at each other the way football players do, as if getting the raccoon out of the house was a tactical play in a game. After he was released, he scuttled across our lawn like a freed hostage. I remember him looking back at us over his shoulder.
After he was gone, my parents came back down to the basement.
They helped me prop my toy fences and trees back up. Marg came downstairs to help, too. Jerry and Grandma stopped by later, and they also joined the cleanup. Together we sanitized my plastic toys and tossed my stuffed animals through a gentle cycle in the wash.
Everyone helped me put my little world back together.�

“When I was a kid in the basement, I channeled Jo. I experienced the toy world through her perspective. My voice was hers when I spoke.
When I played with other toys, I considered them side characters. I put on voices that weren't mine for them. Occasionally I tried channeling other toys. I held my stuffed unicorn Francine and tried on her personality. I looked around the toy world, pretending I was her.
Doing that gave me a deeper understanding of the place. I would rearrange the gardens so Francine could more easily graze through them. I would identify the toys that Francine was closest with and sit them nearer to each other. Over time, I did that for all my toys, but I always came back to channel Jo.�

“The man who lives above me had another temper tantrum last night He stomped around like an enraged baby elephant. I think he wear steel-toe boots or tap shoes. His girlfriend was shouting his name, which is either Dan or Stan. She was crying, "Stop it, Dan (or Stan) I love you!"�

“The man upstairs was once again on his bullshit last night. Their fights are becoming more frequent. It used to happen once a month, then once every other week. Now it feels like it's every day.
He was yelling at his girlfriend, "You don't love me!"
I can't imagine how anyone could resist loving a man who yells at them so often. It sounds like he punches holes in the walls of their rented apartment.
I find it so strange that he is responding to her supposed lack of love for him with violence. It seems so counterintuitive. If I worried someone didn't love me, I would sink into myself. I would become as small as possible. I would be silent. Inoffensive.
Why does he behave like that? What is his goal? Does he think through his actions at all, or does he just act on his angry compulsions?�

“My grandma died of blood cancer over two years ago now. She was old, but it still knocked the wind out of me. We knew she had cancer for years. I knew it was coming, but somehow, it still took me by
surprise.
Id never experienced someone close to me dying betore. I thought I knew what it would be like, but I didn't.
I'd considered Grandma to be an immediate family member.
She was always at our house. Sigrid and I spent a lot of time in her garden. We could go to her place and walk inside without knocking.
We felt comfortable opening her fridge. Eating her food. Taking a nap on her couch. Running a bath.
I was surprised by some of my feelings when she died. I knew I'd feel devastated, and I did, but there were other feelings I didn't expect. One thing I really wrestled with was feeling like there was less love in the world for me. When she died, I felt a shift in the universe.
It was more than her absence. I felt the cosmic void where her love for me used to be, like an empty stomach after puking. On top of feeling shattered by her absence, I felt less important with her gone, and also guilty for feeling that way. I wasn't just mourning her life.
I was mourning her love for me. When she died, I felt selfishly less important, and every time I lose someone, I'll have less purpose. I will degrade in value the longer I live, until there is no point to me.�

“After my grandma died, I found myself scowling at old women. I felt affronted by their existence. I know that's unreasonable. It's ri-diculous. But when I saw any lady over eighty, I thought, Fuck you.
Why are you alive when my grandma isn't? Do you deserve to be here
more than her?
I went to Walmart to buy nylons for her funeral. Before I got out of the car, I watched an old lady hobble through the parking lot as if she murdered my grandma with her own arthritic hands. I gripped the steering wheel and felt incensed at the sight of this frail, elderly woman. I had to take deep breaths.
After the initial blow of her death, I got over hating old women. I convinced myself I was being ridiculous. I decided it was just a weird reaction to my grief.
I had never felt anything like that before. It was strange for my worldview to shift like that. I didn't realize I could think so differ-ently, and in a way that left me feeling disturbed.
I wonder if old people are often crotchety because they've dealt with so many atrocities, they can no longer tolerate anyone. Maybe they ask to speak to managers, hold up lines, and drive at a snail's pace because theyre at the end of their ropes. Maybe all their people have died, gotten sick, or tried to kill themselves, and it's irksome to see the rest of us tottering around, breathing air, taking up space.�

“She said, "I'm okay. Thank you. It's weird. I can hear him pacing over your room, I think. I can hear him talking on his phone." I nodded. "Yes, the floors are thin. Ive been hearing you for a while. I was really worried about you."
"I should have known that," she said. "I can hear you too."
"What do you mean?" I frowned.
"I heard you crying the last couple weeks. I was concerned about you, too. Are you okay?"�

“Marg entered the room around this time. She brought a plater of sugar cookies and marshmallow peanut butter squares. She asked,
"What's so funny?"
Rather than reply, Sigrid was just telling me about how her friend was raped and is a lesbian, Billy said, "Oh, were just laughing at the dog."

The dog was sitting in front of us. She looked at me in a way that made me feel like, somehow, she understood what we were talking about. I could sense that she didn't think highly of Billy.�
]]> Great Big Beautiful Life 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 432 Emily Henry Molly 4
The ending also felt really rushed. She spends this whole book building up to the writing of the biography, Alice’s relationship with her mother and her late father, Hayden’s strained relationship with HIS family and now his dynamics with Margaret. Jodi and Margaret, and Jodi softening up to Alice. And like it felt like there was a lot of loose ends or it kind of just fizzled out. I wanted more.

Still I enjoyed the book overall and as always an easy read. I feel like Emily struck some gold with the biography but defaulted a little too much to her repeat formula. Which I get because obviously it works for her. Couple with same jobs, push pull, sexual tension, happily ever after. I get it! She does it well. She can write these tropey romances because she does SO well at building up the people beneath the tropes. But in this case it was kind of disappointing because all that character work and history kind of got shoved aside to default to the formula and now I got a taste for more.

I loved the Nicollett thread we got to follow. I loved the detective work. I loved the storm. I loved the visit home and the chickens and the sleeping outside. I loved the mosaics. More of this please Emily.

Quotes

I slow my pace, but surprisingly, he pauses halfway up the first set of steps when he realizes I'm behind him.
Not only does he pause, he actually turns toward me and makes eye contact. Huge progress for us. Friendship bracelets incoming, surely.

"It was years ago now," he says. "But honestly, it was the last serious relationship I was in."
"Really?" I say.
His head cocks to the left. "I find it hard to
believe that's surprising."
"Well, it's even harder picturing you
casually dating," I say.
"I don't, much," he says. "Just feels like
work."
"Do you get lonely?" I meant it in the most innocent way possible, but as soon as it sneaks out, I tingle with embarrassment.
But he just studies me seriously, like it's a perfectly normal thing to ask someone you very clearly want to sleep with. "Sometimes I..." He hesitates.
"You can tell me," I say, almost a whisper.
His jaw muscles leap. "Sometimes I just miss this. Being close to someone. Being touched. Not just sex, I mean."

]]> 4.21 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: Molly
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
Some mixed feelings on this one. Parts of it were my favorite she has done, but maybe she was overreaching. I really enjoyed actually Seeing the book the characters were working on. I found Margaret really interesting and I liked listening about her family. I wish Emily had gone MORE in depth on that. I enjoyed the multiple strained family relationships that felt very real. The friends didn’t feature as much in this book which I think is for the best because they felt more realistic. I actually really liked how much more natural/organic this relationship felt. But honestly I was too intrigued by all of the other things happening in this book to care much about the sexual tension and it felt like soooo many chapters were dedicated to that. I routinely found myself skimming these sections because I just didn’t really care. This is a book that would have benefited from being close-door just because the actual plot-lines were WAY more interesting. Her home life? Her family? Her house? Margaret’s crafting? Cecil? These details were SO good.

The ending also felt really rushed. She spends this whole book building up to the writing of the biography, Alice’s relationship with her mother and her late father, Hayden’s strained relationship with HIS family and now his dynamics with Margaret. Jodi and Margaret, and Jodi softening up to Alice. And like it felt like there was a lot of loose ends or it kind of just fizzled out. I wanted more.

Still I enjoyed the book overall and as always an easy read. I feel like Emily struck some gold with the biography but defaulted a little too much to her repeat formula. Which I get because obviously it works for her. Couple with same jobs, push pull, sexual tension, happily ever after. I get it! She does it well. She can write these tropey romances because she does SO well at building up the people beneath the tropes. But in this case it was kind of disappointing because all that character work and history kind of got shoved aside to default to the formula and now I got a taste for more.

I loved the Nicollett thread we got to follow. I loved the detective work. I loved the storm. I loved the visit home and the chickens and the sleeping outside. I loved the mosaics. More of this please Emily.

Quotes

I slow my pace, but surprisingly, he pauses halfway up the first set of steps when he realizes I'm behind him.
Not only does he pause, he actually turns toward me and makes eye contact. Huge progress for us. Friendship bracelets incoming, surely.

"It was years ago now," he says. "But honestly, it was the last serious relationship I was in."
"Really?" I say.
His head cocks to the left. "I find it hard to
believe that's surprising."
"Well, it's even harder picturing you
casually dating," I say.
"I don't, much," he says. "Just feels like
work."
"Do you get lonely?" I meant it in the most innocent way possible, but as soon as it sneaks out, I tingle with embarrassment.
But he just studies me seriously, like it's a perfectly normal thing to ask someone you very clearly want to sleep with. "Sometimes I..." He hesitates.
"You can tell me," I say, almost a whisper.
His jaw muscles leap. "Sometimes I just miss this. Being close to someone. Being touched. Not just sex, I mean."


]]> <![CDATA[Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves]]> 199514774
How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we’ll find something fresh and ready to eat? It’s an everyday act, easily taken for granted, but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement. Banquets were held just so guests could enjoy the novelty of eggs, butter, and apples that had been preserved for months in cold storage—and demonstrate that such zombie foods were not deadly. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching an entirely new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but also seasonality and geography. Tomatoes in January? Avocados in Shanghai? All possible.

In FROSTBITE, New Yorker contributor and co-host of the award-winning podcast Gastropod Nicola Twilley takes readers with her on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting such off-the-beaten-track landmarks as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s OJ reserves. Today, more than three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment.

In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but as Twilley soon discovers, the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food, extending the distance between producers and consumers and redefining what “fresh� really means. More importantly, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a U.S.-style cold chain, Twilley asks, can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we? A deeply-researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, FROSTBITE makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge—and how our future might depend on it.]]> 400 Nicola Twilley 0735223289 Molly 0 to-read 4.18 2024 Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
author: Nicola Twilley
name: Molly
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Oxford Soju Club 222259187
When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protege, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha’s last breath: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.� In the meantime, a Korean American CIA agent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation of the North Korean spy cell in the aftermath of the assassination. At the centre of it all is the Soju Club, the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, owned by Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul in search of a new life after suffering a tragedy. As different factions move in with their own agendas, their fates become entangled, resulting in a bitter struggle that will determine whose truth will triumph.

Oxford Soju Club weaves a tale of how immigrants in the Korean diaspora are forced to create identities to survive, and how in the end, they must shed those masks and seek their true selves.]]> 224 Jinwoo Park 1459755103 Molly 0 to-read 4.44 Oxford Soju Club
author: Jinwoo Park
name: Molly
average rating: 4.44
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 Molly 4
This book had me laughing out loud multiple times though (as all her books do!) and I was really invested in the outcome. I also really liked her last interaction with her parents, especially in juxtaposition with her relationship with Hank and Gloria.

SPOILERS

She rocks me back and forth, cooing,
"You're heeeeere."
"I'm heeeeere!" I say.

"Sometimes I still can't believe you're a farmer," I say. "I mean, it's so cool, don't get me wrong. I just really did think you'd have art in the Met someday."
She shrugs. "It could still happen. Life's long."
That makes me snort with laughter. "I don't think anyone says that."
"Maybe not," she says, "but if they were truly present, maybe they would."

“…My parents would go to Florida with my aunties and uncles all the time, and then they'd make us look through one hundred separate pictures of them inside a Margaritaville."

"You're playing dirty," I say.
"Me?" he replies. "You just gave me a lap dance."
"I did not," I say, "and I will never."
"Doesn't Wyn's hair look sexy like this?" he parrots in a breathy voice.
"I didn't say sexy. When did I say sexy?"
"You did the voice. I knew what you meant." I roll my eyes. "I'm playing my part."
"What part is that? Marilyn Monroe singing
'Happy birthday, Mr. President'?"

"You all right there, Harriet?" Wyn asks in his own husky equivalent of the happy-birthday-Mr.-President voice.

I start toward them, but Wyn catches my wrist.
"I like the bowl," he says. "She showed me a picture. I thought it was beautiful."

"This one." He's staring at the smaller of the vases, streaked with shades of green, blue, purple, and brown, a horizon of earthy colors.
My heart squeezes. "That one's called
Hank."
He looks up, face open, with the expression that used to make me think of quicksand, a face that could pull you in and never let you go.
"You named it?" he says. "After my dad?"
"Isn't that humiliating?" I try to pull my phone away.
He doesn't let go. "Why would it be humiliating?"
"Because I'm not Michelangelo," I say. "My vases don't need names."
He holds the phone up. "This one needs a fucking name, and that name is Hank." I reach for it again, but he yanks it out of reach, goes back to staring at the screen, creases rising from the insides of his brows. Quietly, he says, "It looks like him."
"You don't have to say that, Wyn," I reply.
"It's a vase, by an amateur.�

Wyn takes hold of the pink thing and lifts it, spreading it out so the hot-pink bra cups jut from his chest.
Above us, Cleo and Kimmy are shrieking now.
"This," Wyn says, "is exactly why I hate getting clothes as presents. Nothing ever fits."
"At least it's your color," I say.
He tuts, laughing, and shakes his head.
"Thanks, Kim."
Kimmy hurls herself forward, squawking something through her guffaws, but Cleo yanks her back against the bench.
"Excuse me, Wyn." I pull the tiny bra out of his hands, holding it in front of me. "In which universe does this fit on Kimmy's boobs?"
He gapes, looks up at Cleo and Kimmy, who are still falling all over each other in fits of laughter, then back at me. "Damn," he says.
"Didn't see that one coming."

The silence leaves too much room for questions, for memories to vine around me, hold me captive.]]> 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: Molly
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:
Emily Henry books go down like a glass of water. So easy to read and almost always pull me out of a slump. Being in an 8+ year relationship myself, I found these characters pretty relatable in terms of knowing someone like that. It was also a scary window into what a breakup might look like! While I wish there had been a little more focus on the friends/present I really liked how this book was structured overall. She is so good at weaving a relationship. I also wish there had been more emphasis on the discord. Not saved for the last hundred or so pages and resolved so quickly. But maybe that’s just a me thing, it wasn’t necessarily the focus of the book. I also wish the friends had been a tad more fleshed out.

This book had me laughing out loud multiple times though (as all her books do!) and I was really invested in the outcome. I also really liked her last interaction with her parents, especially in juxtaposition with her relationship with Hank and Gloria.

SPOILERS

She rocks me back and forth, cooing,
"You're heeeeere."
"I'm heeeeere!" I say.

"Sometimes I still can't believe you're a farmer," I say. "I mean, it's so cool, don't get me wrong. I just really did think you'd have art in the Met someday."
She shrugs. "It could still happen. Life's long."
That makes me snort with laughter. "I don't think anyone says that."
"Maybe not," she says, "but if they were truly present, maybe they would."

“…My parents would go to Florida with my aunties and uncles all the time, and then they'd make us look through one hundred separate pictures of them inside a Margaritaville."

"You're playing dirty," I say.
"Me?" he replies. "You just gave me a lap dance."
"I did not," I say, "and I will never."
"Doesn't Wyn's hair look sexy like this?" he parrots in a breathy voice.
"I didn't say sexy. When did I say sexy?"
"You did the voice. I knew what you meant." I roll my eyes. "I'm playing my part."
"What part is that? Marilyn Monroe singing
'Happy birthday, Mr. President'?"

"You all right there, Harriet?" Wyn asks in his own husky equivalent of the happy-birthday-Mr.-President voice.

I start toward them, but Wyn catches my wrist.
"I like the bowl," he says. "She showed me a picture. I thought it was beautiful."

"This one." He's staring at the smaller of the vases, streaked with shades of green, blue, purple, and brown, a horizon of earthy colors.
My heart squeezes. "That one's called
Hank."
He looks up, face open, with the expression that used to make me think of quicksand, a face that could pull you in and never let you go.
"You named it?" he says. "After my dad?"
"Isn't that humiliating?" I try to pull my phone away.
He doesn't let go. "Why would it be humiliating?"
"Because I'm not Michelangelo," I say. "My vases don't need names."
He holds the phone up. "This one needs a fucking name, and that name is Hank." I reach for it again, but he yanks it out of reach, goes back to staring at the screen, creases rising from the insides of his brows. Quietly, he says, "It looks like him."
"You don't have to say that, Wyn," I reply.
"It's a vase, by an amateur.�

Wyn takes hold of the pink thing and lifts it, spreading it out so the hot-pink bra cups jut from his chest.
Above us, Cleo and Kimmy are shrieking now.
"This," Wyn says, "is exactly why I hate getting clothes as presents. Nothing ever fits."
"At least it's your color," I say.
He tuts, laughing, and shakes his head.
"Thanks, Kim."
Kimmy hurls herself forward, squawking something through her guffaws, but Cleo yanks her back against the bench.
"Excuse me, Wyn." I pull the tiny bra out of his hands, holding it in front of me. "In which universe does this fit on Kimmy's boobs?"
He gapes, looks up at Cleo and Kimmy, who are still falling all over each other in fits of laughter, then back at me. "Damn," he says.
"Didn't see that one coming."

The silence leaves too much room for questions, for memories to vine around me, hold me captive.
]]> <![CDATA[Yeonnam-dong's Smiley Laundromat]]> 203469691
It is already a haven of tranquility and reflection for locals, but when someone leaves a notebook behind, the laundromat becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbours who were once just faces in the crowd.

But there is more to the diary than first appears, and before long the laundromat's regulars are teaming up to solve a mystery and help the notebook's former owner find peace.]]> 320 Kim Jiyun 1529437431 Molly 0 to-read 3.93 2023 Yeonnam-dong's Smiley Laundromat
author: Kim Jiyun
name: Molly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> French Exit 36590432 From bestselling author Patrick deWitt, a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandaland financial disintegration

Frances Price � tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature � is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin � to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, and the inimitable Mme. Reynard, aggressive houseguest and dementedly friendly American expat.

Brimming with pathos and wit, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners,' a riotous send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute]]> 245 Patrick deWitt 0062846922 Molly 5
Nothing much happened. I hate cruises. The characters should be immensely dislikable. The cat thing is absurd and unrealistic. I shouldn’t have liked this book at all. And yet I was totally into it! A good character study.

Quotes

�"You're going to leave him on the sidewalk and go to France?
"Paris, France."
The man at the podium shook his head. He was half. perusing their passports but a peevishness was growing in him, At last, he couldn't hold back. "You bring an animal into your life, you've got a responsibility to do right by that animal." Frances nudged the passports closer to the man. He was disgusted, but had no legal recourse to keep Frances and Malcolm from leaving the United States; he handed them their passports and tickets and curtly waved them on. Small Frank, meanwhile, had snuck back into the terminal and now was walking along the interior wall toward the point of embarkment.


He took to his bed, a plastic trash can resting on his chest, Frances sitting on a chair nearby, Small Frank perched on her lap.�

Looking up at Frances, she said, "Interesting animal you've got here."
Frances asked Malcolm, "Who is this person?�
"Madeleine the medium."
"What's she doing?"
"I'm not sure. What are you doing, Madeleine?" Madeleine stood. "Sorry." Pointing to Small Frank, she
asked, "Do you not know?"
"We know," said Frances.

“Mme Reynard became still, then brightened. "May I share a recollection I have of you;"
"All right."
Mme Reynard said, "It must have been twenty years ago, in the months atter your husband's death. I was eating with a group at Le Cirque, and a man at my table had had dealings with your husband and was not at all enamored of him. He d actually been speaking poorly of him when you came in. You looked so smart, I couldn't help but stare. We were all staring, As you passed the table, the man stopped you and said, Mrs. Price, I knew your husband well. And it's all I can do not to dance on his grave. Do you remember it?"
"I don't, no. What did I say to him?"
"That's the thing. You didn't say a word. You drank his
drink."
Frances nodded. She remembered now, distantly.
"Straight Scotch, said Mme Reynard, "and you drank it down in a gulp and then stared at him with a look of absolute indifference. You were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and the poor fool didn't know what to do with himself." The women both were smiling. Frances said, "I'm sorry ! was rude before. My life has fallen completely to pieces and I'm upset about it."
"I know just what you mean."
"Yes, perhaps you do, after all. Oh, look, here comes Malcolm with our dinner."
"Sustenance!" Mme Reynard cried.�

“Five pigeons perched in a huddle on the branch of a sycamore at the edge of the park, Malcolm was only half watching them, but now he noticed four of the pigeons were stepping away from the fifth. They walked in a shuffling, sideways bunch while the fifth stood in place, hunkered down and shivering. After a moment it wavered and became still; then, tilting forward, it fell from the branch and plummeted beak-first through the air, thirty feet or more, crashing directly onto the belly of a sleeping immigrant. The man jumped to his feet; clutching his stomach, he studied the dead bird with the purest confusion. What dread omen was this?
What woeful news was the natural world sharing with him? He looked around, desirous for a witness, someone to explain the occurrence, but there was no one, and the man snatched up his blanket and hurried from the park, the bird lying stiffly in the grass.

At this moment, the phone rang. Malcolm put the receiver to his ear and asked, "What's the opposite of a miracle."

Frances sat upright in her bed. "How many letters?"�


“Mme Reynard nodded, then looked inward for a time. "Do you ever feel," she asked, "that adulthood was thrust upon you at too young an age, and that you are still essentially a child mimicking the behaviors of the adults all around you in hopes they won't discover the meager contents of your heart?"�

“Have you noticed men simply take them out and use them here? No harm in it, I suppose, but it takes some getting used to. Yesterday's was memorably large. What a gift that mus be for a man. What a lottery life is. It was nice to see it, I'll admit.
Frances described the second part of her private, two-part plan for Joan, concluding the note with words of devotion and love.
I've always admired your heart. Your heart is the rightest of all.

She called for the check, and in the time it took to receive it she decided she could never send the card. She folded it and left it on the table beneath her empty wineglass. The waiter found it but didn't understand English. He showed it to the other wait ers and the cook but none of them knew English either. On his way home from work he stopped by the post office and mailedit.
It was out of character for him to do this but he thought Frances was a special case. Recently she'd tipped him a hundred euros on a glass of house wine, and when he had protested she had said it couldn't matter. What did she mean by this? The waiter had mailed the card not because of the tip but because of what prompted her to leave the tip. He wasn't certain what that was, of course, only that it was something fearsome, and so, worthy of his esteem.�

�"Why do I suddenly feel like I'm the punch line to a drinking game? What do you people want?"
"You know what I want, Frank. I've gone to some length to locate you and I find your refusal to come home perfectly vulgar.
I never asked you for anything in my life and now I want this one thing from you."
"One little thing,"
"I've earned it."�

“Joan and Frances lay together in their pajamas. They smelled of gin and cold cream and Frances whispered giddily, "We're just two little old ladies!" Their laughter was muffled in the pillows; they were so glad to be reunited.”]]> 3.48 2018 French Exit
author: Patrick deWitt
name: Molly
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. The eccentric rich (and then not) eccentric mother-son duo who steal from parties and have phones to call one another from their rooms, despite living in the same house, despite being 65 and 32. It should be abhorrent and is instead extremely charming. With their cat, Small Frank, who actually IS her dead husband. I loved the short chapters. I loved the dialogue and the way the character’s spoke. I loved how timeless and yet time-behold it felt. This was so good and I cannot believe I let it sit on my shelf for so long. Frances is an enigma. I loved her.

Nothing much happened. I hate cruises. The characters should be immensely dislikable. The cat thing is absurd and unrealistic. I shouldn’t have liked this book at all. And yet I was totally into it! A good character study.

Quotes

�"You're going to leave him on the sidewalk and go to France?
"Paris, France."
The man at the podium shook his head. He was half. perusing their passports but a peevishness was growing in him, At last, he couldn't hold back. "You bring an animal into your life, you've got a responsibility to do right by that animal." Frances nudged the passports closer to the man. He was disgusted, but had no legal recourse to keep Frances and Malcolm from leaving the United States; he handed them their passports and tickets and curtly waved them on. Small Frank, meanwhile, had snuck back into the terminal and now was walking along the interior wall toward the point of embarkment.


He took to his bed, a plastic trash can resting on his chest, Frances sitting on a chair nearby, Small Frank perched on her lap.�

Looking up at Frances, she said, "Interesting animal you've got here."
Frances asked Malcolm, "Who is this person?�
"Madeleine the medium."
"What's she doing?"
"I'm not sure. What are you doing, Madeleine?" Madeleine stood. "Sorry." Pointing to Small Frank, she
asked, "Do you not know?"
"We know," said Frances.

“Mme Reynard became still, then brightened. "May I share a recollection I have of you;"
"All right."
Mme Reynard said, "It must have been twenty years ago, in the months atter your husband's death. I was eating with a group at Le Cirque, and a man at my table had had dealings with your husband and was not at all enamored of him. He d actually been speaking poorly of him when you came in. You looked so smart, I couldn't help but stare. We were all staring, As you passed the table, the man stopped you and said, Mrs. Price, I knew your husband well. And it's all I can do not to dance on his grave. Do you remember it?"
"I don't, no. What did I say to him?"
"That's the thing. You didn't say a word. You drank his
drink."
Frances nodded. She remembered now, distantly.
"Straight Scotch, said Mme Reynard, "and you drank it down in a gulp and then stared at him with a look of absolute indifference. You were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and the poor fool didn't know what to do with himself." The women both were smiling. Frances said, "I'm sorry ! was rude before. My life has fallen completely to pieces and I'm upset about it."
"I know just what you mean."
"Yes, perhaps you do, after all. Oh, look, here comes Malcolm with our dinner."
"Sustenance!" Mme Reynard cried.�

“Five pigeons perched in a huddle on the branch of a sycamore at the edge of the park, Malcolm was only half watching them, but now he noticed four of the pigeons were stepping away from the fifth. They walked in a shuffling, sideways bunch while the fifth stood in place, hunkered down and shivering. After a moment it wavered and became still; then, tilting forward, it fell from the branch and plummeted beak-first through the air, thirty feet or more, crashing directly onto the belly of a sleeping immigrant. The man jumped to his feet; clutching his stomach, he studied the dead bird with the purest confusion. What dread omen was this?
What woeful news was the natural world sharing with him? He looked around, desirous for a witness, someone to explain the occurrence, but there was no one, and the man snatched up his blanket and hurried from the park, the bird lying stiffly in the grass.

At this moment, the phone rang. Malcolm put the receiver to his ear and asked, "What's the opposite of a miracle."

Frances sat upright in her bed. "How many letters?"�


“Mme Reynard nodded, then looked inward for a time. "Do you ever feel," she asked, "that adulthood was thrust upon you at too young an age, and that you are still essentially a child mimicking the behaviors of the adults all around you in hopes they won't discover the meager contents of your heart?"�

“Have you noticed men simply take them out and use them here? No harm in it, I suppose, but it takes some getting used to. Yesterday's was memorably large. What a gift that mus be for a man. What a lottery life is. It was nice to see it, I'll admit.
Frances described the second part of her private, two-part plan for Joan, concluding the note with words of devotion and love.
I've always admired your heart. Your heart is the rightest of all.

She called for the check, and in the time it took to receive it she decided she could never send the card. She folded it and left it on the table beneath her empty wineglass. The waiter found it but didn't understand English. He showed it to the other wait ers and the cook but none of them knew English either. On his way home from work he stopped by the post office and mailedit.
It was out of character for him to do this but he thought Frances was a special case. Recently she'd tipped him a hundred euros on a glass of house wine, and when he had protested she had said it couldn't matter. What did she mean by this? The waiter had mailed the card not because of the tip but because of what prompted her to leave the tip. He wasn't certain what that was, of course, only that it was something fearsome, and so, worthy of his esteem.�

�"Why do I suddenly feel like I'm the punch line to a drinking game? What do you people want?"
"You know what I want, Frank. I've gone to some length to locate you and I find your refusal to come home perfectly vulgar.
I never asked you for anything in my life and now I want this one thing from you."
"One little thing,"
"I've earned it."�

“Joan and Frances lay together in their pajamas. They smelled of gin and cold cream and Frances whispered giddily, "We're just two little old ladies!" Their laughter was muffled in the pillows; they were so glad to be reunited.�
]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 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 Molly 0 to-read 4.11 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Molly
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Library of Lost Dollhouses]]> 216269038 When a young librarian discovers historic dollhouses in a hidden room, she embarks on an unexpected journey that reveals surprising secrets about the lost miniatures.

Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century’s worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy’s uneventful life takes an unexpected turn when she, first, learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and, second, discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses. After finding clues hidden within these remarkable miniatures, Tildy starts to believe that Belva Curtis LeFarge, the influential heiress who established the library a century ago, is conveying a significant final message.

With a newfound sense of spontaneity, Tildy sets out to decipher the secret history of the dollhouses, aiming to salvage her cherished library in the process. Her journey to understand introduces her to a world of ambitious and gifted women in Belle ÉpoqueParis, a group of scarred World War I veterans in the English countryside, and Walt Disney’s bustling Burbank studio in the 1950s. As Tildy unravels the mystery, she finds not only inspiring, overlooked history, but also a future for herself, filled with exciting possibilities—and an astonishing familial revelation.

Spanning the course of a century, The Library of Lost Dollhouses is a warm, bright, and captivating story of secrets and love that embraces the importance of illuminating overlooked women of the past.]]> 320 Elise Hooper 0063382148 Molly 0 to-read 4.01 2025 The Library of Lost Dollhouses
author: Elise Hooper
name: Molly
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones]]> 123414959
In Behind the My Life in Rhinestones, global superstar Dolly Parton shares, for the first time, the full story behind her lifelong passion for fashion, including how she developed her own, distinctly Dolly style, which has defied convention and endeared her to fans around the world.

Featuring behind-the-scenes stories from Dolly Parton’s life and career, and the largest reveal of her private costume archive, this gorgeously photographed bookspotlights her most unforgettable looks from the 1960s to now. Thesky-high heels, famous wigs, bold makeup, eye-catching stage clothes—she shares them all. Along the way, Parton discusses memorable outfits from her past, from the clothes her mother would sew out of feed sacks (including her“Coat of Many Colors�) and the bold dresses and hairdos that shook up Nashville, to the bunny suit on the cover of Playboy, evening wear at Studio 54, costumes from her most famous film and TV roles, and the daring styles that continue to entertain and inspire today.

Filled with candor, humor, and lots and lots of rhinestones, Behind the My Life in Rhinestones is a shining tribute to one of the most beloved musicians in history, a treasured keepsake for anyone who loves Dolly Parton, and an indispensable guide to forging your own path to beauty and confidence.]]> 335 Dolly Parton 1984862138 Molly 0 to-read 4.12 2023 Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones
author: Dolly Parton
name: Molly
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Know My Name 50196744
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.]]> 384 Chanel Miller 0735223718 Molly 5 What if you're assaulted and you didn't already belong to a male? Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected?

I understood what the woman meant, that a transaction as simple as receiving a piece of furniture from a stranger possessed an inherent threat, that any time we met someone online, we must scan for signs of assault, rape, death, etc. We knew this. But the guy did not speak this language; he just saw a desk.

First, my wiener dog was strangled in a tight knot. It alarmed me that I'd almost killed my small friend. I gingerly untangled him.

There were many subtle moments like this where I paused to look the person in the eye in an attempt to say, If only you knew how much this meant to me. A small gesture, just remembering my name, or asking if I needed a little assistance, felt like warmth on my skin when I spent most of my time being numb. The custodian of my building, Anthony, was always refilling the hot cocoa machine on the fifth floor because he knew I drank two cups in the evenings. The Korean mother who worked at Sue's Market, oval bun and tiny round glasses, would look up and smile when I came in and say, Hi, Chanel, everything okay? Haven't seen you in a few days.

And finally there was the comedy crew, who made sure I got home safely in the evenings. These were the pockets of the world where I was regrowing.
They called me Chanel, not Brock Turner's victim, not Lucas's girlfriend. Just Chanel.

At parties, I measure everything. If there are no shot glasses, I use capfuls, hunched to conceal my obsessive techniques. I see people pouring and I stare. That's a free pour, I think, You can't do that, they'll say how much, how many ounces, one third or half of the cup, what kind of cup? If someone wanders to the bathroom or leaves with a guy, 1 grow tense, What do you mean she's gone, where'd she go, who'd she go with?

My advice is, if he's worried about his reputation, don't rape anyone.

On July 25, 2018, Brock's appellate attorney appeared in court before a panel of three judges to present his case that Brock had only intended to have outercourse. The Mercury News reported Justice Franklin Elia responding, I absolutely don't understand what you are talking about, which summed up everything I could say.

It brought to mind a Hafiz poem:
And then, all the and thens ceased.
Nothing remains to be done in the Order of time, when all is still.]]> 4.69 2019 Know My Name
author: Chanel Miller
name: Molly
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
I was thankful to have Lucas. But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I, alone, was not enough. At the hospital it had never occurred to me that it was important I was dating someone; I had only been thinking of me and my body. It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body. It felt strange to say, I have a boyfriend, which is why I did not want Brock touching my body.
What if you're assaulted and you didn't already belong to a male? Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected?

I understood what the woman meant, that a transaction as simple as receiving a piece of furniture from a stranger possessed an inherent threat, that any time we met someone online, we must scan for signs of assault, rape, death, etc. We knew this. But the guy did not speak this language; he just saw a desk.

First, my wiener dog was strangled in a tight knot. It alarmed me that I'd almost killed my small friend. I gingerly untangled him.

There were many subtle moments like this where I paused to look the person in the eye in an attempt to say, If only you knew how much this meant to me. A small gesture, just remembering my name, or asking if I needed a little assistance, felt like warmth on my skin when I spent most of my time being numb. The custodian of my building, Anthony, was always refilling the hot cocoa machine on the fifth floor because he knew I drank two cups in the evenings. The Korean mother who worked at Sue's Market, oval bun and tiny round glasses, would look up and smile when I came in and say, Hi, Chanel, everything okay? Haven't seen you in a few days.

And finally there was the comedy crew, who made sure I got home safely in the evenings. These were the pockets of the world where I was regrowing.
They called me Chanel, not Brock Turner's victim, not Lucas's girlfriend. Just Chanel.

At parties, I measure everything. If there are no shot glasses, I use capfuls, hunched to conceal my obsessive techniques. I see people pouring and I stare. That's a free pour, I think, You can't do that, they'll say how much, how many ounces, one third or half of the cup, what kind of cup? If someone wanders to the bathroom or leaves with a guy, 1 grow tense, What do you mean she's gone, where'd she go, who'd she go with?

My advice is, if he's worried about his reputation, don't rape anyone.

On July 25, 2018, Brock's appellate attorney appeared in court before a panel of three judges to present his case that Brock had only intended to have outercourse. The Mercury News reported Justice Franklin Elia responding, I absolutely don't understand what you are talking about, which summed up everything I could say.

It brought to mind a Hafiz poem:
And then, all the and thens ceased.
Nothing remains to be done in the Order of time, when all is still.
]]> <![CDATA[Really Very Crunchy: A Beginner's Guide to Removing Toxins from Your Life without Adding Them to Your Personality]]> 180351894 240 Emily Morrow 0310367522 Molly 0 to-read 4.14 2024 Really Very Crunchy: A Beginner's Guide to Removing Toxins from Your Life without Adding Them to Your Personality
author: Emily Morrow
name: Molly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)]]> 22034
Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.]]> 448 Mario Puzo Molly 0 to-read 4.39 1969 The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)
author: Mario Puzo
name: Molly
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Greatest Pub in the Multiverse (Greatest in the Multiverse)]]> 221831117 A heartwarming tale of friendship, acceptance, and the magic of second chances.

James O'Sullivan never wanted to return to his hometown of Cuanmore, but when his estranged father passes away, he finds himself drawn back to the family pub he left behind. Little does he know, O'Sullivan's Pub holds a secret that will change his life forever: a hidden portal to a magical pub that serves as a sanctuary for patrons from across the multiverse.



As James navigates his new role as the caretaker of The Pint & Portal, he must confront his past, forge unexpected friendships, and unravel the mysteries surrounding the pub's enchanted history. With the help of Emma, a former witch hunter seeking redemption, and a colorful cast of regulars from various worlds, James discovers that the true magic of The Pint & Portal lies not in its mystical brews or otherworldly visitors, but in the bonds of community and the power of empathy.



But when outside forces threaten to expose the pub's secrets and tear apart the fragile harmony James has built, he must rally his newfound family to protect their haven and prove that love and understanding can conquer even the deepest divisions.



The Greatest Pub in the Multiverse is a heartfelt and uplifting cozy fantasy that celebrates the beauty of found family, the strength of compassion, and the extraordinary magic that can be found in the most ordinary of places. Perfect for fans of Travis Baldree, TJ Klune, and anyone who believes in the power of a warm hearth, a cold pint, and an open heart.

]]> 396 Herman Steuernagel 1990505228 Molly 0 to-read 4.50 The Greatest Pub in the Multiverse (Greatest in the Multiverse)
author: Herman Steuernagel
name: Molly
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Other People’s Summers 218267244 A famous actress whose life is unraveling flees to an idyllic English lakeside resort and the best friend she ghosted in this poignant and witty story from the USA TODAYbestselling author of The Book Club Hotel.

In school, Milly Beckett and Nicole Raven were as close as sisters. Now, years later, a gulf separates them, and not just because of the different spheresthey inhabit. Nicole is a global superstar with the world at her fingertips, but when scandal breaks, she turns to the only person she trusts.

Fresh from a painful divorce and struggling to balance her work and raising her daughter alone, Milly is tempted to refuse her friend’s plea for help. Nicole wasn’t there for her when she needed her most, and that’s hard to forgive. But Nicole is desperate and Milly agrees to give her the sanctuary she needs.

Against a stunning Lake District backdrop, stilted small talk gradually gives way to soul-deep revelations as the two women slowly find their way back to one another. Living with Milly gives Nicole a glimpse of a different pathfor herself, and Milly starts to see a life beyond her divorce, including the possibility of a new romance. But Nicole can’t stay hidden forever—and neither can the secret she’s been keeping from Milly, a secret that threatens both her future happiness and the fragile bond between them.

Heartwarming and hopeful,Other People’s Summersexplores the beauty of friendship, the power of forgiveness, the impact of the choices we make and the many ways in which life can surprise us.

]]> 320 Sarah Morgan 1335147012 Molly 0 to-read 4.15 Other People’s Summers
author: Sarah Morgan
name: Molly
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hazel Says No 216865343
Hazel Blum, please report to the principal’s office. Hazel Blum.

When Hazel Blum’s father gets a tenured job at a prestigious college, she and her family relocate from the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn to a middle-of-nowhere college town in Maine. With her mother, Claire, a clothing designer, and her father, Gus, an American Studies professor, Hazel and her eleven-year-old brother, Wolf, spend the summer at the town pool, where they acclimate to their new lives and connect with the town’s sprawling community. That is, until a dramatic fallout on the very first day of her senior year tips the fickle balance of idyllic Riverburg and impacts everyone in her family.

Tracking through the perspectives of each member of the Blum family, this relatable fish-out-of-water story handles big issues with great empathy and humor, capturing the love that unites one unforgettable family and the essence of life in small-town Maine. Emotionally deft, authentic, and compulsively readable, Hazel Says No is a debut novel not to be missed.]]> 352 Jessica Berger Gross 1335015124 Molly 0 to-read 4.12 2025 Hazel Says No
author: Jessica Berger Gross
name: Molly
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead]]> 59366182 In this “fun, page-turner of a novel� (Sarah Haywood, New York Times bestselling author) that’s perfect for fans of Mostly Dead Things and Goodbye, Vitamin, a morbidly anxious young woman stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church and soon finds herself obsessed with her predecessor’s mysterious death.

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace.

In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace’s old friend. She can’t bear to ignore the kindly old woman who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can’t bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace’s death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence.

With a “kindhearted heroine we all need right now� (Courtney Maum, New York Times bestselling author), Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling and “delightfully weird reminder that we will one day turn to dust and that yes, this is depressing, but it’s also what makes life beautiful� (Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl).]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 198216736X Molly 5
So well-paced. So funny. Growing up in the catholic church (somewhat) I found a lot of the church-scenes absolutely hilarious and relatable. The cast of main characters so poignant. The emails. The voicemails. Gilda’s inner dialogue. It was all so touching and human.

Also fun fact: I currently live in the same city as the author. Pretty neat!

Quotes:

“Why am I so upset? Why do I care that Grace will never eat a cookie again, or that Rosemary doesn't know that? I don't even know these people. Why does it matter to me that this woman was not informed that her friend is dead? Why do I care? There are sadder things happening on this planet right now than old women dying after living long lives-�

“My face looks strange. Is it the mirror? It is a sort of warped, vintage mirror. Maybe it's distorting my face. My eyes look enormous, and my mouth looks so small. Was my mouth always that small in comparison to my other features? Is that really my face? Am I looking at a painting? Who is that?�

“It is one a.m. I was researching what to say in mass
when I was side-tracked by an article that claims priests used to kill themselves to be with God.
A notification obstructs the article on my phone.
It's Eleanor. She's texted me, asking, You up?
I text back Yes, and return to my article.
I guess this is why Catholics teach that suicide is a sin. They were running out of priests.
Another notification obstructs the article. What are you up to? Eleanor asks.
I write back: Researching the order of mass.
I guess heaven sounded so good to the holy men that they thought, hey, what are we waiting for?
She texts again, You're what?�

�"How did these get so knotted?" I ask Sister Jude as we untangle a box full of rosaries.
"Someone must have put them away carelessly," she sighs.
I think it was me.
I almost break the rosary in my hands as I undo a particularly tight
knot.
"Be careful!" she says, taking the rosary out of my hands in the same way she'd confiscate a knife from a toddler.
"Breaking a rosary is bad luck. It means someone's mad at you," she explains.
I have a feeling that if I broke a rosary, that person would be her.�

“Dear Grace,
How were your holidays? I hope you were able to spend time with your family and enjoy the holiday season.
The kids came over to my house. Cindy helped me cook. I made your apricot tarts. They were a hit, as usual.
I would be lying if I said I was fully in the spirit, however. Jim's absence was really noticeable. He used to wear a hat like Santa's all day on Christmas. We put the hat on his chair at dinner.
I am trying to be more grateful for what I have remaining in my life. I have my health, for example.
How have you been, Grace? Have you been feeling well? We're old birds now, aren't we?
Happy New Year.
Love,
Dz𳾲�

“My mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby. Every woman in my family before me lived to have a baby—just so that baby could grow up to have another baby. If I don't have a baby, then all of those women reproduced just so that I could exist. I am the final product. I am the final baby.� (me)

“A band is playing. The lights are moving in sync with the music. Whenever the drum beats, all the blue lights flash on and then off The red lights flicker in sync with the bass. When the singer hit a high note, all the lights point to her.
"How is everyone doing tonight!" the singer shrieks into the crowd.
Amid the screaming replies, I allow myself to say out loud, "I actually haven't been feeling well lately."
I look behind me and see that the room has been swarmed with people. I think about how strange it would be to see other animals do some of the things humans do. What if birds had concerts? I start to imagine a flock of hundreds of birds surrounding one little bird while it sings to them. That is what this is, when I think about it. We’re a herd of animals watching another animal make noises.�

“A couple is getting married today. The bride is blond, and she is wearing white despite something I overheard her soon-to-be mother in-law say in the hall.
I am standing at the back of the church, watching the couple at the front. They are looking into each other's faces, holding each othes hands.
I look around the church—at the crowd of people watching. They are all smiling up at the couple. Some of them are teary-eyed.
I wonder, why do we do this? We give each other rocks and wear expensive clothing to sign papers saying we will be someone's partner until one of us dies. We involve the government.
I look around the room again, at the happy faces of the people siting in the pews. They love this. They love watching these two get married.
The bride and the groom are grinning at each other.
Something in my mind clicks. This makes them happy. They buy expensive clothing and involve the government because it makes them happy.�

Dz,
Tell Jim I saw a man who looked just like him at the drugstore last night. I screamed "Jim!" over and over. When the man finally turned around and I realized it was not Jim, I recognized what a miracle it is they haven't committed me to a seniors' home yet. I have been laughing about it all day.
Love, your friend,
Grace
Her most recently sent email to Rosemary was for her birthday.
It said:
Dear Rosemary,
Happy belated birthday! My memory is going, Rosie. I'm sorry I didn't email you last week. If I ever miss it again, please consider this email my forever happy birthday. I hope every birthday, and every day you have left on this earth, is so happy you can barely stand it!!!”]]> 3.85 2021 Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Molly
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars rounded up. Ugh wow this book. It’s hard to know just what to say. Very, very relatable. I took so many pictures of so many pages that I wanted to remember. This is easily one of my new favorite books. It also did my anxiety absolutely no favors whatsoever.

So well-paced. So funny. Growing up in the catholic church (somewhat) I found a lot of the church-scenes absolutely hilarious and relatable. The cast of main characters so poignant. The emails. The voicemails. Gilda’s inner dialogue. It was all so touching and human.

Also fun fact: I currently live in the same city as the author. Pretty neat!

Quotes:

“Why am I so upset? Why do I care that Grace will never eat a cookie again, or that Rosemary doesn't know that? I don't even know these people. Why does it matter to me that this woman was not informed that her friend is dead? Why do I care? There are sadder things happening on this planet right now than old women dying after living long lives-�

“My face looks strange. Is it the mirror? It is a sort of warped, vintage mirror. Maybe it's distorting my face. My eyes look enormous, and my mouth looks so small. Was my mouth always that small in comparison to my other features? Is that really my face? Am I looking at a painting? Who is that?�

“It is one a.m. I was researching what to say in mass
when I was side-tracked by an article that claims priests used to kill themselves to be with God.
A notification obstructs the article on my phone.
It's Eleanor. She's texted me, asking, You up?
I text back Yes, and return to my article.
I guess this is why Catholics teach that suicide is a sin. They were running out of priests.
Another notification obstructs the article. What are you up to? Eleanor asks.
I write back: Researching the order of mass.
I guess heaven sounded so good to the holy men that they thought, hey, what are we waiting for?
She texts again, You're what?�

�"How did these get so knotted?" I ask Sister Jude as we untangle a box full of rosaries.
"Someone must have put them away carelessly," she sighs.
I think it was me.
I almost break the rosary in my hands as I undo a particularly tight
knot.
"Be careful!" she says, taking the rosary out of my hands in the same way she'd confiscate a knife from a toddler.
"Breaking a rosary is bad luck. It means someone's mad at you," she explains.
I have a feeling that if I broke a rosary, that person would be her.�

“Dear Grace,
How were your holidays? I hope you were able to spend time with your family and enjoy the holiday season.
The kids came over to my house. Cindy helped me cook. I made your apricot tarts. They were a hit, as usual.
I would be lying if I said I was fully in the spirit, however. Jim's absence was really noticeable. He used to wear a hat like Santa's all day on Christmas. We put the hat on his chair at dinner.
I am trying to be more grateful for what I have remaining in my life. I have my health, for example.
How have you been, Grace? Have you been feeling well? We're old birds now, aren't we?
Happy New Year.
Love,
Dz𳾲�

“My mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby. Every woman in my family before me lived to have a baby—just so that baby could grow up to have another baby. If I don't have a baby, then all of those women reproduced just so that I could exist. I am the final product. I am the final baby.� (me)

“A band is playing. The lights are moving in sync with the music. Whenever the drum beats, all the blue lights flash on and then off The red lights flicker in sync with the bass. When the singer hit a high note, all the lights point to her.
"How is everyone doing tonight!" the singer shrieks into the crowd.
Amid the screaming replies, I allow myself to say out loud, "I actually haven't been feeling well lately."
I look behind me and see that the room has been swarmed with people. I think about how strange it would be to see other animals do some of the things humans do. What if birds had concerts? I start to imagine a flock of hundreds of birds surrounding one little bird while it sings to them. That is what this is, when I think about it. We’re a herd of animals watching another animal make noises.�

“A couple is getting married today. The bride is blond, and she is wearing white despite something I overheard her soon-to-be mother in-law say in the hall.
I am standing at the back of the church, watching the couple at the front. They are looking into each other's faces, holding each othes hands.
I look around the church—at the crowd of people watching. They are all smiling up at the couple. Some of them are teary-eyed.
I wonder, why do we do this? We give each other rocks and wear expensive clothing to sign papers saying we will be someone's partner until one of us dies. We involve the government.
I look around the room again, at the happy faces of the people siting in the pews. They love this. They love watching these two get married.
The bride and the groom are grinning at each other.
Something in my mind clicks. This makes them happy. They buy expensive clothing and involve the government because it makes them happy.�

Dz,
Tell Jim I saw a man who looked just like him at the drugstore last night. I screamed "Jim!" over and over. When the man finally turned around and I realized it was not Jim, I recognized what a miracle it is they haven't committed me to a seniors' home yet. I have been laughing about it all day.
Love, your friend,
Grace
Her most recently sent email to Rosemary was for her birthday.
It said:
Dear Rosemary,
Happy belated birthday! My memory is going, Rosie. I'm sorry I didn't email you last week. If I ever miss it again, please consider this email my forever happy birthday. I hope every birthday, and every day you have left on this earth, is so happy you can barely stand it!!!�
]]> Kukum 122004920 224 Michel Jean 1487010907 Molly 0 to-read 4.33 2019 Kukum
author: Michel Jean
name: Molly
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America]]> 451044 San Francisco Examiner.]]> 400 Lillian Faderman 0140171223 Molly 0 to-read 4.02 1991 Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
author: Lillian Faderman
name: Molly
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters]]> 16200
*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet]]> 208 Mark Dunn 0385722435 Molly 4
I actually really enjoyed this book and felt it was a fun and clever way to demonstrate the censorship. I love to see the different ways that such an important topic is tackled! It was really engaging, especially as more people left the island. You could feel the emptiness.

The later switch to phonetic spelling reminded me a lot of those early contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary who wished to see a switch to phonetic spelling (and are now the reason we have phonetic spelling in the dictionary, even if we don’t use the phonetic version primarily).

Great book for YA but I don’t think it should be pushed off as only good for young readers. There are many ways to tackle this topic and I don’t really feel one is necessarily better than others. The more we think of this topic, the better!

RIP Mannheim ]]> 3.93 2001 Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
author: Mark Dunn
name: Molly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:
Finally got around to this one after a friend lent it to me. One I have heard a lot about but never got around to/even looked out for. Really glad I read it. The premise reminded me a lot of The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, but in this version there is somewhat.. less blind acceptance?

I actually really enjoyed this book and felt it was a fun and clever way to demonstrate the censorship. I love to see the different ways that such an important topic is tackled! It was really engaging, especially as more people left the island. You could feel the emptiness.

The later switch to phonetic spelling reminded me a lot of those early contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary who wished to see a switch to phonetic spelling (and are now the reason we have phonetic spelling in the dictionary, even if we don’t use the phonetic version primarily).

Great book for YA but I don’t think it should be pushed off as only good for young readers. There are many ways to tackle this topic and I don’t really feel one is necessarily better than others. The more we think of this topic, the better!

RIP Mannheim
]]> Be Gay, Do Crime 222778904 A follow-up to their runaway success Peach Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women, editors Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley return with Be Gay, Do Crime, a celebration of queer chaos from an all-queer author lineup featuring Myriam Gurba, Emily Austin, Alissa Nutting, and Francesca Ekwuyasi

A trans woman makes increasingly frequent hoax calls to a business where she's had a negative experience, watching the consequences with perverse joy. A group of aging queers turns to bank robbery to stop the sale of their bungalow complex to a development company. As the president prepares to give a speech, two women lurk among the journalists, ready to shoot him. And an aspiring author takes to stealing items from strangers� homes in a kind of cosmic redistribution each time one of her relationships fail.

In sixteen brilliant, wild-eyed stories, Be Gay, Do Crime delivers a celebration and reckoning of why queer people turn to crime–unintentionally, as a means of survival, as protest, as rescue, or to right injustices big and small.
]]> Molly Llewellyn 1938603451 Molly 0 to-read 5.00 Be Gay, Do Crime
author: Molly Llewellyn
name: Molly
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gay Girl Prayers 183910792 72 Emily R. Austin 1771316225 Molly 0 to-read 3.87 Gay Girl Prayers
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Molly
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Interesting Facts about Space 176443380
As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself.

Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.]]> 320 Emily R. Austin 1668014238 Molly 0 to-read 3.84 2024 Interesting Facts about Space
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Molly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hidden Pictures 58724923 A wildly inventive spin on the supernatural thriller, about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets.

Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.

Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force.

Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.]]> 372 Jason Rekulak 1250819342 Molly 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Hidden Pictures
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Molly
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Be Ready When the Luck Happens]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 320 Ina Garten 0593799895 Molly 3
There were parts of this memoir I found very inspiring or relatable. Whether it was their attitude on living cheaply abroad, or relationship struggles, or wanting to go after what you want in your own way. I also really enjoyed some of the food/scenery descriptions. I also (despite what it may sound like later in this review) thought her relationship seemed Lovely and very sweet, it is amazing to see that two people were able to grow together for so long. Both of them in their own off-beat ways.

However this book went on a bit� too long and the pluckiness that started off entertaining started to wear on me. I don’t want to claim she hasn’t worked hard, I really feel she has. But she doesn’t seem at all aware (title aside) of how Insanely Lucky she has been or privileged. As a Gen Z in her mid-twenties I can barely fathom buying a first house (though we sure are trying) never-mind making “real estate� and “interior design� my “hobbies. That’s insanely fortunate. She doesn’t seem to realize most people’s dads aren’t mid-life crisis buying one of two houses designed by a world-famous architect that they can then get married in (another thing I stress about paying for!)

That falling in and out of insanely successful businesses and hoping the money appears (which it somehow always did!) is not a usual experience. I have never even been overseas because I simply cannot afford it. Our partners aren’t job hopping from success to success and having our bosses frontload any expense to make our long distance relationship work. And it’s great she has had such a great life but Ina, most of us CANNOT AFFORD to be ready when the luck happens. I wish!

Her writing also started to slog a bit, and was a bit repetitive at times. More than once she started to sound like that 50s housewife she apparently wasn’t trying to be. I am sure Jeffrey is lovely but you don’t Need to tell me that 30 times a chapter. She talks about re-reading her old letters at the end and sliding out a window in a barrel in college? WHERE IS THAT MEMOIR? Even her time in Paris on $5 a day is largely glossed over. Lots of glossing, lots of marriage talk, maybe not enough on the fun little day-to-day details.

Some parts of this were very sweet but ultimately tone-deaf. Even more so once the celebrity besties in the Hamptons and Paris, friends of friends and guests on her show started rolling in. I would love to have a life like Ina’s but I really am not holding my breath.

However I did enjoy her passion for food, her desire to uplift her younger employees, and her stubbornness. Her recipes did seem good too, might have to pick up one of those cookbooks (or find the recipes online).

SPOILERS

“Here are my plans/dreams. We go to Paris once, at least, in the next five years. We won't have much money but that will be all the fun.
Maybe we could go camping. But instead of touring the Louvre, etc., I'd like to get up at 4 a.m. and walk the streets...down the Champs de L'Esse [his spelling!] while the sun comes up... around the markets... along the Seine. That's us...not the fancy restaurants, etc.�

“…grapes in the middle, put the cheeses back around the grapes, then a few groupings of strawberries and crackers, and then stop yourself." Anna taught me that often, "less is more," and quality is everything.�

“As a finishing touch, I added an old-fashioned screen door to the entrance-the sound of that door slamming shut was the essence of summer, of vacations and carefree times, a signal to relax, indulge, and eat!�

“Everywhere I went there were inspirations the warm goat cheese salad from Café Varenne and the blue cheese soufflé I loved at Le Récamier. My goal was to make these dishes accessible for Americans at home with American ingredients. We don't have the classic French potiron squash, but I found the combination of canned pumpkin and fresh butternut squash made the perfect classic soupe au potiron-without the potiron! I loved writing this cookbook because I was living it!”]]> 4.25 2024 Be Ready When the Luck Happens
author: Ina Garten
name: Molly
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
Really mixed feelings about this book. I hadn’t heard of Ina Garten really, I mean. Yes I have distantly heard of Barefoot Contessa but I actually picked up this memoir after seeing rave reviews.

There were parts of this memoir I found very inspiring or relatable. Whether it was their attitude on living cheaply abroad, or relationship struggles, or wanting to go after what you want in your own way. I also really enjoyed some of the food/scenery descriptions. I also (despite what it may sound like later in this review) thought her relationship seemed Lovely and very sweet, it is amazing to see that two people were able to grow together for so long. Both of them in their own off-beat ways.

However this book went on a bit� too long and the pluckiness that started off entertaining started to wear on me. I don’t want to claim she hasn’t worked hard, I really feel she has. But she doesn’t seem at all aware (title aside) of how Insanely Lucky she has been or privileged. As a Gen Z in her mid-twenties I can barely fathom buying a first house (though we sure are trying) never-mind making “real estate� and “interior design� my “hobbies. That’s insanely fortunate. She doesn’t seem to realize most people’s dads aren’t mid-life crisis buying one of two houses designed by a world-famous architect that they can then get married in (another thing I stress about paying for!)

That falling in and out of insanely successful businesses and hoping the money appears (which it somehow always did!) is not a usual experience. I have never even been overseas because I simply cannot afford it. Our partners aren’t job hopping from success to success and having our bosses frontload any expense to make our long distance relationship work. And it’s great she has had such a great life but Ina, most of us CANNOT AFFORD to be ready when the luck happens. I wish!

Her writing also started to slog a bit, and was a bit repetitive at times. More than once she started to sound like that 50s housewife she apparently wasn’t trying to be. I am sure Jeffrey is lovely but you don’t Need to tell me that 30 times a chapter. She talks about re-reading her old letters at the end and sliding out a window in a barrel in college? WHERE IS THAT MEMOIR? Even her time in Paris on $5 a day is largely glossed over. Lots of glossing, lots of marriage talk, maybe not enough on the fun little day-to-day details.

Some parts of this were very sweet but ultimately tone-deaf. Even more so once the celebrity besties in the Hamptons and Paris, friends of friends and guests on her show started rolling in. I would love to have a life like Ina’s but I really am not holding my breath.

However I did enjoy her passion for food, her desire to uplift her younger employees, and her stubbornness. Her recipes did seem good too, might have to pick up one of those cookbooks (or find the recipes online).

SPOILERS

“Here are my plans/dreams. We go to Paris once, at least, in the next five years. We won't have much money but that will be all the fun.
Maybe we could go camping. But instead of touring the Louvre, etc., I'd like to get up at 4 a.m. and walk the streets...down the Champs de L'Esse [his spelling!] while the sun comes up... around the markets... along the Seine. That's us...not the fancy restaurants, etc.�

“…grapes in the middle, put the cheeses back around the grapes, then a few groupings of strawberries and crackers, and then stop yourself." Anna taught me that often, "less is more," and quality is everything.�

“As a finishing touch, I added an old-fashioned screen door to the entrance-the sound of that door slamming shut was the essence of summer, of vacations and carefree times, a signal to relax, indulge, and eat!�

“Everywhere I went there were inspirations the warm goat cheese salad from Café Varenne and the blue cheese soufflé I loved at Le Récamier. My goal was to make these dishes accessible for Americans at home with American ingredients. We don't have the classic French potiron squash, but I found the combination of canned pumpkin and fresh butternut squash made the perfect classic soupe au potiron-without the potiron! I loved writing this cookbook because I was living it!�
]]> V for Vendetta 5805 "Remember, remember the fifth of November..."

A frightening and powerful tale of the loss of freedom and identity in a chillingly believable totalitarian world, V for Vendetta stands as one of the highest achievements of the comics medium and a defining work for creators Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance.]]> 296 Alan Moore 1401207928 Molly 0 to-read 4.26 1990 V for Vendetta
author: Alan Moore
name: Molly
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lady Chatterley’s Lover 32049 376 D.H. Lawrence 039460430X Molly 0 to-read 3.56 1928 Lady Chatterley’s Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Molly
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future]]> 62585980
A global exploration of the eight remaining species of bears―and the dangers they face.

Bears have always held a central place in our collective memory, from Indigenous folklore and Greek mythology to nineteenth-century fairytales and the modern toy shop. But as humans and bears come into ever-closer contact, our relationship nears
a tipping point. Today, most of the eight remaining bear species are threatened with extinction. Some, such as the panda bear and the polar bear, are icons of the natural world; others, such as the spectacled bear and the sloth bear, are far less known.

In Eight Bears, journalist Gloria Dickie embarks on a globe-trotting journey to explore each bear’s story, whisking readers from the cloud forests of the Andes to the ice floes of the Arctic; from the jungles of India to the backwoods of the Rocky Mountain West. She meets with key figures on the frontlines of modern conservation efforts—the head of a rescue center for sun and moon bears freed from bile farms, a biologist known as Papa Panda, who has led China’s panda-breeding efforts for almost four decades, a conservationist retraining a military radar system to detect and track polar bears near towns—to reveal the unparalleled challenges bears face as they contend with a rapidly changing climate and encroaching human populations.

Weaving together ecology, history, mythology, and a captivating account of her travels and observations, Dickie offers a closer look at our volatile relationship with these magnificent mammals. Engrossing and deeply reported, Eight Bears delivers a clear warning for what we risk losing if we don’t learn to live alongside the animals that have shaped our cultures, geographies, and stories.]]> 272 Gloria Dickie 1324005084 Molly 0 to-read 4.25 2023 Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future
author: Gloria Dickie
name: Molly
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Say You'll Remember Me (Say You'll Remember Me, #1)]]> 216437557 disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong�

. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 0349442827 Molly 0 to-read 4.13 2025 Say You'll Remember Me (Say You'll Remember Me, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Molly
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative]]> 207376026
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2024: Bookshop, Apple Books, and more!!

Keke Palmer thought she knew who she was. What it means to be a good person and what it takes to be a success. It all seemed so simple, until she realized the challenges she would have to face to prove to herself who she wanted to be. From feeling alienated to having to restart her career after ten years in to becoming a single mother just months after her son was born—everything she worked for in life that she felt granted her what she wanted now also reminded her that “life is going to life� and throw curveballs regardless of what you deserve. She found herself asking, Where do I find my power? How do I master myself?

In her own raw and intimate words, Keke talks about everything from her struggles with boundaries to unconditional love, forgiveness, and worthiness. “Don’t block your blessings and potential opportunities by allowing the voices of other people to influence your actions,� she says. “How you’re choosing to set yourself up for success is between you and the person looking back at you in the mirror.�

Throughout the book, Keke also poses readers with the questions needed to get them through their own challenging times by sharing personal stories and lessons she’s learned along the way. She gets candid about the tools she’s developed to take the reins, harness her vulnerability, and recognize ownership in the narrative of her life—which allowed her to turn personal power into major power.

In this exhilarating, deeply poignant, and often laugh-out-loud book, Lauren Keyana Palmer gets real about life, work, love, and belief. These pages will encourage readers to empower themselves with the truth, leverage their currency, and find the keys to master themselves and the art of alchemy. Keke writes, “You are not on anyone else’s timeline, only your own.�

The result is a tour de force.

They said, “Jack of all Trades, Master of None.�
She said, “No, I am the Master. Of Me.”]]> 256 Keke Palmer 1250372518 Molly 0 to-read 3.54 2024 Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative
author: Keke Palmer
name: Molly
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Little Shrew 200109893 72 Akiko Miyakoshi 1525313037 Molly 0 to-read 4.33 2022 Little Shrew
author: Akiko Miyakoshi
name: Molly
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Spellshop 217206125 The Spellshop is Sarah Beth Durst’s romantasy debut–a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love.

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.

When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.

In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.

But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.

Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.]]> 377 Sarah Beth Durst 1250333970 Molly 0 to-read 3.98 2024 The Spellshop
author: Sarah Beth Durst
name: Molly
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Thing Between Us 56269269
“This intense cosmic horror with a touch of Mexican American folklore is incredibly creepy and moving.� —Margaret Kingsbury, BuzzFeed

It was Vera’s idea to buy the Itza. The “world’s most advanced smart speaker!� didn’t interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house—who ordered industrial lye? Then there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.

It was funny and strange right up until Vera was killed, and Thiago’s world became unbearable. Pundits and politicians all looking to turn his wife’s death into a symbol for their own agendas. A barrage of texts from her well-meaning friends about letting go and moving on. Waking to the sound of Itza talking softly to someone in the living room . . .

The only thing left to do was get far away from Chicago. Away from everything and everyone. A secluded cabin in Colorado seemed like the perfect place to hole up with his crushing grief. But soon Thiago realizes there is no escape—not from his guilt, not from his simmering rage, and not from the evil hunting him, feeding on his grief, determined to make its way into this world.

A bold, original horror novel about grief, loneliness and the oppressive intimacy of technology, This Thing Between Us marks the arrival of a spectacular new talent.]]> 272 Gus Moreno 0374539235 Molly 5
Edit: almost exactly a year later and still thinking about the wall. ]]> 3.70 2021 This Thing Between Us
author: Gus Moreno
name: Molly
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
Making everyone read this. A friend Bree in bookclub recommended it. Ended up reading it the same day, couldn’t put it down!!! Packing can wait, right? I move to Canada in 4 days, plenty of time!

Edit: almost exactly a year later and still thinking about the wall.
]]> I'm Thinking of Ending Things 40605223 Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why�

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.�

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 241 Iain Reid Molly 4
It went much, much faster than I expected. Especially with how dense the text/topics could be. Maybe it helped that I saw the movie a few years ago? A movie my partner and I actually only watched because my best friend said I “had to� and I “couldn’t look up anything about it first�. Which. By the way. Definitely the best way to watch it, what the hell.

But anyway recently I have been into similar thrillers and saw this mentioned a few times. I never intended to read this (or watch the movie again for that matter) but now it seems I will be doing both. This was so good and engaging!!! The repetition chapter towards the end?! SO Well Done. Probably didn’t hurt that I read this into the night.

I really loved how this unspooled and yeah definitely going to need to sit through that movie again for comparison purposes. I haven’t seen it since around when it came out I think.

I also got this weird intense deja vu around the throwing away cups scene. I don’t know why. Maybe from the movie? I guess? But it felt like I had read it before and I definitely haven’t. Might have been similar to a scene in another book I have read OR I did read a lot of explanation articles after watching the movie so maybe it was quoted in there. Either way only added to the eeriness for me, for sure.

SPOILERS

“He never let me finish my story. I never kissed Doug after our lesson. Jake assumed. He assumed I kissed Doug. But a kiss needs two people who want to kiss, or it's something else.
Here's what really happened. I went back to the car that time. I leaned in the window and opened my hand, revealing the tiny wrinkled candy wrapper, the one Doug gave me. I uncrumpled it and read it:

My heart, my heart alone with its lapping waves of song, longs to touch this green world of the sunny day. Hello!�

"It seems like more people, if not depressed, are unhappy these days. Would you agree?"
"I'm not sure I'd say that. It does seem like there's more opportunity to reflect on sadness and feelings of inadequacy, and also a pressure to be happy all the time. Which is impossible."

“I always thought I would light that candle one day. I never did. The more time passed, the harder it became to light. Whenever I thought an occasion might be special enough to burn the candle, it felt like I was settling. So I would wait for a better occasion. It's still there, unlit, on top of a bookcase. There was never an occasion special enough. How could that be?”]]> 3.53 2016 I'm Thinking of Ending Things
author: Iain Reid
name: Molly
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
Read the book in almost exactly 3 hours (thanks Libby!)

It went much, much faster than I expected. Especially with how dense the text/topics could be. Maybe it helped that I saw the movie a few years ago? A movie my partner and I actually only watched because my best friend said I “had to� and I “couldn’t look up anything about it first�. Which. By the way. Definitely the best way to watch it, what the hell.

But anyway recently I have been into similar thrillers and saw this mentioned a few times. I never intended to read this (or watch the movie again for that matter) but now it seems I will be doing both. This was so good and engaging!!! The repetition chapter towards the end?! SO Well Done. Probably didn’t hurt that I read this into the night.

I really loved how this unspooled and yeah definitely going to need to sit through that movie again for comparison purposes. I haven’t seen it since around when it came out I think.

I also got this weird intense deja vu around the throwing away cups scene. I don’t know why. Maybe from the movie? I guess? But it felt like I had read it before and I definitely haven’t. Might have been similar to a scene in another book I have read OR I did read a lot of explanation articles after watching the movie so maybe it was quoted in there. Either way only added to the eeriness for me, for sure.

SPOILERS

“He never let me finish my story. I never kissed Doug after our lesson. Jake assumed. He assumed I kissed Doug. But a kiss needs two people who want to kiss, or it's something else.
Here's what really happened. I went back to the car that time. I leaned in the window and opened my hand, revealing the tiny wrinkled candy wrapper, the one Doug gave me. I uncrumpled it and read it:

My heart, my heart alone with its lapping waves of song, longs to touch this green world of the sunny day. Hello!�

"It seems like more people, if not depressed, are unhappy these days. Would you agree?"
"I'm not sure I'd say that. It does seem like there's more opportunity to reflect on sadness and feelings of inadequacy, and also a pressure to be happy all the time. Which is impossible."

“I always thought I would light that candle one day. I never did. The more time passed, the harder it became to light. Whenever I thought an occasion might be special enough to burn the candle, it felt like I was settling. So I would wait for a better occasion. It's still there, unlit, on top of a bookcase. There was never an occasion special enough. How could that be?�
]]> <![CDATA[Wings of Starlight (Disney Fairies)]]> 212808316 Brimming with magic and romance, a young fairy queen must form an unlikely alliance or risk an unspeakable danger destroying all she holds dear in this standalone YA novel from New York Times bestselling author Allison Saft.

It’s been centuries since a warm-season fairy in Pixie Hollow has crossed into the Winter Woods, and while most fear the legends of monsters lurking in the frozen lands, Clarion, can’t help being intrigued by Winter’s stoic beauty. But under the watchful eyes of the current monarch and the court's seasonal ministers, Clarion has little time to dwell on daydreams while the days to her coronation dwindle away.

That is, until reports of a monster crossing from Winter into Spring make their way to the palace. Clarion sees defeating this threat as an opportunity to prove that she is worthy of her new role. But instead of finding a monster at the edge of Winter, she finds Milori, a young guardian of the Winter Woods. Together, they form an unlikely bond as they race to save their lands.

But as their alliance warms to something more, they will discover there is a reason a warm-season fairy and a winter fairy must not be together. And the cost could be just as deadly as the monsters that prowl the Winter Woods.

Discover the origin of the sweeping, star-crossed romance between the queen of Pixie Hollow and the lord of the Winter Woods.]]> 400 Allison Saft 1368098452 Molly 5
I didn’t watch the Disney Tinkerbell movies until I was a teenager/young adult (they mostly came out after I was a kid and I threw them on one day for shits and giggles and� yeah they sucked me in). But I did see Peter Pan (live action first and then animated) as a kid, of course, and I read and owned the Disney Fairies illustration infused “chapter books� as a kid and loved those. All of this to say I have loved Pixie Hollow for a long time and teen/young adult me TOTALLY clocked the tension between the Queen and the Lord of Winter in the movies. I 100% remember looking at fanfiction for the first time in a while, and scouring internet forums, for answers with little to no luck.

So when I heard about this book earlier this year?! Instant purchase. It was sold out at all but one store in my area (30 mins away, and their last copy). I didn’t get a chance to really sit and read it until now but I LOVED IT.

Let me get my (minimal) complaints out of the way first. Sometimes I wanted a little more creativity from the author re:the fairy realm. Bedsheets? Badminton rackets? I mean� come on. Tinkerbell has an entire arc about lost things from the human world and you want me to believe soon-to-be Queen Clarion has a fitted sheet and plays badminton? Also I really, really wanted an epilogue a-la (SUNRISE ON THE REAPING SPOILER) Haymitch talking about Katniss and Peeta. Although I didn’t actually like that epilogue that much, I do think it would have been fun to hear about Clarion and Milori reuniting for that tension filled dance when Tink finds her (random) twin and breaks all the rules to reunite the realms. Also I wish we had heard an eensy bit more from the ministers of the seasons.

Also not a complaint but I would kill for a book from Milori’s POV.

Okay onto what I loved. THE TENSION. THE YEARNING. THE SLOW BURN ROMANCE (needed more!!!!) the descriptions of the food and the smells and the scenery felt very true to the first Pixie Hollow books I read which was nice. Also Petra being her friend?! Ahhhh!!!!! And the LESBIANS. YES. Also also also the way the author totally tied in the Milori lore we see in the movies with the wings and the owl!!!!! Uuuuugh need more. I loved these two SO MUCH. And the Keeper!!! It felt so natural and totally made sense. I even got pulled in by the Nightmare threat WAY more than I thought I would! Even Elvina got me in the end. I loved her last few descriptions.

Ugh and that final kiss?! Kill me.

SO GOOD. ]]> 4.25 2025 Wings of Starlight (Disney Fairies)
author: Allison Saft
name: Molly
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I didn’t watch the Disney Tinkerbell movies until I was a teenager/young adult (they mostly came out after I was a kid and I threw them on one day for shits and giggles and� yeah they sucked me in). But I did see Peter Pan (live action first and then animated) as a kid, of course, and I read and owned the Disney Fairies illustration infused “chapter books� as a kid and loved those. All of this to say I have loved Pixie Hollow for a long time and teen/young adult me TOTALLY clocked the tension between the Queen and the Lord of Winter in the movies. I 100% remember looking at fanfiction for the first time in a while, and scouring internet forums, for answers with little to no luck.

So when I heard about this book earlier this year?! Instant purchase. It was sold out at all but one store in my area (30 mins away, and their last copy). I didn’t get a chance to really sit and read it until now but I LOVED IT.

Let me get my (minimal) complaints out of the way first. Sometimes I wanted a little more creativity from the author re:the fairy realm. Bedsheets? Badminton rackets? I mean� come on. Tinkerbell has an entire arc about lost things from the human world and you want me to believe soon-to-be Queen Clarion has a fitted sheet and plays badminton? Also I really, really wanted an epilogue a-la (SUNRISE ON THE REAPING SPOILER) Haymitch talking about Katniss and Peeta. Although I didn’t actually like that epilogue that much, I do think it would have been fun to hear about Clarion and Milori reuniting for that tension filled dance when Tink finds her (random) twin and breaks all the rules to reunite the realms. Also I wish we had heard an eensy bit more from the ministers of the seasons.

Also not a complaint but I would kill for a book from Milori’s POV.

Okay onto what I loved. THE TENSION. THE YEARNING. THE SLOW BURN ROMANCE (needed more!!!!) the descriptions of the food and the smells and the scenery felt very true to the first Pixie Hollow books I read which was nice. Also Petra being her friend?! Ahhhh!!!!! And the LESBIANS. YES. Also also also the way the author totally tied in the Milori lore we see in the movies with the wings and the owl!!!!! Uuuuugh need more. I loved these two SO MUCH. And the Keeper!!! It felt so natural and totally made sense. I even got pulled in by the Nightmare threat WAY more than I thought I would! Even Elvina got me in the end. I loved her last few descriptions.

Ugh and that final kiss?! Kill me.

SO GOOD.
]]> The Book of Goose 59808607 A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.]]> 348 Yiyun Li 037460634X Molly 0 to-read 3.67 2022 The Book of Goose
author: Yiyun Li
name: Molly
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cry for Me, Argentina: My Life As a Failed Child Star]]> 217387918 For readers of Samantha Irby and Jennette McCurdy, a hilarious moving memoir by Argentine-American comedian Tamara Yajia about growing up between two worlds.

From the day she was born, Tamara Yajia entered the world on a wave of absurdity. She was the newest member of a family no one would call normal, from her grandfather the salami obsessed poppers salesman, to her mother, the OnlyFans model. Not only will her family try anything once, like moving to the United States and opening a food stand named Sexy Chicken; they'll try anything multiple times, like moving back to Argentina, then back to the United States, all while Tamara manages to achieve some success as a preteen child actress after a jaw-dropping performance where she strips down to a garter belt in front of a crowd of rabbis.

The road doesn't get easier for a twelve-year-old Argentinian Jew trying to make it big in Orange County. The disappointment of giving up her childhood career as a performer makes for a rather tumultuous coming of age. But through grit, hustle, and a series of creative endeavors like joining a girl band, and performing her own one-woman show, Cumming of Age, Tam has made it through, and she's ready to spill some shit-figuratively and literally.

Featuring an unlikely combination of comedy and tragedy, generational struggle, and filthy sex jokes, Tamara Yajia's debut memoir is the messy, blazing story of a young Argentine trying to survive while holding on to her confidence, ambition, and sense of humor.]]> 240 Tamara Yajia 1639733914 Molly 0 to-read 4.50 2025 Cry for Me, Argentina: My Life As a Failed Child Star
author: Tamara Yajia
name: Molly
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)]]> 63132313 Welcome to Scion. No safer place.

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing.

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal � and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.]]> 560 Samantha Shannon 1639732233 Molly 0 to-read 4.24 2013 The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Molly
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Among the Burning Flowers (The Roots of Chaos, #0.5)]]> 222376983 With the awakening of fire-breathing dragons, Among the Burning Flowers sees the first sparks of danger that threaten to consume the world in The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Take your first steps into the epic.
Yscalin, land of sunshine and lavender, will soon be ablaze.

It has been centuries since the Draconic Army took wing, almost extinguishing humankind.

Marosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home, controlled by her cold father, King Sigoso. Over the mountains, her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name. Together, they intend to usher in a better world.

A better world seems impossibly distant to Estina Melaugo, who hunts the Draconic beasts that have slept across the world for centuries.

And now the great wyrm Fýredel is stirring, and Yscalin will be the first to fall . . .

A story of human resilience in the face of dire circumstances, Among the Burning Flowers leads readers through the gripping and tragic circumstances that pave the way for the opening of the million-copy bestseller The Priory of The Orange Tree.

Richly illustrated with magical artwork by Rovina Cai (@rovinacai).]]> 304 Samantha Shannon 1639736018 Molly 0 to-read 4.41 2025 Among the Burning Flowers (The Roots of Chaos, #0.5)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Molly
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction � but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 Molly 0 to-read 4.18 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Molly
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Soft as Bones: A Memoir 210367079
In her deeply affecting memoir, Soft as Bones, Chyana Marie Sage shares the pain of growing up with her a crack dealer who went to prison for molesting her older sister. She details the shame and guilt she carried for years after her family’s trauma as she went from one dysfunctional relationship to another, from one illegal drug to another. In revisiting her family’s history and weaving in the perspectives of her mother and sisters, Chyana examines the legacy of generational abuse, which began with her father’s father, who was forcibly removed from his family by the residential schools and Sixties Scoops programs.

Yet hers is also a story of hope, as it was the traditions of her people that saved her life. In candid, incisive, and delicate prose, Chyana braids personal narrative with Cree stories and ceremonies, all as a means of healing one small piece of the mosaic that makes up the dark past of colonialism shared by Indigenous people throughout Turtle Island.]]> 296 Chyana Marie Sage 1487013027 Molly 0 to-read 4.89 Soft as Bones: A Memoir
author: Chyana Marie Sage
name: Molly
average rating: 4.89
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> First Time, Long Time 221179141 For readers of Emma Cline and Melissa Broder, the story of an adrift, sardonic young woman falling for an older radio host� and then for his daughter.

When aspiring writer Allison moved to L.A., she expected her life to finally take shape. After years of dwelling in grief over her brother's unexpected and untimely death, and allowing her mercurial parents' feelings and desires to infect her own, she almost feels ready become the main character in her own story again. Yet Allison continues to feel inextricably tied to both her parents, particularly her unpredictable father, and weighed down by her the loss of her brother. In L.A., as with anywhere else, she feels uninspired and lonely, unable to write and barely scraping by as an English teacher, while struggling to connect with her students and fellow instructors.

After a serendipitous run in with famed radio DJ Reid Steinman, an idol of her father’s, Allison is rapidly drawn under his spell, while also developing an unanticipated, tangled relationship with his adult daughter, Maddie. She’s forced to balance her romance with Reid with her gnawing desire for the intoxicatingly charming Maddie, as it becomes increasingly evident that she and Allison's late brother share more than a few qualities. As Allison's relationships with the equally self-possessed father and daughter deepens, she struggles to establish the boundaries of her own identity.

Through candid self-awareness, keen observations, and deliciously wry humor, FIRST TIME, LONG TIME asks, what happens to a young woman’s goals when she becomes involved with a famous man? And how might she move forward when so much in her past remains unresolved?]]> 304 Amy Silverberg 1538726475 Molly 0 to-read 4.36 First Time, Long Time
author: Amy Silverberg
name: Molly
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Trust Her Completely 229766270

From physician and award-winning memoirist Christine Henneberg, I Trust Her Completely is a smart, provocative, suspenseful debut novel exploring female friendship, abortion, ambition, and radical choice. For readers of Sally Rooney, Anne Patchett and Carmen Maria Machado, I Trust Her Completely is the Mother’s Day novel for this moment.

]]> 274 Christine Henneberg Molly 0 to-read 4.20 I Trust Her Completely
author: Christine Henneberg
name: Molly
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Minor Fall 230148545 Bryn Stornoway is line 1273.
This is their story.

After the sudden death of her twin, Roe is desperate for a fresh start in Ireland. But when she begins work at a hotel in the foothills of County Kerry, a centuries-old ledger reveals she’s one of the few who can relive the memories of Ruhaven—a forgotten world with a deadly history.

As the first twin ever born in the Ledger, what killed Roe’s sister is now hunting her too—and her only hope is the one man who’s survived Ruhaven’s curse.

Exiled from Ruhaven and determined to conceal his past, Bryn Stornoway’s redemption depends on ensuring Roe’s survival—even if the brewing attraction between them violates Ruhaven’s laws.

As danger closes in, Roe and Bryn must confront the secrets of their intertwined pasts to uncover the truth behind her sister’s death.

Before it finds them.]]> Kayla M. Martell Molly 0 to-read 4.91 The Minor Fall
author: Kayla M. Martell
name: Molly
average rating: 4.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Midnight Estate 212378269 New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin

In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate on the east coast of Australia she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion—beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation.

When a misshelved book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle's library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own—a story of love, loss and betrayal. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must ask herself: Is the true mystery the one hidden within the walls of her ancestral home, or is it within the pages of a book that chose her as much as she chose it?

Told across three timelines and set against the Gothic backdrop of Wurimbirra, The Midnight Estate weaves a tale as intricate and haunting as Kate Morton's Homecoming, inviting readers into the heart of a family's darkest secrets with an absorbing book-within-a-book mystery.]]> 352 Kelly Rimmer 1525805118 Molly 0 to-read 4.34 The Midnight Estate
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Molly
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> With Stars in Her Eyes 222376885 WITH STARS IN HER EYES is break out author Andie Burke's (Fly with Me) next novel, a swoon-worthy sapphic romance about fresh starts and finding that one person who feels like home.

After a catastrophic career debut, cellist Courtney Starling escapes to her happy place—her best friend’s bookshop in Kansas. Shelving books and hosting book clubs in a place where nobody knows her stage name is the perfect respite.

Thea Quinn has just started her new piercing job at the tattoo shop next door. She moved to this quirky corner of Kansas for a fresh start, but despite the benefits of escaping family pressures, Thea's homesick. Maybe Thea needs to connect with potential friends over a new interest…like perhaps a historical romance book club run by a particular mysterious and sexy bookseller with a pixie cut?

Friendly meetings become stolen moments between the bookshelves, and suddenly Courtney and Thea's old problems feel eons away. But just as the chemistry between them heats to a combustion point, consequences from Courtney’s past arrive on her doorstep at exactly the wrong moment. New revelations and surprising connections take the pair from feeling joyfully lovestruck to star-crossed as both women must question what they’re willing to give up for happily ever after.]]> 368 Andie Burke 1250372526 Molly 0 to-read 3.69 2025 With Stars in Her Eyes
author: Andie Burke
name: Molly
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Witch of the Wolves 222284050 When a powerful witch discovers she's the daughter of an Alpha werewolf and is taken by his Pack, she's determined to break free all the while denying her attraction to her abductor. Witch of the Wolves is perfect for fans of A Court of Thorns and Roses and From Blood and Ash.

Cordelia Levine comes from a long line of powerful witches. She's been flying under the radar in the human world, focused on strengthening her magic. She loves working at her aunt's apothecary in London, secretly serving supernaturals.

Until the truth about her family is revealed.

She always assumed her enhanced sense of smell came from her French perfumer father. But when Bishop Daniels abducts Cordelia at the request of her father, the Alpha, Cordelia learns she's a lycan--sharing both witch and werewolf traits. She's brought to Trevelyan, the pack estate, under the guise of protection from foreign threats who want to use her to continue their bloodline.

She quickly learns that to keep her from being sold off to another pack, her father intends to give Cordelia as a mate to Bishop. His second in command and the future Alpha.

Cordelia refuses to accept this as her fate. She can't rely on her magic alone to escape and when she learns Bishop plans to challenge her father's power, she reluctantly begins to trust him. The cracks within the Pack become evident and something is bound to break. And Cordelia and her growing desire for the man who shouldn't set her on fire are right at the center of it all.

Witch of the Wolves is the first book in this Victorian romantasy series, featuring an intense and sexy romance and a world on the brink of change.]]> 352 Kaylee Archer 1250393078 Molly 0 to-read 3.86 2025 Witch of the Wolves
author: Kaylee Archer
name: Molly
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wild Reverence 222376906
Ten years ago, Vincent of Beckett wrote to Matilda on the darkest night of his life―begging the goddess he befriended in dreams to help him. When his request went unanswered, Vincent moved on, becoming the hardened, irreverent lord of the river who has long forgotten Matilda. That is, until she comes tumbling into his bedroom window with a letter for him.

As Fate would have it, Matilda and Vincent were destined to find each other beyond dreams. There may be a chance for Matilda to rewrite the blood-soaked ways of the gods, but at immense sacrifice. She will have to face something she fears even more than losing her magic: to be vulnerable, and to allow herself to finally be loved.]]> 544 Rebecca Ross 1250373352 Molly 0 to-read 4.66 2025 Wild Reverence
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Molly
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Before I Forget 222376558 A funny, heartfelt, late coming-of-age story that examines the role of memory in holding us back—and in moving us forward

Call it inertia. Call it a quarter-life crisis. Whatever you call it, Cricket Campbell is stuck. Despite working at a zeitgeist-y wellness company, the twenty-six-year-old feels anything but well. Still adrift after a tragedy that upended her world a decade ago, she has entered early adulthood under the weight of a new burden: her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

When Cricket’s older sister Nina announces it is time to move Arthur from his beloved Adirondack lake house into a memory-care facility, Cricket has a better idea. In returning home to become her father’s caretaker, she hopes to repair their strained relationship and shake herself out of her perma-funk. But even deeply familiar places can hold surprises.

As Cricket settles back into the family house at Catwood Pond―a place she once loved, but hasn’t visited since she was a teenager―she discovers that her father possesses a rare gift: as he loses his grasp of the past, he is increasingly able to predict the future. Before long, Arthur cements his reputation as an unlikely oracle, but for Cricket, believing in her father’s prophecies might also mean facing the most painful parts of her history. As she begins to remember who she once was, she uncovers a vital truth: the path forward often starts by going back.]]> 288 Tory Henwood Hoen 1250276799 Molly 0 to-read 4.45 Before I Forget
author: Tory Henwood Hoen
name: Molly
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Molly 5
The only thing that slightlyyyy didn’t hold up for me was the epilogue but honestly even then.

I will read any future Hunger Games book. No doubt. ]]> 4.62 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Molly
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
My heart. I have wanted to hear Haymitch’s story since I first read the books in fifth grade, and again when the first movie came out a couple of years later. She certainly, CERTAINLY, delivered. Oh my God.

The only thing that slightlyyyy didn’t hold up for me was the epilogue but honestly even then.

I will read any future Hunger Games book. No doubt.
]]> Horror Movie 200101541 A chilling twist on the “cursed film� genre from the bestselling author ofThe Pallbearers Club andThe Cabin at the End of the World.

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.

The weird part?Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.

The man who played “The Thin Kid� is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions � demons of the past be damned.

But at what cost?

Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful twist on the “cursed film� that breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.]]> 277 Paul Tremblay 0063070014 Molly 3
But the very, very ending? The last few lines. Uuuugh. So cliché. Felt like the author just didn’t know how to wrap up.

Spoilers**

A shy teenage boy who looked and dressed like Karson gave me a detailed pencil drawing of Cleo staring off blankly, eyes angled away from whoever might be looking back at her, and she carried the Thin Kid in a reversal of the famous picture of the Creature from the Black Lagoon carrying the white-bathing-suit-clad Julie Adams in his arms. Cleo's look somehow was her look. I thanked the artist, my voice quavering, and I couldn't look at the picture for long. I had to hide it in a cardboard box underneath my table before I started full-on ugly crying, and I quickly moved the Karson look-alike along.

A twitchy guy showed me a tattoo on his arm of the Thin Kid sitting in the corner of a room. It was like looking at a memory.]]> 3.31 2024 Horror Movie
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Molly
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves:
review:
Its hard to articulate why this is 3 stars. I think it was well-done, especially the way the little bits and pieces all came together. Especially with the finger. I enjoyed the perspectives, I enjoyed the premise. Maybe the pacing a bit too slow, a bit too drawn-out? Also the ending was fairly predictable, though I don’t think that’s an issue. The pre-ending less so. I do like how this leaves you with a lot of questions. You are left doubting the innocence that was previously stated. However we didn’t get much character development or explanation or insight into almost anything which was kind of disappointing. Eh could have used a lot of tweaking.

But the very, very ending? The last few lines. Uuuugh. So cliché. Felt like the author just didn’t know how to wrap up.

Spoilers**

A shy teenage boy who looked and dressed like Karson gave me a detailed pencil drawing of Cleo staring off blankly, eyes angled away from whoever might be looking back at her, and she carried the Thin Kid in a reversal of the famous picture of the Creature from the Black Lagoon carrying the white-bathing-suit-clad Julie Adams in his arms. Cleo's look somehow was her look. I thanked the artist, my voice quavering, and I couldn't look at the picture for long. I had to hide it in a cardboard box underneath my table before I started full-on ugly crying, and I quickly moved the Karson look-alike along.

A twitchy guy showed me a tattoo on his arm of the Thin Kid sitting in the corner of a room. It was like looking at a memory.
]]> There's A Place For You 55154404
At the start of this year, I wrote a short story called “There’s a Place for You.� I designed it for The New Yorker. The New Yorker passed. As I’m now in the midst of a new novel, rather than redesign the story for another publication � something I’m not entirely convinced is possible � I’ve decided to release it online.

So here’s that New Yorker story you’ll never read in The New Yorker.

Find your columns, grow your hair, the light you sought was never in your eyes.

Tear your temples down.

� Mark Z. Danielewski]]> 16 Mark Z. Danielewski Molly 0 to-read 4.09 2020 There's A Place For You
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: Molly
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Used to Live Here 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 Molly 3
Like Charlie and Eve seem to have minimal relationship outside of Charlie being pretty annoyed with her or vice versa. Also she shows up at the house and its�. Boarded up? Is there no record of the down payment or realtor or anything? I guess thats possible in a world that can accommodate erasing a person/potential multiple dimensions but� yeah. Hmmm. Also what do the neighbors have to do with it? Felt like they sort of got dropped.

Just could have used more, but overall an engaging read.

Too many unanswered questions and dropped/unresolved hints and secrets. But I would definitely read a sequel if more questions got answered. Like Jenny DEFINITELY knew what was up right? She was onto something? What happened to that? Did Paige know something too and try to help, or did she just want to torture Eve too. What was Thomas� backstory? What did he get out of this? The old man??? The babysitter?

Spoilers-

Shrugging off his hand, Paige faced a window.
She stared into the cold night, the blasts of wind kicking up furries of snow into swirling blurs.
"Minnesota." The word flicked off her tongue like she considered it an obscenity. "You know winters there get to forty below, right?"

"Mm-hm," said Thomas, mouth full of food.
"Minnesota."
"That's a long way," said Charlie.
Thomas nodded. "I was offered a professorship in Duluth."
"Oh?" Charlie said. "I have some family out there. What school?"
"Denman," Thomas said.
"Huh, not familiar." Charlie took another bite.
"I'm sure it's a great university, though."
"It's a community college," Paige interjected, a hint of resentment in her voice. "Not a university." Thomas clicked his tongue and went back to
eating.
[As a Duluthian, this school doesn’t exist and idk if this is intentional by the author or not]

But then, he made the mistake of telling the story in front of Charlie Bastion. At the crescendo, right on cue, he pulled out the photo and held it up for all to see. Charlie, barely looking up from her meal, said, "That's a great horned owl.�

He deflated. His drunken face filled with a slow realization as he sank back into his chair, peering down at the photo on his lap. He looked like a little kid who'd just learned the truth about old Saint Nick. Eve felt bad for him, but Charlie, as usual, didn't care.

USER: Navidson_ 27
[house of leaves reference]

USER: Evergreen12
[Just a spooky coincidence because this is my lucky # and my animal crossing island name]

Dozens in all, but one stood out. It featured the man with the handlebar mustache, but he looked younger in this one, late twenties perhaps. And he had a full head of hair, black and tangled, long enough to reach his shoulders. He was perched behind a drum kit, pounding away, playing to a half-empty dive bar. Neon lights. Hazy smoke. In the foreground, slightly out of focus, was a guitarist with neck tattoos and a full beard belting into a microphone. A lot of passion packed into a single frame. Eve could almost smell the sweat, the booze, the pot.

Post Title: My partner went missing, but everyone is telling me she never existed to begin with.
Body: I never thought I'd be posting on a site like this, but right now I don't know where else to turn.
I've exhausted all other avenues: family, police, the
fucking FBI� everything.
On Idate redacted] I returned home to [address redacted] and found our recently purchased property looking as though it had been abandoned for decades.
Boarded up.
Completely falling apart. My partner, [name redacted], was gone.
Only our dog remained,

OLD MAN WITH THE SCAR HAS LIVED IN THE CABIN FOR CENTURIES AND GOES BY MANY DIFFERENT NAMES]]> 3.67 2024 We Used to Live Here
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Molly
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves:
review:
This book reminded me so much of house of leaves in some aspects (see: a possible reference I picked out in the quotes below). The labyrinth, the articles, the clues. But ultimately I feel this fell a little bit short. A little too much in Eve’s head and not all the loose ends got tied up. Very short climax. The Very ending was gut wrenching for sure however. Definitely hearing it kicked off on reddit was� unsurprising. It could have been more fleshed out for sure.

Like Charlie and Eve seem to have minimal relationship outside of Charlie being pretty annoyed with her or vice versa. Also she shows up at the house and its�. Boarded up? Is there no record of the down payment or realtor or anything? I guess thats possible in a world that can accommodate erasing a person/potential multiple dimensions but� yeah. Hmmm. Also what do the neighbors have to do with it? Felt like they sort of got dropped.

Just could have used more, but overall an engaging read.

Too many unanswered questions and dropped/unresolved hints and secrets. But I would definitely read a sequel if more questions got answered. Like Jenny DEFINITELY knew what was up right? She was onto something? What happened to that? Did Paige know something too and try to help, or did she just want to torture Eve too. What was Thomas� backstory? What did he get out of this? The old man??? The babysitter?

Spoilers-

Shrugging off his hand, Paige faced a window.
She stared into the cold night, the blasts of wind kicking up furries of snow into swirling blurs.
"Minnesota." The word flicked off her tongue like she considered it an obscenity. "You know winters there get to forty below, right?"

"Mm-hm," said Thomas, mouth full of food.
"Minnesota."
"That's a long way," said Charlie.
Thomas nodded. "I was offered a professorship in Duluth."
"Oh?" Charlie said. "I have some family out there. What school?"
"Denman," Thomas said.
"Huh, not familiar." Charlie took another bite.
"I'm sure it's a great university, though."
"It's a community college," Paige interjected, a hint of resentment in her voice. "Not a university." Thomas clicked his tongue and went back to
eating.
[As a Duluthian, this school doesn’t exist and idk if this is intentional by the author or not]

But then, he made the mistake of telling the story in front of Charlie Bastion. At the crescendo, right on cue, he pulled out the photo and held it up for all to see. Charlie, barely looking up from her meal, said, "That's a great horned owl.�

He deflated. His drunken face filled with a slow realization as he sank back into his chair, peering down at the photo on his lap. He looked like a little kid who'd just learned the truth about old Saint Nick. Eve felt bad for him, but Charlie, as usual, didn't care.

USER: Navidson_ 27
[house of leaves reference]

USER: Evergreen12
[Just a spooky coincidence because this is my lucky # and my animal crossing island name]

Dozens in all, but one stood out. It featured the man with the handlebar mustache, but he looked younger in this one, late twenties perhaps. And he had a full head of hair, black and tangled, long enough to reach his shoulders. He was perched behind a drum kit, pounding away, playing to a half-empty dive bar. Neon lights. Hazy smoke. In the foreground, slightly out of focus, was a guitarist with neck tattoos and a full beard belting into a microphone. A lot of passion packed into a single frame. Eve could almost smell the sweat, the booze, the pot.

Post Title: My partner went missing, but everyone is telling me she never existed to begin with.
Body: I never thought I'd be posting on a site like this, but right now I don't know where else to turn.
I've exhausted all other avenues: family, police, the
fucking FBI� everything.
On Idate redacted] I returned home to [address redacted] and found our recently purchased property looking as though it had been abandoned for decades.
Boarded up.
Completely falling apart. My partner, [name redacted], was gone.
Only our dog remained,

OLD MAN WITH THE SCAR HAS LIVED IN THE CABIN FOR CENTURIES AND GOES BY MANY DIFFERENT NAMES
]]> <![CDATA[Words with Wings and Magic Things]]> 215362355
Beyond the doorway of the first page of this collection awaits a dragon piñata, an alligator on the A train, a hungry yeti, an ice cream dream, jetpack sneakers, midnight firelight, a gray day, a plump tomato, a serious question and so much more. Whether you're feeling blue, lemon yellow or Day-Glo green, this inviting and magical book of poems takes young readers on an uplifting journey through everyday moments, moods and experiences, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. With enchanting illustrations throughout and seven die-cut portals that open into the realms of Welcome, Wonder, Wild, Weee!, Whoops & Wallops, Windows and Whispers & Well Wishes, Words With Wings and Magic Things explores how words can awaken us to a world of wonder and possibility. Step inside . . . and take flight!]]> 128 Matthew Burgess 1774880288 Molly 0 to-read 4.28 2025 Words with Wings and Magic Things
author: Matthew Burgess
name: Molly
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beasts of Carnaval 218171624 When night descends, el Carnaval de Bestias rises.

They come chasing paradise�

Within the shores of Isla Bestia, guests from around the world discover a utopia of ever-changing performances, sumptuous feasts and beautiful monsters. Many enter, but few ever leave—the wine is simply too sweet, the music too fine and the revelry endless.

Sofía, a freedwoman from a nearby colonized island, cares little for this revelry. Born an enslaved mestiza on a tobacco plantation, she has neither wealth nor title, only a scholarly pragmatism and a hunger for answers. She travels to el Carnaval de Bestias in search of her twin brother, who disappeared five years ago.

There’s a world of wonder waiting for her on the shores of this legendary island, one wherein conquerors profit from Sofía’s ancestral lands and her people’s labor. But surrounded by her former enslavers, she finds something familiar in the performances—whispers of the island’s native tongue, music and stories from her Taike’ri ancestors…a culture long hidden in the shadows, thrust into the light.

As the nights pass, her mind begins unraveling, drowning in the unnatural, almost sentient thrall of Carnaval. And the sense that someone is watching her grows.To find her brother and break free, Sofía must peel back the glamorous curtain and face those behind Carnaval, before she too loses herself to the island�

]]> 400 Rosália Rodrigo 0778387232 Molly 0 to-read 4.43 Beasts of Carnaval
author: Rosália Rodrigo
name: Molly
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare]]> 206101608 From major new storytelling talent Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, a blazing, bodily, raucous journey through contemporary Hawaiian identity and womanhood. "A knockout. Eleven knockouts, one KO for every story."-Elizabeth McCracken

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's wrenching and sensational debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonization. This is a Hawai'i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth.

A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with her pregnant body. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in a giant flower. A kanaka writer, mid-manuscript, feels her raw pages quaking and knocking in the briefcase.

Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare is both a fierce love letter to Hawaiian identity and mythology, and a searing dispatch from an occupied territory threatening to erupt with violent secrets.]]> 272 Megan Kamalei Kakimoto 1639734635 Molly 0 to-read 4.00 2023 Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare
author: Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
name: Molly
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[John Muir: To the Heart of Solitude]]> 215359001 176 Lomig 1681123525 Molly 0 to-read 4.33 John Muir: To the Heart of Solitude
author: Lomig
name: Molly
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop]]> 215149232
For the first few months all Yeongju does is cry, but the long hours in the shop also give her time to mull over what makes a good bookseller and store. As she starts to read hungrily, host author events, and develop her own bookselling philosophy, she eases into her new setting. Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that connect them all, she finds her new story as the Hyunam-dong Bookshop transforms into an inviting space for lost souls to rest, heal, and remember it's never too late to scrap the plot and start again.]]> 320 Hwang Bo-Reum 1639736379 Molly 0 to-read 3.76 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Molly
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Book of Night (Book of Night, #1)]]> 58293924 Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.]]> 304 Holly Black 1250812194 Molly 3
I feel like I stuck with this one despite rhe extremely slow start for two reasons. One, I found Charlie and also her introduction to con very interesting. Two, I was just intrigued enough by Vince to stick with it. I liked their romance but I agree with other readers that it since exactly stick out. All we really got was a recap of their romance that mainly happened before the book started (and somewhat out of convenience?), Charlie realizing her feelings are stronger than expected, and a recap from each POV about their first date so to speak. And some faded to black sex scenes. No pizzazz. I know this is apparently going to be a duology but the very ending was soooo lackluster and disappointing.

I did enjoy the second half of the book I will say. It was intriguing enough for me to stay up and finish it. But Holly is gonna have to work haaaaard to redeem this in book 2, if she is able to.

Also the whole Rand/Charlie chapters were very interesting to read, felt researched (at least to this layman) and gave me some ideas to flesh out my brand new d&d characters so that was nice.

SPOILERS]]> 3.51 2022 Book of Night (Book of Night, #1)
author: Holly Black
name: Molly
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
review:
Mixed feelings here. I loved the Tithe series as a teenager and turns out I have really enjoyed books of hers I didn’t know she had written! I was obviously excited about an adult debut from her. However as for many others this did fall a bit short for me in some areas. I did really enjoy her descriptive writing, and I actually did enjoy the main characters for the most part, though I think they could’ve been more fleshed out. I also did struggle to keep track of all the side characters. The world building was interesting but needed more refinement. I struggled when trying to explain this book to my boyfriend, I had hoped it would become clearer as I finished the book but not so.

I feel like I stuck with this one despite rhe extremely slow start for two reasons. One, I found Charlie and also her introduction to con very interesting. Two, I was just intrigued enough by Vince to stick with it. I liked their romance but I agree with other readers that it since exactly stick out. All we really got was a recap of their romance that mainly happened before the book started (and somewhat out of convenience?), Charlie realizing her feelings are stronger than expected, and a recap from each POV about their first date so to speak. And some faded to black sex scenes. No pizzazz. I know this is apparently going to be a duology but the very ending was soooo lackluster and disappointing.

I did enjoy the second half of the book I will say. It was intriguing enough for me to stay up and finish it. But Holly is gonna have to work haaaaard to redeem this in book 2, if she is able to.

Also the whole Rand/Charlie chapters were very interesting to read, felt researched (at least to this layman) and gave me some ideas to flesh out my brand new d&d characters so that was nice.

SPOILERS
]]> <![CDATA[Mine Till Midnight (The Hathaways, #1)]]> 693016 Two hearts steeped in scandal . . .

When an unexpected inheritance elevates her family to the ranks of the aristocracy, Amelia Hathaway discovers that tending to her younger sisters and wayward brother was easy compared to navigating the intricacies of the ton. Even more challenging: the attraction she feels for the tall, dark, and dangerously handsome Cam Rohan.

Wealthy beyond most men’s dreams, Cam has tired of society’s petty restrictions and longs to return to his “uncivilized� Gypsy roots. When the delectable Amelia appeals to him for help, he intends to offer only friendship—but intentions are no match for the desire that blindsides them both. But can a man who spurns tradition be tempted into that most time-honored arrangement: marriage? Life in London society is about to get a whole lot hotter . . .]]> 360 Lisa Kleypas 0312949804 Molly 0 to-read 4.06 2007 Mine Till Midnight (The Hathaways, #1)
author: Lisa Kleypas
name: Molly
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Blood Is Yours (The Summoning #1)]]> 228552296 This novella features explicit *spicy* content and is intended for audiences 18+ only.

“Look at what you do to me, Elowen. No one holds a candle to you. Even in this hellish place, you bring me to heights I’ve never known.�
____

A glistening bead of sweat trails between the gloriously sculpted plains of his chest as he gifts me a crooked grin.

“You are the embodiment of perfection, Elowen.�

A grin curls my lips as my gaze holds his and my hands wrap around him.

“Such a good boy.�
____

The Summoning (sum-mon-ning) A pivotal life event experienced by all daemon males or dominants when they and their soulbound come of age. This Summoning urges them—mind, body, and spirit—to unite. Intense side effects may include, but are not limited heightened emotions, uncontrollable arousal, dizziness, dream walking, an increase in fluids, and an insatiable thirst and hunger for their soulbound in a variety of intimate ways that cannot be listed here (please reference the book). Some effects may be painful.

Sariel
Born in Hell, I have waited millennia for my soulbound. Now, after crossing realms to find her, the only things standing in my way are a mad doctor, a dungeon cell, and magic-suppressing shackles. Anyone who enters my cell puts their life in my merciless hands.

That is until Elowen—a delicate human female—is assigned to my care. I would know even by scent alone that she belongs to me. The moment I break free of these manacles, I will rightfully claim her as mine.

Elowen
I’ve dreamed of Sariel for three years. I know him as intimately as I know myself. So when Dr. Forsythe assigns me to care for the daemon, I’m not afraid of the massive, horned, and winged male—I’m exhilarated. Because I know, without a doubt, he is mine.

Tropes
Spicy & sweet meets gothic romantasy
Fated mates
Captured by a mad scientist
Bondage
MMC In shackles
FMC tasked w/ his care (including obtaining his s3m3n samples)
Touch him/her & become a c0rpse
HEA guaranteed
Traverses the realms to find her
Cinnamon roll only for her
Fast burn
Dom/sub dynamics
Dual POV
Unique world & magic system
Enough k!nk & spice to set your undergarments aflame
Morally grey MCs
All the banter
All the feels

Trigger Warnings
Copious amounts of s3minal fuid
Captivity (of the MMC)
Violence & gore
Highly explicit descriptions of numerous sexual acts
C_m play
Cr3am p3s
Gagging
Knotting
Claiming/marking
Dom/sub/switch dynamics
Discussion of mental health
Discussion of the death of a parent]]> 224 Chiara Forestieri Molly 0 to-read 3.67 2025 My Blood Is Yours (The Summoning #1)
author: Chiara Forestieri
name: Molly
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> You Have a New Memory: Essays 221179234 An open-hearted interrogation of our digital selves, braiding cultural criticism, memoir, and narrative musings into an exploration of identity, girlhood, media, tech, nature and "finding the depth and beauty in the fucked-up world we live in" (Phoebe Bridgers) from writer, artist, and conflicted influencer Aiden Arata.

If you told Aiden Arata in 1995 that the internet would one day crown her the “meme queen of depression� and mega corporations would fly her to conferences to speak about commodifying one's emotions for views, she would have asked you what a meme was. Now, in her highly anticipated debut, she brings us raw reportage from that liminal space between online and offline worlds, illuminating how we got here and where to go next.

In this collection of kaleidoscopic essays, Aiden artfully explores what it means to exist on the internet, from fan fic forums to TikTok. She exposes influencer grifts from the perspective of a grifter, digs into the alluring aesthetic numbness of stay-at-home girlfriend content creators, and interrogates our online fetishization of doom to grapple with the real-world apocalypse. In her own words, “In some ways, the internet feels like a neutral energy in the way that money is a neutral energy, only as virtuous or wicked as the person using it. But then you have to follow that line of inquiry somewhere annoying like,Am I using it for good?�

YOU HAVE A NEW MEMORY is a deeply human inventory of the digital sphere, a searing analysis of the present and a prescient assessment of the future. Aiden is the wry, unexpected voice we need to navigate existing simultaneously as creators, consumers, and products in our increasingly braver and newer world.]]> 240 Aiden Arata 1538767597 Molly 0 to-read 3.47 You Have a New Memory: Essays
author: Aiden Arata
name: Molly
average rating: 3.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Madonna in a Fur Coat 27793819 The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time.



'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.'

A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.



'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian]]> 168 Sabahattin Ali 014198127X Molly 0 to-read 4.19 1943 Madonna in a Fur Coat
author: Sabahattin Ali
name: Molly
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot]]> 36687229 267 Mikki Kendall Molly 0 to-read 4.37 2020 Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
author: Mikki Kendall
name: Molly
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Aftertaste 222370732 What if you could have one last meal with someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost? Combining the magic of Under the Whispering Door with the high-stakes culinary world of Sweetbitter, Aftertaste is an epic love story, a dark comedy, and a synesthetic adventure through food and grief.

Konstantin “Kostya� Duhhovny is a haunted man. When he was a child, his beloved father died shortly after their family immigrated to Brooklyn from Ukraine, and ghosts have been hovering around Kostya ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes for them to eat a meal he prepares for them. He realizes that perhaps his life’s purpose is offering closure to grieving strangers—and that he might finally be able to find closure himself.

Kostya sets out to learn everything he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. As his kitchen skills begin to catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe that looms. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped happens to be falling in love with him.

Set in the bustling world of New York restaurants and teeming with mouthwatering food writing, Aftertaste is a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching look at love and loss, and a ghost story about all the ways we hunger—and how far we’d go to find satisfaction. Lavelle’s debut is a multi-course tasting menu of a book that will sate, delight, excite, comfort, and inspire even the pickiest of readers.]]> 400 Daria Lavelle 1668205424 Molly 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Aftertaste
author: Daria Lavelle
name: Molly
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Agor 222225627 Claim the orc before he claims you.

After many years on the road to escape wars and hunger, my people settle on the border of the remote wetlands. But peace proves illusive even here.

As one of the village guards, I’m tasked to protect a group of women on a berry-picking trip into the bog orcs� territory. We’re ambushed, and I’m taken into the orcs� keep as the High Chief Agor’s plaything.

Faced with the mighty orc, who’s more than twice my size, I have to rely on my wits to overpower him. But neither of us is prepared for how much we both will enjoy playing the power exchange game with each other.
_________________

This book is part of the multi-author series Dark Orcs of Helfallow. All books I this series stand alone and can be read in any order.

In the world of Helfallow, Orcs are everywhere—ranging from the open plains to the towering mountains, from the jagged seaside cliffs to the shadowed depths of ancient forests. Brutality and domination are the law of the land, where survival is earned through strength and ferocity. The only question that remains: which tribe will claim you as its captive?

Agor, by Marina Simcoe
Valka, by Sandra R Neeley
X'nath, by YD La Mar
Daghel, by SJ Sanders
_________________
Agor is a fast-paced Fantasy/ Monster Romance. It contains graphic scenes of intimacy.
Intended for mature readers.]]> 170 Marina Simcoe Molly 0 to-read 3.76 Agor
author: Marina Simcoe
name: Molly
average rating: 3.76
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Your Natural Garden: A Practical Guide to Caring for an Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden]]> 210594591
From plantsman Kelly Norris, author of New Naturalism, comes a much-needed handbook to maintaining today’s natural gardens. Naturalistic plantings, overflowing with biodiverse communities of plants, are filling front and backyards around the globe with colorful blooms, easy-care plants, and wildlife habitat. But caring for a naturalistic garden is vastly different than caring for a traditional home landscape of carefully manicured plants separated by mulch and regularly primped and pruned. In Your Natural Garden, tending your garden properly means understanding its connection to the greater natural world and using garden care methods that mimic nature instead of controlling it.

Page by page, you’re guided through all the seasons of a naturalistic garden’s life and the tasks and to-dos that come with each of them. Including how to:


Encourage and establish complexity in a new garden
Promote growth and variation by letting your plants self propagate
Determine when and what to edit, and when it’s best to let chaos rein
Decide if and when weeding is necessary
Foster the insects and other animals that rely on your plants
Understand succession in the naturalistic garden and why it’s important
Know when it’s time to cut back your garden and how to do it right

Verdant photographs accompany the text throughout, offering examples of well-tended naturalistic plantings and the tasks that are needed to properly care for them.]]> 208 Kelly D. Norris 0760388229 Molly 0 to-read 4.00 Your Natural Garden: A Practical Guide to Caring for an Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden
author: Kelly D. Norris
name: Molly
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Golden Summer (Barry’s Bay, #2)]]> 227945196
I never anticipated Charlie Florek.

Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer there at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life.

Now Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.

Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when life was simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.

Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.]]> 336 Carley Fortune 0735247293 Molly 0 to-read 4.63 2025 One Golden Summer (Barry’s Bay, #2)
author: Carley Fortune
name: Molly
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging]]> 213245166

For fans of adventurous women’s memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped.

When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.

In this lush and lyrical memoir, she tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity.

Complex and unflinchingly authentic, this deeply moving narrative heralds an important new voice in literature that will open minds and hearts everywhere.]]> 400 Tara Roberts 1426223757 Molly 0 to-read 4.21 Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging
author: Tara Roberts
name: Molly
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Molly 5 Once it kicked off I couldn’t stop thinking about it or put it down. Seriously. I loved these characters so much. I always say I don’t like mystery novels but what I mean is I don’t like mystery novels who don’t put in THIS level of effort. I felt it was masterful splitting of POVs, storylines, and timelines. (Not easy). I felt the characters were well-developed and I will be thinking about Tracy, Barbara, Alice, Vic, T.J., and especially Jesse and Louise for a LONG time. I got a migraine mid-read and I was so pissed because I didn’t want to stop. I was in the last 6 or so chapters. I also couldn’t stop thinking about it during that time, trying to put clues together. Really can’t recommend this book enough. The setting and history was also incredibly thought out and worked SO WELL!!! I feel like people will have issues with the ending being “realistic� and I did too- at first. In reality things of *that nature* not necessarily that specific thing did/do happen. People are variable.

As an aside when it came to Sluiter it did remind me of the book The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel which us a biography about the “last true hermit� Christopher Knight (a problematic book in its own right). She doesn’t mention it in her acknowledgements but the way he survived reminds me of actions Knight took a LOT. However, please note that Knight committed no *violent* crimes.

SPOILERS - QUOTES

“…or her loyalty, her devotion to anyone who showed her even a modicum of interest.�

�"Sixty-five percent of people," said Calvin, "are less than twenty feet from a trail when they first begin to feel disoriented."�

�"The food," said Barbara, unswervingly. "I like being able to eat as much as I want."

The next line in her script read: That's interesting. Mine is being in nature. But Barbara's reply was so heartfelt, and mirrored her own emotions so precisely, that Tracy said, "Me too."�

“At a certain point Alice realized neither she nor Mrs. Van Laar had said a word for the better part of an hour, and no one else seemed to notice or mind, and she had the sudden realization that she was a consumable good being evaluated for purchase by the two men at the table, with Delphine as auctioneer. That the less she said, the better. The notion that some decision had been made already on her behalf began to settle onto her shoulders toward the end of the meal.�

“She was afraid to use the word, to even think it, but sometimes Tracy felt like she was falling in love with Barbara Van Laar. She was fascinated by the details of Barbara's face and body, her eyes-long-lashed and perennially sleepy-and the shape of her strong legs, and the nails she bit down to nothing, and the very light hair of her forearms and thighs, which looked like spun gold in the sunlight, and which emphasized the artificial black of her hair. If she caught Tracy staring which she must have she said nothing, only smiled vaguely in her direction, as accustomed to being the recipient of such gazes.
More important: Barbara was the first friend she'd ever had who seemed to like Tracy as much as Tracy liked her.�

“She took it into her hands knowing without a doubt that she would keep it in her trunk for the rest of the session, a sort of holy relic, sanctified by Lowell Cargill's touch.�

“Sluiter moved from unoccupied cabin to unoccupied cabin, stealing canned goods and other provisions left behind by summer people;� (this reminded me of Christopher Knight. I think they were even ultimately caught in extremely similar ways)

His earnest face, beautifully sculpted, moving in agitated ways: it was perhaps the most erotic thing that Tracy, at twelve, had ever witnessed.

“Rich people, thought Judy-she thought this then, and she thinks it now-generally become most enraged when they sense they're about to be held accountable for their wrongs.�

�"What's your name, darling?"
"Judyta," says Judy. Not Investigator Luptack. Not Judy. Not Joo-DEE-tah, as most Americans say when forced to pronounce her given name. Instead she pronounces it just as her mother does—Yoo-DIT-ah—and the Italian woman sighs, as if hearing a poem, and tells her it's beautiful.�


“She turns up the radio as loud as she can take it. Van McCoy commands her to Hustle. Sleepily, she tries to comply. Judy wakes up with a jolt. It's full dark. She's still on Route 29. Her hands are in her lap. The car is turned off. She's still alive. But apparently, she pulled to the side of the road and fell asleep, without having any memory of doing so. Without locking her doors. A sudden rush of adrenaline and fear. Imagine, thinks Judy—imagine if she hadn't pulled over.�

“It was only after he left that she saw Lowell, across the room, wearing the type of absurd broad-collared polyester suit that the boys brought for dances and that still, despite everything, made her heart speed up.
He stood still as a statue against the opposite wall. He was looking at a couple in the center of the room: Barbara Van Laar and her partner. And on his face was an expression of pain.�

The silence between them persisted awhile, until Tracy heard Walter sniff loudly. once was crying, she realized.
"He's amazing," said Walter. "Isn't he.�

�"Is there a reason you don't want to tell me what you told your parents?" asks Judy.
"I don't want to get them in trouble," he says.
"Your parents?"
"My friends."
There is pride in his voice as he says it. This is a boy, Judy understands, who doesn't have many of those.
"Who are your friends, Christopher?"
"Barbara and Tracy," he says, so quietly she isn't certain she heard him right.
"Barbara and Tracy?"
He nods.�

“Louise nods. It's painful to hear, but it's true. When, Louise wonders, did Jesse become the person in front of her? In her mind she sees the version of her brother who, when tired, used to drape his small body onto hers, place two of his own fingers into his mouth. Time, she thinks, moves differently in Shattuck from how it does at the Preserve.
"And also," says Jesse, "You should get a different job."
"Like what?".
"I don't know, Lou. You're really smart. You can do anything you want. You could go back to Union."
"On whose dollar?" says Louise.
"I dunno. Borrow it from a bank. Isn't that what they do?"
It sounds exhausting. She feels as if she's at the base of a mountain, looking up. But she's climbed mountains before. She's run up mountains, even.�

“She'll see her father again at his wedding to Donna Romano, and at holidays where, for each of the three years afterward, a new baby half-sibling will appear. She will make conversation.
She'll be polite. But they won't be her family, not anymore. The only family she has left stands beside her.
"Mom," says Tracy. "Have you ever heard of punk music?"
"No," says her mother. "Will you tell me about it?"�
]]> 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Molly
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves:
review:
WHY WAS THIS BOOK SO GOOD!!!!!
Once it kicked off I couldn’t stop thinking about it or put it down. Seriously. I loved these characters so much. I always say I don’t like mystery novels but what I mean is I don’t like mystery novels who don’t put in THIS level of effort. I felt it was masterful splitting of POVs, storylines, and timelines. (Not easy). I felt the characters were well-developed and I will be thinking about Tracy, Barbara, Alice, Vic, T.J., and especially Jesse and Louise for a LONG time. I got a migraine mid-read and I was so pissed because I didn’t want to stop. I was in the last 6 or so chapters. I also couldn’t stop thinking about it during that time, trying to put clues together. Really can’t recommend this book enough. The setting and history was also incredibly thought out and worked SO WELL!!! I feel like people will have issues with the ending being “realistic� and I did too- at first. In reality things of *that nature* not necessarily that specific thing did/do happen. People are variable.

As an aside when it came to Sluiter it did remind me of the book The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel which us a biography about the “last true hermit� Christopher Knight (a problematic book in its own right). She doesn’t mention it in her acknowledgements but the way he survived reminds me of actions Knight took a LOT. However, please note that Knight committed no *violent* crimes.

SPOILERS - QUOTES

“…or her loyalty, her devotion to anyone who showed her even a modicum of interest.�

�"Sixty-five percent of people," said Calvin, "are less than twenty feet from a trail when they first begin to feel disoriented."�

�"The food," said Barbara, unswervingly. "I like being able to eat as much as I want."

The next line in her script read: That's interesting. Mine is being in nature. But Barbara's reply was so heartfelt, and mirrored her own emotions so precisely, that Tracy said, "Me too."�

“At a certain point Alice realized neither she nor Mrs. Van Laar had said a word for the better part of an hour, and no one else seemed to notice or mind, and she had the sudden realization that she was a consumable good being evaluated for purchase by the two men at the table, with Delphine as auctioneer. That the less she said, the better. The notion that some decision had been made already on her behalf began to settle onto her shoulders toward the end of the meal.�

“She was afraid to use the word, to even think it, but sometimes Tracy felt like she was falling in love with Barbara Van Laar. She was fascinated by the details of Barbara's face and body, her eyes-long-lashed and perennially sleepy-and the shape of her strong legs, and the nails she bit down to nothing, and the very light hair of her forearms and thighs, which looked like spun gold in the sunlight, and which emphasized the artificial black of her hair. If she caught Tracy staring which she must have she said nothing, only smiled vaguely in her direction, as accustomed to being the recipient of such gazes.
More important: Barbara was the first friend she'd ever had who seemed to like Tracy as much as Tracy liked her.�

“She took it into her hands knowing without a doubt that she would keep it in her trunk for the rest of the session, a sort of holy relic, sanctified by Lowell Cargill's touch.�

“Sluiter moved from unoccupied cabin to unoccupied cabin, stealing canned goods and other provisions left behind by summer people;� (this reminded me of Christopher Knight. I think they were even ultimately caught in extremely similar ways)

His earnest face, beautifully sculpted, moving in agitated ways: it was perhaps the most erotic thing that Tracy, at twelve, had ever witnessed.

“Rich people, thought Judy-she thought this then, and she thinks it now-generally become most enraged when they sense they're about to be held accountable for their wrongs.�

�"What's your name, darling?"
"Judyta," says Judy. Not Investigator Luptack. Not Judy. Not Joo-DEE-tah, as most Americans say when forced to pronounce her given name. Instead she pronounces it just as her mother does—Yoo-DIT-ah—and the Italian woman sighs, as if hearing a poem, and tells her it's beautiful.�


“She turns up the radio as loud as she can take it. Van McCoy commands her to Hustle. Sleepily, she tries to comply. Judy wakes up with a jolt. It's full dark. She's still on Route 29. Her hands are in her lap. The car is turned off. She's still alive. But apparently, she pulled to the side of the road and fell asleep, without having any memory of doing so. Without locking her doors. A sudden rush of adrenaline and fear. Imagine, thinks Judy—imagine if she hadn't pulled over.�

“It was only after he left that she saw Lowell, across the room, wearing the type of absurd broad-collared polyester suit that the boys brought for dances and that still, despite everything, made her heart speed up.
He stood still as a statue against the opposite wall. He was looking at a couple in the center of the room: Barbara Van Laar and her partner. And on his face was an expression of pain.�

The silence between them persisted awhile, until Tracy heard Walter sniff loudly. once was crying, she realized.
"He's amazing," said Walter. "Isn't he.�

�"Is there a reason you don't want to tell me what you told your parents?" asks Judy.
"I don't want to get them in trouble," he says.
"Your parents?"
"My friends."
There is pride in his voice as he says it. This is a boy, Judy understands, who doesn't have many of those.
"Who are your friends, Christopher?"
"Barbara and Tracy," he says, so quietly she isn't certain she heard him right.
"Barbara and Tracy?"
He nods.�

“Louise nods. It's painful to hear, but it's true. When, Louise wonders, did Jesse become the person in front of her? In her mind she sees the version of her brother who, when tired, used to drape his small body onto hers, place two of his own fingers into his mouth. Time, she thinks, moves differently in Shattuck from how it does at the Preserve.
"And also," says Jesse, "You should get a different job."
"Like what?".
"I don't know, Lou. You're really smart. You can do anything you want. You could go back to Union."
"On whose dollar?" says Louise.
"I dunno. Borrow it from a bank. Isn't that what they do?"
It sounds exhausting. She feels as if she's at the base of a mountain, looking up. But she's climbed mountains before. She's run up mountains, even.�

“She'll see her father again at his wedding to Donna Romano, and at holidays where, for each of the three years afterward, a new baby half-sibling will appear. She will make conversation.
She'll be polite. But they won't be her family, not anymore. The only family she has left stands beside her.
"Mom," says Tracy. "Have you ever heard of punk music?"
"No," says her mother. "Will you tell me about it?"�

]]> <![CDATA[A Feather So Black (Fair Folk, #1)]]> 182761396 Set in a world of perilous magic and moonlit forests, this seductive romantic fantasy tells the story of a defiant changeling, her cursed sister, and the dangerous fae lord she must defeat to save her family.

In a kingdom where magic has been lost, Fia is a rare changeling, left behind by the wicked Fair Folk when they stole the High Queen's daughter and retreated behind the locked gates of Tír na nÓg.

Most despise Fia's fae blood. But the queen raises her as a daughter and trains her to be a spy. Meanwhile, the real princess Eala is bound to Tír na nÓg, cursed to become a swan by day and only returning to her true form at night.

When a hidden gate to the realm is discovered, Fia is tasked by the queen to retrieve the princess and break her curse. But she doesn’t go with her is prince Rogan, Fia's dearest childhood friend—and Eala’s betrothed.

As they journey through the forests of the Folk, where magic winds through the roots of the trees and beauty can be a deadly illusion, Fia’s mission is complicated by her feelings for the prince…and her unexpected attraction to the dark-hearted fae lord holding Eala captive. Irian might be more monster than man, but he seems to understand Fia in a way no one ever has.

Soon, Fia begins to question the truth of her mission. But time is running out to break her sister's curse. And unraveling the secrets of the past might destroy everything she has come to love.]]> 496 Lyra Selene 0316564966 Molly 0 to-read 3.71 2024 A Feather So Black (Fair Folk, #1)
author: Lyra Selene
name: Molly
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X Molly 0 to-read 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Molly
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Creation of Half-Broken People]]> 211862022
A modern Gothic story set on the African continent, The Creation of Half-Broken People tells the tale of a nameless woman plagued by visions. She works for the Good Foundation and its museum, a place filled with artifacts from the family’s exploits in Africa, the Good family members all being descendants of Captain John Good, of King Solomon’s Mines fame.

Our heroine is happy with her association with the Good family, until one day she comes across a group of people protesting outside the museum. Instigating the protesters is an ancient woman, who our heroine knows is not real. The nameless woman knows too that the secrets of her past have returned. After this encounter, she finds herself living first in an attic and then in a haunted castle, her life anything but normal as her own intangible inheritance unfolds through the women who inhabit her visions.

With a knowing nod to classics of the Gothic genre, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu weaves the threads of a complex colonial history into the present as she examines the collusion of colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism in creating and normalizing a certain kind of womanhood.]]> 384 Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu 1487013272 Molly 0 to-read 4.11 The Creation of Half-Broken People
author: Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
name: Molly
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Witch Who Trades with Death]]> 214540648 A young witch forced to play concubine for her impirical captor, finally breaks free to find a life of her own, but even those with the power to call Death cannot outrun their past�


All witches must serve the cruel and immortal Emperor Yacatl. But after four years of terror and abuse, Khana not only kills one of his favorite courtiers with her magic, but also discovers the secret of his power and he’s been making deals with Death. And now, so is she.

Armed with magic that she doesn’t fully understand, Khana flees the empire and stumbles into a small mountain town filled with fierce warriors that ostracize her for being a witch, despite using her abilities to heal their sick and injured. There, her magic and courage are put to the test as she is forced to stop running and fight back against the emperor that wants her dead.

But every deal she makes with Death takes another piece of her soul. And there’s only so much Khana can give before she turns into the very monster she’s trying to destroy.]]> 384 C.M. Alongi 1915998530 Molly 0 to-read 4.17 2025 The Witch Who Trades with Death
author: C.M. Alongi
name: Molly
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Off Menu 220160945 Heartburn meets Bridget Jones’s Diary, a wickedly funny, fast-paced, clever, and fresh novel that caters to our insatiable appetite for food and romance. Hilarity and heartbreak are dished out in equal measure.

Twenty-something Ruthie Cohen, a data entry minion for a second-tier movie app, spends her days thinking about the kickass meals she’s going to make for her besties, Trish and Lilly, while pining for Dean (sigh, Dean), her vacation fling from six months earlier. Could they have made it work in real life?

On top of that, Bubbe Bobby Grace, Ruthie’s beloved and inspiring grandmother, passed away and left Ruthie an inheritance of $62,873, along with instructions on how to use it: “Follow your passion, Dollface.� During a prosecco-fueled night with her gal pals, Ruthie decides to turn her passion into a career and learn the art of French cooking, enrolling in culinary school, paying tuition, and buying her chef’s whites with a few quick clicks online. It’s not long before Ruthie marches into the kitchen and feels the heat from her cooking partner, Jeff, the super hunky (totally taken!) musician that weasels his way into her brain � right next to Dean.

How can anyone be expected to focus on school, cooking, career planning, baking, friends, and deciding between two hot guys, especially when one of them also thinks that John Cusack is woefully underrated? And what if neither feels quite like Ruthie’s perfect pairing?]]> 280 Amy Rosen 1770417869 Molly 0 to-read 3.41 2025 Off Menu
author: Amy Rosen
name: Molly
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Unlikely Neighbors 209770888 A small-town woman’s journey of self-discovery takes an unexpected detour when she inherits a Brooklyn brownstone—complete with one hot next-door neighbor—in this sexy, emotional contemporary romance.

When you least expect it, love comes knocking�

Holland Davenport is ready to go beyond her small-town existence. Her plan involves moving into an apartment in Charleston—not inheriting a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn from a relative she never knew. Yet in a burst of daring, Holland meets the challenge head-on, moving to New York to learn more about her family and renovate the place. Add to that a gorgeous next-door neighbor who turns out to be a board member at her new job, and she’s definitely out of her depth.

Noble Washington is the successful CEO of a company he spent a decade building. But his carefully ordered life begins to unravel the second he meets fiery social worker Holland—and spends one unforgettable night with a woman who should be off-limits.

There’s a wall and a world of differences lying between them. But the sheltered Southerner and the ambitious native New Yorker feel a pull that just won’t be denied…]]> 288 Renee Daniel Flagler 1335574948 Molly 0 to-read 3.65 Unlikely Neighbors
author: Renee Daniel Flagler
name: Molly
average rating: 3.65
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Accidentals: Stories 211004813 The Accidentalsis the brilliant new book from International Booker-shortlisted duo Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey.]]> 144 Guadalupe Nettel 1639734929 Molly 0 to-read 4.05 2023 The Accidentals: Stories
author: Guadalupe Nettel
name: Molly
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]> 384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 Molly 0 to-read 3.79 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Molly
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)]]> 213243908 A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.

Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.]]> 448 B.K. Borison 0593641191 Molly 0 to-read 4.06 2025 First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)
author: B.K. Borison
name: Molly
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)]]> 208841368 Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm-as its queen.

Along with her former academic rival-now fiancé-the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell's long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare, filled with scholarly treasures.

Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world-how could an unassuming scholar like herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in-Wendell's murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell's magic-and Emily's knowledge of stories-to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.
]]> 368 Heather Fawcett 0356519198 Molly 0 to-read 4.14 2025 Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Molly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cher: The Memoir, Part 1 214363953
After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir.

Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center.

She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist.

As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship.

With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.

Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart.

Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar.

It is a life too immense for only one book.]]> 432 Cher 0008355371 Molly 0 to-read 4.23 2024 Cher: The Memoir, Part 1
author: Cher
name: Molly
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lodge 214152208 From the author of The Reunion, a cozy rom-com about a writer who decamps to a Vermont lodge for work but finds herself distracted by the charming ski instructor next door.

Alix Morgan just got her big break as the ghostwriter of a memoir by Sebastian Green, a former member of the boy band True North. And when he offers her a penthouse at a luxurious resort in Vermont, she jumps at the chance to work far away from her noisy, cramped apartment.

Her career as an entertainment journalist has been building toward this dream job—after all, she used to cover True North and was one of the last people to interview former front man Jett Beckett before he disappeared. As she combs through her client’s voice memos, the specter of the missing lead singer remains, and fans are desperate to know the full story.

But Alix also has time for some fun at this glamorous resort, where she begins ski lessons with a handsome instructor named Tyler. As Alix and Tyler fall in love on the slopes, Alix’s work takes a complicated turn—and the mystery of True North’s downfall may be hers to solve.]]> 352 Kayla Olson 1668033194 Molly 0 to-read 3.71 2025 The Lodge
author: Kayla Olson
name: Molly
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> One Night Hand Stand 221035295 Who accidentally has a one-night stand with her yoga instructor?

Yep. Me.

How did I accidentally sleep with someone, right? I know what you’re thinking. Whoops! I slipped and inadvertently inserted Tab A into Slot B.

That’s not quite how it went.

But my yoga instructor is really, really skilled with Tab A, if you know what I mean.

Slot B never had it so good.

What am I supposed to do now, as I walk into my yoga class and find the guy I ghosted this morning� there, in front of the class, perfectly aligned and grinning at me like he remembers touching all my chakras.

He's perfect. Too perfect. He's so perfect he's ruining my job.

I'm an investigative reporter, working on spec for an article for a national magazine, and my job is to find all the ways this yoga chain is corrupt.

The only thing criminal here is that I can't have him in Slot B ever again. And I would. I'd turn myself into a paper doll book if that's what it took for more of that action.

I want him. He wants me. Nothing I do will make him back off because the chemistry is off the charts.

Except for one pesky little thing:

We’re at cross-purposes.

I need my exposé to get the job of my dreams. He needs to sell his stake in the yoga chain before I expose the corrupt current owner.

That makes him my enemy. My nemesis. The guy I have to get around to get ahead.

And now we’re supposed to hate each other.

But who ever let that get in the way of love?]]> 296 Julia Kent 1638802181 Molly 0 to-read 4.36 2025 One Night Hand Stand
author: Julia Kent
name: Molly
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma]]> 58214328 A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.

"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know."

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.]]> 352 Stephanie Foo 0593238109 Molly 5
Spoilers below:

She dotted my work with fierce red X's, circles, and strikethroughs. Each progressive pen mark was a punch to the chest, until I was barely breathing. Oh no. I'm so dumb. Oh no.
At the end of the entry, my mother sighed.
She wrote an assessment at the bottom of the page:
There can only be one "first." You are still writing too much "Then." Then I went on a ferris wheel. Then I played two frog games. Try to use other words. And I did it well. Very well. Not good!

But when I think about my childhood in Malaysia, my memories aren't fragmented.
Instead, I am transported, an entire sensory world unfolding before me: the sweat on my upper lip, the sound of traffic, the smells gasoline and smoky frying pans and the woody, heady smell of jungle decay.
Because I loved Malaysia. I loved the storm drains that lined the Colonial-style row houses and shop fronts. I loved the rattan overhangs on the hawker stalls and shops and digging through the freezers for lime-vanilla ice cream bars. I loved getting into pillow fights with my cousins during monsoon season crouching in the dark until a bolt of lightning illuminated our hiding spots and we clobbered each other's faces off. I loved the food: rich, lard-filled black mee and funky, spicy prawn mee and crunchy, chubby Ipoh bean sprouts and silky, lukewarm Hainanese chicken—all served on robin's-egg-blue plastic plates with bright orange chopsticks and a big icy glass of Yeo's soybean milk or neon Kickapoo Joy Juice. I loved not having to wear my seatbelt in the back seat and loved playing computer games with my cousins all day long. I loved the language, which I can wield like a native. Its elegant conciseness (Can lah!), its phalanx of exclamations (Alamak! Aiyoyo! Aiyah! Walao eh!), the many languages it steals from (Malay: Tolong! Cantonese: Sei lor! Tamil: Podaa!), its fun, puzzling grammar (So dark! On the light one! Wah, like that ah?).
But most of all, I loved Malaysia because Malaysia loved me.

In Gretchen Schmelzer's excellent, gentle book, Journey Through Trauma, she insists on the fifth page: "Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole in this argument-try to find a way that you can do this on your own-but you need to trust me on this. If there were a way to do it on your own I would have found it. No one looked harder for that loophole than I did."

For example, before 1 quit my job, my boss often came into my office to tell me I'd made some minor mistake. If my body and brain were totally in the present, I would have felt embarrassed for messing up but would recognize that it wasn't a huge deal, acknowledge my faults, and get back to it.
Instead, after my boss left, I always felt guilt and anxiety and shame and terror. I'd run downstairs to have a cigarette, text a friend about how I was a moron, and spend half an hour freaking out about how nobody respected me and I'd probably end up fired. Even though consciously I was completely in the present, my emotions were back in 1997, back when I was a little kid and making a mistake on a spelling test could literally be a matter of life and death. This return was an emotional flashback.

So if you're stuck in a machine for an hour, where does your mind go? If you're like most people, you'll ruminate on the past or plan your future. You might think about your relationships, upcoming errands, your zits. And scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs.
Which makes sense. The DMN is the seat of responsibility and insecurity. It can be a punishing force when it over-ruminates and gets caught in a toxic loop of obsession and self-doubt.

On these hectic journeys, I of course made mistakes. I forgot to bring a healthy snack, or I wasted too much time huffing essential oils in a gift shop and arrived too late to a yoga class, where I lost my $15 deposit. Each time I fucked up, I chastised myself: You're jobless and bleeding money!
You're living like an entitled socialite! Except without any of the fun parts! Like octopus carpaccio! Or yachts!

I noticed one occasion where I was blabbering on about Joey's job of all things.
I made a comment: "What the fuck am I talking about. Where am I?" Dr. Ham responded, "YES! This is the aftermath of dissociation."

I thought about this for a moment. "You mean...I was only taught how to apologize whenever there's a problem and say, 'I'm sorry. I'm so fucked-up.' "
"Exactly. You don't know how to apologize by making it a two-way repair."

The truth is not an easy thing to discern. If it were, the world would be a much more peaceful place. Instead, each of us is a delicate bundle of triggers, desires, emotions, and needs and we all have our own ways of concealing those needs. And so, when our understanding of what people need fails to match up with what they want-therein lies conflict. In order to minimize conflict, the trick is to ascertain some version of that truth. To identify what is actually happening around us. Only, as in a quote often attributed to Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are."

I remembered how people with C-PTSD can often assume problems are about them—not out of selfishness or narcissism but because they want to have enough control to be able to solve the problem.
But if this was not about me, then what was she struggling with? What did she need? Could I provide it? I tried to prepare for the fact that I might not be able to, and that's okay, too.
]]> 4.50 2022 What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
author: Stephanie Foo
name: Molly
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
review:
I feel a lot of gratitude to Stephanie for writing this book. There is a lot of vulnerability in here. She is also a fantastic writer. I obviously couldn’t put the book down and I thought her ability to pull you into a scene was incredible. I don’t know if I have C-PTSD or PTSD. I was given a tentative diagnosis pretty shortly before being unable to continue sessions. However despite not suffering childhood trauma I related to a LOT of this book and I feel like I learned so much. I also saw many of my friends in Stephanie at various moments in her life. A truly impactful memoir and educational experience.

Spoilers below:

She dotted my work with fierce red X's, circles, and strikethroughs. Each progressive pen mark was a punch to the chest, until I was barely breathing. Oh no. I'm so dumb. Oh no.
At the end of the entry, my mother sighed.
She wrote an assessment at the bottom of the page:
There can only be one "first." You are still writing too much "Then." Then I went on a ferris wheel. Then I played two frog games. Try to use other words. And I did it well. Very well. Not good!

But when I think about my childhood in Malaysia, my memories aren't fragmented.
Instead, I am transported, an entire sensory world unfolding before me: the sweat on my upper lip, the sound of traffic, the smells gasoline and smoky frying pans and the woody, heady smell of jungle decay.
Because I loved Malaysia. I loved the storm drains that lined the Colonial-style row houses and shop fronts. I loved the rattan overhangs on the hawker stalls and shops and digging through the freezers for lime-vanilla ice cream bars. I loved getting into pillow fights with my cousins during monsoon season crouching in the dark until a bolt of lightning illuminated our hiding spots and we clobbered each other's faces off. I loved the food: rich, lard-filled black mee and funky, spicy prawn mee and crunchy, chubby Ipoh bean sprouts and silky, lukewarm Hainanese chicken—all served on robin's-egg-blue plastic plates with bright orange chopsticks and a big icy glass of Yeo's soybean milk or neon Kickapoo Joy Juice. I loved not having to wear my seatbelt in the back seat and loved playing computer games with my cousins all day long. I loved the language, which I can wield like a native. Its elegant conciseness (Can lah!), its phalanx of exclamations (Alamak! Aiyoyo! Aiyah! Walao eh!), the many languages it steals from (Malay: Tolong! Cantonese: Sei lor! Tamil: Podaa!), its fun, puzzling grammar (So dark! On the light one! Wah, like that ah?).
But most of all, I loved Malaysia because Malaysia loved me.

In Gretchen Schmelzer's excellent, gentle book, Journey Through Trauma, she insists on the fifth page: "Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole in this argument-try to find a way that you can do this on your own-but you need to trust me on this. If there were a way to do it on your own I would have found it. No one looked harder for that loophole than I did."

For example, before 1 quit my job, my boss often came into my office to tell me I'd made some minor mistake. If my body and brain were totally in the present, I would have felt embarrassed for messing up but would recognize that it wasn't a huge deal, acknowledge my faults, and get back to it.
Instead, after my boss left, I always felt guilt and anxiety and shame and terror. I'd run downstairs to have a cigarette, text a friend about how I was a moron, and spend half an hour freaking out about how nobody respected me and I'd probably end up fired. Even though consciously I was completely in the present, my emotions were back in 1997, back when I was a little kid and making a mistake on a spelling test could literally be a matter of life and death. This return was an emotional flashback.

So if you're stuck in a machine for an hour, where does your mind go? If you're like most people, you'll ruminate on the past or plan your future. You might think about your relationships, upcoming errands, your zits. And scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs.
Which makes sense. The DMN is the seat of responsibility and insecurity. It can be a punishing force when it over-ruminates and gets caught in a toxic loop of obsession and self-doubt.

On these hectic journeys, I of course made mistakes. I forgot to bring a healthy snack, or I wasted too much time huffing essential oils in a gift shop and arrived too late to a yoga class, where I lost my $15 deposit. Each time I fucked up, I chastised myself: You're jobless and bleeding money!
You're living like an entitled socialite! Except without any of the fun parts! Like octopus carpaccio! Or yachts!

I noticed one occasion where I was blabbering on about Joey's job of all things.
I made a comment: "What the fuck am I talking about. Where am I?" Dr. Ham responded, "YES! This is the aftermath of dissociation."

I thought about this for a moment. "You mean...I was only taught how to apologize whenever there's a problem and say, 'I'm sorry. I'm so fucked-up.' "
"Exactly. You don't know how to apologize by making it a two-way repair."

The truth is not an easy thing to discern. If it were, the world would be a much more peaceful place. Instead, each of us is a delicate bundle of triggers, desires, emotions, and needs and we all have our own ways of concealing those needs. And so, when our understanding of what people need fails to match up with what they want-therein lies conflict. In order to minimize conflict, the trick is to ascertain some version of that truth. To identify what is actually happening around us. Only, as in a quote often attributed to Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are."

I remembered how people with C-PTSD can often assume problems are about them—not out of selfishness or narcissism but because they want to have enough control to be able to solve the problem.
But if this was not about me, then what was she struggling with? What did she need? Could I provide it? I tried to prepare for the fact that I might not be able to, and that's okay, too.

]]> One True Loves 27189194
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.

Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.

That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.

Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?

Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid Molly 4
This book was STRESSFUL. But so good!! I really enjoyed it, it was an easy read. Sometimes just wish she had gone more into depth but I definitely enjoyed watching each love blossom and leas up to the present.

Sometimes the dialogue was a little amateurish. So were the descriptions and also a little repetitive at times. I wish she had gone a little deeper into the characters. But also I really loved how she described how people change and how love can look different than what you expect. She is kind of messy and again I feel like a lot is resolved very quickly and the second half feels a bit rushed. In reality this is probably a three star book but I am really grateful to be out of the reading slump I was in.

Her writing has really evolved since this book but I still felt this was worth the read.

"Sometimes when I think about what I wore to prom, I wonder why you and Olive didn't try to stop me. Remember I had those temporary butterfly tattoos all over my body?"
He laughs. "Honestly, I thought that was hot as hell. Remember, I was eighteen.�

"Breakfast for lunch," I say. "Very charming."
"What can I say? I'm a charming guy. I also, while I was out, got you a twelve-pack of Diet Coke because I know Emma Lerner, and Emma Lerner needs a steady supply of Diet Coke in the house."
My name is not Emma Lerner and I don't drink
Diet Coke anymore and I'm not sure how to respond to any of it, so I don't.

"I miss you, too," I say, and then —I don't know what possesses me —before I know it, I have bent down and kissed him. He kisses me back but then pulls away. I wonder if it's because he can tell I've kissed someone else.
"Sorry," I say. "Force of habit."
"It's OK," he says.
"How were the cats this morning?" I ask. I love talking to Sam about our cats. I love inventing silly names for them and making up stories about what they do when we re not around.
"Homer slept in the bathtub," Sam says.
Before I had a cat, before I loved those two little furballs, I would have thought someone saying,
"Homer slept in the bathtub," was boring enough to put me to sleep. But now it's as fascinating as if you'd told me he'd landed on Mars.
"He wasn't under the piano?"
Sam shakes his head. "Nope, he won't leave the bathroom. When I tried to take a shower this morning, I had to pick him up and lock him out of the room."
I should be back in that house. I should be with Sam and Mozart and Homer. I don't know why Homer's in the bathtub or what it means. But I know it wouldn't happen if I was there.]]> 4.03 2016 One True Loves
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Molly
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars rounded up

This book was STRESSFUL. But so good!! I really enjoyed it, it was an easy read. Sometimes just wish she had gone more into depth but I definitely enjoyed watching each love blossom and leas up to the present.

Sometimes the dialogue was a little amateurish. So were the descriptions and also a little repetitive at times. I wish she had gone a little deeper into the characters. But also I really loved how she described how people change and how love can look different than what you expect. She is kind of messy and again I feel like a lot is resolved very quickly and the second half feels a bit rushed. In reality this is probably a three star book but I am really grateful to be out of the reading slump I was in.

Her writing has really evolved since this book but I still felt this was worth the read.

"Sometimes when I think about what I wore to prom, I wonder why you and Olive didn't try to stop me. Remember I had those temporary butterfly tattoos all over my body?"
He laughs. "Honestly, I thought that was hot as hell. Remember, I was eighteen.�

"Breakfast for lunch," I say. "Very charming."
"What can I say? I'm a charming guy. I also, while I was out, got you a twelve-pack of Diet Coke because I know Emma Lerner, and Emma Lerner needs a steady supply of Diet Coke in the house."
My name is not Emma Lerner and I don't drink
Diet Coke anymore and I'm not sure how to respond to any of it, so I don't.

"I miss you, too," I say, and then —I don't know what possesses me —before I know it, I have bent down and kissed him. He kisses me back but then pulls away. I wonder if it's because he can tell I've kissed someone else.
"Sorry," I say. "Force of habit."
"It's OK," he says.
"How were the cats this morning?" I ask. I love talking to Sam about our cats. I love inventing silly names for them and making up stories about what they do when we re not around.
"Homer slept in the bathtub," Sam says.
Before I had a cat, before I loved those two little furballs, I would have thought someone saying,
"Homer slept in the bathtub," was boring enough to put me to sleep. But now it's as fascinating as if you'd told me he'd landed on Mars.
"He wasn't under the piano?"
Sam shakes his head. "Nope, he won't leave the bathroom. When I tried to take a shower this morning, I had to pick him up and lock him out of the room."
I should be back in that house. I should be with Sam and Mozart and Homer. I don't know why Homer's in the bathtub or what it means. But I know it wouldn't happen if I was there.
]]> <![CDATA[My Government Means to Kill Me]]> 58724723 A fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young gay Black man in 1980s New York City, from the television drama writer and producer of The Chi, Narcos, and Bel-Air.

Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, Earl “Trey� Singleton III leaves his overbearing parents and their expectations behind by running away to New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. In the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships—all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.

Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.]]> 276 Rasheed Newson 1250833523 Molly 0 to-read 4.23 2022 My Government Means to Kill Me
author: Rasheed Newson
name: Molly
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997]]> 45567066
In Disasterama, Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth—from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York—where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters.

Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS� wrath—the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks—remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of Orloff’s friends. In Disasterama, Orloff tells their story: the true tale of how a bunch of pathologically flippant kids floundered through a deadly disaster.]]> 232 Alvin Orloff 1941110827 Molly 0 to-read 4.34 2019 Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
author: Alvin Orloff
name: Molly
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father]]> 16241141 A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and �80s San Francisco with an openly gay father.

After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child.

Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate who can transform the ordinary into magic, but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference.

In Alysia’s teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she has befriended—fall ill as AIDS starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then in France, her father tells her it’s time to come home; he’s sick with AIDS. Alysia must choose whether to take on the responsibility of caring for her father or continue the independent life she has worked so hard to create.

Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her father’s journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a father’s legacy and a daughter’s love.

It has been named a Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Honor Book for 2014.]]> 326 Alysia Abbott 0393082520 Molly 0 to-read 4.01 2013 Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father
author: Alysia Abbott
name: Molly
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[Easy Meal Prep: Save Time and Eat Healthy with Over 75 Recipes]]> 212923967
In Easy Meal Prep, nutrition coach and meal prep expert Erin Romeo, the Food Prep Princess (@foodprepprincess on Instagram), guides you through the essentials of meal prep, a key component to any diet—whether you’re high-protein, vegetarian, dairy-free, gluten-free, low-carb, or just trying to eat healthy. This highly accessible guide includes:


How to prep a week’s worth of meals in a few hours
Over 75 healthy and delicious recipes
How to meal-prep in 5 easy steps
5 meal-prep plans to get you started
Tips and tricks for food planning

So, skip the takeout and never be at a loss for a healthy meal again with this essential guide to easy meal prep.]]> 144 Erin Romeo 1577155068 Molly 0 to-read 3.86 Easy Meal Prep: Save Time and Eat Healthy with Over 75 Recipes
author: Erin Romeo
name: Molly
average rating: 3.86
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]]> Something in the Walls 211004350
Then she meets journalist Sam Hunter at the grief group one day, and he has a proposition for her: Thirteen-year-old Alice Webber claims a witch is haunting her. Living with her family in the remote village of Banathel, Alice finds her symptoms are getting increasingly disturbing. Taking this job will give Mina some experience and much-needed money; Sam will get the scoop of a lifetime; and Alice will get better—Mina is sure of it.

But instead of improving, Alice’s behavior becomes inexplicable and intense. The town of Banathel has a deep history of superstition and witchcraft. They believe there is evil in the world. They believe there are ways of…dealing with it. And they don’t expect outsiders to understand.]]> 304 Daisy Pearce 1250334381 Molly 0 to-read 3.36 2025 Something in the Walls
author: Daisy Pearce
name: Molly
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> The Other Lata 217182467 A compulsively readable romcom of mistaken identity set in high society New York and the sacrifices made to keep up appearances, from the author of the GMA Book Club selectionDavi Shastri's Last Day.]]> 272 Kirthana Ramisetti 1538770997 Molly 0 to-read 3.91 The Other Lata
author: Kirthana Ramisetti
name: Molly
average rating: 3.91
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]]> <![CDATA[Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy, Past and Present]]> 213870699 A fascinating and beautifully illustrated account of trying to conceive in both the past and the present.

Inspired by the author’s own experience, Conceiving Histories brings together history, personal memoir, and illustration to investigate the culturally hidden experience of trying to conceive. In elegant, engaging prose, Isabel Davis explores the combination of myth, fantasy, science, and pseudo-science that the (un)reproductive body encounters in pursuit of a viable pregnancy. The book chronicles the trying-to-conceive lifecycle arc from sex education at school, through the desire to be a parent, into the specifics of trying and struggling to conceive. It also looks back at conception throughout history to open a new vista on what we live with today.

A central argument of Davis’s is that historical people lived with the unknown just like we do but were more explicitly able to acknowledge it. In an age of assistive reproductive technologies, the act of embracing uncertainty seems difficult. Although the topic of not conceiving is potentially painful, this is not a grim book; more than grief, it is motivated by curiosity, wonder, compassion, and even humor. With 108 full-color illustrations, Conceiving Histories is also a beautiful material object, an intentionally playful antidote and supplement to Google—the resort of so many embroiled in fertility challenges.]]> 304 Isabel Davis 0262049481 Molly 0 to-read 4.75 Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy, Past and Present
author: Isabel Davis
name: Molly
average rating: 4.75
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]]> Once Upon You and Me 209770889 Charming fairy tale meets spicy bedtime story in this deliciously enchanting age-gap LGBTQIA+ romance

When Taylor Frost’s boss, Amy, flies him across the country to prep for her daughter’s sweet sixteen at the Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills, the solo mission is well within his wheelhouse. Taylor is excellent at his job—except, he’s probably not supposed to flirt with the resort’s mountain man of a manager, Ethan Golding. Because the rugged older man is also the birthday girl’s father, aka Amy’s ex-husband. Oops.

For Ethan, his divorce seemed like the bad ending to his romantic story. And now, making his daughter’s sweet sixteen dreams come true is the closest he’ll get to the kind of magic happiness in fairy tales. Until adorable Taylor has him wondering if maybe this is just the beginning of a more erotic kind of bedtime story�

The only problem is Amy. And how very not okay she’d be with the chemistry between her assistant and her ex.

If only forbidden flings ever led to happily-ever-afters…]]> 288 Timothy Janovsky 1335574964 Molly 0 to-read 3.89 2025 Once Upon You and Me
author: Timothy Janovsky
name: Molly
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rebel Romanov: Julie of Saxe-Coburg, the Empress Russia Never Had]]> 211080534 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters comes the story of a courageous young Imperial Grand Duchess who scandalized Europe in search of freedom.

In 1795, Catherine the Great of Russia was in search of a bride for her grandson Constantine, who stood third in line to her throne. In an eerie echo of her own story, Catherine selected an innocent young German princess, Julie of Saxe-Coburg, aunt of the future Queen Victoria. Though Julie had everything a young bride could wish for, she was alone in a court dominated by an aging empress and riven with rivalries, plotting, and gossip―not to mention her brute of a husband, who was tender one moment and violent the next. She longed to leave Russia and her disastrous marriage, but her family in Germany refused to allow her to do so.

Desperate for love, Julie allegedly sought consolation in the arms of others. Finally, Tsar Alexander granted her permission to leave in 1801, even though her husband was now heir to the throne. Rootless in Europe, Julie gave birth to two―possibly three―illegitimate children, all of whom she was forced to give up for adoption. Despite entreaties from Constantine to return and provide an heir, she refused, eventually finding love with her own married physician.

At a time when many royal brides meekly submitted to disastrous marriages, Julie proved to be a woman ahead of her time, sacrificing her reputation and a life of luxury in exchange for the freedom to live as she wished. The Rebel Romanov is the inspiring tale of a bold woman who, until now, has been ignored by history.]]> 336 Helen Rappaport 1250273129 Molly 0 to-read 3.89 2025 The Rebel Romanov: Julie of Saxe-Coburg, the Empress Russia Never Had
author: Helen Rappaport
name: Molly
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) 60353900 An instant #1 New York Times bestseller!

Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid's Tale in this blend of Chinese history and mecha science fiction for YA readers.

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected--she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.�

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia�. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way--and stop more girls from being sacrificed.]]> 432 Xiran Jay Zhao 0735269955 Molly 0 to-read 4.09 2021 Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1)
author: Xiran Jay Zhao
name: Molly
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Life Came to a Standstill: True Accounts of Loss, Love, and Hope]]> 36955358
Each narrative lovingly remembers the deceased, honestly conveys the shock of death, and details the grief work that the survivors-and their extended family members-have done to move toward healing and make a new life without their loved one. Though these are stories of painful loss, they are also inspiring accounts of strength, hope, and love, lighting the way from the darkest sorrow to the first shimmer of hope.

An extensive addendum includes helpful supplementary material with valuable professional insights-guidance to help you navigate, when your once familiar world feels like an alien landscape.]]> 228 Gwendolyn Broadmore 152551282X Molly 0 to-read 4.47 Life Came to a Standstill: True Accounts of Loss, Love, and Hope
author: Gwendolyn Broadmore
name: Molly
average rating: 4.47
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]]> <![CDATA[The Relationship Mechanic (Peach Blossom, #2)]]> 209770894 There’s more than one way to love and more than one place to call home in this rousing small-town romantic comedy that’s sure to charm fans of Hannah Bonam-Young’s Next to You and Ashley Herring Blake’s Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date

There’s no fix for a lonely heart like a little TLC�

Jessica Jae-un Miller came to Peach Blossom, Georgia, for a visit, not a breakdown. But when her rental car dies on the outskirts of town, mechanic Lavenia “Vini� Williams provides a tow—and a very welcome jump start to Jessica’s heart. It’s been a minute since Jessica’s last fling—her relationship specialty—and Vini checks all the right boxes. If only the sexy car whisperer seemed interested�

Vini knows herself and what she wants. She loves her job, her family, her hometown—but she’d love to fall in love. Jessica stirs up all the right feelings, but the city girl has no intention of staying in Peach Blossom. Why sign up for a broken heart?

But the temptation is real as Vini goes out of her way to drive a carless Jessica around town. The pair can’t seem to keep their distance—or their hands to themselves. With only six weeks to figure out where their red-hot chemistry might lead, Vini and Jessica will have to decide if home can be where the heart is when the heart only knows how to run.

From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…]]> 288 Karmen Lee 1335574905 Molly 0 to-read 3.49 2025 The Relationship Mechanic (Peach Blossom, #2)
author: Karmen Lee
name: Molly
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/01
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