sam's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 03 May 2025 21:01:17 -0700 60 sam's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Blood Over Bright Haven 208430658 Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.

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

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

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

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

(Content warnings for gore, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation)]]> 430 M.L. Wang 0593873351 sam 0 4.39 2023 Blood Over Bright Haven
author: M.L. Wang
name: sam
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: physical-copies, physical-tbr, currently-reading, fantasy-and-paranormal
review:

]]> Immaculate Conception 217453576 From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection

Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.

Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.

Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.]]> 304 Ling Ling Huang 0593850432 sam 0 4.24 2025 Immaculate Conception
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: sam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> Kisscut (Grant County, #2) 13359867 TESS GERRITSEN'Her characters, plot, and pacing are unrivalled' MICHAEL CONNELLY________________________________________The second book in Karin Slaughter's #1 bestselling GRANT COUNTY series.When a teenage quarrel in the small town of Heartsdale explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton - paediatrician and medical examiner - finds herself entangled in a horrific tragedy. What seems at first to be an individual catastrophe has wider implications when the autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse and ritualistic self-mutilation.Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, but the children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal crime.And unless Sara and Jeffrey can uncover the deadly secrets the children hide, it is going to happen again. _________________________________________Crime and thriller masters love Karin 'I'd follow her anywhere!' GILLIAN FLYNN'Passion, intensity, and humanity' LEE CHILD'A writer of extraordinary talents!' KATHY REICHS'Fiction doesn't get any better than this' JEFFERY DEAVER'A great writer at the peak of her powers' PETER JAMES'Raw, powerful and utterly gripping' KATHRYN STOCKETT'With heart and skill Karin Slaughter keeps you hooked from the first page until the last. . .' CAMILLA LACKBERG'Amongst the world's greatest and finest crime and thriller writers' YRSA SIGURÐARDÓTTIR]]> 439 Karin Slaughter sam 3 4.33 2002 Kisscut (Grant County, #2)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: sam
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, mystery-and-thriller
review:

]]> Real Americans 222532834 From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?]]> 416 Rachel Khong 0593685148 sam 0 to-read 3.80 2024 Real Americans
author: Rachel Khong
name: sam
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Creation Lake: A Novel 220160270 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116536 sam 0 to-read 2.80 2024 Creation Lake: A Novel
author: Rachel Kushner
name: sam
average rating: 2.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Voyage of the Damned 218554737
Aboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.

Except Ganymedes Piscero - class clown, slacker, and all-round disappointment.

When a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people without a Blessing to protect him, odds of survival are slim.

But as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be. Can he unmask the killer and their blessing before this bloody crusade reaches the shores of Concordia?

Or will the empire as he knows it fall?]]> 464 Frances White 0778387909 sam 0 to-read 4.11 2024 Voyage of the Damned
author: Frances White
name: sam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Night Ends with Fire (The Dragon Spirit Duology)]]> 228895466 Infused with magic and romance, this sweeping fantasy adventureinspired by the legend of Mulan follows a young womandetermined to choose her own destiny—even if that means going against everyone she loves.

The Three Kingdoms are at war, but Meilin’s father refuses to answer the imperial draft. Trapped by his opium addiction, he plans to sell Meilin for her dowry. But when Meilin discovers her husband-to-be is another violent, ill-tempered man, she realizes that nothing will change for her unless she takes matters into her own hands.

The very next day, she disguises herself as a boy and enlists in her father’s place.

In the army, Meilin's relentless hard work brings her recognition, friendship—and a growing closeness with Sky, a prince turned training partner. But has she simply exchanged one prison for another?As her kingdom barrels toward destruction, Meilin begins to have visions of a sea dragon spirit that offers her true power and freedom, but with a deadly price.

With the future of the Three Kingdoms hanging in the balance, Meilin will need to decide whom to trust—Sky, who inspires her loyalty and love; the sea dragon spirit, who has his own murky agenda; or an infuriating enemy prince who makes her question everything she once knew—about her kingdom and about her own heart.]]> 464 K.X. Song 0593641531 sam 0 to-read 3.25 2024 The Night Ends with Fire (The Dragon Spirit Duology)
author: K.X. Song
name: sam
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng]]> 218185743
These days nobody can reach Cora: not her aunt, who wants her to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival; not her weird colleagues; and especially not the slack-jawed shadow lurking around her door frame. After all, it can't be real—can it? After a series of unexplained killings in Chinatown, Cora believes someone might be targeting East Asian women, and something might be targeting Cora herself.]]> 304 Kylie Lee Baker 0778368459 sam 4 4.26 2025 Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
author: Kylie Lee Baker
name: sam
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: physical-copies, audiobooks, bless-the-library
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blindsighted (Grant County, #1)]]> 55355151 The first Grant County novel, from the No. 1 Bestseller.

The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, paediatrician and medical examiner, finds Sibyl Adams dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach. But it's only once Sara starts to perform the post-mortem that the full extent of the killer's brutality becomes clear.

Police chief Jeffrey Tolliver - Sara's ex-husband - is in charge of the investigation, and when a second victim is found, crucified, only a few days later, both Jeffrey and Sara have to face the fact that Sibyl's murder wasn't a one-off attack. What they're dealing with is a seasoned sexual predator. A violent serial killer...]]> 416 Karin Slaughter 0099553058 sam 3 4.04 2001 Blindsighted (Grant County, #1)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: sam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, mystery-and-thriller
review:
me enjoying procedurals vs me hating copaganda
]]> <![CDATA[One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This]]> 213870084 From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.

On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.� This tweet was viewed over 10 million times.

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.

This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the west, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France and Germany.� It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order,� a generation that understands the west can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11.

This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the west. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the west has served up. This is the book for our time.]]> 208 Omar El Akkad 0593804147 sam 0 4.69 2025 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
author: Omar El Akkad
name: sam
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal]]> 213702691 Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple dignity for the Palestinian.]]> 256 Mohammed El-Kurd sam 0 to-read 4.89 2025 Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal
author: Mohammed El-Kurd
name: sam
average rating: 4.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver, #2)]]> 59445976
Who killed Emily Vaughn?

Prom Night. Longbill Beach, 1982. Emily Vaughn dresses carefully for what's supposed to be the highlight of any high school career. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the night, because of that secret, she will be dead.

Nearly forty years later, Andrea Oliver, newly qualified as a US Marshal, receives her first assignment: to go to Longbill Beach to protect a judge receiving death threats. But Andrea's real focus isn't the judge � it's Emily Vaughn. Ever since she first heard Emily's name a year ago, she's been haunted by her brutal death. Nobody was ever convicted � her friends closed ranks, her family shut themselves off in their grief, the town moved on � so the killer is still out there. But now Andrea has a chance to find out what really happened…]]> 400 Karin Slaughter 0062858114 sam 3 3.99 2022 Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver, #2)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: sam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: bless-the-library, audiobooks, mystery-and-thriller
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver, #1)]]> 35887251
Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?

But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . .]]> 476 Karin Slaughter 0062430297 sam 2 3.81 2018 Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver, #1)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: sam
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, mystery-and-thriller
review:

]]> Looking for Smoke 217432776
Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered.

Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them—Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli—have a complicated history with Samantha.

Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names. Even though one of them may be the murderer.]]> 416 K.A. Cobell 0063318687 sam 0 to-read 4.50 2024 Looking for Smoke
author: K.A. Cobell
name: sam
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club, #5)]]> 219623252 Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal.

But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it. Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?]]> Richard Osman 1405975628 sam 0 to-read 4.46 2025 The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club, #5)
author: Richard Osman
name: sam
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ordinary Love 218695913 A page-turning, irresistible novel of class, ambition, and bisexuality, this is the breathtaking story of a woman risking everything for a second chance at her first love.

Emily has, by all appearances, a beautiful a townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, two healthy children, and a husband who showers her with attention. But the truth is more Emily’s marriage is in trouble, her relationship with her parents is fraught, and she is still nursing a heartbreak from long ago. When Emily runs into her high school best friend, Gen, at a cocktail party, that heartbreak comes roaring back. But Gen Hall is no longer the lanky, hungry kid with holes in her shoes who Emily loved in her youth. Instead, Gen is now a prominent Olympic athlete with sponsorship deals and a string of high-profile ex-girlfriends. Emily and Gen circle one another cautiously, both drawn together by a magnetic attraction and scarred by their shared history. Once upon a time, Gen knew everything about Emily. And yet, she still abandoned her. Can Emily trust Gen again? Can they forgive each other for mistakes they made in their youth? Can Emily risk her children, her privacy, and the fragile peace she has found with her family just to be with a woman she loved long ago?

A sweeping queer romance, Ordinary Love is the beautiful, wrenching, completely seductive story of two people trying to forge a path through fear, bound by a love they discovered when they were too young to understand its power.]]> 368 Marie Rutkoski 0593803264 sam 0 to-read 4.24 2025 Ordinary Love
author: Marie Rutkoski
name: sam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Cold Cases 63139797
In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect—a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.

Oregon, 2017 . Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases—a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.

They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she’s not looking, and she could swear she’s seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn’t right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?]]> 368 Simone St. James 0440000238 sam 2 3.78 2022 The Book of Cold Cases
author: Simone St. James
name: sam
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, mystery-and-thriller
review:

]]> If We Were Villains 34275217
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 1250095298 sam 4 4.21 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: sam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: physical-copies, audiobooks, bless-the-library, lqbtqia
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)]]> 213618143 The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.

To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.

Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.

Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.

Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.]]> 465 Robert Jackson Bennett 0593723821 sam 0 4.55 2025 A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: sam
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy]]> 77920745 WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Economist, Time, The New Republic, and the Financial Times.

Immersive and gripping, an intimate story of a deadly accident outside Jerusalem that unravels a tangle of lives, loves, enmities, and histories over the course of one revealing, heartbreaking day.

Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge.

In A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall—hailed for his “severe allergy to conventional wisdom� (Time)—offers an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine and a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth.]]> 272 Nathan Thrall 1250854970 sam 0 to-read 4.33 2023 A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
author: Nathan Thrall
name: sam
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[He Who Drowned the World (The Radiant Emperor, #2)]]> 63132362
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband―and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history―and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him.

All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…]]> 486 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621836 sam 4 4.22 2023 He Who Drowned the World (The Radiant Emperor, #2)
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: sam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: physical-copies, fantasy-and-paranormal, lqbtqia
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Piece, Volume 2: Buggy the Clown]]> 364956 193 Eiichiro Oda 159116057X sam 3 bless-the-library, manga 4.36 1998 One Piece, Volume 2: Buggy the Clown
author: Eiichiro Oda
name: sam
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: bless-the-library, manga
review:

]]> The Singer's Gun 7617564 287 Emily St. John Mandel 1936071649 sam 0 3.79 2010 The Singer's Gun
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: sam
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> Private Rites 199313102 From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else

It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.]]> 327 Julia Armfield sam 2 3.85 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: sam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, lqbtqia, unhauled
review:

]]> Minor Black Figures 228788985 From the Booker Prize finalist and bestselling a perceptive novel about a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity

A newcomer to New York, Wyeth is a Black painter who grew up in the South and is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. It’s challenging. Gallery shows displaying bad art. Pretentious artists jockeying for attention. The gossip and the backstabbing. While his part-time work for an art restorer is engaging, Wyeth suffers from artist’s block with his painting and he is finding it increasingly difficult to spark his creativity. When he meets Keating, a white former seminarian who left the priesthood, Wyeth begins to reconsider how to observe the world, in the process facing questions about the conflicts between Black and white art, the white gaze on the Black body, and the compromises we make � in art and in life.

As he did so adeptly in Booker finalist Real Life and the bestselling The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor brings to life in Minor Black Figures a fascinating set of characters, this time in the competitive art world, and the lives they lead with each and on their own. Minor Black Figures is an involving and tender portrait of friendship, creativity, and the connections between them.]]> 320 Brandon Taylor 0593332369 sam 0 to-read 5.00 2025 Minor Black Figures
author: Brandon Taylor
name: sam
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
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 sam 4 audiobooks, bless-the-library 4.61 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: sam
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library
review:

]]> The Incandescent 217387935 Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.]]> 432 Emily Tesh 1250835011 sam 0 to-read 4.18 2025 The Incandescent
author: Emily Tesh
name: sam
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 sam 4 4.22 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: sam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: physical-copies, horror-and-gothic, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 sam 0 4.51 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: sam
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, non-fiction
review:

]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 sam 3 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: sam
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: physical-copies, sci-fi-and-dystopian, lqbtqia
review:
i was having a really good time until the tone shift in the last quarter or so
]]> <![CDATA[We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)]]> 221544394 The first thrilling mystery in the new North Falls series from Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Girls and the Will Trent series.

Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think.

Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?]]> 448 Karin Slaughter 0063336774 sam 0 to-read 4.39 2025 We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: sam
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Say You'll Remember Me 217182552 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.]]> 368 Abby Jimenez 1538759195 sam 0 to-read 4.15 2025 Say You'll Remember Me
author: Abby Jimenez
name: sam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 382 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 sam 0 to-read 4.29 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: sam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Lady for a Duke 57007967 A lush, sweeping queer historical romance from the bestselling author of Boyfriend Material—perfect for fans of Netflix’s Bridgerton, Evie Dunmore, and Manda Collins!

When Viola Carroll was presumed dead at Waterloo she took the opportunity to live, at last, as herself. But freedom does not come without a price, and Viola paid for hers with the loss of her wealth, her title, and her closest companion, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood.

Only when their families reconnect, years after the war, does Viola learn how deep that loss truly was. Shattered without her, Gracewood has retreated so far into grief that Viola barely recognises her old friend in the lonely, brooding man he has become.

As Viola strives to bring Gracewood back to himself, fresh desires give new names to old feelings. Feelings that would have been impossible once and may be impossible still, but which Viola cannot deny. Even if they cost her everything, all over again.]]> 460 Alexis Hall 1538753758 sam 0 to-read 4.05 2022 A Lady for a Duke
author: Alexis Hall
name: sam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
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 sam 0 to-read 3.80 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: sam
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Small Worlds 59634120 An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from Caleb Azumah Nelson, the no.1 bestselling, award-winning author of Open Water

The one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, while the DJ spins garage cuts. Dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known.

Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free?

Set over the course of three summers in Stephen's life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.]]> 260 Caleb Azumah Nelson 024157434X sam 4 physical-copies 4.29 2023 Small Worlds
author: Caleb Azumah Nelson
name: sam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: physical-copies
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Piece, Volume 1: Romance Dawn (One Piece, #1)]]> 1237398 207 Eiichiro Oda 1569319014 sam 4 bless-the-library, manga 4.49 1997 One Piece, Volume 1: Romance Dawn (One Piece, #1)
author: Eiichiro Oda
name: sam
average rating: 4.49
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: bless-the-library, manga
review:

]]> Hungerstone 212342605 Hungerstoneis a thrillingly seductive sapphic romance for fans of S.T. Gibson’sA Dowry of Bloodand Emilia Hart’sWeyward.

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage, the relationship has soured and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

The preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger.

Torn between regaining her husband's affection and Carmilla's ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution,Hungerstoneis a compulsive feminist reworking ofCarmilla, the book that inspiredDracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire.]]> 336 Kat Dunn 1638932166 sam 3 4.02 2025 Hungerstone
author: Kat Dunn
name: sam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: physical-copies, bless-the-library, audiobooks, lqbtqia
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self]]> 7840634 Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self offers a bold new perspective on the experience of being young and African-American or mixed-race in modern-day America.

In each of her stories, Danielle Evans explores the non-white American experience with honesty, wisdom, and humor. They are striking in their emotional immediacy, based in a world where inequality is a reality, but the insecurities of young adulthood and tensions within family are often the more complicating factors.

One of the most lauded debuts of the year, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self announces a major new talent in Danielle Evans.

Virgins --
Snakes --
Harvest --
Someone ought to tell her there's nowhere to go --
The king of a vast empire --
Jellyfish --
Wherever you go, there you are --
Robert E. Lee is dead

]]> 232 Danielle Evans 1594487693 sam 3 4.05 2010 Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
author: Danielle Evans
name: sam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: essays-and-short-stories, physical-copies
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 sam 0 to-read 4.00 2023 Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare
author: Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
name: sam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future]]> 207294076 From Yale professor and bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a searing confrontation with the authoritarian right’s efforts to annihilate public education, silence teachers, and use taxpayer money to undo a century of work to advance social justice action on race, gender, sexuality, and class.Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recip Erdogan, and Argentina’s Javier Milei have all reached the same if you want to roll back the clock on civil rights, equity, and inclusion, a great place to start is in our schools. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history. He shows that hearts and minds are won in our elementary schools, high schools, and universities—and that governments are currently ill-prepared to do the work of uprooting fascist policies being foisted upon our children through school boards, in courtrooms, and in the boardrooms of the companies trusted to train our teachers and create the materials they’ll share with their students. Deeply informed and urgently needed, this book is a vibrant call to action for lovers of democracy worldwide.]]> 256 Jason F. Stanley 1668056917 sam 0 4.31 2024 Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
author: Jason F. Stanley
name: sam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, non-fiction
review:

]]> Confess 22609310
For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?]]> 306 Colleen Hoover 1476791457 sam 1 unhauled, romance 4.14 2015 Confess
author: Colleen Hoover
name: sam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 1
read at: 2015/03/15
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: unhauled, romance
review:

]]> We Could Be Rats 214152402 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 1668058146 sam 4 4.06 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: sam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, lqbtqia
review:

]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 sam 0 4.27 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: sam
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> My Best Friend's Exorcism 32301955
Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries � and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

]]> 332 Grady Hendrix 1594749760 sam 3 horror-and-gothic, unhauled my best friend’s exorcism is a fun, mostly entertaining read with a solid dose of creepy moments. the story centers on the friendship between abby and gretchen, two high school best friends whose bond is tested when gretchen gets possessed. the buildup to the climax is probably the best part—there’s a steady sense of dread that keeps you hooked, and you can’t help but feel the tension rising as things start to get weird.

that said, the tone can feel a little all over the place. it doesn’t quite land on either side of the campy horror or full-on creepy. at times, it seems like it’s trying to be both, but ends up kind of in between. the 80s references are a fun touch at first, but after a while, they started to feel a bit much. by the halfway point, it started pulling me out of the story rather than pulling me deeper into it.

it's a good time with some solid tension and a great central relationship. while it doesn’t always hit the right tone and leans a little too hard on 80s nostalgia, it’s still a fun, creepy read if you’re in the mood for a supernatural story about friendship.]]> 3.98 2016 My Best Friend's Exorcism
author: Grady Hendrix
name: sam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: horror-and-gothic, unhauled
review:
my best friend’s exorcism is a fun, mostly entertaining read with a solid dose of creepy moments. the story centers on the friendship between abby and gretchen, two high school best friends whose bond is tested when gretchen gets possessed. the buildup to the climax is probably the best part—there’s a steady sense of dread that keeps you hooked, and you can’t help but feel the tension rising as things start to get weird.

that said, the tone can feel a little all over the place. it doesn’t quite land on either side of the campy horror or full-on creepy. at times, it seems like it’s trying to be both, but ends up kind of in between. the 80s references are a fun touch at first, but after a while, they started to feel a bit much. by the halfway point, it started pulling me out of the story rather than pulling me deeper into it.

it's a good time with some solid tension and a great central relationship. while it doesn’t always hit the right tone and leans a little too hard on 80s nostalgia, it’s still a fun, creepy read if you’re in the mood for a supernatural story about friendship.
]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 sam 0 non-fiction, unhauled 3.94 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
author: Joan Didion
name: sam
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: non-fiction, unhauled
review:

]]> Family Lore 62949033 From bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.

And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it's worth it to keep trying--to have a child, and the anthropology research that's begun to feel lackluster.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces--one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.]]> 371 Elizabeth Acevedo sam 4 unhauled 3.50 2023 Family Lore
author: Elizabeth Acevedo
name: sam
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/06
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: unhauled
review:
the pacing was a bit rough for the first half, but man. the ending hit me harder than i expected.
]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 sam 3 “most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. we triumph, but it is not really we who fail - we are ruined by forces beyond our control.�

a fascinating mix of literary mystery and experimental storytelling. the way it plays with different formats and perspectives is really interesting, but overall, i felt it was a bit of a hit-or-miss experience.

this novel is told in four parts: part one is an excerpt from a bestselling novel from the 30s; part two is a draft of an autobiography of andrew bevel, an extremely wealthy man of wall street; part three is a memoir of the ghostwriter of part two, ida; and part four consists of mildred’s daily logs. for me, part three was definitely the highlight with ida’s character showing up and trying to learn more about mildred and andrew’s motives. the other sections, though very readable, didn’t grab me as much. the different narrative shifts and forms felt more like a clever trick than a way to really dig into the mystery.

the "mystery" itself didn’t offer the satisfying resolution i’d hoped for. as the story unfolds, the reader is left questioning the reliability of the narratives they’ve been given, but by the conclusion, while the pieces all fit together, it’s not in a way that feels rewarding.]]> 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: sam
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: bless-the-library, audiobooks, historical-fiction, unhauled
review:
“most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. we triumph, but it is not really we who fail - we are ruined by forces beyond our control.�

a fascinating mix of literary mystery and experimental storytelling. the way it plays with different formats and perspectives is really interesting, but overall, i felt it was a bit of a hit-or-miss experience.

this novel is told in four parts: part one is an excerpt from a bestselling novel from the 30s; part two is a draft of an autobiography of andrew bevel, an extremely wealthy man of wall street; part three is a memoir of the ghostwriter of part two, ida; and part four consists of mildred’s daily logs. for me, part three was definitely the highlight with ida’s character showing up and trying to learn more about mildred and andrew’s motives. the other sections, though very readable, didn’t grab me as much. the different narrative shifts and forms felt more like a clever trick than a way to really dig into the mystery.

the "mystery" itself didn’t offer the satisfying resolution i’d hoped for. as the story unfolds, the reader is left questioning the reliability of the narratives they’ve been given, but by the conclusion, while the pieces all fit together, it’s not in a way that feels rewarding.
]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 sam 3 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: sam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: physical-copies, fantasy-and-paranormal
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy]]> 40890214 In this important sequel to Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, author Lindsay Gibson offers powerful tools to help you step back and protect yourself at the first sign of an emotional takeover, make sure your emotions and needs are respected, and break free from the coercive control of emotionally immature parents.

Growing up with emotionally immature (EI) parents can leave you feeling lonely and neglected. You may have trouble setting limits and expressing your feelings. And you may even be more susceptible to other emotionally immature people as you establish adult relationships. In addition, as your parents become older, they may still treat your emotions with mockery and contempt, be dismissive and discounting of your reality, and try to control and diminish your sense of emotional autonomy and freedom of thought. In short, EIs can be self-absorbed, inconsistent, and contradictory. So, how can you recover from their toxic behavior?

Drawing on the success of her popular self-help book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, author Lindsay Gibson offers yet another essential resource. With this follow-up guide, you’ll learn practical skills to help you recognize the signs of an EI, protect yourself against an emotional takeover, reconnect with your own emotions and needs, and gain emotional autonomy in all your relationships. This is a how-to book, with doable exercises and active tips and suggestions for what to say and do to increase emotional autonomy and self-awareness.

If you’re ready to stop putting your own needs last, clear the clutter of self-doubt, and move beyond the fear of judgment and punishment that’s been instilled in you by emotionally immature parents, this book will help you find the freedom to finally live your life your way.]]> 224 Lindsay C. Gibson 1684032520 sam 0 4.38 2019 Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy
author: Lindsay C. Gibson
name: sam
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: currently-reading, bless-the-library, non-fiction
review:

]]> Sunbringer (Fallen Gods, #2) 176823181
When Middren falls to the gods, your kind will be the first to die.

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren—but now they are stirring, whispering of war. Godkiller Kissen sacrificed herself to vanquish the fire god Hseth, who murdered her family and endangered her friends. But gods cannot be destroyed so easily, and Hseth’s power threatens to reform with even greater strength and a thirst for vengeance. As tensions rise throughout the land, the kingdom needs its Godkiller more than ever.

Still reeling from the loss of Kissen, young noble Inara and her little god of white lies, Skedi, have set out to discover more about the true nature of their bond. As the divide between gods and humans widens, Inara and Skedi will uncover secrets that could determine the fate of the war to come.

Meanwhile, Elogast, no longer a loyal knight of King Arren, has been tasked with killing the man he once called friend. The king vowed to eradicate all gods throughout the land, but has now entered into an unholy pact with the most dangerous of them all. And where his heart once beat, a god now burns. . .]]> 367 Hannah Kaner 0063350106 sam 0 to-read 3.91 2024 Sunbringer (Fallen Gods, #2)
author: Hannah Kaner
name: sam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Katabasis 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 sam 0 to-read 4.24 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: sam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lolita 9216051 The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze."The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind." �The New YorkerAwe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.]]> 376 Vladimir Nabokov sam 0 3.86 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: sam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> The Reformatory 62919847 A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida
June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.]]> 576 Tananarive Due 1982188340 sam 4 4.44 2023 The Reformatory
author: Tananarive Due
name: sam
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: horror-and-gothic, physical-copies
review:

]]> The Mechanics of Memory 199597622
Memory is Copeland-Stark’s business. Yet after months of reconsolidation treatments at their sleek new flagship facility, Hope Nakano still has no idea what happened to her lost year, or the life she was just beginning to build with her one great love. Each procedure surfaces fragmented clues that erode Hope’s trust in her own memories, especially the ones of Luke. As inconsistencies mount, her search for answers reveals a much larger secret Copeland-Stark is determined to protect.

But everyone has secrets, including Hope.]]> 384 Audrey Lee 0744310393 sam 0 to-read 3.84 2024 The Mechanics of Memory
author: Audrey Lee
name: sam
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood]]> 2784926
Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack, and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets.

The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father's steadfast efforts assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction. With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his fathers generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.]]> 227 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0385520360 sam 0 4.08 2008 The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: sam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: bless-the-library, audiobooks, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants]]> 17465709 Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.]]> 408 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1571313354 sam 0 to-read 4.52 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: sam
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)]]> 57185878 Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.

It wasn't her.

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.

But even in Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.]]> 160 Seanan McGuire sam 3 4.03 2025 Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: sam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: bless-the-library, audiobooks, fantasy-and-paranormal
review:

]]> The Pallbearers Club 59314692 The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song.

What if the coolest girl you've ever met decided to be your friend?

Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses.

Okay, that part was a little weird.

So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things—terrifying things—that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?

Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she's making cuts.

Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship.]]> 278 Paul Tremblay 0063069911 sam 0 3.08 2022 The Pallbearers Club
author: Paul Tremblay
name: sam
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read, physical-copies, physical-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) (Vera Wong, #2)]]> 215805853 Vera Wong is back and as meddling as ever in this follow-up to the hit Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.�

Ever since a man was found dead in Vera's teahouse, life has been good. For Vera that is. She’s surrounded by loved ones, her shop is bustling, and best of all, her son, Tilly, has a girlfriend! All thanks to Vera, because Tilly's girlfriend is none other than Officer SelenaGray. The very same Officer Gray that she had harassed while investigating the teahouse murder. Still, Vera wishes more dead bodies would pop up in her shop, but one mustn't be ungrateful, even if one is slightly...bored.

Then Vera comes across a distressed young woman who is obviously in need of her kindly guidance. The young woman is looking for a missing friend. Fortunately, while cat-sitting at Tilly and Selena's, Vera finds a treasure Selena's briefcase.Inside is a file about the death of an enigmatic influencer—who also happens to be the friend that the young woman was looking for.

Online, Xander had it a parade of private jets, fabulous parties with socialites, and a burgeoning career as a social media influencer. The only problem is, after his body is fished out of Mission Bay, the police can't seem to actually identify him. Who is Xander Lin? Nobody knows. Every contact is a dead end. Everybody claims not to know him, not even his parents.

Vera is determined to solve Xander's murder. After all, doing so would surely be a big favor to Selena, andthere is nothing she wouldn't do for her future daughter-in-law.]]> 336 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593546245 sam 0 to-read 4.27 2025 Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) (Vera Wong, #2)
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: sam
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Is Not a Ghost Story 199793438 Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Amerie’sdazzling,satirical adult debut tells the story ofa Black man who walks into the light…to find himself in Los Angeles, where he becomes an instant celebrity for being the first visible and verifiable ghost.

John’s House provides all he needs. Surrounded by a vast, beautiful ocean under a void of sky, the House is John’s haven. He is alone, but never lonely; he is here now, but neither remembers nor longs for a before. In his House, John is safe and untroubled.

But then a terrible shadow creature breaks in—and it wants him out. Pushed from the House, John falls into the light�

And finds himself in modern-day Los Angeles, the first person to ever come back from the other side. Though he has no memory of his past life, or even how he died, everyone wants to know more about the Black man who has returned from the dead—is he the second coming? A hoax? Or something beyond explanation? Soon he has brand deals, TV interviews, and politicians aiming to use him for their agendas, yet all John wants is to go home.

But going home will require, most unfortunately, help. In search of a way back, John grudgingly joins forces with a mystic holding dubious qualifications, a hard-edged publicist bent on making him famous, and an aspiring actress who is unsettlingly familiar. With this ragtag band of allies, John begins a journey to find his House on the ocean—but getting there will prove more complicated than he imagined, for it will require not only trusting in someone other than himself, but will mean uncovering painful truths about who John was in life and, perhaps most difficult, who he must become.

A gorgeous, tender story of hope, sacrifice, and what it means to be human,This Is Not a Ghost Story introduces an astonishing new voice in literary fiction.]]> 304 Amerie 0358653088 sam 0 to-read 3.90 This Is Not a Ghost Story
author: Amerie
name: sam
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Forest of Noise: Poems 211809097 A candid, horrific, and deeply touching new collection of poems about life in Gaza by an award-winning Palestinian poet.Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and destroyed his house, pulverizing a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fled for their safety. Not for the first time in their lives.Somehow, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. These are those poems. Uncannily clear, direct, and beautifully tuned, they form one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime. Here are directives for what to do in an air raid; here are lyrics about the poet’s wife, singing to his children to distract them. Huddled in the dark, Toha remembers his grandfather’s oranges, his daughter’s joy in eating them.Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely livable occupation, Forest of Noise invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination—even as it is watched live. AbuToha's poems introduce readers to his extended family, some of them no longer with us. This is an urgent, extraordinary, and arrestingly whimsical book. Searing and beautiful, it brings us indelible art in a time of terrible suffering.]]> 96 Mosab Abu Toha 0593803973 sam 0 4.73 2024 Forest of Noise: Poems
author: Mosab Abu Toha
name: sam
average rating: 4.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us]]> 33947154
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.]]> 291 Hanif Abdurraqib sam 0 to-read 4.57 2017 They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: sam
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 33917107
On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.�

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]> 127 Timothy Snyder 0804190119 sam 0 to-read 4.24 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: sam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 sam 5 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: sam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: physical-copies, fantasy-and-paranormal, favorites
review:

]]> The American Daughters 221473199
The American Daughters follows Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl who is enslaved alongside her mother, Sanite toa businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans.Sanite and her mother Ady are an inseparable duo—taking walks along the river,working together in the fields and spending nights looking up at the stars, dreaming. Ady’s favorite pastime is listening to Sanite's stories of her families' origins, their fierce and rebellious nature, and the everlasting love that strengthens their bond.

When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and unmoored, until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called The Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite—andhelp from these strong women—Ady learns how to choose herself. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their right to live free.]]> 304 Maurice Carlos Ruffin 0593729412 sam 0 to-read 3.36 2024 The American Daughters
author: Maurice Carlos Ruffin
name: sam
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Untitled (Shadow of the Leviathan, #3)]]> 102615935 Robert Jackson Bennett sam 0 to-read 4.80 Untitled (Shadow of the Leviathan, #3)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: sam
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1)]]> 9251500 Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago's first (and only) Wizard P.I. Turns out that 'everyday' world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in.

Harry is the best at what he does - and not just because he's the only one who does it. So whenever the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal capabilities, they look to him for answers. But business isn't just slow, it stinks.

So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get . . . interesting.

MAGIC - IT CAN GET A GUY KILLED.]]> 318 Jim Butcher 0356500276 sam 4 3.68 2000 Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1)
author: Jim Butcher
name: sam
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2015/09/05
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: fantasy-and-paranormal, three-and-half-stars
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 1 (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Renewal Edition, #1)]]> 10862575
This new edition of Sailor Moon will feature:

- An entirely new, incredibly accurate translation!
- Japanese-style, right-to-left reading!
- New cover art never before seen in the U.S.!
- The original Japanese character names!
- Detailed translation notes!

This version of Sailor Moon will be completely true to original. Join us as Sailor Moon returns to the U.S. for the first time in years!]]> 240 Naoko Takeuchi 1935429744 sam 3 unhauled, manga 4.29 2003 Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 1 (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Renewal Edition, #1)
author: Naoko Takeuchi
name: sam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2015/07/26
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: unhauled, manga
review:

]]> The Fox Wife 211003810 Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting qi, but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking . . .

Manchuria, 1908.
In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach—until, perhaps, now.

Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can’t escape the curse that afflicts them—their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family’s luck seems to change—or does it?

Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all she’s a mother seeking vengeance for her lost child. Hunting a murderer, she will follow the trail from northern China to Japan, while Bao follows doggedly behind. Navigating the myths and misconceptions of fox spirits, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.

New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. Epic in scope and full of singular, unforgettable characters, The Fox Wife is a stunning novel about old loves and second chances, the depths of maternal love, and ancient folktales that may very well be true.]]> 400 Yangsze Choo 1250266033 sam 0 to-read 3.92 2024 The Fox Wife
author: Yangsze Choo
name: sam
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame]]> 217388174 A new Queer, Asian-inspired fantasy novella about a renowned dragon slayer who never takes her armor off in public, Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame reads like She Who Became the Sun meets The Mandalorian, with dragons!

The fiercely independent nation of Quanbao is isolated, reclusive, and something of a mystery to the rest of the world. It is rumored that there, dragons are not feared as is right and proper but instead loved and worshiped.

Yeva is perhaps a strange emissary to these people. Not only because their face has never been seen in public, but because they are a hero born to a birthright that makes them suited for their task—hunting dragons.

And so the dragon hunter must woo Quanbao's queen—the Lady Sookhee—to understand what secrets she is hiding. A woman reasonably suspicious of Yeva's intentions, and the imperial might of the throne she represents, Sookhee bears the burden of the safety of her entire people. How can she trust this stranger newly arrived to her court, a weapon forged in blood and fire, to understand what her people need and how best to safeguard their future?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 176 Neon Yang 1250357349 sam 0 to-read 3.96 2025 Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame
author: Neon Yang
name: sam
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devils (The Devils, #1) 212276037 A brand-new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie, featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey

Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side]]> 560 Joe Abercrombie 125088005X sam 0 to-read 4.43 2025 The Devils (The Devils, #1)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: sam
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wandering Stars 174147294
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.]]> 315 Tommy Orange 0593318250 sam 4 rtc 3.83 2024 Wandering Stars
author: Tommy Orange
name: sam
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: physical-copies, historical-fiction
review:
rtc
]]> The Incandescent 216488999 A Deadly Education meets Rivers of London in this captivating contemporary fantasy from Sunday Times bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

Dr. Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job � no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. But it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from, is herself . . .]]> 368 Emily Tesh 0356525643 sam 0 to-read 4.24 2025 The Incandescent
author: Emily Tesh
name: sam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)]]> 221559926 The gripping and exciting first book in a brand new crime thriller series from the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author.

Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think.

Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?]]> Karin Slaughter 0008625891 sam 0 to-read 4.24 2025 We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: sam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Only If You're Lucky 211004903
And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered... and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

A tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal—another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.]]> 384 Stacy Willingham 125088795X sam 0 to-read 3.54 2024 Only If You're Lucky
author: Stacy Willingham
name: sam
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Diana in Love (Dirty Diana, #2)]]> 212808968 A woman travels to Paris where she reconnects with a man from her past and reclaims the wild, sensual woman she used to be--the second book in the Dirty Diana series, based on the #1 fiction podcast starring Demi Moore.

Diana Wood has thrown her life in the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. Everything is a mess. After years of watching her safe, steady marriage growstrained, she and her husband, Oliver, decided to separate. Now, he’s embarked on a new career and what seems to be a satisfying dating life,whileshe’s eating cereal for dinner in an empty kitchen after her daughter has gone to bed.

When an important client asks Diana to come to Paris, she jumps at the opportunity--and not only for professional reasons. Paris will afford Diana the time and space she needs to reflect on her next steps, especially her plans for the website she recently launched that showcases women sharing their deepest, most secret fantasies--a site thatis quicklygrowing in popularity.And just maybe,Jasper, the seductive, elusive man from Diana’s past--the man who truly lit her up in every way--will be in Paris at the same time.

Diana and her two best friendstravel tothe City of Lights, where Diana indulges every one of her desires--culinary, artistic, and sensual. But no vacation lasts forever. When Diana returns to Dallas, she must confront the still-raw feelings she has for her husband,and decide once and for Is it possible to be the spontaneous, creative, fully alive woman she rediscovered in Paris?]]> 256 Jen Besser 0593447689 sam 0 to-read 3.91 Diana in Love (Dirty Diana, #2)
author: Jen Besser
name: sam
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> When the Moon Hits Your Eye 211004190
It's a whole new moooooon.

One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters -- schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians -- as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.]]> 326 John Scalzi 0765389096 sam 0 to-read 3.85 2025 When the Moon Hits Your Eye
author: John Scalzi
name: sam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Harvest of Hearts 216882952 Deluxe Stenciled Edges Edition

In the beloved tradition of Howl’s Moving Castle, a whimsical and unforgettable story of fantastic adventure, common sense, and the power of love to overcome the greatest of obstacles . . .

Before Foss Butcher was Snagged, she thought no more of the magic-users than did anyone else in her tiny village. Sometimes gorgeous women in impossible carriages rolled into town and took bits of people’s hearts. Everyone knew hearts fueled their magic. But Foss, plain, clumsy, and practical as a boot, never expected anyone would want hers.

True enough, when the only sorcerer in the kingdom stepped from his glossy carriage, he didn’t intend to hook Foss. Sylvester’s riot of black curls and perfectly etched cheekbones caught her eye a moment too long, that was all. Suddenly, Foss is cursed and finds herself stomping toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House, where her only friend is a talking cat and the walls themselves have moods.

But as Foss learns the ways of magic, she realizes she’s far from its only unwilling captive. Even Sylvester is hemmed in by spells and threats. It’s said this sorcery protects king, country, and order for thousands. If Foss wants to free herself—and, perhaps, Sylvester—she’ll have to confront it all . . . and uncover the blight nestled in the heart of the kingdom itself.]]> 448 Andrea Eames 1645661903 sam 0 to-read 3.80 2025 A Harvest of Hearts
author: Andrea Eames
name: sam
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Minor Detail 53575905 Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.

Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.]]> 144 Adania Shibli sam 0 4.17 2017 Minor Detail
author: Adania Shibli
name: sam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: audiobooks, bless-the-library, translated
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative]]> 208580653 From the award-winning novelist of The Parisian and Enter Ghost comes an outstanding essay on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative.

Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University nine days before October 7th, 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history. Profound and moving, Hammad writes from within the moment, giving voice to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Recognizing the Stranger is a brilliant melding of literary and cultural analysis by one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and a foremost writer of fiction in the world today.

"Extraordinary and amazingly erudite. Hammad shows how art and especially literature can be much, much more revealing than political writing.� � Rashid Khalidi, author of the New York Times bestseller The Hundred Years� War on Palestine]]> 96 Isabella Hammad 0802163920 sam 0 4.68 2024 Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
author: Isabella Hammad
name: sam
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: bless-the-library, non-fiction
review:

]]> Foster 60797399
** Adapted into the Oscar-nominated film adaptation, An Cailín Ciúin / The Quiet Girl **

From the author of the Booker-shortlisted Small Things Like These, a heartbreaking, haunting story of childhood, loss and love by one of Ireland's most acclaimed writers.

'A real jewel.' Irish Independent

'A small miracle.' Sunday Times

'A thing of finely honed beauty.' Guardian

'Thrilling.' Richard Ford

'As good as Chekhov.' David Mitchell

]]> 90 Claire Keegan 0571379141 sam 4 bless-the-library 4.36 2010 Foster
author: Claire Keegan
name: sam
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: bless-the-library
review:
simple, yet profoundly impactful
]]> The Seven Year Slip 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston sam 0 to-read 4.17 2023 The Seven Year Slip
author: Ashley Poston
name: sam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blackouts 65215321 From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective.

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay--playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized--has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories--moments of joy and oblivion--and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?

Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Páramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.]]> 306 Justin Torres 0374293570 sam 4 bless-the-library, lqbtqia “lost time is never found again.�

BLACKOUTS has a dream-like quality that keeps you hooked from the very first page. inspired by a real scientific study, the novel feels like a journey through someone's subconscious, with torres using it as a lens to explore deeper themes like mental health, racial stereotypes, suppressed queer history, and storytelling across generations.

what stands out most is how torres takes complex, heavy subjects—like trauma, identity, and the struggles of marginalized communities—and brings them to life in such an intimate way. the book is told through a queer lens, and you can feel the weight of those experiences, both personal and collective. while the story can get a little muddled in the second half, torres’s gorgeous writing helps keep the momentum going by making even the most abstract moments compelling.

BLACKOUTS doesn’t tie everything up neatly and that’s part of what makes it so intriguing. it’s a book that asks you to think, reflect, and interpret in your own way. despite some narrative confusion, torres delivers a thought-provoking and emotionally charged exploration of memory, identity, and the queer experience. ]]> 3.76 2023 Blackouts
author: Justin Torres
name: sam
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: bless-the-library, lqbtqia
review:
“lost time is never found again.�

BLACKOUTS has a dream-like quality that keeps you hooked from the very first page. inspired by a real scientific study, the novel feels like a journey through someone's subconscious, with torres using it as a lens to explore deeper themes like mental health, racial stereotypes, suppressed queer history, and storytelling across generations.

what stands out most is how torres takes complex, heavy subjects—like trauma, identity, and the struggles of marginalized communities—and brings them to life in such an intimate way. the book is told through a queer lens, and you can feel the weight of those experiences, both personal and collective. while the story can get a little muddled in the second half, torres’s gorgeous writing helps keep the momentum going by making even the most abstract moments compelling.

BLACKOUTS doesn’t tie everything up neatly and that’s part of what makes it so intriguing. it’s a book that asks you to think, reflect, and interpret in your own way. despite some narrative confusion, torres delivers a thought-provoking and emotionally charged exploration of memory, identity, and the queer experience.
]]> North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 sam 0 to-read 4.11 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: sam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Conversations with Friends 32187419 A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."]]> 304 Sally Rooney 0451499077 sam 3 “gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.�

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS introduces us to frances, a character who’s insecure and often selfish, but she tries to hide it behind a veneer of intellectual superiority. she loves performing poetry and being praised, yet she’s always preoccupied with how others see her. she surrounds herself with people who talk a big game about being socially conscious and aware, but it’s mostly just talk—there’s not much action to back it up.

rooney’s writing is sharp and she’s fantastic at writing dialogue that feels real. you really get a sense of frances’s inner turmoil and there’s something compelling about how deeply we’re let into her psyche, but, at the same time, there’s something about it that can feel a little exhausting. i can appreciate the craft, but i didn’t always enjoy reading it.

3.5 stars, rounded down]]> 3.74 2017 Conversations with Friends
author: Sally Rooney
name: sam
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: physical-copies, audiobooks, bless-the-library, lqbtqia
review:
“gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.�

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS introduces us to frances, a character who’s insecure and often selfish, but she tries to hide it behind a veneer of intellectual superiority. she loves performing poetry and being praised, yet she’s always preoccupied with how others see her. she surrounds herself with people who talk a big game about being socially conscious and aware, but it’s mostly just talk—there’s not much action to back it up.

rooney’s writing is sharp and she’s fantastic at writing dialogue that feels real. you really get a sense of frances’s inner turmoil and there’s something compelling about how deeply we’re let into her psyche, but, at the same time, there’s something about it that can feel a little exhausting. i can appreciate the craft, but i didn’t always enjoy reading it.

3.5 stars, rounded down
]]> <![CDATA[The City of Mist: Stories (The Cemetery of Forgotten)]]> 57644063 Return to the mythical Barcelona library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in this posthumous collection of stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind and The Labyrinth of the Spirits.

Bestselling author Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived of this collection of stories as an appreciation to the countless readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey that began with The Shadow of the Wind. Comprising eleven stories, most of them never before published in English, The City of Mist offers the reader compelling characters, unique situations, and a gothic atmosphere reminiscent of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

The stories are mysterious, imbued with a sense of menace, and told with the warmth, wit, and humor of Zafón's inimitable voice. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudí reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece.

Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to come dream along with him.]]> 160 Carlos Ruiz Zafón 0063118106 sam 2
2.5 stars, rounded down]]> 4.11 2020 The City of Mist: Stories (The Cemetery of Forgotten)
author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
name: sam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: bless-the-library, essays-and-short-stories, translated
review:
the writing is beautiful and atmospheric. while it’s nice to return to the world of THE CEMETERY OF FORGOTTEN BOOKS, there were only one or two stories that i actively enjoyed. a lot of them are quite short and have similar imagery while not being directly related so it feels repetitive.

2.5 stars, rounded down
]]> The Blue Book of Nebo 58584613 Prize-winner in three categories of the 2019 Wales Book of the Year Award, The Blue Book of Nebo paints a spellbinding and eerie picture of society’s collapse, and the relationships that persist after everything as we know it disappears.

After nuclear disaster, Rowenna and her young son are among the rare survivors in rural north-west Wales. Left alone in their isolated hillside cottage, after others have died or abandoned the towns and villages, they must learn new skills in order to remain alive. With no electricity or modern technology they must return to the old ways of living off the land, developing new personal resources.

While they become more skilled and stronger, the relationship between mother and son changes in subtle ways, as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities, especially once his baby sister Mona arrives. Despite their close understanding, mother and son have their own secrets, which emerge as in turn they jot down their thoughts and memories in a found notebook. As each reflects on their old life and the events since the disaster which has brought normal, twenty-first century life to an end, The Blue Book of Nebo becomes a collective confidante, representing the future of their people and a new history to live by.

In this prize-winning and best-selling new novel, Manon Steffan Ros not only explores the human capacity to find new strengths when faced with the need to survive, but also the structures and norms of the contemporary world.]]> 156 Manon Steffan Ros 1646051009 sam 0 to-read 4.31 2018 The Blue Book of Nebo
author: Manon Steffan Ros
name: sam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Three Lives of Cate Kay 223370541 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets First Lie Wins in this electric, voice-driven debut novel about an elusive bestselling author who decides to finally confess her true identity after years of hiding from her past.

Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t really exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now.

As a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and charting a new future. But after a shocking revelation, Cate understands that returning home is the only way she’ll be a whole person again.]]> 304 Kate Fagan 1668076217 sam 0 to-read 3.80 2025 The Three Lives of Cate Kay
author: Kate Fagan
name: sam
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Disappoint Me 218153678 An electrifying story of love, betrayal, and the complicated allure of bougie domesticity.

“Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other.”� Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can’t deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn’t these be the best years of her life? Why doesn’t it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships—familial and romantic—that make us who we are.]]> 320 Nicola Dinan 0593977874 sam 0 to-read 4.16 2025 Disappoint Me
author: Nicola Dinan
name: sam
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Am the Spirit of Justice 210137050
The fight for civil rights in America didn’t begin in the 1960s—Black Americans have been working for justice, freedom, and equality since the first slave ships came to its shores. InI Am the Spirit of Justice, Jemar Tisby demonstrates that that arc of history bends toward equality. Throughout, the spirit of justice is personified as it moves through time, loving the oppressed and supporting the freedom fighters. The poetic text not only informs readers of the countless and often nameless people who have taken up the fight, it also inspires them to continue working for equality for all.

I Am the Spirit of Justiceis the picture book companion to Jemar Tisby’sThe Spirit of Justiceand is cowritten by author and poet Malcolm Newsome with art by illustrator and activist Nadia Fisher. This beautiful and sweeping book is a great introduction to the history of civil rights for the youngest readers and an important addition to the libraries of anyone working for justice.

I Am the Spirit of Justiceis ideal

Introducing children to important figures in the history of the civil rights movementInspiring young readers to see the importance of justice in our worldTeachers and librarians looking for resources for civil rights education, with an included bibliography and suggestions for further reading]]> 32 Jemar Tisby 0310145562 sam 0 to-read 4.75 I Am the Spirit of Justice
author: Jemar Tisby
name: sam
average rating: 4.75
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sour Cherry 213816143 A stunning reimagining of Bluebeard—one of the most mythologized serial killers—twisted into a modern tale of toxic masculinity, a feminist sermon, and a folktale for the twenty-first century.

The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.]]> 312 Natalia Theodoridou 1963108191 sam 0 to-read 3.78 2025 Sour Cherry
author: Natalia Theodoridou
name: sam
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vagabond, Vol. 1 214151579 728 Takehiko Inoue 1974752585 sam 0 to-read 4.57 Vagabond, Vol. 1
author: Takehiko Inoue
name: sam
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Strange Case of Jane O. 213870076
In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life.

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 sam 0 to-read 3.91 2025 The Strange Case of Jane O.
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: sam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Counting Backwards 216052828 Inspired by true events revealing America's troubling past involving Pre-War eugenics practices, this emotionally riveting dual timeline novel brings together the lives of two inspiring women while exploring the timely and important themes of immigration, fertility, and motherhood. A revelatory tale of heartbreak and hope, it is an unputdownable story that will stay with readers long after the final page.

Jessa Gidney is a woman on the edge. Passed over for partner at her Manhattan law firm, she reevaluates her priorities, focusing on her deep desire to become a mother and her newfound interest in pro bono work. Her first case? An incarcerated woman named Isobel Perez fighting against a deportation order. An unsettling revelation about Isobel's health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. With her corporate law firm unsupportive and her husband, Vance, only concerned about the added stress while they're trying for a baby, Jessa is torn about whether to intervene. But when a shocking secret about her own family history comes to light, she is propelled to fight for these women, no matter the cost.

Nearly a century earlier in Virginia, seventeen-year-old, real-life Carrie Buck dreams of escaping her life as an unpaid laborer for her foster family. She yearns for a family of her own, a dream that seems within reach when she attracts the attention of her foster mother's handsome nephew. But he soon abandons her, and she's cast out, pregnant and completely alone. As a ward of the State, she is designated "feebleminded" and left to the mercy of a corrupt and heartless legal system. Her courageous fight for her own destiny leads to a landmark Supreme Court case.

As the novel alternates between these two women's stories, a startling connection is revealed. Tackling complex topics such as reproductive injustice, immigration law, eugenics, and societal expectations of women, the story is a compelling exploration of empowerment and self-determination. With a gripping investigation reminiscent of Erin Brockovich woven throughout, the tale is a testament to the courage it takes to stay true to oneself.]]> 336 Jacqueline Friedland 1400347300 sam 0 to-read 4.27 Counting Backwards
author: Jacqueline Friedland
name: sam
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Anywhere You Go 216750978
A small-town waitress and a big-city Broadway press agent swap homes to escape the messiness of their personal lives, only to find new purpose—and new love.

Tatum Ward and Eleanor Chapman lead totally opposite lives. Tatum’s never left her Midwestern hometown. She resides in a quaint guest cottage on her parents� property while working part-time as a waitress, where she spends most shifts ignoring her feelings for a beautiful regular named June. Eleanor dedicates every waking hour to her high-profile press career, sacrificing personal relationships for professional success, save for the occasional hookup to fight off her loneliness. When both women’s lives unexpectedly blow up at the exact same time, they each need an escape, and fast.

In Tatum’s hometown, Eleanor expects a quiet hideaway where she can recharge. Instead she gets wrapped up in the family drama that Tatum left town to avoid, pulled in by Tatum’s charismatic older sibling, Carson, who charms Eleanor at every turn. Tatum ends up in Eleanor’s New York high-rise apartment with June. One week together in the big city might make it impossible for Tatum to avoid not just her true feelings for June, but her real dreams for her life.

Amid a friendship with a reclusive Hollywood actress and a complicated family reunion, Tatum and Eleanor each discover much more than they bargained for away from home. Their house swap won’t last forever, but it might be just long enough for both women to surrender their defenses and finally fight for the life—and love—they deserve.]]> 352 Bridget Morrissey 0593817125 sam 0 to-read 3.93 2025 Anywhere You Go
author: Bridget Morrissey
name: sam
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer]]> 219484513 Actress and content creator Dylan Mulvaney’s honest account of her journey through girlhood

When Dylan Mulvaney came out as a woman online, she was a viral sensation almost overnight, emerging as a trailblazing voice on social media. Dylan’s personal coming-out story blossomed into a platform for advocacy and empowerment for trans people all over the world. Through her “Days of Girlhood� series, she connected with followers by exploring what it means to be a girl, from experimenting with makeup to story times to spilling the tea about laser hair removal, while never shying away from discussing the transphobia she faced online. Nevertheless, she was determined to be a beacon of positivity.

But shortly after she celebrated day 365 of being a girl, it all came screeching to a halt when an innocuous post sparked a media firestorm and right-wing backlash she couldn’t have expected. Despite the vitriolic press and relentless paparazzi, Dylan was determined to remain loud and proud.

In Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, Dylan pulls back the curtain of her “It Girl� lifestyle with a witty and intimate reflection of her life pre- and post-transition. She covers everything from her first big break in theater to the first time her dad recognized her as a girl to how she handled scandals, cancellations, and . . . tucking. It’s both laugh-out-loud funny and powerfully honest—and is a love letter to everyone who stands up for queer joy.]]> 266 Dylan Mulvaney 141977039X sam 0 to-read 4.12 2025 Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer
author: Dylan Mulvaney
name: sam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Playworld 211025439
“In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.�

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he's teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm.

Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era—with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.]]> 528 Adam Ross 0385351291 sam 0 to-read 3.78 2025 Playworld
author: Adam Ross
name: sam
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Pachinko Parlour 59825231 The days are beginning to draw in. The sky is dark by seven in the evening. I lie on the floor and gaze out of the window. Women’s calves, men’s shoes, heels trodden down by the weight of bodies borne for too long.

It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko, in an apartment in an abandoned hotel, and lying on the floor at her grandparents: daydreaming, playing Tetris and listening to the sounds from the street above. The heat rises; the days slip by.

The plan is for Claire to visit Korea with her grandparents. They fled the civil war there over fifty years ago, along with thousands of others, and haven’t been back since. When they first arrived in Japan, they opened Shiny, a pachinko parlour. Shiny is still open, drawing people in with its bright, flashing lights and promises of good fortune. And as Mieko and Claire gradually bond, a tender relationship growing, Mieko’s determination to visit the pachinko parlour builds.

The Pachinko Parlour is a nuanced and beguiling exploration of identity and otherness, unspoken histories, and the loneliness you can feel amongst family. Crisp and enigmatic, Shua Dusapin’s writing glows with intelligence.]]> 171 Elisa Shua Dusapin 1914198166 sam 4 bless-the-library, translated ”i like it when it’s foggy. when you can’t see into the distance. when there’s no horizon. it gives me a feeling of having time. that it’s all right not to see, not to be aware of what’s in my path.�

THE PACHINKO PARLOUR is a quiet, introspective novel that explores themes of loneliness, language, and familial disconnect. dusapin’s sparse, understated prose slowly unravels claire’s inner world, capturing her subtle, but persistent alienation. the tension between the desire for connection and the barriers that language—both spoken and unspoken—can create is felt most acutely in the quiet moments of the book.

what makes this novel so poignant is how effectively dusapin portrays the hollowness of family interactions that fail to bridge emotional distances. there’s a melancholic thread running through the narrative that never fully dissipates. it’s in the book’s final 20 or so pages that the emotional weight really lands. the sense of leaving, both literal and metaphorical, struck me. it’s a quiet kind of wound, one that stays with you.

]]> 3.61 2018 The Pachinko Parlour
author: Elisa Shua Dusapin
name: sam
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: bless-the-library, translated
review:
”i like it when it’s foggy. when you can’t see into the distance. when there’s no horizon. it gives me a feeling of having time. that it’s all right not to see, not to be aware of what’s in my path.�

THE PACHINKO PARLOUR is a quiet, introspective novel that explores themes of loneliness, language, and familial disconnect. dusapin’s sparse, understated prose slowly unravels claire’s inner world, capturing her subtle, but persistent alienation. the tension between the desire for connection and the barriers that language—both spoken and unspoken—can create is felt most acutely in the quiet moments of the book.

what makes this novel so poignant is how effectively dusapin portrays the hollowness of family interactions that fail to bridge emotional distances. there’s a melancholic thread running through the narrative that never fully dissipates. it’s in the book’s final 20 or so pages that the emotional weight really lands. the sense of leaving, both literal and metaphorical, struck me. it’s a quiet kind of wound, one that stays with you.


]]>