Lauren's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 May 2025 12:58:18 -0700 60 Lauren's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Spread Me 222376601
Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the solitude, and the way the desert keeps her far away from the temptations teeming out in the civilian world.

When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it into the hab. But the longer it's inside, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer.

One by one, Kinsey's team realizes the thing they're studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate....]]> 208 Sarah Gailey 1250387337 Lauren 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Spread Me
author: Sarah Gailey
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wide Sargasso Sea 25622780 Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.]]> 176 Jean Rhys 0393352560 Lauren 0 to-read 3.63 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea
author: Jean Rhys
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World]]> 216524259 “A glorious, revelatory book.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”—Rachel Aviv, staff writer at the New Yorker

A paradigm shifting look at the landscape of disabled parenting—the joys, stigma, and discrimination—and how disability culture holds the key to transforming the way we all raise our kids
In Unfit Parent, Slice debunks the exclusionary myths that deem disabled people “unfit� to care for their children, instead showing how disabled parents and disability culture provide valuable lessons for rejecting societal rules that encourage perfectionism and lead to isolation.

Combining her personal experiences with interviews, research-backed evidence, and disability studies, Slice shares insight into what the landscape is like for disabled parents—one that is scattered with unpredictable obstacles and inaccessible barriers. In overcoming these challenges, she describes how disabled parents are oftentimes more prepared to adapt to the demanding nature of parenthood, including the uncertainty of losing control over bodily autonomy.

Uplifting and powerful, Unfit Parent illuminates how disabled bodies and minds give us the hopeful perspectives and solutions we need for transforming a societal system that has left parents exhausted, stuck, and alone.]]> 216 Jessica Slice 0807013242 Lauren 0 to-read 4.62 Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World
author: Jessica Slice
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.62
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Records 218569917
Lina and her father have arrived at an enclave called The Sea, a staging-post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China. Under the tutelage of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to face her ailing father’s troubling admissions about his role in their family’s tragic past. Lina’s encounters with her intellectual and personal forebearers force her to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption.

Profound, exquisitely written and with extraordinary subtlety of thought, The Book of Records explores the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity, our search for home, and the place of faith and humanity in our world.]]> 368 Madeleine Thien 1324078650 Lauren 0 arc, currently-reading 3.89 2025 The Book of Records
author: Madeleine Thien
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: arc, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping]]> 182484370
Sera Swan was once one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her magical Guild. Now she ( slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps Aunt Jasmine run an inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep the talking fox in check, and longs for the magical future she lost.

When she learns about an old spellbook that holds the secret to restoring her power, she turns to Luke Larsen, a gorgeous historian who might just be able to help her unlock the book’s mysteries. Luke, who has his own reasons for staying at the inn, never planned on getting involved in the madcap goings-on around him and certainly had no intention of letting certain grumpy innkeepers past his icy walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he not only agrees to help, but also finds himself thawing .

Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone... and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.]]> 352 Sangu Mandanna 0593439376 Lauren 0 to-read 4.62 2025 A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?]]> 6763725 81 Mark Fisher 1846943175 Lauren 2 4.20 2009 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
author: Mark Fisher
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Awake in the Floating City 217453585 An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.� —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.]]> 320 Susanna Kwan 0593701402 Lauren 4 arc
This is a quiet, thoughtful novel that follows Bo, a woman living in a future San Francisco that is slowly being swallowed by water, and her caretaking of Mia, an elderly neighbor who lives in her apartment building. There are some futuristic cli-fi elements to this, but it's mostly a human story with a more narrow focus about the characters and their relationships and less about what's happening in the wider world due to climate change. Both our main characters are well developed-Bo can be a bit frustrating at times, but it feels realistic given what we know about her character. Since Bo is an artist and a main portion of the story involves her creating a new art piece, there's a LOT of information on different artistic techniques and mediums, which could be interesting but I sometimes found went on a bit too long and lost my attention. Lots of thematic content in here around memory, place, etc. as well. The ending worked very well for me and I enjoyed the writing style throughout. I feel like this book has been getting a lot of buzz and I don't know that it quite lived up to the hype for me, but I still enjoyed it! ]]> 3.92 2025 Awake in the Floating City
author: Susanna Kwan
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing May 13th!

This is a quiet, thoughtful novel that follows Bo, a woman living in a future San Francisco that is slowly being swallowed by water, and her caretaking of Mia, an elderly neighbor who lives in her apartment building. There are some futuristic cli-fi elements to this, but it's mostly a human story with a more narrow focus about the characters and their relationships and less about what's happening in the wider world due to climate change. Both our main characters are well developed-Bo can be a bit frustrating at times, but it feels realistic given what we know about her character. Since Bo is an artist and a main portion of the story involves her creating a new art piece, there's a LOT of information on different artistic techniques and mediums, which could be interesting but I sometimes found went on a bit too long and lost my attention. Lots of thematic content in here around memory, place, etc. as well. The ending worked very well for me and I enjoyed the writing style throughout. I feel like this book has been getting a lot of buzz and I don't know that it quite lived up to the hype for me, but I still enjoyed it!
]]> <![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 Lauren 4 4.25 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Sky on Fire 220687910 A fast-paced and thought-provoking queer sci-fi/fantasy novel from #1 New York Times bestseller E. K. Johnston.

Morgan Enni has things to do.ĚýA science prodigy in a university full of mage-scientists, she’s notable for having no magical ability, which only increases her ambition and drive to prove herself. Her research has the potential to devastate every aetherworker in the galaxy and shake the crumbled foundations of the Stavenger Empire. It's no wonder she can't find anyone who wants to listen to her, much less fund her expedition.

But Morgan is stubborn, and eventually her work catches the attention of a group of rebels, who hope it might turn the tide in their favour. When they try to recruit the young scientist, they get much more than they bargained for. Morgan Enni has secrets of her own.

Set in the world of Aetherbound, E. K. Johnston continues to entwine Arthurian myth and the history of North Atlantic fisheries in a clever, character-driven space fantasy.]]> 272 E.K. Johnston 1984816160 Lauren 0 to-read, arc 4.10 2025 Sky on Fire
author: E.K. Johnston
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, arc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Way Witch (She Who Knows, #2)]]> 212809133 Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, One Way Witch is the second in the She Who Knows trilogy

The world has forgotten Onyesonwu.

As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy â€� until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed.Ěý

Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.

When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past � for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.]]> 240 Nnedi Okorafor 0756418976 Lauren 3 arc
I had to give less than four stars because I didn't like this one quite as much as She Who Knows, the prequel in this series. This one picks back up with Najeeba quite a while after the events of the first book (this occurs after the events of Who Fears Death-I read that one but quite a while ago and don't remember specifics, but there's a foreword that covers what you need to know included with this volume). This definitely felt like the middle book in a trilogy-the plot is pretty slow-moving and building and covers Najeeba's time training to harness her power and become a sorcerer. Partly due to this it didn't have the same pull as the first volume, although I still love Najeeba as a character and did finish it in a few days. I think the next steps are definitely intriguing enough for me to want to finish the series even if this one didn't grab me the same way as She Who Knows. ]]> 4.01 2025 One Way Witch (She Who Knows, #2)
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing April 29th!

I had to give less than four stars because I didn't like this one quite as much as She Who Knows, the prequel in this series. This one picks back up with Najeeba quite a while after the events of the first book (this occurs after the events of Who Fears Death-I read that one but quite a while ago and don't remember specifics, but there's a foreword that covers what you need to know included with this volume). This definitely felt like the middle book in a trilogy-the plot is pretty slow-moving and building and covers Najeeba's time training to harness her power and become a sorcerer. Partly due to this it didn't have the same pull as the first volume, although I still love Najeeba as a character and did finish it in a few days. I think the next steps are definitely intriguing enough for me to want to finish the series even if this one didn't grab me the same way as She Who Knows.
]]> <![CDATA[Will There Ever Be Another You]]> 222925320 Amid a global pandemic one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together—of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease

She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and she hears “What is love? Baby, don't hurt me" playing repeatedly in her head. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are.

Has the illness stolen her mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over, a chance afforded to few people? The very weave of herself seems to have loosened as time and memories pass straight through her body. “I’m sorry not to respond to your email,� she writes, “but I live completely in the present now."

Will There Ever be Another You is the brain-shredding, phosphorescent story of one woman’s dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking, as well as a profound investigation into what keeps us alive in times of unprecedented disorientation and loss.]]> Patricia Lockwood 0593718577 Lauren 0 to-read 4.27 Will There Ever Be Another You
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth]]> 3401468 152 R. Buckminster Fuller 0935754016 Lauren 0 currently-reading 4.08 1969 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
author: R. Buckminster Fuller
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 222132293 Instant #1 New York Times bestseller! � #1 Washington Post bestseller! � #1 Indie Bestseller! � USA Today Bestseller!

'Earnest and empathetic.' � New York Times

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

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. 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 advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a 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.]]> 199 John Green 1529961459 Lauren 4 4.35 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves:
review:
I stg I'm not trying to start a fight, but I wish John Green had always been writing engaging non-fiction like this instead of mediocre YA novels.
]]> Turn Up the Ocean: Poems 58772726
Over the course of his celebrated career, Tony Hoagland ventured fearlessly into the unlit alleys of emotion and experience. The poems in Turn Up the Ocean examine with an unflinching eye and mordant humor the reality of living and dying in a time and culture that conspire to erase our inner lives. Hoagland’s signature wit and unparalleled observations take in long-standing injustices, the atrocities of American empire and consumerism, and our ongoing habit of looking away. In these poems, perseverance depends on a gymnastics of skepticism and comedy, a dogged quest for authentic connection, and the consolations of the natural world. Turn Up the Ocean is a remarkable and moving collection, a fitting testament to Hoagland’s devotion to the capaciousness and art of poetry.]]> 80 Tony Hoagland 1644450925 Lauren 0 to-read 4.27 Turn Up the Ocean: Poems
author: Tony Hoagland
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stop Me If You've Heard This One]]> 214986001 From the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.

Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she’s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she’s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.

Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent—a much older lesbian magician—who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot’s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It’s not long before Cherry must decide how much she’s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act—and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.

Equal parts bravado, tenderness, and humor, and bursting with misfits, magicians, musicians, and mimes, Stop Me If You've Heard This One is a masterpiece of comedic fiction that asks big questions about art and performance, friendship and community, and the importance of timing in jokes and in life.]]> 269 Kristen Arnett 0593719786 Lauren 4 3.60 2025 Stop Me If You've Heard This One
author: Kristen Arnett
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Motherhood - Is It For Me?: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Clarity]]> 34015478
For partnered and single women alike, this self-help guide will lead you to your truth, gently and nonjudgmentally. A series of exercises - done at your own pace or over the book's recommended 12 weeks - will enable you to navigate through your immobilization. You’ll learn how to let go of external circumstances that cloud the motherhood decision. No one can make the motherhood decision for you, but this self-help guide for women will help you to say hello to a new future—one of clarity and brightness.

Motherhood � Is It For Me? can be read and used individually or in a women’s group. Many women feel that there’s nowhere to turn when they can’t decide whether to become mothers; they’re unsure how to think about family planning. Some think they don’t want to be a mother at all, or they might be deciding whether to become pregnant after 35 and have a baby. In all of these circumstances, women can feel lonely, isolated and debilitated. If you have these feelings, you’re not alone; so, whether you read Motherhood � Is It For Me? as an individual or in a women’s group, doing the exercises will lead you to clarity.

This self-help guide includes 20 stories from women of diverse backgrounds who share their decision-making journeys; half of these women chose motherhood while half decided on a childfree life. These women’s stories create a valuable, supportive community by breaking the isolation that women often feel when they don’t know their own truths about motherhood.

The authors of this book, who are both licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, created the Motherhood-Is it for me?� program in 1991—it has had more than 25 years of proven success. Motherhood � Is It For Me? brings the methods used in that innovative, insightful program to paperback or e-book. Motherhood � Is It For Me? provides the path to a woman’s deepest desire so that she can make the motherhood decision that feels right for her. It’s a must-read if you’re undecided.]]> 474 Denise L Carlini 1945252162 Lauren 0 currently-reading 4.33 Motherhood - Is It For Me?: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Clarity
author: Denise L Carlini
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Bright Years 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 Lauren 3 arc
I liked this book but to me this was basically the platonic ideal of a three-star read; I liked it as I was reading it, it was engaging enough to move along quickly, I generally liked the characters, but some things didn't work great and I didn't feel an overall deep connection with the content. The book follows the story of three (four-ish) generations of a family in Texas and the ways in which addiction and trauma are passed down throughout the years. That makes this book sound pretty dark and it has its dark moments but overall I found it a likable family drama. The constant dropping of events to mark our place in time (ie "9/11 happened," "I heard the Spice Girls on the radio," "What do you think of the new Wes Anderson movie?") was distracting-I understood what this was trying to do but it felt pretty forced. There's also some elements of the book that happen what feels like out of nowhere and are dropped quickly or never really expanded on. The writing occasionally felt a little overwrought, but overall I liked it and I'm always softer on debut novelists with writing since harshly judging the first pass at anything feels unfair. Other readers REALLY seem to like this, so if you connect with the description I'd say to give it a shot, and I'd definitely read something else by Damoff in the future! ]]> 4.36 2025 The Bright Years
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing April 22nd!

I liked this book but to me this was basically the platonic ideal of a three-star read; I liked it as I was reading it, it was engaging enough to move along quickly, I generally liked the characters, but some things didn't work great and I didn't feel an overall deep connection with the content. The book follows the story of three (four-ish) generations of a family in Texas and the ways in which addiction and trauma are passed down throughout the years. That makes this book sound pretty dark and it has its dark moments but overall I found it a likable family drama. The constant dropping of events to mark our place in time (ie "9/11 happened," "I heard the Spice Girls on the radio," "What do you think of the new Wes Anderson movie?") was distracting-I understood what this was trying to do but it felt pretty forced. There's also some elements of the book that happen what feels like out of nowhere and are dropped quickly or never really expanded on. The writing occasionally felt a little overwrought, but overall I liked it and I'm always softer on debut novelists with writing since harshly judging the first pass at anything feels unfair. Other readers REALLY seem to like this, so if you connect with the description I'd say to give it a shot, and I'd definitely read something else by Damoff in the future!
]]> Wild Dark Shore 211051083 From the beloved, New York Times bestselling author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves, a novel about a family living alone on a remote island, when a mysterious woman washes up on shore

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

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, 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, can they trust each other enough to protect one another—and the precious seeds in their care? And can they finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together?

A novel of heart-stopping twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.]]> 307 Charlotte McConaghy 125082799X Lauren 2 4.36 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping]]> 123029113 A whimsical and heartwarming novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magical powers—and her life—back on track, from the national bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.

Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps her aunt run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power�

Enter Luke Larsen, handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and might just know how to unlock the spell’s secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell. Worse, he might actually be thawing.

Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone...and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.]]> 336 Sangu Mandanna Lauren 0 to-read 4.37 2025 A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts]]> 522525 Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification.

Why is it so hard to say “I made a mistake”—and really believe it?

When we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat other people, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so, unconsciously, we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-justification—how it works, the damage it can cause, and how we can overcome it.

This updated edition concludes with an extended discussion of how we can live with dissonance; learn from it; and perhaps, eventually, forgive ourselves.]]> 292 Carol Tavris 0151010986 Lauren 0 currently-reading, coaching 4.01 2007 Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
author: Carol Tavris
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: currently-reading, coaching
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Demons (Star Trek: The Original Series, #30)]]> 216879
A Starfleet research expedition to the farthest reaches of the galaxy has unearthed that force once again... and brought its silent evil back to the planet Vulcan. Now Spock must defeat the demons that threaten his friends and family,or the ·ˇ˛ÔłŮ±đ°ů±č°ůľ±˛ő±đâ„� will become the instrument of the galaxy's destruction!

]]> 251 J.M. Dillard 0671708775 Lauren 2 3.55 1986 Demons (Star Trek: The Original Series, #30)
author: J.M. Dillard
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1986
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3)]]> 211492066
While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.

Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.

Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.]]> 336 Katherine Addison 1250821010 Lauren 4 4.62 2025 The Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3)
author: Katherine Addison
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
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 Lauren 4 4.60 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Mirror (The Bone Season, #5)]]> 222532910
As she makes her way back to the revolution, her journey takes her to Venice, where she learns a dangerous secret � one that could change the face of the war between humans and immortals. Before she can return to London, she must help the Domino Programme unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist.

And it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories � Arcturus Mesarthim � might also hold the key to saving Italy.

Lyrical and action-packed, The Dark Mirror drives the Bone Season series forward, showing Samantha Shannon at the height of her powers.]]> 509 Samantha Shannon 1408879468 Lauren 4 4.53 2025 The Dark Mirror (The Bone Season, #5)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:
This book is too long but the series does get better as it goes!
]]> <![CDATA[The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life]]> 30367546
Now you can get off the fence and get on with your life. Imagine your relief when you discover the right choice and break free from obsession. Picture yourself enjoying the pleasures of parenthood or the freedom and spontaneity of living childfree.

The Baby Decision is a powerful, unbiased guidebook by a professional coach/psychotherapist who has specialized in the topic for forty years.

With wisdom, depth and humor Merle will help you take this overwhelming decision and break it down into a digestible sequence of five steps.

During this discovery process you

Dissolve fear and doubt.Use thirty visualization exercises and thought experiments to uncover your answer.Have deep talks with your partner, even if you disagree.Resist pressures from family and friends, and fully consider the rewards of the childfree choice.Learn the latest on one-child families, single, LGBTQI+ and older parents, fertility and adoption.Steal a few benefits from the opposite choice.Merle Bombardieri, MSW, LICSW is a psychotherapist, coach and workshop leader. Although she enjoyed raising her daughters, she has been a childfree advocate since 1978. She has contributed to Our Bodies Ourselves, The Boston Globe Magazine, Glamour, Self and Brides and has appeared on national news, talk show, and documentaries.

Please see her Author Page for more information and to visit her blog for free advice and resources.

Discover your personal answer to the baby question. Click “Play� on the Audible sample or “Look Inside� to preview the book.]]> 352 Merle Bombardieri 0997500727 Lauren 0 to-read 4.21 1981 The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life
author: Merle Bombardieri
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


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


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Lauren 0 to-read 4.11 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Killer Potential 215217589 Darkly funny and provocative, this edge-of-your-seat thrill ride follows two unlikely fugitives—an SAT tutor who finds her rich employers brutally murdered and the bound woman she frees from their mansion—an irresistible debut novel perfect for fans ofĚýThe GuestĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýMy Sister, the Serial Killer

A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles.

Everything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors� Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help within a closet. As Evie works to free her, the two are spotted—and within moments, they go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.

Suddenly at the heart of a manhunt and accompanied by a mysterious woman who refuses to speak, Evie knows the only way to clear her name is to find the real killer. But first she’ll have to break down the barriers of her companion, who is quickly becoming the most important person in Evie’s upside-down life. Their breathless spree takes them across the U.S. as developments in the case shock the nation and the press runs wild with Evie’s a gifted kid turned killer. She's now on the cover of every magazine and newspaper—anointed the new Charles Manson, a bloodthirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war. Evie is finallyĚýsomeone.

By turns cuttingly hilarious and deeply insightful,ĚýKiller PotentialĚýis a strikingly original debut. A literary novel with the page-turning intensity of a thriller that asks timely questions about our belief in the romance of social mobility, and how the stories we’re sold about our potential can shape the course of our lives.]]> 320 Hannah Deitch 0063356481 Lauren 3 arc
Should probably give this one a 2.5 but I try to be nicer with debut novels, so I'll round up to a three. I think this book ended up on my radar thanks to an offer of the ARC from NetGalley that described it as "sapphic Thelma and Louise" and like...I guess, but this one didn't work that well for me and I'm not sure why. I found Evie pretty identifiable but just didn't end up being that invested in her and Jae-the ending was kind of predictable although I did like the way things wrapped up in the story. I don't know if it was the writing style? The way some of the plot points and character reactions felt a little unbelievable? The book was a slow starter but the pacing evened out and once it got going the book moved along quickly, which I appreciated (I can see how other authors might have gotten bogged down in the "on the run" portion which didn't happen here, although we did take quite a circuitous route around the country). The creativity is there and I think a lot of the complaints I have are pretty common in debuts, so I'm definitely interested to see what Deitch does next! ]]> 3.44 2025 Killer Potential
author: Hannah Deitch
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing today!

Should probably give this one a 2.5 but I try to be nicer with debut novels, so I'll round up to a three. I think this book ended up on my radar thanks to an offer of the ARC from NetGalley that described it as "sapphic Thelma and Louise" and like...I guess, but this one didn't work that well for me and I'm not sure why. I found Evie pretty identifiable but just didn't end up being that invested in her and Jae-the ending was kind of predictable although I did like the way things wrapped up in the story. I don't know if it was the writing style? The way some of the plot points and character reactions felt a little unbelievable? The book was a slow starter but the pacing evened out and once it got going the book moved along quickly, which I appreciated (I can see how other authors might have gotten bogged down in the "on the run" portion which didn't happen here, although we did take quite a circuitous route around the country). The creativity is there and I think a lot of the complaints I have are pretty common in debuts, so I'm definitely interested to see what Deitch does next!
]]> <![CDATA[Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better]]> 59807999
Thinking 101 draws on decades of research from other cognitive psychologists, as well as from Ahn's own teaching and groundbreaking studies. She presents it all in a compellingly readable style that uses fun examples from K-pop dancing, anecdotes from her own life, and illuminating stories from history and the headlines. As Thinking 101 shows, with better awareness of our biases, we can improve our lives and tackle real-world problems. It is, quite simply, required reading for everyone who wants to think—and live—better.]]> 288 Woo-Kyoung Ahn 1250805953 Lauren 0 currently-reading, coaching 3.83 Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better
author: Woo-Kyoung Ahn
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: currently-reading, coaching
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Study Like a Champ: The Psychology-Based Guide to “Grade A� Study Habits (APA LifeTools Series)]]> 69701262 Most college and high school students think they know how to study, but cognitive science has unveiled many myths about what really works.

This engaging, student-friendly book debunks major myths about studying and provides practical tips for studying smarter, not harder. Written by expert psychology teachers who also conduct the very research that these tips are based on, this book outlines clear steps students can use throughout their high school and college careers to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning. Numerous examples and self-assessments will help students apply the strategies to their own unique situations, so that they can begin and maintain habits that foster life-long learning.

Psychologists Regan A. R. Gurung and John Dunlosky are both award-winning teachers and researchers who have spent years conducting studies on how students learn. Not only have they published a significant number of scientific peer-reviewed papers on the topic, but they have received national recognition as teachers.
]]> 224 Regan A. R. Gurung 1433840170 Lauren 4 coaching 4.50 Study Like a Champ: The Psychology-Based Guide to “Grade A” Study Habits (APA LifeTools Series)
author: Regan A. R. Gurung
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: coaching
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide]]> 53484574
This bestselling book introduces you step-by-step to the key skills needed to become a successful coach. Supported by an Online Resource site with over 70 videos of coaching in action, this practical book will be an invaluable resource for novices and trainee coaches.]]> 240 Christian Van Nieuwerburgh 1529710545 Lauren 4 coaching 4.56 2013 An Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide
author: Christian Van Nieuwerburgh
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/15
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: coaching
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones]]> 40244063 The instant New York Times bestseller. Over 1 million copies sold!

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
- make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
- overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- design your environment to make success easier;
- get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.]]> 306 James Clear Lauren 3 coaching 4.41 2018 Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
author: James Clear
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: coaching
review:
3.5 stars-I think the base information is good, and the writing style of the book is SO casual that I think it breaks these steps down into really easily digestible information. I guess my biggest criticism is it felt like it didn't need to be a book and could have been a long-form article instead. Most of the anecdotes read like wikipedia excerpts. I guess overall probably 4 stars for the actual information and suggestion for informing habits and a 2.5-3 for the writing style.
]]> Teach Yourself How to Learn 38228987 160 Saundra Yancy McGuire 1620367564 Lauren 4 coaching 4.07 2018 Teach Yourself How to Learn
author: Saundra Yancy McGuire
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/13
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: coaching
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mini ADHD Coach: Tools and Support to Make Life Easier―A Visual Guide]]> 135982777
Diagnosed at 29, Alice Gendron offers full and supportive insight into life with ADHD, addresses common challenges and hurdles, and provides tips and ADHD hacks that will help you to get things done and live a more peaceful daily life. This illustrated and informative guideĚýis a must-have for anyone looking to better understand ADHD and how to thrive with ADHD.Ěý

Through Gendron’s motivational voice and relatable illustrations, The Mini ADHD Coach will teach
Ěý Ěý
The Mini ADHD Coach is the perfect resource for flourishing with ADHD.

FIRST TRULY ACCESSIBLE SELF-HELP BOOK FOR ADHD While there are many books about ADHD, this is a unique graphic approach that explores ADHD from daily challenges and how to overcome them to a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know. This book offers a great resource for readers of all ages with its accessible illustrations and thorough content, which is timely and essential given the increase of diagnoses of ADHD in children and women around the world.

POPULAR EXPERT Alice Gendron’s style and approach have struck a chord internationally, with a rapidly growing audience ofĚýnearly a half-million social media followers—including a strong following across her foreign-language accounts in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Japanese. Her growing websiteĚý(theminiadhdcoach.com) has thousands of monthly visitors from across North America.

A VITAL ADDITION TO ADHD For anyone diagnosed with or supporting family or friends with ADHD, this is a practical and informative guide to read along with such ADHD books for adults asĚý Neurotribes , Invisible Women , Women with ADHD , The End of Average , Unwell Women , Divergent Mind , Your Brain’s Not Broken , Mother Brain , Still Distracted After All These Years , Taking Charge of ADHD , Taking Charge of Adult ADHD , Hyperbole and a Half , Solutions and Other Problems , and Am I There Yet?

Perfect ]]> 208 Alice Gendron 1797227335 Lauren 4 coaching 4.28 The Mini ADHD Coach: Tools and Support to Make Life Easier―A Visual Guide
author: Alice Gendron
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.28
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: coaching
review:
I picked this up from the library because I'm an academic coach who works with a LOT of students with ADHD so I thought this was written by a professional ADHD coach and would be a helpful resource for my work. I didn't realize "The Mini ADHD Coach" was the name of the author's blog as a content creator living with ADHD so it wasn't really helpful as a professional resource for me, but was very cute! The hacks were things I was already familiar with and often talk about with my students, but I think for someone newly diagnosed or looking for strategies to try on their own this could be really helpful.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be]]> 55883426 'Game-changing. Katy Milkman shows in this book that we can all be a super human' Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit

How to Change is a powerful, groundbreaking blueprint to help you - and anyone you manage, teach or coach - to achieve personal and professional goals, from the master of human nature and behaviour change and Choiceology podcast host Professor Katy Milkman.

Award-winning Wharton Professor Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behaviour change. An engineer by training, she approaches all challenges as problems to be solved and, with this mind-set, has drilled into the roadblocks that prevent us from achieving our goals and breaking unwanted behaviours. The key to lasting change, she argues, is not to set ever more audacious goals or to foster good habits but to get your strategy right.

In How to Change Milkman identifies seven human impulses, or 'problems', that commonly sabotage our attempts to make positive personal and professional change. Then, crucially, instead of getting you to do battle with these impulses she shows you how to harness them and use these as driving forces to help instil new, positive behaviours - better, faster and more efficiently than you could imagine.

Drawing her own original research, countless engaging case studies and practical tools throughout to help you put her ideas into action, Milkman reveals a proven, inspiring path that can take you - once and for all - from where you are today to where you want to be.]]> 249 Katy Milkman 1785043714 Lauren 4 coaching 3.52 2021 How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
author: Katy Milkman
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: coaching
review:
Had to book-club this with my team at work. If you've read pop-psych productivity or habit-building books, most of what's in here will probably be familiar to you (although I found Milkman's writing less grating than James Clear's in Atomic Habits). A helpful starting point for people trying to jump into behavior change, which is why I gave it four stars-did have some interesting ideas to implement in terms of talking to students about these topics.
]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 215950366 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 1668075105 Lauren 4 arc
First of all, so excited to get another Stephen Graham Jones ARC-I work at CU Boulder and when my students get to take classes with him I'm extremely jealous like...can I audit lol. ANYWAY.

This was a great (mostly) historical horror novel told from three viewpoints-a Pikuni man, a Lutheran preacher, and a modern-day professor reviewing the diary in which the historical story is being told. The epistolary style took me a little bit of time to get into but once I did I was locked in-I was also really impressed with the completely different voice compared to his other novels I've read (the last section, which takes place in present-day, reminded me a lot stylistically of the Indian Lake books).

As another reviewer said, this one hits differently than many other horror novels as it's based around a real genocide event (the Marias Massacre-a few reviewers have recommended reading up on it before reading the book, and I can see how that would give some context but I went into it relatively blind and don't think it impacted the story in any way-I was able to read more about it after I finished). The historical elements of the book feel as important and engaging as the vampire story-themes of memory, narrative, and trauma run throughout and as usual (at least based on SGJ books I've read) there's lots of violence and gore (although certainly not to the slasher-movie extent we got in the Indian Lake trilogy). It did run a bit long-we switch back to present-day near the end of the book and while I initially wasn't sure about that move and the pacing of it, on reflection I think it worked well. Add this to the list of Stephen Graham Jones novels I would absolutely recommend (which has so far been *checks notes* all of them).]]> 4.49 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing tomorrow, March 18th!

First of all, so excited to get another Stephen Graham Jones ARC-I work at CU Boulder and when my students get to take classes with him I'm extremely jealous like...can I audit lol. ANYWAY.

This was a great (mostly) historical horror novel told from three viewpoints-a Pikuni man, a Lutheran preacher, and a modern-day professor reviewing the diary in which the historical story is being told. The epistolary style took me a little bit of time to get into but once I did I was locked in-I was also really impressed with the completely different voice compared to his other novels I've read (the last section, which takes place in present-day, reminded me a lot stylistically of the Indian Lake books).

As another reviewer said, this one hits differently than many other horror novels as it's based around a real genocide event (the Marias Massacre-a few reviewers have recommended reading up on it before reading the book, and I can see how that would give some context but I went into it relatively blind and don't think it impacted the story in any way-I was able to read more about it after I finished). The historical elements of the book feel as important and engaging as the vampire story-themes of memory, narrative, and trauma run throughout and as usual (at least based on SGJ books I've read) there's lots of violence and gore (although certainly not to the slasher-movie extent we got in the Indian Lake trilogy). It did run a bit long-we switch back to present-day near the end of the book and while I initially wasn't sure about that move and the pacing of it, on reflection I think it worked well. Add this to the list of Stephen Graham Jones novels I would absolutely recommend (which has so far been *checks notes* all of them).
]]> Conclave 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris Lauren 0 to-read 4.03 2016 Conclave
author: Robert Harris
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Membranes 55825321
First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes--heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies--into a sensitive portrait of one young woman's quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader's own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich's translation brings Chi's hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.]]> 168 Chi Ta-wei 0231195710 Lauren 0 to-read 4.00 1995 The Membranes
author: Chi Ta-wei
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This]]> 220257561 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West offered freedom and justice for all. Over the past twenty years he reported on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more. He won awards for his journalism and his fiction. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.

This powerful book is a chronicle of Omar's painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means � as a citizen, as a father � to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times. This is a book for those that have tired of moral emptiness. This is a book for everyone who wants something better.]]> 188 Omar El Akkad 1837264252 Lauren 0 currently-reading 4.65 2025 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
author: Omar El Akkad
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Boleyn Traitor (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #11)]]> 220235413 From the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, legendary historical novelist Philippa Gregory returns to the court of Henry VIII with this dazzling and provocative tour de force about the high cost of loyalty, love, and betrayal.

Sister. Liar. Spy. Traitor.

Her secrets shaped a kingdom.

Her loyalty was deadly.

Jane Boleyn watches from the shadows of the Tudor court, where nothing is more powerful than a secret. And power rests on the edge of a tyrant King’s sword.

She wears many masks � loving wife, devoted sister, and obedient spy. It’s what a woman must do to survive.

The only weapon she has is her voice.

They say Jane’s whispers sealed the fate of two queens. They called her a liar and a traitor.

But the truth is far more dangerous�

Philippa Gregory brings the Boleyn traitor out of the shadows in an explosive story of one woman’s survival in the deadly dance of the Tudor Court.]]> 640 Philippa Gregory 0063439689 Lauren 0 to-read 5.00 Boleyn Traitor (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #11)
author: Philippa Gregory
name: Lauren
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> K2: Triumph and Tragedy 112037
Jim Curran came to K2 as a climbing cameraman with an unsuccessful British expedition, but stayed on through the climbing season. This is his account of the dramatic events of that summer, a story of ambitions both achieved and thwarted on a mountain which all high-altitude climbers take the most pride in overcoming. In 1986 K2 took its toll of those ambitions.

Curran vividly describes the moments that contribute to the exhilaration of climbing on the world's most demanding mountain, and he assesses the tragedy of that summer with compassion and impartiality.

K2, "the savage mountain", is the second-highest peak in the world - and the most difficult to climb. In 1986, it was the site of both dazzling triumph and great loss as twenty-seven men and women reached the top but thirteen died trying. Curran was there to record it all in words and photographs: courage and obsession, luminous success and thwarted ambition.]]> 224 Jim Curran 0395485908 Lauren 3 4.00 1987 K2: Triumph and Tragedy
author: Jim Curran
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon]]> 199897225 From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the epic adventure tale The Emerald Mile comes the most dramatic and deeply moving account ever of walking the Grand Canyon, a highly dangerous, life-changing 750-mile trek. The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park, author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom. Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this jewel of national parks is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The intensity of the effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held staggering dangers and unexpected discoveries. Accompanying Fedarko through this sublime yet perilous terrain is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captures the stunning landscape in breathtaking photos. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors� camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park’s remote wildness. An epic adventure, action-packed survival tale, and a deep spiritual journey, A Walk in the Park gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the crown jewel of America’s National an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.]]> 505 Kevin Fedarko Lauren 3 4.48 2024 A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
author: Kevin Fedarko
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman]]> 62336871 Fates and Furies meets Melancholia in this ominous and absorbing debut novel about marriage and motherhood in a time of ecological collapse, as mothers around the world begin to mysteriously vanish from their homes

Ada—a woman from Montreal living reluctantly in Michigan—vanishes from her bed one night while her husband Danny is asleep beside her, her young son, Gilles, in the next room. Desperate to locate Ada before Gilles understands what has happened, Danny begins a search. But the feds are already involved: across the country and around the world, mothers are vanishing from their homes.

Where did Ada go? What has she gone through? And how does the mystery relate to the forest that she seemed magnetically drawn to?
Confronting the role of motherhood and the meaning of home in the wreckage of capitalism and climate change, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman is that rare, dazzling debut that is both thrilling and profound. It is a mystery, a play on myths of metamorphosis, and above all, a story of love—between husband and wife, mother and child—deeply troubled by the future we face.]]> 288 Molly Lynch 1646221427 Lauren 0 to-read 3.50 2023 The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman
author: Molly Lynch
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Private Rites 203579085 From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters� lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters� 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 imperiled world.]]> 291 Julia Armfield 125034431X Lauren 0 to-read 3.57 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fire from Heaven (Alexander the Great, #1)]]> 67697
In Alexander's childhood, his defiant character was molded into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son's loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion, on whom he depended for he rest of his life, taught him trust, whilst Aristotle's tutoring provoked his mind and Homer's Iliad fuelled his aspirations. He killed his first man in battle at the age of twelve and became the commander of Macedon's cavalry at eighteen - by the time his father was murdered and he acceded to the throne, Alexander's skills had grown to match his fiery ambition.]]> 375 Mary Renault 0375726829 Lauren 0 to-read 3.98 1969 Fire from Heaven (Alexander the Great, #1)
author: Mary Renault
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Angel Down 220160849 The critically acclaimed author of the “crazily enjoyable� (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war.

Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.

What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.

Angel Down plunges you into the heart of World War I and weaves a polyphonic tale of survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict.]]> 304 Daniel Kraus 1668068451 Lauren 0 to-read, arc 4.48 Angel Down
author: Daniel Kraus
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.48
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read, arc
review:

]]> A Little Life 39100683
In rich and resplendent prose, Yanagihara has fashioned a tragic and transcendent hymn to brotherly love, a masterful depiction of heartbreak, and a dark examination of the tyranny of memory and the limits of human endurance.

Source: penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 951 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539266 Lauren 4
AND PUNISHMENT IT WAS. I honestly have no idea how to rate this. I'm very glad I read it and it will stay with me a long time but on the other hand I would never recommend this book to another human who I respected or cared about. The People In The Trees was a similarly painful reading experience but there the protagonist is designed to be unlikable so it was easier to handle, unlike Jude who you want to succeed but instead everything is just consistently getting worse. It's hard reading a novel where a stretch of good things happening only leads to a growing sense of dismay and horror knowing something awful is coming up shortly. It was to the point where approaching the end of a chapter I was able to accurately predict the horrible tragedy that I KNEW WAS COMING!!! Because too many pages had been not even good things happening, but just the absence of terrible things happening! On twitter I posted "The moral is 'all of life is suffering and all good things are just temporary light posts in between the endless stretches of darkness'" and like...that probably isn't what you should take away from this book but that's sure what it felt like while in the middle of the reading experience!!

Anyway my final review on twitter was "4 stars but also f*ck this book lol" which, basically accurate. It's a beautiful novel! The writing, as usual, is near flawless! It could easily have been 200 pages shorter! It made me very upset constantly while reading it! I don't know if I could emotionally handle reading it again!

I think it's like a haunted house where you know you shouldn't go in because people are going to jump out screaming and scare the hell out of you but some part of you yearns for punishment because it reminds you that you are alive and breathing so you're going to go in anyway? That's basically the experience of A Little Life.]]> 4.29 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/07
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: nyt-notabl-100, national-book-award-finalists, arc
review:
WHEWWWWWW I had to let this one sit for a while. I finished the defense draft of my dissertation and in the two week break between submission and my defense I immediately chewed through a 750 page book in three days lol. I cannot live without some kind of punishment.

AND PUNISHMENT IT WAS. I honestly have no idea how to rate this. I'm very glad I read it and it will stay with me a long time but on the other hand I would never recommend this book to another human who I respected or cared about. The People In The Trees was a similarly painful reading experience but there the protagonist is designed to be unlikable so it was easier to handle, unlike Jude who you want to succeed but instead everything is just consistently getting worse. It's hard reading a novel where a stretch of good things happening only leads to a growing sense of dismay and horror knowing something awful is coming up shortly. It was to the point where approaching the end of a chapter I was able to accurately predict the horrible tragedy that I KNEW WAS COMING!!! Because too many pages had been not even good things happening, but just the absence of terrible things happening! On twitter I posted "The moral is 'all of life is suffering and all good things are just temporary light posts in between the endless stretches of darkness'" and like...that probably isn't what you should take away from this book but that's sure what it felt like while in the middle of the reading experience!!

Anyway my final review on twitter was "4 stars but also f*ck this book lol" which, basically accurate. It's a beautiful novel! The writing, as usual, is near flawless! It could easily have been 200 pages shorter! It made me very upset constantly while reading it! I don't know if I could emotionally handle reading it again!

I think it's like a haunted house where you know you shouldn't go in because people are going to jump out screaming and scare the hell out of you but some part of you yearns for punishment because it reminds you that you are alive and breathing so you're going to go in anyway? That's basically the experience of A Little Life.
]]> <![CDATA[A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy]]> 196600406 “Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn’t a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me.�

Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.�

Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.� So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.

Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.]]> 304 Tia Levings Lauren 4 4.36 2024 A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
author: Tia Levings
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Antidote 214537790 FromĚýPulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestsellingĚýauthor of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Lauren 4 arc
I really enjoyed this one! I had loved Swamplandia when I read it originally, but on re-read a couple of years ago it just felt too dark and bleak, a series of bad things happening to the characters with no real moral resolution. Pleased to report this one, while it certainly has dark elements, didn't feel that way at all. I think this book had really powerful things to say about memory and who writes history and whose narratives are the ones that get told-it felt very relevant in the current political climate here in the U.S. All of our main characters/narrators were fleshed out, multi-dimensional, and likable and the magical realism blended well with the setting (I'm assuming based on some specific characteristics that this is meant to be a Wizard of Oz allusion but I'll be honest, I didn't really get it lol. Probably just a me problem). Don't skip the afterword content-there's a great supporting short essay and lots of references and research that went into this one. Between the content/topics addressed and Russell's excellent writing, I wouldn't be surprised to see this one on awards lists for this upcoming year. Recommended! ]]> 4.01 2025 The Antidote
author: Karen Russell
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing March 11th!

I really enjoyed this one! I had loved Swamplandia when I read it originally, but on re-read a couple of years ago it just felt too dark and bleak, a series of bad things happening to the characters with no real moral resolution. Pleased to report this one, while it certainly has dark elements, didn't feel that way at all. I think this book had really powerful things to say about memory and who writes history and whose narratives are the ones that get told-it felt very relevant in the current political climate here in the U.S. All of our main characters/narrators were fleshed out, multi-dimensional, and likable and the magical realism blended well with the setting (I'm assuming based on some specific characteristics that this is meant to be a Wizard of Oz allusion but I'll be honest, I didn't really get it lol. Probably just a me problem). Don't skip the afterword content-there's a great supporting short essay and lots of references and research that went into this one. Between the content/topics addressed and Russell's excellent writing, I wouldn't be surprised to see this one on awards lists for this upcoming year. Recommended!
]]> <![CDATA[So When Are You Having Kids: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren’t Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents]]> 61037242 0 Jordan Davidson 1799785262 Lauren 4 3.50 So When Are You Having Kids: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren’t Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents
author: Jordan Davidson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
I read The Most Important Job In The World towards the end of last year, which was all about the philosophical decisions to choose to have or not have kids. I feel like this book was a great complement to that, because while there are some elements of that in the early chapters, this was mostly practical advice covering topics like the financial realities of having children, fertility treatments, making the decision (or coping with the realities due to infertility) of not having children, etc. I wouldn't say it's a "definitive guide" in that I didn't feel like I've come to a firm decision after reading it, but it was definitely a lot of great info that could certainly contribute to a more informed decision either way. Also appreciated that this book was very queer and trans friendly in its message and languaging as well!
]]> <![CDATA[Elphie: A Wicked Childhood (The Wicked Years, #0)]]> 199743711
Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy; Elphie is the riveting coming-of-age story of a very peculiar and relatable young girl.

Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education, haphazard though it must be—until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

Elphie is destined to be a witch; she bears the markings from childhood—most evidently in her green skin but more obscurely and profoundly in her cunning and perhaps amoral behaviors, as she seeks to make do, to slip by, to sneak out, to endure, and to aspire.]]> 288 Gregory Maguire 0063377012 Lauren 4 arc
Wow, people on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ REALLY do not like this book, which is surprising to me because I actually enjoyed it-objectively it's probably a 3.5 but I'll round up to four to balance out what seems to me an unfairly low score. Is it entirely necessary? No, not really-you can absolutely skip this and still get a full and complete story of Elphaba through the original series, or even just by reading Wicked as a standalone. That said, this was a nice look into her childhood, and it was really interesting to see the development of the relationships between her and her two siblings. Most of the complaints in other reviews seem to center on the writing style, but as a Gregory Maguire near-completist, this didn't stand out to me as being significantly different than most of his other books-he definitely has a distinctive style which you may like or dislike, but if you've read his work before, especially the more recent Maracoor trilogy, I don't think the style should come as a surprise-I personally found it very readable as I finished the book in one sitting over a few hours. This isn't a necessary read but unlike some other prequels for famous books/characters I don't think it negatively impacts the overall story in any way (looking at you, Hannibal Rising). ]]> 3.16 2025 Elphie: A Wicked Childhood (The Wicked Years, #0)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing March 25th!

Wow, people on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ REALLY do not like this book, which is surprising to me because I actually enjoyed it-objectively it's probably a 3.5 but I'll round up to four to balance out what seems to me an unfairly low score. Is it entirely necessary? No, not really-you can absolutely skip this and still get a full and complete story of Elphaba through the original series, or even just by reading Wicked as a standalone. That said, this was a nice look into her childhood, and it was really interesting to see the development of the relationships between her and her two siblings. Most of the complaints in other reviews seem to center on the writing style, but as a Gregory Maguire near-completist, this didn't stand out to me as being significantly different than most of his other books-he definitely has a distinctive style which you may like or dislike, but if you've read his work before, especially the more recent Maracoor trilogy, I don't think the style should come as a surprise-I personally found it very readable as I finished the book in one sitting over a few hours. This isn't a necessary read but unlike some other prequels for famous books/characters I don't think it negatively impacts the overall story in any way (looking at you, Hannibal Rising).
]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, MieczysĹ‚aw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inĚýGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 305 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Lauren 4 3.65 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
This was my first Tokarczuk novel and I REALLY liked it! Very dense and philosophical writing but engaging throughout-horror elements really only come into play at the very end but there is a thread of unease that runs through the whole story.
]]> The House of Eve 123282252 'Heart-rending' Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Luminous and moving!' Kate Quinn
'Unforgettable' Kristen Harmel

The heartbreaking and completely unputdownable instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick about the pain and sacrifice of forbidden love, the lengths a mother will go to protect her child, and survival against the toughest of odds.

Philadelphia, 1948: Fifteen-year-old Ruby 's dreams are almost within reach. She's going to be the first in her family to attend college, despite having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising her only daughter. But falling madly in love with the one boy she is forbidden from threatens to pull Ruby back into poverty and desperation. When she's imprisoned in a home for unwed mothers - locked in the House of Eve with other 'fallen girls' - everything she's worked so hard for starts slipping through her fingers.

Washington, DC, 1948: Eleanor arrives in the city with ambition, hope and a past she's trying her hardest to run from. When she meets William at Howard University, with his inky black eyes and broad shoulders, it's love at first sight. But William hails from one of Washington, DC's elite Black families, who don't let just anyone into their inner circle - especially not a girl from 'the wrong side of the tracks'. Eleanor hopes that a baby will mean they finally accept her, and that her secrets won't see the light of day - but fate has other plans in store...

In the dawn of the 1950s, Ruby and Eleanor are complete strangers - until their paths unexpectedly collide. Forced to make the most heartbreaking decisions of their lives, will their choices save them... or be their undoing?

Fans of Kate Quinn, Lisa Wingate and Kristin Harmel will fall head over heels for this totally gripping and heart-wrenching historical-fiction page-turner.

Readers love The House of Eve :

' All the stars!!! ... It absolutely blew me away . I finished it several days ago and am still thinking about it! I still don't have the exact words to describe how it made me feel ... So many emotions ... It will hit your heart hard ... Will have your heart breaking time and again . I could not put it down ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

'5 brilliant stars! I'm definitely not crying right now . That's a lie . I totally am ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

' Everything . This book was everything . The House of Eve will not only be a favourite of the year, but a favourite of all-time . I ADORED THIS BOOK . You can't tell me that Ruby and Eleanor aren't real people because they're real in my heart, and I will never forget them. I'm jealous of you all who get to read this for the first time. ALL THE STARS ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

' I read this book in one sitting and loved it!! ... I was blown away ... I couldn't read it fast enough ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

' WOW! I'm still processing this book! I devoured it in three days ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

' I LOVED THIS BOOK! ... Grabs you from the first page and holds you until the satisfying conclusion . The House of Eve is a timely, redemptive, powerful , beautifully written yet haunting novel of resilience and sacrifices women make' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

' I really gobbled up this book . PAGE-TURNER! I absolutely loved this story... Amazing ... Impossible for me to put down ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer,

' I LOVED THIS BOOK! ' Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewer, ]]> 384 Sadeqa Johnson 034913054X Lauren 3 4.30 2023 The House of Eve
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Orb of Cairado (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1.1)]]> 223200977 The Goblin Emperor,ĚýThe Orb of CairadoĚýoffers an unlikely hero in historian Ulcetha Zhorvena.

Five years ago, Ulcetha was studying at the University of Cairado, working his way toward becoming a scholar first-class in the Department of History. Then a prize artifact disappeared and Ulcetha, deftly framed, was kicked out. Now he works for a crooked importer, using his knowledge of elven history to write provenances for the fake artifacts Salathgarad sells.

When the airshipĚýWisdom of ChoharoĚýexplodes, killing the emperor and three of his four sons, it takes with it Ulcetha’s best friend, Mara Lilana. But Mara leaves behind a puzzle—the one thing Ulcetha can’t resist. And the puzzle leads Ulcetha back to the Department of History…and maybe the chance to clear his name.]]> 101 Katherine Addison 1645242145 Lauren 4 4.42 2025 The Orb of Cairado (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1.1)
author: Katherine Addison
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Alchemised 222490389 In this riveting dark fantasy debut, a woman with missing memories fights to survive a war-torn world of necromancy and alchemy—and the man tasked with unearthing the deepest secrets of her past.

“What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours? The war is over. Holdfast is dead. The Eternal Flame extinguished. There’s no one left for you to save.�

Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed.

In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile, undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.

According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit?

To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight—to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self—is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.]]> 1040 SenLinYu 0593972708 Lauren 0 to-read 4.59 2025 Alchemised
author: SenLinYu
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Lauren 5
ANYWAY HELLO I LOVED THIS BOOK???? "Romance" is a bit of a stretch TO ME-it's a feature of a book but hardly the focus, but I just loved this, it was so cute and cozy and conflicts were all resolved quickly. Just a delight! ]]> 4.04 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
I've somehow unfortunately been dragged into doing these Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ challenges so I can get my stupid little bookmark icon, and I was really dreading this once since I'm not a romance reader (nothing against the genre but just not my thing-and not to mention since the challenge options are pulled from Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ member shelves there was ONE option with queer romance and very few authors of color, TRY HARDER GOODREADS MEMBERS).

ANYWAY HELLO I LOVED THIS BOOK???? "Romance" is a bit of a stretch TO ME-it's a feature of a book but hardly the focus, but I just loved this, it was so cute and cozy and conflicts were all resolved quickly. Just a delight!
]]> <![CDATA[Fable for the End of the World]]> 209594872 The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in this standalone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.]]> 384 Ava Reid 0063211556 Lauren 3 arc
It's a bold move in the author's note at the start of the book to say you were inspired by The Hunger Games and spent years writing THG fanfic and then write a take on THG because you have to know it will be compared to the original, and this one does unfortunately fall short (which, I don't know that many if any books in this genre and general plot could live up to the original). Sapphic Hunger Games is an idea we love to see (!) but the plot itself just didn't work as well.

I think this book has good messaging around the state of the world, the way that individual compassion and empathy is at the base of affecting great change, and also the way constant surveillance has turned much of our lives into a performance for others. Unfortunately while she's likable I found the behavior and choices of our main character Inesa fairly unbelievable for a lot of the book-I didn't realize Katniss being extremely competent was such a key part of making THG successful for me but apparently it was! I also didn't find her brother to be particularly sympathetic-other reviewers have talked about their wonderful relationship and how much they cared for each other but...where? They barely interact for most of the book, he does absolutely nothing to defend her from their terrible mother, and he seems pretty emotionally removed from her. I felt no emotional connection to their relationship whatsoever. Having him disappear from a majority of the book honestly felt like one of the better authorial choices to me.

If you like dystopian murder competitions, you may enjoy this one. It hits the expected notes and I will say it gained an additional star from me because the ending is pretty bleak-I do admire a book, especially YA, that isn't afraid to GO for it. The relationship between the two leads is pretty fast-paced so doesn't feel as deep as it might otherwise, but I did like them together and thought Melinoe's arc was well-done. Overall don't know that I would widely recommend this, but if you're a fan of the genre you can give this a shot (no pun intended). ]]> 3.81 2025 Fable for the End of the World
author: Ava Reid
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing March 4th!

It's a bold move in the author's note at the start of the book to say you were inspired by The Hunger Games and spent years writing THG fanfic and then write a take on THG because you have to know it will be compared to the original, and this one does unfortunately fall short (which, I don't know that many if any books in this genre and general plot could live up to the original). Sapphic Hunger Games is an idea we love to see (!) but the plot itself just didn't work as well.

I think this book has good messaging around the state of the world, the way that individual compassion and empathy is at the base of affecting great change, and also the way constant surveillance has turned much of our lives into a performance for others. Unfortunately while she's likable I found the behavior and choices of our main character Inesa fairly unbelievable for a lot of the book-I didn't realize Katniss being extremely competent was such a key part of making THG successful for me but apparently it was! I also didn't find her brother to be particularly sympathetic-other reviewers have talked about their wonderful relationship and how much they cared for each other but...where? They barely interact for most of the book, he does absolutely nothing to defend her from their terrible mother, and he seems pretty emotionally removed from her. I felt no emotional connection to their relationship whatsoever. Having him disappear from a majority of the book honestly felt like one of the better authorial choices to me.

If you like dystopian murder competitions, you may enjoy this one. It hits the expected notes and I will say it gained an additional star from me because the ending is pretty bleak-I do admire a book, especially YA, that isn't afraid to GO for it. The relationship between the two leads is pretty fast-paced so doesn't feel as deep as it might otherwise, but I did like them together and thought Melinoe's arc was well-done. Overall don't know that I would widely recommend this, but if you're a fan of the genre you can give this a shot (no pun intended).
]]> The Fourth Consort 211397254 A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (the inspiration for the major motion picture Mickey 17).

Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.

That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.

Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.

When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.

Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?]]> 304 Edward Ashton Lauren 4 arc
This was my first Edward Ashton novel and I really enjoyed it! It's sort of a first contact story (there are other elements beyond that as well) and falls into my favorite genre of sci-fi with the more anthropological elements of cultural adaptation and (mis)understanding as well. It was a quick read but stayed engaging-I liked most of the characters and the pace was brisk but not too speedy. I was initially not sure how Ashton would pull off a satisfying ending, but I liked where it ended up. A lot of the bigger ideas and implications stayed fairly surface level, and I would have been interested to learn more about the larger context of the two groups running the show who were in conflict, but I also think it wasn't a bad choice to keep the scope of this more narrow.

Simple but effective, quick pacing, likable main characters (Dalton and Breaker specifically), and a good amount of humor throughout. Recommended for a quick and enjoyable sci-fi jaunt!]]> 4.27 2025 The Fourth Consort
author: Edward Ashton
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing February 25th!

This was my first Edward Ashton novel and I really enjoyed it! It's sort of a first contact story (there are other elements beyond that as well) and falls into my favorite genre of sci-fi with the more anthropological elements of cultural adaptation and (mis)understanding as well. It was a quick read but stayed engaging-I liked most of the characters and the pace was brisk but not too speedy. I was initially not sure how Ashton would pull off a satisfying ending, but I liked where it ended up. A lot of the bigger ideas and implications stayed fairly surface level, and I would have been interested to learn more about the larger context of the two groups running the show who were in conflict, but I also think it wasn't a bad choice to keep the scope of this more narrow.

Simple but effective, quick pacing, likable main characters (Dalton and Breaker specifically), and a good amount of humor throughout. Recommended for a quick and enjoyable sci-fi jaunt!
]]> Nuclear War: A Scenario 186490031 In only one scenario could the world as we know it end in a matter of that is nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound towards the United States.Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These projects are vital to how we understand the world we really live where one nuclear missile begets one in return; where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds-notice, with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear A Scenario explores this ticking clock scenario, based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons; created the response plans; and been responsible for those decisions should they need to have been made. Nuclear A Scenario is unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.]]> 400 Annie Jacobsen 0593476107 Lauren 2
Do you want to scare the crap out of yourself? In that case, read this! I don't know if the geopolitical scenario in this book is in any way realistic (some elements definitely seemed inflated for dramatic effect), but based on the amount of interviews and research, I suspect the general sequence of events and effects of nuclear war probably ARE realistic. I guess my main question is like...what was the point of this? Since as this book makes violently clear, you, me, and any members of the general public who read this can't actually do anything about the series of events that occurred in this book. At one point Jacobsen basically says that nuclear winter will essentially be like what was experienced by the dinosaurs after the asteroid crashed into earth 66 million years ago, another event completely out of anyone's control. So I guess the takeaway is: if this happens it will be EXTREMELY bad. On the other hand while humans are the impetus of this particular disaster, everything is basically out of almost all of our hands? Idk, I think most of us can agree nuclear weapons are bad, but I would have loved literally any conclusion that included ways to think about disarmament, etc.

Also this is my first book by Annie Jacobsen and I don't love the writing style of short, incomplete sentences, but it wasn't enough to be a full distraction. I would say if you are someone who thinks nuclear weapons are cool and good, then you should probably read this to get a realistic perspective of what using these weapons would actually look like. If you already think nuclear weapons and nuclear war are bad, I'm not sure there's a point in reading this besides scaring yourself, since there aren't really any actionable takeaways out of it.]]> 4.55 2024 Nuclear War: A Scenario
author: Annie Jacobsen
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:
Okay well. Not sure how to rate this.

Do you want to scare the crap out of yourself? In that case, read this! I don't know if the geopolitical scenario in this book is in any way realistic (some elements definitely seemed inflated for dramatic effect), but based on the amount of interviews and research, I suspect the general sequence of events and effects of nuclear war probably ARE realistic. I guess my main question is like...what was the point of this? Since as this book makes violently clear, you, me, and any members of the general public who read this can't actually do anything about the series of events that occurred in this book. At one point Jacobsen basically says that nuclear winter will essentially be like what was experienced by the dinosaurs after the asteroid crashed into earth 66 million years ago, another event completely out of anyone's control. So I guess the takeaway is: if this happens it will be EXTREMELY bad. On the other hand while humans are the impetus of this particular disaster, everything is basically out of almost all of our hands? Idk, I think most of us can agree nuclear weapons are bad, but I would have loved literally any conclusion that included ways to think about disarmament, etc.

Also this is my first book by Annie Jacobsen and I don't love the writing style of short, incomplete sentences, but it wasn't enough to be a full distraction. I would say if you are someone who thinks nuclear weapons are cool and good, then you should probably read this to get a realistic perspective of what using these weapons would actually look like. If you already think nuclear weapons and nuclear war are bad, I'm not sure there's a point in reading this besides scaring yourself, since there aren't really any actionable takeaways out of it.
]]> Properties of Thirst 59365040 A New Yorker Best Book of 2022

Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen , National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a novel destined to be an American classic: a sweeping masterwork set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American Dream.

Rockwell “Rocky� Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death.

As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy.

Rocky is determined to protect his remaining family and the land where they’ve loved and lost so much. But when the government decides to build a Japanese-American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he’s battled for years. Complicating matters is the fact that the idealistic Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.

Properties of Thirst is a novel that is both universal and intimate. It is the story of a changing American landscape and an examination of one of the darkest periods in this country’s past, told through the stories of the individual loves and losses that weave together to form the fabric of our shared history. Ultimately, it is an unflinching distillation of our nation’s essence—and a celebration of the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.]]> 544 Marianne Wiggins 1416571264 Lauren 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Properties of Thirst
author: Marianne Wiggins
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Infinite Fates 210395729 They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

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

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

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.]]> 352 Laura Steven 1250333881 Lauren 3 arc
Our Infinite Fates follows two sort-of-star-crossed lovers who are always reincarnated over time, drawn to each other in every lifetime, and must kill each other by their shared 18th birthday, for reasons left unclear until close to the end of the story. The book was certainly readable, considering when I got to around the 50% mark and was feeling over it I chewed through the rest in about 36 hours. In all honesty this was partially on me-I don't know why I requested a YA ARC about reincarnation and multiple lives when I generally don't like books about time travel, etc. I think it was the gorgeous cover, to be honest! Honestly (based on my personal feelings) the "This Is How You Lose The Time War" comp should have been enough to make me not even request this one to begin with (I see the comparison but although I felt similarly underwhelmed by that book, I honestly don't think the two books are THAT similar). I wavered between a 2.5 and 3 stars on this one, but since I went into it primed to not love it because of the genre, I rounded up to try and be fair.

My main complaint (which again, I probably should have seen coming) is that the storytelling of the past lives felt very repetitive-the chapters are short and while they cycled through different sexes of the two characters (which I appreciated!) and different cultural settings and time periods, it was pretty much the same every time and when you know each one will end the same way there isn't really any suspense. Because we only had short glimpses of the characters in their past lives, I also didn't really feel much in terms of chemistry between the two leads-we're told they have a great love story but we're just kind of asked to take it at face value since we don't see that connection really grow and develop over time. The big reveal near the end of the book also made me laugh; as it shook out it was fine, I guess (although it did kind of blow out the scope of the story in a way that felt kind of incongruous so close to the end of the book), but just the way it was written really hit as funny for me when I doubt it was intended to be so. I liked Evelyn but she also made some baffling choices in here and while she herself acknowledges readily in the text that they were stupid (lol) it's still like girl...but why.

I think if you're more into the genre than I am and feel drawn to the premise you'll probably like this more than I did-the characters are generally likable, it's a quick read, and other (maybe less cynical) people REALLY seemed to enjoy the romance-across-time-and-space aspect. ]]> 3.75 2025 Our Infinite Fates
author: Laura Steven
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing March 4th!

Our Infinite Fates follows two sort-of-star-crossed lovers who are always reincarnated over time, drawn to each other in every lifetime, and must kill each other by their shared 18th birthday, for reasons left unclear until close to the end of the story. The book was certainly readable, considering when I got to around the 50% mark and was feeling over it I chewed through the rest in about 36 hours. In all honesty this was partially on me-I don't know why I requested a YA ARC about reincarnation and multiple lives when I generally don't like books about time travel, etc. I think it was the gorgeous cover, to be honest! Honestly (based on my personal feelings) the "This Is How You Lose The Time War" comp should have been enough to make me not even request this one to begin with (I see the comparison but although I felt similarly underwhelmed by that book, I honestly don't think the two books are THAT similar). I wavered between a 2.5 and 3 stars on this one, but since I went into it primed to not love it because of the genre, I rounded up to try and be fair.

My main complaint (which again, I probably should have seen coming) is that the storytelling of the past lives felt very repetitive-the chapters are short and while they cycled through different sexes of the two characters (which I appreciated!) and different cultural settings and time periods, it was pretty much the same every time and when you know each one will end the same way there isn't really any suspense. Because we only had short glimpses of the characters in their past lives, I also didn't really feel much in terms of chemistry between the two leads-we're told they have a great love story but we're just kind of asked to take it at face value since we don't see that connection really grow and develop over time. The big reveal near the end of the book also made me laugh; as it shook out it was fine, I guess (although it did kind of blow out the scope of the story in a way that felt kind of incongruous so close to the end of the book), but just the way it was written really hit as funny for me when I doubt it was intended to be so. I liked Evelyn but she also made some baffling choices in here and while she herself acknowledges readily in the text that they were stupid (lol) it's still like girl...but why.

I think if you're more into the genre than I am and feel drawn to the premise you'll probably like this more than I did-the characters are generally likable, it's a quick read, and other (maybe less cynical) people REALLY seemed to enjoy the romance-across-time-and-space aspect.
]]> Glaciers 62330986 “Her story could be told in other people’s things. The postcards and the photographs. A garnet ring and a needlepoint of the homestead. The aprons hanging from her kitchen door. Her soft, faded, dog-eared copy of Little House in the Big Woods . A closet full of dresses sewn before she was born. All these things tell a story, but is it hers?�

Isabel is a single twenty-something in Portland, Oregon, who repairs damaged books in the basement of the local library, dreaming of a life she can’t quite reach. She is filled with longing―for a life in Amsterdam even though she’s never visited, for the unrequited love of a coworker, for a simpler time from her childhood in Alaska among the threatened glaciers she loves, and for the perfect vintage dress to wear to a party that just might change everything.

Unfolding over the course of a single day, Alexis M. Smith’s shimmering debut finds Isabel looking into her past―remembering her parents� separation, a meeting with an astrologer, and a life-changing encounter with a glacier―and shows us how fleeting, everyday moments can reveal an entire life. In classic movies, in old photographs and unsent postcards, rare books, and thrifted gems, Glaciers tells the story of a young woman’s love of the past and a hope to make something new and all her own.]]> 128 Alexis M. Smith 1953534902 Lauren 4 4.01 2012 Glaciers
author: Alexis M. Smith
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Lauren 3 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
review:

]]> They're Going to Love You 59721793 A magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles

Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer just like her mother, Isabel, a former Balanchine ballerina. Since they live in Ohio, she only gets to see her father Robert for a few precious weeks a year when she visits Greenwich Village, where he lives in an enchanting apartment on Bank Street with his partner, James.

Brilliant but troubled, James gives Carlisle an education in all that he holds dear in life--literature, music, and most of all, dance. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and the sophistication of their lives, Carlisle's aspiration to become a dancer herself blooms, born of her desire to be asked to stay at Bank Street, to be included in Robert and James' world even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come.

Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life, causing her to see with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she's become. They're Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.]]> 288 Meg Howrey 038554877X Lauren 3 arc
I really liked Meg Howrey's last novel, The Wanderers, so much so in fact that it was one of the few books over the last few years I decided to buy a copy of (I do probably 90-95% of my new reads through the library). There's a lot to like in this book as well; her writing continues to be beautiful and you can really tell that she's a former dancer-her knowledge of and passion for the subject is very clear. She can set a scene beautifully; you get a great sense of place from the various locations in this book (New York City, Los Angeles, Mexico).

I did have some trouble with the emotional pacing of the story, and I'll readily admit part of it may be my own experiences leaking through (I am also estranged from my father, although from a younger age than Carlisle). As another reviewer stated, I found her father's reaction to the precipitating event (revealed relatively late in the book) to be incredibly overblown and downright cruel, which really affected my view of the way the remaining events of the book play out. For a story that's constantly referencing the ideas of forgiveness and being forgiven, I was completely unconvinced that Carlisle should be forgiving her father at all at the end of the book, which I think is probably not where I should have fallen by the end of the narrative. The ending does seem to happen a bit abruptly and wrap up a bit too neatly as well.

Overall though, another enjoyable read from Howrey-I loved reading the sections about ballet and especially choreography. Definitely want to go back and read The Cranes Dance now!]]> 4.06 2022 They're Going to Love You
author: Meg Howrey
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/17
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-I received an ARC of this from NetGalley, thanks to them and the publisher!

I really liked Meg Howrey's last novel, The Wanderers, so much so in fact that it was one of the few books over the last few years I decided to buy a copy of (I do probably 90-95% of my new reads through the library). There's a lot to like in this book as well; her writing continues to be beautiful and you can really tell that she's a former dancer-her knowledge of and passion for the subject is very clear. She can set a scene beautifully; you get a great sense of place from the various locations in this book (New York City, Los Angeles, Mexico).

I did have some trouble with the emotional pacing of the story, and I'll readily admit part of it may be my own experiences leaking through (I am also estranged from my father, although from a younger age than Carlisle). As another reviewer stated, I found her father's reaction to the precipitating event (revealed relatively late in the book) to be incredibly overblown and downright cruel, which really affected my view of the way the remaining events of the book play out. For a story that's constantly referencing the ideas of forgiveness and being forgiven, I was completely unconvinced that Carlisle should be forgiving her father at all at the end of the book, which I think is probably not where I should have fallen by the end of the narrative. The ending does seem to happen a bit abruptly and wrap up a bit too neatly as well.

Overall though, another enjoyable read from Howrey-I loved reading the sections about ballet and especially choreography. Definitely want to go back and read The Cranes Dance now!
]]> <![CDATA[Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)]]> 60021216 In theĚýfollow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America.

“Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.�

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,”ĚýthroughĚýthe South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo â€� a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hatĚýcostume of a true “Unitedstatesianâ€�... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.â€�

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts,Ěýbayous,Ěýand coastlines.ĚýFrom his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book,ĚýLess IsĚýLostĚýis a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.]]> 272 Andrew Sean Greer 0316498904 Lauren 4 arc
This novel reads a bit as Less: The Domestic Version; unlike the first book where Less travels around the globe in an attempt to distract himself from heartbreak, this story sees Less travelling across the US in an attempt to avoid a pending financial crisis. Freddy is once again the narrator (although we see more of him and his own experiences in this story, since there isn't the "unknown narrator" plot device from the first volume).

Overall this story was a delight to read-Greer's writing is as good as the first book, with a bit more laugh-out-loud humor in this one. Less is just an enjoyable character to spend time with. The emotional impact of this one didn't hit quite as hard; it was just another fun adventure with familiar characters, not that I think it particularly needed to be more than that. My one main criticism is probably because I re-read Less immediately before this one so it was very fresh in my mind, but there were some aspects that seemed as though the book was written for a new audience who hadn't read Less, but also didn't necessarily work for that audience, if that makes sense. There's a lot of recap at the beginning which you wouldn't need if you were familiar with the first book, but there's also some references that won't make any sense to you if you DIDN'T read the first book. It throws the pacing a bit (especially toward the beginning of the story) as though it's not sure how to tie itself into the first one-as the story progresses, the flow of the story smooths out.

If you enjoyed the first book or are looking for a lighthearted read, can absolutely recommend this one. For me it didn't live up to the emotional jolt of the first one, but still a quick and pleasurable read. ]]> 3.64 2022 Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/06
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Less was a surprise top-10 book of the year for me when I first read it in 2018 so I was delighted to learn a sequel was coming out. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC!

This novel reads a bit as Less: The Domestic Version; unlike the first book where Less travels around the globe in an attempt to distract himself from heartbreak, this story sees Less travelling across the US in an attempt to avoid a pending financial crisis. Freddy is once again the narrator (although we see more of him and his own experiences in this story, since there isn't the "unknown narrator" plot device from the first volume).

Overall this story was a delight to read-Greer's writing is as good as the first book, with a bit more laugh-out-loud humor in this one. Less is just an enjoyable character to spend time with. The emotional impact of this one didn't hit quite as hard; it was just another fun adventure with familiar characters, not that I think it particularly needed to be more than that. My one main criticism is probably because I re-read Less immediately before this one so it was very fresh in my mind, but there were some aspects that seemed as though the book was written for a new audience who hadn't read Less, but also didn't necessarily work for that audience, if that makes sense. There's a lot of recap at the beginning which you wouldn't need if you were familiar with the first book, but there's also some references that won't make any sense to you if you DIDN'T read the first book. It throws the pacing a bit (especially toward the beginning of the story) as though it's not sure how to tie itself into the first one-as the story progresses, the flow of the story smooths out.

If you enjoyed the first book or are looking for a lighthearted read, can absolutely recommend this one. For me it didn't live up to the emotional jolt of the first one, but still a quick and pleasurable read.
]]> The Last Chairlift 60320396 John Irving, one of the world’s greatest novelists, returns with his first novel in seven years—a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics.

In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor.

Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren’t the first or the last ghosts he sees.]]> 889 John Irving 1501189271 Lauren 3 arc
The Last Chairlift is John Irving's 15th novel and traces the life story of protagonist Adam Brewster through his childhood in New England, adult life as a writer in New York and Vermont, and his later years in Toronto, taking us through around 70 years of social and political history at the same time. It's a sprawling family saga that will have tons of familiar hallmarks if you're a regular Irving reader: Phillips Exeter, small-town New England, wrestling, absurd character deaths, LGBTQ representation, a writer protagonist, political commentary, etc.

All this to say, if you like John Irving's past books, you'll probably find something to like here too. The main ensemble cast consists of six characters for most of the book, and I found all but one of them (Little Ray, Adam's mom) to be likable. There are a LOT of character deaths in this, so much so that many of them don't have much of an emotional impact, but all the main ones hit effectively. Your mileage may vary, but as someone who likes Irving's writing style overall, the writing was generally easy and pleasant to read.

By far the biggest issue with this novel was simply the length (Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ lists the upcoming hardcover release at 912(!) pages-my Kindle didn't track page count in my ARC). The ARC opens with a glowing letter from John Irving's editor which I found sort of ironic because if the book is 900 pages it seems hard to imagine that there was much editing going on. The novel took me about two weeks to get through (I finished three other books I was reading concurrently during this span) because of just how bloated it was-plot-wise it feels like there's a good deal that could have been trimmed or eliminated. The two longest chapters in the book (which I think are significantly longer, around 20% of the total novel according to my Kindle) are written in screenplay style (the reason for this is clear when you read the novel), and while I'm not sure how well it worked overall I did enjoy those sections just because it was something different to break up the length of the overall book.

I liked the novel overall, hence the three-star rating, and I think if you're a big Irving fan you'll probably find it worth the read; I've read about 2/3rds of his books and been mixed on them but this one does remind me more of the ones I've liked (Cider House, In One Person, Owen Meaney) than the ones I didn't. The length aside, it's an interesting story; I'm just not sure we needed quite as much of it as we got. ]]> 3.31 2022 The Last Chairlift
author: John Irving
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/28
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel!

The Last Chairlift is John Irving's 15th novel and traces the life story of protagonist Adam Brewster through his childhood in New England, adult life as a writer in New York and Vermont, and his later years in Toronto, taking us through around 70 years of social and political history at the same time. It's a sprawling family saga that will have tons of familiar hallmarks if you're a regular Irving reader: Phillips Exeter, small-town New England, wrestling, absurd character deaths, LGBTQ representation, a writer protagonist, political commentary, etc.

All this to say, if you like John Irving's past books, you'll probably find something to like here too. The main ensemble cast consists of six characters for most of the book, and I found all but one of them (Little Ray, Adam's mom) to be likable. There are a LOT of character deaths in this, so much so that many of them don't have much of an emotional impact, but all the main ones hit effectively. Your mileage may vary, but as someone who likes Irving's writing style overall, the writing was generally easy and pleasant to read.

By far the biggest issue with this novel was simply the length (Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ lists the upcoming hardcover release at 912(!) pages-my Kindle didn't track page count in my ARC). The ARC opens with a glowing letter from John Irving's editor which I found sort of ironic because if the book is 900 pages it seems hard to imagine that there was much editing going on. The novel took me about two weeks to get through (I finished three other books I was reading concurrently during this span) because of just how bloated it was-plot-wise it feels like there's a good deal that could have been trimmed or eliminated. The two longest chapters in the book (which I think are significantly longer, around 20% of the total novel according to my Kindle) are written in screenplay style (the reason for this is clear when you read the novel), and while I'm not sure how well it worked overall I did enjoy those sections just because it was something different to break up the length of the overall book.

I liked the novel overall, hence the three-star rating, and I think if you're a big Irving fan you'll probably find it worth the read; I've read about 2/3rds of his books and been mixed on them but this one does remind me more of the ones I've liked (Cider House, In One Person, Owen Meaney) than the ones I didn't. The length aside, it's an interesting story; I'm just not sure we needed quite as much of it as we got.
]]> <![CDATA[Furious Heaven (The Sun Chronicles, #2)]]> 36205229 Non-stop action, space battles and intrigue abound in the second in a galactic-scale, gender-swapped space opera trilogy inspired by the life of Alexander The Great.

The Republic of Chaonia fleets under the joint command of Princess Sun and her formidable mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, have defeated and driven out an invading fleet of the Phene Empire, although not without heavy losses. But the Empire remains strong and undeterred. While Chaonia scrambles to rebuild its military, the Empire's rulers are determined to squash Chaonia once and for all by any means necessary.

On the eve of Eirene's bold attack on the rich and populous Karnos System, an unexpected tragedy strikes the republic. Sun must take charge or lose the throne. Will Sun be content with the pragmatic path laid out by her mother for Chaonia's future? Or will she forge her own legend despite all the forces arrayed against her?]]> 1081 Kate Elliott 1800243235 Lauren 4 arc
An enjoyable sequel to our gender-swapped Alexander the Great story! Reading the first volume is a must (very little will make sense otherwise) and I'm glad I re-read Unconquerable Sun immediately before this one so I felt current on the characters and events. We pick up here shortly after its conclusion, and jump immediately into the action. The book follows the same general track as the first volume, with battle action and military campaigns interspersed with strategic planning, occasional interludes away from battle, and all seven of Sun's companions and her Gatoi bodyguard flung across known space on various missions. If you're familiar with Alexander the Great's story, a couple of the plot points in here won't be a surprise to you, but it's definitely an engaging read nonetheless.

The worldbuilding gets significantly expanded in this volume, and with more characters added to the central cast as well as the increased scope of events we get a bit less time with each, although it's always a delight to see Persephone, Hetty, and others (especially one of Sun's newly introduced companions, Makinde). Apama's backstory and plotline also get quite a bit more development in this novel, and it's really interesting to have a view from the Phene side of the conflict. The pacing can be a bit slow; goodreads says this release will be 400 pages, which is about 150 pages shorter than Unconquerable Sun. My kindle ARC didn't have page numbers but it ABSOLUTELY did not read any shorter-in fact it felt like a longer book. If it is longer in publication then that's understandable; if it really is only 400 pages, I would be more critical of the pace of the storytelling. The book is definitely a slow burn that builds momentum as the story goes on.

In summary, a sprawling sequel but it was a delight to return to this world and its many characters-looking forward to the release of the third volume!]]> 4.10 2023 Furious Heaven (The Sun Chronicles, #2)
author: Kate Elliott
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/04
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel!

An enjoyable sequel to our gender-swapped Alexander the Great story! Reading the first volume is a must (very little will make sense otherwise) and I'm glad I re-read Unconquerable Sun immediately before this one so I felt current on the characters and events. We pick up here shortly after its conclusion, and jump immediately into the action. The book follows the same general track as the first volume, with battle action and military campaigns interspersed with strategic planning, occasional interludes away from battle, and all seven of Sun's companions and her Gatoi bodyguard flung across known space on various missions. If you're familiar with Alexander the Great's story, a couple of the plot points in here won't be a surprise to you, but it's definitely an engaging read nonetheless.

The worldbuilding gets significantly expanded in this volume, and with more characters added to the central cast as well as the increased scope of events we get a bit less time with each, although it's always a delight to see Persephone, Hetty, and others (especially one of Sun's newly introduced companions, Makinde). Apama's backstory and plotline also get quite a bit more development in this novel, and it's really interesting to have a view from the Phene side of the conflict. The pacing can be a bit slow; goodreads says this release will be 400 pages, which is about 150 pages shorter than Unconquerable Sun. My kindle ARC didn't have page numbers but it ABSOLUTELY did not read any shorter-in fact it felt like a longer book. If it is longer in publication then that's understandable; if it really is only 400 pages, I would be more critical of the pace of the storytelling. The book is definitely a slow burn that builds momentum as the story goes on.

In summary, a sprawling sequel but it was a delight to return to this world and its many characters-looking forward to the release of the third volume!
]]> <![CDATA[Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)]]> 60372755
Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns home, when convicted serial killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer into a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.

Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.

Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.]]> 496 Stephen Graham Jones 1803361743 Lauren 4 arc
I have reached the "read everything the author publishes" stage with Stephen Graham Jones, I fear. The Only Good Indians was my introduction, after which I devoured My Heart Is A Chainsaw, so I was so excited to get an ARC of the sequel! If you enjoyed the first, there's more to love here in the second, which picks up four years later with a new killer on the loose. The carnage starts much earlier in this volume-we already know many of the characters so there isn't as much lead in, we get right to the slashing. The school essay interludes continue with a new narrator, and there's just as many references to the what-seems-to-be endless catalog of slasher movies.

Jones's horror has such a human element to it, with the various relationships, trauma, and recovery woven into the story, and I just deeply love Jade. She's such a wonderful protagonist and Jones has given her such a clear voice in both these books. A fast-paced, gore-soaked sequel with a killer (no pun intended) protagonist? What's not to love? Looking forward to the third volume!]]> 4.07 2023 Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/20
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
4.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel!

I have reached the "read everything the author publishes" stage with Stephen Graham Jones, I fear. The Only Good Indians was my introduction, after which I devoured My Heart Is A Chainsaw, so I was so excited to get an ARC of the sequel! If you enjoyed the first, there's more to love here in the second, which picks up four years later with a new killer on the loose. The carnage starts much earlier in this volume-we already know many of the characters so there isn't as much lead in, we get right to the slashing. The school essay interludes continue with a new narrator, and there's just as many references to the what-seems-to-be endless catalog of slasher movies.

Jones's horror has such a human element to it, with the various relationships, trauma, and recovery woven into the story, and I just deeply love Jade. She's such a wonderful protagonist and Jones has given her such a clear voice in both these books. A fast-paced, gore-soaked sequel with a killer (no pun intended) protagonist? What's not to love? Looking forward to the third volume!
]]> Rose/House 52263339 Dust jacket illustration by David Curtis.

Arkady Martine, the acclaimed author of the Teixcalaan Series, returns with an astonishing new novella.

Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.

A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.

Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.

But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.

There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.

No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.

Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies]]> 128 Arkady Martine Lauren 4 arc
I was SO EXCITED for an Arkady Martine ARC; I love her writing and her Teixcalaan duology so I was really interested to read a different kind of piece by her. This is a short but gripping sci-fi murder mystery with a locked room murder, except the room is a house designed by a renowned architect that is "haunted" by an artificial intelligence. There are multiple viewpoint characters, including two police officers investigating the murder and a former student of the architect who has been designated his "archivist" and is the only person allowed to enter the house since his death. For such a short read, all of the characters are well-developed. The book also really succeeds in the short format-with novellas I often either feel that they should have just been a short story or alternately should have been expanded into a full-length novel, but Martine does a great job keeping the story tight and fast-paced within the given pages while also weaving in larger narratives about art and design, narrative, AI, language, and more.

Martine's writing remains really impressive, and I really enjoyed her take on a different genre. Definitely recommended, looking forward to reading her next work!]]> 3.57 2023 Rose/House
author: Arkady Martine
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/18
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
4.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novella!

I was SO EXCITED for an Arkady Martine ARC; I love her writing and her Teixcalaan duology so I was really interested to read a different kind of piece by her. This is a short but gripping sci-fi murder mystery with a locked room murder, except the room is a house designed by a renowned architect that is "haunted" by an artificial intelligence. There are multiple viewpoint characters, including two police officers investigating the murder and a former student of the architect who has been designated his "archivist" and is the only person allowed to enter the house since his death. For such a short read, all of the characters are well-developed. The book also really succeeds in the short format-with novellas I often either feel that they should have just been a short story or alternately should have been expanded into a full-length novel, but Martine does a great job keeping the story tight and fast-paced within the given pages while also weaving in larger narratives about art and design, narrative, AI, language, and more.

Martine's writing remains really impressive, and I really enjoyed her take on a different genre. Definitely recommended, looking forward to reading her next work!
]]> Quietly Hostile: Essays 62052300
The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had.

Her teeth are poisoning her from inside her mouth, and her diarrhea is back. She gets turned away from a restaurant for wearing ugly clothes, she goes to therapy and tries out Lexapro, gets healed with Reiki, explores the power of crystals, and becomes addicted to QVC. Making light of herself as she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of all the details that make up a true portrait of her life, Irby is once again the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need.]]> 290 Samantha Irby 0593315693 Lauren 5 arc
Literally shrieked when I received the ARC of this one-Samantha Irby essay collections make me scream-laugh while simultaneously hollering IT ME!!!!! in a way no other nonfiction does. "i like to get high at night and think about whales" is THE most identifiable chapter title in the history of literature, no notes!

I think this collection might have been my favorite so far. It's a mix of personal family stories, pop-culture breakdowns (loved the Sex And The City chapter as someone who never has and likely never will watch the show), and general life-experience pieces, and it nails an equilibrium between vulnerable, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud funny. I would read anything Irby writes!]]> 3.66 2023 Quietly Hostile: Essays
author: Samantha Irby
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this collection!

Literally shrieked when I received the ARC of this one-Samantha Irby essay collections make me scream-laugh while simultaneously hollering IT ME!!!!! in a way no other nonfiction does. "i like to get high at night and think about whales" is THE most identifiable chapter title in the history of literature, no notes!

I think this collection might have been my favorite so far. It's a mix of personal family stories, pop-culture breakdowns (loved the Sex And The City chapter as someone who never has and likely never will watch the show), and general life-experience pieces, and it nails an equilibrium between vulnerable, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud funny. I would read anything Irby writes!
]]> <![CDATA[Dear Medusa (A Novel in Verse)]]> 61389549 This searing and intimate novel in verse follows a sixteen-year-old girl coping with sexual abuse as she grapples with how to reclaim her story, her anger, and her body in a world that seems determined to punish her for the sin of surviving.

This is more than a story about sexual violence--this book is about race, sexuality, love, and how anger can be a catalyst for healing.
--Gabrielle Union, bestselling author, actress, and producer

Sixteen-year-old Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her. But there's more to her story than the whispers that follow her throughout the hallways at school--whispers that splinter into a million different insults that really mean: a girl who has had sex. But what her classmates don't know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher, and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesn't recognize. To the world around her, she's been cast, like the mythical Medusa, as not the victim but the monster of her own story: the slut who asked for it.

Alicia was abandoned by her best friend, quit the track team, and now spends her days in detention feeling isolated and invisible. When mysterious letters left in her locker hint at another victim, Alicia struggles to keep up the walls she's built around her trauma. At the same time, her growing attraction to a new girl in school makes her question what those walls are really keeping out.

[This] fierce and brightly burning feminist roar...paints a devastating and haunting portrait of a vulnerable young woman discovering the power of her voice, her courage, and her rage. --Samira Ahmed, New York Times bestselling author of Internment and Hollow Fires]]> 384 Olivia A. Cole 0593485742 Lauren 4 arc
Wavering between 3 and 4 stars, but I'll round up since I think the book sensitively deals with a whole host of traumatic issues. Content warnings for sexual assault and rape, slut shaming, racism, homophobia, drug use.

Dear Medusa follows Alicia, a 16 year old high school junior living with the trauma of being sexually assaulted by one of her teachers, and the social fallout that comes from attempting to cope with that trauma in various ways. The novel is written in verse, which I think works well for what reads as a YA book (I'm not sure how this is technically classified by the publisher but it definitely reads as YA/new adult to me). I don't think it's perfectly written. There's a couple plot points that never really resolve themselves (not the main climactic event but a couple of the side stories). The framing device of a group therapy/sharing circle with an outside researcher is good AS a framing device but in practice can sometimes come across as a bit more...reserved from the main plot? Removed? I'm not sure of the wording but something about the structure of the conversations in the group (while the content was valuable) felt a bit off as opposed to Alicia's narrative sections. The ending comes on a bit abruptly although I do like where we leave the story (you know I love an ambiguous ending even with character growth).

I do think there's a lot to like about this novel though, especially for teen/new adult readers. I've read Olivia Cole's work since her first novel released through Indiegogo and her writing just keeps getting better and more readable with every book. The content of the book can be raw and very upsetting; it took me a long time to read this because it was very difficult to get through emotionally but you really connect with and feel for Alicia throughout the story, and her friends introduced through the book are great as well; I especially loved Deja and her discussions on asexuality. Lots of great conversations throughout the book on girls' sexuality, social expectations, the male gaze, racism, homophobia and transphobia, etc. If you can handle the content, I think this is definitely a valuable read, especially for teen and early 20's readers who I think will really connect with Alicia. ]]> 4.36 2023 Dear Medusa (A Novel in Verse)
author: Olivia A. Cole
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/11
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing in March 2023!

Wavering between 3 and 4 stars, but I'll round up since I think the book sensitively deals with a whole host of traumatic issues. Content warnings for sexual assault and rape, slut shaming, racism, homophobia, drug use.

Dear Medusa follows Alicia, a 16 year old high school junior living with the trauma of being sexually assaulted by one of her teachers, and the social fallout that comes from attempting to cope with that trauma in various ways. The novel is written in verse, which I think works well for what reads as a YA book (I'm not sure how this is technically classified by the publisher but it definitely reads as YA/new adult to me). I don't think it's perfectly written. There's a couple plot points that never really resolve themselves (not the main climactic event but a couple of the side stories). The framing device of a group therapy/sharing circle with an outside researcher is good AS a framing device but in practice can sometimes come across as a bit more...reserved from the main plot? Removed? I'm not sure of the wording but something about the structure of the conversations in the group (while the content was valuable) felt a bit off as opposed to Alicia's narrative sections. The ending comes on a bit abruptly although I do like where we leave the story (you know I love an ambiguous ending even with character growth).

I do think there's a lot to like about this novel though, especially for teen/new adult readers. I've read Olivia Cole's work since her first novel released through Indiegogo and her writing just keeps getting better and more readable with every book. The content of the book can be raw and very upsetting; it took me a long time to read this because it was very difficult to get through emotionally but you really connect with and feel for Alicia throughout the story, and her friends introduced through the book are great as well; I especially loved Deja and her discussions on asexuality. Lots of great conversations throughout the book on girls' sexuality, social expectations, the male gaze, racism, homophobia and transphobia, etc. If you can handle the content, I think this is definitely a valuable read, especially for teen and early 20's readers who I think will really connect with Alicia.
]]> Translation State 62979034
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn't "optimal behavior". I's the type of behavior that results in elimination.

But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots--or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.

As a Conclave of the various species approaches--and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line--the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars.

Masterfully merging space adventure and mystery, and a poignant exploration about relationships and belonging, Translation State is a triumphant new standalone story set in Leckie's celebrated Imperial Radch universe.]]> 432 Ann Leckie 0316290246 Lauren 5 arc
SO excited for a new Ann Leckie book set in the Imperial Radch universe. You don't need to have read the Ancillary series to enjoy this one (I haven't read them in five years or so, so my recall wasn't great when I started this, although more came back to me as the story went on), but you'll probably feel comfortable in the universe more quickly and understand a few more of the references (and recognize at least one familiar face from that series) if you have. Also, the Ancillary trilogy in particular is great, so I'd honestly recommend reading them anyway. This book gives a more in-depth look at the Presger Translators through the viewpoints of three extremely likable characters whose lives end up intersecting in a dramatic way with possible far-reaching implications for the whole of this narrative universe.

This book, like the other Imperial Radch books, has a lot to say about a lot of topics, including gender, identities we claim vs. genetic identities, prejudice, coming of age, belonging, the extended way trauma can affect us, the ability of one or two people to effect change on a systemic level, etc. The book is extremely well-written, with an engaging if occasionally far-flung narrative. There is quite a bit of descriptive body horror in here, so do be aware of that. Also there's a fair amount of humor! Things do occur and wrap up a bit too smoothly sometimes, but I was so engaged and had so much fun reading this one that I forgive it that flaw. Whether a fan of the Imperial Radch series or not, definitely recommend this one! ]]> 4.23 2023 Translation State
author: Ann Leckie
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/04
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing in June 2023!

SO excited for a new Ann Leckie book set in the Imperial Radch universe. You don't need to have read the Ancillary series to enjoy this one (I haven't read them in five years or so, so my recall wasn't great when I started this, although more came back to me as the story went on), but you'll probably feel comfortable in the universe more quickly and understand a few more of the references (and recognize at least one familiar face from that series) if you have. Also, the Ancillary trilogy in particular is great, so I'd honestly recommend reading them anyway. This book gives a more in-depth look at the Presger Translators through the viewpoints of three extremely likable characters whose lives end up intersecting in a dramatic way with possible far-reaching implications for the whole of this narrative universe.

This book, like the other Imperial Radch books, has a lot to say about a lot of topics, including gender, identities we claim vs. genetic identities, prejudice, coming of age, belonging, the extended way trauma can affect us, the ability of one or two people to effect change on a systemic level, etc. The book is extremely well-written, with an engaging if occasionally far-flung narrative. There is quite a bit of descriptive body horror in here, so do be aware of that. Also there's a fair amount of humor! Things do occur and wrap up a bit too smoothly sometimes, but I was so engaged and had so much fun reading this one that I forgive it that flaw. Whether a fan of the Imperial Radch series or not, definitely recommend this one!
]]> Terrace Story 59829075 From the author of the acclaimed novel Temporary, an intimate exploration of time, a fable about love, an epic daydream for a broken-hearted world

Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world.

Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it's looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death?

Based on the National Magazine Award-winning story, Hilary Leichter's profound second novel asks how we nurture love when death looms over every moment. From one of our most innovative and daring writers, Terrace Story is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.]]> 240 Hilary Leichter 0063265834 Lauren 4 arc
I had previously read the author's novel Temporary, and enjoyed it but wasn't blown away; Terrace Story was much more emotionally affecting. The book is a series of four interconnected stories about a related cast of characters that examines love, family, and grief with a metaphysical bent. I really enjoyed the characterizations (especially the way characters introduced in the first story evolved throughout the book) and the writing and found the stories very moving. The ending chapter was something of a surprise in terms of the setting but I thought wrapped everything up very effectively. Happy to recommend this one!]]> 3.62 2023 Terrace Story
author: Hilary Leichter
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing in August 2023!

I had previously read the author's novel Temporary, and enjoyed it but wasn't blown away; Terrace Story was much more emotionally affecting. The book is a series of four interconnected stories about a related cast of characters that examines love, family, and grief with a metaphysical bent. I really enjoyed the characterizations (especially the way characters introduced in the first story evolved throughout the book) and the writing and found the stories very moving. The ending chapter was something of a surprise in terms of the setting but I thought wrapped everything up very effectively. Happy to recommend this one!
]]> Where Coyotes Howl 60784526 Beautifully rendered, Where Coyotes Howl is a vivid and deeply affecting ode to the early twentieth century West, from master storyteller Sandra Dallas.

Except for the way they loved each other, they were just ordinary, everyday folks. Just ordinary.

1916. The two-street town of Wallace is not exactly what Ellen Webster had in mind when she accepted a teaching position in Wyoming, but within a year’s time she’s fallen in love—both with the High Plains and with a handsome cowboy named Charlie Bacon. Life is not easy in the flat, brown corner of the state where winter blizzards are unforgiving and the summer heat relentless. But Ellen and Charlie face it all together, their relationship growing stronger with each shared success, and each deeply felt tragedy.

Ellen finds purpose in her work as a rancher’s wife and in her bonds with other women settled on the prairie. Not all of them are so lucky as to have loving husbands, not all came to Wallace willingly, and not all of them can survive the cruel seasons. But they look out for each other, share their secrets, and help one another in times of need. And the needs are great and constant. The only city to speak of, Cheyenne, is miles away, making it akin to the Wild West in rural Wallace. In the end, it is not the trials Ellen and Charlie face together that make them remarkable, but their love for one another that endures through it all.]]> 320 Sandra Dallas 1250277906 Lauren 3 arc
Sandra Dallas does a great job developing a sense of place and strong setting for her novels set in the American West; I had similar feelings about her other previous novel I've read, Tallgrass. She does a great job making you feel like you're on location in Wyoming in the early 20th century, and that was probably my favorite part of the novel and honestly why I requested this as an ARC.

Unfortunately the rest of the story didn't really get me invested. I like Ellen and the relationships she develops with other women in Wyoming, but I never developed a strong emotional attachment to her. She and Charlie supposedly have an all-time great love but we honestly don't see much of it beyond the fact that unlike many of the other men in this novel he never beats or is otherwise abusive to her. I know the stereotype of cowboys during this period is of them being emotionally reticent, but I didn't find their great love story particularly believable. After the halfway point the book is pretty much a series of rotating tragedies (which I'm sure is accurate to the time period) but it was hard to get emotionally invested in many of them.

If you're looking for a quick novel on life in Wyoming in the early 1900's you could certainly do worse than this; the book is readable and again provides a great sense of place. The character development and emotional relatability did leave a bit to be desired for me. ]]> 3.90 2023 Where Coyotes Howl
author: Sandra Dallas
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/13
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing in April 2023!

Sandra Dallas does a great job developing a sense of place and strong setting for her novels set in the American West; I had similar feelings about her other previous novel I've read, Tallgrass. She does a great job making you feel like you're on location in Wyoming in the early 20th century, and that was probably my favorite part of the novel and honestly why I requested this as an ARC.

Unfortunately the rest of the story didn't really get me invested. I like Ellen and the relationships she develops with other women in Wyoming, but I never developed a strong emotional attachment to her. She and Charlie supposedly have an all-time great love but we honestly don't see much of it beyond the fact that unlike many of the other men in this novel he never beats or is otherwise abusive to her. I know the stereotype of cowboys during this period is of them being emotionally reticent, but I didn't find their great love story particularly believable. After the halfway point the book is pretty much a series of rotating tragedies (which I'm sure is accurate to the time period) but it was hard to get emotionally invested in many of them.

If you're looking for a quick novel on life in Wyoming in the early 1900's you could certainly do worse than this; the book is readable and again provides a great sense of place. The character development and emotional relatability did leave a bit to be desired for me.
]]> The Thick and the Lean 61273325 In Lambda Award finalist Chana Porter’s highly anticipated new novel, an aspiring chef, a cyberthief, and a kitchen maid each break free of a society that wants to constrain them.

In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.

But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.

Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.

With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.

A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.]]> 384 Chana Porter 1668000199 Lauren 4 arc
Wavering between 3.5 and 4 stars, but I'll round up because of how interesting I find the concept. I had read Porter's The Seep a couple of years ago, and while I didn't come away from it completely enamored I was really intrigued by her world design and concept, and so looked forward to reading her next novel. The Thick and the Lean takes place in a world where food is a social taboo similar to sex in our world. It's an interesting device to challenge the ways we think and talk about food and eating. There's also larger issues of class inequality and environmental collapse that are addressed in the story. We follow two protagonists simultaneously who briefly meet up towards the end of the book but otherwise remain on their own separate storylines.

I liked both Beatrice and Reiko (although some parts of Reiko's story that happen offscreen felt a bit muddled or unclear) and overall I liked the messaging of the book, although I did think it was a little longer than needed and sometimes seemed to be trying to say a bunch of different things of which only a few came through clearly. There's definitely a lot going on in this one. I did love the worldbuilding once again; Porter's imagination did not disappoint in this book either. Overall generally recommended if the description interests you! ]]> 3.68 2023 The Thick and the Lean
author: Chana Porter
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/18
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing today!

Wavering between 3.5 and 4 stars, but I'll round up because of how interesting I find the concept. I had read Porter's The Seep a couple of years ago, and while I didn't come away from it completely enamored I was really intrigued by her world design and concept, and so looked forward to reading her next novel. The Thick and the Lean takes place in a world where food is a social taboo similar to sex in our world. It's an interesting device to challenge the ways we think and talk about food and eating. There's also larger issues of class inequality and environmental collapse that are addressed in the story. We follow two protagonists simultaneously who briefly meet up towards the end of the book but otherwise remain on their own separate storylines.

I liked both Beatrice and Reiko (although some parts of Reiko's story that happen offscreen felt a bit muddled or unclear) and overall I liked the messaging of the book, although I did think it was a little longer than needed and sometimes seemed to be trying to say a bunch of different things of which only a few came through clearly. There's definitely a lot going on in this one. I did love the worldbuilding once again; Porter's imagination did not disappoint in this book either. Overall generally recommended if the description interests you!
]]> <![CDATA[The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos—Exploring the Fascinating History of Our Universe and the Possibility of Life Beyond Our Planet]]> 61121586 A dazzling cultural and scientific exploration of alien life and the cosmos, examining how the possibility of life on other planets shapes our understanding of humanity, for fans of Leslie Jamison, Carl Zimmer and Carlo Rovelli.

One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? YetĚýthis very question is inevitably reducedĚýto yes or no, to odds and probabilities that posit answers throughĚýcomplex physics. The science is fascinating, but it doesn't exist in aĚývacuum. It is a reflection of our values and aspirations, our fears and anxieties, and most importantly, our enduring sense ofĚýhope.Ěý

In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus up throughĚýto our contemporaryĚýquest for exoplanets inĚýthe "Goldilocks zone," where life akin to ours on Earth might exist. Along the way, she interweaves insights from a long-standing tradition of science fiction writers who use the power of imagination to extrapolate and construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists.

Weaving in expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry and pop culture touchstones ranging fromĚýA Wrinkle in Time łŮ´ÇĚýStar Trek to Avatar,ĚýThe Possibility of LifeĚýexplores our evolving conception of the cosmos to ask an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?]]> 288 Jaime Green 0369700015 Lauren 4 arc
The Possibility of Life gives a great overview of the scientific search for life in the universe, starting with the historical development of the science of astronomy and early theories about Earth's role in the universe, and following through to modern theories and even future possibilities. Throughout, Green weaves in references to science fiction media, giving a cultural grounding to the more abstract scientific sections.

I really enjoyed this one! The science can be complex (I did have to reread a few sections to really get a grasp on some of the concepts) but Green's writing reads really well overall, and I loved the scifi references I already knew and maybe even more loved the ones I didn't (new reading recommendations!). Overall a really excellent nonfiction read; happy to recommend this!]]> 4.00 2023 The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos—Exploring the Fascinating History of Our Universe and the Possibility of Life Beyond Our Planet
author: Jaime Green
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/18
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing today!

The Possibility of Life gives a great overview of the scientific search for life in the universe, starting with the historical development of the science of astronomy and early theories about Earth's role in the universe, and following through to modern theories and even future possibilities. Throughout, Green weaves in references to science fiction media, giving a cultural grounding to the more abstract scientific sections.

I really enjoyed this one! The science can be complex (I did have to reread a few sections to really get a grasp on some of the concepts) but Green's writing reads really well overall, and I loved the scifi references I already knew and maybe even more loved the ones I didn't (new reading recommendations!). Overall a really excellent nonfiction read; happy to recommend this!
]]> With My Little Eye 61776651
It started with the letters�

For actress Meribel Mills, disturbing fan mail is part of the price of fame. So when she starts getting creepy letters written in fruit-scented marker she is mostly unphased and diligently files them along with her other messages from unhinged fans. After all, she’s a single mom approaching forty, not the kind of hot young celeb who sparks dangerous obsessions. But there’s something different about Marker Man�

He’s been in her home�

Meribel’s sheets smell of unfamiliar cologne, and objects have gone missing around the house. Plus, the letters have become more perverse, with drawings of a naked Meribel tied up or chopped into pieces. While the police insist that stalkers hardly ever escalate to violence, Meribel has played the dead girl one too many times on TV to risk becoming her in real life. She and her daughter move from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a fresh start—but no distance is great enough.

He’s watching her�

Years of being in front of a camera have given Meribel a superpower—she can feel eyes on her, a creeping sensation like bees inside her skin. And someone definitely has her in their sights. Could Marker Man have followed her all the way across the country?

Who else might be watching—her ex-husband? The lover she left behind in LA? Her new neighbor? Suddenly, every man in her life is a suspect, but she can’t keep herself and her daughter safe from a monster she can’t identify. When the paths of all of these men collide, Meribel will find herself alone in the fight of her life, desperate to protect those she loves as danger closes in from all sides.]]> 336 Joshilyn Jackson 0063158671 Lauren 2 arc
Y'all...

I'm a Joshilyn Jackson completist and really enjoyed all her southern family drama stories; she's more recently moved into this series of thrillers (the books are unrelated though all the titles reference traditional children's games). This one follows an actress who moves back to Atlanta to avoid a stalker, who follows her across the country putting both her and her daughter, as well as new friends and acquaintances in danger.

With a disclaimer that I don't generally read thrillers, I thought Jackson's first two were alright, so I'm really not sure what happened with this one. There is one subplot/relationship that serves almost no purpose and doesn't go anywhere. Basically all of the characters are unlikable, including our lead Meribel (I did like her daughter Honor, and was glad she became a more developed and involved character as the story went along). The reveal of one of the "good guy" characters as a villain seems to come out of nowhere; I had to re-read the page where his intentions are revealed three times because I thought I was misunderstanding something or had him confused with another character. The ending is also incredibly abrupt and unsatisfying; it feels as though a timer went off and she had to stop writing under threat of punishment. Sorry to say almost nothing about this book worked for me.]]> 3.59 2023 With My Little Eye
author: Joshilyn Jackson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/04/23
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing April 25th!

Y'all...

I'm a Joshilyn Jackson completist and really enjoyed all her southern family drama stories; she's more recently moved into this series of thrillers (the books are unrelated though all the titles reference traditional children's games). This one follows an actress who moves back to Atlanta to avoid a stalker, who follows her across the country putting both her and her daughter, as well as new friends and acquaintances in danger.

With a disclaimer that I don't generally read thrillers, I thought Jackson's first two were alright, so I'm really not sure what happened with this one. There is one subplot/relationship that serves almost no purpose and doesn't go anywhere. Basically all of the characters are unlikable, including our lead Meribel (I did like her daughter Honor, and was glad she became a more developed and involved character as the story went along). The reveal of one of the "good guy" characters as a villain seems to come out of nowhere; I had to re-read the page where his intentions are revealed three times because I thought I was misunderstanding something or had him confused with another character. The ending is also incredibly abrupt and unsatisfying; it feels as though a timer went off and she had to stop writing under threat of punishment. Sorry to say almost nothing about this book worked for me.
]]> Whalefall 62919162 327 Daniel Kraus 1665918160 Lauren 4 arc
Whalefall follows Jay, a young man whose father has recently died by suicide, as he dives into Monterey Bay in search of his father's remains. Through a series of increasingly unfortunate events, he ends up being swallowed by a sperm whale and fighting for his life from inside the whale as he also confronts his grief over both his father's death and their poor relationship in life.

The atmosphere of this one is UNMATCHED. Whether describing diving through a kelp forest or the (supposedly mostly scientifically accurate) multiple stomachs of the whale, Kraus's descriptions are some of the most vivid I've read. You really feel for Jay and are simultaneously horrified by everything happening around him. Pretty much the only issue I had with this book is the way the story tries to redeem the father to some extent (and I have an absent/estranged father so I'm particularly sensitive to these narratives)-Mitt is emotionally abusive to his son in basically every interaction and the few "heartwarming" scenes thrown in at the end along with Jay's "maybe I didn't try hard enough to understand him" internal conversations rubbed me the wrong way. It's possible to deal with grief without entirely absolving a person who has consistently treated you very badly, even if they are family or a parent; at points it felt like the book kind of understood that but also felt like a traditional "child must show parent forgiveness" narrative. May just be my personal connection to that kind of conflict but other books I've read have handled it in a way I liked better than this one.

Other than that though, a quick and entirely absorbing read; Kraus's writing is wonderful. Recommended, but do be aware of the graphic body horror and claustrophobia present in the story. ]]> 3.66 2023 Whalefall
author: Daniel Kraus
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/07
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
The claustrophobia! The gore! The body horror!

Whalefall follows Jay, a young man whose father has recently died by suicide, as he dives into Monterey Bay in search of his father's remains. Through a series of increasingly unfortunate events, he ends up being swallowed by a sperm whale and fighting for his life from inside the whale as he also confronts his grief over both his father's death and their poor relationship in life.

The atmosphere of this one is UNMATCHED. Whether describing diving through a kelp forest or the (supposedly mostly scientifically accurate) multiple stomachs of the whale, Kraus's descriptions are some of the most vivid I've read. You really feel for Jay and are simultaneously horrified by everything happening around him. Pretty much the only issue I had with this book is the way the story tries to redeem the father to some extent (and I have an absent/estranged father so I'm particularly sensitive to these narratives)-Mitt is emotionally abusive to his son in basically every interaction and the few "heartwarming" scenes thrown in at the end along with Jay's "maybe I didn't try hard enough to understand him" internal conversations rubbed me the wrong way. It's possible to deal with grief without entirely absolving a person who has consistently treated you very badly, even if they are family or a parent; at points it felt like the book kind of understood that but also felt like a traditional "child must show parent forgiveness" narrative. May just be my personal connection to that kind of conflict but other books I've read have handled it in a way I liked better than this one.

Other than that though, a quick and entirely absorbing read; Kraus's writing is wonderful. Recommended, but do be aware of the graphic body horror and claustrophobia present in the story.
]]> The Last Ranger 63249808 🎧9 hours

The best-selling author of The River returns with a lush and vivid mystery set in Yellowstone National Park where a skirmish between a local hunter and a wolf biologist turns violent, and a park ranger, facing his own personal demons, sets out to determine what really happened.


Ren is a park ranger, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp around with cameras and the locals who want to carve out a meaningful living amid this western landscape.

When Ren discovers his friend Hilly, a biologist and wolf expert, nearly dead in the steel jaws of a wolf trap, he hopes it’s just an accident, but the small red ribbon tied to the stake makes him fairly certain that it wasn’t. What begins as an inquiry into a known poacher soon opens into the discovery of a local group of ranchers who have formed an alliance at odds with both the park and with Ren’s responsibility to protect it.

Rife with surprising humor, populated by a cast of extraordinary characters, each drawn to Yellowstone for their own reasons, Peter Heller once again mines the rich vein where our very human impulses play out against the stunning beauty of the natural world.]]> 287 Peter Heller 0593535111 Lauren 4 arc
I really enjoyed The Dog Stars, and couldn't stand the characters in The Painter, so I was interested to see how my third Peter Heller novel would sit. Really liked this one! The writing is so gorgeous; I think Heller is honestly one of the best atmospheric writers. You really feel like you're IN Yellowstone and the surrounding area. Ren is a great protagonist and I loved learning more about wolf biology as well. The ending came on a bit abruptly and there's a plot point surrounding a vigilante organization that doesn't really go anywhere, but overall I really enjoyed this.
]]> 3.70 2023 The Last Ranger
author: Peter Heller
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/29
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing August 1st!

I really enjoyed The Dog Stars, and couldn't stand the characters in The Painter, so I was interested to see how my third Peter Heller novel would sit. Really liked this one! The writing is so gorgeous; I think Heller is honestly one of the best atmospheric writers. You really feel like you're IN Yellowstone and the surrounding area. Ren is a great protagonist and I loved learning more about wolf biology as well. The ending came on a bit abruptly and there's a plot point surrounding a vigilante organization that doesn't really go anywhere, but overall I really enjoyed this.

]]> The Blue, Beautiful World 98182526 The Best of All Possible Worlds.

The world is changing, and humanity must change with it. Rising seas and soaring temperatures have radically transformed the face of the Earth. Meanwhile, Earth is being observed from afar by other civilizations ... and now they are ready to make contact.

Vying to prepare humanity for first contact are a group of dreamers and changemakers, including Peter Hendrix, the genius inventor behind the most advanced VR tech; Charyssa, a beloved celebrity icon with a passion for humanitarian work; and Kanoa, a member of a council of young people from around the globe drafted to reimagine the relationship between humankind and alien societies.

And they may have an unexpected secret weapon: Owen, a pop megastar whose ability to connect with his adoring fans is more than charisma. He has a hidden talent that may be the key to uniting Earth as it looks towards the stars.

But Owen's abilities are so unique that no-one can control him, and so seductive that he cannot help but use them. Can he transcend his human limitations and find the freedom he has always dreamed of? Or is he doomed to become the dictator of his nightmares?]]> 293 Karen Lord 059359844X Lauren 3 arc
I'm a BIG fan of The Best Of All Possible Worlds (the first book in this trilogy) and generally liked but wasn't wild about The Galaxy Game. This ties in many characters and references from those novels but I think can probably be read as a standalone if you're okay with figuring out much of the worldbuilding as you go. I did enjoy this quite a bit (still LOVE Karen Lord's writing style). The book is informally sectioned into two parts with a timeskip in the middle-the first part felt a bit incongruous and was harder for me to get into, but I really enjoyed the second part (around the last 2/3rds of the book). I love sociological/anthropological sci-fi, and Lord does such a wonderful job with these concepts in a speculative/futuristic setting. Probably worth reading the first two books before this one, but still recommended! ]]> 3.37 2023 The Blue, Beautiful World
author: Karen Lord
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing August 29th!

I'm a BIG fan of The Best Of All Possible Worlds (the first book in this trilogy) and generally liked but wasn't wild about The Galaxy Game. This ties in many characters and references from those novels but I think can probably be read as a standalone if you're okay with figuring out much of the worldbuilding as you go. I did enjoy this quite a bit (still LOVE Karen Lord's writing style). The book is informally sectioned into two parts with a timeskip in the middle-the first part felt a bit incongruous and was harder for me to get into, but I really enjoyed the second part (around the last 2/3rds of the book). I love sociological/anthropological sci-fi, and Lord does such a wonderful job with these concepts in a speculative/futuristic setting. Probably worth reading the first two books before this one, but still recommended!
]]> California Golden 62358023 Two sisters navigate the turbulent, euphoric early days of California surf culture in this dazzling saga of ambition, sacrifice, and longing for a family they never had, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife

Southern California, 1960s: endless sunny days surfing in Malibu, followed by glittering neon nights at Whisky A-Go-Go. In an era when women are expected to be housewives, Carol Donelly is breaking the mold as a legendary female surfer struggling to compete in a male-dominated sport--and her daughters, Mindy and Ginger, bear the weight of her unconventional lifestyle.

The Donnelly sisters grow up enduring their mother's absence--physically, when she's at the beach, and emotionally, the rare times she's at home. To escape questions about Carol's whereabouts--and chase their mom's elusive affection--they cut school to spend their days in the surf. From her first time on a board, Mindy shows a natural talent, but Ginger, two years younger, feels out of place in the water.

As they grow up and their lives diverge, Mindy and Ginger's relationship ebbs and flows. Mindy finds herself swept up in celebrity, complete with beachside love affairs, parties at the Playboy Club, and USO tours to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Ginger--desperate for a community of her own--is tugged into the vibrant counterculture of drugs and cults. Through it all, their sense of duty to each other survives, as the girls are forever connected by the emotional damage they carry from their unorthodox childhood.

A gripping, emotional story set at a time when mothers were expected to be Donna Reed, not Gidget, California Golden is an unforgettable novel about three women living in a society that was shifting as tempestuously as the breaking waves.]]> 368 Melanie Benjamin 0593497864 Lauren 2 arc
Decent historical fiction but extremely frustrating characters. Benjamin's writing was readable but not particularly enticing, and the book seemed to be trying to cover a lot of ground for the time period (Hollywood, the surfing revolution, women's rights, cults, early discussions of colonialism) but felt in many ways like it only touched the surface of all of these.

]]> 3.66 2023 California Golden
author: Melanie Benjamin
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/06/18
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing August 8th!

Decent historical fiction but extremely frustrating characters. Benjamin's writing was readable but not particularly enticing, and the book seemed to be trying to cover a lot of ground for the time period (Hollywood, the surfing revolution, women's rights, cults, early discussions of colonialism) but felt in many ways like it only touched the surface of all of these.


]]> Death Valley 62909823
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.]]> 205 Melissa Broder 1668024896 Lauren 4 arc
Melissa Broder novels tend to be polarizing; I read The Pisces which I generally liked despite its weirder elements, and didn't read Milk Fed, which seemed to either be the best or worst novel anyone had ever read according to reviews. I like weird fiction though! I like identifiable yet unlikable women MC's!

All this to say I REALLY liked Death Valley. There's still some of the surrealism and weird elements (although not as much as I remember there being in The Pisces) but mostly this was just a really moving story about grief experienced by a woman in her early's 40s whose father is possibly dying in the ICU after a car accident and whose husband is deteriorating after years of a chronic illness. Absolutely recommended. ]]> 3.52 2023 Death Valley
author: Melissa Broder
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/20
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel, releasing October 24th!

Melissa Broder novels tend to be polarizing; I read The Pisces which I generally liked despite its weirder elements, and didn't read Milk Fed, which seemed to either be the best or worst novel anyone had ever read according to reviews. I like weird fiction though! I like identifiable yet unlikable women MC's!

All this to say I REALLY liked Death Valley. There's still some of the surrealism and weird elements (although not as much as I remember there being in The Pisces) but mostly this was just a really moving story about grief experienced by a woman in her early's 40s whose father is possibly dying in the ICU after a car accident and whose husband is deteriorating after years of a chronic illness. Absolutely recommended.
]]> <![CDATA[Labyrinth's Heart (Rook & Rose #3)]]> 59954183
May you see the face and not the mask.

Ren came to NadeĹľra with a plan. She would pose as the long-lost daughter of the noble house Traementis. She would secure a fortune for herself and her sister. And she would vanish without a backward glance. She ought to have known that in the city of dreams, nothing is ever so simple.

Now, she is Ren, con-artist and thief. But she is also Renata, the celebrated Traementis heir. She is Arenza, the mysterious pattern-reader and political rebel. And she is the Black Rose, a vigilante who fights alongside the legendary Rook.Ěý

Even with the help of Grey Serrado and Derossi Vargo, it is too many masks for one person to wear. And as the dark magic the three of them helped unleash builds to storm that could tear the very fabric of the city apart, it's only a matter of time before one of the masks slips—and everything comes crashing down around them.


The Rook & Rose trilogy
The Mask of Mirrors
The Liar's Knot
Labyrinth's Heart]]> 688 M.A. Carrick 0316539759 Lauren 4 arc
LOVED this conclusion to a long and complicated trilogy. Did things wrap up a bit too neatly for most of the plots and subplots? Yes, probably. The pacing could feel uneven at times-what seems to be the main conflict wraps up about 100 pages before the story ends, and while other pieces stepped in to fill its place it did throw me off a bit. These are my minor justifications for why I didn't give this five stars, BUT. SO emotionally satisfying; I teared up quite a few times while reading this. Ren, Grey, and Vargo are such a wonderful leading trio, and the extensive cast of supporting characters feel very real and fleshed-out. I don't often read epic fantasy (not entirely sure how to sort this genre-wise) because it can feel very overwhelming with the sheer scope. The authors do a great job in these books of tackling society-level issues but keeping the focus on a smaller scale, which keeps you honed in on the characters and their motivations and relationships. I had such a good time with this trilogy. Definitely recommended. ]]> 4.26 2023 Labyrinth's Heart (Rook & Rose #3)
author: M.A. Carrick
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/17
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel!

LOVED this conclusion to a long and complicated trilogy. Did things wrap up a bit too neatly for most of the plots and subplots? Yes, probably. The pacing could feel uneven at times-what seems to be the main conflict wraps up about 100 pages before the story ends, and while other pieces stepped in to fill its place it did throw me off a bit. These are my minor justifications for why I didn't give this five stars, BUT. SO emotionally satisfying; I teared up quite a few times while reading this. Ren, Grey, and Vargo are such a wonderful leading trio, and the extensive cast of supporting characters feel very real and fleshed-out. I don't often read epic fantasy (not entirely sure how to sort this genre-wise) because it can feel very overwhelming with the sheer scope. The authors do a great job in these books of tackling society-level issues but keeping the focus on a smaller scale, which keeps you honed in on the characters and their motivations and relationships. I had such a good time with this trilogy. Definitely recommended.
]]> <![CDATA[Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair]]> 76149581
Don’t panic—Mercury Stardust, AKA The Trans Handy Ma’am is here to help!

For too many people, the simple act of contacting a plumber or repair person can feel like a game of chance. As a transwoman and a professional maintenance technician, Mercury Stardust has discovered (the hard way) that we live in a world with much to fear. If you've ever felt panicked about opening your home to strangers in order to fix a maintenance issue, this book is for you.

Renting a home can be a complex process—from finding a safe and affordable space, to hiring help for moving in and out, and of course, managing any repairs that come up during your stay.

You deserve to feel empowered to take matters into your own hands—and it’s not as hard as you might think. In this book, Mercury will show you how to tackle the projects that need improvement in your home—from how to properly fix a clog in your bathroom sink and safely hang things on your walls to patching small and medium drywall holes.

Safe and Sound

Remember—a little bit of knowledge can go a long way toward making you feel more safe and in control of your own life.]]> 224 Mercury Stardust 0744079071 Lauren 4 arc
Extremely useful book on some basic home repairs aimed at renters. I just moved out of a rental into my own place (hooray!) but a lot of the basic home maintenance tips still apply. Also loved that chapters were included on move-in/move-out, home safety, and tenants rights resources. It wasn't a perfect book for me, but I think that may come down to my personal learning style-with some of the projects, I feel like watching a video on YouTube of someone walking me through it could have worked better, but that's just for me personally! Best of all was Mercury's constant reassurance and emotional resets throughout the chapters. Definitely recommended and not only for renters, but for anyone looking for an inclusive, welcoming look at home repair and maintenance skills.]]> 4.77 Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair
author: Mercury Stardust
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.77
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/21
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, publishing tomorrow!

Extremely useful book on some basic home repairs aimed at renters. I just moved out of a rental into my own place (hooray!) but a lot of the basic home maintenance tips still apply. Also loved that chapters were included on move-in/move-out, home safety, and tenants rights resources. It wasn't a perfect book for me, but I think that may come down to my personal learning style-with some of the projects, I feel like watching a video on YouTube of someone walking me through it could have worked better, but that's just for me personally! Best of all was Mercury's constant reassurance and emotional resets throughout the chapters. Definitely recommended and not only for renters, but for anyone looking for an inclusive, welcoming look at home repair and maintenance skills.
]]> Generation Ship 63876699 In this riveting, stand-alone novel from Michael Mammay, author of Planetside, the beginning of a new human colony must face tyrannical leaders, revolution, crippling instability, and an unknown alien planet that could easily destroy them all.

In 2108, Colony Ship Voyager departed Earth for the planet of Promissa with 18,000 of the world's best and brightest on board. 250 years and 27 light years later, an arrival is imminent.

But all is not well.

The probes that they've sent ahead to gather the data needed to establish any kind of settlement aren't responding, and the information they have received has presented more questions than answers. It's a time when the entire crew should be coming together to solve the problem, but science officer Sheila Jackson can't get people to listen.

With the finish line in sight, a group of crewmembers want an end to the draconian rules that their forebearers put in place generations before. However, security force officer Mark Rector and his department have different plans. As alliances form and fall, Governor Jared Pantel sees only one way to bring Voyager's citizens together and secure his own a full-scale colonization effort. Yet, he may have underestimated the passion of those working for the other side...

Meanwhile, a harsh alien planet awaits that might have its own ideas about being colonized. A battle for control brews, and victory for one group could mean death for them all.]]> 608 Michael Mammay 0063252988 Lauren 3 arc
Wavering between 3 and 3.5 stars. Conceptually I love a lot of what this book is about (a generation ship dispatched from Earth finally arrives at its destination planet, but the planet appears that it may be already inhabited by intelligent life). There are great questions posed about colonization, the broader cast was diverse, and I liked the focus on the political conflicts that can arise in basically any situation with a group of humans living and working together. The writing style wasn't my favorite-it was easy to read but the characters were a bit flat and just acted their roles within the story without feeling like they had much depth to them. Overall if the topic interests you I'd say to give it a try-it was a relatively quick read for the length.]]> 3.72 2023 Generation Ship
author: Michael Mammay
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/22
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

Wavering between 3 and 3.5 stars. Conceptually I love a lot of what this book is about (a generation ship dispatched from Earth finally arrives at its destination planet, but the planet appears that it may be already inhabited by intelligent life). There are great questions posed about colonization, the broader cast was diverse, and I liked the focus on the political conflicts that can arise in basically any situation with a group of humans living and working together. The writing style wasn't my favorite-it was easy to read but the characters were a bit flat and just acted their roles within the story without feeling like they had much depth to them. Overall if the topic interests you I'd say to give it a try-it was a relatively quick read for the length.
]]> Day 145625425 NATIONAL BESTELLER � An “exquisite� (The Boston Globe) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life—and how we all must learn to live together and apart—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours

“The only problem with Michael Cunningham’s prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals� work. He is the most elegant writer in America.”�The Washington Post

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS� CHOICE � A BEST BOOK OF THE NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub, Paste, Kirkus Reviews

April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while his sister, Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled sleights and frustrated sighs. And dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—and with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

“[Cunningham] is one of love’s greatest witnesses.� —Los Angeles Times

“An absolutely stunning portrait of humanity . . . a masterpiece.� —Literary Hub ]]> 275 Michael Cunningham Lauren 4 arc
Haven't read a Michael Cunningham novel since The Hours-his writing is so lovely. While there is plot development (you could make a list of events that take place) it feels like a book in which not a lot happens, and I don't mean that in a critical way! Is the family more introspective than real people might be? I mean, almost certainly. That reflection is what makes this more than just a "day in the lives of a family that lives through a pandemic" though, so I don't mind it too much. Sometimes the passages can get so dense it feels a bit overwrought, and some characters are (understandably) more likable than others. Overall though, a very good read.]]> 3.83 2023 Day
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/08
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, publishing November 14th!

Haven't read a Michael Cunningham novel since The Hours-his writing is so lovely. While there is plot development (you could make a list of events that take place) it feels like a book in which not a lot happens, and I don't mean that in a critical way! Is the family more introspective than real people might be? I mean, almost certainly. That reflection is what makes this more than just a "day in the lives of a family that lives through a pandemic" though, so I don't mind it too much. Sometimes the passages can get so dense it feels a bit overwrought, and some characters are (understandably) more likable than others. Overall though, a very good read.
]]> Splinters 155685405 Ěý
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. She has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books� Splinters enters a new realm.
Ěý
In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents� complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once—a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover—Jamison places the magical and the mundane side by side in surprising ways: pumping breastmilk in a shared university office, driving the open highway in the throes of new love, growing a tender second skin of consciousness as she watches her daughter come alive to the world. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, an almost impossibly deep reckoning with the muchness of life and art, and a book that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another.
Ěý
How do we move forward into joy when we are haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we’ve caused? A memoir for which the very term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these and other pressing questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page. Jamison has delivered a book with the linguistic daring and emotional acuity that made The Empathy Exams and The Recovering instant classics, even as she reaches new depths of understanding, piercing the reader to the core. A master of nonfiction, she evinces once again her ability to “stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon� (NPR).]]> 272 Leslie Jamison 0316374881 Lauren 5 arc
Read this book in a single sitting! Leslie Jamison has, to me, an otherworldly ability to articulate feeling through her writing. As with her other books, I was constantly highlighting as I read. This book could be labeled as both a divorce and early motherhood memoir, but feels like it covers a lot more emotional ground. I really think she's one of the best nonfiction writers out there; easily a top 10 book of the year for me. ]]> 3.79 2024 Splinters
author: Leslie Jamison
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/10
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing in February 2024!

Read this book in a single sitting! Leslie Jamison has, to me, an otherworldly ability to articulate feeling through her writing. As with her other books, I was constantly highlighting as I read. This book could be labeled as both a divorce and early motherhood memoir, but feels like it covers a lot more emotional ground. I really think she's one of the best nonfiction writers out there; easily a top 10 book of the year for me.
]]> Poor Deer 127823311 A wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss—and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life—from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Oshetsky

Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.

No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.

Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret’s made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes’s death.

Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life’s most difficult moments.]]> 240 Claire Oshetsky 006332766X Lauren 4 arc
Chouette was a top 10 book of the year for me last year, and I still think about it CONSTANTLY-it was so unlike anything I had read before. I was so excited to get an ARC of Poor Deer, and while it's a different book from Chouette I still really enjoyed it. It has some of the same unsettling undertone (kind of dark fairytale vibes I suppose?), and is similarly located (at least in the first part of the novel) within a family setting with memorable cameos from people in the wider community-I really love Oshetsky's writing and the way she communicates the interior world of her characters. This is a tender novel about guilt and grief and the ways in which we search for redemption and how we write and rewrite the stories of our own lives. Definitely recommended!]]> 3.97 2024 Poor Deer
author: Claire Oshetsky
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing in January 2024!

Chouette was a top 10 book of the year for me last year, and I still think about it CONSTANTLY-it was so unlike anything I had read before. I was so excited to get an ARC of Poor Deer, and while it's a different book from Chouette I still really enjoyed it. It has some of the same unsettling undertone (kind of dark fairytale vibes I suppose?), and is similarly located (at least in the first part of the novel) within a family setting with memorable cameos from people in the wider community-I really love Oshetsky's writing and the way she communicates the interior world of her characters. This is a tender novel about guilt and grief and the ways in which we search for redemption and how we write and rewrite the stories of our own lives. Definitely recommended!
]]> Mercury 127305817
It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.

The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known―or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.]]> 336 Amy Jo Burns 1250908566 Lauren 3 arc
Really enjoyed Burns' novel Shiner, so requested this as an ARC. There's things to like about this family drama, but I didn't like it as much as the previous book-Marley is a great lead and Shay is extremely sympathetic but the other characters were hard to like (not to say this isn't realistic! Just didn't make for as enjoyable a reading experience for me). The pacing is slow but I don't think that's necessarily a negative, it works well for a character study versus a heavily plot-driven novel. This wasn't a favorite but I'd definitely read another by Burns in the future. ]]> 3.78 2024 Mercury
author: Amy Jo Burns
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/27
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing in January 2024!

Really enjoyed Burns' novel Shiner, so requested this as an ARC. There's things to like about this family drama, but I didn't like it as much as the previous book-Marley is a great lead and Shay is extremely sympathetic but the other characters were hard to like (not to say this isn't realistic! Just didn't make for as enjoyable a reading experience for me). The pacing is slow but I don't think that's necessarily a negative, it works well for a character study versus a heavily plot-driven novel. This wasn't a favorite but I'd definitely read another by Burns in the future.
]]> 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 Lauren 3 arc
I enjoyed Orange's debut novel There There-this ends up turning into pretty much a direct sequel as it follows the story of Orvil and his family who we are introduced to in the first book. Reading There There isn't required, but I'd advise it just because the background experiences of the characters in that book do contribute to what happens here. The writing is beautiful and Orange does an amazing job of giving each point-of-view character a distinctive voice. I liked the overall impact of the first portion of the book telling the historical stories of past generations of the family, but I think it became a more cohesive read in the second part when it narrowed down to Orvil's generation. This one didn't hit me quite as strongly as There There did, but the writing is still great-if you liked the first book, there's no reason not to read the second one. ]]> 3.83 2024 Wandering Stars
author: Tommy Orange
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing in February 2024!

I enjoyed Orange's debut novel There There-this ends up turning into pretty much a direct sequel as it follows the story of Orvil and his family who we are introduced to in the first book. Reading There There isn't required, but I'd advise it just because the background experiences of the characters in that book do contribute to what happens here. The writing is beautiful and Orange does an amazing job of giving each point-of-view character a distinctive voice. I liked the overall impact of the first portion of the book telling the historical stories of past generations of the family, but I think it became a more cohesive read in the second part when it narrowed down to Orvil's generation. This one didn't hit me quite as strongly as There There did, but the writing is still great-if you liked the first book, there's no reason not to read the second one.
]]> The Other Valley 176450755
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town--except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.

When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.]]> 290 Scott Alexander Howard 1668015471 Lauren 4 arc
I really enjoyed this book, which was something of a surprise since I normally hate time travel stories. This did have some of my usual concerns (namely there's just too much that can happen if time travel is a plot device that's never explained to my satisfaction, loopholes, etc), but by keeping the story closely focused on the characters it was easier to ignore the inconsistencies. The writing in this book is beautiful, and Odile has realistic responses to the decisions set in her way throughout the story. Would happily recommend for fans of quiet, philosophical speculative fiction. ]]> 3.85 2024 The Other Valley
author: Scott Alexander Howard
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing in late February 2024!

I really enjoyed this book, which was something of a surprise since I normally hate time travel stories. This did have some of my usual concerns (namely there's just too much that can happen if time travel is a plot device that's never explained to my satisfaction, loopholes, etc), but by keeping the story closely focused on the characters it was easier to ignore the inconsistencies. The writing in this book is beautiful, and Odile has realistic responses to the decisions set in her way throughout the story. Would happily recommend for fans of quiet, philosophical speculative fiction.
]]> <![CDATA[The Angel of Indian Lake (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #3)]]> 178072409 The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror literature

It’s been four years since Jade Daniels last set foot in Proofrock, Idaho. Since then, her reputation, and everything around Indian Lake, has changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of the savage history of Proofrock, Idaho, no one’s got the mettle to confront � no one except a final girl, making her last stand, this time for everything.

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma and stolen hope. It’s the story of the American West written in blood. And it’s the story of one girl who doesn’t know how to give up.]]> 416 Stephen Graham Jones 1668011689 Lauren 4 arc
I'm submitting this review a few days late post-release date, but I needed some time to decompress from this one after I finished it sobbing on a hotel balcony. The ENDING???

Jade is back in Proofrock four years after the ending of Don't Fear the Reaper, and as readers of the first two books in the series will expect, horror follows along with her. Breakneck pace on this one-sometimes (especially in one particular scene/event) so much was happening I found it a bit hard to keep track of what was going on and where things were coming from. The gore in this one even exceeded the earlier two in true slasher fashion-one scene I read on a plane was so much I had to put the book away for the rest of the flight. The body count! The action sequences! This series is such a love letter to the genre, but also challenges it in important and necessary ways.

And what else to say about Jade? She's one of my very favorite protagonists in anything, and this book ends her arc in such a beautiful way. The last chapter was tears start to finish. I know Jones has another slasher-related book coming this summer, but honestly at this point I would read anything he writes-I love the way he writes his characters and the care he puts into building the world. Definitely recommended, especially for fans of the first two books in the series. ]]> 4.24 2024 The Angel of Indian Lake (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #3)
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
4.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

I'm submitting this review a few days late post-release date, but I needed some time to decompress from this one after I finished it sobbing on a hotel balcony. The ENDING???

Jade is back in Proofrock four years after the ending of Don't Fear the Reaper, and as readers of the first two books in the series will expect, horror follows along with her. Breakneck pace on this one-sometimes (especially in one particular scene/event) so much was happening I found it a bit hard to keep track of what was going on and where things were coming from. The gore in this one even exceeded the earlier two in true slasher fashion-one scene I read on a plane was so much I had to put the book away for the rest of the flight. The body count! The action sequences! This series is such a love letter to the genre, but also challenges it in important and necessary ways.

And what else to say about Jade? She's one of my very favorite protagonists in anything, and this book ends her arc in such a beautiful way. The last chapter was tears start to finish. I know Jones has another slasher-related book coming this summer, but honestly at this point I would read anything he writes-I love the way he writes his characters and the care he puts into building the world. Definitely recommended, especially for fans of the first two books in the series.
]]> Choice 150778991
Together, these connected narratives raise the How free are we really to make our own choices? In a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, Neel Mukherjee confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life.]]> 304 Neel Mukherjee 1324075015 Lauren 3 arc
I originally requested an ARC of this because of a positive comment by Hanya Yanagihara, whose writing I like. This book is essentially three novellas (barely) tied together by a short mention in the first story, all of which deal with themes of morality and the choices we make, as well as the dangers of "well-meaning" white (neo)liberalism. I did like that overarching connection and the idea that even when we make what seems to be the most moral choice possible, because we don't exist in a laboratory but in a living society there will often be negative consequences that accompany the good of that choice. Mukherjee's writing is beautiful. My biggest issue in this book is with the characters, who sometimes felt like almost cartoonish versions of what they were supposed to represent. Part 1 was the worst for this, Part 2 was slightly better, and Part 3 had the least of this and was definitely my favorite of the three stories. ]]> 3.33 Choice
author: Neel Mukherjee
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing in April 2nd 2024!

I originally requested an ARC of this because of a positive comment by Hanya Yanagihara, whose writing I like. This book is essentially three novellas (barely) tied together by a short mention in the first story, all of which deal with themes of morality and the choices we make, as well as the dangers of "well-meaning" white (neo)liberalism. I did like that overarching connection and the idea that even when we make what seems to be the most moral choice possible, because we don't exist in a laboratory but in a living society there will often be negative consequences that accompany the good of that choice. Mukherjee's writing is beautiful. My biggest issue in this book is with the characters, who sometimes felt like almost cartoonish versions of what they were supposed to represent. Part 1 was the worst for this, Part 2 was slightly better, and Part 3 had the least of this and was definitely my favorite of the three stories.
]]> <![CDATA[Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction]]> 195820708
Journey across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe.

Listen to the words of the Old Gods that ruledĚý The Raven Tower.

Learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls.

And so much more, inĚýthis masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.Ěý]]> 403 Ann Leckie 0316553573 Lauren 4 arc
I'm an Ann Leckie completist, although her Imperial Radch books are far and away my favorite. I was so excited for her short story collection! The book is divided into three sections: the first is original fiction (i.e. unrelated to previous stories she's published), the second is three stories set in the Imperial Radch universe, and the last section is stories in the universe of The Raven Tower. I was surprised how much I liked the stories in the third section, since I thought Raven Tower was fine but not a favorite! Like any short story collection, it's a bit uneven in terms of quality/likability, but I didn't find anything in here that I thought wasn't worth reading! Definitely recommended for sci-fi/fantasy fans and Ann Leckie readers.

Standout stories for me:
Lake of Souls
Another Word for World
Night's Slow Poison
She Commands Me and I Obey
The Snake's Wife
Marsh Gods]]> 3.95 2024 Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction
author: Ann Leckie
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

I'm an Ann Leckie completist, although her Imperial Radch books are far and away my favorite. I was so excited for her short story collection! The book is divided into three sections: the first is original fiction (i.e. unrelated to previous stories she's published), the second is three stories set in the Imperial Radch universe, and the last section is stories in the universe of The Raven Tower. I was surprised how much I liked the stories in the third section, since I thought Raven Tower was fine but not a favorite! Like any short story collection, it's a bit uneven in terms of quality/likability, but I didn't find anything in here that I thought wasn't worth reading! Definitely recommended for sci-fi/fantasy fans and Ann Leckie readers.

Standout stories for me:
Lake of Souls
Another Word for World
Night's Slow Poison
She Commands Me and I Obey
The Snake's Wife
Marsh Gods
]]> Lost Ark Dreaming 195790767
Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers� most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.

There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living―for everyone.]]> 179 Suyi Davies Okungbowa 1250890756 Lauren 4 arc
Haven't read anything by Okungbowa before but really liked this one, a climate-crisis story set in the near future just off the coast of Nigeria-the story also deals with ideas of cultural identity and class divisions. Novellas can be tricky because they often fall between feeling like a short story that got dragged out too long or a short version of what should be a full-length novel, but this story worked really well as a stand-alone at this length. We got enough time with our three main characters and the pace of the book moved along briskly. I plan to check out Okungbowa's longer works after this one, which I happily recommend! ]]> 3.63 2024 Lost Ark Dreaming
author: Suyi Davies Okungbowa
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing May 21st!

Haven't read anything by Okungbowa before but really liked this one, a climate-crisis story set in the near future just off the coast of Nigeria-the story also deals with ideas of cultural identity and class divisions. Novellas can be tricky because they often fall between feeling like a short story that got dragged out too long or a short version of what should be a full-length novel, but this story worked really well as a stand-alone at this length. We got enough time with our three main characters and the pace of the book moved along briskly. I plan to check out Okungbowa's longer works after this one, which I happily recommend!
]]> Moonstorm (Moonstorm #1) 198688449 In a society where conformity is valued above all else, a teen girl training to become an Imperial pilot is forced to return to her rebel roots to save her world in this adrenaline-fueled sci-fi adventure—perfect for fans of Iron Widow and Skyward!

Hwa Young was just ten years old when imperial forces destroyed her rebel moon home. Now, six years later, she is a citizen of the very empire that made her an orphan.

Desperate to shake her rebel past, Hwa Young dreams of one day becoming a lancer pilot, an elite group of warriors who fly into battle using the empire’s most advanced tech—giant martial robots. Lancers are powerful, and Hwa Young would do anything to be the strong one for once in her life.

When an attack on their boarding school leaves Hwa Young and her classmates stranded on an imperial space fleet, her dreams quickly become a reality. As it turns out, the fleet is in dire need of pilot candidates, and Hwa Young—along with her brainy best friend Geum, rival Bae, and class clown Seong Su—are quick to volunteer.

But training is nothing like what they expected, and secrets—like the fate of the fleet’s previous lancer squad and hidden truths about the rebellion itself—are stacking up. And when Hwa Young uncovers a conspiracy that puts their entire world at risk, she’s forced to make a choice between her rebel past and an empire she’s no longer sure she can trust.]]> 352 Yoon Ha Lee 0593488334 Lauren 4 arc
Could be a 3.5 but I'm rounding up to 4 stars. I've always said I would read a grocery list if it's written by Yoon Ha Lee-that said, this book was fun! It's a YA space opera complete with sentient mechs, evil empire, etc. The beats are fairly predictable if you've read YA sci-fi, but I really enjoyed all of the characters and I just love to read any decently-written Gundam/Evangelion/fly in a giant robot with personalized abilities story. 15 year old me would have EATEN this up! There's nothing revolutionary (no pun intended) in here in terms of plotting or character development (I'm still a little unclear on how the gravity thing works as well) but if you go into it knowing it's YA, no reason not to pick this up if it interests you!]]> 3.42 2024 Moonstorm (Moonstorm #1)
author: Yoon Ha Lee
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

Could be a 3.5 but I'm rounding up to 4 stars. I've always said I would read a grocery list if it's written by Yoon Ha Lee-that said, this book was fun! It's a YA space opera complete with sentient mechs, evil empire, etc. The beats are fairly predictable if you've read YA sci-fi, but I really enjoyed all of the characters and I just love to read any decently-written Gundam/Evangelion/fly in a giant robot with personalized abilities story. 15 year old me would have EATEN this up! There's nothing revolutionary (no pun intended) in here in terms of plotting or character development (I'm still a little unclear on how the gravity thing works as well) but if you go into it knowing it's YA, no reason not to pick this up if it interests you!
]]> <![CDATA[All About Yvie: Into the Oddity]]> 208089413
This book is an intimate and in-depth look into the life of Yvie Oddly, winner of Season eleven of RuPaul's Drag Race. It begins with their childhood and then tells of their coming out and coming to terms with their sexuality, gender and how those things impact their journey as an artist. It then follows them through their experience on Drag Race (season 11 and All Stars, All Winners), and their rise to super stardom. It’s a close glimpse into their wonderful and sometimes turbulent relationships with their friends, family, and all the people they met along their journey. And it’s an exploration of Yvie’s unique expression of drag as an art form.

Yvie Oddly’s memoir will inspire readers as Yvie candidly shares their evolution into their current identity and learning to balance their private and public personas. Readers will follow them on a journey they will sympathize with, and many may even see themselves in their struggles.]]> 256 Yvie Oddly Lauren 3 arc
I'm a huge fan of Yvie and was so excited to get this as an ARC! Like others, I wasn't a huge fan of the style of the book, much of which reads in third person like a long interview. I absolutely loved hearing directly from Yvie and reading about more of their experiences, the Yvie-led content was great-I just wish there had been less "what Yvie is saying here is" explanations from their co-writer. Some of the formatting also felt a bit hard to follow (specifically in the section recapping the season 11 episodes, where we would jump ahead to post-show experiences before coming back to the next episode, which was kind of going in reverse chronologically)-the formatting with some of the fanart and images was also odd (no pun intended) but I think that was more due to the ARC formatting, and I assume this won't be an issue in the published copy. Anyway, huge fan of Yvie, and really enjoyed hearing from them, other queens who know them, and close family and friends, I just wish there had been a bit less of their co-author in the structure of the book. ]]> 3.56 All About Yvie: Into the Oddity
author: Yvie Oddly
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.56
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing June 19th!

I'm a huge fan of Yvie and was so excited to get this as an ARC! Like others, I wasn't a huge fan of the style of the book, much of which reads in third person like a long interview. I absolutely loved hearing directly from Yvie and reading about more of their experiences, the Yvie-led content was great-I just wish there had been less "what Yvie is saying here is" explanations from their co-writer. Some of the formatting also felt a bit hard to follow (specifically in the section recapping the season 11 episodes, where we would jump ahead to post-show experiences before coming back to the next episode, which was kind of going in reverse chronologically)-the formatting with some of the fanart and images was also odd (no pun intended) but I think that was more due to the ARC formatting, and I assume this won't be an issue in the published copy. Anyway, huge fan of Yvie, and really enjoyed hearing from them, other queens who know them, and close family and friends, I just wish there had been a bit less of their co-author in the structure of the book.
]]> The Eyes Are the Best Part 195703882 Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying� yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.]]> 278 Monika Kim 1645661237 Lauren 3 arc
Holy body horror batman! I should have expected it from the cover, so that one's on me. I enjoyed a lot of this debut novel, about a Korean-American college student dealing with the aftermath of her parent's divorce, her new extremely awful stepfather-to-be, and life as a young Asian woman in college and elsewhere. The pacing was uneven (sort of a slow starter and then a LOT happening in the last third of the book), the repeated dream sequences sometimes felt a bit incongruous, and our protagonist Ji-won is the only one who really gets significant character development, but overall I enjoyed this one! I wish there was a bit more horror to be honest...but the eyeball-crunching descriptions almost make up for it. ]]> 3.81 2024 The Eyes Are the Best Part
author: Monika Kim
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
3.5 stars-Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing today!

Holy body horror batman! I should have expected it from the cover, so that one's on me. I enjoyed a lot of this debut novel, about a Korean-American college student dealing with the aftermath of her parent's divorce, her new extremely awful stepfather-to-be, and life as a young Asian woman in college and elsewhere. The pacing was uneven (sort of a slow starter and then a LOT happening in the last third of the book), the repeated dream sequences sometimes felt a bit incongruous, and our protagonist Ji-won is the only one who really gets significant character development, but overall I enjoyed this one! I wish there was a bit more horror to be honest...but the eyeball-crunching descriptions almost make up for it.
]]> <![CDATA[She Who Knows (She Who Knows #1)]]> 202635277 Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Firespitter is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy

When there is a call, there is often a response.

Najeeba knows.

She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.

Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.]]> 112 Nnedi Okorafor 0756418968 Lauren 4 arc
I'm a HUGE fan of Okorafor's Binti series, but didn't vibe as much with Who Fears Death-this new series of novellas is a side-story to that novel (although you don't have to read the former to understand or enjoy the latter). I really enjoyed this, though! I think Okorafor's plotting and prose really shine in a shorter format, and her worldbuilding is a great mixture of engrossing but easily understandable in a short time frame, which I think is why the length works well here. Loved Najeeba and her family, and while the pacing of the ending felt a bit rushed, I'm excited to see where the story goes from here in the next volume!]]> 4.19 2024 She Who Knows (She Who Knows #1)
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing tomorrow, August 20th!

I'm a HUGE fan of Okorafor's Binti series, but didn't vibe as much with Who Fears Death-this new series of novellas is a side-story to that novel (although you don't have to read the former to understand or enjoy the latter). I really enjoyed this, though! I think Okorafor's plotting and prose really shine in a shorter format, and her worldbuilding is a great mixture of engrossing but easily understandable in a short time frame, which I think is why the length works well here. Loved Najeeba and her family, and while the pacing of the ending felt a bit rushed, I'm excited to see where the story goes from here in the next volume!
]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Lauren 4 arc
I just love Rachel Kushner's writing and will read anything she publishes. This was probably my second favorite of hers after The Flamethrowers, and the fact that I gave a spy/noir novel four stars should say something since those aren't genres I normally enjoy. There's a lot of ambiguity in this one (not unusual for a Kushner novel) and the philosophical interjections sometimes worked well and sometimes felt like a poorly-timed interruption to the plot. Sadie is a great protagonist and I loved the character study elements, though sometimes it felt like everyone else in the book was held at a remove to help facilitate that piece. Regardless, really liked this one!]]> 3.34 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing September 3rd!

I just love Rachel Kushner's writing and will read anything she publishes. This was probably my second favorite of hers after The Flamethrowers, and the fact that I gave a spy/noir novel four stars should say something since those aren't genres I normally enjoy. There's a lot of ambiguity in this one (not unusual for a Kushner novel) and the philosophical interjections sometimes worked well and sometimes felt like a poorly-timed interruption to the plot. Sadie is a great protagonist and I loved the character study elements, though sometimes it felt like everyone else in the book was held at a remove to help facilitate that piece. Regardless, really liked this one!
]]> Burn 202102018 From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence

Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital.

But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, scavenging from boats left in lakes, and dodging armed men—secessionists or U.S. military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.

Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.]]> 291 Peter Heller 0593801628 Lauren 3 arc
As usual, Peter Heller's writing is gorgeous in this story of two best friends emerging from the woods of Maine after a hunting trip to find the towns around them have descended into chaos and what appears to be some kind of civil war. The atmospheric and nature descriptions are, standard for Heller, beautiful and evocative. I appreciated another return to the dystopian setting from him after liking his debut with The Dog Stars.

That said, this one didn't work as well for me-there's a recurring flashback to an event that feels deeply weird and out of place with the rest of the story, and despite the obvious impact on the main character, I still wasn't really sure why this was included and why we needed to hear SO much about it, and felt fairly unfinished in terms of its meaning. For someone who seems to be fairly calculating and level-headed in the midst of crisis throughout the story, our protagonist also makes what seem to be deeply stupid decisions in the last few chapters of the book (luckily, he realizes his mistakes and changes direction somewhat, but it still felt incongruous with the rest of his development). Despite some parts of this not working for me, it was still a decent read and I finished it quickly. ]]> 3.51 2024 Burn
author: Peter Heller
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/09
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: arc
review:
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing August 13th!

As usual, Peter Heller's writing is gorgeous in this story of two best friends emerging from the woods of Maine after a hunting trip to find the towns around them have descended into chaos and what appears to be some kind of civil war. The atmospheric and nature descriptions are, standard for Heller, beautiful and evocative. I appreciated another return to the dystopian setting from him after liking his debut with The Dog Stars.

That said, this one didn't work as well for me-there's a recurring flashback to an event that feels deeply weird and out of place with the rest of the story, and despite the obvious impact on the main character, I still wasn't really sure why this was included and why we needed to hear SO much about it, and felt fairly unfinished in terms of its meaning. For someone who seems to be fairly calculating and level-headed in the midst of crisis throughout the story, our protagonist also makes what seem to be deeply stupid decisions in the last few chapters of the book (luckily, he realizes his mistakes and changes direction somewhat, but it still felt incongruous with the rest of his development). Despite some parts of this not working for me, it was still a decent read and I finished it quickly.
]]>