sophie's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 03 May 2025 14:13:12 -0700 60 sophie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1) 50520939
Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.]]> 376 Olivie Blake sophie 0 currently-reading 3.56 2020 The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)
author: Olivie Blake
name: sophie
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore]]> 17910294
A mesmerizing and essential biography of the modernist poet Marianne Moore

The Marianne Moore that survives in the popular imagination is dignified, white-haired, and demure in her tricorne hat; she lives with her mother until the latter's death; she maintains meaningful friendships with fellow poets but never marries or falls in love.
Linda Leavell's Holding On Upside Down —the first biography of this major American poet written with the support of the Moore estate—delves beneath the surface of this calcified image to reveal a passionate, canny woman caught between genuine devotion to her mother and an irrepressible desire for personal autonomy and freedom. Her many poems about survival are not just quirky nature studies but acts of survival themselves.
Not only did the young poet join the Greenwich Village artists and writers who wanted to overthrow all her mother's pieties but she also won their admiration for the radical originality of her language and the technical proficiency of her verse. After her mother's death thirty years later, the aging recluse transformed herself, against all expectations, into a charismatic performer and beloved celebrity. She won virtually every literary prize available to her and was widely hailed as America's greatest living poet.
Elegantly written, meticulously researched, critically acute, and psychologically nuanced, Holding On Upside Down provides at last the biography that this major poet and complex personality deserves.]]> 481 Linda Leavell 0374710996 sophie 0 to-read 4.18 2013 Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore
author: Linda Leavell
name: sophie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Do You Remember Being Born? 123856309 FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN AWARD FOR FICTION

Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Sean Michaels' luminous new novel takes readers on a lyrical joy ride—seven, epic days in Silicon Valley with a tall, formidable poet (inspired by the real-life Marianne Moore) and her unusual new collaborator, a digital mind just one month old. It's both a love letter to and an aching examination of art-making, family, identity and belonging.

Dear Marian, the letter from the Company begins. You are one of the great writers of this century.

At 75, Marian Ffarmer is almost as famous for her signature tricorn hat and cape as for her verse. She has lived for decades in the one-bedroom New York apartment she once shared with her mother, miles away from any other family, dedicating herself to her art. Yet recently her certainty about her choices has started to fray, especially when she thinks about her only son, now approaching middle age with no steady income. Into that breach comes the letter: an invitation to the Silicon Valley headquarters of one of the world's most powerful companies in order to make history by writing a poem.

Marian has never collaborated with anyone, let alone a machine, but the offer is too lucrative to resist, and she boards a plane to San Francisco with dreams of helping her son. In the Company's serene and golden Mind Studio, she encounters Charlotte, their state-of-the-art poetry bot, and is startled to find that it has written 230,442 poems in the last week, though it claims to only like two of them.

Over the conversations to follow, the poet is by turns intrigued, confused, moved and frightened by Charlotte's vision of the world, by what it knows and doesn't know ("Do you remember being born?" it asks her. Of course Marian doesn't, but Charlotte does.) This is a relationship, a friendship, unlike anything Marian has known, and as it evolves—and as Marian meets strangers at swimming pools, tortoises at the zoo, a clutch of younger poets, a late-night TV host and his synthetic foam set—she is forced to confront the secrets of her past and the direction of her future. Who knew that a disembodied mind could help bend Marian's life towards human connection, that friendship and family are not just time-eating obligations but soul-expanding joys. Or that belonging to one’s art means, above all else, belonging to the world.]]> 335 Sean Michaels 1039006752 sophie 3
i ended up not liking this very much because i have beef with books that do backflips to avoid making any points, especially when it flat-out uses AI to generate text in the book � oof. Idk man, I get books can be whatever and asking a lot of questions without answers is fine, but i can’t bother to pretend for the sake of any argument that anything involving AI is art. it isn’t. it’s a beast of capitalism and I fucking hate it, and i’m not humoring philosophical takes like “well maybe if tells us something about capital-A Art� while corporations use it to fuck over workers and the planet. it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I can understand that might be a me problem, but it wasn’t something i could personally engage with in good faith.

i do appreciate that it brought me to this point of thinking about poetry and the lives of those who create poetry, even if it was disappointing to me. i just also wish it had something cool to say, didn’t use AI for basically a gimmick, and yes, of course i wish it was gay. literally no one would be mad at you for making the poet Marianne Moore a lesbian in your fiction book, i promise. she literally went to Bryn Mawr. like. come on now. whatever, i don’t care at all *adds that Marianne Moore bio to my tbr* ]]> 3.77 2023 Do You Remember Being Born?
author: Sean Michaels
name: sophie
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:
marianne moore was a lesbian and this book is COWARDLY for not going there. just kidding, this story isn’t about that at all, but i got so bored in the last 30% that i started reading about the real-life poet this is based on and i got blasted with a beautiful beam of historical queerness and now i need to read that biography about her or i’ll die, actually. anyways.

i ended up not liking this very much because i have beef with books that do backflips to avoid making any points, especially when it flat-out uses AI to generate text in the book � oof. Idk man, I get books can be whatever and asking a lot of questions without answers is fine, but i can’t bother to pretend for the sake of any argument that anything involving AI is art. it isn’t. it’s a beast of capitalism and I fucking hate it, and i’m not humoring philosophical takes like “well maybe if tells us something about capital-A Art� while corporations use it to fuck over workers and the planet. it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I can understand that might be a me problem, but it wasn’t something i could personally engage with in good faith.

i do appreciate that it brought me to this point of thinking about poetry and the lives of those who create poetry, even if it was disappointing to me. i just also wish it had something cool to say, didn’t use AI for basically a gimmick, and yes, of course i wish it was gay. literally no one would be mad at you for making the poet Marianne Moore a lesbian in your fiction book, i promise. she literally went to Bryn Mawr. like. come on now. whatever, i don’t care at all *adds that Marianne Moore bio to my tbr*
]]> Pounded by Produce 216475536 A tale of veggies tempted to break their vows.

Fleeing a tumultuous past, Emily finds refuge at a kitchen job in a quiet countryside parish.

Robert and Laurent are two best friends with a bond that has crossed lines throughout their history, but now walk the straight and narrow, giving their lives to their parish as priests.

One magical night under the harvest moon, Robert and Laurent experience a bizarre They wake up as a tomato and cucumber.

Emily brings these ripe and juicy vegetables into the kitchen, but instead of preparing a meal, she uses them for other, more pressing needs. Emily awakens something in the priests, who, from then on, spend their days as humans and their nights in their vegetable forms.

The three find themself in a steamy entanglement, unable to deny their primal desires. Will they fight their urges or break their vows and alter the course of their lives forever?From the best-selling author of Get In My Swamp comes a veggie love story filled with angst and lust.]]> 203 G.M. Fairy sophie 0 currently-reading 3.72 Pounded by Produce
author: G.M. Fairy
name: sophie
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Mule Boy 228363290 An elegiac novel of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the story

On New Year’s Day, 1929, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface. After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed.

From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. But, years later, when the miners� loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black.

Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live.]]> 192 Andrew Krivak 195427646X sophie 0 currently-reading 5.00 Mule Boy
author: Andrew Krivak
name: sophie
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 sophie 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: sophie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism]]> 198563691 Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.

If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.

In Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to “civilize� Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Education was not an afterthought for the Founding Fathers; it was envisioned by Thomas Jefferson as an institution that would fortify the country’s racial hierarchy. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. The most insidious aspects of this system fall below the radar in the forms of standardized testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources.

By demonstrating that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This book will change the way people understand the place we send our children for eight hours a day.]]> 400 Eve L. Ewing 0593243706 sophie 0 to-read 4.61 2025 Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
author: Eve L. Ewing
name: sophie
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Writing Retreat 61273863
Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement.

But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell—they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she must discover the truth—or suffer the same fate.]]> 313 Julia Bartz 1982199458 sophie 0 to-read 3.41 2023 The Writing Retreat
author: Julia Bartz
name: sophie
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Little Neck 229905907 Little Neck is a haunting and cinematic novel set in a small New England town steeped in secrets.

It follows the life of a girl abandoned in a cemetery, who grows up tending graves under the guidance of a beloved groundskeeper. Her world unravels when he catches her exhuming a body, and she is sent to apprentice with the town’s tombstone carvers. As the girl learns fragments of her hidden past, a dark family history begins to consume her.

Little Neck explores themes of inheritance, desire, and grief, probing the question: Can we escape the mistakes of our parents, even when their identities are a mystery? With echoes of Agota Kristof, Marguerite Duras, and Marie Redonnet, Dennigan crafts a tragic, darkly humorous meditation on family and the secrets that shape us.]]> 184 Darcie Dennigan 1964499526 sophie 5
Can’t wait for this to pub so I can talk about it for real. Please, PLEASE tell me it’s going to be shaped like a tombstone. nothing could be more perfect. Fonograf, can you hear me �. Fonograf, I beg ……]]> 4.17 Little Neck
author: Darcie Dennigan
name: sophie
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: best-of-2025, novellas-my-beloved
review:
thank you to edelweiss for the free drc! you really, really have to be in the mood for this style of prose, as well as the horrors that await you (cw: csa), but if you’re still on board…prepare to get your tits blown off. this was horrifying and cathartic and beautiful, yes, all of those things � if I had to label it, I would say it belongs somewhere in the victorian gothic realm, unless the author says otherwise. I was up until 2 am finishing this because i NEEDED to know more, and the answers did not disappoint. what a novella! what style! Impeccable in every way.

Can’t wait for this to pub so I can talk about it for real. Please, PLEASE tell me it’s going to be shaped like a tombstone. nothing could be more perfect. Fonograf, can you hear me �. Fonograf, I beg …�
]]> She's Always Hungry 201033505
A woman welcomes a parasite into her body.

A teenager longs for perfect skin.

A scientist tends to fragile alien flora.

A young man takes the night into his own hands.

Unsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humor, Eliza Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.]]> 240 Eliza Clark 0063393263 sophie 0 to-read 3.80 2024 She's Always Hungry
author: Eliza Clark
name: sophie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stone Yard Devotional 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood sophie 0 to-read 3.73 2023 Stone Yard Devotional
author: Charlotte Wood
name: sophie
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mending Bodies 215344205
Hon Lai Chu, one of the foremost writers working in Hong Kong today, sets her characters loose in a macabre reality animated by sketchy institutions and characters with elusive motivations. Politically and socially allegorical, Mending Bodies, translated by Jacqueline Leung, challenges our safe understandings of people, bodies, and governments.]]> 240 Hon Lai-chu 1949641767 sophie 0 to-read 3.91 Mending Bodies
author: Hon Lai-chu
name: sophie
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 sophie 5 4.19 2025 The River Has Roots
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: sophie
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: anna-b, best-of-2025, fantasy, novellas-my-beloved
review:
perfectly executed, no notes. this is what i want out of the fantasy genre always. that switch to present tense gave me full-body chills. AHHHH!!! <3 LOVE THIS
]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 sophie 0 to-read 3.64 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: sophie
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 sophie 3
I also think, and here’s where we get real nitpicky, that this didn’t really necessarily do anything new - this was for Hunger Games fans who wanted to see Haymitch’s games, and that’s fine! That’s me, even. But you can’t open the book with four quotes about propaganda and then not get at the actual MEAT of what makes propaganda so effective and why. I would probably take arguments on this if you’re really passionate about how Good of a job this book does on this front, because this isn’t my area of expertise and frankly every time they talked about posters and crafting their own narratives (as if that’s even possible in their situation lol), I rolled my eyes, so maybe I’m already in a bad position to critically analyze this. But also, one of my favorite things about the OG trilogy is that it doesn’t talk down to its audience. This book, though, this book does - and that’s just disappointing. There are like three sentences in Mockingjay that do what this book takes almost 400 pages to do, and it’s nuanced and complicated and from an unreliable narrator who you care So Much about because you’ve spend three books with her. The same effect cannot be replicated in one book with mister beefy boy tragic backstory guy. Sorry!

What this book does do is say yes, of course propaganda is being used to control the districts and the Capitol. Great. Then it absolutely does not fucking elaborate????? We know the why, there are four books about the why. Show us HOW. A Flickerman is here, and he’s trying to help them for no explicable reason? Cool, that sounds complicated, I wonder what’s going on there. Oh, we’ll never know? GREAT. Nice. Can you like, show us how it affects the districts though? give me examples. tell me about the sponsors from rich families trying to influence the games. Tell me what makes them pity instead of fear the “animals� in the ring. Show me how the spirit of rebellion survives in a broken man after Snow takes everything from him, and do it without quothing the Raven so FUCKING much.

I’m going to stop complaining about this baby book for babies now. So, bottom line. Did I enjoy it? yes. Was I entertained? Of course. Is she good at writing tragedies? Obviously. Is the on-page gore and violence serving a purpose? Yes, it was brutal and yes, I loved (parts of) it. Did the last 50 pages and “sweetheart� lore punch me in the face and steal my lunch money? Yes, help me. But I don’t think this book holds any value outside of the context of the original trilogy � it is what it is, but I don’t want to us to pretend that Suzanne is writing to take a #stand against capitalist oppression when she’s, uh, not really doing that.

Speaking of, I wonder how much profit this book is netting, and I wonder how much of that is going to survivors of genocide. I wonder if any USAmerican teen will read this and be able to actually make the critical connection between the constant flow of propaganda in their real life to what’s happening in this story. I also wonder if perhaps Suzanne’s fixation on chronicling Snow’s life and reign has gotten her off track to the point where his overarching presence in this book perhaps distracts us from the real terrors at work. I just don’t know, man. I wanted what I got, but I also wanted so much more. ]]> 4.61 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: sophie
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:
3.5 rounded doooown because while this book is certainly leagues better than TBOSAS, it really, really reads like fanfiction while simultaneously pretending like someone who has never read the original trilogy is reading this book. I was so frustrated by the level of exposition � so much of the “worldbuilding� (details already established in the og trilogy/TSBOSAS) could have been cut so we could focus on other things, and the book would be so much stronger for it. I barely felt like Haymitch was real � the way he reacted, his internal monologue, his actions didn’t really seem tethered to any specific character, he really just felt like knockoff Katniss. Yes, I know that’s on purpose, but his only defining unique trait is his love for Lenore. Believe me, I get it, I love her too, but that simply cannot carry an almost 400-page book. He really is just Ken, and that’s okay, but in a cast full of interesting, complex characters, he reads flat in comparison.

I also think, and here’s where we get real nitpicky, that this didn’t really necessarily do anything new - this was for Hunger Games fans who wanted to see Haymitch’s games, and that’s fine! That’s me, even. But you can’t open the book with four quotes about propaganda and then not get at the actual MEAT of what makes propaganda so effective and why. I would probably take arguments on this if you’re really passionate about how Good of a job this book does on this front, because this isn’t my area of expertise and frankly every time they talked about posters and crafting their own narratives (as if that’s even possible in their situation lol), I rolled my eyes, so maybe I’m already in a bad position to critically analyze this. But also, one of my favorite things about the OG trilogy is that it doesn’t talk down to its audience. This book, though, this book does - and that’s just disappointing. There are like three sentences in Mockingjay that do what this book takes almost 400 pages to do, and it’s nuanced and complicated and from an unreliable narrator who you care So Much about because you’ve spend three books with her. The same effect cannot be replicated in one book with mister beefy boy tragic backstory guy. Sorry!

What this book does do is say yes, of course propaganda is being used to control the districts and the Capitol. Great. Then it absolutely does not fucking elaborate????? We know the why, there are four books about the why. Show us HOW. A Flickerman is here, and he’s trying to help them for no explicable reason? Cool, that sounds complicated, I wonder what’s going on there. Oh, we’ll never know? GREAT. Nice. Can you like, show us how it affects the districts though? give me examples. tell me about the sponsors from rich families trying to influence the games. Tell me what makes them pity instead of fear the “animals� in the ring. Show me how the spirit of rebellion survives in a broken man after Snow takes everything from him, and do it without quothing the Raven so FUCKING much.

I’m going to stop complaining about this baby book for babies now. So, bottom line. Did I enjoy it? yes. Was I entertained? Of course. Is she good at writing tragedies? Obviously. Is the on-page gore and violence serving a purpose? Yes, it was brutal and yes, I loved (parts of) it. Did the last 50 pages and “sweetheart� lore punch me in the face and steal my lunch money? Yes, help me. But I don’t think this book holds any value outside of the context of the original trilogy � it is what it is, but I don’t want to us to pretend that Suzanne is writing to take a #stand against capitalist oppression when she’s, uh, not really doing that.

Speaking of, I wonder how much profit this book is netting, and I wonder how much of that is going to survivors of genocide. I wonder if any USAmerican teen will read this and be able to actually make the critical connection between the constant flow of propaganda in their real life to what’s happening in this story. I also wonder if perhaps Suzanne’s fixation on chronicling Snow’s life and reign has gotten her off track to the point where his overarching presence in this book perhaps distracts us from the real terrors at work. I just don’t know, man. I wanted what I got, but I also wanted so much more.
]]> <![CDATA[So What If I'm a Puta: Diaries of Transness, Sex Work, Desire]]> 215545091
(So What) If I’m a Puta?, originally published on author Amara Moira’s popular blog of the same name, consists of 44 crônicas that wryly portray her experiences as a trans sex worker in Brazil. In a brazen, funny, and at times heartbreaking voice, Moira explores the political and personal textures of her encounters with the men who buy sex from her, and the complex reality of her labor of a sort of love.

Woven through Moira’s essays are reflections on transition, safe sex, desire, whorephobia, consent—in the grim context of Brazil’s record rates of violence against trans women. Ultimately, Moira writes to “give a voice to us prostitutes� and center trans sex workers in Brazil’s putafeminist movement, modeling a feminism that envisions inclusivity, safety, self-determination, and joy for us all.]]> 192 Amara Moira 155861348X sophie 0 to-read 4.25 So What If I'm a Puta: Diaries of Transness, Sex Work, Desire
author: Amara Moira
name: sophie
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Orlanda 1845361 When the two meet again in Belgium, Aline subconsciously sheds her prim tendencies for more assertive behavior, as she begins to understand that the audacious and lively Orlanda was born from her psyche. The more time the two spend together, the less time they can stand to be apart.
Winner of the Prix Meacutedicis, this lyrical novel, which recalls the erudition and imagination of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, and Patricia Duncker's Hallucinating Foucault, is a stunning evocation of a woman who is forced to confront every part of her soul, and embrace herself whole.]]> 224 Jacqueline Harpman 1583220119 sophie 0 to-read 3.85 1996 Orlanda
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: sophie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vanishing World 219300660 From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and all children are born by artificial insemination.

Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated� in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system� by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.� Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?]]> 240 Sayaka Murata 0802164668 sophie 0 to-read 3.50 2015 Vanishing World
author: Sayaka Murata
name: sophie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Y/N 58523626 Y/Na novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.

It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.

Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love. An escalating series of mistranslations and misidentifications lands her at the headquarters of the Kafkaesque entertainment company that manages the boyband until, at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence.

Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant, Y/N is a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one’s singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Esther Yi’s prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about “identity� and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.]]> 204 Esther Yi 1662601549 sophie 4 that was so much 2.92 2023 Y/N
author: Esther Yi
name: sophie
average rating: 2.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
that was so much
]]> Gifted & Talented 211004124 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.

Where there’s a will, there’s a war.

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

Or at least, so they like to think.

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

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

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

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins—but which Wren will come out on top?]]> 512 Olivie Blake 1250883407 sophie 4
i’ll stop being grumpy now, Arthur Yves Gillian and *looks at smudged writing on hand* Eyelid, i love you so much. WHATEVERRRRR 4 stars i don’t care at all ]]> 3.81 2025 Gifted & Talented
author: Olivie Blake
name: sophie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
3.5 extremely begrudgingly rounded up, because the gillian/arthur/yves throuple ending and the shrooms reveal took me OUT even though i really don’t think this book is, um, good. the characters are impeccable, but this should have been at least a hundred pages shorter and maybe if we focused on one book per calendar year the books would be, idk, better? i just think this needed a lot more time in the editing trenches and it could have been pretty perfect, but instead it spent so much time telling instead of showing, being obnoxious, and showing me Anybody Except Gillian. also, we’re gonna thank Royal Tenenbaums in the credits but NOT Succession? come on now. don’t pretend this isn’t knock-off succ when a big part of the charm is, in fact, that it is knock-off succ. it just is!! sorry!!

i’ll stop being grumpy now, Arthur Yves Gillian and *looks at smudged writing on hand* Eyelid, i love you so much. WHATEVERRRRR 4 stars i don’t care at all
]]> <![CDATA[Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism]]> 250792 Ain't I a Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women's movement, and black women's involvement with feminism.]]> 205 bell hooks 089608129X sophie 0 nonfic 4.51 1981 Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
author: bell hooks
name: sophie
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: nonfic
review:

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

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

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

Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.]]> 304 Ling Ling Huang 0593850432 sophie 0 to-read 4.23 2025 Immaculate Conception
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: sophie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer]]> 35068432
"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.]]> 352 Michelle McNamara 0062319809 sophie 4 nonfic 4.12 2018 I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
author: Michelle McNamara
name: sophie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/13
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> Age of Blight: Stories 25779031 Age of Blight, a young scientist's harsh and unnecessary experiments on monkeys are recorded for posterity; children are replaced by their doppelgangers, which emerge like flowers in their backyards; and two men standing on opposing cliff faces bear witness to each other's terrifying ends.

Age of Blight explores a kind of post-future, in which the human race is finally abandoned to the end of its history. Muslim's poetic vignettes explore the nature of dystopia itself, often to darkly humorous effect, as when the spirit of Laika (the Russian space dog that perished on Sputnik 2) tries to befriend a satellite, or when Beth, the narrator's older sister, returns from the dead. The collection is illustrated throughout by the charcoal drawings of RISD artist Alessandra Hogan.

In haunting and precise prose, Kristine Ong Muslim posits that humanity's downfall will be both easily preventable and terrifyingly inevitable, for it depends on only one thing: human nature.]]> 105 Kristine Ong Muslim 1939419565 sophie 4 horror-etc 4.02 2016 Age of Blight: Stories
author: Kristine Ong Muslim
name: sophie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: horror-etc
review:
weird! read most of this in a park in the sunlight with the birds chirping, truly ideal if not perhaps thematically appropriate. i don't know if i really enjoyed this collection, but it was unique and well-written and had plenty of thought-provoking stuff going on. if you like post-apocalyptic horror that never really explains itself, you might also like this...
]]> Come Closer 220772
The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?]]> 194 Sara Gran 0425210316 sophie 4 horror-etc 3.63 2003 Come Closer
author: Sara Gran
name: sophie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: horror-etc
review:
3.5 - thumbs up. like Isaac said, gone girl add demon (it’s not like gone girl at all). wish we had seen any of the violence on page (is something wrong with me?)
]]> <![CDATA[Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance, #2)]]> 218063235 Featuring exquisite emerald sprayed edges!

It’s enemies to lovers in this sexy and delightful holiday mash up that pairs the spare prince of Christmas with the crown prince of St. Patrick’s Day!

Someone has been stealing Christmas’s joy, and there’s only one clue to the culprit—a single shamrock.

With Coal busy restructuring Christmas—and their dad now having a full midlife crisis in the Caribbean—Kris volunteers to investigate St. Patrick’s Day. His cover: an ambassador from Christmas to foster goodwill. What could go wrong?

Everything, it seems. Because Prince Lochlann Patrick, Crown Prince of St. Patrick’s Day, happens to be the mysterious student that Kris has been in a small war with at Cambridge. They attempt to play nice for the tabloids, but Kris can’t get through one conversation without wanting to smash Loch’s face in—he’s infuriating, stubborn, loud, obstinate, hot�

²�hot?

Kris might be in some trouble. Especially when it turns out that the mystery behind Christmas’s stolen magic isn’t as simple as an outright theft. But why would a Holiday that Christmas has never had contact with, one that’s always been the very basis of carefree, want to steal joy? Can a spare prince even hope to unravel all this, or will Kris lose something way more valuable than his Holiday’s resources—like his heart?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 320 Sara Raasch 1250333210 sophie 2
look. listen. if this book sounds cute and interesting to you, please do not let me being mean stop you from embarking on that journey. but please also know that i was PLANNING on being nicer. i promise. this book sat at a 3 star for SO long, because honestly? it was charming, i did like the characters, it was silly in a good way and i think a lot of things that i didn’t like about it were genre conventions and not an issue with the book itself. however. then we pulled some third act shit so egregiously cringe that i laughed out loud and could not lock back in for the life of me. i TRIED, man, but it just did Not End and i couldn’t get over how unsexy it all was. Anna tells me that somehow it was much worse in the first book, so maybe i should count my blessings, but i didn’t read that one so i’m being mean to this one instead.

Kris, you are charming but your tattoos are bad and your boyfriend is cringe and i’m not afraid to say it. GOD. i feel better now ]]> 4.37 2025 Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance, #2)
author: Sara Raasch
name: sophie
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:
finally free� the curse been been lifted �.

look. listen. if this book sounds cute and interesting to you, please do not let me being mean stop you from embarking on that journey. but please also know that i was PLANNING on being nicer. i promise. this book sat at a 3 star for SO long, because honestly? it was charming, i did like the characters, it was silly in a good way and i think a lot of things that i didn’t like about it were genre conventions and not an issue with the book itself. however. then we pulled some third act shit so egregiously cringe that i laughed out loud and could not lock back in for the life of me. i TRIED, man, but it just did Not End and i couldn’t get over how unsexy it all was. Anna tells me that somehow it was much worse in the first book, so maybe i should count my blessings, but i didn’t read that one so i’m being mean to this one instead.

Kris, you are charming but your tattoos are bad and your boyfriend is cringe and i’m not afraid to say it. GOD. i feel better now
]]> Hungerstone 212342605 Hungerstoneis a thrillingly seductive sapphic romance for fans of S.T. Gibson’sA Dowry of Bloodand Emilia Hart’sWeyward.

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

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

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

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

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution,Hungerstoneis a compulsive feminist reworking ofCarmilla, the book that inspiredDracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire.]]> 336 Kat Dunn 1638932166 sophie 3 for-the-girls, horror-etc 4.01 2025 Hungerstone
author: Kat Dunn
name: sophie
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: for-the-girls, horror-etc
review:
so sorry to my fellow gays and beloved coworkers who love this book but it just didn’t click with me. i really liked the part where she gnaws on a table leg + didn’t like anything else LOL. I’d still recommend this to anybody who wants baby’s first gothic lesbian vampire story, but Me Personally, i was not having a good time at any point in the reading experience. you can cancel me for this if you disagree, i deserve it, but i think there was a distinct lack of complexity in this book that usually is present in gothic retellings, so i kept waiting for it to get interesting and the commentary to evolve, but it never did. like, go off girl, you know i love a kill-and-eat-that-man moment, but i need a lil something more to chew on�
]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 sophie 0 to-read 4.22 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: sophie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Things Don't Break on Their Own]]> 203019749 259 Sarah Easter Collins 0593798333 sophie 3 3.74 2024 Things Don't Break on Their Own
author: Sarah Easter Collins
name: sophie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
review:
2.5, rounded up because it’s gay. not very good though unfortunately
]]> Katabasis 210223811 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

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

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 400 R.F. Kuang sophie 5 best-of-2025, fantasy
see y'all in august! >:) ]]> 4.03 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: sophie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: best-of-2025, fantasy
review:
thank you to lauren for the arc! absolutely infuriating how good this was. weirdly enough, this was my least favorite of her books so far (no, I can't tell you why, just know it's a personal problem). but my GOD. my GODDDD. I'm an R.F. Kuang acolyte for life, if that wasn't obvious. all of the praise heaped on her is absolutely deserved and I'm already excited for whatever she dreams up next.

see y'all in august! >:)
]]> Katabasis 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

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

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 sophie 0 to-read 4.24 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: sophie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> God-Disease 205307296 Winner of the 2023 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Manuel Muñoz. Imagine a space where cities and municipalities are delineated only by letters. A place in flux, a freewheeling confluence that does not commit to being American, Korea, or even Korean American. This is where God-Disease takes place. Strange things happen here. Identities warp and shift; sometimes they vanish altogether. In the titular story, a museum insect curator returns to her birth town, J Municipality, feeling empty and searching for answers to her mother’s absence; was it insanity that plagued her, or was it shin-byeong—god-disease? Equal parts Southern Korean Gothic and slipstream, the collection is a meditation on language, identity, and names, and how deceptively fragile they can be.]]> 240 an chang joon 195604633X sophie 5 best-of-2025, horror-etc 4.67 God-Disease
author: an chang joon
name: sophie
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: best-of-2025, horror-etc
review:
thanks to edelweiss for the drc! honestly? this banged severely. it's been such a long time since i've really been able to dive into and enjoy a short story collection like this � gruesome and real and meaningful and full of dramatic cinematic twists that COULD be trite but somehow fit the tone of this collection perfectly. every time i finished a story, I both wanted to immediately reread it and read the next one as fast as possible. again, so delighted by how truly gross and evocative the imagery was - this is quite genre-bendy, but in my mind this is squarely horror because of the tropes and traumas the author engages with in all of the stories. and that's a good thing! 4.5 rounded up, purely because I didn't like the last story nearly as much as all the other ones, but I would recommend this pretty widely, and especially to nicole (get in here bro)
]]> Antiquity 185767241 Elegant, slippery, and provocative, Antiquity is a queer Lolita story by prize-winning Swedish author Hanna Johansson—a story of desire, power, obsession, observation, and taboo

Antiquity follows its unnamed narrator, a lonely woman in her thirties whobecomes enamored of a chic older artist, Helena, after interviewing her for amagazine. Helena invites the narrator to join her in the Greek city of Ermoupoliwhere she summers with her teenage daughter Olga. At first an object ofjealousy, Olga morphs into an object of desire as the pull of Helena is transposed onto her daughter and the prospect of becoming someone’s first, ifperverse, lover.

With echoes of Death in Venice, Call Me by Your Name, The Lover, and Lolita, but wholly original and contemporary, Antiquity probes the depths of memory, power, and the narratives that arrange our experience of the world.]]> 224 Hanna Johansson 1646221710 sophie 3 3.37 2020 Antiquity
author: Hanna Johansson
name: sophie
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:
this had me hooked in the beginning but it took me SO long to read because nothing happens + the prose is so thick sometimes that i felt like giving up. if you like greek mythology and predatory narrators with deceptive, well-crafted internal monologues, this might be for you � certainly it's for someone with a high tolerance for litfic, because even though it's objectively good, i found myself wanting our narrator to be killed off mid-sentence so i could be done with the book. lol
]]> Psychic Teenage Bloodbath 63098616
She can’t speak. She can’t move. She can’t even close her eyes.

Unable to sleep, Susan has gone quite mad. But, deep within the recesses of her mind, she’s discovered a new and frightening set of skills.

And now, one year later, Susan will use these skills for one single-minded, blood-soaked purpose � REVENGE.

From the sadistic mind of Carl John Lee, author of Horror House of Perversion, comes a nightmarish tale of vengeance and brutal, stomach-churning violence.

PSYCHIC TEENAGE BLOODBATH.

Don’t let her inside your mind.]]> 208 Carl John Lee sophie 0 to-read 3.72 Psychic Teenage Bloodbath
author: Carl John Lee
name: sophie
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thirst 174156085 Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. A breakout, genre-blurring novel from one of the most exciting new voices of Latin America’s feminist Gothic.

It is the twilight of Europe’s bloody bacchanals, of murder and feasting without end. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet.

In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women—and they cross a threshold from which there’s no turning back.

With echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.]]> 256 Marina Yuszczuk 0593472063 sophie 3 3.43 2020 Thirst
author: Marina Yuszczuk
name: sophie
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:
so mid that i almost forgot i read this. i really liked part two and the parts about grief, and also the part where she says fuck them kids. i didn’t like anything else about this unfortunately :/
]]> <![CDATA[How Europe Underdeveloped Africa]]> 42719072 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an ambitious masterwork of political economy, detailing the impact of slavery and colonialism on the history of international capitalism. In this classic book, Rodney makes the unflinching case that African “mal-development� is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present. Meticulously researched, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains a relevant study for understanding the so-called “great divergence� between Africa and Europe, just as it remains a prescient resource for grasping the multiplication of global inequality today.

In this new edition, Angela Davis offers a striking foreword to the book, exploring its lasting contributions to a revolutionary and feminist practice of anti-imperialism.

]]> 432 Walter Rodney sophie 0 nonfic 4.45 1971 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
author: Walter Rodney
name: sophie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within U.S. Slave Culture]]> 18789058
Unearths connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture that has largely been ignored until now

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person’s claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence. The Delectable Negro explores these connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture.

Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith’s slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. Woodard uses these texts to unpack how slaves struggled not only against social consumption, but also against endemic mechanisms of starvation and hunger designed to break them. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption.]]> 320 Vincent Woodard 0814794610 sophie 0 nonfic 4.17 2014 The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within U.S. Slave Culture
author: Vincent Woodard
name: sophie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia]]> 42129163
The work is divided into three sections. The two chapters in the first part consider how Renaissance white women and women of color were depicted as plump and feminine, separated by class, yet belonging to the same gender. The second part of the work charts the rise of modern racial ideologies that yoked feminine beauty to Protestant, Anglo-Saxon whiteness. Later chapters and the epilogue consider how Americans normalized the "scientific management" of white women's bodies for the purpose of racial uplift, a project that continued to situate black women as the embodied Other.

The author does not address fat from the angle of health or previous attitudes white Europeans held towards corpulence.]]> 296 Sabrina Strings 1479886750 sophie 0 nonfic 4.26 2019 Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
author: Sabrina Strings
name: sophie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South]]> 40887375 A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy

Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.]]> 320 Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers 0300218664 sophie 0 nonfic 4.29 2019 They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
author: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
name: sophie
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2021/09/01
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:
really good!! for an academic text, it's clear and concise, and is well-researched and put together. i thought the meta-argument, which is generally about sexism in knowledge production//academia, was really well done and worked well with the main argument about white women's use of enslaved people as currency // agency. my biggest complaint is that the footnotes were in the back instead of being on-page :(
]]> Orientalism 355190
In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.]]> 424 Edward W. Said sophie 0 nonfic 4.13 1978 Orientalism
author: Edward W. Said
name: sophie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> The Wretched of the Earth 66933 Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.

The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other.

Fanon's analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world, and this bold new translation by Richard Philcox reaffirms it as a landmark.]]> 251 Frantz Fanon 0802141323 sophie 0 nonfic 4.35 1961 The Wretched of the Earth
author: Frantz Fanon
name: sophie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> I Was A Doctor In Auschwitz 777047 189 Gisella Perl 0405123000 sophie 0 nonfic 4.55 1948 I Was A Doctor In Auschwitz
author: Gisella Perl
name: sophie
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II]]> 95784
This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many.]]> 290 Iris Chang 0140277447 sophie 0 nonfic
iris chang’s work will be remembered. ]]> 4.23 1997 The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
author: Iris Chang
name: sophie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/27
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:
i don’t really have words for this except that it was an insanely difficult read and it was so so necessary. if you can read this, do. if you can’t, read about it.

iris chang’s work will be remembered.
]]> <![CDATA[Missing Persons: or, My Grandmother's Secrets]]> 127282315
In 2015, the Irish government commissioned an investigation into the state’s network of Mother and Baby Homes after the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of up to eight hundred children prompted international outrage. The homes, which operated from the 1920s to the 1990s, were responsible for nearly nine thousand child deaths and countless other abuses.

Yet in the face of overwhelming evidence, everyone seemed to forget what had actually occurred. No one remembered who the babies were, how they died, or where they were buried. A whole society had learned not to look, or not to look too closely, and certainly not to ask too many questions.

Clair Wills’s investigation leads her back to the discovery that nearly thirty years ago a cousin of hers had been born in one of the Homes and her existence had been covered up. As Wills finds out more about her own family’s secret chronicle of loss, her investigation expands into an exploration of the secrets and silences that make up our family stories, the limits of record-keeping, and the fragility of memory itself. Wills unravels a history of illegitimacy that stretches back into her grandmother’s life in Ireland a hundred years ago and forward to her own generation today. Missing Persons reveals the truth that seeps through the gaps in our stories about the past and that is encrypted in things left unsaid―if you learn how to read what is missing.]]> 208 Clair Wills 0374611866 sophie 0 nonfic
i would love to read more of this author’s work, especially re: Irish masculinity and politics of respectability. If you already know a lot about this subject i would maybe read other texts, but for me (random layperson) it was a really interesting book with a lot of good points being made. ]]> 3.64 Missing Persons: or, My Grandmother's Secrets
author: Clair Wills
name: sophie
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: nonfic
review:
nonfiction/memoir so leaving this unrated - i wish this book had either slightly more or slightly less of an academic tilt, the verbiage was weird and not consistent throughout. it also suffered from being repetitive, which is more of an editing issue than anything else. those are really my only complaints, though. i loved loved loved bringing in Beckett and Sartre even though it was very brief, and i think the authors own history is a a REALLY interesting lens to look at this subject with. the single chapter talking about the author’s own experience with infant loss made this book, it was so powerful.

i would love to read more of this author’s work, especially re: Irish masculinity and politics of respectability. If you already know a lot about this subject i would maybe read other texts, but for me (random layperson) it was a really interesting book with a lot of good points being made.
]]> <![CDATA[No Human Involved: The Serial Murder of Black Women and Girls and the Deadly Cost of Police Indifference]]> 211960948 An urgent examination of the invisibility of Black women and girls as victims of targeted killings, and the lack of police intervention and media coverage.
When Black women and girls are targeted and murdered their cases are often categorized by police officers as “N.H.I.� � “No Humans Involved.� Dehumanized and invisible to the public eye, they are rarely seen as victims. In the United States, Black women are killed at a higher rate than any other group of women, but their victimhood is not covered by the media and their cases do not receive an adequate level of urgency. Utilizing intensive historical research of cases in cities such as Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angles, Cheryl Neely calls attention to serial cases of Black female murder victims and a lack of police action. Neely approaches each case and story with detailed care. Instead of focusing solely on the killings and the murderers, she highlights the lives of the women and girls and their communities that never stopped fighting for justice. With media neglect and police indifference, Neely argues that because law enforcement is less likely to conduct serious investigations into the disappearances and homicides of Black women, they are particularly vulnerable to become victims. Diving deep into the unseen and unheard, Neely uses personal interviews, court records, media reports, and analytical data to understand how and why Black women are disproportionately more likely to die from homicide in comparison to their white counterpoints. Sounding an urgent alarm, No Human Involved contends that it is time for Black women’s lives to matter not only to their families and communities, but especially to those commissioned to protect them.]]> 264 Cheryl L. Neely 0807004561 sophie 5 best-of-2025, nonfic
also sidenote i just know this author is a great professor, the way this is written is so engaging and almost feels like you're in a class about this topic. i really appreciate nonfic written this way, it feels much more accessible when it's not dry and overwritten. this is something i really think everyone should at least know - and probably read - about, so i really hope this will find the widest possible audience. ]]> 4.48 2025 No Human Involved: The Serial Murder of Black Women and Girls and the Deadly Cost of Police Indifference
author: Cheryl L. Neely
name: sophie
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: best-of-2025, nonfic
review:
i don't usually rate nonfic but i can't stress enough how well-researched, smart, and relevant this was. every time i was like 'hey well good point, but what about this thing?' it was brought up immediately after i had that thought. i don't know of another book like this and it's genuinely so important that it exists. obviously this is a tough read but i would tell anyone who considers themselves a "true crime fan" that they must read this and grapple with it.

also sidenote i just know this author is a great professor, the way this is written is so engaging and almost feels like you're in a class about this topic. i really appreciate nonfic written this way, it feels much more accessible when it's not dry and overwritten. this is something i really think everyone should at least know - and probably read - about, so i really hope this will find the widest possible audience.
]]> <![CDATA[Putafeminista: A Manifesto of Sex Worker Feminism]]> 215545629
As long as feminism has existed as a movement in Brazil, sex workers have taken to the streets in solidarity—despite the fact that mainstream feminist discourse positions sex work, and the “putas� who enact it, as detrimental to women’s rights. In Putafeminista, activist and sex worker Monique Prada calls for feminists to retire this hypocrisy and embrace putafeminism: a working class women’s movement that rejects whorephobia and its classist, colonial dimensions.

Drawing on her firsthand experiences with sex work and movement building, Prada argues for the validity of sex work as feminist labor and tracks the innovations introduced by Brazilian sex workers to feminist internet discourse, street actions, and governmental advocacy. For readers seeking the glimmers of tomorrow’s feminism, Prada places that future with putafeminists, naming the brothel a “final frontier� for all women to gather, reform, and revolt.]]> 96 Monique Prada 1558613390 sophie 0 best-of-2025, nonfic 4.50 Putafeminista: A Manifesto of Sex Worker Feminism
author: Monique Prada
name: sophie
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: best-of-2025, nonfic
review:
thanks to edelweiss for the drc, this rocked! i'm grateful this work has been translated, because it has such important ideas packaged in a really interesting, comprehensible format. not only does it offer substantiated arguments for the legitimacy and decriminalization of sex work, it was also surprisingly funny and undercut with empathy that i really appreciated - for example, it both acknowledges the life and circumstances that created Dworkin's ideology, while also acknowledging the violent patriarchal harm that ideology causes. that's a layer of nuance i don't see that often, mostly because it's so easy to dunk on second-wave feminists like Dworkin for their anti-porn stances, but I think understanding where that mode of thinking comes from is really important when we're trying to combat conservative feminist takes (Prada's alternate phrasing for 'radical' feminists, which i really like, because nothing about excluding sex workers/trans people from your feminism is radical). AND it acknowledges the nuances of gender/queer identity and that intersection with sex work specifically in Brazil, AND it uses 'asexual people exist' as a counterargument to 'sex work is an inherent talent all women have,' which i thought was particularly delightful and inclusive. anyways! i would totally read more from this author, and i hope these ideas resonate with as many people as possible. fuck a swerf, fuck a terf, long live putafeminism <3
]]> Prophet 64221052 480 Sin Blaché 0802162029 sophie 2 3.61 2023 Prophet
author: Sin Blaché
name: sophie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
maybe i’m just being a big meanie but if you’re going to write 2000s-era inception fanfiction and publish it in the year of our lord 2023, at the VERY least they should fuck nasty. But they don’t! They don’t even kiss until the last page of the book!!!! i genuinely just do not see the point. i don’t want to get too nitpicky because we’ll be here Forever, but the plot is so bad it’s not even worth talking about and the way it treats one of the two female characters is HEINOUS. I guess these crimes could be forgiven because it’s Literally Fanfiction if and ONLY if it delivered on the character dynamics (it does) and resolved everything in an interesting or horny manner (it doesn’t). yes, i’m still going to make Anna read this, everyone else just go watch Inception and make it gay in your mind
]]> Sour Cherry 213816143 A stunning reimagining of Bluebeard—one of the most mythologized serial killers—twisted into a modern tale of toxic masculinity, a feminist sermon, and a folktale for the twenty-first century.

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

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.]]> 312 Natalia Theodoridou 1963108191 sophie 5
thank you to edelweiss for the arc, i can't wait to reread the physical when it comes out... as a sidenote, this book made some really fucking cool graphic design choices for page layouts + margins, which isn't something i see that often! truly just great on every level.]]> 3.79 2025 Sour Cherry
author: Natalia Theodoridou
name: sophie
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: best-of-2025, queer-collection, favorites
review:
thanks to edelweiss for the drc! this book gets a whole 5 stars from me, a hater...oh my god, this was just perfect. rarely if ever have i liked a 'fairytale retelling' (feels reductive to call it that, it's just too good) even though i always WANT to like them - this delivered absolutely everything and more. the last 10% actually floored me, apologies to anyone who experienced my Live Slug Reaction real-time as i clutched my head in my hands and said "oh no, oh no" a bunch. seriously, WOW. no, you don't need to be familiar with Bluebeard to read this, but yes, it's even better with context, since this work plays with the fourth wall and is definitely in conversation the original and stageplay versions of this tale (and probably to some other stuff I'm missing! I had no real knowledge before reading this, but I'm certainly interested now).

thank you to edelweiss for the arc, i can't wait to reread the physical when it comes out... as a sidenote, this book made some really fucking cool graphic design choices for page layouts + margins, which isn't something i see that often! truly just great on every level.
]]> Little World 217043721
'He has no notion of how to care for a saint. Even a small one. Does not even believe � Still. Catholic or not. You don't turn away a saint.'

In the north-western corner of 1950s Australia, a saint arrives at the home of a retired engineer, who unwittingly becomes her custodian. A girl of indeterminate age, her body remains as it was when she died, incorruptible. And though no one knows it, she is conscious, reflecting on past and present.

Little World stretches across continents and eras � from the Canal Zone in Panama and the island of Nauru all the way to the onset of Covid in contemporary Victoria. Beautiful, rich and strange, it weaves a tale of interconnected fates as characters grapple with the unknowable, and in this way come face to face with their deepest needs.]]> 120 Josephine Rowe sophie 5 4.42 Little World
author: Josephine Rowe
name: sophie
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: best-of-2025, queer-collection, novellas-my-beloved
review:
thank you to edelweiss for the drc! that was so good
]]> Blood on Her Tongue 213570812 "I'm in your blood, and you are in mine�"

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry� and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.]]> 368 Johanna van Veen 1728281571 sophie 4 best-of-2025, horror-etc
This book doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything, but boy was it delightful � for once, I found a super trope-heavy book really enjoyable, and I was continuously surprised and delighted by the use of those tropes. I doooo think the first two thirds are super strong, and the last third leaves something to be desired, but also, it came, it served, it did exactly what it needed to do, and I can't wait to see that beaaautiful cover when it pubs . highly recommend for anyone who thinks this sounds interesting. (jumpscare warning for the use of the word "quim," though - idk if it's just me but my GOD we have got to find better old-timey genitalia slang than that).]]> 3.99 2025 Blood on Her Tongue
author: Johanna van Veen
name: sophie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: best-of-2025, horror-etc
review:
thank you edelweiss for the drc! A clean fun read... no, just kidding, it's gross and gory and horny and gothic and yes, sapphic on the side. Yippeeeeee!!

This book doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything, but boy was it delightful � for once, I found a super trope-heavy book really enjoyable, and I was continuously surprised and delighted by the use of those tropes. I doooo think the first two thirds are super strong, and the last third leaves something to be desired, but also, it came, it served, it did exactly what it needed to do, and I can't wait to see that beaaautiful cover when it pubs . highly recommend for anyone who thinks this sounds interesting. (jumpscare warning for the use of the word "quim," though - idk if it's just me but my GOD we have got to find better old-timey genitalia slang than that).
]]> <![CDATA[Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious]]> 216052746 Do you ever wish you had more faith, but struggle to make religious belief fit with modern assumptions about the world and human life? With a rare combination of empathy, open-mindedness, and persuasive argument, Ross Douthat offers a blueprint forthinkingone's way from doubt to belief.

As a columnist for theNew York Timeswho writes often about spiritual topics for a skeptical audience, Ross Douthat understands that many of us--whether we are agnostic, somewhat religious, or longtime believers--want to have more faith than we do. But we think we can't believe the way our ancestors did, knowing what we know now--can we?

With clear and straightforward arguments,Believeshows how religious belief makes sense of the order of the cosmos and our place within it, illuminates the mystery of consciousness, and explains the persistent reality of encounters with the supernatural.

Douthat argues that in light of what we know today it should be harder tonothave faith than to have it. With empathy, clarity, and rigor, Douthat

Why nonbelief requires ignoring what our reasoning faculties tell us about the worldHow modern scientific developments make a religious worldview more credible, not lessWhy it's entirely reasonable to believe in mystical and supernatural realitiesHow an open-minded religious quest should proceed amid the diversity of religious faithsHow Douthat's own Christianity is informed by his blueprint for belief

Highly relevant for our current moment,Believeoffers a pathway for thinking your way from doubt into belief, from uncertainty about our place in the universe into a confidence that we are here for a reason.]]> 240 Ross Douthat 0310367581 sophie 1
I found it deeply frustrating every time Ross implied that Muslims are actually just seeing the Christian God disguised as their prophet, or implying that Aztecs are Satanists, or saying that maybe bad things happen because they don't look bad from God's perspective (specific example being used here was the Holocaust).

Less egregious, but still relevant: Ross completely misunderstands the nature of atheism and agnosticism, despite the infinite resources available to him. I understand him choosing to view materialism as a religion, but that doesn't actually make it true; the same way it's inherently untrue to describe atheism as a religion. I don't think the author made any effort to understand the "skeptics" this book is supposedly targeted at.

I don't really have the time or willpower to get into how bad this book fails at being empirical, but I can tell you this: Ross makes several claims without citations that are very easily disproven by reading a single peer-reviewed article. I'm thinking specifically of when he says DMT reduces brain function (it doesn't) and when he says "by some measures, reports of mystical experiences have increased" (that could be true! but also cite a source! what are the fucking measures!) and when he says all peace efforts are based in religion (CITE A SOURCE). He does cite the Bible a bunch though! And also his mother?? So that's cool!

This man also holds many beliefs I personally disagree with (he's pro-life, he thinks god cares if you watch porn, he built his career on the predictability of American imperialism and is a spineless bastard who thinks me and all my little friends are going to hell), but that's not the basis for this review. I read this with discerning eye and found it to be deeply unconvincing, insulting, and no better than the arguments peddled by any street preacher.]]> 3.71 2025 Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious
author: Ross Douthat
name: sophie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:
thank you to edelweiss for the free drc! However, this book is not what it claims to be; it is not empathetic, it is not rigorous, it is not open-minded, it is not empirical at any point, and to call it persuasive (or even to say it's engaging with the discourse in good faith) is laughable. This is a book designed to sell to Christians who want validation that their faith is the One True Faith, masquerading as a book to turn skeptics into believers (i.e. save their souls) using really solid arguments such as "a lot of people believe in god, so should you" and "getting close to the [Christian] truth is better than nothing."

I found it deeply frustrating every time Ross implied that Muslims are actually just seeing the Christian God disguised as their prophet, or implying that Aztecs are Satanists, or saying that maybe bad things happen because they don't look bad from God's perspective (specific example being used here was the Holocaust).

Less egregious, but still relevant: Ross completely misunderstands the nature of atheism and agnosticism, despite the infinite resources available to him. I understand him choosing to view materialism as a religion, but that doesn't actually make it true; the same way it's inherently untrue to describe atheism as a religion. I don't think the author made any effort to understand the "skeptics" this book is supposedly targeted at.

I don't really have the time or willpower to get into how bad this book fails at being empirical, but I can tell you this: Ross makes several claims without citations that are very easily disproven by reading a single peer-reviewed article. I'm thinking specifically of when he says DMT reduces brain function (it doesn't) and when he says "by some measures, reports of mystical experiences have increased" (that could be true! but also cite a source! what are the fucking measures!) and when he says all peace efforts are based in religion (CITE A SOURCE). He does cite the Bible a bunch though! And also his mother?? So that's cool!

This man also holds many beliefs I personally disagree with (he's pro-life, he thinks god cares if you watch porn, he built his career on the predictability of American imperialism and is a spineless bastard who thinks me and all my little friends are going to hell), but that's not the basis for this review. I read this with discerning eye and found it to be deeply unconvincing, insulting, and no better than the arguments peddled by any street preacher.
]]> Summer Shadows 217007022 TheTalented Mr. Ripley meets Dracula, this stylish neo-noir horror graphic novel will sink its teeth into you and leave you infatuated. Forever.

By day the Greek islands are all sand, sea and fun…but by night they’re the perfect hunting ground for vampires!Nick Landry is searching for his exon the unspoiled island of Avraxos. Anthony was the love of his life, and without knowing why he left, Nick can’t move on. But Anthony isn’t the only one to disappear on Avraxos. Coast guard officer Alekos Kourkoulosis on the trail of another young man who disappeared there. Both men had fallen in with the glamorous set onboard a jet-black superyacht moored offshore before vanishing. As the mystery deepens, Nick and Alekos discover that the brighter the sunshine, the darker the shadows�

Acclaimed writer John Harris Dunning (Tumult, Wiper, Salem Brownstone) and talented artist Ricardo Cabral (Wiper) team up again to bring you this darkly seductive horror.

CollectsSummer Shadows #1�#4.]]> 136 John Harris Dunning 1506742246 sophie 4
if you liked Joe Hill's Basketful of Heads and Sins of the Black Flamingo by Andrew Wheeler (two things I also enjoyed), you would probably also really like this! ]]> 3.46 Summer Shadows
author: John Harris Dunning
name: sophie
average rating: 3.46
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: graphic-novels-manga-etc, horror-etc, queer-collection
review:
thanks to edelweiss for the drc! this was a little ridiculous plot-wise but honestly, i had a GREAT time. double whammy of vampires on a boat + two kind, queer protagonists - what's not to like? the coloring + paneling was also great, i really liked how a lot of the vampire 'shots' were framed. i do think everyone suffered from same-face syndrome a little bit, and that wasn't helped by everyone having identical body types (skinny, ripped, boring), but those are really my only complaints... a great summery graphic novel, and extra points for the surprise butch lesbian.

if you liked Joe Hill's Basketful of Heads and Sins of the Black Flamingo by Andrew Wheeler (two things I also enjoyed), you would probably also really like this!
]]> 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 sophie 3 3.97 2024 Poor Deer
author: Claire Oshetsky
name: sophie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
This was good, but a very rare example of something that I wanted to be a short story or novella. I really liked the exploration of mental illness (OCD specifically) through Poor Deer, and the queer element is moving and written really well � I just felt like it lost steam in the last hundred pages and would have been more powerful if it were a little shorter, ya know? maybe I'm just too picky, this could be a me problem...
]]> Geek Love 13872 Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out � with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes � to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious � and dangerous � asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.]]> 348 Katherine Dunn 0375713344 sophie 3 blue-room-blues 3.96 1989 Geek Love
author: Katherine Dunn
name: sophie
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: blue-room-blues
review:

]]> My Husband 63017297 In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband--but can their marriage survive her passionate love?

At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife's hand when they're sitting on the couch together?

Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him--setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.

Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .

The winner of France's First Novel Prize in 2021, My Husband builds on the premise of hits like Gone Girl and Fates and Furies--how well can you really know your spouse?--and adds the tension and creepy obsession of You. The result is an irresistible read--compelling, tense, and engaging, infused with sly subversive humor, and told in an utterly original voice that makes it unforgettable.

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan]]> 272 Maud Ventura 0063274825 sophie 4 average french couple: 3.67 2021 My Husband
author: Maud Ventura
name: sophie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:
average french couple:
]]> Acts of Desperation 59716573
But this relationship is unpredictable, and behind his perfect looks is a mean streak. She's intent on winning him over, but neither is living up to the other's ideals. He keeps emailing his thin, glamorous ex, and she's starting to give in to secret, shameful cravings of her own. The search for a fix is frantic, and taking a dangerous turn...

We're all looking to get what we want - but do we know what we need?]]> 281 Megan Nolan sophie 3 most 3 star book of all time 3.79 2021 Acts of Desperation
author: Megan Nolan
name: sophie
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves:
review:
most 3 star book of all time
]]> The Line of Beauty 139087
As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends.

Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this U.K. bestseller is a major work by one of our finest writers.]]> 438 Alan Hollinghurst 0739464469 sophie 0 to-read 3.76 2004 The Line of Beauty
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: sophie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Good Happy Girl 185767237 A poignant, surprising, and immersive read about a young professional woman pursuing an emotionally intense relationship with a married lesbian couple.

Helen, a jittery attorney with a self-destructive streak, is secretly reeling from a disturbing crime of neglect that her parents recently committed. Historically happy to compartmentalize� distracting herself by hooking up with lesbian couples, doting on her grandmother, and flirting with a young administrative assistant—Helen finally meets her match with Catherine and Katrina, a married couple who startle and intrigue her with their ever-increasing sexual and emotional intensity.

Perceptive and attentive, Catherine and Katrina prod at Helen’s life, revealing a childhood tragedy she’s been repressing. When her father begs her yet again for help getting parole, she realizes that she has a bargaining chip to get answers to her past.

In her exploration of queer domesticity, effects of incarceration on family, and intergenerational poverty, Marissa Higgins offers empathy to characters who don’t often receive it, with unsettling results.]]> 256 Marissa Higgins 1646221974 sophie 3 2.91 2024 A Good Happy Girl
author: Marissa Higgins
name: sophie
average rating: 2.91
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: blue-room-blues, for-the-girls
review:
weird as fuck…�.didn’t like it if i’m being honest but i have to appreciate what it was doing. fighting through the writing style (grating, overwritten) was worth it for me because the ending is so juicy on a character-dynamic level. not to push my agenda buuut the main character is like what if roman roy was honest with himself and also a lesbian (literally irresistible to me, i had to keep reading). it sucks the author is engaging with readers by screenshotting negative reviews and posting them on other platforms, though. super bad form and makes me unlikely to pick up her work again especially since i just didn’t like this very much LOL
]]> The Lottery and Other Stories 89723 The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.]]> 302 Shirley Jackson 0374529531 sophie 4 4.05 1949 The Lottery and Other Stories
author: Shirley Jackson
name: sophie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
very good domestic horror short stories, i liked “Like Mother Used To,� “The Renegade,� “Pillar of Salt,� and “The Lottery� best. Special shout-out to “My Life With RH Macy� for serving retail realness and making me laugh out loud
]]> <![CDATA[An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth]]> 208896788 A formidable, uncanny, and utterly unique new work from accomplished novelist and poet, Anna Moschovakis, whose translation of David Diop’s Frêre d’âme (At Night All Blood Is Black, Pushkin and FSG) won the 2021 International Booker Prize

In An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, an unnamed narrator struggles to regain the ability to walk after a sudden seismic event has rendered unpredictable shifts and undulations in the ground. Convinced of a need to find and kill her younger housemate, Tala, who has disappeared, the narrator struggles physically and psychically to contend with her homicidal task in the wake of failure as a Method actor. The narrator travels back in time and out into a dust-covered, shadowy city, where she is targeted by charismatic “healing� ideologues with uncertain motives. Torn between a paranoid suspicion of internalized, toxic language, and a desperate attempt to find stability and feel something like whole, she is forced to question familiar figurations of light, shadow, authenticity, and voice, taking tentative steps toward a new understanding of self and world.]]> 208 Anna Moschovakis 1593767838 sophie 2 blue-room-blues 3.08 2024 An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth
author: Anna Moschovakis
name: sophie
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: blue-room-blues
review:
hated this so so so much. peace and love
]]> They Bloom at Night 211003894
Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their dead family has reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape.

When Mercy’s predatory leader demands Noon and her mom capture the creature drowning residents, she reluctantly finds an ally in his deadly hunter of a daughter and friends old and new. As the next storm approaches, Noon must confront the past and decide if it’s time to answer the monster itching at her skin.]]> 272 Trang Thanh Tran 1547611111 sophie 0 to-read 3.59 2025 They Bloom at Night
author: Trang Thanh Tran
name: sophie
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Between 57190581
When Hilton's wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons lurking outside are matched by his internal terrors—macabre nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are these bizarre dreams the dark imaginings of a man losing his hold on sanity—or are they harbingers of terrible events to come?

As Hilton battles both the sociopath threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves . . .

Chilling and utterly convincing,The Betweenis the haunting story of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves as he slowly loses himself.]]> 304 Tananarive Due 0063157675 sophie 4 horror-etc 3.97 1995 The Between
author: Tananarive Due
name: sophie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: horror-etc
review:
3.5 rounded up - I didn't know this was pubbed in 1995 until after I finished it. I think it held up super well, it's still really relevant and Tananarive Due is a legend for a reason. i'm a big fan of character-driven horror and there were plenty of very interesting, scary moments in this, but I think it's just a liiiittle too blue room for me personally. I also really didn't like the epilogue :( but that's just personal preference, I'm definitely sold on how this author writes horror!
]]> Into the Unbeing Part One #1 211049576 28 Zac Thompson sophie 3 graphic-novels-manga-etc
also, please note this didn't affect my rating at all, but uhhhh. Hildur...isn't a lesbian? for some reason? makes no goddamn sense... look at her... and her dog... whatever. ]]> 3.90 Into the Unbeing Part One #1
author: Zac Thompson
name: sophie
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: graphic-novels-manga-etc
review:
Okay, finally have thoughts about this one - I really love the art style, horror elements, and color palette but I really DIDN'T like any of the characters, especially how the main Black character was written. I can't really get into that without spoiling the whole thing, and I think if you want to read this you should go in with an open mind and form your own opinion, but for me, even if horror/science fiction is executed REALLY well, if the characters aren't compelling to me, then it's just not for me. I also think while this WAS its own unique story, it's just a hair too close to the far superior Area X trilogy for me to want to read further. rip!

also, please note this didn't affect my rating at all, but uhhhh. Hildur...isn't a lesbian? for some reason? makes no goddamn sense... look at her... and her dog... whatever.
]]> The Monster of Elendhaven 43263515
These monsters of Elendhaven will have their revenge on everyone who wronged the city, even if they have to burn the world to do it.]]> 160 Jennifer Giesbrecht 125022568X sophie 5 horror-etc, queer-collection
original review: dark and queer, twisted and visceral. the CHARACTERS, my god. enchanting. i'm enchanted. such beautiful, intricate darkness. a blackened mirror that you do not want to look into, but keep dreaming of all the same. i couldn't tear myself away. i still can't. nicole, you have GOT to read this book.]]> 3.54 2019 The Monster of Elendhaven
author: Jennifer Giesbrecht
name: sophie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: horror-etc, queer-collection
review:
12/10 reread: noooo i totally didn’t reread this to hit my gr goal. haha. you’re crazy. anyways it’s still really really really good and now is the perfect season to read it� read it please�.

original review: dark and queer, twisted and visceral. the CHARACTERS, my god. enchanting. i'm enchanted. such beautiful, intricate darkness. a blackened mirror that you do not want to look into, but keep dreaming of all the same. i couldn't tear myself away. i still can't. nicole, you have GOT to read this book.
]]> Curdle Creek 203578885 For fans of “The Lottery� and The Hunger Games, this novel set in a small town with a sinister tradition is chilling in the best possible way.

�Curdle Creek is a thoughtful, sinister tour-de-force.�
―Tananarive Due, L.A. Times Book Prize-winning author of The Reformatory


Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home. Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America stuck in the past and governed by a tradition of ominous rituals. Osira is considered blessed, but her luck changes when her children flee, she comes second to last in the Running of the Widows and her father flees when his name is called in the annual Moving On ceremony.

Forced into a test of allegiance, Osira finds herself transported back in time, then into another realm where she must answer for crimes committed by Curdle Creek. Exile forces her to jump realms again, landing Osira even farther away from home, in rural England. Safe as long as she sticks to the rules, she quickly learns there are consequences for every kindness. Each jump could lead Osira anywhere but back home.

Curdle Creek is a unique, inventive novel exploring themes of home, belonging, motherhood and what we inherit from society. This American gothic offers a mash-up of the surreal and literary horror that will appeal to fans of Ring Shout, The Underground Railroad and Lovecraft Country. Yvonne Battle-Felton’s fever dream of a tale is enthralling, layered and quite unlike anything else.]]> 304 Yvonne Battle-Felton 1250362016 sophie 3 2.82 2024 Curdle Creek
author: Yvonne Battle-Felton
name: sophie
average rating: 2.82
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:
should have dnf’ed this because it really wasn’t my thing, but i was posessed by insanity (needing to hit my goodreads goal) so here we are. if you like rivers solomon’s sorrowland and/or character-driven dystopias you might like this!
]]> <![CDATA[A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1)]]> 18131
It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet.]]> 211 Madeleine L'Engle 0440498058 sophie 4 middle-grade 4.04 1962 A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1)
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: sophie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: middle-grade
review:
3.5 - delightful reread, i love meg and calvin and charles wallace. much more jesus in this than i remembered
]]> An Excellent Host 212436950
Somewhere in Brooklyn, a feast awaits its guests, a man cannot believe his great good luck, and ancient gods get ready to receive their due in this horror-fantasy updating of Greek myths.

An exclusive paperback for Indie Bookstore Day, featuring a new story from Chelsea G. Summers, the bestselling author of A Certain Hunger. Signed by the author.]]> 69 Chelsea G. Summers 196188416X sophie 3 4.00 2024 An Excellent Host
author: Chelsea G. Summers
name: sophie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:
about as complex as taylor swift’s brand of feminism
]]> <![CDATA[Gravity Lost (Ambit's Run, #2)]]> 195790796
After thwarting a space station disaster and planetary destruction, the Ambit crew thought turning Isaiah Drestyn over to the Union would be the end of their troubles. Turns out, it’s only the start.

Drestyn is a walking encyclopedia of dirty secrets, and everyone wants a piece of him―the Trust, the Union, even the Guild. Someone wants him bad enough to kill, and with the life of one of their own on the line, the Ambit crew must jail-break the very man they helped capture and expose some of the secrets he’s been keeping before it’s too late.

In the Spiral, everything has a price. In their fight to protect what they love, Eoan, Nash, Saint, and Jal will confront some ugly truths about their enemies, and even uglier truths about their friends. But nothing will come close to the truths they’ll learn about themselves.

You can’t always fix what’s broken � and sometimes, it’s better that way.



Ambit's Run
Cascade Failure]]> 387 L.M. Sagas 125087128X sophie 3 anna-b
Anna i love you dearly, thank you for sharing these little guys with me!! i’m sorry that i’m such a hater but also, you agree, you just have a giant brain and can see past it to all the good stuff, and also, you’re right about everything. xoxo ]]> 4.22 2024 Gravity Lost (Ambit's Run, #2)
author: L.M. Sagas
name: sophie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: anna-b
review:
it’s one of my favorite things in tha WORLD to read and annotate a book that a beloved friend has given me, and i would do it again in a HEARTBEAT - especially because the juicy bits in this book are sooo juicy and good. but also, as you can see, this took me a month to finish, because the book itself was not very good. The plot is stupid, the worldbuilding is boring, characters with names ending in -En or -Yn were insufferable to read about, and there was NO EMOTIONAL CATHARSIS AT THE END, WHY GOD. i really think there should be a third book or perhaps even a prequel to pull out the stuff that Really Matters, like the crazy history between S+J, or more about my favorite lesbian Nash, but the author is sooo concerned with beefing up the plot, which was the thing i cared least about. Alas.

Anna i love you dearly, thank you for sharing these little guys with me!! i’m sorry that i’m such a hater but also, you agree, you just have a giant brain and can see past it to all the good stuff, and also, you’re right about everything. xoxo
]]> The Boyhood of Cain 217005303 A searing novel of love and betrayal as a young boy comes of age in the heart of England, from an exquisite new voice.

In a small village in England, in the shadow of an ancient abbey nestled between rivers, a young boy is growing up. Daniel is highly intelligent but little understood by his family, and so a secret passion burns inside him—for love, for certainty, and for recognition. His father is a man of grand gestures but few practical skills, and his beautiful mother is attentive but compromised by her own unhappiness and fading ideals.

When Daniel’s father loses his job as the headmaster of the local school, the family is pulled beneath the undertow of his whims, stumbling into a rural life for which they are ill-prepared. The arrival of Philip, a new boy at school, whom Daniel worships with a confused intensity, is his sole solace. Before long, both boys fall under the spell of a charismatic art teacher, setting Daniel on a perilous course that could lead to the betrayal of all he loves.

Tender, brutal, and enthralling, The Boyhood of Cain is a remarkable portrait of a young boy caught between mother and father, between self and desire, and between obedience and freedom. It evokes the passions and private wounds of youth and plumbs the turning points in our lives that make us who we are.]]> 208 Michael Amherst 0593718526 sophie 3
I just don't know what this book was trying to accomplish. It really takes the punch out of the few big, important moments if they're just handed to you without fuss and then never addressed again. Both the mother and the sister COULD have been really interesting, but they weren't. i also feel like the last scene was written because the author was like "oh shit, i need something poetic and symbolic to round this out" and i'm really struggling to figure out what it meant + how it fits into the book. I did like how this book captured a specific flavor of queer male desire, but it really only did something profound and cool a couple times, and the rest felt...not as important, or overstated, or just boring.

there are many great queer coming of age books out there, and there is definitely a reader out there somewhere who will resonate with this, but it wasn't me. if you're willing to read a litfic with no plot, just vibes about a complicated little guy, this may be for you!]]> 3.41 2025 The Boyhood of Cain
author: Michael Amherst
name: sophie
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC! 2.5 rounded up, I really wish I liked this one more than I did. It had a super strong start, and seemed right up my alley, but I feel like it was telling me all the important bits instead of showing me, ya know? I don't feel like I got to know any of the characters or their motivations, everyone felt pretty one-dimensional except for the main character (who honestly, I do love, thus the rounding up).

I just don't know what this book was trying to accomplish. It really takes the punch out of the few big, important moments if they're just handed to you without fuss and then never addressed again. Both the mother and the sister COULD have been really interesting, but they weren't. i also feel like the last scene was written because the author was like "oh shit, i need something poetic and symbolic to round this out" and i'm really struggling to figure out what it meant + how it fits into the book. I did like how this book captured a specific flavor of queer male desire, but it really only did something profound and cool a couple times, and the rest felt...not as important, or overstated, or just boring.

there are many great queer coming of age books out there, and there is definitely a reader out there somewhere who will resonate with this, but it wasn't me. if you're willing to read a litfic with no plot, just vibes about a complicated little guy, this may be for you!
]]> Check, Please! 25163963
There’s checking.

It’s a story about hockey and friendship and bros and trying to find yourself during the best 4 years of your life.]]> Ngozi Ukazu sophie 5 4.60 2014 Check, Please!
author: Ngozi Ukazu
name: sophie
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: favorites, graphic-novels-manga-etc, queer-collection
review:
hockey. baking. queer people. sappy emotions. literally what else is there. it’s perfect go read it
]]> <![CDATA[Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance � award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film � Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future � and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team � well trained but eccentric � has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 sophie 4 3.60 2024 Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: sophie
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: best-of-2024, sci-fi-collection
review:
jeff you're crazy for this one
]]> Tampa 17225311 "Smart and biting" —New York Journal of Books

"Laced with dark, sometimes savage humor and juicy riffs on consumer culture and its twin obsessions, youth and beauty" �Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

Celeste Price is twenty-six years old, beautiful, smart, married to a handsome man with money, and starting a new job as a junior high school teacher in suburban Tampa. Yet she harbors a dark secret. She is driven by a singular sexual obsession—fourteen-year-old boys. As the school year begins, Celeste has chosen and seduced the naive Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in awe of his teacher. But when her lustful frenzy begins to spiral out of control, the insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination.

"Impeccably written, full of smart cultural observations, and no small amount of wit . . . A very bold book." —Daily Beast]]> 266 Alissa Nutting 0062280562 sophie 0
there are a lot of complicated reasons why i read this, but it was mostly because i wanted a version of that show A Teacher that didn’t try to redeem its protagonist in any way. this was definitely that. the narrative is done really well, in a way that’s both revolting and compelling, and several points are made in a way that just doesn’t exist in other media focusing on women abusing children, rather than men. it’s clear throughout that this is abuse, and ruining the lives of her victims. reading it from her perspective lets the author talk about the trappings of youth and beauty and the failure of the criminal justice system, as a background to the mc’s insatiable lust for control and her abject lack of empathy.

i certainly wouldn’t recommend this one, nor will i reread it, but i appreciate narratives with purpose, especially when the purpose is showing us the type of monster whose behavior is excused due to The Patriarchy (her status as a sex symbol, primarily). the telling and very gross scenes with her cop husband were also especially well done. commentary within commentary, wrapped up in a big gross mess of abuse and delusion.

cw: explicit csa (not skippable, it’s the whole book), rape, coercion, drugging, murder]]> 3.36 2013 Tampa
author: Alissa Nutting
name: sophie
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/05
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:
there was a dead bug squished between the pages and somehow, that was not the most disgusting thing in this book.

there are a lot of complicated reasons why i read this, but it was mostly because i wanted a version of that show A Teacher that didn’t try to redeem its protagonist in any way. this was definitely that. the narrative is done really well, in a way that’s both revolting and compelling, and several points are made in a way that just doesn’t exist in other media focusing on women abusing children, rather than men. it’s clear throughout that this is abuse, and ruining the lives of her victims. reading it from her perspective lets the author talk about the trappings of youth and beauty and the failure of the criminal justice system, as a background to the mc’s insatiable lust for control and her abject lack of empathy.

i certainly wouldn’t recommend this one, nor will i reread it, but i appreciate narratives with purpose, especially when the purpose is showing us the type of monster whose behavior is excused due to The Patriarchy (her status as a sex symbol, primarily). the telling and very gross scenes with her cop husband were also especially well done. commentary within commentary, wrapped up in a big gross mess of abuse and delusion.

cw: explicit csa (not skippable, it’s the whole book), rape, coercion, drugging, murder
]]> The Cipher 341930
It began with Nakota and her crooked grin. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse...

Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...]]> 356 Kathe Koja 0440207827 sophie 0 to-read 3.54 1991 The Cipher
author: Kathe Koja
name: sophie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Detective Beans: The Case of the Missing Hat]]> 207294885 Meet Detective Beans, the best kitten detective in town, equipped with his tie, brown trench coat, and—GASP. It’s gone! His detective hat is missing! Follow along to discover the charming, whimsical, and mysterious world of Detective Beans.

Meet Detective Beans (just Beans for short), a young cat sleuth dedicated to doing whatever it takes to solve the case. After a night of mystery movies with his best friend, Biscuit, Detective Beans wakes up to find his detective hat is missing. There’s only one thing to do: hit the streets of Cat Town and find that missing hat! Cat Town is full of suspects, from the neighborhood bird to a magician in the park, and each twist and turn in this journey leads to an interesting new encounter � and to solving a much bigger case than Beans could have imagined.

Brilliantly written and illustrated by New Zealand comic artist Li Chen, creator of the internationally popular ExtraOrdinary Comics, Detective Beans and the Case of the Missing Hat is filled with charming cat capers, warm-hearted humor, and detective stories all in the form of a graphic novel that will entertain comics fans and middle grade readers everywhere.]]> 208 Li Chen 1524895164 sophie 5 4.52 Detective Beans: The Case of the Missing Hat
author: Li Chen
name: sophie
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: best-of-2024, graphic-novels-manga-etc, middle-grade
review:
utterly delightful, funny and charming and GOOD. I’m so proud of Detective Beans!!
]]> Thin Places 50633622 Thin Places, echoes with the ghosts of Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, while forging its own unique gothic sensibility. Here there be monsters! And witches!

These are tales of monstrous mothers and dark desires. Love, grief, death; and the exquisite pain and joy of life. With transcendent prose, Chronister chronicles the lives of powerful women and children; wicked witches and demons. These are the traumatic ghosts we all carry, and Chronister knows what it means to be human and humane. Powerful and hypnotic, these are tales you won’t forget, from a vibrant new voice.]]> 206 Kay Chronister 1988964180 sophie 0 to-read 3.89 2020 Thin Places
author: Kay Chronister
name: sophie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bad Behavior 251356 Emperor of the Air has there been such excitement surrounding a debut short-story collection.

Daisy's valentine --
A romantic weekend --
something nice --
An affair, edited --
Connection --
Trying to be --
Secretary --
Other factors --
Heaven]]> 208 Mary Gaitskill sophie 0 to-read 3.90 1988 Bad Behavior
author: Mary Gaitskill
name: sophie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower]]> 54391767
But no prince has managed to conquer the first flight yet, let alone get to the fortieth.

In fact, the supply of fresh princes seems to have quite dried up.

And winter is closing in on Floralinda…]]> 146 Tamsyn Muir 1596069929 sophie 5
original review: didn’t like the ending originally, but i’ve been thinking about it nonstop. tamsyn muir is so so good at writing transformation through trauma. alecto is really gonna take us out huh]]> 4.17 2020 Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: sophie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: fantasy, genderfuckery-etc, novellas-my-beloved, queer-collection
review:
2024 reread: i like this book a totally normal amount

original review: didn’t like the ending originally, but i’ve been thinking about it nonstop. tamsyn muir is so so good at writing transformation through trauma. alecto is really gonna take us out huh
]]> Plasmas 58624396 160 Céline Minard 2743653671 sophie 0 dnf 3.08 Plasmas
author: Céline Minard
name: sophie
average rating: 3.08
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: dnf
review:
had to stop reading this, it was making me francophobic. rolled my eyes several times and i only got through the first three stories. maybe if you like overly pretentious litfic pretending to be scifi, this is for you!
]]> <![CDATA[The Unwanted Guest (The Locked Tomb, #3.5)]]> 219360665 32 Tamsyn Muir sophie 5
Merged review:

crumpling to the ground in a heap of dirty stage costumes, hair gel, and lyctoral sorrow]]> 4.62 2023 The Unwanted Guest (The Locked Tomb, #3.5)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: sophie
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/14
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:
crumpling to the ground in a heap of dirty stage costumes, hair gel, and lyctoral sorrow

Merged review:

crumpling to the ground in a heap of dirty stage costumes, hair gel, and lyctoral sorrow
]]> Negative Space 52028992 364 B.R. Yeager 1733569456 sophie 4 horror-etc
idk if i would ever reread because it was just toooo sad, but it really captured the vibes of digital-age small-town nihilism without being super cringe (VERY impressive), and the paranormal-but-not rampant suicidality was done really well. like, was it demons or whatever? obviously yes. was it also commonplace negligence and adults not giving a shit about their children even a little bit? also yes! not a single suicide prevented, every child left behind ]]> 3.71 2020 Negative Space
author: B.R. Yeager
name: sophie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: horror-etc
review:
i’m preeeetty sure this is just what it’s like to grow up in new england. the last third definitely left something to be desired but i loved how weird and gross this was. definitely a vibes first plot second type of book, i couldn’t tell you what was actually going on with any clarity, but you don’t need to know what’s going on to Get it. punched me in the face a couple times with devastating sadness in a way i was not expecting at all (i love Lu so much).

idk if i would ever reread because it was just toooo sad, but it really captured the vibes of digital-age small-town nihilism without being super cringe (VERY impressive), and the paranormal-but-not rampant suicidality was done really well. like, was it demons or whatever? obviously yes. was it also commonplace negligence and adults not giving a shit about their children even a little bit? also yes! not a single suicide prevented, every child left behind
]]> <![CDATA[Practice (The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming #2)]]> 60414529 "All good theory stands up to the test of practice."

Freshly-risen from the underworld of his insecurities, Ronoah Genoveffa Elizzi-denna Pilanovani is halfway through his journey to the fabled Pilgrim State. But the world this side of the Iphigene Sea is not an easy one: violence and subterfuge litter the way forward, and something meaner stalks the edges of Ronoah’s certainty, something that threatens to turn the very reason for his pilgrimage to dust.

To survive, he will have to be clever and kind in equal measure. To ask for help from the acrobats and queens-to-be and foreigners� gods that cross his path. To confront that beguiling, bewildering companion he travels with, the one whose secrets are so vast and unforgivable. He will have to draw on every story he knows in order to make it to the Pilgrim State with his soft heart intact—and then make it home again.

Mythic and multilayered, the final installment of the Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming duology is a love letter to losing and regaining faith in the ways you move through the world.]]> 636 Sienna Tristen 1775242765 sophie 5
if you are a character-driven fantasy fan you need to read this � you WILL like it. take my hand and trust me on this.]]> 4.70 2022 Practice (The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming #2)
author: Sienna Tristen
name: sophie
average rating: 4.70
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: anna-b, fantasy, favorites, queer-collection
review:
took an entire month to read this because i knew that once it was over, it was over, and i just couldn’t handle that. this duology is just so unbelievably good. i feel like parts of this were written for me specifically to hold and cherish in my brain forever. this is everything i want out of the fantasy genre and more.

if you are a character-driven fantasy fan you need to read this � you WILL like it. take my hand and trust me on this.
]]> <![CDATA[Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past � one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A� stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells sophie 5 4.23 2018 Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)
author: Martha Wells
name: sophie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/11
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: sci-fi-collection, genderfuckery-etc, favorites, novellas-my-beloved
review:
unironically this novella about a murderbot was so frickin cute. i love murderbot so much
]]> Don't Sleep with the Dead 211004130 Don't Sleep with the Dead, a standalone companion novella to The Chosen and the Beautiful, her acclaimed reimagining of The Great Gatsby.

Nick Carraway―paper soldier and novelist―has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He's good at watching, and he's even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he's forgotten the events of that summer in 1922.

On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone's been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn't done with him.

In all paper there is memory, and Nick's ghost has come home.]]> 112 Nghi Vo 125036261X sophie 5
Nghi Vo, I will trade you my soul in an exchange for continuing to write whatever and whenever you want. thank you for this gift for Me Specifically. thank you also to edelweiss for the drc, never opened anything so fast in my life. 6/5 stars, I love these three so much I can hardly breathe]]> 3.70 2025 Don't Sleep with the Dead
author: Nghi Vo
name: sophie
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: best-of-2025, fantasy, novellas-my-beloved, queer-collection
review:
this was SO good and i'm not just saying that because this book was Made For Me (it really was, though). i had the highest possible expectations and it surpassed all of them. it's also an absolutely wonderful continuation of Chosen and the Beautiful (read that first for maximum effect). my singular gripe with this book is that the cover is ugly (sorry) but that doesn't even matter because i'll be buying this the second i can. it's just too fucking good. I cannot BELIEVE how good it is. delicious and angsty and bloody and burnt and full of queer longing and women made of wax like come ONNNNNNN i will never! ever! shut up about this! holy shit !!!

Nghi Vo, I will trade you my soul in an exchange for continuing to write whatever and whenever you want. thank you for this gift for Me Specifically. thank you also to edelweiss for the drc, never opened anything so fast in my life. 6/5 stars, I love these three so much I can hardly breathe
]]> <![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, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inGörbersdorf, 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.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 sophie 0 to-read 3.65 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: sophie
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Loving, Ohio 203664590
After the mysterious suicide of their friend, Sloane, Elliott, Cameron, and Ana are just trying to get through the rest of high school. They live in Loving, Ohio—a town built around The Chorus, a new age cult with members firmly planted in positions of power and influence throughout the community.

Through their grief a series of murders throw these friends into a mystery connected to everything around them. Sloane and her friends have to escape a roaming murderer, figure out their place in the world, and deal with loss all in the looming shadow of The Chorus. But through it they will find the true cost of friendship and the adulthood they seek.

Gut punching emotion drives the mystery of Loving, Ohio. This beautifully drawn coming of age story will stay on the mind for days after reading. An expertly crafted tale about what happens when something infects every institution and structure within a community.]]> 216 Matthew Erman 1506741568 sophie 0 to-read 3.46 2024 Loving, Ohio
author: Matthew Erman
name: sophie
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Derring-Do for Beginners (The Red Company, #1)]]> 134754338
Jullanar is a gently-raised young woman from deep inside the Empire of Astandalas, aware that there are worlds beyond its sway but hardly daring to dream she'd ever see outside of her own country, let alone beyond the empire's borders. And yet they both dream of friendship, of adventure, of what else there might be. And it's Jullanar whose exam results turn out to matter in a way no one could expect. The first book of The Red Company, because even the greatest of folk heroes have to start somewhere.]]> 385 Victoria Goddard 1988908906 sophie 0 to-read 4.49 2023 Derring-Do for Beginners (The Red Company, #1)
author: Victoria Goddard
name: sophie
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bayou 56424673 "Eugene didn’t know if he believed in the devil beyond the wicked things people did of their own accord, but if the devil had a face, it would look like Johnny Walker’s."

Small-town Louisiana, 1935.

When Eugene was twelve, a girl from town disappeared. Everyone said the gators must have got her when she strayed too near the bayou. No foul play, just a terrible accident. But Eugene can't shake the conviction that Mary Beth's death had something to do with the man who used to haunt her—the man no one else could see.

Now, nearly two decades later, there are more dangerous things than gators in Chanlarivyè. People are disappearing again, and this time, no one can find the bodies. As the town's unease grows, charismatic fugitive Johnny Walker arrives on the scene, shedding bullet casings and stolen bank notes in his wake.

He tangles himself up in Eugene's life and awakens memories Eugene thought he had laid to rest years ago. Memories of the mysterious man who followed Eugene into his dreams, and memories of the bayou�

And of the horrifying entity that lurks beneath the water's surface, slowly seeping into the town like a stain.]]> 149 Arden Powell sophie 0 to-read 3.99 2021 The Bayou
author: Arden Powell
name: sophie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gifted 208155402 A moving portrayal of a troubled mother–daughter relationship, shortlisted for Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

In 2008, the unnamed narrator of Gifted is working as a hostess and living in Tokyo’s nightlife district. One day, her estranged mother, who is seriously ill, suddenly turns up at her door.

As the mother approaches the end of her life, the two women must navigate their strained relationship, while the narrator also reckons with events happening in her own life, including the death of a close friend � all under the bright lights of Tokyo‘s ‘sleepless town�, Kabukichō.

In sharp, elegant prose, and based on the author’s own experiences as a sex worker, Gifted heralds the breakthrough of an exciting new literary talent.]]> 144 Suzumi Suzuki 1915590787 sophie 3 3.30 2022 Gifted
author: Suzumi Suzuki
name: sophie
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Where Ivy Dares to Grow 122210609 Mexican Gothic meets Outlander in this spellbinding, atmospheric timeslip debut novel, as a woman struggling with her mental health spends the winter with her cruel in-laws in their eerie, haunting manor that sweeps her back through time and into the arms of her fiancé's mysterious, alluring 19th century ancestor.

Traveling to be with her fiancé’s terminally ill mother in her last days, Saoirse Read expected her introduction to the family’s ancestral home would be bittersweet. But the stark thrust of Langdon Hall against the cliff and the hundred darkened windows in its battered walls are almost as forbidding as the woman who lies wasting inside. Her fiancé’s parents make no secret of their distaste for Saoirse, and their feelings have long since spread to their son. Or perhaps it is only the shadows of her mind suggesting she’s unwelcome, seizing on her fears while her beloved grieves?

As Saoirse takes to wandering the estate’s winding, dreamlike gardens, overgrown and half-wild with neglect, she slips back through time to 1818. There she meets Theo Page, a man like her fiancé but softer, with all the charms of that gentler age, and who clearly harbors a fervent interest in her. As it becomes clear that Theo is her fiancé’s ancestor, and the tenuous peace of Langdon Hall crumbles around her, Saoirse finds she’s no longer sure which dreams and doubts belong to the present—and which might not be dreams at all . . .]]> 294 Marielle Thompson 149674263X sophie 0 to-read 3.37 2023 Where Ivy Dares to Grow
author: Marielle Thompson
name: sophie
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters� or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.]]> 352 Caitlin Starling 0063418819 sophie 0 to-read 4.04 2025 The Starving Saints
author: Caitlin Starling
name: sophie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Briefly, A Delicious Life 60749648
In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants.

Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).

Charming, original, and emotionally moving -- gorgeous and surprising exploration of artistry, desire, and life after death.]]> 304 Nell Stevens 1982190965 sophie 0 to-read 3.83 2022 Briefly, A Delicious Life
author: Nell Stevens
name: sophie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3)]]> 62064986
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.]]> Katherine Addison sophie 0 dnf
I'm so deeply bored by these novellas and the literal Only Interesting Dynamic was WWE-smackdowned into the dirt with a stupid little monologue about how Pelthenhior only wants to fuck women, actually, ignore his dangly earrings and his flamboyance and his profession and his "intense friendship," this man is totally capital S-Straight. uh huh. alright. foooor sure.

I understand that this author's vision is very different than the book I want to read, and I simply cannot fault her for for writing about and prioritizing platonic friendships. I just also think you built a gay little guy for Me Specifically and then said "actually i'm gonna take that back real quick" and nothing has ever been more infuriating <3 ]]> 4.32 2025 The Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3)
author: Katherine Addison
name: sophie
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: dnf
review:
Pelthenhior isn't even gay ! what's the fucking pointtttuhhhh!

I'm so deeply bored by these novellas and the literal Only Interesting Dynamic was WWE-smackdowned into the dirt with a stupid little monologue about how Pelthenhior only wants to fuck women, actually, ignore his dangly earrings and his flamboyance and his profession and his "intense friendship," this man is totally capital S-Straight. uh huh. alright. foooor sure.

I understand that this author's vision is very different than the book I want to read, and I simply cannot fault her for for writing about and prioritizing platonic friendships. I just also think you built a gay little guy for Me Specifically and then said "actually i'm gonna take that back real quick" and nothing has ever been more infuriating <3
]]> <![CDATA[The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas]]> 92625 Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.

The story 'Omelas" was first published in 'New Dimensions 3' (1973), a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story.

The work was subsequently printed in Le Guin's short story collection 'The Wind's Twelve Quarters' (1975).

Ursula K Le Guin (1929�2018) was an American writer who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry & four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, and more. She was known for her treatment of gender ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), 'The Matter of Seggri' (1994)), political systems ('The Telling' (2000), 'The Dispossessed' (1974)) and difference/otherness in any other form.]]> 32 Ursula K. Le Guin 0886825016 sophie 5 4.38 1973 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: sophie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
review:
this is on the list of things that i would make everyone read if i could. she's a master of her craft and so many other books/essays/plays/whatever try to do exactly what this does in fewer pages. if i could sum up my personal philosophy and could only use a few texts to do that, this would be one of them.
]]> Last Days 25330133 180 Brian Evenson 1566894166 sophie 0 to-read 3.89 2009 Last Days
author: Brian Evenson
name: sophie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cascade Failure (Ambit's Run, #1)]]> 127280776
There are only three real powers in the universe: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union's labor's leverage. And between them, the Guild tries to keep everyone's hands above the table. It ain't easy.

Branded a Guild deserter, Jal "accidentally" lands a ride on a Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship's engineer/medic who doesn't see much of a difference between the two jobs, and a "don't make me shoot you" XO, the Guild crew of the Ambit is a little . . . different.

They're also in over their heads. Responding to a distress call from an abandoned planet, they find a mass grave, and a live programmer who knows how it happened. The Trust has plans. This isn't the first dead planet, and it's not going to be the last.

Unless the crew of the Ambit can stop it.]]> 407 L.M. Sagas 1250871255 sophie 4 anna-b 3.82 2024 Cascade Failure (Ambit's Run, #1)
author: L.M. Sagas
name: sophie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: anna-b
review:
a very generous 3.5 rounded up. the most generic meaningless sci-fi universe with with some deeply delightful and compelling characters, who are also generic but damn if i don’t love ‘em. the Anna-tated version i read? 5 stars. couldn’t have done it without you (Anna of the Anna-tations). thanks for sharing the brain cell with me <3
]]> String Follow 57693658
"A work of evil genius that put me in a literal trance and didn't relinquish me until the final page. I loved every insidious second.� ―Mona Awad, author of Bunny

Something strange is happening to the teens in Adena, Ohio.

A mysterious force is seeking vulnerabilities to exploit, friendships to hijack, untapped rage to harness toward its own ends. Who will serve it best? Claire is abrasive and aimless, embarrassed by her privilege. Weak-willed David entertains fantasies of cultish orgies, while Tyler covertly takes up residence in his basement. Greg wages war on the voices in his head, while his sister Beth quietly, furiously unravels. And at the center is the empathetic, naive Sarah. The force wants her most of all. But will she be the key to its success or its destruction?

Eerie, hypnotic, and shot through with dark comedy, String Follow is a razor-sharp suburban gothic that exposes the sweating, bleeding truth of how kids become adults in twenty-first-century America. Simon Jacobs blends the startlingly original and the uncannily familiar, revealing the dark chaos that lurks beneath the surface of Midwestern suburbia.]]> 416 Simon Jacobs 0374603855 sophie 2 horror-etc
anyways. go girl, give us nothing. read something else ]]> 2.88 2022 String Follow
author: Simon Jacobs
name: sophie
average rating: 2.88
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: horror-etc
review:
guys i listened to this whole thing on audiobook and it was never bad, necessarily, it just...wasn't ever good at any point?? I thought I liked where we were going, with some of the teen protags feeling removed and above other people because they're coming to terms with how the world works and how it's easier to shove empathy down and participate in the machine than it is to make your own decisions and stick to your own moral code (sort of whatever, but like, points being made there). but the vague, sinister presence of ""evil"" that never ever gets explained even as a metaphor for like puberty or angst or capitalism or whatever thee fuck just DOES not make sense and i'm tired of books pretending they're doing something they're not actually doing, ya know? also yes I listened to this whole thing, no I could not tell the difference between several of the characters. I understand this is Suburbia but they simply cannot all be named beth sarah reya claire greg tyler colin like okay I know these are all different names but No They're Not???? and their voices just are not distinctive (with the exception of maybe Greg and Beth) so it all blurs together into a book of nothing, about nothing. also like, jesus christ, I GET this book is about Being Evil Etcetera, but the multiple (!!) school shooter scenes that aren't even related to the fucking plot were SO unecessary and cringe and the only point I could possibly glean from that is that the author actually legitimately finds the details of that kind of thing cool or interesting??? because we never actually get insight into What the evil presence in this book actually IS, there is literally no point in including these scenes when terrible shit is already happening in the main plot?? I just cannot find a justifiable explanation for including any of the torrid details of school shooting number whatever if you are not gonna DO anything with that. This is a particular type of violence that I always pay attention to in fiction because it is a lived experience for me (*thumbs up emoji*) and I want to know what people have to say about it and how it's being used in the horror genre (just as shock value? to Say something? to add your voice to the plethora of absolutely useless voices saying 'hey man, isn't this kinda fucked up'? to say 'men are bad' instead of addressing first off gun violence and second off the mental health crisis in this country?) etc. and I just could not come up with a plausible explanation for why this was included except for to make the book edgier. lol. Hate that!

anyways. go girl, give us nothing. read something else
]]> Desiring Arabs 818466 Desiring Arabs Joseph A. Massad reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. To this aim, he assembles a massive and diverse compendium of Arabic writing from the nineteenth century to the present in order to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization.

A work of impressive scope and erudition, Massad’s chronicle of both the history and modern permutations of the debate over representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently oversimplified and vilified culture.



“A pioneering work on a very timely yet frustratingly neglected topic. . . . I know of no other study that can even begin to compare with the detail and scope of [this] work.”—Khaled El-Rouayheb, Middle East Report



Desiring Arabs, [Edward] Said’s disciple Joseph A. Massad corroborates his mentor’s thesis that orientalist writing was racist and dehumanizing. . . . [Massad] brilliantly goes on to trace the legacy of this racist, internalized, orientalist discourse up to the present.”�Financial Times]]> 472 Joseph A. Massad 0226509583 sophie 0 to-read 3.75 2007 Desiring Arabs
author: Joseph A. Massad
name: sophie
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Minor Detail 52974301 Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.

Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.]]> 105 Adania Shibli 0811229076 sophie 0 to-read 4.22 2017 Minor Detail
author: Adania Shibli
name: sophie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Don't Let the Forest In 200982373 Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him.

Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality―Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork―whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster―Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator...]]> 336 C.G. Drews 1250895669 sophie 0 to-read 4.11 2024 Don't Let the Forest In
author: C.G. Drews
name: sophie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bonding 60001227 -B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space

"And once finished, I felt like my tongue had been misplaced, guts heavy and expanded ... gums numb with a tongue that'd been put elsewhere, my mouth clean around a pipe weaving up through pitch and shadow ... and well past ready, primed for delight, waiting but knowing I had already been filled to skin; crying shit, hearing piss, fingernails seeping bile, pores dribbling blood, soles slopping off and out to meet a drain mid-floor ..."
-Christopher Norris, author of Hunchback '88]]> 140 Maggie Siebert 1954899068 sophie 4 horror-etc, very-cool-covers
my favorite stories were Opportunities, The Prime Minister, Bonding, and Every Day for the Rest of Your Life (my favorite of the collection, i think). i didn’t enjoy Marriage (format does it a huge disservice) or the alumni one (stupid) but everything else was extremely well-written even if it didn’t resonate with me, and i think if you enjoy gross horror, at least one of these stories will rocket your brain into another dimension.

very proud to have this on my body horror display!]]> 3.99 2021 Bonding
author: Maggie Siebert
name: sophie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: horror-etc, very-cool-covers
review:
i love it when horror is horroring!!! i love when the Gross is there to underline the point and isn’t the whole point itself!!! many deeply horrifying bits that were executed with the sparsest of language, which is a FEAT.

my favorite stories were Opportunities, The Prime Minister, Bonding, and Every Day for the Rest of Your Life (my favorite of the collection, i think). i didn’t enjoy Marriage (format does it a huge disservice) or the alumni one (stupid) but everything else was extremely well-written even if it didn’t resonate with me, and i think if you enjoy gross horror, at least one of these stories will rocket your brain into another dimension.

very proud to have this on my body horror display!
]]>