Sara 's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 13:15:26 -0700 60 Sara 's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Martyr! 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Sara 4 literary
The only thing I wanted different were some direct political statements that veered into essay-town. Oh, and I guess I didn't really love what Cyrus wrote for his .docx segments; not sure if we're meant to think they aren't that great? Like that his project isn't what he really needs? I'd like to be right about that.

I liked the multi-character narrative, and that our main character was told in the 3rd person, but others in the first

I liked the unapologetic Persian-ness

I liked the imagery, I liked the art. It is always difficult for artists to write about art and artists but I think it's pulled off pretty well here.

]]> 4.23 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Sara
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: literary
review:
4.5

The only thing I wanted different were some direct political statements that veered into essay-town. Oh, and I guess I didn't really love what Cyrus wrote for his .docx segments; not sure if we're meant to think they aren't that great? Like that his project isn't what he really needs? I'd like to be right about that.

I liked the multi-character narrative, and that our main character was told in the 3rd person, but others in the first

I liked the unapologetic Persian-ness

I liked the imagery, I liked the art. It is always difficult for artists to write about art and artists but I think it's pulled off pretty well here.


]]> Deep End 212808709 A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.

Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.

Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.

So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...]]> 464 Ali Hazelwood Sara 2 contemporary, romance
At least this book confirms my theory that the author believes that everyone wants hetero romances where the big strong looming terse man dominates the woman. ]]> 3.96 2025 Deep End
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Sara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:
Didn't really like any of the characters

At least this book confirms my theory that the author believes that everyone wants hetero romances where the big strong looming terse man dominates the woman.
]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Sara 5 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Sara
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Emma 198196 "Reviews and Criticism" presents a wide variety of perspectives, both contemporary and recent, including essays by Sir Walter Scott, Henry James, A. C. Bradley, E. M. Forster, Robert Alan Donovan, Marilyn Butler, Mary Poovey, Claudia Johnson, Juliet McMaster, Ian Watt, and Suzanne Juhasz. New to this edition are essays by Maggie Lane, Edward Copeland, and Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield, the last of which discusses film adaptations of Emma.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.]]> 464 Jane Austen 0393972844 Sara 4
In some ways the book felt quite claustrophobic, with the scope limited to about 10-15 characters in a small village. For the most part they are forced to be each other's society, sometimes on a daily basis. Almost all the characters are annoyed by other characters, or at least judgmental towards them so sometimes I wondered if Sartre's No Exit was perhaps modeled on this book.

I do confess to skimming part of Miss Bates' pages long dialogues where she recounted(sometimes repeatedly) endless minutiae. Austen certainly did an amazing job portraying such a character type, but after the first few times I wish she had done more telling than showing because the Bates character was really tedious.

The biggest surprise for me in this book was Jane Fairfax. I had no memory of this character from the screen adaptations. I thought it was really interesting how Emma and Jane's relationship changed over time, and to me was the most powerful part of the whole book. In some ways their friendship somewhat echoes the Lizzie/Darcy dynamic so I thought that was interesting.

I also thought the dynamics of gender and status were very interesting though of course often frustrating. ]]> 4.06 1815 Emma
author: Jane Austen
name: Sara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1815
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: classic, funny, romance, quiet, character-driven
review:
I marked it as read in 2020, but maybe I'd thought I'd read it? Or was basing it on Clueless or the Gwyneth Paltrow movie? Because I don't think I actually read it until this year.

In some ways the book felt quite claustrophobic, with the scope limited to about 10-15 characters in a small village. For the most part they are forced to be each other's society, sometimes on a daily basis. Almost all the characters are annoyed by other characters, or at least judgmental towards them so sometimes I wondered if Sartre's No Exit was perhaps modeled on this book.

I do confess to skimming part of Miss Bates' pages long dialogues where she recounted(sometimes repeatedly) endless minutiae. Austen certainly did an amazing job portraying such a character type, but after the first few times I wish she had done more telling than showing because the Bates character was really tedious.

The biggest surprise for me in this book was Jane Fairfax. I had no memory of this character from the screen adaptations. I thought it was really interesting how Emma and Jane's relationship changed over time, and to me was the most powerful part of the whole book. In some ways their friendship somewhat echoes the Lizzie/Darcy dynamic so I thought that was interesting.

I also thought the dynamics of gender and status were very interesting though of course often frustrating.
]]> Shy Creatures 199531966
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.]]> 400 Clare Chambers 0063258226 Sara 5 3.99 2024 Shy Creatures
author: Clare Chambers
name: Sara
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: historical-fic, literary, psychological
review:
It's a difficult combination for a book to be warm and uplifting but also contain some distressing plot elements. I think this would be a great book club book.
]]> Back After This 198705223 From the New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo, a podcast producer agrees to host a new series about modern dating—but will the show jeopardize her chance at finding real love?

Cecily Foster loves to make podcasts. She fiercely protects her colleagues, dearly adores her friends, and never misses dinner with her sister. But after a disastrous relationship with a colleague who stole her heart and her ideas, she’s put romantic love on hold.

When the boss who’s disappointed her again and again finally offers her the chance to host her own show, she wants to be thrilled. But there’s a catch—actually, two catches. First, the show will be about Cecily’s dating life. And second, she has to follow the guidance of influencer and newly minted relationship coach Eliza Cassidy, whose relentlessly upbeat attitude seems ready-made for social media, not real life.

Cecily would rather do anything other than put her singledom on display (ugh) or take advice from the internet (UGH). But when her boss hints that doing the show is the only way to protect a friend’s job, she realizes she has no choice.

To make matters more complicated, once she’s committed to twenty blind dates of Eliza’s choosing, Cecily finds herself unable to stop thinking about Will, a photographer she helped to rescue a very big and very lovable lost dog. Even though there are sparks between the two, Will’s own path is uncertain, and Eliza’s skeptical comments about Cecily’s decision-making aren’t helping. On the one hand, Will seems great. But on the other hand . . . don’t they all?

As Cecily struggles to balance the life she truly desires and the one Eliza wants to create for her, she finds herself at a crossroads. Can Cecily sort through all the advice and find a way to do what she loves without losing herself in the process?]]> 308 Linda Holmes 0593599268 Sara 0 to-read 3.98 2025 Back After This
author: Linda Holmes
name: Sara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bright Sword 201750794
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Sara 3 fantasy, sf-fantasy_bookclub
For being 670 pages long, it was overall very readable, especially the first half. The beginning part of the book was very immersive, and it was fun to see how Grossman was constructing his version of the era of Camelot, and it was also fun getting to meet many of the characters and getting to know their backstories. However, there is a point in the story where the character the book largely follows, Collum, is on a quest that turns into a series of quests that seem to go nowhere and he feels trapped in the act of interminable questing - it's kind of how I felt about that last third of the book.

Grossman is impressively good at generating lots of plot as well as incredible fantastical situations and images - his inventiveness is really amazing. But there was just too much of it, and it became a bit repetitive. For example, Collum gets into many perilous situations and has the thought "ok I am going to die now" multiple times and at some point it all becomes very Marvel movie and the stakes of life and death get sort of dull. Similarly, there was too much repetition of Collum wondering if he was special and then being shown he's not special...or is he? No he isn't...but is he???

Collum and the other knights seem to care about the idea of Britain, or a certain version of Britain, and their actions are a result of this zeal. As a reader, it was difficult to buy into and share this vision, and of course looking back from this time and knowing the outcome, it all feels pretty existentially pointless. So going along with their endless quests became increasingly difficult for me to care about. As I was reading I was thinking, okay, maybe this is a point about empires falling apart (hello America in 2025) or about how national identity has to change as the peoples within a nation change and how change is just what life is. And then Grossman did the thing that Jess (hi, Jess!) hates where in the last chapters he basically spells this all out and it becomes sort of a clumsy essay about how there will always be immigrants and that there is no such thing as national purity and a vague reference to how indigenous peoples were there first etc

Finally... the ending... [spoilers removed]





]]> 3.94 2024 The Bright Sword
author: Lev Grossman
name: Sara
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: fantasy, sf-fantasy_bookclub
review:
3.5 stars

For being 670 pages long, it was overall very readable, especially the first half. The beginning part of the book was very immersive, and it was fun to see how Grossman was constructing his version of the era of Camelot, and it was also fun getting to meet many of the characters and getting to know their backstories. However, there is a point in the story where the character the book largely follows, Collum, is on a quest that turns into a series of quests that seem to go nowhere and he feels trapped in the act of interminable questing - it's kind of how I felt about that last third of the book.

Grossman is impressively good at generating lots of plot as well as incredible fantastical situations and images - his inventiveness is really amazing. But there was just too much of it, and it became a bit repetitive. For example, Collum gets into many perilous situations and has the thought "ok I am going to die now" multiple times and at some point it all becomes very Marvel movie and the stakes of life and death get sort of dull. Similarly, there was too much repetition of Collum wondering if he was special and then being shown he's not special...or is he? No he isn't...but is he???

Collum and the other knights seem to care about the idea of Britain, or a certain version of Britain, and their actions are a result of this zeal. As a reader, it was difficult to buy into and share this vision, and of course looking back from this time and knowing the outcome, it all feels pretty existentially pointless. So going along with their endless quests became increasingly difficult for me to care about. As I was reading I was thinking, okay, maybe this is a point about empires falling apart (hello America in 2025) or about how national identity has to change as the peoples within a nation change and how change is just what life is. And then Grossman did the thing that Jess (hi, Jess!) hates where in the last chapters he basically spells this all out and it becomes sort of a clumsy essay about how there will always be immigrants and that there is no such thing as national purity and a vague reference to how indigenous peoples were there first etc

Finally... the ending... [spoilers removed]






]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Sara 0 to-read 4.39 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Sara
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel (Raven Cycle Graphic Novels, #1)]]> 221473209 The first book in Maggie Stiefvater'sĚý#1 NYT bestselling series The Raven Cycle, now gorgeously illustrated as a graphic novel!

Blue Sargent comes from a family of psychics. Only, she has never had the same clairvoyant abilities they had and has always felt too ordinary within the magic that surrounded her. Enter Gansey, a rich student from Aglionby, the town’s all-boys private school teeming with wealth, privilege, and trouble. Blue's always made it a point to stay away from its students, the Raven Boys.

But when Gansey asks her to join him and three other Raven Boys on his quest to find a long-forgotten Welsh king rumored to be sleeping beneath the mountains of their quiet Virginia town, Blue doesn’t hesitate. She jumps at the chance to finally be a part of something real and full of magic, a world she was born into yet one that always stood just out of reach. Soon enough, she’s swept into a strange and shifting world woven into theirs, one far more dangerous than anything they could have dreamt up.

Now reimagined as a stunning full-color graphic novel adapted by Stephanie Williams and illustrated by Sas Milledge, The Raven Boys unravels a thrilling plot around a cast of characters impossible to forget.]]> 256 Stephanie Williams 0593621182 Sara 0 to-read 4.41 2025 The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel (Raven Cycle Graphic Novels, #1)
author: Stephanie Williams
name: Sara
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Worst Ronin 197448842 When an unlikely pair of female samurai join forces, what begins as your run-of-the-mill quest for glory and revenge evolves into something much more complicated. Turns out fighting actual demons doesn’t mean you’re not running from your own internal ones. Nimona meets Attack on Titan in this edgy, unexpectedly hilarious, genre-defying young adult graphic novel.

Being a samurai isn’t easy. Sixteen-year-old Chihiro Ito knows that more than anyone. Her father is renowned among the samurai, but the only thing Chihiro is known for is spending way too much time on her phone obsessing over Tatsuo Nakano, Chihiro’s idol and the first woman to be accepted into Kesi Academy, a prestigious samurai school.

So, when Chihiro’s father is conscripted for service and the opportunity arises to work with Tatsuo in his stead, Chihiro jumps at the chance to prove that she’s worthy of a spot at Kesi Academy and the samurai title. Their mission: kill the yamauba demon terrorizing a village. With a legendary samurai like Tatsuo by her side, Chihiro is convinced victory is inevitable. But Tatsuo isn’t at all like the hero Chihiro imagined. Foulmouthed, quick tempered, and a terrible drunk, Tatsuo completely turned her back on the samurai way and is now a ronin working for hire as a means of escaping the grief that haunts her. Forced to work together, the two are thrust on a treacherous journey filled with epic battles and twisted conspiracies as they must put aside their differences to save the village and face the demons of the past.]]> 336 Maggie Tokuda-Hall 0358464935 Sara 3 graphic-novel, ya
I think that I am too much of a soft girl, and just couldn't reconcile the humor and jaunty tone with professional killing]]> 3.88 2024 The Worst Ronin
author: Maggie Tokuda-Hall
name: Sara
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: graphic-novel, ya
review:
I liked the concept and the art and the mixture of contemporary and historical. I liked the characters.

I think that I am too much of a soft girl, and just couldn't reconcile the humor and jaunty tone with professional killing
]]> Beautyland 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Sara 0 to-read 4.09 2024 Beautyland
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Sara
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Make Envy on Your Disco 195608187 Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction

It’s the new millennium and the anxiety of midlife is creeping up on Sam Singer, a thirty-seven-year-old art advisor. Fed up with his partner and his life in New York, Sam flies to Berlin to attend a gallery opening. There he finds a once-divided city facing an identity crisis of its own. In Berlin the past is everywhere: the graffiti-stained streets, the candlelit cafés and techno clubs, the astonishing mash-up of architecture, monuments, and memorials.

A trip that begins in isolation evolves into one of deep connection and possibility. In an intensely concentrated series of days, Sam finds himself awash in the city, stretched in limbo between his own past and future—in nightclubs with Jeremy, a lonely wannabe DJ; navigating a flirtation with Kaspar, an East Berlin artist he meets at a café; and engaged in a budding relationship with Magda, the enigmatic and icy manager of Sam’s hotel, whom Sam finds himself drawn to, and determined to thaw. I Make Envy on Your Disco is at once a tribute to Berlin, a novel of longing and connection, and a coming-of-middle-age story about confronting the person you were and becoming the person you want to be.]]> 296 Eric Schnall 1496239016 Sara 0 to-read 4.31 2024 I Make Envy on Your Disco
author: Eric Schnall
name: Sara
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> When You Reach Me 7026534
Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.

By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 208 Rebecca Stead 0385906641 Sara 4 3.98 2009 When You Reach Me
author: Rebecca Stead
name: Sara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:

]]> This Summer Will Be Different 197577126 This summer they’ll keep their promise. This summer they won’t give into temptation. This summer will be different.

Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.

It’s easier said than done.

Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.

If Lucy can’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.

When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.]]> 368 Carley Fortune 0593638883 Sara 5
I thought this was a very well-structured and plausible romance. I appreciated the centering of female friendship as well as the main character taking on board feedback without feeling rejected, and giving herself the chance to develop into a well-rounded person before trying to make the love interest - or anyone - her "everything".

I guess if I were to quibble with anything it would be that the love interest was entirely too perfect to be real.

But the Prince Edward Island setting was practically pr0n in itself - the author should get royalties from the PEI travel bureau for how lushly she describes the island. I practically want to move there right now myself!]]> 3.94 2024 This Summer Will Be Different
author: Carley Fortune
name: Sara
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: canadian, contemporary, romance
review:
The 5 stars is within the genre of contemporary adult romance.

I thought this was a very well-structured and plausible romance. I appreciated the centering of female friendship as well as the main character taking on board feedback without feeling rejected, and giving herself the chance to develop into a well-rounded person before trying to make the love interest - or anyone - her "everything".

I guess if I were to quibble with anything it would be that the love interest was entirely too perfect to be real.

But the Prince Edward Island setting was practically pr0n in itself - the author should get royalties from the PEI travel bureau for how lushly she describes the island. I practically want to move there right now myself!
]]> Cats: Nature and Nurture 40864793 Science Comics: Cats, we meet feline friends from the tiniest kodkod to the biggest tiger, and find out what makes your neighborhood domestic cats so special. Equipped with teeth, claws, and camouflage to survive everywhere from deserts to mountaintops, how did these ferocious felines make the leap from predators to playmates... and are they even done leaping?

Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, the solar system, robots, and more. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!]]> 128 Andy Hirsch 1250143128 Sara 4
I will say that I had some issues with the intro! For one it perpetuated the myth that there was witch/cat hunting in medieval times when that didn't happen until the 17th century, which is early modern era. Also the intro said it would delve into some things that the book ended up not covering. But those quibbles are small, considering most youth would probably just skip to the comics part :)]]> 4.46 2021 Cats: Nature and Nurture
author: Andy Hirsch
name: Sara
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: graphic-novel, non-fic, younger-readers, science
review:
I learned a lot! And some of the illustrations were just genius, especially the panel showing the spectrum of purr vs roar among different species of cats

I will say that I had some issues with the intro! For one it perpetuated the myth that there was witch/cat hunting in medieval times when that didn't happen until the 17th century, which is early modern era. Also the intro said it would delve into some things that the book ended up not covering. But those quibbles are small, considering most youth would probably just skip to the comics part :)
]]> <![CDATA[Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair]]> 199389219
What if our cats could talk? Would they ask endless questions about why we haven't given them wet food...again? Would they scream greetings at the first sign of life before the sun even rises? Linney certainly will.

Have you met Linney yet? If not, prepared to be blessed! Lucy Knisley's online Linney comics are collected for the very first time in this gifty hardcover featuring the internet sensation, Linney. With all-new comics, this collection shows us just how amazing, and what a true gift, all cats are.]]> 208 Lucy Knisley 0593177649 Sara 4 memoir, graphic-novel 4.36 2024 Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair
author: Lucy Knisley
name: Sara
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: memoir, graphic-novel
review:

]]> Greta & Valdin 176443453
It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole MÄori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.

Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.

Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings� misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.]]> 352 Rebecca K. Reilly 1668028042 Sara 0 to-read 3.90 2021 Greta & Valdin
author: Rebecca K. Reilly
name: Sara
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Forbidden Purple City 44765812 Nine beautifully crafted stories from rising star Philip Huynh.

A stunning story collection from a fierce new talent who writes with both assurance and vulnerability.

A man returns to Hoi An in his retirement to compose a poem honouring his parents. Two teenagers, ostracized in a private school, forge an unlikely bond. A son discovers the truth about his father's business ventures and his dreams of success. A young bride, isolated on a remote island with her new husband, finds community in a group of abalone divers.

Taking the title for his debut collection of short fiction from the walled palace of Vietnam's Nguyen dynasty, Philip Huynh dives headfirst into the Vietnamese diaspora. In these beautifully crafted stories, crystalline in their clarity and immersive in their intensity, he creates a universe inhabited by the deprivations of war, the reinvention of self in a new and unfamiliar settings, and the tensions between old-world parents and new-world children. Rooted in history and tradition yet startlingly contemporary in their approach, Huynh's stories are sensuously evocative, plunging us into worlds so all-encompassing that we can smell the scent of orange blossoms and hear the rumble of bass lines from suburban car stereos.

]]> 189 Philip Huynh Sara 4 4.00 2019 The Forbidden Purple City
author: Philip Huynh
name: Sara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/03
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: canadian, contemporary, immigrant-experience, short-stories, literary
review:
Pretty solid collection of short stories, and I loved how many were set in or referred to Vancouver. The story that gives this book its title was actually one of the lesser compelling ones to me, and I am curious about why this one was chosen as the title story - perhaps because it evokes a past in Vietnam that cannot be reclaimed due to war and time? My favorite stories were Gulliver's Wife, The Tale of Jude, Turkey Day, Mayfly, and The Abalone Diver (the last one set on Jeju island in Korea).
]]> <![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories]]> 2282 162 Truman Capote 067960085X Sara 5 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Sara
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Misadventures in Ghosthunting 144087235 Melissa Yue Sara 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Misadventures in Ghosthunting
author: Melissa Yue
name: Sara
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bletchley Riddle 205064698 This middle grade historical adventure follows two siblings at Bletchley Park, the home of WWII codebreakers, as they try to unravel a mystery surrounding their mother’s death.

Remember, you are bound by the Official Secrets Act�

Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister Lizzie share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they’re living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amidst one of the greatest secrets of World War II—Britain’s eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley’s top minds to crack the Nazi's Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.

The Battle of Britain rages and Hitler’s invasion creeps closer. And at the same time, baffling messages and codes arrive on their doorstep while a menacing inspector lurks outside the gates of the Bletchley mansion. Are the messages truly for them, or are they a trap? Could the riddles of Enigma and their mother's disappearance be somehow connected? Jakob and Lizzie must find a way to work together as they race to decipher clues which unravel a shocking puzzle that presents the ultimate challenge: How long must a secret be kept?]]> 392 Ruta Sepetys 0593527542 Sara 4
It is set during WW2, and involves spies and codebreaking

The main protagonists are a 19 year old boy and a 14 year old girl. The illustrated person on the cover on the motorbike could be either of the siblings.

So here we have a book with a wide appeal across genders and ages. The protagonists are teens but the chapters are short first-person account written in fairly simple sentences. So I could see kids in 3rd grade and up finding this book accessible.

]]> 4.12 2024 The Bletchley Riddle
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Sara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: historical-fic, ya, younger-readers
review:
This book was made to be popular.

It is set during WW2, and involves spies and codebreaking

The main protagonists are a 19 year old boy and a 14 year old girl. The illustrated person on the cover on the motorbike could be either of the siblings.

So here we have a book with a wide appeal across genders and ages. The protagonists are teens but the chapters are short first-person account written in fairly simple sentences. So I could see kids in 3rd grade and up finding this book accessible.


]]> <![CDATA[What You Are Looking For Is in the Library]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazineĚýeditor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]> 304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Sara 0 to-read 4.07 2020 What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Sara
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brownstone 53154461 An exciting teen coming-of-age epic from author Samuel Teer and debut graphic novel artist Mar Julia, Brownstone is a vivid, sweeping, ultimately hopeful story about navigating your heritage even when you feel like you don’t quite fit in.

Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met.

Now, with her white mother headed on a once-in-a-lifetime trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father for an entire summer. Xavier seems happy to see her, but he expects her to live in (and help fix up) his old, broken-down brownstone. And all along, she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish—which she doesn’t speak.

As Almudena tries to adjust to this new reality, she gets to know the residents of Xavier’s Latin American neighborhood. Each member of the community has their own joys and heartbreaks as well as their own strong opinions on how this young Latina should talk, dress, and behave. Some can’t understand why she doesn’t know where she comes from. Others think she’s “not brown enough� to fit in.

But time is running out for Almudena and Xavier to get to know each other, and the key to their connection may ultimately lie in bringing all these different elements together. Fixing a broken building is one thing, but turning these stubborn individuals into a found family might take more than this one summer.]]> 320 Samuel Teer 0358394740 Sara 0 to-read 4.27 2024 Brownstone
author: Samuel Teer
name: Sara
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Leap 200982350 A coming-of-age graphic novel following two dancers at a conservative performing arts school―exploring friendship, first love, and what it means to fall out of step with your own dreams.

Ana has been studying contemporary dance since she was little, but her heart isn’t in it anymore. Instead her focus is on Carina―a beautiful, ambitious ballerina whose fear of being outed keeps Ana in the closet and their fragile relationship from seeing the light of day. Risking her own career, Ana gives up more and more in order to fit into the shadows of Carina’s life.

Sara, on the other hand, is fielding whispers she may be the best dancer their school has produced in years. Much of that is thanks to her mentor and instructor, Marlena, who plucked Sara from the classical track and encouraged her to blossom as a contemporary dancer. Sara has always been in awe of Marlena, but recently, that admiration has sparked into something more, and Sara’s not sure what to do about it.

As junior year at their performing arts school begins, Ana and Sara are assigned as roommates. What starts off as a tentative friendship soon becomes a much-needed anchor.]]> 304 Simina Popescu 1250838304 Sara 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Leap
author: Simina Popescu
name: Sara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4) 13661
Once, when they were young, they helped each other at a time of darkness and danger and shared an adventure like no other. Now they must join forces again, to help another in need -- the physically and emotionally scarred child whose own destiny has yet to be revealed.]]> 281 Ursula K. Le Guin 1416509631 Sara 0 to-read 4.03 1990 Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Sara
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3)]]> 13667 259 Ursula K. Le Guin 141650964X Sara 0 to-read 4.13 1972 The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Sara
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)]]> 13662
Then a wizard, Ged Sparrowhawk, comes to steal the Tombs� greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. Tenar’s duty is to protect the Ring, but Ged possesses the light of magic and tales of a world that Tenar has never known. Will Tenar risk everything to escape from the darkness that has become her domain?]]> 180 Ursula K. Le Guin 0689845367 Sara 4
I can really see how this series had reverberated through fantasy through time. I do want to read more in the series. ]]> 4.12 1971 The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Sara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: classic, fantasy, sf-fantasy_bookclub, ya, series
review:
I read Le Guin's afterword towards the beginning of reading this novel and I am glad I did. It helped me have a better context for the main character. Le Guin really creates some very visceral claustrophobic feelings as I read, both because of the physical setting but also because of the oppressive psychic world the main character lives in. Great to see Sparrowhawk again, though for some reason I was expecting him to be much older.

I can really see how this series had reverberated through fantasy through time. I do want to read more in the series.
]]> <![CDATA[Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice]]> 25852870
Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master's degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won't discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane's fortieth birthday fast approaches.

Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip's friend, neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy, reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . . And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.]]> 492 Curtis Sittenfeld 1400068320 Sara 2 contemporary, romance Romantic Comedy seems modeled on P&P. But in her retelling, all the characters are pretty unbearable and it almost feels like her attempt to translate the characters and situations to today's touchpoints (or at least the today of 2013) was for us to understand that the characters are actually all spoiled and petty and unsympathetic.

Sittenfeld's retelling was not a 1:1 translation, and that was probably for the best, but I felt like some of her changes made sense and some did not. It made sense to me that Jane / Lizzy would be in their late 30s to convey their "old maid" status. It made sense to set the sisters' home in Cincinnati, and to have characters go off to New York, Texas, and California - America is huge and traveling between those places is not a casual undertaking and that helps us understand how Jane going off to her aunt's or Charlotte going off with Collins was truly so far away.

But a lot of the other choices were just weird, and kind of tone-deaf, and generally unpleasant.

]]> 3.58 2016 Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Sara
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:
Does Curtis Sittenfeld hate Pride and Prejudice? Does she want us to hate Pride and Prejudice? I don't think the answer is yes because of her afterword and because Romantic Comedy seems modeled on P&P. But in her retelling, all the characters are pretty unbearable and it almost feels like her attempt to translate the characters and situations to today's touchpoints (or at least the today of 2013) was for us to understand that the characters are actually all spoiled and petty and unsympathetic.

Sittenfeld's retelling was not a 1:1 translation, and that was probably for the best, but I felt like some of her changes made sense and some did not. It made sense to me that Jane / Lizzy would be in their late 30s to convey their "old maid" status. It made sense to set the sisters' home in Cincinnati, and to have characters go off to New York, Texas, and California - America is huge and traveling between those places is not a casual undertaking and that helps us understand how Jane going off to her aunt's or Charlotte going off with Collins was truly so far away.

But a lot of the other choices were just weird, and kind of tone-deaf, and generally unpleasant.


]]> Romantic Comedy 62628727 A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.

But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.

Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?

With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.]]> 309 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590943 Sara 4 romance, contemporary
I wish that The Night Owls hadn't been so slavishly modeled after SNL; it was distracting and invited too many comparisons to specific, real personae. I also felt that the author's politics were clumsily added to the story.

Immediately after reading this, I read Sittenfeld's Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice and that was kind of interesting because I realized a couple of things. One, that I think Sittenfeld basically just wants to write the same main character all the time (middle upper-middle class woman from a midwest city who is not super hot but is clever and is a writer and kind of judgemental and wary about love and 2) that the P&P DNA is very much present in Romantic Comedy, where Sally is Elizabeth and the rock star guy is a combo of Bingley (nice, a little cheesy and airy, but sweet; also mega rich) and Darcy (super mega rich and uses wealth to assist the MC with family drama). In both books we get a lot of mansion porn. Sittenfeld makes some light critique of celebrities and wealthy people but really just seems to want to write P&P again and again

One thing really bothers me...Sally is famous for writing about women farting and pooping and being real bodies with hair and not airbrushed fantasies. But there is a subplot about her not wanting a partner to know when she poops / that she poops. She becomes close to this partner, learns to be vulnerable and I was sure that we would have had the character accidentally fart and feel embarrassed but that the partner would be cool about it as proof of true love, but that never happened. She also spends a lot of time talking about hair removal. Why lean into how much the character rejects norms if she does not actually reject those norms in her actual life?]]> 3.60 2023 Romantic Comedy
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Sara
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: romance, contemporary
review:
Well it went down easy, and I definitely enjoyed it. I think it is quite risky to have your main character be comedy writer, and actually show their comedy writing, because if you cannot deliver then you have exposed yourself as a writer. I do think Sittenfeld managed to write Sally's writing well. I also have a soft spot for epistialtory writing, especially for romance and I could believe that such an email exchange would be possible in 2020 under the conditions the characters were in.

I wish that The Night Owls hadn't been so slavishly modeled after SNL; it was distracting and invited too many comparisons to specific, real personae. I also felt that the author's politics were clumsily added to the story.

Immediately after reading this, I read Sittenfeld's Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice and that was kind of interesting because I realized a couple of things. One, that I think Sittenfeld basically just wants to write the same main character all the time (middle upper-middle class woman from a midwest city who is not super hot but is clever and is a writer and kind of judgemental and wary about love and 2) that the P&P DNA is very much present in Romantic Comedy, where Sally is Elizabeth and the rock star guy is a combo of Bingley (nice, a little cheesy and airy, but sweet; also mega rich) and Darcy (super mega rich and uses wealth to assist the MC with family drama). In both books we get a lot of mansion porn. Sittenfeld makes some light critique of celebrities and wealthy people but really just seems to want to write P&P again and again

One thing really bothers me...Sally is famous for writing about women farting and pooping and being real bodies with hair and not airbrushed fantasies. But there is a subplot about her not wanting a partner to know when she poops / that she poops. She becomes close to this partner, learns to be vulnerable and I was sure that we would have had the character accidentally fart and feel embarrassed but that the partner would be cool about it as proof of true love, but that never happened. She also spends a lot of time talking about hair removal. Why lean into how much the character rejects norms if she does not actually reject those norms in her actual life?
]]> Prep 9844 Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 420 Curtis Sittenfeld 081297235X Sara 2 3.44 2005 Prep
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Sara
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2012/07/19
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tangled Up in You (Meant to Be, #4)]]> 197577021
Ren has never held an iPhone, googled the answer to a question, or followed a crush on social media. What she has done: Read a book or two, or three (okay, hundreds). Taught herself to paint. Built a working wind power system from scratch. But for all the books she’s read, Ren has never found one that’s taught a woman raised on a homestead and off the grid for most of her twenty-two years how to live in the real world. So when she finally achieves her lifelong dream of attending Corona College, it feels like her life is finally beginning.

Fitz has the rest of his life mapped out: Graduate from Corona at the top of his class, get his criminal record wiped clean, and pass himself off as the rich, handsome player everyone thinks he is. He’s a few short months from checking off step one of his plans when Ren Gylden, with her cascading blonde hair and encyclopedic brain, crashes into his life, and for the first time Fitz’s plan is in jeopardy.

But a simple assignment in their immunology seminar changes the course of both their lives, and suddenly they’re thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire on a road trip that will lead them in the most unexpected directions. Out on the open road, the world somehow shifts, and the unlikely pair realize that, maybe, the key to the dreams they've both been chasing have been sitting next to them the whole time.]]> 320 Christina Lauren 1368092837 Sara 0 contemporary, romance 3.89 2024 Tangled Up in You (Meant to Be, #4)
author: Christina Lauren
name: Sara
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters]]> 217182346 From the bestselling author ofĚý Why We Swim comes a mind-expanding exploration of muscle—from our ancient obsession with the ideal human form to the modern science of this amazing and adaptable tissue—that will change the way you think about what moves us through the world.
Ěý
“Remarkable . . .Ěý A singular book about the true meanings of strength and flexibility, about our ability to define who we are and who we might be.â€�
—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
Ěý
In On Muscle, Bonnie Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean to us. Cardiac, smooth, skeletal—these three different types of muscle in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and allow for motion. Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty—and how they have distorted it—through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health.
Ěý
Tsui introduces us to the first female weightlifter to pick up the famed Scottish Dinnie Stones, then takes us on a 50-mile run through the Nevada desert that follows the path of escape from a Native boarding school—and gives the concept of endurance new meaning. She travels to Oslo, where cutting-edge research reveals how muscles help us bounce back after injury and illness, an important aspect of longevity. She jumps into the action with a historic Double Dutch club in Washington, D.C., to explain anew what Charles Darwin meant by the brain-body connection. Woven throughout are stories of Tsui’s childhood with her Chinese immigrant artist dad—a black belt in karate—who schools her from a young age in a kind of quirky, in-house Muscle Academy.Ěý
Ěý
On Muscle shows us the poetry in the physical, and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we’re capable of.]]> 256 Bonnie Tsui 1643753088 Sara 0 to-read 3.87 On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters
author: Bonnie Tsui
name: Sara
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stay True 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 Sara 0 to-read 4.01 2022 Stay True
author: Hua Hsu
name: Sara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Greenglass House (Greenglass House, #1)]]> 18222716 384 Kate Milford 0544052706 Sara 0 to-read 4.01 2014 Greenglass House (Greenglass House, #1)
author: Kate Milford
name: Sara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Steal from Thieves (Thieves & Kings #1)]]> 215749025 In this high-stakes heist novel, an alchemologist and a con man team up to steal a rare necklace—but complicated feelings of attraction and deception threaten to destroy everything and everyone they love—for fans of Alexandra Bracken and Judy I. Lin.

Within the dazzling halls of London’s Crystal Palace, the event of the season has arrived: The Great Exhibition. An opportunity for the greatest minds of the century to come together under one roof in an unprecedented display of art and invention. And for two unlikely partners in crime, it’s about to become the score of a lifetime.

Charming conman Kane Durante works alone—or on occasion with his best friend, Fletcher. But when his boss, the infamous Kingpin of London’s magical dark market, gives him the impossible task of stealing a priceless artifact from the Great Exhibition, he knows it’s a job he can’t pull off alone. Enter Zaria Mendoza, daughter of one of London’s greatest alchemologists. Ever since her father’s death, Zaria’s been struggling to keep her underground business afloat, and impatient clients are becoming violent. When the infuriatingly handsome Kane offers her the promise of enough money to get out of debt and leave London entirely, she knows she can’t walk away from this dangerous partnership.

But robbing one of the most public, heavily-guarded buildings in London isn’t going to be easy, especially when love and betrayal threaten to ruin everything they've worked so hard for.]]> 400 M.K. Lobb 0316575488 Sara 0 to-read 4.11 2025 To Steal from Thieves (Thieves & Kings #1)
author: M.K. Lobb
name: Sara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Concierge At Hokkyoku Department Store, Vol. 1 (The Concierge At Hokkyoku Department Store, #1)]]> 54927247 146 Tsuchika Nishimura 883355113X Sara 0 to-read 4.03 2017 The Concierge At Hokkyoku Department Store, Vol. 1 (The Concierge At Hokkyoku Department Store, #1)
author: Tsuchika Nishimura
name: Sara
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games, #2)]]> 59801779
Intrigue, riches, and romance abound in this thrilling sequel to the beloved bestsellingĚý The Inheritance Games

The Inheritance Games Ěýended with a bombshell, and now heiress Avery Grambs has to pick up the pieces and find the man who might hold the answers to all of her questions—including why Tobias Hawthorne left his entire fortune to Avery, a virtual stranger, rather than to his own daughters or grandsons.Ěý

Thanks to a DNA test, Avery knows she’s not a Hawthorne by blood, but clues pile up hinting at a deeper connection to the family than she had ever imagined. As the mystery grows and the plot thickens, Grayson and Jameson, two of the enigmatic and magnetic Hawthorne grandsons, continue to pull Avery in different directions. And there are threats lurking around every corner, as adversaries emerge who will stop at nothing to see Avery out of the picture—by any means necessary.Ěý

With nonstop action, aspirational jet-setting,Ěý Knives Out -like family intrigue, swoonworthy romance, and billions of dollars hanging in the balance,Ěý The Hawthorne Legacy Ěýwill thrill Jennifer Lynn Barnes fans and new readers alike.

** Don’t miss the next books in the Inheritance Games ĚýThe Final GambitĚý andĚý The Brothers Hawthorne areĚý available now!]]> 384 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 031610518X Sara 2 Tedious 4.24 2021 The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games, #2)
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Sara
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves:
review:
Tedious
]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)]]> 13642
Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.]]> 183 Ursula K. Le Guin Sara 4 [spoilers removed] 4.02 1968 A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Sara
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: classic, fantasy, sf-fantasy_bookclub, ya
review:
[spoilers removed]
]]> The Soulmate Equation 58438593
But then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that’s predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers: This Jess understands.

At least she thought she did, until her test shows an unheard-of 98 percent compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr. River Peña. This is one number she can’t wrap her head around, because she already knows Dr. Peña. The stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess—who is barely making ends meet—is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. As the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the “Diamond� pairing that could launch GeneticAlly’s valuation sky-high, Jess begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist—and the science behind a soulmate—than she thought.

The Soulmate Equation proves that the delicate balance between fate and choice can never be calculated.]]> 360 Christina Lauren 1982171111 Sara 2 contemporary, romance 3.96 2021 The Soulmate Equation
author: Christina Lauren
name: Sara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:
Slow, bogged down in too many details, too worshipful of Big Tech, and sometimes too sacharine. Also the characters felt v generic
]]> The True Love Experiment 62361081 Sparks fly when a romance novelist and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the perfect Hollywood love story and take both of their careers to the next level—but only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off script.

Felicity “Fizzy� Chen is lost. Sure, she’s got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she’s asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn’t been practicing what she’s preached.

Fizzy hasn’t ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, can’t-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism she’s spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?

Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work in large part because it allows him to live near his daughter. But when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard pass—unless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.

The True Love Experiment is the book fans have been waiting for ever since Fizzy’s debut in The Soulmate Equation. But when the lights come on and all eyes are on her, it turns out the happily ever after Fizzy had all but given up on might lie just behind the camera.]]> 409 Christina Lauren 1982173432 Sara 3 contemporary, romance 4.06 2023 The True Love Experiment
author: Christina Lauren
name: Sara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:

]]> Terry Jones' Medieval Lives 20645 224 Terry Jones 0563522755 Sara 4 non-fic 4.01 2004 Terry Jones' Medieval Lives
author: Terry Jones
name: Sara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: non-fic
review:

]]> These Impossible Things 59228196 AĚýrazor‑sharp debut novel of three best friends navigating love, sex, faith, and the one night that changes it all.

It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents, aunties and uncles, they’ve learned to live their own lives alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women. Staying over at a boyfriend's place is disguised as a best friend’s sleepover, and tiredness can be blamed on studying instead of partying. They know they’re existing in a perfect moment. With growing older and the stakes of love and life growing higher, the delicate balancing act between rebellion and religion is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

Malak wants the dream: for her partner, community, and faith to coexist happily, and she wants this so much she's willing to break her own heart to get it. Kees is in love with Harry, a white Catholic man who her parents can never know about. When he proposes, she must decide between her future happiness and the life she knows and family she loves. Jenna is the life of the party, always ready for new pleasures, even though she’s plagued by a loneliness she can’t shake. Through it all, they have always had each other. But as their college years come to a close, one night changes everything when harsh truths are revealed.

As their lives begin to take different paths, Malak, Kees, and Jenna—now on the precipice of true adulthood—must find a way back to each other as they reconcile faith, family, and tradition with their own needs and desires. These Impossible ThingsĚýis a paean to youth and female friendship—and to all the joy and messiness love holds. AĚýMarie ClaireĚýBook Club Pick for June 2022 and a Most Anticipated Book by:ĚýBustle, theSkimm,ĚýFortune, Apartment Therapy,Ěýand BookRiot]]> 400 Salma El-Wardany 1538709309 Sara 0 to-read 4.22 2022 These Impossible Things
author: Salma El-Wardany
name: Sara
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day]]> 36355166 'Year of Wonder is an absolute treat - the most enlightening way to be guided through the year.' Eddie Redmayne

Classical music for everyone - an inspirational piece of music for every day of the year, celebrating composers from the medieval era to the present day, written by award-winning violinist and BBC Radio 3 presenter Clemency Burton-Hill.

Have you ever heard a piece of music so beautiful it stops you in your tracks? Or wanted to discover more about classical music but had no idea where to begin?

Year of Wonder is a unique celebration of classical music by an author who wants to share its diverse wonders with others and to encourage a love for this genre in all readers, whether complete novices or lifetime enthusiasts.

Clemency chooses one piece of music for each day of the year, with a short explanation about the composer to put it into context, and brings the music alive in a modern and playful way, while also extolling the positive mindfulness element of giving yourself some time every day to listen to something uplifting or beautiful. Thoughtfully curated and expertly researched, this is a book of classical music to keep you company: whoever you are, wherever you're from.

'The only requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open mind.'
Clemency Burton-Hill


Playlists are available on most streaming music platforms including Apple Music and Spotify.
]]> 448 Clemency Burton-Hill 1472252306 Sara 0 to-read 4.39 2017 Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day
author: Clemency Burton-Hill
name: Sara
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating]]> 40189670

Just friends. Just friends. JUST FRIENDS. If they repeat it enough, maybe it’ll be true . . .


Hazel knows she’s a lot to take � and frankly, most men aren’t up to the challenge. If her army of pets and taste for the absurd don’t send them running, her lack of filter and tendency to say exactly the wrong thing will. Their loss. Not everyone can handle a Hazel.


Josh has known Hazel since college. From the first night they met � when she gracelessly threw up on his shoes � to when she sent him an unintelligible email while in a post-surgical haze, Josh has always thought of Hazel more as a spectacle than a peer. But now, ten years later, after a cheating girlfriend has turned his life upside down, going out with Hazel is a breath of fresh air.


Not that Josh and Hazel date. At least, not each other. Because setting each other up on progressively terrible double blind dates means there’s nothing between them . . . right?

]]> 309 Christina Lauren 1501165852 Sara 4 contemporary, romance
I agree with some other reviewers that there are some major and distracting plausibility issues in the story - foremost would be Hazel never having ever met her best friend's brother or parents or having figured out that her best friend's brother was her college crush? And then also the depiction of Hazel as an elementary teacher - her ability to have a lunch date during work and seemingly never having to grade or plan outside of work hours? Other things too, but I decided to not worry about these issues and rate based on the characters. ]]> 3.92 2018 Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating
author: Christina Lauren
name: Sara
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:
I liked the characters and their dynamic, and how in general they were straightforward with their feelings for each other. Also, neither character was too weighted down by any major trauma or issue, so it was nice to have an overall light and breezy tone throughout the book. I especially enjoyed how much self-love Hazel has for her oddball self and how she seeks relationships with people who appreciate her for who she is.

I agree with some other reviewers that there are some major and distracting plausibility issues in the story - foremost would be Hazel never having ever met her best friend's brother or parents or having figured out that her best friend's brother was her college crush? And then also the depiction of Hazel as an elementary teacher - her ability to have a lunch date during work and seemingly never having to grade or plan outside of work hours? Other things too, but I decided to not worry about these issues and rate based on the characters.
]]> The Mighty Red 199793431
Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.]]> 384 Louise Erdrich 0063277050 Sara 4 3.79 2024 The Mighty Red
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Sara
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: environment, literary, indigenous
review:
I loved all the characters, and all the complicated facets of the characters. I loved the setting. Loved Erdrich's trademark way with words and her humor. I appreciated the environmental theme but it was at times a little too heavy handed.
]]> <![CDATA[Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom]]> 61272711 New York Times Bestseller | New York Times 10 Best Books of 2023

The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his� slave.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.

But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.

With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.]]> 416 Ilyon Woo 1501191055 Sara 0 to-read 3.95 2023 Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
author: Ilyon Woo
name: Sara
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Sara 4
Right now Lite is pretty appealing.]]> 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Sara
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/12
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: essays, non-fic, memoir, philosophical
review:
I really don't mean this as a dis, but to me this was DFW Lite.

Right now Lite is pretty appealing.
]]> <![CDATA[A Mouthful of Dust (The Singing Hills Cycle, #6)]]> 199653099 Hunger makes monsters in this dark new tale in Nghi Vo's Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle.

Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desserts made of dust, they discover the secrets of what happens when hunger stalks the land and what the powerful will do to hide their crimes.

Trapped in the mansion of a sinister magistrate, Chih and Almost Brilliant must learn what happened in Baolin when the famine came to call, and they must do so quickly... because the things in the shadows are only growing hungrier.

The Singing Hills Cycle has been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award, and the Ignyte Award, and has won the Crawford Award and the Hugo Award.

The novellas are standalone stories linked by the Cleric Chih, and may be read in any order.]]> Nghi Vo Sara 0 to-read 5.00 2025 A Mouthful of Dust (The Singing Hills Cycle, #6)
author: Nghi Vo
name: Sara
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)]]> 203164357 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize â€� a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the â€sidekickâ€� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 320 Kate Atkinson 0385547994 Sara 3 contemporary, mystery, series
It was also quite farcical at times. So at the climax of the book there was both a lot of tension caused by peril and suspense, as well as that kind of cringey tension coming from cringey situations. I didn't really love that either.

But it wasn't BAD; it just wasn't the flavor I was interested in. ]]> 3.70 2024 Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Sara
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series
review:
This was a bit of a meta-mystery, with lots of in-jokes about the tropes of mysteries; lots of winking. I didn't love that, it felt like it was trying to be too clever.

It was also quite farcical at times. So at the climax of the book there was both a lot of tension caused by peril and suspense, as well as that kind of cringey tension coming from cringey situations. I didn't really love that either.

But it wasn't BAD; it just wasn't the flavor I was interested in.
]]> The Man in Black: Stories 199743712 From the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries, an eclectic, thrilling collection of short stories, featuring many characters that readers have come to know and love.

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur, and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. The Man in Black gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume.

There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.

In the title story, Ruth Galloway crosses paths with a mysterious man in a bookstore, setting in motion a rescue mission that hinges on the legends and lore of Norfolk.

Looking into the past, a young magician in 1920s Leeds wonders just what happened to his missing landlady in Max Mephisto and the Disappearing Act.

In Justice Jones and the Etherphone, a witty girl detective investigates the dire prediction of a fortune teller in dreary postwar London.

A flashback in time reveals Harbinder Kaur as a Detective Sergeant surviving her first day on the job at Shoreham DCI.

To celebrate the holidays, Ruth gets her very first Christmas tree, and her beloved cat narrates his own seasonal story in Flint’s Fireside Tale.

And readers can armchair travel with stories set on the Amalfi Coast, in Capri, and in Egypt as Ruth and DCI Nelson experience their very own version of Death on the Nile.

The Man in Black illustrates the breadth and variety of Elly Griffiths’s talent for blood-chilling, page-turning stories all with her trademark humor and heart.]]> 320 Elly Griffiths 0063289334 Sara 4 mystery, short-stories 3.86 2024 The Man in Black: Stories
author: Elly Griffiths
name: Sara
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: mystery, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cost of a Hostage: A Lane Winslow Mystery (A Lane Winslow Mystery, 12)]]> 217861323 The latest mystery in the series Publishers Weekly calls “highly entertaining� sees Lane trekking through Mexico while the team back in Nelson pursue an open and shut and then open again kidnapping.

It’s a slow August morning in King’s Cove. Lane has a book to read and a lawn that needs mowing. At the Nelson Police Station her husband, Inspector Darling, and his team are tidying their desks during a rare lull. Then Lane receives a call with news that Darling’s brother Bob has gone missing from a mining camp in Mexico and the police station is visited by the frantic mother of a boy kidnapped from his bedroom.

From bustling Mexico City, through the desert and into the mountain range beyond, Darling and Lane’s search for Bob puts them out of the realm of the law and at the mercy of a local bandido. Meanwhile Lane is certain she’s recognized someone from her past she’d rather forget.

Back in the Kootenays, both kidnapper and kid turn up across the lake in Creston and it appears to be case closed—until a body is found mangled in the paddlewheel of a ferry boat. Plans for Ames’s wedding are taking shape, and Terrell’s favourite soon-to-be police officer April has a chance to prove her mettle. The latest Winslow mystery questions the roles of men and women, husbands and wives, and of course a certain police inspector and King’s Cove’s resident sleuth.]]> 464 Iona Whishaw 177151454X Sara 0 to-read 4.50 The Cost of a Hostage: A Lane Winslow Mystery (A Lane Winslow Mystery, 12)
author: Iona Whishaw
name: Sara
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dream Count 219521090 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until � betrayed and brokenhearted � she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America � but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 059380273X Sara 0 to-read 3.97 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Sara
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Friends 217163697 #1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Sara 0 to-read 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Sara
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]> 384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 Sara 0 to-read 3.82 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Sara
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Woods Blue Sky 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Sara 0 to-read 3.71 2025 Black Woods Blue Sky
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Sara
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Death of the Author 214329001 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]> 448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391155 Sara 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Death of the Author
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Sara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hammajang Luck 213847219 HAMMAJANG | adjective. Definition: In a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Chiefly in predicative use, esp. in all hammajang. Etymology: A borrowing from Hawaiian Pidgin. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person - costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most.

And it's all Angel's fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station - of home - to spend the best part of a decade alone.

But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting - and she has an offer.

One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There's just one thing Edie needs to do - trust Angel again - which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?

Ocean's 8 meets Blade Runner in this trail-blazing debut science fiction novel and swashbuckling love letter to Hawai'i about being forced to find a new home and striving to build a better one - unmissable for fans of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.]]> 368 Makana Yamamoto 0063430827 Sara 0 to-read 3.62 2024 Hammajang Luck
author: Makana Yamamoto
name: Sara
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
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.]]> 382 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Sara 0 to-read 4.67 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Sara
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Sara 0 to-read 4.55 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Sara
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Is a River Alive? 218569826 Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler� (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.]]> 384 Robert Macfarlane 0393242137 Sara 0 to-read 4.54 2025 Is a River Alive?
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Sara
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Great Big Beautiful Life 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 384 Emily Henry 059344129X Sara 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: Sara
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intermezzo 209286482 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties � successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women � his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude � a period of desire, despair and possibility � a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 447 Sally Rooney 0735281831 Sara 4
The author listing quotes she incorporated at the end was interesting. It made me wonder if these are quotes she has ready to hand, just floating around in her brain. I wondered if they were touchpoints she listed first and then wrote the story around or whether they just came to her as she wrote.

OK, but I haven't actually said how I felt about this book. There were a lot of big feelings in this book, so I also had a lot of feelings. I felt invested and really stressed out by the characters and the plot and felt motivated to get to the end, for any kind of resolution to relive the stress I was feeling. The interiority of thoughts felt very well observed, and the characterization very specific. I know it is not fair, and that I am being culturally biased, but the characters just frustrated me so much! I wanted to yell at them: "Just say what you mean! Explain how you feel!" This is how I feel about a lot of cultures where it is frowned upon to speak directly and things are stated so that everything must be coded and interpreted. It makes for terrible interpersonal relations but I guess that is what also makes interesting literature. ]]> 4.06 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Sara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: contemporary, literary, not-american-canadian-british, romance
review:
Another sign that I have been reading too much mediocre genre fiction is how exciting it was to read something written with real literary style, and in more than one modality. This is such a low bar, but the fact that the writing style was so different between the different characters' POVs was just so great. I thought it was interesting that Peter was given the most Joycean style, maybe because he is the most lost and the biggest wanderer between disasters of his own making. On the note of POVs, I wonder why Margaret was given POV along with the brothers but not Sylvia or Naomi?

The author listing quotes she incorporated at the end was interesting. It made me wonder if these are quotes she has ready to hand, just floating around in her brain. I wondered if they were touchpoints she listed first and then wrote the story around or whether they just came to her as she wrote.

OK, but I haven't actually said how I felt about this book. There were a lot of big feelings in this book, so I also had a lot of feelings. I felt invested and really stressed out by the characters and the plot and felt motivated to get to the end, for any kind of resolution to relive the stress I was feeling. The interiority of thoughts felt very well observed, and the characterization very specific. I know it is not fair, and that I am being culturally biased, but the characters just frustrated me so much! I wanted to yell at them: "Just say what you mean! Explain how you feel!" This is how I feel about a lot of cultures where it is frowned upon to speak directly and things are stated so that everything must be coded and interpreted. It makes for terrible interpersonal relations but I guess that is what also makes interesting literature.
]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Sara 5
I am sure I am not the only one contrasting this book with Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood. I liked Birnam Wood, but I loved this book. It was the writing, the weirdness, the problematic narrator - it was everything. ]]> 3.35 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Sara
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: contemporary, literary, environment
review:
I'm kind of obsessed with this book and I don't really know why.

I am sure I am not the only one contrasting this book with Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood. I liked Birnam Wood, but I loved this book. It was the writing, the weirdness, the problematic narrator - it was everything.
]]> <![CDATA[No Rules Tonight: A Graphic Novel]]> 204640538
It's time for the annual winter camp at Anjeon University. A full weekend, deep in the mountains, with no parental supervision. But this is no ordinary getaway. It is 1980s South Korea, where political tensions are high and curfew is strict. Luckily, it’s the only night of the year when Koreans have no curfew, no obligations, and no rules. Christmas Eve.

In the snowy mountains, everyone has a different plan for their one night of freedom. Hyun Sook is trying to restart her banned book club but has to hide from a boy she suspects of being a spy. Taehee and Kiwoo are trying to build up the nerve to confess their feelings for one another, while Sujji pines after her crush, ready to risk it all and finally tell someone the secret she’s been hiding for her entire life.

Acclaimed creators Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada deliver a cinematic, hilarious, and heartfelt story about the universality of growing up, making friends, and falling in love.]]> 208 Kim Hyun Sook 0593521307 Sara 4 Banned Book Club - the quite cartoony drawing style somewhat softens the blow.

I think the thing I took away from this is that even within an oppressive regime, there is always room for friendship, resistance, creativity, art, and fun.

Strong recommend.

Also just realized that the author and the artist are married and they seem adorable!!!]]> 3.94 2024 No Rules Tonight: A Graphic Novel
author: Kim Hyun Sook
name: Sara
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: friendship, graphic-novel, not-american-canadian-british, political, funny, ya, memoir
review:
I really don't know how the creators of this graphic novel memoir did it, but they managed to make the account of college-aged friends oppressed by South Korea's former brutal regime into quite a fun and heartwarming romp. While the graphic novel does not shy away in words or images about the actual torture one of the friends faces for being caught in public not singing the national anthem at the daily appointed time (and for his past involvement in reading and disseminating banned books, as related in Banned Book Club - the quite cartoony drawing style somewhat softens the blow.

I think the thing I took away from this is that even within an oppressive regime, there is always room for friendship, resistance, creativity, art, and fun.

Strong recommend.

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

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

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 Sara 0 to-read 3.93 2025 The Strange Case of Jane O.
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Sara
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bellevue Square 33595663
Jean Mason has a doppelganger. At least, that's what people tell her. Apparently it hangs out in Kensington Market, where it sometimes buys churros and shops for hats. Jean doesn't rattle easy, not like she used to. She's a grown woman with a husband and two kids, as well as a thriving business, and Toronto is a fresh start for the whole family. She certainly doesn't want to get involved in anything dubious, but still . . . why would two different strangers swear up and down they'd just seen her--with shorter hair furthermore?

Jean's curiosity quickly gets the better of her, and she visits the market, but sees no one who looks like her. The next day, she goes back to look again. And the day after that. Before she knows it, she's spending an hour here, an afternoon there, watching, taking notes, obsessing and getting scared. With the aid of a small army of locals who hang around in the market's only park, she expands her surveillance, making it known she'll pay for information or sightings. A peculiar collection of drug addicts, scam artists, philanthropists, philosophers and vagrants--the regulars of Bellevue Square--are eager to contribute to Jean's investigation. But when some of them start disappearing, it becomes apparent that her alleged double has a sinister agenda. Unless Jean stops her, she and everyone she cares about will face a fate stranger than death.]]> 262 Michael Redhill 0385684835 Sara 0 to-read 3.09 2017 Bellevue Square
author: Michael Redhill
name: Sara
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)]]> 52439531
To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man's touch -- and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a conwoman, and he's determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather's last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.]]> 386 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1368052401 Sara 3
I agree with Mathilde that the love triangle was tres annoying.

I'm also a little bummed out because the first couple of chapters made the main character seem like a potentially interesting person, but as soon as she is thrust into the mansion and the realm of the Hawthornes, she becomes a bit of a Mary Sue, and then ALL the tropes happen: makeover, wealth pr0n, love triangle
]]> 4.13 2020 The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Sara
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series, ya
review:
The pacing and intrigue was very page-turning, so I appreciate that. I will continue with the series.

I agree with Mathilde that the love triangle was tres annoying.

I'm also a little bummed out because the first couple of chapters made the main character seem like a potentially interesting person, but as soon as she is thrust into the mansion and the realm of the Hawthornes, she becomes a bit of a Mary Sue, and then ALL the tropes happen: makeover, wealth pr0n, love triangle

]]> <![CDATA[The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, Vol. 1 (The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, #1)]]> 212294563 184 Sumiko Arai 1975399684 Sara 0 to-read 4.54 2023 The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, Vol. 1 (The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, #1)
author: Sumiko Arai
name: Sara
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Love and Other Words 36206591 The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).]]> 432 Christina Lauren 1501190539 Sara 4 contemporary, romance 4.23 2018 Love and Other Words
author: Christina Lauren
name: Sara
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All Our Hidden Gifts (All Our Hidden Gifts, #1)]]> 44779795 Maeve’s strangely astute tarot readings make her the talk of the school, until a classmate draws a chilling and unfamiliar card—and then disappears.

After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.

Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily’s gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find—even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism.]]> 384 Caroline O'Donoghue 1536213942 Sara 0 to-read 3.95 2021 All Our Hidden Gifts (All Our Hidden Gifts, #1)
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Sara
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Berry Pickers 210367324 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

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

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

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646222385 Sara 0 to-read 4.12 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Sara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Roll Call (Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Club, #1)]]> 60606325 208 Molly Knox Ostertag 0063039249 Sara 4 4.35 2022 Roll Call (Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Club, #1)
author: Molly Knox Ostertag
name: Sara
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: graphic-novel, ya, younger-readers
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, 1)]]> 16002011
Bad sportsmanship? Sure.

Chainsaws? Why not.

Running away from home on Thanksgiving? Nothing can possibly go wrong.]]> 280 Prudence Shen 159643659X Sara 3 graphic-novel, ya 3.84 2013 Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, 1)
author: Prudence Shen
name: Sara
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: graphic-novel, ya
review:
This book was written 11 years ago, and 4 years before #metoo. Written and illustrated by two women, yet parts of the book are pretty icky, but I guess we are all swimming in the soup of misogyny.
]]> Noodles on a Bicycle 205181039 A vibrant historical picture book about Tokyo's bicycle food deliverers, or demae, who balanced towering trays of steaming hot noodles on their shoulders while navigating crowded city streets.When the deliverymen set off in the morning, the children wait for the flicker of pedal and wheel. It's the demae-- delivery men-- setting off to deliver steaming trays of noodles to hungry customers all over the city. They are whizzing past other bicycles, soaring around curves, avoiding the black smoke of motorcycles. When the children see them, they want to be them. And so they practice with bowls of wobbling water stacked on trays. The day passes, and, finally, exhausted, the demae return home, to their families, and, yes, to steaming bowls of noodles.ĚýĚýĚýĚýThis beautifully crafted, visually exciting story by a powerhouse author and illustrator team is sure to be adored by food lovers, young and old.]]> 40 Kyo Maclear 0593706099 Sara 5 picture-book 4.30 2024 Noodles on a Bicycle
author: Kyo Maclear
name: Sara
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: picture-book
review:

]]> Age 16 181513297 312 Rosena Fung 1773218336 Sara 5 ahhhh this was so good! 4.26 Age 16
author: Rosena Fung
name: Sara
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: graphic-novel, canadian, semi-autobiographical, ya
review:
ahhhh this was so good!
]]> Death at Morning House 199793628 From the bestselling author of the Truly Devious books, Maureen Johnson, comes a new stand-alone YA about a teen who uncovers a mystery while working as a tour guide on an island and must solve it before history repeats itself.

The fire wasn’t Marlowe Wexler’s fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist.

With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that’s how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It’s easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.

Oh, and the deaths. Did anyone mention the deaths?]]> 384 Maureen Johnson 0063255952 Sara 3 3.71 2024 Death at Morning House
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Sara
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)]]> 60495147
Relief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax.

The case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed.

Seven suspects. Two murders. One killer still playing a deadly game.]]> 445 Maureen Johnson 0063032651 Sara 4 contemporary, mystery
I'm not sure if the solution makes sense...this is the first one in the series where the solution is in "person you wouldn't suspect went kind of crazy" territory which is not my fave.

I do think that now that Stevie has now twice brought along all her friends to a place outside of school to solve murders, we are stumbling into the detective cliche of attracting murders at a disproportionate rate too many times to be believable. I do like that Stevie isn't a lone wolf detective, and that she does feel so bonded to her friends, but how many times is she going to keep bringing them all along with her especially as they are supposed to be imminently separating for college?

I'm also kind of bummed out with some of the characters.
-Stevie for being a jerk and lying to her friends and being forgiven way too easily IMHO
-One of the 1995 characters is a Black woman who is basically just another version of Janelle, the only other Black character - smart, logical, and a selfless caretaker for others.
-Vi has become a main character, but after 5 books, we get so little flavor about them. We know what they look like, we can guess they are Vietnamese-American; we know they love Janelle; we know they love languages and politics and that they love learning. But we don't get much in the way of dialogue from them to develop them as a personality.
-And the Stevie and David thing - I know they are both kind of broken, and at 18 years old they have a right to be immature - but they never seem to learn from their mistakes in communication and their way of relating is becoming a bit of a drag]]> 3.79 2022 Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Sara
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves: contemporary, mystery
review:
I have a positive bias for this book because the historical part (1995) took place in London, and I was living there as an American abroad, just as our main characters are in the contemporary parts of the book. I also appreciate that Johnson managed to do a British Manor Murder Mystery.

I'm not sure if the solution makes sense...this is the first one in the series where the solution is in "person you wouldn't suspect went kind of crazy" territory which is not my fave.

I do think that now that Stevie has now twice brought along all her friends to a place outside of school to solve murders, we are stumbling into the detective cliche of attracting murders at a disproportionate rate too many times to be believable. I do like that Stevie isn't a lone wolf detective, and that she does feel so bonded to her friends, but how many times is she going to keep bringing them all along with her especially as they are supposed to be imminently separating for college?

I'm also kind of bummed out with some of the characters.
-Stevie for being a jerk and lying to her friends and being forgiven way too easily IMHO
-One of the 1995 characters is a Black woman who is basically just another version of Janelle, the only other Black character - smart, logical, and a selfless caretaker for others.
-Vi has become a main character, but after 5 books, we get so little flavor about them. We know what they look like, we can guess they are Vietnamese-American; we know they love Janelle; we know they love languages and politics and that they love learning. But we don't get much in the way of dialogue from them to develop them as a personality.
-And the Stevie and David thing - I know they are both kind of broken, and at 18 years old they have a right to be immature - but they never seem to learn from their mistakes in communication and their way of relating is becoming a bit of a drag
]]> How It All Ends 199793511
Now, Tara is part of a future she doesn’t feel at all ready for. She's not ready to watch the racy shows the high school kids like, or to listen to the angsty music, or to stop playing make-believe with her younger brother. She’s not ready to change for PE in front of everyone, or for the chaos of the hallways, or for the anarchy of an English class that’s overrun with fourteen-year-old boys.

But then there’s Libby.

Tara doesn’t know whether she’s ready for Libby. She can’t even explain who Libby is to her because she doesn’t know yet. She just knows that everything’s more fun when she and her new classmate are together. But what will happen next? How will it all end?

This debut graphic novel is a clever and candid portrait of a young girl grappling with the pressures of fitting in, finding your people, and sorting through confusing feelings. Emma Hunsinger has a pitch-perfect ear for the awkward yet endearing moments that accompany growing up, and her illustrations are downright hilarious. She brilliantly captures the humor and the horror of self-discovery and the first blushes of having a crush. How It All Ends deftly explores how unbearable—but exciting!—it is to grow up.]]> 304 Emma Hunsinger 0063158159 Sara 5
good message about being yourself, and message delivered very well without being a cliche]]> 4.19 2024 How It All Ends
author: Emma Hunsinger
name: Sara
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: contemporary, graphic-novel, ya
review:
loved the main character's chaotic brain

good message about being yourself, and message delivered very well without being a cliche
]]> The Wood at Midwinter 206101583 'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

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

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

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe. Featuring an introduction by Susanna Clarke and gorgeous illustrations from Victoria Sawdon truly worthy of the magic of this story, this is a mesmerising, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.]]> 64 Susanna Clarke 1639734481 Sara 3 short-stories 3.47 2024 The Wood at Midwinter
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Sara
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: short-stories
review:
a very pretty cover for a very short ok-ish story
]]> <![CDATA[The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious, #4)]]> 52716736 TheĚýTruly Devious series continues as Stevie Bell investigates her first mystery outside of Ellingham Academy in this spine-chilling and hilarious stand-alone mystery.

Amateur sleuth Stevie Bell needs a good murder. After catching a killer at her high school, she’s back at home for a normal (that means boring) summer.

But then she gets a message from the owner of Sunny Pines, formerly known as Camp Wonder Falls—the site of the notorious unsolved case, the Box in the Woods Murders. Back in 1978, four camp counselors were killed in the woods outside of the town of Barlow Corners, their bodies left in a gruesome display. The new owner offers Stevie an invitation: Come to the camp and help him work on a true crime podcast about the case.

Stevie agrees, as long as she can bring along her friends from Ellingham Academy. Nothing sounds better than a summer spent together, investigating old murders.

But something evil still lurks in Barlow Corners. When Stevie opens the lid on this long-dormant case, she gets much more than she bargained for. The Box in the Woods will make room for more victims. This time, Stevie may not make it out alive.]]> 400 Maureen Johnson 0063032627 Sara 4 4.05 2021 The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious, #4)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Sara
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series, ya
review:
All my guesses were wrong! I guess i'm a Nate and not a Stevie
]]> <![CDATA[The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)]]> 39893545
For her own safety they say. She must move past this obsession with crime. Now that Stevie’s away from the school of topiaries and secret tunnels, and her strange and endearing friends, she begins to feel disconnected from the rest of the world. At least she won’t have to see David anymore. David, who she kissed. David, who lied to her about his identity—son of despised politician Edward King. Then King himself arrives at her house to offer a deal: He will bring Stevie back to Ellingham immediately. In return, she must play nice with David. King is in the midst of a campaign and can’t afford his son stirring up trouble. If Stevie’s at school, David will stay put.

The tantalizing riddles behind the Ellingham murders are still waiting to be unraveled, and Stevie knows she’s so close. But the path to the truth has more twists and turns than she can imagine—and moving forward involves hurting someone she cares for. In New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson’s second novel of the Truly Devious series, nothing is free, and someone will pay for the truth with their life.]]> 369 Maureen Johnson 0062338080 Sara 4 4.12 2019 The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Sara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series, ya
review:
A great YA mystery despite a lot of repetition of facts, both within this book and recapping book 1. I guess if you were not bingeing the series you would appreciate all the recapping.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hand on the Wall (Truly Devious, #3)]]> 45240918
She knows who Truly Devious is. She’s solved it. The greatest case of the century.

At least, she thinks she has. With this latest tragedy, it’s hard to concentrate on the past. Not only has someone died in town, but David disappeared of his own free will and is up to something. Stevie is sure that somehow—somehow—all these things connect. The three deaths in the present. The deaths in the past. The missing Alice Ellingham and the missing David Eastman. Somewhere in this place of riddles and puzzles there must be answers.

Then another accident occurs as a massive storm heads toward Vermont. This is too much for the parents and administrators. Ellingham Academy is evacuated. Obviously, it’s time for Stevie to do something stupid. It’s time to stay on the mountain and face the storm—and a murderer.

In the tantalizing finale to the Truly Devious trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson expertly tangles her dual narrative threads and ignites an explosive end for all who’ve walked through Ellingham Academy.

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson delivers the witty and pulse-pounding conclusion to the Truly Devious series as Stevie Bell solves the mystery that has haunted Ellingham Academy for over 75 years.]]> 369 Maureen Johnson 0062338110 Sara 4 4.12 2020 The Hand on the Wall (Truly Devious, #3)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Sara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series, ya
review:
Well I guessed who the culprit was in book 2, but the series was still a satisfying read. I'm not sure if I am sold on the character of David but with the other books in the series, I will give him a chance.
]]> <![CDATA[Truly, Devious (Truly Devious, #1)]]> 29589074
Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.� It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.Ěý

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson weaves a delicate tale of murder and mystery in the first book of a striking new series, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and E. Lockhart.]]> 416 Maureen Johnson Sara 5 3.90 2018 Truly, Devious (Truly Devious, #1)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Sara
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series, ya
review:
This was really good. Really good mystery, YA or no YA. And really good YA writing, really good writing. I think it helps it's told in the 3rd person. It also helps that Johnson avoids pretty much all YA character cliches. Her characters are odd, surprising, interesting. The details about the characters and the setting are so specific, and again, sometimes surprising. It just feels really fresh and exciting, and I'm already on to the next in the series.
]]> Roomies 34466910 From subway to Broadway to happily ever after. Modern love in all its thrill, hilarity, and uncertainty has never been so compulsively readable as in New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren’s romantic novel.

Marriages of convenience are so...inconvenient.

For months Holland Bakker has invented excuses to descend into the subway station near her apartment, drawn to the captivating music performed by her street musician crush. Lacking the nerve to actually talk to the gorgeous stranger, fate steps in one night in the form of a drunken attacker. Calvin Mcloughlin rescues her, but quickly disappears when the police start asking questions.

Using the only resource she has to pay the brilliant musician back, Holland gets Calvin an audition with her uncle, Broadway’s hottest musical director. When the tryout goes better than even Holland could have imagined, Calvin is set for a great entry into Broadway—until his reason for disappearing earlier becomes clear: he’s in the country illegally, his student visa having expired years ago.

Seeing that her uncle needs Calvin as much as Calvin needs him, a wild idea takes hold of her. Impulsively, she marries the Irishman, her infatuation a secret only to him. As their relationship evolves and Calvin becomes the darling of Broadway—in the middle of the theatrics and the acting-not-acting—will Holland and Calvin to realize that they both stopped pretending a long time ago?]]> 368 Christina Lauren 1501165836 Sara 4 contemporary, romance 3.73 2017 Roomies
author: Christina Lauren
name: Sara
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Sara 4 mystery, series
Would continue with this series for sure]]> 4.07 2024 We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Sara
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: mystery, series
review:
A mystery / thriller with a very British deadpan tone. All our heroes are level-headed and wry, and take assassins and other perils very much in stride. For the most part it really worked for me, and the book was very page-turny and readable. Not so sure about the ending but that seems to be what I say about every mystery I read.

Would continue with this series for sure
]]> Ooko 27209146 almost everything . . . Ooko wants someone to play with too! The foxes in town always seem to be playing with their two-legged friends, the Debbies. Maybe if he tries to look like the other foxes, one of the Debbies will play with him too. But when Ooko finally finds his very own Debbie, things don't turn out quite as he had expected!

A quirky, funny, charmingly illustrated story about finding friendship and being true to yourself.]]> 32 Esmé Shapiro 1101918454 Sara 0 to-read 4.05 2016 Ooko
author: Esmé Shapiro
name: Sara
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Betting on You 60197314
Now, Bailey and Charlie are still polar opposites, but instead of everything about him rubbing Bailey the wrong way, she starts to look forward to hanging out and gossiping about the waterpark guests and their coworkers—particularly two who keep flirting with each other. Bailey and Charlie make a bet on whether or not the cozy pair will actually get together. Charlie insists that members of the opposite sex can’t just be friends, and Bailey is determined to prove him wrong.

Bailey and Charlie keep close track of the romantic progress of others while Charlie works to deflect the growing feelings he’s developed for Bailey. Terrified to lose her if his crush becomes known, what doesn’t help his agenda is Bailey and Charlie “fake dating� in order to disrupt the annoying pleasantries between Bailey’s mom and her mom’s new boyfriend. Soon, what Charlie was hoping to avoid becomes a reality as Bailey starts to see him as not only a friend she can rely on in the midst of family drama—but someone who makes her hands shake and heart race. But Charlie has a secret—a secret that involves Bailey and another bet Charlie may have made. Can the two make a real go of things…or has Charlie’s secret doomed them before they could start?]]> 432 Lynn Painter 1665921234 Sara 3 contemporary, romance, ya
I'm not sure I am sold on the main guy, and I am definitely not into that these teen boys in Painter's books are all "jacked" and "muscular".

I liked the divorce subplot(s) and thought they were handled well. The main character's relationship with her mom felt like it was written a bit inconsistently and I wish that part had been strengthened a bit. ]]> 4.12 2023 Betting on You
author: Lynn Painter
name: Sara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: contemporary, romance, ya
review:
This was a purposeful homage to When Harry Met Sally - it used some of the exact same beats while also translating it to teenagers in Omaha and adding its own plot points.

I'm not sure I am sold on the main guy, and I am definitely not into that these teen boys in Painter's books are all "jacked" and "muscular".

I liked the divorce subplot(s) and thought they were handled well. The main character's relationship with her mom felt like it was written a bit inconsistently and I wish that part had been strengthened a bit.
]]> <![CDATA[Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape]]> 195719732
Brave, unconventional, and determined, Ruth Asawa let nothing stop her from living a life intertwined with art.

Renowned for her innovative wire sculptures, Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa (1926�2013) was a teenager in Southern California when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced into camps. Asawa’s family had to abandon their farm, her father was incarcerated, and she and the rest of her family were sent to a detention center in California, and later to a concentration camp in Arkansas. Asawa nurtured her dreams of becoming an artist while imprisoned and eventually made her way to the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

This graphic biography by Sam Nakahira, developed in consultation with Asawa’s younger daughter, Addie Lanier, chronicles the genesis of Asawa as an artist—from the horror of Pearl Harbor to her transformative education at Black Mountain College to building her life in San Francisco, where she would further develop and refine her groundbreaking sculpture.

Asawa never sought fame, preferring to work on her own for her, art and life were one. Using lively illustrations and a dozen photographs of Asawa’s artwork, Ruth An Artist Takes Shape is a graphic retelling of her young adult years and demonstrates the transformative power of making art.]]> 112 Sam Nakahira 1947440098 Sara 5 4.29 Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape
author: Sam Nakahira
name: Sara
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: california, graphic-novel, immigrant-experience, non-fic, ya, memoir
review:

]]> Woven 212084596 71 Joshua Barkman 1738259110 Sara 5 graphic-novel 4.87 Woven
author: Joshua Barkman
name: Sara
average rating: 4.87
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: graphic-novel
review:
Short illustrated story. Beautiful meditation on art/creativity and friendship
]]> Love, Theoretically 61326735
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?]]> 389 Ali Hazelwood 1408725797 Sara 4 contemporary, romance 4.07 2023 Love, Theoretically
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Sara
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:
I believed the main character's growth and all of the dynamics between characters
]]> The Love Hypothesis 56732449
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.]]> 356 Ali Hazelwood 0593336828 Sara 3 contemporary, romance 4.11 2021 The Love Hypothesis
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Sara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: contemporary, romance
review:
The plot was 40% cute and 60% eyeroll. I liked the characters and most of the dialogue.
]]> Hollow (Hollow, #1) 59831053
Isabel "Izzy" Crane and her family have just relocated to Sleepy Hollow, the town made famous by—and obsessed with—Washington Irving's legend of the Headless Horseman. But city slicker-skeptic Izzy has no time for superstition as she navigates life at a new address, a new school, and, with any luck, with new friends. Ghost stories aren't real, after all....

Then Izzy is pulled into the orbit of the town's teen royalty, Vicky Van Tassel (yes, that Van Tassel) and loveable varsity-level prankster Croc Byun. Vicky's weariness with her family connection to the legend turns to terror when the trio begins to be haunted by the Horseman himself, uncovering a curse set on destroying the Van Tassel line. Now, they have only until Halloween night to break it—meaning it's a totally inconvenient time for Izzy to develop a massive crush on the enigmatic Vicky.

Can Izzy's practical nature help her face the unknown—or only trip her up? As the calendar runs down to the 31st, Izzy will have to use all of her wits and work with her new friends to save Vicky and uncover the mystery of the legendary Horseman of Sleepy Hollow—before it's too late.]]> 176 Shannon Watters Sara 4 3.98 2022 Hollow (Hollow, #1)
author: Shannon Watters
name: Sara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: contemporary, graphic-novel, mystery, ya
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Brief Histories of Everyday Objects]]> 27840859 NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Hilarious, entertaining, and illustrated histories behind some of life's most common and underappreciated objects - from the paperclip and the toothbrush to the sports bra and roller skates

Brief Histories of Everyday Objects is a graphic tour through the unusual creation of some of the mundane items that surround us in our daily lives. Chapters are peppered with ballpoint pen riots, cowboy wars, and really bad Victorian practical jokes.

Structured around the different locations in our home and daily life—the kitchen, the bathroom, the office, and the grocery store—award-nominated illustrator Andy Warner traces the often surprising and sometimes complex histories behind the items we often take for granted. Readers learn how Velcro was created after a Swiss engineer took his dog for a walk; how a naval engineer invented the Slinky; a German housewife, the coffee filter; and a radical feminist and anti-capitalist, the game Monopoly.

This is both a book of histories and a book about histories. It explores how lies become legends, trade routes spring up, and empires rise and fall—all from the perspective of your toothbrush or toilet.]]> 211 Andy Warner 1250078652 Sara 4 funny, graphic-novel, non-fic 3.96 2016 Brief Histories of Everyday Objects
author: Andy Warner
name: Sara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/12
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: funny, graphic-novel, non-fic
review:
Read in a South Jersey public library while waiting for my friend. Funny and a nice diversity (in every way) of inventors
]]> The City in Glass 209439468 In this new standalone, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.

And then the angels come, and the city falls.

Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.

She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.

Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.]]> 216 Nghi Vo 1250348277 Sara 0 to-read 3.75 2024 The City in Glass
author: Nghi Vo
name: Sara
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Stranger Diaries (Harbinder Kaur, #1)]]> 40796097
To make matters worse, the police suspect the killer is someone Clare knows. Unsure whom to trust, she turns to her closest confidant, her diary, the only outlet she has for her darkest suspicions and fears about the case. Then one day she notices something odd. Writing that isn't hers, left on the page of an old diary: "Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me."

Clare becomes more certain than ever: “The Stranger� has come to terrifying life. But can the ending be rewritten in time?]]> 338 Elly Griffiths 1328577856 Sara 4 contemporary, mystery, series
I LOVED everything about the Stranger Diaries until the end where we get a solution that feels like the popular choice for so many murder mysteries - a character you never would expect who has some obscure, hard to believe, motive or is just I guess insane?

Anyway, disregarding the eye-rolling ending, I love the gothic horror atmosphere of the story. I loved the nods to Wilkie Collins and other gothic writers. I loved the fictional horror story "The Stranger Diaries" interspersed with the contemporary mystery. I enjoyed the multiple narrators, and how they all had slightly different perspectives on what they experience. ]]> 3.81 2018 The Stranger Diaries (Harbinder Kaur, #1)
author: Elly Griffiths
name: Sara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series
review:
Here's why "how-done-its" like Columbo or Poker Face are superior to most whodunnits: the murderer can have a perfectly normal, even prosaic, reason for the crime, such a money, jealousy, wanting a new partner, power.

I LOVED everything about the Stranger Diaries until the end where we get a solution that feels like the popular choice for so many murder mysteries - a character you never would expect who has some obscure, hard to believe, motive or is just I guess insane?

Anyway, disregarding the eye-rolling ending, I love the gothic horror atmosphere of the story. I loved the nods to Wilkie Collins and other gothic writers. I loved the fictional horror story "The Stranger Diaries" interspersed with the contemporary mystery. I enjoyed the multiple narrators, and how they all had slightly different perspectives on what they experience.
]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Sara 0 to-read 4.16 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Sara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Word 181109985
Then a murder case turns up. Local writer, Melody Chambers, is found dead and her family are convinced it is murder. Edwin, a big fan of the obit pages, thinks there's a link to the writer of Melody's obituary who pre-deceased his subject.

The trail leads Benedict and Edwin to a slightly sinister writers' retreat. When another writer is found dead, Edwin thinks that the clue lies in the words.

Seeking professional help, the amateur investigators turn to their friend, detective Harbinder Kaur, to find that they have stumbled on a plot that is stranger than fiction.]]> 338 Elly Griffiths 0063374722 Sara 2 contemporary, mystery, series 3.71 2024 The Last Word
author: Elly Griffiths
name: Sara
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: contemporary, mystery, series
review:
Too many characters, honestly, and too hard to suspend my disbelief with any part of the plot.
]]> The Deep Dark 195263612 From Molly Knox Ostertag, writer-illustrator, comes a darkly beautiful story of identity, family, love, loss, and magic.

Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.

So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won’t get attached, of course. She’s always been strong enough to survive without anyone’s help.

But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.]]> 480 Molly Knox Ostertag 1338839993 Sara 4 4.33 2024 The Deep Dark
author: Molly Knox Ostertag
name: Sara
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: contemporary, graphic-novel, lgbtq, fantasy, horror, romance, ya
review:
This graphic novel was very intense!!! Intense emotions, intense plot, laced with both fantasy and psychological horror. The characters felt real and sympathetic, and the art and design of the book was just absolutely amazing.
]]> Ash's Cabin 180724641
Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash’s age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than in fighting for change. Even Ash’s family seems to be sleepwalking through life.

The only person who ever seemed to get Ash was their Grandpa Edwin. Before he died, he used to talk about building a secret cabin, deep in the California wilderness. Did he ever build it? What if it’s still there, waiting for him to come back…or for Ash to find it? To Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start and an escape from the miserable feeling of alienation that haunts their daily life.

But making the wilds your home isn’t easy. And as much as Ash wants to be alone…can they really be happy alone? Can they survive alone?

From New York Times –bestselling author and illustrator Jen Wang comes a singularly affecting story about self-discovery, self-reliance, and the choice to live when it feels like you have no place in the world.]]> 320 Jen Wang 1250754062 Sara 0 to-read 4.15 2024 Ash's Cabin
author: Jen Wang
name: Sara
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Goose 63291996 Long-listed for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A New York Times Book Review Editors� Choice

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to the quiet Pennsylvania home where a woman can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a story of disturbing intimacy and obsession, of exploitation and strength of will, by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.

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

As children in a war-ravaged backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves—until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.]]> 368 Yiyun Li 1250872413 Sara 0 to-read 3.73 2022 The Book of Goose
author: Yiyun Li
name: Sara
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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