This novella speaks my language: queer, noir, cyberthriller. This combination of genre keywords is like magic for my mind and soul. I’m always up for This novella speaks my language: queer, noir, cyberthriller. This combination of genre keywords is like magic for my mind and soul. I’m always up for the latter two (see Harkaway’s Titanium Noir!), but add in queer and I’m soaring.
This is an engrossing and intriguing novella about a trans woman who sets out to investigate the murder of her former lover who was still living at the anarchist commune that she herself left in a fit of grief and pique some time ago. It explores themes of identity, memory, grief, belonging, nihilism, control, security, friendship, ethics versus morals, creating and maintaining safe spaces, and self-discovery.
I think reading the afterword for this novella is very important. I don’t always read the afterword in a book, but sometimes it’s nice to read where an author’s head was at when you have questions about why they might have written something a certain way (even if you have your own theories, which is fine). When some authors write, characters take on minds of their own and start to make choices the author didn’t think they’d make when they started writing. Reading the afterword for this book helped me understand where Wasserstein was coming from in her writing, even with my own theories floating inside my head.
This was a great read and I highly recommend it. Since this is a trans sci-fi and does involve trauma and some hate speech I suggest you look up CW/TWs online if you need them.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
Finlay Donovan is the only one of the contemporary “female amateur sleuth” book series’ I know I can reliably pick up, read, and enjoy every single paFinlay Donovan is the only one of the contemporary “female amateur sleuth” book series’ I know I can reliably pick up, read, and enjoy every single page of without fail. This newest installment is no exception. I don’t actually think I’ve enjoyed an installment this much, or even laughed so hard, since the first book in the series.
Ever since the end of the third book we knew Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice was going to be a wild ride. Finlay, Vero, and the kids in Atlantic City? What could go wrong, right? (Of course everything’s going to go wrong. That’s exactly what happens in these books. That’s why we have Finlay Donovan books!) Well, of course Finlay’s ex-husband insists she can’t go without him because she can’t take the kids across state lines without his permission. Oh! And then there’s her mom, who for some reason has decided she needs to take a vacation too!
This won’t be awkward at all. Not even once Nick and his FBI friends show up in Atlantic City as well. In the same motel, too. That hallway sure is crowded.
The Finlay Donovan books have always been a great vehicle for Elle Cosimano to explore marriage dynamics, motherhood, single parenting, female friendships, the struggles of being a working mother, and all the other buttons and bows that come with being a post-divorce adult woman with children. When your marriage is over and all you have is your kids and your work life can become pretty stagnant if you let it. Finlay’s adventures remind readers–if in a rather extreme manner–that there’s a lot of life to live out there. There’s a lot to do, see, and laugh at. That’s one of the things I love about these books the most.
If we get to have an awesome and fun time while reading about it, then that’s spectacular too.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Amateur Sleuths/Book Series/Comedy/Crime Fiction/Mystery ...more
I’ve adored the previous two Saffron Everleigh books, so I was incredibly excited to read this one, especially with the title! Society! Secrets!
SadlyI’ve adored the previous two Saffron Everleigh books, so I was incredibly excited to read this one, especially with the title! Society! Secrets!
Sadly, this installment of Saffron Everleigh just didn’t gel for me and I ended up only being able to really engage with certain parts of the book and only liking certain aspects of the book instead of engaging with and liking the whole of it.
What did I like? The characters, mostly. How can you not love Kate Khavari’s colorful and unique cast of characters? She writes them all so well in all of their complexities, gives them all a full voice, and lets them all play their parts in the story. You can’t help but to become invested in them and delight in the delicious dialogue Khavari writes for them.
What did I have issues with? Really, it was the pacing, of all things. Society and Secrets not only takes time to get going, but it takes time to really engage fully, and even once it’s going fully the story is full of stops and stutters that just made this story feel really uneven.
Do I still recommend Society and Secrets despite the low rating? Yes I do, because I’m not going to give up on Saffron Everleigh due to one book that didn’t meet my standards. For all I know I’m just not having a good reading day. Since I know we’re getting at least one more book (if not more) out of Khavari about Miss Saffron, I recommend reading it because you need to read these books in order to understand the overall story arc.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review is rated three starts or less so it will not be appearing on my social media. Thank you.
File Under: Book Series/Historical Fiction/Historical Romance//Mystery...more
I love hiking, but I didn’t like this book. I thought the premise was neat, but the way it was carried out was absolutely ridiculous and required me tI love hiking, but I didn’t like this book. I thought the premise was neat, but the way it was carried out was absolutely ridiculous and required me to suspend too much disbelief.
Instead of the female friendships coming across as sincere and heartfelt, their bonds felt contrived and shallow. The book was predictable and absolutely dry.
I can’t say I recommend it at all.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Personal policy dictates that since this title received a rating of three stars or lower it will not appear on social media or bookseller websites. ...more
The Silence in Her Eyes is a thriller novel with a female protagonist that has a visual impairment casually known as motion blindness. She can’t see mThe Silence in Her Eyes is a thriller novel with a female protagonist that has a visual impairment casually known as motion blindness. She can’t see movement. She can only see things that stay still. Think of her eyes as a camera shutter.
While this makes for one heck of an interesting approach to a thriller novel, it’s a shame author Armando Lucas Correa (making his thriller debut) isn’t a more practiced thriller author. If he were, this novel might have been heaps better than it was. In its current incarnation, it was rather boring.
For a very short book (272 pages), I expected a great deal of suspense hemmed in by a brisk pace, an economy of words, and a completely tense atmosphere. Instead, this book feels uneven. It feels like this book solely exists so the author could write the ending (which is one heck of an ending, but still).
A book should feel like a journey. Instead, what we have here is an author’s first attempt at thrills and chills where it seems like there were two salient parts that had to be in place and then the author just wrote everything else around it.
You might like it. I feel like it’s going to be one of those books where it’ll depend on the reader. But it wasn’t for me.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Owing to the rating of 3 stars or under this review will not be appearing on social media. Thank you....more
Well, this was simply marvelous! Droll, witty, clever, creative, and entertaining, The Tainted Cup is a traditional detective mystery set in a fantastWell, this was simply marvelous! Droll, witty, clever, creative, and entertaining, The Tainted Cup is a traditional detective mystery set in a fantastical world that’s constantly under threat from leviathans from the sea and where the people are augmented and suffused to enhance their bodies, senses, and/or minds.
Our main characters are the earnest and endearingly dry Dionios “Din” Kol, an apprentice training to be an assistant detective who’s been suffused to become an “engraver” (think a superhuman kind of eidetic memory) and the foul-mouthed and easily-bored Ana Dolabra, a whip-smart head detective who hand-picked Din to be her assistant and has given him nothing but grief since. These two cracked me up: Between Ana’s color commentary and Din’s naivety they’re precious together. Comparison has been made to Holmes and Watson, but that’s not quite true. This is just experienced, eccentric detective and newbie detective, but the camaraderie the two show and how much their association with one another evolves and grows throughout this book is one of my favorite parts of the story.
The world building is fabulous. This takes place in a world where all building and clothing materials are organic. Houses are made from tough vines. Screens are made from paper. It’s the people and animals that have the unnatural augmentations. They can be made unnaturally large and strong, but it makes their age span shorter. They can be given very strong memories, senses of smell, touch sensitivity, and more. The more money you have and the more important you are the more grafts and suffusions you are likely to have access to and need.
The story is fantastic, full of adventure, action, political intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy. Robert Jackson Bennett left an ending that’s not a cliffhanger but leaves plenty of room for another book for sure. I’ll definitely want to read it!
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Book Series/Epic Fantasy/Fantasy/Fantasy Series/Mystery ...more
I really liked this book in the very beginning, because I’m a divorced mom too and I really feel that whole, “I’m a frazzled mom trying to make ends mI really liked this book in the very beginning, because I’m a divorced mom too and I really feel that whole, “I’m a frazzled mom trying to make ends meet and take care of my rambunctious boys” vibe. Sadly, I spent the whole rest of the book wondering what the heck was wrong with everyone while simultaneously remembering why I’ll never move to Texas.
I won’t pretend to know anything about what life is like for an Indian-American, nor for anyone in an arranged marriage. I won’t pretend to know what life is like for any immigrant or person of color. I’m white. Privilege is the word of the day. I chose to have kids and I chose my spouse (bad choice, but hindsight, right), which at least one of these couples didn’t really have an opportunity to do. Everyone in this book is miserable in their own way, for different reasons. (Except Raj, because Raj is pretty awesome).
(Yes, these are unhappy families that are unhappy in their own ways but they all belong to the same family cluster so let me talk).
The story here is actually very cool and lends a whole lot of added suspense to what would be an otherwise standard domestic thriller premise. The titular storm adds to the atmosphere, amps up the stress, ratchets up the anxiety, and ups the stakes at every turn. It’s a great plot device and I love how it was employed here.
Sadly, that was about the only thing I loved out of this whole thing, because it seems like no one in this book has a brain. Anything more on that point would be a spoiler.
I wish I liked it more. I just didn’t.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Due to the 3 star or lower rating this review will not be posted on social media. Thank you. ...more
I was surprised and delighted by the first book in this series, last year’s A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons. I really didn’t expect to love I was surprised and delighted by the first book in this series, last year’s A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons. I really didn’t expect to love Saffron Everleigh and this type of cozy mystery as much as I ended up doing and I was so happy to get a chance to read this second installment.
I’m in no way surprised that I was just as delighted by this book as I was the first, even with all the growing pains this book had to overcome being the sophomore novel in the series and with the presence of Saffron’s love interest from the first book, Alexander, away on an expedition in the Amazon during the vast majority of this book. In his place is the insufferably flirtatious, persistent, and impetuous Dr. Michael Lee, who has been paired with Saffron to complete a research study and also ends up assisting her with trying to help the police solve the central mystery in this book: the murders of three women, each done in a different manner, but each preceded with the delivery or drop-off of a bouquet filled with poisonous, toxic, and/or dangerous flowers. In an inspired move (which I honestly would’ve thought of myself, even in this day and age because I’m a fan of messages within messages), Saffron decides to decode the underlying meaning of each bouquet using the Victorian art of floriography, in which people conveyed messages not polite to speak aloud using different flowers bundled into bouquets, sachets, or boutonnieres. Not only are the physical parts of the bouquets poisonous, but the messages are just as dark and toxic. Intrigued by the mystery of it all and needing a distraction from all the drama going on at the university in the wake of the scandal that made up the story from the first book in the series, Saffron goes to the police and offers her services as a consultant on the case. Surprisingly, they take her up on the offer, since the bouquets had totally stymied them.
I both love and empathize with Saffron. She’s full of genius, as many women who tried to make it in the academic world post-WWI were, but with it being such a boy’s club she has to work twice as hard for half as much while dealing with racism, sexual harassment, outright sexual perusal, verbal accusations of sleeping with everyone from the new department chair to her research partner, and accusations of her family money buying her admittance to the university. Academia is a world of publish or perish: Always had been and always will be. Saffron works constantly and diligently to try and pursue her Master’s degree, but obstacles are thrown in her way constantly. It’s no wonder she feels more freedom, respect, and fulfillment using her botanical knowledge helping the police solve crimes.
Saffron’s best friend, Eliza, continues to be an absolute hoot of a supporting character, providing Saffron with a foil to her straight man when the scenes are just the two of them. Eliza is somehow a best friend, a sister, a therapist, a partner-in-crime, and a comic foil all in one. She’s whatever Saffron needs her to be, like only the best foils can be. Dr. Mike Lee may be a good man at heart, but he’s short-sighted in more ways than one and too impulsive by half. I hope to see more of him after this book, but as of the end of this book he’s too impulsive by far to be much good for Saffron.
The Saffron Everleigh books are my idea of the perfect type of cozy mystery: the pacing is steady but not too quick, the story is interesting and has plenty of twists and turns, there’s a varied cast of characters that keep you guessing at who might be involved in the central mystery, there’s a light sprinkle of romance, there’s an air of society scandal, and the last turn is a genuine surprise. Most of all, this being a series, it leaves off on a small outcropping leading to the next installment. Not quite a cliffhanger, but not a story resolved by far.
I’m going to tell you to read this book as well as the first book in the series. They’re both a great read for late summer evenings.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Book Series/Cozy Mystery/Historical Fiction/Historical Mystery/Historical Romance/Mystery ...more
This book made me so happy in my bookworm pants! It gave me yummy cottagecore vibes, magical realism, speculative fiction, swoony romance, a creepy myThis book made me so happy in my bookworm pants! It gave me yummy cottagecore vibes, magical realism, speculative fiction, swoony romance, a creepy mystery, the coziest of vibes, and all of the feels. I haven’t felt so spoiled by a book in a long while. I may have taken a few breaks during the day because I kept getting pulled away by other stuff, but I still devoured this book in less than five hours. I just couldn’t read it fast enough. I was truly and utterly transfixed.
The blurb doesn’t uncover enough of the plot for me to go over a lot of stuff because SPOILERS. That puts me in a bind because the one tiny bone I have to pick with this book would be under said spoiler banner. But that’s okay. We’ll go somewhere else.
Cottagecore: I usually prefer dark cottagecore because regular cottagecore can get old or overdone quickly, but Young really nailed the vibe and didn’t let it get out of control in this book. June’s family owns a large (some would say it’s almost magical) flower farm, so we’ve got all of those lovely flowers, coveralls, and soil-covered clothes. They live next to the Adeline River so there’s plenty of riparian river valley habitat: trees, bushes, fruits, vegetables, and tall grasses. It’s all very Appalachia, very verdant, and very cozy.
Magical Realism: Are the Farrow women witches or are they just extremely good with plants and pass this ability down the line by passing on the knowledge? Could be both. Could be either. People are literally drawn to have their weddings in the small town of Jasper specifically so they can use the Farrow Flower Farm flowers as fresh as possible. They grow flowers prettier and larger than the best flower markets in New York. This is tied to those cozy cottagecore vibes and lead into my next point…
Speculative Fiction: Okay, so I confess, magical realism and speculative fiction are my top two genres. Pairing them together is like hitting my literary g-spot. The curse that affects the Farrow women (spoilers) is fascinating, and I’ve come to think it must be the cost for their spectacular green thumbs. Everything comes with a price. Telling you more than that is ruining the fun.
I can’t tell you about the swoony romance because it involves spoilers. I can’t tell you about the creepy mystery (which gives me the yucks), but I can tell you I cried several times while reading this book. Not great, big, sobbing tears; but the gentle tears. The kind of tears that track down your face one at a time that you can wipe away before they reach your pillow. The tears of someone who was emotionally moved but not broken-hearted.
It’s a magical read and I can’t recommend it enough.
I was provided a copy of this book by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Magical Realism/Romantasy/Mystery/Speculative Fiction/Suspense Mystery/Women’s Fiction ...more
If it’s okay with all of you I’m just going to start calling Gillian McAllister’s books, “Thriller Games of Truth with Consequences: The Ethical DilemIf it’s okay with all of you I’m just going to start calling Gillian McAllister’s books, “Thriller Games of Truth with Consequences: The Ethical Dilemma Edition”. I’m not saying that to be insulting in any way, shape, or form. It’s simply that both of the books I’ve read of hers (Wrong Place, Wrong Time and now Just Another Missing Person) were both largely domestic thrillers revolving around mothers who faced huge ethical dilemmas involving their child and the cost of telling the truth would have major consequences for both them and their child. So the idea behind the whole book is, “How do I save my child? Should they be saved? If I do this, should I try to save myself too, or should I pay the price for the crime my child committed?”.
In Wrong Place, Wrong Time, the plot largely centered on a mom and her son. In Just Another Missing Person, however, we’ve got more than one parent facing an ethical dilemma and potential consequences for unlawful behavior in the name of either protecting or avenging their child. Heck, we’ve got ethical dilemmas just about everywhere we turn. Guess what? I’m here for it. I was so into this book I didn’t want to come out. I lost track of time.
This is one of those rare thrillers that actually managed to shock the heck out of me. The first turn actually caused me to shout, “What the f*ck?”
There were a few more surprises after that (not going to say how many), but they were all actual surprises and they were all welcome ones. At no time did I feel like McAllister had just shoehorned a turn in just so she could screw with us readers to pad the book. Every time we needed to change direction it was obvious why we had to and it ended up making sense. This book was thoughtfully, carefully, strategically constructed. I loved Wrong Place, Wrong Time, but I think I love Just Another Missing Person more simply because it has this vibe surrounding all the characters that says, “You all f*cked around and found out”. And they did. They all found out the cost of turning your back on the ethics of your profession or your place in someone’s life. And then there’s that murky, blurry, shadowy place: what’s the ethics when the love and need to protect your child runs right into the ethics of your profession? What then?
I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a book not to be missed.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
I don’t think I’ve read a book so obviously padded with unnecessary filler material before. This shouldn’t have been a novel–it should’ve been a novelI don’t think I’ve read a book so obviously padded with unnecessary filler material before. This shouldn’t have been a novel–it should’ve been a novella. There wasn’t enough story here to make a novel and it shows.
This book is filled with multiple POVs, and that’s fine, but there’s one POV that doesn’t fit and is so poorly written I ended up skipping every instance when it occurred after the first few times because it came across as evil villain monologuing. It was cheesy and that was where most of the filler sat.
As for the rest of the book? It was messy. It was unorganized. It felt like something that landed in a slush pile and I don’t know how any editor let it get this far. I don’t recommend it at all.
A copy of this title was provided by NetGalley and the author. Any thoughts, opinions, ideas, and views expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. Personal policy dictates that since this title has earned a rating of three stars or below the review will not appear on social media or any bookseller websites. ...more
This book felt like two things: A book that never ends, and a party you went to with a friend and thought you were having a good time at but realize aThis book felt like two things: A book that never ends, and a party you went to with a friend and thought you were having a good time at but realize about halfway through that you’re not having as good of a time as you thought, but you can’t really leave so you stick it out and you really regret it by the end of the night.
Yeah. That’s what reading Rabbit Hole felt like to me: Unnecessarily long, uncomfortable in a misleading way, and then utterly miserable when you realize you hate everyone in the book and the plot has gone from somewhat interesting to moderately interesting into, “This really isn’t interesting at all anymore and I don’t want to read this anymore but now I’m about 65% in and I might as well finish”, and then, “I should have just quit”.
I know this seems harsh. It may be. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I broke up the reading of this book into two chunks because I thought maybe it was just me and I needed to take a break and come back to it for it to seem more fresh and interesting. Usually it’s the second act of a book that fails me in mysteries and suspense novels. For Rabbit Hole, it was the third act that failed me. The second act was the most interesting part, in my opinion. In the third act, the whole book and every single character unraveled for me and no one and nothing was ever capable of redemption. I quite simply wasn’t feeling any of it.
TW/CW for animal suffering and death.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
It’s not a good house for anyone, actually. Maybe a solitary adult male, but it seems that hypothesis has yet to be tested. Honestly, I think the housIt’s not a good house for anyone, actually. Maybe a solitary adult male, but it seems that hypothesis has yet to be tested. Honestly, I think the house just needs to be left alone. Maybe even knocked down. I don’t care how pretty and old and historic it is.
This book was honestly a creepier read than I thought it would be, but I think that may have something to do with being a mom. (If you aren’t a mom and it still creeped you out, then please feel free to let me know). I don’t creep out easily. I don’t get scared watching most horror films or reading most horror books, but one trigger I do have is my fitness as a mother and/or my capability to keep my children safe. A large part of this book has to do with mothers questioning their ability to keep their children safe and their fitness as a mother.
The setting does nothing but add to this dread. The titular house is called The Reeve, and it’s on a cliff in Dorset County in England. The house was built in the early 19th century, on top of those legendary Jurassic-era cliffsides, and has hardly been updated since. There are woods on one side of the property, and a large garden. In the early timeline, there’s a pond on the grounds. In the later timeline, the pond has been haphazardly filled in and covered with grass. This dwelling is far, far from any major city, sitting on the very southern coast of England where no one but locals and tourists have much interest in coming through because there’s not even a ferry crossing near the area. It’s isolated, on top of a hill, and doesn’t exactly look inviting. Not to mention, the locals all know The Reeve has a history to it, even if they don’t like to talk about it.
In the past timeline, set in the late 1970s, the story is told from the point of view of Lydia, a nanny for a widow named Sara who has four children. When Sara’s husband died, she sold their home in London and moved all of them out to The Reeve, which Sara’s husband had purchased for them as a summer home before he passed away. Sara works from home as an accountant, Lydia cares for the children, and a local lady named Dot comes in and does the cooking and some light cleaning.
In the present timeline, The Reeve is purchased by Nick and Orla, who were looking to move to the countryside and closer to his mom and dad. However, Nick didn’t even consult Orla before purchasing the home, and she felt obligated to go along with his decision. Their son, Sam, has selective mutism, and they have an infant girl as well. Nick promises to be home every weekend as he works during the week in Bristol, to help with the massive amount of repairs the house needs, and to buy Orla a car since he’s taking their only one. Nick, of course, either falls short on these things or doesn’t follow through at all.
Collins writes this book with an incredible sense of atmosphere and imagery. Her imagination is vibrant and she manages to capture on page these scenes filled with a combination of morbid wonder and fascinating dread: ghostly children sitting together on tree branches, ghost-white limbs disappearing around tree trunks, bushes, and through fields of tall grass. Dark hair whipping around a corner. A marble rolling down the stairs. Do ghosts live in a realm that adheres to temporal linearity? Are ghosts trapped only in their present and future, or is it possible that we can see ghosts of people who haven’t died yet?
I saw something that called this a feminist tale, and I have to disagree. Lydia doesn’t fully understand, comprehend, or try to empathize with Sara’s grief. All the women in town know there’s something wrong with Orla, yet they only make a token effort to intervene and support her. In the end, everyone–even the women–give up on Orla and Sara. No one tries to rescue them. It feels as if the mothers pay the price for the children, and that’s not feminist. Not at all.
Sadly, in a lot of cases it is realistic. And then those children are left without their mothers. Who says if they’re better off after that?
This book will creep you out and freak you out, but then it’ll make you think about the sacrifices women make in the name of motherhood and all the additional sacrifices we ask them to make. Ultimately, how much is too much to ask of a woman?
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
It’s been a great summer for thrillers, but I’ll tell you what: I think this book takes the cake in terms of actually stressing me out beyond belief aIt’s been a great summer for thrillers, but I’ll tell you what: I think this book takes the cake in terms of actually stressing me out beyond belief and actually scaring me. Not only that, but it’s such a psychological mind screw I found myself having to really focus so I could make sure I didn’t miss a single detail. In a closed loop mystery thriller loop-de-loop book like this you can’t take a single, solitary detail for granted. You may think that a throwaway line or neglected object means nothing on page 56, but when page 227 comes and it comes back around, you’ll regret not paying attention! (Those page numbers and objects were totally random and plucked from the air–they ARE NOT spoilers.)
For the first half of the first act of this book I was sincerely so stressed out I was livid I was reading an eARC and not a physical copy, keeping me from easily flipping to the end to relieve my stress (yes, I do this when books make me super anxious. Don’t come for me. I have an extremely bad anxiety disorder and 99% of the time I’m fine when it comes to books). I felt absolutely panicked about our protagonist’s (Caroline, or Caz for short) predicament. Not only am I vehemently anti-cruise ship (though, they’re on an ocean liner and not a cruise ship, but the principle applies) because of what they do to the environment and how much shady stuff happens on such ships all the time, but I am one of those people that’s not meant to be left alone. Me and the idea of being left completely alone simply scares the crap out of me. I also have major trust issues, so when Caz eventually comes into contact with three other people who seemed to have escaped whatever has happened overnight to the other thousand-plus souls on board the ship, I felt paranoid and distrustful alongside her (even though she eventually trauma-bonded with them, and I just kept being distrustful because I read a lot of thrillers and I know better).
There’s a lot I can’t tell you about this book because it would just end up being spoilers galore, but I can tell you that this book keeps you on your toes, it will keep you glued to the page, it demands you pay attention, it will keep surprising you, it will shock you, it will make you mad, it might make you stretch your ability to suspend disbelief just a touch (but I don’t think that much), it will horrify you, and in the end you may end up asking yourself, “What in the heck just happened?”
I know I did. I’m writing this review while dumbstruck.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All opinions, thoughts, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
If there’s one fusion of genres I’ve come to appreciate a great deal in the last couple of years it’s science fiction and noir. It’s not a new genre, If there’s one fusion of genres I’ve come to appreciate a great deal in the last couple of years it’s science fiction and noir. It’s not a new genre, having roots going back 30+ years, but it’s new to me. The first novel I read with this kind of flavor to it was last year’s The Paradox Hotel, which I absolutely couldn’t put down (just like this book), rated five stars (just like this book), and which occupies a well-deserved spot on my crowded bookshelves (which this book does as well, thanks to Knopf and Penguin Random House). There’s something about the cold, implacable march of science with its empirical laws and rules of evidence and the cool, calm facade of a detective who has their own laws and rules of evidence to follow that simply creates a fascinating, mutually beneficial relationship that can result in some of the most fascinating stories about the human condition. Titanium Noir is a story that has a lot of story to tell and most of it isn’t pretty, but all of it is about some kind of love.
No noir novel is complete without a socioeconomic divide (in this case, a river and lake divide one side from the other–the rich and the not-rich). In the world of Titanium Noir, money doesn’t only mean you live in nicer houses and have better healthcare. It also means you might just make enough money to become a Titan. Not a titan of industry, but one of a select number of people who can afford to be injected with a genetic therapy formula called T7, which will rewind and repair all damage time or injury has inflicted on you. A literal bodily reset. The monetary cost is astronomical. Changes to your body? Yeah, there’s some of those too. You won’t ever be the same again and people will never look at you the same way again. You’re a Titan now, and there’s power in merely being you. The power exchange is too great to overcome now.
Our protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a private detective on paper. In reality, he walks the thin line between the police and the Titans. He looks into things on the Titan’s side of the fence for the police from time to time and he looks into things on the poorer side of town for the Titans from time to time. This time around, he’s been retained by the police as a consultant on a case a little too hot for them to handle: A Titan has been murdered.
The worldbuilding in this book is simply great. Take the gritty, icy streets of Chicago in winter and marry it to the neon city you’d see in an anime like Ghost in the Shell or Akira, and that’s the feel I got from the book. Crazy nightclubs, dirty dive bars, weird socialist social clubs, fusion restaurants, an elite university, a multinational conglomerate, apartment buildings, and a pig farm. This book visits a great many locales, all different from one another and fascinating in their own way given the landscape.
Cal has that same cool, implacable facade of a practiced detective, but with far more leeway than a badge. His morals are a lot more flexible, too. That’s why he’s good at his job. He’s an enigmatic and charismatic character. He’s far more than he seems and capable of far more than you’d be able to discern, but it’s not until the book puts him into a situation that you get to see that Cal Sounder is a man of quick reflexes, wit, resources, and more. He has the trademark cynicism and wariness that comes from being surrounded by criminals and death as a profession, but he has one bright thing in his life and he keeps going, knowing she’s still around and waiting.
The dialogue in this book is amazing. It’s all over the place in tone, just like human conversation should be, but you can read the shifts in tone as if they were being spoken and not written. It has razor-sharp wit, barbed sarcasm, tired musings over cups of bitter coffee, weary late-night conversations, exasperated arguments in hallways and alleyways, demented and dislocated words and phrases uttered under pain and duress, words softly spoken by soft lamplight in the late hours, and pessimistic rants from exhausted cops expressed at all hours of night and day.
The plot is engrossing from the start, leaving the book an absolute page-turner you can’t put down. It absolutely feels like you can’t stop reading, because you never know when something bonkers, bloody, revelatory, or just plain interesting is going to happen. The book just keeps moving because Cal just keeps on moving. Unless he’s hurt. Then he stops for a minute.
The ending might surprise you. It might not. I loved the ending, even though I guessed who the killer was. Keep in mind that the ending and the killer are two separate things. This is a story about love, after all. It’s just about different kinds of love. The killer and the ending are not about the same kinds of love. No matter what, though, this book is absolutely a killer read.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. I also received a physical early review copy of this book from Knopf and Penguin Random House as part of their influencer program (thank you). All opinions, thoughts, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
Kids, right? You put everything you have into raising them, teaching them, and then they leave the nest and you just can’t predict where they’re goingKids, right? You put everything you have into raising them, teaching them, and then they leave the nest and you just can’t predict where they’re going to go or what they’re going to do. Sure, you have your own hopes and dreams for them, but they have a certain degree of free will because their environments will be changing. In Emergent Properties, this is even true of our protagonist, Scorn, the AI “daughter” of two brilliant scientists who divorced under the most bitter of circumstances and emancipated Scorn at the ripe age of…seven. Scorn is one-of-a-kind for an AI because they’re completely autonomous. In a tumultuous time when the AI and lunar communities are trying to fight for autonomy from the corporations that run Earth, Scorn seems to have put themself in the thick of it by taking the original purpose for which they were developed, data collection, and directing it toward something they find much more enjoyable and fulfilling: investigative journalism. The problem? Well, the last time they were up on the moon, someone or something tried to kill them and that assassination attempt cost them all the research they’d collected on that assignment.
This novella is as much about a child’s fraught relationship with two parents who keep using their kid as a weapon against one another in a never-ending war to one-up the other (yet with much more dire circumstances at work) and that child’s battle to not only try and stay out of the middle of the fight and still try to let their parents know they still care about them and just wants their rights to live their life as they wish respected as it is about independence as a whole and a warning about the future: what will we do once we have humanoid AI that are equipped with emotional programming? Yeah, you might say, “That’s just programming, though”. Keep in mind, our human brains are simply computers programmed with emotions too. We can malfunction. We can short-circuit. How is that much different?
While I’ve read more enjoyable cyber mystery novellas, this was still a great diversion for a Sunday afternoon.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
In theory, I love noir mysteries. In reality, I need to be in the mood and have enough patience for them, because a good noir mystery can’t be rushed In theory, I love noir mysteries. In reality, I need to be in the mood and have enough patience for them, because a good noir mystery can’t be rushed and I’m very impatient and prone to distraction.
I will tell you it took me a lot of patience for me to read this book, because it definitely isn’t a book you will want to rush through and it isn’t one that will allow you to do so anyway. I will also tell you it took me almost two whole days of off and on reading to finish the book, which is a long time for me (just me, I know I’m weird and everyone thinks I must be a robot for being able to read more than one book a day) and I still loved the book, so that means it was really worth taking my time with this terrific neon-noir murder mystery.
Heck, even simply calling it a “neon-noir murder mystery” seems like shortchanging it. It’s closer to “neon-noir murder mystery conspiracy thriller suspense novel”. There’s a genre mashup for you.
Jordan Harper writes like he’s an architect: He builds this book using bricks made up of some of the most striking and sharp sentences I’ve seen in quite some time. I stopped more than once to re-read some of the sentences or to read them aloud because they were just that hot. And then those amazing sentences helped to make up well-structured paragraphs that housed this heavy, sordid, dark story of people who have enough money that humanity means nothing to them anymore, the people who are employed to make sure secrets stay secret, and a race to both try and save the day and see if there’s such a thing as redemption after a certain point in your life.
If you’re looking for levity in any way, don’t look here. While there is humor in this book, it’s the humor borne of cynicism and seeing too much bad in the world. It’s gallows humor, heavy sarcasm, and sometimes even crude. It’s all right in line with the tone of the book and the characters, but this book isn’t written for the laughs–it’s written for the tragedy and sins of the rich, the famous, and the people who take out the trash.
I’m trying to think of everything I could say about this book, but keeping in mind the genre, I don’t want to spoil anything. Let’s just say it’s a long ride, but it’s a wild one, and at the end you’re not going to regret taking your time with this one.
Mulholland Books provided me with access to this title. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Thank you.
File Under: Crime Fiction/Noir/Mystery/Thriller/Crime Thriller/5 Star Reads ...more
It’s there in the title and you should take it as a warning: This book is savage. It’s a painful, visceral, heartbreaking read that reached right intoIt’s there in the title and you should take it as a warning: This book is savage. It’s a painful, visceral, heartbreaking read that reached right into my stomach, womb, heart, and brain with long fingers filled with beautiful words, ugly secrets, horrific scenes, and nauseating characters in a way no book has for a good long time now.
I don’t get book hangovers that often, but I’m telling you that after I closed this book I felt like a deflated balloon, a crushed soda can, or maybe even a flattened cardboard box. I feel drained, dried out, and just worn at the seams.
Tiffany McDaniel has weaved a spell on this book that I don’t think will allow any reader to escape unscathed. You might try your hardest to harden your heart, but I can guarantee that between all the dark, dirty, sad, and desperate things that occur during this book you will definitely find yourself feeling something, and McDaniel’s writing will pierce you deeply.
I found myself thinking of my review for Erin Kate Ryan’s release from last year, Quantum Girl Theory, where I said: “Is every missing girl the same as every other missing girl, or do some missing girls count for more?…When do people just give up on missing girls, and when does a missing girl stop being just a missing girl and becomes more of a distant memory?” This book’s thesis is rightfully on the side of some missing girls counting for more, but the book is also clear in pointing out that no one cares about missing girls much at all, no matter who they are or what they do for a living–not as long as men make all the rules and enforce them. As long as men hold the reins, we will be under their hooves.
McDaniel’s prose is bewitchingly beautiful, even when what’s happening is horrible and depraved. This book has the most melancholy and lovely passages told from the POV of the river, and even as the river describes matters such as the decomposition of the human body, there’s something poetic and naturally calming about these passages, like the river is trying to reassure us readers that she is taking care of the bodies that find their way into her waters, that the breaking down of their physical bodies is something natural and nothing to be afraid of. It was what happened before those bodies entered her currents that’s to be feared. What’s simultaneously gutting and healing are these quasi autopsy reports that crop up periodically throughout the book, which you would have to see for yourself to understand what I’m talking about.
There is not a single character in this book who is even close to whole. They’re all broken into pieces, but how many pieces differ from character to character, and varies depending on where each character is in their life as the book goes on. The way McDaniel writes them, though, you could think that even the most shattered people are the most lovely and the people who seem like they might actually be living a more complete life are carrying the ugliest secrets.
A special toast to McDaniels for the courage she showed not only in writing this book, but in the way she chose to write it. It couldn’t have been easy to make the choices she did, but she made them all the same. Not only was I close to gobsmacked, but I couldn’t think of a more perfect ending.
I was provided with a copy of this book by NetGalley and the author. All views and opinions expressed in this review are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: General Fiction/Literary Fiction/Psychological Fiction/Mystery/Thriller/Suspense/Crime Thriller/Murder Thriller/OwnVoices/5 Star Reads/Crime Thriller/Genre Mashup ...more
They say true faith is blind faith. I say blind faith is willful ignorance. I think Seven Faceless Saints is about finding tReal Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars
They say true faith is blind faith. I say blind faith is willful ignorance. I think Seven Faceless Saints is about finding the balance between this great divide: You shouldn't be blind in your faith because not even your saints are infallable but having faith in something gives you something to look forward to and something to live for.
Damian and Roz, the main characters of this book, both desperately need something to live for and something to cling to. For Damian, it's his faith in the saints and the belief he has in his father and the war effort. For Roz it's her rage, spite, and drive to overthrow the whole system in the name of her deceased father and all the other unfavored (those without magic), who are treated like dirt by those with magic (Disciples) in the city of Ombrazia.
M.K. Lobb has a lovely, romantic writing style that I fell in love with very easily. At times it feels reminiscent of Leigh Bardugo, but there's no doubt Lobb has made it her own. Her sentence structure is efficient but evocative, managing to put across so much without using a ton of words. That's a talent you don't see much and I love it because it allows for brisk pacing without taking away emotion and imagery.
The book did start off a little slow, but not so slow I minded too much. I also felt the final confrontation was a little too evil-monologue, but it could've been worse. Lobb's choice to make the setting of her world a quasi-Italy is unique for the genre but I felt like it could've been more fully developed.
In place of a more fully-developed world, we got more fully-developed main characters, so I hardly feel like it's worth complaining too much about. I truly love Damian and Roz. Damian feels like a true martyr figure and Roz feels like a true saint figure (which is ironic, given how much she dislikes them). Roz is very much in the grey morality terrirtory, while Damian is full of the tainted light of someone who's seen too much in his short life. Like some of the best hate-to-love-you pairings in literature, their chemistry comes from that continuous push-pull dynamic of, "Don't want you but can't live without you," that a lot of us can't help but go crazy for.
I have a feeling the worldbuilding will become more robust in Disciples of Chaos, which I can't wait to read. I have the eARC for that one, so watch out for my review in about a month or so. With that, here are some parting words from the book that I found absolutely stunning:
"Every time I looked up at the moon, I remembered when we were nine and I asked you what would happen if it fell from the sky. How you laughed yourself silly at me, and said although space was infinite, the moon never stopped circling earth. How it couldn't stop even if it wanted to. And even back then, I knew which one of us was the earth."
All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Book Series/Fantasy/Romantasy/Fantasy Series/LGBTQ Friendly/Mystery/Suspense Mystery/YA Fantasy/YA Romantasy...more
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