Every time I get ready to read a book involving time travel or time heists I send up a few wishful thoughts to the literary muses that it won’t be a tEvery time I get ready to read a book involving time travel or time heists I send up a few wishful thoughts to the literary muses that it won’t be a total disaster. After all, not every time travel novel is written the same or with the same underpinning theories. Some time travel books are meant for the Sagan set and some, like this YA title from author Alyson Noel (forgive the lack of umlaut, please), are meant for those who are more familiar with ideas close to wormholes and how all moments in time coexist alongside one another because time is a construct and doesn’t truly exist. Time is really just distance, and distance can be traveled. In this book, they just use something of a mashup between Doctor Who, Inception, and Avengers: Endgame to do it. That’s really, really oversimplifying it, but without spoiling the crud out of some of the most fun and tricky parts of the book I’m just going to leave it at that.
See, but that’s what landed this book (which just started out as me saying, “Oooooh, pretty shiny cover and time heists! Wanna read it!”) a 5 star rating: this book was some of the most page-turning, charming, interesting, and absolutely fun reading I’ve had in quite some time. In the last month or so I’ve read a lot of heavy material (yeah, I know, more the fool me for preferring horror and thrillers, right?), and this was like taking a large inhale of fresh, fantastical air. In both May and June there hasn’t been a fantasy novel I’ve read that didn’t have some serious social and/or cultural commentary attached to it, but “Stealing Infinity” (even though it does have a measure of self-awareness about the world’s richest people just hoarding wealth and doing nothing with it, which a theme I think we’ll see expanded on in the next installment) decides to just let the fun flag fly, showing us what it’s like to go through the ropes of essentially join a secret society of chrononauts and learn to time travel. There are trials along the way (hey, it’s a hero’s journey, of course there’s going to be trials). There’s romance, there’s tentative friendships, there are betrayals, there’s mystery, and there’s a female protagonist with a mysterious past and a special power not many people know about.
At the time of this review, I really needed this book. This book was like drinking perfectly cool water on a really hot day (well, it’s actually over 101 outside today, so I’m not far off but you know what I mean). It’s like biting into a perfect cookie when you’re craving one. It’s not an original book. It’s not a complicated book. It’s not a perfect book. But I needed it. It dragged me in, it kept me, it swept me along, and I kept turning pages until it ended and I was disappointed there would be no more until Noel completes the sequel. I’ll be there to pick that up!
Thanks to NetGalley, Entangled, and Entangled Teen for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Okay, so, I’ve always said Australia is the one place in the world I’ve never desired to travel to because it seems like just about everything that liOkay, so, I’ve always said Australia is the one place in the world I’ve never desired to travel to because it seems like just about everything that lives there is designed to make you die a terrible death, but this book also reminds me of Australia’s bloody and violent past, it’s present-day issues with racism and misogyny, and highlights (ever so briefly) the dangers of gaslighting and how it can erode away at your instincts and inherent will.
At its heart, “The Island” is most simply described as a crime thriller, but I actually think it verges kind of close to being a horror novel, too. If anything, it might almost straddle that fine line between thriller and horror that some novels do, which is fine by me. I like my thrillers taute, hard, fast-paced, violent, and no-holds-barred. This book starts out tense with some exhausting and questionable family bickering, leads up to a questionable decision made in haste, and from there it’s quite like one of the best kinds of thrill rides: up and down, slow where it needs to be and fast when it needs to be. The pacing is exactly correct and what very, very little filler there is fits in with the story and either calls back to the main story or will be relevant shortly in front of you as you read.
There is a small cast of main characters, a large cast of supporting characters, and a very large cast of what one might call corps de esprits. The cast of main characters is exactly the right size and each one is fleshed out distinctly and gets the appropriate amount of page time. The large cast of main characters is indeed very large, but we don’t need to know as much about them as we do our main characters. Even so, they are distinct enough from one another I had no issues telling who was who as I read, which can be an issue when a supporting cast is all-white and as large as it is. Even the scattered corps de esprit characters are easy to determine one from another, which is a grace not one usually gets when there are this many people who have names and have speaking lines in a novel.
This was a sharp, smart, and cunning novel that pulls no punches with its characters or with the reader. It was a great read I devoured. I highly recommend it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Company for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Little, Brown Company for also sending me a complimentary physical copy of this novel. ...more
Books like “The Resemblance” are a thrilling example of why I love reading so much, and this is only Lauren Nossett’s debut novel. Think about that. TBooks like “The Resemblance” are a thrilling example of why I love reading so much, and this is only Lauren Nossett’s debut novel. Think about that. This thrilling, intense, spine-tingling, breathtakingly written novel about male-dominated power structures, southern attitudes toward gender norms, two different kinds of brotherhoods, and a woman trying to navigate her way through a truly perplexing and seemingly improbable hit and run murder of a frat boy by someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to the dead frat boy himself.
I really do mean it when I say this book is an absolutely thrilling reminder of why I love reading so much. Writing is an art, and just as with any other artistic medium, the point is for it to make you feel. If Nossett did one thing extremely well with this book, it was to elicit emotion. From intense rage and sadness at the statistics and reminders of what happens on college campuses, in sorority and frat houses, and to the sisters and brothers of those organizations to the bitterness Marlitt (our protagonist) feels toward the male officers she works with when they’re given the more “dangerous” cases because their boss doesn’t approve of her working the riskier investigations. There is one scene in the first half of the novel (I’d hazard it’s in the first third of the novel) that’s so well-written in its intensity, drama, panic, and trauma that I felt like I couldn’t breathe and started crying, causing me to put the book down and go outside for some air.
And then I came right back inside and picked it back up again because I don’t resent the tears or that feeling of suffocation. A book should make you feel something. That’s what the author shoots for when they write for us, and Lauren Nossett is a great markswoman. The feelings kept coming, along with those deeply thrumming themes of power in the very dirt of Athens, Georgia and in the white male power structure and how easy it is for those golden boys to take away your autonomy, your identity, and maybe even your life simply by whispering the right word in the right ear (or the wrong word in the right ear, or the right word in the wrong ear).
The prose in this book is so lovely that it makes the horrors of what’s going on during the book stand out that much more. The editing helps to keep that leash of suspense pulled nice and tight, only allowing for a little slack every now and then. There’s no room to breathe with solving this murder; too many cogs and sprockets made from gold working hard to wrap it all up and sweep it all away for Marlitt to rest, even after events start to escalate beyond her control.
As far as I’m concerned, Lauren Nossett has written one of the best crime thrillers I’ve read this year, and one of the most important ones set on a college campus I’ve ever read. I can’t recommend it enough.
Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for granting me access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.
At one point in this book, there is an exchange of dialogue between two characters that I felt was not only central to this novel, but also central toAt one point in this book, there is an exchange of dialogue between two characters that I felt was not only central to this novel, but also central to real life:
“Does anyone have family that grows up functional? At all, anywhere?”
“In books, sometimes. A few rare cases.”
Considering this novel is about a species of monsters who eat books to stay alive, these lines seem rather droll, but at the same time, they are also rather true; there are few rare cases of truly functional families, whether they be real or fictional.
“The Book Eaters” has been one of the books I was looking forward to reading the most this year from the moment I first read the synopsis. I can say with absolute certainty it blew me away. To market this book as merely a mix of horror and fantasy with a LGBTQ female lead is to do this book a severe, if not almost criminal disservice, for this book manages to deftly weave in a wealth of commentary on many cultural, social, educational, gender, and economic issues even as it tells a compelling tale of a mother who will do anything to save her son and escape the cabal-like life she was born and raised in.
I thought this was going to be a long review, because I have so much to say about it, but I find myself at a loss as to how to explain the way this book intertwines the importance of childhood literacy while emphasizing the importance of making sure a child’s literacy is a well-rounded experience and not a cultivated one only filled with princesses or knights and instead filled with a mixture of both. I find it kind of difficult how to explain that the more rural the family, the further away from civilization and modern experiences the family will be and the further away from modern experiences the family and their children will be and therefore will be unfamiliar with how to move within and without the modern world if they suddenly find themselves stuck in it. This book is especially keen on pointing out that women have a particular need to be as well-educated as possible, for this world is dominated by knights and dragons and the patriarchy and they love nothing more than for women to submit to their perceived power.
There is more, so much more, in this moving and stunning book I devoured as much as a Book Eater literally consumes the pages of the OED.
Sunyi Dean, I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but I tip my cap to you, because this book is a masterpiece of genre literature I know will eat away at my brain for who-knows-how-long. And I’m not even sorry about it. The only other three books that have stuck in my head this much this year so far are “Anthem” by Noah Hawley, “Blood Sugar” by Sascha Rothchild, and “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. Sure, there have been other 5 star books, but as far as books that like to peek into my brain and say hello? Yeah, this book is going to be one of those ones.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for granting me access to this book. ...more
When I was still in college (I graduated in 2017), I heard an episode of “Stuff You Missed in History Class” (I think that was the podcast anyway) aboWhen I was still in college (I graduated in 2017), I heard an episode of “Stuff You Missed in History Class” (I think that was the podcast anyway) about an operation Japan came up with during WWII that involved yanking teenage girls out of school to spend all day, every day, cutting and pasting together huge balloons made of washi paper that would then be turned into bombs set adrift across the Pacific Ocean using the jet stream air to carry them to the west coast of the US. Back then, when I first heard about it, I was fascinated by the topic, and even more fascinated that it actually worked (not to any real efficacy; but still, some of those balloons did reach the US mainland). That quirky little historical fact still pops up in my mind from time to time, as some historical facts do, because those balloons were the first weapons able to cross oceans. Good answer for a pub quiz, at any rate.
This operation is one of two true historical horrors that Alma Katsu uses as the basis for “The Fervor”, her latest excursion into historical horror fiction. The other being, of course, the Japanese internment camps here in America that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor. Katsu also uses these events as a clever opportunity to weave in the anti-Asian sentiments that have become more vocal and more evident ever since COVID appeared here in the US and some people (*cough*) felt it was the fault of Asian people (it didn’t seem to matter which Asian country or province you hailed from) that the disease had made it to our shores.
I find it funny that when it comes to fantasy books, I have to really be impressed when Japanese demons and spirits are part of the story in order to consider it a good book, but I get absolutely giddy as a schoolgirl when they make an appearance in horror novels like this. I think it’s the symbolism of it all. In a fantasy book they’re actual characters that are portraying the demon or spirit, but in a horror book like this, they are a symbol for something larger and more meaningful than simply being a fox spirit. They are the portents. They are the foreshadowing. They are some of the exposition. They are part of the plot and storyline. They are part of the cultural makeup of some of the characters. They portray inner thoughts and feelings of characters that we aren’t receiving in other ways. So to see them here makes me so happy.
The narrative here is tightly woven and well-directed. Even though the book takes time to get the characters where they need to be for the big finish, it never feels like wasted time. There are things that absolutely need to happen in order for there to be no plot holes or loose ends, and Katsu trusts us readers to stick with her as she sets a steady pace in order to get there on her clock. You can trust that if she leaves a character (since this book is told from a few different POVs) in a sticky situation and we are worried for them she will get back to them in a few chapters and we’ll pick up and get our questions answered. No loose threads, no holes left open for the plot to fall through. The story stays steady and beating strong.
This is my first Kastu novel (I’ve read a couple of short stories), but it won’t be my last. I was thoroughly engaged.
Thanks to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam Son’s for granting me access to this novel. This review is coming from my ARC backlist. ...more
In the first couple of chapters of this book I felt like I was reading repetitive drivel I’ve read in just about every other political comedy I’ve reaIn the first couple of chapters of this book I felt like I was reading repetitive drivel I’ve read in just about every other political comedy I’ve read in the past few years, right down to the opposition candidate being a gross caricature for the Rotten Tangerine One. So I was immediately just done. I really tried to keep giving it a chance, but this book seemed more in love with itself than anything, and that came across as just pretentious. The dialogue wasn’t funny, witty, snappy, insightful, or heartful enough to compare to Aaron Sorkin during his “The West Wing” days, and I struggled constantly to care about any of the main characters.
It offered me no challenge, it offered me nothing new, and it made me feel nothing. I was utterly bored.
Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. Per personal policy, this review will not be posted on social media or bookseller websites due to the 3 star or lower rating. ...more
There are so many things to love about this multifaceted deep-dive into the third act of a woman’s life, about who women are when they decide they no There are so many things to love about this multifaceted deep-dive into the third act of a woman’s life, about who women are when they decide they no longer need and/or want men in their lives, about what being a woman is at the very root of all things, and how desperately needful it is to remind ourselves everyday that there are more women than men on the Earth and, just like with most base creatures who huff and puff and make a lot of noise, men really do have more cause to fear women, if only we would remember that and use that power more often.
When I say “multifaceted”, I really do mean it. I have always loved a book title simple enough it lends itself to conveying many vector points in the text. “The Change” could refer to any and/or all of the following things (I suspect, given Miller’s sly writing style, that it’s the latter): all the characters have either just gone through or are going through menopause (sometimes called The Change), Harriet’s garden is always changing, the way all three women have changed over their lives and how it shaped them into the people they are in present-day, all three main character’s personal lives are in a state of flux and they have all made some recent personal decisions or changes, or it could even be referring to the overarching change to the way things have been done that the three main women in this story decide to enact that the title is referring to.
This is one of those books that’s long (close to 500 pages), but doesn’t feel it, and the pacing is like the steady heartbeat of someone who’s been walking at a brisk pace. It’s a mystery novel, in part, but definitely not cozy. No one sits down for long in this book, unless they’re sitting down planning, making, or discussing mischief. Or maybe partaking of illicit substances. This book, and the people in it, keep moving. Keep talking. Keep thinking. They have a lot to do, a lot to see, a lot to say, a lot to think about, a lot to plan, a lot of things to put into place, a lot of players to put into action, and then a whole lot more stuff to do when their latest set of actions sets off, reactions happen, and they have to run around and figure out next steps.
I have read a few good books about smashing the patriarchy since I started doing this back last August. There are only three that made me clench my fists together, shake them in victory, and growl like I had just come out victorious from an arena fight. This was the third one. By the time this book was over and every single person–Every. Single. Person.–who was responsible for the horrors perpetrated prior to the events of this book and during this book had paid their due, I started to feel a little bit better about the fact I’m in perimenopause myself. I have a good few decades left to live, myself, and those decades are meant to be lived however I see fit. Anyone else who thinks they know better can turn around and walk away. I have better things to do with my time.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for allowing me early access to this title in exchange for fair and honest review. ...more
This book killed me. Massacred me. From swooning highs to sobbing lows, I was destroyed and remade by this book.
This book reminded me so much of whatThis book killed me. Massacred me. From swooning highs to sobbing lows, I was destroyed and remade by this book.
This book reminded me so much of what I love about Rainbow Rowell’s novels: that sweet vulnerability, the harsh truths, the blazing fire that is love, fierce friendships, great supporting characters, flawed yet extremely relatable main characters, complex familial dynamics, honest discourse on emotions and mental states, and a whole lot of absolutely beautiful prose and sentence structure.
Of course, in this book we also get some extremely lovely poetry. I honestly teared up at the poems more than once.
This book is better written than most YA romances I’ve read in the past year and has a love story that I simply adore. Our main protagonist, Chase, goes through so much in this book, and I found myself identifying with some of his struggles and feeling all the feels for him when it came to his other struggles. This book does an excellent job of helping the reader understand the concepts of body dysmorphia and identifying as nonbinary without coming across as patronizing or proselytizing, and that’s a huge relief. While a great many people need to be seriously educated on these subjects, this book keeps away from laying it on thick, which makes the whole book and its topics more accessible to the average reader.
I also really need to address the absolutely fantastic manner in which Salvatore addressed the extremely real and extremely toxic topic of body image issues in the LGBTQ community. Adolescent, teen, and young adult males are victims of eating disorders and body image issues in much larger numbers than most people suspect, and that pressure is more than doubled in much of the queer community. Again, the topic is deftly handled by Salvatore, and I’m so glad to see a YA romance novel with LGBTQ themes that also takes the time to talk about an issue not a lot of people realize is a huge problem.
I highly, highly recommend this book if you love LGBTQ romances, college romances, stories of discovering and accepting yourself, fantastic and funny supporting characters, and if you love the writing of authors like Rainbow Rowell and Casey McQuiston.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury YA for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Sara Cate dedicates this book to “all the good girls”. All I can say is: thank goodness for all the good girls, because this book is both fire and balSara Cate dedicates this book to “all the good girls”. All I can say is: thank goodness for all the good girls, because this book is both fire and balm for the soul of any reader who loves good girls, dominant males, the kink community, and a big helping of praise and affirmation.
I know from experience that sometimes there’s nothing quite like being told you’ve been a good girl. The best girl. The sweetest girl. To be told you’re worth it–whatever “it” is. I also know there’s something about seeing someone being on their knees for you, being so sweet for you, doing anything and everything to please you. Yeah, I’m versatile like that.
A lot of authors write kink-centric books and they don’t feel authentic. They don’t read as authentic. It’s a manufactured experience. And yeah, so maybe that’s fiction and I shouldn’t be surprised, but since I’ve done my time in and out of clubs and parties and dynamics, I know good kink writing when I read it. This novel is the kind of BDSM-centric writing I wish every one of those novels could be, because it actually rang true for once.
Charlie’s curiosity once she discovered who she was working for felt as authentic as my own when I first encountered what some people can and will do behind closed doors (and sometimes not even closed doors, lol). At one point Charlie talks about it like it’s falling down a rabbit hole. To be honest, that’s exactly what it can feel like. Her first experience inside a working club read as honest and familiar from so many stories I’ve heard from fellow players before, and her full-on embrace of submission once she discovered it matches just as many stories. Sometimes, when something fits, it just fits. There’s no shame in that, and I fully believe that was one of Sara’s largest and most firm points in writing this book: don’t be ashamed of what you love, who you love, or what makes you happy. If your happiness comes while kneeling for your millionaire boss, then who’s anyone else to judge?
It’s a wonderful romance novel and an even better love letter to the BDSM community. ...more
This book had no right to be this good! I really didn’t know for sure what I was getting into with this book: I just knew it was about a prep school, This book had no right to be this good! I really didn’t know for sure what I was getting into with this book: I just knew it was about a prep school, involved queer themes, and involved something that sounded like dark academia. (Shush, I happen to love dark academia).
I started reading this stunning and tragic coming-of-age drama and got immediately sucked into it. The story of soft, impressionable Laura and her obsession with a long-dead author and his book both made me sad and fearful from the start. Moving high schools just so you can go to the alma mater of your literary hero? Moving away from your family just so you can live, breathe, eat, sleep, and learn in the same hallowed halls? That’s not a healthy thing for a teenager to do, but somehow Laura managed to convince her parents to let her attend. So she sets out to walk in his footsteps, looking for somewhere to belong, looking for something beautiful and transcendent, and she ends up becoming enmeshed with the school’s choir both due to her attraction to Virginia, their intense and charismatic leader, and because all of the choir’s members are just as obsessed with the same author as she is.
This book isn’t subtle about what it’s trying to be. It’d be kind of hard to pretend like you’re not somewhat reminiscent of “The Secret History” when you’re a mysterious, dark, and philosophical novel with queer themes set in a isolated prep school on the East Coast. But Burton was definitely more overt with the queer themes and upped the ante with a hefty dose of young white men who feel entitled to the women around them.
There is a lot of interesting discourse about the Madonna/Wh (putting the rest of the words there will get me in trouble) Complex, with two women in the story going through that dichotomy. Neither one of them can fully escape being both worshiped by men only to turn around and have those same men blaspheme them. There’s also a healthy dose of both questioning one’s sexuality and some internalized homophobia. All of it makes for an aching angst-fest that could remind some people of what it was like when they didn’t know who they fully were or what they fully wanted out of life.
In the end, all I can really say solidly is that I really enjoyed it. Like, would buy it and read it again.
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
“Pull” is actually a compilation of a few bonus scenes that comes after the original novel, “Push”, the novella “Pull”, which follows the Harper-Lockw“Pull” is actually a compilation of a few bonus scenes that comes after the original novel, “Push”, the novella “Pull”, which follows the Harper-Lockwood family as they attend their first Pride parade as a polyamorous throuple, and then a couple of more short stories that come after the time frame set in “Pull”. As the author states: You DO NOT want to read “Pull” if you haven’t read “Push”. Needless to say, you don’t want to skip “Push” anyway, because it’s a brilliant romance novel. One of my favorites of all time, in fact.
I’ve always wished for another novel to come after “Push”, even though I knew Nyla wrapped everything up nice and neat in the original novel, if only because the book was so scorching I just wanted more so I could revel in the hotness of it all. “Pull” does a great job of giving me what I want.. Which is mainly just more Ben and Ryan spicy goodness. I mean, just, whew! *fans self* Holy heck! Those two men! In the original novel they were already fogging up my glasses, but in this they take it to another level! The dirty talk is so on point. We get exhibitionism. We get role play. We get it rough and hard. We get it intense. And I loved it all.
I was surprisingly into the very first bonus scene in the book, which involves Ryan and Tate. I’m not going to spoil it, but for some reason, I thought it was hot. I guess that’s going to be a scene that’s not going to be for everyone, but I like what I like.
I love the dynamic between Ryan and Jess. They’re so similar, but not so similar that they’re the same person. And the way Jess gets turned on by her husbands is so similar to how I feel when I watch two guys makes her a really relatable character.
I’ve been a fan of Nyla K. ever since I read “Push” the first time, and I’m so glad this has been released to a wide audience. Polyamorous throuples deserve more love from the romance community at-large, in my opinion. Hopefully more authors start to pick up on polyamory soon. Us poly people would appreciate it. ...more
Wow. I didn’t expect to have all the feelings I felt while feeling this book. While not the best YA psychological suspense-thriller I’ve read so far tWow. I didn’t expect to have all the feelings I felt while feeling this book. While not the best YA psychological suspense-thriller I’ve read so far this year, it’s right up there near the top.
The most overwhelming feeling I had throughout this book was dread. For two thirds of this book I just felt a huge amount of dread: first on behalf of one character, and then on behalf of another. This book tells four different stories, in a way: two stories of families that were and two stories of families that are. You get to see both sides of the story, but no matter where you look, every facet of this story is so much more complex than what it looks like on the surface.
I feel like, if I had more time to sit on it, I could analyze this whole novel and write you an essay to articulate just how many layers there are to this book, but this is a review for a book release and not a book analysis. Maybe that’s another review for another time when I can read this book on my own time and annotate the whole thing. Trust me, though, the themes of love, loss, grief, mental illness, motherhood, sisterhood, families, domestic violence, and survival are more than enough to keep you involved, intrigued, and turning pages. It’s an absolutely chilling novel about how far some people will go to keep people safe and how far some other people will go to keep people happy. Which is the lesser of two evils? Read it and find out.
Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Oh how I love books that heavily embed linguistics not only the culture of the people in the book but also so deeply into the very plot of the book! IOh how I love books that heavily embed linguistics not only the culture of the people in the book but also so deeply into the very plot of the book! I may not be a linguist (that title falls to my baby sister), but both she and I grew up with a love of languages and how language evolves over time. This book made me so very happy in my linguistics pants just because it was so clever and almost effortless in how it took the English language and showed how much it could have shifted and then been embedded into the social fabric in the future. I won’t give any examples, because I really don’t want to ruin the fun. Some of the changes are just so downright spot-on they become hilarious. I found myself saying, “Of course that’s what we’d end up calling that in the future!” This book also relies heavily on how technology has changed language on a global scale, with American English, fragmented sentences, and emojis being the most common languages spoken when the digital world is involved.
I am simply mad about this book. It’s one of the best sci-fi novels I’ve read this year, and it’s not even pure sci-fi. It’s also an amateur sleuth mystery, a little bit of a thriller, and a crafty bit of speculative fiction. There are many great points to be made about first contact with an alien civilization: what kind of considerations and how many considerations would we be willing to give to an alien civilization to gain access to their technology, should they come in peace? Would they have an advantage over us once some of us could learn their language and act as translators (in case they didn’t speak out loud, which is the case in this book) because it would give them a buffering time between speaking and then having to hear someone’s reply in which to craft more questions, thoughts, decisions, and answers? Would they have an advantage in composing oneself between one statement and another just by virtue of the translation lag time?
The overall murder mystery plot is an engaging and a twisty road. It’s unpredictable and it seems that just when the mystery might be solved, it’s another red herring or the logic falls apart and we’re a few steps back again. A few steps forward, a stumble back. That’s how this book goes and that’s how I like it. And just when you think all the players have been identified, there’s sure to be another piece put into play or one of the pieces is found to have not been part of it at all. In the end, I was about 85% surprised by who it was. And then I felt like, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Trust me, pick up this book. Then actually read it. If you’re a fan of speculative fiction I can almost guarantee you’ll enjoy it.
Thanks to NetGalley, MacMillan-Tor/Forge, and Tordotcom for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
I’ve sat here staring at my laptop screen for a bit, trying to think of the best way to start out this book review because I just can’t stay away fromI’ve sat here staring at my laptop screen for a bit, trying to think of the best way to start out this book review because I just can’t stay away from the word “ineffable” when it comes to this book. When I pull away from the intricacies and intimacies of the story and look at it from afar, it’s just something so enigmatic and beautiful I simply don’t know where to start with it.
Why don’t I try starting with the plot, boiled down to its base elements? This book is, at its roots, a Great American Road Trip novel. It’s the story of two sisters who decide to set out and find their mother, who has been missing for five years, and now that they’re both adults they decide to find out once and for all what her fate was, because they think they have the tools to do so. This wouldn’t be a special book at all if it weren’t for the sheer, raw talent and imagination of Ruth Emmie Lang.
Characters and atmosphere are what drive this book, and both are magnificent engines. I’d say atmosphere carries slightly more weight than the characters, but that may be due to the fact that Lang’s mesmerizing, earnest, and almost hypnotic prose lends the atmosphere strength, while only half of characterization is carried by prose (the rest being carried by heartfelt, well-written, and sometimes heartbreakingly vulnerable dialogue).
The themes of sisterhood, motherhood, guilt, shame, secrets, and regret are all central to this book, overlaid with mystical melodies surrounding memory, music, birds, and migration. These themes and literary melodies are where the book gets ineffable for me, because I feel I could write a whole essay about how memory, music, birds, and migration patterns all tie into one another, but that would never fit into a book review. This one is running long as it is.
Our two main characters, Finn and Zadie, are both wonderful and heartbreaking to read, with their opposite worldviews and personalities. If you have a sister you might know that feeling of simultaneously wanting to hug them and throttle them but you’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe. When it comes to their disparate world views regarding their missing mother, you can also see that big sister/little sister dynamic in action as they both regard their mother and her actions in different ways, memories and emotions colored differently by their age when the events happened and whether or not they were there when certain things happened. It causes strife and discord as Zadie tries to shield and protect Finn from what happened in the last six months their mother was around before she disappeared, but it’s hard to stop those protective instincts, and you can feel the weight of Zadie’s emotions regarding the matter.
Yes, I cried.
There are fabulous interludes throughout the book as Zadie and Finn travel from Texas to Washington in their endeavor to find their mom, from stargazing in Arizona to communing with trees in the Cascades. Every new supporting character that’s brought into the story contributes something significant to the story and never takes away from the plot or feels like filler material. It’s just one more stepping stone and one more mile to go.
I simply loved it. Everything about it. It was compelling from the first sentence, reeling me in immediately and it kept me captivated to the very end. It won’t disappoint you.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for granting me access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.
File Under: Coming of Age/Magical Realism/New Adult/Mystery ...more
Confession time: Even though I own the Cursebreakers Trilogy in ebook format, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (I know, I know), so I went into tConfession time: Even though I own the Cursebreakers Trilogy in ebook format, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (I know, I know), so I went into this book knowing it was a spinoff of that universe and it would help if I read that series first. I simply didn’t have time but felt confident I could probably pick up the threads pretty quickly like I did with Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology. Thankfully, I was right. It was pretty easy to pick up the threads and I’m so glad. I’d have hated to have had to wait to sit down and read Cursebreakers (I still plan on reading it! I’m just short on time right now!) before I read this book.
It’s such a good book! Easily one of the best fantasy reads I’ve come across this year. It doesn’t come quite as close to the level of enjoyment I found in reading Laura Sebastian’s “Castles in Their Bones”, but it’s not that far behind (Don’t hit me with SJM’s latest release–I have it but haven’t had the time to touch that behemoth either!). I love the LGBTQ and disabled representation up front and center. I love the found family aspect (frankly, I’m loving this wave of found family in YA fiction overall that we’ve been seeing over the past few years, which I could probably write a whole essay on).
From the start I was really digging the none-too-subtle parallels between the set-up for this book and the events of the January 6th attempted insurrection here in the US. The notion of the “Truthbringers” taking advantage of poor and rural communities and their ignorance to plant and sow seeds of mistrust and doubt in order to grow a population ready and willing to commit treason? Taking advantage of their desperation in order to gain favor and garner a twisted form of trust and obligation in order to trap them into feeling like they needed to stay quiet and do what they’re told in order to stay in your good graces? Kemmerer pulled no punches with the allegory, and I’m glad for it. It was a slick move for a plot line. It drew me into the story with little effort and helped me to identify with the characters in a way nothing else would.
I love the way Kemmerer does her narrative prose and the way her characters recall things that are said. It’s not done in the typical narrative manner and it really stands out. I also love how a lot of the symbolism in her books is double-sided and much of the morality is gray. It’s messy, but it’s true. I like my books that way.
Thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Children’s, and Bloomsbury YA for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Excuse me, but can I just sit here and swoon for a moment?
Okay, maybe more than a moment, because I adored this book. It was absolutely fabulous.
WasExcuse me, but can I just sit here and swoon for a moment?
Okay, maybe more than a moment, because I adored this book. It was absolutely fabulous.
Was it predictable? Yes. Was the worldbuilding robust or the magic system fascinating? Not really. But is this girl an absolute sucker for romantasy centered on political intrigues and secrets? Heck yes. Do I have a thing for competency in my main characters? Heck to the yes!
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance is definitely a character-driven romantasy, with a decent plot riding behind all of that lovely character development. Usually this would upset me, especially when a book is as long as this one is. I found, though, that I enjoyed every single page of this book and soaked it up like the first sunniest days after winter because of all the LGBTQ+ issues and the way Velasin (one of our MMCs) not only dealt with his own personal demons but also learned all about his new home and how he might fit in there.
Watching he and Caethari (our other MMC) first form a friendship out of something desperate and ineffable and letting it patiently evolve as the pair negotiate adventures (and misadventures), intrigues, sweet moments and sour, horrors, times of great pain, and so much more throughout the book is not only interesting but it’s moving. Their courtship is mostly one-sided, but it’s not an unwelcome one. They’re drawn together by circumstance but also by sheer chemistry.
It’s a romantic book first and a fantasy book second, but put it together and it’s just completely magical without even trying too hard. Foz Meadows wrote a fantastic story about love, family, and the dangers of reaching too far and too high.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Book Series/Fantasy/Romantasy/Fantasy Series/LGBTQ Fantasy/LGBTQ Romance/OwnVoices ...more
This book is so much more than what it says on the box (or, in the blurb, if you will). This is no run-of-the-mill historical fiction or women’s detecThis book is so much more than what it says on the box (or, in the blurb, if you will). This is no run-of-the-mill historical fiction or women’s detective mystery. This book is part lyrical prose, part ghost story, part historical fiction, part detective story, part suspense, part thriller, and a whole lot of brilliant commentary on how missing girls are treated in America.
Our narrator is a sad sack. I’m sorry, but she really is. But that’s why I like her. She is, in a way, a miserable human being. Is it her fault she’s miserable? Both yes and no. Her misery, circumstances, and the story of how she ended up where she is in the beginning of this book show her both her culpability as an unreliable narrator and give us good reason not to like her. She’s a hustler, first and foremost. Coming in second is her curse of clairvoyance, which calls into question every memory or vision she sees.
Let’s take a step away from this narrator, who was once a missing girl herself but seems to have lived several different lives since then. Are they all her? Is she all them? In the end, shouldn’t every missing girl be equal to every other missing girl? That’s the question this book is asking. Is every missing girl the same as every other missing girl, or do some missing girls count for more? And there’s a question asked more than once in the novel hitting at the heart of this question: When does a girl stop being a girl? 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 starts off strong and doesn’t let up. The stories within, both from the POV of our narrator and from the web of related and connected, are filled with suspense, ghosts both literal and figurative, a thin veil of terror, and heaps of longing and regret. For these characters there is really no future, but there is so much in each of their pasts that lead them to their end.
It’s a tragic and haunting story filled with almost a southern gothic feel at times, while still feeling like a beautiful piece of literary fiction.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
My silk pillowcase currently hates me, because I have soaked it in tears. My mom was very concerned as I came out of my room wiping fat tears off my cMy silk pillowcase currently hates me, because I have soaked it in tears. My mom was very concerned as I came out of my room wiping fat tears off my cheeks and out of my red-rimmed eyes. She asked me if I was crying because the book was too sad. I told her no, I was crying because it had just made me feel so much I couldn’t help it. Then we both basically said the same thing: “Art is supposed to make you feel things. If it doesn’t make you feel something, it’s not good art.”
This book made me feel all the feels. My pillowcase tells the tale. So do my (now) swollen eyes. For about the last 15% of this book, practically all I did was sob as this book broke my heart and then put it back together piece by piece like an exquisite jigsaw puzzle. By the time the last words had come, I was practically shaking, overcome with a kind of relief I’ve never felt for two book characters ever before in my entire life.
Part of me had thought this book was surely overhyped. There was no way it could be as good as everyone was saying, could it? It was better than I had hoped. To me, this is Generation X in a book. This is me (born in 1978) picking up an original Nintendo game controller on Christmas morning in 1986 and playing Super Mario Brothers for the very first time and knowing life would never be the same. This is parents urging you to pursue what will make you money when you want to pursue what makes your heart race. This is putting up with casual racism and misogyny all the time because no one had ever said you didn’t have to put up with it. This was making the transition from landlines to cell phones and then never actually answering your cell phone but just texting. This was the transition from PC to console and then back to PC and then multi-porting.
This book wasn’t a book about video games. This book was about a generation raised playing them. This was a book about people who were raised knowing that video games meant infinite lives to restart but not infinite health. This was a book about a pair of people who knew real life contained infinite restarts but only one heart that could be broken so easily. In video games, they could live life after life and be whoever they wanted to be, but in the real world they were stuck being who they were, and sometimes being who they were was downright unbearable. But they could go to sleep, wake up tomorrow, and hit the restart button. But games get old just like people get old, and games get boring just like people get bored. And both the world and people can seem so bleak.
I insist you read this. It’s up there as one of the best 5 books I’ve read this year (according to GR I’ve read 361 books already this year), and I can tell it’s going to be stuck in my head, floating around there, making me think the philosophical and emotional thoughts for some time after this. You won’t be disappointed.
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for granting me access to this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
I’m not usually one for military fiction (I love military non-fiction, though), but the blurb for this book caught me with its premise of a British woI’m not usually one for military fiction (I love military non-fiction, though), but the blurb for this book caught me with its premise of a British woman who is unwilling to sit by and accept her fiance had simply gone missing at the Battle of Somme (during WWI, for those who aren’t in the know) and decides to spirit herself away without telling her family to travel to France in order to keep the promise to return his body to England. At the same time, there is a concurrent and intertwined storyline about a British military captain who, along with Amy (our female protagonist), stumble upon the scene of what would be considered an egregious war crime on the part of the British Army while seeking a possible spot where Amy’s missing fiance might be found.
The blurb makes it sound like the main storyline and interest lies with Captain Mazkenzie and his endeavor to get to the bottom of what happened at Two Storm Wood, but in truth it’s Amy and her indefatigable, determined, and tenacious search for the truth about her missing fiance and what happened at Two Storm Wood that truly carry this amazing book. Stalwart with love and burdened by guilt, Amy marches through sodden battlefields, sees the worst horrors of war, endures horrible conditions among hostile and period-typical misogynistic males because she simply cannot accept the word “missing” when it comes to the man she loves.
The narrative in this book pulls no punches. We get to see the horrors of war and the aftermath both through the eyes of the soldiers and through what Amy sees in her travels: war hospitals filled the sick, the damaged, the dying, and the dead. We get detailed and well-researched sections of the book that put us readers directly in the trenches, dugouts, and battlefields as the Battle of Somme rages on. Most of all, we get to see the horrors and wreckage of war without varnish. This isn’t a pretty book, but it’s a dang good one.
Last of all? This book is indeed thrilling. It’s tense, driven, and does manage to keep surprising you. And what is war if not thrilling all on its own? WWI was horrifying, and this book won’t let you forget it.
Thanks to NetGalley and W. W. Norton for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Holy cow, wow. I just knew, when I first read the description of this book, it was going to be special. It sounded like the best kind of “Doctor Who” Holy cow, wow. I just knew, when I first read the description of this book, it was going to be special. It sounded like the best kind of “Doctor Who” episode, and it absolutely was that, but it was made even better by a heartbreaking love story, a story of found family, sociopolitical and socioeconomic commentary and barbed jabs, and slick espionage.
Let me put it to you this way: this book cost me sleep, and I love my sleep. I need my sleep. But I started this book almost right after dinner this past evening and then stayed up until almost 2:30 am reading it because I couldn’t put the thing down. I even looked at my phone for the time at about 11:00 pm and contemplated going to sleep before I just gave up and knew I wasn’t going to bed until I had finished the book.
Some books are just worth losing some sleep. This is one of those books. The ones worth a quiet evening staying up and turning pages.
The plot is clever, tight, and so dang interesting. It’s hard to make time travel digestible without plot holes a’ plenty, but the plot devices woven into the narrative account for it! That’s some clever writing and I’m not even ashamed to admit it. The main character, January, is probably one of my favorite FMCs I’ve read in a novel so far this year, and her AI sidekick, Ruby, is so freaking sassy it makes me want one. The writing is sharp, witty, and bright. The narrative is crisp and clear. The prose is beautiful. I even cried toward the end and I’m not one to tear up easily.
If you like time travel, queer love stories, time heist stories, and a whole lot of crazy, I can’t recommend this book enough.
Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review! ...more
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