BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST rating: 4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. Audiobook will bump it to 5. This honest, big-hearted orc knows what’s good. Wherever Viv is planted, she blooms. BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST by Travis Baldree (Tor/Macmillan, November 7, 2023) is a prequel to LEGENDS & LATTES (Tor/Macmillan, November 8, 2022), which proved that the Tiktok kids are sometimes […]
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FINAL CHALLENGE REPORT! Books read: 16Books reviewed: 4Books DNFed: 1Books not read: 3 Additional books read not on list, June 1– September 1: 26 Total books read this summer: 42 I’m taking the 20 Books of Summer Challenge even though typically I read a lot more than 20 books during summer. I won’t post book
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THORNHEDGE rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. THORNHEDGE by T. Kingfisher will be released August 15, 2023 by Tor/Macmillan. Some things are just “me” things and this sweet novella is totally one. A heartwarming flipped fairy tale that reminded me somehow of WICKED by Gregory Maguire (HarperCollins, 1995), but I like this storyline much better: A shape-shifting
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BLUE SKIES rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. In BLUE SKIES, out today, May 16, 2023 (Liverlight/W.W. Norton), T.C. Boyle gives us the blackest satire of social media influencer culture you can imagine, set in a near-future climate dystopia. As you can tell from the cover, California is on fire. Florida has the opposite problem: it’s drowning.
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CLASS by Stephanie Land rating: 4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. To read CLASS (Atria/Simon & Schuster, November 7, 2023), and Stephanie Land‘s prior book MAID, is to re-live the second-worst period of my life, from 2001 to 2009. The worst period was my first marriage, 1990 to 2001, but poverty and the family court system have a
THE ST. AMBROSE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐. (To be released by Gallery/Simon & Schuster, July 11, 2023). This could have been any one of three great, or at any rate very good, novels: 1. a psychological thriller, which gets progressively creepier and creepier, which is how the publisher is pitching it right
IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. We’re awash in cynicism. We’re drowning in snark. You know what is missing? Goodness. Pure, unadulterated goodness. When I think of literary goodness, I think of Bishop Myriel, even though I never got all the way through LES MISERABLES, being defeated at Waterloo. And I think
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STARLING HOUSE rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. Like Alix E. Harrow‘s other heroines, orphan Opal is a savvy, strong-willed girl. She’s a Kentuckian, so she’s also willing to bend (or break) rules or face down any danger in order to fight for her kin. STARLING HOUSE (Tor/Macmillan, October 3, 2023) is a flipped fairy tale like
LUCKY RED rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. If you ask about my favorite genre, Western will likely be the last thing on the list, but some westerns I revere. LONESOME DOVE (1985). THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2011). But, feminist westerns. Hello. As with the circus, the frontier is a place where fictional women can explore identities and
THE ROAD TO ROSWELL rating: 4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. Willis’s last book was CROSSTALK, (2016), and Willis turns 78 in December, so am I ever happy about THE ROAD TO ROSWELL (Penguin Random House, June 27, 2023). She’s back, baby! Thanks to Edelweiss Plus/Above the Treeline and Penguin Random House for sending me a copy of
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