SYSTEM COLLAPSE rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. This book is 7th in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. If you’ve never read any Murderbot books, this review has spoilers. If you’re up to date, I’ll try not to spoil SYSTEM COLLAPSE (Tor/Macmillan, November 14, 2023). This is the first book in the series I’ve read; […]
THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE rating: five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. The setting for THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride (Penguin Random House, August 8, 2023) is the outskirts of a Pennsylvania steel town in the 1930s—a place called Chicken Hill. It is home to a mix of Jewish, Black, and Italian households.
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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
