JULIE CHAN IS DEAD rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. The grass is always greener on the richer side–or so retail worker Julie Chan supposes in the psychological thriller JULIE CHAN IS DEAD by Liann Zhang (Simon & Schuster, April 29, 2025). Identical twins Julie and Chloe were orphaned and adopted by different families and separated at […]
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JAMES rating: five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. My favorite book of 2024 so far is JAMES by Percival Everett (Doubleday/Penguin Random House, March 19, 2024), a retelling of Mark Twain‘s classic THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN from the point of view of Jim, Huckleberry Finn’s companion on that legendary raft trip down the Mississippi River. I can’t
THE DROWNING HOUSE rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. When not reading THE DROWNING HOUSE (Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, July 23, 2024), I felt myself being lured back onto the island setting, almost as if it were a waking dream. Cherie Priest has a way of creating an atmosphere that carves out permanent space in your consciousness. I
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FOUL DAYS rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. Set in Chernograd, Bulgaria, FOUL DAYS by Genoveva Dimova (Tor/Macmillan, June 25, 2024) is a fantasy novel with a sassy, rough-and-tumble urban feel (think the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo). Chernograd is split by a Wall in which an evil magical creature is trapped, making passage next
YOUTHJUICE rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐. HEBE was supposed to give me the heebie-jeebies, but the novel stole its own thunder almost immediately. A slow horror buildup would have been ideal in the gothic horror novel youthjuice by E.K. Sathue (Penguin Random House, June 4, 2024). Sophia is the new Creative Director for HEBE, a cosmetics
A WELL-TRAINED WIFE rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. A WELL-TRAINED WIFE: MY ESCAPE FROM CHRISTIAN PATRIARCHY by Tia Levings (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, August 6, 2024) is a blunt and staggering account of a woman’s marriage, motherhood, escape, and recovery within the extreme (arguably now mainstream) religious right. You can call it dominionism, you can call it
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SANDWICH rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. Don’t tug at my heartstrings, as a rule. It annoys me. I don’t like three-hanky, or even two-hanky reads. One hanky might be okay if there is also humor. SANDWICH by Catherine Newman (HarperCollins, June 18, 2024), is a dead-realistic novel about three generations of family vacationing at Cape Cod.
THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐. Turton, tighten. My reading circle will be shocked at this rating. I might have given THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Stuart Turton (Sourcebooks, May 21, 2024) four stars, if not for the horror western I read next,
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THE FOX WIFE rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. The term “immersive” gets thrown around a lot, but I rarely get truly immersed in books. Yangsze Choo‘s fantasy novel THE FOX WIFE (Henry Holt/Macmillan, February 13, 2024) had me in its grip from page one. I was there in 1908 Manchuria. The novel is as stunning as
THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS rating: 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. I’ve been waiting for-ev-er. Eons. Okay, five years. But that’s a long time to wait for Katherine Arden. The Winternight Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy trilogies, hands down. THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS by Katherine Arden (Del Rey/Penguin Random House, February 13, 2024) ends
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