Trade Me is a fun read you can feel good about. Last year I spent months rereading and contemplating Courtney Milan’s brilliant and overtly feminist The Brothers Sinister series. The series was set in Victorian England in the early days of the Industrial Revolution when women had few legal rights and the opinion of others could mean the difference between safety and disaster. Trade Me is Milan’s first contemporary romance and is no less bold. There are no overt misogynists or blatantly gender based obstacles […]
Relief Shrivels and Blows Away
The perfect time to read horror and really feel it is on a cold grey day in January. The kind of day that’s so grey that you don’t really notice when night sets in, because day was never really here. Horror has never been my genre, but the same Facebook friend who brought Ken Scholes to my attention was offering a copy of the anthology in exchange for a review and I decided to expand my horizons. It was a good decision. I’m prone to […]
A love note about my longtime companion
A little more than 10 years ago I made a huge change in my life. I quit my quasi-legal job at a large non-profit, started massage therapy school, and started working at a small bakery. Prior to working at the bakery, my baking expertise was cake. My bread baking had been a spectacular failure, but I wanted to learn. My new boss hired me, not because I could bake, but because I was an adult with a car and could be trusted to open the […]
The Whole Rebellion Thing Was Never My Bag
I knew Saga would be good. So many people told me it would be good. I still didn’t expect it to be this good. Viscerally good. I want to drop my plans for the rest of the week and re-read it and then read volumes 2 – 4. The stars on this go up to 6. In my last review, I spent a lot of time complaining about one of the female character’s costumes, and how was I supposed to take Gamora seriously as a […]
Rocket Raccoon and his Human Hangers-on
Last year before the Guardians of the Galaxy movie was released, I confessed that I had never been a comics reader and I felt overwhelmed about where to start. As usual, Pajibans were helpful and suggested I start with Guardians of the Galaxy: Legacy. I bought it, I read it and I enjoyed it. But for some reason, I was not up to writing a review. On Sunday, while I was waiting for a friend, I opened up my Kindle library and decided to […]
Book Exchange Book 1 – Loved it!
I read and loved McKinley’s The Blue Sword when I was a teen, but had no idea there was a subsequently written prequel of sorts until a 2013 Pajiba thread in defense of adults reading YA. Still one of my favorite comment threads. So many good recommendations. After I spent well over a year not getting around to picking up this book I was dying to read (because I do that), the lovely Mrs. Smith included it in my CBR Gift Exchange box o’ goodies. […]