Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop
Anne Bishop is someone whose novels I consider highly readable and engaging but I also don’t recommend her too often for a few reasons. As I was reading this one, I was reminded of how much sexual abuse is a part of the worlds she writes. Now to be clear, the abusers always get punished and get what’s due to them but it’s a major component. There are also far more people who are decent and good, and do the right thing but violence against […]
Kentucky Bourbon by Susan Reigler
My bourbon journey started about 2.5 years ago, and to be honest if you had told me three years ago that whiskey would ever be my drink of choice, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. In college, I gravitated towards sweet cocktails, primarily rum and vodka based, like pineapple and Malibu. By my mid 30s, I had settled into gin as my preferred liquor, with gin and tonics being an easy make at home. I have always wanted to be more […]
A Resistance of Witches by Morgan Ryan
The author definitely has potential and I’d be curious to see what else she does but I’d say the novel is a solid 3 – really interesting ideas but there were plot points that could have been fleshed out more to make it stronger. Other themes and plot were very much conventional (mother-daughter conflicts, the old ways vs the new ways, and I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised by the twist) but within that, there are some very emotional and moving scenes. […]
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
There are a few different layers through which to view this book. At the top, there is the story between the knight and the scholar, two people intertwined across time, who are in a loop and keep reliving the same story, with variations, and have a strong connection and love, and whether they can ever break the cycle and get their happy ending. It is a story about storytelling – something Harrow seems to be more and more interested in with the Spindle Splintered novels […]
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
I never would have picked this on my own – it was a book club choice. On the other hand, it definitely wasn’t boring and it was short. Hungerstone was the other horror novel set in 19th century England I read in October, and I will say as bonkers as Victorian Psycho, I also preferred it because it just kept me engaged – like a train wreck(Hungerstone was just kind of boring). As much as the narrator’s actions might make you cringe, there’s also just […]
The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott
This wasn’t quite the novel I was expecting – there isn’t anything inaccurate about the novel’s description but I was expecting a fun, fast paced fantasy/adventure novel and instead got more of dense road trip novel that was so slow paced it would almost be cozy if not for the dark subject matter. Elen is a courier in a sleepy town at the edge of the empire. Elen and her recently deceased sister Aoving settled there over a decade ago, along with Aoving’s son Kem, […]
