Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

Messy, grief-filled story

The Minus-One Club by Kekla Magoon

February 20, 2023 by LB Leave a Comment

Oof, this book is messy and emotional. At it’s center The Minus-One Club is a story of grief and finding your way forward after the death of a loved one, but it is also a story of friendship and identity. Kermit just lost his sister after a drunk driver hit her car head-on, and now he has to go back to school and try getting back to “normal.” But he finds an anonymous note in his locker inviting him to a secret meeting, where other […]

What happens in Vegas might not stay in Vegas

Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai

February 20, 2023 by yesknopemaybe 3 Comments

When I picked up “Partners in Crime” by Alisha Rai, I had big expectations. I loved Rai’s Modern Love series so much and this book had big shoes to fill. Luckily, this book ended up being such a fun and wild romp. The story follows Mira Chaudhary, a mid-30s accountant who is looking for a stable man to settle down with. She turns to a matchmaker for Indian American singles and meets Naveen Desai, a lawyer at one of the best law firms in the […]

Sad, informative, and moving

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

February 15, 2023 by Sophia 1 Comment

I’m not a big reader of graphic novels, but I usually read one or two a year and appreciate the differences in storytelling. With graphic novels, I’ve always steered towards memoirs, and Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022) by Kate Beaton, is no different. I first saw Ducks on NPR’s Best Books List. I almost immediately felt a connection to Beaton. We’re not too far apart in age, and I felt her pain as she tells the story of how she struggled after she graduated from college with […]

Review #1: When I Cease to Understand This Book

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

February 14, 2023 by Monty Leave a Comment

This book was a curiosity to me – a “blend of fiction and historical fact” is how it was most often described. But how is that going to work? Truthfully, I read almost exclusively genre fiction, and sometimes feel like I’m missing out or disconnected from the real world – I picked this up wondering if it could reconnect me. The publisher of the book says that When We Cease to Understand the World “is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical […]

Magic Tides: Kate & Curran Still Going Strong

Magic Tides by Ilona Andrews

February 11, 2023 by malechai 6 Comments

Plot summary of Magic Tides: Kate, Curran and their son, Conlan have left Atlanta, vowing to keep a low profile, and are settling into a new city and new house…but some things never change! Magical mayhem is about to erupt when Kate undertakes the rescue of a kidnapped youth, while Curran guards the homefront. It should be a simple retrieval, but with monsters on land and sea, Kate’s got her work cut out for her. Still, she’s never let her blade dull or her purpose […]

Maiden, Mother, and Crone of the Corn

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

February 10, 2023 by meagmms 7 Comments

CW: Incest, rape, sexual assault, violence against women, suicide I found Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home after digging around Reddit for books similar to Ari Aster’s artful horror movie Midsommar and bought a used copy online. The jacket artwork is cool. I’ll venture back for rereads, absolutely. It’s a folk horror novel written during the production of The Wicker Man in 1972, although neither the author nor director were aware of one another at the time. Neopaganism was having a moment in the 1960s. Times and […]

Search