A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
I love mythology. I am the stereotypical gay boy who grew up devouring every piece of mythology I could get my hands on as a kid. So when I heard about a retelling of the Trojan War from the point of view of the women involved, I was amped! But, dear reader, I made it 40% and then decided that I could not do any more. My first DNF of the year. The structure of the book is that the muse of poetry is helping […]
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
I read Lucy Foley’s other popular book The Guest List a few years ago and I enjoyed it. Fun, fast paced, interesting story line, so I was excited for another mystery by Foley. This one, The Paris Apartment, was nowhere near as enjoyable because so much felt exactly the same: multiple points of view, some characters sharing a mysterious past, and an outsider trying to figure it all out. The Paris Apartment just felt like a rehashing of The Guest List but in Paris. Jess is […]
Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller
I loved Hotel of Secrets and now I want to go read Diana Biller’s backlist. I was anxious going in to this romance because I haven’t enjoyed a straight historical romance in forever, but it quickly won me over. I liked it so much I’ve actually preordered a signed copy from an independent bookstore. Hotel of Secrets is set in Vienna just as 1878 begins. While the jostling among empires (Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman) and the rise of national identities isn’t a focus, it does creep […]
The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan
CBR15passport – a book you own I am making my way through the Brothers Sinister series and I have really enjoyed them all so far but this one might end up being my favorite because of its heroine. Jane Fairfield is a boss. She is life goals. The theme running throughout this novel is outsiders and how they function within power structures. The historical setting for this novel (1867) revolves around the mid-19th century franchise movement in England, that is, the efforts to expand voting […]
The Embroidered Sunset by Joan Aiken
Many of us read Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase or Arabel’s Raven as children, but she also wrote a host of novels for adults. The Embroidered Sunset shares the same sensibility as her children’s books, namely, Dickensian villains with no good qualities, crazy side characters who speak in rhymes and break out in song, and a habit of wrapping up the plot in wholesale destruction (for instance, blowing up a castle in Black Hearts in Battersea, attempting to make a cannon so powerful […]
Upgrade by Blake Crouch
GENE EDITING IS A FEDERAL CRIME #GPA ONE MISTAKE CAUSED THE GREAT STARVATION #GPA #NEVERFORGET These are billboards you would pass if you lived in Denver Colorado in the far enough future that gene editing technology is much further advanced, but not so far that hashtags aren’t still a thing. The benefits to this technology include clothes made with spider silk and improvements in medicine and agriculture. But there is also a darker side, where dolls can be wrapped in human muscle and skin and […]
