Gallant by V. E. Schwab
Victoria Schwab: "One of the tricky things about my books is that they're never written for the same reader. It's a choice I made, and I stand by, but it also means that someone is invariably disappointed. They might love Shades of Magic, but Vicious doesn't work for them. They might adore Addie … [Read more]
Girlhood by Melissa Febos
I found Girlhood (2021) by Melissa Febos on NPR's Best Books List. It's a relatively short book, composed of essays discussing Febos's difficult adolescence. The description stated that Febos "questions the way girls' behaviors are controlled, and how we learn to cage and control ourselves well into … [Read more]
Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse
The tl:dr version of this review is: I could not put it down. It was so, so good. Very much a middle book, but a very entertaining middle book. Fevered Star starts with a murder. Far from the chaos in Tova, Lord Balam murders a thief so that he can walk through dreams. Serapio wakes up with a … [Read more]
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
I was in college in 2005, studying archaeology and talking to creationists in my free time. The Passion of the Christ had come out the previous year, and I was smart enough to sound like I knew something about the world, but not smart enough to just leave well enough alone. I spent a lot of time … [Read more]
Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron
Arrah is sixteen and she still has no magic. This is a huge embarrassment because her parents are both incredibly powerful witchdoctors, her mother the Ka-Priestess of the Almighty Temple. There is one thing that a desperate wannabe-witchdoctor can do to get magic: trade away years of their life in … [Read more]
Undateable by Sarah Title
A book about an angry, frumpy feminist who loves books getting a make over to stop being single? I could not wait to be mad at this book. Only I couldn't. It's adorable and funny and eschews the problems with its own premise expertly. Plot: Bernie is your standard angry feminist. She is extremely … [Read more]
