Alien Stories
Alien Stories is a resonant, haunting little collection. Every story made an impression on me, and I was so impressed with Osondu’s imaginative, precise craft.
Author: E.C. Osondu
Publisher: BOA Editionos
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Celebrated Nigerian-born writer E.C. Osondu delivers a short-story collection of nimble dexterity and startling originality in his BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning Alien Stories.
These eighteen startling stories, each centered around an encounter with the unexpected, explore what it means to be an alien. With a nod to the dual meaning of alien as both foreigner and exterrestrial, Osondu turns familiar science-fiction tropes and immigration narratives on their heads, blending one with the other to call forth a whirlwind of otherness. With wry observations about society and human nature, in shifting landscapes from Africa to America to outer space and back again, Alien Stories breaks down the concept of foreignness to reveal what unites us all as 'aliens' within a complex and interconnected universe.
TL;DR Review
Alien Stories is a resonant, haunting little collection. Every story made an impression on me, and I was so impressed with Osondu’s imaginative, precise craft.
For you if: You like to read great short stories that play with metaphor in speculative elements.
Full Review
I recently discovered the fabulous indie publisher BOA Editions (which also happens to be headquartered in Rochester, NY, which isn’t too far from my hometown). I followed them on Instagram, and one of their posts about this short story collection caught my eye. Speculative, promising weirdness, and George Saunders blurbed it? Sign me up.
The folks at BOA were kind enough to send a copy my way, and friends, it didn’t disappoint. These stories are excellent. The feeling of finding a diamond in the rough reminded me of reading Imaginary Museums by Nicolette Polek, which was published by another fab indie, Soft Skull Press. (Indie presses are SO GREAT and doing important, amazing work, and you should follow and support them, please and thank you.)
Anyway, each of these stories uses the concept of aliens to make a larger statement about racism and xenophobia. There are baby aliens, and spaceships that get mysteriously left behind, and a focus group giving their thoughts and opinions on aliens, and a grandmother who tells stories about a red planet, and so much more. Osondu gives us so many metaphors and layers and smart, imaginative applications of speculative elements.
If you like to read great short stories that play with metaphor and craft and make you think about them long after you’ve finished reading, check this one out!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Racism
Xenophobia
The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories
The Ghost Variations is a fun and smart set of 100 flash fiction ghost stories. I read a few each day in October and loved it. Brockmeier has created something really creative here.
Author: Kevin Brockmeier
Publisher: Pantheon
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Cover Description
Ghost stories tap into our most primal emotions as they encourage us to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophic, and touching, you'll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered—and met with a multitude of answers.
A spirit who is fated to spend eternity reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, ghostly trees that haunt the occupant of a wooden house, specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead: these are just a few of the characters in this extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories. Kevin Brockmeier's fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive—or, as it happens, not to be.
TL;DR Review
The Ghost Variations is a fun and imaginative set of 100 flash fiction ghost stories. I read a few each day in October and loved it. Brockmeier has created something really creative here.
For you if: You like or want to read more flash fiction!
Full Review
“In April, the U.S. secretary of philology held a press conference to announce the discovery of a twenty-seventh letter, dead for some centuries, that had been haunting the alphabet at least since the time of Cervantes.”
I received a gifted copy of this from Pantheon earlier this year, when the book was first published (thank you!) and saved it for October and ghost story season. It’s a collection of flash fiction ghost stories, and I read three or four each day throughout the month. It was such a fun reading experience, and I really really enjoyed my time with this book.
The book itself is exactly what it sounds like: 100 ghost stories, each exactly two pages long, about a whole variety of topics. The stories themselves are imaginative and thought-provoking rather than spooky, which is exactly my style. Basically, Brockmeier just said to himself, “What if X were ghosts?!?” 100 times. (What if the world ran out of songs and the radio static was ghost music? What if there were a dead, ghost letter of the alphabet? What if someone grew older in both directions forever? What if someone who was not actually a ghost snuck into the afterworld?) Then he uses that premise, that constraint, to look more closely at what makes us human — which is where the book’s magic really lies.
I found this collection to be delightful and funny, moving and thought-provoking, and just very creative and smart overall. I definitely recommend picking it up, but definitely spreading it across a longer period of time rather than reading it cover to cover in one go. If you were to rush through it, I don’t think you’d be able to get the full effect.
Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)
I was lukewarm on Gideon the Ninth, and unfortunately I wasn’t a huge fan of Harrow either. The ending was good — but you spend the whole book not just curious, but deeply lost and confused. I didn’t find it much fun.
Author: Tamsyn Muir
Publisher: Tor.com
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
***Description is spoiler for Gideon the Ninth***
She answered the Emperor's call.
She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.
In victory, her world has turned to ash.
After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath — but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.
Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
TL;DR Review
I was lukewarm on Gideon the Ninth, and unfortunately I wasn’t a huge fan of Harrow either. The ending was good — but you spend the whole book not just curious, but deeply lost and confused. I didn’t find it much fun.
For you if: You deeply loved Gideon the Ninth and count yourself a part of the super fanclub.
Full Review
Gideon the Ninth and Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series has a huge cult following. (With a premise like “goth lesbian necromancers in space,” how could it not??) I read Gideon last year and was lukewarm on it — I thought it was fun, but a bit overwhelming in its worldbuilding and sloppy in its convenient plot choices. Still, I didn’t hate it, and Harrow is nominated for the Hugo, so I figured I’d keep going.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really enjoy Harrow all that much. The overwhelming worldbuilding problem got even worse. I found the whole book to be completely disorienting and confusing — not like a puzzle or a treasure hunt, but like being dropped in the middle of the forest and left alone to find the way out. The ending was exciting and better and did answer questions — and it did go partway to redeeming it from being a complete flop in my mind — but I’m still not 100% sure that I know what happened in most of the book.
On the one hand, I can understand why it is this way. The main character is wading through and emerging out of major trauma, and no doubt this is a picture of what that can look like. But as a reader, it really just wasn’t fun. It sometimes got to the point where I just stopped trying to follow along and hoped I would catch up later.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep going with the series. I do really love these characters; there’s no denying that the characters is where Muir shines. And I do want to know what happens. But I think it will depend on how the next one is received and whether it keeps getting nominated for awards.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Grief and death
Body horror
Trauma recovery
Hell of a Book
Hell of a Book is a really creative, really affecting novel that’s as funny as it is devastating. One heck of a ride, it will surprise you and move you.
Author: Jason Mott
Publisher: Dutton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
An astounding work of fiction from a New York Times bestselling author, both incredibly funny and honest, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole
In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Jason Mott's novel and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: since his novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
Throughout, these characters' stories build and build and as they converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art, and money, there always is the tragic story of a police shooting playing over and over on the news.
Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably powerful, an electrifying high-wire act, ideal for book clubs, and the book Mott says he has been writing in his head for ten years, Hell of a Book in its final twists truly becomes its title.
TL;DR Review
Hell of a Book is a really creative, really affecting novel that’s as funny as it is devastating. One heck of a ride, it will surprise you and move you.
For you if: You like novels that play with form in a creative way while also remaining ultra-readable.
Full Review
“Every child like you in this country has been swallowed up by the monster since before they were even born. And every Black parent in the history of this country has tried to stop that monster from swallowing them up and has failed at it. And every day they live with that.”
Wow, OK. Where to even start with this one? Hell of a Book wasn’t really on my radar until it was longlisted (now shortlisted) for the National Book Award, but I’m glad it found its way onto my TBR in the end. This one is super creative, super smart, and both funny and devastating. And it’s definitely one heck of a ride.
The main character is an unnamed Black man on tour for his debut, bestselling novel called Hell of a Book. What’s it about? Hell if he knows. But it’s great; everyone says so. He’s living recklessly and wildly; anyway, his “condition” makes him never quite sure what’s real or what’s not. Including the young Black boy who claims he’s real, just invisible to others at will. The novel also bounces back and forth to show The Kid’s past, just as our narrator’s background comes into sharper focus.
It’s been a long time since I read a novel as creative or smart as this one. The beginning is comic, voicey, almost bouncy. You’re curious, amused. But the way it all comes together? Mott has used this creativity to shed light on a really heavy topic — Blackness, police violence, racial and generational trauma — and tell a devastating story is incredible. It’s a slow boil; you won’t know what hit you until you’re walloped on the floor. It’s wild to call this book fun, but it was; and yet it was also heartwrenching, wise, and effective.
Also, I highly recommend the audiobook for this one; the voice actor did an incredible job and it added a lot to my reading experience. If you’re up for a unique (but still very readable) form and voice, pick this one up.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Alcoholism
Racism
Police shooting/gun violence
Child death, parent death
Bullying
Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)
Network Effect was my favorite Murderbot story so far. I think the full-novel length gives it space to appeal to those who don’t always gravitate toward hard sci-fi.
Author: Martha Wells
Publisher: Tor.com
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.
You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.
—
I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.
When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.
Drastic action it is, then.
TL;DR Review
Network Effect was my favorite Murderbot story so far. I think the full-novel length gives it space to appeal to those who don’t always gravitate toward hard sci-fi.
For you if: You are a Murderbot fan!
Full Review
Network Effect is the fifth story in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, but the first full-length novel. It’s nominated for this year’s Hugo Award, which is what put the series on my radar in the first place.
As the dust jacket says: “Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.” Murderbot is a SecUnit, short for security unit (so like, a badass fighter sentient robot) who hacked the part of its code that forces it to obey commands. That gives it the freedom to start really developing into a person of its own in all the ways that count (and watch as many soap operas as it can). Most of the characters in Network Effect are from the novellas, so you’ll definitely want to read those before you read this one. But if you liked the novellas (no spoilers, but especially the second one), you’ll like this one!
In fact, I liked the first four novellas, but I’m happy to say that this was my favorite Murderbot story so far. As someone who doesn’t read much hard sci-fi, the focus on how all the tech works was sometimes too heavy for me in the novellas. But this full-novel length gives Network Effect more space for narrative elements I do tend to like — development of secondary characters, a layered mystery, subplots. I hope she’ll write more Murderbot novels in the future!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Violence/gun violence
Death and grief
Medical/body horror
A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables, #1)
A Spindle Splintered is a really fun, really creative quick read. It’s not quite a retelling, but people who love retellings will love this. I’m excited to read more of these Fractured Fables!
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Publisher: Tor.com
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.
Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
TL;DR Review
A Spindle Splintered is a really fun, really creative quick read. It’s not quite a retelling, but people who love retellings will love this. I’m excited to read more of these Fractured Fables!
For you if: You like fairy tales, queer fantasy, and/or retellings!
Full Review
After really liking The Ten Thousand Doors of January and LOVING The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow has become an auto-read author for me. I love her creativity and storyteller voice. So of course I preordered A Spindle Splintered, the first novella in her new Fractured Fables series. And it did NOT disappoint!
This isn’t really a Sleeping Beauty retelling, as you might expect; it’s more of a new story about the Sleeping Beauty story. The main character is a 21-year-old terminally ill girl named Zinnia who’s been obsessed with Sleeping Beauty her whole life. At the birthday party her best friend threw her, something ~unexpected~ happens, and she finds herself quite literally in the story itself — but it’s not exactly what she’d have imagined.
This book was just really fun, and I read all 125 pages in one sitting. Such a fun adventure, a quick dip into another world. Part of the joy in reading it lies in how aware of itself the story is (I laughed when she was like “wait, how do I still have cell phone service?? ahh well whatever I guess”), which keeps it from feeling cheesy and tips it over to creative and smart. Harrow has given us a new fable about hope and choice and forging our own path.
I can’t wait to read more of these novellas!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Terminal illness
Rape (mentioned, not shown)
Intimacies
Intimacies is a sharp, taut novel that was very different from what I expected based on the synopsis. It’s much more about tension, power, and character than events or plot.
Author: Katie Kitamura
Publisher: Riverhead
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A novel from the author of A Separation, a taut and electrifying story about a woman caught between many truths.
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.
She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into explosive political fires: her work interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes becomes precarious as their relationship is unbound by shifting language and meaning.
This woman is the voice in the ear of many, but what command does that give her, and how vulnerable does that leave her? Her coolly impassioned views on power, love, and violence, are tested, both in her personal intimacies and in her role at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her; it is her drive towards truth, and love, that throws into stark relief what she wants from her life.
TL;DR Review
Intimacies is a sharp, taut novel that was very different from what I expected based on the synopsis. It’s much more about tension, power, and character than events or plot.
For you if: You like books that examine character, but without much plot or resolution.
Full Review
I read Intimacies because it was longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award. It was my first book by Katie Kitamura and very different from what I’d expected.
The story is about a woman who’s moved to The Hague to take a temp job as a court interpreter with the UN’s International Court. She’s lacking a sense of home and looking to put down roots somewhere. Throughout the book’s ~200 pages, we see her interpreting for a political criminal, grappling with a teetering new relationship, and navigating new and old friendships.
The synopsis on the book’s cover makes it feel like it’s going to be twisty and full of drama, but it’s not. The book is more about tension and power dynamics than anything that actually happens. In fact, this is true to the point that I found it frustrating. Doors were opened and never closed. Weird things happened for no reason. I waited hopelessly for patterns to be explained. From what I’ve heard, this isn’t unusual for Kitamura. I think if I’d known that, I would have enjoyed the book more. But as it happened, I felt a little misled and unmoored.
Still, the strength of Kitamura’s prose and examination of power and character can’t be denied. I think I’ll plan to reread it, now knowing what to expect.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Allusions to genocide, sexual violence, violence
Infidelity
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Scribner
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.
Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.
TL;DR Review
Cloud Cuckoo Land was a fun-to-read, moving book, but it was definitely not perfect. I liked it, but certain aspects left me a little uncomfortable.
For you if: Like stories with multiple timelines, and/or literary fiction with more emphasis on plot.
Full Review
Cloud Cuckoo Land was one of the most highly anticipated books of the fall, if not the year, and it’s a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award. I really enjoyed reading it, but when I finished, I couldn’t quite bring myself to say I loved it.
First, the good: The plot — three distinct timelines tied together by a single story, emphasizing the timelessness of our stories and the importance of unearthing, preserving, and enhancing them — was a lot of fun to read. Parts of the present-day timeline read nearly like a thriller, which definitely makes the book a page turner. You’ll fly through its nearly 600 pages. It was also emotional and, in places, deeply empathetic.
Then the not-so-good: First, for a book with central themes *about* climate change, its environmentalism felt surface-level at best, a cheap grab for a plot device at worst. It didn’t really say anything new or present any useful ideas about our current reality or where we go from here.
And second — and this is where I’m sort of conflicted — one of the main characters is neurodivergent (possibly ASD, at least sensory processing disorder), but his character arc is uncomfortable. He’s manipulated into radical ecoterrorism. On the one hand, I actually thought from an individual character perspective, it was well done. Your heart really breaks for Seymour at every turn, and it’s easy to see exactly how and why this happened to him. But on the other hand, we still live in a world where neurodivergent representation isn’t mainstream enough to be able to show someone easily manipulated into violence without the danger of feeding problematic stereotypes. I think ultimately I’m less than comfortable with the choice, but I also really did love Seymour. It’s just hard to expect the world to read him as an individual instead of as part of a larger narrative about neurodivergence, violence, and the world we live in.
Ultimately, I’m glad I read it, and like I said, it was a really fun, entertaining read. But it’s far from perfect.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Ableism
Animal death
Confinement
War violence and PTSD
The Book of Magic (Practical Magic, #2)
The Book of Magic is a really great conclusion to the Practical Magic series. I think fans of the Owens family are going to love it.
Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Master storyteller Alice Hoffman brings us the conclusion of the Practical Magic series in a spellbinding and enchanting final Owens novel brimming with lyric beauty and vivid characters.
The Owens family has been cursed in matters of love for over three-hundred years but all of that is about to change. The novel begins in a library, the best place for a story to be conjured, when beloved aunt Jet Owens hears the deathwatch beetle and knows she has only seven days to live. Jet is not the only one in danger—the curse is already at work.
A frantic attempt to save a young man’s life spurs three generations of the Owens women, and one long-lost brother, to use their unusual gifts to break the curse as they travel from Paris to London to the English countryside where their ancestor Maria Owens first practiced the Unnamed Art. The younger generation discovers secrets that have been hidden from them in matters of both magic and love by Sally, their fiercely protective mother. As Kylie Owens uncovers the truth about who she is and what her own dark powers are, her aunt Franny comes to understand that she is ready to sacrifice everything for her family, and Sally Owens realizes that she is willing to give up everything for love.
The Book of Magic is a breathtaking conclusion that celebrates mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, and anyone who has ever been in love.
TL;DR Review
The Book of Magic is a really great conclusion to the Practical Magic series. I think fans of the Owens family are going to love it.
For you if: You like Practical Magic, and/or witchy books about sisterhood and true love.
Full Review
“Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library.”
The Book of Magic is the fourth and final novel in the Practical Magic series, perfect for October. It’s witchy and moving, about sisterhood and family and desire and (as always) true love. I think fans of the Practical Magic series are going to be really happy with this one!
The Book of Magic takes place after Practical Magic, giving us the conclusion of Sally and Gillian’s story, but also Aunt Jet and Aunt Fran’s. You don't have to have read all the books in the series before picking this up — I started my PM journey with Magic Lessons, which was the third one released, and THEN I saw the Practical Magic movie, and now I've read this one. That said, I could tell that there was a lot from The Rules of Magic, Jet and Fran’s story, that I would have appreciated more deeply if I'd read that one. Still, I never felt lost — she gives great backstory.
I also listened along with the audiobook as I read, and it was really well narrated, as I fully expected!
Read this if you love books about witches and sisterhood and true love and whimsy and magic.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death and grief
Pregnancy
Infertility
Kidnapping
Bewilderment
Bewilderment is a gorgeously written, heartbreaking, highly consumable novel. I didn’t think it was perfect, but I definitely did enjoy it.
Author: Richard Powers
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain....
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
TL;DR Review
Bewilderment is a gorgeously written, heartbreaking, highly consumable novel. I didn’t think it was perfect, but I definitely did enjoy it.
For you if: You like sentimental literary fiction, themes about climate change
Full Review
Bewilderment was one of the most anticipated books of 2021, and it has been both shortlisted for the Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. I haven’t read The Overstory (yet), so this was my first Powers, but I’m here now! I didn’t think this book was perfect but I definitely enjoyed it a lot.
The story is set in an eerie (I might say slightly dystopian) near-future United States. It’s about a man named Theo and his son, Robin, who does not have a diagnosis but is certainly neurodivergent. Theo’s wife recently died, and he’s doing his best to juggle his work in astrobiology and single parenthood. Eventually he agrees to allow Robin to try a new type of cognitive therapy that involves him learning the emotional patterns of his optimistic mother’s mapped mind. Robin also becomes increasingly obsessed with environmental activism.
So, first things first: This book is absolutely beautifully written, heartbreaking, with gorgeous prose. It’s very sentimental. Its vignettes/short chapters propelled me to inhale it in a single evening, one night when I just needed to shut out my own world and get lost in a story.
One thing that left me a bit unsettled, though, was Theo’s attitude toward seeking treatment for Robin, which I found surprising given the heavy focus on science, environmentalism, and biology. We’re obviously biased, given that it’s written in Theo’s first person (yes, of course Robin is just misunderstood!!), and I understand proceeding with caution when it comes to medication and kids, but when your child’s school is threatening to call CPS because he’s struggling so much and you refuse to get him diagnosed (“No doctor can diagnose my son as well as I can”) — AND the fact that Robin completely despaired of his return to his “former self” when the experimental treatment had to pause? I’m just not sure. It felt strange and a little preachy for the book to take such a tough stance that way in light of all the other themes.
One other thing: There is a reference toward the beginning of the book that I know told a lot of readers exactly how the story was going to end. I didn’t know the work being referenced, myself. But I’ve heard competing thoughts on whether that soft spoiling was additive or detrimental to others’ experiences.
Ultimately, though, I really enjoyed this one. I know a lot of people were surprised it didn’t get shortlisted for the National Book Award, but that feels okay for me. It was shortlisted for the Booker, which I think tracks better anyway.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death of a parent
Grief
Child death
The Souvenir Museum
The Souvenir Museum is a collection of solid stories. Unfortunately, not many of them grabbed me, but I did like the fact that many of the stories were linked.
Author: Elizabeth McCracken
Publisher: Ecco
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date
In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear.
With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken traces how our closely held desires—for intimacy, atonement, comfort—bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time. Her characters embark on journeys that leave them indelibly changed—and so do her readers. The Souvenir Museum showcases the talents of one of our finest contemporary writers as she tenderly takes the pulse of our collective and individual lives.
TL;DR Review
The Souvenir Museum is a collection of solid stories. Unfortunately, not many of them grabbed me, but I did like the fact that many of the stories were linked.
For you if: You like linked short stories.
Full Review
I read The Souvenir Museum because it was longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award. I love that they always have some short story collections on the list, and I was excited to read this one.
I ended up with mixed feelings. On the one hand, each story is well written, and they deal with solid, relatable themes, like love and the absurdity of life. The characters were well developed. Many of the stories are also connected to one another, which I always think is fun and creative. But on the other hand, not many of them really grabbed me. I was sort of meh on the collection overall. Maybe I was just not in the right headspace, but I’m not surprised that it didn’t make the shortlist. Regardless, though, I’m always grateful for the chance to read well-plotted short stories, so I’m glad I read it.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Suicide (minor)
Gallant
Author: Victoria Schwab
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source.
Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home—to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home, it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.
Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant—but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now Olivia sees what has unraveled generations of her family, and where her father may have come from.
Olivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him?
New York Times bestselling author Victoria Schwab crafts a vivid and lush novel that grapples with the demons that are often locked behind closed doors. An eerie, standalone saga about life, death, and the young woman beckoned by both. Readers of Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Melissa Albert, and Garth Nix will quickly lose themselves in this novel with crossover appeal for all ages.
TL;DR Review
Gallant is relatively straightforward, but beautiful and also unexpected in delightful ways. Victoria Schwab will sweep you up into dark YA fairytale land with her storyteller voice.
For you if: You like fairytale vibes, but with a twist.
Full Review
“Rain drums it fingers on the garden shed.”
OK, so Gallant doesn’t come out until March, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on an early review copy thanks to a truly wonderful bookseller friend. It’s a standalone, early-YA novel billed as The Secret Garden meets Crimson Peak (!). If you’re into dark (but not too dark) fairytales written in an atmospheric storyteller voice, this is the one. for. you. I enjoyed every minute.
The main character, Olivia, grew up in a school for girls, sort of like an orphanage. It’s gray and miserable, and she’s bullied and outcast (for reasons I loved discovering on my own so won’t name here). All she has is her mother’s last journal, which starts fine but descends into seeming madness. Until one day the school gets a letter from her long-lost uncle, and she’s brought to Gallant, the family estate. Enter: ghouls and curses and doors in mysterious walls. Olivia just wants is to belong; to finally have a family and a home.
The story is relatively simple and straightforward, but it was also beautiful, sad, curious, lovely, and very atmospheric. I think people of all ages will love this one, especially if you’re a fan of magical books that sweep you up into what can only be described as a *story.* And while the plot isn’t very complex, it definitely surprised me several times, which was both delightful and contemplative.
I also think that Olivia is one of the most impressive characters I’ve ever read, for that secret reason I alluded to above. Writing her must have been such a unique challenge, but if anyone could do it, it was our girl Victoria. And she nailed it.
Preorder this one!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Ableism
Death of a parent, grief
Bullying
Suicide (brief)
Matrix
Matrix is a feast of language with a premise you can’t help but love. It’s really different from Groff’s other work, and it’s not my favorite, but I liked and appreciated it a lot.
Author: Lauren Groff
Publisher: Reiverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.
At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough?
Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.
TL;DR Review
Matrix is a feast of language with a premise you can’t help but love. It’s really different from Groff’s other work, and it’s not my favorite, but I liked and appreciated it a lot.
For you if: You liked both Wolf Hall and Hamnet.
Full Review
“It is because this prayer is enclosed within the chapel, she sees, not despite the enclosure, that it becomes potent enough to be heard. Perhaps the song of a bird in a chamber is more precious than the wild bird’s because the chamber itself makes it so. Perhaps the free air that gives the wild bird its better song in fact limits the reach of its prayer. So small, this understanding. So remarkably tiny. Still, it might be enough to live for.”
As the latest from Lauren Groff and her first novel since Fates and Furies, Matrix is one of the most anticipated books of the fall and longlisted for the National Book Award. I liked it a lot and admired it even more.
The novel’s main character is Marie de France, a real-life poet from the 12th century about whom virtually nothing is actually known. Groff takes a few of modern-day historians’ hints and theories and reimagines Marie as a smart, fierce, protective, headstrong lesbian who becomes a prioress at an abbey and builds a massive, self-sufficient community of exclusively women out of nothing. The book takes us from her early days at the abbey through her death in old age, with all her writings, divine visions, and ferocity in between.
What stands out most for Matrix are the words themselves. The prose flows and sings and is really, truly beautiful. In that way, it reminded me of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. That’s what I loved most. The story, however, is more like that of Wolf Hall; a series of “and then, and then, and then” events strung together, with the focus more on the arc of the main character’s life than with any central conflict or plot. That may not be for everyone; I struggled a bit with the story in the middle, personally, but that gorgeous prose never lost me.
Either way, I can’t help but appreciate the feat of this novel and what Groff built out of virtually nothing. I would be absolutely shocked if this doesn’t get nominated for the Women’s Prize next year; it’s just their type.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Death and grief
Zorrie
Zorrie is a quiet but emotional novel. It’s short, and yet contains a woman’s whole life — with deep characterization. I read it in one day and enjoyed it very much.
Author: Laird Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
From prize-winning, acclaimed author Laird Hunt, a poignant novel about a woman searching for her place in the world and finding it in the daily rhythms of life in rural Indiana.
“It was Indiana, it was the dirt she had bloomed up out of, it was who she was, what she felt, how she thought, what she knew.”
As a girl, Zorrie Underwood’s modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a radium processing plant. At the end of each day, the girls at her factory glowed from the radioactive material.
But when Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finally finds the love and community that have eluded her in and around the small town of Hillisburg. And yet, even as she tries to build a new life, Zorrie discovers that her trials have only begun.
Spanning an entire lifetime, a life convulsed and transformed by the events of the 20th century, Laird Hunt’s extraordinary novel offers a profound and intimate portrait of the dreams that propel one tenacious woman onward and the losses that she cannot outrun. Set against a harsh, gorgeous, quintessentially American landscape, this is a deeply empathetic and poetic novel that belongs on a shelf with the classics of Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout.
TL;DR Review
Zorrie is a quiet but emotional novel. It’s short, and yet contains a woman’s whole life — with deep characterization. I read it in one day and enjoyed it very much.
For you if: You like character-driven historical fiction.
Full Review
“Grief seemed to constitute a kind of connective membrane, not a divide, and the ‘fragile film of the present’ felt strengthened, not threatened, by the past. Tears, it struck her—even ones that spilled out of your mouth or off a table—formed a fretwork the wingless could learn to walk over, if there had been enough of them and you tried.”
Zorrie landed on my radar because it was longlisted for the National Book Award. This was my first Laird Hunt novel, and I really liked it! The prose is truly beautiful, and it made me feel so many emotions.
The book is less than 200 pages long, but it covers Zorrie’s entire life — from looking for work as a young woman during the Depression, to her short stint in a radium plant, to her years as a farmer. It covers much of the 20th century in America. And yet I don’t feel like it was rushed — the blurbs compare this one to Elizabeth Strout, and I think this economy of language and impressively efficient characterization are exactly why. It’s also been compared to Marilynne Robinson, which I can also understand. It’s the same kind of soft but powerful language — and of course, it’s historical fiction set in the midwest.
I read this book in one day, and I think it could be enjoyed that way or savored. It’s melancholy, but somehow also like warm sunshine on amber fields of grain. It’s about family and loneliness and purpose and grief and America. It probably won’t be for everyone, but if you like quiet, character-driven historical fiction, pick this one up.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Miscarriage
Death and grief
Abundance
Abundance is a book that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to — humbling and frustrating, it’s an empathetic look inside the trap of poverty in America today. I think you should read it.
Author: Jakob Guanzon
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A wrenching debut about the causes and effects of poverty, as seen by a father and son living in a pickup
Evicted from their trailer on New Year’s Eve, Henry and his son, Junior, have been reduced to living out of a pickup truck. Six months later, things are even more desperate. Henry, barely a year out of prison for pushing opioids, is down to his last pocketful of dollars, and little remains between him and the street. But hope is on the horizon: Today is Junior’s birthday, and Henry has a job interview tomorrow.
To celebrate, Henry treats Junior to dinner at McDonald’s, followed by a night in a real bed at a discount motel. For a moment, as Junior watches TV and Henry practices for his interview in the bathtub, all seems well. But after Henry has a disastrous altercation in the parking lot and Junior succumbs to a fever, father and son are sent into the night, struggling to hold things together and make it through tomorrow.
In an ingenious structural approach, Jakob Guanzon organizes Abundance by the amount of cash in Henry’s pocket. A new chapter starts with each debit and credit, and the novel expands and contracts, revealing the extent to which the quality of our attention is altered by the abundance—or lack thereof—that surrounds us. Set in an America of big-box stores and fast food, this incandescent debut novel trawls the fluorescent aisles of Walmart and the booths of Red Lobster to reveal the inequities and anxieties around work, debt, addiction, incarceration, and health care in America today.
TL;DR Review
Abundance is a book that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to — humbling and frustrating, it’s an empathetic look inside the trap of poverty in America today. I think you should read it.
For you if: You are willing to be uncomfortable in order to have your eyes opened a little wider.
Full Review
I read Abundance after it was longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. I probably wouldn’t have heard of it or picked it up otherwise, but I’m glad I did. I’m also glad it’s being recognized, particularly by the NBA, because Jakob Guanzon has written a humbling, frustrating, deeply modern American novel.
The book is about a man named Henry, a formerly incarcerated single dad who is currently living out of his pickup truck with his young son. It starts on his son’s birthday, which he celebrates with a carefully budgeted trip to McDonald’s and a stay in a motel with a real bed and bathtub. Things are looking up because Henry has a job interview the next day. But then his son springs a fever and starts to worsen, and Henry has to desperately grasp for control, optimism — and enough money to eat, get to his interview, and help his son. Throughout the book, we also jump backward in time to learn about Henry’s adolescence, start to his family, struggle with drugs, incarceration, and eventual homelessness.
Henry is a wildly imperfect protagonist (which is its own important narrative choice), but you can’t help but root for him. Even though he’s often made bad choices, he’s deeply human and trying so hard to do right by his son, build something, and just get through the day. And so this novel does exactly what it sets out to do — reading it is a frustrating, humbling experience. You have the sense that if Henry could only catch one single break, he’d be able to get a handle on things and be okay. And you remember this is the lived reality for so many people stuck in the cycle of poverty in the US, and you remember that so many of them never do catch a break, and they live in this state of constant stress every day; it doesn’t get to end after 250 pages that cover two days.
And then there’s the brilliant structural choice to organize the books into chapters named for the amount of money Henry has in his pocket at any given moment, underscoring that number’s tenuous, constant presence at the front of his mind — how critical it is to his existence, how he is never allowed to forget it.
If you have a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator and the ability to buy your children Advil when they are sick, this book will force you to remember and sit with that privilege.
I will be thinking about the end of this one for a really, really long time.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Drug use and addiction
Bulimia
Domestic violence
Pregnancy and childbirth
China Room
Author: Sunjeev Sahota
Publisher: Viking
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A transfixing novel about two unforgettable characters seeking to free themselves—one from the expectations of women in early 20th century Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora.
Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her now-sisters spend their days hard at work in the family's "china room," sequestered from contact with the men—except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and strong willed, Mehar tries to piece together what Mai doesn't want her to know. From beneath her veil, she studies the sounds of the men's voices, the calluses on their fingers as she serves them tea. Soon she glimpses something that seems to confirm which of the brothers is her husband, and a series of events is set in motion that will put more than one life at risk. As the early stirrings of the Indian independence movement rise around her, Mehar must weigh her own desires against the reality—and danger—of her situation.
Spiraling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who arrives at his uncle's house in Punjab in the summer of 1999, hoping to shake an addiction that has held him in its grip for more than two years. Growing up in small-town England as the son of an immigrant shopkeeper, his experiences of racism, violence, and estrangement from the culture of his birth led him to seek a dangerous form of escape. As he rides out his withdrawal at his family's ancestral home—an abandoned farmstead, its china room mysteriously locked and barred--he begins to knit himself back together, gathering strength for the journey home.
Partly inspired by award-winning author Sunjeev Sahota's family history, China Room is at once a deft exploration of how systems of power circumscribe individual lives and a deeply moving portrait of the unconquerable human capacity to resist them. At once sweeping and intimate, lush and propulsive, it is a stunning achievement from a contemporary master.
TL;DR Review
I liked China Room a lot. Short, and with one plotline that’s more plot-driven and one that’s more character-driven, I was pleasantly surprised at how fast-paced and engaging it was.
For you if: You want to read more books with Punjabi representation.
Full Review
China Room landed on my radar because it was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. It’s only 250 pages long, and I ended up easily reading it in one day; the super-short chapters combined with the fast pace (at least for a ~Booker book~) really had me turning the pages.
The story takes place in two timelines with two characters: The first, Mehar, lives in Punjab in the 1920s. She is married off to one of three brothers in a triple wedding, but she and her fellow brides are kept in the dark (literally) about which of the brothers are their husbands. When she seems to have figured it out, she can’t help but careen herself down a very risky path. The other timeline, which takes place today, is about Mehar’s unnamed great-grandson, who travels to Punjab to recover from addiction. Staying in the same house where she lived, he faces down his own kind of personal and generational trauma.
While I was reading, I found myself most engaged in Mehar’s story, although that’s mostly because her chapters were fast-paced and driven heavily by plot. The story of our unnamed modern main character, on the other hand, is much more introspective and character-driven. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that had both of those styles alongside one another like that, and it was really interesting.
At book club, a lot of us talked about wanting more out of either or both of the storylines, at the same time realizing that Sahota’s restraint was likely purposeful, even if the reason why wasn’t immediately clear. I can agree here; there were definitely connections and events I’d been rooting for (love when a book makes you root for things!), and yet I also think what we were ultimately given did quite a bit of work.
Pick this one up if you’re a sucker for a love story and/or interested in reading more historical fiction set in India.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Confinement
Withdrawal from drug addiction
Racism/xenophobia
The Actual Star
Oh my gosh, I loved The Acutal Star so much. It’s so creative and smart and well-written. Every chapter was a puzzle. This is one to savor and enjoy!
Author: Monica Byrne
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas meets Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series, as acclaimed author Monica Byrne (The Girl in the Road) spins a brilliant multigenerational saga spanning two thousand years, from the collapse of the ancient Maya to a far-future utopia on the brink of civil war.
The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents — collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle.
An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.
In each era, age-old questions about existence and belonging and identity converge deep underground. Because only in complete darkness can one truly see the stars.
TL;DR Review
Oh my gosh, I loved The Actual Star so much. It’s so creative and smart and well-written. Every chapter was a puzzle. This is one to savor and enjoy!
For you if: You like books with multiple timelines that have intersecting plotlines.
Full Review
“The Cortada The cave began as nothing more than a softness. As the water pooled, the softness became a depression, the depression a cut, the cut a passage, the passage a cavern, and the cavern a world. In the time of the Maya, that world was the realm of the gods. In the time of Saint Leah, that world was a tourist attraction. In our time, I propose, that world may be most rightly understood as a theatre of the soul.”
Hi there. I’d like to introduce you to the next book I’ll be recommending to anyone who will listen: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne. It’s creative and smart, with intricate (but not overwhelming) world-building. It’s a standalone soft sci-fi novel, perfect for people who love to read fantasy too.
The story takes place in three timelines: the year 1012, focusing on the ruling siblings of the final great Maya empire; 2012, with a girl named Leah who travels to Belize in search of Xibalba, transcendence; and 3012, focusing on two members of the nomadic society that now worships Leah and evolved out of climate change, each urging a certain direction for the world’s next age.
This is a book that’s easy to read quickly but rewards you for reading slowly and paying close attention; I read it over the course of nearly three weeks (a very long time for me) and loved every minute. Each chapter is a puzzle, a treasure hunt. The three timelines and plots intersect early and often, and we as readers delight in every moment of overlap. You sense that you’re spiraling toward an epic conclusion, and Byrne absolutely delivers.
All three timelines are also carefully considered; Byrne carefully researched Maya history and traditions, and that part of the story is rich. I also appreciated the way she presented languages from Spanish to Kriol without direct translation, but in a way that allowed you to follow along. And I was fascinated by the future she imagined: one in which biological sex does not exist, pronouns are universal, and people’s identities (gender, sexuality, etc) are self-chosen and -communicated.
ANYWAY, I loved this book a whole heck of a lot and you should read it!!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Self-harm
Incest
Sexual content
Graphic violence
Olive Kitteridge
I’m late to the game with both Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge, but I’m so glad I finally arrived! What beautifully rendered characters. I loved it.
Author: Elizabeth Strout
Publisher: Random House
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
TL;DR Review
I’m late to the game with both Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge, but I’m so glad I finally arrived! What beautifully rendered characters. I loved it.
For you if: You like linked short stories.
Full Review
“Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.”
I’d been meaning to read Olive Kitteridge for a good long time, because I love linked short stories and of course it’s a modern classic. Finally, my friend Bernie forced it to the top of my TBR, and I’m so glad! This book is full of really beautifully rendered characters, tender moments, hope and heartbreak.
The stories could almost be chapters, as they move more or less linearly in time and give us a progressive amount of information about Olive (a strong-willed, brusque, no-holds-barred kind of woman) and her life. But they’re not quite chapters, because they hop and bop between main characters; they’re not all about Olive herself.
Elizabeth Strout’s magic is in creating her characters very quickly and efficiently; the dialogue, details — everything — come together into sharp, lifelike relief and BOOM there goes your poor little heart, fallen for another one of them. Olive isn’t really even a nice person, and you still love her, quickly and fiercely.
Strangely as I read, this book reminded me of The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo. They don’t have a ton in common at first glance — linked stories vs a 500-page family saga — but they both look closely (and heartbreakingly) at what happens to marriage in old age and navigating tricky adult child/parent relationships. (Also the patriarch is named Henry in both books, lol.)
Content and Trigger Warnings
Suicidal thoughts
Anorexia
Death and grief
Toxic relationship
The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves, #1)
The Silvered Serpents is a fun book two in the Gilded Wolves trilogy. It’s a formulaic YA fantasy plot, but in a way that’s entertaining and could make a great comfort read.
Author: Roshani Chokshi
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Returning to the dark and glamorous 19th century world of her New York Times instant bestseller, The Gilded Wolves, Roshani Chokshi dazzles us with another riveting tale as full of mystery and danger as ever in The Silvered Serpents.
They are each other’s fiercest love, greatest danger, and only hope.
Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost — one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long lost artifact rumored to grant its possessor the power of God.
Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all.
As hidden secrets come to the light and the ghosts of the past catch up to them, the crew will discover new dimensions of themselves. But what they find out may lead them down paths they never imagined.
A tale of love and betrayal as the crew risks their lives for one last job.
TL;DR Review
The Silvered Serpents is a fun book two in the Gilded Wolves trilogy. It’s a formulaic YA fantasy plot, but in a way that’s entertaining and could make a great comfort read.
For you if: You like multi-POV YA fantasy novels, like Six of Crows.
Full Review
The Silvered Serpents is the second book in The Gilded Wolves trilogy by Roshani Chokshi. I read The Gilded Wolves a few years ago, when it first came out, and then again recently as a re-read. Then it was on to this one, all in preparation for the third and final book coming out this month!
The trilogy is a multi-POV story about crew of young heisters, led by a man (boy? idk, it’s YA) named Séverin. In The Gilded Wolves, they embark on a mission to restore Severin’s status as head of one of the four ruling families, and pretty much save the world from an unknown enemy trying to restore the Tower of Babel and become gods. This one picks up where that one left off, with our characters fractured but determined to find an ancient book they all desperately want for different reasons. But beware: Séverin is spiraling and soooooo dramatic in this one. Be prepared to want to shake him, lol.
These books are basically Six of Crows but a little more formulaic and tropey. That said, I still think they’re a lot of fun. Part of the experience is knowing they’re formulaic and then just sitting back to enjoy the ride, fall in love with the characters, root for your favorite ‘ships, and see how they’ll defeat the bad guys. These books would make a really great, fast-paced read between heavier books or books with intense world-building. I’m hooked now and definitely ready for The Bronzed Beasts!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Grief after death of a loved one
Kidnapping and torture
Antisemitism
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is a true feat. This one feels like a new great American novel, sweeping and forceful. I loved all 800 pages, and I expect it to win many awards.
Author: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Publisher: Harper
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
The 2020 National Book Award–nominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic — an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer — that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans — the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers — Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.
Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women — her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries — that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors — Indigenous, Black, and white — in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story — and the song — of America itself.
TL;DR Review
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is a true feat. This one feels like a new great American novel, sweeping and forceful. I loved all 800 pages, and I expect it to win many awards.
For you if: You like multigenerational family novels and/or historical fiction.
Full Review
“We are the earth, the land. The tongue that speaks and trips on the names of the dead as it dares to tell these stories of a woman’s line.”
Please allow me to add my voice to the throng of people who are insisting that you get a copy of this book and read it. It’s a sweeping, epic 800 pages honoring Black and Indigenous women throughout American history, and I believe those calling it the next great American novel are on the nose.
The main character of the novel is Ailey Pearl Garfield; it starts when she’s a young child and follows her until she’s in her mid-30s. But it’s about so much more — so many more — than just her. Throughout the novel, we get “song” chapters told in a collective ancestral voice. They tell the story of Ailey’s ancestors, starting with the Muscogee Creek people who originally lived on land that’s now Georgia, then enslaved people, then tenant farmers, to today. We also get sections dedicated to Ailey’s mother and sister. The breadth and depth of the novel is absolutely incredible, and I feel like I came to know all these people so intimately. The focus, throughout, is on the women; those who faced it all and endured.
It’s not always an easy read, nor would I expect it to be. There’s a lot of trauma — both generational and personal — and I encourage you to check trigger warnings. My heart broke for all of these characters; I encourage you to seek out reviews by Black and Indigenous readers for more on the impact and weight of the reading experience.
Could this book have been shorter? Well, probably, but I’m glad it wasn’t. I love books that dive so intimately into all of its characters that you feel you really know them. Even though it was 800 pages, I feel like it could have gone on forever. In fact, I caught myself musing about what would happen next after I’d already finished it, and had to remind myself there was no more!
Finally, I read large swaths of this one via audiobook, and the narration was beautifully done. While the prose is beautiful and transportive, it’s also strong and self-assured enough to translate all of its power when spoken aloud — in keeping with the style and talent of Black storytellers throughout history.
I encourage you to read this one — whether you make your way through it quickly or a bit at a time over a long time, it will be worth it.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Drug addiction and use (graphic)
Pedophilia and childhood sexual assault/rape (graphic)
Pregnancy, abortion, and miscarriage (moderate)
Racism and colorism
Misogyny
Slavery and colonialism
Loss and grief