A bold statement: I think Playground is my favorite Richard Powers so far. I know he won the Pulitzer for The Overstory (which I definitely enjoyed!), but I said what I said.

Great Big Beautiful Life is Book Lovers meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in the best way imaginable, and y’all aren’t ready. Emily Henry has done it again.

THAT ENDING. Fourth book when?!?!?

I’m a sucker for literary fiction with speculative elements, so when I heard about Black Woods Blue Sky, which blends the dreaminess and darkness of fairy tales with the beauty and danger of the Alaskan wilderness, I knew it was going to be exactly my kind of book. And I was not wrong!

This Strange Eventful History was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Parts of it were more engaging for me than others, but overall, I enjoyed it. Audio is definitely the way to go here, IMO!

Upon a Starlit Tide bills itself as The Little Mermaid mixed with Cinderella into a dark historical fantasy — and it delivers excellently. Kell Woods clearly knows and loves her fairytales and folklore. I had so much fun reading it.

I’m glad that I decided not to skip the supplementary novellas in this series. Like The Pale Dreamer (#1.5), this one was fast, short, fun, and felt like a fully worthwhile into a few key characters and relationships.

These books have a lot of promise, but the execution is just not as good as I want it to be. Still, they are fast paced and short, so I’ll probably keep going.

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again before this series is over, but man, books like these are why we read fantasy. Onward!

Unsurprisingly after all that hype, this genre-bender not only delivers but also hits differently than anything else Okorafor has written.

Just like Iron Flame, this book is fun, but fine — Fourth Wing is the strongest in the series so far. I had a good time with Onyx Storm, and if the fourth book was out now, I’d pick it up right away. But the execution is just not there.

This book was a bit of a miss for me. It has emotional impact and fantastic characters, but the execution felt old-fashioned and strangely out of touch. It’s short, though, so you still might enjoy this heartwarming little story.

I savored this book over the course of a month, sinking in every time I opened it. Prose, pacing, plot, character — Schwab truly does it all and does it better than most.

This book is clearly setting up a LOT of room for the rest of the series to run, which I find extremely exciting!

This book is surreal and disorienting (in a good way), deeply affecting, and the kind of book that’s so good and readable you have to stop yourself from inhaling it

Mirrored Heavens is an epic conclusion to an epic trilogy, and one that I’m very glad I read.

I read The Bone Season and loved it, so when a friend recommended that I read The Pale Dreamer before diving into The Mime Order, I sent the salute emoji and borrowed it from the library.

This was the perfect way to kick off my 2025 reading in a year that will surely bring a great need for laughter, levity, and love. You will find all three in these pages.

Our Evenings has a lot of things going for it, in terms of being a winner for me: It follows a character across their entire life, it depicts that life with tenderness and care, it has a strong first-person voice. And while it didn’t land with me 100%, I netted out on liking it.

Y’all. I am so mad at myself for waiting this long to read The Bone Season. It was exactly the kind of fantasy I was craving — a series that starts with a banger with a rich world and great plot and promises a good, long journey with a set of beloved characters over many books.