Star's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 17 May 2025 23:52:24 -0700 60 Star's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Small Ceremonies 215805816 Part coming-of-age novel, part searing examination of a community finding itself, Small Ceremonies is a tantalizing and heartbreaking debut.

“I fear for our friendship, for the day it will end, wondering when that day will be . . .”

Tomahawk Shields (a.k.a. Tommy) and Clinton Whiteway are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future rife with possibility and greatness. The two friends play for their high school’s poor-performing hockey team, the Tigers, who learn at the start of the new season that the league wants them out. Their annual goal is now more important than to win their first game in years and break the curse.

As we follow these two Indigenous boys over the course of a year, we are given a panoptic view of Tommy and Clinton’s Winnipeg, where a university student with grand ambitions chooses to bottle her anger when confronted with numerous micro- (and not so micro-) aggressions; an ex-convict must choose between protecting or exploiting his younger brother as he’s dragged deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly; a lonely rink attendant is haunted by the memory of a past lover and contemplates rekindling this old flame; and an aspiring journalist does everything she can to uncover why the league is threatening to remove the Tigers. These are a sampling of the chorus of voices that depicts a community filled with individuals searching for purpose, leading them all to one fateful and tragic night.

Ferociously piercing the heart of an Indigenous city, Kyle Edwards's sparkling debut is a heartbreaking yet humour-flecked portrayal of navigating identity and place, trauma and recovery, and growing up in a land that doesn't love you.]]> 368 Kyle Edwards 0593701518 Star 5 4.30 Small Ceremonies
author: Kyle Edwards
name: Star
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/17
date added: 2025/05/17
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]]> The Emperor of Gladness 218636419 Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.]]> 416 Ocean Vuong 1529945860 Star 5 4.44 2025 The Emperor of Gladness
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Star
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/15
date added: 2025/05/15
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it's not what I expected, but I loved it nonetheless.
]]> The Third Rule of Time Travel 215748787 Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.

In this riveting science fiction novel from acclaimed author Philip Fracassi, a scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.

Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She's built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler's lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.

After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.

Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.

As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.]]> 325 Philip Fracassi 0316572519 Star 3 3.62 2025 The Third Rule of Time Travel
author: Philip Fracassi
name: Star
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/12
date added: 2025/05/13
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]]> The Lamb 216867498
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom.

With this gothic coming-of-age tale, novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.]]> 336 Lucy Rose 1399619713 Star 3 3.89 2025 The Lamb
author: Lucy Rose
name: Star
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/10
date added: 2025/05/10
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]]> Exit Zero 211934921 Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland.

Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.]]> 208 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374616477 Star 4 3.72 Exit Zero
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Star
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/09
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]]> Symbiote 211178743 Contagion meets The Walking Dead in this new sci-fi thriller where a biological threat ravages scientists and military personnel at the South Pole.

As World War III rages on, the scientists in Antarctica are thankful for the isolation – until a group of Chinese scientists arrive at the American research base. In their truck is a dead body, the first murder in Antarctica. The potential for a geopolitical firestorm is great, and, with no clear jurisdiction, the Americans don’t know what to do. But they soon realize the Chinese scientists have brought far more with them than the body…

Within seventy-two hours, thirteen others lie dead in the snow, murdered in acts of madness and superhuman strength. An extremophile parasite from the truck, triggered by severe cold, is spreading by touch. It is learning from them. Evolving. It triggers violent tendencies in the winter crew, and, more insidiously, the beginnings of a strange symbiotic telepathy.

Exhausted by suspicion and fear, with rescue impossible for months, the desperate crew members turn on each other. A small group of survivors try to resist the siren call of the growing hive mind and stay alive long enough to solve the mystery of the symbiotic microbe’s origins. But the symbiote is more than a disease – it is a biological weapon that can change the balance of power in a time of war.

The survivors cannot let anyone infected make it to the summer season, when planes will arrive to take them – and potentially the symbiote – back to civilization.]]> 425 Michael Nayak 1915998425 Star 2 3.45 2025 Symbiote
author: Michael Nayak
name: Star
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
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]]> My Friends 217163697 "The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else's belief in them."

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of a wide expanse of sea. But Louisa, soon to be eighteen years old and an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise. She is determined to find out the story behind these three enigmatic figures.

More than two decades before, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up every morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that, after a chance encounter in an alleyway, will unexpectedly be placed into Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to discover how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more anxious she becomes about what she'll find. Louisa's complicated life is proof that happy endings are sometimes possible, but they don't always take the form we expect them to.

Fredrik Backman's signature charm, humor, and attention to the poignant details of everyday life are on full display in this funny, moving novel. His most heartfelt and personal tale yet, My Friends is a stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of art and friendship.]]> 436 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Star 5 favorites
"...Art is fragile magic, just like love, and that's humanity's only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that's our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield."
]]> 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Star
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: favorites
review:
Fredrik Backman has once again turned me into a slobbering mess.

"...Art is fragile magic, just like love, and that's humanity's only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that's our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield."

]]> Old Soul 211178725
Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.]]> 336 Susan Barker 0593718291 Star 2 3.75 2025 Old Soul
author: Susan Barker
name: Star
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/05
date added: 2025/05/06
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]]> The Bright Years 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 Star 4 4.34 2025 The Bright Years
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Star
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
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]]> Audition 216247518 One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. A mesmerizing Mobius strip of a novel that asks who we are to the people we love.

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, and young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In Audition, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day—partner, parent, creator, muse—and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best.]]> 208 Katie Kitamura 059385232X Star 4 3.45 2025 Audition
author: Katie Kitamura
name: Star
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:
This was very cerebral and strange. It was like reading an unsolvable puzzle, but I suppose that was the point. The writing was impeccable, but don't go into it expecting answers.
]]> The Resurrectionist 210365385 Historical fiction, true crime, and dark academia intertwine in a harrowing tale of murder, greed, and the grisly origins of modern medicine.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his posh, sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. A shining beacon of medical discovery in the age of New Enlightenment, the city’s university offers everything James desires—except the chance to work on a human cadaver.

For that he needs to join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square, at a cost he cannot afford. In desperation he strikes a deal with Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, a dashing young dissectionist with an artist’s eye for anatomy and a reckless passion for knowledge. Nye promises to help James gain the surgical experience he craves—but it doesn’t take long for James to realize he’s made a devil’s bargain... Nye is a body snatcher—and James has unwittingly become his accomplice.]]> 336 A. Rae Dunlap 1496750349 Star 4 Quick and fun. 3.87 2024 The Resurrectionist
author: A. Rae Dunlap
name: Star
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:
Quick and fun.
]]> Mother of Rome 211399780 A powerful and fierce reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history’s greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible.

The names Romulus and Remus may be immortalized in map and stone and chronicle, but their mother exists only as a preface to her sons’ journey, the princess turned oath-breaking priestess, condemned to death alongside her children.

But she did not die; she survived. And so does her story.

Beautiful, royal, rich: Rhea has it all—until her father loses his kingdom in a treacherous coup, and she is sent to the order of the Vestal Virgins to ensure she will never produce an heir.

Except when mortals scheme, gods laugh.

Rhea becomes pregnant, and human society turns against her. Abandoned, ostracized, and facing the gravest punishment, Rhea forges a dangerous deal with the divine, one that will forever change the trajectory of her life…and her beloved land.

To save her sons and reclaim their birthright, Rhea must summon nature’s mightiest force – a mother’s love – and fight.

All roads may lead to Rome, but they began with Rhea Silvia.]]> 400 Lauren J.A. Bear 0593638948 Star 4 4.34 2025 Mother of Rome
author: Lauren J.A. Bear
name: Star
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:
I'm such a sucker for retellings that involve wolves for some reason.
]]> Notes from a Regicide 211004138 Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.

When your parents die, you find out who they really were.

Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.

Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.

In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.]]> 336 Isaac Fellman 1250329108 Star 3 3.85 2025 Notes from a Regicide
author: Isaac Fellman
name: Star
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
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]]> Saltcrop 222376600 From the acclaimed author of The Stardust Grail comes the epic tale of two sisters who sail across oceans to find their missing third sister―and Earth’s environmental salvation.

In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother.

But then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find―and save―her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered.

But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister―or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.

--

Content warnings available on the author's website (see author bio).]]> 384 Yume Kitasei 1250380960 Star 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Saltcrop
author: Yume Kitasei
name: Star
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devil Three Times 218372439 An audacious debut spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil

Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
Ěý
Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde's descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while can he save himself, too?
Ěý
Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.]]> 416 Rickey Fayne 0316575178 Star 0 to-read 4.02 The Devil Three Times
author: Rickey Fayne
name: Star
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 Star 4 3.63 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Star
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
Atmospheric, eerie, beautifully written.
]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Star 5 favorites 4.24 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Star
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: favorites
review:
I've been waiting for this book the second I closed Once There Were Wolves. She has a hold on me like no one else. Everything here is perfect- the writing, the atmosphere. I could feel the love she has for our world dripping from her pen. Charlotte McConaghy really is a special writer.
]]> Dissolution 215362027 A woman dives into her husband's memories to uncover a decades-old feud threatening reality itself in this staggering technothriller from the bestselling author of Ascension.

Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It's the loneliest she's ever felt in her life.

When a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn't losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she's told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.

Led by Hassan and his technological marvels, Maggie breaks into her husband's mind, probing the depths of his past in an effort to save him. The deeper she dives, the more she unravels a mystery spanning continents and centuries, each layer more complex than the last.

But Hassan cannot be trusted. Not just memories are disappearing, but pieces of reality itself. If Maggie cannot find out what Stanley did all those years ago, and what Hassan is after now, she risks far more than her husband's life. The very course of human history hangs in the balance.]]> 384 Nicholas Binge 0593852168 Star 4 4.09 2025 Dissolution
author: Nicholas Binge
name: Star
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:
Did not see that ending coming.
]]> <![CDATA[What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma]]> 58214328 A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.

"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know."

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.]]> 352 Stephanie Foo 0593238109 Star 0 4.50 2022 What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
author: Stephanie Foo
name: Star
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
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]]> Heartwood 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 Star 4 3.92 2025 Heartwood
author: Amity Gaige
name: Star
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:
Unexpectedly really enjoyed this. Reminded me of The God of the Woods, but much more adult and the poetic writing really worked for me.
]]> Big Breath In 208433155 This new standalone from the former Writer Laureate of Alaska and author of the acclaimed Cecil Younger series introduces an amateur sleuth with an ax to grind—and a child toĚýsave.Diagnosed with terminal cancer, retired marine biologist Delphine is on the brink of throwing in the towel. She has outlived her PI husband and feels like a burden to her son and his growing family. One night, while contemplating how to go on, Delphine witnesses a woman and her young child being victimized by her apparent boyfriend. When Delphine later discovers the woman has gone missing, she embarks on a quest to track her down and help her and the child.ĚýWhat begins as a chance encounter balloons into an at-once zany and heartfelt rescue mission across the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, Delphine encounters the dregs of humanity—grappling with schemers, kidnappers, and murderers—as well as its joys. With the help of a few friends, a retired PI, and a queer biker gang, Delphine becomes determined to stop the bad guys from getting away with it . . . knowing full well it may be her last hurrah.ĚýWhile Big Breath In standsĚýalone, longtime Straley fans will recognize the characteristic wit, heart, and contemplation of life that threads through every one of his books—and discover a new heroine to fall in loveĚýwith.]]> 288 John Straley 1641296542 Star 2 This was so damn weird. 3.64 2024 Big Breath In
author: John Straley
name: Star
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:
This was so damn weird.
]]> Broken Country 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Star 4 4.39 2025 Broken Country
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Star
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> When We Were Real 214565598 From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.

JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.

Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last—a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar—with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.

When We Were Real is a tour-de-force and exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.]]> 464 Daryl Gregory 1668060043 Star 2 4.09 2025 When We Were Real
author: Daryl Gregory
name: Star
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
could not vibe with this to save my life.
]]> I Leave It Up to You 214269353 From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?

A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.Ěý

Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles, That of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.

There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.

Why do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.]]> 311 Jinwoo Chong 0593727053 Star 4 3.96 2025 I Leave It Up to You
author: Jinwoo Chong
name: Star
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[These Memories Do Not Belong to Us]]> 221452836 For fans ofĚýCloud AtlasĚýandĚýThe Power, a hauntingly beautiful and profoundly prescient debut set in a future where China is the sole global superpower and citizens can record and transfer memories between minds.

When I was a boy, my mother used to tell me stories of a world before memories could be shared between strangers…

Decades from now, the world is run by an authoritarian state calledĚýQin. In Qin, every citizen is fitted with a Mindbank, an intracranial device capable of not only recording but transferring memories between minds. The technology gives birth to a new economy, referred to as Memory Capitalism, where anyone with means can relive the life experiences of others. It also unleashes opportunities for manipulation—memories can be edited, marketed, and even corrupted for personal gain.

When a man inherits his deceased mother’s Mindbank—a collection of memories from before, during, and after the global war that landed Qin atop the international food chain—he’s unsure what he’ll find inside, or whether the Party has gotten to her memories first, altering the experiences sheĚýleft for him. Either way, he is adamant that he must share them with the world before they are destroyed forever, even if the cost of doing so is his own life.

Powerful and provocative,ĚýThese Memories Do Not Belong to UsĚýis a kaleidoscopic look into the ways in which governments and media manipulate history and control our collective imagination. It encourages us to see beyond the sheen of convenient truths to unearth real stories of struggle, sacrifice, and love that, despite all odds, refuse to be eradicated.Ěý]]> 224 Yiming Ma 0063413485 Star 0 to-read 4.38 2025 These Memories Do Not Belong to Us
author: Yiming Ma
name: Star
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Compound 218460337
All of you are young, all beautiful, all keen to escape the grinding poverty, political unrest and environmental catastrophe of the outside world.

You realise that cameras are tracking your every move, broadcasting to millions of reality TV fans.

Soon, ten men will arrive on foot – if they all survive the journey.

What will you have to do to win?

And what happens to the losers?

LORD OF THE FLIES meets LOVE ISLAND in this explosive, addictive debut novel, as bingeable as the best reality TV, with dark undercurrents of literary dystopia and consumerist satire. ]]> 304 Aisling Rawle 0593977270 Star 0 to-read 3.93 2025 The Compound
author: Aisling Rawle
name: Star
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tilt 214151301 Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing story about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, she realizes there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. She’s determined to change her life if she can just make it home.]]> 229 Emma Pattee 1668055473 Star 4 3.67 2025 Tilt
author: Emma Pattee
name: Star
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> When the Cranes Fly South 221251872 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE SWEDISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD • A profoundly moving debut novel that follows an elderly man’s struggle to maintain autonomy over his own life: an emotional story of love, friendship, fatherhood, dogs, and atonement that is already an international sensation.

“One of those â€you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to buy twenty copies and give them to everyone you love’ books.” —Fredrik Backman, bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, in The New Yorker

“A powerful, sneakily emotional meditation on life and death, and the foundational relationships in our lives. This is a book that will echo in your soul.” —Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain


Bo is running out of time. Yet time is one of the few things he’s got left. These days, his quiet existence is broken up only by daily visits from his home care team. Fortunately, he still has his beloved elkhound Sixten to keep him company … though now his son, with whom Bo has had a rocky relationship, insists upon taking the dog away, claiming that Bo has grown too old to properly care for him. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotion, leading Bo to take stock of his life, his relationships, and the imperfect way he’s expressed his love over the years.]]> 320 Lisa Ridzén Star 0 to-read 4.55 2024 When the Cranes Fly South
author: Lisa Ridzén
name: Star
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Woods Blue Sky 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Star 4 3.68 2025 Black Woods Blue Sky
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Star
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
3.75. Hella weird. But still engaging.
]]> Don't Cry for Me 57938995
As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay.

But most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace.Ěý

With piercing insight and profound empathy, acclaimed author Daniel Black illuminates the lived experiences of Black fathers and queer sons, offering an authentic and ultimately hopeful portrait of reckoning and reconciliation. Spare as it is sweeping, poetic as it is compulsively readable, Don't Cry for MeĚýis a monumental novel about one family grappling with love's hard edges and the unexpected places where hope and healing take flight.]]> 301 Daniel Black 133542573X Star 4 4.35 2022 Don't Cry for Me
author: Daniel Black
name: Star
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't read Isaac's Song first. It was an easier read since the queer son was much easier for me to connect with, and the ultimately hopeful story helped me reconcile (just a bit) with his father in this novel.
]]> ł§±çłÜ˛ą°ů±đÂł 59848960
We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.

When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared. How could they have been? Of all the things physicists had predicted, “the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through” had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.

For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy…and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.

The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be.

Nothing goes back.]]> 112 Mira Grant 1645240541 Star 4 3.94 2021 ł§±çłÜ˛ą°ů±đÂł
author: Mira Grant
name: Star
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
She's small but she packs a punch! I love a sci-fi/dystopian novel that makes me go, "oh yeah I can see that happening" and this is precisely that. It's about a dystopic future, sure, but it's also about government failures and greed.
]]> ł§±çłÜ˛ą°ů±đÂł 58243480
We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.

When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared. How could they have been? Of all the things physicists had predicted, "the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through" had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.

For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy...and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.

The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be.

Nothing goes back.]]> 144 Mira Grant 1645240533 Star 4 3.81 2021 ł§±çłÜ˛ą°ů±đÂł
author: Mira Grant
name: Star
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/20
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
She's small but she packs a punch! I love a sci-fi/dystopian novel that makes me go, "oh yeah I can see that happening" and this is precisely that. It's about a dystopic future, sure, but it's also about government failures and greed.
]]> Dream Count 209166121 A publishing event ten years in the making—a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 320 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0593803477 Star 2 3.91 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Star
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:
For a novel with 4 female protagonists, this is certainly very much about men. This novel is made up of 4 novellas, with 4 different POVs from 4 women whose lives revolve entirely around other men and the children they do/do not/may/may not have. The relationships between the women and the men are very binary, heteronormative, and one demensional. Smart woman falls/works for shitty man, he cheats/lies/leaves/abuses, rinse and repeat. And weirdly the book gets more and more defensive as it goes on, as if the author, due to her own controversies in the past, took it out on what she perceives to be "progressive American ideals" and used her characters as mouthpieces for herself. Overall this was such a weird read and quite the slog. I would have liked it so much more had she just focused on Kadiatou's story only.
]]> The Garden 213618270 An eerie, hypnotic, darkly beautiful novel about two elderly sisters living alone at the edge of the world and how their lives unravel when their sanctum is breached, for fans of Piranesi and The Testaments.

In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. Evelyn and Lily have only ever known each other. What was before the garden, they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know. Each day is spent in languid service to their home: tending the bees, planting the crops, and dutifully following the instructions of the almanac written by their mother.

So when a nameless boy is found hiding in the boarded house at the center of their isolated grounds, their once-solitary lives are irrevocably disrupted. Who is he? Where did he come from? And most importantly, what does he want?

As suspicions gather and allegiances falter, Evelyn and Lily are forced to confront the dark truths about themselves, the garden, and the world as they’ve known it.]]> 320 Nick Newman 0593717732 Star 3 3.5 3.63 2025 The Garden
author: Nick Newman
name: Star
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:
3.5
]]> We Could Be Rats 214152402 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668058146 Star 4 4.05 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Star
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:
A little YA, but I didn't mind.
]]> The Mourner’s Bestiary 210436767 A critically acclaimed literary memoir braiding together environmental research and the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness.

Author Eiren Caffall is the inheritor of a family legacy of 200 years of genetic kidney disease and the mother of a child who may inherit that legacy.

A literary memoir on loss, chronic illness, and generational healing, Caffall’s The Mourner’s Bestiary is also a meditation on grief and survival told through the stories of animals in two collapsing marine ecosystems—the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound—and the lives of a family facing a life-threatening illness on their shores.

The Gulf of Maine is the world’s fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and the Long Island Sound has been the site of conservation battles that predict the fights ahead for the Gulf.]]> 320 Eiren Caffall 1955905584 Star 0 4.34 2024 The Mourner’s Bestiary
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Star
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Star 5 4.59 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Star
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves:
review:
This could be nostalgia goggles but I don't care. Between this book and Gaga's new album I just might be 17 again.
]]> All This & More 199515825 The Cartographers and The Book of M comes an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made… and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.”

But there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does next to change her fate.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over.

She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off.…

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

Perfect for fans of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, bestselling author Peng Shepherd’s All This and More is an utterly original, startlingly poignant novel that puts the reader in the driver’s seat.]]> 469 Peng Shepherd 0063278979 Star 3 3.33 2024 All This & More
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Star
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Death of the Author 214329001 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]> 448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391155 Star 3 4.03 2025 Death of the Author
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Star
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
review:
This is likely my favorite book from this author, and I still don't really like it. I don't know why we just don't vibe, and after so many books (DNF'd most of them) I'm at a good place to stop trying.
]]> This Is a Love Story 216426697 An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both

For fifty years Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.

Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.]]> 304 Jessica Soffer 0593851269 Star 4 3.20 This Is a Love Story
author: Jessica Soffer
name: Star
average rating: 3.20
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves:
review:
4.25. This is not for everyone but it certainly checks all my boxes! I am a sucker for lyrical prose and this book tugged hard on my heartstrings. The book title is right- this isn't a romance, it's a love story. This is also one of those books that benefited so much from the narrator. Her voice was smooth, subtle, and filled with quiet strength, just like the central story. My personal heaven is a poetic, character-driven book, preferably narrated by Marin Ireland.
]]> The Strange Case of Jane O. 213870076
In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life.

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 Star 4 3.90 2025 The Strange Case of Jane O.
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Star
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:
4.5. So strange but I weirdly loved it. Don't read it if you hate unreliable narrators.
]]> The Poppy Fields 218431658
What if there were a cure for the broken-hearted?

Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal.

Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects.

On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way to the Poppy Fields—where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder—each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage.

A high-concept speculative novel about heartache, hope, and human resilience, The Poppy Fields explores the path of grief and healing, a journey at once profoundly universal and unique to every person, posing the questions: How do we heal in the wake of great loss? And how far are we willing to go in order to be healed?]]> 324 Nikki Erlick 0063349337 Star 0 to-read 4.10 2025 The Poppy Fields
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Star
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Frequency of Living Things]]> 220160186 A heartbreaking American epic about three sisters who unearth lifetimes of family tensions as they are forced to rescue one of their own from peril, testing the limits of sacrifice, sisterhood, and forgiveness from the author of the “profound work of great wisdom” (Alice Elliott Dark) The Great Transition .

Josie may be the youngest sister, but she takes care of everyone. She is the left-brained scientist to her twin sisters’ right-brained artistic chaos. She makes sure their rent gets paid on time, they make their therapy appointments, and has also been their de-facto band manager since she was a teenager. When Ara, her middle sister (by a few minutes), calls from jail, it isn’t exactly a surprise, and Josie knows exactly how to snap into action.

Emma is the quintessential frontwoman, complete with looks and attitude. But the success of The Twins’ first (and only) album—gold records, Grammy nominations, and diehard fans—is two decades behind her. Hiding under the surface of her swagger is a long-held guilt that has turned her into her sister’s enabler. Emma knows she needs Ara’s creative genius and thinks a jailhouse record could be just the thing to get Ara her freedom and their band back on the main stage.

Ara is detoxing, not only from her opioid habit but also from her family. The truth is, as crazy as it sounds, she’s not in a hurry to get out of lock-up. In the most unlikely and dangerous of places, this could be her chance to face the demons of her past and disentangle herself from her family.

Bertie, who raised her three daughters as a single mother, has always taught them that family won’t always be around to take care of you. A former defense attorney and perennial do-gooder, she’s committed to taking care of everyone less fortunate even if that means putting her girls’ needs second. But now Bertie must decide if she should reenter her daughters’ lives in their greatest time of need—or watch to see if the resilience she’s taught them will help carry them through.

A story both intimate and sweeping, The Frequency of Living Things explores the timeless question of how our individual destinies are intertwined with our family, our siblings, and our history no matter how we try to untangle ourselves from them.]]> 336 Nick Fuller Googins 1668056062 Star 0 to-read 3.88 2025 The Frequency of Living Things
author: Nick Fuller Googins
name: Star
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Where Are You Really From: Stories]]> 221739723 From the critically-acclaimed author of Disorientation, a multi-genre story collection that explores the limits and possibilities of storytelling

A mail order bride from Taiwan is packed up in a cardboard box and sent via express shipping to California, where her much older husband awaits her. Two teenage girls meticulously plan how to kill and cook their downstairs neighbor. An American au pair moves to Paris to find herself, only to find her actual French doppelgänger. A father reunites with his estranged daughter in unusual circumstances: as a background actor on the set of her film. And in “Casualties of Art,” a writer’s affair with a married artist tests the line between fact and fiction, self-victimization and the victimization of others.

In these six singular stories and a novella that pivot from the terrible to the beautiful to the surreal, Elaine Hsieh Chou confronts the slipperiness of truth in storytelling. With razor-sharp precision and psychological acuity, she peels back the tales we tell ourselves to peer beneath them: at our treacherous desires, our self-deceptions and our capacity for cruelty, both to ourselves and each other. Expansive and provocative, Where Are You Really From is a visionary achievement.]]> Elaine Hsieh Chou 059329839X Star 0 to-read 4.37 2025 Where Are You Really From: Stories
author: Elaine Hsieh Chou
name: Star
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Medusa Protocol (An Assassins Anonymous, #2)]]> 219520679 Welcome back to Assassins Anonymous, the only twelve-step group where joining can be deadly.

When Astrid, known in her assassin days as Azrael, stopped showing up to Assassins Anonymous, the group assumed her past had caught up with her. Only her sponsor Mark, formerly the deadliest killer in the world, holds out hope that she’s okay. Then, during a meeting, the group gets a sign, or rather, a pizza delivery.ĚýIs there another psychopath out there who actually likes olives on their pizza, or is Astrid trying to send Mark a message?

Meanwhile, Astrid wakes up in the cell of a black site prison, on a remote island. A doctor subjects her to mysterious experiments, plumbing the depths of her memory and looking for a vital clue from her past. She’ll do anything to escape, except…killing anyone. Hmm. Turns out it’s not easy to blow this joint without blowing anything, or anyone up.]]> 320 Rob Hart 0593717422 Star 0 to-read 4.10 2025 The Medusa Protocol (An Assassins Anonymous, #2)
author: Rob Hart
name: Star
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Happy Land 216247526 'It's time we name our kingdom!' he shouted over the wind. 'I say we call this place Happy Land. If this ain't the land of happy people, then where is it? Why not create our heaven right here on earth?'

In the hills of Appalachia, there once existed a land ruled by a king and queen. Inspired by memories of African kingdoms, a community of formerly enslaved men and women grasped freedom on mountain land they owned. But freedom doesn't always last forever . . .

Today, after years of silence, Nikki has been summoned to North Carolina by her estranged grandmother. But instead of revealing answers about their recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki a shocking story about her great-great-great grandmother, Queen Luella, and the very land they stand on. Land Mother Rita insists must be protected at all costs.

As Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, she comes to realise how much of her identity is rooted in this family land, and how much they stand to lose if it, like so much else, is taken from them. It's time to reclaim what's theirs.]]> 368 Dolen Perkins-Valdez 0593337727 Star 0 to-read 4.31 2025 Happy Land
author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
name: Star
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Road to Tender Hearts 218460347 A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death—from the beloved author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals

At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.

But when PJ reads an obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.

Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also figures he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter, adrift in her 20s, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.

This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a second shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.]]> 384 Annie Hartnett 0593873440 Star 0 to-read 4.47 2025 The Road to Tender Hearts
author: Annie Hartnett
name: Star
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Isola 212806636 A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.]]> 368 Allegra Goodman 0593730089 Star 4 3.99 2025 Isola
author: Allegra Goodman
name: Star
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves:
review:
4.5. A bit slow at times but the writing was stunning.
]]> Penitence 211003837 For readers of Ann Patchett and Celeste Ng, Penitence is a poignant exploration of love and forgiveness. It’s a suspenseful, addictive page-turner filled with literary insight that compels readers to consider whether each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel—she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.

Spanning decades, from the ski slopes of rural Colorado to the streets of post-9/11 New York City and back again, Kristin Koval’s debut novel Penitence is an examination of the complexities of familial loyalty, the journey of redemption, and the profound experience of true forgiveness.]]> 320 Kristin Koval 1250342996 Star 4 3.75. 3.68 2025 Penitence
author: Kristin Koval
name: Star
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
3.75.
]]> Awake in the Floating City 217453585 An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.” —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.]]> 320 Susanna Kwan 0593701402 Star 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Awake in the Floating City
author: Susanna Kwan
name: Star
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Isaac's Song 210719174 The beloved author of Don’t Cry for Me and Perfect Peace returns with a poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance, for fans of The Great Believers and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy. At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.

Poignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac's Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me and a high-water mark in the career of an award-winning author.]]> 320 Daniel Black 133509041X Star 4 4.29 2025 Isaac's Song
author: Daniel Black
name: Star
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves:
review:
4.5. So good, and so healing. I'm off to read Don't Cry For Me.
]]> Blob: A Love Story 212994452 'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'
Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend...

The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. But when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her.

As her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realizes it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man. But as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love.

Blending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.

'An inventive, utterly unique debut'
Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light]]> 256 Maggie Su 0063358646 Star 3 3.38 2025 Blob: A Love Story
author: Maggie Su
name: Star
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:
There's a metaphor here I haven't been able to unpack fully. My trauma enforced brain immediately goes to parental dysfunction rather than jilted lover- her possessiveness of the blob, her willing the blob to be completely obedient, her molding the blob into an image of her choosing etc. The MC is extremely unlikable, with alcoholic tendencies. I wish the book would dive deeper in some of (or all) the topics it touched on, because many threads were left hanging.
]]> Gliff 200459614 O brave new world, that has such people in't.

Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.

What does it mean?

It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?

In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?

And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?

Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.]]> 288 Ali Smith 0241665574 Star 4 4.09 2024 Gliff
author: Ali Smith
name: Star
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
review:
My first Ali Smith and it's hella weird. I didn't hate it at all though.
]]> Mickey 7 (Mickey7, #1) 62030429 Now experience where the hit movie from Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho, starring Robert Pattinson, started in Mickey7 (the inspiration for the film Mickey 17).

Dying isn’t any fun…but at least it’s a living.

Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7’s fate has been sealed. There’s a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.

Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.

That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.]]> 369 Edward Ashton 3641280540 Star 4 3.5. 3.71 2022 Mickey 7 (Mickey7, #1)
author: Edward Ashton
name: Star
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves:
review:
3.5.
]]> Good Dirt 213618132 The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.

The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Star 4 4.25. 4.03 2025 Good Dirt
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Star
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:
4.25.
]]> Bright Objects 199798259
Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.

As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.

A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.]]> 352 Ruby Todd 1668053217 Star 3 3.44 2024 Bright Objects
author: Ruby Todd
name: Star
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:

]]> More or Less Maddy: A Novel 214343503 A breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normal” life for a career in stand-up comedy.

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on an antidepressant. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

With her signature “deep empathy and insight” (Booklist), Harvard-trained neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Genova has crafted another profoundly moving novel that makes complicated mental health issues accessible and human. More or Less Maddy is destined to become another classic like Still Alice.]]> 367 Lisa Genova 1668026783 Star 4 4.27 2025 More or Less Maddy: A Novel
author: Lisa Genova
name: Star
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:
4.5. My second Lisa Genova and it hits just as hard as the first one. It's hard to root for Maddy, and I've had to walk away a few times because she became very frustrating. Genova is so good at writing flawed and frustrating characters you can't help but root for.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Blink of An Eye (Kat and Lock, #1)]]> 62072146 Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye.Ěý

DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat's instincts come up against Lock's logic. But when the two missing person's cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.Ěý

AI versus human experience.Ěý
Logic versus instinct.
With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?Ěý

In the Blink of an Eye is a dazzling debut from an exciting new voice and asks us what we think it means to be human.Ěý

]]> 416 Jo Callaghan 1398511161 Star 4 4.13 2023 In the Blink of An Eye (Kat and Lock, #1)
author: Jo Callaghan
name: Star
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves:
review:

]]> All the Water in the World 211003759 In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most – love and work, community and knowledge – will survive.]]> 295 Eiren Caffall 1250353521 Star 3 3.5. 3.55 2025 All the Water in the World
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Star
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:
3.5.
]]> Homeseeking 211025407 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593712993.

An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen Star 5 4.23 2025 Homeseeking
author: Karissa Chen
name: Star
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
review:
I did not want this to ever end. What a fabulous book to read during Chinese new year.
]]> Babylonia 210204151
When kings fall, queens rise.

Nothing about Semiramis's upbringing could have foretold her legacy or the power she would come to wield. A female ruler, once an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire - certainly no one in Ancient Assyria would bend to her command willingly. Semiramis was a woman who knew if she wanted power, she would have to claim it.

There are whispers of her fame in Mesopotamian myth- Semiramis was a queen, an ambitious warrior, a commander whose reputation reaches the majestic proportions of Alexander the Great. Historical record, on the other hand, falls eerily quiet.

In her second novel, Costanza Casati brilliantly weaves myth and ancient history together to give Semiramis a voice, charting her captivating ascent to a throne no one promised her. The world Casati expertly builds is rich with dazzling detail and will transport her readers to the heat of the Assyrian Empire and a world long gone.]]> 448 Costanza Casati 1464228213 Star 4 4.07 2024 Babylonia
author: Costanza Casati
name: Star
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
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]]> How to Sleep at Night 212421041 A sharply observed comedy of manners about straight marriage, gay marriage, and family ties stretched thin by politics,ĚýHow to Sleep at NightĚýis a witty and whip-smart debut reminiscent ofĚýFleishman Is in TroubleĚýand Emma Straub, by the New York TimesĚýbook reporter.

Meet Ethan and Gabe. A devoted couple since their early twenties, they have successful careers, an adorable daughter, and a house in the New Jersey suburbs. Sure, they may have slowly drifted to different ends of the political spectrum, but their marriage still has its spark. Then one night Ethan makes a shocking he wants to run for Congress as a Republican — but only if he has progressive Gabe’s blessing. For weeks a slightly queasy Gabe struggles between supporting his husband’s dream and maintaining his own lefty ideals.ĚýHe can feel himself slowly pulled under the tide of Ethan’s political ambitions, even as he becomes widely known as a conservative spouse.ĚýĚý

In a nearby town, suburban mom Nicole wonders what happened to her younger self—living in New York City, freely dating men and women, and on a path to a career in the art world. Bored and frustrated, Nicole feels like an accessory in husband’s life and she yearns for something of her own.ĚýShe finds it one fateful morning when an old flame re-enters her life unexpectedly. That woman is Ethan’s sister Kate.

A political reporter at a major newspaper, Kate has reached the top of her profession, and her career is at the very center of her life.ĚýBut the adrenaline rush of chasing a story has lost its thrill.ĚýĚýWhen Nicole—the woman who broke her heart—slides into her DMs just as her brother starts his controversial congressional run, Kate’s life is thrown into a tailspin that threatens to derail the success she’s worked so hard to achieve.

A witty and knowing novel about romantic and sibling love, ambition, monogamy, and the ways in which our identities evolve over time,ĚýHow to Sleep at NightĚýmarks the debut of an accomplished novelist with the verve of Jennifer Close, J. Courtney Sullivan, Nick Hornby, and Emma Straub.


]]> 304 Elizabeth Harris 0063353237 Star 4 3.45 2025 How to Sleep at Night
author: Elizabeth Harris
name: Star
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
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3.75. Topical, entertaining, and a little annoying.
]]> The Tennis Partner 187117 New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone.

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David’s past emerges once again—and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.]]> 345 Abraham Verghese 0060931132 Star 5 3.95 1998 The Tennis Partner
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Star
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
You know I'm devoted to an author when I'm willing to read their non-fiction. This has all the markings of a great Verghese novel. His prose is, as always, elegant, poised, and remarkably fluid. He has a knack for using the fewest words and the most seemingly random settings to draw impossibly vivid pictures of characters, while exploring their inner most thoughts and ideas. I'm hopelessly in love with his words.
]]> Sister Snake 199531653 A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters—one in New York, one in Singapore—who are bound by an ancient secret.

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim as she freely uses her beauty and charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret; once they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang Dynasty China.

A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her—but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.

Razor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale “The Legend of the White Snake,” this is a novel about being seen for who you are—and, ultimately, how to live free.Ěý]]> 272 Amanda Lee Koe 006335506X Star 4 3.78 2024 Sister Snake
author: Amanda Lee Koe
name: Star
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves:
review:
3.75. I just wish the narrator could have taken 2 Duolingo Mandarin lessons before recording this audiobook.
]]> The Shutouts 203579071 A brilliant queer dystopian novel from the author of Yours for the Taking, following a cast of characters on the margins of a strange and exclusive new society.

The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in.

Almost 40 years later, another mother, Ava, and her daughter Brook are on the run as well, from the climate change relief program known as The Inside Project, where they've spent the past 22 years being treated as lab rats. When they encounter a woman from Ava’s past on the side of the highway, the three continue on in a journey that will take them into the depths of what remains of humanity out in the wilderness.

At the same time, way up North, weather conditions continue to worsen and a settlement departs in search of greener pastures, leaving behind only two members, drawn together by a circumstance and a mystery they are destined to unravel together.

Set in the world of Gabrielle Korn's Yours for the Taking, The Shutouts tells the captivating story of those who have been shut out from Inside, their fight to survive, and an interconnectedness larger than all of them.]]> 304 Gabrielle Korn 1250323487 Star 3 3.80 2024 The Shutouts
author: Gabrielle Korn
name: Star
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
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The best thing about these books is the world building, and not much else. Tell me why I seem to always end up on the side of the cult/eco-terrorists (looking at you, The Deluge)? I used to think there's not much you can do to write a cli-fi I didn't like, but somehow Korn did it twice.
]]> Dogs and Monsters: Stories 205436002 From the "terrifyingly talented" (TheĚýTimes, UK) author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Porpoise, eight mesmerizingly imaginative, deeply-humane stories that use Greek myths and contemporary dystopian narratives to examine mortality, moral choices and the many variants of loveGreek myths have fascinated people for millennia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew.In "The Quiet Limit of the World" Haddon imagines Tithonus' life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In "The Mother’s Story," Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king's wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In "D.O.G.Z." the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior.Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism—to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon's tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds—all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon's supple prose, he showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic.]]> 273 Mark Haddon 0385550863 Star 4 3.75. 3.53 2024 Dogs and Monsters: Stories
author: Mark Haddon
name: Star
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
3.75.
]]> Masquerade 195790999 Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future.

Òdòdó’s hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the the warrior king of Yorùbáland. Already shunned as social pariahs, living conditions for Òdòdó and the other women in her blacksmith guild grow even worse under Yorùbá rule.

Then Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of Ṣàngótẹ̀, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realizes he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife.

In a sudden change of fortune, Òdòdó soars to the very heights of society. But after a lifetime of subjugation, the power that saturates this world of battle and political savvy becomes too enticing to resist. As tensions with rival states grow, revealing elaborate schemes and enemies hidden in plain sight, Òdòdó must defy the cruel king she has been forced to wed by re-forging the shaky loyalties of the court in her favor, or risk losing everything—including her life.

Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue that turn an entire region on its head.]]> 352 O.O. Sangoyomi 1250904293 Star 4 3.93 2024 Masquerade
author: O.O. Sangoyomi
name: Star
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
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This kinda slaps?! Hoping for a sequel.
]]> Rental House 208584952 From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations.

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?]]> 224 Weike Wang 0593545540 Star 4 3.30 2024 Rental House
author: Weike Wang
name: Star
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:
3.5. What an odd little book. On one hand, the parts with Keru's parents are so relatable I've dogeared the pages to read to my therapist. On the other hand, it's so sparse and dry I'm not sure what to make of it.
]]> <![CDATA[10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World]]> 43706466 An intensely powerful new novel from the best-selling author of The Bastard of Istanbul and Honour

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .]]> 312 Elif Shafak 0241293863 Star 5 Breathtaking. 4.09 2019 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
author: Elif Shafak
name: Star
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
review:
Breathtaking.
]]> The Story of Edgar Sawtelle 2731276
Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires—spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.]]> 566 David Wroblewski 0061374229 Star 4 3.64 2008 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
author: David Wroblewski
name: Star
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:
It's good, but worse than the prequel. If you're going to read one Edgar Sawtelle story, read Familiaris.
]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)]]> 60932 Parable of the Sower continues the story of Lauren Olamina in socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s. Convinced that her community should colonize the stars, Lauren and her followers make preparations. But the collapse of society and rise of fanatics result in Lauren's followers being enslaved, and her daughter stolen from her. Now, Lauren must fight back to save the new world order.]]> 448 Octavia E. Butler 0446610380 Star 4 4.31 1998 Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Star
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
4.5. If Trump could read, I would think he read this and used it as a fascist playbook. This duology is scarily prophetic, and I'm sad I didn't read them sooner.
]]> The Days I Loved You Most 198189780 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Today Show Pick

Unforgettable and utterly romantic, The Days I Loved You Most is an emotional, life-affirming novel that asks, What if you could write the final chapter of your own love story?

In the summer of 1941, on the New England shores where they were raised, Evelyn and Joseph fell in love. Now, more than sixty years later, with a lifetime between them, they have gathered their three grown children to share the staggering news: she has received a heartbreaking diagnosis, and he can't live without her. So in one year's time they will end their love story on their own terms.

Over the next year, the couple retraces their past—all the joys and regrets that brought them to this moment. They embark on a journey to live out their greatest dreams and to connect with each of their children. But as their final days draw closer, they must confront the stark reality of what's to come, and make peace with the legacy they will leave behind for their family.

Spanning the twentieth century from World War II to 9/11 and beyond, The Days I Loved You Most is a timeless tale of unwavering devotion -- a moving tribute to the enduring power of love and a reminder that even in the darkest moments, there is always hope and beauty to be found.]]> 336 Amy Neff Star 3 3.96 2024 The Days I Loved You Most
author: Amy Neff
name: Star
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
3.5. Here's my annual attempt at a romance book. In our lord's year 2025 it's still not my thing. This deals with some pretty heavy topics which should've been my jam, but I wish we spent more time with the larger family as a whole in the present day.
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida]]> 57224204
Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire” (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.]]> 386 Shehan Karunatilaka 1908745908 Star 4 3.89 2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Star
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Star 5 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Star
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/04
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Star 5 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Star
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
Breathtaking. Glad I squeezed this in before the end of the year. I think I'm a sucker for poets who write novels/novels that read like poems.
]]> Private Rites 199313102 From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else

It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.]]> 327 Julia Armfield Star 3 3.85 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: Star
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:
Didn't like this one nearly as much as Our Wives Under the Sea :/
]]> The Way 205900986 A postapocalyptic road trip and a quest for redemption.

The world has been ravaged by a lethal virus and, with few exceptions, only the young have survived. Cities and infrastructures have been destroyed, and the natural world has reclaimed the landscape in surprising ways, with herds of wild camels roaming the American West and crocodiles that glow neon green lurking in the rivers.

Against this perilous backdrop, Will Collins, the de facto caretaker of a Buddhist monastery in Colorado, receives an urgent and mysterious request: to deliver a potential cure to a scientist in what was once California. So Will sets out, haunted by dreams of the woman he once loved, in a rusted-out pickup pulled by two mules. A menacing thug is on his tail. Armed militias patrol the roads. And the only way he’ll make it is with the help of a clever raven, an opinionated cat, and a tough teenage girl who has learned to survive on her own.

A highly original contribution to the canon of dystopian literature, The Way is a thrilling and imaginative novel, full of warmth, wisdom, and surprises that reflect our world in unsettling, uncanny, and even hopeful ways.]]> 304 Cary Groner 1954118422 Star 4 3.79 2024 The Way
author: Cary Groner
name: Star
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Star 5 I get it now. Holy shit. 4.21 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Star
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves:
review:
I get it now. Holy shit.
]]> It's Not the End of the World 217593457 From the acclaimed author of Yes, Daddy; It's Not the End of the World is a terrifying climate thriller, a vicious takedown of the uber-wealthy, and a queer family saga that isn't afraid to punch back.

It's 2044 and life is bleak for many Americans, but not for Mason Daunt. Safe in his Los Angeles mansion, Mason can remain blissfully unaware of the relentless wildfires engulfing California, the proliferation of violent right-wing militias, and the rampant authoritarianism destroying American society. He's so rich, in fact, that he and his partner Yunho Kim are throwing a 100-person, $100,000 baby shower to celebrate their newborn-on-the-way. When a potentially apocalyptic event hits Los Angeles on the day of their celebration, though, the wealthy gay couple refuses to cancel their party. Surely it's not the end of the world? But as Mason runs a few last-minute errands, a staggering twist thrusts him into the mounting chaos, and threatens the lives of everyone he holds dear.

Shot through with biting wit, brutal gore, primal sex, and unexpected catharsis, It's Not the End of the World is a nerve-shredding roller coaster of a novel that will leave readers shocked, heartbroken, and inspired to question their most firmly held convictions. What happens when our current battles with climate change, capitalism, and white supremacy are pushed to their breaking points? And how can we find hope?]]> 384 Jonathan Parks-Ramage 163973614X Star 0 to-read 4.00 2025 It's Not the End of the World
author: Jonathan Parks-Ramage
name: Star
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Ancients 203164471 A richly imagined, sweeping novel set in the climate-changed world of our own descendants, by the acclaimed author of WHISKEY WHEN WE’RE DRY.

A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling, they set out across a breathtaking yet treacherous wilderness in search of the last of their people.

Down the coast, raiders deliver the children's mother, along with the rest of their human cargo, to the last port city of a waning empire. Determined to reunite with her family, she plots her escape—while her fellow captives plan open revolt.

At the center of power in this crumbling city, a young scholar inherits his father's business and position of privilege, along with the burden of his debts. As the empire's elite prepare to flee to new utopia across the sea, he must decide where his allegiance lies.

With a rapidly changing climate shifting the sands beneath their feet, these three paths converge in a struggle for the future of humanity—who will inherit what remains and who gets to tell its story. At once a sweeping survival story; an epic of the distance future; and a post-apocalyptic vision of hope and optimism, THE ANCIENTS weaves a multilayered narrative about human resilience, hope, and stewardship of our world for future generations.]]> 400 John Larison 0593831160 Star 5 favorites 3.76 2024 The Ancients
author: John Larison
name: Star
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: favorites
review:
This is the new standard all cli-fi will be measured against from now on. Everything was just right, it's as if the author had a list of things I adored and checked them off one by one.
]]> Katabasis 210223811 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 400 R.F. Kuang Star 0 to-read 4.01 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Star
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Memory Collectors 219401075 Four strangers time travel to the past and find themselves stuck on the day all their lives were changed in this stunning speculative mystery from award-winning film and television producer Dete Meserve, perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Wrong Place Wrong Time and The Paradox Hotel.

What would you do if you could spend an hour in your past? Four strangers in the beach town of Ventura, California are about to find out.Ěý

Elizabeth aches for one more precious hour with her son who died in a senseless accident. Andy is desperate to find his first love who vanished after a whirlwind romance. Logan craves the rush of surfing and mountain climbing, yearning to reclaim the freedom he lost after a misstepĚýlanded him in a wheelchair. Brooke is looking for an hour of relief from the guilt of an unforgivable mistake.

Enter Aeon Expeditions, the groundbreaking time travelĚýinvention of Mark Saunders—which allowsĚýsome lucky clientsĚý the chanceĚýto spend an hour in their past. Even though Aeon’s technology ensures time travel can’t alter the future, all four clients,Ěýincluding Mark’s ex-wife Elizabeth,Ěýyearn to revisit the hour that changed their lives forever.Ěý

But when their “hour” extends beyond sixty minutes, they find themselves stranded in the past. As their paths intertwine unexpectedly, they unearth shocking secrets hidden in the shadows of their shared All their lives were shattered the same night on a secluded highway by the beach. As they delve into the hidden truths of that pivotal hour, a startling revelation emerges. They were not alone. Someone else was present, harboring deadly intentions.

The Memory Collectors is a heart-wrenching, genre-bending novel brimming with hope, grief and second chances.

]]> 336 Dete Meserve Star 0 to-read 4.20 2025 The Memory Collectors
author: Dete Meserve
name: Star
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Dream Hotel 60499589
From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 11 Laila Lalami Star 0 to-read 3.76 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Star
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Julie Chan Is Dead 220195725 In this razor-sharp, diabolical debut thriller, a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade.

Julie Chan has nothing. Her twin sister has everything. Except a pulse.

Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier with nothing to lose, finds herself thrust into the glamorous yet perilous world of her late twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, a popular influencer. Separated at a young age, the identical twins were polar opposites and rarely spoke, except for one viral video that Chloe initiated (Finding My Long-Lost Twin And Buying Her A House #EMOTIONAL). When Julie discovers Chloe’s lifeless body under mysterious circumstances, she seizes the chance to live the life she’s always envied.

Transforming into Chloe is easier than expected. Julie effortlessly adopts Chloe’s luxurious influencer life, complete with designer clothes, a meticulous skincare routine, and millions of adoring followers. However, Julie soon realizes that Chloe’s seemingly picture-perfect life was anything but.

Haunted by Chloe’s untimely death and struggling to fit into the privileged influencer circle, Julie faces mounting challenges during a weeklong island retreat with Chloe’s exclusive group of influencer friends. As events spiral out of control, Julie uncovers the sinister forces that may have led to her sister’s demise and realizes she might be the next target.]]> 320 Liann Zhang 1668067919 Star 0 to-read 3.61 2025 Julie Chan Is Dead
author: Liann Zhang
name: Star
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend 200174139 White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun literally explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help fellow guests make it off the island alive…

Vacation Checklist: Ěý
Pack swim trunks.Ěý
Apply sunscreen.Ěý
Survive the apocalypse?

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.

Then the sun explodes.

With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should’ve sprung for the travel insurance), Dan’s holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make.

Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?

]]> 384 M.J. Wassmer 1464218021 Star 4 3.69 2024 Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
author: M.J. Wassmer
name: Star
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves:
review:
3.5. The cover made me think it was a romance so I initially avoided this, but it turned out to be a decent debut. I wouldn't say it's quite as whimsical as Kevin Wilson's work but it kept me engaged.
]]> State of Paradise 195790688
W mieście rozdawane jest „oko umysłu”, urządzenie do zagłębiana się w wirtualnej rzeczywistości produkowane przez tajemniczą firmę z Miami. Na ulicach pojawia się coraz więcej plakatów z twarzami zaginionych sąsiadów. Mieszkająca w domu swojej matki ghostwriterka, autorka znanych thrillerów, z niepokojem śledzi zachodzące zmiany. Zmaga się z rodzinnymi tajemnicami, dręczą ją fragmentaryczne wspomnienia trudnej młodości, relacja z rodzinnymi stronami jest słodko-gorzka, na dodatek bliscy jej ludzie zachowują się coraz dziwniej. Jest gorąco, duszno, rzeczywistość przytłacza…

Lepki, przesiąknięty deszczem i upałem „Stan raju” to wciągający jak wir opis splotu wydarzeń na pograniczu rzeczywistości i fikcji. Powieść została uznana za jedną ze stu książek, które trzeba przeczytać w 2024 roku według tygodnika „Time”. Została wyróżniona przez redaktorów „New York Times Book Review” i uznana za najlepszą książkę 2024 roku przez „Vanity Fair”, NPR, „Elle” i „Kirkus Reviews”. Znalazła się również na długiej liście nominacji do nagrody Joyce Carol Oates Prize w 2024 roku.

„Stan raju” opowiada o dziwnych dniach pandemii, bezmyślnej ucieczce w tajniki technologii, granicach pomiędzy światem rzeczywistym i urojonym. Pójdę za Laurą van den Berg, dokądkolwiek mnie zabierze, nawet na Florydę.”
Rachel Yoder, autorka powieści "Nocna suka"

„Genialna opowieść o duchach i głęboko poruszająca, nastrojowa refleksja na temat miejsca, pamięci i samej natury rzeczywistości, gdzie nic nie jest takie, jak się wydaje.”
Mona Awad, autorka powieści: „Króliczek”, „Wszystko dobrze”, „Rouge”

„Doskonała i znakomicie skomponowana. Laura van den Berg jest utalentowaną i odważną pisarką: napisała powieść ciężką,
mocną i piękną. Nie mogłem się od niej oderwać.”
Charles Yu, autor powieści „Ucieczka z Chinatown”]]> 224 Laura van den Berg 037461220X Star 3 3.40 2024 State of Paradise
author: Laura van den Berg
name: Star
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
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]]> The Safekeep 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 Star 4 4.05 2024 The Safekeep
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Star
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
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]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?”

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Star 4 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Star
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
4.5. Did not expect to love this quite so much. It's maximalist, exquisitely intricate and drops you right in the middle of the characters' neuroses. The writing is impeccable but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, especially given how unlikeable and downright despicable some of the characters are. But to dislike a book because of unlikable characters, and because the family is rich is...a choice. Maybe read the last chapter again.
]]> The Wood at Midwinter 206101583 'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe. Featuring an introduction by Susanna Clarke and gorgeous illustrations from Victoria Sawdon truly worthy of the magic of this story, this is a mesmerising, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.]]> 64 Susanna Clarke 1639734481 Star 4 3.47 2024 The Wood at Midwinter
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Star
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
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A teeny but perfectly magical story.
]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Star 3 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Star
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Magic (Practical Magic, #2)]]> 56898179 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.]]> 400 Alice Hoffman 198215148X Star 5 4.09 2021 The Book of Magic (Practical Magic, #2)
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Star
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves:
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Can't believe the series is over
]]> <![CDATA[Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)]]> 22896 Alternate cover for ISBN 9780425190371 (currently here).

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.

One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...
]]> 286 Alice Hoffman Star 4 3.70 1995 Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Star
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
I read this series in absolutely atrocious order. Second prequel first, then first prequel, then Practical Magic, and then onto the sequel. I'm sure if I had read this first, I would have loved it more. AH has become a much better writer since she wrote this. Also I expected a lot more magic after reading the prequels first.
]]> Mechanize My Hands to War 202104262
Deep in the hills of Appalachia, anti-android sentiment is building. Charismatic demagogue Eli Whitaker has used anger toward new labor policies that replace factory workers with androids to build a militia–and now he is recruiting child soldiers.

Part of a governmental task force, Adrian and Trey are determined to put a stop to Whitaker’s efforts. Their mission is complicated by their own shared childhood experiences with Whitaker. After an automated soldier shoots a child during a raid to protect Trey, both grapple with the role of androids and their use in combat.

Interrelated with the hunt for Whitaker, farmers Shay and Ernst struggle after they discover their GMO crop seeds have failed and caused a deadly illness in Shay. To help manage, they hire android employees: Sarah as hospice, and AG-15 to work the now-toxic fields. The couple’s relationship to the androids evolve as both humans get progressively more sick.

Timely and chilling, Wagner's nonlinear debut shares intimate narratives of loss, trauma, and survival as the emergence of artificial life intersects with state violence and political extremism in rural Appalachia.]]> 320 Erin K. Wagner 0756419344 Star 0 to-read 3.74 2024 Mechanize My Hands to War
author: Erin K. Wagner
name: Star
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> Floreana: A Novel 209770411 On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women—a century apart—converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.

After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galápagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn’t dare tell Gavin why she’s really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave—confessions of another woman who needed to disappear.

In 1929, Dore Strauch left the life she knew to create a new one with the man she loved. On remote Floreana they’re beholden to no one but each other. Until the arrival of strangers, settlers in their paradise. Suddenly, Dore realizes that it’s no longer the refuge she imagined. And that amid the island’s fragile beauty, people can do the most terrible things.

A gripping reimagining of a true story, Floreana intertwines the emotional journeys of two women bound by dark secrets, the want of escape, and the lengths to which they’ll go to find their place in the world.]]> 287 Midge Raymond 1662524374 Star 0 to-read 3.29 2024 Floreana: A Novel
author: Midge Raymond
name: Star
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Crumbling of a Nation and other stories]]> 217396380
With a blend of dark humor and shattering insight, this collection takes readers on a compelling journey through the absurdities and shortcomings of modern life and the near future. As an added bonus, this collection concludes with the first three chapters of Ginsberg’s (hopeful) debut novel, In the Algorithm We Trust.]]> 205 Ryan David Ginsberg Star 5 3.97 2024 The Crumbling of a Nation and other stories
author: Ryan David Ginsberg
name: Star
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
review:
Chilling. Maybe I'll stick to dystopian stories that are slightly further from real life moving forward. This was an uncomfortable read.
]]> Nuclear War: A Scenario 182733784
Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.]]> 400 Annie Jacobsen 0593476093 Star 5 4.36 2024 Nuclear War: A Scenario
author: Annie Jacobsen
name: Star
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
review:
I'm covered in cold sweats and I never want to think about this book ever again. Although chances are I will never be able to actually stop thinking about it.
]]> Toward Eternity 199392376 What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer: The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells that not only cure those afflicted but leave them virtually immortal. At the same time, literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning "Beloved," in honor of his husband. When Dr. Beeko, who holds the patent to the nano-therapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.]]> 256 Anton Hur 0063344483 Star 4 3.81 2024 Toward Eternity
author: Anton Hur
name: Star
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves:
review:
4.5. So totally my jam. This spectacular book explores our eternal pursuit of music, poetry, and love. Good scifi should teach us to be better humans, and that's exactly what this book did.
]]> Animal Dreams 77262 Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.]]> 342 Barbara Kingsolver 0060921145 Star 4 4.07 1990 Animal Dreams
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Star
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> Tell It to Me Singing 199798583
Monica Campo is pregnant with her first child when, moments before being wheeled into emergency heart surgery, her mother confesses a long-held Monica’s father is not the man who raised her. But when her mother wakes up and begins having delusional episodes, Monica doesn’t know what to believe—whether the confession was real or just a channeling of the telenovela her mother watches nightly.

In her despair, Monica wants to speak with only one her ex-boyfriend of five years, Manny. She can’t help but worry, though, what this says about her relationship with her fiancé and father of her unborn child.

Monica’s search for the truth leads her to a new understanding of the the early eighties when her parents arrived from Cuba on the famous Mariel boatlift, and the tumultuous seventies, a decade after Castro’s takeover, when some people were still secretly fighting his regime—people like her mother and the man she claims is Monica’s real father. Tell It to Me Singing is a story that takes readers from Miami to Cuba to the jungles of Costa Rica and, along the way, explores the question of how and to whom we belong, how a life is built, and how we know when we’re home.]]> 400 Tita Ramírez 1982157313 Star 2 3.76 2024 Tell It to Me Singing
author: Tita RamĂ­rez
name: Star
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Don't judge a book by its gorgeous title because this was incredibly boring.
]]> The Original Daughter 217245582 In this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.

In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.]]> 368 Jemimah Wei 0385551010 Star 0 to-read 4.11 2025 The Original Daughter
author: Jemimah Wei
name: Star
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>