I’ll bet a bunch of you kinda know where this is going with the title that I gave this blog. I see you. The thing is, I have a conference coming up at the end of October. I also have the opportunity to hit up some beta readers in October. And the conference has pitches…
I keep coming back in my mind to reading Hamnet in February. I hadn’t read Maggie O’Farrell before, and I was so impressed I was just waiting to come back to her. The Marriage Portrait—her newest book, from 2022—was my chance. While it did not disappoint, I ended up liking Hamnet better, but only because…
After an adulthood avoiding Kurt Vonnegut, I finally read Cat’s Cradle. I immediately wondered what had been wrong with me to avoid Vonnegut. Cat’s Cradle is written in clear, straightforward prose with short, snappy sentences and paragraphs. It’s a little strange and the science fiction part of it is just a little science-y and a…
I have never felt such strong emotion in both of two opposite directions as I did while reading Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente. I am not alone in either hating or strongly admiring this book, and I even found another reader who felt exactly as I did: I hated the book for a good long…
When a vote was taken at my YA-for-adults book club regarding If I See You Again Tomorrow by Robbie Couch, there was not one person who didn’t like it. It was about half-and-half people who liked it and people who found it “middling.” I was probably somewhere between these two positions, but I raised my…
I found Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis to be a fun, fast, humorous, and charming read. Though charming maybe isn’t quite the word. A fairytale farce novel with the villain-perspective going on and some fun mash-up twists, it still manages to be different from the other villain-y books in its tone and its particular twists. Perhaps…
Here’s the thing: I have an issue with blood. It is a real thing rooted in trauma and it has grown worse with age. Here’s the other thing: Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan very unexpectedly features an awkwardly large number of scenes where the protagonist either bites the inside of her…
I’m going to have to agree with some other readers that Happy Place is not my happy place when it comes to Emily Henry or my vacation reads. But I did enjoy reading it. I still laughed and sighed and felt the sizzle of a romance; this book just had some more issues for me…
It was the eve of my birthday and I was headed to a book club meeting, except we were meeting at one of the leader’s houses and we were going to watch a (book-related) movie—an annual event. We were told we could bring treats; I took that as an opportunity to do some cooking or…
I enjoyed reading One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus, as did most of the other people who read it. It’s a little fluffy, but it’s meant to be: a fun, YA thriller that uses both tropes and cliches to go a little deeper, blending inspiration from The Breakfast Club with modern situations…
The summer will be coming to an end this month (in some ways. The weather won’t get there, but for most of us schedules and activities will cease to be summery before September). Which means it is plausible that you real readers still have a stack of “summer reading” on an end table or bookshelf…
I had so many conflicted feelings when I finished this book. Then I watched the limited streaming series and had more conflicted feelings, but not the same feelings, exactly. And then the New York Times published their best books of the twenty-first century and then the people’s choice, and there was Normal People again, not…
(Head to the end of the post to see my picks.) Sure, there’s a bunch of political stuff going on, but the book news in the past week or two has also been blowing up, unpredictably so. It all began with a little list that the New York Times put out. They put book lists…
After seeing T. Kingfisher conduct author interviews at my local bookstore, I walked away with the opinion that I would get along with her and also walked away with a copy of her most famous book, Nettle & Bone. A few weeks later I read the book while out of town and was hooked from…
“He woke up with no eyebrows and no idea how he’d gotten into such a position.” –Dreadful, Caitlin Rozakis
I enjoyed reading Universal Love by Alexander Weinstein. I would recommend it. (I did already, to my husband.) There are some things to mention, like how I know the author. There are other things, like how my husband has become a huge fan. (He doesn’t know the author.) If there is any part of you…
Way back in the spring, I went to a writing conference and didn’t tell. I wrote some notes for you, typed them up, and then got too busy with reviews and other things to share what it was like. North Carolina has a good writing network. I mean, there might be better, but there is…
In case you were wondering, there is actually not that much sex in Rebecca Yarro’s Fourth Wing, besides Violet’s frequent internal diatribe about how attracted she is to one of the other characters and the frat-boy conversations between the characters. But the sex scenes that are there are lengthy and extremely graphic, down to the…
It’s no wonder I was getting two books confused in my head. (Okay, it’s true: I do that a lot, anyway.) But when I saw one title on a table at a bookstore and then the other on a nearby table (titles that had both been on my radar for months and months), I picked…
Well, well, well… I have been out of town. On and off for a few weeks. So I missed my post for what to read in July, skipped right over the Fourth of July altogether. But I am still going to give it to you and maybe you can use it next year. Actually, I…
the starving artist 