I have joined another book club. (What? You don’t say?) Partly I have joined because it is at the bookstore where I work. Partly I love the premise—a type of book club that I have been considering starting myself, the type of book club where people read books of their choosing, given certain parameters. This…
I read In the Woods by Tana French last year, my only other experience with French. Apparently, I have not yet reviewed it. (I have a couple dozen books on my backlist from 2025.) I read mysteries and crime thrillers largely because I’m forced to or they overlap with another genre, so I was happy…
Perhaps it’s a waste of your time, but I want to first say that I don’t enjoy giving negative book reviews (not that this review is ALL negative). I would love it if all reading experiences were four-plus stars and I could just rave about everything I read (especially ARCs). However, I am honest to…
My takeaway of Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher: I started out a little annoyed because it wasn’t quite what I expected or wanted, writing-caliber and Arthurian-wise. Then I took a deep breath and told myself to read the book on its own terms, which sometimes works. For this one, it…
A Tender Age by Chang-rae Lee is best read with a buddy. Not like while you’re reading it, but it’s the kind of book you want to discuss after (and while) you read. I guess that makes it a good book club read. But since it’s being published today, it might be awhile before it…
I normally do a separate book review for the books we read in the bookshop’s club (since I will be leading discussion and it helps me think through my impressions and opinions of a book), but I didn’t get around to this one—There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak—in March. (I have already…
April was not a great reading month for me. I guess we can understand why it’s taken me so long to review this gaggle of titles. Dear Mothman by Robin Gow was on my radar before it showed up as a YA-for-Adults book club read. (For the record, it’s more Middle Grades.) This is partly…
***Early copy as a bookseller*** I’ll probably do a longer review later, but this drops in the UK today and Americans have only a week to wait! So, I’ll give my two cents now. I’m a middle-aged lady who reads many, many things including YA and graphic novels and I was swept up into this…
There is a part of me that was fighting liking Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day. I already had a beef with her because her books are all hardcover, thin, and overpriced, making them all but inaccessible to many people. Perhaps this is more a beef with her publisher. But then the issues deepened…
My main beef with Orbital by Samantha Harvey? It’s not a novel. And I don’t mean it’s a novella, either, though it’s definitely short enough to be that. No, it is a book of vignettes, so maybe a book of connected short stories? Not really even that. Also, it’s something akin to creative nonfiction—the characters…
I heard a reader say on a podcast recently that they were going to spend the semi-bicentennial year reading a book from each of the 50 states. The idea appealed to me, even though I will not be doing that this year. My TBR (to-be-read) is more than full, actually. But I could spend some…
I fully expected to like Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. I expected it to be an easy read. It would have been an easy read, except I was pretty bored (so it was difficult to want to pick it back up). I liked (and more-so respected) Olive Kitteridge back in the day. And then…
I was in a mood. I’ve read a lot of “serious” literature this year and had been on a literary fiction streak. Which is fine. It’s great! I love literary fiction. But I just wanted to read something that I could fly through and would take me no time at all—right in the middle of…
First things first, I guess; the title and the promise of The Drowned Woods (by Emily Lloyd-Jones) doesn’t work. There are no drowning woods. There is a city that goes underwater, mostly off-screen. Once you get past that (which I invite you to do right now), it’s smoother sailing. Blurb: Mer plans to live the…
Yes, I know it’s now March 1. Hush. I had been looking forward to Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, another one of those lauded, literary sci-fi reads like The Ministry of Time (which it turned out I didn’t love). Where did I land on this one? I don’t know. I feel torn. I liked it. It…
Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft might have been the first book I was excited about in 2025, like as I was reading it. I just somehow didn’t expect it. I suppose the cover doesn’t give much (including the mood) away. I don’t hate the cover, but the overall impression is…
Not to be confused with Night Watch (Discworld #29) by Terry Pratchett. Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips won the Pulitzer Prize in 2024, which was how it caught my attention as a giant doorstop of a hardcover book. Then it caught my attention again when it went to paperback, because what the heck?—it was…
This is largely a story of first-in-a-series. It’s also a long story because the most yet-unreviewed book of 2025 (for me) is speculative fiction. Let’s jump right in. It feels like I read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley forever ago, maybe in a different life. Or maybe I was yanked through a wormhole…
If I’m ever going to catch up with my reviews, I am going to have to post multiple reviews at once and make them a little (read: a lot) shorter than normal. Maybe you’ll like that? Or maybe you want all the juicy deets? It is what it is. Let’s begin with my Christmas reads.…
We’ll begin with a list that you’ll find nowhere else: My Best Reads of 2025. It’s possible that not a single book on this list was published in 2025, just that I read it in 2025. (Turns out a few of them were published this year. See asterisks.) Some of them were published hundreds of…
the starving artist 