scaifea's 2024 Challenge

Hey, everybody!

I'm Amber, a one-time Classics professor, turned stay-at-home parent/lady of leisure, turned part-time library assistant, turned back into Classics professor, turned back to librarian. When I'm not at the library, I spend my time sewing, writing, knitting, baking, and, of course, reading.

I'm 48 going on 12 and live in Ohio with my husband, Tomm; our son, Charlie; and our two dogs: Mario the Golden Retriever and Agent Fitzsimmons the Border Collie.

This is my sixth year in the Category Challenge. I won't set any particular goals for my categories again this year, but instead just list the books I read in each one and see how many I get through. My categories are pretty much the same as last year, with a couple of small changes.

For my theme this year I'm going with some of my favorite villains. I do love a bad boy (or girl).

Currently Reading:


What I'm Reading Now:
-The Kaiju Preservation Society (CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners)
-The Land of Laughs (CAT#2: 1001 Fantasy Books You Must Read Before You Turn Into a Newt)
-My Hero Academia Vol 22 (CAT#3: Manga)
-Peach Clobbered (CAT#4: Mysteries)
-Hot Head (CAT#5: Romance)
-The Library of Broken Worlds (CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist)
-The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist + CAT#7: Audiobooks)
-Death on the Nile (CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies)
-Happyhead (CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves)
-The Librarian Always Rings Twice (CAT#18: Library Display Books)

BingoDOG



1. featuring twins: Fangirl
2. epistolary or diary format: Attachments
3. featuring water: The Last Mapmaker
4. Written in another cultural tradition: My Hero Academia vol 14
5. a current or recent bestseller: Fourth Wing
6. on a topic about which you have specific knowledge: Babel
7. title contains a person's name: Anna and the Swallow Man
8. an ugly cover: N or M?
9. fewer than 100 copies on LT: Iveliz Explains It All
10. word "big" or "little" in title: Big
11. paper-based item in the plot: The Ten Thousand Doors of January
12. themed around food or cooking: Maizy Chen's Last Chance
13. read a CAT: Linger
14. author 65 or older: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
15. short story collection: A Stroke of the Pen
16. POC author: Breathe and Count Back from Ten
17. three word title: Life with Father
18. book from a "similar library": Carry On
19. set in a city: The Words We Keep
20. involves warriors or mercenaries: Katherine
21. reread a favorite book: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
22. about friendship: The Prince and the Dressmaker
23. set in multiple countries: When the Angels Left the Old Country
24. only title and author on cover: Dark Matter
25. publication year ending in -24: Billy Budd

AlphaKIT
January: A&Y: $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America & By Your Side
February: F&E: Galileo's Middle Finger & Honestly Elliott
March: H&R: A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting & All My Rage
April: U&O: The Men Who United the States & The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot
May: N&P: Now Entering Addamsville & The Postman Always Rings Twice
June: J&B: Me: Elton John Official Autobiography & Only This Beautiful Moment
July: I&S: Imogen, Obviously & The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
August: M&G: Mexikid & Scorched Grace
September: V&C: Starter Villain & The Changeling
October: D&T: The Death of Mrs. Westaway & Tin Man
November: L&W: A Merry Little Murder Plot & Warrior Girl Unearthed
December: K&Q The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper & I Have Some Questions for You
Year-Long: X&Z: America for Americans: The History of Xenophobia in the United States & The Lost City of Z

RandomKIT
January: Early Birds: Anna and the Swallow Man
February: Escape or Rescue: When the Angels Left the Old Country
March: World Wildlife Day: Cruel Beauty
April: Enchanted Garden Visitors: The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot
May: Art & Architecture: Ghost Wall
June: Initials: Nightbane
July: Favorites: Heartstopper vol 5
August: Titles: Whalefall
September: Weather: Any Way the Wind Blows
October: Halloween Memories: Solitaire
November: Written in the First Person: When All Is Said
December: Roll a Die: Severance

Pitch Black, from Rise of the Guardians

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
I've been reading the Young Adult Library Services award winners for years now, and I love it. It takes me about a year to get through all of them from the previous announcements, so it works out well.

1. Light from Uncommon Stars (Alex Award)
2. The Last Mapmaker (Newbery Honor Book)
3. Maizy Chen's Last Chance (Newbery Honor Book)
4. The Words We Keep (Schneider Award)
5. Breathe and Count Back from Ten (Schneider Honor Book)
6. Honestly Elliott (Schneider Honor Book)
7. When the Angels Left the Old Country (Stonewall Medal + Printz Honor Book)
8. Iveliz Explains It All (Newbery Honor Book)
9. I Kissed Shara Wheeler (Stonewall Honor Book)
10. All My Rage (Printz Award)
11. Icebreaker (Printz Honor Book)
12. A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting (Alex Award)
13. Cross My Heart and Never Lie (Stonewall Medal)
14. Stars in Their Eyes (Stonewall Honor Book)
15. The Eyes and the Impossible (Newbery Medal)
16. Babel (Alex Award)
17. Library of the Dead (Alex Award)
18. The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot (Alex Award)
19. Daughter of the Moon Goddess (Alex Award)
20. Fourth Wing (Alex Award)
21. How Lucky (Alex Award)
22. In the Key of Us (Stonewall Honor Book)
23. The Witch's Heart (Alex Award)
24. The Rose Code (Alex Award)
25. Winter's Orbit (Alex Award)
26. Only This Beautiful Moment (Stonewall Award)
27. Solito (Alex Award)
28. Simon Sort of Says (Newbery Honor Book & Schneider Honor Book)
29. Malice (Alex Award)
30. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth (Stonewall Honor Book)
31. Imogen, Obviously (Stonewall Honor Book)
32. Bad Cree (Alex Award)
33. Fire from the Sky (Printz Honor Book)
34. Scout's Honor (Printz Honor Book)
35. Lore Olympus vol 1 (Alex Award)
36. Chlorine (Alex Award)
37. Eagle Drums (Newbery Honor Book)
38. Whalefall (Alex Award)
39. The Collectors (Printz Award)
40. Starter Villain (Alex Award)
41. The High Desert (Alex Award)

Severus Snape, from the Harry Potter series

CAT#2: 1001 Fantasy Books You Must Read Before You Turn Into a Newt
This one comes from the list curated in The Green Dragon group a few years ago and captained by Morphidae.

1. The Farthest-Away Mountain
2. Gnomes
3. The Drawing of the Dark

Tomura Shigaraki, from My Hero Academia

CAT#3: Manga
Charlie helped me get interested in manga and I'm loving it.

1. My Hero Academia vol 14
2. Black Butler vol 2
3. My Hero Academia vol 15
4. Black Butler vol 3
5. My Hero Academia vol 16
6. Uzumaki
7. Black Butler vol 4
8. My Hero Academia vol 17
9. Black Butler vol 5
10. My Hero Academia vol 18
11. My Summer of You vol 1
12. Black Butler vol 6
13. My Summer of You vol 2
14. My Summer of You vol 3
15. My Hero Academia vol 19
16. My Hero Academia vol 20
17. My Hero Academia vol 21
18. Black Butler vol 7
19. Black Butler vol 8

Moriarty, from Sherlock

CAT#4: Mysteries
I do love a good mystery.

1. N or M?
2. And Then There Were None
3. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
4. Fatal First Edition
5. The Postman Always Rings Twice
6. The Thursday Murder Club
7. Mousse and Murder
8. Scorched Grace
9. Naked in Death
10. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
11. A Spell for Trouble
12. A Merry Little Murder Plot

Dracula (Gary Oldman is my favorite)

CAT#5: Romance
When I started working at the library, this was the genre I had the least experience with, and since many of our patrons enjoy romances, I thought I'd better get a working knowledge. As it turns out, I enjoy them too!

1. Fangirl
2. By Your Side
3. Katherine
4. The Seven Year Slip
5. Check & Mate
6. Mistress of Mellyn
7. A Little Village Blend
8. A Knight in Shining Armor
9. Firelight
10. My Summer of You vol 1
11. Fire from the Sky
12. Powerless
13. Seducing the Sorcerer
14. Naked in Death
15. The Flatshare
16. Angels' Blood

Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
Years ago I started a wishlist on Amazon as a way to keep track of books I'd someday like to read. It's now so long that it takes *forever* to scroll down to the bottom, and since the people who used to use it for gift ideas are now all folks (mostly family) amongst whom we've all agreed not to exchange gifts anymore (and instead just enjoy our holiday gatherings together gift-free - ie it's not because we now hate each other or anything), I decided I should start whittling away at it, and so I am requesting these titles one by one from the library and I'll only actually buy the ones I love and want to keep on the shelves.

1. $2.00 a Day
2. By Your Side
3. Anna and the Swallow Man
4. Practical Magic
5. Galileo's Middle Finger
6. The Men Who United the States
7. Ghost Wall
8. Year Million
9. Now Entering Addamsville
10. Me
11. The Hazel Wood
12. Never Tell a Lie
13. Vinegar Girl
14. America for Americans: The History of Xenophobia in the United States
15. The God Delusion
16. God Is Not Great
17. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
18. The Bear and the Nightingale
19. The Winter People
20. Excellent Women
21. The Almost Sisters
22. The Miniaturist
23. The Silence of the Girls
24. The Invisible Library
25. The Death of Mrs. Westaway
26. Tin Man
27. The Light Between Worlds
28. Dark Cities Underground
29. Self-Made Boys
30. Evvie Drake Starts Over
31. The Flatshare
32. When All Is Said
33. Wordslut
34. Women Talking
35. Divine Rivals
36. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
37. Severance
38. The Drowning Tree
39. The Chain
40. The Order of Time
41. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
42. The Starless Sea
43. The Kingdom of Back
44. The Red Lotus

Loki, from the MCU

CAT#7: Audiobooks
I listen to books while housecleaning, sewing, driving, and working on cargo at the library, so I get through a fair amount in a year, generally.

1. Fangirl
2. $2.00 a Day
3. By Your Side
4. Anna and the Swallow Man
5. The Last Mapmaker
6. Maizy Chen's Last Chance
7. The Ten Thousand Doors of January
8. The Words We Keep
9. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
10. Breathe and Count Back from Ten
11. Honestly Elliott
12. When the Angels Left the Old Country
13. Galileo's Middle Finger
14. I Kissed Shara Wheeler
15. Camp Damascus
16. Attachments
17. A Stroke of the Pen
18. All My Rage
19. Billy Budd
20. Icebreaker
21. A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting
22. The Three-Body Problem
23. Babel
24. Library of the Dead
25. The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot
26. Daughter of the Moon Goddess
27. The Men Who United the States
28. Dark Matter
29. Fourth Wing
30. How Lucky
31. Ghost Wall
32. Now Entering Addamsville
33. The Witch's Heart
34. The Rose Code
35. Winter's Orbit
36. Nightbane
37. Only This Beautiful Moment
38. Solito
39. Simon Sort of Says
40. Me
41. Open Season
42. Malice
43. The Hazel Wood
44. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
45. Imogen, Obviously
46. Bad Cree
47. The Uncommon Reader
48. Fire from the Sky
49. Powerless
50. Chlorine
51. Seducing the Sorcerer
52. Eagle Drums
53. Whalefall
54. Vinegar Girl
55. America for Americans: The History of Xenophobia in the United States
56. The God Delusion
57. God Is Not Great
58. The Collectors
59. Starter Villain
60. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
61. Reckless
62. The Serpent King
63. The Bear and the Nightingale
64. The Winter People
65. Under This Red Rock
66. Excellent Women
67. The Almost Sisters
68. The Miniaturist
69. The Silence of the Girls
70. The Invisible Library
71. The Death of Mrs. Westaway
72. Tin Man
73. The Light Between Worlds
74. Not Even Bones
75. Self-Made Boys
76. Evvie Drake Starts Over
77. Warrior Girl Unearthed
78. The Flatshare
79. When All Is Said
80. Wordslut
81. Women Talking
82. Divine Rivals
83. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
84. Lies My Teacher Told Me
85. Skyshade
86. Severance
87. The Chain
88. The Order of Time
89. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
90. The Starless Sea
91. The Kingdom of Back
92. The Red Lotus

Mr. Gold, from Once Upon a Time

CAT#8: Beauty and the Beast Retellings
A couple of years ago, for reasons I can't recall, I decided that I should read through all the B&B retellings I can find.

1. Cruel Beauty
2. Beastly
3. The Princess Saves Herself in This One
4. Firelight
5. Rose Daughter

Crowley, from Supernatural

CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies
There are a handful of authors whom I love so much that I want to read All. The. Things. So this is where I'll catalog those. Right now the list is John Boyne, Agatha Christie, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Moore, and Maggie Stiefvater.

1. Linger
2. N or M?
3. Forever
4. And Then There Were None
5. Sinner

Muzan, from Demon Slayer

CAT#10: National Endowment for the Humanities Timeless Classics
This may well be the first book list I ever acquired. I don't remember where it came from, but I know that I got it at some point in high school, in the form of a tri-fold pamphlet. I didn't start working through it, though, until around the same time as I started the Newbery winners and the 1001 Children's Books list.

1. Life with Father
2. The 39 Steps

Kylo Ren, from Star Wars

CAT#11: National Book Award for Fiction
This one seems clear on its own, I guess. I do love award winner lists.

Dark Willow, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

CAT#12: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Another award list.

Imhotep, from The Mummy

CAT#13: Book-a-Year Challenge
A few of years ago, I made a list of books by year, just to see both how far back my reading goes and where/when there are gaps. I'm now working on filling in the gaps, so that I'll have read a book from every year for as far back I can go.

1. The Dead Secret

Kilgrave, from Jessica Jones

CAT#14: Shakespeare
I'm doing a full-on reread.

Ricardo Diaz, from Arrow

CAT#15: Unread Books from My Shelves
I have books on my shelves that have been there, unread, for YEARS. I need to work on that.

Angelus, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves
I have a couple of shelves full of books that I really want to get to soon.

1. The Prince and the Dressmaker
2. Unwind
3. The Moth Keeper
4. Unwholly
5. Wayward Son
6. Uzumaki
7. Crown of Midnight
8. Prince Caspian
9. Icarus
10. Heartstopper vol 5
11. How Do You Live?
12. Unsouled
13. Solitaire
14. Iron Flame
15. Possible Happiness

Ronan, from the MCU

CAT#17: Books from My Stack of Book Riot Book Lists
Yeah, I may have a problem with collecting more lists when I already have too many.

1. Katherine (24 Best Romances of All Time)
2. Mistress of Mellyn (24 Best Romances of All Time)
3. A Knight in Shining Armor (24 Best Romances of All Time)
4. Naked in Death (24 Best Romances of All Time)
5. Rose Daughter (100 Must-Read Books for Beauty and the Beast Lovers)

Team Rocket, from Pokemon

CAT#18: Library Display Books
Two of my colleagues are in charge of all of our adult book displays, and I like to support their efforts.

1. Snow
2. The Seven Year Slip
3. How to Survive History
4. Mousse and Murder
5. The Lost City of Z
6. The Silent Sister
7. My Epic Spring Break(Up)
8. Your Shadow Half Remains
9. The Christmas Bookshop

Aziraphale & Crowley, from Good Omens
(Aziraphale would pitch a hissy fit at the accusation of being a villain (but he kind of is) and Crowley insists that he is when he really isn't.)

CAT#19: Everything Else
I'll list here the books that don't fit any of the above categories.

1. How to Be a Girl in the World
2. A True Princess
3. A Child's Christmas in Wales
4. A Christmas Memory
5. A Christmas Carol

Welcome back! I am paying the closest attention to your Shakespeare re-read... because I like Shakespeare, not because of the category photo ;)
(narrator: it was because of the category photo.)

I am loving the villains (especially Loki and Angel). Good luck with your reading in 2024. I will return to pick up more BBs and follow your Beauty and the Beast retellings.

Alan Rickman and David Tennant play some great villains! And Christopher Moore is one of my favorite authors too. Favorite Authors is a great category!

Great pics! Good luck and I'll be lurking.

>24 lowelibrary: I have an absolute soft spot for a good villain, Loki in particular, and it doesn't hurt that Hiddleston is a very pretty person.

(I have to tell you that every time I see your username, I think of one of my favorite regular library patrons, whose last name is Lowe. She used to be a librarian herself and has the funniest stories!)

>25 Charon07: Oh, agreed! Rickman and Tennant were practically born to be bad! And yay for another Moore fan! Few authors can make me actually laugh right out loud, but he's definitely one of them.

I always love your themes and the pictures you choose! Happy reading in 2024!

Hi Amber, I love your set-up and I am happy that I can drop by and see pictures of David Tennant whenever I want!

Happy reading! I'll be checking out your mystery and romance categories.

Thanks, all! I have so much fun putting together my themes each year.

Glad to see you here again, Amber. Your thread is always so much fun.

Great to see you, Amber!

Thanks, folks! Happy new year!

CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#1: Featuring Twins

1. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Cath and her twin, Wren, are off to their first year of college, and it seems to Cath that her sister is already pulling away from her, leaving Cath on her own to adjust to a new roommate who seems to hate her and whose maybe-boyfriend, Levi, is absolutely always around, making Cath even more uncomfortable than her normal anxiety-induced level of discomfort. She also worries about being away from her father, who suffers from manic episodes, and just the thought of trying to figure out the dining hall is too much for her. Thank goodness for fanfic, her safe space, and which she’s really very good at writing. She finds comfort in her fic stories – and so do her thousands of online followers. But when her creative writing professor gives her a failing grade on a fanfic story she turns in, her writing partner betrays her, and her maybe-friendship-maybe-something-else with Levi seems to go south, Cath nearly gives up and moves home. She’ll need to find some self-confidence in her very real abilities to get back on track.

I’m very, very late to the Rowell fan bus (I read my first of her novels – Eleanor & Park – last year and thought it was okay but that it didn’t really live up to the hype), but I’m definitely on board after this one. An excellent range of characters, all believable and well drawn, an interesting story and good atmosphere (I felt like I was right back on campus), and I loved the fanfic angle, especially that Rowell included bits both of Cath’s writing and excerpts from the ‘real’ books. I also love that she’s gone on to write (or so it seems – clearly I haven’t read them yet but I absolutely want to) the story that is Cath’s fanfic. Very cool.



CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
January AlphaKIT: A

2. $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn Edin
A look into what poverty looks like in the states, the history of government welfare, and how it has tragically and repeatedly failed those who need it.

I recognize this as an important subject (which is why I wanted to read about it), but the delivery here is very dry and I just couldn’t keep my mind on the task.

>35 scaifea: I've loved many of Rowell's novels and would especially recommend my favorite, Attachments!

>36 christina_reads: I've just put a hold on that one already!

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
January AlphaKIT: Y

3. By Your Side by Kasie West
Autumn and her friends were studying in the public library late one night before heading to a cabin out in the woods for a fun, snowy weekend, when the craziest/worst thing happens: as they’re packing up their vehicles, Autumn runs back into the getting-ready-to-close-for-the-night library to use the bathroom, and by the time she’s finished, somehow her friends have left without her and she’s locked inside the library for the entire weekend. She does her best not to panic (it doesn’t help that her anxiety meds are in her friend’s car), but then she soon discovers that she’s not alone; another student from her high school has been locked in with her, although he chose to be there…

A fair-to-middling YA romance. I found the MC to be juuuust this side of too annoying, but the main love interest (yes, there’s a triangle, which is slightly ugh, but fine) is an interesting character. There’s also a very predictable and solidly frustrating third act split, but it doesn’t last too long, and the ending is sweet. Honestly, the worst part is that you really have to stretch your tolerance for the unbelievable to swallow all the circumstances needed for them to be trapped in a public library all weekend, and I was irritated that it was merely a setting to get the Unlikely Couple in the same space for long enough instead of being a featured part of the atmosphere. I mean, hello, you’re IN A LIBRARY. And you have it ALL TO YOURSELF. That’s the romance, right there.

>38 scaifea: Haha, that does sound like an ideal romantic setting!

Interesting categories. I am especially interested in Beauty and the Beast retellings.

>39 christina_reads: On the days that I open the library I'm sometimes the only one in the building for 30-45 minutes and it's a pretty cool feeling. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to share it even with a handsome dude!

>40 Zozette: I'm fascinated by retellings of all kinds, but something about the B&B story just calls to me. So far I've read some real duds, to be honest, but it's also led me to some of my now-favorite books that I may not ever had read otherwise.

Love your villains! Rickman is the best, but I'm also pleased to see Spike again...

>42 MissWatson: Thanks! That's possibly my favorite version of Spike, too. Vampire Billy Idol is such a dream.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

4. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
A family of aliens have traveled light years to escape a devastating war and are running a donut shop in the San Gabriel Valley. An older Japanese woman, who is a virtuoso violinist whom no one has heard play in many, many years, is buying back her soul by handing over the souls of her students to the demon who has hers. An Italian woman runs an instrument repair shop but doubts her abilities because the family trade secrets were only handed down from father to son. And a young transgender runaway with an extraordinary musical talent will bring them all together, changing all their lives as she struggles to find her own place in the universe and the strength to believe she deserves it.

So good. So very, very good. Unbelievably good. Strange and quirky and funny and gut-punching and just so, so good. The entire time I was reading I felt as if the story were just barely in my control; at first I had no idea how the characters could ever come together and share a plot, and then once they did I had no idea how they’d resolve what needed to be resolved in a way that would account for who they appeared to be and who they clearly wanted to be/were heading toward being. And then in the final hour it all just comes together so beautifully. You’ll be rooting for everyone and wanting to hug each one. It’s beautifully strange and weirdly wonderful and terrifically twisty in the end.



CAT#3: Manga
BingoDOG#4: Written in Another Cultural Tradition

5. My Hero Academia vol 14 by Kohei Horikoshi
Another excellent entry in the series. More of some of my favorite characters in this one, so it was extra fun.



CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#7: Title Contains a Person's Name
January RandomKIT:Early Birds

6. Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
A Polish girl, Anna, is left on her own when her father is taken by the Germans, but her life is drastically changed – and almost certainly saved – when a mysterious gentleman charms her with his bird calls and bids her secretly follow him out of the city and into the woods. They live and travel together as if father and child for several years during the war, always on the move and always evading one or the other group of soldiers, experiencing various meetings and partings with others on similar paths, until the inevitable happens and Anna, who, by the grace of the Swallow Man (the only name she ever has for her companion) has been able to experience a childhood of sorts, is forced to grow up and face the world.

There are *so* many WWII novels out there of all kinds, and honestly I’ve mostly grown tired of them. But I’m very glad I gave this one a chance because it’s one of the better ones I’ve read in a long time. It reminds me quite a bit of The Book Thief; it’s dark and sad and deals with awful things, of course, but it still manages to be about the magic of human kindness and the beauty that’s forever in the world, no matter what else inhabits the place.

>44 scaifea: The Light from Uncommon Stars has been on my TBR list for a while. I’ll have to bump it up in the queue. And I may have to take a BB for Anna and the Swallow Man. I’ve been trying to resist adding to the TBR, and I’m also reluctant to undertake yet another WWII novel, but I can use more of that magic you describe.

>44 scaifea: I adored Light From Uncommon Stars too. Taking a BB for Anna and the Swallow Man.

>44 scaifea: Ooh, Light from Uncommon Stars does sound good. I'll have to pick it up sometime.

>44 scaifea: I have added Light for Uncommon Stars to my TBR list as it will fit both my music and sci-fi categories. And it is available on Everand as an ebook. Thanks for the review.

>44 scaifea: - I listened to Anna and the Swallow Man last year and agree that it was different from most of the WW II novels.

>45 Charon07: There's just such an oversaturation of WWII stuff out there and it can be...a lot. But yes, this one is worth it.

>46 JayneCM: It's so great to start off the year with such a fantastic read - I'm glad you loved it, too! And I hope you love AatSM too.

>46 JayneCM: Yes, do! It's so fabulous.

>48 Zozette: I'm glad you've found a copy, and I hope you love it!

>49 dudes22: There's a book club that meets at my library and they seem to read almost exclusively WWII novels; I'm going to recommend this one the next time they meet, in case they haven't already discussed it.

CAT#1: YALSA Awards (Newbery Honor Book)
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#3: Featuring Water

7. The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat
A young girl lives in a tiny, rundown set of rooms with her shiftless/shifty father and his partner in petty crime. They think she works a menial job at the docks market, but she secretly has managed to become an apprentice to a mapmaker, and she’s exceptionally good at the trade. When the chance presents itself for her to follow her boss on a sea voyage to discover unknown lands, which may or may not be inhabited by dragons, she jumps at the opportunity to free herself from her father’s clutches and possibly change her lowly stars. The expedition is not without dangers and troubles, though, and no one on the ship seems to be who they claim to be, with hidden lives and motives everywhere.

It's…okay. It’s a nice story, and the couple of little twists at the end are interesting and fun. I also think certain members of its intended audience (this is a middle grade novel) would have a great time with it. I just don’t feel that something extra, though, to make it Newbery Honor Book worthy. *shrug*

CAT#1: YALSA Awards (Newbery Honor Book)
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#12: Themed around Food or Cooking

8. Maizy Chen's Last Chance by Lisa Yee
Maizy Chen and her mom travel from LA to Last Chance, Minnesota for an extended stay with her grandparents while her grandfather is ill. Her grandparents own a Chinese restaurant, and Maizy finds herself getting to know the locals through their visits to the Golden Palace. She watches as her mom negotiates her rocky relationship with her own parents, learns from her grandfather about the history of her family and the discrimination that Chinese Americans have long struggled against, all while experiencing it firsthand in this small mid-western town. When the beloved bear statue, for years has stood outside the restaurant, is stolen, Maizy sets out to solve the mystery and discovers racism in obvious and surprising places.

A solid middle grade novel about family, loss, friendship, difference, and the importance of family roots and history. All of these elements are nicely blended, and the characters feel believable and interesting.

CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies
BINGODOG#13: Read a CAT

9. Linger by Maggie Stiefvater
(2nd in a series, so there are spoilers ahead)

Grace and Sam have fought so hard to be together, and just when as they’re settling into the idea that a future together is possible, things start to unravel. Again. The new werewolves made by Sam’s adoptive father, Beck, seem potentially problematic, to put it lightly, while Sam is struggling to fill the role of Human in Charge/Den Father that Beck left behind at the same time as he’s trying to negotiate being all human all the time. But when he’s with Grace, all of his uncertainty and worry crumbles. Until Grace herself becomes a source of worry for him. She becomes nearly constantly ill with a high fever and stomach pains, and no doctor can suss out what’s wrong. But both Grace and Sam secretly and separately fear they know the real reason she’s sick…

I adore Stiefvater, as you all likely know, and I’m really enjoying her version of the werewolf romance trope. But. Hoo boy, there is a *lot* of teen angst in here, and a lot of frustrated love feels, neither of which are usually my jam. But it’s Maggie and I love her and her writing is still amazing and I have faith that the ending to the series will be Maggie-style amazeballs.

CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#11: Paper-Based Item in the Plot

10. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
When January was a young girl, she found a door that opened to another world. But Mr. Locke (her father’s boss and essentially her surrogate father, since her own dad spent almost all his time traveling the world looking for treasures for Mr. Locke’s collection) severely punished her for having such fanciful thoughts, so she put it out of her mind and went on with the business of growing up. Now, at 17, she’s told that her father is dead, and things begin to happen to and around her that make her return to the idea of worlds behind doors…

An excellent idea for a story, and the world(s) building is nicely done. I enjoyed the book just fine, but I fell just shy of *loving* it, mostly because the characters felt a little flat. I was interested in where the story was going, but I never felt fulling invested in the people involved. Still, a fun read.

CAT#4: Mysteries
CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies
BingoDOG#8: An Ugly Cover

11. N or M? by Agatha Christie
Tommy and Tuppence are now middle-aged and chafing at the idea that no one seems to want to let them help out in this war effort like in the last one. So when an old friend recommends Tommy for a spy gig on home shores, he jumps at the chance, even though they’re both told that it’s men’s work only – and finds Tuppence already undercover and waiting for him when he arrives. Their job is to try to uncover a German spy mastermind in a small resort town while posing as boring old ordinary citizens on extended holiday and staying at a boarding house.

It’s Christie, so of course everyone is a suspect, and the plot is fast-paced and fun. I’m always delightfully shocked by the reveal, and as always, I adore Tommy and Tuppence.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves
BingoDOG#22: About Friendship

12. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
A graphic novel about a young dressmaker who would like to do more than just sew other people’s designs, a prince who secretly loves to wear beautiful dresses, and the friendship that grows between them.

I loved this sort-of fairy tale and its positive representations. Great storytelling, lovely illustrations, fantastic message. I highly recommend it.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#19: Set in a City

13. The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart
Lily is a model high school student and athlete with dreams of heading to Berkeley for college. But she also has a lot of secrets, like the fact that her sister isn’t actually off at university but in an institution after a suicide attempt, and that Lily herself struggles with anxiety and OCD-type symptoms. When the new boy reveals that he knows Lily’s sister from the hospital, Lily worries that everyone will find out all her secrets, but as the two grow closer she needs to decide what her priorities are.

I read this one because it won a Schneider Award, and it sure reads like it was written solely with that goal in mind. A story about a teen struggling to make it through everyday situations while dealing with mental illness is one thing and I’m all for positive representations of such things in literature, especially YA lit, but to have three sisters all have some form of mental illness, *plus* the love interest, and then to have the main character constantly refer to her struggles with anxiety and OCD to the point that it overwhelms what little plot there was in the first place is just too much.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist

14. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
The Owens sisters, orphaned as girls, were raised by their eccentric aunts in a ramshackle house in Massachusetts and were shunned and scorned and feared by their peers, while the aunts greeted at the back door various townswomen seeking cures for heartbreak, unwanted pregnancies, and other hazards of being a woman and dealing with love. One sister left at 18 and never looked back. The other waited until her heart was crushed by widowhood until she took her own two daughters and fled looking for a more normal existence for them and for herself. But magic in one’s blood isn’t something you can escape, and despite a vow made as children, love and all its messes catch up to all Owens women eventually.

Magical realism is hit or miss in the extreme for me. If a book falls into that genre, I either throw it across the room in disgust or absolutely adore it. This one I loved. Such strong and strongly written women are found here, and their stories are a perfect blend of everyday and extraordinary. And I love that it’s a story filled with women and their relationships with one another, and although people of the male persuasion are key parts of the plot, they are certainly not in starring roles. They’re the celery of the recipe: background supporters but in no way a distraction from the main flavor of the tale.

CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#14: Author 65 or Older

15. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Flavia de Luce is an 11 year-old with a quick brain and a penchant for chemistry, particularly the chemistry of poisons. When a stranger dies in her family’s garden, she suspects that poison is the culprit, and when the authorities prove too slow at solving the case for her – and especially when her father is pinned as Suspect #1 – Flavia decides to solve it herself.

I know that many people don’t like this one because they think Flavia is too precocious for her age, but I don’t really think it’s too far of a stretch. And yes, she’s pretty darned annoying, but I think (or at least I hope) that in this case the problem is the point – she’s supposed to be irksome (as I suspect some genius children actually may be, to be honest). So with those things I don’t have an issue. Still, I didn’t love the book. The plot was overly convoluted, to the point that the various U-turns and red herrings became exhausting, and in the end, the wrap-up felt trite and tired. But by far the biggest annoyance was that the narrator of the audiobook didn’t bother to learn how to pronoun the *one* Latin word in the book, which turned up on several occasions. Honestly. How hard would that have been? And it was doubly annoying that a character whose key trait is her polymath abilities wouldn’t know how to pronounce one of the very first words you learn in Latin 101. Cripes.

>58 scaifea:

One of my friends thought the Flavia was too precocious for her age until I pointed out she isn’t as precocious as young Sheldon Cooper is, adding that my friend seem to have no problem accepting Sheldon’s abilities.

>59 Zozette: Maybe what they think is ridiculous is more acceptable on TV than in a novel, which some folks thing should be more accurate? I was thinking more about actual, real-life kiddos, and how there are extremely smart/genius kids out there. So it's not impossible at all.

I've not watched Young Sheldon, but I do adore the grown-up version...

CAT#18: Library Display Books

16. Snow by John Banville
A priest gets murdered and his body mutilated in an Irish estate home and long-suffering Detective Inspector Strafford (who always has to correct people from “Stafford”) is on the case. Everyone’s a suspect, everyone is holding back secrets, and catholic church is pressuring Strafford to hush it all up. To add insult to deadly injury, it won’t stop snowing, making any sort of mobility a difficulty.

Christie but make it Irish, a smidge more modern, and quite a bit more than a smidge gritty and violent. I loved it up until I didn’t, but my aversion is certainly my own and not the fault of the book, which is wonderfully written. What I didn’t love was the part of the story in which the priest was a pedophile, which in itself wouldn’t have turned me away, but there’s a chapter written from his POV about his ‘sins,’ and that tips it over into the Ewewewickickick category for me.

>61 scaifea: When I read my review/comments on the book, I think the only thing that pulled it up to 3 stars for me was the writing. I didn't like the detective that much or the story line.

>62 thornton37814: Oh, I love Strafford. He's so very well drawn.

>61 scaifea: I have this in the stacks, and I am wondering if I should read the spoiler.

>64 Crazymamie: Hm. Well, I think it's fairly early on in the story that you get the gist of this info, so it wouldn't 100% ruin the book...

>65 scaifea: Oh, thanks for that. It's a NOPE for me. And much appreciated.

>66 Crazymamie: You're welcome!

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners (Schneider Honor Book)
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#16: POC Author

17. Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester
Veronica has hip dysplasia, which means she’s had a bunch of surgeries, can’t walk as long or as far as other teens, and has scars that she tries to hide. She also has parents who are very strict, a situation made worse when she’s caught in the apartment complex hot tub making out with a boy. And she both hates that they immediately assumed she would have ‘gone all the way’ if they hadn’t walked in at that moment and suspects that they, in fact, prevented the boy from raping her by doing so. She also feels that she has no say in her medical care, as her doctor tends to talk past her and directly to her parents about the progression of her condition and what the next steps should be. Swimming is the only thing that allows her to feel free and completely in control. So when auditions are announced for the mermaid show she has long dreamed of being a part of (but of which her parents strongly disapprove, of course) – and when a new boy moves into the complex and sparks fly between the two of them – Veronica must decide between obeying her parents and demanding the body autonomy she (and all women everywhere) deserve.

I *loved* this YA novel, both for the interesting storyline and its unique and important portrayal of consent, why it’s vital, and how it’s not just about sex. Veronica and her boyfriend are interesting and nicely developed characters, who both struggle both with the usual Teen Stuff and also mental and physical issues in a realistic, relatable way without too much angst. Highly recommended.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners (Schneider Honor Book)
CAT#7: Audiobooks
February AlphaKIT: E

18. Honestly Elliott by Gillian McDunn
Elliott is on the spectrum and has ADHD. He’s most comfortable and happy in the kitchen cooking elaborate-for-a-middle-grader meals, but lately even cooking can’t calm the disturbances in his brain caused by his father remarrying and the new wife being pregnant. His grades have fallen in a drastic way, and there was an “incident” that he now must go to weekly therapy to work through. The one thing he’s looking forward to is summer cooking camp. But when his father decides that Elliott should be made to pay for the damages he caused with this “incident,” Elliott realizes he’ll have to use the money he worked hard all year to save for camp to do so. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, they do: his friends cut him out of a group project at school and he's left the only one in the class without any partners, sad and embarrassed. But it turns out that the Most Popular Girl in School also doesn’t have a partner after she leaves her own friend group in a huff. And then the two of them come up with a plan that just may possibly earn them an A, and enough money for Elliott to pay back his father *and* go to cooking camp.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
February RandomKIT: Escape or Rescue
BingoDOG#23: Set in Multiple Countries

19. When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb
An angel and a demon have been friends for centuries, studying together in a synagogue in the old world, when the demon decides that they should leave and go to the states since everyone else seems to be escaping. He convinces the angel to go with him by saying that they should find a local young woman who immigrated but whose family hasn’t heard from her.

This one won several awards, but I can’t really understand why. I didn’t care about any of the characters and had trouble feigning interest in the plot. The “an angel and a demon are in love despite everything (including themselves) and work together to save the world” thing has been done elsewhere – pretty famously – and done *much* better. Just go reread that one or rewatch the show.



CAT#5: Romance
CAT#17: Books from My Stack of Book Riot Book Lists
BingoDOG#20: Involves Warriors or Mercenaries

20. Katherine by Anya Seton
A fictionalized romance about the love affair of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford.

It’s on lots of lists as one of the best romance novels of all time, and maybe it’s because it was, I guess, one of the first true historical romances? I’ll grant that it may be important to the history of the genre, but it’s nothing special as far as the writing goes or the romance itself. It’s just…okay. But certainly not good enough for its length.

>69 scaifea: Katherine has been on my wish list for ever because so many people have recommended it, and the main that has been putting me off is its length, so it's good to see another opinion. Not good enough for the length is a judgement that I think is also relevant to some authors' ever-lengthening crime novels e.g. Cormoran Strike is going to have to carry on without me because 900 plus pages are far too many.

>70 pamelad: I *do* seem to be in the minority with this one, and it's not *horrible* or anything, but criminy, it is LONG. I'm wishing I had listened to it instead (I listen to my audiobooks at 2x speed).

I tried the first of Rowling's adult novels and couldn't get through it, and now that she's revealed herself to be such a turd, I don't feel bad about not liking it at all.

>71 scaifea: the first of Rowling's adult novels

That was such a mess. How do you finish writing the Harry Potter books and decide that what people really want is a book populated entirely with Dursleys?

>71 scaifea: A less controversial example might be the Matthew Shardlake books by C. J. Sansom. An excellent series, but the last book is 880 pages.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
BingoDOG#9: Fewer Than 100 Copies on LT

21. Iveliz Explains It All by Andrea Beatriz Arango
Iveliz is suffering from PTSD and bouts of depression from an accident she was in with her father. She’s on meds and goes to a therapist, but is still acting out at school and at home, where her grandmother, who has dementia, has just moved in from Puerto Rico. She makes a To Do list of ways to be better, but struggles to reach her goals.

Hm. I get what this middle grade novel is trying to do – portray mental health struggles in a realistic way to a middle grade audience from the POV of a young person (plus how to deal with an elderly family member suffering from dementia, plus being Latinx in a predominately white school) – but I don’t think it works. Iveliz comes off as way too selfish and rude, and so outright mean to her mother, who isn’t being portrayed as anything but a parent trying desperately to find a way to help her child through a rough time, that she crosses over into unredeemable for me, even if the resolution wasn’t milquetoast-like (and it is). It felt too much like the message was that it’s okay to be shitty to your friends, family, teachers, and therapists if you’re Going Through Something, and you don’t really even need to apologize later because they should Just Know. Not a great message for the intended audience (or any audience).



CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
February AlphaKIT: F

22. Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger
This one started out good, with the promise of being a deep dive into the history of how medicine has misunderstood and mistreated the trans population and what can and should be done to change that. But at some point it took a left turn into a sort of tell-all about a particular activist who went off the rails and spread all sorts of slander and libel about a couple of researchers, including the author. It got weird. And while the scandal was sort of interesting, it felt more like it belonged elsewhere. *shrug*

BingoDOG#18: Book from a 'Similar' Library

23. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
In Rowell’s Fangirl, the main character writes fanfic for a HP-like series about a school of magic and a Chosen One. Carry On is the first book in a trilogy that is Rowell’s version of that fanfic. So it’s fake fanfic of a fake series, and it is amazing. I adore it. And in fact I love it more than HP these days, what with Rowling being a turd. Think Harry and Draco as roomies with an enemies-to-lovers story arc and as much more interesting characters as well.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

24. I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
The most popular girl in an Alabama christian high school kisses three different people then vanishes, leaving clues for those three teens to solve her disappearance. One of the kissed is her next-door neighbor, one is her bitterest rival for valedictorian, and one is her actual boyfriend.

I’m beginning to think that McQuiston belongs in my Writers Who Can Do No Wrong category. This was a delight. A fun little mystery, excellent characters who take interesting and believable self-discovery journeys and whom your rooting for all along the way.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

25. Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
I was so excited for this book when I heard about it – a horror story about a gay conversion camp written by a person named Chuck Tingle, I mean what more do you need in life? – but I was disappointed with the actual thing. The premise is so promising: the fundamentalist a-holes who run the camp are both metaphorically and literally evil, using demons to keep the kids from gaying it up via Pavlovian torture. But Chuck doesn’t seem to be able to deliver the goods. The actual story he writes around that premise is weirdly unimaginative; for example, the solution to getting rid of the demons seems too simple and too easily executed, and the explanation for their existence involves poorly explained Science and Latin (?) thrown in for good-intentioned purpose. Also, there’s just no palpable tension. I wasn’t ever all that nervous or scared for the characters. And then there’s the writing itself, which is…not great. Not every single noun needs an adjective, and you don’t always have to go for the $20 word when the buck-fifty word is perfectly fine and in fact the better option. So, in the end, I did need more and that’s sad.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

26. Unwind by Neal Shusterman
In the near future, after a second civil war over reproductive rights, the US lives under the Bill of Life, which makes life inviolable until the age of 13. From 13-18, though, a person’s parents can choose to have their child unwound, a process by which every bit of the body is harvested and used as grafts and transplants. Doctrine states that his isn’t death, but that the Unwound live on through the lives of the various people who receive those…parts. The book follows three teens who have been scheduled to be unwound and find themselves thrown together as they try to escape.

Charlie read this one and immediately handed it to me, saying that I *had* to read it. So, of course, I dropped all other books and read it. And he has excellent tastes when it comes to books. This was fantastic, and I’ll absolutely be continuing with the series (Charlie’s already halfway through the second book). The characters are really well drawn, the story is unique and interesting and really uncomfortable (in the best way) in parts, and there are some wild twists along the way.

CAT#3: Manga

27. Black Butler vol 2 by Yana Toboso
Master Phantomhive and his…interesting…butler take up – and solve – the case of Jack the Ripper.
I adore this manga. Fun story and gorgeous art.



CAT#10: National Endowment for the Humanities Timeless Classics
BingoDOG#17: Three Word Title

28. Life with Father by Clarence Day
This memoir of the author’s father is supposedly famous for its gentle humor, but I didn’t find anything at all funny about the bigoted, sexist, selfish ass.

CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#2: Epistolary or Diary Format

29. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
Beth, Jennifer, and Lincoln all work for the same newspaper, but only Beth and Jennifer know each other. They send a constant stream of personal emails back and forth, using their work accounts, about every personal subject under the sun. Lincoln’s job is to monitor company emails and report usage violations. But he can’t make himself turn Beth and Jennifer in. Their conversations are funny and witty and wonderful, and he knows he shouldn’t be reading them, but he can’t seem to help himself. And then, one day, Beth emails Jennifer about the super-cute guy she saw in the break room. And it turns out she’s talking about Lincoln.

I adored this novel. Rowell has an absolute knack for clever dialogue, and also for fabulous love stories. I loved every single character and felt like a Lincoln myself, on the outside looking in on their lives and wanting to be a part of it. So engaging and delightful.

>79 scaifea: I also adore this book! So glad you loved it as well!

CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#15: Short Story Collection

30. A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett (audiobook) - 8/10
A collection of formerly-misplaced short stories by Terry Pratchett, from his very early writing years.

These were fun, but also clearly early writings. The best part was David Tennant reading one of them and Neil Gaiman reading his foreward.

>80 christina_reads: Sorry, Christina, I missed you earlier!

It definitely seems like a popular book, and I'm not surprised.

CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies

31. Forever by Maggie Stiefvater
Third in Stiefvater’s werewolf series. Any attempt at a summary would contain all sorts of spoilers, so I won’t.

You all know how much I adore Stiefvater, but this book came close to being too much in the “I love him/her SO MUCH, but we’re SUPER star-crossed and it probably won’t work out and of course it seems best not to communicate any of these feelings” category. But still, it’s a great story and I’m excited for the next book. Maggie can write a character so well, and all the ones in this series are excellent.

CAT#4: Mysteries
CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies

32. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Ten strangers are lured to a small island by various means and an unknown host, their secret past crimes are revealed, and then they are killed off, one by one. Who is this maniacal, justice-seeking host? Is it some eleventh person, somehow hiding on the island, or is it…one of them?

Ooooh, this is now my second favorite Christie ever (after Murder on the Orient Express), and one of a few of hers that actually packs a bit of a scary atmosphere. Think Clue, but without the hilarity and with a lot more spookiness. I adored it.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
March AlphaKIT:R

33. All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
Two Pakistani teens living in California, who have been friends since they were little, struggle with issues of racism, mental and physical abuse, grief, and drug abuse. Can their friendship last when it all culminates in a fateful encounter with the police?

This Printz Award winner definitely deserves all the praise. The subject matter is sometimes brutal, but Tahir handles it beautifully, all while creating believable and complex characters and crafting a first-rate story. Definitely recommended.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

34. The Moth Keeper by K. O'Neill
Middle grade graphic novel about a young girl learning to take over the Night Village responsibility of tending the night moths. It’s a gentle, warm read about friendship, love, and the importance of self-care, self-worth, and belonging. I adored it.



CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#25: Publication Year Ending in -24

35. Billy Budd by Herman Melville
I went into this one blind other than suspecting that it would have something to do with ships and sailing, and what I got was that, but also a story about the unfairness of Rules, the power of rumor, and a fantastic character study. And Melville could craft a sentence.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

36. Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei
The story of two first years from very different backgrounds playing on the same college hockey team and both vying for the next #1 NHL draft pick. So naturally, they hate each other. Until they…don’t. But can their budding romance survive their passion for the game and the status that comes with being picked first?

I adored this – and the youth are apparently calling it – Boy Love romance. It’s both a feel-good warm-hug read while also tackling issues of depression and anxiety in college-age folks. Definitely recommended, if you like this sort of thing (and why wouldn’t you? It’s lovely.)



CAT#8: Beauty and the Beast Retellings

37. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Nyx has been raised as the disposable twin, the less adorable one, who has trained all her life to be married off to the demon tyrant and to find a way to kill him and free her people. She’s resented every second of it, and although she hates the idea that she’ll very likely die along with her enemy, she’s determined to do what needs to be done. And then she meets her new husband and falls in love. And then she meets his shadow and falls in love again. So things are…complicated.

A solid Beauty and the Beast retelling, with some fairly strong Howl’s Moving Castle vibes. My only quibble is that the ending drags just a bit, and it didn’t sweep me off my feet as much as I wanted it to.

>86 scaifea: Thanks for reminding me that Cruel Beauty exists! I liked Hodge's other book, Crimson Bound, so I'm interested in trying this one too.

>87 christina_reads: You're welcome - I hope you love it!

>86 scaifea: I will take a BB on every Beauty & the Beast retelling.

>89 lowelibrary: Ha! Even the really bad ones?! I get it, though; such a great story and so many retelling possibilities. I'm really enjoying reading through them!

>90 scaifea: I have not come across a really bad one yet. Some are better than others, but I love them.

>91 lowelibrary: Oho, I have. I can't read stories that try to dress (non-consensual) abuse up as romance, and I've run across a couple of those in B&B retellings. Just, ew.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
March AlphaKIT: H

38. A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin
With both parents gone and the massive debt left by her gambling father looming over her, Kitty finds herself responsible for her four younger sisters, all of whom – including herself – will be without even a home to call their own in just a few short months. And so she decides to travel to London for the season in search of a wealthy husband, all thoughts of a love match for herself abandoned as absurdly unrealistic. She quickly finds a likely target in a bungling-but-kindly second son in a landed gentry family, but finds an obstacle in the older brother, Lord Radcliffe. She soon strikes a deal with the lord, agreeing to leave his younger brother alone in exchange for help navigating a society of which she is sorely lacking in understanding. You can guess the results.

A fun and happy entry in the genre. The characters are instantly likable and the story unfolds with nice pacing and just the right amount of conflict.

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#18: Library Display Books

39. The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
Clementine has inherited her beloved aunt’s NYC apartment, and as she unpacks her boxes and tries to figure out how to come to terms with her grief, she soon finds herself also trying to remember – and life by – the two rules her aunt set down for her about the apartment (which, by the way, if magical): 1) Always take your shoes off, and 2) Never fall in love with whomever you may find when you walk in the door. It only takes a few days before Clementine needs to put Rule #2 into practice, when she comes home to find a strange man in her apartment and quickly realizes that the magic has happened to her: the apartment transported her back in time 7 years. Can she keep herself from falling in love with a man she knows she’ll lose again very soon, and if he loves her, then why hasn’t he tried to find her in the present? And would he be the same person?

A sweet little romance with a neat premise. No real depths here, but the story is fun and decently written. If you like this sort of thing, you’ll like this.



CAT#3: Manga

40. My Hero Academia vol 15 by Kohei Horikoshi
The story is now getting into one of my favorite arcs (I’m up to date with the anime, but not the manga yet), and so I really enjoyed this volume.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

41. Cross My Heart and Never Lie by Nora Dåsnes
A sweet little middle grade graphic novel about the awkwardness of growing up at a different rate than your friends and negotiating your way through your first crush.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

42. Stars in Their Eyes by Jessica Walton
A middle schooler goes to her first con with her equally-geeked out mom, which is exciting but also stressful because she (the kiddo, not the mom) is an amputee/cancer survivor/bisexual who suffers from panic attacks. She meets and falls in love with a nonbinary teen, and all-in-all has a good time at the con.

I love how much we’re seeing more diverse representation in middle grade books, but the novels that are so laser-beam focused on it are a little exhausting. Can we maybe now skip to the era of having diverse characters in a story without constantly referencing their diversity? That feels like true progress to me. There’s a scene in this GN in which the MC is trying to have a nice swim in the hotel pool in peace, but an obnoxious adult interrupts her to say that she’s “an inspiration,” and the point of the scene is that such do-gooders aren’t doing anything good at all by pointing up a person’s difference. I feel like possibly the author could ponder their own advice here, because the story (two teens meet at a con and gently and sweetly fall in love over their shared geekiness) would have been much more successful if it were, in fact, allowed to be the main story that just happened to have LGBTQ and disabled characters in the main roles.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

43. The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers
This year’s Newbery medal winner. I barely made it through. The main characters are animals (a dog is the narrator), and normally I would NOPE that after the first page, but since I have read *all* of the Newberys I felt obligated to continue. And of course there’s animal abuse. Ugh. Also, Eggers commits the literary since of winking just a little too hard at his own cleverness. This one firmly goes in the Newbery Duds column for me.



CAT#7: Audiobooks

44. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
I don’t even know how to describe this one well enough without giving stuff away. It’s a scifi novel set in china over several decades starting during the Cultural Revolution, and it involves a cult conspiracy, a VR video game with a more sinister purpose, and lots and lots of physics.

I enjoyed the plot (although I confess I was hoping for a more twisty reveal of the mysterious bits), but I could certainly have done with a great deal less science exposition. Hoping that the Netflix rendition leaves all that to the imagination.

CAT#19: Everything Else

45. How to Be a Girl in the World by Caela Carter
Lydia has spent the whole of summer vacation wearing long-sleeved turtlenecks and sweatpants because after the boys at school started commenting on her body she hasn’t felt comfortable or safe in her own skin. And worse, her mom’s boyfriend is starting to give her over-long hugs and uncomfortable stares. She’s too afraid that the adults in her life won’t feel the same way she does – that these things are wrong and she’s right to feel unsafe – and so she keeps it all to herself. When her mom surprises her and her live-in cousin with the news that she’s bought a house for them, they start cleaning it up on the weekends since the former owners seem to have left all their belongings behind. Lydia finds a small room in the basement filled with little jars of dried herbs and flowers, and a book of hand-written spells. Could this be the solution to her problem? Could she fight off unwanted male attention with magic? She’ll try anything to make the idea of going back to school in the fall even remotely palatable.

Easily the best read of the year so far for me and it’ll take a lot to top it. This is one of those middle grade books that every single student, no matter their gender, should read, and every single parent should read it, too. It perfectly captures the horror of being a middle school girl in the world, one who sees the injustices against women, feels them keenly, but also sees that this is the norm and she’s meant to accept it as such. So powerfully written, with a so-wonderfully told story. I loved every word of it and I urge all of you to read it for yourselves.

CAT#19: Everything Else

46. Friends for Life by Andrew Norriss
Francis is sitting alone in the schoolyard, head in his hands, when a strange girl he’s never seen before walks up and sits next to him. Jessica is shocked when he speaks to her because she assumed that, like everyone else, he wouldn’t be able to see her. Because, well, she’s a ghost. They become immediate and fast friends, and then incidentally gather two more outsiders to them to form a group of best friends. As they all start to open up to one another – and when they discover how Jessica died – they begin to realize just why it is that they are the only ones who can see Jessica. And then they begin to wonder why she hadn’t been able to move on…

A sweet and lovely little middle grade book that had a little bit of everything: a slice-of-life friendship story, a little bit of mystery, and an important message about mental health for youth. Definitely recommended.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#6: On a Topic about Which You Have Specific Knowledge

47. Babel by RF Kuang
Set in an AU Oxford College where the world runs on the combined magic powers of silver and language, this is a story of the evils of empire and the sacrifices that are made by those who oppose them.

I *adored* this book. Think His Dark Materials but make it LINGUISTICS. Perfection.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

48. Library of the Dead by TL Huchu
A girl who can communicate with the dead makes her living by charging them and their living relations for the privilege of her gift. But when a ghost who can’t pay begs her to find her missing son, she breaks all her rules against charity cases and sets out to investigate the series of mysterious disappearances in the neighborhood. She also gets her friend to sneak her into the members-only secret library where he works (and for which his father is president), and soon realizes both that the two things are related and that she very well may be in over her head.

I had a little trouble staying on top of the plot with this one, but it was still an okay read, if a little scattered.

CAT#19: Everything Else

49. A True Princess by Diane Zahler
A retelling of The Princess and the Pea couched in the traditions of Norse Myths and fairy kings and changelings. There were some fun twists involved, too.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

50. True Biz by Sara Novic
Charley has been battling her hearing parents over her cochlear implant for as long as she can remember, and finally she’s won the right to go to an actual school for the deaf. But she quickly discovers that she’s far behind her peers because her parents didn’t let her learn ASL. Once she begins to learn, so much more of the world opens up to her and she realizes the extent of what of life her mother has denied her in the name of appearances. Parallel to Charley’s story are those of the headmistress of the school, which is dealing with caring for an elderly deaf mother and a jealous wife, and of a fellow deaf student, whose family legacy – everyone is born into the family deaf – and his relationship with his parents is shattered when his baby sister is born hearing.

The more I learn about the deaf community the more I realize I don’t know and want to. There are chapters scattered throughout this novel that detail some of the history behind ASL and the deaf community in the US, and I appreciated those while also really enjoying the story and the characters. My only quibble is that the ending seemed a bit abrupt and a little pat, but otherwise this was a great read.

CAT#5: Romance

51. Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood
Mallory’s life is full of taking care of her two younger sisters and her ill mother while working a minimum-wage job and worrying about the unpaid mortgage. So she has no time to spare for her former pastimes, such as chess, which she is very, *very* good at. Like, child prodigy kind of good. Then her best friend asks her to participate in a charity tournament and she just happens to play against the #1 ranked player in the world, and win. And everything changes.

An adorable sort-of-enemies-to-lovers story that’s also not quite a grumpy-sunshine trope as well. The romance is lovely and fun, and the parallel plot of being an outsider in the chess world is legit interesting as well. This one pleasantly surprised me with how much I enjoyed it.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
April AlphaKIT: O
April RandomKIT: Enchanting Garden Visitors

52. The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
Lenni is 17 and a patient in the terminal ward of a Glasgow hospital. Margot is 83 and a patient in the same hospital, awaiting heart surgery. This is the story of their friendship and of how they ended up sharing their collective 100 years with each other.

An excellent story (or pair of stories, really), beautifully told. Both Lenni and Margot are fascinating and wonderful characters, and they’re so well drawn that you quickly feel that they’re your friends as well, which makes losing them all the tougher. I haven’t full-on wept because of a book in a long time, but I cried for this one and I don’t regret a second of it.

>101 scaifea: - I read this last year and liked it a lot too, Amber.

>101 scaifea: Taking a BB for this one.

>102 dudes22: I'm so glad you enjoyed it, too. Such a lovely book.

>103 lowelibrary: Oh good! Enjoy!

CAT#4: Mysteries

53. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
Pip has decided to do her senior capstone project on the 5-year-old cold case of a girl who went to the same high school. Under the guise of approaching the project from the topic of social media’s role in crime cases, Pip really intends on clearing the name of the other student – Sal - who was presumed to be the murderer after his apparent suicide and finding out what really happened to Andie Bell, whose body was never found. She teams up with Sal’s brother, Ravi, who also believes in Sal’s innocence, and together they set out to uncover the truth. But Pip quickly learns that there are layers of secrets here that she hadn’t guessed, and someone is out to stop her from investigating.

An okay mystery with some attempted twists at the end, although they didn’t have the shock value I would have liked them to, and in general the pacing was a little slow. I didn’t dislike it, but I also didn’t love it. The best part is the sweet slow burn romance between Pip and Ravi.



CAT#3: Manga

54. Black Butler vol 3 by Yana Toboso
Another lovely romp with Sebastian the demon butler. This volume wrapped up the Jack the Ripper storyline.

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#17: Books from My Stack of Book Riot Book Lists

55. Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt
Martha finds herself on the other side of a couple of years ‘out’ in the ton and without a husband, and her aunt has gently reminded her of her options: find a husband, fast, or find a job as a governess. Martha decides on the latter and sets off for a remote manor to take up the tutoring and managing of a stubborn and motherless child with an aloof but also philandering father. The neighboring manor houses a flirty bachelor brother and his meek sister, who dotes on Martha’s charge and mooneyes the father. Martha finds herself in the middle of it all, fighting off both the advances of the neighbor and her disturbingly strong and growing feelings for the master of Mellyn.

Oooh, I loved this one. A fantastic gothic romance with all sorts of Jane Eyre and Rebecca vibes.

>106 scaifea: I'm sure I read that one decades ago.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

56. Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
Once upon a time the moon goddess was a mortal woman in love with the man who used his impressive bow skills to do the Celestial Emperor a big favor and win a vial of immortality elixir. But when he was away and she was dying in child birth, she took the elixir to save herself and her child and was punished for it by being banished to the moon. And so Xingyin – the child – has grown up knowing only the moon, her mother, and a servant. All that changes overnight when the Emperor’s servants pay a surprise visit and nearly discover Xingyin’s existence, so her mother sends her away to seek her fortune. This is the story of how Xingyin works to find a way to free her mother from the Emperor’s curse, becoming a skilled fighter in his army along the way, as well as getting herself involved in a messy love triangle, of course.

I enjoyed this romantasy for the most part. I love the mythical retelling, of course, but the love triangle gets too angsty and the star-crossed aspect gets tedious.

>106 scaifea: I enjoyed Mistress of Mellyn too, and have been looking for a copy of Bride of Pendorric. Love a good gothic.

>109 pamelad: I definitely think I'll have to look up some of her other work, too.

CAT#4: Mysteries

57. Fatal First Edition by Jenn McKinlay
Lindsey and Sully are in Chicago for an archivist convention when Lindsey finds a tote bag with a very rare book in it under her conference seat. They turn it in to the convention coordinator – a former professional collector of such finds – then start making their way home to Briar Creek on an overnight train. Straight out of Christie’s playbook, they wake the next morning to find that the coordinator, who was also homeward bound on the same train, has been murdered, and somehow that rare book has made its way back into Lindsey’s possession. But that’s just the beginning of their troubles when the murder train stops in Briar Creek and the suspects are all bunking in the local inn during a major snowstorm.

There’s a lot going on in this entry in the series, and it’s all a bit jumbled, to be honest. It seems that all cozy mystery series start to fray around the edges at some point, and I’m afraid this one is starting to show signs of unraveldom. I’ll stick with it for now because I like the characters, but if the writing gets much worse I’ll likely jump ship soon.



CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
April AlphaKIT:U

58. The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester
Another Simon Winchester deep dive into an specific aspect of history, this time about a handful of people who, early on, shaped the US into the country it is.

Meh. Not my favorite of his works; I found myself needing to put effort into focusing on the content, and that’s usually not the case with Winchester’s writing.

CAT#8: Beauty and the Beast Retellings

59. Beastly by Alex Flinn
Kyle is the king of his high school: rich, popular, gorgeous, and dating the prettiest girl in school. He’s also a complete ass; he looks down on anyone who doesn’t share his qualities, makes fun of them relentlessly, and plays horrid pranks on them. His world upends, however, on the night of the school dance, when the ‘ugly’ girl he prank-invited to go with him turns out to be a witch. She curses him to look just as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, which turns him into a beast. The spell, of course, is only reversable if he can find someone to love and who loves him in return.

I should have trusted my instinct to abandon this one early on, but I had hoped that it would improve. It didn’t. Lackluster writing, an overly-simplistic retelling of the original tale that belies a not-complete understanding of the point, and characters that are either wholly unlikeable, even once ‘redeemed,’ or so cardboard-like that there’s no depth to them at all. The Belle character is essentially a stand-in for the Necessary Female Character Here, in that she does the bare minimum of being trapped, feeling scared, then sus, then in love, with no nuance to her personality or feelings or actions.



CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#24: Only Title and Author on Cover

60. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Jason teaches college physics who gave up his chance to do ground-breaking research in his field in favor of starting a family with his beautiful artist wife. Both gave up promising careers for middling ones in order to put their marriage and raising their now-teenage son first. And both are happy with the decision with essentially no regrets beyond the occasional, casual ‘what if’ thoughts. Jason goes out one night to meet some old friends at a bar (a former college roommate has just won a prestigious physics award), and he doesn’t come back. He’s kidnapped, drugged, and wakes up in an alternate universe version of his life, one in which he never married and instead did the ground-breaking work he gave up in his own world. That research? Inventing a box that allows one to travel through the multiverse. He spends the rest of the book running from his colleagues in that world and searching for a way back to his own universe, his own version of his wife and son.

Typical first-person Capable White Man Doing Impressive Things While Running from Bad Guys and Fighting for His Best Girl thriller. But with Science! I guess? Not really my cuppa, I suppose.



CAT#2: 1001 Fantasy Books You Must Read Before You Turn Into a Newt

61. The Farthest-Away Mountain by Lynne Reid Banks
Dakin is a 14-year-old girl who dreams of meeting a gargoyle, marrying a prince, and visiting the Farthest-Away Mountain, which no one has ever managed to do. One day she thinks she sees the mountain nod to her, so she takes that as a sign and sets out to do All the Things. Adventures ensue.

A middle grade fantasy that feels like a bedtime story a parent makes up as she goes along, in the sense that it seems a little hodgepodge with “and then…and then…” vibes. Which isn’t necessarily all that bad, although the writing could be a little less clunky.

>111 scaifea: I find McKinley's books to be uneven in quality. Some books are pretty good; others are very lacking.

>113 thornton37814: This cozy series, though, has made it farther than any other I've read before starting to deteriorate into lackluster plots and lousy writing.

>114 scaifea: I think my preference is for some of the older cozy series than the more modern ones. I really enjoyed the old Rett McPherson Torie O'Shea series and the Monica Ferris needlework series back in the day. The last couple of Ferris books were not quite as good as earlier ones, but McPherson quit writing them way before I was ready for her to do so.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

62. Unwholly by Neal Shusterman
The second in the Unwind series. Not quite at good as the first one, but it still delivers some fairly excellent action and some fun twists. I can’t wait to see what comes next with these characters and their stories.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
BingoDOG#5: Current or Recent Bestseller

63. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Violet has been training to be a scholar for what seems like most of her life, under the tutelage of her own scholar father. After his death she continued on that path, until her mother – a dragon rider of considerable rank – made the executive decision that Violet would follow in her mother’s (and her brother’s, and her sister’s) footsteps and enter the dragon rider training program. It’s a dangerous career path, with the majority of the first year students ending up dead before the year is over (or, really, even started), and Violet is not a likely candidate for survival. She’s short, slight, and her bones are devastatingly brittle. Oh, and there’s a giant target on her back, since the children of those who led the rebellion several years ago all would love to kill her because her mother is the reason most of their parents are dead. Her number one threat is the leader of the rebellion kids – and also Violet’s assigned wing leader. He’s the best of the riders and very, very dangerous. Also? Very, very handsome. Because of course he is. But Violet has some tricks up her sleeve, including a ridiculous amount of courage and stubbornness, so underestimating her is probably not the best idea.

Oh my lordy lou, I adored this book and can’t wait to get my hands on the next one. It ticks so many of my boxes: fabulous world building, amazingly detailed characters, excellent writing, superb twists, steamy enemies-to-lovers romance. It’s so, so good.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

64. How Lucky by Will Leitch
Daniel is a twenty-something guy living in a southern college town and working at-home for a regional airline’s customer service department. He only has a couple of friends and doesn’t get out too much, with the exception of tailgating on football game days. Overall, though, he considers himself a lucky guy, despite the fact that he has a degenerative and eventually fatal disease that has left him wheelchair-ridden, Stephen Hawking style. Then one day he sees a college student accept a ride from some dude in cowboy boots and a ballcap for a defunct team, and when she is reported missing, he’s pretty sure he was the last person to see her, except for her kidnapper, of course. But what, exactly, can he do about it? Honestly, more than you’d think.

This Rear Window-esque novel is like a fun, slightly wild ride on a motorized wheelchair (and I’m convinced Daniel would happily take readers on such a ride if requests were made). The mystery itself isn’t anything earthshattering and there are no big or shocking twists, which threw me off a bit, if I’m honest. But Daniel himself, and the more-than-half of the book devoted to his life story, more than make up for whatever the actual plot lacks. He's a fantastically created character, who rings 1000% true, and he’s one that you’ll want to be friends with for life.

>118 scaifea: Taking a BB for this one.

>119 lowelibrary: I hope you love it!

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

65. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
Simon, Baz, and Penelope have left their magical school behind and started Uni, sharing an apartment in London and trying their level best to move on from what amounts, essentially, to the years of trauma after trauma that tags along after being (friends/mortal enemies/boyfriends) with a Chosen One. It’s…not going well, it seems, for any of them, and so when Penelope suspects that their school friend, Angela, may be in some sort of trouble in San Diego, she persuades the boys to fly across the pond and then take a good old-fashioned road trip across the US. Will it help Penelope figure out why she can’t figure out What’s Next as easily as she used to? Will it fix what both Baz and Simon both secretly and separately fear is the end of their relationship? Will they get eaten by southwestern dragons? Killed by Vegas Vampires? Anything is possible in a convertible Mustang on Route 66, except maybe finding a decent cuppa.

Nearly as brilliant as the first book in the trilogy – I equal parts adore Baz and Simon and want to knock their heads together, and I love that feeling. Long Live the Uncommunicative and Fret/Fraught Gay Boys trope! I love to hate it.

CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
May RandomKIT: Art & Architecture

66. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
An abusive husband/father takes his family along with a college class of archaeology students on a summer reenactment trip, during which they will all live as closely to the way the ancient peoples of northern Britain lived. The professor leading the class slowly gets sucked into the father’s obsession with recreating a human sacrifice ritual, and the narrator – a teen girl and the daughter of the family man – is at the heart of the reenactment.
This one’s short but also sort of a slow burn. The tension is built up really nicely, and although I’m not sure I’d really call this a full-on horror novel, it’s definitely got a good creep factor to it.

CAT#9: Favorite Author Bibliographies

67. Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater
Massive rockstar Cole St. Clair is making a comeback to the music scene after disappearing for a couple of years (and only a select few know that he’s now a werewolf). So he’s moving to LA to record a new album while filming a reality show about the process. But he’s really in LA because the woman he fell for while trying to figure out how to be a wolf and not a suicidal drug-addict hot (in more ways than one) mess now lives here, and he wants to try to win her back (if, in fact, she was ever his to begin with). Complications: Isabel’s parents are imploding, her brother died trying NOT to be a werewolf, and she’s built so many walls to keep herself safe that even a guy with zero red flags would have a challenge on his hands. And Cole has enough red flags to make a very, very large…somethingorother…out of them. Lots of flags. Also? The person in charge of the reality show has a history of inviting hot messes to star in her projects so she can throw wrenches in their path and film them losing control. For that to happen to Cole would be bad for lots of reasons. Can he keep himself together while projecting the image of Wildman St. Clair while also convincing Isabel that he’s a safe space?

The last in the Shiver series, this is my favorite by a lot, even though (because?) the main characters are nowhere to be found. Cole and Isabel have a much more interested (and much less exhausting?) storyline, and I adore them both. Smart people doing stupid things are rarely so easy to root for as here. Steifvater, I think, was honeing her Ronan skills in Cole, and it was so fun to watch.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

68. Lightlark by Alex Aster
Every century the rulers of Lightlark’s six realms come together to play a deadly game for the chance to break the curses each realm – and their inhabitants – have endured for 500 years. Each ruler has secrets and motives to hide, including Isla, one of the youngest of the rulers. The game is deadly by nature, but Isla’s secrets could get her killed faster than any competition. Who can she trust among the other rulers, especially when she knows she can’t trust anyone with her heart.

Another Hunger Games-like romantasy with a love triangle and some fun twists. Formulaic, sure, but a hoot nonetheless. It ends on a cliffhanger, so I’ll definitely be continuing with the series.



CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist

69. Year Million edited by Damien Broderick
A collection of essays by various scientists and mathematicians on the subject of what life will be like in the year One Million. I admit to skimming a few of the essays, but some of them were really interesting.

CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
May AlphaKIT: N

70. Now Entering Addamsville by Francesca Zappia
Zora is a teen living in a small Indiana town and she’s, essentially, an outcast. This is because her father is in prison for swindling a majority of the townspeople, but also because everyone thinks she’s the one setting fires all over town, when really it’s the Firestarter she’s hunting down, a demon-like creature that possesses human bodies and feeds off ghost energy. The ability to see those ghosts helps her hunting skills, but not her outsideriness, and her prickly nature probably doesn’t help matters, either. When the school janitor dies in a house fire, though, things really, um, heat up, and Zora teams up with another Firestarter – whose motives are suspect but his jaw is chiseled so we’ll give him the benefit – to track down the real culprit before it’s all too late.

I enjoyed this one a great deal. Zora is a cool character: her prickly nature is excellent, and I love that she’s sort of into the Love Interest but it’s definitely a sidebar for her after the mission at hand. There are a couple of nice little twists in the plot, too.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

71. In the Key of Us by Mariama J. Lockington
Two tween black girls from different backgrounds meet at a prestigious music summer camp and fall in love.

Sweet and soft, but not a lot of substance. Perfect, though, I think, for its intended demographic: middle graders.

CAT#3: Manga

72. My Hero Academia vol 16 by Kohei Horikoshi
Another excellent entry in the manga series.



CAT#5: Romance

73. A Little Village Blend by Nathan Burgoine
A brother and sister team own a little tea shop in the Village, and they both have interesting abilities tied to their wares: he can enhance the effects of each tea (calming, energizing,…) and she can tell the future in a person’s dregs. When a hot guy in uniform and with a gorgeous husky in tow comes in for a London Fog, Ivan is cautiously interested, but Anya has one look at the dregs and says, Nope, definitely not; he’s a mess you don’t need to try to fix. Will Ivan – a natural fixer – give it a try anyway, or will he heed his sister’s warning and wait patiently for the Protector she’s already predicted will come?

This one’s a novella that was recommended to me by one of my Tuesday Teens and I really enjoyed it. Sweet and cozy, like a warm hug.



CAT#4: Mysteries
May AlphaKIT: P

74. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain
Ugh. I thought I’ve give hardboiled/noir a try again, but nope, I still don’t like it. Too grim for my tastes.

CAT#8: Beauty and the Beast Retellings

75. The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace
Free verse has to be really really REALLY well done for me to like it at all. This collection just didn’t do it for me. I appreciate her sentiments, but I wasn’t impressed by the poetry on a technical/skill level.



CAT#2: 1001 Fantasy Books You Must Read Before You Turn Into a Newt

76. Gnomes by Wil Huygen
Cute idea, but I think I just wasn’t in the mood for it.



BingoDOG#21: Reread a Favorite Book

77. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
A re-read of an absolute childhood favorite. I’m not even sure if it would hold up for anyone else, but the whole series is steeped in so much sentimental wonderfulness for me that I don’t care. I still adore it.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

78. The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
A reimagining of, essentially, all the high points of Norse mythology through the eyes of Angrboda, mother of Fenrir, Hel, and Jörmungandr.

Easily one of my favorite books so far this year. I love myth retellings, but I’m also very picky about them, and Gornichec is Gaiman-level good at lovingly recrafting those old stories. The writing is top notch.

CAT#3: Manga
CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

79. Uzumaki by Junji Ito
A horror manga about a town that slowly succumbs to a weird and supernatural obsession with spirals.

I read this one for the first time years ago and loved it, and I’ve reread it now because one of my Tuesday Teens has chatted it up as a favorite. It definitely holds up: creepy and weird and imaginative and really well done.

CAT#18: Library Display Books

80. How to Survive History by Cody Cassidy
A fun look into a handful of disastrous moments in history from the viewpoint of how you could have possibly survived them. In each chapter Cassidy takes on a particular event (the Chicxulub asteroid, the fall of Rome, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake,…), and using advice from experts in that specific field, he lays out a plan for survival, should you find yourself somehow back in time and in the wrong place. An easy and interesting read; I learned a lot more than I thought I would!



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

81. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
Follows the lives, loves, losses, and triumphs of three women during WWII, who find themselves working at the now-famous code-breaking center of Bletchley Park.

I generally don’t go for historical novels about Strong Women Doing Strong Things during WWII, but this one really surprised me. The characters are excellent, seamlessly woven into actual historical events. The love stories are interested and well done, and there’s even a nice mystery plot that ties everything together and manages to deliver a nice twist.



CAT#3: Manga

82. Black Butler vol 4 by Yana Toboso
Gosh, I love this manga. Cool plot, even cooler characters. Gorgeous illustrations.

>130 scaifea: - I've liked all of Kate Quinn's books about WWII that I've read, Amber. Our book club is reading The Alice Network for next month's discussion and because it's a reread for me, I'm going to listen to the audio this time.

>131 dudes22: It definitely has strong book club vibes. One of the BCs at my library almost exclusively read WWI historical novels with female protagonists, but I feel like a little of that would go a very long way for me.

I listened to this one and the narrator was excellent. (Full disclosure: I always listen at 2x speed, but she sounded great to me.)

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

83. Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
The Iskat Empire is held together by treaties, which are in turn sewn up with arranged marriages. Some of the subject planets are beginning to chafe under Iskat rule, so when the Iskat Prince Taam dies in a flight accident, his widower, Jainan, is hurriedly remarried off to another Iskat prince, Kiem. But a marriage between a prince whose reckless past has given him a reputation as a spoiled and disobedient royal and a quiet and deeply damaged widower who isn’t showing any actual willingness to remarry doesn’t seem like then bandage the empire needs. And when Taam’s death is revealed as a murder with Jainan as a suspect, the marriage only gets less likely to succeed. But there’s more to both Kiem and Jainan than anyone else sees, and possibly more between them than either could have hoped.

Sci-fi romance with an idiots-to-lovers trope? Yes, please. And it doesn’t disappoint.

>133 scaifea: LOL at "idiots to lovers." I do enjoy that trope!

>134 christina_reads: It's so good, right? You just want to knock their heads together and then give them a big hug!

>127 scaifea: I'm taking a BB for A Little Village Blend!

>128 scaifea: I'm doing a chronological Narnia reread (not by publication order, but chronological according to the story - I have finished three books so far) and my feelings are similar to yours.
The Witch's Heart is another BB, it sounds excellent!

>136 MissBrangwen: I hope you love those two reads as much as I did. And yay for Narnia!

CAT#7: Audiobooks
June RandomKIT: Initials

84. Nightbane by Alex Aster
The second book in the Lightlark series, this one picks up just where the first left us. The love triangle continues to be fraught, Isla continues to learn what her abilities can do, and secrets about their world abound. So, romantasy being romantasy. Are there some plot holes? Yes. Is the writing sometimes a little…silly? Most certainly. But the characters are great and the story is fun, so who cares that not everything makes perfect sense, and when the writing isn’t silver prose it’s still not the worst I’ve ever read by a lot shot. I’m declaring myself an Aster fan.



CAT#4: Mysteries

85. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
A group of pensioners living in a posh retirement community have a little club in which they look at cold case files and try to solve them. And then the murders start right where they are. So, much to the consternation of the local police, they set their minds to solving these uncold cases. And they learn along the way that it’s not only criminals who have secrets…

I enjoyed this one, but I didn’t…LOVE it. Elizabeth grated on my nerves. And the ending went on too long; one or two red herring twists right at the end are okay, but beyond that the trope becomes very tired very quickly. But beyond Lizzie, I adored the characters and the wordsmithery was lovely.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: audiobooks
June AlphaKIT: B

86. Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian
The story of three generations of Iranian men learning family secrets and learning to cope with that knowledge, while also adjusting to life in another culture, either because of a move from Iran to the US or the US to Iran.

Excellent treatment of how gays are treated in a culture other than your own and negotiating the thought shifts that go with learning your assumptions may not be accurate. I sometimes get impatient with novels that shift between narrators and time periods, but this one does it really well.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

87. Crown of Midnight by Sarah Maas
The second in the Throne of Glass series. Can’t talk too much about it without giving up spoilers, but I can say that the love triangle is still going pretty strong, and Maas delivers her trademark plot twists whammies in the last 30 pages or so. Excellent fantasy series so far.



CAT#3: Manga

88. My Hero Academia vol 17 by Kohei Horikoshi
Still loving this manga series.

>130 scaifea: Just added How to Survive History to my wishlist. it is definitely my sort of book.

>141 Zozette: I hope you love it!!

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

89. Solito by Javier Zamora
Memoir about the author’s experience as a young boy trying to get across the border to his parents. Fascinating and well-told.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

90. Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow
Middle Grade novel about a boy with PTSD and how his family moves to another town for a fresh start. The author hits that sweet spot of being able to write believably in a MG first person voice, and the details of the trauma are nicely unfolded throughout the story.

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#17: Books from My Stack of Book Riot Book Lists

91. A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux
A woman gets ditched by her shitty boyfriend while on vacation in England, and while she’s crying over him in an old church, a nobleman from 400 years in the past is pulled through time by her tears. She helps him find out who betrayed him to the queen all those years ago and caused his wrongful execution. They fall in love. He gets sucked back in time. She cries a lot. Again. Then *she* gets zapped back in time to save him because he’d still been executed even after discovering at least part of the truth in the future. They fall in love again. She gets pulled back to the future. She cries a lot. Again.

Ugh. This 80s romance novel has not aged well, although, to be honest, bad writing is pretty much always bad writing. Plot holes and contradictions don’t breed in the pages over time. It’s just…not good. However, if you squint, tilt your head just right, and replace the two MCs with Nandor and Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows, it almost kind of works.

CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
June AlphaKIT: J

92. Me: Elton John Autobiography by Elton John
Follows the standard celebrity memoir pattern: humble beginnings, overnight fame, drugs/sex/excess, rehab, equilibrium found in later years. A fair amount of dishing about other big names, but he never gets too catty about it, and the book is well-written and interesting.



CAT#4: Mysteries
CAT#18: Library Display Books

93. Mousse and Murder by Elizabeth Logan
The first in a cozy mystery series, but it’ll be the last in the series for me. The writing is already not good, the characters are flat and uninteresting, and I had the murderer figured out within 30 pages.

>146 scaifea: I enjoyed Me: Elton John alot when I read it.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

94. Open Season by C. J. Box
Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming with a wife, two little girls, and a baby on the way. He has a history of being a bit bungling, but he’s honest and fair. This proves to be a bit of a problem, both for him and people in high government places with secrets to hide. Pickett finds a hunter dead on his woodpile, then finds two more dead hunters in the mountain camp whence the first dead man came, but his persistence in getting to the bottom of the case makes some local higher-ups uncomfortable and then downright angry. It’s when his family is threatened that Joe really gets angry and justice starts getting served.

Yeah, this one’s just not my jam, I think. It was okay, and the writing was okay, and the plot was fine, but it wasn’t overly interesting in any aspect. I won’t be continuing with the series.

>147 lowelibrary: Right? I thought it was really well done.

>148 scaifea: The first is probably not the best in the series, although I did enjoy it. I'd recently been in the very areas the book was set when it first came out, and I recognized so many places. (My brother lived near there for a while, and my nephew and his wife continue to live there.)

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

95. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all get pulled back into Narnia when Prince Caspian uses Susan’s magic horn to call for aid. They discover that thousands of years have passed since they were last in Narnia and much has changed. Caspian is the rightful king, but his uncle has taken the throne and Caspian’s life is in danger. The children travel through wild terrain with a friendly dwarf to reach Caspian and his army in time to help turn the fate of the battle. Aslan also shows up just in time to help out, sort of, with, weirdly, Bacchus and his Maenads in tow.

I didn’t remember much about this entry in the series from when I was a kid. It’s not…great? Not a lot happens, there’s an overabundance of poorly-veiled references to the importance of blind faith in capital-G god, and what’s with Dionysus and his crew showing up for a revelry?! Very weird.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

96. Malice by Heather Walter
Alyce is a grace – a woman born with certain fae abilites – who lives in a house with other graces, where they offer their services to the nobility for a fee. But unlike all the other graces in the kingdom, Alice is a dark grace, whose abilities lean more toward curses than beauty enhancements. She’s never fit in with the other graces, or with anyone, until she meets a man imprisoned in a tower, who tells her about her true origins and begins to train her to use her abilities as they were intended. Meanwhile at the royal castle, the princess Aurora is counting down the days to her 21st birthday, when she will die unless her true love finds her and kisses her first. Many men have tried and all have failed to life the curse. When the princess and the dark grace meet, both of their lives begin to change.

I love the idea of a queer retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but this one didn’t work for me. Too much angst, very little action, and the Big Plot Twist is visible from miles away.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

97. Icarus by K. Ancrum
Icarus goes to high school by day, being careful who he befriends and how many friends he keeps, trying hard not to make attachments that would necessitate hanging out outside of school. By night he’s an art thief, trained and working for his father, who is hell-bent on revenge against one man, Mr. Black, living in a mansion and collecting all kinds of priceless art. Then one night when Icarus sneaks into the mansion to replace an original Monet with the replica his father has painted, he gets caught. By Mr. Black’s son, Helios. And Icarus’ first real friendship begins, and leads the way for his other, tentative friendships to become real as well.

It's difficult to summarize this YA novel because it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read, and in a very good way. It’s sort of a retelling of a Greek myth but not really; it’s sort of a romance but not really; it’s sort of a heist story but not really. It’s all of these and much more. I absolutely adored it. Icarus is such a great character, and his coming-of-age story is so soft and lovely. Yes, there’s some harshness here, but overall it feels warm and wonderful. Icarus will stay with me as a friend for a long time, I think.

CAT#3: Manga

98. Black Butler Vol. 5 by Yana Toboso
The Black Butler is set the task of winning a curry competition for his young master, which may prove difficult since the competition is supernaturally gifted at cooking up excellent Indian cuisine. BB is BB, though, and comes through in the end, as always.

Still adoring this manga series. So fun.

CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

99. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
Alice has grown up knowing only a life on the run, although she’s not sure exactly what her and her mom have been running from. When they receive a letter informing them of her grandmother – a famous recluse and author of a now-impossible-to-find collection of fairy tales – dies, Alice thinks that maybe they can finally stop living nomadic lives and take up residence in her grandmother’s estate, Hazel Wood. But no, her mom still refuses to go near the place and forbids Alice to go looking for it. When strange people start following Alice and then when her mother is kidnapped, she has no choice, she thinks, but to try to track down the Hazel Wood and solve the mysteries surrounding it. She soon finds, though, that those who have tried before her to crack those secrets haven’t fared so well…

An interesting story nicely told, with some good twists to old fairy tale tropes.

>155 scaifea: Taking a BB for this one.

>156 lowelibrary: I hope you enjoy it! There's a sequel, if you're interested (The Night Country), and then another sort of companion volume, Tales from the Hinterland. I'm not sure that I'll continue with them, but maybe some day.

CAT#4: Mysteries

100. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Vera Wong is an elderly widow who runs a teashop in San Francisco. She gets up early every morning and opens the shop, even though she only ever has one customer, and she texts her grown son several times a day, even though she knows he probably won’t respond. But her quiet life takes an abrupt 180 when she wakes up one morning to a dead body in her shop, the police don’t seem interested in calling it a murder, and Vera decides to solve the case on her own.

Adorable. Think Debbie Macomber, but with most of the saccharine replaced with delicious Szechuan. Very much enjoyable.

>158 scaifea: Wasn't it fun?

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
July AlphaKIT: S

101. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Silas is a trans boy on the spectrum living in an AU Victorian England where people born with violet eyes can commune with the dead, but violet-eyed women are seen merely as breeding stock and not allowed to practice as mediums. Silas has violet eyes, and that, coupled with his trans identity, lands him in an asylum that claims to cure girls with “veil sickness,” which is, of course, simply another way for men to oppress women who have a chance at exercising power over them. Because there’s no ‘curing’ going on here and the women who are sent to the asylum are habitually abused in myriad and horrific ways. Silas wants nothing more than to be allowed to become a surgeon and live a normal life, but can he overcome all that is thrown against him not only to accomplish that goal but also to break down the patriarchal system and save the young women who are his fellow inmates?

Ooof. Okay, folks, this one is DARK. And it pulls zero punches in describing the awful, awful things done to its characters. But the story is pretty darn great. My only quibble is that it’s slow to get going, and the first third of the narrative gets too bogged down in Silas’ anguish at how difficult it is for him to be trans and on the spectrum in his world. I get that that’s necessary to the story, to a certain extent, but a little goes a long way and honestly, a little is all that’s needed here. If you’re in any way squeamish, you’ll likely be happier staying clear of this one, and I’d also recommend looking up a list of trigger warnings, if you have any worries in that direction as well (I’m not going to try to come up with my own list – it would be longish – and I’m certain someone else already has somewhere out there in the interwebs).

CAT#10: National Endowment for the Humanities Timeless Classics

102. The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Set just before WWI in England, the narrator tells the story of how, just after returning to London from a stint in the army in South Africa, he’s approached by a desperate neighbor with a fantastical story of German spies out to get him (the neighbor), faking his own death, and the need for a hideout. Our narrator obliges, but the Germans manage to find his new friend and kill him while Narrator is out. So N find himself on the run, both from the Evil German Spies and Scotland Yard, who now want him on murder charges. And so the rest of the story is, essentially, N running all round the English countryside, oh-so-cleverly tricking and eluding the bad guys at every turn.

Ho hum. Another first-person white dude telling how smart and resourceful he is in the face of danger. Self-insert spy fanfic much? At least this one doesn’t have any distressed damosels for him to misogynize all over. Blech. It’s supposed to be a classic, I suppose? But that just implicates it in the spread of this kind of tired trope.

>161 scaifea: I pretty much rated it similarly when I read it years ago. I think it just didn't hold up well.

>161 scaifea: To enjoy John Buchan's books you have to immerse yourself in that world - public school English gentlemen, fine flowers of English womanhood. He's such a snob!

CAT#6: Books from my Wishlist

103. Never Tell a Lie by Hallie Ephron
Ivy and David are living in an old Victorian house, expecting a baby, and generally living a loving and happy life. But when they have a yard sale to get rid of some old junk left behind by the previous house owners, an old high school classmate stops by, acting just as socially inept and strange as she always did, and leaving Ivy feeling off-balance. Things only get worse when said classmate is reported missing the next day and her appearance at the yard sale was the last time anyone saw her.

A run-of-the-mill pop thriller. The writing is fine, but the ‘twist’ is obvious almost from the beginning.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves
July RandomKIT

104. Heartstopper vol 5 by Alice Oseman
Nick, Charlie, and their friends are all so sweet and wholesome and adorable. I adore their stories and I’m very much looking forward to the final volume.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
July AlphaKIT: I

105. Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli
Imogen is a proud ally to her queer friends and is excited to visit her gay BFF, Lily, over spring break at the college she’s attending 30 minutes away. The trip is sprinkled somewhat with anxiety, though, because Lily has found a very cool group of LBGTQ+ friends who make Imogen wonder if Lily has moved on from being her best friend, and then there’s also the story that Lily has roped Imogen into about the two of them once dating, which means that Imogen now needs to pretend to be bi. But then Tess walks into Lily’s dorm room and kicks off Imogen’s slight identity crisis: does she really need to pretend or is she, in fact, not straight at all?

At first I thought Imogen’s headspace agonizing over whether she’s a bad ally who’s appropriating or actually bi was going to get exhausting real quick-like, but in the end, the story is sweet and funny and the agonizing serves a good purpose, especially for members of the intended audience who may be facing similar questions of their own. Good stuff in here that make it definitely worth the read.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

106. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Mackenzie has been having bad dreams, and she’s convinced that she’s also somehow bringing items from her nightmares and into the real world, although they disappear as she opens her eyes. When her dead sister starts appearing in the dreams and the dream items she brings into our world turn…dark (the ripped-from-its-body head of a raven, for example), she really starts to worry. She decides to return home to her Cree mother, aunties, and cousins for the first time in years, hoping they’ll be able to help her get rid of the nightmares, but what she finds is a family still steeped in grief at the loss of her sister. And clearly something supernatural and unfriendly is taking advantage of that grief. But supernatural talents run in her blood, and the women in her family combine their strengths to fight back.

Good writing, good characters, cool story. The horror element is light in nature, so don’t let that scare you away, so to speak. And the thing that pushed this over into the category of one of my best reads of the year so far is that there are essentially no male characters here; it’s a story 100% about women helping women work through pain and grief, share joys, and just, in general, live their lives with no thoughts spared for men in pretty much any sense.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

107. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (audiobook) - 8/10
A story about the Queen taking up reading as a hobby. A little heavy-handed in places, but in general it’s cute.



CAT#5: Romance
CAT#8: Beauty and the Beast Retellings

108. Firelight by Kristen Callihan (Beauty and the Beast retelling) - 8/10
A Beauty and the Beast retelling in which the Beauty has secret fire-making powers and the Beast has Jekyll/Hyde vibes. It’s a fun-enough bit of fluffy smut reading, but nothing extraordinary.



CAT#3: Manga

109. My Hero Academia vol 18 by Kohei Horikoshi (manga) - 9/10
Another fun entry to the series. Has one of my favorite scenes in both the manga and anime so far involving two of my favorite characters (both villains, of course) facing off.



CAT#3: Manga
CAT#5: Romance

110. My Summer of You vol 1 by Nagisa Furuya (wishlist) - 9/10
A lovely Boy Love manga about two high schoolers negotiating their potential feelings for each other.

>167 scaifea: Normally I would take a BB for any Beauty and the Beast retelling, but not into a lot of smut. Is Firelight graphic smut or more light? Since this is the second book in the series can it be read as a stand-alone?

BTW your touchstone goes to the wrong book.

>168 lowelibrary: I've not read any other books in the series so I think you'd be okay as far as that goes. But if you don't like smut then...maybe don't read it?

>169 scaifea: Thank you.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#5: Romance
CAT#7: Audiobooks

111. Fire from the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot
Ante loves the reindeer herding traditions of his Samí village in Sweden and is happy in the knowledge that he will take over his father’s herd. But some parts of traditional indigenous life are causing him to worry that he may not fit in as a member of the culture, as he’s beginning to have feelings for his best friend, Erik, that go beyond simple friendship.

A sweet story of first love, mixed with the hurdles of negotiating past generations’ traditions with new and progressive ways of thinking. Mostly enjoyable, although the angst was a little much based on the payoff.

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#7: Audiobooks

112. Powerless by Lauren Roberts
After a sickness tore its way through the kingdom, the remaining inhabitants of Ilya were either left with special abilities or remained Ordinary, and the Elites (the gifted ones) have exiled those Ordinaries under the false pretense that their lack of abilities threatens those who do have supernatural powers. Enter Paedyn Gray, a young woman Ordinary whose father was murdered by the king when she was just a girl, and who escaped notice and now lives the life of a thief. If she’s caught by the king’s Enforcer (who is also his son), she will be killed. And through a twist of fate, she sort of accidentally saves the prince, finds herself famous in the slums, which then gets her nominated as a contestant in the Purging Trials.

There are, essentially, no new elements to the post-apocalyptic YA romance trope list here: an outsider girl with secrets is forced to participate in a deadly competition, gets ensnared in a love triangle, is spunky and has surprising talents. There’s even a hedge maze that magically moves as part of the trials. I mean. But despite the lack of originality, it’s a fun story; much like a lot of romance sub-genres, if you don’t go into it expecting to be surprised by new plot twists, and instead just relax into a familiar story, you’ll enjoy yourself.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

113. Scout's Honor by Lily Anderson
Think Jujutsu Kaisen but with Pink Punk Girl Scouts. It’s just as fun as it sounds.



CAT#3: Manga

114. Black Butler vol 6 by Yana Toboso
Another cool and fun volume in this manga series.




CAT#3: Manga

115. My Summer of You vol 2 by Nagisa Furuya
116. My Summer of You vol 3 by Nagisa Furuya
Adorable warm hug of a Boy Love story. Highly recommend this manga trilogy.



CAT#3: Manga

117. My Hero Academia vol 19 by Kohei Horikoshi
Still love this manga series so much.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

118. Lore Olympus vol 1 by Rachel Smythe
Meh. I’d heard the buzz about this series and was mildly excited to try it. It was…okay, but not enough for me to continue, I think.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

119. Chlorine by Jade Song
Ooof. Dark and graphic story of a high school swim team member who endures sexism and all levels of sexual abuse throughout her high school career, all while dreaming of becoming a mermaid and scheming to make that dream a reality. Not for the faint-hearted.



CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

120. How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino
The middle grade-level book that is Miyazaki’s boyhood favorite and the basis for his latest film (although you may have to tilt your head, squeeze your eyes nearly shut, and then do a healthy amount of recreational drugs before making the connection). It was absolutely adorable and lovely and wholesome. Definitely recommended, whether you love Miyazaki or not.

CAT#4: Mysteries
August AlphaKIT: G

121. Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy
I really need to learn my lesson that I don’t like noir fiction.



CAT#5: Romance
CAT#7: Audiobooks

122. Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch
A m/m fantasy romance that I think I would have liked better had I read it in print instead of listened to the audio – the narrator was not great.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

123. Eagle Drums by Nasugraq Rainey Hopson
A sweet middle grade retelling of the origin story of the Iñupiaq Messenger Feast.

CAT#18: Library Display Books
AlphaKIT: Z

124. The Lost City of Z by David Grann
A journalist goes in search of answers to the disappearance of Percy Fawcett, who was lost in the South American jungles looking for an ancient city he believed existed but had never been found.

One of the more interesting narrative nonfictions I’ve read in a good long while.



CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
August RandomKIT: Titles

125. Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
Anestranged teen goes diving for his father’s remains after he (the father) committed suicide off the coast of Monterey. And then he (the teen) gets swallowed by a whale.

I thought I was getting a quirky survival thriller, and it’s about 40% that, but it’s also 60% a story of a shitty father’s abuse and a son working through his guilt at not reconciling while said shitty father was still alive. It’s well-written and an interesting story, but just not exactly what I was looking for, I guess.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

126. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
A modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, in which Kate is the daughter of an eccentric researcher at Johns Hopkins and resists her father’s request that she marry his brilliant assistant so that said assistant can keep his green card.

Meh. It’s…okay. The writing is fine and I enjoyed Kate’s character, but the story feels overly simple and borderline misogynistic. *shrug*

>171 scaifea: I'm definitely taking a BB for Fire from the Sky!

>174 scaifea: Eagle Drum is already on my WL, so it's good to see you liked it.

>177 MissBrangwen: I hope you love them both!

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#17: Books from My Stack of Book Riot Book Lists

127. Naked in Death by J.D. Robb
A futuristic police procedural/romance is not at all what I had assumed this In Death series was about, but I enjoyed it, for the most part. I didn’t love some of the dynamics between the love interests, but in general it was an nicely-written and entertaining read.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
AlphaKIT: X

128. America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by Erika Lee
A timely and smart look at the history of xenophobia in the US and how that history has led us to where we are, politically, today.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

129. Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase
A gothic novel that follows the events around an old English manor house in the 1960s and in the present day, and in which the mystery of how those two time periods and the people within them are linked is slowly revealed. Nice writing with an excellent buildup to a satisfying end.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

130. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Welp, this is one of my new favorite books. Dawkins didn’t garner a new recruit in me, but only because he was – and forgive me for this – preaching to an already-converted choir member. What it did do for me, though, was become an instant comfort read, especially for someone who lives in an area of the country steeped in conservative christian attitudes. Highly recommended.



CAT#8: Beauty and the Beast Retellings
CAT#17: Books from My Stack of Book Riot Book Lists

131. Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley
As Beauty and the Beast retellings go, this one is pretty good; it stays fairly traditional but adds a few little twists to make it inventive. And the writing’s good (It’s McKinley, so of course), but I did feel that it got sloggy in the middle and that the ending could have been edited some. Overall, though, a solid effort.

>182 scaifea: Taking a BB for The God Delusion. It sounds like an interesting read for when I am in a deep-thinking mood. I also live in the Bible belt and that is hard for someone who does not believe in organized religion.

>183 lowelibrary: That belt is getting wider in this country. *sigh*

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

132. God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
Another along the lines of The God Delusion, but this one doesn’t so much argue the point of nonexistence and focus on all the actual harm religion can do and has done throughout history. It suffered a bit in comparison, but is still an excellent read.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks

133. The Collectors edited by A. S. King
A curation of short stories, all by YA authors and all set within the parameters set by the editor: make it about a collection of some sort, and make it weird. Most hold up to both requirements, some more than others. I generally don’t enjoy short story collections, but this one wasn’t bad, and there are a couple of real gems in here.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
CAT#7: Audiobooks
September AlphaKIT: V

134. Starter Villain by John Scalzi
A down-on-his-luck, divorced, former-journalist-now-substitute teacher learns that his estranged, super-rich uncle has died. And then he learns that he has inherited said uncle’s businesses (sort of), which include a parking garage empire and also an evil empire, complete with volcano secret lair. This means, then, that a whole host of other villains now want him dead. Oh, and his cat can type.

This one was an absolute hoot. It feels like Dave Barry with Douglas Adams vibes and I loved it.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

135. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Rosemary Cooke was, until she was 5, a very chatty child, and also a twin. And then something happened in her family that resulted in her sister, Fern, disappearing and Rosemary gradually losing her voice. She tells her story in bits and pieces, starting in the middle and working her way slowly round to some big reveals.

I’m not at all sure why I, at some point, thought I wanted to read this book (which is how it must have made it onto my wishlist). It’s not in any way my usual thing, and, true to form, it didn’t work for me. It’s way too sad – there’s animal cruelty in spades – and there’s now real trade-off for the suffering it inflicts on the reader (as far as I’m concerned). Blech.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

136. Unsouled by Neal Shusterman
Not as many crazy twists in this one, but it’s still a solid entry in the series.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners
August AlphaKIT: M

137. Mexikid by Pedro Martín
A middle grade graphic novel/memoir about Martín’s childhood RV road trip with his large family to bring his grandfather from Mexico to live with them in California. Funny and touching and interesting in turns, this one is definitely worth a read.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

138. This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston
A group of rich privileged white teen boys go out hunting one morning and one of them gets fatally shot. None of them are confessing and they’re all sticking together. Kate, a high school senior who’s interning in the prosecutor’s office where her mom works as an assistant, finds herself with a ringside ticket to the investigation, which is made more complicated by the fact that she was secretly seeing the victim on the side. Sort of. And then when she finds out what was really going on between the two of them, things get even more complicated.

A fun murder mystery with some interesting twists.

CAT#3: Manga

139. My Hero Academia vol 20 by Kohei Horikoshi
This entry in the manga series introduces one of my favorite characters, so it gets a definite thumbs up from me.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

140. Reckless by Lauren Roberts
A fun entry in this particular romantasy series with a nice little twist at the end.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

141. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner
Three high school friends all deal with their own issues in a small Tennessee town: Lydia has a fashion blog that she hopes will be her ticket out of a town in which she has never felt she belonged; Travis escapes into a fantasy series fandom to get away from his abusive father; but Dill struggles to find a way out from under the stigma of a disgraced and imprisoned evangelical preacher of a father, a mother who can’t hear anything over her own bible thumping, and a family history of violence and self-harm that he fears he can’t escape. When tragedy hits their friendship, will they find a way to help each other leave their pasts behind and start fresh away from it all?

This one packs a punch, folks. The writing is good, the characters’ voices all ring fairly true, and the story does the emotional rollercoaster trick well without dipping into the melodramatic. Definitely recommended.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
September AlphaKIT: C

142. The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
Apollo is a seller of rare books, and as a person of color, he’s a bit of a rare find in the field himself. But he’s carved out a nice little life for himself and his wife, Emma, in NYC, and they’re just settling into the exhausting joy of new parenthood when things start falling apart. Emma starts acting strangely toward their infant boy. And when tragedy strikes, Apollo sets out to find the family he’s lost, discovering along the way that the supernatural lurks just below the surface of their everyday New York lives.

A dark treatment of the changeling trope (although, of course, it’s a dark kind of story to begin with), well told and with an interesting twist on the relevant mythology. I was worried that it would be too grim, but it turned out to be an excellent yarn.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

143. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Vasilisa has grown up with the ability to see all sorts of spirits and creatures that others can’t, although most people in her small Russian village still believe and leave offerings. When her mother dies, her father eventually remarries to a woman from the city who is devoted to the christian god and who, along with the new priest in town, insists that folks stop worshipping the old spirits. And then things start going wrong. But Vasilisa has a sort of bond with Frost, the old god of the dead, and together they may set things right.

A nice story influenced by Russian folktales and with some new interesting adjustments.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

144. The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon
Pet Sematary meets…something else that I can’t figure out but doesn’t matter because it’s mostly Pet Sematary without bothering with the pet first. Still, an interesting story, and good and creepy, with some good twists as the separate threads come together.

>195 scaifea: I read The Bear and the Nightingale soon after its release. I found it interesting. I haven't gotten around to The Winter People yet, but I think it's one I was considering giving a try.

>196 thornton37814: The Winter People is pretty much full-on horror, just so you know.

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves + September RandomKIT: Weather

145. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell
The finale of the Simon/Baz trilogy, and it absolutely delivers. For those who don’t know, this series is, essentially, a fake fanfic of a fake HP-like fantasy series that Rowell made up for her novel, Fangirl. And it is *better* than Rowling on her best day. So, so good.

>197 scaifea: I think I expected something different. I'll see if I get to it or not.

CAT#7: Audiobooks

146. Under This Red Rock by Mindy McGinnis
Neely is still mourning her brother’s suicide while trying to hide her mental illness (she hears and sees people who aren’t actually there) from the grandparents who are raising her. The only place she seems able to escape her demons is in the caverns at the local tourist trap, so when she has a chance at a summer job there, she jumps to accept. Things seem to be going well at first – she’s even starting to make friends with the other summer help – but when one of those new friends is murdered in the caves and Neely’s hallucinations increase, she’s caught trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, and if she has any culpability in what has happened.

This one is really dark, and I don’t recommend it for those who may find talk of mental illness or suicide triggering. It’s an okay mystery with some good twists, but honestly, a little too grim for me.

CAT#18: Library Display Books

147. The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlaine
Riley grew up in a house full of grief caused by her older sister’s suicide, and while Riley doesn’t remember Lisa (she was only two at the time of her sister’s death), she witnessed the consequences of the loss every day in her mother’s depression, her father’s withdrawn demeanor, and her brother’s aloofness and anger issues. With her father’s death (and her mother gone years earlier), Riley is left to clean out her childhood home and prep her father’s estate for selling. But as she sorts through her father’s things, secrets start coming out of the woodwork and everything she’s ever known about her family is about to change.

A decent mystery with inventive twists, but nothing earthshattering. Good for when you need something slightly mindless and nicely entertaining.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

148. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Mildred, at 30-something, is considered a spinster in her 1950s London, and she moves through life fairly contentedly, working for the Impoverished Gentlewomen’s Group, helping out at her local parish, and living on her own in a small apartment. Her life gets slightly shaken up when a fashionable couple move in downstairs and Mildred finds herself swept up in their mildly dazzling world.

This one was a surprising delight. Think Cranford for slightly more modern era. I loved it.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

149. The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson
Leia, a graphic novel author/artist with a substantial cult following, gets cozy with a Batman-becostumed fan at a comic con and now finds herself pregnant. But she decides to keep it to herself, at least for now, because her grandmother’s health – physical and mental – is failing, and she needs to focus on trying to convince Grandma Birchie and her lifelong best friend, Wattie, to move into assisted living. And then she – and the rest of the town – catch the two elderly friends trying to sneak a trunk with human bones in it out of the house, and all heck breaks loose.

There’s quite a bit more to this one than I have the energy just now to summarize, with more side stories (Leia has her own almost-sister, who in turn is having *her* own problems, the mysterious Batman Daddy plays a significant role, and even Leia’s graphic novel is a side plot, too), and it’s all excellently interwoven into an entertaining and deeply felt tale. Every character is nicely crafted, and there are some fun twists that may not be terribly shocking but are well turned out just the same. Definitely recommended.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

150. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
Set in the late 1600’s in Amsterdam, this story follows 18-year-old Nella as she moves to the city from her small country village to become the wife of a rich merchant. But married life isn’t at all what she thought it would be, with a grim and unfriendly sister-in-law, a too-familiar housemaid, and a husband who, for reasons she can’t guess, shows no interest in touching her at all. He does, however, buy her an extravagant wedding present: a dollhouse version of her new home, which she decides to fill with commissions from a local miniaturist. But as the tiny versions of the elements of the house and those living in it keep appearing at her door, each more uncannily accurate than the last, Nella worries about how the craftsperson knows all they seem to know about her and her new life, even as secrets she didn’t know herself are slowly revealed.

This one is difficult to categorize. Historical fiction, sure, but maybe also sort of magical realism? Or not? And there’s sort of romance, but also not? It’s not exactly a happy story, but it’s also a fascinating one, and it’s nicely told.

CAT#3: Manga

151. Black Butler vol 7 by Yana Toboso
Another good entry in the Black Butler manga series. We’re starting to see more of the demon side of Sebastian, which is excellent.



CAT#1: CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

152. Chef's Kiss by Jarrett Melendez
This graphic novel about a recent English major grad who finds temporary employment in a restaurant that turns into a job he actually loves won an Alex Award, but I found it a little lacking. The story was cute and the illustrations are okay, but the writing/dialogue was a bit clunky.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

153. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
A retelling of the Iliad through the eyes of Briseis, Achilles’ war prize, this novel highlights the women of war and their forgotten lives.

Excellently written and lovingly true to the original. I adored it.

CAT#4: Mysteries

154. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun
Jim Qwilleran, a veteran newspaper reporter, becomes a fish out of water when he’s assigned a new beat he knows nothing about: the local art scene. But when an art gallery manager is murdered and the reporter’s eccentric art critic and cat lover landlord seems somehow to be involved, Qwilleran adds investigative reporter back onto his resume.

The first in a classic and long-running cozy mystery series. It was significantly less of a drag than I honestly thought it would be – I assumed it hadn’t aged well, but I was more or less happily surprised. I didn’t love it enough to continue with the series, but I certainly didn’t hate it, either.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

155. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
Irene has lived all her life in service for the Library, a sort of multiverse hub where books from all worlds are stored. She’s a legacy employee: both of her parents are Librarians as well. She’s still working her way up the ranks, though, when her superior gives her a new student assistant and a dangerous new assignment all in the same day, and Irene is feeling slightly underqualified. She holds her own, however, when things go very sideways while she and Kai – the student who is clearly hiding stuff from her – are trying to collect a dangerous book from an alternate London.

A fun bookish fantasy with steampunk vibes. I can’t decide, though, if I liked it well enough to continue with the series. The characters felt a little flat and there were elements of the story that could have been fleshed out better. Plus, I have a feeling that the Big Overarching Storyline Secret is kind of obvious, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess? But I think I needed a little more from the story to keep going with it.

>208 scaifea: Taking a BB for this one

>209 lowelibrary: Enjoy!

>208 scaifea: Ha, I'm literally reading this one now! Will be back to compare notes once I've finished it. :)

>211 christina_reads: Funny! I hope you're enjoying it!

CAT#18: Library Display Books

156. My Epic Spring Break(Up) by Kristin Rockaway
Ashley is an overachieving high schooler whose ambition is to become a successful coder, and she’s certain she’ll get into the Silicon Valley summer internship she’s applied for that will help her toward that goal. Nevermind that her best friend, Jason, teases her about taking everything too seriously and never making time to have fun. But then she gets rejected for the internship on the day her crush starts making eyes at her, and she throws all common sense out the window and starts chasing after the boy and making really stupid decisions.

Like, really, really stupid decisions. This is one of those YA books that adults will have a hard time reading. It’s all about Dumb Teen Hormones Makes Teen Do Dumb Things and so very cringey. Also very predictable. Not that that’s a bad thing in a romance book, far from it, but if you know the outcome at the beginning, then the story needs to be about the journey, and this one doesn’t have a very entertaining journey.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
October AlphaKIT: D

157. The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
Harriet (Hal) is just about at the nadir of her young life so far (she’s behind on her rent, her tarot reading booth at the Brighton pier isn’t pulling in enough customers, the money she owes to the loan shark is very, very due, and since her mother’s death she feels completely alone in the world). And then she receives a letter from a solicitor telling her that her rich grandmother has died and she is named as an heir in the will. The only trouble is that her grandparents have been long dead, so there must be some mistake. But she needs the money. So she decides to take a chance that her skills of deception in the tarot booth will transfer to this situation, and she sets off on a trip to the funeral and the will reading, set to fool the old woman’s real family. Of course, she finds that she’s stepped into a way more interesting and dangerous situation than she could ever have guessed.

A fun mystery/thriller with a good cast of characters. Certainly kept me turning the pages to see if my hunches were right.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
October AlphaKIT: T

158. Tin Man by Sarah Winman
Ugh. Nope. Not for me. This one was all character study and virtually no plot, and I find those kinds of novels way too tedious.



CAT#16:Books from My Read Soon! Shelves
October RandomKIT: Halloween Memory

159. Solitaire by Alice Oseman
Follows Tori Spring (Charlie Spring’s sister, of Heartstopper fame) as she struggles with depression and feelings of isolation while trying to figure out how to accept the offer of friendship from the strange and strangely lovely new boy in school, while also trying to figure out why the anonymous anarchist terrorizing the school (to the delight of most students) seems to be focusing their attention on her.

Tori is my favorite Heartstopper character by far, so of course I loved this novel devoted to her. Oseman is a master of YA lives and stories.

>214 scaifea: Taking a BB for The Death of Mrs. Westaway

>215 lowelibrary: Yay! I hope you enjoy it!

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

160. The Light Between Worlds by Laura Weymouth
Three siblings (two girls and a boy) were whisked away into a magical barely-not-Narnia during a London air raid, spent five years there, then were returned to the exact moment they left. The novel follows the lives of sisters 5 years after their return, and how they are trying to cope with life in the ‘real’ world.

Cool premise, but the pacing was off, I think, or maybe the sisters were just not very likable characters. I dunno, but it didn’t fully work for me.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist

161. Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein
The premise of this one is that all those children’s stories that we’ve been told were written by parents for their kids were actually true stories told by the children to their parents, who then exploited what they thought were just the vivid imaginations of their offspring. But the kiddos all went to the same underground world (because children can travel between worlds more easily than adults), and it’s the Underworld inhabited by Isis and Osiris and, most disturbingly, Set. Set’s trying to recover his old power and has manipulated the building of city subway systems around the world to build, essentially, a big power circle, or something, that will somehow do…something…? But one of the children who visited the realm is now all grown and wants to try to stop him.

Yeah, again, a cool idea but the execution didn’t live up to the potential and it really seemed to fall apart toward the end.



CAT#7: Audiobooks

162. Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer
There are Unnaturals – humans with extraordinary abilities – all over the world, and some of them are dangerous. There’s also a huge black market system in which those Unnaturals are hunted down and sold, either alive or in pieces, to people interested in exotic consumables. Nita works with her mother in that system, dissecting the bodies of the Unnaturals her mom brings home from the hunt. Until one day Nita – an Unnatural herself – is kidnapped and put up for sale, and she fights to find a way to escape.

Wow, this one is pretty intense and there’s quite of bit of graphic physical violence/bodily harm. But the story is interesting and the writing is good.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

163. Self-Made Boys by Anna-Marie McLemore
A retelling of The Great Gatsby with Nick and Jay as trans men. Wonderfully done. I loved it.

CAT#4: Mysteries

164. A Spell for Trouble by Esme Addison
When Alex’s mother died when she (Alex) was a kid, her father avoided taking her on visits to her mother’s family. And so far years now, she has been out of touch with her aunt and her cousins. But now that her father has also passed on, she decides to take them up on the offer to stay with them in their small coastal town of Bellamy Bay for a little while. Alex’s aunt runs an old-fashioned apothecary, and many in town seem to think her teas and tonics are particularly good at what they claim to do on the tin. As it turns out, much to Alex’s surprise, it’s all true because her mother’s side of the family are all water witches, which means she is, too. She helps out at the store while learning to control her newly-discovered magic, and then a local real estate mogul is murdered and Alex’s aunt is the top suspect. So she sets out to prove the cops wrong and solve the case herself, all while flirting with one of the detectives *and* one of her own main suspects (two separate hotties).

An okay first entry in a cozy series, but not enough of interest to convince me to continue. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t *love* it.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

165. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
Evvie’s husband died in a car accident two years ago. Her family and her friends have been great at supporting her and trying to help her through the grief, but what none of them know is that she was in her packed car ready to pull out of the driveway and leave her husband when she got the call from the hospital. Dean Tenney is a (now former) MLB pitcher who suddenly came down with the yips and is now looking for a place to stay in Evvie’s small Maine town where he can lay low for a big and try to figure out what’s next. When their mutual friend suggests that Dean rent out the empty apartment attached to Evvie’s house, their two worlds collide, and although they quickly make a pact that both her dead husband and his dead baseball career are off limits, their growing (possibly more than) friendship repeated pushes those limits.

A fun – and sometimes actually pretty funny – little romance. Nothing too high stakes and nothing too spicy. Just warm and cozy.

CAT#7: Audiobooks
November AlphaKIT: W

166. Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley
The sequel to Firekeeper’s Daughter, this novel follows Daunis’s younger cousin, Perry, who, at 16, just wants a lazy summer, but ends up in an intern position helping various tribal members to try to recover long-ago stolen artifacts that are now in the possession of the local university. There’s also a murder mystery and a heist – this one has a bit of everything, along with more history of the Ojibwe people and how they’ve been mistreated in so many ways by colonizers. Just like the first book, this one is masterfully written, the story and the histories wonderfully told. Highly recommended.

CAT#5: Romance
CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

167. The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary
Tiffy is trying to extricate herself from a bad relationship and looking for a cheap place to live in London, but finding something affordable without mold or rats is nearly impossible. Leon is looking for some extra cash to help fund his brother’s court appeal process and advertises his place as a flatshare for someone who works a regular 9-5 job (he works nights and so it would be a case of flat mates who are never there at the same time). And so starts a post-it notes-only flat-mate-ship, which turns into notes-all-over-the-flat friendship, which turns into…something more.
Absolutely adorable and very fun. I’m a sucker for an epistolary novel anyway, but this one was extra good.

>222 scaifea: So glad you liked this one! It's still my favorite book by O'Leary.

>223 christina_reads: I may have to look up her other stuff - I really liked this one!

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
November RandomKIT: A Book Written in the First Person

168. When All Is Said by Anne Griffin
Maurice Hannigan sits alone at the bar of the local hotel and makes 5 toasts to the 5 most important people in his life, all while monologuing in his head the story of these people and his life to his grown son, who has moved from Ireland to the States years ago.
Wonderfully written and beautifully told. I adored it.

>225 scaifea: Taking a BB for this one. The plot sounds similar to The Five People You Meet In Heaven which I loved.

>226 lowelibrary: Enjoy!

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

169. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
The second in the Fourth Wing series, and hoo, is it good. So, so good. Too many spoilers for the first book to actually talk about the plot at all, but I am loving this series.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

170. Wordslut by Amanda Montell
An analysis of how the English language is inherently patriarchal and some suggestions on how to start tipping it more toward equality. Fun and interesting.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

171. Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Based on actual events in which a group of Mennonite women were repeatedly drugged and raped in the middle of the night then told that they were being visited by demons as some sort of punishment, this story is about a similar group of women after the truth has been revealed as they meet secretly to decide what they should do: leave the colony, stay and do nothing, or stay and fight for themselves.

The novel is 10% plot and 90% Socratic dialogue (sort of. Not really. But sort of.) and I loathe Socratic dialogue. I get what the author is doing here (at least I think I do: shining a light on horrific deeds that tend to go unnoticed, trying to give the women in these situations a voice,…), but I was irritated that the she still filtered those voices through a male protagonist, who’s job in the book is literally to translate the speech of the women into his own words. Maybe that frustration with a male presence that doesn’t seem at all necessary is also part of Toews’ point; if so, brava, because she nailed it. I was super frustrated.

CAT#4: Mysteries
November AlphaKIT: L

172. A Merry Little Murder Plot by Jenn McKinlay
The Briar Creek Library has a new Writer in Residence program, and their first resident is the famous author of a police procedural mystery series. Lindsey, library director and dabbler in local crime solving, is determined to make friends with the stand-offish writer, but things get complicated when Helen (the WiR) has to deal with both a stalker and the new director of the Friends of the Library, who is determined to get all of Helen’s books banned. And then there’s a murder, of course.

McKinlay is 15 volumes deep in this series and I’m impressed that things haven’t gone pear shaped yet. I’m still enjoying the stories and the characters, even if this one did get a little repetitive in a couple of places.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

173. Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
After her brother goes off to join the war being waged between two gods, Iris becomes a journalist for a local newspaper, and fights her own battle with a rival writer for a permanent job as a columnist. Her brother is MIA and her rival is driving her mad, so she finds comfort in typing up letters to her missing brother and just leaving them in her closet. But then the letters start disappearing and are replaced with responses, although they’re not from her brother. A man named Carver is somehow magically receiving her letters, and the two strike up a friendship. When Iris gets a chance to work near the front as a war correspondent, she takes it, but she also takes her magic typewriter with her so that she won’t lose the connection with Carver that has become so important to her. And when her rival follows her to the front, her feelings for him – and for Carver – become complicated. All the while, the conflict of the gods comes closer and closer to disrupting Iris’ world.

It was…okay. A fair-to-middling YA romance-in-a-fantasy-setting (I don’t think I’d call this a full-on romantasy, but I can’t exactly explain why). I’ve read worse, but I’ve certainly also read better, and I don’t think I’ll bother continuing with the series.

>231 scaifea: Hmm, this one is on my TBR. Sounds like I don't need to move it to the top of the list just yet!

>232 christina_reads: I think I'm not in the majority with this one, especially since it won the Goodreads award for YA fantasy last year. So you may like it a lot better than I did.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
December AlphaKIT: K

174. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
Nonfiction account of the Jack the Ripper murders that focuses on the lives of the women he killed, along with setting the socio-economic scene in which they lived as well.

I made it halfway through this one before calling it quits, so I’m counting it. It wasn’t awful; it just didn’t hold my attention at all.

CAT#18: Library Display Books

175. Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
Riley lives in a house on a lake, remote from the rest of the world. She moved there after whatever it is that’s infecting the world through the eyes (make eye contact and you go murderously insane) claimed her mother’s life. And she’s lived utterly alone ever since, which has been a handful of years. And then Ellis moves in down the road and decides to visit, opening Riley’s world up to all sorts of dangers, which she moved away from civilization to avoid. Are Ellis’ intentions malicious? Or is Riley just paranoid? Imagining things? Or is she going crazy? Is she already infected and doesn’t even know it?

Hoo boy, this one’s a doozie. Short, but jam-packed with creepy goodness. It kept me guessing up to the end and beyond.

CAT#13: Book-a-Year Challenge

176. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
Classic gothic mystery fully equipped with a creepy old manor house, suspicious-acting servants, and a sweet, unsuspecting young mistress. It dragged in parts, and I wasn’t ever really invested in the characters. So overall this one was pretty meh.



CAT#3: Manga

177. My Hero Academia vol 21 by Kohei Horikoshi
UA High classes A and B are pitted against each other in some training matches, plus there’s a new student hoping to join the hero class.
Another fun volume in the series.



CAT#7: Audiobooks

178. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
I’ve been meaning to read this one for ages, so when Charlie’s history teacher assigned some of it for class reading, I decided now was the time. Interesting, but nothing new or earth-shattering to me. I do love that his teacher is assigning it, though, and I hope the kiddos take it to heart and learn to look critically at their textbooks in all subjects.

CAT#4: Mysteries

179. Up to No Gouda by Linda Reilly
After the unexpected death of her husband, Carly moves back to her small Vermont hometown to open a grill cheese diner. And then someone is murdered behind her restaurant. Naturally, she becomes an amateur sleuth, and equally naturally, there’s a Handsome Hometown Love Interest as well.

An okayish cozy mystery. I enjoyed it just fine, but I won’t be continuing with the series.

CAT#1: YALSA Award Winners

180. The High Desert by James Spooner
An excellent graphic novel memoir about a multiracial young man growing up in the early nineties and learning about the punk movement. An interesting memoir and also a great source of beginning info on how the punk movement has always been about so much more than mohawks and anarchy symbols. Definitely recommended.

CAT#17: Audiobooks

181. Skyshade by Alex Aster
The third in the Lightlark series. The plot is all over the place in this one; it feels so convoluted that, at the end, when several events were revealed that I assume were meant to be twists, I couldn’t be arsed to try to remember just who these characters were or how they fit into the story. And the love triangle became extra-tedious. It moved from angst-ridden indecision to straight-up flighty unfaithful-fantasy dalliance. There’s just no nuance in the writing at all here.

CAT#2: 1001 Fantasy Books You Must Read Before You Turn Into a Newt

182. The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
Set in 1529 in the months leading up to the during the Turkish siege of Vienna, this novel follows Irishman Brian Duffy as he is hired by a strange old man to be a bouncer for the inn that houses Herzwesten brewery. As it turns out, Duffy is in for a lot more than he may have bargained for, because everyone is more than he seems – including Brian himself – and there’s more at stake in the upcoming invasion than he could imagine.

This is the second Powers novel I’ve read, and I suspect it won’t be the last. He’s a master at drawing fun and fascinating characters, plopping them down into equally interesting plots, and scattering unique twists on various mythologies into the mix. Definitely recommended.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
December RandomKIT: Roll a Die

183. Severance by Ling Ma
Post-apocalyptic novel set after a pandemic leaves most of the population “fevered,” which seems to mean they’re essentially harmless zombies. Candace is one of the handful of survivors coming out of NYC, and she joins a group of people making their way to a complex owned by one of members outside of Chicago. But the leader of their group seems a little off, and Candace has her own secrets as well.

Meh. An okay end-of-the-world story, although the ending was pretty anticlimactic, and the message of actually being cut off from the world vs. being metaphorically so is a little heavy handed.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist

184. The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman
Juno returns to her small private college years later to support her bestie, who is giving a lecture on a stained-glass window in the school library that was created by one of the founders of the school. Juno herself is preparing to restore the window to its original glory, along with her father and the glass company they run together. And then her bestie turns up death, drowned in the same river in which Juno’s husband (now institutionalized) tried to kill her and their then-infant daughter. So she works to solve the murder while putting the window back together, revisiting her relationship with her returning-to-normal-life-with-the-help-of-therapy-and-drugs husband, all while diving into the mysterious history of the man and wife team who originally created the window and founded the college.

Goodman tries to do *a lot* here, and it gets ponderous fairly quickly. The allusions to classical myth and its representations in art are way too heavy handed; she needs to leave some things up to the imagination of the reader and stop hitting us over the head with all her cleverness. The story’s not bad, but the writing is too self-consciously artsy, I think. Just a bit too fussy overall.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks
December AlphaKIT: Q

185. I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai
A dark academia mystery in which a prep school alumna goes back to teach podcasting years after graduating there and becomes obsessed all over again with the unsolved murder of her school roommate their senior year.

A pretty good mystery with some solid twists. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.

CAT#18: Library Display Books

186. The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan
A lovely and cozy story about a woman who, after losing her dead-end shopgirl job, is gently pushed by her parents and her annoyingly successful sister into taking a position in a dusty, failing bookshop in Edinburgh. Her job: to help the shop – and the eccentric and sweet old shopkeeper – into turning a profit before Christmas. Enter Handsome But Shallow and Generally Horrible Famous Author to turn her head, and also Sweet and Shy and, Um, Quaker Also-Handsome Academic Dude to make it a triangle.

I loved it. The characters are all fantastic, the story is fun and sweet (without ever being saccharine) and at times even hilarious, and the setting is so lovingly described that the city becomes one of the most beloved characters in the book. My only tiny little miniscule quibble is how Colgan switches narrators mid-paragraph and does so frequently. It’s a bit jarring and, I think, unnecessary.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

187. The Chain by Adrian McKinty
A woman’s tween daughter is kidnapped and the phone call she gets introduces her to The Chain: in order to get her child back, she needs to pay a ransom and then kidnap someone else in turn to keep The Chain going.

Well, I mean, it does what it says on the tin: it’s definitely a thriller. And it’s fun enough, but it’s 92% thrill and 6% substance (the other 2% is the barely-developed-really-only-sketched love interest stuff, I guess). But sometimes that’s exactly what you want in a book.

>244 scaifea: It's been a while since I've read Jenny Colgan, but I usually do enjoy her books. Will have to add The Christmas Bookshop to my list!

>244 scaifea: I'm Taking a BB for The Christmas Bookshop and I enjoyed The Chain when I read it.

>245 christina_reads: >246 lowelibrary: I hope you both enjoy the Colgan - I think there's at least one sequel, just fyi.

CAT#19: Everything Else

188. A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
189. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
Yearly re-read of these two favorites. Just wonderful, the both of them.

>248 scaifea: A Christmas Memory is my favorite thing Capote ever wrote, and something I also like to re-read at Christmas.

>249 Charon07: It makes me cry every time.

CAT#19: Everything Else

190. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Another yearly reread of a favorite.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

191. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
An interesting, if only marginally intelligible for me, explanation of where we are in our understanding of just how time works.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

192. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
I don’t always love hardcore scifi novels, but this one was an absolute delight. It felt like a cross between Firefly and Farscape (based on the handful of episodes I’ve watched of that one) in book form. Definitely recommended.



CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

193. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
One of the best books I’ve read this year, hands down. Beautifully imagined and just as skillfully told. It felt like a Miyazaki reimagining of a Gaiman fantasy story. Highly, highly recommended.

I have read some of Jenny Colgan's books, but not The Christmas Bookshop. I'll have to look for it!

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

194. The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu
In an interesting take on the lives of Mozart and his equally talented sister, this novel posits that they were actually children linked to a fairy realm and that Nannerl must choose between a life of musical fame and her brother’s health, a choice given to her by a fairy boy from the Kingdom of Back.

The story is certainly a fun and interesting premise. I think the writing could have been a little more…something. Engaging? I can’t quite put my finger on what felt lacking, and honestly it could have been the narrator of the audiobook and not the writing at all. Regardless, the story is worth the read.

>253 scaifea: I'm taking a BB for this!

>254 MissBrangwen: I hope you enjoy it!

CAT#16: Books from My Read Soon! Shelves

195. Possible Happiness by David Ebenbach
Follows a teen boy in 1989 NYC through a few months of high school as he finds a friend group, battles with depression, and works to figure out who he is.

Maybe not the happiest of reads, but I think it could be an important one in the right hands. I’ll be recommending this one to my teen librarians, for certain.



CAT#3: Manga

196. Black Butler Vol 8 by Yana Toboso
Another fun entry in this manga series, with a somewhat shocking reveal about some of the regular characters. Still loving it.

CAT#6: Books from My Wishlist
CAT#7: Audiobooks

197. The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian
When her boyfriend disappears on their biking trip to Vietnam, Alexis quickly begins to discover that he wasn’t at all the person he seemed to be, and when she returns to her job in a NYC ER, she decides to hire a PI to help her figure out just what he was doing in the lost hours before his death, which she’s convinced was more than an accident. Turns out she’s right, and she must hurry to uncover the truth before the people who killed him unleash a deadly plague on the world.

Does pretty much what it says on the tin: book candy for those who like thrillers that don’t require a lot of attention or thought. It was just what I needed at the moment.



CAT#5: Romance

198. Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh
Elena’s world is ruled by a handful of deadly angels, who each have small armies of vampires that do their bidding. Elena is a vampire hunter, making a living off collecting the bounty for vampires who try to break the contracts with their angel overlords. And she’s good enough at her job that the archangel Raphael wants her to carry out a top-secret mission for him, but she won’t be hunting her usual prey, but something much deadlier.

Super powerful and equally hot angels who use humans as playthings, sexy and dangerous vampires, and a sassy, mouthy human protagonist equals an absolute hoot of a paranormal romance. Steamy and fun, with an interesting plot as a bonus.