Book 41: Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict

My final Christmas mystery of 2023! This one was pretty entertaining - it's an obvious riff on Murder on the Orient Express, only it's a Christmas Eve train to Scotland that's been delayed. Our main protagonist is a retired police detective who's traveling to the Highlands to see her daughter; their relationship has always been fraught and distant, and now her daughter is having a very difficult delivery of her first baby and so time is of the essence! Without wanting to spoil too much of this book, I will say that there's a lot more sexual assault trauma than I was really looking for in my Christmas murder mystery. It ended up feeling pretty dark in a way I wasn't expecting. Still, with that caveat, it was a good read. 

Grade: B

Book 40: An Heiress for Christmas by Samantha SoRelle

Well, one of the best things I can say for this novella is that it was short, except that its main flaw was also its slightness. Two best friends from Oxford become master and valet when one man's father loses everything and ruins his son's prospects in the process, but then the master needs to get married by Christmas or get cut off by his father, and honestly none of it matters. Perfectly readable but with no real story, and not enough Christmas to make up for it. 

Grade: C

Book 39: A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles

The sequel to The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, this book is just as delightful and captivating as the first one. The focus of this book is on Joss's nephew Luke, who becomes the secretary for Rufus d'Aumesty, a new Earl. They develop a relationship, but Luke has secrets and Rufus has his own problems attempting to fend off his uncle's attempts to strip him of his title and property. Will it all work out???? Indeed. 

Grade: A 

Book 38: The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles

Man, I loved this book. Two men who have been sleeping together but don't know each other's real names at a pub in London part on bad terms, only to encounter each other again when one of them moves to Kent after the death of his estranged titled father. Sir Gareth is completely unfamiliar with the smuggling families that control the Kentish Moors, but is introduced to all aspects of it when he discovers that his former bed partner is Joss Doomsday of the Doomsday clan. Hijinks and misunderstandings ensue, and it's just a delightful story from start to finish, with real conflicts that are resolved in satisfying ways. My favorite book by this author in quite some time. 

Grade: A 

Book 37: The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

Another Christmas mystery novella! This one is about a woman living in New York in 2019, who always spends Christmas alone, and rereads an old journal that tells the tale of a Christmas in the Cotswolds in 1989 that involved an old country manor house and murder. Halfway through the story, it takes a twist and we discover the real truth, etc. 

I liked this story a lot, but it felt a bit unbalanced--I think it would have been better if rather than the two parts being about equal in length, the first part was longer. I felt like the latter half suffered from being overexplored, and lessened the impact of the Christmas haunting themes of the story. But it was another one that I enjoyed overall, and I'd definitely read another story by this author. 

Grade: B

Book 36: The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

Next up on the Christmas-themed stories, the first mystery of the month! Apparently this is a sequel novella to a very popular full length mystery called The Appeal that focuses on the same amateur theater group in a small English village. This explains why it felt like there were a bunch of references to characters or previous events that never got resolved, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit! It's an epistolary style, with lots of emails and text messages and ads in church programs, and it felt like a Christmas special on a cozy mystery show that would air on Acorn. The mystery and resolution wasn't particularly shocking, but then it fits with the holiday season that way. 

Grade: B 

Book 35: Once Upon a Christmas House by A.D. Ellis

We have once again hit the time of year when I stop pretending there's any chance of me getting to Book Zero and finishing my To Be Read pile in order to read a whole bunch of Christmas-themed gay romance novels and mysteries. First up, we have a classic pretend relationship for the sake of appearing on a home improvement reality TV series, with a side of magical Christmas house nonsense. I will be honest, this is a book that is a much better idea than execution, but I also failed out of five other gay romance novels before I hit this one, so at least it was that level of good! The backstory for the emotional damage one of the protagonists has was extremely silly, and this is definitely a novel that would have been much stronger if it had just been novella-length, but I had a nice time on a December evening reading this, so I can't complain much. 

Grade: C  

Book 34: The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

A book club book! This is a vampire-esque story set in modern England, only instead of them surviving on human blood, they eat--you guessed it--books! The story centers on Devon who is on her own and caring for her son, a particular kind of book eater who eats people's brains if they don't have access to a medication. The narrative alternates between following them in the present day and her childhood and young adulthood showing us how they ended up there, and the specific cultural institutions she's fighting against to survive and raise her son. 

There's also a whole plot about the women of each family being controlled and married off in order to strengthen family lines, and the difficulty they have with breeding because women can only have two (at most) children before they become infertile, and a whole lot of nonsense society construction around all of this. The narrator is well-aware of how nonsense it is, because it's not as if the patriarchy is a sensible system, but it's also not exactly an uplifting story. There was a lot to chew on (heh) in this book, but it never quite coalesced into something greater than the sum of its parts, for me.

Grade: B  

Revisiting Guy Gavriel Kay Part 1

So most years, in addition to however many new books I succeed in reading, I often reread a fair number of books. In the past I haven't logged those books on this blog, because they seemed outside the scope of this "project," but this year I've decided that I will! This is pretty easy because so far my main rereads have been of Guy Gavriel Kay's canon, leading up to his most recent release from last spring, which I still haven't read because I had wanted to do a reread of his books first.

Here are the books I've reread so far!  

The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy

Possibly the first proper high fantasy trilogy I ever read, which I did before seeing the Lord of the Rings movies and suddenly realized some of the source of his inspiration (which makes sense given the work he did with Christopher Tolkein in the 1970s). It's a portal fantasy that also brings to mind A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and after I read the Lymond Chronicles I discovered another big influence on his work (and a couple of key character types that reoccur throughout his writing). It is definitely a fantasy trilogy written in the 1980s, with some central plot arcs that I don't entirely love, but I also cry every single time I reread these books, because boy does he know what he's doing with these tropes. 

Ysabel

This one is out of publication order, but it also kind of exists on its own. It's the only novel other than the Fionavar Tapestry that takes place in our world, and I don't always buy his mid-2000s modern day POV, but it also brings together a number of his favorite themes in really effective and elegant ways. Also I desperately need to go to Aix-en-Provence. 

Tigana

The big one. His first standalone fantasy and the one he's probably still best known for in a lot of circles, the central conceit of this story is so emotionally resonant and tragically relevant. His character work in particular gets much stronger in later novels in my opinion, but this novel is plotted perfectly, even when you wish it could end in a different way. 

A Song for Arbonne

Boy this book fucked me up when I read it for the first time as a teenager. It's very much his bridge novel between high fantasy novels that are clearly set in worlds based on specific cultures and historical events, and his later novels that are historical fiction about fictionalized versions of cities and nations that also have some magical realism. This one really got to me; it's not as sweeping or just as big as either Tigana or the novel that follows it, but the central battle between a society that wants to have a public role (however flawed) possible for women and one that demonizes them and keeps them subjugated really resonated for me, and there are many scenes from this book that have stayed in my head for decades even if some of the other details had faded since my last reread. 

Next up is Lions of Al-Rassan, and let me tell you that's always a fraught read but it's not going to be easier this fall, sigh. But that's also of course one of its great strengths.

No official grade for any of these but honestly my view of all of his books is that they're just different shades of an A, so take that as read. 

Book 33: Briarley by Aster Glenn Gray

This is a lovely queer Beauty and the Beast retelling, in which the standard beauty's father ends up in the cursed house with the beast instead. It's set during the early days of WWII on the south coast of England, and the beast in this instance is actually a dragon. There's not much more to say about the plot than that; if you know the original fairytale, the queer version of it is fairly straightforward, but the writing is brisk and draws you in, and the ending satisfies. A good read for a cold evening under a blanket. 

Grade: B

Book 32: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

Man, I knew going into this book that it was going to go in directions I wasn't expecting, and boy did it. This is the final book in the Scholomance trilogy, and it also picks up immediately after the end of The Last Graduate. El has made it out of the Scholomance, and now she has to attempt to deal with the aftermath of the escape and whatever is happening outside of the Scholomance, and neither of those processes go at all how I was expecting. This trilogy engages with and subverts so many of the magical universe tropes and archetypes, and it does so knowing exactly where that should lead. There are three separate reveals in this book that made me gasp and stare off into the middle distance, and the commitment to the worldbuilding and no easy answers is really incredible and frankly rare. I loved how complicated it all is, and how satisfying I found the ending both in spite of and because of that. 

Grade: A 

Book 31: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

For some reason, after I read the first book I took months and months to pick up the second one, I think in part because I knew that once I read the second one I would then immediately need to finish the trilogy, and I wanted to save it or something? I definitely end up putting off doing some things because otherwise I won't 'savor it' or something, and it's not my favorite habit! What is my favorite, however, is this book! 

The Last Graduate takes place immediately after A Deadly Education ends, so now El and her friends are in their final year in the Scholomance and are staring down the barrel of the final gauntlet. Plus the school is now attempting to kill El and a flock of freshman she's unexpectedly in charge of in all new ways, and something weird is going on with Orion!!! This book is a great example of a narrative arc following the internal logic of worldbuilding and then attempting to actually address it, with fantastic tension and development, and it's also a story that as soon as things start to feel like they're going well, you get nervous because that means a rug is about to get pulled, and boy does it. A perfect middle novel of a trilogy. 

Grade: A

Book 30: The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

As soon as I heard that there was another book written for adults by the author of The Binding, one of my favorite books that I read in 2020, I knew I had to read it. I think I went into it expecting it to feel more similar to that book than it actually is, but what definitely is similar is the way it drops you into a world that feels familiar but has distinct differences from our world and history. It is set primarily at a remote academy where young men are taught the art (and science) of the grand jeu, while the larger society around them begins to crumble. The story is told from three alternating points of view, as well as a journal belonging to Leo Martin describing his experience at the academy ten years prior as a student. 

Part of the thrill of The Binding is discovering how incomplete a version of reality you're initially shown, in wild swings of revelation. The Betrayals is more gradual; it draws you through the current day and the past, all while ruminating on the role of art and creation when basic freedoms are being sanded away. It has made me want to read Hermann Hesse, who is a noted inspiration for this novel, and it made me think a lot about the desire for the remove of an ivory tower, a place that doesn't need to concern itself with something as dirty as politics, until suddenly it does. 

Grade: A 

Book 29: The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

This is a fairly standard speculative novella about a young woman in a village who needs to find her inner Joan of Arc to stand up to oppressive strictures of the Emperor, and specifically the Order, a band of consecrated men who travel from village to village hunting out wizards. She and her father are on the road when they ride by, and they threaten her father because she doesn't want them to ruin his paper, and that sets them both on a path where they have to hide from the Order and eventually fight back. 

I enjoyed this fine while I was reading it, but the longer I sit with it after the less it lands. Heloise is described as being nearly a woman grown during the first scene, but I kept reading her as much younger, and in general something about the world building didn't quite work for me. Not a bad way to spend an evening, but there are also much better imo. 

Grade: C 

Book 28: The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall

A fantasy novella about a woman who keeps the border between our world and a version of the afterlife, and the man who comes to her and asks for her to guide him through in order to find someone he lost. I kept waiting for the world and their relationship to click into place for me, but it never quite did, and by the time they arrived at the end all I could really think was I mean I guess. On the plus side it was short! That's what I've got.

Grade: C 

Book 27: The Black Tides of Heaven by Jy Yang

A novella! Another one in a collection from Tor that focuses on stories with LGBTQ themes. 

This story focuses on twins Mokoya and Akeha, who have been sent to a monastery by their mother the Protector. It's a authoritarian matriarchal society in which children do not declare their gender until they reach puberty and are then accepted in that way, and there was an interesting tension when Mokoya identifies as a woman and then feels separate from her twin for the first time when Akeha identifies as a man. Akeha leaves his mother and sister as they continue to wield power and tries with his limited magic to help the people stand up against his mother, and as a result misses getting to have a relationship with his sister's child, but finds a love of his own. 

I like a lot of this story, but I found the ending ultimately unsatisfying - I wouldn't be surprised if this is a novella that's actually intended to be a prologue of a novel, because so much is set up but not fully resolved by the end of it. Akeha was a great character but in the end it wasn't quite enough. 

Grade: B

Book 26: A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

This is one of the books that's been in my TBR pile since before 2016! Glad I finally got to it. 

There's a pull quote from Jane Yolen on the front of my copy of the book that compares it with Harry Potter, and I actually think that set me up poorly for what story this is telling. It's an older style of children's fantasy, and only the first third of the book are set at the college of magics, which doesn't resemble Hogwarts at all. The protagonist is a young woman named Faris who is heir to a kingdom and in a very complicated power struggle with her uncle the regent. She's sent there with two protectors, one of whom stays during her time there, and she befriends another student who becomes a dean before leaving with Faris to return to her kingdom, which is where the rest of the story is focused. 

The element of this story that really clicked for me is the relationship between Faris and her guard, which turns into the classic king and lionheart trope, and it goes into a really interesting and ultimately incredibly satisfying direction. The overall world building and focus of the book wasn't exactly what I was hoping it would be, but that aspect was so good it elevated the entire reading experience for me, and made me really love the overall arc. 

Grade: B  

Book 25: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Sometimes your reading plan gets completely derailed because a person you're on vacation with keeps reacting out loud to a book they're reading, and that book gets launched to the top of your TBR list. That's what happened to me with this book, a delightfully meta contemporary murder mystery that's also an examination of the relationship between a writer and comments from their beta reader. 

The first chapter feels like a fairly standard story about a young woman who has a writing fellowship in Boston and is working at the Boston Public Library when a murder takes place elsewhere in the building. A scream is heard, and she and the three strangers also sitting at her table all get embroiled in the mystery and with each other. But after the first chapter, we see the comments from a reader, who is corresponding with the author of this novel and providing feedback and guidance.

One of the most impressive parts of the story is how the novel within a novel at the heart of this book simultaneously feels like a draft in progress without actually having the problems that a first draft of a book inevitable does. There's a cat and mouse tension between the mystery of writing the novel combined with the murder mystery being told, and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

Grade: A

Book 24: Lone Women by Victor LaValle

A book club book! I hadn't read anything by this author before, and I really enjoyed this book a lot. It's set in early 20th century Western U.S., and focuses on a Black woman who has left California after the suspicious circumstances of her parents' deaths and makes her way to Montana, because unmarried women (including Black women) are allowed to claim homesteads in their own name. She's traveled light aside from a locked steamer trunk, which attracts a lot of attention. 

I don't want to say much more because I went into this book pretty cold, and from the very first page it just drops you right in and lets you figure out which way is up. It's described as being horror fiction, which I understand, but for me it's more horror cut with magical realism. Adelaide is a wonderful POV character, and the history of Montana made me want to read a number of the books that initially inspired this story. It's an eerie book that doesn't shy away from how harsh living on your own as a Black woman would be on a homestead, but it's not a story that wants to spotlight those challenges for their own sake. I'll definitely be reading more works by this author in the future.  

Grade: B

Book 23: A Thief in the Night by KJ Charles

A lovely novella to read on a summer afternoon! There's not a lot of conflict in this gay regency romance, but sometimes that's just what you want. Toby is a thief who robs a man after a mutually satisfying encounter in an alleyway, only to meet him again when he goes to a manor house attempting to pose as a butler. But the man in question has his own difficulties, chief among them the fact that his father deliberately ruined his estate while he was in the navy, which he now has to resolve after his father's death. Will they learn to trust each other and find the hidden jewels that will provide for their future together??? What a question. This is the final piece of the world started with Kit and Marian's novels, and I had a very nice time reading it. 

Grade: B

Book 22: Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse

A book club book! At the last minute my work schedule cleared just enough for me to read this in time for my May book club, and I'm glad it did! It was the perfect length for that kind of turnaround - this novella is a very quick, enjoyable read. 

This story is a real blend of genres and tropes - it's got flavors of the Old West frontier standing in as a sort of liminal space for both the Elite and the Fallen, two kinds of people who either have divinity or do not. Angels and demons are real and walk among the humans, and the story centers on Celeste and Mariel. Both are Fallen but Celeste can pass as Elite, and that becomes very useful when Mariel is arrested for the murder of a Virtue and has to figure out how to prove her sister's innocence. There are saloon brawls and ex-lovers and secret lovers and so on and so forth, and it's very fun! I think I was hoping for a bit more from it overall than it gave; the world is interesting enough that I would have enjoyed a novel that fully fleshed out the elements of the society and the various characters living in the town. The end in particular didn't quite land the way I was hoping it might, and some of the tropes felt gestured at, rather than really developed. Someone at my book club said that it felt a bit like a pandemic book to her, and that felt right to me. Perfectly enjoyable, but not exceptional. 

Grade: B

Book 21: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

A friend read this and recommended it, and boy did I have a great time reading it! It's a classic Agatha Christie-esque mystery setup (extremely posh wedding set on a tiny remote island off the western coast of Ireland), with five narrative point of views that tell the story of the day leading up to the murder. The reader doesn't know who's dead until very close to the end, but what makes a wedding an ideal setting for a murder mystery in general is bringing together a wide assortment of people who all know various aspects and eras of the bride and groom's pasts. The groom's schoolmates from his days at public school are one key era, and the bride's oldest friend (and his wife) and her sister are another, and the book really draws you through the story because you just want to know how it all fits together as it flips from point of view to point of view. It's extremely satisfying and the characters are so clearly drawn, and I loved how clear-eyed the story is about who the real villains are. A great and fast contemporary mystery read. 

Grade: A 

Book 20: The World We Make by NK Jemisin

A book club book! But also a book that I was always going to read on my own, since it's the sequel to The City We Became, which I absolutely loved.

It's always interesting reading something that you know is in a slightly different form than had been originally intended; this series was initially planned as a trilogy, rather than a duology, and there are aspects of the plotting that felt a bit like attempting to fit two suitcases' worth of clothes into one: there's not a lot of space for things to breathe, and there are definitely elements of it that I would have loved to have seen expanded, and entire sequels or tangents I would have read whole books about. But the fundamental themes and relationships that mattered so much to me in the first book still ring true in this one. She kept me on absolute pins and needles regarding one resolution that I was absolutely ready to burn down the world for, and when we got there it was worth it in the end. The first book captured me completely by the story itself, and the second was both about the text and about how she was able to arrive at the text, a lesson in the world shaping what stories we can tell and how. There was a defiance to the first book that was still present in the second one, but also an awareness of how long the fight is, and how many angles the enemy will pursue to further its goals. I'm so glad I got to read this ending. 

Grade: A 

Book 19: Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw

This is a Tor free novella that I got a couple of years ago and finally got around to reading. It's a noir crime story with a supernatural twist; it reminded me a bit of the Rivers of London books and how they combine two distinct genres and play around with both. 

Overall I enjoyed it! The noir styling is aggressive but not over the top for me, and there's enough twists and turns in the case the P.I. takes to keep me engaged. I don't know that I would want to spend a whole novel in this world, but the length fits for the story and themes. A nice way to spend a cold winter evening. 

Grade: B

Book 18: Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen

A queer mystery set at a mansion! This book is pitched as "Knives Out with a queer historical twist," which was enough to make me interested. I have to say that I went in expecting a different historical setting; rather than the turn of the 20th century Edwardian backdrop, we were in the Bay Area in the early 1950s. Our protagonist is Andy, a former San Francisco detective who was fired in disgrace when he was caught with his pants down in a gay bar raid. Before he can drink himself to death, he's hired by a mysterious and wealthy woman named Pearl who wants him to investigate whether her wife Irene died tragically or was in fact murdered. Pearl and Irene lived together on a large estate in Marin County with a whole cast of queer family members and staff, and Andy needs to figure out who might have wanted Irene dead and why. 

This was an enjoyable, fast read and certainly fits the "country house murder but gay" genre, but I think I may have gone in with slightly too high expectations, or possibly just hopes for a slightly different book. One of the themes of the story is how the closet acts as a cage, and we see the impact that had on Andy while he was a closeted and then exposed cop. But we also see how living in a house where everyone knows who you are can make it difficult to survive outside of that house, no matter how beautiful it is. I think I was hoping for a lighter gay mystery novel, but once I realized what kind of story it was, I really enjoyed it. I'm already adding the sequel coming out this fall to my reading list, sigh (one step forward, two steps back, as always). 

Grade: B 

Book 17: The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

I kept reading the first book in this series because I had a feeling I would like the sequel better, and I was correct! 

This book overlaps with various parts of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb and benefits because it has much less setup to spend pages and pages on. Rob is blackmailing Marian because her rich duke husband was already married when he married her, which Rob knows because his mother is in fact his actual wife. For some reason (can't imagine what!) the two of them continue to exchange letters even while they should be enemies, and when she needs help after she kills her husband during what was supposed to be a robbery, the two of them escape from London together. 

If that setup sounds a bit convoluted: it is! It's an odd series, but the two of them have great chemistry together, and while the novels can't really decide whether they want to be about a couple of 18th century aristocrats completely throwing away their wealth or if it's something in the middle, it ends in a way that feels less half-baked than the first one. I don't know if the first one is worth getting through to make it to this one, but I felt satisfied by this conclusion. 

Grade: B   

Book 16: Masters in This Hall by KJ Charles

Well, it took me until February 7, but I finally read a great Christmas romance novel this season! 

Honestly, I expected this to be great; it's a novella set in a universe I had enjoyed, and the setting is also delightful. John Garland has been dismissed from his job as a hotel detective after a robbery occurred while he was, uh, distracted by Barnaby Littimer. He retreats to his rich uncle's home on Christmas Eve for the Christmas season, and discovers that Littimer is there as a master of festivities during the the week leading up to his cousin's wedding. He is of course immediately suspicious that Littimer is there to rob his uncle, but is there more to the story? Who can say! 

The pairing is very fun, and so are the holiday traditions Littimer is in charge of leading, including a mummers play. It's a classic mystery set at a great house over the holidays, and I had a great time reading it. 

Grade: A 

Book 15: Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma

Well, it's the start of February and I finally read the winter Solstice book I bought in December! Not bad. 

This is a queer, poly, multi-faith book about magic and love and family. It starts with Layla hearing that her boyfriend Meraud is missing from Nat, who is Meraud's other partner. Meraud is a wizard who has practiced a risky kind of magic, and is now stuck and hidden in an in between state, neither alive nor dead. The only way to find him and bring him back is for Layla and Nat, as his beloveds, to work together and follow the breadcrumbs to him. 

It's essentially an enemies-to-family story, where the relationship we see develop and deepen is between these two people who have nothing in common other than Meraud. At times Meraud feels more like a mcguffin than a character, but what Layla and Nat (and the other people in their separate lives) go through in order to bring him back is compelling enough that I didn't mind, in the end. A lovely, quick story to read with a mug of tea. 

Grade: B

Book 14: The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian

Man, every once in a while I hit a book by this author, who I usually enjoy a lot, and just completely bounce off of it. In this case, the setup is that the son of a Duke, Percy, needs to hire Kit, a highway robber who has lately retired and become a coffeeshop owner, in order to rob his father the Duke. There are reasons for this, and attraction is suggested between the two, of course, but it takes a hundred pages before Kit will even agree to the scheme, and then he has to teach Percy how to rob his father himself, because part of the reason Kit retired from his thieving ways is that he has a limp now from a robbery gone wrong, and there are other shenanigans at foot, but it just never really clicks for me. Part of why I continued reading is because it's the first in a series, and I knew that the second novel was about Marian, Percy's childhood friend who was married to his father after his mother died, and I'm still curious about that one. But this felt like a story that could have been a novella of setup for that second story. I will report back on whether the next book works better for me!

Grade: C 

Book 13: Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots by Cat Sebastian

The final book (so far) in the Cabot series, this is just a very nice story about people loving each other the way they want to be, which is a concept I've been thinking about a lot recent. The titular Cabot in this story is the son of the OG Cabot, who is living in the East Village in the early seventies and just figuring out his life after serving in the army for a year but not getting anywhere near Vietnam itself, thanks to his family connections. There's definitely more than a little of the 'boy wasn't New York magical when the East Village was still affordable (because of utter neglect and abandonment)" feel to this book, but I still enjoyed it a lot. He is befriended by Alex, a Ukrainian immigrant doctor who helps Daniel after he got into a fight with someone who was talking shit about gay people, and the two of them are in the slowest, most gentle best friend pining I've ever read. But it works for me, and the way they create a life together is just really lovely, and there's just enough plot that happens for both of them and the people in their lives that it doesn't feel inert. Just a very nice book to read while there's an artic blast outside and you don't want to leave your couch all day. 

Grade: B

Book 12: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

The first book in the Scholomance trilogy, I decided to finally read this now that it's complete, and I'm glad I waited, because boy that cliffhanger at the end of this book! 

What I knew going in was that it was a story set at a magical school, but very little else, and the start of the story really drops you right into the middle of it. There's no set up, the narrative begins most of the way through the junior year of the protagonist, and in general it feels designed to make the reader feel like they're struggling to keep up. That also matches the school itself: there are no teachers, just classes with assignments, and there are monsters who can kill you everywhere, and then graduation means running a gauntlet of the worst monsters and using your developed skills (and, crucially, the alliances you've built) to survive and make it to adulthood. It's a lot!

Our protagonist is El (short for Galadriel), whose mom is a great healer but who does not follow in her footsteps: her talent in magic is for mass destruction, essentially, and she also makes everyone else feel bad psychically. But over the course of the book, she begins to develop a core group of friends, in part because the golden boy of the school, Orion, rescues her and everyone assumes that if he bothered to do that, there must be some reason to not dismiss her for their own self-interest. I've been watching a lot of Survivor this winter, and there's a real sense of that kind of alliance-building, it's an interesting mashup of genres. 

The end of the book is extremely satisfying, and then the final line is a classic first book ??? moment, and I am very excited to dive into book two now!

Grade: A 

Book 11: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

The second book in the Thursday Murder Club series! This one just jumps right in, since we already know most of the main players, and this time the mystery has come directly to them. We get to see a lot more of Elizabeth's past, and Ron and Ibrahim's friendship (and relationship with Ron's grandson) is so lovely, and this series is just fun to read. There's just the right level of peril; I trust the author to do what needs to be done to make the story work, without being cruel just for the sake of it, but at the same time there is real suspense and real consequences. I don't really want to say much more about the story than that, but it's a sequel that builds on what was great about the first one and keeps running. 

Grade: A 

Book 10: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

It is always so nice when you start reading a book that a ton of people have recommended to you, and within the first couple of pages you're like 'oh yes.' This is the first in a series of English mystery novels set at a very nice retirement community in a small village by the sea. There's a group of four retirees who are all in the titular club together, reviewing old cold cases and files that Elizabeth brings for them to discuss, until suddenly there's a real murder in town and they have an actual current case to solve. 

Elizabeth is a delight; she clearly has a very interesting secret past that means she has all kinds of unconventional methods for investigating leads. We also follow the story through the journal entries of Joyce, who's the newest member of the club and just such a good voice for the novel. They end up working together with a young policewoman who had moved down there from London after a bad breakup, and it's very much a story that I had no idea how it was going to end until just before. 

It's not entirely a light book; while the person whose murder kicks off their whole adventure isn't someone we care about, the entire book is basically a rumination on what makes life living, and grief, and the specter of loss that is everywhere in a community like that. It really hits hard, but for me the balance is exactly what it needs to be. I am very happy that I waited long enough to read the first one that I can now immediately read the next two in the series. 

Grade: A 

Book 9: Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

Man, this book should be a homerun for me. It's a Notting Hill famous/not-famous romance between a writer and the movie star she met when she was young and is now interviewing again, and the narrative goes back and forth between the present and ten years prior, when they first met. It should be light and snappy with an intriguing chronological structure that conceals what actually transpired between the two of them all those years ago, and instead it's just exactly the wrong kind of fantasy for me. The actor is getting ready to play James Bond for the first time, and that's fraught for a variety of reasons, and it's one of those things where I just know a bit too much about the reality of this topic to lose myself in this fictionalized version of it, and meh. I picked this up because it was recommended on a podcast I listen to, and I am honestly a bit perplexed. 

Grade: C 

Book 8: Christmas Wish List by N.R. Walker

Another gay Christmas romance novel! This one is...fine. It's about a guy who's a chef who gets hired for the Christmas season at a newly opened bed and breakfast that's owned by a guy who came out and ended his straight marriage and so is trying to figure things out in his forties. The story and the romance is fine; probably the most intriguing thing is that they acknowledge their attraction to each other and then are like 'oh no but we can't until Christmas is over!' That gives it a bit of tension at least, even though they in no way hold out that long. Definitely another entry in the 'this would have worked better as a novella' list, as there's not much in the way of a plot, but it was fine for what it is. 

Grade: C  

Book 7: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

First book club book of the year! I was very happy when this book got chosen, because I've been meaning to read something by this author and this was a great excuse for it. This book club focuses on novels that exist within the speculative fiction umbrella, and I would say that this one qualifies but is closer to literary fiction than the standard scifi genre novel. The story spans four or five centuries, starting with a remittance man in Canada just prior to WWI, then stopping off in New York right before Covid hits, and then a worldwide book tour two centuries after that. How are they all linked? Well that's what everyone is trying to figure out. 

I hadn't read anything else by this author, but I've seen the first two episodes of the miniseries based on Station Eleven, so I wasn't surprised at how much of the story is about a possible future and also pandemics and what they do to civilization. I was surprised by the writing; for some reason I went into this expecting it to be a challenging read in some way, and instead I found it delightfully crisp and engaging. I think I went in fearing that it would be all of the things I like least about literary fiction as a genre, and instead it was what I like best. It also has a ton of incidental queerness, which is something I always appreciate. I really enjoyed reading it, and individual images and characters from the story are going to stick with me for a long time. Looking forward to going back and reading her earlier novels now! 

Grade: A 

Book 6: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Man, this book. I started reading it about a week ago, and it's the sort of novel where I read the first section, about the first fifty pages or so, and I had to stop there and pause for the night because I could already tell it was going to wreck me. 

It's the story of two people from LA who became friends as children playing video games together in the eighties, and then find each other again as college students in a T station in Cambridge in the nineties, and live a life together and around each other and video games for the next twenty or so years. It's a book that has a lived-in quality of time and place; they live in Cambridge and Boston about five years before I was there, but it still has the feeling of being exactly right and I felt transported into my own memories. But the sections of the novel set in places I don't know at all well (K-Town in LA, Tokyo, a small video game company in the early 2000s) feel just as specific and devastating, and it's not a book that derives its power from the familiar references of either a location or of multiple video games. 

I read this book suspecting that it would be sadder than most of the books I choose to read are, and it is, but the sadness is earned and balanced in a way that these stories aren't often. Sam and Sadie aren't perfect characters by any stretch of the imagination; they both do and say and feel things that are deeply hurtful and pigheaded and occasionally awful and borderline unforgivable, but there's a thruline of truth and a heart to it all that makes me care about them and their lives and the games they create together. The author has such a light touch with narration - we see the story through multiple POVs, and it's always a story that's being told from a future that is waiting on the early years, but it's so beautifully done, even when where the story is going occasionally made me want to put the book done just so I could stop the next page from being true. I don't want to say more about it because I was glad to have gone in with as little knowledge as I did, but it fucked me up and made me think about art and friendship and storytelling and memory and starting over, and the last line made me spontaneously burst into tears, and if that's not a rec then I don't know what is. 

Grade: A

 

Book 5: Only One Bed by Keira Andrews

Another slightly delayed Christmas romance, this is another one that has a lot of elements I like a lot but doesn't quite know what to do with them all, in my opinion. This one is about Sam and his best friend Etienne, who's an ice dancer training in hopes of making his first Olympics in another year. Etienne and his dance partner moved away to work with a new coach, but Sam is able to join him at Mont-Tremblant, where Etienne and his partner are performing over Christmas. They share a cabin and a bed, and Sam begins to realize that he's bisexual and Etienne realizes that he and his partner should move back home to their old coach and where Sam still lives. 

It's...fine? There's just not a lot of either conflict or tension over whether they'll figure their shit out, complete with friends of both men who tell them how certain they are that the other one is in love with them. The whole thing feels like a prequel to another story about Sam's older brother, who's a singles skater, and his great rival. It has all of the elements but none of the spark. 

Grade: C

Book 4: The Wrong Rake by Eliot Grayson

Whenever I do my annual kindle unlimited read of various m/m Christmas romance novels, I also end up downloading a couple of non-Christmas romances to see if there are any new authors I need to add to my mental list of options. I'm not entirely sure this will be a permanent entry for me, but I did enjoy this enough to download the other historical romances this author has written. 

The setup for this one is pretty straightforward: Major Henry Standish has come to London from Bath to find the rake who trifled with his sister. He goes to a club called Perdition, which Simon Beaumont, the alleged rake in question, owns along with two friends. But it is a case of mistaken identity, because in reality it was Simon's brother, who often poses as Simon and runs up debts and generally gets himself into trouble. However, before they can go find Simon's brother and resolve the issue of Harry's sister, Simon allows Harry to "demand satisfaction" from him, in predictable (yet delightful!) ways. 

The resolution of the story isn't quite as, well, satisfying as the rest of it, but I did enjoy both the setup and the overall dynamic of the story, and I'm looking forward to discovering whether this continues in the author's other books as well. 

Grade: B 

Book 3: Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian

The second entry in the Cabot books, this story is set a few years later than the first and focuses on Tommy's nephew Peter, who has just graduated from Harvard and doesn't know what to do with his life. His family (a very very very thinly veiled fictional version of the Kennedys) expects him to join his father on his presidential campaign before he heads to law school, but when Caleb Murphy, a classmate who has always avoided Peter, discovers he doesn't have enough money to get to LA from Boston, Peter offers to drive him there. And then the rest of the book is a pretty delightful roadtrip romance that blossoms between two frenemies who begin to reveal their true selves to each other over the course of nine days. It's a beautiful early 1960s travelogue as well as a romance, and it was just a real pleasure to read - a great summer romance to read while under a blanket or two in the middle of winter. 

Grade: A 

Book 2: Tommy Cabot Was Here by Cat Sebastian

After a bit of a break, I'm catching up with this author, and this first novella made me very happy I am! It's a 1950s prep school second chance romance between the school's former golden boy Tommy Cabot and his best friend (and more) Everett Sloane, who's now an instructor there. When Tommy's 12 year old son becomes a student there, they meet again after 15 years of silence. I absolutely loved the angst and tension in the first couple of chapters, and the hurt that resulted from Everett leaving for England immediately after Tommy's society wedding in order to protect his own heart. I could have actually done with more of that before the inevitable reconciliation, which felt a bit too pat when it finally happened - I wanted the pain to be ratcheted up even further first. I thought the story threaded the needle between realism about how gay culture existed in the U.S. at that time and creating a happy ending for them, and I'm very excited to read the next two books in this series!

Grade: B

Book 1: The Christmas Leap by Keira Andrews

Well, it may be January, but I've still got Christmas m/m romances to read! This one is like a mash up of three different plots - it starts with former best friends Michael and Will, whose estrangement was caused by Michael realizing that he was never going to get over his crush on his straight friend Will unless he ghosted him. The story kicks off with Michael getting dumped by his boyfriend of six months and calling Will when his car breaks down in bad weather, because even after two years of not talking, Will is still the person in his life he trusts the most. Then it veers into a fake boyfriends story when Will brings Michael along with him to his company holiday retreat, and then they both go to Australia for business last minute (???) and confess their feelings for each other and it all wraps up neatly and somewhat bafflingly? It takes place in the same universe as The Christmas Deal, and in some ways I liked it better - the angst level was more my speed for a Christmas romance. But it did also feel like a narrative retread, and in some ways it rushed through the best parts of a fake boyfriends narrative, even one between two (former) best friends. Fine but not more than that. 

Grade: C

2023 Master List

Here we are again! Last year was an odd one for me, certainly for reasons beyond my reading list but it showed up there, too. I read 36 books in total, but 12 of those were in January and another 16 were in March-May, so for most of the year I read very little. A lot of the year my focus was on other kinds of media, or on writing, so looking back on my list wasn't particularly surprising, but it definitely clarified how I had approached different parts of my year, and what I spent my leisure time on. 

A couple of days ago I was talking with friends about annual reading goals, and the desire to actually read through our entire 'to be read' piles, and the fiction of how satisfying that would be. I said that sometimes I think I could actually do it, I could actually read the 2.5 books per week I would need to in order to make it through all of the books that are on the list below the count. But of course, in order to do that, I would also need to not add any additional books to my list in a year. Which inevitably means that even if I got to 'book zero' by the end of 2023, it would be a lie, because I know there are books coming out in 2023 that I will want to read! The list is always repropagating itself, because even if I somehow managed to read all of the books out of the millions and millions that have already been written (a task that I will obviously never complete), there are always new books to be added, and thank god for that.

However! I do still find value in both the overall attempt, fruitless though it always is, and also in the satisfaction I do genuinely derive when I finally cross off a book that's been on this list since I started this blog almost seven years ago, or when I end up adding five new books to this list because I read one book by an author and realize I want to read everything else they've written, too. And that, in the end, is the real reason I continue to keep this list and blog, because I love reading and I want to have a nice time reading things that are worth it to me to read. The first book I started reading this year already feels like a great one; here's hoping that continues through the year. Let's see where I land.