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