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