Book 18: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

A book club book! Which was also already on my list of things I needed to read, but this gave me the nudge I needed to actually read it. Unusually for this author, it's a standalone novel and also one that I think is probably New Adult rather than YA. It takes place in Spain post-Ferdinand and Isabella and focuses on a young servant named Luzia who is hiding both her family's Jewish faith in an era when anything other than public Catholicism was outlawed and her magical abilities. Her magic is discovered by the mistress of the household she works for, and a powerful noble who has a mysterious assistant wants to train her and present her in court for his own gains. 

The story unfolds more slowly than I was expecting, and then suddenly it opens up completely and takes a lot of turns. It's the third historical book about the Iberian peninsula that deals with religious identity and persecution and magic that I've read, so I was very much in the bag for the overall themes of the story, and when the narrative pace picks up it's pretty thrilling and ends up taking turns with various characters that I didn't expect and found extremely gratifying. It also made me want to pick up her adult fiction series again, which I bounced off of a bit the first time I tried it. But now I think I'm ready for the particular kind of edge she approaches stories with. 

Grade: A   

Book 17: How to be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

This was a book that was recommended by a podcast I listen to, and it sounded interesting enough for me to give it a shot, so I did! The setup is pretty interesting: it's a modern retelling of various folk tales that all basically serve as cautionary tales for women, all having to do with their relationships with men. One woman dates a tech billionaire and narrowly avoids being killed like all of his prior girlfriends; another goes on a reality tv dating show and doesn't fully realize that she's the villain; and then there's a little red riding hood taken to its implied end. They all meet at a support group that's set up by someone mysterious, who has his own agenda, and they all discover new things about themselves. 

I wanted to like this more than I did; it's not a bad story, but it's not one that felt particularly fresh or challenging for me, and a lot of it read like a bunch of MFA short stories that had gotten stapled together into a novel. But I think it's worth reading, even if I was hoping it would arrive at someplace a little less expected in the end. 

Grade: B

Book 16: Nimona by ND Stevenson

My sister wants to show me the movie version of this and had also given me the graphic novel last Christmas, so it was finally time! This was a fascinating example of me having a sense of what the story was about and discovering that I was incorrect, but not being mad about it. I thought it was about a girl with two dads, and instead it's about a monster who adopts a supervillain and has to deal with his arch nemesis. Those two ideas overlap, for sure, but I think part of the joy and revelation in this book is where the story goes versus where you think it will. Anyway Nimona is right and everyone should know it!!

Grade: A  

Book 15: The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord

 A book club book! And one we all felt pretty ambivalent about, sadly. It’s very much what I think of as cozy sci-fi, in that while things are definitely happening (first contact on a future earth where unexplained things have happened to the cities of the world) it’s not actually that interested in suspense or peril? And sometimes that can be nice, but it can also tip over into a story with stakes that should be high but which always feel low because you’re never actually invested in the reality or in doubt of the result. There’s a kind of model UN setup where one of the aliens (surprise!) is in disguise as a teacher, and the students are being quizzed on what’s presented as a fictional scenario but which we know is real, and the entire description of the scenario made me feel like someone was explaining the backstory of their D&D campaign without actually letting me play it, or even watch other people play. I never got hooked into the characters or the world.

 

Grade: C

Book 14: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

Man, Cat Sebastian has really found her wheelhouse in writing gay romances set in mid-20th century America. This one takes place in New York and is between a Brooklyn-born Italian-American who scrapes through and becomes a newspaper reporter, and the son of the publisher who joins the reporting desk in order to learn the business before he takes over. The New York of it all is super well crafted and made me want to go wander around different neighborhoods in my city, which is about the biggest compliment I can give it. The love story is really beautiful and the depiction of how gay people lived in a pre-Stonewall era just felt really nice to read: a reminder that we've always been here. 

Grade: A

Book 13: Time to Shine by Rachel Reid

A charming hockey romance about a goalie in the minors who gets called up to the NHL and finds both his confidence and true love! This is a lovely and extremely readable story featuring one taciturn loner and the bubbly yet anxious star player whose love he can't quite trust. However, it's a romance novel, so you know he will eventually! I also enjoyed this one more than others because while we've got a lot of archetypes here, they map less cleanly onto real life players than some hockey romances do, which makes it easier for me to lose myself in the story and not argue with it.

Grade: B

Book 12: Flux by Jinwoo Chong

A book club book! This is a first novel that feels it, in both really positive and slightly tiring ways. It's stuffed to the brim with ideas, and they don't all quite come together to make a cohesive whole. It's very timey-wimey but also has some of the best engagement in what it means to be a person who's deeply connected to a piece of media, and manages to depict that in a way that feels extremely accurate but also not instantly dated - I can't datestamp the author as being on tumblr in precisely 2014-2015 or whatnot. Overall I enjoyed it enough to be very excited about his next book, which is a great landing place for a first novel. 

Grade: B