Back to some fiction and one of those books that I’m pretty sure I got on concept and title alone. I may have heard someone say something about it and it really does sound right up my alley from the concept alone.

We follow [name], a young woman who is the only one of her family to ever leave the house. She goes into town where everyone knows the story of what happened to her and her family. One night, all but three of them died of a poisoning from dinner, which somehow turned the whole town against them. She is a strange girl herself, having grown up believing in practical magic and practicing it by casting small spells around the property. All seems calm until a distant family member, their cousin [name], shows up one day looking for the family fortune and causing their strange lives to come crumbling down.

This story reads like a fairy tale, with [name] being very matter of fact about everything that is happening around her, even if she is describing something that seems ridiculous. The people are not so much real people as a single character trait that is brought to the forefront and there doesn’t seem to be that much motivation behind most of the actions of the characters.

Not that this is a bad thing! It was very much a fun read and interesting to be in the head of someone who was looking through the lens of magical happenings. Overall, I was very entertained, but it really does read more like an old fable with a lesson to be learned. What that lesson is, I’m not sure, but it might be something that you like!

You know, I’m starting to get more into horror. I didn’t used to seek it out that much, but I’ve been really enjoying these spooky reads lately. Even if not everything about these books is hitting for me.

We follow Daisy, a young woman who moves to a mansion that her mother inherited. Daisy can see ghosts and the house draws them in, but doesn’t appear to be devouring them as it should. Slowly, Daisy learns that the house has developed a taste for the living, and her mother turning it into an AirBnB is giving it an ongoing supply. But the house hides dark family secrets that Daisy’s tight lipped mother has never hinted at and until that past is uncovered, the house will continue to take things from the people who stay inside.

And there’s a B-plot in the “present” that honestly you can skip. It follows Brittany, a Youtuber investigating a mystery without ever stating what the mystery is (Because it would have been a spoiler) and uncovering information in interviews that Daisy uncovers on her own anyway. The information doesn’t even typically match up to what’s going on in the Daisy storyline either, just that the character is being introduced. Her last two chapters are actually relevant, but that’s honestly it.

The pacing is also pretty slow. The first half of the book is dominated by Daisy pining over the college student who was dating her that dumped her because his friends found out how young she was, and the book gets a lot better when she’s more entrenched in the mystery of the house. The things that the house does and how the house evolves as a character is pretty fun and almost makes up for how convoluted the reveals ended up being.

Overall, it’s not bad but it could have been shorter and tighter. There were a lot of things that felt unnecessary, and it took a while to get to the point. The mystery was less of a mystery and the book outright refusing information, but it has a fun atmosphere and the world was a lot of fun.

I don’t read many sci-fi books in general anymore, so I don’t remember what made me put this on my list. Maybe an urge to expand what I’m reading. Maybe wanting to recapture my sci-fi phase from high school. Maybe just trying to challenge myself while my brain is not doing well. Who knows!

We follow a man who wakes up in a spaceship who is slowly remembering who he is and what he’s doing there. Ryland Grace is on a mission to save the earth from a strange space bacteria that is eating the sun, but he is alone because the two trained coworkers have died as they traveled to a distant star that appears to be immune to what is currently devouring our sun. Once there, he meets an alien on the same quest and they work together to find a way to save both of their planets.

While amnesia feels like a trope that has been overdone and is used to create some cheap tension, I actually really liked the way it was used here. The slow reveal of information being used as a means of moving the story forward in the present was probably the most interesting use of it that I can remember reading. Even though the final reveal at the end was ultimately not surprising after spending the book with Ryland, I still appreciated how it all came together.

One of the nicer things for me for this book is that there is a lot of science that I did not need to pay a lot of attention to. My brain is still bad, so having places where I could clearly take that mental break and come back later was amazing. There’s a lot of sections where Ryland and Rocky, the alien that he encounters in space, are going back and forth theorizing and hypothesizing where the journey to get to the conclusion can be interesting, but ultimately understanding is not necessary for understanding the book.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book! The pacing is quick and it was an interesting look at how even though humanity as a whole might be questionable, humans as individuals can be fantastic. There’s a nice feeling of peace at the end of it that I can take away. And also Rocky was just… I loved Rocky. Fantastic spider alien.

You know, I had forgotten why I avoided some genres. I thought that my aversion to Canadian literature was from just having to analyze it at schoool throughout the years, but as it turns out that wasn’t the only reason.

The book follows Minique, a young girl growing up in Montreal in the 1600s. She and her friends move through life day by day as Minique grows to dislike the current system where she is meant to grow up and lose her power to the men around her. The church teaches women to be complacent, but there are still women around who hold their own businesses and power. Anne is one such woman, and Minique eventually goes to her to learn what she knows, before eventually deciding to become a witch in the woods, away from the town who dislikes her.

I did not finish this book. The first two thirds is essentially an autobiography of Minique as she grows up to learn to detest men and the place they put women in society, while not actually experiencing hardships as a result of being female. It is very slow and has events that simply happen without much of a narrative string through it, just the story of a girl growing up and the hardships of New France.

Also, the very Canadian writing habit of inserting random French that is unexplained throughout the text because it is set in Quebec. At least, that’s what I’ve noticed a lot of in similar books growing up.

At two thirds of the way through, the book shifts completely. The pace picks up and Minique, who had never expressed interest in anyone previously, meets a man who she thinks is a garbage person and becomes so lustful for him that it’s mostly just her thinking about sex or having sex with him. I got bored very quickly and put it down.

Ultimately, I can’t recommend it. But hey, if you think it sounds interesting, or you want to only read the part of it that sounds like your thing, go for it.

In a change of pace, this is a book that my dad lent me! We don’t typically read the same kinds of book, so I wasn’t sure, but also I’ve been doing a lot of reading things I’m not familiar with or that I wouldn’t normally picked up, so thought it was worth at least giving it a shot!

We follow two women: Alix and Josie. They were both born on the same day in the same hospital, but who grew up to have very different lives. Alix is a podcaster looking for a new project and Josie, who she meets randomly on her birthday, has a story she wants to tell. But as Josie tells her story, she becomes obsessed with Josie, and the people in her life warn Alix that there’s something very off about her.

The framing device of the book is as a Netflix documentary, which actually worked really well for me. It doesn’t hit you over the head with exposition in the way these kinds of devices often do, it was more used as an opportunity to add in extra and biased perspectives on the story that gives more context to what’s currently happening in the story.

I am also a sucker for an unreliable narrator, and seeing the perspectives of Alix and Josie play off of one another was a lot of fun. Alix feels like someone at a turning point, and watching as Josie devolves into what she is at the end, watching as she justifies everything in her life, it’s lovely. Not that everything is clear by the end, but I like that kind of thing.

Overall, really enjoyed this one! It was fun, unexpected, and also something that I ended up having a really good time with. Check it out if you’re looking for a thriller.

This is a book I would have expected me to put on the holds list from ages ago. I have been staring at this cover for months, trying to remember what it was about and refusing to look up the synopsis because it felt like cheating. And I’m not mad about going into it as blind as I did!

We follow Devon, a young Book Eater woman. Through her past, we see that Book Eaters are a dying breed of supernatural creatures that look human but eat books if they are lucky, or eat minds if they are not. Those that devour minds instead, they are consigned to being essentially attack dogs to maintain the order that the Book Eaters have created, where women are sent to assigned marriages to create new children who they will never be allowed to see again once they are weened. In the present, we see Devon trying desperately to find a way to keep her mind eater son alive and out of the life she was raised in, knowing what awaits him there.

It’s a complicated premise that was a bit difficult to grasp at first, but the way the story works out it did end up clear by the end how the world worked. This is a really great way to have a lot of exposition without it feeling like an info dump. I do wish I had been eased into the world a little more slowly at times, but ultimately it ended up being well paced and gave me everything I needed to know at the time, even if I wanted to know more.

I really enjoyed the story, as well as the characters as they unraveled throughout the story. A woman in a seemingly impossible situation trying to do what’s best for her son, and the people who both help and harm her along the way. The world and worldbuilding is genuinely interesting, even if the themes get pretty depressing as you find out more about how Devon is being screwed over by the society she’s been born into.

Overall, definitely check it out if you’re looking for something a little darker and you can’t decide whether you want something more historical or more modern. It will give you both, from princesses in castles to a high stakes coup to free yourself of the trappings of all of that.