Author: Tanya

Finally, I went into the book having read the blurb so I knew what I was getting into! Unfortunately, the blurb seems to have been written for a different book than the one I read. Maybe the author didn’t get any say in it? Who knows.

This is essentially three different books. In the first, we follow a woman named Boy as she escapes her abusive father and makes a new life for herself in Flax Hill, settling for safety and security over anything that she has any real love for and deciding that this is the way it should be. In the second we follow Bird, who is Boy’s biological daughter as we encounter themes of race and watch as she communicates with the sister that Boy sent away before meeting her and coming to understand why her mother distrusts her even if she’s not sure it’s fair. Finally, the third has us snap back to Boy as she discovers that her father is a traumatized transman and biologically her mother and then decides to bring both of the girls with her on a quest to detransition her father and the story stops before anything more happens.

It’s an incredibly meandering read. Though I found Boy interesting, she doesn’t want anything and this is very much a book where things happen more than a story is told. There’s very little chemistry between characters, and I’m not sure if the flat characterization of so many of the characters is a result of Boy’s indifference to everything or if the depth just wasn’t there.

Also that last part. The book really does stop rather than end, and the last third really does come completely out of nowhere. It’s a very sour end to a dull read. I don’t typically spoil stories like this, or I try not to, but in this instance I think it’s necessary for readers to know what’s coming there.

Overall, I was definitely not the audience for this one. I think it’s literary fiction, which is likely a better fit for someone else.

Reading may be going very slowly as a result of the heat wave and also just generally being tired, but I have heard such good things about this that I did my best to make sure I could enjoy this one. And hopefully I can start getting back into the swing of things!

We follow a young man who lives in a strange house full of rooms with statues. As far as he knows, this house is the whole world and he is on a quest for knowledge, working with a man who appears for regular meetings twice a week called The Other. Slowly, he realizes that not only is The Other not who he appears, but he is not the person he thinks he might be either.

This is exactly my kind of book. The narrator is unreliable not because he is actively lying but because he is in a perspective that has been manipulated and lied to. There’s a strange other world where the worldbuilding is light and not fully explained, letting a lot of questions and mysteries continue to exist throughout that do not ultimately matter to the plot, but are fun to fill in on your own.

The framing device of the journals is interesting, but it does highlight what I think might be a thing people may have trouble with: The voice of the lead. He does come across innocent and naive, which can be frustrating for some people but I really liked it given the context it was presented in.

Overall, really loved it! If you get the chance to read it, I would highly recommend it. It’s one of the few times I really like an award winning book, but it had to happen again at some point!

I’m slowly getting used to the idea that I cannot devour books like I used to. Then again, sometimes you get a book that is good enough that the crash is worth it.

The book follows three people who are brought to a very special school. Everyone there is an adult who has a singular goal: Murder. Each and every student has someone that they want to eliminate in the world, a person whose death would ultimately make the world a better place and there is no other resolution to their existence. The first half of the book is primarily about the school and how they train people. The second half has us follow three of the students as they carry out the murder.

I loved this book. It took a while to really get into, since the world building was very heavy in the first half. Once we’re out in the world and seeing them apply their skills for their particular target and you see just how terrible their actual targets are to warrant this kind of action, it ends up feeling very cathartic and fun to watch things unfold. Also, Doris is amazing and I loved her.

My main issue was with one of the protagonists. There is a woman who is highly skilled, but not that driven to actually do the murder. Once I saw more of her perspective, I was more annoyed than rooting for her and ultimately didn’t care about what happened. I would much rather read someone who is driven without the skills than skillful without the drive.

It was ultimately a fantastic read. I had so much fun with it and hope that the ending was a fake out because I do not want that one character to meet their end. If you’re in the mood for some 50s style heist-y revenge stories or a school story that’s more college than high school, definitely check it out!

After a surprisingly long time of not being able to read (Yay chronic fatigue and brain fog) I pulled myself together to finally get through my latest library hold before I was put back on a several month long waitlist. Something cute, light, and featuring an octopus.

The story primarily follows Tova, the old woman who cleans the aquarium and is watching as the other elderly people she is friends with move on with their lives and confides in the octopus at the aquarium that she is still struggling with the death of her son from decades ago. Slowly, she learns that her son has not completely vanished from her life and has left behind a secret that she was not expecting to find.

It is a really cute story, and particularly entertaining interspersed with the perspective of an octopus who does not understand why these dumb humans can’t see the obvious right in front of them. The perspective of Marcellus, who is constantly escaping his tank and trying to make the most of his final days of life and captivity is a lot of fun and honestly the best part of this book.

The other perspectives I had a harder time with. I honestly didn’t really care about them as characters. Cameron in particular was a very frustrating read given that most of the misunderstandings in the story revolve around him and many of his problems were self inflicted. When things do eventually turn around for him, it doesn’t feel like it was earned or that he changed, just that it was narratively appropriate for it to happen, which was disappointing.

Overall, though, it was really cute and a fun read. Marcellus is lovely, Tova is endearing, and maybe just skim over Cameron’s chapters if self pitying characters aren’t your thing.

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.