Category: Fiction

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.

I love getting these books that I’ve had on hold for ages. I have no memory of what made me put the book on hold, no idea what I’m walking into, only that the wait list was over 20 people and it’s taken months for it to finally get to me. Did I look at the summary to see what I was getting into? Of course not!

The story follows the inhabitants of the Dellawisp, an apartment complex on the infamous Mallow Island. Zoey, the young girl with the invisible bird is moving into her late mother’s suite to start over and hears the untimely demise of one of her neighbours. Slowly, we meet the inhabitants of the Dellawisp (4 of them? This is a really small place) and start to see the secrets they are hiding and the pasts that they cannot let go of.

This felt like a strange reading experience in that it felt like a book that I would grow to hate as soon as my English teacher tried to make me find the author’s intended meanings. The subject matter dipped into prostitution, sexual assault, drug use, and child abuse among other things, but the tone stayed squarely in that new girl in town trying to win the county fair pie contest range. It was like the tone was trying to make the subject matter more tame for a younger audience.

The story itself was fine. I do think it would have been stronger if the perspectives of the ghosts were cut as one didn’t add anything to the narrative and the other actively made it worse. The jumping between characters means the focus keeps changing and, though it’s all connected by the themes of loss and grief and moving on by finding your new chosen family, it did feel meandering.

Overall, not bad, but not one that’s particularly memorable. It’s pretty quick and not a bad use of time, but there are a lot of books I’ve liked more lately.

My health has been pretty all over the place as has my ability to stay focused on a book without some complications. I stumbled across a short story from Tor (Always a good time) that my brain could finally handle!

We follow Theresa, a young girl who was given away by her birth mother in exchange for something from a woman who can make your needs happen and who speaks to the bees. She grows up calling this magical woman Mama, and helps her with the people who come asking for help while also attending school with a girl who she grows infatuated with, and who she will risk everything to help.

It’s a really good short, and one written in that delightful magical realism style where the magic is matter of fact but also very ethereal. Theresa is an interesting lead, one who has lived a mostly sheltered and seemingly directionless life without wanting much more than the attention of one girl from school. And when she gets it, things fall apart very quickly.

Overall, it was a lot of fun. It’s also available in full for free on Tor’s site, so do check it out when you have the chance!

There’s something about this randomly picking up books from the library app that I really love, because I don’t think I would have ever gone to this section of a book store or looking through a library. It’s much easier to add random books to your holds and just read them when they become available after forgetting everything about why you added them in the first place.

The book follows Vera, the daughter of a convicted serial killer who has come home to her dying mother to settle things with the house once her mother finally passes. Her relationship with her mother is distant to say the least, but she also has to deal with a border, an artist and the son of the man who wrote an expose on her father’s crimes. But this old house holds secrets, as does Vera’s own past and the truth behind that final victim that got her father caught, and Vera soon finds that she is more attached to the house than she thought.

I really liked most of this book. There is a twist at the end that I think I would have liked a lot more if it had happened earlier so that it could be more thoroughly explored, because I do love a good “It wasn’t all in my head” reveal. I liked the supernatural element, but the vagueness of some of it was frustrating because I wanted to know more. It may be that as a horror story that was intentional, but I didn’t find it scary so it was a bit disappointing.

It is pretty slow at the start, including some elements that I thought would play into the story more like the people of the town wanting her gone. I think the pacing may have played into some missed opportunities to make the story feel more complete in the end. It does feel much more like a story that stops rather than ends, like there’s a lot of loose ends and like I am missing chapters that might wrap it up more fully. It doesn’t feel like it needs a sequel so much as a couple more chapters, or a five years later epilogue.

Overall, I did really enjoy the story. I just wanted a little more in the end to make it feel like it ended, even if it wasn’t over. This might be more of a genre mismatch for me, and I still had a lot of fun with the book.

I am finally getting some of my holds in! I’ve been working on a few new things I’ll talk about in a bit, so the books are a nice reminder that I was planning to read a lot more this year. That goal has not gone well, but time to try and pick it up again!

The story follows Ava who has been called into work at an Ikea knockoff store where her ex who she’s been avoiding, Jules, is also working a shift. When a little old lady slips into an alternate dimension, the pair of them are voluntold to go get her and are sent into the wormhole to find first the remains of the woman, followed by a replacement as they work through their relationship troubles.

This feels very much like Horrortor in a lot of ways, from the premise of it being an Ikea knockoff with alternate dimensions and horror elements. It has a much more action adventure angle to it, though, with much more exploration and much less being horribly scarred by the carnivorous furniture and hive mind employees of the alternate dimension.

A lot of the book was relationship stuff, though, and the two exes working through their relationship and why their recent breakup happened. And it never feels like they actually work out anything so much as they air out their grievances. I hoped that these issues would have some kind of parallel to the horror worlds they ended up in, but ultimately it felt very separate.

Overall, it’s not bad. I’m not a fan of relationship heavy stories and I thought it was a little heavy on that aspect, but I did like the way the story played out in the end. It’s also pretty short, so if you have an afternoon it’s worth checking out!