It’s our first Whatcha Reading post of March 2020.
All I can say is wow; it’s been a weird couple weeks and I have a feeling it’s only going to get weirder.
Please look after yourselves, your friends, your families, you furry loved ones, and your neighbors. Oh, and make sure you have some good books on hand.
Tara: I’m reading Kate Daniels Book 9, Magic Binds, ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) right now and made the mistake of starting it before bedtime. I bought Iron and Magic ( A | BN | K | AB ) when it was on sale last week, realized I’d read up to KD8, and decided to rectify that. I forgot how much I love this world.
Lara: I’ve just started Alpha Night by Nalini Singh and I’m loving it (so far… each time I announce I love a book, something scuppers it. Fingers crossed that’s not the case with this one!)
Maya: All I’m seeing all over twitter is how much people love Alpha Night, Aarya included!
Lara: Yes please! Hooray!
Sarah: I am curious and want to hear what you think of it! Also – how much violence is there?
Elyse: I just finished First Comes Scandal by Julia Quinn. ( A | BN | K | AB ) I liked it better than her prior Rokesby books but the conflict was weak.
Sarah: I’m reading An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upton, ( A | BN | K | AB ) and then A Stroke of Malice by Anna Lee Huber. ( A | BN | K | AB ) MURDERBOOKS AHOY.
Claudia: I’ve had a couple of pleasant surprises lately — books that gave me more than I had expected. One was Uncovering the Merchant’s Secret by Elizabeth Hobbes, which featured pirate heroine in Brittany, France, in the 1300s (based on a true story.) Setting was unusual, and so were the main characters (pirate heroine was older and twice widowed, commoner hero)
Carrie: I just finished Glass Town by Isabel Greenberg ( A | BN | K | AB ) – a wonderful graphic novel about Charlotte Bronte’s relationship to the imaginary world she created with her siblings when they were children. Review pending! All the deets!
Catherine: I’ve just finished American Dreamer by Adriana Herrera, which I liked for its portrayal of family and community and for protagonists who behaved like grownups and used their words. I’ve also just read and loved the ARCs of two books that don’t come out for months – so here’s a heads up that Marry in Scarlet by Anne Gracie and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh will definitely be worth waiting for. I’m really looking forward to rereading them both slowly for review purposes.
And I’m halfway through Ariel’s Island by Pat McKee, ( A | BN ) which is a Tempest retelling with corporate law and a few murders and I was hoping for brilliance or for crazysauce, but alas, my hopes have not been realised. I don’t know if the problem is me or the book, but I’m finding it surprisingly slow going for a story that opens wth a body impaled on a fountain.
Sneezy: I’m diving into some feel-good noms with A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day by Jackie Lau ( A | BN | K | AB ) after getting my ass kicked in When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate. To anyone working on their traumas and digging in to the work they need to do: Mate said we can only look for what we know is there. MEANING WE’LL GET THERE! BECAUSE WE ARE THERE, (sort of). I’M CHEERING FOR YOOOOOUUUUU!
Aarya: Like Maya mentioned above, I read and loved an arc of Alpha Night (June 9). Re: the violence, it’s on par with the rest of the series (which is standard PNR violence but not gory). People die on page, there is ruthless justice, the Psy have uncontrollable martial mental abilities, etc. Nothing struck me as out of the norm.
I also DNFed an arc of Suzanne Park’s Loathe At First Sight (August 4). ( A | BN | K | AB ) It wasn’t for me: 1) I struggled with the misogynistic/racist harassment storyline (it’s so painful in real life; I can’t enjoy it in fiction!), 2) the comedic aspects didn’t appeal to my sense of humor, and 3) it’s women’s fiction and not romance as I originally assumed. YMMV since it was well-written. Just not for me.
Honestly, I am exhausted from the real world right now (I’m sure that I’m not the only one). I need my fiction to be happy and light-hearted. Up next is Shelly Laurenston’s Badger to the Bone (March 31) because Shelly never fails to make me laugh. My resolution this week is to browse the news less and laugh more. I hope y’all are staying safe and healthy.
EllenM: I just read House of Earth and Blood ( A | BN | K | AB ) and I enjoyed it a lot but also had some Qualms and Quibbles (review forthcoming!) I’m also reading the josei manga series You’re My Pet by Yayoi Ogawa ( A ) which I’m so far LOVING. I was not originally intending to review it but it’s so bizarre and delightful that I think the bitchery NEEDS TO KNOW.
Also Aarya I COMPLETELY feel you on being exhausted from the real world. I think I need to read only the fluffiest books & comics right now.
Maya: I’m reading Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson! I saw Alexis Daria talking about it on Twitter and the cover was AMAZING, so I grabbed it from my library. So far its pretty wonderful. The best friend of the MC has just died and she just knows that it was murder, even though everyone around her tells her that it was suicide. The MC and her bestie were dabbling in the occult before her bestie’s death and so the MC turns to magic to both process her pain and help her honor her bestie’s memory by finding her murderer. YA with a Latinx MC and zombies!
Carrie: OMG
PUT IT IN MY EYEBALLS
Maya: The MC is so angry because everyone is dismissing her feelings and I loved every misunderstood teen moment.
Misunderstood and marginalized!
Charlotte B: I also read House of Earth and Blood and although, like Ellen, I had Qualms and Quibbles, I really liked the fact that the great epic love that really drives the story is the heroine’s relationship with her best friend.
Susan: I’m reading The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics! I love it a lot because both of the protagonists are trying so hard to acknowledge their own skill and force the rest of the world to acknowledge it, but it is so stressful
I don’t trust a historical romance about misogynistic men and culture refusing to allow women to be acknowledged for their work to end with catharsis, basically.
What have you read or are currently reading this month? Let us know!
A Night To Surrender, by Tessa Dare.
I was going to read all the Spindle Cove books I missed before in 2020, and then do a re-read of the entire series (and all of Tessa Dare’s books I have) in 2021.
Now I’m almost tempted to bump up doing a read of the entire series due to needing the distraction. Only I have other books I have to get to so I can get off this book buying ban I placed on myself.
Hope everyone is doing okay. Make sure to practice self-care along with the rest of the suggested precautions.
Metaphorical non-infectious fistbump to the others who’ve been reading Paladin’s Grace. I LOVE T Kingfisher desperately (and the graphic novels and children’s books she publishes under her own name, Ursula Vernon), and Paladin’s Grace was a happy place as usual. That fantasy world is starting to become a favourite setting, right up there with Discworld.
Libraries just shut down here, but I was lucky and happened to binge on holds and picked up a BUNCH before everything shut down, and all sign outs have now been extended so they aren’t due until the end of April, which feels positively decadent. So I have a big stack, in addition to my own purchased tsundoku piles and the still operational library ebook services.
Currently jumping between three or four titles because CURSE my ADHD. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal is one. Just started that and was taken by surprise by the beginning. I knew it was a book about a lady astronaut and an alternate universe’s space program but somehow it completely passed me by exactly HOW the universe was alternated, if that makes sense? Definitely starts with a bang.
Also reading Among Others by Jo Walton which is very good but very sad. It’s about a girl who’s the sole survivor of a Magical Adventure which saved the world but killed her twin sister and now she has to go on alone as the veteran of a terrible world saving magical battle that NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT and figure out how to cope with her trauma and her grief and her permanent physical disability and chronic pain. It’s elegiac and gentle and about the healing power of books and ultimately leaning hopeful, I think, but it’s still rough stuff and I’m having to take it in small doses.
A friend gave me Through Wolf’s Eyes by Jane Lindskold a while back and for some reason I keep running into recommendations for it in lists and things so maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. I’m not sure what to think of it yet. Fantasy novel, girl raised by wolves, court intrigue. Not far enough in to know where the plot is going.
@Jeannette, it was driving me crazy trying to figure out if the Eric Foner who writes sci-fi is related to the famous Foner family of historians and labor activists. It would make sense because they are a family of writers. But then I concluded he couldn’t be because the Eric Foner who is a historian is still alive, and Jewish people never name a child after somebody who is still alive.