We’ve made it past November 3rd. Let’s all rejoice, take a deep breath, and talk about books!
Claudia: Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t, which I had completely neglected because it dropped from my library holds right on Nov. 3! It’s great to have some uninterrupted reading time again.
Sarah: I’m about to start A Lady Compromised, ( A | BN | K | AB ) part of the Rosalind Thorne mystery series by Darcie Wilde. I also (sorry!) have an advanced copy (I feel so shitty when I talk about ARCs, I’m sorry) for a April 2021 book called Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto that I’m told is screaming hilarious. I’m ready to shriek laugh.
Carrie: In War and Peace, Moscow is on fire and Rostov is torn between two lovers and feeling like a fool.
I just started The Price of Salt, a classic by Patricia Highsmith and it might be my new favorite Christmas story,
Tara: Sarah recommended Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam to me and my library hold finally came through. I’m very bad about spending too much time on social media and it’s really helping me challenge those behaviours and I really like what she has to say about creating moments.
Sarah: I love that book. It changed the way I think about my own time and the way I feel when I have nothing but white space for myself on my calendar.
I’m so happy it’s working for you!
Elyse: I just started The Wicked Hour by Alice Blanchard. It’s the second in a procedural series set in a town similar to Salem, MA (a history of witch trials turned into a tourist industry). I liked the first book quite a lot because there’s a supernatural element woven in
You really have to read the first book, Trace of Evil, before this one.
Shana: I’ve been having trouble reading lately, but I’m nearing the end of Who We Could Be by Chelsea Cameron. Tara recommended it, and it’s been the perfect low-conflict comfort read. I don’t usually love friends to lovers, or coming out stories, but somehow I’m enjoying this one.
Catherine: I’m back on a Laura Florand binge, with Chase Me and Trust Me. ( A | BN | K | AB ) Everything else I’ve tried recently I’ve bounced out of within three chapters, and I had trouble even getting into these, so I don’t think the books are the issue here…
EllenM: I am trying to read a novella a day in November as I have sooooo many unread novellas on my kindle. Shameless plug but if anyone wants to follow along with my twitter micro-reviews: I’m @bookpriestess. the ones I’ve enjoyed most so far are The Dress of The Season by Kate Noble (super cute histrom novella dealing a lot with processing shared grief) and Silver Shark by Ilona Andrews (from the Kinsmen universe). ( A | BN | K | AB )
Maya: I just finished How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon. ( A | BN | K | AB ) Over the last year, I’ve mostly only done nonfiction readings on race in response to racist incidents at my (now former) workplace so that I could be ready to support folks that were harmed AND those that were doing the harming. Obviously, that was a deeply exhausting existence. But, now that I’ve quit that job, I’m glad to finally have back the ability to read challenging, exhilarating, and heart breaking work for me alone.
Also, to balance out all that real worldness, I just read Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh. I love me a good fairy tale and that is definitely one that is going to stick with me for awhile!
Sneezy: I’ve been on a murderous binge, rereading the Milla Vane titles over and over. If those books are prayer beads, I’d have cracked them at this point. In real life, I believe in restorative justice and healing. Currently in book life, I greatly appreciate the fantasy of a bossy, sarcastic horse who will fight zombies and crush skulls, a giant saber toothed snow cat whose idea of fun is clawing and biting a part the people who cross him while enjoying meat being butchered and cut up for it as his due, and overall vicious, poetic deaths.
What can I say? Stress turns me into blood thirsty wench
In non-fiction, I’ve gone back to The Purpose of Power by Alicia Garza. ( A | BN | K | AB )
Susan: I’ve just finished The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite, and I enjoyed it so much! I can’t properly express how much I love it without writing an essay (Creators supporting each other! Bees! Printing presses! Roasting the “gals being pals” idea in a historically appropriate way!), but I am honestly grateful that I finally found the brain to read it.
And I’ve just started Katie O’Neill’s The Tea Dragon Tapestry, the last book in the Tea Dragon series, ( A | BN ) and it continues to be adorable and colourful. I definitely recommend looking at the art even if you don’t read the book, because it’s gorgeous.
What are you reading? Let us know!
I missed the last WAYR so lots to talk about!
Excellent:
Queen of Shadows (#4), Empire of Storms (#5) and Kingdom of Ash (#7) by Sarah J. Maas – this series (Throne of Glass) turned from “just” excellent to a total squee for me. This is technically labelled YA, but I call it just straight fantasy with A LOT of strong women. I know we are supposed to go crazy for the main romance arc of the series and I loved it, but I squeed for one of the secondary romances. I also did something I basically never do – book 5 ended in a bunch of cliff hangers and when I read the back of book 6 saying it was a parallel novel, I was like screw this, I need to know what happened and skipped straight to Book 7. Lots of CWs here especially for torture. Can’t recommend this series highly enough.
Very Good:
The Bride Takes a Groom by Lisa Berne: The third in the historical Penhallow Dynasty series, this one paired a heiress heroine smothered and controlled by her parents and an easygoing, laid-back Beta hero with no money and lots of dependents (widowed mother, younger siblings). I love Lisa Berne’s heroines – they seem so real with lots of great qualities but also lots of faults too. Also the secondary characters are fully drawn and the kids in the book almost stole the show – no plot moppets here.
Good:
Chasing Cassandra by Lisa Kleypas: the sixth in the Ravenals series, it is Kleypas, so I inhaled it in one sitting. BUT I tend to agree with the review here at SBTB, the last third or so of the book felt like a let down or anti-climax – I was expecting more conflict either between the hero and heroine or with the villain or something. I went into the book thinking it was going to be very similar to her Tempt Me at Twilight which is absolutely swoon-worthy, but this grumpy businessman who has a problem with feelings never for one second lived up to Harry Rutledge from Tempt Me at Twilight.
A Rake’s Midnight Kiss by Anna Campbell: This was such a whiplash from the first in the historical romance Sons of Sin series which was so full of angst and so was not what I was expecting. This was a relatively light romp with a hero after a jewel that he thinks rightfully belongs to his family and a scholar heroine. CWs: towards the beginning of the book the hero spies on the heroine while she is skinny dipping and later a sexual assault attempt is made on the heroine by the book’s villain.
When a Marquess Loves a Woman by Vivienne Lorret: The third in the historical romance Season’s Original Series, this one was a sort of enemies to lovers (maybe antagonists to lovers is a better description) after the heroine spurned the hero’s offer of marriage five years prior. She went on to marry a much older man who was emotionally abusive. The chemistry between the two is off the charts and the hero is clearly still pinning all these years later – so that was great. But I think we needed more emotional growth and more grovel from the heroine.
Meh:
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr: This YA, first in a series, is all about the Fae and the battle between the Summer King and Winter Queen. The Summer King has to find “the one” to fully regain his power and the Winter Queen is determined to stop him. This book was pretty meh – I read ahead to spoilers from the last book in the series and am glad I didn’t continue.
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitan: I wish the book was as organized as the title implies – instead it jumped around from topic to topic and spent way too much time stuck in the weeds – don’t get me wrong, I think a deep dive into the history of paper file systems is interesting (and in another context I would have enjoyed learning about it), but added NOTHING to what the book was trying to tell you and just seemed like the author often dumped his research onto the page and didn’t have a strong enough editor to cut all the excess.
The Bad:
Thief of Lies by Brenda Drake: Everything about this book was bad – bad world building, bad dialogue, bad writing, bad characters, but I finished it with no desire to read the next in the series.
@Vicky: I’m glad you liked CARIDES’S FORGOTTEN WIFE—I found it “wrecking” in the absolute best way. I always say that it’s the sign of an excellent writer if they can make me continue to read through plot elements (like cheating or a child’s death) that would generally be the hardest of hard passes for me—and Maisey Yates did just that in CARIDES’S FORGOTTEN WIFE. I haven’t read Yates before, but I’m certainly going to try more of her books now. She has a big backlist of HPs and contemporary cowboy romances, so I’m going to be spoiled for choice when it comes to her work.
:::rolls in with Dolly Parton playing, because I needed the power of Dolly to get through the last couple of weeks:::
Anyone else super-tired, and yet kind of hopeful?
It feels like FOREVER since the last Whatcha Reading?. At any rate, I followed up Aru Shah with Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson, which was a bloody little tale, with a deeply unreliable narrator, who also happens to be a nerdy little bookseller (or is he?). I really enjoyed the central conceit, which was that a serial killer was using a blogged list of perfect murders from literature to set up his killings. The whole thing was definitely jumped off of Strangers On a Train, which was one of the listed murders. The references were used well, but if you have a yen to read any of the books referenced, be aware that the book tells you all about them. Apparently I was still in a suspenseful mood, because I decided to break out my first Harlan Coben, The Boy From the Woods. I took some good-natured mockery from a friend about the fact that I took so long to read some Coben. Really enjoyed, it had some nice twists, and I also enjoyed Coben using it to make some sharp observations on current politics and how deeply indecent certain people can be. I also read Become Duchess Goldblatt for the memoir portion of my class. I enjoyed how she approached Duchess as being a whole separate entity that was there at a time that she needed her, and also the fangirling over Lyle Lovett (who seems, based on her stories, to be a thoroughly lovely person). Which brought us to election week, wherein I read Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, in between doomscrolling, watching cable news, and praying that we managed to rescue the American Experiment. I loved it. I loved the Arthurian mythology bent (catnip), the use of college secret societies (more catnip), and the toppling of racist patriarchy (catnip Yahtzee). The storytelling and magic systems were well-built, and Bree was a great lead character. It was also the most nuanced portrayal of complicated grief that I have some across in some time (the other one being Big Hero 6, yeah, I said it, fight me). It took me 8 days to read, which I blame on the doomscrolling and the fact that my brain did not have the bandwidth it normally does. I followed that up with Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders by Tessa Arlen, which a clever little mystery set in WWII England. The history setting was very well-done and the killer was actually very well-hidden until the end. Which brings us to today, in which I am back in Aru Shah, this time with Aru Shah and the Song of Death. I want to go to the underwater naga kingdom in the WORST way. Sounds awesome. Until next time, folks. It’s a good day to do the Charleston in your living room. Sure, your husband will look at you funny. But you still did the Charleston, and you still had fun with it.
I’m too late as usual, and I MISS the heart button. (I’m “hearting” @Star’s piece on Mary Balogh.) As has happened to me before, I’ve spent time writing a long piece and then somehow my words disappear. Next time I’m going to try to catch this earlier and write it elsewhere and then cut and paste!
Good in romance: Yours in Scandal my Lauren Layne and After All These Years by Kathleen Gilles Seidel (classic but great!)
Fabulous in non-romance: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (don’t let the early pain in the book put you off), and very, very painful but good: A Burning by Megha Majumdar.
Could not stick with anything new, been diving deeper into the comfort rereads. I read all 150+ comments on books to read in emergency, and may come back to them later for recs, but for now all my brain wants is the safety blanket of a book I know by heart. And cartoons. Tweenager got me to rewatch Kung Fu Panda and it’s so relatable and funny and hopeful.
I devoured the Sons of Britain series by Mia West and then discovered that only the first 5 of a planned 9 books are out yet! It’s an excellent, immersive queering of the King Arthur legends. Set in 6th C Wales with no knights or magic (until book 5), it feels like both Arthur’s origin story and an origin story of the Arthurian Legends. Book 1 has a couple gory battle scenes.
I read Redressed by Cat Sebastian. Free short story about a 40 something seamstress and vengeful selkie. Absolutely worth signing up for the author’s newsletter to get it. And that inspired me to re-read 2 books in the Turner trilogy.
I just started Jo Goodman’s “More Than You Know,” which I know has a lot of fans. I just finished Tessa Dare’s
“The Governess Game,” which was so much fun, but her strengths are dialogue/characters while going lighter on the plot. Even though I really enjoyed that book, I wanted something meatier after, so this sea-faring adventure sounded perfect. I’m really enjoying the intricate details so far, it kind of reminds me of my favorite aspects of Laura Kinsale and Loretta Chase’s writing.
Winter blues has hit me extra hard this year so I’m struggling to focus on anything really. I’m halfway through “A Princess for Christmas” by Jenny Holiday and while I do enjoy it while reading it I struggle to pick it up after a break. It’s full of fun, over the top Christmas traditions in an imaginary Alpine country (my favourite) and great banter/chemistry between all the characters but it also (surprisingly?) deals a lot with grief and missing people around Christmas time and I am not ready to deal with this atm. Also the hero switches between being tolerant and open minded to unnecessarily possessive and willfully ignorant of foreign etiquette thinking he knows better because he’s from the “land of the free” and rules don’t concern him. I try to ignore these moments bc I like him otherwise but they’re brought up often in his perspective.
I’ve made a list of Christmassy/wintery books I wanna read before/around the holidays but I think I’m gonna pick up Tessa Dare’s “The Wallflower Wager” next bc her writing always does it for me and I’m here for cute animals and heroines (and eventually heroes).