I am cemented in my belief that Fern doesn’t know a single normal human being. Everyone she knows seems to be a complete psychopath who thrives on making her feel afraid. At this point Fern has become convinced that she is the girl that Astrid referred to as witnessing her kidnapping. She is attempting to track down clues to prove that fact, but also to try and unlock more memories of what happened. There have been some big revelations too, that I can’t really mention without spoiling the book. I have developed a theory about who is responsible for the kidnapping, I’ll be interested to see if I’m right. Hopefully this book has a better payoff at the end than the last one.
This one has been slow going. I went out of town this week for a long overdue vacation with my spouse and kids. It was fantastic but also meant I couldn’t read much, and I didn’t even bring this book with me. I didn’t really want to lug a 540 page book around to hotels. So far we’ve delved into the history of Area 51, it’s original use as a testing facility for spy planes. This led to some misidentifications as UFOs, which the Air Force was more than happy to play along with. UFO rumors provided cover to what they were actually testing after all. But we’ve now also covered how the UFO rumors started to become inconvenient for the CIA and Air Force, people were making too many assumptions that the government was covering things up. And so they changed tactics and admitted that they were researching UFOs, but that most of the time there was nothing unusual after investigation. I’m interested to see where we go next.
Raised in the darkness of Satis House where the clocks never tick, the beautiful Estella is bred to hate men and to keep her heart cold as the grave.
She knows she doesn’t feel things quite like other people do but is this just the result of her strange upbringing?
As she watches the brutal treatment of women around her, hatred hardens into a core of vengeance and when she finds herself married to the abusive Drummle, she is forced to make a deadly
Should she embrace the darkness within her and exact her revenge?
Jin-Lu has the most dangerous job in the wasteland. She’s a magebike courier, one of the few who venture outside the domed cities on motorcycles powered by magic. Every day, she braves the wasteland’s dangers—deadly storms, roving marauders, and territorial beasts—to deliver her wares.
Her most valuable cargo? A prince’s love letters addressed to Yi-Nereen, a princess desperate to escape the clutches of her abusive family and soon-to-be husband. Jin, desperately in love with both her and the prince, can’t refuse Yi-Nereen’s plea for help. The two of them flee across the wastes, pursued by Yi-Nereen’s furious father, her scheming betrothed, and a bounty hunter with mysterious powers.
A storm to end all storms is brewing and dark secrets about the heritability of magic are coming to light. Jin’s heart has led her into peril before, but this time she may not find her way back.
Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she’s hunted down and dispatched rapists, murderers, domestic abusers—bad men all. But leading a double life has left her lonely—dating’s tough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she’s finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true-crime podcaster who’s amassed legions of die-hard fans for cracking cold cases and bringing justice to victims.
When a decapitated body shows up on Jon’s doorstep the morning after his wife leaves him, he becomes the chief suspect for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. Saffy’s crush becomes an obsession as she orchestrates a meet-cute and volunteers to help Jon clear his name, using every trick up her sleeve to find the real killer and get her man—no matter the cost.
Darkly comic and addictively readable, Bad Men is a wild romp of a feminist thriller that asks if even a serial killer can have a happily ever after.
Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers…
Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is very, very wrong…
Maggie just wants to be home with her daughter, but she’s in a dangerous situation and she doesn’t know who put her there or why. She’ll have to fight with everything she has to survive…
Three women. Three stories. Only one way out. This captivating novel will keep readers guessing until the very end.
Rating:
Review:
The premise of this book was exciting. Women who had been seemingly abducted into lives that weren’t their own, forced to find a way out. Who was responsible? What was the reason? Would they escape? I love a good mystery and I was enthusiastic to see where this book went. The narrator was fabulous, giving each of the women their own personality and inflection, it really made me connect with them individually.
This could have easily been a five star read, if not for the ended. Each of these individual women’s stories were compelling. The women themselves were interesting and unique, I enjoyed their narrative and following along with them. The scenarios played out in a riveting manner, I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next. I was entranced by the book. I developed a theory about what it was all about, who was responsible for the women’s plights.
Then I got to the ending. I was excited! We were finally going to see who the guilty party was! The women were going to get answers. I was going to see if my pet theory was correct. But it wasn’t. And the actual ending wasn’t good either. It was a completely stereotypical trope. It was far fetched. It came out of left field. It made very little sense. And so, I finished this fabulous book with a “huh….so, that was it?” And then I turned to a podcast because it was so disappointing. Overall I really loved this book, and I will likely read other books from this author because I enjoy how she writes, but this one fell flat in the end.
Charlotte’s daughter Stella is sensitive and brilliant, perhaps even a genius, but a recent change in her behavior has alarmed her parents. Following the sudden death of Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, the once disruptive and anti-social child has become docile and agreeable. But what’s unsettling is that she has begun to mirror Blanka’s personality, from Blanka’s repetitive phrases to her accent, to fierce cravings for Armenian meat stew after being raised a vegetarian. Charlotte is pregnant with her second child, and depleted and sick with the pregnancy. She is convinced that Blanka herself is somehow responsible for Stella’s transformation. But how could Blanka, dead, still be entwined in their lives? Has Blanka somehow possessed Stella? Has Stella become Blanka? As Charlotte becomes increasingly obsessed, she is sure that only she can save her daughter. . . even though it’s soon clear that her husband believes this is all in Charlotte’s head. Helena Echlin’s singular, chilling voice holds light to the blurred lines of diagnosis in children and to the vital power of maternal instinct. Kaleidoscopic and tense, pulse-pounding and genuinely creepy, and infused with shades of the supernatural, Clever Little Thing is an ode to motherhood and a nuanced critique of the caretaking industry, a page-turner that will haunt readers long after its epic, surprising finale.
They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran
Expected publication: March 4, 2025 by Bloomsbury YA
A red algae bloom has taken over Mercy, Louisiana. Ever since a devastating hurricane, mutated wildlife lurks in the water that rises by the day. But Mercy has always been a place where monsters walk in plain sight. Especially at its heart: The Cove, where Noon’s life was upended long before the storm at a party her older boyfriend insisted on.
Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their dead family has reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape.
When Mercy’s predatory leader demands Noon and her mom capture the creature drowning residents, she reluctantly finds an ally in his deadly hunter of a daughter and friends old and new. As the next storm approaches, Noon must confront the past and decide if it’s time to answer the monster itching at her skin.
Hera by Jennifer Saint
Expected publication: August 17, 2024 by Flatiron Books
Hera, immortal goddess and daughter of the ancient Titan Cronos, helped her brother Zeus to overthrow their tyrannical father so that they could rule the world. But, as they establish their reign on Mount Olympus, Hera suspects that Zeus might be just as ruthless and cruel as their father was, and she begins to question her role at his side. She was born to rule, but does that mean perpetuating a cycle of violence and cruelty that has existed since the dawn of time? Will assuming her power mean that Hera loses herself, or can she find a way to forge a better world?
Traditionally portrayed as a jealous wife, a wicked stepmother, and a victim-blaming instrument of the patriarchy, Hera is ripe for a retelling that shows her as a powerful queen―ruthless when she needs to be, but also compassionate, strategic, and ambitious. With Hera, beloved and bestselling author Jennifer Saint delivers another epic and enthralling reimagining of a Greek heroine we only thought we knew.
This will be a somewhat recurrent post, detailing some of the Advanced Reader’s Copies of books I’ve received recently. The frequency of this post will depend on what ARCs I get sent or approved for. Sometimes it might be often, sometimes not as often. Enjoy! I am looking forward to read these books, let me know if any of them have caught your eye too.
The Delicate Beast by Roger Celestin
Expected publication: February 4, 2025 by Bellevue Literary Press
In the 1950s Tropical Republic, a boy lives amid opulence and privilege, spending days at the beach or in the cool hills above the sweltering capital, enjoying leisurely Sunday lunches around the family compound’s swimming pool. That is, until the reign of The Mortician begins, unleashing unimaginable horrors that bring his childhood idyll to an end. Narrowly escaping the violent fate visited on so many of his fellow citizens, he and his brother follow their parents into exile in the United States where they must start a new life. But as he grows, he never feels at home, and leaves his family to travel across Europe and outrun the ghosts of the past.
A searing novel of a life lived in the shadow of history, The Delicate Beast portrays the persistent, pernicious legacy of political violence.
Anticipation by Neil Taylor
Expected Publication: February 4, 2025 by Neem Tree Press
Your every move is being watched by businesses hoping to manipulate your behaviour. Every picture, every post, every like, every follow, every purchase, every search.
When 17-year-old Riya Sudame inherits her father’s secret AI algorithm, she and a handful of carefully selected Keyholders hold the power to predict people’s future using their online data. But with great power comes great responsibility, and they must safeguard it from falling into the wrong hands.
Enter Jim Booker, a powerful social media tycoon, who will stop at nothing to steal the technology for himself. Soon Riya faces a critical choice. Fighting ruthless tech giants seems like an impossible task—wouldn’t it be easier to relinquish her father’s creation in exchange for a normal teenage life?
But if she does, she will have to live with the knowledge that she is the reason that, like everyone, you are being played.
Neil Taylor marks his debut in this dark, twisty AI YA thriller.
Kree by Manuela Draeger
Expected Publication: October 22, 2024 by University of Minnesota Press
A warrior struggles through an apocalyptic landscape and the world after death
Kree Toronto has been raised as a warrior in a ravaged postapocalyptic, posthuman, the population decimated by wars and civilization long since collapsed. After her attempt to avenge the death of her dog, Loka, goes horribly wrong, Kree finds herself lost in a world after death and wanders into the city of the terrible mendicants.
Under the Brothers’ totalitarian rule, Kree can lead a quiet life and forget her violent past, even if needles grow in her skull and hallucinatory blood rains pour down now and then to remind her. She can make a shamanic healer with a shaking tent, a mysterious stranger hatched from an egg, and a gruff Tibetan electrician in a world without electricity. And she can have her Loka as long as she toes the Party line and does as she’s told. When she can’t—when her friends start to disappear and the Brothers turn against her—Kree sets out on a quest, searching for a new way forward.
Multiply reincarnated and unstuck in time, Kree is the characteristically marvelous creation of Manuela Draeger, whose extraordinary stories, in the words of author China Miéville, “are as close to dreams as fiction can be.”
So far I am learning a lot of interesting things in this book. Last week we learned that the original entity in charge of Area 51 was the Atomic Energy Commission. This week we learned that the first official use of Area 51 (apart from nuclear tests at the Nevada Testing Site) was to engineer and test the U-52 spy plane that the government wanted to use to spy on the Soviet Union. Because the project was secret, many residents reported that the planes were UFOs because..planes weren’t supposed to fly that high. And that was the first connection with Area 51 and UFOs.
When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a thirty-four-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping—and equally famous return—twenty years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.
Back home in New Hampshire, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir—which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again—and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. As Fern’s search becomes increasingly desperate, she hopes to remember her past so she can save Astrid in the present…before it’s too late.
How it’s going:
This story has a really good premise. And so far I have learned a lot abut Fern and a bit abut Astrid. Fern has had recurring nightmares about a girl with no face reaching for her. When she sees Astrid on the news she realizes that Astrid is the girl she’s been dreaming about. I have also learned that Fern was raised by complete psychopaths. And seemingly everyone she knows, except her husband, is completely twisted. I’m excited to see where this goes.
Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos―the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge.
Rating:
Review:
This is another example of a book that tried to do too much, and as a consequence it loses the premise that was promised. I was told that this was a book about a man stuck in the Palestine/Israel conflict. I was told that this was a book about a man whose son disappears after a tragic accident and his journey to try and find his son. Unfortunately, the journey of Abed Salama and his son was only about 10% of this book. At only six hours runtime, it was a short book. And the actual synopsis was only a small part of it.
Quickly after being introduced to Abed and his family, we get a short history lesson in the history of the Palestine/Israel conflict. A lot of other reviewers have felt this was irrelevant but I didn’t mind too much. While the book is titled “a day in the life”, there is a nuance to what someone’s day includes. Your day is never just about a singular 24 hour period. Your family influences your day. Your job. Where you live. The country that you live in. And, in the case of Abed, the long battles between Palestine and Israel influence his day. A single day can sometimes be shaped by 50 years of history. I enjoyed that nuance. I also enjoyed that the author conveyed this point without actually saying that was their point. It’s always appreciated when an author treats me like I am intelligent enough to understand the subtext.
We also get a very long history of Abed and how he grew up. His first wife. His struggles to accommodate his culture and his family. There was a lot of valuable insight to be gained by being introduced to this character in the depth that was presented in this book.
Where it falls off the rails was when we start following other characters. Honestly, I can only barely tell you who these people were. Their narratives are abrupt and presented with little to no explanation. I could piece together that one individual seemed to be the ambulance worker that arrives at the scene of the accident, another seemed to be a politician of some kind, another seemed to be an aid worker. I had a hard time keeping these characters straight because we launch straight into their narrative with no introduction to who they are or how they are relevant to the story of Abed. For some reason we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about a refugee camp in Jordan and the return to Palestine of those individuals who had been living in the refugee camp. I was quickly confused and tuned out because I couldn’t follow what was going on.
We only come back to Abed’s search for his son at the very end of the book. I wanted to spend more time on that, because that’s the story that I was sold. But it wasn’t the story that I got. In total this was a good book, but it got lost in its own narrative and forgot to tell me the story that was promised.
The Honey Witch of Innisfree can never find true love. That is her curse to bear. But when a young woman who doesn’t believe in magic arrives on her island, sparks fly in this deliciously sweet debut novel of magic, hope, and love overcoming all.
Twenty-one-year-old Marigold Claude has always preferred the company of the spirits of the meadow to any of the suitors who’ve tried to woo her. So when her grandmother whisks her away to the family cottage on the tiny Isle of Innisfree with an offer to train her as the next Honey Witch, she accepts immediately. But her newfound magic and independence come with a No one can fall in love with the Honey Witch.
When Lottie Burke, a notoriously grumpy skeptic who doesn’t believe in magic, shows up on her doorstep, Marigold can’t resist the challenge to prove to her that magic is real. But soon, Marigold begins to care for Lottie in ways she never expected. And when darker magic awakens and threatens to destroy her home, she must fight for much more than her new home—at the risk of losing her magic and her heart.
My thoughts:
I love books with magic. I love books with magic that comes with a price. A woman being torn between using magic to save her town but also the idea of losing the woman she is starting to love it a good premise for a book. And the cover is lovely.
Paradise of the Damned by Keith Thomson
Published: May 21, 2024 by Little, Brown & Company
The transporting account of an obsessive quest to find El Dorado, set against the backdrop of Elizabethan political intrigue and a competition with Spanish conquistadors for the legendary city’s treasure
As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic.
Entering the Elizabethan court as an upstart from a family whose days of nobility were far behind them, Raleigh used his military acumen, good looks, and sheer audacity to scramble into the limelight. Yet that same swagger proved to be his undoing, as his secret marriage to a lady-in-waiting enraged Queen Elizabeth and landed him in the Tower of London. Between his ensuing grim prospects at court and his underlying lust for adventure, the legend of El Dorado became an unwavering siren song that hypnotized Raleigh.
On securing his release, he journeyed across an ocean to find the fabled city, gambling his painstakingly acquired wealth, hard-won domestic bliss, and his very life. What awaited him in the so-called New World were endless miles of hot, dense jungle packed with deadly flora and fauna, warring Spanish conquistadors and Indigenous civilizations, and other unforeseen dangers. Meanwhile, back at home, his multitude of rivals plotted his demise.
Paradise of the Damned, like Keith Thomson’s critically acclaimed Born to Be Hanged, brings this story to life in lush and captivating detail. The book charts Raleigh’s obsessive search for El Dorado—as well as the many doomed expeditions that preceded and accompanied his—providing not only an invaluable history but also a gripping narrative of traveling to the ends of the earth only to realize, too late, that what lies at home is the greatest treasure of all.
My thoughts:
I have read a lot of books and watched a lot of documentaries about the fables El Dorado. The quest for gold and riches has been a defining quest for humanity all over the world, throughout all of human history. This one sounds interesting.
A timely, beautifully observed debut novel set in near future New York about a young woman who finds herself tangled in a secret government project combating loneliness.
Lee’s life is perfectly mapped out. A top student and professor favorite, everyone expects her to land one of the coveted roles at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee finds herself at a company no one’s heard of in the dead city of New York instead, her goals are completely upended.
In this new role, Lee’s task is to gather research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her outgoing roommate Veronika. But when it’s revealed that the company is part of a classified mission to solve loneliness—an emotion erased from society’s lexicon decades ago— Lee’s determination to prove herself kicks into overdrive and she starts chasing bolder experiences for the AI.
How far will Lee go? As loneliness continues to spread, she must decide what she’s willing to give up for success and, along the way, learn what it means to be a true friend.
Loneliness & Company is an enchanting, gorgeously written novel about finding meaning and connection in a world beset by isolation.
My thoughts:
Over the past few years I have heard a lot about the “epidemic of loneliness”. This seemed to start entering the public lexicon after the COVID-19 epidemic. Scientists started talking a lot about how we all need to get out from behind our screens, re-engage with the world, and combat the loneliness. This book seems to play on that theme. That’s an interesting premise and I am always willing to try out a debut novel.
Written Among The Stars 