A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas – Kind of a step down from ACOMAF, but not a huge step down. I’m going to be honest and say the Spring Court doesn’t interest me that much, so I was a little bored during this book’s first section. The second and third sections were much stronger. Particularly in the final battle scene, I found myself thinking that Maas is good at writing on a sentence by sentence level, this book is as compulsively readable as the first two, but in a more macro sense a lot of it didn’t make much sense (particularly the stuff revolving around Feyre, Nesta, and Elain’s dad, the King of Hybern, and Rhys’ death and revival).

The Maid by Nita Prose – I wanted to like this one more than I did. It started off promising, I thought Molly was an interesting take on a mystery lead, being very service oriented and strongly influenced by her traditional grandmother. I also was intrigued by her supporting cast. However, I predicted the twist pretty early on, and I was disappointed to see that I was completely right, down to which character Molly was gonna end up with. It’s not quite a “divorcee thriller” (Molly’s too romantically inexperienced for that, plus the main villain isn’t really her boyfriend), but it’s teetering towards it. Also, this is definitely a coincidence, since they were both released in early 2022, but it has more in common with The Housemaid than just the title – the leading maid lady (who coincidentally have almost the same name – Millie and Molly), who is unbelievably naive, ends up getting romantically involved with an Evil Man (TM) who takes advantage of her, and she ends up with the handsome foreigner. That said, The Maid is definitely the superior of the two (mostly because Molly doesn’t spend all her time fat-shaming her female boss and it doesn’t have a child character I wished was dead), so it’s kinda disappointing that The Maid‘s film adaptation died in development hell and The Housemaid‘s movie got made to a massive success fueled by middle aged moms. I’m also at least open to reading The Mystery Guest and further sequels.

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas – Maybe I’m just not a fan of novellas, but I found this kind of unnecessary. Maybe it was just because I read this book in early May and not during the holiday season, since the vibes weren’t really clicking for me. Also, why were only Feyre and Rhys’ POVs in first person and everyone else was in third? I don’t feel like this was a waste of my time (it didn’t take long to read), but I’m not sure why this is a mainline numbered book instead of being book 3.5. I’m going to put A Court of Silver Flames on the back burner for right now (I’ll read it closer to when ACOTAR 6 comes out in the fall), so I also can’t say for sure how this acts as a bridge between ACOWAR and ACOSF.

Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh – I’m gonna do this one by bullet points:

• Why is it set in 2005? I feel like it being a period piece adds nothing to the story, and nothing would change if it was set in the then-present of when it was first published (2018). If I was going to set up that it was 2005, I would, of course, have all the characters be super excited to see the movie Madagascar.
• I swear, when Johnny was talking about how he had to go to the doctor after he tried to masturbate after having dick surgery, I almost burst out laughing. I don’t think this scene was meant to be funny, but I was almost laughing.
• Kind of like Lucy Score’s Knockemout trilogy (that was Things We Never Got Over, Things We Hide From the Light, and Things We Left Behind), this book could have been two to three hundred pages shorter. Honestly, there’s only so many bad things that can happen to Shannon before my eyes glaze over. Romance books in general should try to stick to a 100,000 word maximum. Too much longer than that and it’ll either be bogged down by uninteresting subplots or find ways (usually the dreaded miscommunication trope) to stretch out the plot.
• This book would have been better if it was set in college (and I’m not just talking about aging them up for the spice scenes). I know that would complicate the whole Shannon living with her abusive dad thing, but I feel like it would make the rest of the story make more sense. Also, I don’t know why this was ever marketed as YA (and again, not just because of the spice). Honestly, the prose feels more adult than YA to me, and also, I feel like the book’s length would scare off a lot of teens anyway.
• This book has not one but four book playlists in it (one during the story and three at the end), and frankly, they are hilarious. Book playlists are seldom not funny (case in point – Twisted Love‘s playlist has people joking that at the end of the book Alex sings Marc Anthony’s “You Sang to Me”, a very cheesy song, to Ava), but Binding 13‘s has some particularly funny moments:
  • Johnny’s playlist for Shannon inadvertently suggests Metallica’s “Tuesday’s Gone” (a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd) is a love song, which, no, it’s not
  • It’s major whiplash going from the super dramatic final scene of the book to the very next page being the hilarious playlists
  • The song that’s supposed to play when Johnny is falling in love with Shannon is “Mr. Brightside”, and my notes in my notes app for that were just “???”
  • Shannon’s playlist includes songs like “Airplanes” by B. o. B. and Hayley Williams (you know, the song from those videos where Twilight Sparkle and the bird from Regular Show are in love), “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga (no idea why, it’s not like she’s a celebrity or anything), and “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina & the Waves (WTF her life is a constant strain of misery)
  • Johnny’s playlist includes “First Kiss” by Kid Rock (ah yes, Kid Rock, a musician I associate with Ireland), “Trumpets” by Jason Derulo (“Is it weird that your ass reminds me of a Kanye West song?” Yeah, it kind of is, Jason), and “Thunder” by Imagine Dragons (lmao)
• These books have insanely high Goodreads ratings, I have zero idea why. The lowest rated Boys of Tommen book is Taming 7 with a 4.33, which on Goodreads’ standards is incredibly good. I’m not a hater, I’m not saying these books should have bad ratings, but, I don’t know, something like a 3.85 rating seems more fair. I’m particularly surprised these books in particular are so high, because A) there’s the controversy over whether these books should be classified as YA or adult, I’m surprised there’s not more angry parents 1 starring it because their teens read it, and B) these books are incredibly Irish, to the point I’m surprised they were even able to catch on in the States, there’s a three page glossary of Irish slang at the beginning.
• All that said, I did already get Keeping 13 (for some reason, all the TJMaxxes and Marshallses around me are loaded to the brim with all the Boys of Tommen books for half price), and I do intend to read it. I might not stick with the rest of the series though. Kind of like the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, these books are long and I’m not sure about my patience to read four more massive romance novels that I think are just okay.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke – I don’t love this book, certainly not as much as the people who were recommending it to me. That said, I completely get why this book resonated with so many people. It is undoubtedly a smart and unique book. The things it was doing just didn’t interest me. A big part of that is that this book is book is extremely British and I’m not British. There’s a lot of cultural nuances about the differences between northern and southern English people that are going over my head. It’s also about academic disputes, and I’m sure some people eat that sort of conflict up. But I simply could not get invested in the argument over the legacy of the Raven King, it felt like one of those things that academics could argue about forever and no one in the public would care. Also, it very much feels like a 19th Century novel, and some people gel with that style but I don’t. Also, I hate footnotes (I blame residual trauma from reading House of Leaves). I’ve heard nothing but good things about Piranesi though.

The Shadow of the Gods, The Hunger of the Gods, and The Fury of the Gods by John Gwynne – Gwynne strikes me as a very old-school fantasy writer. His first book came out in 2012, but he writes like someone who got their start in the ’70’s or ’80’s. That’s not a bad thing, and I certainly see why he has his devotees. It’s just not really my favorite. I’ll also admit a bias against The Bloodsworn series in particular by admitting I just don’t love Scandinavian culture or mythology. It’s just not an aesthetic I’m drawn to, and really the only thing that makes this series particularly unique is the Norse aesthetic. (To an extent, I’m also just not a fan of the trope of having fantasy countries be thinly veiled analogues to real cultures, I find it uncreative.) The Bloodsworn trilogy is a very solid series, if the premise sounds exciting to you, I don’t think you’ll find anything to dislike, but I just didn’t consider this one of my top recommendations.

Catalyst Gate by Megan E. O’Keefe – A fine end to this trilogy, although I must admit with each passing book I found myself chilling somewhat on the series. It doesn’t blow me out of the water, and I don’t think this is necessarily the book to give to convert space opera non-believers. It’s simply very good.

The Courting of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson – I will say I did not know going into this that this book is by the same author as The Adoration of Jenna Fox (I didn’t remember the author’s name). When I saw Jenna Fox in the author’s bibliography, I was suddenly hit with a wave of memories from when I was in middle school – I absolutely despised Jenna Fox. Jenna Fox was a dull slog through the life of a “not like other girls” teen mixed with diatribes about the evils of messing with nature. I’d pretty thoroughly erased it from my memory until I discovered this book, which I’d heard good things about, was written by the same author. That said, I don’t blame myself for not catching this earlier because Bristol and Jenna are about as unsimilar as any two books can be, even beyond the genre differences. Jenna was a very introspective book (that’s not inherently a good thing), Bristol is pretty much entirely external conflicts. Now, from what I’ve gathered, between Jenna and Bristol, Pearson wrote some fantasy romance YA books, which make the jump between the two less dramatic (and most of the people who were super pumped for Bristol had come from there and not Jenna). But, to give Jenna some flowers, the one nice thing I can say about it is that it’s decidedly not a coattail-rider. It was released the same year as The Hunger Games, YA speculative sci-fi was not a sure bet. But Bristol was written in 2024, and fae romances with easily digestible tropes are all the rage. Bristol feels incredibly derivative, and to an extent, that makes it worse, even though Bristol herself didn’t make me as angry as Jenna did and it lacks the ham-fisted social commentary that made Jenna feel didactic. I’m going to be skipping The Last Wish of Bristol Keats, and now I’m going to remember the name Mary E. Pearson so I never accidentally read anything else from her again.

Nophek Gloss, Azura Ghost, and Ethera Grave by Essa Hansen – Okay, I’m worried I’m starting to get space opera-ed out. As a writer of the genre, I feel some strange obligation to read everything in the genre. But as much as I hate to admit it, not everything in the genre is worth reading. Take this The Graven series for instance. I’ve read a lot of generic space operas, but this is one of the most generic I’ve ever read. To an extent, the problem is me – I think I really just don’t enjoy stories about revenge. I think revenge is overused as a motive, and everything worth saying about it has already been said – revenge is true justice, revenge is a slippery slope, revenge won’t bring your loved ones back, revenge brings in innocent collateral, etc. But also, The Graven series is just not very good. The author’s bio was legit more exciting than anything actually in the book (Hansen is a professional swordswoman and falconer and works at Skywalker Sound on MCU movies). I regret spending my time on these books (I don’t know why I felt the need to finish all three), and not because they’re poor quality, they’re serviceable but mediocre. Rather, it’s because I’m realizing that I have so many books on my TBR that people have asked me why I haven’t read them yet (like the next book for instance) and I instead spend my time reading unknown unpopular books that aren’t even diamonds in the rough. These books have very few eyes on them, they’re too old to use as comp titles anymore, and I’m not even sure Hansen is still a working writer – Ethera Grave came out three years ago and she hasn’t announced any new books, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she went back to her prestigious day job at Skywalker Sound.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar – “Facinatingly boring” sounds like an oxymoron, but I can’t think of any other way to describe this book. Martyr!, the first prose novel from a poet, says everything and nothing all at once. Martyr! is not a long book, but in its 300-ish pages, it tries to tackle the meaning of life and death, biculturalism, sexuality, addiction, US imperialism and US-Iranian relations, familial trauma, consumerism, art, PTSD, and many many more, and, as you can guess, since any one of those topics on their own could make a full novel, it handles none of them terribly well. This novel’s tendency to flit between topics like a bee between flowers makes a lot of sense coming from a poet – it’s more acceptable for a poetry collection to tackle multiple issues in a shallow way, that’s just how poetry works. But perhaps Akbar was out of his depth when it came to writing a novel. In addition to tackling too many themes, it also tackles too many characters – Cyrus, his mother, his father, his uncle, his roommate (also, for some reason, some of the POVs are in first person, but most of them – including main character Cyrus – are in third). If this were, as the blurb suggested it would be, actually just about Cyrus and his obsession with martyrdom in light of his parents’ deaths, it would have been much better. Also, I don’t think this book’s use of Iran Air Flight 655, a real air tragedy, was very well handled. I have a pet peeve about fiction inserting their OCs into real life mass casualty incidents (don’t get me started on My Year of Rest and Relaxation), and while Martyr! was at least trying to say something about US-Iranian relations, I don’t think it was handled particularly well, especially since it’s important to the book’s big plot twist. It reminded me somewhat of the 2010 Robert Pattinson classic film Remember Me, which also used a disaster as its twist ending, except it’s not as funny as Remember Me. Also, I need to talk about the Lisa Simpson scene. So, fairly early in the book, Cyrus’ closeted lesbian mother Roya has a fantasy where she talks to Lisa Simpson. Yes, THAT Lisa Simpson. From The Simpsons. They have a conversation about deep topics and then it just kinda ends. After I read that scene, I had to put the book down for a bit. That scene was just so… unserious, which was not what I was expecting from this very serious book. In fact, there’s a lot of references to pop culture. In short, to quote Lisa Simpson (from this book, not from the show), “Stop trying to make everything mean something.”

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden – This book had an interesting premise, and if “WWI ghost story” sounds exciting to you, you’ll probably like it. That said, its two stories were not made equal. Freddie, the brother fighting in WWI, is the one more involved with the supernatural aspects of the stories. Laura, the sister on the homefront, is surrounded by weak characters and a less interesting storyline. Also, it’s been said elsewhere, but this book’s premise of “WWI was the beginning of the biblical apocalypse” is not a mainstream Christian idea. Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever said that (at the time, they said that the generation that fought WWI would live to see the end of the world, they’ve obviously rolled that back since the generation that fought WWI has since died out and no apocalypse has come). It was definitely interesting, and it does do a good job of getting across just how bleak it felt to live during WWI, but it is a little disingenuous to call it a mainstream Christian belief as Arden does.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle – Bury Your Gays was objectively very good, it just wasn’t one of my personal bests of the month. I might just not love stories about the inner workings of Hollywood and writers fighting to keep their vision safe from meddling executives. And I don’t love the “The characters were real all along” trope. And, probably my hottest take, I would have cut the flashbacks to Misha’s closeted gay Montana childhood – every single flashback was exactly what I assumed would it would be, all of it could have been left implied when Misha talks about his closeted Montana childhood and everyone would have been able to fill in the blanks, and then there would have been more space for the main story to fill. But there’s a good chance this book just wasn’t for me, and again, I think this was an objectively good book.

Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan – We wrap up the mainline Lady Trent memoirs on a high note. Within the Sanctuary of Wings threw in some late-series plot twists that kept me entertained. All in all, this is a great series that gets my full recommendation.

The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner – Are you sure this is the same Sarah Penner that wrote The Lost Apothecary? Because someway, somehow, this managed to fix basically all of my problems with The Lost Apothecary. It’s even weirder, since Apothecary was Penner’s debut and Seance was her sophomore book, and usually, debut novels are way more restrained because the author is untested, while the sophomore book gets less editorial oversight and is in turn worse (see Ali Hazelwood’s first two books – The Love Hypothesis was actually edited by a professional editor, but by Love on the Brain Hazelwood was allowed to go on academic elitist soapboxes and write the bitchiest FMC of all time who was probably an author self-insert). But it was seemingly reversed with Apothecary and Seance – Apothecary was the soapbox-y book about how all men are evil and their only use is to help women make babies (which every woman wants), and Seance is surprisingly nuanced. Seance actually has a real mystery, with multiple suspects and plot twists. Apothecary had a mystery, but it wasn’t a very well-made mystery. I give a lot of credit to Penner, it’s possible she listened to criticism of Apothecary and used it to make Seance genuinely good. That said, I only read Seance because I’d bought it before I read Apothecary, I’m wary of The Amalfi Curse since I don’t know which of the two books was the fluke and which one is more in line with her future works.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini – I’ll start with the good. Paolini certainly has a love for sci-fi as a genre. A genuine love for works like Alien, Star Trek and Mass Effect is clear in this book. He’s not jumping from epic fantasy to space opera out of a desire to chase trends or anything. But that’s basically the only nice thing I have to say about it. Now, I suppose I should lay my cards on the table – I’ve never liked the Inheritance series. I read the first three books when they were new, and I distinctly remember someone saying “Hey, did you know there’s gonna be a fourth one?” and I might have audibly groaned. What do you mean, I’m not done with this series? I’ve still never read Inheritance, and To Sleep was my first Paolini book since I was about eleven. To Sleep did not win me over to Team Paolini. Kira is a bit of a dull lead, and the rest of the characters felt like sci-fi stock characters. Also, and I’m not the first person to make this complaint, it was way too long. I don’t think it needed to be this long. Also, I hate how the spine of the book just says “Paolini” on it. Like, Christopher Paolini has not earned the right to be a mononymous author. To Sleep is literally his first non Inheritance series book he’s ever written. He has not earned the right to treat himself like the voice of a generation.

The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman – I think I’m done with Dungeon Crawler Carl. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this anymore. Dinniman’s sense of humor is just so mean spirited. I appreciated the new character of Katia in this book, it definitely spiced up the stale Carl/Donut relationship, but it still didn’t get me to forgive this book’s sins. Between this and how miserably long the rest of the series is, I just can’t do it anymore. That said, I am very interested in the forthcoming TV adaptation, because I feel like it’s gonna go one of two ways. Either it’s going to be super successful and super popular and people who’ve never played an RPG in their life are going to be parroting the jokes, or it’s going to be so bad that we retroactively wonder why we ever liked the books in the first place (that’s what happened with Ready Player One – everyone was praising it until the awful movie came out and then people started saying “oh wait, this book sucks too”).

My Funny Demon Valentine by Aurora Ascher – This felt like an old school, Eighties or Nineties style romance – that’s not a bad thing! I wouldn’t be surprised if Aurora Ascher has had a past ghostwriting for other romance authors. Evangeline and Asmodeus are a fun musician couple, I love it when couples in a romance novel actually have something in common (which is rarer than it sounds). Although I’m not going to lie – it was kind of unserious that the big demon hunter enemy of the book was named Dan – not Daniel, which is at least a biblical character, but Dan. Also, the playlist at the end of the book was all jazz songs! Gotta love it when the book playlist isn’t just top 40 hits.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde – This was my first Fforde book, he’s just not as big of a deal in the States as he is in the UK, but I had fun! You will not enjoy this book if you’re in the camp of “all dystopian books must be a commentary on current politics”, because this book is absolutely nothing like the real world whatsoever. But it was fun to explore this bizarro world and the humor actually made me laugh. The one weak spot was the Constance, Eddie, and Violet love triangle, especially when Eddie and Jane are probably endgame, but even then it was still a funny good time. I look forward to reading Red Side Story and continuing into this colorful world.

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio – I was told going into this book that Empire of Silence is basically just a long prologue to the rest of the Sun Eater series, and yeah, that seems about right. I don’t usually buy second books before I finish book one, but I did get Howling Dark before I finished Empire of Silence. That said, if it was just a big prologue, I think it was a good prologue. I’ll definitely be continuing with the series.

The Striker by Ana Huang – I go back and forth on whether or not I can say “Ana Huang is a good writer”. Because at once, they are some of the trashiest of trashy romance novels, and also they’re incredible at being a trashy romance novel. Her books are certainly very approachable and compulsively readable. But at the same time, if you don’t like romance novels, you are absolutely not going to get won over by her books. On to The Striker itself, I bought this one because I found it on sale for five dollars, but I was intending on skipping this series since sports romances just aren’t my favorite (and yet I’ve read two this month). Let’s be honest with ourselves here – most people’s enjoyment of this book is going to be directly tied to how sexually attractive they find soccer players to be, and soccer players simply aren’t my jam. Scarlett and Asher are fine leads, they don’t stick out in my head, which is both a good and a bad thing – better to be forgotten than remembered for something bad. Also, her full name is Scarlett DuBois, and that was distracting as hell – like Scarlett O’Hara mixed with Blanche DuBois, two famous Southern Belles, but our Scarlett is from London. It’s never mentioned that her parents are huge Vivien Leigh fans or anything. I don’t know, maybe it’s only distracting to me.

Young Rich Widows by Kimberly Belle, Layne Fargo, Cate Holahan, and Vanessa Lillie – This book has probably the fastest zero-to-the-leads-getting-into-a-fistfight speed of any book I’ve ever read (they start physically fighting on page 75). It gets better from there, but this book’s biggest problem is that its four leads are not equally good. Meredith is so much better than the other three it’s not even funny. Krystle is a boring mama bear type, and the wife-vs-mistress fight between Justine and Camille was the worst part of the book to me. As an aside, I have no idea why they wrote Camille to be Justine’s husband’s mistress, when Camille was already the much younger second wife to her own husband, I don’t know why she needed to be both a gold digger and a mistress, I’d have just picked one. But Meredith, a stripper in a lesbian relationship with the only female lawyer on the team, was the character I kept reading the book for. I do think I’ll read the sequel (especially since there’s probably going to be less catfighting), but probably not book three since I wanna say that the author writing for Meredith left the project after book two – and why would I keep reading without Meredith?

The Library of the Dead with T. L. Huchu – This book is horribly falsely advertised. One – this book is YA. It was in the adult section both at the bookstore and at the library. It’s not even a case like Binding 13 where it’s debatable whether it should go in adult or YA. This is about a fourteen year old who acts exactly like a fourteen year old. Literally the only thing that could have maybe pushed it towards adult is the vulgar language used, but it’s not like teenagers are famous for being clean mouthed, I don’t think anything that was said was something a young teen wouldn’t say. Two – This was described as a “contemporary” fantasy. Even in the cover flap. It is not. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic Edinburgh, about as far from “contemporary” as it could get. And honestly, if it had been shelved in YA and clearly said it was post-apocalyptic, I would not have read it. Ropa, our lead and narrator, was pretty obnoxious. The mystery, the main plot line, was weak. The fantastical angle was underdeveloped, as was the post-apocalyptic aspect. This book continues my adage that books about libraries always suck.

Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall – The cover describes this book as “Sapphic Moby-Dick in Space” and yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Do you like Moby-Dick? Do you like space? Then you’ll like Hell’s Heart! And yes, I think you do in fact need to like Moby-Dick. Not just the storyline, the actual book from 1851. Hall apparently read Moby-Dick a chapter a day on a live-stream, and their dedication to making Hell’s Heart feel like its inspiration shows. And by that I mean this book is really slow. I was here for a rollicking space whaling adventure, but there’s a lot of world building and conversations with characters who don’t matter and, of course, a lot of sex stuff. The Captain Ahab analogue, creatively named “A” (is that a Pretty Little Liars reference?) barely feels like a presence at all in this story, when other Moby-Dick adaptations usually have Ahab being this towering presence over the story – it’s his (or in this case, her) revenge quest after all. Hell’s Heart is a lot like Moby-Dick in one way, and that’s that it is absolutely not for everyone. There’s a Futurama episode with the same premise (down to the same name for their whale, Mobius Dick), go watch that instead.

Arcana Academy by Elise Kova – This one was a surprising hit! I was so enamored by the premise, but I was worried since it’s a romantasy, and romantasy books don’t have the best track record for utilizing their cool premises because they’re putting all their energy into the romance. Case study – the Twisted Sisters’ Zodiac Academy series, which I went into hoping it would be faeries with a cool astrological magic system, but I don’t think this is a book about astrology at all. But Arcana Academy is tarot cards all the way down. The premise is FMC Clara is trying to find the enigmatic The World card to help save her sister. I actually kind of liked the characters and the romance too! Definitely waiting for the second book.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel – I respect ESJM. I don’t really like her works. I think I just don’t enjoy pandemics as a plot device (and I didn’t like it before COVID either). Also, her books really have to be read in publication order. I’d read Station Eleven but not The Glass Hotel, and one of the major characters in Sea of Tranquility was introduced in The Glass Hotel. If her writing style appeals to you, you probably already have all three of her books and are watching her like a hawk for book four. I’m not knocking that, she’s clearly a talented author and I’m glad she gets to write what she wants to write. I’d say I liked it less than Station Eleven, which followed the more interesting premise of “what effect would the apocalypse have on a theatre troupe?” while this book is about a time traveler rescuing ESJM’s author self insert from dying in a pandemic. I’ll pick up The Glass Hotel (to catch up on what I missed), but I might not read her future books.

Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin – The producers of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind could sue and win. Now, I generally like multi-POV books. If all the POVs are interesting. Good multi-POV books have each POV enrich each other, or at least each tell an interesting story in its own right, but the POVs in Tell Me An Ending are five not very interesting stories. I think my dark horse favorite of the five was William, followed by Oscar. Noor was the glue that held the other four stories together, and the glue is never that interesting. Then there was Mei, who I found super obnoxious, demanding to meet her birth mother (who abandoned her and wants nothing to do with her) and getting into toxic relationships. Lastly there was Finn, who spends his whole time wondering if his wife Mirande had cheated on him. He was a jerk, and frankly Mirande deserved better than him. Also, there’s not one but three marriages ruined by having children (Finn in particular has some really mean things to say about Mirande because she insisted on keeping the baby and then he says that having the baby “ruined her body” – yeah, Mirande should cheat on him.) You can just tell when someone has a toxic viewpoint and wants to push it on the world subtextually.

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders – I knew I was in for a bad time when I saw the author’s photo and she’s got hot pink hair and she was an editor at io9 (BEEP BEEP NEPOTISM ALERT THIS WOMAN DID NOT GET HER BOOK PUBLISHED BY ITS OWN MERITS), and that her dedication mentioned colonialism despite her being white as snow. There’s a blurb on the back (from Daveed Diggs, of all people) that says “The City in the Middle of the Night does everything right,” and frankly, I thought this book did nothing right besides having a cool premise. There’s two POV characters and four leads, and all but one of them are jerks (poor Mouth. Mouth deserved better.) Sophie spends all her time simping for Bianca, Bianca is bad news all the way down, and Alyssa is a violent jerk. Mouth, one of the two POV characters, is an interesting character, but she spends all her time getting shit on by the other characters (including her lover Alyssa). This is a prime example of a good premise being ruined by bad characters.

For the Love of the Bard by Jessica Martin – Do I actually not like Shakespeare? To be more specific, do I actually really hate Twelfth Night? I mean, it’s never been a favorite of mine, I’ve never thought it was funny or subversive, but listening to Miranda soliloquize about how amazing it was made me really start to resent Twelfth Night (also, I think every single character in Twelfth Night is straight and cis; people are just projecting their own queerness onto the characters, the text itself is not progressive at all). Moving on to the merits and faults of this book, this is set in one of the least believable small towns I’ve ever read in a romance novel – there’s no way literally every business in this town is named after a Shakespeare pun. This book, the character of Miranda in particular, is really biting off more than it can chew. Miranda:

• Is a YA author facing a fan revolt because she killed a fan favorite character she hated
• Has a mom with cancer
• Is returning to her hometown
• Is directing a performance of Twelfth Night
• Is dealing with drama from her lawyer older sister Portia
• Is having run-ins with her high school ex Adam

It’s a lot. Not helping was I found most of the characters pretty annoying or stereotypical (except for my unproblematic fave, Miranda’s younger sister Cordelia). A lot of people don’t like the Miranda/Adam relationship because they don’t think he apologized enough, but my bigger complaint is that these characters in their thirties are still upset over something that happened at prom. Like, fifteen years ago. Can’t really recommend this book, even if you do love Shakespeare. There’s also a sequel about Portia that I’m not going to read (also, why no Cordelia book? She was the best one!)

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel – This is a unique book. It’s not my favorite book ever, but I could see it being someone’s favorite and I would totally get it. I liked the unique interview format.

The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis – My second 1910’s period piece about a woman named Laura this month. Huh. Now, I only read this book because Fiona Davis is writing the American Girl adult Samantha novel later this year, and I wanted to read the book she’s credited for on the cover. It’s very much a “Book Club Novel”, and it has that trope I don’t like of there being a modern character to “anchor” the story (although Sadie is from the ’90’s, so not strictly speaking modern). Laura’s story is a very standard A Doll’s House type story, about her lesbian awakening in a time of repression. Sadie’s story was surprisingly more interesting, showing the ramifications of Laura’s actions in the 1910’s eighty years later. Not groundbreaking, but solid, and I’m still excited for the Samantha book.

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin – This retelling of the story of Cleopatra, Caesar, and Antony is probably my vote for best space opera of the month. Definitely an underrated book.

The Blood Trials by N. E. Davenport – Aside from how the characters are in their twenties and the spice scenes, this felt like a YA novel. That’s not inherently a bad thing, there certainly is an adult audience for YA books (this book could probably be described as “New Adult”, if that term wasn’t so stigmatized), but I personally don’t enjoy it. This is another book with vaguely Roman aesthetics (between this, The Stars Undying, and James Islington’s Hierarchy series, I wonder if it’s safe to say Roman aesthetics are in vogue for Dystopias). I liked it enough to pick up the sequel.

Turning Darkness into Light by Marie Brennan – I was wary going into this one since it introduces a new narrator, Isabella’s granddaughter Audrey, and it has a different format (the previous five books were normal prose framed as a memoir, this one is a true epistolary novel, told as Audrey’s diary, letters between characters, and the occasional news article). While I’d say it’s not quite as good as the main five (and in particular a big step down from Within the Sanctuary of Wings, my choice for the best in the series), it’s still a very good book, on the same level of quality as the rest of the series. I’m actually a bit disappointed Audrey doesn’t have more books to her name.

Idolfire by Grace Curtis – Frank Herbert once described Dune as having a “coital rhythm” – what he meant by that is that it starts slow and steady and then a there’s a big explosion of everything happening all at once. I could say more or less the same of Idolfire. Most of the book is a dull travelogue of a dull land, and then suddenly there’s gods and the fate of the world at stake. The problem is, unlike Frank Herbert, I think Grace Curtis just isn’t a very good writer. The crazy climax did not feel earned. The first half of the book was boring and the characters were unmemorable. While not the worst book I read this month (which is probably either The City in the Middle of the Night, Hell’s Heart, or our next book), I feel like it’s the most incompetent.

The Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Schaffert – Have you ever seen the documentary The Woman Who Wasn’t There? It’s about a woman who pretended to be a 9/11 survivor and ended up leading a support group for real survivors of the attacks before she was found out. With the premise of this book, I was expecting a fictional and Titanic-based equivalent of The Woman Who Wasn’t There. That’s an interesting idea. I was expecting Yorick to have to keep up the lie with his new friend group of actual Titanic survivors, and then fall in love with one and debate whether or not to be honest with them. That wasn’t what I got. Everyone is someone who missed the Titanic. Okay, then the story is about how tragedy touches people who aren’t directly involved. It’s not that either. It’s a very boring tragic romance between boring people. It has really low ratings basically everywhere it’s rated. I’m glad I didn’t spend money on this. Also, no more 1910’s period pieces for a while.

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki – A well meaning book with really poor execution. There’s a good story core there – a vulnerable trans teen gets scooped up by a violin teacher who might sell her soul to the devil – but that’s only one thread of a thousand in this book, and it’s not a long book. If it was just Shizuka and Katrina’s story, I could see it being good, but not only is there the romance between Shizuka and Lan advertised on the back cover, but there’s so many other characters floating around (if you held a gun to may head and told me to explain who Astrid was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you). Also, the sci-fi aspect, despite giving the book its title, are pretty weak. I get that the aliens were an immigrant allegory, but they just as easily could have been non-allegorical immigrants and not much would have changed. Also, anyone calling this a “queer joy” book needs to have their book confiscated – Katrina spends most of her time thinking she’s some kind of freak and doomscrolling through transphobia (literally at one point, she reads the comments under a video of her performance) until she magically accepts herself at the end. The vibe is apparently “cozy” but there’s so much heavy content in this book it’s impossible to get cozy.

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer by Ragnar Jonasson – A very old-school mystery that will appeal to fans of Agatha Christie and her contemporaries. Like Sleeping Giants before it, my favorite part of this book was the story explained through a transcript of a conversation. Also, I assume the title is more poetic in its native Icelandic.