The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Why have I only just found Holly Black? I know she’s been around for a long time, I’ve seen the reviews go by on CBR, but somehow I never got around to reading any of her work. This is like my Rainbow Rowell experience all over again. I’m blown away. This book was perfect; an absolute dark delight. Jude Duarte is a human stolen away to the land of Faerie with her sisters. While Jude’s sisters find their own quiet ways to either assimilate or […]
The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold
Perhaps it’s unfair that I’m reviewing The Last Smile of Sunder City only days after finishing Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. A Hugo award winning series is always going to be an unreachable pinnacle, especially by a debut author, and I’m probably doing an unrealistic comparison to expect Sunder City to feed the depth of my expectations after spending three books in Jemisin’s incredible craft. But I did expect more from Sunder City. This isn’t to say Arnold is a bad writer; he’s not. He’s a very […]
The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin
While the whole Broken Earth series was incredibly deserving of the Hugo award, the Stone Sky, in particular, was a feat of literary perfection (at least in my opinion). As I’ve said with both of Jemisin’s previous novels, her ability to successfully deploy second person POV continued to astound me in this last chapter of her epic, and while hints are given in book two of who this narrative voice is, it all comes roaring to the surface in book three. As with any trilogy, […]
Pepper's Rules for Secret Sleuthing by Briana McDonald
One of my MFA cohorts just published her debut novel, and of course, I had to buy it. Pepper’s Rules for Secret Sleuthing is a middle-grade story about our hero, Pepper, who’s gone with her father to help settle the estate of a late family relative. However, when they get there, Pepper notices some strange behavior from her own aunt and a few facts that don’t seem to add up. With the help of a neighborhood boy and unexpected assistance from her cousin, Pepper tries to […]
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
I will start this review by saying I DNFed this book at about a hundred pages, but not because I didn’t like it. I really liked it. But I’ve realized I am a bad reader on digital platforms. I tried Hoopla for the first time, hoping to fill the void that’s been the suspension on our county-wide library lending program. I borrowed Queen of the Night from Hoopla and had an immensely hard time reading it on my computer screen. Which seems ridiculous since I […]
Gardens for Victory by Jean Marie Putnam & Llyod C. Cosper
In a box my grandmother hadn’t opened for probably fifty years, she found a swath of old family documents, and in it was this book, Gardens for Victory, a comprehensive guide to teach Americans how to supplement their ration cards during World War II with sustainable gardening. We have no idea how the little pamphlet never got thrown away; the spine was very bent and the pages dog-eared, meaning my great-grandparents probably followed its instructions during the war for their own gardens. The fact that it had […]
