Tag Archives: book recommendations

Reading Romance Through the Apocalypse

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Not gonna lie, it really does feel like the world is ending these days. Globally, things look dire. Domestically, I am beginning to lose hope that the U.S. is even worth saving some days. It feels like everything is burn down around us. I don’t want to turn this blog into a political soap box, but as a queer, Asian-American woman with queer, trans, and POC family and friends, I should hope it’s obvious where I stand. I am angry, exhausted, afraid, and grieving for my communities, for my country, and for the millions and millions around the world negatively impacted by this government’s policies.

It becomes a little more difficult every day to do the things I need to do. To work, to write, to take of myself and others. Even reading, my best refuge, sometimes feels too difficult and draining. Dredging up the energy to do anything is hard when the apocalypse is raging around you. My brain and nervous system retreat to a few different hobbies in moments like this. But one of my significant resting places is romance novels. In an average year, I read a pretty good chunk of romance novels (some spicy, some not), but in the last year and half or so, I’ve probably read more romance and erotica than I had in my entire life up to this point. I am basically burning through them. I still read other things as well, but there is a lot of romance happening.

And that’s ok! In difficult times like this, when we are under constant attack, emotionally and mentally, sometimes even physically, we deserve whatever comforts and resting places we can find. That is one of the things romance novels exist for! Generally speaking, you go into a romance novel knowing exactly what to expect. That’s not to say that all romance novels are exactly the same. There is variety and surprise aplenty in romance novels. But romance novels do follow certain genre conventions without which they would not qualify as romances, and that is part of the point. They are intended to be familiar and comforting. I should be able to settle into the story knowing that no matter how dramatic or awkward or angsty the plot gets, I can rest assured that love will prevail and the heroes/heroines will get their happily-ever-after. I need that right now, when happily-ever-afters seem so scarce on the ground for real people.

So! Romance novels it is, then! I refuse to apologize for that.

Generally speaking, I do not believe in “guilty pleasures.” I advocate for loving what you love without embarrassment. And yet, I’ll confess that some of the things I’ve been reading lately, I would not confess to on my death bed. Some romance novels I read are very good quality, with or without spicy scenes. I’ve been leaning heavily into straight-up erotica lately (and, again, there is nothing wrong with that!) A lot of it is very smutty, plot-light, and silly. But I’ll admit that some of it isn’t even very good, it just scratches some itch in my brain. Not to mention, some of them say just a little more about my personal tastes than I really feel like airing publicly (lol).

That said, I thought I might be brave enough to offer a small sampling of a few titles I’ve read that I particularly loved. I should probably add that I tend prefer historical romances and cozy fantasy romances, but I read a handful of contemporary romances as well. I read very little that would lean more into dark romance, but I do have a slightly unhealthy obsession with monster romances.

SOME ROMANCE TITLES:

Laurie Gilmore’s Dream Harbor Series:
This series includes The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, The Christmas Tree Farm, and The Strawberry Patch Pancake House. I’ve read the first three, but haven’t picked up Strawberry Patch Pancake House yet. And there’s a fifth book coming out in September. This contemporary romance series are set in the fictional ideal New England town of Dream Harbor. They are unbearably sweet, happy, and adorable in a way that I find both incredibly comforting and just a tiny bit depressing in a “I will never have this and am I painfully jealous” kind of way. So I have to be careful of my mood when I pick one of these up, lol. They usually have a handful of spicy scenes. My biggest complaint is they are unrelentingly heterosexual and I would really love some more sappy queer couples.

On the Same Page and The Next Chapter by Haley Cass
Speaking of sappy queer couples in contemporary romance, I also really enjoyed On the Same Page by Haley Cass. Haley Cass is beloved for her sapphic romances and this one was great. It is pretty spicy, featuring a lingerie model/fashion influencer, and a great friends-to-lovers plot. I am a sucker for friends-to-lovers and much prefer it to enemies-to-lovers (which may account for my reluctance to read a lot of current romantasy?). I will say a few scenes in On the Same Page really triggered my painfully-sensitive secondhand embarrassment. Just FYI for anyone who suffers from that the way I do. The Next Chapter is a sequel to this one, but I haven’t read it yet.

Travis Baldree’s Novels:
In the realm of cozy fantasy romance, I read a lot. I imagine at this point most people have at least heard of Legends & Lattes, and its sequel Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree by now. Those are both great. So cozy and wonderful and happy, even when the fantasy plot elements get serious for a bit. And they’re sapphic, which makes me extra happy. I am so excited for the third book, Brigands & Breadknives, coming out later this year!

Megan Bannen’s Hart & Mercy Series:
I also highly recommend The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen, and its sequels The Undermining of Twyla and Frank, and The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam. These are fantasy romance set in a fictional world with some absolutely incredible world-building details! And the romances themselves are wonderful. As I mentioned above, I don’t generally care for enemies-to-lovers, but the relationship in The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy really makes it work and I loved it. While the main couple of each book is straight, there are some background relationships that are queer. I haven’t read the third book in this series yet, but its on the TBR list.

The Belles of London by Mimi Matthews:
For historical romances, my recent favorite has been Mimi Matthews’ series The Belles of London. There are four books in this series set in Victorian England, following the romances of four women who become friends and bond over their shared love of horseback riding. The four books are: The Siren of Sussex, The Belle of Belgrave Square, The Lily of Ludgate Hill, and The Muse of Maiden Lane. These books speak to my soul and I love all four of the friends. It’s really difficult to choose one, but I think Lily of Ludgate Hill might be my favorite (maybe?). I am devastated that this series is now complete though. Historical romances set in either Regency or Victorian England are my faves.

Haven Ever After Series by Hazel Mack:
I’m not going to share too much of the monster romance I’ve been reading, because let’s be real… these are mostly straight-up erotica and the specific ones I gravitate to cut just a little too close to the bone. I will, however, mention one of the series I’ve been reading pretty consistently: Haven Ever After by Hazel Mack, the first of which is Getting It On with Gargoyles. There’s 7 or 8 in this series now, and I think the author is still going. In addition to being very spicy, these books are also just really sweet and fun. They mostly feature straight couples (my biggest complaint with basically all monster romances in general), but there is one poly pairing that was f/m/m (Slaying with Sylphs) that was really good. I’m hopeful that Hazel Mack will branch out into more queer couples if she keeps going. But, yeah… monster romances generally skew pretty heavily straight. (The selection of queer monster erotica is pretty slim, and I’ve probably already read it if it’s out there, but if you know of any good titles, PLEASE DO DROP ME A LINE. I need my fix.)

More Queer Joy Books for Pride Month!

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I wanted to share some more queer stories for Pride Month, just because I can! I’ve really loved the recent explosion of queer literature. There’s always room for more improvement, and some genres get more representation than others, but overall I’m very excited to see how many more queer books we’re getting across the board: in SFF, in poetry, in literary fiction, and even in YA and children’s fiction. I’ve tried to share some recent titles in a few different genres for today.

To start with, I wanted to recommend some queer poetry! I don’t talk about poetry here much but I’m actually a HUGE poetry nerd, and read a lot of it. And quite a lot of the poetry I read is queer of some kind or another. So! I have a few to share!

Night With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong – this poetry collection from Vietnamese-American poet, also well known for his fiction novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, focuses on Vuong’s experiences with immigrant parents, being an outsider in American culture, facing anti-Asian racism, and his experiences as a gay man with less-than-supportive parents, and facing homophobia in America on top of the racism he deals with. The poems are lyrical and hard-hitting. Vuong has a second poetry collection out now, Time is a Mother, which I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on yet.

Next, the two poetry collections by Chen Chen, a Chinese-American poet, examine similar issues of race, sexuality, family, and belonging. His collections are When I Grow Up I Want to Be A List of Further Possibilities, and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency (which I wrote a full review for here). Chen’s poetry, like Vuong’s, deals with the experiences of being an Asian immigrant in the US, and the issues of anti-Asian racism that arise from that. He is also a gay man, and examines the homophobia he experiences in American society, as well as from his parents – particularly his mother with whom he has a fraught relationship. Chen’s poetry is more visceral and blunt, with occasionally humorous or explicit language and description, and some experiments with form. His second book in particular, pulls inspiration from and pays homage to a number of other Asian-American poets, including Bhanu Kapil, Jennifer S. Cheng, Justin Chin, and Marilyn Chin.

Another queer poet worth checking out is Jay Hulme, with his collection The Backwater Sermons. Jay Hulme is a trans-man in the UK, who is also a devout Christian. Much of his work deals with the complex beliefs and emotions that arise from the intersections between religion and sexuality, particularly in a christian culture where some subsections of the community are very welcoming of queer identity, and other subsections are violently and vehemently opposed. Hulme imagines gentle and accepting Jesus in a dance club, and re-frames saints with queer identities of all kinds. Personally, as a queer woman who came from a Catholic background and now has a complicated and ambivalent relationship with religion writ large, I found Hulme’s poetry and perspective on Christianity touching and enlightening and filled with a hope I have not yet found for myself. Here is one of the poems from this collection: “Jesus at the Gay Bar.”

I can also highly recommend K. J. Charles’s newest release: The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which is in the same vein of much of her other work. A queer historical romance, this one is set in Regency England (did I mention this is one of my favorite time periods?), and features a lonely prickly baronet, his former lover – a charming smuggler, and a creepy gothic estate on Romney Marsh. I love everything Charles writes, and this one is no exception. Hopefully, I’ll get around to writing a full review for this one eventually, but in the meantime, you should still check it out!

And I’ll stop, today, with The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard. This one is a sapphic science fiction with space pirates, and a sentient spaceship. It’s been described as Black Sails in space, but with lesbians, romance, and Vietnamese influences. This one came out last year, and I had it on my radar then, but didn’t finally get around to buying until last week. So, I haven’t read this one yet, but it’s at the top of my TBR stack. It sounds amazing, and the reviews have been great, and I have no doubt I’ll love it when I get to it.

My Month of Victorian Romances

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Sometimes I get in these moods, where I read one particular kind of book and just CANNOT STOP reading that particular kind of book. I go through cycles where I absolutely devour certain genres or sub-genres. Back in 2020 I went through a huge space opera phase. In mid-2021 there was a big period of murder mysteries. My romance reading in general tends to happen in big chunks.

Starting around the beginning of December, and going through Christmas and New Years, and the first couple weeks of January, I’ve been voraciously consuming historical romance novels set in the Victorian time period. Within that there have been a few variations: a few straight romances, a few mystery types, a few fantasy types. But all of them have been Victorian historical fiction.

In order, I have now read:
Soulless by Gail Carriger
The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews
A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Manda Collins
An Heiress’s Guide to Deception and Desire by Manda Collins
The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews
Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk (a re-read by still in the same Victorian-set genre)
Changeless by Gail Carriger (started by didn’t finish)
Jackaby by William Ritter
Beastly Bones by William Ritter

Soulless and Changeless are the first two books of Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series (paranormal romance/steampunk set in Victorian England). I read Carriger’s YA The Finishing School series last year. I didn’t realize until after the fact that the Parasol Protectorate series was an adult series, and written first, and the Finishing School series is a prequel. But I enjoyed the YA books enough to try out the adult series. I wouldn’t say I loved the Finishing School books, but I enjoyed them. They were silly and frothy and adventurous and fun. I found Soulless for cheap at the used bookstore and enjoyed it enough, and then I grabbed the sequel, Changeless, at the library. I won’t say it’s a DNF. I think I might come back to it eventually, probably. But some of the characters that I knew from the Finishing School series appear in ways I really didn’t like (again, I realize the Parasol books came first, so it’s my own fault, but however it happened, I am far more attached to the version of the characters from the prequel series and I was pretty upset about some things in Changeless, which I won’t specify as they are spoilery). Changeless, also frankly was not scratching the particular ITCH I had when I jumped into these Victorian books. So I returned it to the library early.

The Belles of London series encompasses the books The Siren of Sussex and The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews (and a third one is coming out in 2024). These were straight Victorian romance – no magic or murder mysteries in these, just lots of Victorian-period melodrama, which I loved. I loved them so much that The Siren of Sussex made it onto my favorite books of the year list! They are swoony and fun and filled with smart, interesting, complex women and honorable men trying to do the right thing under difficult circumstances, and all the kinds of societal roadblocks and miscommunication issues one might expect from the genre. They are not out to defy the genre expectations, but rather play them up to great effect. I am really looking forward to the third one.

In what appears to be very much a pattern in these kinds of novels, the two books by Manda Collins, A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem, and An Heiress’s Guide to Deception and Desire are also linked books, with at least one more book to be released in the series this year in March. These are historical romance/mystery hybrids (one of my favorite combos!), with each book featuring a woman MC solving a crime while also following in love with the charming man helping them investigate. They are both really great mysteries (I had the first one figured out about ⅔ of the way through but the second one kept me guessing until right near the end). And the romances are both sweet and swoony. The first one is a rivals-to-lovers pairing (a police detective and a woman who’s doing her own investigating and keeps messing with his career). The second book is a second-chance romance with a pair of lovers who broke off their engagement years ago, mixed with a marriage of convenience (it’s complicated!). I really loved both and I cannot wait for the third one!

Finally, I have an already completed series of four books by William Ritter that are Victorian-age historical paranormal mysteries. They are not romance, strictly-speaking, though there is a romantic subplot threaded through all the books. They are about a woman from England who comes to America and finds employment with a paranormal investigator. The books are written in first person with the woman, Abigail, narrating her adventures with the investigator, Jackaby, in a way similar to Watson’s narration of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have finished the first two books, and already have the third one checked out from the library and ready to go. These books are BLAST. Fun mystery writing, lots of period-appropriate set dressing and some really fun paranormal monsters including the usuals such as werewolves, vampires, ghosts, as well as some things you would not expect. I can’t wait to see where these go next!

So that’s what my reading has looked like the last month or so (about a month and a half now, actually, I guess). I think I’m going to finish the William Ritter series now, and then I’m thinking I might jump into something different. I’m thinking about getting back into big epic fantasy tomes. I used to read them almost exclusively in high school. Big giant 800-page types. But I fell out of the habit in college and then grad school killed my reading altogether (as I’ve talked about on this blog before), and since I’ve gotten back into the swing of things I haven’t really returned to my roots yet. I think it’s about time. But we’ll see…

Novellavember

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While I’ve been busy with NaNoWriMo, it has come to my attention that November is also novella reading month: “Novellavember.” The wonderful and awesome bookseller, Kel, who is a bit Twitter-famous and can be found at the handle @panediting, has put a lot of work into promoting a bunch of novellas in the bookstore where she works, and sharing photos.

I do not currently have a bookstore, but I thought I could share some novella suggestions of my own. A few are ones I have mentioned on the blog before, and some are new.

So! Novellas to read for Novellavember:

Alix E. Harrow’s fractured fairy tale duology, A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended: these two novellas feature main character Zinnia Gray, a folklore major who is dying from a progressive disease, who comes to discover she is a variation on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale motif when she accidentally ends up in an alternate dimension with another Sleeping Beauty. In the second book, having survived the first incident, Zinnia begins trekking through fairy tales versions helping the characters fix their lives and save their happy endings until she is caught by the Evil Queen of one version of Snow White and must figure out how to save herself. Alix Harrow described these books as Into the SpiderVerse for fairy tale princesses, and that is a very accurate description. These books are an absolute delight, filled with sarcasm, sapphic women, and incisive commentary on the plight of women in fairy tales.

Lina Rather’s “nuns in space!” duology: Sisters of the Vast Black, and Sisters of the Forsaken Stars: I wrote a full review for the first novella in this duology back when it came out, which can be found here. These are slim, tightly-plotted, space operas in miniature, about nuns of the Order of Saint Rita, traveling around in their sentient spaceship saving lives and accidentally starting revolutions. These nuns are smart and complex, and their group includes a former war criminal, a lesbian engineer, and a lot of progressive liberals. The bits about the sentient spaceship are especially fascinating, and the political aspects are tense and horrifying. As a lapsed Catholic, whose patron saint is St. Rita, and loves space opera, these books were pretty much made for me. I adore them both!

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey: for something completely different, try this novella set in a dystopian America where technology has been outlawed or destroyed and society has reverted to a “wild west” style of living. To keep the isolated masses entertained and educated on government-controlled and highly censored reading materials, women librarians travel in horse-drawn carriages to various small towns in the west. Secretly-gay Esther stows away on such a carriage to escape her father when her lover is discovered and hanged. Once aboard, the other librarians train her, and reveal that they are not as “upright” and “government controlled” as the public might believe. This book was a joy! As one might guess, it is filled with gay and nonbinary women librarians who are secretly part of a rebellion against the oppressive government. And the righteous anger in every word is incendiary.

Servant Mage by Kate Elliott: This book is not really like Upright Women Wanted at all, but I think it has a similar tone/feel to it in that righteous anger drips from every word, and I love that about it. This novella is set in a world where magic exists, but in the years since an uprising destroyed the monarchist government, those who possess magic (once considered special and noble) are now taken from their families and made into slaves so that their magic may properly benefit all of society. Fellian is one such mage, however she is saved from her servitude by a group of monarchist rebels who need her magical abilities to help their cause. As Fellian works with this group, led by an exiled noble, she slowly realizes that the monarchists aren’t actually any better than the oppressive government they are fighting to overthrow. Kate Elliott is a master of the craft (see my review of her chonky space opera, Unconquerable Sun), and she proves to be as amazing in this short format as she is in her very expansive novels. The ending of this book is earned by every step of the narrative, and it is SO SATISFYING.

Trafik by Rikki Ducornet: Ok, this last one (for now) is a bit of a departure from the rest. It’s weird. If you don’t generally like more experimental literary fiction forms, you’re probably safe to skip this one. BUT if you are willing to go off the beaten path a bit, I highly recommend this one. For those not familiar with Rikki Ducornet, she is an avant-garde writer/poet, known for writing some very strange, dreamlike prose. One of her full novels, The Jade Cabinet, is a favorite of mine, and I’ve written a couple academic papers on it. Trafik is her most recent work (marketed as a novel, but as a teeny little book of about 120 pages, it’s definitely more in the novella category. It’s science fiction, of a sort, following a character named Quiver, a “mostly human” astronaut, and her neurotic robot Mic. When they accidentally destroy their cargo, they fear punishment from their employers and instead go rogue, making a run for the strange planet called Trafik. As I said, this is a WEIRD book, but it is weird in the best way possible – quirky, funny, hallucinatory. It functions as a nice, bite-sized introduction to Ducornet and her work.

Well, those should keep you busy for a bit at least! (And I just now noticed they are all women authors, so that’s fun). Time for me to dash back off to my Nano project (which is going pretty well for once… *knock on wood*). Catch you all later!

Cozy Fantasy Recs for the Stressed and Anxious

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I have been hugely stressed out this entire year. As I mentioned in a previous post, a lot of that was job-related. But, of course, the general state of the world at large is definitely not helping matters. Due to the constant levels of stress and anxiety, I have been hugely dependent on very happy, upbeat, cozy, wholesome media to keep me going. I used to be able to handle more grim and gritty fiction/television at least some of the time, but lately… not so much.

I suspect a lot of other people feel similarly. To that end, I thought I would share some of the cozy fantasy I’ve been consuming lately to help keep me from going completely insane.

First up on the recommendations list is a book that has been getting a lot of traction on social media. In fact, it got SO MUCH traction on social media that this little self-published book has since been picked up by Tor Books for traditional publication. You can probably guess. Yep! I’m talking about Legends & Lattes by Travis Baltree. This book is like the definition of cozy low-stakes fantasy: set in an unabashedly D&D-inspired world, it features an orc warrior who has decided to hang up her axe, retire from adventuring, and open up the very first coffee shop in the land. In the course of trying to get her coffee shop up and running, she befriends several people around the city, accidentally gets on the wrong side of the local mob boss, and has to deal with an old travel companion-turned-rival. While there is conflict, and some danger involved, the book largely stays low-stakes and perfectly charming. You are assured of coziness galore, and a happy ending, as well as some sweet sapphic romance just to gild the lily. I guarantee you will not be able to stop smiling your whole way through the book. In addition, I will say that I have the audiobook, which is read by the author (who is also a professional audio narrator) his reading is delightful.

Second on my recommendations list is A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. I’ve discussed T. Kingfisher before, when I wrote a review of her book Nettle & Bone back in… March? That book is still currently top contender for my favorite new release book of the year (though I haven’t read Nona the Ninth yet as I write this, so that may change soon). [AN: I have read Nona since initially drafting this post. I haven’t quite decided yet, but they might be tied?] It was also the first book by T. Kingfisher I had read, but I loved it so much that I knew I was going to have to read the rest of her work as well. That’s where Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking comes in.

This book is categorized as young adult fantasy, but works just as well as middle grade fiction. It features a main character who is a fourteen year old girl — and the narration does a wonderful job of really staying in that teenage POV. On top of that, Kingfisher’s world-building continues to be top-notch. In this book, fourteen-year-old Mona is an apprentice baker in her aunt’s bakery. She possesses some minor magic to work with the dough, but nothing like what the real wizards in the city possess. But when magic-users all over the city begin to disappear, Mona accidentally comes across a plot to remove all magic from the city, including the powerful wizards that defend it from outside attack. Through luck and quick thinking, Mona escapes this fate, leaving her the only one left in the city with any hope of stopping an attack and protecting her queen.

While the stakes in this book are bigger and more dangerous — there is some violence and death — the overall tone remains so upbeat and snarky and fun as to keep it from being oppressive or overly dark. It helps that we are treated to things like walking gingerbread men wreaking havoc on the attacking army, and Mona’s continued irritation that she has been left to do the grown-ups’ jobs for them because they are all useless.

My third (and final, for now) recommendation is the first volume of a brand new literary magazine called Wyngraf — available in print and ebook through their website. This new magazine specifically features only cozy fantasy stories, in the wake of a growing call for that particular sub-genre. I got the first issue on ebook (though I may buy future volumes in print) to check out what kind of stories were being published. While the stories range in length and skill-level, they are all fairly charming. Nice, light, happy little reads to nibble on in between bigger reading goals. This first volume features such stories as “The Perils of Living With Your Human” — about a dragon who is having a rough day trying to help the human he is bonded with; “Your Own Beeswax” — a comedic little tale about a minstrel, in the vein of Jack Vance; and a few stories of what the editor calls “backpack fantasy” — fun little tales that feel a bit like the road travel montage of a larger fantasy epic. Some of the stories are weaker than others, but on the whole the collection works well together and is entertaining enough to read through in an evening or two. I look forward to what stories we might see in the next issue (which conveniently is out on Oct 1st!).

No doubt I will have more cozy fantasy recommendations in the future. But I hope these three are a good start for those who, like me, need some more warmth and joy in their lives to counterbalance the stress and anxiety of the world around us.

March New Releases on My Radar

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As I did back in February, I would like to share a quick list of a few of the books that have been released in March that I made note of. These are books that I have not had a chance to read yet, but which caught my attention when I was looking for ARCs to consider for work. They sound interesting and promising, and I will probably read them eventually.

  1. The Unbroken by C.L. Clark —

This debut novel is an epic North African-inspired military fantasy by a queer woman of color, and it sounds AMAZING. The publisher’s blurb reads:

“Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.
Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet’s edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.
Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren’t for sale.”

Fun fact: I actually know the author. I don’t know her WELL, but we worked together as instructors one summer at the Duke University Talent Identification Program (a summer program of college-level course work for high-achieving high schoolers), and we’re still “Friends” on Facebook. She probably doesn’t remember me much (I don’t really stand out) but I remember her and she was VERY cool. At the time, she was just out of her MFA program and working on a number of short stories, so I was so excited to see the news when she announced her publishing deal. I WILL be reading this book when I can find more free time.

2. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro —

of course, Kazuo Ishiguro is very famous. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature for cryin’ out loud! And this is his first new work SINCE winning the Nobel. What’s exciting is that while Ishiguro is most well-known for his works of realism, he has dipped his toes into speculative fiction a couple times, and this new novel is staunchly in the realm of science fiction. The publisher’s blurb for this one states:

“Klara and the Sun tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.”

3. Lost in the Never Woods by Aidan Thomas —

I love a fun twisty retelling of a classic fairy tale or children’s story. Don’t even get me STARTED on Alice in Wonderland retellings! I’m OBSESSED. So of course this book caught my eye! The blurb reads:

“It’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into light. Attempting to flee her past, Wendy almost runs over an unconscious boy lying in the middle of the road, and gets pulled into the mystery haunting the town.
Peter, a boy she thought lived only in her stories, claims that if they don’t do something, the missing children will meet the same fate as her brothers. In order to find them and rescue the missing kids, Wendy must confront what’s waiting for her in the woods.” 

I mean: YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU! This sounds exciting and amazing, and I will definitely be picking this one up eventually!

4. In the Quick by Kate Hope Day —

Something else I am ALWAYS obsessed with is space and astronauts. The cover ALONE of this book had me like WOAH. I mean, LOOK AT THAT COVER! The blurb describes it as:

“June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention, who leaves home to begin a grueling astronaut training program. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space station, but is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncle’s fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was twelve years old, and while the rest of the world has forgotten them, June alone has evidence that makes her believe the crew is still alive.
She seeks out James, her uncle’s former protégée, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiry’s fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the love that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cell’s fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create–and any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive.
Equal parts gripping narrative of scientific discovery and charged love story, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship and the costs of human ingenuity. At its beating heart are June and James, whose love for each other is eclipsed only by their drive to conquer the challenges of space travel.”

I will absolutely 1000% be reading this one eventually. Women astronauts! Dangerous missions and space exploration! Yes! I am also slightly amused because June is my mother’s name, and she’s always saying it’s a pretty uncommon name that you don’t see in media or pop culture much and I’m like: well here ya go!