altlovesbooks

I fully admit I read this to keep up with my Goodreads goal for the year. It's also been on my to-read list ever since I finished Circe and Song of Achilles, so it wasn't entirely picked for ulterior reasons. I'm actually glad I gave this a chance, it was very short but also very engaging.

It takes the name from a Nereid from mythology, but as far as I can tell, the rest of the story has nothing to do with the actual (fairly sparse) story. It's actually more like a perspective-flipped Pygmalion, which is acknowledged by the author in the afterword and in other reviews here.

It was actually kind of a super creepy story that I expected to go a different way. I kept reading (for the half hour or so I spent with it) to find out where things were headed, and didn't even mind that it's a bit lacking in depth.

So, not only did it keep me and my arbitrary Goodreads goal afloat another week, I actually really enjoyed it. Definitely read either Circe or Song of Achilles first if you haven't yet, but this is a nice little bite-sized story after you're done with those.

What, and I say this with all the intensity and fervor I can, the fuck.

If it wasn't so late in the year, if I weren't just barely keeping up with my Goodreads goal, this would've been a DNF almost immediately. Instead I said fuck it, let's see where this goes.

A weird body horror sex cult/human testing facility posing as a holistic makeup brand owned by a pedophile and managed by a woman nursing a monkey and who replaces her eyes with diamonds, is where it went.

The sacrifices I make for my Goodreads goal.

"It’s your second home, Jon. You’ll be back."

Who knew a book about owl conservation in Russia could be so engaging? Books like these are why I love dipping into obscure topics – you never know what you’ll find or how interesting small details can be.

This is a book about fish owls in Russia being studied by a guy from Minnesota. Jon Slaught picks these elusive, very rare birds as the focus of his graduate work, and we go along with him on his expeditions into Russia to find, study, catch, and release them. Along the way, we get a lot of insight into far eastern Russian culture, introspective thoughts about conservation in general, and an informative final few chapters where we learn what comes from his research and the devastating impact a typhoon from 2016 has on the region.

This is almost part memoir, in that we get a lot of Jon’s thoughts along the way about his expedition companions, the locations he frequents, the colorful cast of Russian characters he meets along the way, and all sorts of other little bits along the way. There’s plenty here about the fish owls of course, but I also loved learning new things about a country I know not enough about. The struggles he goes through in getting tracking data from the owls he identifies was especially interesting to me, about not wanting to stress the birds out unnecessarily, and wanting to make sure eggs and nest aren’t harmed while doing so. It’s very clear to me that he cares deeply about the owls and the region, and I really appreciated that while reading.

Great book about an obscure topic in a country most people probably don’t know much about.

This book is probably a master class in how to write a character who’s neurodivergent (named Sunday) and the struggles she goes through in trying to understand her daughter. A new couple moves in next door to them, and the over-the-top personality of the wife, Vita, entrances Sunday. The two seem to hit it off, but after one rewarding summer for Sunday, she slowly comes to realize that the couple next door isn’t what they appear and her entire carefully constructed life slowly starts unraveling.

I really was incredibly interested in seeing how Sunday navigates her world. Certain colors of foods and things bother her, so that her meals generally all have to be of a certain color for her to eat them. She views life and human courtesies through the lens of an old etiquette book for ladies, and dispenses pearls of wisdom out of a book about Sicilian folklore. She approaches conversations tonally, and habitually taps out speech patterns and imitates the speaker’s lilt in her head. I liked seeing how she tried to adapt to Vita’s unconventional ways, making an effort to get to know her despite being so foreign in mannerisms. It was enlightening getting inside Sunday’s head and seeing how she sees the world.

Unfortunately this only took up half the book. The other half, after the summer Sunday spent with Vita and her husband Rollo, when the wheels start falling off Sunday’s ordered life, wasn’t nearly as interesting to me. Things felt a little repetitive as the same thoughts, ideas, and plot points are reiterated and retread. The buildup to an ending I suspected was coming felt slow, and the payoff at the end felt a little weak. A lot of Sunday’s quirks felt like they were put by the wayside in favor of the plot involving her daughter, not that they stopped existing, but they stopped mattering in the story as much. I don’t know, the second half just didn’t click with me as much as the first half.

But there’s lots here for people to like! I highly recommend giving it a try if the premise still appeals to you, because it may hit you differently than it hit me.

Soooooooo...... I grabbed this book off NetGalley because it's a book about magical libraries. I've read a ton of these, and I like the different takes. I have not read anything by Kate Quinn previously (I guess she writes historical romances?), so understand going into this review that maybe I don't have the same background and history with this author that others do.

Alix is down on her luck, down to $36 in her account, and even that is taken from her when her identity is stolen and her bank account yanked from her. She stops by the Boston Public Library where she works part time as a page to see if there's any extra work for her, and when she was told no, she beats feet to the stacks to avoid crying in front of coworkers. Throwing open a storage room door she steps, not into the storage room she expects, but into a vast magical library. Enter the Astral Library, open for people in need of refuge. Here, the Librarian matches wayward travelers with books, where they can live out their lives in their favorite book worlds not as the main characters, but as background characters living in the world. This sounds like heaven to Alix, but in her delay in picking the right book world for her to hide in, she gets caught up in Astral Library business involving mysterious red cards, invaders attempting to pull established patrons out of their books, and a group bent on tearing down the very foundation of the Astral Library.

Right off the bat, I will say I love the idea of a library harboring people who really need it. That's true to life, and something all libraries should aspire to being. But unfortunately, the rest of the book felt like a fever dream. All the extras piled on top of the book refugee idea really brought the entire thing down, especially when none of it seemed to add to the overall plot.

I also kind of didn't like the writing. It's chock full of over-the-top humor ("Let me be your Watson and let's 'Study in Scarlet' this bitch.") and gags that I feel like are all over the contemporary romance genre these days. The author also manages to work in a "LOL" and a fourth wall-breaking reference to herself. There also manages to be a (late story relationship spoilers here) third act breakup, without there being an actual romance in place. It just all felt like Too Much, and not what I wanted to read from a book about a magical library.

Maybe Kate Quinn fans will get more out of it than I did? Great premise, I just didn't care for the presentation.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.