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A hot guy dupes three different girls in three different states into dinner, drinks, and a roofie. You can see where this is going. The girls are murdered, but instead of that being the end of the story, the three girls each end up in an undead limbo, able to see the world around them but unable to interact (for the most part). They're able to follow their murderer around, see his home life, and how their families are coping with their disappearances. As the murderer hops states and kills again, the three girls end up coming together and trying to see this guy brought to justice.

I want to say up front that I really liked this concept of the ghosts of his victims following him around and vaguely annoying him with their limited powers. It's a unique POV, where we get to see the murderer living his life and also the investigations going on at the same time. What I'm less sold on, though, was the girls themselves. All three read very similarly and had vaguely generic names, so it was hard to keep them straight, particularly when all three are brought together near the end. And while I really don't know the extent of ghost powers, whatever they can do to interact with the world seems to conveniently get more powerful exactly when it needs to without a lot of handwavy explanation.

But it was really a sad story for the three girls. I really did enjoy the story, even if I didn't like how similar the three girls felt. If you like the whole "I am a ghost" POV, I read a book earlier this year that I really enjoyed along those same lines. Check out In an Instant by Suzanne Redfearne.

"Piano keys. The ivory spine of the Arctic."

Because I read so many Arctic expedition books, I'm uniquely interested in any book that references this area of the world. So imagine my surprise when I was halfheartedly browsing NetGalley and found a fiction book about a homesteading family in the Arctic making a living by selling piano parts, a quirky concept right my my wheelhouse. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into, especially since generational family dramas aren't usually my cup of tea, but I came away from this book incredibly impressed with what I read.

The Spahr family has been homesteading off the grid in the Arctic since their ancestor, Moose, was dragged there reluctantly by his father wanting a better (read: more independent) life for them. At the time, cheap, productive land was promised to anyone willing to make the journey to claim it--provided you're willing to lug an upright piano along. The thinking was a piano meant civility, creativity, a mark of worth, so any family wanting to make this journey to create what was envisioned as an artistic community of like-minded people needed to purchase one and bring it along. So part of this book covers Moose, his family, and the others in their caravan north, and his trials along the way. The other part of this book centers around Milda, Finlay, Temperance, and their parents, descendants of Moose, scratching out a living from Jubilation House, their shelter in the Arctic. While they make a meagre living from what they harvest (octopus, kelp, various plants), What really sets their family on its fateful trajectory is the discovery of a discarded piano. The bulk of this book covers the various family members and how they approach this new industry of the Arctic, the reclamation of piano parts.

I'm gonna save you a Google, because the concept of the book was just plausible enough to make me wonder if the lugging of a piano to the Arctic was an actual thing in history. It is not, as best I can tell.

I don't normally get fully into generational dramas, but something about the Spahr family really had me interested to see how the family ended up. This story is told through chapters involving Moose (the Spahrs' ancestor), and then chapters involving various POVs from the Spahrs and (later) other families that survived. Moose's story is told fragmentally, so you don't get his conclusion until the end of the book, but I appreciated seeing various "clues" along the way from later on.

I got really invested in Milda and Finlay specifically, because (mild character motivations here) Milda never seemed to really enjoy her time at Jubilation house, yet stuck around out of a sense of familial obligation it seemed. I simultaneously wanted her to follow her dreams and leave, and also also wanted the family to stick together. Finlay was all-in on Arctic life though, and I felt like Milda stuck around to make sure he was safe. I liked Moose's POV as well, as we get to know the various families that play a part later in the book. I felt really bad for him, swept up as he was by a father who thought he knew best. I wasn't quite as in love with the later POVs, they felt not quite as established as the Spahrs, but I appreciated that they carried the story along to its end and had a purpose.

Really enjoyed this book. Tugs at the heartstrings something terrible as it goes along (MAJOR PLOT SPOILER: Finlay's death gutted me in particular), well written, just a unique story I wasn't sure what to expect going in.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a free eBook in exchange for an honest review.

For a book involving Tiffany glass, I expected a bit more description and inclusion of the actual glass than what I got. Something that artistic and colorful felt like it needed more than a few cursory lines in a book that I ultimately was disappointed in.

Emilie Pascal flees to America, running from a past in France where her father is accused of art forgery. Determined to get a job designing Tiffany glass works, she produces a (forged) letter of recommendation and a portfolio (real) and manages to land the job of her dreams. There on the floor of the all female division of Tiffany's, Emilie creates art according to Mr. Tiffany's exacting standards, ultimately creating a four panel work depicting the four seasons that ultimately brings her back to Paris and back into the world she fled.

I went into this book expecting more historical fiction about the glass work and conditions and design process than I ended up getting. Aside from Emilie, we're also introduced to other characters in the book, but aside from Grace, Emilie's roommate, the others didn't really feel We also get other stories from the other girls here too, but other than Grace, Emilie's roommate, the others felt tacked on and not very well fleshed out. There's also a lot of romance and girls pairing off with guys that are brought into the story at convenient points, which seemed at odds with the "men are the problem" tone the author sets along the way.

Not the best historical fiction book I've read, I think we needed either fewer, more fleshed out characters, or an overall plot to follow all the way through to keep my interest up.

I grew up in Michigan around hunters and fishermen, and was aware that different fish are attracted to different lures. Tackle boxes are full of pretty colors. What I was not aware of was that, a) apparently fly lures used to be tied using incredibly exotic feathers because of some woo-woo science that said fish care about that sort of thing, and b) that there's an entire hobby community built around tying these flies, and who don't actually use them at all. The world truly is a diverse place.

Enter Edwin Rist, flutist and fly tyer (a word I promise is spelled correctly because I looked it up) from a young age. He earned a name within the fly tying community, became incredibly obsessed with this little segment of his world, and....robbed a museum of most of its rare bird collection, almost 300 in total. Rather than actually using them in his hobby, he ended up selling them both piecemeal and as whole birds, making a ton of money, and eventually getting caught. The author here tells Edwin Rist's story after hearing about this crazy crime, and then takes things a step further by trying to track down the missing birds.

You can't get much more niche than a true crime book involving exotic feathers and an unknown hobbyist community. No people were harmed in this book (but a heck of a lot of bird carcasses are denuded), so if you're looking for a great true crime book not about murder, this may be your jam. I was really into this book about Edwin Rist and the fallout from his crime. I won't spoil anything here, but there's quite an interesting twist as the book progresses beyond the trial, something I wasn't expecting in a true crime book where I'm more used to the story being played straight by the author.

Really interesting book, fits snugly into my 5 star favorite books on incredibly niche topics.

"Here at the beginning, it must be said the End was on everyone's mind."

Rainey is a guitar player holed up in a small town surviving after climate change works its terrible magic on the world. Society has collapsed, but small towns like Rainey's survive through helping each other and forming close social ties. A visitor drops in on Rainey and Lark's house to rent their upstairs room, and it's through this roommate that the story really gets started. The roommate vanishes unexpectedly, but someone comes looking for him and ruins Rainey's life along the way. Rainey uses his boat to escape, and we're brought along his tour of Lake Superior and his musings along the way.

Not quite what I expected, but not unwelcome either. Things seem a bit confused in places, if only because there's a few world-specific terms used as if we should be aware of what they mean, but never really are. This was a surprisingly beautiful book about life in the End Times as they impacted an average man, though. Things start out oddly hopeful, get progressively bleaker as the book goes on, and still manages to wrap all the way back around to hopeful by the end. Things never went quite as I expected at any point in the book, which added a bit to my enjoyment.

The book does meander quite a bit, so if the musings of a sad guitar player about the world around him don't interest you, you probably won't like this one. I did feel like the book was slow in places, but ultimately enjoyed how things played out.

"The sea is broad and her paths are many."

I read Sancton's other book, Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night, as part of my deep dive into arctic exploration, and was really pleased with the result. I somehow missed(!) that he has another book coming next month (and will absolutely pick it up soon), but did manage to snag the ARC for this upcoming book of his. I went into it basically blind; I didn't know much about either the San Jose or treasure hunting in general, but I ended up walking away with more treasure hunter knowledge, historical and naval knowledge, and information about the players involved than I expected.

This book covers a lot of ground in its journey to the San Jose. The opening few chapters recounting how and why it sunk in the first place set the stage for later on, but also were interesting in their own right. I thought the different accounts for the lead up to and the actual battle of was a nice touch; you get to experience multiple angles of the incident. After this introduction of sorts, we're thrust into the role of Dooley-watcher, where we're introduced to him first later in life and then from childhood on up in Cuba. I sort of thought the Dooley life chapters were a mixed bag; some were really interesting, and sort of shows how and why Dooley made the choices he made later on, and some felt a bit extraneous and made things feel a bit slow. The treasure hunter asides were universally interesting to me, as was the actual search for the San Jose later on. Lots of neat footnotes are included here, particularly about the preponderance of shells around the wreck site and the connection between them and bones. Nature is metal.

I will say that I sort of expected a bit more about the wreck itself. It felt like by the time it was located, the book was basically over. With what happens later, I guess that's to be expected, but it felt a bit anticlimactic given the title of the book. But as a book about treasure hunting vs. deep sea archaeology, I was very pleased.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm apologetic and sad that it took me this long to read this book.

I won't summarize the plot here, because it's a very hard book to summarize convincingly. In brief and using not-book-specific terms, earth mages (sort of) are the crux of an empire about to fall. We get three narrators of this falling, and three different points in time telling the story. Nothing is quite as it seems up front.

It's dense to start, but I didn't find it unreasonably so. I thought the author does a really good job of onboarding the patient reader; if you give the story a chance to unfold and hold your questions for the end, you'll be rewarded along the way. The magic system is incredibly unique, and the author does a good job of explaining it and layering on complexity as the story goes along using the plot. This book is a journey in all senses of the word, and I never really found myself bored, even during the middle part that receives mixed reviews. Several moments in the story drew an audible noise from me, both in realization and in shock. The use of the different narrators was especially fun (if you can use fun to describe this bleak book), in that it kept me wondering how things tied together.

Just a really great complex, interesting, engaging, (insert additional awesome adjectives here) book. Can't wait to start book 2.

"It amazes me to this day how much a little travel changes one's perspective."

What a delightful book. This one has been rotting on my to-read list forever, and I picked it as part of my shortlist of books to get through this year. Not sure why I took so long to get to it, because I really enjoyed this trip.

Asim (our POV character) and Dabir are friends and servants to the Vizir, one the captain of the guard and the other a scholar. An encounter with a fortune teller and an ambiguous destiny ahead of them, the two are charged by the Vizir with retrieving a stolen item that Dabir suspects may be dangerous. The journey takes them far afield, across water, into mysterious places that have been, and into alternate realities where things aren't as they seem. Asim and Dabir fight with everything they have to keep Baghdad from undergoing the same fate as Ubar, but even that might not be enough.

Right off the bat, this is very much sword and sorcery desert fantasy set in 8th century Baghdad, so if that's not your jam, you might not enjoy this. There's djinns, shapeshifting snakes, some musings on faith, and a whole lot of neat swordplay if you decide to give this a go, though. I really enjoyed the two wildly different temperaments of these two friends, with Asim being the typical action-before-thought guard and Dabir being a scholarly thought-before-action sort. Someone in another review I read of this described this book as a buddy cop movie, and I absolutely agree.

Just a really enjoyable book in a setting I don't read too often. I'm absolutely picking up the next books.

I didn't like this one as much as the other two, but appreciate the conclusion/closure.

Part of this had to do with the drastic-feeling change in tone from the first two books. While the first two sat comfortably in sci-fi, almost cyberpunkian mystery with our unnamed synesthete protagonist, this one felt more....I don't even know. Techno-thriller? There's not a lot of mystery here beyond trying to figure out motives, and this book manages to blast past sci-fi and wrap all the way around to fantasy with literal dragons, krakens, and mythical creatures from various cultures showing up (albeit created by technology). It's very fast-paced, and our POV character doesn't seem to do a great job at keeping us in the loop as to what's going on.

Which leads me to the other reason I didn't like this one, the POV character. This book changes POV characters entirely, so we're now sitting in the daughter, Ascalon's, head. She's perfectly acceptable as a POV, but for her to be the exclusive POV in this book made me a bit disappointed. It's drilled into the reader throughout the entire book about how awesome she is at everything (and she even gets more awesome as the book goes on), so the stakes feel especially low in a book where everything should be ramping up. I think I would have appreciated maybe a dual POV including the synesthete, because it felt like Ascalon hit the end of the book along with us and had no more idea what was going on than we did.

I did really like the fleshing out of the Leachateans, their ad-speak and way of life. Their city names, also, were pretty great.

I'm glad to have finished the series though! This was really unique, and despite my hangups in this book, it still kept me reading and interested, so that's something.

I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. I actually liked this romance book. It's not without flaws, but in a book club where I've read several romances now where the people felt like over-the-top caricatures of how real people are, the fact that the two main characters felt like actual people was refreshing.

Xavier is a vet in Minnesota who treats a kitten owned by Samantha, a mustard social media manager on her way back to California. There's a bit of love-at-first-sight (exaggeration, they're both head over heels almost immediately), the two have an epic first date, and Samantha returns to California to help her family take care of her ailing mother, leaving both sad and pining for a relationship that never took off. But as these things happen, Xavier meets her in California, and despite Samantha's reluctance, the two start hesitantly exploring a long distance relationship. Unfortunately things are expensive and complicated, and Samantha's mother is getting worse, leaving the two trying to figure out how to make this relationship work.

I loved the setup and the beginning of this book. Two people who felt like people, trying to make a long distance relationship work out. Maybe I'm biased here, because that's how my husband and I started out, but I loved this. I don't have enough first-hand experience with dementia to know if it was handled properly, but I'm judging from the other reviews that it was, which I also enjoyed. There's some really sad/touching moments here that made me feel things.

I guess what I didn't like was that the middle of the book felt like the same points on repeat. Xavier bankrupting himself (both monetarily and in energy) to make these once-in-a-few-months meet ups work. Samantha mentally saying this will never work, and then immediately forgetting all about that during the next meet up. Samantha's mom in decline, but none of the family want to actually help except Samantha. Around and around with these same points without any real progress until the last 10% of the book or so. All of these points are valid and relevant and smart to consider, but it didn't seem like it moved the book forward any having to rehash them so much. It made the middle part feel a bit of a drag.

I also feel like, maybe, there were other options to explore other than either a) putting mom in a home that will clearly abuse her, or b) keeping mom at home and the entire family burns out. There's plenty of resources out there for dementia care, and not all of them are dirty, diseased, unkempt, neglectful homes. Exploring any of the other avenues (in-home nurse care, monetary/professional resources for family members, etc) may have given Samantha a little freedom for the two of them to feel more comfortable about their relationship.

Finally, and this is incredibly minor, the constant reference to ACOTAR was pure pandering to romance readers. Like, "eh? eh? eh? Here's this book you all like, don't you love this reference???". C'mon.

Still, of the romance books I've had to read for my library's book club, this has been my favorite so far.

Maybe I'm just not a cozy person? I drink tea, wear cardigans, have cats, but I felt like this book never went anywhere and was kinda boring besides. I guess I need stakes, a plot, something carrying me through to get me interested in a book. While I'm sure this will appeal to some people, because it is cute, and there's some good elements here, my attention wandered periodically.

We have a cast of four in this book. Tao, the Teller of Small Fortunes, has a cart and a mule and goes around to villages and towns telling people's fortunes for cash. She runs into Mash and Silt, two reformed(?) thieves on the road to find Mash's young daughter who went missing following a bandit raid. She reads Mash's fortune, and the three of them band together to hopefully find her. Along the way, they also absorb Kina, a baker who loves baking but isn't quite as good as her uncle and who wants to see the world, into their ranks. The four of them go on (very episodic) adventures while the issue of where Mash's daughter is hangs over them.

I guess what I didn't like was the episodic feel of the book. It felt like at every town they'd get another call to action in some form or fashion, they'd act on it/resolve it/run from it, and then on to the next town/call to action. The fate of Mash's daughter isn't brought up nearly as much as you might expect, nor does it seem very urgent since they're always off doing other things instead of tracking down this 4-year-old. I sort of felt like this would be more of an urgent task.

I liked how different the four characters felt, but at the same time, they felt shallow and undeveloped throughout the book. Only Tao really has any sort of character arc, and even that felt low stakes and not all that important to Tao/the larger story. The half-finished feel of the rest of the characters made them feel a bit flat and boring, despite how different they felt from each other.

It's a good book for some low stakes, cozy palm reading fun, but I finished the book wishing more had been done to develop literally anything more than what I got.

"The river can be such a simple girl, but most lovely when she's unadorned."

I clearly didn't get whatever everyone else got out of this book. I thought the setup was interesting, an aging woman escorting a houseboat full of artistic types against the backdrop of a society in flux. Art in almost all forms is disappearing, there's a plague causing people to vanish, armed uprisings, a whole host of things going wrong on the mainland, but on the river there's just them on a weird journey. After taking the wrong branch of the river they start seeing increasingly bizarre sights and stop in towns with unusual afflictions. The Land of Doze where the crew feel exhausted all the time, the Island of Lost Children, a Lord-of-the-Fliesesque town of children where everyone thinks its 1993 instead of 2033, and a whole host of bizarre encounters on the river.

Honestly, this felt a bit like The Phantom Tollbooth, but with tougher to parse allegories. Each encounter the group aboard Silver Lady runs into felt like it had some sort of deeper meaning or allusion to something, but without more to go on I wasn't able to really get anything out of it. The dystopian society the group is on vacation from isn't really reflected in the story itself beyond mention of how unsafe the world outside the river is, and a constant fear that the art they're making aboard is going to vanish. There's also a lack of a through thread tying everything together, making it hard for me to really stay invested in a story that didn't seem like it was going anywhere. The author also shoehorns in mention of Qigong any chance she can get.

I don't know, there's enough reviews out there to make me think I clearly missed something, but I didn't really enjoy this trip downriver.

I won a copy of this eBook through Goodreads Giveaways.

I'm almost hesitant to give this a true crime tag, because of the amount of artistic liberties the author took along the way to pad out the story. Rather than a full factual telling of what on the surface sounded like a really interesting case involving arsenic poisonings in Hungary, this felt almost historical fiction-y. The author is up front about the inclusion of fictional elements in her author's note in the beginning: "However, to fill in gaps, I have had to imagine or assume certain scenarios.", but I wasn't really expecting the whole book to read like a novel.

And the story itself, while interesting on the face of it, doesn't seem like there's more to it than what's in the title. I don't know if there just wasn't enough factual info out there to write a full length book on or what, but be prepared to read all sorts of descriptive elements about people, places, and how evil Auntie Suzy looks. The story itself really drags in places while the author shoehorns all this in, which is a shame.

Just not a great example of a true crime book, unfortunately. There's an interesting story somewhere here, but it needs more of a factual touch than it got, I think.

"Oh, poor you. Here you are on a magical isle and all you can think of is what you don't have."

Two sisters on the run from their controlling father and an opportunistic guy-with-a-boat are stuck at Caraval, some sort of wish-fulfilling carnival that's not well explained but everyone wants to be at. Scarlett is chasing her sister Tella in the company of guy-with-a-boat Julian, who was kissing Tella in the beginning of the book but I guess decided to throw his lot in with Scarlett instead. The crux of this book is Scarlett's search for Tella amidst this weird scavenger hunt game that apparently more than just them are participating in, but we really only see the two of them doing anything.

For the good, the author managed to nail that dreamy, frenetic atmosphere a book like this aims for. Some of the descriptions of the locations, the people, the situations were written well. But on the other side of this coin, the prose is very purple. The author/Scarlett describes a lot of things using color/vibes, and it's sometimes hard to follow along. The ending (such as it is) and last, say, 20 pages or so, was especially hard to understand with all the prose and the twists upon twists happening all at the same time.

I also kind of hated that there's nonexistent world building here. There's some mention of the island nation Scarlett and Tella are from being, idk, isolated or blockaded or prevented in some way from participating in the rest of the world, but that's never really explored. Did the larger world even have a name? Other nations? No idea. Caraval, too, isn't really explained much, aside from that it's held every year. Every coincidence, every twist (and there are plenty of those), every little issue that might come up, is chalked up to magic and nothing more is said or explained. I get the sense that the magic is whatever the author needs it to be at any given point.

Finally, the characters were all kind of unlikeable. Scarlett mentions her upcoming marriage to a guy she's never even met approximately 80 million times, and basically decides her sister's future for her under the guise of knowing what's best for Tella. Tella seems to make a game out of throwing her sister under a convenient bus whenever she wants. And Julian exists in the book as a love interest, but I never quite understood what his appeal was beyond being Scarlett's ride along.

So, stars for some great writing and nailing the atmosphere, and stars removed for a poor ending, confusing descriptions, no grasp of the larger world and why we should care about Caraval, and unlikeable characters.

"Queens do not accept impossibilities"

Quinn is a con woman in Victorian England, the title of Queen of Fives, and a duty to keep her group afloat through generating income. The income in question here being the fortune of a duke she has five days to dupe into marrying her. So she makes her debut into high society, posing as a woman of means with the hope of catching the duke's eye (or forcing it, if not organically), with a suspicious sister and mother in law watching her every move. There's secrets aplenty in this family though, and this fortune may not be the easy mark Quinn thinks it is.

I guess I was expecting something more heist-forward than this book ended up being. There's lots of eligible-Victorian-lady-doing-eligible-Victorian-lady things here, at balls and shows and outings with the duke. It's all very historical fiction for large chunks of the book, which kind of bored me. I also thought the twists here weren't very unexpected, they're telegraphed fairly early on, and unless you skipped ahead past those parts, you know what's coming. I was rather disappointed about that, too.

Finally, I really wasn't sure what the Queen of Fives was supposed to be as a title. There's only like, five real characters in this book, so I don't know if she was the leader of like two of them, a whole group of them, or what. It's not really established what sort of reach/pull/power she has, if anything, and that also bothered me.

Idk, kind of bland, flat, boring, not what I was expecting.

"I think she's going to kill me."

This is only a very tenuous 4 stars, and I'm willing to be argued lower. I was riveted through a lot of the book, but as I got closer to the end, I started to realize that not a lot I was super interested in was actually going to matter by the end of the book. There also feels like a bit of a tone shift between the beginning and ending that somewhat disappointed me. But the journey for 3/4ths of the book nearly almost made up for a lackluster finish.

We have two aging sisters locked in a garden they've lived in all their lives. At some point when they were young, the civilized world ended, and the two sisters and their household locked themselves away as best they could to survive. Now grown and outlived their parents, these sisters only know what's within the boundaries of their walls, and a book their mother left them outlining how to care for everything. But strict Evelyn starts falling apart as less and less of what their mother left them starts mattering, and despite easygoing Lily's attempts to talk her down from her strict adherence to schedule and routine, the two normally close sisters start fighting. Amid this is the arrival of a boy from the outside world, something that shouldn't exist in Evelyn's eyes. The boy forces Evelyn to confront memories of her and her sister's past, and presents her with an alternate view that maybe everything she'd been brought up believing wasn't true at all.

So there's a lot to like here. I loved getting to know the sisters and their garden, and piecing together bits and pieces of their past to try and figure out where things went wrong and why. But as we went along in the book and we get more and more of these short memories from Evelyn's viewpoint, I start realizing that not a lot of it matters. There's nothing in the way of world building outside of the garden, so we never really find out what happened (though pretty easy guesses can be made). I did like the unreliable narrator feel of both Evelyn and her mom, it kept me guessing for a lot of the book to try and figure out where things were going to end up.

What disappointed me is that I felt like the author set up some really great, really dark ideas and then didn't follow through with them. Ending spoilers here: one of my big problems was the setup for the bodies in the ice house. The author makes it clear that both Evelyn and her sister have been eating the people that were killed when Evelyn was young, but then quickly dances away from that and doesn't really address it again. The boy is understandably worried he's next on the menu, but aside from a bit of "I'm scared of you" dialogue, it's wrapped up and ignored fairly quickly. I also feel like some of the memories we get from Evelyn about her mom and dad were leading towards the mom killing the dad, but I couldn't tell if that actually happened or not. Again, nothing's really spelled out or connected to what's going on currently. I guess I just wish, in a book with a setup and setting as unsettling as we get here, the author had gone all the way and leaned into some of these ideas more to lend a bit more impact to the story.

I also had a hard time figuring out what genre this book is in. I ultimately landed on literary fiction, because while the overall setting leans dystopian sci fi, none of that really bleeds into the garden at all.

Just a really interesting book that I wish had gone all the way into some of the ideas presented.

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Read this book as a physical/ebook copy, if you can. I listened to it as an audiobook, and without the text, didn't have the big clue needed to understand what was going on until the very end. I still greatly enjoyed the mystery and the reveal, but would have gotten there sooner with an actual book in my hands. This is admittedly way more fiction drama than it is sci-fi, but it's hard to discount the core sci-fi element propping the whole structure up. If you're looking for something more clearly sci-fi, you may be disappointed.

This book is really two(ish) stories wrapped in one. We have the friendship of Rafi Young and Todd Keane, two very different kids brought together through a love of strategy. Chess brought them together, but Go was where their true friendship lay and what laid the groundwork for their futures. Todd went on to become a tech billionaire developing AI projects, while Rafi went on to live on a tiny island in the Pacific, Makatea. They both withdrew from each other's lives, for various reasons.

We also have the story of Makatea, told mostly through the eyes of its inhabitants, an island poised to become the latest tech venture, the manufacturing point for offshore seasteading. The inhabitants are divided on whether this is a good thing or not, and are being offered the chance to vote on whether or not the company gets to proceed.

I'm gonna let you know right up front that there's an awful lot of family (in the loose friend group sense) drama in this book. I was drawn into the unlikely friendship between Todd and Rafi, which had its predictable ups and downs. Todd's chapters, clearly a bit into the future looking backward at a friendship gone to time were especially sad, knowing he was fighting a neurological condition. But even as I was following along with this family drama, I couldn't figure out how any of this linked to Maktaea. I also spent a lot of the book wondering where the AI was in this book that mentions AI in the description. It comes up within the first third of the book, but from the description, I expected it to be a bit more prominent.

And then the last 20 pages happened.

Major ending/story spoilers ahead. I kept having this nagging feeling throughout especially the second half of the book after Rafi and Todd have their falling out that facts dropped between the two stories (and Evie's as well) weren't lining up. I thought maybe I was just missing something, listening to the whole story as an audiobook, but then larger pieces started not lining up, and I started wondering. The big reveal about large parts of the story being made up by Todd's AI using Todd's memories as a "playground" of sorts for his dementia-ridden mind to finally have a "happy" ending drew an audible "ohhhhhhhhh" out of me while getting ready for work. Eveything that's not written in italics in the book is AI-generated for Todd's benefit, while everything in italics is the "real life" story. Rafi dies early, Evie dies after her book was written evidently, and Ina is on the island, sans kids. The last 20 pages or so really hit hard, when I realized what had been going on the entire time.

I really was into everything this book was telling me. I was drawn into the friend group drama, stayed for the fate of Makatea, and had an audible reaction to the ending of the book. Just everything in such a great package.

DNF @ 9%

At under 10% of the book, we flew through so many events that I thought needed way more explanation, or at least a reaction, out of Sophie. From reading the reviews, the pacing doesn't seem to get better, nor are explanations probably forthcoming, so I'm just gonna pass on this in favor of something else.

Certainly different than what I was expecting from the title/description. Not in a bad way, I don't think, but anyone picking this up and expecting a djinn in the story may be disappointed at how historical fiction-y it is.

A great mansion sits on the coast of South Africa. Sana and her father are tenants in this mansion, currently subdivided awkwardly into different apartments and occupied by a colorful cast of characters. We get to know these neighbors well, as Sana gets used to her new surroundings and starts exploring the unused parts of the mansion. The East Wing is where she finds discarded furniture, a locked door, and a mystery to unravel about the history of the house surrounding Meena. Meena was a lover and second wife of the previous owner of the house, and we're introduced to her tragic story, and the story of the house, through Sana's investigations.

Right off the bat, there is a djinn in this book, but the djinn is just a...idk...unseen being witnessing what's going on with Sana and Meena. We don't get the djinn as a viewpoint exactly, and neither Sana nor Meena ever know it's there, but we get its impressions, and those of the house, occasionally. It's unique, the djinn is clearly upset by what has happened and what is happening, but can't do anything about it. The book itself is more of a family drama or historical fiction than it is a fantasy/magical realism book.

I thought Sana's viewpoint in present day South Africa wasn't quite as compelling as Meena's, but we needed Sana's sleuthing to understand Meena's story and its ramifications. Sana's neighbors are all a bit crazy in their own way, and we get to know them too alongside the story of the house. Meena's story is tragic (but kind of predictable), but anyone looking for justice in what happens to her may not enjoy the ending. But maybe that was sort of the point.

I did love the writing of this book, it was very lyrical, very compelling, very descriptive. I wanted to keep reading to figure out the story of the house and its inhabitants. Just, in short, an unexpectedly enjoyable historical fiction, despite the lack of a djinn.

Good but not great/5 stars. I'm a huge fan of the microhistory genre, and I felt like this particular take on the history of the American road trip was way too broad/meandering. I loved the bits about the actual road trip, the history of, what things sprung up alongside the roads as a result of what changes, those parts were really interesting. I also learned Betty Ford was a CB user, who used the handle 'First Mama". Kinda love that.

What didn't work for me as much were the other tangents, the ones only peripherally related to road trips. For instance, while I enjoy video games and arcades, the history of arcade cabinets in hotels was kind of out of place. There's several rabbit holes that, while interesting in their own right, don't seem to quite fit here. Another thing that you will either like or not is that the author uses his own experiences as a kid on road trips with his family as segues into the various topics. While the (sometimes lengthy) anecdotes are funny, it sort of lent this microhistory a bit of a memoir feel, when all I wanted was to get back to the history topics.

So, again, good but not great. Nice little audiobook, but I probably won't revisit it.

"We are cursed to be the sum of our deeds, black as they may be. They are like an arrow: once the shot is made, there is no escaping the consequences."

Girton and his master are back in town, ostensibly to find sanctuary from pursuers and a healer for his master, but they learn quite quickly that 5 years is a long time for a kingdom. Things aren't as they were, and the two of them are pulled into a fight for the crown between Girton's old tormentor Tomas, Girton's old friend Rufra, and Girton's old target Aydor. Compounding things is a murder in Rufra's camp that Girton gets pulled into investigating, and the ever-present suspicion that a spy lingers in camp. It's a twisty thing to unravel, and Girton's not altogether sure he can before the spy threatens his friend.

It's a darker story than the first one, for better or worse. Everyone's (supposedly) 5 years older, the stakes are a bit higher, and these are now adults having adult problems rather than older boys figuring out practice yard problems. I liked that. I also liked that the story uses essentially a medieval murder mystery as its central plot, allowing Girton the freedom to move around and introduce himself (and us) to central players on this new field. There's also quite a bit of character progression here in the characters from the first book......

.....EXCEPT GIRTON. Hearing him whinge so much about all his perceived slights against him from people he thought were his friends was painful. I couldn't tell any time at all had passed for how he acted, especially against his own master. It really took me out of the story.

But the story and actions scenes were great, and as soon as the story reached that tipping point of chasing down the culprit, I had a hard time putting the book down. That's something, at least.

"There should be a cost to power, and I paid it gladly."

I wasn't sure much could get darker tonally than the first book in this series, but this one managed to surprise me with how dark it got. Khraen still doesn't know the entirety of who he is, but he's started collecting the obsidian shards of his heart to find out. Now he has his old flame Henka in tow, but he still doesn't have any memories of her and is, basically, operating under blind faith that she means to him what she says she means to him. We're still never quite sure who's friend or foe yet, but Khraen still is on a journey to find out.

This book felt more like Khraen embracing all the worst parts of his power, while rationalizing it away every time. Each time he swears he'll do better next time, agonizes over it even, but still manages to make the wrong (right?) decision in the moment. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed a lot of his considerable inner turmoil in this book, it's very introspective and thoughtful, but I know it rubs some people the wrong way that he's not this badass demonologist doing badass demonologist things cover to cover.

There's even more visceral detail in this book than the last book, which, yay if you like that sort of thing, but I had to skim portions of the detailed necromancy bits, personally.

Bren is a great character here. A great foil against Khraen's descent into....idk, madness, instability, power, whatever he's got going on here. I look forward to reading book three shortly.

"The Force isn't the only thing that has a dark side, Han. And the tricky thing about the dark side is that it's so easy to use--and it gets you what you think you want."

I actually thought this book was actually pretty fun. A very injured Luke and C3PO get kidnapped aboard a(nother) dreadnaught, this one helmed by an AI (the Will) kidnapping aliens from various locales and brainwashing them into believing themselves part of the crew. There's some pretty funny scenes here with Luke and C3PO trying to navigate the issues aboard, while the ship itself heads towards its mission to blow up a colony. Meanwhile, on said colony, Leia, Han, Chewie, and R2D2 are investigating reports of an old colony of Jedi children, but are being thwarted by less than forthcoming residents.

I liked the writing of this book a lot. Too many of the old Star Wars books I've read so far feature flat, boring, non-descriptive writing. This one was a standout in terms of setting a scene, giving the reader some backstory (I particularly liked Leia's scene reminiscing about Alderaan), and bringing the reader along on the adventure. I thought Luke being stuck aboard a ship of brainwashed aliens was funny, and I especially liked that the author gave a reason for Luke not Jedi-ing his way to instant victory. Maybe that's why people didn't like this book -- Luke being hobbled from doing cool Jedi things. Hard to say.

I will say I didn't care for the ending much. The author did a great job of setting up stakes for the group on the dreadnaught, and then walking them back. That undid a lot of the emotional impact that the reader experienced, which I thought took away a bit from the story.

Just a fun book with recognizable characters and actual tension. I have a hard time rating that poorly.

"I'm just reminding you that you can’t base a character on a real-life person and then not get sued."

Final tally:

Instances of the word 'snarl': 15

Instances of the words 'grump' or 'grumpy': 27

Instances of the word 'growl': 26

Instances of the word 'scowl': 13

For a book this size, north of 500 pages, I fully expected way more to happen. And not even just in the romance sense, just in the overall "is there a story here somewhere in this book with story in the title" sense. I fully admit I don’t normally read romance, but even my basic story need didn't feel met by this one.

Hazel is a writer. Or, was a writer. Or maybe still is in her mind, but hasn't really put anything out since her divorce, so she isn't actually in the minds of everyone who counts. Her friend and agent Zoey delivers an ultimatum – produce a book or get dropped. She ditches big city life for small town life in the hopes of finally finding inspiration, and she does…..in the form of tall, grumpy contractor hired to renovate her decrepit house. A whole town's worth of over-the-top personalities and chaotic shenanigans happens, with the overall goal being to save their small town from being absorbed by the larger city nearby. And of course, quirky sunshine writer and grumpy scowly contractor hook up.

This book was messy and chaotic, and not in a good way. I freely admit I haven't read any of the author's other books, but from reading reviews here, the chaos is even a bit much for long time author fans. The pages drip humor, and while it was fun in the beginning, it got really old really fast when the author is cracking jokes mid-sex, both out loud and in narration. Speaking of the actual reason we’re all here reading this book, it took the two characters half the book (that's roughly 250 pages) for them to go on their first date, and that wasn’t even a date. For some more detailed information, (romance spoilers here) Cam agrees to a FWB situation with Hazel for research purposes, so for a large chunk of the book even past this point they still aren't really a couple. Lots of sex is had, of course, but there's zero relationship development or chemistry. Even the overall story propping up the romance feels lacking. I guess I expected more to happen in a book of this size.

Finally, with Hazel being a writer herself, there's multiple points of the book where it feels like the author is speaking directly to the reader, and all of it felt shoehorned in. Lots of statements about how Hazel feels like her writing is discounted because she writes romance and not literary fiction, some of what feels like insider baseball about how the publishing industry and writer events works, and even a whole chapter dedicated to Hazel giving another character pointers on how to get started writing. None of it felt like it helped the overall story along any.

Just not my thing, I guess.

"Vendi, Vidi, Solvi."

Clayton Stumper is a puzzle unto himself -- as a baby, he was left on the doorstep of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers in a hat box with no note. Growing up with the house full of various puzzlers across many different disciplines left an impression on him, but as a young adult now, he wants to learn more about where he came from. Pippa, the woman who found him, knows, but all she left him after her death was a puzzle to solve. Never much of a puzzler, he nevertheless sets off to learn more about his parents, and himself in the process.

Right off the bat, we needed more Clayton in this story about Clayton. Interspersed with the chapters about this mystery surrounding his parents, we also have the past POV of Pippa, founding the Fellowship and bringing together all the disparate personalities that made the group what it was. Not a lot happens after the founding of the Fellowship though, making it feel more like a distraction from the actual plot with Clayton that matters than anything else.

I also wish Clayton was developed a bit more than he was. He seems like a nice guy, but really unable to adult on his own without Pippa or the Fellowship there to guide him along. Towards the end, he seems more willing to talk to people than he was, but that's really all the character development we get out of him.

I will say, in my physical copy at least, the inclusion of puzzles to actually solve was a nice touch.