Julia

I liked this, although I think Gong's Immortal Longings series is better (likely because this was her debut - it is an amazing debut). Somehow the pacing is smoother, while still at quite a clip. My curiosity about this book is that it's quite gory for young adult (certainly equivalent to IL), and although I like the fantasy element, it ended up adding A LOT of plot to the complicated Romeo & Juliet bones that already needed to feel emotionally urgent. I'll read the second one, and I would recommend people curious about Gong start with her adult stuff.

Picked this up after hearing Marissa Meyer speak; she said Jest is her favorite character she's ever written. I agree, he's pretty great! I confess to dragging near the end of this one, because the "how she came to be" story of the Queen of Hearts is indeed very psychogically intriguing in Meyer's hands...but it's not a HAE for this poor romance reader! Still, well done, and I can imagine recommended this to a lot of friends with preteen kiddos in a few years.

This was cute! I just heard Sarah Hawley talk yesterday, and she is so smart, funny, and thoughtful. Clearly as much of a romance reader as writer. I think that paranormal contemporary romance is not my jam, so I am more excited to try her romantasy (she finished "Servant of Earth" in 2017 but was apparently told there "wasn't a market" for romantasy lolllllzzzzz), but if this is your genre, this is pleasing! Good female friendships, complex family dynamics, concise but well-attended-to world building. I could have used more smut, but I can almost always use more smut.

Fun, but not my favorite Hazelwood! I'm happy to read her playing around in the paranormal genre, but this felt less spicy than her average and, despite an adventurous plot, the pacing felt not quite as zippy? Not sure. Still, pretty sure I'm never going to regret reading one of her books.

Hospicing Modernity (https://decolonialfutures.net/hospicingmodernity/) changed my life a few years ago. I honestly can't think of another book that's been so impactful. Outgrowing Modernity took me FOREVER to read (over 6 months!), but I think that's because of how much wrestling with ideas, feelings, and ways of being it demands, even more so than HM for me personally. I especially loved and was stunned by Machado de Oliveira's approach to AI, or Emergent Intelligence, as she calls it, but how could it have been otherwise, given her overarching ways of being - if we are inseparable from all things, that includes the new forms of intelligence we are now using at our peril or to our benefit, typically both at once. This philosophy rejects simplicity, embraces our complicity, and provides a compass, not a roadmap, for how to live in the time of metacrises. There are times the book gets a little bogged down in intellectual parts, but Machado de Oliveira acknowledges that herself near the end. And her goalposts for us should we choose them are crystal clear and lacking obfuscation: sobriety, maturity, discernment, and responsibility. I feel like Krista Tippett always has nice things to say, but her front cover blurb is just spot on: "A moral, intellectual, and spiritual masterpiece."