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Cloud Cuckoo Land

Title: Cloud Cuckoo Land

Author: Anthony Doerr

Genre: science/historical fiction

Thank you NetGalley for this book!

I was really nervous to pick this one up. I’ve just heard so much about it but was intimidated by its breadth. The length wasn’t an issue. I’ve read several that are over 1000 pages. But just the span of time, the characters, the interweaving plots made me nervous. I took my time with it and am so glad I did. What a spectacular book.

From Goodreads: Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.

Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet. 

I can’t even begin to explain just how expansive this book is. The story is told with a fable woven throughout, and all the storylines draw back to this fable, but in ways you don’t expect. Even though this one took me a while to get through, it was worth it to be able to savor this one. It’s just such a beautiful book.

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Under the Whispering Door

Title: Under the Whispering Door

Author: TJ Klune

Genre: Fantasy

Thank you NetGalley for this book.

Oh wow does TJ Klune knock it out of the park again! I loved The House in the Cerulean Sea and wasn’t sure what to expect this time around. Granted, this book isn’t in any way related to Cerulean, but a second effort might not be as rewarding. But this book is just wonderful. Full of heart and love and kindness and all that is good in the world.

From Goodreads: When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.

Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.

But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.

At first, you really hate Wallace. He’s a terrible person, but to really appreciate how he evolves, he has to start out rough. You love Hugo and the others in the tea shop (no spoilers), and watching certain people move in and out of their lives is interesting. But the kindness that Hugo shows from day one is so wonderful. Klune, in my book, has written another lovely book. I will gladly recommend him to anyone and look forward to his next publication.

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When Things Get Dark

Title: When Things Get Dark

Editor: Ellen Datlow

Genre: horror short story

Thank you NetGalley for this book.

I’m not a short story collection person. I try again and again, but I just can’t get into them. Well, that all changed with this book. Maybe it’s just horror collections that I need to read. I love Stephen King’s. And I’ve been trying to read more thanks to the encouragement of the Books in the Freezer podcast, who has mentioned Ellen Datlow several times. So, when I saw this on NetGalley, I figured it was worth a try. And I’m so glad because there wasn’t a single miss in this entire collection.

From Goodreads: Legendary editor, Ellen Datlow, collects today’s best horror writers in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, and more.

A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by, and in tribute to, Shirley Jackson.

Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant, and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers.

This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, will bring together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.

Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, and Genevieve Valentine.

I’m not well-versed in Shirley Jackson. I love The Lottery (click on the link to read. First published in 1948) and was fortunate enough to teach it, as well. My students LOVED it. And I’ve read The Haunting of Hill House, but that’s about it. I definitely need to branch out. That said, anything inspired by her must be amazing. Every time I started a new story, I thought there was no way this one was going to be as good as the rest. I was wrong. They were all outstanding. Josh Malerman’s was my favorite (not a shock. I love his work). But really, each and every one of them was sufficiently creepy. This collection is a must-read for horror fans.

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Bones to the Wind

Title: Bones to the Wind

Author: Tatiana Obey

Genre: YA fantasy

I had the honor of editing this book, but my opinions are entirely honest. I’m hit or miss with YA fantasy. Some of it is just too much for me. But this book was really great. Obey does an excellent job of world-building, which is really difficult to do. She places her characters in their universe while also leading the reader through the maze of a brand new setting. World-building is another layer of writing that many don’t even bother with. When a book is set in our world, there’s no building that needs to be done. Maybe this is why fantasy is so hard for me. Sometimes the worlds just make no sense at all. Thankfully, this isn’t the case here. I loved the world, the characters, and the plot.

From Goodreads: Rasia is determined to destroy her old man’s record in the Forging, a trial each child must succeed to come of age. All Rasia needs to do is hunt down a gonda, hitch its tentacle ass to her windship, and haul it back home in record time. Easy. Or it would be if Rasia wasn’t stuck on the same team as Nico—a know-it-all, spoiled, grubworm who never does anything Rasia tells her to do.

Nico doesn’t care about Rasia’s egotistical dreams of glory. This is her brother’s last chance to pass the Forging or her father is going to banish him from the family. She needs to scour the desert to find whatever team the bones placed him on and help him kill a gonda before it kills him.

Too bad Nico and Rasia can’t get along to steer a windship straight.

BONES TO THE WIND is a coming-of-age sword and sorcery fantasy adventure. Action-packed and humorous, the novel includes strong female characters, LGBTQIA+ representation, and mature themes.

What I really loved about this book is that there’s no actual antagonist. Society itself is definitely fighting against the characters, but Rasia and Nico are both heroic and a mess. Both have good and bad traits. And they are perfect foils for each other. It’s hard to pick which one you want to cheer for because they are both equally loveable and frustrating. I wanted to claim into the book and knock their heads together sometimes because they are so stubborn. When I’m this engaged in a book, I know it’s one that will stick with me. I can’t wait for the second installment to see where this world goes next. This book is available now on Amazon, so please support this young indie author.

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Pearl

Title: Pearl

Author: Josh Malerman

Genre: horror

Thank you NetGalley for this book!

My love for Josh Malerman has no boundaries. I’ve loved everything he’s written: Bird Box, Goblin, Malorie, Inspection, A House at the Bottom of the Lake, Unbury Carol, and Black Mad Wheel. And now Pearl, which is an absolutely delicious, demented, disturbing book. And I loved every minute of it. Telepathic pig. Sold.

From Goodreads: Go to the farm just outside of town and you’ll hear it. A voice. Inside your head. Or is it?

Come to me…

A voice that makes you want to pick up that axe over in the corner of the barn. And swing it. And kill.

Feed us. Feed us now.

It is the voice of Pearl.

Sing for me. Sing for your precious Pearl…

I mean, come on. A telepathic pig who wants you to kill? Genuis. And because Malerman is such a good writer, it’s not cheesy or poorly written. Pearl is horrifying. The pig is so creepy with his one bad eye and sitting like a human. The events are grotesque and bloody. The characters are torn down and put back together by Pearl. And when Pearl gets into your head, there’s no stopping him. This book was just so absurd and hilarious. And so much fun.

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The Lighthouse Witches

Title: The Lighthouse Witches

Author: CJ Cooke

Genre: supernatural mystery

Thank you to NetGalley for this book!

I’m not a big fan of witch stories, but this one sounded like a lot of fun. It’s told in both 1998 and 2021, which is a really difficult way to write a book because you can’t give too much away in either storyline because the other plot will be ruined, but Cooke does a great job balancing them. Overall, this book was really enjoyable and had a fun twist at the end.

From Goodreads: When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it’s an opportunity to start over with her three daughters–Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she’s frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed.

Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she’s initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers–except she’s still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she’ll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn’t realize just how much the truth will change her.

While in the 2021 storyline, Luna will frequently think about the past, but it’s not always clear that is what’s happening. I was a bit confused at times and had to go back and reread. That might have been my fault, though, because I read quickly and easily could have missed the shifts. The wildling idea was nice and creepy, but the book isn’t really scary. This isn’t a complaint, but just to let people know what to expect. The twist at the end absolutely made sense, which is a must for me. I despise twists that exist just to throw the reader off. But this one was great. Overall, this book was a lot of fun and kept me reading and guessing.

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As the Wicked Watch

Title: As the Wicked Watch

Author: Tamron Hall

Genre: thriller

Thank you, NetGalley for this book!

I really wanted to love this book. I’m a big fan of Tamron Hall’s and want good things for her. But, I found this book uneven to the point of frustration. I’m bummed! I loved the main character and the fact that Hall was able to put her own journalistic background into the story. This aspect definitely worked well. But the actual plot just fell apart over the course of the book.

From Goodreads: When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her a dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network.

Jordan is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene—in impractical designer stilettos. Armed with a master’s degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has thus far been able to balance her dueling motivations: breaking every big story—and giving voice to the voiceless.

From her time reporting in Texas, she’s sure she has covered the vilest of human behaviors, but nothing has prepared her for Chicago. You see, Jordan is that rare breed of journalist who can navigate a crime scene as well as she can a newsroom—often noticing what others tend to miss. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of black females, many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized, and all of them quickly forgotten.

All until Masey James—the story that Jordan just can’t shake, try as she might. A fifteen-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot, Masey has come to represent for Jordan all of the frustration that her job—with its required distance—often forces her to repress. Putting the rest of her workload and her (fraying) personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that a missing black child would so rarely get. Three young boys are eventually charged with Masey’s murder, but Jordan remains unconvinced.

There’s a serial killer on the loose, Jordan believes, and he’s hiding in plain sight.

I liked the concept of the plot. A journalist takes a deep dive into a murder. Great. But this story had too many characters. Some of them could have been combined into one that had more purpose. I also felt like the pacing was off. If a book is going to be about a serial killer (not saying it is or not, but there are two deaths in the book) the second death shouldn’t be at 90% of the way through the book. The ending was completely rushed and jumped around a lot. I still think Hall is fantastic, but this book needed a good edit.

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The Best Short Stories 2021

Title: The Best Short Stories 2021

Editor: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Genre: short story collection

Thank you NetGalley for this book!

I don’t read a ton of story collections, but I’m always pleased after I finish one. I love discovering new authors whose story has stuck with me. And I think it’s so much more challenging to write a short story than a novel. You have so little space to make an impact on the reader. I broke this book up into chunks, reading one or two stories a day, and that method worked really well for me. Overall, I really enjoyed these stories.

From Goodreads: Twenty prizewinning stories selected from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year–continuing the O. Henry Prize’s century-long tradition of literary excellence.

Now entering its second century, the prestigious annual story anthology has a new title, a new look, and a new guest editor. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and young emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Adichie, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.

Featured in this collection: Daphne Palasi Andreades – David Means- Sindya Bhanoo- Crystal Wilkinson- Alice Jolly- David Rabe- Karina Sainz Borgo (translator, Elizabeth Bryer) – Jamel Brinkley- Tessa Hadley – Adachioma Ezeano- Anthony Doerr- Tiphanie Yanique – Joan Silber – Jowhor Ile – Emma Cline – Asali Solomon – Ben Hinshaw – Caroline Albertine Minor (translator, Caroline Waight) – Jianan Qian – Sally Rooney

Several of these stories really stuck with me, particularly the ones from Daphne Palasi Andreades, Crystal Wilkinson, Jamal Brinkley, and Jianan Qian, all of who are new to me. I’ve never read any of their other works. But you really can’t go wrong with this collection. Each one has something that you’ll enjoy. I’m glad I picked this one up.

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Red Clocks

Title: Red Clocks

Author: Leni Zumas

Genre: dystopian

Finally, not a celebrity memoir! And this one was from my favorite genre- dystopia. And although I’ve read better ones, this one was really interesting. You follow five different women who all live in the same town in Oregon. They all live in a world where abortion is illegal, and the Personhood Amendment rules the land. Sound familiar?? Ugh. These women are tangentially related, which becomes more prevalent as the book progresses.

From Goodreads: Five women. One question. What is a woman for?

In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom.

Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivør, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro’s best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homeopath, or “mender,” who brings all their fates together when she’s arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.

I’m not sure how this book would be on audio because it has a stream-of-consciousness feel to it. The characters insert random internal thoughts into their conversations, which is easy to follow since they are italicized but in audio would be a nightmare. I really enjoyed this book, though. I loved seeing how the women all came together and helped each other out. The world they live in is terrifying but very real. There is no reason to think we aren’t headed on that same path.

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Born a Crime

Title: Born a Crime

Author: Trevor Noah

Genre: memoir

Since I’m the last person on the planet to read this much-hyped book, I figure that since I’m on a roll with celebrity memoirs, I might as well. I do wish I could have listened to it, but since I rarely do that, my standby ebook format would have to suffice. I know absolutely nothing about Trevor Noah, other than his job as the host of The Daily Show and the fact that he’s from South Africa. I’ve seen clips of TDS, and he’s really funny, but I don’t watch it. So learning about his childhood wasn’t something I sought out because I’m a fan of his. It’s just been recommended so many times by so many people that I thought, why not?

From Goodreads: Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

This book was great. Trevor Noah is known for his humor, which is evident throughout the entire story. I laughed a lot, but it’s also a really heartfelt read. He loves his mother dearly, even though she was hard on him. He understood that her stubbornness was always from a place of love. She tried to teach them the ways of the world and how life as a mixed boy (his words) in S. Africa was the hardest life imaginable. They were also very poor. Like eating caterpillar sandwiches poor. Even if you aren’t necessarily a fan of his, the book is funny and engaging. I really enjoyed it, and I have a new respect for Noah. He certainly worked hard to get where he is.