*I received a copy of The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Review: The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowenna Miller
Monday, March 27, 2023
Anticipated April 2023 Releases
It's been a busy year of new releases and April is no exception! There are so many amazing books coming out next month, and I'm sure I've still managed to forget a number of books for this list. I've had the opportunity to read The Bone Shard War, Untethered Sky, and Some Desperate Glory, all of which were great (reviews to come soon!), and I have a couple ARCs of some others that I can't wait to dive into. For the rest, I can only hope I'll manage to get to them in good time, haha, because I seriously can't wait for all of these! What upcoming releases are you most looking forward to reading in April?
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Review: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.
But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.
To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried."
I just love T. Kingfisher, I really do.
There is something very special about T. Kingfisher's brand of horror, and A House with Good Bones captures that quality extremely well. A House with Good Bones contains fairly ordinary people in ordinary settings where nothing exceptionally outlandish happens–at first–and a slow creep of dread slowly settles in, but you are almost always caught off guard by it because of how well the story is able to incorporate humor and endearing characters that make it impossible to put the book down.
This is very classic T. Kingfisher horror and so for me that means it's brilliant and I'm going to love it. If you have read and enjoyed any of T. Kingfisher's other horror books (or even non-horror ones), then you will definitely want to check this one out as well because it is very much written in the same style and with all the trademark humor, creepiness, and intelligence as her previous books.
In A House with Good Bones, we follow Sam Montgomery as she makes her way back home during some time off from work to check in on her mom after her brothers calls and tells her that their mom seems to be acting a little... "off." Sam arrives home in North Carolina and soon realizes that things with her mom are, indeed, a bit odd. Things in the house also seem to be just a little bit odd, and Sam can't figure out why her mom seems to be acting a lot like her Gran Mae used to act–especially since neither her mother nor Sam herself particularly liked Gran Mae.
T. Kingfisher is an absolute master at creating the most creeping, slow burn horror. I remember when I first read The Hollow Places by Kingfisher, the first book of hers that I read, and I was so immersed and blown away by how unbelievably unnerving and creepy the story was and how her writing was able to make me feel so incredibly uneasy, and that is the case in A House with Good Bones as well. There's not all that much in the way of action in the first portion of the book, but there is still so much that happens with regard to the weirdness of Sam's mother's actions and the house itself. Not to mention the fact that there is a weird amount of wild vultures in the neighborhood that seem particularly interested in Gran Mae's house, which also lays out a perfect atmosphere for this eerie story.
Sam is an incredible protagonist, and her humor and deadpan narrative delivery remind me a lot of the protagonists in The Hollow Places and The Twisted Ones. She is an entomologist living in Arizona, but often travels for various archaeological digs, and her entomologist expertise definitely comes in handy in this book in some very surprising ways, but also in ways that I found very interesting. I love when characters are specific experts in a topic and I get to learn a little bit secondhand from their narrative, which happens quite a bit here–but I promise it's all interesting and not at all dry. Sam is the perfect horror companion because she's very rational and always looking for a reasonable explanation for things, especially since she is scientifically-minded, as well as because of her ability to have a very dry-witted remark for just about everything. I laughed as much as I felt creeped out in this book, and that is my favorite type of story because I love humor and being entertained, but I also love getting creeped out by things. I felt like I was friends with Sam in this book, and that made for an even more enjoyable experience.
I can't tell you anything that happens because it absolutely needs to be a surprise, so just know that as you form theories and opinions about what's happening, you are probably somewhat on the right track... but also a little wrong and there will be big surprises to keep things interesting. I genuinely could not put this book down. In a time when I've been struggling to get through a single book in any short amount of time, I read this book so quickly and so easily that it helped remind me why I love reading so much. Although there is a lot more I could potentially say about this book, I'm going to stop here and keep things relatively brief because I'm not sure what else I could say that wouldn't just be outright overenthusiastic gushing about it, and at this point I think my point has been made.
Overall, it's another five stars from me for A House with Good Bones. This was brilliant, entertaining, timely, and has so much to love about it. I cannot recommend A House with Good Bones (or any T. Kingfisher book, really) enough.
Buy the book: Amazon | Bookshop.org
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro, The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter, & Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.
The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro
Publication: April 18th, 2023
Del Rey
Hardcover. 272 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org
From Goodreads:
"A woman is haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona as she unravels the dark secrets of her family history in this ravishing and provocative horror novel.
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.
Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.
When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.
Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.
But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers—and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever."
The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter
Publication: April 18th, 2023
Gallery/Saga Press
Hardcover. 384 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org
From Goodreads:
"In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.
But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.
Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.
With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.
A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act."
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
Publication: April 4th, 2023
Wednesday Books
Hardcover. 368 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org
From Goodreads:
"After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.
To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish―into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love."
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the premise of Divine Rivals, but I've really enjoyed others books I've read from Rebecca Ross, so I'm eager to check it out.
Monday, March 20, 2023
Review: Rubicon by J.S. Dewes
After enduring a traumatic resurrection for the ninety-sixth time, Valero is reassigned to a special forces unit and outfitted with a cutting-edge virtual intelligence aid. They could turn the tide in the war against intelligent machines dedicated to the assimilation, or destruction, of humanity.
When her VI suddenly achieves sentience, Valero is drawn into the machinations of an enigmatic major who’s hell-bent on ending the war—by any means"
*I received a copy of Rubicon courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*
Friday, March 17, 2023
The Friday Face-Off: Current Read #2
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Review: Chaos & Flame by Tessa Gratton & Justina Ireland
The pacing of Chaos & Flame is a little hit or miss at times, but overall it's a very fast-paced adventure with plenty of things going on to keep you turning the pages. The first third of the book felt a little rushed to me compared to the rest of the book, and there's one major plot progression point that felt exceptionally rushed and incorporated in a that felt as though the characters just accepted it and moved on much more quickly than made sense to me. This pacing and tone created a slight mismatch with the latter half of the book's pacing where there were more times when it felt like the story dragged slightly and not much really happened.
Buy the book: Amazon | Bookshop.org