1/5: DNF at 22% This was super snappy and sparky and spicy (in the ”spicy cat” way) and perky and quippy and whatever else-y. It was also weirdly immature (Keira is supposed to be in her 30s but she acts like a teenager?), the writing was choppy, and sometimes the dialogue just plain didn’t work. I’m pretty sure I’m not the target audience as I’m neither into video games/VR nor weed. The worldbuilding was kind of interesting but also weird because this happens in the 2030’s but it’s a full-blown cyberpunk dystopia with bionic people? Like someone on gReads said: ”The best description I can come ...

5/5: I drew a sharp breath when I reached the last sentence of the first chapter, and that pretty much described the whole reading experience. Is it corny to say I was holding back tears the whole time? Is it cheesy to claim I could feel the drums and the rhythm shivering under my skin? Probably, but I honestly don’t give a fuck. The language is breathtakingly beautiful and the story old as time: peaceful people want to be left alone to live their lives but greed in all its myriad forms is just too much. Men come to kill and rape and burn and bleed the land dry, leaving behind scorched earth a...

3/5: So. I finally finished the (almost) complete fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (because this doesn’t include juvenalia, poetry, or collaborations), and I so relieved you guys. Shit. That was a fucking Chore and most of the time it Did Not Spark Joy. The snobbish holier-than-thou attitude (though he didn’t really have anything to back it up) was grating, as was his misogyny and raging racism. Most of his works in this book are either mediocre blathering or trying to appear more high-brow than they actually are, but there were gems in that giant barrel of sewage. He was able to write well (as in well...

4/5: It took me some while to get through this because a) this is a long-ass book and b) I had to repeatedly set this aside because I had so many library books to read. Poor dear, sorry about that. Also, I’m amused by the book’s title: the main story spans over nine years and the extra part takes another decade or so, so the title applies to the first part only, lol. Anyhoo. I knew going in that the romance side would be the slowest of burns and very much in the background but I didn’t really mind. The cases were interesting and I enjoyed the detailed court intrigue and politics. It’s a sign ...

4/5: 1st person POV… *makes a face* Luckily, it works here well. That said, this was interesting! I liked Jake’s morbid humor, his take on life (and unlife), and the slow, creeping sense of Things Not Being Right. The romance part felt organic and believable and I liked the ending. I can understand how people might be grossed out. Cancer, CF, and death are gritty topics and Thornton doesn’t shy away from the icky parts of terminal illness and death. But I have to say that for me (as a nurse), those were some of the more believable parts of the story.

4/5: I mean, it’s Lisa and J.A., what else can it be but good? A quick, fast-paced read that still manages to offer a lot to chew and sent me to boy the two other books of the trilogy. I liked the flow, the snark, the smol red herrings sprinkled on top, and I liked the ending–it was a cliffhanger and a neon-sign pointing toward the next book in the series but it could have been the end.

This book is based on the author’s personal experience (except that it happens in Iceland instead of Norway) and it shows. The text is rubbed raw and bleeding with every word, and I can only imagine how it felt to write. Probably a bit like dying or throwing up and suffocating, I’d guess–especially when it ends with yet another court order. I listened to this at one go because I was literally unable to pause this. There’s no way to rate this book. As an autobiographical book it’s definitely better than most I’ve read but it’s not necessarily a good book as a literary product.. But to give ...

3/5: I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Chuck Tingle. I’ve been aware of him and his tinglers for ages but I never bothered to read any – mostly because I thought he was a crack author. I knew about Bury Your Gays (on my TBR list) and I’d heard good things about Camp Damascus so when a friend recced this to me for a reading challenge fill, I grabbed. The story is POV Rose Darling, a 20yo, deeply religious, autistic young woman who starts to experience strange, terrifying, and baffling phenomena that slowly push her to find out the truth about her community. It starts rather ominously from the s...

5/5: I don’t think the summary does justice to the book because I think it makes it sound a lot more Dramatic than it really is. Yes, there’s danger. Yes, there are oddballs in the crew. Yes, there are life-threatening situations. But it’s really about the literal long journey to the strange planet where they’re supposed to do the wormhole tunneling job; a roadtrip but in space. This is a story about finding yourself and your family, and what counts as family, and how the different relationships shape us and the people around us. This is a very cozy book despite the massive scope of the worldbu...

Best known for Steal the Stars, our heart-pounding first season, Stories from Among the Stars is a science fiction anthology series from Macmillan Podcasts.