Genre: horror Published: Berkley Press, January 2023 My Rating: 3/5 stars "Shit," Mark said. "There's a lot of dolls..." Leave it up to Grady Hendrix to take a trope I think I'm going to hate and make it into something thoroughly enjoyable! I was introduced to this author when I read Horrorstör, expecting to hate it because the concept of a haunted Ikea was so balls-to-the-wall, I couldn't imagine it being anything but a gimmick. But after the great time I had with that book, even upon recent re-read, I decided to give Hendrix' latest release a try. What I got was a combination of his familiar lighthearted wit and horror-comedy, but combined with a far more mature and emotional family story at the core, into what I feel is his best release to date. How to Sell a Haunted House follows estranged siblings Mark and Louise, forced to return to their family-home in Charleston after the sudden and unexpected death of their parents in a car crash. Each with separate and troubled lives of their own, neither of them are excited for a family-reunion. They plan on a quick funeral and selling of the house that holds many mixed memories for the both of them. Upon inspection of the house however, they find even stranger things than the horded remnants of their fathers academic career and their mothers eerie puppet-collection. In order to move on, Mark and Louise must confront a haunting that has shaped their lives and childhoods forever. "How've you ignored it for so long?" Louise asked. "It's what we do" Mark said. "Our whole family functions on secrets". A book this rife with classic horror-tropes (and subversions of them!) calls for a classic-comp-title. For me, this is a perfect marriage of the creepy-puppet-horror-comedy elements of Chucky, the spooky house of The Conjuring, and the slightest hint of the emotionally mature family-dynamics, trauma and grief of The Haunting of Hill House (the Netflix Adaptation). The latter can even be seen in the structure of the novel itself, following the classic Kübler-Ross stages of grief, just like the Netflix-series. This combo might not sound like it would work, but Hendrix pulls it off perfectly. Don’t expect something too profound here: despite the deeper layer real-life horrors like childhood trauma, parenthood, grief and the impermanence of life, this is primarily book that delights in its own campiness. If you’re in the mood for a fast-paced and fun take on the golden haunted-house-trope that mixes an adorably dysfunctional set of protagonists with supernatural spooks a bit on the silly side; this one is for you. "Mothering, manipulation - sometimes there wasn't a difference. She'd learned that from her mum." Campy horror tends not to be my cup of tea, but there’s the occasional exception that I really enjoy. How to Sell a Haunted House was that exception for me. I had an unexpected amount of fun, and would absolutely recommend it. Find this book on Goodreads.

Suspiciously Specific is a new bi-weekly series of assorted book recommendations, inspired by the subreddit by the same name, as well as a short video-series by BooksandLala on Youtube. In short-form, I’ll recommend ten books across genres, that happen to have something very specific in common. Whether it be a very niche trope, a cover-trend, or a theme that is só specific you’re surprised there’s more than one book that includes it. Requests for a list are always welcome if you happen to have a specific trope you love, but think is too niche to find recommendations for. Most of us will think of poltergeists and scares in the night when the subject of ghosts comes up. Personally, I’ve always imagined a haunting to be a little more like the ones in the books on this lists. These ghosts don’t haunt, taunt or scare. Instead they lament and linger; melancholically ruminating about times gone by and making sure the living don’t forget. An alternative way to describe this very specific brand of ghosts is just “my favourite kind of ghosts”, as it’s a personal bookish catnip for me. These eleven books and a bonus entry (because I couldn’t pick) haunt me in the best way, without keeping me up at night. I hope they will do the same for you. 1. Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour Genre: magical realism One-line synopsis: Having aged out of the foster system, an 18- year old girl takes on a live-in teaching job at an isolated farm on the North Californian Coast. During the daytime she finds connection and friendship in her colleagues and the foster children she tutors, yet during the night the lingering sea mist is filled with ghosts. Ghosts of Mila’s past, and that of the others, that won’t let her leave her past trauma behind. Why it’s haunting: the ghosts that roam these farmlands don’t even interact with our protagonists throughout most of this story; instead they live out their own repetitive patterns and movements, unaware of the effects they have on the living. They are memories, trauma’s, desires and reminders of things to never forget. In that way that only Lacour can, these ghosts left me in tears, but also strangely comforted, rather than scared. 2. We Speak in Storms by Natalie Lund Genre: magical realism, contemporary One-line synopsis: The small town of Mercer, Illinois is plagued by rumours of ghosts and storm-spirits ever since a tornado destroyed the lives of a whole generation over 50 years ago. When a new tornado touches down in the exact same spot once again, three teens find these rumours might be more than that. A ghost of sorts subtly infiltrates each of their lives, and in the end, they find that might not be such a bad thing. Why it’s haunting: the ghosts that Callie, Josh and Brenna encounter aren’t out to scare or harass them. Instead, they’re here to help. Each of the teens is struggling with a big event in their lives; one they feel utterly alone in. In their interaction and research of the ghosts that haunt them, they find not only friendship in each other, but that (even separated by time) you are never alone in an experience. 3. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel Genre: literary fiction One-line synopsis: this phenomenally woven literary story interlinks the two seemingly unrelated events - a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea – and traces the lives of the key players back to a single day at an isolated hotel on Vancouver Island years ago. Why it’s haunting: the ghosts in The Glass Hotel are both literal as well as metaphorical. They are memories for some, glimpses of a counterlife (a life not lived) for others. At times they are even the characters themselves; feeling like “ghosts of their formers selves” after a life-altering event. 4. Ghost Music by An Yu Genre: literary fiction/magical realism One-line synopsis: Ghost Music tells the story of young Chinese woman desperately trying to fit into the mould of the perfect spouse and future mother, yet experiencing the dissonance of that mould mismatching her own dreams. When a delivery of mushrooms from an unknown sender arrives on her doorstep and triggers a strange sort of haunting, it sets her off on a surreal journey. A literal one through the streets of Beijing, and a psychological one past the hopes and dreams she gave up on. Why it’s haunting: similar to the ghosts in The Glass Hotel, this one represents a very specific type of grief; the grief over a life not lived, chances not taken and the idea we can be haunted by a future that will never be. It’s a brilliantly written story that may seem surreal and strange on the surface, but offers a lot of depth and heart if you’re willing to stick with it. 5. Me: Moth by Amber McBride Genre: magical realism, novel in verse One-line synopsis: this novel in verse is part coming of age-, part ghost- story about two grieving teens who embark on road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors. Why it’s haunting: without spoiling such a short book, ghosts are everywhere in Me: Moth. Both our protagonists are “haunted” in a way; Sani by the grips of his clinical depression, and Moth by the recent loss and trauma of losing her parents in a car accident. Packed to the brim with elements of Native American folklore and symbolism, this one will also haunt your mind long after you’ve finished it. 6. Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejide Genre: magical realism One-line synopsis: Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington DC, ferrying ill-fated passengers in a haunted car: a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Why it’s haunting: The ghosts in Nephtyhys’ trunk isn’t the only lingering spirit in here. I’ll quote the books backflap, as it perfectly summarizes why this is such a haunting read: Creatures of Passage beautifully threads together the stories of Nephthys, Dash, and others both living and dead. Morowa Yejidé's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim themselves. 7. The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan Genre: magical realism One-line synopsis: following the sudden and unexpected death of her mother, 17-year old Leigh becomes convinced that her mother has turned into a bird. Determined to chase and find that bird, half Asian-half white Leigh travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. All along the way she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. Why it’s haunting: Leigh’s ghostly encounters are different from any other upon this list. They’re often tactile, sensory and filled with color and feeling rather than just a visual picture of a person. These experiences help Leigh not only process the grief over her mother, but also connect to the family-history she never knew about. 8. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon Genre: literary horror/dystopian One-line synopsis: Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. Yet even in the forest, Vern cannot escape her past. Hunted by the cult she’s escaped, haunted by visions she cannot explain, and , her body wracked by uncanny changes, Vern must face the past to protect herself and her small family. Why it’s haunting: Sorrowland is probably my least favourite novel out of all of these, as it tries to do too many great things with the hauntings, and cancels itself out at times. The hauntings, both the physical and mental ones, are manifestations of Verns trauma, both personal, generational and institutional. Although they are at times frightening, Vern regards them with mostly sorrow and a powerful will to overcome what has happened to her that dominated this novel. 9. Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger Genre: magical realism, middle-grade/YA One-line synopsis: Elatsoe tells the story of a Lipan Apache teen, who lives in an America quite similar to our own. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. When Ellie’s beloved cousin becomes the victim in a horrible crime, she sets off on a journey for answers, using her well-honed inherited skill of raising ghosts. Why it’s haunting: Strangely enough, the haunting part of this novel is the reality of it, not the ghosts. Darcie Little Badger creates a fantastic world that uses elements of magical realism to bring light to (in more ways than one) heavy topic such as racial violence, bigotry and grief. The ghosts, especially Ellie’s ghost-dog companion, add an element of whimsy, comfort and love to balance out this novel in an unexpected way. 10. Come With me by Ronald Malfi Genre: horror One-line synopsis: Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife Allison is killed. Haunted by her absence--and her ghost--Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death. Why it’s haunting: although this is a horror novel, the ghosts isn’t the source of the scares here. Allison’s spirit assists Aaron in his search for answers, and helps him ease into the realization that she’s really gone forever. On top of being an excellent murder-mystery-horror novel, this is one of the best and most heartfelt portrayals of grief I’ve seen in horror yet. 11. The Curse on Spectacle Key by Chantel Acevedo Genre: middle-grade mystery One-line synopsis: A sweetly spooky ghost story about a Cuban American boy who befriends a pair of spirits and tries to break the curse on his island home . . . only to discover a seemingly lost piece of his family's history in the process. Why it’s haunting: I had to include at least one middle-grade story on this list, and what better book to take that place than one that starts out with a boy discovering his new home is haunted by a crying ghost amongst others. After being initially scared, Frank soon learns that the ghosts that haunt Spectacle Key aren’t out to hurt them. When he finds that some of them are sad, lost or troubled themselves, Frank doesn’t hesitate to offer his help. Bonus-entry: my current read that I’m hoping to add to this list as soon as it releases/I’ve finished the ARC. 12. The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer Genre: literary fiction One-line synopsis: Folktales and spirits animate this lively coming-of-age tale of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn grappling with their mother’s illness, their father's infidelity, and the truth of their family’s past. Why it’s haunting: I’m not quite sure yet, as I’m only a few pages in, but I’m feeling a beautiful family story, haunted by memories of its past.

For many people, the month of February is the month of romance and new love, but for me personally it has always had another connotation entirely. To me, February is about a different side of love; the side of grief, missing and cherishing the memory of something you loved. A big chunk of my family’s losses cluster between Christmas and the first half of February, so the anniversary of my mums death as the last in line functions as a memorial date for all of those for us. In honour of this personal association and mindset, both Suspiciously Specifics of this month cover a specific grief-trope I love. Starting off with grief and the ocean. You have probably heard the saying “grief comes in waves” before, and maybe that’s where the literary connection between grief and the ocean was born. It could just as well be related to the nature of the ocean itself: vastly deep, uncontrollable and drowning, yet also uniquely beautiful and enticing. All these aspects and more are bound within these 10 (kind of 11) books, that all share that specific theme. 1. The Gracekeepers & The Gloaming – Kirsty Logan Genre: magical realism One-line synopsis: set in a waterlogged world flooded by the ocean, we follow two protagonists; Callanish who makes a living as a Gracekeeper, administering shoreside burials to the local islanders, and North; a circus performer with floating troupe of acrobats, clowns and dancers who sail from one archipelago to the next, entertaining in exchange for sustenance. A beautiful friendship blossoms when their stories intersect. The Gloaming follows the life of an unorthodox family of five on one of these islands in the wake of a tragedy that changed their lives forever. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: Kirsty Logan and I have a similar fascination with the ocean, and it shows in her works each and every time. Both these novels share a spot as they’re technically a very loosely connected duology. TW: degenerative illness. 2. Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield Genre: literary horror One-line synopsis: Miri spends months grieving the loss of her wife, after a deep-sea mission ended in catastrophe. When the presumed lost submarine unexpectedly re-emerges with its crew alive, Miri soon finds the wife she got back isn’t quite the same as when she left. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: body horror 3. The Last True Poets of the Sea – Julia Drake Genre: Young Adult Contemporary One-line synopsis: 16-year old Violet spends her summer researching her family history involving family-curses, shipwrecks and coastal tragedies to keep her mind of the recent loss of her brother. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: mention of suicide. One of the most underrated YA-novels on the subject I’ve read. 4. Migrations – Charlotte McConaghy Genre: literary fiction One-line synopsis: A young woman carrying the weight of her past on her shoulders leaves behind everything but her research gear, arriving in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration across the ocean to Antarctica. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: although Franny’s icy ocean journey is one of my all-time favourite novels, it’s a raw depiction of grief and trauma. TW: (sexual)violence, thoughts of suicide. 5. The Thing About Jellyfish – Ali Benjamin Genre: middle grade contemporary One-line synopsis: After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting. She sets out on a research-journey of her own in order to confirm her theory. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: for readers ca 8 and up. 6. August Isle – Ali Standish Genre: middle grade contemporary One-line synopsis: a young girl uncovers family secrets when she visits the island town of August Isle, Florida, where her mother used to spend her vacations when she was a child. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: for readers ca 10 and up. 7. Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea – Ashley Herring Blake Genre: middle-grade/young adult contemporary One-line synopsis: A novel about a girl navigating grief, trauma, and friendship as she explores the local legend of the mermaid that is said to haunt the ocean near their coastal town in Maine. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: for readers ca 10 and up. 8. The Hollow Sea – Annie Kirby Genre: literary fiction, magical realism One-line synopsis: When Scottie realises that she may never become a mother, she embarks on a journey to the North Atlantic archipelago of St Hia, chasing ghosts, folklore and answers about her own past in this beautiful meditation on motherhood in all its different forms. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: loss of child/miscarriage 9. Tides – Sarah Freeman Genre: literary fiction One-line synopsis: After a devastating loss, Mara flees her old life ends up adrift in a wealthy seaside town, working through her experience by self-imposed isolation and nightly ocean swims. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: TW: loss of child/still-birth/miscarriage. 10. Sea Bean – Sally Huband Genre: literary fiction One-line synopsis: When pregnancy triggers a chronic illness and forces her to slow down, Sally takes on a journey of beach-combing and self-healing, finding structure in her search for the titular sea-beans: beached seedlings from tropical vines, drifted across the Atlantic to the shores of Western Europe. Editor’s note and trigger warnings: please note this is a 2023 release, that has yet to be officially released. My opinions are based on the ARC provided by the publisher. For its beautiful depiction of a different kind of grief (grief over loss of health), it deserved a spot on this list however. Slight spoilers for Suspiciously Specific #4: in this entry we'll cover 10 non-horror books, about melancholic ghosts.

Genre: Sci-fi Published: Prometheus, October 2022 My Rating: 2/5 stars As a Dutchy myself, who reads and writes almost exclusively in English from the age of 13, I knew I had to read this book as soon as I heard about it. Natural Law is a sci-fi/dystopian epos, written in English by Dutch author Solomonica de Winter, to be published on the Dutch/Belgian market. Not only am I very excited to see multi-lingual reading becoming more and more popular amongst young adults, I also feel the author deserves a lot of praise for this feat of writing in her second language, regardless of the quality of the book itself. Unfortunately, the book itself didn’t work for me, and I ended up DNF-ing it around the 65%-mark. The story follows Gaia, a 17-year old lone-survivor, outcast and the last “mutant” of her kind in a post-apocalyptic New America. In a dystopian wasteland where the written world is outlawed, Gaia embarks on a quest to find the last written text in existence, all the while outrunning different adversaries who would like to see her dead. Whilst the set-up and concept are interesting, the story failed me in terms of execution. The story feels very similar to early 2010-dystopia’s like The Hunger Games, so much so that it lacks a little identity of its own. Additionally, the quick jumps in time and place in the narrative quickly become disjointed and disorienting, and make for a frankly unpleasant reading-experience. My biggest problem with the novel unfortunately lies in the writingstyle. Although I commend the author for her grasp of a second language, the writingstyle was absolutely grating and borderline unreadable. De Winter writes in an unnaturally overwritten, almost biblical tone, that often feels like the original text was put through a thesaurus. I can’t quite tell if this was deliberate or not, but regardless, it made this book a chore to read. Overall: two stars and a massive compliment to a Dutch publisher and young author branching out into a different language then their own. As a standalone novel however, this would’ve been closer to a 1-star book for me. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Speculative horror Published: Zando Projects, March 2023 My Rating: 3/5 stars "He wasn’t Monstrilio anymore, but he wasn’t Santiago either. Santiago was dead. There was solace in keeping his memory unchanged. He was a place to visit, like a book reread.” Frankenstein in Baghdad meets Samanta Schweblin in this unsettling speculative horror novel by debut Mexican author Sámano Córdova. Driven by the maddening grief over losing her eleven-year-old son, a mother cuts out a piece of his lung and keeps it in a jar. Inspired by a strange folktale and the desire to keep a piece of her son alive with her, she feeds and nurtures the lung until it grows into a little sentient creature she names Monstrilio. As this little monster grows and transforms, and begins to shape the lives of the people around it, Monstrilio kicks up questions of love, loss and the darker side of both of those things. Monstrilio was a story in two parts for me. It starts off as a deeply powerful narrative about a mothers desperate grief over the loss of her child. This first half of the novel was absolutely brilliant to me, and everything I’d hoped the novel would offer based on the synopsis. We see the fallout of Santiago’s death reflecting onto the people closest to him; his parents Magos and Joseph, their best friend Lena and uncle Luke, all coping in different (often times clashing) ways, and changing as a result. It’s a raw and unflinching depiction of a grieving family unit, but a beautifully executed one, and I loved the part the monstrous little Monstrilio played in the metaphor here. We witness Monstrilio (or M, as he comes to call himself) grow and transform throughout the story, passing more and more for human as he ages. It’s at about the halfway mark, where M becomes a teenager, that the story switches gears. Monstrilio transforms from a destructive little grief-creature, into a queer teen, exploring his sexual identity and the “hunger” he feels deep inside him. This includes quite a few instances of exploring kinks (with ánd without consent from partners). Personally, I was a little caught of guard by this, as nothing about the synopsis or previous content of the book had prepared me for this. In essence, my mixed feelings about this book boil down to the mismatch between these two parts. I feel like both narratives work well. The tropes of the grief-monster ánd the queer-monster have both been explored before, and I happen to love both of them. Monstrilio just demonstrated that having them mashed together in this way, created a feeling of mismatch for me. It felt like the author was mixing their metaphors, therefore losing the strength of both of them along the way. It likely boils down to personal taste; I wanted to read the story of the grieving parents and the grief-monster. I wanted to read the story of the boy feeling like a monster for his desires and inability to meet his parents’ expectations for him. I just didn’t quite feel like the two were linked seamlessly enough in Monstrilio. Many thanks to Zando and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: sci-fi Published: Orenda Books, January 2023 My Rating: 3.5/5 stars "Their worldviews were so completely alien. How can we ever hope to bridge that divide between utterly different minds?" One ordinary afternoon on the Edinburgh beach, a display of lights in the sky, the stranding of a mysterious squid and a series of unexplained strokes suffered by bystanders connect the lives of our three protagonists. Lennox is a teenage boy struggling with his identity and feeling like he doesn’t belong. Ava is heavily pregnant and on the run from an abusive relationship, in search of a new place to call home. Heather has lost all hope of ever finding that feeling of home again, after losing her daughter to cancer, and now suffering a terminal diagnosis herself as well. What follows is a thought provoking character-driven first-contact sci-fi novel that explores themes of connection, loneliness and language in the face of meeting a life-form who’s understanding of those things is completely alien from our own. What I liked: The Space Between Us reminded me of one of my favourite sci-fi movies Arrival, and although I don’t think it’s quite as brilliant as that movie, I still really appreciated what it did. The story shines in its portrayal of these three protagonists, and the interweaving of their storylines. There’s a deep sense of loneliness to all of them at the start, and their journey of connection to each other, themselves and the humans around them is a wonderful one to witness. Ironically wonderful, as it took an alien visitor to begin with. Without spoiling any of their story- and character-arcs, Heather, Ava and Lennox were all well-rounded and memorable character, and I enjoyed their arcs equally. Speaking off the alien visitor: “Sandy”, as they call, is one of my favourite types of literary alien. The closest comparison, again, is the Arrival-aliens; sentient enough to communicate, but so completely alien that their comprehension of some concepts is so different from our human ones. In this case, those concepts being “connection”, rather than time in the case of Arrival-. The implications that has on communication, understanding and even the way we view ourselves is wonderfully explored here. What I didn’t like: When it comes to sci-fi, I’m very good at suspending my disbelieve. Squid-aliens touching down on earth? Sure. Telepathic communication? Hell yeah. However, when it comes the realistic elements within a sci-fi novel, I want them to actually be rooted in reality. For that reason I was immediately annoyed with the first few chapters of this novel, especially with the ridiculous depiction of the hospital-scenes. Since it’s mentioned in the synopsis, and happens in the first few chapters, I don’t consider this a spoiler; the inciting incident involves our protagonists suffering a simultaneous, unexplained stroke and waking up within the hospital afterwards. What follows is a scene in which they’re all in a multi-patient open room, having woken up not 5 minutes earlier, only for a doctor (read: walking-plot-vehicle-of-exposition) to walk in and explain in detail what happened. This involves exposing patient-sensitive medical info to other patients (hello HIPAA violations!!), discharging patients mere minutes after suffering massive strokes and potential brain-damage, and quite a few medical inaccuracies that can’t be explained by “magic-alien-stroke”. The entire sequence reads incredibly amateurish on an exposition level, and feels written by someone who has never experienced a hospitalization themselves. As a chronically ill, cancer-survivor and MD: this stuff bothers me personally more than it might most. The second element to knock of a star involves a spoiler; namely the inclusion of a trope that I personally detest. SPOILERS AHEAD. On multiple occasions, the book pulls the “magical healing” trope that I hate. I could overlook it in the case of the alien-induced stroke, but I was not okay with the “twist” at the end where Sandy magically removes Heathers tumor and cures her cancer. From a disability-standpoint, ánd that of a cancer-survivor; this trope has always been a slap in my face. If you chose to make cancer a part of your story, you have to commit to it. There are no magical cures, ánd I strongly resent the idea that the only way to write a fulfilling ARC about illness is to cure it. Usually, this trope is a deal-breaker for me. Considering it came so late in the book and I already enjoyed the rest of it so much, it’s surprising that it didn’t impact my experience more. As a testament to how good the rest of the story was, I will still recommend it as a first-contact sci-fi novel, for those in the market for it. On the level of disability-representation, for which some of you know me, it’s a no for me. Many thanks to Orenda Books and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Find this book on Goodreads.

Suspiciously Specific is a new bi-weekly series of assorted book recommendations, inspired by the subreddit by the same name, as well as a short video-series by BooksandLala on Youtube. In short-form, I’ll recommend ten books across genres, that happen to have something very specific in common. Whether it be a very niche trope, a cover-trend, or a theme that is só specific you’re surprised there’s more than one book that includes it. Requests for a list are always welcome if you happen to have a specific trope you love, but think is too niche to find recommendations for. A flutter of wings in the shadows… The reflection of a false eye in dark… Blink and you’ll miss these tiny creatures of the night, yet they are everywhere between the page of these novels. In literature, moths often are associated with darkness, endings, death and decay, whereas their day-time brothers the butterflies represent the power of change and transformation. It won’t come as a surprise to find these themes present in the following ten books. All of them are shadowy, illustrious and gloomy, making them perfect for the darker days of January. 1. Me (Moth) by Amber McBride genre: novel in verse, magical realism one-line synopsis: a novel in verse that is part coming of age-, part ghost- story about two grieving teens who embark on road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors. the significance of the moth: Aside from the name of our main character, Me (Moth) has many references to native American folklore speckled throughout, in which the Moth is a symbol of a deceased soul roaming the earth. Moths speak to our protagonists grief over the loss of her parents, and play a poetic and gut-punching and powerful role in the progression of this story. 2. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell genre: literary fiction, contemporary one-line synopsis: a profound, impactful and nuanced novel that explores the fallout of the relationship and grooming of a 15-year old girl, by her manipulative teacher 46- years her senior. Told from the dual timeline of the victim then, and in hindsight as an adult with what she knows now. the significance of the moth: apart from the prominent appearance on the cover, the butterfly in this novel only plays a small role, but represents fragility, as well as transformation and coming of age. 3. Moths by Jane Hennigan genre: dystopian one-line synopsis: a dystopian thriller, set in a world where women hold all the power after a moth-carried pathogen has affected all the men; turning them crazed and murderous, or killing them outright. the significance of the moth: the moths here are very literal, present as the carriers of the toxin that changed the world and affects all the men in society. 4. The Alchemy of Letting Go by Amber Morrell genre: middlegrade magical realism one-line synopsis: a twelve-year-old girl discovers she may have magical powers, and starts to explore the line between science and magic, and life and death, as neither are as solid as she thought they once were. the significance of the moth: our protagonists has an obsession with lepidoptery (the science of butterflies and moths), ever since the death of her sister who was an aspiring entomologist. 5. Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore genre: magical realism one-line synopsis: Two non-binary, neurodivergent teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake, as they try to keep their heads above water navigating family, acceptance, love and the feeling of displacement that comes with their identities. the significance of the moth: water-moths flutter from the lake on multiple occasion, representing the blurring of the lines between our world, and the one under the surface. 6. Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor Genre: fantasy One-line synopsis: young, introverted scholar Lazlo has received nothing but ridicule from his peers over his fascination with the mythic lost city of Weep, thought to have existed one, but having been lost to time almost two centuries now. Everything changes as Lazlo is offered the opportunity of a lifetime; to join an expedition to uncover the lost city, as one of the few experts on its history and lore. What follows is an adventure of mythical and godlike proportion. The significance of the moth: one of our protagonists has the magical power to transform/scream into existence, a cloud of moths, infiltrating the dreams of others. 7. Wildwood Whispers by Willa Reece Genre: magical realism One-line synopsis: a bittersweet story of hope, fate, and folk magic about a young woman who travels to a sleepy southern town in the Appalachian Mountains to bury her best friend, and finds healing within the nature that surrounds her. The significance of the moth: moths and fireflies feature often within the Wildwoods, both signifying Mel’s newfound connection to the earthy and nature, as well as her transformation in healing from trauma. 8. The Language of Moths by Christopher Barzak genre: magical realism, novella one-line synopsis: a coming of age story about love, grief and neurodivergence, in which a boy learns his autistic sister can communicate with the mysterious moth-species their entomologist father is there to study. the significance of the moth: the search for this moth sets the family on a trip to the Allegheny Mountains, creating the inciting incident for the story. 9. The Moth Girl – Heather Kamins genre: magical realism one-line synopsis: a teenage girl finds her world (literally) turned upside down, as she’s struck by a chronic, disabling illness. the significance of the moth: in this case, the moth-thing is a clear metaphor for the protagonists chronic illness and how it leaves her literally floating, losing her firm grasp on the world. It’s a powerful metaphor that many who’ve struggled with disability or chronic illness will be able to relate to. 10. Moths: An Evolution Story by Isabel Thomas Genre: childrens nonfiction, picture book One-line synopsis: A clever picture book about the extraordinary way in which animals have evolved, intertwined with the complication of human intervention, through the observant eyes of a moth. The significance of the moth: the moth here has a double role. It’s our literal “fly on the wall”-observer of change, as well as the change itself, embodying evolution and adapting to the world around you.

Genre: Magical Realism, Science fiction, Grief Published: Zephyr, March 2023 My Rating: 5/5 stars, potential new favourite "In the zone, things are preserves. In the slow places, decay can be delayed. Night comes later. Back in normal time, everything readjusts to the correct now. Her smell had disappeared. All I had was the memory." The honour of my first 5-star of the new year goes to Clara Kumagai’s phenomenal debut, that blends magical realism and sci-fi elements into a haunting tale of grief, family, time and the earthquake that shook a nation. Synopsis: Sora grew up with the legend of the giant catfish that lives under the islands of Japan; a creature of magic and myth responsible for earthquakes and tsunami’s by flicks of its tail. When Sora was eleven, the catfish rolled with an earthquake so powerful it shook time itself. Since then, the hardest-hit areas have fractured into zones, each flowing at a different pace of time. Due to the devastation, as well as the time-anomalies, these zones are off-limits to anyone but a restricted few governmental scientists. Both Sora and her father have been obsessively exploring the zones in secret, each with motives of their own. Her father seeks a scientific answer to the incomprehensible. Sora seeks her mother, who went missing during the Shake, hoping to find her trapped in a different time-zone somewhere. But dwelling in the time-zones isn’t without danger, and when Sora’s dad travels too far, Sora must venture into uncharted territory to bring him back to now. Review: Catfish Rolling is very close to my perfect book. It checks so many of my boxes; an emotionally layered, slowly unfurling story centring grief, change and the progression of time. Elements of folklore, philosophy and science. Generational gaps, family dynamics and a young-adult protagonist navigating desolate and haunted landscapes, mindscapes and combinations of those two. Kumagai juggles this ambitious cocktail of elements with remarkable ease and success. Personally, it was the depiction of grief, and the intersection of grief and time, that resonated with me the most. The way the zones warp time is very similar to the effects that grief can have on our perception- and memory of time. Slowing it down, speeding it up, making entire chunks of it go missing, or trapping characters to get lost in times gone by. On a smaller scale, Sora and her dad lose each other and themselves within them. On a larger scale, we also see the rippling effects the earthquake has had in shaping Japan and its culture as a whole. Some zones seem stuck in time, held back by devastation and holding on to traditions to cope. Other large urban zones shifting into high-gear, speeding away from the past at dazzling speed. Kumagai nails the narrative on each of these levels in a way that only an incredibly skilful author can. Again; my mind is blown that this is a debut! On an “objective reviewers basis”, I highly recommend this book. It’s a wonderfully written, thought provoking piece of speculative magical realism, that combines a post-apocalyptic-exploration mystery with an emotional character journey. You have to be okay with a slower pacing and not expect a flashy, plot heavy sci-fi novel, but if you surrender yourself the currents of this story, you’re in for an absolute treat. On a personal basis, I’m deeply thankful to have encountered this novel. Wandering the desolate landscapes of post-quake-Japan, and experiencing the feelings of curiosity, displacement, liminality and deep longing for a place you can’t return to, touched my heart in a way that few grief-stories have lately. This is going on the favourite-grief-fiction shelf for sure. Many thanks to Zephyr Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Readalikes: The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan (blending Asian mythology and coming of age with a grief-narrative), Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (different genre, but similar in regards to exploring liminal spaces and trauma) You can find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Novel in Verse Published: Feiwel Friends, January 2023 My Rating: 5/5 stars "My point is that a leaf knows it’s important at all moments of its life, even when its broken. People always forget that a rough day, a bad year, doesn’t equal a bad life." I’ve been eagerly anticipating whatever Amber McBride would bring the world after her phenomenal debut Me: Moth, that made a running entrance into my favourite books of 2021 list. Her sophomore release rose to the occasion and brought an experience that felt emotionally and thematically similar Me Moth, but still brought something new to the table. We're All So Good at Smiling is an absolutely brilliant, deeply personal and emotionally resonant novel in verse about two teens dealing with grief, depression, identity and more. Both central characters are haunted by their own personal trauma’s that have shaped their lives and the physical neighbourhood around them. The dark forest at the end of Marsh Creek Lane is filled with suffocating roots and monsters, and the only way to escape it is to travel straight through. I loved the journey Faerry and Whimsy take together and their friendship they form along the way. The author illustrates it best by a single scene that lingers in my mind: Faerry and Whimsy stumbling through the forest, neither one carrying the other out, but leaning on each other. They struggle together and keep each other up, while they save themselves. Even more impressive than her characters is Amber McBrides writing, allegories and metaphors. Despite the heavy subject matter and the depth in which this story dares to explore it, We're All So Good at Smiling manages an undertone of hope, beauty and music in both its language and message. It’s a story that flows and uplifts, especially when listening to the audiobook narrated by the author and interspliced with beautiful music. Because of that, I slightly resent the publishers comp/blurb of "They Both Die at the End meets The Bell Jar". This book isn’t like either of those. It’s not suffocatingly heavy at any moment (which The Bell Jar absolutely can be), nor does it romanticize mental health-issues, or have a deliberately tear-jerking ending like They Both Die at the End. I think this comparison does a huge disservice to the uniqueness of this book, and gives a wrong expectation of the tone and content. We're All So Good at Smiling stands on its own as a powerful achievement of story in verse and deserves to be marketed as such. Amber McBride has another release scheduled for October this year, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting Gone Wolf. This second masterpiece has cemented her as an auto-buy poet for me.

Genre: Literary Fiction Published: Feminist Press 2022, First published January 2001 My Rating: 5/5 stars “This desire grew slowly, stronger and stronger, but it never had any place to escape except for into sorrow. It has caused her to choose neglect. It has refused to be sublimated, but instead reappeared as a fresh green sadness.” Synopsis: We join San in 1970s rural South Korea, a young girl ostracised from her community. She meets a girl called Namae, and they become friends until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of physical intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path of quashed desire and isolation. We next meet San, aged twenty-two, as she starts a job in a flower shop. There, we are introduced to a colourful cast of characters, including the shop's mute owner, the other florist Su-ae, and the customers that include a sexually aggressive businessman and a photographer, who San develops an obsession for. Throughout, San's moment with Namae lingers in the back of her mind. Review: Violets is an absolutely haunting exploration of unmet desires, infatuation, and the fear of being forever unseen and overlooked. This was such a layered experience, filled with motifs of flowers, Greek mythology, language and more, that grew on me with every following page. By the start, I was reading a 3-star novel about an “ordinary girl” experiencing “ordinary things”. By the end I had read a phenomenally crafted masterpiece that will live rent free in my mind for quite some time to come. I’m usually the kind of reader that needs to be able to relate to a main character, for a book to deeply impact me emotionally. With San, that wasn’t quite the case, yet I was still fascinated and invested in her as a character. Contrary to her reserved appearance, San experiences the world with an emotional intensity and contrast that’s seems to live in that phase between your late teens and early twenties. The world is loud and large around her; she is small and overlooked. She wishes to be seen, be captured and leave an imprint on the world, but also feels safe in her invisibility. She want to love; to connect, yet fears nothing more. Shin Kyung-Sook packed so much into this character and story, so much of which felt so current to the time. Ironically so, since this book was written almost 15-years ago. I tried to think of “readalikes” similar to this one. The closest I could come, mostly based on the feeling I got whilst reading it was Ghost Music by An Yu. Both differ quite a bit thematically and tonally, but evoke a similar feeling of sonder. A melancholic smallness, whilst coming of age a large Asian metropolis. Thank you Matthew Sciarappa for championing and recommending this book over and over, leading to me eventually picking it up. You were só right! Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Literary Fiction Published: Riverhead Books 2018, originally pubished as Bieguni in 2007. My Rating: DNF “Move. Get going. Blessed is he who leaves.” You know those books where you love the idea behind them, but deeply dislike the execution, so you end up with this feeling of cognitive dissonance on how you actually feel about the product itself? That’s Flights for me. On paper, this should be a run-away success, and based off the backflap synopsis I was expecting a 5-star read. This novel promises an interlinking narrative with a central theme of travel, movement and flux. Along the way it references mythology, science, and body (particularly paralleling the mapping of the world via cartography with the mapping of the body through by early physicians and anatomists). Obviously, this ticks on my buzzwords: brilliant, I wish I’d have thought of this myself, 5-star prediction. Unfortunately, the problem isn’t the themes; it’s everything else… First things first; is not a novel. It’s not even a novel interspliced with scientific/travel-related interludes. If you want to read that, I recommend Sight by Jessie Greengrass. It's not an interlinked short-story collection in a central world/theme either. If you’re looking for a great example of that, I recommend How High We Go in the Dark by Sequioa Nagamatsu. This is more so a series of vignettes, vaguely circling a central theme, that overall lack the cohesion to form a whole for me. Other reviewers have loved this specific aspect of it as something innovative, and that’s valid. Personally, I found it disjointed, and above all, not the best or first time this kind of narrative was attempted. Because of this disjointed feeling, Flights becomes less than the sum of its parts, rather than more. Character-development is in all the uncoordinated motion, and interesting concepts lack the needed depth, ending up as oversimplified statements like “change will aways be a nobler thing than permanence”. There’s a difference between purposeful/mindful travel and aimless, frantic wandering. This book was the second. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Blue Monday [noun]: Blue Monday is a name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) claimed to be the most depressing day of the year. This year, one of my original tags is making a return. I created this tag to spread a little bookish joy on what many people consider the most depressing, drab day of the year. You all know the concept of a tag, so let’s not make this intro too long. Without further ado, let’s get into the prompts. 1. It’s Monday again… you’re already tired and still have the whole workweek ahead of you. Pick a book or series that was hard to get into, but had a great pay-off in the end. Although I haven’t finished this series yet, so I can’t speak to the ultimate pay-off, The Winnowing Flame trilogy by Jen Williams immediately comes to mind, starting with The Ninth Rain. We’re dropped off into the almost post-apocalyptic setting of the city of Ebora, once the wealthy home of tree-gods, now fallen into derelict after a cataclysmic event. Alongside our three protagonists (an adventurous archaeologist, a charismatic Eborian nobleman fallen from grace and a young outlawed witch) it’s up to us to figure out the mystery of this cataclysmic event, and prevent history from repeating itself. Jen Williams creates a truly original world that is a blend of sci-fi and fantasy, and doesn’t spoon-feed its lore to you. Instead, she trusts the reader to figure things out along the way, alongside her characters. This can make for a bit of a daunting start, where you feel dropped in the deep end without floaties. Once you get swimming however, the story, the mystery and the engaging characters make for one of the best and most underrated fantasy novels I’ve read recently. 2. The weather outside is gray and dark. Pick a book with a dark, grey or gloomy cover, and contrast it with a beautifully coloured one. Since there are too many good options to choose from, I’m picking the two most recent releases on my shelves, both of which I’ve read as ARCS, and both of which I’d recommend. For a dark and gloomy cover, it doesn’t get more gloomy than a skull in the pine-timbers. Say hello to the cover of Briardark by S.A. Harian, a sci-fi horror novel that reads like what would happen if Netflix’s Dark teamed up with Blake Crouch, and wrote a mystery set in Area X from Annihilation…? Intrigued? You should be! Briardark is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat from page one. Our colourful counterpart is We Are All So Good At Smiling by Amber McBride, with its iridescent cover filled with butterflies and flowers. Don’t be fooled though: this book packs equal parts beauty and sadness, following the friendship between two teens, both having suffered the hardships of trauma and depression, finding back the magic and beauty in the world and themselves. 3. Your bank-account is empty after your Christmas spendings. Pick a book you can read right now without, without spending a single penny. Think: a book from your owned-TBR or at your local library. City of Saints and Madmen holds the title of one books to have been on my TBR for the longest, as well as the book I’ve picked up for the lowest price. This book was a lucky thrift-store find, where I paid 3 euro’s for a book by one of my favourite authors that I genuinely wanted to read. Since then, I’m ashamed to say that it’s been sitting on my shelves idly, as I’ve been too intimidated by its size and strangeness to pick it up. I’m hoping to change that soon. City of Saints and Madmen is the start of Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris universe; a collection of new-weird fantasy tales set in the fictional city of Ambergris. It promises to combine philosophy, Lovecraftian horror, changing geometry and hallucinogenic mushrooms in a literary tapestry like none other. I have no idea what any of that means, but by the hands of this author, I’m desperate to find out and report back. 4. Your next vacation seems so far away. Pick a book to take you on a trip to faraway lands, or offer you vacation-vibes. If you’re in the market for “’vacation-vibes”, might I redirect you towards my post on Beach Reads That Aren’t All Romance, or if you fancy a trip around the world, why not browse the books on my list of Mythology Inspired Fiction from Around the World. A special shout out goes to a wholesome book that gives me ultimate vacation-vibes, but also packs an emotional punch: August Isle by Ali Standish. This underrated middle-grade gem tells the story of a young girl making new friends, conquering her fears and confronting family-secrets as she spends her summer vacation at the Floridian island where her mother used to spend her childhood summers decades ago. 5. And above all; your new-year’s resolutions are becoming very hard to stick to. How are you doing on your bookish resolutions so far? Personally I’m doing good on account that I didn’t really make any strict resolutions this year. I set up a 30-book master TBR, from which I’ve already read 5 books, but otherwise I’m winging it this year, and it’s working great for me. 6. Overall: you’re just not feeling your best this Monday… Pick a book that made you cry, but was 100% worth it. These are few and far between for me, so I have to give this to my favourite read of 2022 once more. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer made me cry harder and better than I’ve had in a long time. I’ve talked about this book in depth in my review, my yearly favourites and on many other places, so I’m keeping this short. This fantastic debut literary novel about a woman’s journey with terminal cancer, told from the perspective of herself, her daughter and the sentient voice of her tumor, was something truly special to me. It resonated and impacted me like no other (adult) novel on cancer has ever done before. I understand the subject matter may make this a difficult read for many, but if you’re up for it, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. But… 7. Rainy weather makes for the perfect reading-mood. Show a book you (could) read in one sitting For me, there are two types of books that I can read in a single sitting. My favourite kind is one that’s relatively short and packed to the brim with tension, so it’s impossible to put down midway-through. Recently, that book was What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher for me. As a gothic retelling of the classic Fall of the House of Usher, the unsettling tension and atmosphere are palpable in this one, and despite being familiar with the source material, Kingfisher had me so invested in here adaptation of the characters that I was on the edge of my seat to see their faiths play out. It helps that this book is <200 pages, making it perfectly binge-worthy. If you want to take this prompt the opposite way, and are looking for a cheer-up book to warm you up inside whilst curled up with a blanket, might I recommend Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. Although this wasn’t a new favourite to me in the way it was for many people, I did read it in just 2 sittings and I can see what it did for others. Legends and Lattes is a cozy fantasy novel about an orc barbarian who gives up a life of adventuring in favour of the quiet life and starts a coffee-shop in her local town. It reads like a warm steaming latte in book-form and will make for the perfect book to unwind and cheer you up when down. 8. Spring is already fast approaching. Shout out your most anticipated spring-release for this year. I’m taking March, April and May as my definition of Spring, and these months happen to hold some of my most anticipated releases of the entire year. A full list of those can be found here, but I want to give a shout out to the 3 that I’m most eager for at this moment. First is Assassin of Reality by Marina Dyachenko, the sequel to one of my favourite “weird-dark-academia-fantasy” novels Vita Nostra. This is out in the original Russian already, but the English translation is set for release on March 14th of this year. Second is Sea Bean by Sally Huband; literary fiction where nature writing about the ocean meets themes of disability, body and grief. This ticks all of my boxes, and I’m desperately hoping it delivers. Third and last I’m looking forward to The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter by Soraya Palmer. Compared to the works of Helen Oyeyemi, this book combines folktales and spirit-animals with a coming of age tale of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn grappling with their mother’s illness, their father's infidelity, and the truth of their family’s past. 9. And there’s so much more to life than just money. Share a book that taught you an important lesson This feels like the perfect opportunity to shout out some of my (semi-)recent favourite non-fiction reads. And given my personal brand as a reader, it’d only be fitting to recommend some disability- or grief-related nonfiction. First and foremost, two of my all-time favourite disability memoirs are When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, about a young neuro-surgeons journey following his terminal lungcancer diagnosis, as well as Sitting Pretty by Rebekkah Taussig, about her coming of age, journey towards motherhood and so much more as a wheelchair-bound young-adult. On the topic of grief, might I recommend one of my most recent reads, and probably the first “self-help-ish” book I’ll ever endorse: It’s OK that You’re Not OK by Megan Devine. This book tackles the journey of grief in a society that doesn’t offer the time or space for it in a comprehensive and compassionate way, without ever preaching to the reader. 10. And the upside to a “down-day” is that tomorrow can only be better. Share a book that gives you hope. I’ve blabbered your ears off about my two queens of hope-punk, Emily St. John Mandell and Nina LaCour, so I’m trying to pick a slightly more unexpected answer. Let’s switch gears and talk about the protagonist with the biggest capacity for hope and optimism amidst dire situations: Mark from Andy Weir’s The Martian. This man is literally left for dead on a foreign planet with nothing but his wit, a broken space-rover and a packet of potato seeds and still manages to be the most optimistic and determined character in the universe. Whether you love or hate his snarky humor (I personally adore it!), you cannot help but admire this man’s perseverance in the face of adversity. It’s what makes Mark one of my all-time favourite characters and one I aspire to be like in my own little ways as well. This year I don’t want to pressure anyone in particular by tagging them personally. Instead, if you’re a bookish-creator and would like to spread some joy today for yourself, consider yourself tagged. Whether you decide to answer these questions for yourself, remember: better days are coming. Hang in there, and happy reading.

Genre: modern poetry Published: Atmostphere Press, February 2023 My Rating: 3/5 stars “I am haunted, by the ghost of the future I wanted” Corpse Beneath the Crocus is N.N. Nelsons debut collection of modern poetry, written as an exorcism of her own grief after the death of her husband in 2018. It grapples with the topic of grief; from how it manifests in mundane and daily details, to the greater ripples it sends through all of our lives. As such it feels like a very personal collection to the author, which always makes it difficult to review it as an outsider. When it comes to poetry, more so than any other genre, I look for a combination of the beauty of the text in itself, as well as an emotional connection to it. This collection, as is often the case with modern poetry for me, was a mixed bag of that. What I loved in particular was the scope of grief it describes; from the sometimes unbearable weight of trying to fathom concepts like “never”, to the small losses, like an indent on a mattress when the person who left it is gone. My two favourite poems were Marionette and September 27th, which I think captured that beautifully. What brought the collection down a bit, was that it poses relatable feelings and experiences, but never words them in a way that I haven’t seen or thought before. Therefore, although I enjoyed my time with it, I didn’t feel like I gained anything from this collection after finishing it. I’ve also come to realize that I personally don’t enjoy swearing and expletives in my (modern) poetry. I’m not opposed to swearing; I do it quite a lot in day-to-day-life and don’t mind an occasional swearword in my fiction to emphasize strong emotion, but I’m noticing that lines like; “ No luck, fuck, this shit can suck my metaphysical dick and nuts.” feel out of place and unintentionally laughable to me in my poetry. Many thanks to Atmosphere Press and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Cozy Fantasy Published: Tor, November 2022 originally self-published by the author, February 2022 My Rating: 3/5 stars I feel like I’m one out of 6 other people in the world who hasn’t given this book 5 stars, and in doing so I might as well tattoo “I hate fun” on my forehead. I understand the appeal and I’m cheering on the genre of cozy fantasy as much as anybody else. Yet low stakes in high fantasy does not mean a low bar for a successful story. What I liked: The concept of Legends and Lattes is cozy fantasy in its purest form. If you’ve ever wondered what your Dungeons and Dragons characters are doing in their down-time between adventuring; this book offers a little glimpse into that reality. Viv is an Orc Barbarian who, after a final brutal quest, finds she has had enough of her warriors life. With the pocketed bounty of her final raid and settles down in the town of Thune to pursue her secret dream; opening a coffee-shop. From there, we follow her new low-stakes life, where adventure-maps are replaced by chalk-board menu’ and the biggest quest is for an oven large enough to bake enough cinnamon rolls. Along the way, Viv gathers a posse of delightful characters to help her run her shop, from a sapphic succubus-barista to a rat with an extraordinary talent for baking (make sure that Pixar doesn’t come for that copy-right there, Travis!). As a concept, especially for a short palette-cleanser for high fantasy readers, I think it’s great. The execution was just so, so basic. What I didn’t like: This book was just okay; it doesn’t do anything wrong, but doesn’t quite nail any of its elements either. The plot is virtually non-existent; we see Viv going through her days, adjusting the menu (which I didn’t’ need repeated to me each and every chapter…) and coming up with new inventions to improve shop (think the fantasy-version of a gnomisch-espresso-machine or a ceiling fan). Although I was expecting low stakes, I was expecting some element of story, and therefore conflict of some kind. We get none: every challenge Viv faces is overcome with way too much ease there is no discernable arc or tension and the “message” behind it is wafer-thin. Because of that, any character-development feels unearned. The characters themselves feel very shallow, having their main characteristic being their fantasy-race and the fact that they’re “nice-despite-looking-tough”. Their interactions remain very superficial and loyalties are never tested. The title of “found-family” doesn’t feel earned to me, as the book doesn’t succeed to establish that level of connection between these characters; there’s basic co-worker interaction, and then a romance falls out of thin air. I really need more on-page chemistry or supporting each other through challenges to call something a found fantasy. Finally, I want to address this books origins as a self-published NaNoWriMo project. One of the biggest traps of writing on a system of words-per-day is creating very many words and very little story. This clearly happened here too. Loads of elaborate descriptions of mundane events, repetitive sentences and passages that could’ve been cut without losing any content. I’m rooting for the authors success, but I do feel an extra round of editing, maybe even to short-story length, would’ve made his writing a lot better. Overall: a nice palette cleanser as a “side-quest” to break your high-fantasy journey, but don’t expect anything more than that. I had a fun time but this live up to the 5-star hype for me.

Genre: Non-fiction, grief Published: Sounds True, October 2017 My Rating: 4.5/5 stars “For those who are living the stuff of other people’s nightmares” – author's dedication As a vocal sceptic with a history of disliking any self-help book I pick up, I was very hesitant when I saw that tag attached to this book at my library. I still gave it a chance and I’m deeply thankful I did. This was one of the best, shall we call it “self-help-ish”, non-fiction books about grief I’ve read. Megan Devine approaches this topic from two sides; being a professional therapist and grief-counselor, as well as having experiences the deep grief and trauma of witnessing the accidental death of her partner. From this dual-perspective she paints a well-rounded picture of the different realities of grief; the grief she felt as well as the grief she’s witnessed with clients. From there, she offers a compassionate and approachable guide to thoughts and actions that might help you in your journey. Emphasis on might, as this book makes sure not to preach or offer a “quick solution” to your grief, and actually makes a strong stance against that mentality in general. This book excels in two fronts: First it offers a compassionate and accepting view towards grief that is so often lost in our modern society. As it says in the title: “it’s okay that you’re not okay”. Grief, in our western culture, too often is seen as something to overcome. As quickly as possible, as quietly as possible, and preferably coming out the other way as a happier and more fulfilled person. Megan Devine addresses this societal norm that offers no time, space or understanding for grief, and the way that norm is present in the day-to-day lives of someone dealing with a loss. From media-portrayal, to work-place regulations around allowed leave-of-absence after the passing of a loved one, to the way we inadvertently phrase our condolences and consolidations. The book ten sheds light on all the ways in which this approach to grief is counter-productive and often does more harm than good to the grieving person. Secondly, it offers practical tips and advice on how to handle the situations that arise from this. This is where the “self-help-part” comes in, as it offers concrete tips on how to navigate everyday-life without trying to fix your grief, and place in perspective some of the unhelpful or even stupid rhetoric you will encounter from other people. This part was perhaps the most helpful to me personally. Going through my own experiences with multiple dimensions of grief, I’ve heard almost every well-meant but unhelpful, offensive, and out-of-touch remark. In my worst days, they made me feel like I was broken, alone or “failing at working through my grief”. Seeing Megan Devine writing these misconceptions out and breaking them down so succinctly was powerful today, but would’ve made a world of difference had I had this book at the time. I hope and expect this book will do that for others in similar situations. Overall, I will be adding this book to my short-list of grief-non-fiction to recommend. If you’re looking for a concise, insightful, mindful and compassionate book to help you on your next step in your grief-journey; look no further. Find this book hear on Goodreads.

Suspiciously Specific is a new bi-weekly series of assorted book recommendations, inspired by the subreddit by the same name, as well as a short video-series by BooksandLala on Youtube. In short-form, I’ll recommend ten books across genres, that happen to have something very specific in common. Whether it be a very niche trope, a cover-trend, or a theme that is só specific you’re surprised there’s more than one book that includes it. Requests for a list are always welcome if you happen to have a specific trope you love, but think is too niche to find recommendations for. Whether wielding pointy hats, wands or simply the power of their own independence, witchy women have appeared everywhere in fiction these past years. When updating my Ultimate Guide to Witch Fiction around Halloween this year, one type of witch stuck out as particularly prevalent however: the feminist witch. Themes of feminism and female oppression have of course historically been intertwined throughout the medieval witch-trials and demonisation of independent women, so the connection makes sense. Yet it still felt like such a specific subgenre to host só many novels being published within the span of 5 years… almost suspiciously specific. That’s where the idea or this series was born, so the only way to do it justice is to kick it off with a list surrounding this theme. Here are 10 tales centring women ceasing their independence and power, and one in which (queer)men embody the same ideals, as I’m a firm believer that feminism isn’t just for women, but for everybody. 1. The Once and Future Witches – Alix E. Harrow Genre: historical fantasy One-line Synopsis: the late 1800’s suffragist-movement meets witchcraft, magick and paganism. Although this book wasn’t a personal favourite for me, it couldn’t be more perfect for this highly specific theme. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: suffragettes, witches, New Salem. TW: ableism (challenged on page), animal suffering/death, sexual assault, transphobia (challenged on page) 2. The Year of the Witching – Alexis Henderson Genre: historical horror One-line Synopsis: A young woman living in a rigid, puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning, feminist fantasy debut. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: racial discrimination, religion, reads like The Witch or The Village. TW: sexual assault, child abuse (including physical harm), racial slurs. 3. Circe – Madeline Miller Gerne: fantasy One-line Synopsis: one of the most intriguing female side characters, and one of the first literary witches from the Odyssey is given her own voice and story in this retelling of the classic Greek myth. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: Greek mythology retelling, magical island, motherhood. TW: rape. 4. The Bass Rock – Evie Wyld Gerne: historical fiction One-line Synopsis: Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other and to a quest for independence. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: Scotland, coastal setting, modern gothic, toxic masculinity. TW: violence against women and children in many forms, alcoholism. 5. Now She is Witch – Kirsty Logan Genre: fantasy One-line Synopsis: A modern dark fairytale set in a world of violence and beauty in which women grasp at power through witchcraft and poisons, through sexuality and childbearing, through performance and pretence, and most of all through throwing other women to the wolves. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: poisons, folklore/fairytales, queer. TW: physical violence, rape. 6. The Women Could Fly – Megan Gidding Genre: dystopian One-line Synopsis: A dystopian novel about the unbreakable bond between a young woman and her mysterious mother, set in a world in which witches are real and single women are closely monitored. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: race, queer, classism and intersectional feminism in that context. 7. The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave Genre: historical fiction One-line Synopsis: After a storm has killed off all the island's men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: Norway, religion, inspired by true events, queer. TW: sexual assault/rape, domestic abuse, arranged marriage, racism, torture in context of witch-trials. 8. The Queens of Innis Lear – Tessa Gratton Genre: fantasy One-line Synopsis: a coming of age- high fantasy retelling of King Lear in which three magically inclined daughters fight for power, independence and the throne after their prophecy-obsessed mad king has left the lands drained of its wild magic. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: Shakespear retelling, magical island, royalty, wild magic. TW: miscarriage, thoughts of self-harm/suicidal ideations. 9. The Change – Kirsten Miller Genre: supernatural thriller One-line Synopsis: menopause manifests as magical powers in three determined women, who aren’t afraid to use their newfound witchy leverage to right the wrongs that have been done to them and their peers. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: reads like The Witches of Eastwick in bookform. TW: graphic (sexual) violence. 10. Slewfoot – Brom Gerne: horror One-line Synopsis: Part original dark fairytale, part revenge quest; a puritarean thriller featuring demons, witchcraft and a small helping of feminist rights on the side. Keywords and Trigger Warnings: dark arts, revenge, demonic entity/possession, modern fairytale. TW: torture, animal cruelty. 11. Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas Genre: young adult fantasy One-line Synopsis: When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. Keywords: queer, young adult, M-M romance, Latinx, feminism-isn’t-just-about-women.

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Published: Little Brown Book Group, February 2023 My Rating: 3/5 stars Wildblood felt like a book with an identity crisis. On the one hand: we have fantasy-romance against the backdrop of a fun jungle adventure. On the other hand, we have the hint at much deeper themes of eco-tourism, colonialism and abuse of power. Whether you’ll enjoy this novel will largely depend on what you hope to get from it… The Story: Our story takes place in the mystical and dangerous deep-jungles of Jamaica, where rich westerners pay good money to get a taste of the “exotic”, within the safety of a guided tour. The Exotic Lands Touring Company has built an empire on this brand of eco-tourism, meanwhile exploiting the land as well as its people for profit. Victoria is one of their unwilling but ambitious employee’s, as well as a Wildblood; one with the power to manipulate her environment and protect travellers from the dangers of the jungle. When Victoria is passed over for promotion in favour of her ex-boyfriend, she is determined to prove herself. What better way to do so, than to successfully complete the high-profile job of shepherding a famous goldminer safely across the jungle in his next search for treasure. But the jungle is treacherous: between mythical monsters, backstabbing exes, and unexpected romance, Victoria has to decide - is promotion at a corrupt company really what she wants? What I liked: Lauren Blackwood does settings and atmosphere extremely well. She already proved so with the haunted manor-setting in her debut Within These Wicked Walls, but she outdoes herself with the sentient haunted jungle in this book. From the foggy, damp atmosphere to the lush vegetation, to the lurking creatures that inhabit it; I felt myself completely transported to the world she envisioned. I also liked the authors ambition of incorporating some important but complex themes of eco-tourism, colonialism, slavery and abuse of power. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like that came to complete fruition. What I didn’t like: This is where the identity-crisis comes in... Although Wildblood tries to address these themes, it simultaneously reads like your typical young-adult fantasy-romance, more concerned with the soap-opera-level personal drama of its characters, than the larger issues going on around them. The typical tropes of the YA-genre are all there: teenage drama concerning exes and promotions, cringe-worthy insta-love/love-triangles, the trope of our protagonist being the inexplicably “most powerful magic-user of her sort”. The very shallow and basic tropes made for a mismatch to the deeper themes for me; the book simply lacked the page time and depth to do these them justice. Rather, I’d have seen the book commit to its classic-YA roots fully. That way I might have enjoyed it for what it was, and not have been disappointed by missed potential. Speaking of “enjoying things for what they are”; I was irrationally bothered by the fact that the author kept referring to the magic as “science”, even though there’s absolutely nothing scientific about it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the trope of wild/blood magic, but at least call it what it is, instead of selling it as something it’s not?! I recommend this to readers looking for a fun YA-fantasy-romance with a unique tropical setting; you’re in for a good time with this one! If you’re coming at this specifically for the hinted social commentary or looking for anything genre-transcending; you might come away disappointed. Many thanks to Little Brown Book Group UK for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Middle-grade, Magical Realism Published: Albert Whitman & Company, March 2023 Actual Rating: 2.5/5 stars The Alchemy of Letting Go on paper is the exact kind of book that I love to review and recommend. It was sold to me as middle-grade fiction with a relatable portrayal of grief and a 12-year old girl with a strong science-interest in the lead. Grief + STEM + a hint of magic: sign me up! Unfortunately, the execution of this book let me down, and although the book does nothing “wrong”, from the perspective of an own-voice sensitivity reader and reviewer, I cannot give this story more than 3 stars. The Story: We follow Juniper Lane, a 12-year old entomologist-to-be, who “caught the bug” from her scientist parents and older sister Ingrid, who was fascinated with the local endangered butterfly population. Since Ingrid tragically passed away 2 years ago, Juniper has picked up her research. An incident during one of her fieldtrips leads her to discover newfound abilities that blur the line between magic and science. Juniper tries an experiment to change things back to the way they were, but the results aren’t what she expected. What I liked: I really liked the combination of magic and science featured in this story. Early on in the story, things begin to happen that Juniper cannot explain. She turns to what she knows; her scientific mind, to try to make sense of these events and treats the magic as an experiment in a new science subject. Many middle-grade magic stories are about the protagonists learning to “control their emotions” in order to control their magic. I loved seeing a different side in this story; one of a girl who’s already very rational in her approach, learning that it’s okay to show and feel her softer and more emotional side. Mateo as a side character in particular helped as her counterpart, and I loved their accepting and supportive friendship. What I didn’t like: There are 2 things that a middle-grade book about grief must nail in my opinion; a relatable portrayal of our protagonist and their grief, and a positive/helpful/supportive representation of the adult figures in their lives. For me, both were lacking a little. The first is mostly due to Junipers character, who I found very unlikable. She’s extremely flatly written; her only character trait being that she likes science, which we’re told about 2x every page. She’s also very single-minded in that and has little regard for the feelings of others around her. It made it difficult to emotionally connect to her, when even something so personal as the magical search for the sister she misses so much, is seemingly nothing more than an experiment to her. Some of the biggest misconceptions us STEM-girls/women face is the stereotype of the “emotionally stunted kid without a social radar”. Having our protagonist fall into many of these traps doesn’t seem like a great portrayal for a children’s novel. Granted; Juniper is called out on her behaviour, but isn’t shown to learn from it on page. The same argument can be made for Junipers parents as the relevant adult figures in her life. They’re shown as similarly cold and rational and don’t offer any healthy support or help. This is crucial to any good middle-grade grief for me: we have to teach our kids that it’s okay to seek (adult) help in these situations. SPOILERS: Finally, there’s a tricky trope used that I don’t think worked out the way the author intended. I’m generally not a fan of the “bringing-the-dead-back-to-life”-trope. The forever-ness of death is one of the scariest things to face in grief, and this trope undercuts it. I understand what the book tried to do: to have this experience teach Juniper that bringing her sister back was impossible, and things wouldn’t be the same as before regardless. I don’t like the way it was done however for multiple reasons: 1. Juniper first realises that the girl she brought back isn’t her sister because “she likes other things than science now”. I’m a little baffled how the author thought this was a good idea. People change in 2 years’ time, and the way this was handled almost made it feel like Juniper would rather have the memory of her deceased sister than a sister who’s grown and expanded their interests. Not to mention the plot-hole that this sister was supposedly a representation of Junipers memory of her. In that case, she should’ve been the exact opposite, as they idealized version Juniper remembers her as. 2. In the end, Juniper accepts and lets go of the idea of bringing her sister back. Yet the magical not-sister still remains as a presence in her life and even becomes sort of a friend of hers. The message of “you might not get your sister back, but here’s a new friend for your trouble” seemed very strange to me. Overall, I can see the beautiful butterfly at the core of this novel, but I feel it needed a few changes within the cocoon to work for me. It’s an enjoyable middle-grade magical adventure story, but as a story about grief I can’t quite recommend it. Many thanks to Albert Whitman & Company for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Although I have a dedicated page where I keep track of upcoming releases, I still like to include this list of my “most anticipated releases” within my Year in Review series. This year I have 25 to talk about and I’ve sorted them by genre. Please be aware that expected release-dates are always subject to change, so make sure to check the publishers catalogue or Goodreads. Let’s hope I have similar success in predicting the books I’ll love as last year, and without further ado; let’s get into the list. Literary Fiction 1. The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts - Soraya Palmer Expected release date: March 28th 2023 Why I’m Excited: a coming of age story about sisterly bonds, family secrets, illness, hauntings and the power of storytelling, compared to the narrative style of Helen Oyeyemi, ticks basically EVERY SINGLE ONE of my boxes. Take my money already, and get in my bag! Synopsis: Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father’s violence and their mother’s worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home. But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to beings greater than themselves, and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi’s. 2. The Book of Rain – Thomas Wharton Expected release date: March 23rd 2023 Why I’m Excited: Environmental fiction inspired by Cloud Atlas, Station Eleven and the Overstory, told through different timelines. Synopsis: The northern mining town of River Meadows is one of three hotspots in the world producing ghost ore, a new source of energy worth twenty-eight times its weight in gold. It's also linked with slippages of time and space that gradually render the area uninhabitable. After the town is evacuated, the whole region is cordoned off, the new no-go zone wryly nicknamed The Park. Three intertwined stories flow from the disaster of River Meadows. Alex Hewitt and his sister, Amery, were among the first to be shipped out of the contaminated town. Now an accomplished game designer, Alex has moved on, but his sister has not, making increasingly dangerous break-ins to save animals trapped in the toxic wasteland. When at last she fails to return from a trip inside the fence, Alex flies to River Meadows to search for her, enlisting her friend, Michio Amano, a mathematician who needs to transcend the known laws of physics if he and Alex are to succeed. Claire Foley ran away from River Meadows as a teenager and now traffics in endangered wildlife. As Alex and Michio search for Amery, Claire arrives in an island nation under threat of environmental catastrophe to retrieve her greatest prize yet, only to find herself facing a life-altering choice. And, finally, in a future as distant as myth, a flock of birds sets out on a dangerous journey to prevent the extinction of their ancient enemy, humanity. The account they hand down is an Epic of Gilgamesh for our times, illuminating the wisdom of nature and our flawed stewardship of the planet. 3. Shy - Max Porter Expected release date: April 6th 2023 Why I’m Excited: it’s another dark-literary piece by Max Porter, which is all I needed to know going off my love of his previous works.A Synopsis: From the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Shy is a novel about guilt, rage, imagination and boyhood. It is about being lost in the dark, and realising you are not alone. This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy. He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him. H is escaping Last Chance, a home for 'very disturbed young men', and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past and the heavy question of his future. 4. The Memory of Animals – Claire Fuller Expected release date: June 6th 2023 Why I’m Excited: a literary sci-fi novel that deals with themes of grief, guilt and revisiting your past memories, all set during the outbreak of a world-changing pandemic, blurbed as for fans of Never Let Me Go. This sounds topical, lyrical and absolutely haunting and I cannot wait to read it. It doesn’t hurt that the cover is the best thing that 2023 has had to offer so far. Synopsis: In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease’s devastating symptoms: sensory damage, memory loss, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London―perhaps humanity’s last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers―Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper―cannot hide from the mistakes that led them there. As London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, Neffy befriends Leon, who before the pandemic had been working on a controversial technology that allows users to revisit their memories. She withdraws into projections of her past―a childhood bisected by divorce; a recent love affair; her obsessive research with octopuses and the one mistake that ended her career. The lines between past, present, and future begin to blur, and Neffy is left with defining questions: Who can she trust? Why can’t she forgive herself? How should she live, if she survives? 5. Sea Bean – Sally Huband Expected release date: April 6th 2023 Why I’m Excited: literary fiction + chronic illness + nature-writing about the ocean. Bonus points for being partly set on the Dutch isle of Texel (I’ve never seen a non-Dutch book cover that) Synopsis: When a seed falls from a vine in the tropics and is carried by ocean currents across the Atlantic to the shores of Western Europe - it is known as a sea bean. It is still considered lucky to find a sea bean on the shore, they have been used as magical charms for more than a thousand years. Sally's search for a sea bean begins not long after she moves to the windswept archipelago of Shetland. When pregnancy triggers a chronic illness and forces her to slow down, Sally takes to the beaches. There she discovers treasure freighted with story and curiosities that connect her to the world. The wild shores of Shetland offer glimpses of orcas swimming through the ocean at dusk, the chance to release a tiny storm petrel into the dark of the night and a path of hope. This beachcombing path takes her from the Faroese archipelago to the Orkney islands, and the Dutch island of Texel. It opens a world of ancient myths, fragile ecology, and deep human history. It brings her to herself again. 6. The Last Animal – Ramona Ausubel Expected release date: April 18th 2023 Why I’m Excited: again: speculative eco-fiction + themes of family/mother-daughter relationships. As this novel is marketed as “witty and playful” I’m hoping it’ll make a nice offset for the heavier books mentioned earlier. Synopsis: Jane is a serious scientist on the cutting-edge team of a bold project looking to "de-extinct" the woolly mammoth. She's privileged to have been sent to Siberia to hunt for ancient DNA, but there's a catch: Jane's two "tagalong" teen daughters are there with her in the Arctic, and they're bored enough to cause trouble. Brilliant, fiery, sharp-tongued Eve is fifteen and willing to talk back to the male scientists in a way her mother is not. And sweet, thirteen-year-old Vera, who seems to absorb all the emotional burdens of her small family, just wants to be home in Berkeley, baking cakes and watching bad TV. When Eve and Vera stumble upon a four-thousand-year-old baby mammoth that has been perfectly preserved, their discovery sets off a chain of events that pits Jane against her colleagues, and soon her status at the lab is tenuous at best. So what does a female scientist do when she's a passionate devotee of her field but her gender and life history hold her back? She goes rogue. As Jane and her daughters ping-pong from the slopes of Siberia to a university in California, from the shores of Iceland to an exotic animal farm in Italy, The Last Animal takes readers on an expansive, bighearted journey that explores the possibility and peril of the human imagination on a changing planet, what it's like to be a woman and a mother in a field dominated by men, and how a wondrous discovery can best be enjoyed with family. Even teenagers. 7. Cicada’s Sing of Summer Graves – Quinn Connor Expected release date: June 6th 2023 Why I’m Excited: family legacies, queer relationships and the ghostly imprint of grief on a town literally drowned under the waters of a dam-break. I’m hoping this story is as good as the atmosphere and setting it’s painting. Synopsis: Years ago, yellow fever gripped the small lakeside town of Prosper, Arkansas. At the height of that summer swelter, in the wake of an unexpected storm, the dam failed and the valley flooded—drowning the town and everyone trapped inside. The secrets of old Prosper drowned with them. Now, decades later, when a mysterious locked box is pulled from the depths of the lake, three descendants of that long-ago tragedy are hurled into another feverish summer. Cassie: the reclusive sole witness to an impossible horror no one believes. Lark: a wide-eyed dreamer haunted by bizarre visions. June: caught between longing for a fresh start and bearing witness to the ghosts of the past. Bound together, all three must contend with their home’s complex history—and with the ruins of the town lost far beneath the troubled water. 8. The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese Expected release date: May 2nd 2023 Why I’m Excited: Although I haven’t read the authors previous novel Cutting for Stone, I’ve heard nothing but great things about it. His newest release promises a generational tale with themes of medicine, religion and family legacy set on the South Indian coast. Synopsis: Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi—literally “Big Mother”—will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life. Horror/Thriller 9. A House with Good Bones – T. Kingfisher Expected release date: March 28th 2023 Why I’m Excited: one of my favourite horror authors taking on one of my favourite horror tropes of the haunted house. This has all the elements to become a new horror favourite for me. Synopsis: "Mom seems off." Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone. 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. 10. Sister of the Lost Nation – Nick Medina Expected release date: April 18th 2023 Why I’m Excited: “mythological horror” is one of my favourite niche-sub-genres, as it gives such a unique look into the cultural fears of the society that birthed these myths. With native American mythology and history being one that’s fascinated me in particular for years now, this combines the best of both world. The fact that it’s own-voices gives me even more hope that this’ll be something special. Synopsis: A young Native girl's hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe's reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut. Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation's casino...and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step--an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that's intent on devouring her whole.With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she's sure lies in the legends of her tribe's past. When Anna's own little sister also disappears, she'll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation--both ancient and new--are strong, and sometimes, it's the stories that never get told that are the most important. 11. Lone Women – Victor Lavalle Expected release date: March 21st 2023 Why I’m Excited: although the synopsis leaves us with more questions than answers, this was a case of setting + author + hook that was enough for me. Setting: 20th century American Mid-West. Author: Victore Lavalle of Changeling-fame. Hook: a lone traveling woman carrying around a steamer-trunk that may never be opened, or else peoples lives are at stake. Sold. Synopsis: Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk is opened, people around her start to disappear... The year is 1914, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, and forced her to flee her hometown of Redondo, California, in a hellfire rush, ready to make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will be one of the "lone women" taking advantage of the government's offer of free land for those who can cultivate it—except that Adelaide isn't alone. And the secret she's tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing keeping her alive. 12. The Graveyard Children – Katrina Monroe Expected release date: May 9th 2023 Why I’m Excited: They Drown Our Daughters exceeded all my expectations with how great and immersive it was. With similar themes of motherhood, family and a highly atmospheric setting, I’m hoping this will do the same. Synopsis: At four months old, Olivia Dahl was almost murdered. Driven by haunting visions, her mother became obsessed with the idea that Olivia was a changeling, and that the only way to get her real baby back was to make a trade with the "dead women" living at the bottom of the well. Now Olivia is ready to give birth to a daughter of her own...and for the first time, she hears the women whispering. Everyone tells Olivia she should be happy. She should be glowing, but the birth of her daughter only fills Olivia with dread. As Olivia's body starts giving out, slowly deteriorating as the baby eats and eats and eats, she begins to fear that the baby isn't her daughter at all and, despite her best efforts, history is repeating itself. Soon images of a black-haired woman plague Olivia's nightmares, drawing her back to the well that almost claimed her life―tying mother and daughter together in a desperate cycle of fear and violence that must be broken if Olivia has any hope of saving her child...or herself. 13. Looking Glass Sound – Catriona Ward Expected release date: April 11th 2023 Why I’m Excited: With both Sundial and The Last House on Needless Street, Ward has shown her knack for writing unique horror, that isn’t afraid to take a risk. For that alone, I’m curious to see what she does with this latest premise. Synopsis: In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood summer companions and the killer that stalked the small New England town. Of the body they found, and the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time best friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound. But as Wilder writes, the lines between memory and fiction blur. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around the cottage written in Sky’s signature green ink. Fantasy/Sci-fi 14. Now She is Witch – Kirsty Logan Expected release date: January 12th 2023 Why I’m Excited: this is probably my most anticipated release of the entire year, simply because it’s Kirsty Logan. I’ll read anything she writes at this point and a dark witchy tale featuring herbal magic, folklore, prejudice and themes of overcoming a traumatic past is everything I could’ve asked for. Synopsis: From the snowy winter woods to the bright midnight sun; from lost and powerless to finding your path, Now She is Witch conjures a world of violence and beauty - a world where women grasp at power through witchcraft, sexuality and performance, and most of all through throwing each other to the wolves. Lux has lost everything when Else finds her, alone in the woods. Her family, her lover, her home - all burned. The world is suspicious of women like her. But Lux is cunning; she knows how to exploit people's expectations, how to blend into the background. And she knows a lot about poisons. Else has not found Lux by accident. She needs her help to seek revenge against the man who wronged her, and together they pursue him north. But on their hunt they will uncover dark secrets that entangle them with dangerous adversaries. This is a witch story unlike any other… 15. Assassin of Reality – Marina & Sergey Dyachenko Expected release date: March 14th 2023 Why I’m Excited: I didn’t know I needed a sequel the strange but incredibly good ride I had with Vita Nostra, but now that this book has seen the light of day, I cannot wait to get back into Sasha’s story. Synopsis: (spoiler alert for Vita Nostra) In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail. However, Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha’s dark mentor, finds a way to bring her out of the oblivion and back to the Institute for his own selfish purposes. Subsequently, Sasha must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate and is forced to do what few are asked and even less achieve: to succeed and reverberate—becoming a part of the Great Speech and being one of the special few who dictate reality. If she fails, she faces a fate far worse than death: the choice is hers. Years have passed around the Institute—and the numerous realities that have spread from Sasha’s first failure—but it is only her fourth year of learning what role she will play in shaping the world. Her teachers despise and fear her, her classmates distrust her, and a growing love—for a young pilot with no affiliation to the school—is fraught because a relationship means leverage, and Farit won’t hesitate to use it against her. Planes crash all the time. Which means Sasha needs to rewrite the world so that can’t happen...or fail for good. 16. The Surviving Sky – Kritika H. Rao Expected release date: June 6th 2023 Why I’m Excited: I love my SSF to have unique and interesting settings, and a floating-living city in the sky ruled by powerful architects is just an example of such. I also love the idea that we’re following an already established couple trying to preserve a marriage on the rocks, rather than a new (insta-lovey) romance like usual. Very excited to see what the author does with all these concepts. Synopsis: High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. In these living cities, architects are revered above anyone else. If not for their ability to psychically manipulate the architecture, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below. Charismatic, powerful, mystical, Iravan is one such architect. In his city, his word is nearly law. His abilities are his identity, but to Ahilya, his wife, they are a way for survival to be reliant on the privileged few. Like most others, she cannot manipulate the plants. And she desperately seeks change. Their marriage is already thorny—then Iravan is accused of pushing his abilities to forbidden limits. He needs Ahilya to help clear his name; she needs him to tip the balance of rule in their society. As their paths become increasingly intertwined, deadly truths emerge, challenging everything each of them believes. And as the earthrages become longer, and their floating city begins to plummet, Iravan and Ahilya's discoveries might destroy their marriage, their culture, and their entire civilization. 17. The Ghost Theatre – Mat Osman Expected release date: June 23rd 2023 Why I’m Excited: lyrical historical fantasy with a theatre setting. Themes of fluid identities, love, art and class… Did someone just compare this to The Nightcircus? Yes please… Synopsis: London, 1601—a golden city soon to erupt in flames. Shay is a messenger-girl, falconer, and fortune teller who sees the future in the patterns of birds. Nonesuch is the dark star of the city’s fabled Blackfriars Theatre, where a cast of press-ganged boys perform for London’s gentry. When the pair meet, Shay falls in love with the performances—and with Nonesuch himself. As their bond deepens, they create the Ghost Theatre, an underground troupe that performs fantastical plays in the city’s hidden corners. As their fame grows the troupe fans the flames of rebellion among the city’s outcasts, and the lovers are drawn into the dark web of the Elizabethan court. Embattled, with the plague on the rise throughout the country, the Queen seeks a reading from Shay, a moment which unleashes chaos not only in Shay’s life, but across the whole of England too. A fever-dream full of prophecy and anarchy, gutter rats and bird gods, Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre is a wild ride from the rooftops of Elizabethan London to its dark underbelly, and a luminous meditation on double lives and fluid identities and the bewitching, transformative nature of art and power, with a bittersweet love affair at its heart. Set amid the vividly rendered England of Osman’s imagination and written in rich, seductive prose, The Ghost Theatre will have readers under its spell from the very first page. 18. Catfish Rolling – Clara Kumagai Expected release date: March 2nd 2023 Why I’m Excited: mythology (in this case as story that I’ve never heard about before and can’t wait to dive into), collective grief, time and memory in a magical-realism story about a giant catfish that shook a nation. Sounds strange, powerful and completely up my alley. I’m also getting The Astonishing Color of After-vibes, which definitely helps. Synopsis: There's a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls. Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones – the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces. But it's dangerous there – and as she strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows, a glimmer of things not entirely human, linger. After Sora's father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself... Children’s/Middle-grade/Young Adult 19. The Alchemy of Letting Go – Amber Morrell Expected release date: March 1st 2023 Why I’m Excited: Middle-grade featuring grief and a protagonist who’s interested in biology/STEM is about as far up my alley as you can get. Also, spoiler-alert: I’ve already read and loved and ARC of this book, and can highly recommend it. Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Juniper Edwards can't stop chasing the endangered butterfly her sister died trying to catch. In her grief, Juniper finds comfort in her family's study of insects, because science is based on logic, order, and control. But then Juniper's search for the butterfly nearly kills her, too, and when she wakes up with newfound abilities, she discovers that the line between science and magic--and life and death--is not as solid as she thought. With the help of her mysterious neighbors, Juniper tries an experiment to change things back to the way they were. Its result will force her to face the fact that some things are way beyond her control. 20. Miracle – Karen S. Chow Expected release date: March 28th 2023 Why I’m Excited: middle-grade fiction about the loss of a parent, and the healing power of music. Sounds magical, heart-warming, powerful, and just like something I would’ve loved to have at that age, and now love to recommend to my followers. Synopsis: Amie has spent her life perfectly in tune with Ba-ba, her father—she plays the violin, his favorite instrument; she loves all his favorite foods, even if he can’t eat them during his cancer treatments; and they talk about books, including Amie’s favorite series, Harry Potter. But after Ba-ba dies, Amie feels distanced from everyone close to her, like her mother and her best friends, Rio and Bella. More devastating still, she loses her ability to play the violin—the notes that used to flow freely are now stilted and sharp. Will Amie ever find her way back to the music she once loved? With hope and harmony lighting the way—and with help from the people who care about her most—Amie must find the strength to carry on. In the end, she’ll learn that healing, while painful, can be its own miraculous song. 21. The Firefly Summer – Morgan Matson Expected release date: May 2nd 2023 Why I’m Excited: middle-grade with some heavier themes, set at a summercamp, by a well-known and beloved author branching out into a completely new genre. I’ve never read a Morgan Matson before, as I don’t like strictly romance-novels, but I’ll for sure give this one a try. Synopsis: For as long as Ryanna Stuart can remember, her summers have been spent with her father and his new wife. Just the three of them, structured, planned, and quiet. But this summer is different. This summer, she’s received a letter from her grandparents—grandparents neither she nor her dad have spoken to since her mom’s death—inviting her to stay with them at an old summer camp in the Poconos. Ryanna accepts. She wants to learn about her mom. She wants to uncover the mystery of why her father hasn’t spoken to her grandparents all these years. She’s even looking forward to a quiet summer by the lake. But what she finds are relatives…so many relatives! Aunts and uncles and cousins upon cousins—a motley, rambunctious crew of kids and eccentric, unconventional adults. People who have memories of her mom from when she was Ryanna’s age, clues to her past like a treasure map. Ryanna even finds an actual, real-life treasure map! Over the course of one unforgettable summer—filled with s’mores and swimming, adventure and fun, and even a decades-old mystery to solve—Ryanna discovers a whole new side of herself and that, sometimes, the last place you expected to be is the place where you really belong. Poetry, Memoirs and Other 22. We’re All so Good at Smiling – Amber McBride Expected release date: January 10th 2023 Why I’m Excited: the authors debut Me Moth made it to my favourites of 2021 and I’ve been looking forward to reading whatever she writes next. We’re All So Good at Smiling promises to tackle similar themes, written in a similar poetry-prose-hybrid style, so I’m hoping for the same emotional impact that Me Moth left on me. Synopsis: Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the marrow of their bones. And when Faerry and his family move to the same street, the two start to realize that their lifelines may have twined and untwined many times before. They are both terrified of the forest at the end of Marsh Creek Lane. The Forest whispers to Whimsy. The Forest might hold the answers to the part of Faerry he feels is missing. They discover the Forest holds monsters, fairy tales, and pain that they have both been running from for 11 years. 23. See me Rolling; the view from my mobility scooter – Lottie Jackson Expected release date: June 1st 2023 Why I’m Excited: with disability-fiction being so close to my heart, I’m always here for a good memoir about the topic. Each year, one of these memoirs has made my favourites-list, so I’m hoping this one will follow in the footsteps of Sitting Pretty and A Face for Picasso. Synopsis: In this warm, thought-provoking and often hilarious memoir, Lottie Jackson reflects on her experiences of living with disability: from the difficulties of going shopping on a mobility scooter, to the headache of defining oneself on a tick-box form, and from the indignities of the so-called easy-pull tights aid to the intense pleasure of finally swapping a hospital gown for a slinky dress. Lottie captivatingly expresses the acute difficulties and joys of living with disability, as well as the strange everyday occurrences that abled-bodied people usually don't experience. See Me Rolling is an insightful and moving memoir, but it is also a clarion call for greater diversity and inclusion. Inequalities in representation, access and opportunities for disabled people are breeding in silence. Too often people with disabilities are kept on the periphery and treated as a sum of their differences. In this dazzling debut, Lottie reveals why we must strive for change and how we can transform our society for the better. She has a voice that needs to be heard. 24. Wings in the Wild – Margarite Engle Expected release date: April 18th 2023 Why I’m Excited: novels in verse can be hit or miss, but always catch my interest if only for the sheer skill going into writing them. As a lover of beautiful language, I’m so excited to see these kind of books make it into the YA- and Middle-Grade domain as well. A story that takes on that linguistic challenge, as well as difficult topics like political oppression and a refugee-crisis has the potential of being something absolutely extraordinary. Synopsis: Winged beings are meant to be free. And so are artists, but the Cuban government has criminalized any art that doesn’t meet their approval. Soleida and her parents protest this injustice with their secret sculpture garden of chained birds. Then a hurricane exposes the illegal art, and her parents are arrested. Soleida escapes to Central America alone, joining the thousands of Cuban refugees stranded in Costa Rica while seeking asylum elsewhere. There she meets Dariel, a Cuban American boy whose enigmatic music enchants birds and animals—and Soleida. Together they work to protect the environment and bring attention to the imprisoned artists in Cuba. Soon they discover that love isn’t about falling—it’s about soaring together to new heights. But wings can be fragile, and Soleida and Dariel come from different worlds. They are fighting for a better future—and the chance to be together. 25. Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit - Jen Campbell Expected release date: September 2023 Why I’m Excited: Jen Campbell is one of my favourite authors/creators/reviewers and people in general when discussing the topic of disability. I've loved her previous collections that've dealt with this topic and watch her channel religiously for recommendations, so I cannot wait to read her next work. Synopsis: Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit explores disability, storytelling, and the process of mythologising trauma. Jen Campbell writes of Victorian circus and folklore, deep seas and dark forests, discussing her own relationship with hospitals — both as a disabled person, and as an adult reflecting on childhood while going through IVF.

It’s finally time to talk about the best of the best, the cream of the crop; my top 10 favourite reads of 2022. As previous years, this will be a count-down of my subjective favourites; the books that I personally enjoyed, or resonated with the most. My top 5 are all new all-time favourites for sure. The remaining 5 were favourites of the year, but I have yet to see if they stand the test of time. Because there were so many great candidates, I had to be even stricter in my rules for eligibility than usual, to be able to narrow it down to a top 10. - Only books I’ve read for the first time in 2022 are eligible. This to avoid repetition and domination of these list by rereads of my all-time favourites. - One book per author, again, for similar reasons. - Entire series and duologies go into one slot. - Unreleased ARCs and proof copies of books that have yet to be released are not eligible for this year’s list, but potentially for next years. With that being said, I do have 3 honourable mentions that fell outside those, but deserved a mention anyway. First I have my reread of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel in the lead up to her newest release. Both these novels are all-time favourites and more than held up to reread. Mandels phenomenal writing and layered storytelling made me pick up on even more elements that I’d missed on my first read and cemented her as a deeply deserving top 3 author of all time. Similarly The Singer's Gun by her didn’t make the list because of the one-book-per-author clausula. My second honourable mention goes to another reread for which I found a new level of enjoyment upon revisit. Cage of Souls is a sci-fi-fantasy hybrid set in a prison on an inhospitable jungle-island in a postapocalyptic world. We follow the trials and tribulations of Stefan Advani, a scholarly political prisoner, as he attempt to navigate prison-politics with his brain, rather than brawl. This is a very character-driven book that combines a dark story of corruption and misfortune with satire, humour and a fantastic cast of memorable characters. Highly recommended! Third and final honourable mention goes to How High We Go in the Dark. This book might have made my favourites list, had I had the correct expectations for it going into it. This is an emotionally impactful post-pandemic story in the literary tradition of Cloud Atlas. This was sold to me distinctly as a novel, but in fact reads more like a short-story collection. Tonally and emotionally, this was a 5-star read, but as a novel I found it lacked coherence. If you approach it as a melancholic collection of character driven post-apocalyptic short-stories however, I think it works phenomenally. With the honourable mentions out of the way, it’s time to move into the main list. Let’s talk about my top 10 favourite reads of 2022. 10. Never the Wind by Franscesco Dimitri Coming in at the number 10 is immediately my latest addition to this list, and one that could’ve easily gone into the most-surprising list as well. I went into this book under a bit of a false assumption that this was fantasy, as it’s sold and shelved as such. I however, would classify it more so as a coming of age novel with some influences of magical realism and gothic horror, very similar to The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Likewise, this story is told from the point of view of an adult (possibly unreliably) recounting the fragmentary memories of the summer he turned 13. It’s 1996, and our protagonist Luca has recently lost his vision due to retinitis pigmentosa. His parents, reeling from the diagnosis, have uprooted the family to move across the country to a Southern Italian farmhouse, leaving Luca in an environment completely foreign and daunting to him. Navigating this new world without sight, through his remaining senses, Luca befriends Ada; a local girl who takes him out to explore the rocky fields and empty beaches. Their adventures are interrupted when frightening events start to occur to Luca. Are they hallucinations, manifestations of his own fears or something else entirely? I loved the representation of vision-loss and the way Luca’s story was told through his other senses. The novel doesn’t shy away from playing into the vulnerability Luca feels because of it, but never portrays him as a helpless victim, or use his blindness as an inappropriate plot-tool. Luca is a wonderful and memorable character, both as a 13-year old boy and as an adult retrospective narrator. I’m a sucker for this style, especially when the author interjects subtle hints of future experiences within this narration, and was pleasantly surprised to see it in this book. The last surprise in this novel was how deeply engaged and at times slightly unsettled I was throughout. Never the Wind sets up an intriguing mystery that I doesn’t rely on the “twist” to keep you on the edge of your seat. Instead, it’s your investment in this story and the characters that keeps you going, desperate to find out if Luca was going to be okay. Highly recommended, both as a coming of age story, as well as general fiction with a disabled protagonist. Readalikes: The Ocean at the End of the Lane 9. A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henley At number 9 is the only non-fiction/memoir to make the list this year. I’ve compared it to Sitting Pretty, which made my favourites-list of last year, as both are disability-related memoirs by incredibly eloquent and insightful authors. Ariel Henley chronicles the story of her (as well as her twin-sisters’) childhood and coming of age with Crouzon syndrome - a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely, leading to impairment of function, pain and disfigurement of the face. This was one of the very first books I read in 2022, and yet its still so vividly in my mind that I couldn’t deny it a spot on this list. The amount of research Henley has done for this book, both medically, as well as rereading her own journals and family’s documentation of these experiences, is astounding. She seamlessly interweaves topics of disability, beauty-standards, sisterhood, physical pain and the impact of the constant drastic changing of your face (both as a result of her disease, as well as through surgical “repairs”) on a developing identity. On a personal level, I was caught off guard by how much I related to some of Henley’s descriptions of a childhood dominated by medical intervention. The same goes for her discussion on the experience of being the first child to survive a rare diagnosis; simultaneously being seen as a wonder of medical ingenuity, but also dealing with the uncertainty, loneliness and at times feeling like “an experiment” that comes with being a first. Although it made my list for very personal reasons, I highly recommend this book to a broader audience. Henley has such a powerful and striking voice and many of her larger themes and discussions will resonate with many readers regardless. Readalikes: Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body 8. Founders Side trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett Coming in at number 8, we have a complete fantasy series. Although I read Foundryside back in 2021, I finished this trilogy in 2022 which cemented my love for it. This is a high fantasy series with a very unique science-based magic system based in Alchemy and inscribing everyday objects with properties they don’t naturally possess, appropriately named “scribing”. In the first book, we discover the hidden art of scribing alongside our protagonist Sancia, a thief who, unbeknownst to her, steals an object of immeasurable power during a seemingly normal job. What follows is a story of magic, science, unlikely allies, and a political power battle between the merchant Houses of the city of Tevanne. The first book already tells a fantastic, high-stakes and adventurous tale, and the rest of the series continues to surprise by broadening the scope of the story and building on the character-relations amongst a cast I truly came to love. I highly recommend this series, especially to fans of the Mistborn (first era) series, as its characters and unique magic-system reminded me most of his writing. Readalikes: Mistborn 7. Yerba Buena – Nina LaCour In the number 7 spot is another staple-author for my favourite list over the past few years. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nobody writes grief with the same bittersweet mix of melancholy and hope as Nina Lacour does. With Yerba Buena, she’s done it again. This is adult contemporary/literary fiction with a strong F-F romance in which we follow the growing relationship and emotional healing of two young women, after they meet in the titular bar/restaurant. Both carry with them the grief over past events and are stuck in a state of “surviving” on auto-pilot. Together, they embark on a journey of healing, tentative love, and learning how to live rather than survive again. I can keep it short with this book: I loved Nina’s writing, loved these characters, was on board with the romance (which is rare for me), and I came close to crying with how hard this book hit me in the feelings. My full review can be found here. I highly recommend Nina Lacours work to anyone who want a strong, but not pessimistic, portrayal of grief and healing from trauma. Be aware however: although this is listed in the “romance-section” in Goodreads, it obviously isn’t your light-fluffy read, so make sure you get into this story with the correct expectations. 6. Ninth Rain by Jen Williams Ninth Rain first came to my attention when I heard Elliot Brooks talk about it in one of her recommendation videos. I had never even heard of- or seen this series in stores, so I had very little expectations going into it. What I ended up with was an absolute underrated gem of a fantasy-sci-fi-hybrid, brimming with a vivid world and likable, engaging characters. The backflap- description is purposely vague, and so will my synopsis here be, as a lot of the fun for me was figuring out what the heck was going on in this world. We begin our story in once great city of Ebora; once the home of riches, wisdom and ruling tree-gods, now fallen into derelict after a world cataclysmic event only referred to as “the Eight Rain”. We follow three protagonists; an adventurous archaeologists/explorer (think female Indiana Jones, but British), a shy outlawed witch with a tendency for setting accidental fires, and a vain but charismatic Eborean fallen from grace, who’s ego hasn’t yet had the time to catch up to his new underdog status. When a series of unusual events hints at the possibility of a looming Ninth Rain, the three of them form an unlikely expedition team as they set out to uncover the mysteries of The Eight Rain, in order prepare for what’s to come. I’ve never quite read a book that so perfectly blended sci-fi and fantasy elements ánd had such a great cast of characters. Vin, Tormalin and Noon jumped out from the pages from the start and their quick-witted banter and William’s fast paced writing were a wonderful contrast against the density and heaviness that the world offered. I cannot wait to read the rest of this series, as well potentially some more of the authors backlist. I’m feeling like this might become a new favourite fantasy series. 5. Ghost Music by An Yu With my top 5, we’re also entering all-time favourite territory. I’m so excited to have 4 debut- or new to me authors in here, the first of which is An Yu. I read both her debut and sophomore novel this year, the second of which blew me away with how much I loved it. Ghost Music is literary fiction with a slight element of magical realism, that follows a young woman’s quiet identity crisis, after she gave up her dreams of becoming a concert pianist, in favour of being a housewife. She’s having trouble adjusting to her new lives, especially with her argumentative mother in law critiquing her every step of the way. The magical element comes in when a mysterious delivery of mushrooms arrives at her doorstep, seemingly by mistake. These mushrooms act as a conversation starter between the two women, as they cook them up for dinner, swapping stories of their pasts and future dreams. They also act as the catalyst of a series of hallucinatory dreams in which Song Yu must come to turns with the loss of her musical career. Beneath the ethereal and strange motifs within this book is a strongly rooted character study with themes of identity and grief at its core. Grief, not in the traditional sense of losing a loved one, but grief of losing a life and dream you’ve attached part of your personal identity to. This book made my top 5 for how brilliantly it was written. This is short and yet deeply powerful and layered. It manages to be completely strange and “experimental” at times, but deeply relatable on a personal level as well. If you’ve ever questioned your place in life, the paths taken and not taken, and found yourself homesick for a life you cannot lead (anymore), this book might strike a chord with you. I highly recommend it, even if you don’t typically read any magical realism. You can find my full review here. Readalikes: Murakami 4. Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel "We knew it was coming." I guess you could say that for this entry as well, since I had to put all of Emily St. John Mandels books in the honourable mentions. Her latest release Sea of Tranquillity is my fourth favourite read of 2022, and it’s another all-time favourite by her. This is a character-driven sci-fi story with elements of time travel, set in the same universe as Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. It’s a fragmentary, yet powerfully connected tale, that floats on the currents of time, reaching from a pastoral garden in 1912’s Vancouver Island, to a dark colony on the moon in the 2400’s. I go into depth (aka write a loveletter to this book) in my full review here, but in short, here’s why you should read it: Mandel is an artist with words, and keeps getting better and better with every release. Her prose is stunning, serene, melancholic and quietly brilliant as always. Her characters, some of which make a subtle reappearance from her first 2 books, are wonderful, memorable and human. The structure of this novel is impeccable, connecting threads and weaving through time to make a tapestry of unexpected beauty that I can only admire. I highly recommend this book for fans of character-driven sci-fi and literary fiction alike. I honestly had such a great time rereading her works back to back in the lead-up to this release, that I’m considering making a Mandel-athon a personal yearly tradition. 3. This Appearing House by Ally Malinenko It has become somewhat of a tradition that a single hard-hitting middle-grade novel makes my favourites-list. It’s usually one with themes close to my own heart, and one I wish I had had when I was within the target age-range. All of this is more true than ever for my pick for 2022. Landing itself the number 3 spot is This Appearing House by Ally Malinenko; a middle-grade horror novel about a girl and her best friend who accidentally find themselves trapped in a haunted house when out exploring in the neighbourhood. And the house isn’t willing to let them go so easily; first they must exorcize some of their own personal demons and face their worst fears. The only way out it through. This happens to already be one of my favourite tropes, but what cemented this book as a new favourite was our protagonist Jac’s journey through the house. Jac is a childhood cancer survivor, and many of her fears and experiences within the house deal with her experiences as such. As a childhood cancer survivor myself, this book did a lot of powerful things, but most importantly, it offered a way of representation that I’ve never seen in a children’s book before. It shows us a girl who lives, and continues to live through cancer. Jac says it best within the book herself: "She didn’t blame her mother; she understood. She’d read the books. The stories were always the same; kid got sick, everyone felt bad. Kid taught everyone to love in a deeper, more meaningful way. Kid died. Everyone remembered kid as a hero. That was the only story she had ever known. She’d never read about a kid who’d gone through what she had, and lived." This Appearing House offers that story. It’s a harrowing one, but also one of strength and courage. It shows young readers that the story of cancer doesn’t have a binary ending (death or happily ever after). I can see this being a very niche book, and perhaps one that some parents will actively keep away from their child because it deals with “too heavy topics”. Yet I can tell you from experience; it’s so important for these books to exist for the kids who experience and need these stories. Thank you Ally for providing them (as well as the little girl within me) with one. 2. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield If you’ve seen my mid-year freakout, you knew this one was coming. Julia Armfield’s debut novel is a literary horror story featuring themes of the deep ocean, grief, loss and alienation (in an environmental, personal as well as relationship level). It follows the unravelling relationship between two women after one of them returns from a deep-sea mission that ended in tragedy, and this life-altering experience creates a rift in their lives. You can find my full review here, but in short: I’ve been haunted by this book ever since I read it, and I love it for it. Although there is never any out-right horror on page, this novel got under my skin with its atmosphere of alienation, in a way that I’ve been fruitlessly chasing ever since I read Annihilation years ago. In essence, this is a story about a life-changing (traumatic) experience, and how it forever splits your life into “before-and-after”. You return changed and can never completely relate to your unchanged loved ones from the “before” in the same way again after. Armfield captured that dynamic, that discomfort and the grief that comes with that loss perfectly. After having already loved the authors short-story collection Salt Slow, Armfield has quickly become an author I’ll be keeping track off and reading anything they put out from henceforth. Readalikes: Kirsty Logan, Annihilation. 1. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer Even though I read and loved many books, choosing a favourite wasn’t difficult this year, as one stood out clearly above them all in the impression it left on me. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is Maddie Mortimers fittingly spectacular debut; a lyrical novel about a woman, her body and the illness that co-inhabits it. Told from the perspectives of Lia herself, her daughter Iris and the callous, cynical, taunting, and ironically caring voice of the disease itself, we follow her life after a diagnosis of terminal cancer. This is one of the most difficult favourites for me to review in a way that’ll make sense to someone who doesn’t know me personally. I can say that I loved the characters; how full and lifelike they were, and how deeply I related to them. I can say I adored the writing style, which is a strange and beautiful amalgamation of prose and poetry (think Grief is the Thing with Feathers) that cost me half a pack of sticky-notes to annotate all the gorgeous passages. I can say I cried over this book, even though I can count the number of books that have done that to me on the fingers of one hand. Yet all of this wouldn’t quite cover the depth to which I loved it. “Objectively”, I want to give this book to any fan of modern-fiction, especially if you enjoy themes of motherhood, body and the senseless search of making sense of a limited time left on this earth. What I truly would want, is to give my experience with this book to anyone. The way this book resonated with my personal journey (starting with childhood cancer, and by the time I read this book having just landed my dream-job as an MD in the department of Oncology) is an experience I will treasure in all its bittersweet glory, as an all-time favourite. You can find more of my thoughts in my original review here. Readalikes: Grief is the Thing With Feathers, Mrs Death Misses Death Let me know if you’ve read any of these books, or had any favourites in your reading-year that you think I might enjoy. I always love this time of year for gathering inspiration and compiling my TBR for next year from the favourites of my friends. On that note: please be sure to check back in tomorrow for my final part in this Year In Review series: my most anticipated new releases for 2023. Happy reading and until then.

As great a reading-year as 2022 was, they can’t all be winners… In between the hits and hidden gems, I also encountered my fair-share of duds, and today is the time to talk about them. This year I have 8, plus a (dis)honourable mention which couldn’t quite make the full list as it hasn’t been officially released yet. Household rules as always: only book read for the first time in 2022 were eligible for this list, and their order is roughly organised as a countdown from least- to most-disappointing. This means that the number one book isn’t necessarily the worst book on this list, but rather the one that let me down the most. You know the drill by now; let’s talk/complain about the most disappointing books I read this year. 8. The Oceanography of the Moon by Glendy Vanderah (2.5/5 stars) Kicking off the list, I have a book that wasn’t truly bad, but based of the authors previous two novels, I was expecting great. Following an all-time favourite debut and a solid 4-star sophomore novel, this 2.5-start middle-of-the-road-read definitely deserved a spot amongst my most disappointing books. Oceanography of the Moon has the same building blocks as Vanderah’s previous novels: a melancholic yet hopeful story of family bonds and tragedy, carried by a cast of livid characters, and sprinkled with a little dash of mystery. The authors fascination with biology, nature, genetics, and themes of nature-vs-nurture that made me love her books so much, also make a reappearance here. What was lacking was the excellent character-work and deep connection I felt to her previous protagonists. Riley and Vaughn felt distant to me from beginning to end; their voices scripted, their interactions stilted and the plot lacking a sense of realism and depth. I also had quite some issues with the central relationship. I will try to keep it spoiler-free here, but you can read more about my thoughts in my review here. Biological age-gaps in relationships do not bother me, yet maturity-gaps do. This was very much the case for the dynamic between these two characters. There’s a clear inequality in the relationship from the start and it really bothered me. Overall, this wasn’t up to Vanderah-standard and I hope she will revanche herself in her next release. 7. In a Garden Burning Gold by Rory Power (1/5 stars) As I started my full review of In a Garden Burning Gold, I reserve my one-star ratings for books that actively dislike, or feel like “shouldn’t exist”. This one was the latter in the most literal sense. In A Garden Burning Gold is the start of a Greco-Romanian inspired fantasy duology centring twins with elemental magical powers, fighting for their freedom away from their fathers abusive iron thumb. My problem with this story is that it shouldn’t have been a duology, rather it should’ve been drastically edited down into a single release. This first instalment is all build up, and no substance. After slogging through almost 500 pages, all I was left with was unoriginal worldbuilding (think any Greco-Romanian setting from recent YA-fantasy released in the last decade), an introduction to some immature and cringy protagonists and a deep feeling of disappointment over what happened to my favourite “strange-YA-horror-author”. I’m all for authors branching out, but in this case I hope Rory returns to her roots. Not necessarily YA-horror, but more so her shorter, tighter plotted works and willingness to go out there with unusual an original ideas. 6. Kaikeyi – Vaishnavi Patel (2/5 stars) At number 6, we have a 5-star prediction that turned out a 2-star read, with a lot of mixed feelings attached to it. Kaikeyi is next in the long line of classic-mythology retellings that spurred from the success of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. In this case, the myth in question is the Hindu epic Ramayana, viewed from the perspective of the vilified queen. My problem with this book is twofold. Firstly, it makes a lot of the same moves as all the retellings in recent years have already made, including some of the same mistakes. We have a heavy dose of modern-day feminism superimposed on characters that hailed from a completely different time and context. Hero’s spout strangely anachronistic and enlightened modern-day values and villains are harshly judged retro-actively against modern morals. There are ways to write relatable and progressive characters that remain true to their context, instead of completely overwriting them with values formed from our context. It creates dissonance between character and world, diminishes the original myth and frankly makes for lazy writing to me. Secondly, the retelling of the Ramayana comes with a lot more baggage than for example ancient Greek mythology… Unlike the tales of Olympus, the Ramayana still has a lot of religious and cultural significant to modern-day Hindu’s, which makes these re-framings a bit more sensitive. I feel like that nuance often gets lost within the overwhelming amount of Western-European/American reviewers giving this book 5-stars without any context. As a non-Hindu myself, I cannot speak to this experience either, but seeing the disparity between Western reviewers praising it and many Hindu-reviewers being more sceptical, made me a little bit uncomfortable. My full review can be found here. Especially for this book, I recommend you seek out some own-voice reviews as well and not rely solely on mine. 5. Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft (2/5 stars) Fantasy-fans prepare: this one is going to hurt… Senlin Ascends is the widely beloved indie-fantasy-darling that got picked up by traditional publishing a few years ago, and made into a full series. Unfortunately, I truly do not get the hype for this one. I gave it 2-stars for the originality of the worldbuilding, but it was very close to a 1-star experience for me. The book follows Senlin, a scholarly man of words rather than action, who takes his wife on their dream honeymoon to the fabled Tower of Babel. Soon after their arrival, Senlin and his wife are separated, and in his quest to find his wife Senlin discovered the Tower is anything but what he imagined. My biggest problem with this novel was its reliance on the classic girl-in-the-fridge-trope, as well as generally sexist undertones throughout the depiction of all of the female characters. For starters, the entire plot hinges on the search for his wife Marya, who’s had barely any character-development (or page time) for herself. Her sole role and purpose is to be an object for the male protagonist to chase; a vessel for the plot. I’m sick and tired of that trope and wish we’d left that in the 80’s SSF-fiction where it originated. Granted; it’s not only Marya who’s underdeveloped. Basically every character apart from Senlin gives off high “NPC-energy”, having no substance and just “playing their part”. Senlin himself, as the only developed character, is insufferable and snobbish. His verbose narrative voice did nothing to engage me in the meandering plot and I often wanted to quit the book altogether. Fans of this series will say that all of these things were intentional; Senlin is meant to be unlikable and sexist, the plot is meant to make little sense. Might well be, but it didn’t take away from the fact that I just didn’t feel like spending my time reading something I didn’t enjoy. 4. The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlyn Starling (1/5 stars) We’re only at number four and yet we’ve arrived at my objectively worst book of the year. Where my top-three disappointments are arguably a matter of taste and dó have a distinct audience for them, I genuinely think The Death of Jane Lawrence is a poorly written book. It’s a gothic-inspired horror-mystery with supernatural elements. Although it’s targeted at an adult audience it 100% reads like Young Adult fiction to mee, and not in a good way. We follow a level-headed young woman who enters a marriage of with a mysterious and reclusive doctor. Of course, rained in in the remote and crumbling mansion, she discovers a dark side to her husband she didn’t anticipate. Romance and body-horror ensues. I say “level-headed” but of course our protagonist is anything but. From the get-go, “rational” Jane falls desperately and immaturely in love with her fiancé, and begins to make all of the stupidest choices on hand. I was so excited to see a “brain-over-heart”, potentially even asexual female protagonist in a period-horror, but Jane flips like a leaf as soon as the “love-interest” enters the page. Deeply disappointing and a disservice to the character. On top of that, this book tried to be too many things all at once; supernatural fantasy, ghost-story, body horror, period piece, romance, etc. In the end, it began mixing its metaphors and ended up a Frankensteinian patchwork of elements rather than the sum of its parts. After The Luminious Dead (which I gave 2 stars), this is Caitlyn Starling second strike, and I’m getting the feeling that it’s time for me to give up on her writing for good. You can find my full review of The Death of Jane Lawrence here, as well as The Luminous Dead here. 3. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (1/5 stars) This one hurts again, as it’s my best friends favourite book of all time and I completely disliked it. Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a widely beloved an well-known piece of Japanese magical realism centring a coffee shop that offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. Through 4 short-stories, we follow 4 visitors make a trip through time to revisit key moments in their lives they wish they’d approached differently. I had multiple dislikes for this book: the writing is clunky, the characters are flat and underdeveloped (especially the women!) and the whole thing dripped with sentimentality that quickly exceeded my admittedly low tolerance for that. I have a deep dislike for books that feel written with the sole intent to pluck your heartstrings and make you cry, and Before the Coffee Gets Cold is absolutely guilty of that. More importantly however, I cannot get behind many of the messages this book puts out. For starters, the author has very traditionalist views on relationships and gender roles that I don’t agree with. We have women realising their way to happiness is to give up their careers to support their husbands in various ways, and a view on motherhood in the final story that I find extremely problematic. You can find my full review here. Safe to say, despite its wide and international acclaim, I won’t be recommending it Before the Coffee Gets Cold to anyone. To my best friend: I’m so happy that you found something beautiful and meaningful here, but I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. 2. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (2/5 stars) Our Missing Hearts was a book defined by everything it was not; memorable, impactful and insightful. Celeste Ng’s previous contemporary works hit all those beats for me, and I was excited to see it translated to the dystopian genre. The story centres a young boy’s quest to find his poet-mother who became a political fugitive after her work accidentally sparked an anti-government movement. Our Missing Hearts’s biggest offense was being incredibly mediocre. Offensively mediocre. Despite it’s serious and current themes it plays it safe every step of the way. There’s no life, no risk and nothing new to these pages, within a genre that’s already at risk of becoming oversaturated and stale. The whole book felt superficial, commercial and too easy for it. I have many thoughts about this novel and have written a long Good-Bad-Ugly style review in which I discuss all of them in more depth. I invite you to read it here to get a better feel for my thoughts. 1. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (2/5 stars) My most disappointing book of 2022 goes to another author I had high expectations for. Unlike Glendy Vanderah and Celeste Ng however, Peng Shepherd didn’t just deliver mediocre, she delivered bad. The Cartographers is part fantasy treasure-hunt, part mystery-thriller built off the concept of papertowns; fictional places added to maps by their makers as a kind of “trade-mark” and to catch copyright-fraud. Our protagonist Nell Young has been passionate about map-making ever since she caught the bug from her father, who’s a legend in the field. When she receives the news that her father has been found dead in his office seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. What follows is a track through towns that don’t exist and a history of academic intrigue and family drama. The premise is fantastic, but unfortunately, the book falls apart quickly from there on. My biggest gripe was with the flat-as-a-doormat-characters who, despite being described as smart and rational scholars, were seemingly hellbent on making the dumbest decision in any given situation. On top of that the plot was a termite’s fever dream of holes. Every time the author explains a twists to us (which she does often!) it only hammered home the fact that the logic just wasn’t there. I gave this book 2 stars, mostly because I do think there’s an audience out there for it. If you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code and are looking for a mystery with slight supernatural elements to switch your brain off to, this might be it. For me however, the gap between expectation/potential and reality, lands this firmly as my most disappointing read of the year. Full review can be found here. Finally, as a short “dishonourable mention”, I need to mention The Luminaries by Susan Dennard. I cannot put it on this list as a full entry, as it’s technically not released yet, but the ARC I read recently left such a bad taste in my mouth that I kept thinking about it when writing this list. My full review can be found here. Perhaps this book makes a re-appearance in full on my Worst of 2023 list… If after this list you're in for something more positive, be sure to check back in tomorrow for my favourites of the year. Until than, happy rest of your holidays, and happy reading.

On this second day of Christmas my true love gave to me: 11 hidden gems, and a chance to shout them out. These ten novels are far too good to fly under the radar, yet they haven’t quite reached the audience they deserved. Rules for inclusion are simple: having less than 1000 ratings on Goodreads at the time of me writing this, and not being featured on another list (favourites, most surprising etc.) yet. Like in previous iterations, the books are organised based on target audience (adult, young adult, middle-grade respectively). You know the drill by now, so without further ado, let’s get into my most underrated books of 2022. 1. The First Binding by R.R. Virdi (1000 ratings) Considering this was one of Tor’s biggest fantasy debuts of the year, I’m surprised how few people have actually read/rated this one. The First Binding is going to be a hit-or-miss read for many (more on that in my review), but people who love it will really love it. A legendary hero of sorts, recounts his life story by the fire of a crowded tavern, to the ears of an eager audience yearning to hear about his epic adventures. Parts of it may be true, parts of it embellished, exaggerated or downright fabricated by our vain protagonist with a flair for the dramatic. This story is clearly inspired by The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, so if you’re looking for something to tie you over until the eventual release of Doors of Stone (or doomsday, whichever comes first…); give this one a go. Rated it: 4/5 stars 2. The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers (1000 ratings) This is a quiet little book that I’m not surprised has been overlooked by many. This is a small-scope literary fiction novel about two damaged men, each battling demons of their own at the tail-end of the great depression of the 80’s in rural England. They find companionship, connection, hesitant friendship and escape over the secret- and unconventional art of crop-circle making. The set-up is strange, as are our two protagonists, but this is an endearing and heart wrenching story that creeps up on. As a portrayal of trauma, and healing through an unconventional artform and friendship, it’s brilliant and deserves a lot more love. Rated it: 4/5 stars Readalikes: The Offening by the same author. 3. The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope (1000 ratings) A woman able to communicate with spirits must assemble a ragtag crew to pull off a daring heist to save her community in this timely and dazzling historical fantasy that weaves together African American folk magic, history, and romance. I’ve talked about this book in many recommendation-lists for this fall, as well as in my review so I’m keeping it short here. It’s diverse historical fantasy with a fantastic cast of outcast characters pulling of a heist with ghostly help: what more do you need to know…? Rated it: 5/5 stars Readalikes: the Conductors, The Diviners. 4. The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke (800 ratings) The Ghost Woods is the latest in C.J. Cooke’s “loose trilogy” of gothic horror surrounding themes of motherhood, the line between “the natural” and “the uncanny” and the subversion of some classic horror-tropes. I’ve loved The Nesting and The Lighthouse Witches, and The Ghost Woods was no different. This time, we follow casts of characters within two different timelines, both set at a remote gothic manor in the woods that serves as a safe haven for unwed women to give birth and potentially offer up their new-borns for adoption. Strange and unsettling happenings are present from the get-go, both in the lives of these women as within the walls of Lichen Hall. What unravels is a tight and multi-layered horror novel that only just missed the bar of making it into my top 10 of the year. Full review can be found here. Rated it: 5/5 stars Readalikes: Rebecca , Fall of the House of Usher, What Moves the Dead. 5. Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester (700 ratings) If you’ve been here for any amount of time, you’ll probably know my continuous and personal hunt for great disability-fiction, especially targeted at children and teens. Well folks, this year we have another gem to add to that list. Breathe and Count Back From Ten is a contemporary YA-novel starring a Peruvian-American protagonist navigating her painful hip dysplasia, overprotective immigrant parents, and first love, all while chasing her dream of becoming a professional mermaid. I have a full review up here, but suffice to say that this hit all of my boxes. The representation is spot on and never feels like a “substitute” for great storytelling and character development. This book has it all. This quickly became part of my go-to-recommendation-list for anyone looking for positive disability- and chronic pain representation in YA fiction. Rated it: 4.5/5 stars Readalikes: Like Water (not quite with the disability-rep, but it’s the closest I have) 6. From Dust a Flame by Rebecca Podos (500 ratings) Building off Rebecca Podos (author of Like Water), we have her latest release, as well as her debut into full-on fantasy. From Dust a Flame is a Jewish-inspired contemporary-fantasy with themes of family, self-discovery and retracing your (cultural and familial) roots at its core. It follows 17-year old Hannah and her adoptive brother Gabe encountering the effects of an age-old family-curse that impossibly mutates Hannah’s body overnight. Their search for answers leads Gabe and Hannah down the path of her Jewish ancestry, along myths, legends and the tragic history that their family has carried for generations Again: we have fantastic diverse representation, and a great story, all told in Podos’ striking prose. My full review can be found here. Rated it: 4.5/5 stars 7. The Undead Truth of Us by Britney S. Lewis (400 ratings) The Undead Truth of Us is a zombie-story like you’ve never read before, veering away from the spooky, and straight into the tragic. In this YA-contemporary magical realism we follow 16-year old Zharie, who’s become convinced that her mother turned into a zombie, right before her sudden and unexpected death. Now, her world is turned upside down; not only is she forced to reckon with a world without her mother in it, but also a world in which she sees zombies at every street-corner. Don’t go into this novel expecting a World-War Z-type monster-narrative. Instead, this is a brilliant depiction of teenage grief with zombies as a metaphorical manifestation of her experiences. Lyrical, heart-wrenching and magical, this book is perfect for fans of Emily X.R. Pan or even Anna-Marie McLemore. Rated it: 4/5 stars Readalikes: The Astonishing Color of After. 8. Ode to a Nobody by Caroline Brooks DuBois (50 ratings) I understand that novels in verse have quite a niche target audience, and middle-grade novels in verse even more so. Yet it still feels like an injustice to have a book this good to be read by so few people. This is the coming of age story of a young girl finding confidence and her voice through poetry, in the wake of a devastating tornado that uprooted her house and town. Full review can be found here. Rated it: 4.5/5 stars Readlikes: The Hate U Give, The Poet X 9. Healer of the Water Monster by Bryan Young (800 ratings) Credits to Bowties&Books for introducing me to this hidden gem in one of her videos, or else I’d have never heard of this book. Healer of the Water Monster is middle-grade magical realism with a strong root in native American mythology. It follows the story of a young boy’s attempt to save the titular Water Monster, a Holy Being that protects the rivers of his Navajo homeland, and his struggling uncle in the process. This is the definition of a perfect middle-grade to me; it was timely, emotionally impactful and a lot of fun, all whilst tackling some heavier topics including addiction, depression, environmental pollution and indigenous injustice. Bryan Young has a voice that deserves to be heard and enjoyed by more people. Rated it: 5/5 stars Readalikes: A Snake Falls to Earth. 10. Children of the Quicksand by Efua Traoré (400 ratings) Similarly to the previous one, I have another impactful middle-grade with strong cultural/mythology themes. This time rooted in Nigerian mythology. In this we follow city girl Simi who’s send to stay with her Grandmother in a remote village in her native Nigeria. Between adjusting to life without wi-fi, her quirky but traditional grandma, and the strange tight lipped attitude towards her family history, Simi has enough to worry about. Yet this is only the beginning of her adventures, that as her exploration of the surrounding quicksand-lands take a turn for the magical. A wonderful tale of family, diversity, (multi)cultural interests and uncovering your roots. Rated it: 4/5 stars 11. Yonder by Ali Standish (300 ratings) Last but not least, we have a veteran author on this list; Ali Standish continues to publish incredible hard hitting middle-grade books of top-tier quality, and they continue to fly under the radar. As long as that’s the case, I will continue to champion her works here, as she truly is the middle-grade author I wish had been around when I was a kid. Yonder is her first historical middle-grade novel, centering the friendship between two boys against the backdrop of a 1940’s Appalachian small town. Danny has idolized his older best friend Jack as a hero for years now. When Jack goes missing, Danny is determined to find him no matter the cost. What follows is an emotional journey of (self)discovery, friendship, challenging prejudice, owning up to your mistakes, and being the hero of your own story; in big ways or small. My full review can be found here. Rated it: 5/5 stars Read-alikes: Standish’s backlist. I truly hope to have given you some inspiration for some underrated gems with this list. Please let me know if you pick up any of these books, as I'd love to hear your thoughts. I will be back tomorrow, covering my most disappointing reads of 2022. Until then, enjoy your holidays (if you celebrate them) and happy reading.

With 2022 drawing to a close, it’s finally time for one of my favourite series to do each year: my Year in Review. As always, this will be a five-parter of daily posts between Christmas and New-Year consisting of the following: - Most Surprising Books of 2022 - Most Underrated Books of 2022 - Most Disappointing Books of 2022 - Favourite Books of 2022 - Anticipated Releases for 2023 In many ways, compiling these lists was the polar opposite experience from last year. 2021 was my worst reading-year in perhaps as long as a decade. So much so that I couldn’t even manage to select a top-10 for my favourites-list, as there simply weren’t enough books I felt I enjoyed enough to qualify. 2022 however came back with a vengeance as one of my best reading-years. I re-found my enthusiasm and enjoyment for reading early in the year, and kept that momentum going through some incredible books. Out of the 120 books I read, there were a few duds, but they were greatly outweighed by the underrated gems, wonderful surprises and new all-time favourites I discovered. As always, these lists are entirely subjective and no book is ever read in a vacuum. For that reason, a little bit about my personal year to give you an idea of the context I read these books in. Quite a few significant event happened in my life in 2022: I graduated my masters and started my first job as an M.D. in my dream-field of Oncology. This has been an incredible experience, but has also brought some of my own oncological experiences (as a patient and caregiver) back to the foreground. As such, you will find some of these themes within (cancer, trauma, grief) within many of my favourites, as they resonated with me on a deeper level this year. I also moved house and had to do a lot of thing “for the first time”. It was a year of being pushed very far outside my comfort zone, but also a year of rapid growth. Books as always, were a mirror, a companion and an escape throughout. Because this year was great overall, it feels only right to start this Year in Review on a positive note with a short-and-sweet one. These 4 books were quite different than what I expected (in a good way), or that I somehow didn’t expect to love as much as I did. In no particular order, let’s talk about my surprising reads of 2022. Most Surprising Books of 2022 1. A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross If you’ve been here for a while, you know my general feelings about fantasy-romance novels. In short: they’re not for me and almost never work. “Almost” being the keyword, as A River Enchanted proved the exception to this rule. This lush Scottish inspired fantasy novel, swept me up in its beautiful prose, worldbuilding with roots in Scottish folklore and its likable characters; so much so that I was even on board with a romance trope that I’d otherwise detest. I’m hoping this holds up in the sequel, which I’m actually excited to pick up soon. You can find my full review here. Rated it: 3.75/5 stars Readalikes: Queens of Innis Lear and Uprooted. 2. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance by Emmie Ruth Lang I’ve had this book on my shelves for almost 4 years after finding it for a few euro’s at the second hand bookstore, and never quite knew what to expect of it. The synopsis is quite winding yet leaves you with little concrete to go off. And frankly, that’s probably a decent description of the book itself as well. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is a quiet piece of magical realism that tells the life story of a strange young man from the people who knew him, loved him and some who thought he was plain cuckoo. Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey never stays in one place for long. Along the way he leaves a trail of stories behind: stories about a boy who lives with wolves, great storms that evaporate into thin air, fireflies that make phosphorescent honey, and a house filled with spider webs and the strange man who inhabits it. This story shines with its atmosphere and characters, and managed to tuck my heartstrings in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. Rated it: 4/5 stars, Readalikes: Bone Gap, We Speak in Storms or works by Anna-Marie McLemore. 3. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins The Library at Mount Char is a fantasy-sci-fi-horror hybrid that I’d heard such mixed things about, yet the only thing reviewers seemed to agree on is that is it strange and quite dark. Knowing that, I was quite intimidated to pick up this 400 page novel. Luckily, this was entirely my kind of weird. You can find my full review here, as well as a link to the book so you can read the synopsis for yourself. Let me say for now that this was a quick ride of absurdist fun that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss for the world. Rated it: 4.5/5 stars Readalikes: American Gods, The Magicians, Vita Nostra. 4. Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi Sticking with the theme of me underestimating horror aswell as the emotional impact of novels, Black Mouth combines both of these elements into one. I picked this up as an “in-between-read”, fully expecting a Stephen-King-esque spookfest that would be entertaining but little else. What I got was an emotional piece of psychological horror that brilliantly covered childhood trauma and the way guilt, grief and shame can haunt a person into adulthood. My full review and thoughts can be found here. Had it not been such a fantastic reading year with such strong competition, Black Mouth might have made my favourites-list. Rated it: 5/5 stars Readalikes: It. Tomorrow, we'll continue my Year in Review with my list of 10 most underrated books of 2022. Until then of course, happy holidays and happy reading!

Genre: literary fiction Published: Harvill Secker (EU) & Grove Press (USA), November 2022 My Rating: 5/5 stars “Loss came in all shapes and forms, but it never occurred to me until now that you could lose the things you never had.” At this point, I feel like my entire list of favourite reads of 2022 is going to be made up of marmite books that people will either love or hate, but I will be confidently championing this one as a book that I loved to my core. Top 5 reads of 2022, and a book I see myself revisiting in the future many times. Ghost Music is a resonant and reflective character piece with some admittedly bizarre element of magical realism mixed in. Our protagonist Song Yan is a young woman in the midst of a quiet identity crisis. She has given up her lifetime dream of becoming a concert pianist, in favour of becoming a housewife to her new husband, and only touches the piano to tutor a handful of children on the side. As her husband travels for work, the silence of their empty apartment is filled only with the tentative notes of her pupils, and the recent addition of her argumentative mother-in-laws critiques on her life. Tensions rise in the household until their holding-pattern is broken by a mysterious delivery of mushrooms from an unknown sender. These mushrooms form a conversation starter between the two women, as well as a starting point for a quest for the mysterious gifter, that will set Song Yan on the trail of a world-famous pianist who disappeared a decade ago. Ghost Music brilliantly tells a story of young Chinese woman desperately trying to fit into the mould she feels set out for her, yet experiencing the dissonance and friction of that mould mismatching with her own dreams. It’s a novel that is, at its core, about grief. Not just the traditional kind over the loss of a loved one, but the kind of grief you can feel over the loss of your own identity and the future you envisioned. Each of the central characters (Song Yan, her mother in law, her husband and even Bai Yu) carries with them their own regrets of a previous life and roads not taken. Song Yan’s journey throughout these pages is a powerful search for identity and meaning in her plan-B, whilst shedding the haunting of a life she could’ve lived. An Yu manages to pack so much layering into such a short novel and her writing has matured so much since her already brilliant debut Braised Pork. Her prose flows like music and weaves together the intricate chords of these different motifs and themes to create a beautifully melancholic symphony. Even readers who don’t typically enjoy magical realism need not be intimidated by the “magical element” of the fungi in this novel. They are never plot point in themselves, but rather function as a catalyst. They connect and spark conversations about the past between Song Yan and her mother-in-law as the two of them make them into soup. They sprout from dark and forgotten places as a reminder of a past in decay. They appear in Song Yan’s dreams to blur the line between reality and the life she imagined. They are what I wish a good magical realist element to be: an accentuation of reality rather than a magical trope in their own right. Overall, I deeply loved Ghost Music and was left with its deep and melancholic sounds resonating in my mind until now. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, even though I can see why some readers found it to be too “experimental/weird”. Many thanks to Grove Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. You can find this book here on Goodreads.

Gerne: Fantasy Published: Orbit January 2018, originally self-published February 2013 My Rating: 2/5 stars “Never let a rigid itinerary discourage you from an unexpected adventure.” Unpopular opinions incoming: I kind of hated this... On the one hand, I can understand the appeal of The Books of Babel. I understand the love for the indie-darling that got picked up by traditional publishing and became a bestselling hit. On the other hand, based on content, I truly do not get the hype for this one. Reading Senlin Ascends was close to a 1-star experience for me, and I only added the second star for the originality of the worldbuilding. The plot follows Senlin, a scholarly man of words rather than action, who takes his wife on their dream honeymoon to the fabled Tower of Babel. Soon after their arrival, Senlin and his wife are separated, and in his quest to reunite with his wife, Senlin discovered the Tower is anything but what he imagined. My biggest problem with this novel was its reliance on the classic woman-in-fridge-trope, as well as generally sexist undertones in the depiction of all of the female characters. The entire plot hinges on the search for Senlins wife Marya, who’s had barely any character-development (or page time) for herself. Her sole role and purpose is to be an object for the male protagonist to chase; a vessel for the plot rather than a person in her own right. I have a history of disliking this trope and DNF-ing popular series because of it *cough, cought Red Rising cough*, so I might be more sensitive to this one than the average person. Still, I’m sick and tired of seeing it and wish we’d left that in the 80’s SSF-fiction where it originated. Granted; it’s not only Marya who’s underdeveloped. Basically every character apart from Senlin gives off high “NPC-energy”, having no substance and just “playing their part”. Senlin himself, as the only developed character, is insufferable and snobbish. His verbose narrative voice did nothing to engage me in the meandering plot and I often wanted to quit the book altogether. Fans of this series will say that all of these things were intentional; Senlin is meant to be unlikable and sexist, the plot is meant to make little sense. Might well be, but it didn’t take away from the fact that I just didn’t feel like spending my time reading something I didn’t enjoy. You can find this book here on Goodreads

Genre: Horror, Novella Published: Fireside Horror, August 2020 My rating: 4/5 stars "The first time Chris buried a part of herself by her son's roadside cross, it was an accident." Crossroads is a harrowing, disturbing and genuinely unsettling horror novella about grief and the single minded obsession that results from a loss that is larger than one can carry. When Chris's son dies in a tragic car crash, her world is devastated. Consumed by grief, lost in a world of pain and emptiness, she returns to the cross that marks his final resting place daily, having conversations with her son in her mind, hoping for him to answer. After an accidental drop of blood lands on her son's memorial Chris thinks she sees his ghost outside her window. Learning about the legend of the Crossroads Demon, who will bring back the dead in return for a blood-sacrifice, Chris becomes increasingly determined to do anything it takes to see and speak to her son a final time. Her obsession driving her further into a dark spiral that may lead to a ghost, or something else entirely... As a reviewer, I recommend and judge books that deal with grief all the time and ones like these are always the hardest to “recommend”. On the one hand: Crossroads is a brilliant and frighteningly realistic portrayal of the dark and painful side of grief. Chris’ grief is tangible on every page; her son was the central axis to her life, and now everything is being sucked into the vaccuum left behind by his absense. Forget about ghouls, demons and jumpscares; as someone who’s visited those depths of grief, no horror is more terrifying than that. As such, it’s a brilliant piece of horror-writing, as well as grief-fiction, and I’d recommend it. On the other hand: as a “grief-recommendation” I can only endorse it if you’re in a place where you’ve been able to put a little distance between you and your grief. This novella is horror first and foremost: it’s heavy-dark-little-light and characters make irrational and unwise decisions that might leave you in a dark headspace if you’re not able to properly challenge them. In many ways, this is similar to Pet Sematary; brilliant horror, but check yourself (and contentwarnings) before you wreck your emotions with this one. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Poetry Published: Ecco Press, November 2022 My rating: 3.5/5 stars "By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended." Synopsis: Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples and calls us to imagine what will persist in the aftermaths. With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time. They look into the collective psyche of our years in the pandemic and in the throes of anti-racist uprisings, while imagining other vectors, directions, and futures. Stories of survival collide across space and time--from Korean comfort women during World War II to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. Throughout, Choi grapples with where the individual fits within the strange landscapes of this apocalyptic world, with its violent and many-layered histories. In the process, she imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi's signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope. My Opinion: This collection of modern poems holds some beautiful imagery and wordplay, but it ultimately didn't connect with me in the way I wanted it to. It tackles some important and current topics like the pandemic, political instability (specifically in the US), climate change and feminism but plays it rather safe with many of them. I overall found myself "easily agreeing" with much of it, but nothing more. No boundaries were pushed, no thoughts were being challenged, leaving me with a collection that was good, but not as memorable as I'd like it to be. You can find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Middle-Grade, Novel in Verse Published: Holiday House, December 2022 My Rating: 4.5/5 stars “Unreal - There is no other word. Inside our broken home, we don’t know how broken the outside world is.” Ode to a Nobody is a powerful middle-grade novel in verse that managed to exceed my already high expectations with how impactful it was. Through a series of school-issued poetry assignments and journal entries, we’re offered an intimate look into the mind of a young girl as she navigates finding her voice in the aftermath of a storm (literally and figuratively) uprooting her home. We first meet Quinn during the spring of her eight-grade year, through her first attempts at writing a poem about herself for a school assignment. Much like herself; Quinn’s not expecting her poem to be much of anything. Afterall, she’s an unremarkable nobody, average at best at all she does, and happy to fade into the background while her brilliant older brother takes the spotlight. Being invisible however, is no longer an option when an devastating tornado tears through her town and leaves destruction in its wake. With everything she knew changed, Quinn takes to her poetry as an outlet for her emotions. As she openly writes about the destruction of her home, the changing dynamics of her family and friendships, and her own insecurities, we slowly see her finding her voice and gaining the confidence to rebuilt a place for her own in this world. There’s something deeply powerful to middle-grade fiction that manages to approach difficult topics through a lense that is accessible, relatable and understandable for readers of all ages. Combining that power with the ease and flow of its verse makes for an unforgetable reading experience. I loved every step of Quinns journey of charactergrowth, and it’s a testament to the skill of the writing that all that growth is portrayed through journal-entries/poems written by the character herself. Although the format of verse may not be everybody’s cup of tea, I still beg you to give this book a chance if you’re looking for an impactful and emotional journey that still brims with hope, lightness and joy. If you enjoy a coming-of-age novel about finding your innerstrenght (e.i. The Hate U Give, A Heart in a Body in the World or The Poet X) than this is a must read, regardless if you’re an adult, young adult or middle-grade reader. Many thanks to Holiday House for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Horror Published: Compass and Fern, January 2023 My Rating: 3.5/5 stars What would happen if the creators of Netflix’s Dark teamed up with Blake Crouch, and wrote a sci-fi horror-mystery set in Area X from Annihilation…? First, I’d throw my money at them unquestioningly and second, you’d get something quite similar to what S.A. Harian created with Briardark. 7 years ago a group of 5 young hikers, among them a famous Youtube streamer of survival horror-games, goes missing without a trace in the remote and desolate wilderness of the Deadswitch-woods. None of them are ever heard from again. History now threatens to repeat itself when a group of environmental scientist on a field expedition encounter a series of inexplicable phenomena in the area. Landmarks disappear without a trace, satellite phones fail and strange, everchanging foliage hides dark shadows in the periphery. Told through alternating perspectives, between the missing researchers and the man looking into their disappearance via recovered audio- and video-logs, Briardark takes us on a disorienting journey through time and place, into the dark woods… What I liked: Briardark had me hooked from page one with its tight plot, compelling mysteries and unsettling twists. With almost every chapter ending on a cliff-hanger or suspenseful reveal, I was reading compulsively past my bed-time, unable to put the book down. Where the synopsis may seem “familiar”, it subverts expectations, adds elements and leaves you second-guessing all the way until the end. Throughout the novel you might feel disoriented at times, but it always feels intentional, rather than being the result of poor plotting. Rather, you feel what the characters feel as they uncover piece by little piece of the puzzle that is the Deadswitch-wilderness. Worldbuilding, environmental descriptions and atmosphere are spot-on. I’ve started this review by comparing the atmosphere and setting to Area X, which is a huge compliment coming from me, as Annihilation is my uncontested favourite horror-novel. What I didn’t like: The engagement I felt to the plot and mystery unfortunately didn’t extend to the characters. Despite the authors efforts I never felt attached or connected to them beyond their “role” in moving the plot. This may be in part due to the many different POV’s, that all read quite similar, and don’t differ in narrative tone of voice from one character to the next. For a plot-/mystery-driven story, this works fine, but for me as a character-driven reader, I would’ve liked to get to know our cast a little more in depth. I do really appreciate a cast of smart characters, who actually act smart on page, at the center of a survival horror novel. It’s surprisingly rare, but brings a breath of fresh air to the genre. When I first received my ARC, I wasn’t aware that this would be the start of a new series. As such, I wasn’t quite able to adjust my expectations towards the ending. Briardark leaves many questions and mysteries open, and although it succeeded in hooking me for the sequel, I would’ve like to have gotten a little bit more resolution at the end. I’m hoping the author will nail the ending in the sequel, and not repeat the pitfalls of her YA debut. Overall, despite the slightly unsatisfying ending, I still recommend Briardark for fans of sci-fi-horror or speculative mysteries. I myself will be eagerly awaiting the sequel. Many thanks to Compass and Fern for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Published: Daphne Press, January 2023 My Rating: 1/5 stars “Culture runs deeper than blood. ” Might well be, but this book was an uncultured mess… I genuinely hate giving any book a one-star rating, but especially so when it’s an ARC and hasn’t even been released yet. However, with The Luminaries I cannot justify any other rating. This is the most superficial, bland and pointless book I’ve read in a long time. Synopsis (as paraphrased from the backflap): We follow 16-year old Winnie Wednesday, who lives in a mysterious, reclusive town, surrounded by monster-infested-woods and plagued by ancient family feuds and prejudices (think Four Paths from The Devouring Gray). Winnie wants to join the Luminaries, the ancient order of monster-hunters that protects humanity from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest every night. In order to do so, she must complete three deadly trials to prove her worth. Her competitor is a broodingly handsome bad-boy. They team up and a hate-to-love-romance ensues. Have you read that synopsis? Great! You’ve read the entire book. Literally nothing else of interest happens and no more depth is reached within the following 300 pages. Story: thin as a leaf. Characters: flat as a doormat. Worldbuilding: entirely unoriginal. Romance: Twilight levels of cringe. I’m reaching for something positive to mention within this review, but I’m stumped. I guess the book is visually beautiful. It has an eye-catching cover, beautiful character-headings and includes some illustrated compendium-pages depicting the monsters that roam the woods. Those were pretty cool. Other than that, I have little to say. I don’t expect a YA-paranormal fantasy to be a literary masterpiece, but this was offensively low-effort. This is my strongest DO-NOT-RECOMMEND out of any ARC I’ve read in a long time. Many thanks regardless to Daphne Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. You can find this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Fantasy Published: Gollancz, August 2022 My Rating: 4/5 stars The First Binding seems to be one of the more divisive fantasy releases of 2023. On the one hand, I’ve seen it hailed as the best fantasy-debut of the decade. On the other hand, trashed as a pompous and overwritten The Name of the Wind Rip-off. Although I personally really enjoyed my time with this book, I can sympathize with both extremes. First things first; it’s impossible to deny the clear inspiration Virdi takes from Patrick Rothfuss' work. We follow a legendary hero of sorts, recounting his life story by the fire of a crowded tavern, to the ears of an eager audience yearning to hear about his epic adventures. Part of his story may be true, parts may be false, embellished by a quite vain protagonist with a flair for the dramatic. Not only is the set-up familiar, many of the story beats (without spoiling too much: rags-to-riches-street-urchin, magical academy, the epic battle with a beast at the end…) play out in a similar way. As do many of the character archetypes (Ari is a theatre performer rather than a bard, but my point still stands). Whether you’ll enjoy The First Binding most likely boils down to the answer to two questions. 1. Did you love Name of the Wind? If no, than skip this book. 2. Are you okay with reading a well-written “copy” that captures that same feeling, rather than something completely new and original. If you answered yes to both: this book is for you. Personally, that was the case for me. I had fun, I was immersed and I enjoyed the craft and the prose that went into this book. It took me back to that feeling of my first reading some of my genre-favourites (Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb etc.). Being listed among those names is a huge compliment, even if it is by virtue of imitation. In a world whereThe Name of the Wind doesn’t exist, this might’ve been a 5-star read, but in this reality it’s a 4 for me. -0,5 for lack of originality and -0,5 for length. Although I was entertained throughout, this didn't need to be 850 pages long, and could've benefited from an extra edit to shave of about 200 pages or so. Other than that: I can't wait to see how the Tales of Tremaine continue and will be eagerly awaiting the sequel. Here's to hoping that Virdi doesn't mirror "Rothfuss" in this aspect... Add this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: magical realism, literary fiction Published: Picador Press, September 2019, (first published December 2015 in the original Japanese) My Rating: 1/5 stars “At the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present doesn't change.” I can still sense the bitter aftertaste of disappointment this book left in my mouth. Even though this is my best friends favourite book of all time, it just wasn’t my lukewarm cup of coffee at all. I can keep the “lukewarm part” spoiler free, but in order to discuss what really ground my beans and had me ready for a dark-roast, I’m going to have to spoil some of the books events. Be aware: spoilers under the Ugly-section. Also: I will knock it off with the coffee-puns, don’t worry. The Good I really liked the take on time-travel this book had. In short, we follow the everyday happenings in a seemingly ordinary coffee-shop in a small back alley in Tokyo. Except when you sit at a specific table, under specific circumstances, this place offers you an opportunity to travel back in time, and revisit or repeat a conversation with a loved one you’d wish you’d handled differently. During your time-travel, you’re confined to your chair and can only stay for the duration that your coffee is still steaming, leaving you with a limited time to say your piece. Before the Coffee Gets Cold chronicles 4 stories, of 4 separate visitors, each on their personal quest for closure. Time travel can be such a complex maze of paradoxes and by setting these strict rules the author avoids many of these issues. In fact, I often thought of it more as “conversations with ghosts of the past”, rather than time travel. It makes for a great set-up, and one that I’m sure many of us have fantasized about before. The Bad: Things fall apart from the get-go, mostly because of the incredibly clunky writing. I first thought this was a poor translation, but I’ve since heard Japanese reviewers saying it’s actually very true to the original style. Kawaguchi originally wrote this story to be a (screen)play, only to later adapt it into novel form. Except little “adapting” was actually done. There’s so much narrative exposition, dry and lifeless dialogue and a complete lack of transitions or cohesion between the four stories. Characterisation was horrendous, with each character having a single character-trait/motivation, or none at all. As a result, the dialogues that form the centre of this book read like an exercise of “dry-reading a stage play” with the character-sheet missing. The book overall is of course deeply sentimental and is guilty of the bookish-sin I hate most: being emotionally manipulative and written with the sole intent to make the reader cry. If you’re going to tuck my heartstring this blatantly, at least have the decency to wrap your attempts up in an acceptable plot. All of the above made for a 2-star book, but what truly catapulted this one into 1-star territory was some of the underlying messaging that I really couldn’t get behind. There will be spoilers from this point on, so be warned. The Ugly: This novel perpetuates and romanticises some incredibly traditionalist views in my opinion, especially in regards to the roles a woman should take within a relationship. These themes are present in all four stories, but I’ll highlight the most egregious examples. In our first story, a woman relives a pivotal conversation with her (ex)boyfriend. Her take-away from this experience is the realisation that she would’ve been happier had she places her “less accomplished career” (she’s a medical tech and he’s a game developer, so I’m not sure why she’s hellbent on comparing the two) secondary to his happiness. Wife-is-for-the-house, man-for-the-money-trope. Already icky, but I can look past it this once. In the second story, a woman has a conversation with her husband suffering from Alzheimers, in a time before he lost his memories of her. She comes away with the realisation that she’s utterly content having given up her entire life and career to become his full-time caretaker, because “it’s her natural place as a wife and she loves him so much”. NO, NO, NO, NO! Can we please not romanticise and oversimplify the incredibly complex dynamic of a care-taking relationship in this way?! Worst offender is the final story, in which a girl travels back in time to speak to her mother who died giving birth to her(?! Makes no sense but don’t question it) to ask her some burning questions. We learn that mum knew from the get-go that she was ill and would likely die in childbirth, yet selfishly and stubbornly continued to ignore health-risks, become pregnant and continue with the pregnancy, in order to fulfil her purpose to become a mum. The novel than praises her as a selfless hero for it. In my personal opinion: setting a child into the world to grow up an orphan, because you know for a fact you will not be there to take care of it is incredibly selfish. You’re only thinking of your own wishes of being a mum, without considering the implications for the child (growing up without a parent, the survivors-guilt this kid will face etc.). This trope also perpetuates the idea that a woman’s sole purpose and value in life is in producing off-spring, which I deeply reject. Overall, this book started bad but left a scolding burn of anger the longer I sat with it. I know for a fact there’s an audience out there for this book (again Robin, I’m so sorry), but I personally cannot recommend it to anyone. Find this book here on Goodreads.

Adult Fiction 1. Migrations – Charlotte McConaghy Genre: literary Fiction Representation: loss of home/family, trauma Triggerwarnings: sexual assault, suicide, physical violence. One-line synopsis: A young woman carrying the weight of her past on her shoulders leaves behind everything but her research gear, arriving in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration across the ocean to Antarctica. 2. Once There Were Wolves – Charlotte McConaghy Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of home/family, trauma Trigger warning: domestic abuse, animal death, sexual violence, self-harm. One-line synopsis: Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska. 3. Where the Forest Meets the Stars – Glendy Vanderah Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent, depression, cancer One-line synopsis: a mysterious child who claims to be from outer space, teaches two strangers, each haunted by their own grief, how to love and trust again. 4. Grief is the Thing With Feathers – Max Porter Genre: poetry / novel in verse Representation: loss of partner/mother from perspective of 2 young sons and their father. One-line synopsis: a family is taunted by the spirit of a meanspirited crow following the death of their mother. 5. Yerba Buena – Nina LaCour Genre: contemporary, romance Representation: loss of family, trauma One-line synopsis: two women, each damaged by their past in their own ways, find each other in this beautiful tale of love, healing and learning to trust again after an immense loss. 6. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of child Trigger warnings: suicide One-line synopsis: the unexpected suicide of their daughter upsets the meticulously crafted facade of perfection held up by an Chinese-American family, tumbling the remaining family members into chaos. 7. Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel Genre: literary fiction, dystopian Representation: loss of family/friends/way-of-life due to pandemic. One-line synopsis: Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity in the wake of a global societal collapse. 8. The Glass Hotel – Emily St. John Mandel Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of family/friends/way-of-life One-line synopsis: an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. 9. Sea of Tranquillity – Emily St. John Mandel Genre: science fiction Representation: various types of loss One-line synopsis: A novel of art, time, love, and plague, fracturing through time from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. 10. How High We Go In the Dark – Sequioa Nagamatsu Genre: science fiction Representation: loss of family/ friends/ child/loved-ones/way-of-life due to pandemic. One-line synopsis: blending the line between novel and short-story-collection, we follow a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague. 11. The Museum of You – Carys Bray Genre: contemporary fiction Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: a 12-year old girl with a fascination for museums and a deep desire to know her mother, who passed away when she was very young. Her father took his wife’s death hard, and has locked his grief away (literally) by keeping all his wife’s possessions in a dedicated room and sealing the door. Unable to talk to her dad about her mother, Clover takes to the locked room to find her own answers about her mom’s life. 12. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when our protagonist is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known before her passing. 13. The Desert Sky Between Us – Anne Valente Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: estranged sisters Billie and Rhiannon reconnect on a road trip together, to complete the scavenger hunt their mother designed for them before her death. 14. A Million Things – Emily Spurr Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent. Trigger warning: obsessive hoarding disorder, addiction, suicide One-line synopsis: A bursting, heartfelt, debut following fifty-five days in the life of ten-year-old Rae, who must look after herself and her dog when her mother disappears. 15. The Unseen World – Liz Moore Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent, dementia One-line synopsis: years after his passing, a young woman uncovers answers and grieves about a side of the life of her eccentric late father, who she never fully got to know. 16. Night Sleep Death The Stars – Joyce Carol Oates Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent/spouse Triggerwarning: police violence One-line synopsis: a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. 17. The House At the Edge of the World – Julia Rochester Genre: literary fiction Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: twin siblings research their haunted family history, characterised by shipwrecks, mystery and misfortune, as tracked on an old seamap, following the tragic accidental death of their father. 18. Pearl - Siân Hughes Genre: literary fiction Representations: loss of parent One-line synopsis: an atmospheric novel set in rural Ireland, following our protagonists journey from losing her own mother at 8 years old, to becoming a mother herself years down the line. Along the way she seeks solace in the wild Irish nature, art and the medieval titular poem. 19. Death Valley - Melissa Broder Genre: literary fiction, magical realism Representation: caregiving/hospice care, chronic illness (of husband) One-line synopsis: a hallucinatory trip of a novel about a woman getting lost in the Californian desert whilst attempting to outrun her own grief over both her father in the ICU and a husband whose longstanding illness is slowly worsening. 20. Terrace Story - Hilary Leichter Genre: literary fiction, magical realism Representation/trigger warnings: loss of spouse, loss of child, childhood neglect One-line synopsis: a puzzle of stories within stories, about a couple who’ve just moved into a new apartment, only to find a door to a terrace which wasn’t previously there before. They use the terrace as a place to tell stories, about alternate versions of their own life and that of those around them. A beautiful exploration of grief, love, memory and creating space for the aforementioned. Fantasy & Magical Realism 1. The Gracekeepers – Kirsty Logan Genre: fantasy/magical realism Representation: various losses (friends, family, loved one, way of life) One-line synopsis: set in a waterlogged world flooded by the ocean, we follow two protagonists; Callanish who makes a living as a Gracekeeper, administering shoreside burials to the local islanders, and North; a circus performer with floating troupe of acrobats, clowns and dancers who sail from one archipelago to the next, entertaining in exchange for sustenance. A beautiful friendship blossoms when their stories intersect. 2. The Gloaming – Kirsty Logan Genre: fantasy/magical realism Representation: loss of family member/loved one to lingering illness, (facial) disfigurement, limb-differences. One-line synopsis: Set on an island where magic is more than the subject of folklore, we follow an unorthodox family of five in the wake of a tragedy that changed their lives forever. 3. Ghost Music - An Yu Genre: magical realism Representation: various sorts of loss, including grief over a life not lived/giving up on dreams. One-line synopsis: An Yu’s enchanting and contemplative novel of music and mushrooms follows a former concert pianist searching for the truth about a vanished musician, and working through a spectrum of grief in all its multifacetted ways along the way. 4. Braised Pork – An Yu Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of husband One-line synopsis: a young woman finds her husband dead in their small Beijing apartment bathroom, having mysteriously drowned in their bath. Near his body, the only clue she finds is a sketch of a half-man, half-fish creature that may have had significance to her husband. What follows is an exploration of their pasts, their marriage of convenience and the mythology that surrounds them. 5. Creatures of Passage – Morowa Yejide Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of (twin)sibling Triggerwarning: racism, murder, alcoholism/substance abuse. One-line synopsis: A young woman spends her days ferrying ill-fated passengers in her haunted taxi-car (a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk) as she manages her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. 6. By Light We Knew Our Names – Anne Valente Genre: short stories, magical realism Representation: various sorts of loss One-line synopsis: From ghosts to pink dolphins to a fight club of young women who practice beneath the Alaskan aurora borealis, By Light We Knew Our Names examines the beauty in heartbreak and the thin border between magic and grief. 7. Watch Over Me – Nina LaCour Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parents One-line synopsis: After having aged out of the foster system, 18- year old Mila accepts an opportunity to work at a teaching job at an isolated farm on the North Californian Coast. During the daytime she finds connection and friendship in her colleagues and the foster children she tutors, yet during the night the lingering sea mist is filled with ghosts. Horror 1. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson Genre: classic, horror Representation: multiple forms of loss One-line synopsis: four seekers arrive at a notoriously unfriendly gothic mension called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own. 2. Pet Sematary – Stephen King Genre: horror Representation: loss of child Trigger warnings: gore, animal death, on-page death of child One-line synopsis: a sinister pet-cemetery with the power to resurrect whatever is buried there upsets the lives of a family having recently moved into the house nextdoor. 3. Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield Genre: literary horror Representation: loss of spouse, changes within relationship after a traumatic event One-line synopsis: Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. 4. All the Dead Lie Down – Kyrie McCauley Genre: young adult horror, ghosts Representation: loss of parent One-line Synopsis: Days after a tragedy leaves Marin Blythe alone in the world, she receives a surprising invitation from Alice Lovelace—an acclaimed horror writer and childhood friend of Marin’s mother. Alice offers her a nanny position at Lovelace House, the family’s coastal Maine estate. Soon Marin finds out she’s not the only haunted soul about the halls of Lovelace House. 5. Mapping the Interior – Stephen Graham Jones Genre: horror Representation: death of parent, generational trauma and discrimination, Trigger warnings: animal cruelty, discrimination against native Americans One-line synopsis: Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew. 6. How to Sell a Haunted House - Grady Hendrix Genre: horror-comedy, haunted house Representation: parental loss One-line synopsis: After the loss of their parents, an estranged brother and sister return to their childhood home in hopes to sell it, only to find a horders-nest of academic papers, creepy puppets and haunted memories attached to all of it. 7. Come With Me – Ronald Malfi Genre: horror Representation: loss of spouse to murder One-line synopsis: Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, a husband embarks on a journey to discover track down the mysteries of his wife’s curious activities in the weeks prior to her death. 8. White is for Witching - Helen Oyeyemi Genre: horror, haunted house Representation: parental loss Trigger warning: disordered eating One-line synopsis: the Silver twins, Miranda and Eliot, just lost their mother. Now, in their remote house, the family grieves. When Miranda starts to hear spirits in the walls, the house seemingly grieving too, she spirals. Then, Miranda goes missing, and her brother is left trying to find out what happened. 9. Green Fuse Burning - Tiffany Morris Genre: horror, novella Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: An exploration of grief over the loss of a parent, queerness, death and rebirth, all through a lens of natural beauty and terror inside an eco-horro novella. 10. Crossroads - Laurel Hightower Genre: horror Representation: loss of child Trigger warnings: self-harm, suicide One-line synopsis: a harrowing, disturbing and genuinely unsettling horror novella about a womans grief and the single minded obsession that results from the unbearable loss of her son. Young Adult Fiction 1. We Are Okay – Nina LaCour Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of parents One-line synopsis: Snowed in in almost empty college dorm building during the winter break, Marin reconnects with a long lost friend whilst grieving the life and family she’s had to leave behind. 2. Watch Over Me – Nina LaCour Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parents One-line synopsis: After having aged out of the foster system, 18- year old Mila accepts an opportunity to work at a teaching job at an isolated farm on the North Californian Coast. During the daytime she finds connection and friendship in her colleagues and the foster children she tutors, yet during the night the lingering sea mist is filled with ghosts. 3. Bridge of Clay – Markus Zusak Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of parent, terminal cancer One-line synopsis: a family of boys threatens to break apart after the death of their mother due to cancer. 4. Strange Creatures – Phoebe North Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of sibling (gone missing) One-line synopsis: Annie and her older brother Jamie have been inseparable for as long as she can remember. When Jamie goes missing without a trace, Annie becomes convinced he has entered the fantastical world they used to play pretend in, and believes that she's the only one who can bring him back. 5. Me Moth – Amber McBride Genre: novel in verse, magical realism Representation: loss of parents, traumatic accident One-line synopsis: a girl grieving the recent loss of her parents in a fatal car accident, and a boy battling depression find each other on a roadtrip, chasing down the ghosts that haunt them both. 6. The Last True Poets of the Sea – Julia Drake Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of sibling One-line synopsis: 16-year old Violet spends her summer researching her family history involving family-curses, shipwrecks and coastal tragedies to keep her mind of the recent loss of her brother. 7. The Astonishing Color of After – Emily X.R. Pan Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parent Trigger warning: suicide (not on page) One-line synopsis: Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Her search for the bird brings her to her family’s roots in Taiwan, on a journey of chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. 8. The Undead Truth of Us – Britney S. Lewis Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parent, depression, anxiety One-line synopsis: 16-year old Zharie Young is absolutely certain her mother morphed into a zombie before her untimely death, but she can't seem to figure out why. Why her mother died, why her aunt doesn't want her around, why all her dreams seem suddenly, hopelessly out of reach. And why, ever since that day, she's been seeing zombies everywhere. 9. We Are the Ants – Shaun David Hutchinson Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of boyfriend, depression. One-line synopsis: Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button. Only he isn’t sure he wants to, following the tragic events in his life recently. 10. Tell the Wolves I’m Home – Carol Rifka Brunt Genre: historical Representation: loss of uncle One-line synopsis: following his death due to an unnamed illness in 1987, fourteen-year-old June uncovers that the uncle she idolized may have been leading a secret life for years. 11. How To Make Friends With the Dark – Kathleen Glasgow Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: an intimate portrayal of a 16-year olds travel through the darkest depth of grief following the loss of her mother. 12. Letters to the Lost – Bridget Kemmerer Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: An unlikely friendship and romance begins when a boy finds a series of haunting letters on a grave; letter written from a girl to her deceased mother. 13. Catfish Rolling - Clara Kumagai Genre: magical realism Representation: missing parent One-line synopsis: Magic-realism blends with Japanese myth and legend in an original story about grief, memory, time in the wake of an earthquake that shook a nation. 14. We Speak in Storms – Natalie Lund Genre: magical realism Representation: parent with terminal illness, various losses of loved-ones. One-line synopsis: a small town is haunted by the aftermaths of a tornado that shattered and took the lives of multiple families back in the seventies. When new tornado-warnings appear, the heavy winds bring with them ghostly presences from days past. Three teens find companionship, support and recognition in the stories from those that came before them. Middle Grade Fiction 1. A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parent, terminal cancer One-line synopsis: A young boy finds an unexpected partner in dealing with his grief over his mothers terminal illness within a monster that appears at night outside his window. 2. Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea – Ashley Herring Blake Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of parent, loss of (twin)sibling, traumatic accident One-line synopsis: A novel about a girl navigating grief, trauma, and friendship as she explores the local legend of the mermaid that is said to haunt the ocean near their coastal town in Maine. 3. August Isle – Ali Standish Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of sibling/family member, trauma One-line synopsis: a young girl uncovers family secrets when she visits the island town of August Isle, Florida, where her mother used to spend her vacations when she was a child. 4. How To Disappear Completely – Ali Standish Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of grandparent One-line synopsis: 12-year old Emma navigates her new diagnosis of vitiligo - a condition that makes patches of her skin lose their colour-, as well as the grief over the loss of her grandmother and best friend by journaling letters to her grandma. One day, a mysterious “friend” writes back. 5. The Thing about Jellyfish – Ali Benjamin Genre: contemporary Representation: childhood loss of close friend, traumatic accident One-line synopsis: After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting. She sets out on a research-journey of her own in order to confirm her theory. 6. The Girl From Earths End – Tara Dairman Genre: fantasy Representation: parental (terminal) illness, fear of losing parent. One-line synopsis: 12-year old Hannah lives a peaceful life with her two fathers on a small isolated island, tending to the gardens there. Everything changes when one of her dads falls seriously ill. When Henna learns of the existence of a legendary, near-extinct plant with miraculous healing powers, she sets of on a quest to the main-island to join the Academy of Botany located there, in the hopes of bringing back this plant for her dad. 7. Hour of the Bees – Lindsay Eagar Genre: contemporary Representation: grandparent suffering dementia One-line synopsis: a young girl becomes fascinated by the magical stories told by her aging grandfather, as her family moves in with him over the summer to help out with his progressive dementia. 8. Where the Sky Lives – Margaret Dilloway Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of uncle One-line synopsis: When life doesn’t make sense, twelve-year-old amateur astronomer Tuesday Beals has always looked to the stars above Zion National Park, where she lives. Her beloved late uncle Ezra taught her astronomy, but now their special stargazing sites are all she has left of him, along with his ashes and a poem that may be a riddle. 9. King and the Dragonflies – Kacen Callender Genre: contemporary Representation: loss of sibling Trigger warning: suicide, homophobic and racist language (called out on page) One-line synopsis: Twelve-year-old King is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly, following his unexpected passing. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family. 10. Imaginary – Lee Bacon Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: The story of a boy and his imaginary friend--told by the imaginary friend Zach should've outgrown his imaginary friend by now. 11. Sadé and her Shadow Beasts – Rachel Faturoti Genre: magical realism Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: Twelve-year-old Sadé has been escaping to an imaginary world ever since her mum passed away - with its candy-floss lilac sky and endless whimsical adventures. But soon she discovers that frightening shadow beasts live here too and they are seeping into the real world. Non-Fiction 1. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi Genre: memoir Representation: terminal cancer One-line synopsis: a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question 'What makes a life worth living?' 2. Traveling With Ghosts; A Memoir – Shannon Leone Fowler Genre: memoir Representation: loss of spouse One-line synopsis: From grief to reckoning to reflection to solace, a marine biologist shares the solo journey she took—through war-ravaged Eastern Europe, Israel, and beyond—to find peace after her fiancé suffered a fatal attack by a box jellyfish in Thailand. 3. Undying: a love story – Michel Faber Genre: poetry Representation: loss of spouse, terminal cancer One-line synopsis: a memoir in verse written by author and poet Faber following the death of his wife due to cancer. 4. A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis Genre: memoir Representation: loss of spouse One-line synopsis: the authors thought, written in longhand journals, chronicling his grief over the loss of his wife. 5. The Long Goodbye – Meghan O’Rourke Genre: memoir Representation: loss of parent, terminal cancer One-line synopsis: Following the death of her mother, O’Rourke attempts to answer the question “What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief?” 6. Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir – Kat Chow Genre: memoir Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: An intimate and haunting portrait of grief and the search for meaning from a singular new talent as told through the prism of three generations of her Chinese American family. 7. Notes on Grief – Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche Genre: essays Representation: loss of parent One-line synopsis: a work of mediation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. 8. It's OK that You're Not OK - Megan Devine Genre: self-help Representation: loss of spouse (own voice), various losses (authors experience as a therapist) One-line synopsis: blending the line between self-help and memoir: the authro shares her personal experiences, tips and research about grieving in a society that often doesn't offer the opportunity, time and space to do so. 9. The Way Through the Woods: of Mourning and Mushrooms - Long Litt Woon Genre: memoir, science Representation: loss of spouse One-line synopsis: A grieving widow feeling disconnected from life discovers a most unexpected obsession--hunting for mushrooms--in a story of healing and purpose. Looking for even more grief-recommendations? Link to my post on my personal favourite grief-themed novels here. Link to my Goodreads Grief-and-trauma shelf here. Note, this shelf also includes books that are on my TBR, or that I don't necessarily recommend.

Genre: Horror Published: Tor Nightfire, July 2022 Rating: 5/5 stars “The dead don’t walk. The thought beat at my brain like a fragment of some sort of song and rang in my ears on an endless loop. I even flexed my jaw in exactly the right way tot rigger a bout of tinnitus, but as soon as it passed, the words were there again. The dead don’t walk. The dead don’t walk.” When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves. Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all. With this retelling of Poe's classic short story The Fall of the House of Usher, Kingfisher delivers another fantastic piece of gothic-inspired horror that managed to complete unsettle me with its atmosphere and storytelling. Being familiar with the source material (so not quite as many surprises) didn’t take anything away from that. Instead, Kingfisher does Poe’s original completely justice; keeping what made it great and expanding where the original left room. She brought the (originally flat) characters to life of the page, and had me genuinely scared and caring for their fates. Amazing piece of horror that I highly recommend, especially if you liked the original, or the likes of Mexican Gothic or the more recent The Ghost Woods. On a separate note: this cover deserves some awards. Stunning artwork and captures the vibe of the story perfectly. Add this book here on Goodreads.

Genre: Fantasy, Retelling Published: Redbook/Orbit, April 2022 My Rating: 2.5/5 stars “I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions - much good it did me.” I’ve struggled quite a bit with my feelings on Kaikeyi and after weighing the good and the bad, I’ve ultimately landed smack down in the middle on a 2.5 star rating. Kaikeyi is the next addition to the genre of ancient-myths-retold that exploded after the success of Madeline Millers Greek Mythology retellings, and retells the Ramayana from the perspective of the villainous queen. As such, I’ve divided my thoughts and this review into two parts; first looking at this book as a piece of (literary) fantasy, as it’s primarily been marketed, and second as a retelling. Both landed me on a “mixed” judgement, but for different reasons entirely. As a fantasy novel: If we take away the context, and look at Kaikeyi as a standalone fantasy novel, we’re left with an alright story, that simply wasn’t for me. There’s obviously a large focus on royalty and the court-intrigue-politics, which happens to be my least favourite fantasy-trope. Objectively, I think it’s a solid book that many fans of this genre will like, but subjectively it brought my enjoyment far down. Kaikeyi as a protagonist is the novels biggest selling point for me. You can tell the author put a lot of work in developing her character to be a rounded woman, beyond the vengeful “evil stepmother”-role she portrays in the Ramayana. I enjoyed the authors exploration of her struggle to find her place in a male-dominated world and discovering a way to assert authority of her own, when she often feels like a plaything for others to be manipulated. Her unique magical ability ties into this perfectly. Kaikeyi is able to access the Binding Plane; a version of reality in which she can see and manipulate the strings that connect people. It slots perfectly into our protagonists character; a woman so reliant on her social intelligence and literally “pulling strings” in order to exert her influence. I love when a magical power is an extension of a character-trait, and I’ve never seen it done quite in this way before. Weaker points where the side-characters (many feeling flat and quite one-dimensional as opposed to Kaikeyi), and the worldbuilding that I never quite got a feeling for. As a retelling: Judging this book as a retelling is where my feelings truly get mixed, and even a little uncomfortable. Kaikeyi follows all the same beats we already know from classic myth retellings, with one major exception, which I will come back on near the end of this review. In addition to feeling very “same-y” to its genre-competitors, it also falls into all the same traps they’ve already tested my tolerance of. To name a few: - The Feminist Approach In almost every classic-retelling, we encounter an enlightened (female protagonist), who embodies all feminist ideals and morals of our modern time, regardless of the context of the original story. Placing modern feminist views on century-old characters may help to make the story more familiar and comfortable to modern audiences, but it also feels anachronistic and inauthentic at times. There are more ways fitting to have empowered female characters than to have them quote 21st-century feminist morals. - The Western adaptation Other than the feminist themes, many other social, moral and cultural elements of western culture are often introduced into these stories, either to make them more familiar to a Western audience, or because it’s what the author knows best. This can take away from the authentic feel of the original. I’m curious to hear from Hindu-readers how they experienced this, because for me (as a white Western European woman) I very much felt like the target audience. - The Flipping-The-Hero In order to justify the actions of traditionally villainous characters, authors often feel the need to vilify the hero of the original story to an extreme. Much more interesting to me would be to create a full cast of fleshed out characters, all of which are morally non-binary. Circe to me is the perfect example of how to do that right. This final point leads me to the aspect in which Kaikeyi differs from many of the other commercially successful classical retellings. Where Greek mythology has very few (if any) modern-day believers, this cannot be said for Hinduism. When your source material still holds high significance to currently living individuals there is always the risk of offence, especially in vilifying a significant religious figure. For this reason, I highly recommend you seek out own-voice reviews from Hindu-readers, as I personally don’t feel comfortable judging this aspect of the novel. I can see this re-imagining being interpreted as very powerful, or very offensive, depending on your personal context. For me, completely lacking any of this context, it was a middle-of-the-road addition to its genre. Many thanks to Orbit for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. You can add this book to your Goodreads here.