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A woman keeps waking up to Nov. 18th. Non-sci-fi with a sci-fi premise! Tara tests the boundaries of her circumscribed life, driven by curiosity, philosophy, and despair. Short, but it drags sometimes as you’re trapped in the monotony with her. Even though I’d like to learn what becomes of her, I don’t think I can read the full septology. Hubby said the 2nd didn’t add anything.

I love this cover so much; it’s like a riso print for a comic. Had to diagram characters, locations, and timelines to follow all of the jumping around. It’s Nayler’s usual fare of capitalism, consciousness, environmental collapse, and AI, but he always manages to write interesting stories about them in different combinations. It’s not all bleak, but what a mess we continue to make for ourselves.

Another book with no punctuation or new paragraphs for dialogue. I can’t wait for this trend to be over. Our protagonist spends a single day fighting her Parkinson’s while making a difficult journey across Buenos Aires. She learns painful things about key women in her life and her part in their suffering. Beautifully human.

I mean, the title alone! 🍿 Lead characters from Northanger Abbey, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Pride and Prejudice are suspects in the titular crime. I’ve read all of Austen’s novels, and have the usual favorites, but I enjoyed the extensions of these characters’ stories (purists beware); even the unhappy ones. A new crime-solving duo must navigate decorum to find the killer. De-fucking-lightful.

This was a hate read. Not sure why I feel a need to subject myself to writing that hasn’t improved from the first book in this series, characters that are still loathsome, and a story that doesn’t make up for any of these shortcomings. I do have a completionist tendency which might be getting more severe over the years. Lord help me, I’ve already decided to read the next (please-let-it-be-the-last) book in the series.

Love the premise: a young girl realizes she’s an alien and reports on humanity via fax to her people on Planet Cricket Rice. But for this twist, it’s a Bildungsroman that’s much more enjoyable during her childhood vs. adult years. Two passages from the former, one involving her misophonia, truly made me cackle. There’s never a direct confirmation of her origins but her adulthood disappointed for me. Oh well.

A wholly original way of exploring grief that wasn’t depressing. Coral is a lesbian author who finds her brother dead by suicide, and begins responding to texts on his phone as him. Intercut with excerpts from her own dystopian novel and flashbacks from their family’s lives, this was hard to follow at times but always beautifully written. One of those I-love-how-your-mind-works authors, I-could-never.

Really great premise that’s marred by a largely uninterrogated colonialist worldview: Arcane Taxonomy grants a portion of the magic from the thing that’s named. Primarily birds. Vaughn isn’t ignorant of the dynamics this creates for queers, women, and POC (our main characters), or that Western ways of knowing and naming aren’t the end-all, be-all. But the engine driving everything remains the will to conquer.

I enjoyed Book 1 of this duology more. The gay relationship isn’t where we left it, and the typical chopping up of a linear recounting of how it got there was jarring. I just wanted to enjoy them being together. The world continues to be interesting though, and the characters are still likable.