We made it through another month! And this one was a really hard one to make it through, on account of we had to wait for days and days for the election results, and then there was this whole stupid slow-motion effort to pretend that the election didn’t have results, and what with one thing and another I have aged approximately two hundred years. The true headline of November has been my discovery of the sweetest and dearest sitcom since The Good Place got me through the 2016 election. It is — and I do not say this lightly —…
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I’ve probably said this before, but one of the most joyous things to me about the increasing author diversity in the SFF genre (slowly, slowly increasing) is the opportunity to see a wider range of authors take on familiar types of stories. To my immense delight, Romina Garber’s novel Lobizona has not just werewolves but a magic boarding school. This is great for me because while I have mixed feelings about Creatures, I adooooore a boarding school story and even more adore a magic boarding school story. Manu and her mother are undocumented immigrants, and Manu has spent the bulk…
Leave a CommentWhat what? What’s that you say? I READ SOME BOOKS? Yes, wow, we are all correctly very impressed by this news. I read some books! In this economy! As two hurricanes barrel down on me at one and the same time! Wow! (I also read Not the Girl You Marry and definitely want to read more by Andie Christopher, but I did not immediately write down my thoughts on it and now I remember nothing about it.) Bringing Down the Duke, Evie Dunmore Annabelle Archer can stay at Oxford under a few, conflicting conditions. To be permitted to study outside…
Leave a CommentLulu Shapiro is rather famous on Snapchat Flash, not least because of the video she took of herself kissing another girl — the video that led to her breakup with her boyfriend Owen. In the aftermath of going viral, Lulu has hidden in plain sight, shutting herself off from her real life friends while creating an image on Not!Snapchat of a perfect life of elegant parties and beautifully framed selfies. But at one of those parties, she meets Cass, who takes her to spend time at her rich friend Ryan’s new work-in-progress, The Hotel. No phones are allowed at the…
Leave a CommentLuc never knew his rock star father, but now that his dad’s making a comeback as the judge of a reality music show, Luc himself is back in the spotlight. When he’s photographed falling down outside of a bar (perfectly! innocently!), it threatens to compromise his job. He needs a respectable boyfriend to help clean up his image, and his straight friend has just the person: the only other gay guy she knows, vegetarian (yes) barrister (yes) Oliver Backwood (yep). And as it happens, Oliver could use a date to a family function too. It’s a match made in the…
Leave a CommentOR: Elisabeth House, by Catherine Thomas, which is what I kept calling this book in my mind. Also sometimes Catherine Thomas, by Elisabeth House. Elisabeth and Catherine are both very lovely saint names that I would totally name a child, and this engendered confusion in my quarantine-fogged mind. Ines has gotten a second chance in the form of acceptance to Catherine House, a nontraditional, highly exclusive private university with a specialty in the mysterious “new materials.” All tuition, fees, and housing are paid, but students must agree to give themselves up entirely to Catherine House for the three years of…
Leave a CommentWhen Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is revealed, the black millennial drops out of college to support her family and takes a job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan. The discoveries made in Lakewood, Lena is told, will change the world—but the consequences for the subjects involved could be devastating. As the truths of the program reveal themselves, Lena learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the sake of her family. Look, let me quickly spoil the gist of this review for y’all. Lakewood! Is! So! Creepy! The…
Leave a CommentI recently began reading fairy tales to my little nephew, on the grounds that everyone should know fairy tales and he hasn’t really experienced them before. He was either into it or giving a good impression of being into it because he’s very into me: We read “Snow White” first and then he picked out “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The Frog Prince” from my book, and on another day he asked me for a story and I told him “Rapunzel.” It should be noted that there are no positive messages in any of these stories. The couple in “Rumpelstiltskin” allegedly live happily…
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