Book Reviews

Lily Braun-Arnold

YA dystopia // 300 pages

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Premise: After an apocalyptic acid rain, Liz lives alone in the bookstore where she used to work. Her only friend left months ago. Then one day, a girl breaks into the bookstore.

Stand-out elements: the teenage voice, thoughts, and world perspective were realistic

Downsides: felt unfocused (not great since effective dystopias must say something); might have needed one more pass from an editor for small inconsistencies

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2.75

Jennette McCurdy

Memoir // 300 pages

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Premise: Jennette tells the story of her life to date, navigating her mother’s wild moods and overbearing expectations, until her mother’s death from cancer—and then the years after. The top half deals largely with her (almost exclusively negative) experiences as a child actor, and the latter half details her struggle against an eating disorder, but she covers much more than that.

Stand-out elements: highly readable (the writing itself fades into the background to make room for the intense content); engrossing like reality tv or disaster footage

Downsides: none really; i recommend looking up trigger warnings if you have concerns

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4.25 stars

Andy Weir

Sci fi // 475 pages

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Premise: A man wakes up from a coma with no idea of who he is or what is going on. He slowly realizes he is on a spaceship, he is the only survivor, and he has a mission to save the Earth. But he has no idea what the mission is, much less how to complete it.

Stand-out elements: the characters are trying to solve a very interesting problem; i love and am fascinated by the secondary characters; all of the science was explained very well

Downsides: the protagonist’s first name is Ryland (i’m sorry, that’s so petty, but why??)

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3.75 stars

Michelle Young-Stone

Literary fantasy // 275 pages

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Premise: For generations, the women of one family have been born with wings. In present-day 1990s, Prudence, a young woman estranged from her Lithuanian heritage, makes preparations to visit her ailing grandfather. Alongside her story, we learn about several generations of her family dating back to the 1800s in Lithuania—everything they suffered, and everything they survived.

Stand-out elements: Insights into an under-taught part of history; a few “visually” stunning moments; non-fascist national pride, which was uplifting

Downsides: not every character was equally interesting; less fantasy than advertised on the tin, definitely more of a lit fic (only a downside in a “blurb vs content” way)

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4 stars

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Mystery & classics, short stories // 900 pages

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Premise: John Watson, an army doctor, returns wounded and destitute from war and starts sharing an apartment with Sherlock Holmes, a bizarre and fascinating consulting detective. There are 4 novellas and 56 short stories

Stand-out elements: delightful main characters, fun mysteries, a sweeping decades-long overarching story of friendship and love and loss

Downsides: period-typical racism and sexism; the stories tend to get lower-quality the farther you go

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5 stars

Recommended to people who love zany characters, or people who want to get into classics but find the antiquated writing intimidating.

Emily Henry

Romance // 375 pages

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Premise: Harriet and Wyn (together for eight years, broken up for a few months) are both invited to their friend group’s last-ever Maine vacation at their friend’s soon-to-be-sold vacation house. For many reasons, this last trip has to be perfect—and they never told their friends they broke up.

Stand-out elements: poetically written, lots of yearning, good female friendships that matter just as much to the protagonist as her romantic relationship

Downsides: The characters have a millennial sense of humor that is slightly distracting

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4.5 stars

Aliya Whitely

Nonfiction // 200 pages

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Premise: The author’s musings on fungi (and the world, with fungi as a lens to provide metaphors) with some fungal fun facts

Stand-out elements: short chapters, easy to read

Downsides: reads like a journal (stream of consciousness) which is weird for nonfiction; under-researched; lots of semi-vague references to visuals with zero accompanying images

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DNF — no rating

John Scalzi

Sci fi & comedy // 250 pages

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Premise: After Jamie loses her job right as Covid ramps up, she gets hired by a mysterious international organization that studies an alternate-dimension Earth crawling with Kaiju.

Stand-out elements: Good sense of humor, likable characters and friendships (or extremely unlikable, depending on the author’s wishes), down-to-earth sci fi plot that doesn’t take itself too seriously

Downsides: The overarching story/the villain’s plan and goals made me angry because they’re so realistic. I was enraged the whole back-half. (A possible pro for some, maybe)

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4 stars

Suzanne Collins

YA dystopia // 375 pages

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Premise: A dystopian government forces each of its 12 outlying districts to send a boy and a girl to fight to the death in an annual death pageant. Katniss volunteers to take her little sister’s place in the games.

Stand-out elements: i am simply going to be biased here: a highly relatable and somewhat unlikable protagonist, good age-appropriate social commentary, Rue makes me cry, very fast-paced

Downsides: ??

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5 stars

Katherine Arden

Historical fantasy // 325 pages

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Premise: Laura is a Canadian nurse, sent home from the front lines of WWI with a leg wound. When she receives a box and a letter that seem to suggest that her younger brother, Freddie - a soldier on the front - was killed, she believes things are not as they seem, and returns to the war to find out what happened to him.

Stand-out elements: beautiful writing, poignant relationships, both POVs follow interesting events

Downsides: a little slow at points

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5 stars

Madeline L’Engle

Children’s fantasy // 200 pages

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Premise: Meg sets out with peer Calvin and little brother Charles Wallace on a surreal outer-space coming of age adventure to rescue her missing father.

Stand-out elements: Fun fantastical settings (they visit multiple worlds) and characters; an existentially upsetting villain

Downsides: A lot of details glossed over because it’s written for a younger audience

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3.75 stars

Robin R. Means Coleman, Mark H. Harris

Nonfiction, media and race // 325 pages

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Premise: This book tracks the role and treatment of Black characters, actors, directors, etc. in Hollywood horror from the 60s to now (but really the 30s to now)

Stand-out elements: fascinating timeline explored with tons of examples, high visual variation on the page, quick to read

Downsides: It felt like the authors had a certain amount of data and insight and then they had to meet a page count. A lot of repetition.

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3 stars

Margaret Rogerson

YA fantasy // 450 pages

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Premise: Elisabeth was raised in a grimoire library, surrounded by living, magical books. When she wakes up one night and finds that someone has set one of her library’s most powerful grimoires loose, she gets thrown into a conspiracy of sorcerers, and intothe world outside the library that she has never known.

Stand-out elements: Elisabeth—i wish she was the love interest because i am squarely in the demographic of people who would like to be in the POV of someone crushing on her; the world concepts are fascinating (grimoires, demons, etc); very cute romance

Downsides: not enough from some of the side characters, especially a couple of the very plot-relevant ones

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4.75 stars

Cassandra Khaw

Horror // 100 pages

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Premise: In a post-dark-little-mermaid-retelling world, a mermaid and a plague doctor head into the woods and encounter a disturbing group of children

Stand-out elements: incredible horror imagery (both frightening and gory), emotionally poignant moments; i love the two characters’ relationship, it’s very tender

Downsides: dense writing

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5 stars

Sangu Mandanna

Cozy fantasy & romance // 300 pages

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Premise: In a world where witches live in secret, lonely witch Mika moves to a secluded house to teach three young witches about their powers, and maybe becomes less lonely.

Stand-out elements: lovable protagonist (her relationship with magic was my favorite part of the book); the ending came wrapped in a nice little bow; each component element was very well done; pretty funny

Downsides: the ‘grumpy’ in the grumpy-sunshine was a little too mean for the tone of the rest of the book. I think Mika could have done better

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4 stars

Shirley Jackson

Horror // 150 pages

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Premise: Mary Katherine lives on a big property in a small town with her older sister and her uncle. The rest of their family were poisoned to death six years ago. The town hates them. One day, someone shows up at their door to disrupt their lives.

Stand-out elements: Masterful character building and narrative voice. Emotionally vivid; very tense throughout

Downsides: ??

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5 stars