Senevilla

I'm Catholic, practicing. I suspect a lot of people will find this book too irreverent for their tastes, that's ok. I'm not offended by the tone or the jokes that poke fun at Catholicism a little, I think it's written from a place of love and comes off as good-natured to me.

I thought the book was really interesting, I learned a lot! The audio version is exceptionally well done, it really suits the tone of the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free arc, all opinions are my own.

Lovely read! Queeney's background as a magazine writer/editor really shines here. There are lots of quotes from interviews with experts in their respective fields that add so much color to the book. I read on audio and often had to google something to get an image in my head of what he was talking about. I don't know if the text version has photos, but I hope so!

This would make a fantastic gift for anyone who likes niche non fiction. I had so much fun reading this!

Thanks to NetGalley for the free arc, all opinions are my own.

I loved the characters so much, and I loved their blossoming relationship! I like how it unfolded slowly over months, not just instantly in love.

Spoilers below!
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The main problem is making a potion to bring someone back to life – I'll suspend my disbelief and buy that someone dedicated to helping as many people as he can would bring a child he barely knew back to life and, in exchange, never brew another potion again after he's forced to leave town because of his appearance. I'll pretend that someone used to triage and warfare would make that calculation and still make that choice. I'll even buy that to bring back a soul requires giving up someone else's – life for life makes sense. It's harder to but that the crown prince would willingly become an orc zombie so his brother (who he thinks he killed but didn't) can come back to life. But sure, I'll buy it. But why would the king get one brother to kill the other, then exile his one heir to search for the potion brewer to bring back his other son instead of just sending his guards to find the potion brewer, especially since he doesn't know about the cost of potion? Why go through all those extra steps? Why not just find the potion brewer again and force him to brew the potion? If he knew so little about the spell, did he even know that brewing the potion required soul binding first? It felt like a plot twist that didn't really need to happen. I appreciated that the quirk of the spell meant the king was removed from power (I saw that coming a mile off, that was a great moment!) at least.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free arc, all opinions are my own.

Thursday Murder Club meets Thus Adonis Was Murdered in this witty mystery. The mystery was good – solving a 10 year old cold case – but the characters are hands down the best part. I love the banter and the bickering between old friends (and not-friends, as the case may be). I would love to visit Tanglefoot Farm, see the bees and the flowers, and meet Charlie and her adopted uncles.

I can't wait for the next one!

Thanks to NetGalley for the free copy, all opinions are my own

I loved this story! Savvy Summers is a wonderful protagonist. She's got real life experience behind her and the wisdom of a beloved aunt to fill in the gaps. I love the supporting cast too, everyone's hiding something in this story, and uncovering those little secrets along the way lets the main plot unfold slowly without the book dragging. I can't believe I didn't figure out the killer! It's a fair-play mystery, see if you can figure it out before Savvy!

The historical references scattered throughout the book were awesome. It was a clever was of introducing characters and their beliefs without too much fuss. So and so was a member of the BPP? Gotcha – I have a better image in my mind about what kind of person they are and what matters to them. So and so was too young to remember Jim Crow? Ok, I see then why they might have a different view than someone a little older. I thought those moments flowed nicely, and for me they enhanced the story.

And as a little lagniappe, at least some recipes (likely all of them too!) are GOOD. I love cozy mysteries that come with recipes in the back, it's a genre staple, but I've been burned before by a cutesy recipe with bizarre secret ingredients to make it special. Any little extras in these recipes seemed to be actually good additions, not just there to be unique. The orange blossom lemonade is fabulous, and the hot chocolate with honey and peppermint is perhaps not my favorite, but definitely something I will be making for nieces and nephews this Christmas.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free arc, all opinions are my own.

Ignore the cover – the story is FANTASTIC!

Despite having a 16yo protagonist, the story is for adults. CW, there is a lot of discussion about the realities of teen homelessness, including mentions of underage sex workers, living with a pedophile as the alternative to living on the street, substance use, etc. It's not just there for shock value, and it's empathetically written, so it didn't bother me, but I know it won't be for everyone.

The worldbuilding is really cool, magic users and magical humanoids are long lived, and that impacts the story. If you want to know something about a hundred years ago, you can find someone and ask. If you want to know why two people are mad at each other, you might have to go back pretty far to find out.

It took me a while to get into the story, but by the end of the book I was itching for the second! It can't come soon enough.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free copy, all opinions are my own.

“The flag eats heroism to protect and spread itself and returns nothing.”

Strong start, strong ending, dragged in the middle. The beginning was so fantastic that I knew I had to finish the book just to see the end. The majority of the book felt slow to me, which is ok. You spend most of the book in the main character's head (which is really cool!) seeing the world through her eyes. I think making the main character a woman instead of a man was a great choice for the story, if it had been a man I don't think I'd have read the book at all, because it would feel too relatable. Not that there aren't female stalkers and killers, there are! but they are far far in the minority, and every woman knows what it's like to be scared walking alone with a man they know – wondering if he's going to ask you out and get violent if you say no.
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Very minor spoilers below! No plot info, just critiques that talk in broad terms about the book.
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I suppose my two main criticisms would be 1. the book necessarily is a lot of ‘tell, don't show.' The main character isn't rational; her perception of the world isn't anywhere close to the average person's. It would be very hard to ‘show' her logic, because it's so much in her head, but I still didn't enjoy that kind of writing. In moments when the outside world interacts with HER, the writing is much much more ‘show don't tell' – and the juxtaposition between how SHE interprets the world vs how the readers does in those little moments (especially with the neighbor's son) are fantastic, but they feel few and far between. My second criticism is that the main character doesn't change much over the course of the story, she feels static. Sure, she learns between each ‘relationship,' but you could rearrange the mini arcs in almost any order and it wouldn't feel off. The story is supposed to be about her over decades, and I never really got a sense of chance over time.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free copy, all opinions are my own.

A romance novel where you can fully believe both characters are smart, responsible adults. This is the perfect 30-something romance. They have their own goals and ambitions, their own things to work through, etc etc, and no artificial plot contrivances to create tension. I rooted for all the characters to find their happy endings. If you love romance but are tired of books that are stuffed to the gills with tropes just for marketing, this is the book for you.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free copy, all opinions are my own.

The university setting works so well for a murder mystery! I love the main character, you can absolutely tell a historian wrote this. The analogy about detective work and reading against the archival grain made me laugh out loud – and the description of the different kinds of students was so accurate it hurts. A lot of cozy mysteries lack a solid cast of friends/family/network in the main character's life, so often it's the victim, suspects, and a hot detective, and maybe a witty best friend. History Lessons has an extensive social network that makes her feel grounded and real. And I love the romance subplot too! I can't wait for the next book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free arc, all opinions are my own.

A charming cozy mystery with a stunning cast of characters that feel like a real community. I can't pick a favorite character - they're all wonderful. They're messy, they're flawed, and they're determined to figure out how a body ended up outside one of their doors.

The mystery itself is good, more of a 3 or 4 star, I thought the ending was satisfying, but I didn't get a moment of “OH OF COURSE!” that you really want with the big reveal. It all made sense in the end, I just wasn't super wowed.

The book really shines in its character development. I love the relationships between each of the cottages. Every character could be the main character, easily. They all have depth and motivations and leap off the page. I would love for this to become a series, I already miss the Marigold Cottage gang!

Thanks to NetGalley for the free arc, all opinions are my own.

Absolutely brilliant. For kids who grew up reading choose-your-own-adventure novel, this book is a more sophisticated version that keeps all the nostalgia. It's beyond clever, the structure of the book itself and the writing are both top notch.

I LOVE the main character. Kat Hu is a 27yo post doc who loves the history of words and phrases. The other two women also have fantastic personalities that leap off the page. The best part of the book was the relationship between the three women, I like the way they play off each other.

As for the mystery itself, I liked the story and the clues. I found the ending really satisfying.


minor spoilers below!
I liked the relationship between Kat and her parents, and the girlfriend and her sister (who we don't meet but is mentioned), but the world otherwise feels empty. Kat has her coworkers, who she doesn't get along well with, and that's pretty much it. The podcaster is a recurring character, but she doesn't have much depth and is really just a plot device. It never really made sense to me why she'd investigate what the girls did, especially before she knew about the murder.

And Detective McHotty (and variations thereof, that was a great running gag!) asks Kat to help him figure it out – why? It felt too convenient that he'd trust her enough to ask her to continue her own investigations and report back. The trope usually is having to work around the police to solve the crime, and I suppose I like that we're subverting that trope a bit here, but it just took me out of the story because it felt so unlikely.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free copy, all opinions are my own.

A lovely example of science for citizens! This is such a fun book, a great mix of the history of what the world of manufacturing looks like today, how we got here, and where we could be going. The author is funny and makes dense material feel manageable. I hope we'll get a new edition in a decade or so to see how the world has changed.

I cannot recommend enough. From page one I fell in love.

There was a war, and many of the robots fought and have a sort of ptsd. Soldier bots have their messages erase every 24hrs for security, so when one robot loses his friends in an accident he “records” his chat log and memories like a film so he won't forget a single detail. He carries around this huge file for years. When he tries to remember his friends, that file always comes up first, and he relives that day over and over.

He is so afraid of forgetting the friends he loved. One day he shares the file with someone for the first time, and he finds the memory hurts less. Eventually he moves the file into long term memory, because he knows someone else carries a copy too, so it won't be lost even if something happens to him. It's still there, but when he searches for memories of his friends, now the good memories come up first.

I didn't expect a book called “Automatic Noodle” to be about grief, but here we are.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc copy, all opinions are my own.

Fantastic premise: four generations of women run a funeral parlor, keeping the town safe from undead in secret. I will probably read the second because I think the world building in interesting and I like that the author doesn't pull (many) punches.

One point of praise—a lot of people (especially not from the South) have it in their head that “bless your heart” is always sarcastic. It's not, if it was it wouldn't be a useful phrase. It can be, but it's often used genuinely to express pity or mean “I'm touched! You didn't have to do all that!” etc etc. If it was always obviously backhanded we wouldn't be able to get away with saying it. This book nails that!

It's set in the 90s, and makes references to events that would be been relevant to their lives, like Columbine. I understand that is helps build the atmosphere and perspective for why people don't trust one of the characters, but in practice I felt like it wasn't particularly effective or necessary. Being set in the 90s didn't make the story any more or less interesting to me.

Spoilers below:
Is this family the only one in the world fighting the undead? Is it just their town affected by the restless dead? Why have none of them written a guide yet? Is magick real or was Crane just lucky? Maybe we'll find out more in book two!

Thanks to NetGalley for this free copy, all opinions are my own.

I enjoyed the mystery and the characters – each woman has her own perspective and motivations. I thought the ending made sense and was satisfying. It's a fair game mystery, if you pay attention you might guess who's behind it all – I certainly didn't, but when it was revealed, it totally made sense. I think that's the best kind of ending!

I liked the book, but I wasn't super into the story. The writing is good, and the characters are interesting, but it wasn't really for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for my arc, all opinions are my own.

Adorable sequel to the Spell Shop. It was cool to see the political events unfold slowly in the background as a B- or C-plot. It's unapologetically a romance first, and the focus is on the characters and their relationship.

I found the main character a little annoying, she's the kind of nervous chatty person many of us probably relate to. But she is such a compelling protagonist, I was rooting for her the entire time. She's clever and hardworking, and deeply kind. I might not want to be cornered by her at a party, but anyone would be lucky to have her on their side in a crisis.

My favorite part about the book was the dual truths of “you have to save yourself” and “you still need others to help.” It's not one or the other, it's both and. She creates the life she wants, but only has the chance thanks to others who gave her the opportunity. For a story with so much isolation, it's still a story about community.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc! All opinions are my own.

My favorite thing about Kakigori Summer is the little secret language the sisters have, like any siblings do. It really feels like you're sitting in their kitchen like a fly on the wall.

The book is pretty slow-paced, and in the audiobook, it's hard to tell which perspective you're reading sometimes, but it's worth pushing through. Each character has their own perspective and their own memories of the same people and the same events and the same situations. There's tension in those differences, each sister trying to get the others to see her point of view, but always with so much love. A lot of books with very little plot like this would put a lot of emphasis on communication issues, misunderstandings, that sort of thing, but that's not the problem. They're trying to communicate, and they're trying to listen, and they're trying to just be present for each other.

Even when things are at their worst, I love that the story keeps reminding us that in the grand scheme of things, this is just one moment. Maybe a really important moment, one that will stick with us forever, but still just one moment.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc, all opinions are my own.

SO GOOD. Every twist makes you go “I should have seen that coming!!” Fantastic, I bet a reread would make it even better.

This is a beautifully written, approachable book about a complicated issue. It's careful to not be reductive and always emphasizes the humans behind the numbers.

Is it good? No. Is it fun? Sure! Go for it.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Hysterical premise, pretty well executed. I'd like more of his boring life enhanced by vampire powers and less action, to be honest, but it's still a really fun read.

I will never be happy again. My heart is broken beyond repair. Five stars.