Most Disappointing Reads of 2023

Have I blogged or written a book review at all this year? No. Am I going to let that stop me from fulfilling my annual tradition of posting my most disappointing reads of the year and my favourite books of the year? Also no.

A reminder that most of my disappointing reads simply weren’t right for me. That doesn’t mean that they’re inherently bad books, or even that they won’t appeal to you. It simply means that, for one reason or another, they fell short of the expectations I had for them. Here’s why:

5. Flux by Jinwoo Chong
My rating:
Perhaps this is an unfair inclusion because I honestly can’t remember what I expected going into Jinwoo Chong’s debut novel Flux. Perhaps the bright and stylish yellow cover drew me in. Perhaps it was the blurb about how a man suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are using it to cover up violent crimes. But I think it’s most likely that it was the neo-noir that attracted me. I found the main character’s relationship with a fictional 80s hardboiled cop show (which depicted an Asian character as a sidekick at a formative time for our biracial protagonist) and its lead character really interesting, especially as it becomes clear that he is using this fictional detective as a confidant to process past trauma. Unfortunately the plotting and worldbuilding in Flux never lives up to the noir aspects, and I found myself wishing Chong had honed in and told a tighter story that put the character’s relationship with the cop show front and center above all the timey wimey stuff.

Flux is Chong’s first novel, and while it didn’t work for me (or, judging from its 3.4 rating on goodreads, most people), there is some interesting work here about identity and nostalgia. With some more thoughtful worldbuilding and an editor who could tone down the wilder impulses of Chong’s storytelling, there’s potential here for some interesting work down the line.

4. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
My rating:
My exact words to a friend upon finishing Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch were, “I am confused and not impressed”. A choice for one of the book clubs that I belong to, I had to coax myself through to the end by interspersing it with other, lighter, reads. Set in a low-cost housing complex in Indiana over the course of one July week, The Rabbit Hutch uses the POVs of multiple residents to tell the story. Always a tricky thing to get right, in The Rabbit Hutch I felt some characters drew me in, but when the chapter should shift I felt disengaged and unenthusiastic about the prospect of reading on. The prose is either going to work for you or it isn’t and, in the words of one friend, “the author has an MFA, and not to denigrate MFAs, but YOU CAN TELL”. Ultimately this was a divisive book, with book club members rating it anywhere from two to five stars on goodreads. I rounded up to a three, but it’s more of a two-and-a-half for me. Something of a slog, but mostly a case of something that just wasn’t for me, rather than a poorly written book.

3. Love Letters to Joy by Melissa See
My rating:
I’m such a sucker for crumbs of asexual representation that I looked forward to this YA romance, even though that’s not a genre that usually appeals to me anymore. First of all, I love that it’s about a panromantic asexual girl with cerebral palsy, and I’m thrilled that representation is out in the world for young readers. The key word here is young readers. As a woman in my mid-late thirties, Love Letters to Joy reads VERY young. Both the writing style and the plot are simplified and I found the characters lacked depth. The central relationship also never felt fully realized to me. It is a fast, light read and I loved the rep from all across the rainbow of queerness, but there needs to be more going on than just queerness to recommend a book, and unfortunately I didn’t find that here. Younger reads may be more entertained than I was though.

2. Lote by Shola von Reinhold
My rating:
My cockatiel pooed on my library copy of this book, ensuring that I had to pay for Lote, and I was angry that I had to pay for a book I didn’t even like, but perhaps she was just expressing my sentiments for me. I don’t actually think Lote is a bad book, it’s just so very much not my cup of tea. Part of the joy of belonging to a book club is that it nudges you outside of your comfort zone so you pick up titles you wouldn’t normally read. Sometimes you discover things about yourself or find unexpected favourites, while other times you can comfortably say it wasn’t for me, but at least I tried something different. The idea of exploring queerness and looking at the erasure of Black art from the canon by institutions and individuals is an interesting and worthy one, but I found Lote dense and difficult to understand. I’ve also never gotten on with Virginia Woolf’s works, or with modernist and post-modernist works of literature and I have limited interest in the art scene, so this was never going to be a rousing success for me. I also lacked an emotional connection with the book and its characters. Perhaps I’m just too stupid for this book. If you have more of an interest in that period in literature, or in academia, you’ll likely enjoy Lote a great deal more than I did.

1. Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel
My rating:
Which brings us to my biggest disappointment of the year, Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel. In a year when I read a lot of romance and especially queer historical romances, this alternate history romance, which imagines a romantic attachment between King Philip of France and Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, should have ticked every box. Instead it was a bitter disappointment. I have no idea what the point of this book was. All I can come up with is that the author wanted to write fanfiction about her two historical blorbos in a romantic relationship. So far, so good, except as she says in the author’s note she wanted it to be optimistic and not a darker, grittier, tragedy. In order to make that happen, all of the historical context is stripped away. Crusades? What crusades? England and France at war? Glossed over and handwaved because Phillip and Richard can’t bear to hurt each other. The moral complexity of these historical figures is also removed, so we’re left with under-developed characters who are defined by a few traits only.

Unfortunately this means that the relationship between Phillip and Richard also fails to tug at the heart strings. The connection between them is barely developed, which is just absurd in a romance! As a reader, I was left wondering why exactly these two men love one another, and since it’s certainly not developed on page, how exactly do they get from friendly acquaintances to professing their love to each other in overwrought declarations and putting each other above their ambition and family legacy? When you don’t have a sense of who they are as people separately or believe in their love story, it’s impossible to feel invested.

Perhaps the most glaring flaw, however, is that there is no tension whatsoever in a story that should innately be high stakes. They’re rival leaders of kingdoms and they both want the same land! Their fathers went to war, they could go to war at any time! Well, in Siegel’s universe love and the need for a happy ending trump all apparently, so the story plods along to its inevitable angst-free ending where the characters once again declare a love for each other that is never convincingly depicted on page.

I want to support people writing historical fiction and historical romance about their favourite people, but there’s none of the passion on display here that there should be, and the result is a bland tale that feels only surface-deep.

What books did you find disappointing this year? Let me know or link me your blog posts in the comments!

Next Up: Favourite Books Read in 2023

Favourite Books of 2022

I’m all caught up, which means it’s time for this year’s look at my favourite reads from the last twelve months.

2022 felt like a reading year in two parts. I read voraciously for the first 7 or 8 months of the year, finishing my Goodreads challenge of 60 Books in record (for me) time. Then, some time around September, I lost focus and never managed to recover. I usually average around 6 books a month, but for the 4 months I’ve been pushing myself to even make it through 3 or 4 books. I don’t know if it’s stress, distractions, mental health, that I’m not choosing the right reading material, or e) some combination of all of the above, but I hope my ability to read returns swiftly.

I totaled 76 books this year, and some of the highlights of my bookish year included belonging, for a month, to three different book clubs at the same time (work, run by friends, and one run by me), beginning a 10th anniversary re-read of my favourite series (Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles) and having an absolute blast discussing the first three books in the series with my fandom friends over zoom, and going for a blackout in Roar Cat Reads’ Summer Book Bingo by reading 24 books on specific prompts, all featuring LGBTQ+ characters or authors!

Honourable Mentions

They didn’t quite make the cut, but a quick mention for some of the other books this year that I enjoyed:

The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney – I saw a stunning production of “The Brothers Size” pre-pandemic and have been hoping the rest of the triptych would be mounted soon, but while I wait to see them live it was a pleasure to read all three plays. There’s a rhythm to the plays and I found them very visual and easy to picture.

Peter Darling by Austin Chant – I’m not normally one for fairy tale retellings, but I found this one, where Peter is trans and, as an adult, re-evaluating his feelings for Hook, inspired and profound.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan – This queer reimagining of the life and ascension of Zhu Yuanzhuang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, plays with gender in really interesting ways and I was intrigued by the politics and by Zhu’s rise.

The List

“Going through the mirrors requires confronting yourself. You need guts, you know, to look yourself straight in the eyes, to see yourself as you are, to dive into your own reflection. Those who hide their faces, those who lie to themselves, those who see themselves better than they are, they will never be able.”

10. A Winter’s Promise and The Missing of Clairdelune by Christelle Dabos (Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle)

A gift exchange with friends put A Winter’s Promise on my radar, and hilariously I was quickly spoiled for my secret book swap by two of the friends discussing A Winter’s Promise on Twitter and then panicking that I would buy it for myself before our exchange date. I may have known what book I was opening, but at least it was one that looked interesting! Sure enough, I really enjoyed the first book in Chistelle Dabos’ YA fantasy quartet about Ophelia, a quiet girl with the ability to ‘read’ inanimate objects and travel through mirrors, who must suddenly leave her family and her home to marry the aloof, cold Thorn and navigate the complicated politics of his world. I also enjoyed its sequel, The Missing of Clairedelune, which deepens the relationship between Ophelia and Thorn. Unfortunately I felt like the first two books almost felt like a separate duology, while the latter two felt entirely different and brought the quartet to a fairly disappointing ending. Still, I’ll always appreciate Ophelia and Thorn and the fascinating world building that Dabos does here. The first two books in the series were a gripping read!

“This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.”

9. The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

Last year Simon Jimenez narrowly missed out on being my favourite book of the year with his brilliant and affecting science-fiction novel The Vanished Birds. This year, I fell in love with his grim fantasy epic The Spear Cuts Through Water. If I could marry Jimenez’s prose, I would. The way he writes is lyrical, moving, epic in scale and world building, and yet intimate when it comes to his characters. The Spear Cuts Through Water is about as different from his previous book as it’s possible to be, and yet it’s also an incredible read. Though the world he creates here is violent and his protagonists both have traumatic pasts to reckon with, watching their arcs as the two warriors, Jun and Keema, grow from reluctantly depending on one another as travel companions, to yearning for one another hooked me and made my heart ache. At this point Simon Jimenez is an auto-buy author for me, and I cannot wait to see what he does next.

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. The arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”

8. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

I’ve been thinking a lot about Emily St. John Mandel over the past few years, as her “pandemic book”, the brilliant Station Eleven, has had a deserving resurgence and even a TV adaptation, that I have yet to watch. I spent this year catching up, reading first The Glass Hotel, which I also enjoyed, and then her latest, Sea of Tranquility. The thing about her work is that it’s so consistently excellent – how does she do it? I am wholeheartedly invested in the Emily St. John Mandel Literature Universe. I love the little threads that connect her books, the commonalities between three otherwise very different novels, and how compulsively readable, accessible, and yet lyrically written all of her works are. While Station Eleven is still my favourite of St. John Mandel’s works, Sea of Tranquility was a joy to read.

“Sometimes his very existence to me is the existence of love itself.”

7. Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Told with warmth and honesty, Love in the Big City follows Young, a gay Korean man and aspiring author, who is searching for love in Seoul, South Korea. In all four of its interconnected parts, this slim novel moves between the past and present to explore people and relationships significant to Young throughout his twenties and thirties. The narrative voice is so candid and distinct that I felt like an old friend listening to Young discuss his relationships over drinks at a bar. I both laughed and nearly cried reading Love in the Big City, and found it a moving, raw, and often humorous look at young queer life in Seoul.

“Love can’t cure a mental illness. There are lots of ways to help him, you can just be there. To listen. To talk. To cheer him up if he’s having a bad day. And on the bad days you can ask what to could do to make things easier. Stand by his side, even when things are hard. But also knowing that sometimes people need more support than just one person can give. That’s love darling.”

6. Heartstopper volume 4 by Alice Oseman

I’m a big Alice Oseman fan and have been reading the Heartstopper digests as they’re published and loving the dose of endorphins they give me. While Heartstopper has never shied away from dealing with challenging topics, including bullying and homophobia, volume four shines a spotlight on Charlie’s anxiety and disordered eating problems as he seeks professional help. Just as poignant is Nick’s struggle, as he watches someone he loves in pain and isn’t sure how to help him. As someone who has been having my own mental health struggle, especially recently, this struck close to home for me and I was moved by Charlie’s bravery to face his problems and admit that he’s not okay and he can’t do it alone. Volume four definitely made me tear-up with its gentle, but honest storyline and I love that Charlie and Nick come out the other side stronger together.

“I think perhaps our kissing did do something strange to the way time flowed in the space occupied by our two bodies. Underneath me, she was perfectly open and sweet, content to be kissed and ravished. It couldn’t have lasted as long as I thought it did—long enough to build monuments that crumbled to marbled ruins, long enough that the entire city of Los Angeles fell into the fault line and was rebuilt on its own corpse—but when I looked up, I felt oddly sphinx-like, other and strange.”

5. Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Writing lists of your favourite books from the last three years over a period of three days really lets you see which authors pop up again and again! Nghi Vo knocked me out with her debut novella, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, and this year I’ve been widely recommending her second novel, Siren Queen. The way Vo writes is so lush and atmospheric that it draws me in and I love her queer Asian women characters who take no shit. Set in a fantastical Hollywood, where both magic and monsters are real, Siren Queen is about Luli Wei, an ambitious, queer, Chinese-American girl who dreams of being a movie star. Gaining the leverage to propel herself into Hollywood, Luli puts some conditions on her contract: “No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.” At first, the studio doesn’t know what to do with her, but then she’s cast as a monster and her star begins to rise. An atmospheric, enthralling story that asks how much of yourself are you willing to carve out for a shot at immortality?

“The grief of the stones was grief for every man killed in the building of the wall, for every man who died defending or attacking, for every man executed by being thrown off the battlements. “But those are our worst criminals!” the king protests, and the young man says, “That doesn’t matter to the stones.”

4. The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison

My review of this on Goodreads was just “I love Thara Celehar so much you guys” and that remains true! If you too enjoy watching a lonely, haunted, depressed, gay man of faith solve murders in a steampunk fantasy setting populated by elves and goblins, then you’re going to love both The Witness for the Dead and its sequel, The Grief of Stones. Thara’s journey in The Grief of Stones as he reckons with a loss and how this loss changes his core identity is heartbreaking and profound. There’s also a side mystery featuring scones, so obviously I loved this book. I will read as many stories about Thara Celehar as Katherine Addison is willing to write.

“Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he’s having right now. That’s how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction.”

3. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

King Lear is my favourite Shakespeare play and one of my favourite plays period, so I’ve had this acclaimed retelling, which casts Lear as an aging Iowa farmer dividing his thousand acre farm between his three daughters, on my list for ages. I’m so glad I finally picked it up, because A Thousand Acres is everything it promised to be. As a retelling it succeeds by finding the perfect balance between nods to Shakespeare’s play and doing something original and exciting rather than strictly updating the source material. The characters are layered, and I love that our viewpoint character is Ginny (Goneril in King Lear), which give us a fresh perspective on the story. Smiley’s writing and her character work drew me in and I think A Thousand Acres is that exceptional retelling that stands alone but can be enriched through some understanding of Lear.

“And if perhaps his friends had just learned his name, that the aloof small mage and artist was called Raphael, had a brother from another world called Kasian, well, he had to admit that he was rather relieved, in that distant marionette way, that he would not end the Game with no one to know his real name.”

2. Til Human Voices Wake Us by Victoria Goddard

Last year, Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor topped my list of Favourite Reads. Although considerably less polished, her debut novel Til Human Voices Wake Us was one of my favourite books of 2022. Perhaps not since Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell have I encountered a book that meshed together so many of my special interests that it felt written just for me. Til Human Voices Wake Us is about Raphael, the Lord of Ysthar (our Earth), who is coming to the end of a centuries-old contest with an opposing mage. If he loses “The Great Game”, Ysthar will be forfeit. At this worst of all possible times, his life is upended by the arrival of his long-lost twin brother. Combining complicated brother bonds, a protagonist who hides behind masks, music, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and Shakespeare, Til Human Voices Wake Us very nearly brought me to tears and Raphael, this withdrawn man with the weight of the world literally and metaphorically on his shoulders, is one of my new favourite fictional characters.

“You’ll find that what you can bear increases a great deal when you are not offered any other choice.”

1. The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller

Judging from the 3.60 rating on Goodreads, this is a divisive choice for the number one spot, but it’s my list and I loved it. I do think The Bone Orchard is either a book you are going to absolutely adore or that it’s style just won’t be to your tastes. For me, it was clearly the former. Sara A. Mueller’s genre-defying debut novel is part political fantasy, part gothic revenge narrative, and part murder mystery. It revolves around Charm, the necromantic mistress of a brothel that services the wealthy of Borenguard, including its Emperor. When Charm is summoned to the Emperor’s deathbed, he charges her with choosing which of his awful sons will carry on the empire, and discovering which one is responsible for his own murder. I read The Bone Orchard compulsively in three or four days, drawn in by the rich world building, visual storytelling, the deft plotting, and the character work. I fell in love with its characters, especially Charm, who rebels through dying her hair in vibrant shades, and Justice, the most compassionate of Charm’s boneghosts. It’s densely written and there’s a lot to keep track of, but if you’re up for some intense courtly intrigue and themes of trauma, The Bone Orchard is a rewarding and wholly original read. It’s absolutely deserving of the title of my favourite book read in 2022 and although this is a standalone, I cannot wait to see what Sara Mueller comes up with next!


I’d love to know what books made your favourites lists, so let me know in the comments or drop a link to your blog posts so I can add to next year’s TBR!

Wishing you all a wonderful new year filled with new favourite reads and unexpected delights! See you in 2023.

Most Disappointing Reads of 2022

It’s that time of year again when the book community does discourse over Worst/Least Favourite/Most Disappointing Book Lists!

Personally, I’ve always enjoyed reading these lists and seeing what worked and didn’t work for my fellow bloggers. I’ve gone with Most Disappointing for my list, because some of my titles are not objectively bad books, they just aren’t books that I enjoyed or fare books that I wanted more from. Without further ado, here are the six books this year that didn’t work for me:

6. Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
My rating:
I read this back in February and originally gave it 3.5 stars, but upon reflection I’m going to give it 3 stars. Daughter of the Moon Goddess is a fine read, I had fun reading it, but it was one of my most anticipated new releases of the year and it did not live up to the hype for me. This is partly not the author’s fault, but rests squarely on the marketing team and copy. Daughter of the Moon Goddess is being marketed as adult fantasy but everything about this book screams YA. The writing style is fast-paced and easy to understand, but it feels very young. The book also feels like a throwback to 2014: A chosen one “strong female” character who seems to master each skill she tries and who manages to attract the attention of three eligible men? A love triangle between the young woman and two of these men? Daughter of the Moon Goddess lacks the high stakes or imminent danger that would help this book get its emotional hooks into readers as something more than a fun, no braincells required romp. It’s lovely to see a Chinese myth retelling landing so well, I just wish it had some depth to it.

5. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
My rating:
I know, I know! I expect to be pelted with tomatoes at any moment. With apologies to Sir Terry Pratchett and to my Pratchett loving friends, I must admit that this one did not work for me. I was looking for a fun, festive read and I’ve enjoyed other Discworld novels (although admittedly it’s been several years since I read one) so I thought Hogfather might be the ticket. While I liked the general concept of Death playing Santa and there are a few great scenes (Death giving the child in the mall a sword is one), the humour mostly didn’t land for me and I spent many of the scenes with Susan and with Mr. Teatime just wishing we would get back to Death and the hogs. Hogfather took me nearly a month to read because I kept being distracted by more appealing books from my TBR, but even when I sat down and focused, I just wasn’t in the mood. Humourous fantasy often isn’t my thing, so I suspect this is a case of a book that just wasn’t for me but that will very much be for other people. So, if it sounds like something you might enjoy, I do encourage you to pick it up and I hope that it makes you smile more than it did me.

4. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My rating:
As much as I loved The Great Gatsby, I don’t think I would have picked this one up without my book club choosing it in February 2022. I was cautiously excited about Tender is the Night, but I just found it such a slog. I couldn’t read more than a handful of pages without zoning out, and I even tried listening to the audiobook to help and still barely finished in time for the meeting! If I hadn’t been reading for a book club I definitely would have DNFed and I rarely DNF. I didn’t care about or find any of the characters interesting, the writing style didn’t do anything for me, and I have no idea what happened.

3. The Magician by Colm Tóibín
My rating:
As Rachel says in her list of the year’s most disappointing reads, the pervading feeling one has when reading The Magician is ‘what is the point of this book?’ Tóibín’s writing is fine and stands up on a sentence level, but his fictionalized biography of author Thomas Mann has so little to say about both Mann and the broader topics of literature that it feels like a 500 page waste of time. It’s an especially egregious waste when multiple members of Mann’s family, at least as depicted in The Magician, would have made for far more interesting subjects than Thomas Mann. Perhaps Mann would have been better served by a work of non-fiction, but this novel is far too long, offers nothing new about its subject, and the narrative plods.

2. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
My rating:
What’s worse than Colm Tóibín’s fictionalized biography of Thomas Mann? Mann’s own novel, Death in Venice! Since Rachel and I read different translations, I think it’s safe to say that it’s Mann’s novel, and not the translator, who shoulders the blame for this one. I’ll admit to being put off by the Wikipedia article on Thomas Mann which detailed his journal entries about finding his pre-teen son attractive, but even without this bias I wouldn’t have cared for Death in Venice. Maybe one day I’ll give Mann another chance, but it won’t be for awhile.

1. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
My rating:
Days Without End isn’t the worst book I read all year (I think Tender is the Night takes that honour) but it’s the one I found the most disappointing because there is so much potential here for a terrific story instead it’s all a bit of a mess, like a recipe gone awry. Days Without End is about two soldiers in the 1850s Indian Wars and then the Civil War who form a makeshift family with each other and a young Sioux girl. All the ingredients are here: there’s a central queer relationship, an Irish-American character who fled the Irish Famine, a historical setting, and found family, but sadly I found Days Without End very surface level in its depiction of characters, relationships, historical events, and even queerness. The lyrical prose doesn’t match the first-person narration from an uneducated character who is also quite possibly the least introspective and self-aware POV character I have ever encountered. It’s an utterly forgettable book that I wanted more from but just didn’t get it.


What books did you find disappointing this year? Let me know or link me your blog posts in the comments!

Next Up: Favourite Books Read in 2022

Favourite Books of 2021

In which I continue my blast from the past with a list of my favourite books of 2021.

2021 was an unexpectedly fabulous year of reading for me! I read 86 books, a personal best in the years that I’ve been keeping track, and I found a lot of new favourites. Looking at general trends, I loved a large number of science-fiction books this year (4 of my top 10 books). Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a pandemic year, I was also drawn to books about lonely, isolated people finding companionship.

Honourable Mentions

So many great books means that a few of them just missed the cut. I absolutely love the ballet Nijinsky, which uses some of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 (The Year 1905) in its score, so I was fascinated by Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time, a spare, compact book about the composer and the compromises he must make to the integrity of his art to appease the Soviet Union. I raced through Juliet Marillier’s fantasy novel The Daughter of the Forest, which is loosely based on loosely based on the legend of the Children of Lir and “The Six Swans”, and rooted for its protagonist as she endures hardship for the chance to save her beloved brothers. Continuing my exploration of Jane Austen’s works, I enjoyed Emma, but admit that I needed a second read to truly understand and adore it. I thought E.J. Beaton’s political fantasy The Councillor was tremendous fun with a protagonist I adored. And of course Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series continues to deliver and I loved her take on a murder mystery in Fugitive Telemetry.

The List

“I can’t always speak my mind, not if I want to get the things I need or go places I need to go. Everything I do, every word I say, is calculated to make people comfortable. To make them respect me. None of it is a lie, but it is an act, and it’s one that gets very, very tiring.”

10. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

I wasn’t as taken with Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers’ third Wayfarers book and wondered if the series was losing its shine, but the final volume, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within moved me to tears. Chambers’ unique brand of hopepunk is virtually plotless – it features several aliens who face travel delays and are unexpectedly stranded together at an interstellar port – but as the characters’ stories are revealed to one another, they show each other the kindness and understanding so present in all of Chambers’ work. The book never feels preachy, and yet each of the characters’ predicaments have real world resonance. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within offers the same comfort as slipping into your pajamas and holding a cup of your hot beverage of choice in hand. There’s something powerful in that. While saying goodbye to the Wayfarers series is a bittersweet affair, I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying end than The Galaxy, and the Ground Within.

“The twilight struck chilly as he went outside. He experienced for the first time that special dread brought by the first touch of winter to lovers who have nowhere to meet except out of doors.”

9. The Charioteer by Mary Renault

I’ve had Mary Renault’s books on my to-read list for years and I certainly didn’t expect her WWII novel to be the first book of hers I tried, but thank you to my friend Six, who recommended The Charioteer because they were right – it’s brilliant. Written in 1953, wasn’t accepted by U.S. publishers until 1959 because of its positive portrayal of homosexuality! The story follows Laurie, a soldier wounded at Dunkirk, who must choose whether his affections lie with Andrew, a young Quaker conscientious objector working at his hospital, or Ralph, a naval officer that he looked up to when they were both at an all-boys boarding school. I loved the intimacy and the relationships between the characters and I think this is a book that I will get even more out of when I inevitably re-read it.

“But in grieving for a murderer, thou art not grieving for the monstrous. Thou grievest for the man who failed to reject the monstrous act.”

8. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

The Goblin Emperor is one of my all-time favourite novels, so when I heard Katherine Addison was writing a novella set in the same world it quickly became one of my most anticipated books of the year. The Witness for the Dead lives up to the hype. Building on her brilliant world building, The Witness for the Dead is a gently paced mystery, and while there is darkness and murder, there is also kindness, compassion, and healing. The real draw though is protagonist Thara Celehar, who is called to help the common people by speaking on behalf of the recently deceased. He’s a layered, lonely character and I absolutely loved living his daily routine and watching him work. By the end he felt like a dear friend and I look forward to reading more of his adventures.

“The universe erases me, but it also remakes me again and again, so there must be something worthwhile in this image.”

7. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Tightly plotted and perfectly-paced, The whip-smart sci-fi dystopia The Space Between Worlds is set on an Earth where multiverse travel is possible with one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, a poor, Black, queer girl plucked from the rural wastelands because her life has been cut short on 372 other worlds. Now she has an apartment in walled-off Wiley City, an aloof but beautiful handler to flirt with, and is on the road to citizenship and security, but when one of her few remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, Cara is drawn into a plot that threatens the entire multiverse. The Space Between Worlds is such an assured debut I can’t believe it’s a first novel! The plotting will make your head spin, but it’s grounded in a layered exploration of identity and privilege and characters and relationships that you root for. It’s absolutely one of the best books I read all year and I love that it features a bisexual woman as its protagonist!

“Our will and fates do so contrary run.”

6. The Sugared Game by K.J. Charles

I originally picked up the first book in K.J. Charles’ 1920s set historical romance trilogy assuming it would be a guilty pleasure read, but I adored both Slippery Creatures and The Sugared Game. The very things that seem to have put off some romance readers – the lack of a neat happily ever after ending for each book and the amount of plot – have elevated this romance into my favourite ten books of the year! The sizzling chemistry but complications between Will Darling, a bisexual WWI veteran-turned rare book dealer, and his enigmatic, aristocratic, sometimes lover and spy Kim Secretan left me torn between wanting to read it all in one sitting and drawing it out so the series would never end. The plot is engaging, the secondary female characters charming and worthy of their own novel, the sexual tension between Kim and Will simmers, and the sex scenes are enough to make you fan yourself or open a window. I’ve been putting off finishing this series because I can’t bear for it to be over, but I really do need more Will and Kim in my life.

“What was it about whiteness that seemed to elicit an infinite spring of faith and second chances?”

5. The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

The Subtweet, a look at the transformative friendship and falling out between two brown women in the music business, is practically flawless. I love that Shraya, a Canadian trans woman of colour, is doing so well and while this is my first work of hers that I’ve read, it certainly won’t be my last! Shraya’s razor sharp commentary on the music industry, and especially the experience of being a brown, queer, woman in the industry is told through concise and exacting prose. I was floored by how clever and incisive this book is as Shraya lays bare the insecurities of both Neela and Rukmini and comments on the process of making art in the modern age.

“Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.”

4. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Years ago I read Lisa See’s The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane and really enjoyed it. I’ve been meaning to pick this book up ever since, but only putting it on my 35 to read before 35 blog post and its number coming up on my one of my friend Rick’s BookTube Spins gave me the push I needed. I knew nothing about nineteenth century China, so Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was an educational and engaging read for me. I loved reading about the laotong/”old same”, the idea of an emotional match between two women that will last a lifetime, and about nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women used to communicate in secret. The central relationship in the book is between two of these women, Lily and Snow Flower, who are “old sames”. I was deeply invested in their bond and desperately wanted everything to work out! Although the passages on foot-binding can be graphic and may not be for the squeamish, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is an affecting story of female friendship and survival that sucked me in.

“She’d said, When you know why I had to come with you, then we can talk. And she hadn’t meant When you figure out the political situation on Lsel Station, she’d meant – She’d meant, When you understand that when the Empire commands, I can’t say no. She’d meant When you understand that there’s no room for me to say yes, even if I want to. She’d meant You don’t understand that there’s no such thing as being free.”

3. A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

The more I sit with A Desolation Called Peace, the more I love it. The Hugo Award winning, whip-smart sequel to ambitious space opera A Memory Called Empire is practically perfect. It’s well-written, with a focus on language appropriate for an alien culture that values poetry and literature, the character arcs are well fleshed out, the world building continues to astonish, and the depiction of a first contact scenario is fascinating. It’s Mahit who is the beating heart of this series though, and her identity crisis and the muddle of her feelings as she questions where her loyalties lie and how she can reconcile her feelings for a woman from a colonizing empire who will always see her as a “barbarian” is exquisite. For me, this is the rare sequel that improves on its predecessor, but both books in this duology are a treat and will undoubtedly be viewed as science-fiction classics in decades to come.

“Perhaps he has the Kind One speak it for him first, before he tries it out on his own; smiling over the syllables, the sound like a sweet on his tongue, rhyming with the word of his soul; a discovery of not only his new name, but a guiding philosophy on life. That this is how everyone should be named: a hand, thrown into a bag of words, in search of that singular and fitting shape.”

2. The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

Until September, I was certain The Vanished Birds would top my 2021 list of Favourite Books. Although I’ve ultimately ranked it 2nd, it was extremely close and this is one of those books that will live in my heart (and on my book shelf) forever. Told through Jimenez’s lyrical prose, The Vanished Birds is about the devastating impact of both colonialism and capitalism on people and worlds, but it’s also about the choices we make and the relationships we hold dear. I still can’t believe this is a debut novel, it’s so accomplished; far reaching with its ideas and scope, yet intimate and moving on a personal level, it’s one of only a few titles all year to actually make me cry. After I turned the final page, I practically thrust it at my mom, knowing she too would love it (she did). It feels like it’s flown under the radar and I have no idea why because it’s such a brilliant book and there’s just something about the way Simon Jimenez writes that works so well for me. I can’t wait to read everything he ever writes!

“I suppose we always hope that those closest to us can see into our hearts—but unless we invite them, or show them in words or deeds, how can they?”

1. The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

As much as I adored The Vanished Birds, in the end my list really couldn’t have been topped by anything besides Victoria Goddard’s extraordinary novel. At just over 900 pages, The Hands of the Emperor is a cross between Disney’s Moana, beloved TV series The West Wing. the Broadway musical Hamilton, and Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. While many fantasy novels are about the quest, the adventure, The Hands of the Emperor is about the quiet work of building a better world through competent, compassionate government. In this time, when governments around the world seem to be actively working to kill their citizens through deliberate mismanagement and greed, there’s something powerful about a fictional government that implements universal basic income so its citizens no longer live in poverty. The Hands of the Emperor is also about the profound relationship that develops between His Radiancy, The Sun-on-Earth, a literal god, and Cliopher “Kip’ Mdang, a supremely capable cinnamon roll of a man who happens to be His Radiancy’s personal secretary, after Kip dares to invite his lord to vacation with him in his distant homeland. This is a character-driven slow-burn of a novel about devoting your life to something and someone worthy of it, about the conflict between being pulled home, but knowing you have a duty to make the world a better place, and about two lonely, middle-aged men finding each other and being changed by one another. I have never read anything quite like it and I love it with all of my heart.



Thanks for sitting through my look back at what I read and loved in 2021. I promise we’re onto this year’s reads next!


Next up: My 2022 Least Favourites

Favourite Books of 2020

No, you haven’t been overindulging in holiday punch and no, it’s not a typo. This truly is a list of my ten favourite reads of 2020. My always sporadic blogging suffered a hit in 2020 with the anxiety and fear of a global pandemic. The result? A carefully constructed list of the year’s reading highlights that… never made it out of my head. In 2021, Omicron struck and once again my list failed to make it to the page. In my defense, haven’t the last three years really felt like one long, awful year anyway?

I could just let it lie, focus on this year’s list and being more present as the new year begins, but in the interest of tracking my reading, embracing chaos, and, perhaps introducing someone to a new favourite read, I’ve decided to polish and publish my 2020 and 2021 favourites lists before presenting this year’s list.

Honourable Mentions

Before I count down my ten favourites, honourable mention goes to three sci-fi and fantasy titles that I loved. In the early days of the pandemic when I had trouble focusing enough to even pick up a book, N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became kept me interested. I also loved the characters and the Central and South America inspired world building of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun, while the lyrical prose and enemies to lovers story in Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s This is How You Lose the Time War made me swoon.

The List

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.”

10. The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

I’m such a sucker for stories about storytelling and Nghi Vo accomplishes that so well in her novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune. A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage. Initially alone, without friends or allies, the Empress In-yo is able to bend history to her will. After her death, traveling cleric Chih arrives at the isolated villa where she once lived and hears the Empress’ story from her loyal servant Rabbit. Vo’s writing is visual and atmospheric, and her tale unfolds in a way that is clever and empowering. Highly recommended!

“I think that after a certain number of evil choices, it’s reasonable shorthand to decide that someone’s an evil person who oughtn’t have the chance to make any more choices. And the more power someone has, the less slack they ought to be given.”

9. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

I had so much fun reading this book! Naomi Novik’s twist on the magic school idea popular in YA and crossover fantasy titles is the Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where only a fraction of the students survive graduation day. In A Deadly Education, unpopular dark magician Galadriel “El” Higgins tries to navigate the school’s dangers and its pesky heroic himbo. El is a snarky loner with mostly good intentions, which makes her an enjoyable narrator, and I absolutely loved the world building and magic system. A perfect spooky season read!

“It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.”

8. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Compulsively readable, but deeply disturbing, My Dark Vanessa is about the relationship between intelligent, but naïve, Vanessa, who, at the age of fifteen, becomes involved in an affair with her magnetic forty-two-year-old English teacher. This is such an assured debut! It’s a brilliant character study and psychological profile of a woman who was abused in her teens. Even though we, the readers, can see Vanessa’s relationship with her teacher for the grooming and abuse that it was, Vanessa has convinced herself that she was not a victim. When another former student brings sexual assault allegations against their teacher, Vanessa must reckon with redefining her formative relationship. It’s a chilling, unsettling read and it won’t be for everyone, but I thought it was masterful.

“The Green Man walks the wood,” he tried explaining. “But the wood remembers.”

7. Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

I’ve rarely been so charmed by a book as I was by the lyrical fantasy novella Silver in the Wood. Drawing on the Green Man of myth, Emily Tesh constructs a tale of how the gruff, lonely, forest caretaker Tobias’ life is interrupted when he meets, and begins to fall for, neighbouring landowner Henry Silver. The prose is lush and atmospheric, the protagonists endearing, and the secondary cast, which includes a badass mother, an unusual dryad, and a furry friend, only add to the story’s appeal. How could I not be charmed?

“Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance. Because they’re just as important. Actually, for us, they’re way more important.”

6. Loveless by Alice Oseman

Millions have fallen in love with Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, a sweet, sincere love story between two British teenage boys. I adore both the graphic novels and the Netflix series, but it’s Oseman’s YA novel Loveless that holds a special place in my heart. A story of coming out and acceptance, it centers Georgia, a fanfiction loving aromantic asexual (aro-ace) woman, and I identified strongly with Georgia’s exploration of her queer identity. It’s such a powerful thing to be seen by a book, and even though my experiences don’t exactly match Georgia’s (I didn’t find a label that fit or accept myself as a queer woman until my late twenties), I was moved by Georgia’s journey, her passion, and the importance of her platonic relationships. In an uncanny twist, I wound up reading this book about an aro-ace nerd who starts a Shakespeare Society with her friends just when I, another aro-ace nerd, was performing in weekly Shakespeare plays with my friends over zoom, so it’s no surprise that reading Loveless was one of my favourite 2020 memories!

“In the resolved quiet of the heart it was possible to say “Give up; it’s done,” but in practice, hopelessness was too bitter wine for drinking day after day. One would steal a little sip of sweetness and wonder, “What if…?”

5. A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

Kai Ashante Wilson’s queer fantasy romance novella is a book that won’t work for everyone – I know some had issues with the central relationship not being fleshed out enough – but A Taste of Honey sure worked for me. Noble Aqib falls for a handsome Daluçan soldier named Lucrio and is swept up in a whirlwind romance, but Aqib’s father and brother furiously disapprove and the world has more hardships to throw at their relationship. Is their love enough to survive? A Taste of Honey is a bittersweet book about the choices we make and the roads not travelled that stayed with me long after I turned the final page. Affecting storytelling, rich worldbuilding, and exquisite prose made this one of my favourite reads of the year.

“I love a little gall on gall.”

4. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I have to admit that I’m not sure I would have loved Harrow the Ninth quite as wholeheartedly as I did if I had read it in any other year. Fortunately, I read it in 2020 and it was a bright spot in an otherwise pretty bleak time! Why is this book so closely associated with 2020 for me? Well, it features collective trauma, unhealthy coping mechanisms, gallows humour, confusion (especially about how time is passing), palpable repressed grief, bad sleeping habits, learning to cook, and having nothing to do but wait for imminent death. Harrow the Ninth is a whole 2020 mood and I’m here for it. Like my friend Hadeer, I would advise looking up some spoilers, especially if it’s been awhile since you read Gideon the Ninth, because this book is so (purposely) confusing that there are times when it felt incomprehensible, but it’s also completely unique and absolutely brilliant. Those with a keen awareness of fandom/fanfiction will undoubtedly get more out of Harrow, picking up on the fact that the book is essentially an homage to 5 Times/5 Things fanfiction and enjoying the Coffee Shop AU detour. Also, it has both a “Hi __, I’m Dad” and a “none pizza with left beef” joke – what more could you possibly want?! Muir’s prose is sharp, clever, and even those with a great vocabulary will find themselves picking up new words within the pages of Harrow the Ninth.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

3. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

2020 was truly the year of Shakespeare for me. As part of Project Shakespeare I have had the opportunity to revisit some of his plays, many of which I had not read since University, and to discover new gems. The rarely performed Henry VI plays, for example, are absolutely terrific, but it’s Julius Caesar that blew me away when I first read it in August. I knew within the first act that this would be a 5-star read for me and I was right! The lines are some of Shakespeare’s best imho and the relationships between characters are so compelling. My jaw quite literally dropped – that’s how incredible this play is! I still can’t believe I’d never studied or watched a performance of Julius Caesar before! I had the best time taking on my first larger role as Cassius in Project Shakespeare’s version of the play and even revisited the play, playing Brutus, on Project Shakespeare’s second time through the plays! If, like me, you haven’t encountered Julius Caesar before, or even haven’t encountered it since high school, I recommend giving it a read or watching the filmed 2018 National Theatre production with Ben Whishaw, Michelle Fairley, and David Morrissey – it’s terrific!

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

2. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Despite watching numerous adaptations of Pride & Prejudice and Emma, I’d never actually read one of Jane Austen’s books until 2020. I began a group read with two friends, only one of whom had read Austen before, during the pandemic and both of us newcomers were surprised by just how acerbic and sharp Austen’s commentary and wit could be! Of course Pride & Prejudice is a classic for a reason – it’s deeply romantic, it’s wish fulfillment of a sort, it’s funny, and it’s well-written. I’m so glad that I finally took the plunge, first with Pride & Prejudice, and then by reading the rest of Austen’s canon with a Book Club in 2021. Even though I didn’t find Pride & Prejudice quite as enchanting on a re-read, the sheer delight and laughter it brought me in 2020 makes it worthy of its high place on this list.

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”

1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Read in April 2020, right in the heart of the lockdown, my favourite book of the year was John Steinbeck’s classic, East of Eden. A sprawling family epic, it follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Despite it’s doorstopper size, East of Eden never feels long and I practically devoured this book! This book pulled me out of a reading slump and while it didn’t cure my depression, it made it easier to live with for awhile. Dying for some fresh air yet terrified of leaving my apartment, the hours I spent on my balcony absorbed in its pages meant the world to me and I devoured this novel. The scope is truly epic, spanning generations of families. Steinbeck’s storytelling is masterful and his characters are complicated imperfect beings whose stories are compelling. I can’t recommend this highly enough. In fact, it might be time for a re-read in 2023…

Although I went through periods of being unable to focus or pick up a book at all, I’m so grateful that I found some new all-time favourites in 2020 and that my reading was so varied, with all of my top three showing that classics can still be powerful and meaningful in the present.

Thanks for sticking with me on this strange throwback to the beginning of the decade!

Next up: My 2021 Favourites

Book Review: Siren Queen

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo
Published May 10, 2022

Set in a fantastical Hollywood, where both magic and monsters are real, Siren Queen is an atmospheric, enthralling tale that will reward patient readers.

Luli Wei is an ambitious, beautiful, queer woman of colour desperate to be a star. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she spends her childhood chopping off an inch of her own hair, the price of a ticket, to spend a few hours enraptured by the magic of movies at her local cinema. Then a film shoot in her neighbourhood offers Luli a background role and a chance to brush against the world she desires so badly. Propelling herself into Hollywood comes with a cost, but Luli has enough leverage to demand some stipulations of her own: “No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.” For a while the studio doesn’t know what to do with her and Luli wonders if she’ll ever get a break, then she’s cast as a monster, the terrifying siren queen, and her star begins to rise.

Few authors can evoke a setting quite like Nghi Vo. Just as she brought to life a fantastical empire reminiscent of Imperial China in The Empress of Salt and Fortune and a hot 1920s summer on Long Island in The Chosen and the Beautiful, here she turns her imagination loose on an ominous fantastical Hollywood headed by real monsters. Even though Siren Queen is told through the frame of a future Luli telling her lover, Jane, about her life, Vo manages to create and maintain a feeling of danger, of not quite knowing how it will all turn out.

Luli Wei is a terrific character. She knows what she wants and is calculating enough to do what she must along the way, whether it’s taking a name that belongs to someone dear to her or trading years of her life in exchange for career advice. Once in the door, Luli lacks both the power to compel herself further, and the understanding of how to carve out a niche for herself. Then she’s cast as the villain. While Luli is bold and unapologetic, refusing to compromise her principles, Siren Queen never looks down upon those who take other paths. There’s compassion there for gay actors who choose to marry a spouse they aren’t attracted to and for marginalized actors who take stereotypical roles in order to carve out space for themselves in a world dominated by white people.

Siren Queen continually asks questions like how much of yourself are you willing to risk/sign away/carve out for a shot at immortality? Do you try to live authentically or do you hide, reshape, or reinvent parts of yourself? Is it worth it? There’s something intentionally fairy tale-esque about it, the way Vo uses bargains, contracts, and even the power of naming in this story that makes metaphorical monsters literal and otherworldly.

The obvious comparison here is to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. It’s understandable; they’re both well-written, engaging books about enigmatic, ambitious, and sometimes unlikable, queer women of colour who do what they must to get ahead in the film industry. Despite loving both books (and both characters!) I don’t think they’ll necessarily attract the same audience though. Seven Husbands moves at a quicker pace, its monsters are of the human variety, and it reads as escapism with hidden depths, while Siren Queen is slower and more deliberate, leans into the fantastical (did I mention that Luli’s roommate is a magical Swedish cow woman?), yet remains grounded through what it has to say about the moral complexities of fame and power.

Siren Queen isn’t going to appeal to everyone. There are no doubt people who will find it too slow for them, but I love Nghi Vo’s atmospheric writing and her exquisite prose so much that I’d like the rest of her books injected straight into my veins please. Readers who are willing to take the time and spend awhile in Luli’s world will be ensorcelled by this atmospheric fantasy about a clever, unapologetic, queer Asian American woman forging her own path through the glamour and corruption of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Mini Book Reviews: PRIDE edition

While Pride is traditionally celebrated in June, LGBTQ+ books are never out of season. Here are my thoughts on some recent LGBTQ+ reads.

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Remember the days when the only mainstream asexual representation was a handful of YA romances? I do, and it’s why, as an asexual bookworm, I am so glad that a thought-provoking book like this exists. Ace not only represents a wide range of asexual experiences, including disabled aces, aces of colour, male aces, non-binary aces, and aromantic asexuals, it also challenges all readers, ace and allosexual (meaning people who experience sexual attraction to others), to re-examine how we think about and relate to sex and relationships.

Chen writes in a style that is clear and accessible, drawing on personal anecdotes as well as analysis of sexuality and interviews conducted with asexual people. She also has an uncanny ability to look at an issue or topic from all sides and anticipate counter-arguments, which makes for a persuasive and eye-opening book. A bibliography and extensive notes section speak to the research that has gone into this book and may point those looking for more resources in the right direction. As someone who reads very little non-fiction, and who generally prefers narrative non-fiction, I did find Ace a little more theoretical and academic than I’m used to, but it’s still a worthwhile and insightful read.

I not only recommend this book to fellow asexuals who may still be figuring things out or who want to read books about asexuality, but also to pretty much everyone. The points Chen makes about compulsory sexuality are enlightening and I think there is genuinely something that any reader, be they ace or allo, can take away from this book.

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The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Just when I thought that I’d outgrown Young Adult as a genre entirely, I pick up a pair of outstanding queer young adult historical novels! Featuring a Jewish protagonist, The City Beautiful is set in Chicago during the 1890s, a time when thousands of Jewish refugees were fleeing rising anti-Semitism in Europe. Alter Rosen, a Jewish immigrant from Romania, shares a room with three others and often goes hungry as he tries to save enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America. But when his closest friend Yakov becomes the latest victim in a line of murdered Jewish boys, Alter is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, a malevolent possessing spirit that seeks to take over Alter’s body. Alter must join forces with a dangerous boy from his past to find Yakov’s killer.

I’ve never read anything quite like The City Beautiful! I absolutely loved the way Aden Polydoros depicts 1893 Chicago, as both a city of promise and glittering delights, but also a place of poverty, prejudice, and danger. His writing is so evocative that I had a clear picture in my head of the setting as events unfolded. Alter Rosen is deeply empathetic as a boy just trying to make the right choice, but who is tempted by desires he believes to be wrong, and I felt invested in the romance that develops between Alter and another boy. Almost as wonderful as good mensch Alter, are the secondary characters, who are well-developed with their own voices, quirks, and pasts. There’s definitely anger, grief, and pain here, but Polydoros confronts them with maturity and an authenticity that I found moving. Be warned that there is darkness here though and potentially triggering content. The combination of Jewish mythology, murder mystery, characters to root for, and an atmospheric setting make this an irresistible read.

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The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath

Set in early twentieth-century Norway, The Restless Kind is about the friendship between three outcast teens who find refuge in community theatre. Asta is a hard-of-hearing girl who looks different from anyone else in her village due to her mismatched eyes and white forelock. Alongside her friend Gunnar and his secret boyfriend Erlend, she hopes to perform in the local theatre and make a life together as a unit rather than enter into marriage with anyone. However, any future they hope to have together will require money. They have one shot at gaining enough money to secure their future: win the village’s annual horse race.

I loved so much about this novel, but let’s start with the wonderful rep. Disability is still too infrequently represented or at least represented well in fiction. Although Carly Heath is limited by the language of 1904 and therefore discusses the conditions her characters have in an author’s note rather than in the text, she writes from experience about being hard-of-hearing, having post-concussion syndrome, and her experiences with lumbar spine trauma inform her portrayal of Gunnar’s Brown-Sequard syndrome. There is also sexual diversity as Gunnar and Erlend are gay men and Asta is asexual. Accordingly, The Restless Kind is a book about authenticity and resisting the pressure to conform to societal norms, even when it’s difficult.

It’s the characters who are the beating heart of this found family story. I loved reading about Asta, who is courageous and hardworking, maintaining hope as she tries to keep her found family together when circumstances and despair threaten to tear them apart. Told in a dual narrative format, wealthy, big-hearted, but anxious Erlend is the other perspective character. Gravely injured Gunnar is the only one of the central trio not to get a point-of-view chapter. Independent and straightforward, he has a tendency towards melancholy and copes through dark humour that makes his boyfriend nervous. Gunnar’s serious younger brother Fred completes the family.

I would recommend The Restless Kind to anyone who has ever dreamed of running away to a cottage with their friends, anyone who loved Frozen but wished it had lived up to its queer potential, and those looking for a hopeful read about queer found family with authentic disability representation.

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Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko

Early on in Too Much Lip I began to realize exactly how few Australian novels I’d read before and that this was the first Indigenous Australian novel I’d ever picked up. It took a bit for me to get used to the vernacular and the distinct sense of dark humour here, but I’m glad I read Too Much Lip! The book revolves around Kerry Salter, a tough, wise-cracking bisexual woman on a stolen Harley who plans who spend twenty-four hours, tops, in her hometown – just enough time to say goodbye to her dying father. But Bundjalung country has a way of latching onto people and soon she’s once again dealing with her chaotic family, a proposal to build a prison on Granny Ava’s Island, the family’s spiritual home, and her attraction to a good-looking white fella.

Kerry is such a great character to spend time with. She’s outwardly tough, unapologetic, and her smart mouth gets her into trouble, but she also cares. The rest of the Salter Family are similarly well-developed, survivors of trauma who feel fucked up and flawed but who are still standing and interact in all the ways that a family can (both loving and dysfunctional). Author Melissa Lucashenko has a voice that’s distinctly her own and she writes about intergenerational trauma and Australian Indigenous identity in a way that’s intelligent, raw and unflinching, but characterized throughout by biting humour. It’s worth noting that this book deals with a lot of very heavy stuff so please heed the content warnings and know what you’re getting into, but Too Much Lip is a well-written and original novel that I would recommend to the right reader.
Content warnings for child abuse, incest, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and animal cruelty that includes the dog dying

Review: Rogues

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe
Published June 28, 2022

I read almost entirely fiction. In fact, I can count the non-fiction books I read each year on one hand and still have fingers left over, but Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland is so remarkably gripping and well-written that it became my favourite read of 2019. While his second book, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, didn’t capture me in quite the same way, I still loved reading it. I’m not sure whether it’s just the difference between reading a full-length book versus a short story collection, the subject matter, the writing itself, or answer d) all of the above, but Keefe’s latest book, Rogues, didn’t blow me away.

As you can tell from the four star rating, I clearly still enjoyed Rogues. My library hold came in right when I was in the middle of a pretty intense reading slump, and I found Rogues a refreshing diversion that I finished in a matter of days. It may not have broken my slump, but it did hold my attention and I would recommend it to others… with a few caveats.

Collecting twelve of his previously published articles from The New Yorker, Keefe says in his preface that this latest book “reflect[s] on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” The articles range from a fascinating story about the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines to exploring how reality TV producer Mark Burnett reforged Donald Trump into an example of American success.

The biggest reason to pick up this book is, of course, Patrick Radden Keefe’s writing. Keefe is an investigative journalist and his stories are always meticulously well-researched and compellingly told. I often shy away from non-fiction because it fails to capture my attention and the writing can be dry, but Patrick Radden Keefe always manages to hook me and keep me turning the pages, as eager to find out what comes next as I would be reading any great fictional mystery or thriller.

The nature of a short story collection is that some stories will grab you more than others, and that’s the case here. Rogues is a bit of a mixed bag. I absolutely loved some of the articles, but others dragged and I couldn’t connect with them. Rogues starts out strong with “The Jefferson Bottles”, a fascinating look at forging eighteenth-century wines and claiming a link to noted wine connoisseur Thomas Jefferson. My brilliant BookTuber friend Jill at The Book Bully observed that she loved this one because it’s about crimes that only hurt rich people and I completely agree!

Another highlight is “Winning”, which looks at how Mark Burnett, creator and producer of reality TV shows Survivor, The Voice, Shark Tank, and The Apprentice, reshaped Donald Trump’s image. Growing up, I remember watching The Apprentice with my parents and even staying in one of his (incredibly tacky) hotels on a family trip to Atlantic City. Reading about Burnett’s calculating tactics, the way he stroked Trump’s ego to new heights, and his culpability in the rise of Donald Trump to positions of power and success is a somewhat harrowing experience, but it makes for compelling reading.

I would also single out “The Worst of the Worst”, Keefe’s look at star defense lawyer Judy Clarke, who has defended some of the worst American criminals, including Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and Dzhokbar Tsarnaev (one of two men responsible for the bombing the Boston Marathon). An opponent of capital punishment, Clarke believes that all of her clients are people, not monsters, and tries to understand what caused them to commit their crimes.

Ultimately some of the stories in Rogues suffer because of their subject matter. My interest in organized crime is limited and even the gifted Keefe can’t make drug lords and arms dealers into interesting reading so “The Hunt for El Chapo” and “The Prince of Marbella” were never going to be favourites of mine.

While “Journeyman”, a profile of Anthony Bourdain, is well-written and engaging, it feels out of place in this collection. Yes, technically Bourdain falls under the ‘rebels’ part of the subtitle for his unorthodox approach to food, but when all of the other stories have to do with those who break the law in one fashion or another, this article feels adrift. Is it a great article? Yes. Should it have been included in this topical collection? In my opinion, no.

Who would I recommend this book to?
Those who enjoy engaging narrative non-fiction and have already read Empire of Pain and/or Say Nothing (because otherwise you should really read those instead) or are looking for a shorter diversion/enjoy short story collections will enjoy this solid, if not 100% satisfying, book.

Who would I NOT recommend this book to?
If you’re finding the world really grim these days and are looking for a more optimistic read, you might want to hold off on Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing.