I read this book on the recommendation of a friend who knows that I love dark academia and shares that love, too. What I can say for sure about this book is that it's a shipper's dream, chock full of very sexy characters who form a big, informal, morally bankrupt polycule. If that's your thing, you'll want to read The Atlas Six. I can also say that I liked the ideas behind the book--the secret society based around maintaining the magically hidden Library of Alexandria, the different specialties of magic, the opposing society who want information to be free--but that the execution left something to be desired for me. It felt like most of the action was happening off the page, and instead of seeing what was going on, we have 350 pages of one-on-one conversations and being told about Blake's OCs before 20 pages of plot right at the end. So while I was interested in what was happening, I spent a lot of time wanting to rewrite the book to include more action, less lengthy exposition about character traits, and more foreshadowing and suspense.

Might read the sequel to find out what happens, but I'll probably do it on audio to see how the full-cast recording is.

I've seen so many rave reviews of Daisy Jones and the Six that maybe it was inevitable that I would read it and think, "Wait, this? This is the book everyone loves so much?" Because I thought it was fine and perfectly enjoyable, but it didn't hit me the way that The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo did. I thought the characters and their voices were realized well, but they are in a lot of ways stock characters from Behind the Music, so we've heard these stories and these voices before; they're a part of our cultural consciousness. Some of TJR's characterization work is done for her.

Maybe this sounds more damning than I mean for it to be. I generally liked the book and really liked certain elements of it (especially Karen and her storyline, which could have veered into much different territory depending on the author), it just didn't make it past "this is pretty good" territory for me.

Going by the synopsis, I was expecting a straightforward story about a possessed smart speaker, something with elements of Grady Hendrix's Horrorstor. This Thing Between Us is definitely not that book, but I liked what it is: a cosmic horror tale about a young widower dealing with grief and the politicization of his wife's tragic death, one small element of which is in fact a creepy smart speaker.

Lately I have really fallen in love with media about grief, or have become aware that I already loved media about grief. I rewatched the first three John Wick movies and then went to see the fourth. I rewatched both seasons of Fleabag. I devoured How to Sell a Haunted House and Mad Honey. I'm currently kind of preoccupied with loss and drawn to stories that explore how people confront, live with, are consumed by it.

And I think that cosmic horror is especially suited to exploring this topic. When you're grieving, it does feel like the entire universe is a cold and calculating entity turned against you. The enormity of your pain is as incomprehensible as a malevolent consciousness that lurks behind the dead and ancient stars. It just fits. And Gus Moreno gets it.

Sometimes there is a specific flavor of escapism that I crave: the kind that comes not from reading stories with low stakes, but from getting wrapped up in the dramatic problems of fictional characters. And after reading Mad Honey and looking over synopses for a lot of Jodi Picoult's books, I suspected that I had found a treasure trove of imaginary people with problems.

I chose Sing You Home for my first solo Picoult because it's about lesbians and I am me. It's from 2011 and shows its age, in ways both expected (casual transphobia) and unexpected (the jarring realization that things seem kinda worse for queer people in 2023). It was obviously written for a straight audience, and the characters do a lot of work to establish that they're not the loud, weird, scary, flag-waving kinds of lesbians. They assuage fears of gay people being attracted to everyone of the same gender they lay eyes on. And there's

Spoiler

ample time spent establishing that while a character had an abortion when she was 19, it was in fact agonizing and she feels permanent guilt about it. Is that a reaction someone might have to getting an abortion? I suppose, although everything I've read indicates that most people who get abortions report feeling relief afterward. Bottom line, I just don't think abortion needed more negative PR, and this was handled poorly.

But I didn't hate reading this. It's a popcorn book and mostly entertained me the way that I wanted, despite dragging a bit in the last quarter. Not amazing, but fine. A fried-egg-on-toast book.

It took me a long time to get around to this series, but I was won over almost immediately by the relatable Murderbot-- whomst among us hasn't thought about how troubling it is to have emotions about reality, when emotions about our favorite shows are much more comfortable?

There were some moments when I had trouble picturing the characters and exactly what was going on, but I still really enjoyed this and will probably tear through the series pretty quickly.

I love it whenever Blair Braverman cohosts You're Wrong About, so I was excited to read her debut novel, a thriller about a survival reality show (think Naked and Afraid, plus clothes) that goes wrong. This was a much more character-driven book than I expected, focusing primarily on Mara, whose experience with wilderness survival goes back to her increasingly paranoid off-the-grid parents. I really enjoyed her backstory and the ways it colors her approach to the challenges she faces and to her fellow survivors.

My one complaint is that this book takes a long time to get going, with the big inciting incident not happening until halfway through. I would have liked the first 50% to spend more time establishing the characters' relationships to each other, because by the time they really have to depend on each other, I still felt like I barely knew some of them.

But overall? I had a great time being stressed out by this book.

I still enjoy Murderbot as a character, and I loved its interactions with ART, but I found the human characters and settings really difficult to visualize in this one. I’m going to give the third volume a shot, though.

I was drawn to this because of the beautiful cover. Some poems shone, but I kept mentally punctuating and rebreaking the lines to make the meaning clearer.

I've heard so many great things about Priestdaddy over the years that I decided to read it after a lackluster March, hoping that a book so beloved would cast its warm light over my April and let me have a better reading month. And I really liked it, at least at first, until it shifted tone and became a book about writing itself. Toward the end, the chapters felt less cohesive to me, but where this book excels is voice. Lockwood has a way with observation and the unexpectedly-turned phrase that's truly delightful, and I think that if you like memoirs about laughing through family trauma and go in knowing that the lighthearted tone is not consistent throughout, you'll enjoy Priestdaddy. I want to say that it reminded me a bit of Running With Scissors, but I read that when I was like 18 and I'm 34 now, so maybe don't quote me on that.

I’m in need of escapism right now, so I turned to cozy mysteries, the genre where death only really happens to hateful people and our plucky heroine wraps up all the loose threads and restores us to the safety of the status quo by the end. However, A Death in Door County is not nearly as cozy and comforting as I expected. I loved the setting and the cryptid angle, but I was left wanting more of those elements and less of the romantic subplot. Not bad, but not quite the reading experience I was hoping for right now.