This was okay. A pretty typical small-town, second-chance romance about former childhood rivals-turned-sweethearts who reunite after years apart when they co-inherit their grandmothers' lakeside inn and lodge.

This is a paranormal romance, but I felt like the paranormal elements, although everpresent, were a bit underdeveloped; I didn't get a real sense of how the magic works or fits into the world, and there are some inconsistencies, like the fact that gorgons' magic is seen as dark and sinister, but they also can immediately reverse petrifying someone, with no ramifications at all, so I don't know why they're feared?

I also found the relationship similarly underdeveloped, and I had a hard time believing that the connection was all that strong or that Chandler was worthy of trust. There's a lot of sex for such a short book, which will vary in its appeal according to personal preference. As for me (with my demisexual tendencies), I prefer for the scales to tip a bit stronger on the side of character and plot, so I was occasionally annoyed by how often Lettie and Chandler were getting it on, when I wanted them to focus more on the inn.

And I guess on their wacky scheme to save it?

Note that if you are expecting any shapeshifting or monstrousness in this book, there is none. Chandler (the titular gorgon) does sound hot, but she is 100% human in appearance.

A House with Good Bones joins Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House on the list of weird-ass haunted house books that scared me more than I expected them to in 2023.

I've been meaning to read T. Kingfisher for a few years, but I decided to make A House with Good Bones my first because that cover is so so good, and because it's gotten some positive attention, but mostly because the premise sounded close to my familial situation. Close enough that when I described the book to the person I live with, her first response was, "Wow, isn't that kind of on-the-nose?"

I wanted the catharsis I suspected such on-the-nose-ness could provide, and I got it, but I also got dragged along to some creepy places that I didn't expect. Kingfisher asks the reader to do some heavier suspending of disbelief than I anticipated needing to do going in, but I think I prefer that to the more normal book I thought this would be?

Good for fans of nerdy protagonists, contemporary Southern Gothic, generational trauma, and weird fiction with a sense of humor.

I did not expect a monster romance to make me feel more seen and held in my grief and depression than any other book I've read this year, but here we are.

More detailed review to come, maybe?

Oh, I really liked this. It delves a bit deeper into the world Green introduced in She Came From the Swamp, and all the glimpses I’ve gotten so far only make me want more books from her. Loved the protagonist, her family trauma, and the way she learns to embrace her own sort of power. The romance really builds from her being protected to her being in charge of what she wants, and I think that’s great. Huge plus that there’s some Halloween atmosphere.

I normally don’t rate books, but I’m giving this one 5 stars because it got Charles’d, and because it deserves some stars!

Oh, an excellent recommendation. I have no idea how Suzanne Clay manages to pack so much into such a short book, but she does so masterfully. Nothing feels rushed or cut short, the characters have satisfying arcs, and everything just fits together so thematically well. I love that the protagonist is an ex-evangelical and the way that informs her relationship to her spirituality and her sexuality. The sex is written in a way that feels healing and liberating. And the banter? Love a crossroads spirit who can banter.

I've been wanting to explore the wild world of monsterfucker romances for awhile, but the vast majority of them I come across are straight, and that's just not my thing. So I was intrigued when I found this one while browsing through Kindle Unlimited.

Admittedly, I downloaded it partially for the bit, but... I really liked it. I'm not even sure why I'm surprised: I love books about inheritances, I love spooky things and folkloric creatures, I love tall goth girls. But I guess I wasn't expecting all the feelings or to enjoy the protagonist as much as I did.

Good stuff, will read the next one.

My main criticism is that this reads as very YA for a book about characters in their late twenties, but I listened to it for 7+ hours in one day, so obviously it didn't bother me THAT much.

The real pleasure for me was the setting. It's very Stars Hollow but make it witchy, and I liked getting to know the town and its inhabitants and their magic. This is a little more magic-heavy than some witch romances I've read, with a lot of attention paid to a magical tournament and the winning thereof, which I liked.

Overall, this was a solid comfort read, and I hope that the rest of the series is as enjoyable as this one.

This is a harrowing account of exploitation and a must-read if you're a fan of Britney or if you're interested in reexamining much-maligned women of the aughts. (Or if you spent a lot of time obsessed with her in elementary school and then grew into an NLOG phase where you hated her and refused to recognize that "Toxic" was a good song and mostly stopped caring after awhile but thought "If You Seek Amy" was a bop... So me. If you're me.) I'm glad that she got to tell her story, and I hope that it inspires more widespread compassion for her. Regardless of your opinion of her music or her place in pop culture, I think it would be difficult to come away from this memoir without the conviction that what she was subjected to--by her family, by the media, and by men that she loved and thought she could trust--was unjust.

While some topics felt less detailed than some readers might hope, I really appreciate that she acknowledges how her Southern upbringing influenced her life. I've lived in the South my entire life and am just a handful of years younger than Britney, and I saw similar things growing up: the common knowledge of how certain families' men abuse women and how nothing ever gets done about it, the pressure on girls to shut up and do whatever they have to in order to keep everyone happy, and the ways that unruly women have the tendency to get shunted into psychiatric care not to help them heal, but to get them under control.

I spent a lot of time while reading this book taking breaks to look up photos and videos from the times she discusses. Recontextualizing them with the knowledge of what she was enduring is heartbreaking. But similarly, watching more recent Instagram videos of her dancing and playing dress-up feels so different when you divorce your perception of them from people making memes and poking fun at her, and instead see them as a woman reconnecting with a sense of joy and self-determination that was stolen from her for so long. Let this woman dance around in her underwear! She spent 13 years with her dad monitoring every time she went to the bathroom and not letting her eat chocolate!

Michelle Williams nails her narration of the audiobook, so I recommend it in that format for sure.

This is the t4t lesbian minotaur romance I didn’t know I needed. As in At the Crossing, Clay develops her characters well within a very short span of time and tells a compelling, high-stakes story with plenty of heartstrings-tugging emotion and some fulfilling and affirming sex. It was a nice change of pace to see a “monster” whose appeal isn’t that she’s super dominant and possessed of otherworldly sex knowledge; rather, she’s pretty shy, which fits her backstory and made for an interesting dynamic with the huntress MC.

At this point, I’m tempted to say that I prefer monster romance to the strictly human kind. It appeals to my interest in the social construction of monstrosity and my Guillermo del Toro sensibilities. It fits nicely with my demisexual need for a relationship not to be based on immediate sexual attraction grounded in normative standards of attractiveness. And I’m queer, so I’m used to people thinking that my friends and I are monsters, anyway. And The Price on Her Head hits all of these areas pretty perfectly.

A character-driven and introspective novel mostly about the internal lives of three teenaged siblings and the changes of thought and feeling they undergo after discovering an injured young man. Though the synopsis makes this sound somewhat like a mystery--and I suspect that's why my work book club voted for it--it's really a triple Bildungsroman about kids grappling with sexual awakenings, the concept of belonging, and the problem of evil.

I'm not going to say that it's an objectively bad book, because it certainly isn't. But I will say that it isn't a book that I enjoyed. It made me anxious and sad in ways that didn't feel rewarding or productive, and it took me much longer to finish than it should have because I dreaded picking it up.

I'm interested in hearing what my book club thinks about it. But mostly I'm relieved to go back to the streak of uplifting and/or cathartic reading I've been doing lately.

One point in this book's favor: Lily the dog is a delight, and nothing bad happens to her.