dragoninwinterfell's Reviews (147)

I started and stopped and restarted and stopped The Ephemera Collector by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson repeatedly before DNFing. I really wanted to like this one, but there was far too much dry info dumping and not enough focus on character. There were elements I was very interested in, like a middle aged Black woman as the protagonist of a futuristic fantasy novel. But I don't feel that the delivery was as engaging enough to keep spending time on. 

Thank you to NetGalley for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

The Sea Gives Up the Dead by Molly Olguin is a mixed bag of a short story collection. While the quality of the writing is consistently strong - thoughtful prose, compelling explorations of complex topics, and genuinely unique concepts - not every story lands with the same impact. A couple of the stories stood out as truly excellent, drawing me in with their atmosphere and emotional resonance. Others felt flat or dragged in places, making them less engaging despite their strong themes.

Overall, it’s clear that Olguin is a talented writer with a gift for nuance and originality. Even when a story wasn’t especially entertaining, it was still intellectually interesting. Readers who enjoy literary fiction with a touch of the unusual may find plenty to admire here, even if the collection as a whole isn’t uniformly gripping.

An excellent look at unsung heroines.

Tia Williams’ A Love Song for Ricki Wilde was an unexpected delight. As someone who rarely gravitates toward romance, I picked this book up as part of a Goodreads challenge and ended up completely enchanted. What sets this story apart is how deeply personal and emotionally layered it feels, blending whimsical romance with meaningful character development and a vivid sense of place.

At the heart of the novel is Ricki Wilde, a socially awkward, artsy, and ambitious Black woman determined to open her dream flower shop. I've rarely related to a character more. Ricki’s introverted spirit, creative vision, and quiet resilience made her instantly endearing. Her journey is about more than just love; it’s about building a life that honors who she really is, outside of her wealthy and status-obsessed family.

The love story in this novel is both magical and deeply grounded. Without spoiling the plot, I’ll say that it combines ill-fated destiny with genuine compatibility in a way that felt both timeless and refreshingly original. It reads like a modern fairy tale rooted in real emotions and rich history.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is how it pays homage to Harlem, both the Harlem of 2024 and the Harlem of the Renaissance. The neighborhood itself becomes a character in the book, brimming with culture, memory, and legacy. That backdrop brings an extra layer of depth to the romance and to Ricki’s personal growth.

Beyond romance, the book also centers on powerful friendships and found family. My favorite relationship was between Ricki and Della, a recently widowed older woman with a bucket list and a big heart. Watching their bond unfold was one of the most heartwarming parts of the novel. Their chosen grandmother-granddaughter relationship felt authentic, tender, and life-affirming.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a beautifully written celebration of love in many forms: romantic, platonic, and self-love. It’s magical yet grounded, dreamy yet real, and it left me smiling long after I turned the final page.

Very creative, but very tedious. The world building was very good, but the characters were too silly. 

Fatality at the Festival by Beth Dolgner is a very short read that was primarily info dumping and over-explaining. I understand that as an 8th installment in a series that there is backstory to be understood. But that information should be delivered more naturally rather than bringing an already tedious narrative to a standstill every few seconds to recap. The way that the motivations and feelings were overly detailed also made the story drag. A character would say or do something, which was followed by detailed explanations of why and how they were feeling. Then the next character would say or do something, again followed by detailed descriptions of their motivation. For an adult work, there was far too much handholding for the reader. 

Thank you to NetGalley for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was just fine. I wasn't attached to any of the characters, but this felt like an easy listen. 

This book just wasn't for me. I do like some cozy fantasy, but this leaned into too silly for my tastes. Everything was treated as a joke, so there were no stakes and therefore no rooting value. A book the begins with the kidnapping of a queen should be very engaging from the start. Sadly, this one fell short for me. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Beauty of the End by Lauren Stienstra is a haunting, slow-burning novel that manages to be both contemplative and compulsively readable. Set in a near future where humanity is faced with a devastating truth—there is a limit to how many more generations will be born—the book explores how society copes with existential crisis through a grounded, step-by-step portrayal of life continuing in the face of inevitable decline.

The story unfolds through the eyes of Charlie Tannehill, who was just a child when she and her twin sister Maggie learned of the so-called "timeclock" on humanity. As they grow into adulthood, both sisters become involved in the government’s controversial efforts to address the crisis. These efforts, centered on incentivized breeding and reproductive control, raise deeply unsettling ethical questions. While Maggie thrives in this system, Charlie is more conflicted, leading to a strain between the sisters that drives much of the novel’s emotional tension.

Stienstra’s writing is quiet and deliberate, capturing the rhythms of everyday life even as the characters grapple with profound uncertainty. The realism of the narrative is one of its greatest strengths. People still go to work, fall in love, and make difficult choices even as the end of the species looms ahead. The understated way Stienstra portrays this gradual unraveling adds to the story’s poignancy.

Charlie’s character is deeply relatable in her hesitation and emotional complexity. However, one limitation of the novel is that it offers only Charlie’s perspective. While this focus adds depth to her internal struggle, it would have been equally compelling to understand Maggie’s motivations and justifications. A dual perspective could have offered a richer look at the moral ambiguity surrounding the government’s program, especially through the eyes of someone who embraces it fully.

Even so, the lack of full resolution and unanswered questions work in the story’s favor. Much like real life, the book resists the urge to provide neat conclusions, instead inviting readers to sit with uncertainty and form their own judgments. The Beauty of the End is a thought-provoking, character-driven novel that explores the quiet resilience and ethical dilemmas of a society confronting its final chapters.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tiffany L. Warren’s The Unexpected Diva is a moving and masterfully written historical fiction novel that brings to light the extraordinary, yet often overlooked, life of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield. A Black woman who shattered boundaries, Greenfield rose to become a celebrated prima donna in both the United States and Europe.

Warren seamlessly blends historical fact with rich, imaginative storytelling to reconstruct what Eliza’s life might have been like as she navigated the tumultuous decades before the Civil War. Drawing from research on free Black communities in Philadelphia, Warren places Eliza in a vividly rendered world filled with ambition, conflict, and heart. The result is an engaging, emotionally resonant narrative of a young woman caught between her dreams and the deeply entrenched limitations of her time.

Eliza’s journey is shaped not only by her prodigious talent but also by the complex social forces around her. The novel explores the overt racism she faces from white audiences and institutions, as well as the insidious colorism within her own community. These layers add depth and nuance to her struggle, making her pursuit of artistic excellence all the more inspiring.

Warren also explores the intimate and internal conflicts Eliza faces as a woman. She is torn between the desire for love and romance and the relentless ambition to build a prestigious singing career. The push and pull between societal expectations of womanhood and the yearning for personal fulfillment is explored with honesty and grace. Her professional rivalry with the legendary Jenny Lind, her white European contemporary, serves as a powerful foil that highlights how race, class, and public perception intersect in the arts. In addition to this, she has to balance her own ambitions for herself with the goals for advancing the cause for racisl equality and the fight against slavery.

By breathing life into Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, Warren offers readers a much needed reclamation of a trailblazing figure in music history. The Unexpected Diva is both a celebration of Black excellence and a poignant reflection on the personal cost of making history. It is a must read for fans of historical fiction, music history, and stories of women who dared to dream beyond their circumstances.