Contemporary YA has been a struggle for me lately, and this was no exception. I'm not the audience for this book, though, so that's perfectly okay. The intended audience is probably going to lose-their-minds love it — and I'm super happy about that. So ... 4 stars!

A sci-fi fantasy mashup that was more delightfully weird than I imagined! It's like "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," but missed his stop and ended up in California's San Gabriel Valley where he ran into a donut shop (as one does) and found himself in the middle of a space opera. Plus: a transgender musical prodigy who is a struggling runaway, a violin virtuoso who is harvesting souls to reclaim her own, an interstellar refugee family whose matriarch must make some galactically difficult decisions. the fate of sentient AI, and so much food and music and craft and more.

My main quibble is that the science fiction side of things felt slightly contrived, like a convenient plot device rather than a well-developed element. But there was *a lot* going on, so I understand the need to keep some things streamlined. And even with that flaw, I love a genre-bender and this was a great one.

4.5 rounded right up for this modern mystery that's just too much fun!

Another fun caper with Finlay Donovan! This could've easily been another 5-star rating but it hit a couple of my personal anxiety buttons (and leaned into the love triangle, a feature I'm never a fan of). Still — Finlay is great fun to read! :-)

A charming and sometimes genuinely affecting collection of letters about canine companions from a wide variety of correspondents — George Bush Sr., Jane Welsh Carlyle, Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, Bob Hope, Zora Neale Hurston, Helen Keller, Eric Knight (Lassie Come Home author), Charles Lamb, Anaïs Nin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Sue Perkins, Petrarch, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, E.B. White, and more. This is also great on audio, where a number of talented actors and voice actors (Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Stephen Fry, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong, etc.) narrate the letters.

Michael Schur (the creator of The Good Place) has somehow managed to give us a very readable survey of moral philosophy that is also warm, personal, and hilarious. Chapters include "Should I Punch My Friend in the Face for No Reason?" "Do I Have to Return My Shopping Cart to the Shopping Cart Rack
Thingy? I Mean…It’s All the Way Over There" and "This Sandwich Is Morally Problematic. But it’s Also Delicious. Can I Still Eat It?" Also great on audio (check out Libro.fm), where the cast of the Good Place lend their talents and the author's humor shines through.

Eleanor OIiphant meets Miss Marple in a cozy mystery that is both charmingly familiar and delightfully different. Molly Gray may be a little old-fashioned, a lot blunt, and struggling with social cues, but she is also smart, capable, observant, kind, and loves her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel where she returns her assigned rooms to a state of perfection every day. Admittedly, she does not always love her interactions with the guests, who don't always behave in a manner becoming the Regency Grand. She particularly does not love it when the worst but most VIP of guests turns up dead when Molly is in the middle of cleaning his suite. This is not the state of perfection she strives for. If she keeps calm, applies the rules her Gran taught her, accepts a little help from her friends, and tells the police what she saw, everything should work out fine. Except the observant Molly may have missed an important piece of this puzzle. The police suspect foul play — and they're beginning to think Molly herself brought this foul imperfection onto the scene.

Note: Molly appears to be a neurodiverse character, an identity that neither the author nor I share, so it would be worth seeking out the thoughts and reviews of neurodiverse readers for this one. If I see any, I'll link them here.