THIS WAS SO CUTE. I think it’s clear from the cover, but this is a queer Arthurian graphic novel that focuses on Tristan and Lancelot. King arthur and his knights of the round table are perplexed when Merlin disappears without a trace and the fae are starting to wreak havoc throughout their kingdom. His half-sister, Morgan, teams up with Tristan and Lancelot to track down the missing Merlin and try to uncover what’s happening with the increased fae activity. Along the way we learn about a curse placed upon Tristan, uncover secrets about Morgan’s mother, and Lancelot comes to terms with his upbringing. Can this team of unlikely companions rise to the challenges they face?

Marjorie feels invisible to everyone around her. After her mother’s death, she struggles to keep her family and their laundry business afloat while her father grieves. Regular customers are rude and there’s an unrelenting patron who is eying their home/business as a prime location for his next business venture. Wendell is an actual ghost who died too young and is having trouble accepting his own death and adjusting to life beyond the human realm. When they meet, chaos ensues. Wendell causes accidents that impact Marjorie’s work, home, and school life. When events come to a head, both Marjorie and Wendell will have to come to terms with the death in their lives and learn how to grieve and process the lives they had before. Can a ghost and human girl find a way to be friends and turn both of their situations around?

The third, and final, volume follows our cast of beloved characters (Aster, Charlie, and, now, Ariel) as the Vanissen family takes Ariel under their wing for witch training. Every year the family gathers for the Midwinter Festival to celebrate and compete in a tournament called the Jolrun. Aster wants to participate, as a newer witch in training, to be representation for al those in the family who might not want to be the witches or shapeshifters expected by their family. Naturally, there is a dark force haunting Ariel from her past and she must uncover more about her own family than she anticipated to understand what’s at stake and make a decision that will impact her life and the lives around her.

The second volume covers Aster’s training as he tries to catch up with the women in his family and their level of witchery. He takes private lessons with his grandmother when some members of his family are still upset by the decision to allow Aster to study witchery. He and his magic-less friend, Charlie, however, are in for a surprise when another magic-caster arrives in town and causing chaos at Charlie’s school. They must work together to uncover this witch’s secrets and hopefully help them before anyone gets hurt.

This series has been on my TBR for far too long. Enter: Reading Slump (and how I subsequently busted myself out of slump). The first volume follows Aster, a boy raised among his magical family where men are shapeshifters and women are witches. Aster’s biggest secret is that he is actually a witch, though his parents and family would try to discourage this behavior. When the young boys in his family begin disappearing, he knows that he can help, and he’s determined to save everyone regardless of the cost.

I’ll be thinking about this book for months. Readers are thrust into a dying, fantastical world from the start and are forced to slowly unfold the plot, the people of the world, and their deities (the Ladies). We follow along as Pell (Yarrow) and Kew (Hawthorn) are on two separate, though eventually overlapping, journeys to protect the realm and destroy the Beast before it rises to full power. I simply cannot give anything else away about the plot. Everyone should go into this knowing very little about it, as I think that’s the best experience. All I can say is that the vibes are weird fairytale (think: Alice in Wonderland) crossed with absurdist fantasy (dark topics and often graphic descriptions that seem to come out of left field). This book is an absolute wonder and if you’re looking for a strange, character-driven fantasy with unique world-building, this just might be it for you.

I read this as an audiobook and blew through it in a day and a half. (Don’t be fooled by my photo with a copy of the hardcover book - sadly it was only the audiobook that allowed me to multitask while reading!) A very interesting read that talks about how the Earth’s rapid warming impacts daily life. Goodell highlights the intersectionality of climate change (how factors like race and class impact the ways in which people experience climate change). Our winters are shorter and summers stretch on longer with weather and natural disasters popping up more often every year. Even though I stay very aware of information related to climate change, this was one of those books that slapped me in the face and was a good reminder to look at my surroundings. The fact that I’ve been miserable for most of the summer is completely warranted and is a direct result of climate change. If you’re looking for a good nonfiction read that is informative and realistic while also not getting too bogged down in the negative emotions surrounding the topic, this might be a good one to pick up! I recommend the audiobook, personally - the narrator does a fantastic job at bringing Goodell’s voice to life!

It wasn’t as helpful or interesting as I’d hoped it would be. 

This book was a wild gut-punch of a trip for me. Strange, a bit grotesque, poetic, extremely emotional, and very queer. Readers follow a pair of wives and their roller coaster of a relationship. Leah has returned, changed, after a disastrous submarine mission in which she and her cabinmates were trapped under the sea for months. After months of no communication, not knowing where Leah is or if she’s even alive, her wife, Miri, is supposed to return to business as usual. Between two POVs, we witness Leah’s experience of being trapped in a submarine with a small crew, and we watch as Miri attempts to process various stages and forms of grief while she’s gone and even once she’s back.

If you enjoy the nature-esque horror of VanderMeer’s “Annihilation” series and the dark, emotional prose of Machado’s “In the Dream House”, you will probably enjoy sinking your teeth into this novel. There are images of Miri and Leah imprinted on my brain that won’t be fading anytime soon. If her first novel is any indicator of talent and imaginative ideas, I can’t wait to see what else Armfield has in store for readers in the future.

In our third book, all Light has vanished from the world after Kest is destroyed. Bea and Cad find the courage to carry on, learning more about the world the gods originally designed and how their creation got away from them in the end, resulting in their disappearance from society. Will they manage to find a way to restore Light to the world in Kest’s absence?