Hello, fellow readers! It’s been…almost exactly a year to the day that I’ve posted on this blog. The silence is not an indication of inactivity––in fact, it’s the opposite. I negotiated a few book deals this year that still haven’t been announced (all SFF, funnily enough), I’ve read hundreds of manuscripts, and this afternoon I just finished my 40th read (books for fun). It’s been a great quality reading year, as indicated by the eleven––eleven––five-star books I’m excited to share with you below.

Fantasy Favorites

Divine Rivals || The Kingdom of Sweets || Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Nettle & Bone || House of Hollow

Contemporary Favorites

Remarkably Bright Creatures || The Violin Conspiracy || Yours Truly 
[nonfiction] Waypoints

Historical Favorites

Our Woman in Moscow || The Dictionary of Lost Words

Five of these books were audiobooks. A little over a third of my reading this year was accomplished via audio. I’m so grateful to my library for providing Libby and Hoopla so that I may continue consuming wonderful stories!

Read below the break for my reviews!

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt: People were raving over this book. My typical reaction to hyped books is avoidance until the chaos dies down (let’s not examine the irony of this when it comes to my day job). I hemmed and hawed. I mean, why would I want to read a book through the perspective of an octopus? I really struggle with animal POVs. Why would/how could this book be any different?

I loved it. I listened to this on audio and fell in love with Marcellus the octopus. His voice was precocious, sophisticated, clever, and sassy. So endearing. And then there’s Tova. She’s just the kind of character I adore—content yet lonely, needing a jolt to wake her up and see the love and life surrounding her. Life has dealt her a difficult hand, but she managed to find joy in cleaning the aquarium and keeping things nice, tidy, orderly. So when she found Marcellus out of his tank, and a young man arrives in town looking for his birth father—well, I was already cozy and happily settled for what was bound to be an emotional and uplifting ride.

I’m so happy to have experienced this book. What a journey!

~

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross: A breathlessly romantic YA. I devoured it.

How to describe DIVINE RIVALS? It’s . . . WWI at home and abroad (I pictured London and French countryside); it’s gods walking among us forcing humans to participate in their war, with a Hades-and-Persephone backstory; it’s dragons in the day and wolves at night; it’s a Narnia-vibe with wardrobes and magical typewriters; it’s rivals-to-lovers, mistaken identities, and miscommunication done in a beautiful and understanding way; it’s the power of music and words; it’s duty and courage and grief; it’s family, both real and found, and the bonds of humanity.

It’s hard for me to describe a book and give it a review because of how much it made me feel. I read the majority of it on Sunday and finished Monday night—I haven’t inhaled a published book like that in a long time, and it was such a high.

If any of that above—the vibes, the experience—appeals to you, pick up this book. If you adored Ross’s A RIVER ENCHANTED duology, this is the YA counterpart. If you want a sweeping romance that’s equally beautiful and tragic and wishing you had the next book in your hands NOW, pick up this book. If you love historical fiction and like the occasional splash of magic and speculative, dive into this.

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Waypoints by Sam Heughan: I listened to this memoir on audio and it was delightful. WAYPOINTS is part travel log on the West Highland Way and part memoir; braided together to weave a journey of resilience, determination, and growth. It was also very intimate, with Heughan opening up and being vulnerable for the reader with his thoughts and experiences. Inspiring. I highly recommend for anyone in a highly competitive/artistic/talent industry––and anyone interested in the strength of the human spirit.

The audiobook is fantastic. Heughan reads it himself and and inserts lots of funny asides, voices for people in the log, and he laughs and grumbles. It felt like sitting in a pub chatting with a friend.

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Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez: To see very specific aspects of my personal life written into a novel is an incredible, indescribable feeling. I am Jacob; my husband is Briana. Jacob’s methods to calm down and handle his anxiety are mine; Briana’s ability to understand the different silences and social situations is my husband’s. The letter-writing, very similar (ours were emails). The diary-reading, same. Knowing early on This Is It, same.

There is so much more to this book that’s classic Jimenez—I laughed SO MUCH, and the very serious topics in here (social anxiety, divorce, miscarriage, and biggest of all: organ donation and kidney disease) were handled with such care. But most of all, I was so blown away reading very specific things about this relationship that mirrored my own love story.

I’m speechless and so immensely grateful. Abby Jimenez continues to knock them out of the park. Each book keeps getting better and better!

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The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb: “Music is about communication—a way of touching your fellow man beyond and above and below language; it is a language all its own.”

It’s hard to truly put into words what it feels like to be one with music. It’s more than the notes and the crescendos and tempos. It’s more than the breath and reverberation, it’s more than swaying to the beat and transporting an audience. It feels…indescribable, and unless you’re a musician with writing chops to boot, you just can’t really put it into words. Brendan Slocumb is a musician with writing chops—and threw in a great mystery to boot.

I’m not much of a mystery or thriller reader, so I can’t speak to the genre. But my heart was POUNDING and my hands were SWEATING all throughout this narrative. Your instrument becomes a physical part of you—be it voice or winds or strings or brass or percussion—so for Ray’s priceless violin to be stolen right before a major international competition was absolutely gut-wrenching.

His journey through music is full of hardship and determination (bless Grandma Nora), and piled on further by racism everywhere Ray turned. Several events in this book actually happened to the author, which is sickening. Ray needed to prove to himself and to the world that he is an incredible musician in his own right, no matter what kind of violin he played. But oh, the journey to get there and the journey solving the crime…WOW. Talk about some twisted people out there, the nasty things they will say and do, and we still have so much work to do to learn from this country’s history.

As Slocumb said in his author’s note: “Music is for everyone. It’s not—or at least it shouldn’t be—an elitist, aristocratic club that you need a membership card to appreciate: it’s a language, it’s a means of connecting us that is beyond color, beyond race, beyond the shape of your face or the size of stock portfolio. […] Who you are goes far beyond what you look like. […] Alone, we are a solitary violin, a lonely flute, a trumpet singing in the dark. Together, we are a symphony.”

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Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett: This quietly snuck up on me. I listened to the audiobook and found myself falling under the narrative’s spell. I loved the historical, Scandinavian, academic setting; Emily is a nerdy delight; Wendell is charming in a laugh-and-shake-head-smiling way. It was warm and inviting, with low stakes adventure.

What sealed the deal for me was the seriousness of Emily’s research. In college I took a course on Celtic history and folklore, and wrote a semester paper on the pagan beliefs of Celts prior to Christianity’s arrival. I was immersed in brownies and changelings, offerings and rituals, the grim roots of tales to explain away disasters or deaths. Fae are to be respected and feared, they are tricksters, there’s no rhyme or reason to them. So having Emily study them, creating an encyclopedia, combining folklore and fairytales with sociology and psychology—oh my GOSH I devoured it. Finally! A fae book that I can get behind!!

The romance within is also quiet and slow, a low simmer, and it remained that way. I loved that. (I can’t emphasize how much I loved that.) It felt so true to Emily’s nature that it warmed my heart. I’m curious to see what the second book has in store!

Beautifully written, a little silly and fun, a lovely fairytale much like the tales Emily is researching. A true delight. Perfect for a cozy, wintery day by the fire, hot mug of cocoa in hand.

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House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland: *screams* *weeps* This! This is what I mean by loving gothic horror!!!!

THIS is a true and properly terrifying fairytale. The way the fairy stories and frightening woods and unsettling, unexplainable things were woven into bedtime stories to keep children safe at home for centuries. The dark, uncanny, creepy tales of horror. Wow. I devoured this contemporary gothic horror YA novel. This is my cup of tea, this is my jam, this *shakes book in your face* is my kind of horror!

Three young girls disappeared NYE night in Edinburgh, and reappeared a month later, naked yet unharmed, but a little different from before. What happened to the Hollow girls that night? Join Iris and her sisters roughly ten years later—Grey is a successful model and fashion designer, Vivi and nomadic musician, and Iris just trying to please their mum and get into university. But when Grey goes missing, and Iris and Vivi are the only ones interested in finding her, their past, present, and future begins to unravel. Who are they? What happened that night? And who is following them at every turn?

Full of beautiful prose and haunting descriptions, modernized epistolary fragments, and the eerie and uncanny, this was a novel I couldn’t put down. I especially loved the spin on gothic terror too—what frightens us, particularly women, today. This is set mostly in London, written around the time several young British women were assaulted or disappearing. There’s commentary throughout about the pain and frustration of being a woman today, of beauty, of victimizing and shaming. I thought that wove together so nicely with this evergreen tale of missing children, madness, other worlds, and mythological creatures.

Loved it. Loved every word, beginning to end.

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Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams: My third Beatriz Williams did not disappoint! Holy smokes, talk about compelling voice and propelling pace! From the first sentence I was hooked—grabbed and pulled in immediately by Ruth’s frank, blunt voice. Then comes romantic, naive Iris and stunningly cold Lyudmila. From 1940 Italy to 1952 NYC and Moscow to 1948 London, we follow three women and the ways their paths intersect and overlap in this nail-biting Cold War novel of espionage, intrigue, and secrets.

I became VERY excited when I spotted some Easter eggs. Aunt Vivian brings her three daughters, Tiny, Pepper, and Little Viv, to England at one point and I thought, “…hang on… THE Tiny, Pepper, and Vivian of the Schuyler Sister trilogy?” YEP. The very three! So cool to see them as little girls in this book. I enjoyed reading VIOLET GRANT so it was neat to see them as passing characters in MOSCOW.

I’m not one for mysteries and thrillers in books—I do enjoy them on TV, particularly BBC ones!—but this is as close as I’d get. My heart was racing and I enjoyed connecting the threads and seeing how it all played out.

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The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams: Don’t mind me, I just sobbed through the last 100 pages, no big deal…Admittedly, I didn’t know what to make of this novel at the beginning. So much so I skipped to the timelines offered after the author’s note at the end—why should I care about this girl’s obsession with words? But after seeing that the word “bondmaid” really was missing from the OED, and how the making of the OED coincided with the suffrage movement…well, then I understood. And I was excited to dive back into the narrative.

This novel follows Esme Nicholl, at first a very young girl accustomed to sitting under the table at her father’s feet enjoying the slips of paper covered with words fluttering to the floor. She grows into a young yet unconventional woman—unconventional in the sense that she’d rather be an academic than a wife and homemaker—eager to assist these scholarly men with their edits and creation of the Dictionary. But then an actress comes to Oxford, and her friendship awakens Esme’s desire to do more, be more, strive for more. Her life changes, for better and for worse—as life does!—as Esme begins her involvement in the suffrage movement, in recording words excluded from the Dictionary, in seeking out other meanings for words that usually have a female (and therefore negative) connotation.

This journey through Esme’s life is full of wonder, discovery, heartbreak, and empathy. We explore life’s complexities through Esme’s eyes, and readjust our understanding and vision right alongside her.

A moving novel!

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Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher: How to describe NETTLE & BONE without giving too much away? Hmm… I’d call it a fairytale turned on its head. A fairytale but make it horror-lite. An angry fairytale. Rather than the princess rescued by the prince, falling in love, and living happily ever after, the princess is out to kill the prince and forms an interesting crew of misfits to get the job done.

And boy is it justified! So much anger and vengeance. And fiercely feminist. There are a lot of traumas addressed in here—negligence, abuse (physical, mental, emotional), idolization, fear of death, miscarriages and childbirth, the negative effects of duty and honor—but all done with care. Kingfisher faced these head on, but managed to do so with gentleness and (dark) humor. One minute I’m upset and angry, the next I’m laughing and along for the ride.

I also marveled at how small this book is and how Kingfisher managed to pack a massive world and culture and history into it without info-dumping. The way I could fall into the narrative and the characters and still build this understanding of the world and all it’s intricacies was wonderfully done. I’d like to see more of this! (Don’t get me wrong, I love big books—but this was especially refreshing!) Lots of love to dark fairytales!

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The Kingdom of Sweets by Erika Johansen: Confession: I’ve never seen The Nutcracker. (I’m not counting an old PBS broadcast my parents recorded on VHS.) But the music—the music is what I know by heart. I listen to it every Christmas season, and for four years in college it was on repeat in the background as I studied for finals. I’d blast it in my car with the bass turned up, particularly during the scene when the clock strikes midnight and the tree grows and the Nutcracker becomes a prince. I’ve always found the tale of The Nutcracker to be an odd choice for Christmas celebrations, since it has such a dark quality to it.

And now, finally, a retelling and expansion that captures that ominous, gothic quality and marries it with the origins of fairytales: warnings, bargains, and nothing is as it seems. The timeline with the Russian Revolution was just the icing on the cake for me. I loved the exploration of twinhood, light and dark, good and evil, angel and fallen woman, rich and poor—all the dualities that make for excellent Victorian-era fiction. The sickly sweet juxtaposed with gore and rot. And of course Natasha’s complexity and gripping voice. I gobbled this up. It was my gothic fairytale dream, perfect for the holiday season, and really captured the essence of the music for me too.

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What was my top favorite book of 2023? Divine Rivals, easily. My preorder of Ruthless Vows is en route as I type this! But I was also so pleased by the number of gothic, fairytale, horror narratives I read this year. The kind of books that are bait for me, my bread and butter. What each of these books have in common is how they moved me––to laughter, to tears, to sighs, to anger––offering up that emotional connection I so crave in a fantastic book. I’m excited to see what 2024 brings!