Bewilderness

Finished my 9th Aspen Words 2022 Longlist read! This is another that I would absolutely not have picked up without it being on the longlist, as really nothing from the cover to the description really grabbed my interest. (Though I'm always here for a book set in NC, and this author even currently teaches at…

Hell of a Book

After a bit of a break reading other stuff, I'm back with a review for my 8th Aspen Words Literary Prize 2022 Longlist read. This one also happened to have won this year's National Book Award, so I was heading into it prepared for some intense literary fiction and some high expectations. Plus, it was set…

Greedy

There is something about the title of this book that felt aggressive in a way that made me not want to read it, despite the fact that it was compared to Samantha Irby (whose essay collections we are never meeting in real life and wow, no thank you I love) and seemed topically to be spot on…

Men We Reaped

I read my first book by Ward, her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, a few years ago. It was an affecting reading experience, emotional and expressive, lyrical and illuminative. But the story style, the slow-moving family saga and ghost story mix, is one that I have to be in the right mind-space for, because it can easily cause me…

Hang the Moon

As always, when life gets hectic, I turn to romances for a little quick and easy reading escape. I enjoyed the first in this series, Written in the Stars, when I read it a while ago. Although it wasn't a new fav, I was super into the astrology aspects and I also remember how well Bellefleur wrote…

Wahala

Thanks to Libro.fm for the ALC of this book. It is one that I would definitely not have picked up as fast, if ever, without that push. And while there are quite a few ALCs I've gotten from them that remain unread (I'm just one person and there are so many great books and just too many things other than reading on…

The Empire of Gold

Check out my super fast turnaround on reading The Kingdom of Copper (the second book in the Daevabad trilogy) and this final installation! After it was like two years after reading The City of Brass that I finally continued with the series, I'm really proud of my "only" a couple months between these last two. Go me! Also, it…

How to Fail at Flirting

This was a vacation romance read book choice (the final one I ended up getting to on this particular trip). It has been on my TBR list for awhile and this seemed like the perfect chance to finally pick it up. Also, the colors on the cover feel very tropical, to me, so the vibe…

Brown Girls

So, I got this book as an eARC from Netgalley a few months ago. I had a goal, of course, of reading it before publication, but I am just terrible at following through on that. However, I am only a couple weeks late (so that's an improvement!). Plus, I have to say I'm not mad…

Winter’s Orbit

Anything advertised as romance in space is likely to get an immediate add onto my "TBR" list. And this spectacular mix of my two favorite escapist genres was the perfect addition to my "vacay reads" packing stack. So, one binge-read experience later (because once I picked this one up, I absolutely was not able to put it back…