The Storm We Made

I won an ARC of this through a Goodreads giveaway, which is honestly a surprise to me because that never happens - there are so many entries for those! But yea, that was cool. Though then I waited to be able to combine reading it with listening to the audiobook, because having both is fast turning into…

The Palace of Illusions

I have a soft spot for retellings of mythology - any mythological origin and (mostly) any retelling genre/style. A few months ago, I posted a review of a retelling asking for recs for others and someone recommended this! I have looked back and cannot find which review it was that I got the recommendation on, and…

River Spirit

A few years ago, Aboulela's name popped up on a reading challenge list I saw, as a "read a book by this author" prompt. And I don't actually do many reading challenges (because I'm so much of a mood reader), but I love looking through prompts to get ideas. I looked into her body of…

Wrath Goddess Sing

I first saw this book on IG when @booksnblazers posted a glowing review. I do love mythology and retellings and especially when they are queer, so I added it to my TBR right then. But I moved it right up to the top when I saw it was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction. Wrath Goddess…

Queen of Myth and Monsters

I read King of Battle and Blood, the first book in the "Adrian X Isolde" series, just recently. And I was very into it. There was magic and battle and vampires and an enemies-to-lovers romance that went hard on the steamy front. So, I was pretty excited to see that the second book was already out.…

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories

This is my third Aspen Words Literary Prize 2023 longlist read. And honestly so far this longlist is next level. All three (this, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water and The Town of Babylon) so far have been 5-star reads. I wasn’t planning to read the whole longlist this year, but I…

Joan

Fun fact about me: I was obsessed with the story of Joan of Arc when I was in elementary school. I went to Catholic School through 6th grade and honestly, there are not a lot of actively inspiring women in the religious mythology of Catholicism. Like, men who were saints had stories about fighting dragons…

War and Me (+ Giveaway)

Until about two months ago, neither Faleeha Hassan nor this book were anywhere on my radar. But a representative of the publisher (Amazon Crossing) reached out and asked if I was interested in receiving a copy in exchange for participating in a Blog Tour. I've gotten pretty picky about which of these requests I say yes…

The Spy and the Traitor

Friends, you may notice that this book is incredibly unlike anything I've read before. I mean I did read that spy novel that was one of Obama's fav's one year, American Spy, but mostly because Obama recommended it. (And really I don't see that many spy novels by Black women from major imprints..so I was all about supporting that).…

Beasts of a Little Land

This was an ALC offering from Libro.fm a few months ago that intrigued me, so I grabbed it. Then I requested the physical copy from my library (I do like to have both on hand while reading, if possible), but between the delays in the library getting our copy (these printing/shipping delays affect libraries too, y'all) and the…