Hemlock & Silver

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by T. Kingfisher
First sentence: “I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: August 19, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some violence, and swearing, including a few f-bombs. It will be in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

All Anja wanted was a quiet (enough) life to study poisions and to attempt to find antidotes and cures for as many as she could. Unfortunately, that means she is very good at what she does, and that catches the notice of the king, who comes and “asks” (do kings really ask?) her to save his daughter, Snow, who is slowly wasting away, probably being poisoned. Anja doesn’t want to do this – if she fails, it will be the ruin of her and her father – but she doesn’t have a choice. Once she sees Snow, however, things become more complicated: this is not any ordinary poison.

It’s a very loose, and very clever, retelling of Snow White, one that doesn’t focus on the princess, but rather in which you see the story unfold completely outside of it. It’s incredibly clever (even though it does take nearly 100 pages for the story to really get going – but Kingfisher’s writing is good enough that I didn’t mind that) in both its use of magic and the way in which the fairy tale is interpreted. But, mostly I liked it for what I have come to like about Kingfisher’s books: Anja is not your typical heroine. She’s older, she’s grumpy, she’s single-minded, she’s frumpy, she’s stubborn, and I adored her. I love that Kingfisher gives us main characters that aren’t what you usually think of when you say “fairy tale retelling”, and I am here for pretty much anything that she writes.

This is no exception: it’s truly a delight to read.

Audiobook: Deep Dark

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by Zohra Nabi
Read by Sarah Ovens
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some intense parts, jump scares, and neglectful/bad parenting. It would be in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore if it existed in physical form.

Cassia Thorne has spent half of her life in a debtor’s prison in London, eking out what living she could while her father slowly descended into madness. She has made her way as a flute player at the Bartholomew Fair, but this year, she has hopes of something grander: to write and sell the songs that everyone sings. But, her quest for a grander life is waylaid when her friend’s younger brother goes missing. And suddenly Cassia is thrust into the underworld of London, a world of monsters and greedy men, a world where poor children go missing solely because no one will think to go looking for them.

Can Cassia help before it’s too late?

I pitched this one to my coworkers as Dickens with a kraken, and they all agreed: who wouldn’t want to read that? I do have to admit, I was a little disappointed there was an actual monster; I was kind of hoping for a straight-up historical mystery. That said, Nabi did a fantastic job weaving both the speculative aspect of an actual monster in the tunnels under London with the historical elements of class and the way poor people had to scrape to make it.

Ovens was a fantastic narrator, though, keeping the story moving forward, and keeping me engaged enough to keep wanting to listen. I’m sad there isn’t a physical publication of the book in the US; I can think of a handful of kids who would love this one.

But it’s fantastic on audio.

Finders Keepers

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by Sarah Adler
First sentence: “Given all the change I’ve had foisted upon me recently, it’s nice to find that Mr. FArina’s naked torso is pretty much the same as I remember.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: June 24, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and two on-page sex scenes. It will be in the romance section of the bookstore.

Nina is not in a good place: she lost her adjunct professor job up in Boston the same time she broke up with her boyfriend (for Reasons, mostly to do with they weren’t compatible anymore), and has arrived at her parents’ house jobless and relationshipless. So, the last person she wants to see is Quentin Blake, aka her ex-best friend who broke her heart when he left town at age 15, soon after they were arrested for trespassing trying to find the hidden treasure of a local eccentric (and long-dead) soda magnate.

So when Quentin suggests they resume their search for the treasure, Nina is reluctant: what if he leaves again? What if he breaks her heart again? But, she has nothing better to do, and the job search is a bit fruitless, and what else is she going to do? So, they pick up where they left off, and find that while there are similarities to their younger selves, they’ve both grown and changed, and maybe what she’s really needed has been at home all along.

While I don’t think this has the same magic that Mrs. Nash’s Ashes does, I think Adler has a gift for weaving historical elements and contemporary romance. I do love how she writes about long-lost love and the joy of finding your soulmate. This is a sweet book, one that has some genuine humor, and I loved the way she wrote both Nina and Quentin. They had good chemistry together, and I loved the way Adler balanced their relationship when they were teens with the adults they are in the book. It’s a charming, lovely story, one that I found absolutely delightful to read.

Monthly Round-Up: March 2025

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I was thinking, as I put this all together, that I read quite a bit (for me) this month! So many audiobooks, so many non-fiction books. I quite surprised myself. My favorite, though, was the only middle grade book I read, back at the beginning of the month:

The Trouble with Heroes

Such a good book. I can’t wait to sell it! As for the rest:

Adult Fiction:

Beg, Borrow, or Steal
Fast & Reckless
Sword Catcher (DNF)
The Bridge Kingdom
Sandwich
Kate & Frida (audiobook)

Non-Fiction:

Food for Thought (audiobook)
Everything is Tuberculosis
How We Learn to Be Brave
Abundance (audiobook)

YA:

The Raven Boys (reread) (audiobook)

What was your favorite this month?

Audiobook: The Raven Boys

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by Maggie Stiefvater
Read by Will Patton
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is swearing, including a couple of f-bombs, talk of teenage drinking, and a murder. It’s in the Teen Bestsellers section of the bookstore.

I wasn’t going to write a post about this one, since I don’t have much new to say from my first review 13 years ago. Then I realized that even though I have reread this a couple of times, I finally experienced it in a different format, and that warranted mentioning. I’ve heard that Patton – who narrates the whole series – is a good narrator and that the audiobook is a good experience, but I haven’t felt the need. Until this year. I decided I needed Maggie’s stories in my life, and I was feeling a gravitational pull towards the Raven Cycle, so I decided to do the audio. And they’re right: Patton is an excellent narrator for this book (and I’m assuming the series – I’ve got Dream Thieves on hold already) and it’s an excellent way to experience Henrietta and Blue and the boys. I plowed through it because I didn’t want to stop listening (because good story + good narrator = a remarkable experience).

I’m glad I finally got around to listening to this one!

Audiobook: Kate & Frida

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by Kim Fay
Read by Kelsey Jaffer & Ines del Castillo
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some emotionally charged situations, including a library fire in Sarajevo. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

It’s the early 1990s, and Frida Rodriguez is in Paris to try and figure herself out. She wants to be a war correspondent, and she is trying to get someone to help her get into Sarajevo so she can cover the Serbia-Bosnia conflict. While she’s waiting, she writes to the best bookstore in Seattle (which isn’t Elliot Bay Books, but actually is) and Kate Fair answers her letter. Thus begins a correspondence between the two young women where they discuss books, food, life, romance, family, and everything else.

It’s another slight novel that really is more than it seems. There’s a lot of bookish references that I didn’t get – I really wasn’t reading what was popular in the early 1990s, not like now – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy listening to Kate & Frida write back and forth. I was also in my 20s in the 1990s, and it all felt very, well, real to me. I also adored the narrators. Both women did excellent jobs bringing these letters to life, and giving both Kate and Frida more depth.

Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Sandwich

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by Catherine Newman
First sentence: “Picture this: a shorelined peninsula jutting into the Atlantic Ocean.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

I usually don’t take my boss’s recommendations when it comes to books; she and I just have too different of reading preferences. She likes deeply literary things (and mysteries) and I prefer character- and plot-driven genre fiction. So, when she told me I really needed to read this one, I kind of brushed it off.

And then I kept seeing it everywhere, from people whose tastes are more similar to mine, and whose opinions I respect. And so I picked up for myself for Christmas.

I hate to say it, but my boss was right: I needed to read this one. It’s the story of one week in summer, a family vacation – mom, dad, two adult children, one partner, grandparents – all coming together. It’s about nothing, really, just snippets of their vacation. But it’s also about everything. It’s about growing older as a woman, watching your kids get older and become adults themselves, about redefining what it means to be a woman, a person who was once needed and now no longer is, really. It made me laugh – Newman’s observations about menopause, abou the barely contained anger and frustration, about the conflicting emotions (rage, gratitude, regret, joy) you constantly feel as a woman, are spot on – and it made me sob.

It’s a slight thing, this novel, but it packs a punch. And I am glad I finally got around to it.

The Bridge Kingdom

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by Danielle L. Jensen
First sentence: “Lara rested her elbows on the low sandstone wall, her eyes fixed on the glowing sun descending over the distant mountain peaks, nothing between here and there but scorching sand dunes, scorpions, and the occasional lizard.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is violence (lots- the body count is high in this one), on-page sex, and swearing including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Lara – along with 19 of her half-sisters – has been trained by her father, the king of Maridrina – with one goal in mind: marry King Aren, the king of the Bridge Kingdom, gain his trust, infiltrate his country, and help her father bring the country to its knees. At first, Lara is all-in on this plan: she has come to believe that Aren and his country are responsible for the starvation and plagues in her own. But, as she comes to know Aren and his people, she’s not so sure. Perhaps, just maybe, things are not quite as they seem.

I had kind of low expectations going into this one, and I was pleasantly surprised. It was a solid fantasy – I liked the world-building that Jensen did, which never felt overly expository, and I liked the characters she developed. I didn’t get much of a sense of many of the minor characters (there were so many!), but Lara and Aren were really fully developed, which I liked. I did think the sex was a little bit… performative? If that’s the right word; it just didn’t feel as connected as I feel it could have been. My biggest complaint though was the twist with 40 pages left in the book. I don’t mind reading a sequel, but I do get a bit annoyed when the story is left unfinished and I feel I have to read the sequel to finish it out. That said, though, Jensen is a decent writer, and this was a solid book

Audiobook: Abundance

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by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Read by the authors
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: It gets a bit policy-wonky at times. It’s in the Politics section of the bookstore.

In this slim, yet dense, book, Klein and Thompson take the Democrats/liberals to task for not doing enough to support the politics of plenty. We have enough, they argue, we should be able to have a more equal society. And yet, we don’t. They look at history and policy and ask questions about why we aren’t making progress in technology, science, climate change, housing, and transportation. And it boils down to: we have let government regulations slow everything down to the point of inaction.

This was a challenging book for me at least. I’ve always been on the side of government is and can do good for the bulk of the people, and I’m a big supporter of things like universal health care are and universal basic incomes. But, given that our government is the way it is (or isn’t anymore, honestly), why can’t we have a country that distributes its abundance more equitably. Klien and Thompson break it down, and challenge the status quo, insisting (rightly) that it doesn’t work. They admit that they don’t have answers – because the answers for one place will be different than answers in another – but they do recommending asking one question: why? If something isn’t working, if something is broken: ask why? Why does Wichita have a problem with the homeless? Because there is a housing shortage. Well: why? And then go from there. Talk about policies that address the why.

I don’t have any real hope that this book will change anything at a national level, but I found it challenging enough to rethink some of my ideas about how things Should Be. And perhaps that’s all Klein and Thompson can ask for.

How We Learn to Be Brave

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by Mariann Edgar Budde
First sentence: “On Monday, June 1, 2020, at 7:06 p.m., the president of the United States strode defiantly across Washington, D. C.’s Lafayetter Park – trailing a retinue of aides, Secret Service agents, his daughter Ivanka, the attorney general, and America’s top military leaders, including the secretary of defense and the chairmen of the Joint Cheifs of Staff – in order to be photographed holding a Bible in front o St. John’s Church, whose parish house had sustained minor fire damage during protests during the previous evening.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s kind of dense in some spots, though it’s mostly accessible. It’s in the Religion and Philosophy section of the bookstore.

Like many people, I picked up Budde’s book in the wake of her sermon pleading Trump to have mercy for those who are less fortunate. I picked it up partially because of the backlash against her (“who was she to criticize the president?”), but also I was curious. This was written in the aftermath of Trump’s performative use of the church and the Bible to prove that he was… something (Christian? Devout? He is neither.)… and her explanation of how she came to speak out against him at the time. It’s a bit of a self-help book, as she explores different aspects of bravery from choices (or not) to perseverance.

I don’t think I was expecting anything when I picked it up, but I did find some interesting insights into Jesus and some insights into how to be more mindful in the world. I’m not sure Budde set out to create a blueprint, or to put herself up as an example (I know that she didn’t intend to be an example, as she used many other people’s experience as well), but I found it to be a thoughtful look at what bravery, in a Christian framework, means.

I’m glad I read it.