Last Night at the Lobster

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by Stewart O’Nan
First sentence: “Mall traffic on a gray winter’s day, stalled.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

In a rundown mall complex in a rundown town in the Northeast, employees at a Red Lobster are having their final night. Corporate decided to shut the restaurant down, and the manager – Manny – was forced to let go of everyone but five that are coming with him to Olive Garden. Most of his employees don’t show up for the last shift, four days before Christmas, which is fine, since a blizzard set in. They’re slow, they’re shorthanded, but dang it, Manny is going to see this last shift through.

It’s a short, reflective novel, taking place over the course of 12 hours or so. Manny is regretting the end of his affair with a waitress, juggling all the employees who didn’t show up, and wondering if he chose the right people or did the right thing. Not much happens – there are customers, and anyone who has worked a service job recognizes them. But, it’s a beautifully written book, and so I didn’t mind the lack of plot so much.

It’s set at Christmas, but I’m not sure it’s a Christmas book. It’s very melancholy, and it shows the effects of decisions made by suits in faraway places. It makes you think about capitalism and the working class and the way we treat service workers. It’s a good book, even if I don’t think I truly loved it.

Audiobook: Busted

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by Dan Gemeinhart
Read by: Mark Sanderlin
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some implied swearing (cleverly “quacked” out), minor crime, mafia dealings, and disobeying of parents. It’s in the Middle Grade section of the bookstore.

Oscar Aberdeen is a good kid. He’s got lots of grandparents to make sure he’s a good kid, since he lives at Sunny Days retirement home. He doesn’t want anything to change; he’s happy the way it is. But a new owner comes in, and raises the rent on Oscar and his grandpa. And so when new resident (and possible “bad news”) Jimmy Deluca asks Oscar to help him escape Sunny Days (he’s restricted) and accomplish his bucket list for $10,000 to help Oscar stay at Sunny Days, Oscar doesn’t refuse. That’s what starts the worst (and best) day of Oscar’s life.

This was an absolute delight to listen to. Gemeinhart knows how to write to middle grade readers, and knows how to make a story fun. It’s got heart – it’s about being a good person and doing the good thing and being a good friend – and it tackles tough issues like cancer and dying and deadbeat parents and losing one’s home. But it’s fun, entertaining, and thoroughly enjoyable to listen to.

Highly recommend this one. (Maybe I should get around to reading his other books, too!)

Monthly Round-Up: September 2025

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Someone tell me where September went, because I have no idea.

My favorite this month:

Wild for Austen

If only because I watched the entire 1995 Pride and Prejudice immediately after finishing this book. It’s an excellent work of literary scholarship.

As for the rest:

Adult Fiction:

The Kiss Curse
Discontent (audiobook)
Rose in Chains (DNF) (audiobook)
Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife
The Everlasting
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping (audiobook)

YA:

Hekate
Guardians of Dreamdark: Windwitch
Joy to the Girls

Graphic Novel:

Dream On
Winging It

Non-Fiction:

Paper Girl

Now if I can only get time to slow down a little bit.

Paper Girl

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by Beth Macy
First sentence: “It was June 2023, and Silas James had just graduated from Urbana High School, forty-one years after I wore that same insignia.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at the bookstore.
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and mention of sexual abuse. It will be in the Biography section of the bookstore.

When Beth Macy graduated from Urbana High School in 1982, she was able to go to a four-year college on a Pell Grant, since she came from a poor household. She used it as her ticket out, moving first to Georgia and then to Virginia. But, 40 years later, as divisions in her family and between her high school friends grew, she returned to find out why the graduation rate dropped, the addiction rate soared, and it’s harder than ever to get out of the poverty people find themselves in.

It’s a good story, as Macy recounts her troubled childhood with an alcoholic father, interspersing that with the stories of some of the students and people she met over the course of the year and a half she researched this book. She talked to many of the kids she went to school with, trying to understand where they were coming from politically, even as she found them on ever-widening divides. She explores the ways in which poverty makes life challenging and the ways that trauma continues to affect people. She is staunchly anti-Republican, detailing all the ways the Republican party hurts the people it claims to help, but she is not pro-Democrat, faulting them for not reaching out to the poor working class in order to help. It’s a challenging read at times, but it’s a good one: Macy is a good writer, and she has empathy for the people she’s writing about.

It’s an excellent, and important, book.

Audiobook: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping

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by Sangu Mandanna
Read by Samara MacLaren
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, instances of emotional child abuse, and one fade-to-black sex scene. It’s in the Romance-Fantasy section of the bookstore.

I know: I said a few posts ago that I don’t do romantasy. Let’s put it this way: a slightly magical book set in contemporary times is NOT romantsy, and I think I prefer the latter.

Sera was an up-and-coming, talented witch when she was younger, but when she was 15, her great-aunt, whom she loves and lives with, died. Sera was talented enough to bring her aunt back from the dead, but she lost most of her magic and was exiled from the British Guild of Magic as a result. Now, 15 years later, running an inn full of wayward people (both magical and non-), she finds the resurrection spell, something that will help her get her magic back. It’s a historian, Luke, who happens (sort-of) to be stopping in at the hotel with his younger sister, that puts Sera on the right path, and maybe together they can get her magic back.

This was absolutely delightful, especially on audio. The narrator was perfect (Luke is Scottish, and her accent for him was delightful), and the story just silly enough and charming enough to make me happy. It was exactly what I needed, and I can’t complain.

Joy to the Girls

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by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick
First sentence: “I push through the heavy wooden doors out of the Cathedral of Learning, my last exam of the term finally complete.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: Sept 30, 2025
Content: There is some swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some fade-to-black sex. It’s in the YA Romance/Holiday section of the bookstore.

Alex and Molly are nearly done with college, and they both have plans for the future. The problem is that neither one of them has talked to the other about said plans. Alex wants to move in together; Molly wants to go to King’s College in London for an MFA. On top of that, it’s winter holiday, and their friend May has invited them and their other mutual friend, Cora (who has a crush on May), to her hometown, which happens to be all-in on Christmas. Can Alex and Molly make it through the trip with their secrets and their relationship intact (while also setting Cora and May up).

I’ll admit up front that I haven’t read the book that this novella is a spin-off of, and so maybe I’m missing something when it comes to character development. Because while this was cute, it was lacking. I was constantly annoyed that Alex and Molly just DIDN’T TALK TO EACH OTHER, and I felt not quite enough was spent on Cora and May getting together. (Also, there was a definite lack of figure skating.) It was cute, but not cute enough to make me really love it. Maybe if I were the intended audience (read: a fan of the first book) it would have sat differently.

The Everlasting

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by Alix Harrow
First sentence: “It begins where it ends: beneath the yew tree.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 28, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is a lot of violence and swearing, including multiple f-bombs. There is also some on-page sexytimes. It will be in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

This one’s plot is hard to tell, if you don’t want to give too much away. Let’s put it this way: it’s a time loop, it’s vaguely Arthurian, it’s talking about the stories we tell ourselves and the stories countries tell their people, it’s a strong case against colonialism, and it’s about love and power. The rest, I think, is immaterial.

I liked it well enough; I’m not fond of time-travel books, and I struggle with time loops. But, Harrow did this one well, and she managed to close it in a satisfying (and mostly logical) way. I do enjoy her writing, though I have not read much by her, and I was intrigued enough to keep going, even through my confusion. It’s a clever book done well.

(As an aside: this is fantasy with a side of romance, and I enjoy these MUCH more than a romance with a side of fantasy.)

Maybe I should get around to reading her other books.

Winging It

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by Megan Wagner Lloyd and Michelle Mee Nutter
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: October 21, 2025
Content: There is talk of dead parents and some awkward situations. It will be in the Middle Grade Graphic Novel section.

Luna’s mom died when she was a baby, but she and her dad have always gotten along fine. Except now, her dad’s decided that they need to move across the country from LA to Washington DC to live with her (white) mother’s mother, someone that Luna barely knows and doesn’t have a great opinion of. But, in the months that they are there, Luna not only learns to understand her grandmother, but learns to appreciate her dead mother’s love of nature.

This one was…. nice. I like knowing that there are books out there about change and growing – especially moving and making new friends, which is hard – but I wasn’t really drawn in by Luna and her quest to find a luna moth and understand her mother. Perhaps it’s because it took place over a huge chunk of time – an entire year – but it just didn’t resonate with me.

That doesn’t mean that kids won’t love it.

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife

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by Martin Edwards
First sentence: “The snow lay deep and deadly,”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some mild swearing, a couple of f-bombs, and murder (of course). It will be in the Mystery section of the bookstore.

Welcome to Midwinter: a remote resort in northern England that is only open to a few people by invitation only. And this Christmas, it’s open to six people – all who are somehow connected to the publishing industry; all who have fallen on hard times – who have been tasked with solving a pretend murder. The winner gets a grand prize and a new lease on life. Except once they get there, people start dying. At first, it seems they are “accidental”, but as the bodies keep piling up, it becomes more and more obvious that the death that happened at Midwinter five years ago has had repercussions.

I picked this up because of the title, because it sounds like a game of Clue. And there is an interactive element to this; we are given the same information the players in the story are, and it’s possible (if you are not me) to figure out who committed the “pretend” murder. The actual murders in the story have a very Agatha Christie-like quality to them, as does the whole story. Our narrator for most of the book is Harry Crystal, a washed-up mystery writer, whose whole schtick was copying classic mysteries. I feel like, in some respects, that Edwards didn’t get me quite enough information as we went along (I’m not the closest of readers), because the solution came out of left field a little bit. Even so, I didn’t have super high expectations for this, only wanting a bit of fun, and it absolutely fit that bill.

The Guardians of Dreamdark: Windwitch

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by Laini Taylor
First sentence: “The wolf tasted the babe’s face with the tip of his tongue, and pronounced her sweet, and the fox licked the back of her head to see if it was so.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I read my old edition; the new edition will be released on September 23, 2025.
Content: There are some intense moments of danger. It will be in the YA Science Fiction/Fantasy section in the bookstore.

I was on Instagram, when I stumbled across Laini Taylor announcing that she’s re-releasing her first book in a new edition. I was immediately excited, mostly because I remember loving this series and I know it’s been out of print for years. So, I decided to dig out my copies (which I have been meaning to reread for years) and give them a reread to see if they hold up.

And it does. I had one quibble: it’s not really a middle grade book anymore. Maybe 18 years ago, it was, but middle grade books have changed so much that I can’t really see giving this to anyone younger than 11 or 12. It’s not the content; it’s mostly Taylor’s writing style. She’s a very lush, descriptive writer (one of the things I like about her), and she’s not a very linear writer. Both of these add up to a more mature writing style for kids than I think kids are used to/want right now. I think my oldest read this when she was 11, but I couldn’t fathom giving it to my youngest at the same age, 10 years later. It’s a gorgeous book, with an intense plot, and the characters are fabulous, and it holds up all these years later. It’s just an older book than I remember it being.