Monthly Round-Up: June 2025

June 29, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

I find it interesting, at the end of the month when I do these things, what exactly I read (I did finish another 3 audiobooks, but I haven’t written reviews for those, so they’ll be in next month’s round-up). It kind of surprised me that my entire reading was adult fiction this month. I had no idea! My favorite is no surprise, though:

And the rest:

Adult Fiction:

Faithbreaker
Food Person (audiobook)
Great Black Hope (audiobook)
Alchemy of Secrets
Sounds Like Love
Of Monsters and Mainframes

Graphic Novels:

It Rhymes With Takei

I need to read some middle-grade books this coming month to balance things out.

Of Monsters and Mainframes

June 29, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Barbara Truelove
First sentence: “Awaiting input…”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s violence (so many deaths) and swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Demeter is a ship’s main AI computer – she is responsible for all ship functions on the trip between Earth and Alpha Centauri. So, when she shows up at Alpha Centauri with a ship full of dead people, everyone (well, all the humans) assumes that Demeter’s gone crazy. Except she knows she isn’t: the deaths were supernatural in nature. And (over the decades) as more and more people who ride in her end up dead, she has come to believe that she needs to Do Something about it.

This is much less about the plot – the back matter mentions a werewolf, a reluctant vampire, an engineer built from the dead, and a pharaoh with otherworldly powers, but honestly, they don’t show up until more than halfway through – and more about the vibes. A coworker compared it to Murderbot, because the main characters (there’s also a ship’s medical AI) are AI, but I’m not sure that’s correct. I do think there are similarities, and that if you like Murderbot, you’ll like this one as well. It’s this sentence, that captures the feel, ultimately: “The queer love child of pulp horry and classic sci-fi…” Yep. That’s it, exactly.

Which means it’s campy and silly and funny and clever, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not exceptional science fiction, but is solid science fiction, and you can’t ask for more than that.

It Rhymes With Takei

June 24, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by George Takei, Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is homophobia and mention of gay sex. It’s in the Graphic Novel section of the bookstore.

In his previous memoir, They Called Us Enemy, Takei wrote about his time in the internment camps during World War II, but didn’t really elaborate on the rest of his life. In this book, Takei does just that. It picks up when he first realizes that he was gay, when he was about 10 years old, and works his way through the years until the present day. There is a lot about his activism, and the guilt and shame he felt staying in the closet for so long. But, he feared being too different – his family was already put in a camp for being different once – and it was a different time. He was just doing the best he could with what he knew at the time. He made good friends on Star Trek, people who stood beside him later in life, and he eventually became more comfortable with his identity as he got older. The most truly heartbreaking thing was that his brother shunned him when he finally came out to them, but he still has a relationship with his brother’s kids.

It’s a good book – Takei has a good team for this (it’s the same team that did They Called Us Enemy) – one that captures the conflicted and complicated life of one man. It’s perfect for those who are fans of Takei, but it also puts the whole LGBTQ movement in the context of one person’s life.

I really enjoyed it.

Sounds Like Love

June 22, 2025booknutgirls 1 Comment

by Ashley Poston
First sentence: “Most summer nights in the small beach town of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, there was music at the Revelry.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some off-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Joni grew up surrounded by two things: the ocean and music. Her parents owned the Revelry, a music hall in a town in the Outer Banks. She was happy, but she had big dreams: she wanted to be a songwriter, so after college (and a heartbreak), she headed west. She worked, and finally hit it (relatively) big, but over the past year, she’s had writer’s block. Mostly because her mother has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and Joni is afraid she’s going to miss, well, everything.

Then, as she heads back to Vienna Shores for a month-long break, she starts hearing voices in her head. It turns out that it’s Sebastian Fellows, a former boyband member, and who is trying to resurrect his career. Can the two of them work together long enough to get out of each other’s heads? (And do they even want to?)

After the mediocre reaction of Novel Love story (I think I’m one of the few who liked it), I didn’t know what to expect with Poston’s next one. But, she’s back on her game. This was fun, full of music and heart, with enough conflict and tension to keep the book interesting. I liked all the characters and the setting of a beach town in the summer. I liked the relationship between Joni and her parents, and the heartache of her mother’s memory fading. It not as good as Seven Year Slip, but it’s up there.

And it’s a perfect summer novel.

Alchemy of Secrets

June 17, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Stephanie Garber
First sentence: “Holland St. James had been counting down the minutes until tonight.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There are some murders, and talk of deaths and killing, and some mild swearing. It will be in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy section (probably; it’s not really a romance) of the bookstore.

Holland St. James is a PhD student studying folklore and has become interested in these urban tales about the devil making deals with Hollywood actors. Then, one night, she stumbles on one of the tales – the Watch Man – who tells her she has 24 hours left to live, unless she finds the Alchemical Heart and delivers it to the devil. Thus begins a mystery and a “treasure hunt” that takes Holland through old Hollywood and into the past, uncovering truths about her parents’ deaths.

My initial reaction to this was that it’s pretty much exactly like every other one of Garber’s books. It felt like Caraval, just aged up a bit and set in the real world instead of in a fantasy world. There’s a conflicted heroine, trying to do her best; a couple of questionable love interests (though the spice level on this is basically at just kissing); a sister who has questionable motives but also the heroine’s “best interests” in mind; and several twists and turns, some of which were surprising.

It’s not a bad book, it just didn’t floor me the way I was hoping it would.

Audiobook: Great Black Hope

June 15, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Rob Franklin
Read by Justice Smith
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is drug use and lots of drinking (by adults). There is also a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs. It’s in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

When he’s arrested on drug possession in a small Long Island town, Smith – a queer Black Stanford graduate, trying to make his way in the city- finds himself in an interesting position. He comes from a wealthy Black family, one with power and prestige, so he has the money for bail and treatment, but he is Black, with all that entails, and he finds that his race complicates things.

Which is only partially what this book is about. Smith lost his best friend, Elle, to a drug overdose – another Black life taken – and because of who Elle was, her death was fodder for tabloids. His other friend, Caroline (a white woman), finds herself trying to get sober, but spiraling out of control with an affair with a married French chef. On top of all this, Smith loses his job – not because of the drugs (everyone does drugs!), but just because of downsizing – and is dragged home to Atlanta to face his parents with his less-than-successes.

Much like many adult fiction books, this is less about the plot and more about the journey, which I found interesting. Not much has changed in the past 30 years, when Gen X was in their early-to-mid-20s and having the same crises and doing the same drugs, and experiencing the same ennui. It’s good to know that nothing really changes. That said, Franklin is a good writer, exploring class and race (though I wish he had done more exploring of both) and what it means to be Black and wealthy in a city that respects money more than anything. I think the most telling scene was the confrontation between Smith’s sister (a third-year law student, planning on going into public defense) and their grandmother, whose wealth was built on being a landlord of underserved people (or, as it is lobbed at her, a slum lord). It helped, too, that Justice Smith was a good narrator, and kept me engaged in the story.

Not exactly one that I would have picked up normally (it’s one everyone at the store is talking about), but I’m glad I did.

The Listeners

June 14, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Maggie Stiefvater
First sentence: “The day the hotel changed forever began as any other.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is some fade to black sex and actual Nazis. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

June Hudson has worked at the Avalon Hotel – a luxury hotel in the mountains of West Virginia – since her mother abandoned her at age 10. She worked her way up from maid to general manager, earning the trust of the owners, the Gilfoyle family, and the staff. It helps that she knows how to keep the sweetwater – the water that runs through everything at the Avalon – from turning. But, it’s January 1942, and June has found that her hotel has been commendeered by the State Department to house diplomats from Germany, Italy, Japan, and Hungary while they figure out an exchange with those countries. The sweetwater feeds on emotions, and tensions are high as the diplomats crash. But, what can June do to keep these people – guests she didn’t want – happy, and keep the water from turning, and still keep the Avalon the Avalon. Because one thing is for sure: nothing will ever be the same.

I wrote a teaser review seven months ago when I first read it, and my opinion hasn’t changed much. It’s a delight to read. I adore the way Maggie writes characters, and June (and Tucker Minnick, the FBI agent) are no exception. She also has a way of creating a place that comes to life; I could see and hear and feel the Avalon around me. I liked that the stakes were high, but nothing was unreasonable. It all made sense in the context of the book. It was as much of a delight to read this time around as it was the first.

Absolutely one of her best.

Audiobook: Food Person

June 8, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Adam Roberts
Read by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and drug use. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

All Isabella wants to be is a food writer. Except in this age of viral stories and influencers, someone who just wants to focus on the food (and not be on camera) is going to have a hard time of it. So when, after she loses her job at a foody-influencer e-zine, she’s offered to ghost write a cookbook for a once-beloved-but-now-down-and-out celebrity, Molly. It’s somewhat of her dream job: she would love to write a cookbook. Just not one where the other person is vastly uninterested in helping.

There are a lot of ups and downs in this one; both Isabell and Molly have big egos and are mostly unwilling to compromise – Molly wanting something that reflects “her” (or at least her public persona); Isabella wanting something that’s actually good, and something she wants to be proud of. There are hilariously awkward and weird situations (the whole deal with Isabella’s mother is a LOT), and the climax is definitely crazy.

I did like this one though. Hutchinson-Shaw is an excellent narrator, and kept me engaged in this. And Roberts isn’t bad when writing women. He was a former food-writer, so those parts were pretty amazing, and I have to admit that’s why I was there. I adore foody books, and this one absolutely hit the spot.

It was a lot of fun.

Faithbreaker

June 6, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Hannah Kaner
First sentence: “Hestra, god of hearths, felt the flame of Hseth’s coming.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Godkiller, Sunbringer
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, off-screen sex, and lots and lots of violence. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Spoilers for the other two, obviously.

Things aren’t going well for Middren – the rebellion against the king failed (he’s not quite as bad though), and the neighboring country of Talicia is using their newfound power through the god Hseth to conquer (though it’s more like, burn, kill, rape, and pillage) their way through MIddren. The only thing Middren can do is rally its forces – King Aren convinces Elo to be the head of the army and Aren’s right-hand man – and ask for aid from neighboring countries, and possibly the gods themselves. Kissen, Inara, and Inara’s mother are sent off to do that. Of course, if that were all, the book would be 75 pages and we’d be done.

But, Kaner is a better writer than that. She takes us on a journey, both in terms of distance and politics, as well as personally. There is so much growth in this book, it’s incredible. Kaner’s playing with ideas of religion, of forgiveness and reconciliation, of faith and what that can mean. It’s incredible.

I do have to admit that it took me a while to get into this one, mostly because it has been a year since I read Sunbringer and I needed to adjust myself back to Kaner’s writing and her world. But the trilogy is all out, so you can just plow through them one right after another, which is how this world should be experienced, I think.

Such a good series.

Monthly Round-up: May 2025

May 31, 2025booknutgirls Leave a comment

I was talking to a co-worker the other day, and we both realized that it was nearly June. Where HAS this year gone? How is it nearly half over? In the immortal words of Remember Monday, what the hell just happened? It was definitely a crazy month.

My favorite is different for me, but I found myself challenged and informed by this one. It’s definitely one that made me think about how I approach the Bible, and I value what she had to say.