Happy October! It’s been a minute since I did a roundup of the books I’ve been reading – I think the last month I posted books was all the way back in April. Five months’ worth of books is a lot of ground to cover, but before I hop into September’s reads, I want to do a quick look at my top five books of the summer!
Top 5 Summer Reads
A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy / Becky Chambers: These two books are part of a series following the adventures of Sibling Dex, a tea monk, and Mosscap, a robot. After the two meet by chance during Dex’s travels, they embark on a journey to find out the answer to Mosscap’s question for humanity: what do people need? These books are insightful, sweet, and like a warm hug – even our kids loved them (we read them aloud)!
Unmask Alice / Rick Emerson : A lively and informative look at Beatrice Sparks, the lady who scared the pants off several generations of teens with “true journals” like Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal. As it turns out, there’s more (a LOT more) to Sparks’ story than being a humble psychologist entrusted with troubled teens’ diaries so she could help other children. This is a must-read for anyone who read Sparks’ books as a kid (I’m personally still scarred by It Happened to Nancy).
Behind Her Eyes / Sarah Pinborough: Single mother Louise becomes entangled in the lives of her boss, David, and his wife, Adele. As she begins an affair with David and friendship with Adele, Louise realizes their relationship with each other is more troubling than she first thought. This book was an absolute page-turner with a VERY surprising twist – the ending caught me entirely off guard!
Rock Paper Scissors / Alice Feeney: In this dual-narrative thriller, a husband and wife head off for a trip to a remote cabin in Scotland, hoping to save their troubled marriage. One narrative follows the story of the trip, while the second is a series of letters that the wife writes to the husband on their anniversary each year (but has never let him read.) As the story progresses, we realize that the husband and wife haven’t been entirely honest with each other…and they’re not alone in the house. This one’s another quick read with a fun reveal – I finished it in a day!
The books I read in September
A retelling of an ancient myth
Kaikeyi / Vaishnavi Patel
In the Ramayana, Kaikeyi is a jealous queen who banishes the hero of the story to the forest for ten years – but in this reimagining, she’s developed into a fully-fledged main character. The story follows Kaikeyi from her youth, as the only daughter in a royal family with many sons and an absent mother, to her adulthood, where she becomes a treasured queen, wife, and advisor in her new kingdom. While Kaikeyi’s life ultimately follows the same trajectory as her mythological counterpart, Patel gives her a compelling new backstory and motivation for her actions.
I’m such a sucker for retellings of classic stories and myths, and this one did not disappoint! Kaikeyi is such a strong and empowered female character, and the added magical elements were so cool!
Rating: 4.5/5
Two spooky and unsettling stories
Foe / Iain Reid
Junior and Henrietta live a peaceful and quiet life on their farm, until one day a visitor arrives with the news that Junior has been selected for a two-year test mission for a space colonization program. Over the years Junior is gone, Henrietta won’t be alone – she’ll be provided with an cutting-edge, human-like robot of her husband. But as the couple prepares for Junior to leave on his mission, Henrietta is acting quite strange. While Junior suspects something isn’t quite right, he can’t put his finger on it.
Much like Reid’s other book, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, this book has an underlying unsettling feeling that kept me on edge the entire time I was reading. It’s a fun and quick read that reveals itself to ultimately be about the nature of relationships and expectations between lovers.
Rating: 4/5
The Hollow Places / T. Kingfisher
Kara, recently divorced and broke, heads back home to live with her uncle and help him run his business, The Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy. One day, she discovers a hole in one of the museum’s walls. When she recruits her friend, Simon, to help her patch the hole, they discover that it actually leads to a mysterious space behind the wall that shouldn’t exist – and beyond that, there’s an entire other dimension. And while the other dimension is desolate, it’s not entirely empty…
This book had me at “The Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy”! I love books that involve alternate dimensions and Lovecraftian creatures that are just plain weird. This book is like a mash-up of House of Leaves and the Wood Between the Worlds from the Chronicles of Narnia, with the bonus of a good sense of humor.
Rating: 4/5
A book of a magical reality
Book of Night / Holly Black
Charlie Hall is the kind of girl that can never get things in life quite right. The only thing she’s really good at is being a con artist. It’s a skill that’s highly valued by gloamists, magicians who can manipulate shadows, as a way to steal secrets that can enhance their powers. While working for gloamists gives Charlie satisfying thrills and a decent living, it’s also dangerous – so she spends her time bartending, making ends meet, and trying to send her sister to college instead. But it’s hard to truly disappear when she’s one of the best at finding ways to get ahold of things powerful people want, and Charlie is soon caught up in trying to retrieve a legendary book of secrets for a terrifying person from her past.
I’m torn on this book! The character- and world-building was lush, but I never really latched on to Charlie as a character, and I found it a little hard to follow all of the ins and outs of the book’s magical world. This book had so many qualities I love in magical realism fiction – characters with a dark backstory, a really cool in-universe magical element, and a few plot surprises – but ultimately it ended up being more of a like than a love for me.
Rating: 3.5/5