Massive news for our publishing imprint, Kist Reads: we have officially acquired our second book! After reviewing dozens of manuscripts from authors and agents, one stood head-and-shoulders above the rest. Without further ado, I am thrilled to introduce:

BLOOD CANTO by Ofelia J. Vazquez !!!

Here's the elevator pitch for this multi-POV adult high fantasy:

"A sorceress and a bounty hunter team up to kill the president in a rootin' tootin' world inspired by the Mexican Revolution and Mesoamerican mythology.” - Ofelia J. Vazquez

And here's the blurb from the pitch letter I received that instantly grabbed my attention:

Since her country’s corrupted president executed her father, queer sorceress Petra has desired nothing more than to kill him. A military showcase might just be her best shot. But when a cadet sabotages her, Petra resorts to forbidden blood magic, bound to transform her into a monstrosity. Impossibly, she survives.

Since the schism in her monster-hunting order, Captain Fuentes has operated alone. But when a shrine keeper alerts her that a Reckoning will destroy the world in a month, she marches toward the capital to find an ancient sorceress’ grave, key to stopping it. Then she’s called to execute a monstrosity, who’s nothing but a vengeful girl. Wondering if her miraculous immunity might prevent the apocalypse, Fuentes takes her on. With a president to kill, Petra follows.

As they travel across a riots-riddled nation, sorceress and monster hunter stumble into political insurgencies, divine curses, and nefarious schemes, collecting allies as much as enemies—including ghosts from their past hellbent on opposing them before it all ends.

It's hard to narrow it down to just two comps so for the moment I'm gonna shotgun it because there are at least hints of The Jasmine Throne, The Poppy War, Gods of Jade & Shadow, Black Sun, and even Arcane.

There is plenty of work to do over the next year before this hits the shelves (likely Fall 2027), and I plan to involve this community at every step. You can look forward to advanced reader copies, opportunities to participate in publishing decisions, and interviews with the author. You will see everything before Gen Pop—which, naturally, makes you better than them.

PLUS, I snuck Ofelia in the back door of our Discord once both sides were agreed in principle and she's been an active and valued (and chaotic) member of the community. So if you have any questions for us you can always hurl them at us there and we'll answer what we can to the best of our ability. Or you can just tag her with bear memes, she loves bears.

Dialing back to y'all having input on publishing decisions, it was this community that broke the deadlock on the two potential cover versions of A Complement of Scoundrels y'all nailed that one. Seeing as Blood Canto is the working title for this one and we are exploring another option, we may need you again, so stay frosty buttercups!

I want to thank every one of you for your support; this project truly would not be possible without you. A significant portion of our subscription revenue is being poured directly into the imprint, ensuring we can make fair acquisition offers and provide all the resources necessary to take a manuscript from a rough draft to a bookstore shelf. Seeing that in action with A Complement of Scoundrels has been amazing and I can't wait to go through all of it again with Blood Canto.

Thank you again, I'm hyped to share more with you in the coming days!

July was a packed month of reads for sure. I had some winners, I had some mid reads and I had some that didn't work for me.

It was a solid mix of genres and authors, and it brought me so much joy overall! Defy The Dusk, The Scammer, and Victorious were my 3 knockout reads for the month. So memorable and I loved them.

Here's hoping that August turns out in a similar fashion.

I will always be a horror girly. Always. I love the psychology of horror and what it means to everyone. I believe that horror in movies is a glimpse into the collective subconscious anxiety of a period in time, which makes it all the more interesting as a cultural time capsule! Think about it.

In the 70s and 80s, we had this surge of serial killers in the news and subsequently, most horror movies that came out of this era were slasher films.

In the 90s, we were understanding corruption and faced with the depravity of people in power being exposed, so we had a lot of horror movies about the corrupt behavior of the powerful.

In the 00s, we see the rise of splatter cinema, which I interpret as a direct reaction to 9/11 as a sociocultural means of processing the sudden exposure to wanton violence we hadn't experienced before.

The mid 10s showed us horror that relied on the ineptitude of systems meant to protect us like the military or police in reaction to cynicism around the Iraq War.

So you see, we use horror as a release valve, a method of processing things. We see it in books, too. One of my favorite things about horror in books? How evergreen the collective or lingering fears are that authors tap into. Horror books are different from movies in that the horror they focus on is timeless and layered. The horror of racism, oppression, random acts of violence, generational trauma, adoption trauma, etc. Horror books go deeper than just the sociocultural anxiety of the time, they also peel back the basest of human fear that we all experience no matter what time period we exist in.

Look at Frankenstein. Though we don't walk away afraid or haunted, we do walk away unsettled because the message Shelley is discussing transcends the time it was written and taps into a deeper horror we experience as a species instead of as a moment in history. All this to say, I love a horror book and I have so many on my TBR coming up. These, though, are a healthy mix of five I am most looking forward to.

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

First published in 1895, this is a horror staple. A story that goes beyond the 1800s and leans on our fear that nobody is safe no matter their "station" in life. This is a series of short stories about the same play - The King in Yellow - that end up being haunted by a figure from that play. It drives people to madness, which is commentary on this idea we have of inherent safety. We are not safe from our own minds, losing our faculties is a very human and evergreen fear that persists beyond the 1800s when mental health was much less understood than it is today.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

A new fantasy book about a shapeshifting monster who is fleeting monster hunters. When Shesheshen is in a human form, she falls in love with a human and believes she would be a perfect host to lay her eggs in. She discovers too late that her chosen host is sworn to hunt her down. These themes focus on hiding and othering, being an LGBTQ+ person and needing to conceal yourself and your feelings is a very real and challenging thing for so many people. This was something LGBTQ+ folks have dealt with throughout history and was also spoken about in The Picture of Dorian Gray, written decades prior. The fear of discovery is pervasive for LGBTQ+ folks and thus this horror is about the horror of being discovered and what that means.

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

I am so unbelievably excited for this one. The original was published in 1722! It follows the very real experience of Defoe as he wandered a plague-riddled Europe, but he fictionalizes his account to capture and process everything he saw and experienced. Defoe was only five when the plague occurred and this account is likely his way of processing the trauma of the Great Plague experienced as a child. He works very hard to be accurate and achieve verisimilitude for his story as much as possible. Plague has always been a feared and anxiety-inducing thing. We can read this book and likely see parallels to COVID-19 and the COVID-19 lockdown. Our fear of sickness and obliteration at the hands of bacteria transcends time, it is an everlasting terror humanity holds in our most base lizard brains.

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

This is a relatively short novella by an author I really like about a woman named Maryse who hunts demons known as Ku Kluxes facing a rising evil in Macon, Georgia. Clark was deeply inspired by experiences of ex-slaves and spent time reviewing and honoring those accounts as much as he could. He weaves in music and Gullah culture and the problematic Birth of a Nation film to create this layered world. This horror novella centers on the fear of slavery and loss of autonomy, the very real experience had by thousands - millions - of African slaves forcibly brought to America. We are not so removed from this era that we don't still feel the effects of it and an incredibly timeless fear is the loss of freedom, independence, and autonomy. Clark digs his fingers into that wound and presses in this book.

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer

Camille wants to be a trad wife influencer. It's her only goal in life. When her content starts falling off, she knows the only solution is to pivot the way all her fellow trad wife influencers have pivoted: get pregnant and become a momfluencer. In order to achieve this goal, she allows a demon to impregnate her. There is so much here I could pull apart just from the synopsis, but the timeless fear this touches on is the consequences of our desperation. Faustian bargains are a constant theme in horror for centuries and this is a modern twist on an ancient terror. Losing bodily autonomy, not really knowing what she signed up for, and facing impossible consequences of her obsession with fame and notoriety are constant fears we see represented in horror. Human beings overdo it and cautionary tales about the horrific effects of going too far are pervasive throughout time.

So yeah. I love horror and everything it represents about being human. Whether that be the collective sociocultural anxiety of the time or constants about the human condition, horror pulls apart the threads of our subconscious and exposes us to what fears make us most painfully, terribly human.

Tananarive Due's Mazywood is not due for release until September of 2026.

Her nomination will be replaced with Wish of the Wicked by Danielle Paige.

Apologies for this error.

Voting has officially begun for our August Book Club selection!

We invite you to join our Discord community to participate in lively discussions, connect with fellow readers, and share your thoughts throughout the month. For those who prefer to vote here on Bindery, we'll also be posting a poll so members can cast their votes directly on the platform.

🗳️ Voting will remain open for 24 hours. Apologies for the short turnaround, but we're a bit behind with nominations and voting as we're already in August!
📖 Our group reading will begin on Aug 3.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback, please join our Discord and let us know. We're always happy to hear from our community.

Happy reading, and we can't wait to see which book you choose for August!

Here we are at the end of another month that felt both a hundred years long and also over in a blink. This is what I read in July, and below that is what I hope to read in August. (Once again, I have pulled too many books off my TBR shelf to actually be possible. Let us not speak of it.) My favorites from July are starred. Books marked with a * were gifted to me and books marked with a ^ I was paid to read.

WHERE THERE'S ROOM FOR US by Hayley Kiyoko*

KILL ALL WIZARDS by Jedediah Berry*

SUBLIMATION by Isabel J. Kim*

WHERE THEY LAST SAW HER by Marcie R. Rendon*

A DIFFERENT KIND OF JUSTICE by David D'Alessandro^

⭐ MOSS'D IN SPACE by Rebecca Thorne*

⭐ THIS PRINCESS KILLS MONSTERS by Ry Herman*

⭐ COLDWIRE by Chloe Gong*

WAITING FOR THE LONG NIGHT MOON: STORIES by Amanda Peters*

STOPS ALONG THE WAY by Anna Sortino*

MAKE ME BETTER by Sarah Gailey*

⭐ THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans*

⭐ I LOVE YOU DON'T DIE by Jade Song*

MURDER IN THE DRESSING ROOM by Holly Stars*

Please enjoy my "up next" shelf, along with our memorial to our late kitty Marcel.

Eagle-eyed readers will note a few books carried over from previous monthly TBRs - Out Of Step Into You, Black Salt Queen, and Chaos. I promise their time is coming! Other books up soon:

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - It's about time for my annual reread of my favorite book!

The Teller Of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong - August's Found Family Book Club pick. Aren't you glad you read this far? Now you're the first to know!

Arden Grey by Ray Stoeve - A YA novel about a girl who thinks she might be asexual. I think this might be a future FFBC pick as well.

Redshirts by John Scalzi - I am slowly reading my way through Scalzi's backlist as part of a low-key, no deadline challenge I set for myself. (Join it on Storygraph if you want!) This one looks fun.

Long Division by Kiese Laymon - Speaking of Storygraph challenges, I realized I've only completed 19% of the Stacks' 2026 Mega Reading Challenge. Yikes! So I've picked Long Division for the prompt "Read a book that a guest of The Stacks said they would assign in school."

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova - Everyone in my book club has raved about this book, so I borrowed a copy from one of them and am hoping to love it too!

Yeah, I will definitely read all those, for sure! Plus a few current reads I'm carrying over: The Pairing by Casey McQuiston* (reread) and Together We See by Ari Tison*.

Friends! Enemies! Everyone in between!

I hope you're all doing as best as you can be and taking care of yourselves. It's time to vote for the September book club!

Sunny’s Book Club is a monthly book club highlighting both new releases and backlist titles we love. A virtual discussion is hosted over Zoom on the last Sunday of the month.

A new physical book will be shipped to you (or available for in store pickup) the month prior to when this month’s book club will take place. The September pick will ship the last week of August to ensure you have the entire month to read the book.

The link for sign up is not a subscription service, you opt in on a monthly basis dependent on your interest in that months chosen title. We do however have a recurring book club subscription if you are interested here.

From the beloved, award-winning author of the modern classics Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How It Ends comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and a daughter starting over, searching for a new story.

"A beautiful, maybe perfect, novel.” —Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars

This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?

While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives as a duo—cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making up—her daughter takes the reins of the story, and their journey soon becomes a quest for origins, not just to the familial past across continents, languages, and generations, but also farther back, to a mythical and even geological past.

Beginning Middle End evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness, spanning four generations of women. In their travels through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers, and elders, and also its volcanoes, its winds, and its waters. Weaving myths, ancient philosophy, and natural history with fleeting moments of contemporary life, the unforgettable characters in this novel take us on a journey across time, and confront some of life’s primary questions: How do stories shape our children’s memories and imagination? How do we situate ourselves deeply in the world while accepting our transience in it? How are a family’s memories made and what happens when they disappear?

Warm, funny, and poetic, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.

Annie Bot meets Fallout in this dystopian satire: six women created in a lab, designed to serve the billionaires of the future in a luxury fallout shelter, rebel against their programming after the end times arrive.

Welcome to the Felicity Complex! Constructed during the height of the Cold War, our unique hotel is prepared to protect you, the billionaire class, from nuclear annihilation! Shielded from radiation and supplemented with closed air systems and hydroponic gardens, this resort bunker offers a prime existence underground: full gymnasium and spa, gourmet meals, top-tier medical care, and the best in entertainment.

Meet Hallelujah! Grown in a lab and educated in the ways of concierge hospitality, she believes in her duty to comfort the Lord-anointed refugees of the apocalypse. (Even if her lover Anastasia disagrees. Even if her creator Dr. Younghusband is disappointed in her.) Don’t worry—everyone is safe from communists in the Felicity Complex!

Look, Hallelujah, guests have finally arrived! Hallelujah and her sister specimens have waited ages for you. Never mind the secrets other rich survivalists may be hiding. Just make sure they don’t notice the violent intentions behind our staff’s wide, wide smiles…

A sendup of traditional womanhood and lampooning the paranoias of the elite, The Felicity Complex questions the ambitions behind the entitled few who plan for the end times—and who truly survives them.

A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times best selling author of The Girls and The Guest.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 BOOKER PRIZE

A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting. 

A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.

This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades. 

His final destination is Zurich.     

David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in: the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend’s house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life.  

As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he's relied on, vanish.

From the acclaimed author of Marlena comes a “magnificent” (The New York Times) novel about a young woman looking for a father and finding herself.

“Superb, incendiary. . . Each sentence is diamond cut. . . . Famous Men pleases and provokes from every vantage point, but what is especially remarkable is Buntin’s audacity, her gutsy choices, and her clarity.”—The Boston Globe

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, USA Today, The New Yorker, Marie Claire, Lit Hub, The Millions, Our Culture

The right book at the right time can change your life.

Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?

Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.

A gripping novel about ambition, parents and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again.

Four very compelling choices! Happy voting and remember we are reading Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes in August. Today is the last day to sign up on our website. You never have to buy the book from Sunny's to pariticpate in book club, we just love it when you do.

Love what we do? Become a paid subscriber for less than a cup of coffee a month. Your ongoing support helps us plan ahead, fund causes we care about, and create meaningful programming for our community.

"The more we've travelled together, the more I've found myself emoting through him. He smiles, I feel joy, he frowns and my chest dips too. That's not just friendship. That's something deeper. I think I've known that for a while. But I've also seen how easily I ruin good things in my life."

GENRE: Romance
RATING: 4.75/5
FORMAT: eBook ARC
Tropes: Traveling (Euro Summer), Friends to Lovers, Only one bed, Slow Burn

Overall Impression: This was high up on my anticipated list after reading Quarter Love Crisis and it did not disappoint. We get a wholesome story with the horrors and reality of dating plus a dive into Amorie and Noah as people in their own path and as they come together!

Review:
This was such a fun read! I have read Jasmine Burke's book earlier this year (Quarter Love Crisis) and I LOVED it. I was super excited to dive into Around the World in 80 Dates and it did not disappoint. I literally binge read the book in a day!

This was truly such a journey, where we follow Amorie and go on a trip with her through her dates after she meets Noah. They both insist on being friends and so we see their dynamic and keep wondering: Is this the moment they tell each other that they are more than friends?! This takes us on a journey that let's us get to know the characters, who they are and what they think. We get to read Amorie's POV only and yet, we can see and learn so much about Noah from her. I truly loved reading about Amorie, getting to know her and seeing her grow.

We also get to see the reality of the dating world, with some of Amorie's horror story and a lot of right person, wrong timing concept (which ultimately always turns out to be the wrong person because wouldn't the right person come in the right time?). And I really loved how the topic of Grief is addressed here. It made me tear up a bit, the way we remember the ones we've lost and how it changes a lot of the choices we make is shown through both of our characters here.

ANDD I think what I enjoyed a lot was seeing how different and yet so similar the author's writing was compared to Quarter Love Crisis. In a way, both books have the author's voice and the same way of delivering the themes but there is a balance between the plot and character development that brings the story out differently. I can't wait to read more by Jasmine Burke and explore more of her writing.

I was provided a free advance reader copy and I’m sharing my honest thoughts.

In May, I had the pleasure of traveling to Berkeley and San Francisco (SF) for the 12th annual Bay Area Book Festival (BABF), and it could not have been more fun. I explored SF on Saturday and Berkeley on Sunday, and I wanted to share the itinerary (complete with restaurants, independent bookstores, timestamps, and audiobook recs) from my adventures to inspire your next SF trip. 🫶

~ Must-Listen Audiobooks to Fuel Your Travels ~

• Morbid Curiosities by S. Hati - A gripping, emotional YA thriller set in SF featuring a STEM dark academia atmosphere.

• Everything to the Sea by Alicia Upano - An evocative, captivating debut of grief, home, community, youth, and love following the effects of a devastating tsunami.

• Darkening Song by Delphine Seddon - A poignant, addictive contemporary debut of womanhood, friendship, power, and identity set against the backdrop of the music industry.

• Stranger Things Have Happened by Kasie West - A hilarious, cinematic contemporary romcom of family, love, and friendship.

• The Celestial Seas by T.A. Chan - An exhilirating, heartfelt YA sci-fi retelling of Moby-Dick.

• Prodigal Tiger by Samantha Chong - A magical, propulsive contemporary fantasy with Malaysian folklore.

• Salvación by Sandra Proudman - An atmospheric, gripping YA fantasy inspired by Zorro.

• Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier - A vibrant, adventurous YA fantasy with Pacific Island mythology.

~ San Francisco ~

12:40 PM - I started the day at Hilda and Jesse, a delicious queer-owned restaurant. I highly recommend the Liberty Farms Duck Leg Katsu and the Fairy Tale Eggplant.

1:25 PM - I walked to Lush Gelato for their Pistachio and Fresh Mint & Chocolate Chunks ice creams.

1:40 PM - I walked to City Lights Bookstore, a multi-story bookstore with incredible selections "founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin."

2:30 PM - I drove to the free Cable Car Museum and learned about the history of SF's cable car system.

3:20 PM - I drove to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and had the pleasure of seeing their Matisse: A Modern Scandal exhibit. It's open until September 13!

4:50 PM - I walked to Asha Tea House for a warm Chrysanthemum Tea, then headed over to the beautiful Best Bookstore in Union Square.

5:45 PM - My final bookstore stop before dinner was the amazing Argonaut Book Shop, established in 1941.

7:00 PM - I finished the delightful day with dinner at Liholiho Yacht Club. I highly recommend the Swordfish Katsu, Chicory Salad, and Baked Hawaii.

~ Berkeley ~

11:00 AM - I started the day with brunch at Tanzie's, a cozy cafe serving up "Chiang Mai-inspired Thai brunch." I loved their Lava eggs with the Vegan sides and Yum Sum O.

12:00 PM - I had a delicious scoop of Ube Malted Crunch ice cream at Melt Me Creamery.

12:10 PM - I explored the spectacular Bay Area Book Festival. The festival "stands as both a cultural celebration and a critical gathering space where activists, authors, and audiences can unite around today’s most urgent issues and uplift marginalized voices." The 2026 theme was "Writing the Future."

1:30 PM - I moderated the phenomenal "Swords, Seas, and Returning Home: Epic Quests and Cultural Magic in YA Fantasy" panel with Samantha Chong, Makiia Lucier, and Sandra Proudman. It was such a special panel about whimscial world-building, heartfelt adventures, and the meaning of home!

3:30 PM - I walked to Pegasus Books and browsed their beautiful collection of new and used books.

4:00 PM - I headed to Moe's Books, a wonderful multi-story new and used bookstore that opened in 1959.

4:25 PM - My final bookstore of the day was Sleepy Cat Books, where I met their adorable "Sleepy Cat," Lyla.

The BABF weekend was such a beautiful celebration of storytelling, and I can't wait for the next BABF from June 4 to 6, 2027!

"No medicine that would cure such devastating and hollowing pain. Cabanga was a yearning beyond comprehension, a hunger for something or someone so strong, your entire being transformed, and a cloud followed you."

GENRE: Contemp. Romance
RATING: 4/5
FORMAT: eBook
Tropes: Age Gap, Single Mom, Forced Proximity, Vacation Fling (set in a carnival), He falls first

Overall Impression: This is a sweet, funny and quick read! I really liked how we get to explore the dynamic of two people who are hesitant to put themselves first and watch as they learn to be vulnerable together.

Review:

This was a funny and quick read! I really liked both our MCs (Trinidad and Orlando), plus reading the book from a dual POV was a fun journey. I've only gotten back into Contemp Romance last Autumn and so I havent read much of Age-Gap Romance and this is one of the few I've read recently.

There's a lot of emotional focus from both POV. With Trinidad's perspective, we get to see how she is a single mom and has to do everything because she isnt co-parenting with the twin's dad. I really enjoyed how we get to dive into the journey of seeing Trinidad realise she doesnt have to give up everything to be a mom. While with Orlando, we get to see him be a caretaker and we learn more about his story than his emotions. I think the way their POV aare written lines up well with the way they think and behave too. I also felt like the descriptions of the carnival and the setting was super fun. We get to go through Ofele, see them attend the carnival and enjoy it all.

Another favourite thing from this read is that we get to meet a lot of the side characters and we get to learn about them too. I feel like we got to know Orlando's family, especially his mom a lot too. Diving into what happened and reading about grief, mental health, Cabanga and how it affects the whole family was a wholesome addition here. We also get to see Trinidad with her kids and how they love her and the way she supports them both.

I will say though that I think what didnt work for me is the pacing. Throughout the book, it alternates between fast and slow paced rather than being consistent with this. This would sometimes snap me out of the story a little but about half way through the story, I did feel the pace started getting stronger and that this stopped being an issue.

I will definitely be picking more books by the author and would recommend this one to readers looking for exploration of age-gap, single parenting and caretaking in their MCs. I think the best way to describe this is two people finding themselves and learning to prioritise what they need and this theme was done beautifully in the book.

Hi friends!

It's the very last day of July which means...it's almost time to discuss JADE CITY by Fonda Lee!

My schedule is a bit wonky as I've returned home from San Diego Comic-Con and set up a plethora of doctor appointments so we're all going to have an extra week to read before our discussion. The livestream will be on Thursday, August 6th, at 9:45am CST!

As for our August book club pick...I'm looking forward to something spooky. 👻

My friend Jess at The Hexed Library is hosting her annual Summer Scare Readathon! It takes place from August 7th to 16th and she has a host of fun reading prompts:

(There are also some Instagram prompts and cute reading wrap-up templates linked in her announcement video, too!)

Shopping my own shelves a bit, I found a selection of books I'm interested in reading during the challenge. :)

Although, from all the readathons I've participated in, I know I need to give myself at least three books for each category since I rely so heavily on my mood for what I want to read. So I'll be sure to post the full list later!

See you all on the 6th (and earlier, in my super spoiler-y reading vlog)! :)

Tropes are the currency of books nowadays.

In today's publishing and BookTok landscape, it feels like books are expected to be packaged around 1-3 major tropes before readers even pick them up.

And honestly?

I hate it.

Why can't we just let a book exist without immediately labeling every single thing about it?

I remember reading the back of a book and getting excited because it said the main characters hated each other and were eventually going to fall in love. It was exciting because I didn't know exactly how it would happen.

But now, sometimes I feel like knowing the trope before reading takes away some of the mystery.

Instead of a synopsis, we get a list of tropes.

Enemies to lovers.
Found family.
Grumpy/sunshine.
Forced proximity.

And while those things can be fun, sometimes I think they make us focus more on the ingredients than the actual meal.

I also think some of the best books are the ones where the author isn't trying to hit a checklist. They're just writing characters who feel real.

Like...what happened to themes?! I feel like tropes have flattened the way we talk about books. It used to be about more than just "enemies to lovers." It was about the way an author could take a character who was nothing more than ink on a page and make you feel like they were a real person with fears, flaws, dreams, and a heartbeat.

I think that's what makes books by authors like Kennedy Ryan and Abby Jimenez so special. Their books transcend the tropes.

They don't just have an enemies-to-lovers storyline. They have characters with trauma, friendships, fears, dreams, and entire lives who just happen to fall into that dynamic.

The trope is there, but it's not the point.

And I think we've lost a little bit of that in the way we talk about books now.

But...this is coming from someone who absolutely searches "enemies to lovers fantasy recs" on TikTok when I'm looking for my next read. 😂

So maybe tropes aren't the problem.

Maybe it's when the trope becomes the entire identity of the book.

What do you think? Have tropes helped readers find books they love, or have they changed the reading experience?

Hey y'all,

I'm gonna start this off by saying that I actually enjoyed watching The Odyssey. It's beautifully shot (I guess that's what 70 mm meant) and the acting was all very solid throughout. It's the kind of film worth sitting down for three hours.

BUT, I am an English major with disciplines focused on race, sex, and class. Of course I have my critiques. Spoilers for a 2000+ year-old story and its most modern adaptation ahead.

First, let's get into what Christopher Nolan left out:

1. Nobody

   Odysseus tricking the Cyclops by saying his (Odysseus) name was nobody doesn't happen at all.

2. Every other Greek god

   We don't see Poseidon or Zeus or the Sun God. They're all mentioned but never shown on screen.

3. The bed challenge

   Penelope challenging Odysseus to move the bed to make sure he's the real Odysseus (because he knows the bed is immovable) isn't shown in the film. Their resolution was quite soft but not as moving.

Now onto some of the racial dynamics. People complaining about there being BIPOC in the film didn't phase me. We see this all the time. Ancient Greece was a lot more diverse than the faded marble leads us to believe. But that's not what I want to talk about racially here. I think that Lupita Nyong'o is an excellent actress and a great choice for Helen. The few lines she was given were delivered wonderfully. I have some qualms about the scar. Having the only dark-skinned Black woman in the film be visibly scarred as retribution for adultery has some... questionable optics, to say the least. I'm still forming my own opinions there but rest assured, they're not positive.

The old joke about Christopher Nolan killing off MCs wives because he can't write women is one I can't help agreeing with. Though there are moments where these women shine, like when Penelope tears into Telemachus about the throne, or the iconic "back to your disguises" line from Circe. I can't help but wish to see more. Where's more of the manipulation from Calypso? Why don't we get a bit of nuance with Clymnestra? Can't we see Melantho's autonomy in ratting out Penelope's unraveling rather than it being a means of getting closer to Antinous?

I'll list a few books that have been making their rounds on the booksphere that give a bit more insight into these women and others within Greek mythology. In all honesty, several of these are on my TBR and I still need to finish Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey (I'm on Book 9) AND start her translation of The Iliad.

I'd love to hear what you think about all this in the meantime.

XoXo,

Rae