Every year I think I’m going to focus on the series I’m in the middle of, rather than starting up new ones. And every year that doesn’t happen. In 2021 I did make a strong effort to continue series. Some favorites were the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal, the League of Extraordinary Women series…
I’m not a fan of novella-length work, because it’s not long enough for me to really get into the story and its characters. That said, I’m becoming a big fan of Harrow, having read The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches. A Spindle Splintered is the first of a series…
I wasn’t initially a fan of Chambers, but after Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, I’ve come to like each of her books more and more. This one was no exception. Psalm is a novella and the start of a science fiction series about man and robot. As a novella, there wasn’t as much…
As I began reading Eve Brown, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it as much as Hibbert’s previous two books, which I loved so much I read twice (rare for me). Eve is an event planner who’s just finished a wedding where a few things went seriously wrong, so her latest career…
Dear Miss Kopp is the sixth book in the Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart, and I was thrilled to receive an advanced review copy from NetGalley. This is one of my favorite historical series, and if you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend picking up the first book, Girl Waits With Gun. What makes…
I loved the first book by Knecht, Who is Vera Kelly? so I was very happy to receive a review copy of its sequel. These books combine a couple of things I really love – a complicated main character, a mystery, and the history and politics of other countries. In the first novel, heroine Vera…
I read these two books nearly back to back, and their plots and characters were amazingly similar, though I had no idea when I chose them. I love a totally random reading coincidence. Here’s a comparison of the two novels. The story: both The Dry and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter are mystery/thrillers about an unsolved…
Great news for Olive Kitteridge fans — author Elizabeth Strout has published a sequel and it is fantastic. Olive, Again is written in Strout’s signature style of introducing new characters in each chapter so that the book feels like connected short stories rather than a novel. The sequel begins with Olive mourning the death of…
I don’t often write about books in series, but I read a few recently and thought it might be helpful to discuss them together. For those who haven’t read these series, or aren’t caught up, I’ve avoided spoilers and focused more on the series in general than on specific plot details. I should also say…
It’s hard to say this book was fun, since it involved more violently ill characters than any other book I can think of… but it’s a page turner and yes, a lot of fun too. Time travel, the Middle Ages, plague, and Christmas – what more can you want in a book? Connie Willis received…
I didn’t have a chance to review any of the books I read in December because I was traveling, so I’m posting some mini-reviews of the more interesting books I read during my trip: Lethal White by Robert Galbraith: I will only say here that I was disappointed with this entry in the series, which…
Author Andersen has just released the third book in this series, and when she asked me to read it, I asked if I could start with the first instead. This was an interesting, well-written YA dystopian novel. It builds on concepts you’ve already seen frequently in dystopian novels, but with a nice amount of detail…
The Book Stop 