Genre: Adult

It took me longer than it should’ve to learn that Rivers of London was released in the US as “Midnight Riot” hence why it took me so long to read this despite it being high on my to-read list. In hindsight the rename makes perfect sense as Midnight Riot is a much more appropriate title for the better of two core plot/cases covered in book (not to mention that the series this book ended up starting is also called Rivers of London). Confusion on its dual-title release aside, I wanted to like Midnight Riot a lot more than I did as it has such an exciting premise. Peter Grant is a probationary constable/loose police officer who is assigned as an apprentice to Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale after having a run-in with a ghost while on surveillance duty following a grisly beheading murder at Covent Garden (as in the actual real Covent Garden, all locations are either real-life places or are heavily inspired fictional interpretations on boroughs of London). In training as both a supernatural investigative officer and a magic user, Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale team-up to unravel the truth behind a series of seemingly random murders who’s only…

I was very close to dropping this in the first part but stuck with it as I heard the story picks up quickly. Furthermore many fans often consider Red Rising to be one of the weaker books in the series and thematically different due to its culling game-focus. I’m glad I stuck with it though as I thought Red Rising was ultimately great (with a few reservations), a 3 that progressed to a 4.5 rounded up. A mesh of different genres and styles, Pierce Brown is a certified fantasy sci-fi action nerd irl and it shows in his work. The writing style is no-nonsense laced with some advance vocabulary while the plot is fast-paced and furious. The book often takes pleasure in going where the reader wants/or doesn’t want it to go. Case and point if someone commits a terrible act, the book will gleefully and gruesomely execute some sort of twisted judgement on them. But if there’s a character who you are getting attached to and seems to be thriving, you know they’re going to meet an unfortunate end. There are elements in the narrative that are familiar and comfortable to fans of the genre such as the focal…

With only a few days left before the end of the year, I can confidently say I found my top book of 2023. I don’t even know where to start with this one, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a love letter novel to every gamer out there who once had a dream about creating their own game but that’s only half of the novel’s contents. The other half is a perfectly pitched, nuanced story of two 10 yr old kids (eventually three friends) who meet playing Super Mario and the way their friendship, work partnership, and lives intertwine up to their late 30’s. Admittedly I generally have a hard time reading novels that span a wide range of a character’s life mainly due to the difficulty of writing and portraying the maturity and emotions. However, Gabrielle Zevin has made me a believer by the sheer consistency and quality throughout this 400 page story. Starting with the two main leads Sam Masur and Sadie Green, both are incredibly well-developed characters who both compliment and clash with each other a variety of different areas. Character backstories are well-developed and incredibly varied heavily addressing the identify crisis that often comes with being…

Remarkably Bright Creatures is a rather remarkable novel that was unfortunately not for me, my rating does not represent the quality of this book. Very similar in concept Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen which I had recently read last month, Remarkably Bright Creatures is a shifting perspective narrative focusing on several characters whose only connection at first is living/arriving in Sowell Bay. A quiet, small town nestled on the Puget sound, the most notable attraction in the area is the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Tova Sullivan is a 70-something year old senior who works part time at the aquarium in the evenings as a cleaning lady busying herself with moping floors, wiping fingerprints off aquarium glass, and keeping herself busy. She has a group of fellow senior ladies affectionately called the “knit-wits” (I found this hilarious) she often has lunch with, her evening job making sure the aquarium is clean and orderly, and frankly not much else. After losing her husband to cancer a few years ago and her only son Erik when he was 18 (a mysterious disappearance and suspected drowning in the bay), her life has little meaning or direction apart from an unexpected friendship with Mercellus, a senior giant…

I’m stuck trying to figure out if I’m getting fatigue from reading three Emily Henry novels in just over a month or if it’s the novel’s character drama that wasn’t for me, but this one didn’t grab my interest and continued to stumble the further it progressed. Focusing a core trio of gal pals consisting of Harriet, Cleo and Sabrina with their plus one’s added over the years, Happy Place takes the fake dating trope and meshes it with a second chance at love at a small town, summer vacation retreat. I suspect it has to do with the plot and concept of the novel, but I found myself inherently less invested in this tight-nit friend group compared to Emily Henry’s other novels that I read which are Book Lovers and Beach Read. Maybe it’s the lack of literary book elements that I loved or the girl-group friends for life theme that doesn’t appeal to me, but I felt like I was quite far from the target demographics of this book. Fake dating is a common and tired trope but Henry is well aware of this and fully commits to putting Harriet and her ex-fiancé Wyn through the ringer which…