Flash reviews for books I read last month

Bookshop.org had a summer reading challenge where you could win a contest if you read for at least 28 days straight, so I read the unheard-of amount of 15 books!!!! Forget pre-pandemic reading levels, that is junior high reading behavior!!! Anyway, I don't really want to write out full reviews for all of them, so I'm just writing flash reviews. 

The Maid and the Mansion: A Mysterious Murder (book 1? of series) by Fiona Grace - ebook - another murder mystery where a maid does the investigating. Enjoyed this although I read "the men are coming back from war so there's no jobs for women" and assumed it was World War I and not II, leading me to be confused over several things including how she was able to run and fight in long skirts (nope, at/below the knee skirts). Trigger warning for sexual harassment from boss at work (he dies, yay!!) plus the usual stuff (murder, blood). 3.5 stars, would read the rest of the series if they're free

Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly - ebook - absolutely amazing, one of my favorite reads this year. So sad and hard to read at times but so important, with the internal plot mirroring thoughts I've had re: coming out and balancing authenticity with safety, etc. Also there's cool book restoration/making stuff. Genderqueer, queer and lesbian rep. Lots of trigger warnings including homophobic hate crime attacks, transphobia (also internalized), homophobia (also internalized). 4 stars, 2 chili peppers

How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis - hardcover book - I follow her on IG and bought the book at McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC to support her and because I need it. This book is for people who struggle with keeping up with housework--ADHD havers, depressed people, chronically ill people, etc. The non-shaming gentle parenting around cleaning that I never got, and lots of useful tips. She gets us because she's one of us. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.

Recipe for Confidence by Samantha Picaro - ebook - I think I follow this author on IG as well. Her book was promoted by bookstagrammers I follow, and I bought it on sale because the main character is aroace. The teenage MC is autistic as well and feels like she always has to mask and act happy to please everyone around her. I'm afraid I did not enjoy this book; the writing wasn't very good and neither were the parents, and there was stuff that made me angry. I think I need to stop reading books about and for teenagers. 3.5 stars. 

The Meddle & Mend series by Sarah Wallace - ebooks - This is a cozy found family fantasy series set in a magical, queernorm Regency England where racial diversity is also the norm. I ADORED this series! I downloaded the first one because it was free and one of the bookstagrammers that I follow is always promoting the series, and it was so good I downloaded the next one to read immediately, doing that for each book. I inhaled the whole series in like a week. One of the books, The Education of Pip, is about a character who is groomed into an unequal relationship that turns into forced sex work, so trigger warnings for that (there is a happy ending for him).  DM me if you want more info. There is representation for just about every letter of the queer alphabet, plus anxiety and PTSD rep. There are also characters of color (the society is also non-racist). I highly recommend these books and cannot wait for the next one. 3.5 (affectionate)-4 stars varying, amount of spice varies by book but it's usually just kissing or off-page (some Pip stuff does bleed into other books)

A Charm of Magpies series by K.J. Charles - ebooks - I loved this author's Will Darling Adventures trilogy and downloaded their other free ebooks a while back but never got around to reading them. These books are set in a magical gaslamp Victorian England and are about a tattooed duke with strong magical ancestry and a short magician who fall in love, fight magical crimes, and have extremely adult activities. They have to hide their relationship because it's illegal to be gay in Victorian England. The duke and his manservant lived most of their lives in China (which apparently was fine with gay people back then? That sounds wrong but I don't know enough to dispute it, plus KJC probably did their research).  The magical crimes (which are mostly grisly murders) make this series horror in my opinion; they were far too scary for me  but I couldn't stop reading them because they were so good. 3.5 stars (but a high 3.5) and probably 4.5 out of 5 chilis (very spicy).

I reread Lady Susan because it was the Enchanted Book Club pick for July, enjoyed it per usual, and had a lot of fun discussing the book with other book club members over Zoom. I also rewatched Love & Friendship afterwards, naturally. 

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev - paperback book - I bought this ages ago (not sure from where) but didn't get around to reading it. This was a really interesting loose retelling of P&P (duh) where the heroine is an Indian American brain surgeon and the hero is a Somali-Indian British chef, and both leads took on different aspects of both Lizzy and Darcy. It was really good but really sad, with the Wickham-Georgiana storyline being really dark. To be honest, I didn't get why the hero would really come around to being in love with the heroine when she was kind of an awful mess. Understandable, though, when her family was so terrible to her. I do recommend this book even though it made me sad (and hungry, the food sounded so amazing). Trigger warnings for a character being drugged and raped (past), cancer/terminal illness, police racial profiling, racism, xenophobia, miscarriage (past), manipulation, classism. 3.5 stars, 2 chilis due to a rather unnecessary scene at the end

What an Heiress Wants by Gemma Blackwood - ebook - This is part of a Regency romance series, of which I read one previously and liked it. The heroine wants to get back at this guy who led her on, so she concocts a fake flirting/courtship/engagement with her best friend's brother. You already know where this is going. This book has low spice (only kissing and lustful thoughts) and I enjoyed it, even though it got a bit dramatic at the end. 3.5 stars, 0.5 chili

Whew. I truly cannot believe I read so much. So many great reads this month as well!

April-June 2016 books

I have been so lazy with reading lately. My brain is tired when I get home from work, so I procrastinate on my towering to-read list.

Miss Match by Catherine Avril Morris. Free Kindle ebook, early April
Another lame trope-y chicklit romance. I was pretty irritated that the leading lady's friends hired a "romance expert" to basically seduce her without her knowledge and consent, and the friends are never made to see how awful and inappropriate that was; instead, the protagonist apologizes to her friends for being mad at first! (She and the romance expert fall in love for real, of course.) I should stop reading taming of the shrew type stories. 3/5

The Lamp of Darkness by Dave Mason & Mike Feuer. Free Nook ebook, mid-April
This is Biblical historical fiction about Elijah, Ahab and Jezebel from the perspective of a young shepherd boy/musician that is told like fantasy, so I LOVED IT. The authors are rabbis so they definitely know their story and its historical context. This was so good I want to buy a physical copy as well as read the next book(s). 4.5/5

Kahlo by ?. Physical purchased book, lateish April

This is a biography of Frida Kahlo (forgot to get the author's name) with full-color illustrations of many of her paintings and sketches. It's in Spanish, so it took me a little longer to read. I bought this when I was in Mexico with my family at this fancy hotel/restaurant/store called Sanborns, and I read it throughout our vacation there. I wanted more of an analysis of her art and its themes instead of just a straight telling of her life story, but whatever. I got a good deal of that from a scholarly article I got off JSTOR ages ago about the Aztec imagery in Frida Kahlo's paintings, which I read on the plane on the way to Mexico. I was especially troubled at the lack of references, endnotes, or even a bibliography. Where did you get your sources from, person? What if we want to read more? 3.9/5

Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't

 by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. "Gift" physical book, lateish April-early May

My mom bought this book "for me" (really so she could justify buying it to read), and I also read it during my Mexico trip after I finished the Kahlo biography. Cloud & Townsend are Christian psychologists who have written tons of relationship and self-help books separately and together, and I've read several of them thanks to my mom's buying habit. This one was good but a bit 2real at times (I had to fight back tears at the airport, which was kind of embarrassing. Luckily I was sick so I could blame that for the snuffling). 4/5

The Lake House by Kate Morton. Library book, early-mid May

My bookclub chose this book for May, and I thought at first that it was a book the Sandra Bullock rom-com was based on and was prepared for a chick lit book with some time-traveling. It's actually a sweeping mystery set in England that bounces between various characters' views and flashbacks in the "present day" (1990s), 1890s, 1930s and 1940s. I actually already read a book by this author, and I found both books super similar: they have a precocious bookish heroine with authorial aspirations who falls in love with an older guy who encourages her writing so she thinks he likes her back and kisses him and it's super awkward and she and we think it's one of the big mysteries but it isn't, a classic children's book (which doesn't exist in our world) based on a real girl and/or real themes in the book that somehow ties in to the mystery, spouses cheating on each other, mysteries centering around a particular well-loved house that is almost a character in its own right and is later abandoned due to said mystery, guilt, WWII, sisters and their relationships, flashbacks between characters and between the past and the present day, the present day is the 1990s otherwise I guess research would be too easy and the book would be over too soon, there is a historical protagonist and a modern protagonist who are intertwined somehow... Really a lot of similarities. She's a good writer so it puzzled me a bit that the books have so many similar elements. I liked this book way more than The Distant Hours since this one actually had a happy ending. 4/5

Wonder Woman Vol.3: Iron by Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Cliff Chiang. Library comic book, late June
I wanted to read a Wonder Woman comic since I don't think I ever had and I don't want to be a fake geek girl. I usually hate reading series out of order but this one was the first one the library had. Basically this series is, what if Wonder Woman's dad was Zeus? Fantastic. I ordered the rest from the library so I can read the whole series. 4.5/5