First-read to last, bold = stand-out, italics = sucked. How to Understand Your Gender: A Practical Guide for Exploring Who You Are - Alex Iantaffi & Meg-John Barker What EveryBODY is Saying - An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People - Joe Navarro Escape from Camp 14 - Blaine Harden In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom - Yeonmi Park Wenjack - Joseph Boyden The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan Never Be Lied to Again: How to Get the Truth in 5 Minutes or Less in Any Conver...

★★★½☆☆ It's not that House of Leaves isn't fascinating enough for 4 or even 5 stars, it's that it's also irritating enough to push that fascination down to a 3.5 overall. On Storygraph ...

DNF Read from the start until you feel like you've got the point about torture, then read Part 1, Chapter 2 for a fascinating, devastating deconstruction of war and how far it functions as the ultimate method of international conflict resolution. Then stop unless you're really into creation and the body through the lens of the Christian Bible. On Storygraph ...

★★★½☆☆ Direct testimonies from regretful mothers were the highlight of this book. The framing commentary between was repetitive but did on a few occasions crystallize those testimonies into points that make you have to stop and rethink your basic ideas of the virtue of motherhood. On Storygraph ...

★★☆☆☆ Tropes and gross-outs wearing a Steven King mask. Torpedoed itself by explaining the threat within the first quarter of the book via lab reports the main characters never see. Said characters are cardboard stereotypes - the sensitive nerd, the dumb muscle, the kid who's not quite Right in the head, etc. I made the mistake of getting invested in the friendship between the least tropey - a boy with anger issues and his quiet friend - but whenever an opportunity arose for their bond to pay ...

DNF Careful, precise prose paints a vibrant picture of a cabin on the edge of a nature preserve but the characters and plot bring nothing to get excited about. Would love to read a different story by this author in the same setting. On Storygraph ...

★★★☆☆ Pretty Pretty Boys Messy! Sometimes problematic but mostly just dramatic. Too many books let their asshole love interests off the hook but here, he writhes on it. Be aware: the will-they-wont-they plays out amid echoes of brutal homophobic bullying. And the MC is a himbo. Well, 70% himbo, 30% a dog with a bone (and 100% in need of therapy). Transposition Doubles down on the worst parts of the first book. These boys are doing gold medal mental gymnastics to stay apart and being shitty ...

★★★★★ This book feels like if it was taught in schools, we could halve homophobia in a generation. Even sharing little of King's exact identity, his struggle with fear and shame was a more immediate and personal experience than I had prepared for. By the end, you're not only proud of King, you trust him. His insecurities are laid bare, as are the external prejudices he faces, but the book is written so closely that you get to walk with him in creating a new strength despite them. Read this to ...

DNF This is going to be perfect wish-fulfillment for some teen out there just realising she has a crush on her best friend. Personally, all I can relate to is the gay panic. Everyone is rich, beautiful, skillful, and has their parents' support. A boy is named Gunner. Despite being as subtle as a kick in the teeth, I'm glad this book exists; it is no better or worse than the million light-hearted straight romances. On Storygraph ...

★★★☆☆ Failed to follow through on the promise of nuance in the toxic friendship between Peter and Jamie but this Peter Pan beats out all the little horror movie dead girls for scariest child antagonist. The sense of dread grows and does not relent. Pan lore purists, this is not for you. Works best as a prequel to the Disney or with only a faint memory the original. On Storygraph ...

★★★★☆ Despite only understanding about 65% of what was going on at any one time, it was easy to get caught up in the frenetic heists. Contains surprisingly little hokey VR hacking, a fascinating take on AI, and cybernetics that straddle the line between ingenious and depressing (so many new ways to monetise yourself!). Gobsmacked to find out the author hadn't even touched a computer. On Storygraph ...

★★★½☆☆ Moreno-Garcia translates the grey-skies-and-thunder aesthetic into a more colourful post-revolution Mexican town in a way that breathes new life into all the little tropes that make the gothic genre what it is. Holding the revolution in mind also provides silent flavour to the book's interrogation on the uses and harms of ancestral memory - of tradition's place in the face of modernity. Our heroine Noemí, too, orbits this conflict. She is lovely and ladylike, yet vibrant and unafraid to...

★★★☆☆ The Mermaid Murders First in the Art of Murder series. The murder mystery is fine but the real money here is in the will-they-will-they steam and posturing. The Monet Murders Less unique mystery than the first one but this idea of an art detective stands out among the genre and there's a satisfying amount of role-reversal within the main romance that keeps it interesting. Angst is applied with a suitably light hand. Fair Game (Different series.) DNF. Couldn't enjoy the angsty, steam...

★★★★½☆ I was wary that the silliness-to-interestingness ratio would lean too daft for me to be anything other than frustrated with this book but instead it charmed and manipulated me into a minor existential crisis. On Storygraph ...

★★★★½☆ Piranesi's setting is worthy of its namesake. It is an endless limbo of halls lined with marble statues in Tarot-like poses, infused with meanings we can only grasp at. Through these halls, on a calculable schedule, sweep gargantuan tides that wash away the old and bring new dangers and life. Sometimes, one finds human bones. Piranesi's protagonist makes this fantasy/mystery a true love-letter to science. He has no memory and a scientist's heart. His records are meticulous, his progres...

★★★★☆ There are three aspects to Three Body Problem: A fascinating glimpse into a life against the tide of the cultural revolution, including a character who has all of my respect despite being objectively the most harmful person to have ever existed. A trudge through a mystery plot slooowly solved by tip-toeing academics that the author likes far more than he gives us reason to. Sci-fi concepts so expansive, so creative, and so horrifyingly believable (to this layperson, anyway) that they ...

★★★★☆ I had thought ghosts are supposed to build up to their big scares, faffing about with open doors and foggy mirrors first, but not so for Miss Clare. I was leaning away from my audiobook in the first few chapters. It doesn't hit a high like that again for a while but the charmingly-uncharming love interest and supporting cast are entertaining enough, and the mystery sad enough, that you don't hurt for it. Despite having the trappings of a passive Victorian nanny protagonist, Sarah Piper g...

★★☆☆☆ The main character is scrappy enough for this to have been a delightfully ratty little read if it had leant more into grimy spellcraft and less into insta-love. Less predictability in general! The mystery of missing plot devices - er, little siblings could have used another few layers too. On Storygraph ...

★★★★☆ There's an industry practice of blasting sand at metal to clean it, right? This book is like that - like I imagine it might be to be caught in a sandstorm. It stings relentlessly and at times you'll rally against it - the characters go from children to youths, and are as self-sabotaging as they are heroic - but when it's over, you're left raw in a way that feels spiritual - like you've come away with something new. On Storygraph ...

DNF The fact that this book has dodged Disney's lawyers is the most impressive thing about it. Hades and Meg (hell, even some of the side characters) have enough going on under the hood to be interesting beyond their sex scenes but are pulling around too much angst and too few communication skills for me to endure the trip to a healthy relationship. On Storygraph ...

★★★★½☆ The dreamlike quality of the writing and depth of endurance these characters have had to build puts much of this book at the edges of my grasp, but what I have absorbed feels like a gift. One moment stood out to me amid the sweet, pregnant dread that is Beloved's presence at 124 and Paul D's heartbreaking attempts to reckon with himself, and that was how Baby Suggs was surprised to find she felt different after crossing the line into a state where she was free. I won't do it the disserv...

★★★★☆ The inner monologues and flashbacks are as incessant as ever with King but they are a price worth paying to get so far into these characters' heads. The more you learn about the Torrances, the less their plight at the Overlook feels like simple bad luck. It starts to feel as though they ended up at the hotel because they were so perfectly poised to be its playthings. This sense of inevitability cranks up the dread to the point where animal-shaped garden hedges became something so alien a...

★★☆☆☆ The gentle, highly-detailed pace of this book rooted me wonderfully in a small town overrun by the Napoleonic tide - a dash of the other side to War & Peace - however, the only thing wild about Dortchen Wild is her surname. These very many pages are an exercise in frustration over her silent angst and passive martyrdom. On Storygraph ...