Three Books I'm Reading Now, 12/1/25 Edition

The Books I'm Reading Now

I'm reading I, Medusa, Ayana Gray's recently published story from the perspective of the fabled villainess; I'm reading The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy; and I'm listening to the bizarre novel Bunny by Mona Awad.

What are you reading, bookworms?

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01 I, Medusa by Ayana Gray

I love an exploration of a villain's own version of events (Wicked, anyone?).

In Ayana Gray's I, Medusa, Meddy feels like an outcast in her own family. Her parents are (minor) gods, her siblings are beautiful and immortal, and Meddy simply wants an escape from isolated island life and to find her own adventure.

When Athena takes her under her wing, Meddy trains as a priestess in her temple. But she catches the eye of Poseidon, which turns the tides (see what I did there?) of her fortune forever.

I received a prepublication version of I, Medusa courtesy of NetGalley and Random House.

If you're interested in or enjoyed this book, you might want to check out a favorite book of mine, Madeline Miller's Circe, which I mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You, and again in my review of Natalie Haynes's A Thousand Ships, a woman-centered retelling of events surrounding the Trojan War.

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02 The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy

Denny lives a quiet life in small-town Minnesota, caring for his elderly mother with the companionship of his blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George.

A developmental delay--caused by an accident at his birth--means that his options are limited, but Denny seems to keep finding himself in grave trouble. There was the time he kidnapped a neighbor's pet goose, the time he accidentally aided and abetted a bank robbery, and now he's under arrest for the murder of a candidate for mayor.

Trying to do the right thing seems not to work out very well for Denny. To set the record straight, he'll have to uncover painful secrets about his family's past.

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03 Bunny by Mona Awad

I was intrigued by the sound ofWe Love You, Bunny, the sequel to Mona Awad's novel Bunny, so I went back to first read this first book.

Samantha is a scholarship MFA student at the progressive Warren University in New England. A solitary type immersed in her own sometimes dark writing, she is disgusted by the rest of her cohort--childish women who call each other "Bunny," dress in twee outfits, speak in high voices, and seem to be of one unimaginative mind in a mindless echo chamber of nonsense.

But when the Bunnies invite Samantha to their "Smut Salon," she becomes oddly entrenched in their circle, then increasingly unsure of herself and vulnerable. She ditches her few true friends and feels at a loss as to the line between reality and richly imagined dark, seemingly impossible developments.

I'm listening to Bunny as a library audiobook.