Blakemore's book--which is based upon witch hunts during the seventeenth-century English Civil War--is smart, shadowy and gothic, often infuriating, and consistently fascinating. Mother takes one look at the swirling cloud from the kitchen stoop and declares that she will not leave the house for all the silver in Seville, but I--being hard compelled by curiosity, which is, of course, the first sin of woman--decide to go in spite of it. In a small town in seventeenth century England, Puritanical fanaticism is opening the door for witch-hunting paranoia. Rebecca West is fatherless, without marriage prospects, and generally defiant--all of which render her vulnerable to suspicion and subject to the various, often harmful whims of men. You would not think it to look at us, so alike in outward semblance, but there are many different sorts of girl, many different thoughts beneath our little starched caps of perfect white. Odd or unwelcome events are ascribed to dark forces, and dangerous rumors begin to swirl around women on the outskirts of society regarding covens, spells, and carnal desire. Meanwhile, pious, black-cloaked Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, comes to town. Blakemore alternates points of view between Hopkins and Rebecca West, crafting plausible interactions and basing many details upon accounts of the two real-life figures. Witch is just their nasty word for anyone who makes things happen, who moves the story along. Many of the town's men seem largely (and horrifyingly) titillated by the dark activities recounted and wild accusations raised, and the men drum up hysteria, fear, and finger-pointing throughout the community. The most socially powerless women--widows, unmarried women, and fatherless girls--are most exposed to mistrust and devastating punishments, all of which are carried out in the name of a twisted theological logic. Many of these women are appealingly headstrong and willful despite their treacherous situations. The women in question are desperate to save their society from the arrogant men and their unchecked power, but only turning the tide of society against the hunting of witches will stop the outrageous persecution and cruelties. It's satisfying to watch as members of the community begin to recognize the witch hunters as more devilish creatures than anyone they might be seeking to punish, and at the same time it's horrifying to consider the realities of the Witch Craze of the English Civil War, when 100 to 300 women and men were put to death as witches due to a "vacuum of authority...virulent anti-Catholicism...and growing Puritan radicalism," as Blakemore writes in an author's note. ...this cannot be what God intended when he decreed it all--that men would take the most memorable parts, the juiciest bits, and use them as a playbook.... But of course, he is God--he must have known exactly what men would do, and not cared, or else figured it into his arrangements. The Manningtree Witches is smart and thoughtful, and the tone of Blakemore's novel is shadowy and gothic. Rebecca despairs at her situation, yet she is a wonderfully defiant and strong character--her mother is, dangerously, even more so. Powerlessness, despair, fear, and fury fuel Rebecca, but she must keep secret her intelligence and her desire for autonomy. The Manningtree Witches is infuriating in its recounting of the horrific cruelties and tortures enacted against so many women at the time. The women are all trapped in a system that's crushing for females. But I appreciated the dark humor and strength Blakemore allows the formidable female characters in the book. I received a prepublication electronic copy of this book courtesy of Catapult and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts abotu this book? Blakemore is also the author of Fondue. If you like witchy books, you might also like Chris Bohjalian's witch hunt-focused Hour of the Witch or the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Once There Were Wolves, Charlotte McConaghy's novel about a biologist fighting to reintroduce wolves into the Scottish Highlands and to overcome personal tragedy; The Wreckage of My Presence, comedian and actress Casey Wilson's memoir-ish collection of essays; and We Are the Brennans, Tracey Lange's family story about secrets, tragic mistakes, love, and loyalty. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy From a young age Inti realized she had a particular affinity for animals; if she tuned in, she could feel their feelings and even their physical sensations. Inti and Aggie Flynn grew up spending time with their father living off the grid and become attuned to nature, focused on preservation, and respectful of wildlife. Later in life the sisters find themselves in the Scottish Highlands together as biologist Inti works to reintroduce gray wolves into the region. Inti has hardened her heart in the years since she was a child, but she begins opening up because of the magnificent creatures she's studying. When a crisis erupts, Inti must choose between her beloved wolves and the outside world and its pressures to leave the wild behind. McConaghy is also the author of Migrations, a title my book club is reading this fall. I received an advance digital copy of Once There Were Wolves courtesy of Flatiron Books and NetGalley. 02 The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson Casey Wilson, actress (Happy Endings), comedian (Saturday Night Live), and writer, shares essays and memories, breathlessly told in whirlwinds of enthusiasm, frustration, or puzzlement as she works through feelings, her own often uncontrollable tendencies (eating most meals in bed and aiming to spend significant time in the bathtub; her serious sugar addiction; her reliance on psychics and various gurus for unorthodox life guidance), and her pivotal experiences in show business and in her personal life. She frequently focuses on her obsession with Real Housewives, the Kardashians, and other reality television. This element isn't resonating with me so far. Her account of coping with the loss of her mother and her fears about her son's development feel more real and affecting for me. 03 We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange In Tracey Lange's new novel We Are the Brennans, twenty-nine-year old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a haze. She's hungover and horrified: she was the cause of a drunk-driving accident in her adopted town of Los Angeles the night before. She's hit rock bottom and she knows it. Without other options, she skulks back to her hometown in New York. She'd abandoned her family and friends and anyone tied to her past, including her high-school sweetheart, five years earlier, and now she needs the support of people who truly know her. The longer Sunday spends at home, the more she realizes that her people need her too. As secrets become unraveled and threaten the solidity of all she thought she knew about her hometown, Sunday must decide whether to flee again or to stay and find a way through the turmoil.

How did the Bossy Bookworm blog grow up so quickly? It seems like just yesterday I was delirious with Covid, quarantined for weeks with then-atypical symptoms, and just waiting around to be sure I wasn't contagious anymore and could emerge from my bedroom-based cocoon. I was also trying to focus on some of the things that bring me peace and joy--including family love and support, time spent connecting with friends, gazing at the trees outside my windows, watching movies with my children downstairs via FaceTime--and reading and talking about books, which I was doing as much as ever during that time. If you know me, you know I'm a lifelong reader with a greedy streak. And since the launch of Bossy Bookworm, I've read even more books than before, talked about books more often than before, and met many more people who also love to do these things than I could have dreamed. I've been so lucky to reconnect with old friends and encounter new bookworms. I also figured out how to blog, finally learned how to use Instagram, and was overjoyed to be a podcast guest. I've enjoyed so many fun, unexpected offshoots of being a ravenous reader because of this little book blog. So on the first anniversary of the Bossy launch, I wanted to thank you! Thank you for spending some of your precious time on this site, commenting to me here or otherwise about these and other books, and for taking your reading time to explore some of the books I mention here. Reading the right book at the right time can be magical, and I hope some of the information here might help you in your quest to match with books you'll love. You're all fantastic enablers for my terrifically greedy reading habits and for the sharing of my various Bossy book opinions, and I thank you! One more thing: Is there anything you'd like to see on Bossy Bookworm? A category, a Greedy Reading List, a feature, or something else? If so, please drop me a message or an e-mail and let me know! Happy reading! xoxo, Amy (Bossy Bookworm)

The Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, atmosphere of Shoulder Season was a standout element, but the characters' interactions and some of the transitions within the book felt jarring. Beautiful, sleepy Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1981 feels like an unlikely setting for a Playboy resort. But for small-town teen orphan Sherri Taylor, the resort is an open door to a life of excitement and opportunity, an appealing shift from the dead-end, broke life path she'd be on without it. With plenty of youthful explorations of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, plus young women striving to strike the seemingly impossible balance of femininity and control within the male-controlled power structures of the time, Shoulder Season spans forty years, an important love triangle, and the course of a woman's life, from a modest Midwestern start to new beginnings in the California desert. I found some of the transitions and conversations in the book jarring, and I wasn't always clear about Sherri's internal motivations; some interactions between characters--and therefore their relationships--didn't ring true to me. I didn't really buy into Sherri having deep feelings for either of the men in her sights. I ultimately wished the story had ended with more about Sherri than her reactions to various men and their sometimes disappointing or shocking decisions. I very much enjoyed her vulnerability as a young woman and especially the glimpses we got into her self-assured modern-day self. The standouts of Shoulder Season for me were the atmospheric setting, the training and strict rules surrounding Bunnies' behavior (and even their allowed body movements), and the women's bonds and rivalries with each other. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Clancy's first novel, The Second Home, was published last year, when the author was 52. Shoulder Season was inspired by the actual Playboy resort (which predated what is now the Grand Geneva) that was once in the area, and she interviewed workers and guests from the Midwestern hub where hit musicians, family vacationers, single men, and Bunnies all came together for the promise of something bigger--or at least an escape from the expected.

This light fiction young adult novel offers (reluctant) romance, best friendships, dance lessons, glimpses into the future, a reimagined family structure, and lots of heart. In the newest young adult book by Nicola Yoon, Evie Thomas is reeling from her parents' divorce--and from her haunting secret knowledge that her father was seeing his girlfriend before he split with Evie's mom. So she doesn't believe in love or happy endings anymore. Her sister dates boy after boy, two of her best friends are making eyes at each other, and she's sick of all of it. She's written off love. Then something really strange happens. As Evie's putting her former favorite romance books into a Little Free Library, a wizened old woman approaches her with some advice, and soon afterward, unexpected visions start overwhelming her. She's able to see the past and futures of the couples around her. But that's not all: Evie gets roped into taking dance lessons and inconveniently meets an incredible guy. Meanwhile, her best friend is the only one who knows about her ability to peek into the past and future, and he isn't any clearer than she is about what's going on. Her mother starts dating again. And to top things off, her father announces his engagement. It's all too much. I was proud of Evie's forgiveness, yet felt a little bit dissatisfied about her eventual willingness to overlook her father's cheating. It's a complicated situation, but that didn't sit right to me without more of a reckoning. I was also a little bit thrown by the final non-resolution regarding her peek into the future and a tragedy she glimpses. But Instructions for Dancing was romantic, sweet, fun to read (well, to listen to as an audiobook, which I did), and it focused on quirky friends, family loyalty, and looooove, all in a light fiction wrapping. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Nicola Yoon is also the author of the wonderful young adult books Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star. If you're in the mood for more light fiction, you might try the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Shoulder Season, Christina Clancy's novel set in 1981 Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, at a Playboy resort; The Manningtree Witches, A.K. Blakemore's story about witch hunts in 1643 England and the young women who aimed to thwart them; and Instructions for Dancing, Nicola Yoon's newest young adult book about heartbreak, romance, and unexpected new beginnings. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Shoulder Season by Christina Clancy Beautiful, sleepy Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1981 feels like an unlikely setting for a Playboy resort. But for small-town teen orphan Sherri Taylor, the resort is an open door to a life of excitement and opportunity, an appealing shift from the dead-end, broke, desperate life path she'd be on without it. With plenty of youthful explorations of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, plus young women striving to strike the seemingly impossible balance of femininity and power within a male-held power structure, Shoulder Season spans forty years, an important love triangle, and the course of a woman's life, from a modest Midwestern start to new beginnings in the California desert. Clancy's story was inspired by the actual Playboy resort (which predated what is now the Grand Geneva) that was once in the area, and she interviewed workers and guests from the Midwestern hub where hit musicians, family vacationers, single men, and Bunnies all came together for the promise of something bigger. 02 The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore In a small town in seventeenth century England, Puritanical fanaticism is opening the door for witch-hunting paranoia. Rebecca West is fatherless, without marriage prospects, and generally defiant--all of which render her vulnerable to suspicion and subject to the various, often harmful whims of men. Odd events are ascribed to dark forces, and dangerous rumors begin to swirl around the women on the outskirts of society regarding covens, spells, and carnal desire. Meanwhile, pious, black-cloaked Matthew Hopkins comes to town and begins being called the Witchfinder General. Can the headstrong young women save their society from the arrogant men and their unchecked power? If you like witchy books, you might also like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You. 03 Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon In the newest young adult book by Nicola Yoon (author of the wonderful Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star), Evie Thomas is reeling from her parents' divorce--and from her haunting secret knowledge that her father was seeing his girlfriend before he split with Evie's mom. So she doesn't believe in love or happy endings anymore. Her sister dates boy after boy, two of her best friends are making eyes at each other, and she's sick of all of it. She's written off love. Then something really strange happens. As she's putting her former favorite romance books in a Little Free Library, a wizened old woman approaches her with some advice, and soon afterward, unexpected visions start overwhelming her. She's able to see the past and futures of the couples around her. And how did she get roped into taking dance lessons, anyway?

Marilynne Robinson offers another gentle yet affecting book in her Gilead series, this time about faith, grace, human connection, and a romance forbidden because of segregation. He must resist the temptation to lament to her as if the sorrow were his, when the whole brunt of trouble was already coming to bear on her. Jack focuses on the meandering, excruciating, grace-filled romance of a star-crossed couple just after World War II. Jack Boughton is the self-loathing, drifting prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister, and Della Miles is a thoughtful, pensive, upstanding high-school teacher who herself happens to be the child of a preacher. Jack is white, and Della is Black--but the two keep crossing paths in segregated St. Louis and deepening their connection to one other. "...But at least we can be together here." Out in the city everything was Colored or White. Jack deliberates endlessly: about what to do regarding Della, about his thoughts regarding faith, and about the person he is and could potentially become. When we pick up with him at the start of Robinson's book, he has frequently been very drunk, often sleeping rough, and has repeatedly been shaken down for money he may or may not owe to unsavory characters--he drinks so much that in his sober hours he isn't ever quite sure of where he stands in the world and what he's done. It's somewhat surprising that Della is willing to enter into such a fraught--and, at the time, illegal--relationship, one that is sure to at the very least cause a significant rift in her family, might possibly cost her her beloved career, and could land her and Jack in jail. But the connection between them feels essential to each of them. Jack's almost constant disgust with himself--and his intense struggle to simply go on--makes him seem like an unlikely candidate for practical, goal-focused Della to set her romantic sights upon despite the immense difficulties of their spending time together, But when Jack and Della repeatedly encounter each other, they recognize an unexpected and deep affinity. "Sometimes I do wonder. If we were the only ones left after the world ended, and we made the rules, they really might work just as well. For us, at least." Robinson explores complex issues regarding race and related societal pressures of the time; Jack's and Della's evolving thoughts about faith and meaning in life; and the heart-wrenching, tender, ill-fated romance between the two main characters who are trapped by society's oppressive views on race. He knew the peril of relief, which was so welcome sometimes that he gave in to it impulsively and lost his grasp of the reality of the situation. He walked back toward her house half a mile, thought better of it, and went home to his rooming house. At worst, things were not terrible. He could sleep. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you've read the gentle, lovely Gilead, one of Robinson's other three novels in the Gilead series (these include Gilead, Lila, and Home), you may remember the ne'er-do-well Jack Boughton who arrives at the end. That timeline intersects with the events in Jack.

I enjoyed revisiting characters from Ink & Sigil, but I felt bogged down by recounted stories and detailed logistics, and I missed the playfulness of book one. In Kevin Hearne's latest book, the second and final installment in his Ink & Sigil duology, we catch up with the gloriously Scottish, unfailingly calm, crankily aging sigil agent and widower Al MacBharrais and the loyal, lazy, creative, bright pink, mischievous hobgoblin by his side, Buck Foi ("Aye, that's what yer maw said"), for adventure and more of their somewhat grumpy attempts to save the world. Paper & Blood is a quirky, lighthearted fantasy featuring copious Scottish lingo, magical creatures in the wondrous wilds of Australia, and steadfast partners like Nadia (an accountant who moonlights as a pit fighter and is "a sleek goth avatar of pain"), as well as potentially ill-advised companions like the ancient Iron Druid Atticus O'Sullivan and his sentient "dugs" (dogs). Paper & Blood offers entertaining and frequent pop culture references, but it sometimes felt willfully absurd. The story lagged a little for me with the accounts of past battles and war stories; extensive details of the logistics of magical processes and of defusing traps; and page time spent planning responses to current-day conflicts. I missed the character growth from book one, and I found myself wanting a little more of the flashy, witty, surprising banter between Nadia, Al, and Buck--and wanting more Nadia in general. Minor note: thank goodness Saxon Codpiece returned for book two! I did love Al's introspection; for example: Grief is never easy. But it gets softer around the edges, smoothed over like a river rock given time enough and water. It's still a rock and it's heavy and dangerous and capable of hurting you. Just not immediately to the touch, if that makes sense. And: Still, we must recognize that we have zero power to sustain our highs, which means we should take delight in them when they occur but remember that we have much power to lift ourselves out of the abyss. Sometimes that power is simply having faith that the trend line of our lives will climb higher once again. But, frustratingly, a major plot point wasn't resolved (ahem, the curse!), although Al developed a peaceful attitude about the ongoing mystery. I received an advance digital copy of this book courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Last year I really enjoyed Hearne's first book in this duology, Ink & Sigil, so much so that it made it onto the Greedy Reading List Three Offbeat Series I Just Started and Love. The playful tone of this series often reminded me of The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee, which was a five-star read for me.

More Memoirs I've Loved I love a good memoir, one that offers a glimpse or a deep dive into the life and pivotal experiences of another person. For me, the best memoir makes you feel some of the author's feelings and understand their perspective. This is a genre of books I often like to listen to in the form of audiobooks read by the author, because I love hearing a person tell their own story. My to-read list of memoirs is so long it's crushing and overwhelming, but some of those I'd like to read next include: The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson; Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile; Speak, Okinawa by Elizabeth Miki Brina; Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford; and Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. For more memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into and Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year. Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought! Which other books should I add to my memoir to-read list? 01 A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa Ishikawa, who is half-Korean, half-Japanese, and who lived under oppressive totalitarian rule for thirty-six years, tells a fascinating story of his life in North Korea--and of his gripping escape. The promise of better work and stronger education for the children lured Ishikawa's family from Japan to North Korea. But reality was a far cry from the promised utopia. The author traces a tragic cycle of bureaucratic ignorance and force, hunger and desperation, cruelty, and resignation. This short memoir digs into the author’s repeated experience with North Korean horrors and despair—and sets these experiences in contrast to his prior life and heartbreaking knowledge of the free, if difficult, world of his youth in poverty in Japan. The version of this book that I read was riddled with typos, which I imagine came about during the translation from the author's original Japanese account. For another set of accounts of life in North Korea, try Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. My book club read this fascinating book, and I think Demick does an excellent job of exploring the brainwashing, isolation, and fear in North Korea, while building the stories of caring families and their everyday lives in which the madness is normalized. 02 This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps Celebrity memoir time! I first saw Busy Philipps acting on my beloved Dawson's Creek many years ago, and since then, I've remained vaguely aware of her best-friendship with Michelle Williams, her various acting roles, and her candid social media presence. In This Will Only Hurt a Little, Philipps conversationally takes us through her youth in Scottsdale, Arizona, her awkward years, her discovery of her comedic leanings, her friendships, and her loves, mistakes, victories, and joys. She's frank about her missteps and she embraces an active-work-in-progress approach to her personal growth and learning. I listened to Busy read this in audiobook form. It’s interesting to hear experiences a person believes has shaped his or her life, and in This Will Only Hurt a Little, Philipps offers tales from childhood and Hollywood that affected her positively or negatively, while never flinching from laying bare her own regrettable, brave, stumbling, or confident decisions, trials, and adventures. 03 Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood Lockwood is a poet, and her view of the world is entertainingly quirky and off kilter. Her father the priest is an outrageous real-life character in Priestdaddy, and Lockwood works to present him as appealingly so. Late in the book she openly laments at how difficult this is (she worries, “I️ can only write down what you say”). Her tone is loyal while remaining brutal and honest. Her mother is presented sympathetically while coming off as odd, and Lockwood herself takes on a somewhat unhinged tone while recounting off-kilter periods for the family. There’s silliness, dark humor, and life-and-death tragedy—for example, the discovery of a nearby toxic waste dump as a likely reason for widespread and devastating health effects in the community. Lockwood notes that she is not a Christian but is very much “of” the church because of her upbringing. Her exploration of rituals, abuses of power in she's witnessed, and her own present-day participation in traditions felt most interesting to me. Lockwood is also the author of No One Is Talking About This, a book that is odd, disturbing, and likely not everyone's cup of tea. But it's truly unlike anything I have ever read, and the second section, which is an enormous departure in tone from section one, brought me repeatedly to tears. Please let me know if you've read this one! 04 Inheritance by Dani Shapiro Shapiro shares her shock at discovering (via a DNA test taken on a whim in her mid-fifties) that her biological identity as the descendant of two lines of Orthodox Jews is not accurate. The parents who raised her are no longer alive to question, and with this discovery, Dani voraciously challenges her own sense of self and is shaken to her core. She wonders about whether she has a claim to beloved extended relatives who shaped her life but are not, after all, blood relations; she reflects on her religious and cultural integrity and identity; she worries about her predispositions to heretofore unknown genetic health issues; and she considers her potential legacy to her own child—all while panicking about who she is after all and how she can possibly trust what she has believed to be the truth about almost anything anymore. Through practical research, lengthy reflection, and delving into the grief and the increasing layers of loss she feels, Shapiro eventually allows herself to feel hope and a growing peace regarding the likely truth—as well as a sense of freedom in having a more fluid sense of herself as a person. I thought Inheritance was fascinating, thoughtful, jarring, and just lovely. 05 Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur Brodeur was always captivated by her mother and her magnetic personality. Her mother confided her darkest secrets to young Brodeur as though she was a friend, and she drew the teenaged Brodeur in as an accomplice to her longtime extramarital affair. I feared that reading this memoir was going to make me feel like the worst type of voyeur—that the details of the affair at the center of this story might make me feel uncomfortable at best and would feel tawdry at worst. But the story was ultimately more about an emotionally stunted mother, her codependence on her adolescent daughter, and how the author unraveled the many smothering ties to the woman whose conditional love and affection directed her life for too many years. Brodeur is a measured writer who thoughtfully considers her youth, her infatuation with and reliance on her mother (who throughout her life is only concerned with her own impulses and desires), and how her own eventual personal growth drove a rift between her and the mother she idolized, a shift that changed everything forever. Wild Game was really interesting and a quick, engrossing read that surprised me with its depth. I was given a copy of this book by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 06 My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, writing in her mid-forties, recounts her dedication to a single book, one of her own making. She's carefully taken this book to Thailand, Paris, and London, shuffling it from apartment to apartment where it holds a place of honor and has for twenty-eight years. It's a book listing each of the books Paul has read to date. The Book of [Read] Books (which she affectionately calls Bob) reflects the author's hopes, dreams, adventures, and searches for meaning, while her life and the conditions within it affect the books she seeks out and dives into at different points of her life. My Life with Bob is also an examination of a reader's relationship with books, with reading, and with the paralyzing, never-ending, constantly expanding list of titles that make up a to-read list: “At this point, there is no human way that I could read even those books I've deliberately marked as absolute must-reads. . . . This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn't be the goal.” Paul delves fully into her meandering post-college years--during which Bob provides more structure in her life than anything else does. She dabbles in exploring her more recent life and reading habits as well in this thoughtful, unpretentious, gloriously nerdy, and lovable book.

The Invention of Wings is historical fiction that tracks the characters of (the real-life) Sarah Grimke and her enslaved maid Handful through decades of cruelties, resolve, heartbreak, and discovery in early nineteenth century Charleston. In 1803 Charleston, plantation owners wield cruel and immense control over their many enslaved people. In The Invention of Wings, young Hetty, whose real name is Handful, is given to eleven-year-old Sarah Grimke as a gift for her birthday, and the two girls' lives become unevenly, twistingly intertwined forevermore. Sue Monk Kidd spins this historical fiction story, inspired by the real-life Sarah Grimke, and includes excruciating details of the time, including various horrifying punishments for enslaved people considered disobedient; the oppressive power exercised over the humans considered by many in the region to be white property; and the incredible, brave spark that leads some of those in even the most dire situations to keep hope and to resist. It feels appropriate to have complicated feelings about this book. It's uncomfortable, disturbing, and infuriating to read historical fiction about the actual horrors that occurred in this place and time: enslaving people, dehumanizing the Black race, and the exercising of frequent, obscene abuse. The secondary subjugation explored in the book is that of women by men, and various instances and examples of women's powerlessness are apparent throughout the story. The Invention of Wings tracks the character of Handful through decades of bided time, resistance, tragedy, abuse, resolve, and heartbreak, and Kidd grounds Handful in her mother's stories and in her history, which she pieces together similarly to the way she creates her quilts, stitch by stitch. Handful and her mother are gifted seamstresses, somewhat more valuable than others on the plantation because they contribute to the outward, fancy, socially acceptable appearance of the Grimke family by creating beautiful gowns and clothing. In a heart-wrenching scene, Handful sees a list of family property that details her own asserted worth. The dollar amount by her name is relatively high, and she finds herself proud to see it, even as she recognizes the horrifying nature of the entire system, in which humans could possibly be thought to be worth dollar amounts. The Invention of Wings also follows a version of events in which the real-life figure of Sarah Grimke makes a slow, twisting shift from her role as a young woman holding papers asserting ownership of another person (and living within a plantation and Charleston society that were powered by the unwilling work of enslaved people) into an early, outspoken abolitionist. Sarah's stammer feels like a symbol of her longtime ineptitude and inability to achieve any change in her own household for herself or others. When her father dies, she cobbles together a clumsy version of freedom for herself. Later, when she must overcome her fears of public speaking, it feels fitting that she does so in order to excoriate those enslaving others and to encourage the freeing of enslaved persons. I finally read (listened to) this book after my friends Sara, Kiki, and Stirling repeatedly recommended it, and the title also came up in a recent discussion with my friend James when he kindly had me as a guest on his Maybe I'm Amazed podcast. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I'd love to hear what you thought! Sue Monk Kidd has also written other books, like The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair, and The Book of Longings, which made it onto two Greedy Reading Lists: Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved This Year and My Twelve Favorite 2020 Books.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Paper & Blood, Kevin Hearne's second and final book in his quirky Ink & Sigil fantasy duology; The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd's historical fiction story about a plantation, oppressive power, and enslaved people at the turn of the nineteenth century in Charleston; and Jack, a quiet, gorgeous book from Marilynne Robinson that's focused on a meandering romance between an unlikely pair of characters just after World War II. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Paper & Blood by Kevin Hearne In Kevin Hearne's latest book, the second and final installment in his Ink & Sigil duology, we catch up with the gloriously Scottish, unfailingly calm, crankily aging sigil agent Al MacBharrais and the loyal, lazy, creative, mischievous hobgoblin by his side, Buck Foi, for adventure and more of their somewhat grumpy attempts to save the world. Paper & Blood is a quirky, lighthearted fantasy with entertaining pop culture references, copious Scottish lingo, magical creatures in the wondrous wilds of Australia, and steadfast partners like Nadia (an accountant who moonlights as a pit fighter), as well as potentially ill-advised companions like the ancient Druid Atticus O'Sullivan and his sentient dogs. I really enjoyed Hearne's Ink & Sigil last year, and it made it onto the Greedy Reading List Three Offbeat Series I Just Started and Love. 02 The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd In 1803 Charleston, plantation owners wield cruel and immense control over their many enslaved people. In The Invention of Wings, young Hetty, whose real name is "Handful," is given to eleven-year-old Sarah Grimke as a gift for her birthday, and the two girls' lives become unevenly, twistingly intertwined forevermore. Sue Monk Kidd spins this historical fiction story, inspired by the real-life Sarah Grimke, and includes excruciating details of the time, including various horrifying punishments for enslaved people considered disobedient; the oppressive power exercised over the humans who are considered by many in the region to be white "property"; and the incredible, brave spark that leads some of those in even the most dire situations to keep hope and to resist. Sue Monk Kidd also wrote The Book of Longings, which made it onto my Greedy Reading Lists Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved This Year and My Twelve Favorite 2020 Books. 03 Jack by Marilynne Robinson Jack, a quiet, gorgeous book from Marilynne Robinson, focuses on a meandering romance between an unlikely pair of characters just after World War II. John Boughton is the self-loathing, drifting prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister, and Della Miles is a thoughtful, pensive, upstanding high-school teacher and also the child of a preacher. The two--John is white, and Della is Black--keep crossing paths in segregated St. Louis, and Robinson explores complex issues regarding race and related societal pressures of the time; John's and Della's evolving thoughts about faith and meaning in life; and the fraught, heart-wrenching, tender, likely ill-fated romance between the two main characters.

Henry strikes the perfect tone for this wonderfully sweet, funny, friendship-based, romantic story that has lovely depth. People We Meet on Vacation made me laugh a lot--and got me a little teary in the end. In Emily Henry's newest novel People We Meet on Vacation, best friends and polar opposites Alex and Poppy are on their annual vacation. Poppy is impulsive and fun-loving, and Alex would generally rather stay home and read than seek out adventure. The pair has long been emotionally inseparable despite living in different cities--Poppy in New York and Alex in their small hometown. But two years ago on their vacation, something BIG happened. It threatened their friendship and continues to loom over everything between them. They haven't talked about any of it, but Poppy has convinced Alex to join her again on vacation to try to recapture their effortless times together. Surely, she thinks, they can fix everything in a week. She'll just push down her strange feelings about Alex and pretend that fateful time never even happened. The characters desperately need to address deeper issues about themselves and their pasts, but the trip keeps going awry. Henry's structure of taking us back and forth from past vacations and meetings between Alex and Poppy to the present day is never jarring, and watching Poppy and Alex's friendship build over time is satisfying. I adored this aspect. The title relates to the thrill of meeting new people and connecting with them (this also turns out to be important to characters' broader life choices), but I also kept thinking about how Poppy and Alex only felt that they were truly themselves and fully vulnerable with each other. In a way, their annual vacations--which become the sole times they reliably spend time together--bring out each of their honest, authentic selves; they feel like different, fully realized people when they're together. This was a will they/won't they story I loved. Some of the structure of having one character hold such emotional power over the other was frustrating because of the unlikely obliviousness required on the part of that character. But Henry strikes the perfect tone for this wonderfully sweet, funny, friendship-based, romantic story that has lovely depth. People We Meet on Vacation made me laugh a lot--and got me a little teary in the end. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Henry's Beach Read was one of my favorite books last year, and it made it onto the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism.

Stevens offers a bad guy who's easy to despise in this mystery with great passages about surviving in the wild. Characters' careless behaviors in the face of known danger frustrated me for much of the book. Chevy Stevens's Dark Roads is set in the wilderness and rugged terrain of British Columbia, along a highway where unsuspecting women traveling alone go missing from time to time--yet a predator never ends up being brought to justice. Teen Hailey McBride learned from her father how to be self-sufficient--to hunt, to camp, to stay tough, and to never drive Cold Creek Highway by herself. Now that he's gone, she's grieving--and she's at the mercy of Vaughn, her aunt's controlling husband, a police officer on a power trip. When she suspects that Vaughn is paying too much attention to her, Hailey decides to lay the groundwork for running away and to disappear into the wild. When she's eighteen she hopes to emerge, out from under others' thumbs. What Hailey doesn't anticipate is that the community will assume she's been taken by the highway killer, which they do. But now she's stuck. She can't return to her aunt's, and for a time the book is satisfyingly focused on her survival skills and her bonding with a young dog while she determines her next move. This section was my favorite part of the book. Meanwhile, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek to try to figure out what happened to her sister Amber, who vanished in the area. Beth becomes a potential target herself--while also inadvertently drawing attention to the truth about Hailey's disappearance. I quickly became frustrated with Beth's careless, repeated, willfully risky behavior in what she clearly knows--after the loss of her sister--to be a potentially deadly situation. She's grieving and coping with substance abuse issues, but it was difficult watching her repeatedly lose control of her faculties and surrender her ability to protect herself when she knows how crucial it is to do so. The bad guys in Dark Roads feel full-bore evil and overwhelmingly pervasive; in one case we see little evidence of redeeming qualities, which makes it feel too easy to wholeheartedly despise the character at hand (in another case, the matter involves more gray areas). The horrific abuses of power, toxic masculinity, and the disturbing, predatory serial killing in the book may make you angry enough to want to spit nails, which is how I felt. In Dark Roads, characters figure out their places in the world, find internal strength when they need it, and learn to start to let go of what's weighing them down. Some elements felt too easy--certain characters' vulnerabilities seem destined to lead to tragedy and made me want to shout warnings I felt they shouldn't need--but the book was atmospheric, and the characters' friendship and loyalty (and, sometimes, selfishness) that Stevens explores kept me engaged. Stevens's fictional Cold Creek Highway setting is based on the real-life "Highway of Tears" in British Columbia, where women have gone missing since the 1970s, and where a disproportionate number of Indigenous women have been abducted. Many of these missing-person cases remain tragically unsolved. I received a prepublication digital copy of this title courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Chevy Stevens's first novel was Still Missing. I found some commonalities between Dark Roads and another suspenseful read I recently read and was engrossed in, Wendy Walker's Don't Look for Me, especially regarding the villains of both stories.

Now You Say Yes is beautiful. Harley's middle-grade story about love, duty, self-discovery, disappointment, and pushing through the discomfort of trusting others is sometimes heartbreaking and consistently lovely. I adored it. In Bill Harley's newest work, the middle-grade novel Now You Say Yes, we follow newly orphaned fifteen-year-old Mari and her nine-year-old stepbrother, Conor, who is on the spectrum, as they strike out on a cross-country journey in a desperate attempt to avoid foster care. Mari is bent on staying with her brother and preserving the only family they each have left. But she's not legally an adult, and she doesn't have many options of who she can rely on to keep them safe. Harley perfectly captures small, illuminating moments during the siblings' road trip while exploring trust, betrayal, the unexpected bubbling up of grief, and the bone-deep tiredness of a young woman trying to take on more than she should have to. The upcoming eclipse is set up as a wonderful centering point for the siblings' trip, Conor's single-minded obsession, and Mari's search for solutions. Harley takes us through Mari's realistic-feeling moments of frustration with Conor as well as her exasperation with her position as a minor without autonomy or power. She's reliant on possessing certain papers (which she doesn't have) and is expected to participate in rigid systems in specific ways (which she can't do while also keeping Conor with her). Mari is a wonderful character. She doesn't transform too easily, but she does regain her inner strength in an understated way, she displays her own version of bravery, and she manages to find some peace in not having all of the answers. Now You Say Yes is beautiful. Harley's story about love, duty, self-discovery, disappointment, and pushing through the discomfort of trusting others is sometimes heartbreaking and consistently lovely. I adored it. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Harley is also the author of the wonderful seven-book, middle-grade, humor-filled Charlie Bumper series (which my son read and absolutely adored) as well as the middle-grade books Night of the Spadefoot Toads and The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher.

Walker offers a terrifying, disturbing premise--but I was fascinated with the character depth, explorations of grief, and the twist I never saw coming in this suspenseful book. Molly Clarke is dealing with bottomless grief. Her youngest daughter died in an unthinkable accident, and for Molly, making her way through each day is like wading through floodwaters threatening to drown her. So she walks away--from her distant husband, her always-furious oldest daughter, her absent middle son, her broken life, and her relentless pain. At least, that's what the clues left behind seem to indicate. But the truth of what has occurred is horrible, terrifying, twisty--and absolutely fascinating. Don't Look for Me has disturbing echoes of Emma Donoghue's Room, and Walker's premise is often difficult to read and experience on the page. But I was pleasantly surprised by the generous character depth, explorations of grief, and self-actualization Walker offers within her suspenseful, gripping Don't Look for Me. Situations aren't black-and-white, and terrible pain sometimes leads to intense realizations in what feel like realistically messy routes toward closure. Our main protagonists are satisfyingly clever and resourceful, but they meet with plausibly complicated challenges, and nothing is too easy. There was a twist that I didn't see coming, and I thought it worked beautifully. Some of the wrap-up details near the very end felt a little bit unsatisfying, but resolving them cleanly might have felt too easy. I was intrigued by this book and flew through it in a day. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? My book club likes to tackle a mystery read as one of our summer books, and this was our most recent one. Wendy Walker has written multiple other books, including All Is Not Forgotten and Emma in the Night. I can't wait to read more by this author.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry's newest light fiction novel about best friends and polar opposites Poppy and Alex on their annual vacation; Now You Say Yes, Bill Harley's irresistible middle-grade novel about orphans on a cross-country journey as they desperately try to stay together as a family; and Don't Look for Me, Wendy Walker's suspenseful, character-driven novel about a mother coping with the worst grief imaginable while a lurking evil endangers key characters' safety. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry In Emily Henry's newest novel People We Meet on Vacation, best friends and polar opposites Alex and Poppy are on their annual vacation. Poppy is impulsive and fun-loving, and Alex would generally rather stay home and read than seek out adventure. The pair has long been emotionally inseparable despite living in different cities--Poppy in New York and Alex in their small hometown. But two years ago on their vacation, something BIG happened. It threatened their friendship and continues to loom over everything between them. They haven't talked about any of it, but Poppy has convinced Alex to join her again on vacation to try to recapture their effortless times together. Surely, she thinks, they can fix everything in a week. She'll just push down her strange feelings about Alex and pretend that fateful time never even happened. This is already feeling like a will they/won't they story I'll love. Henry's Beach Read was a favorite book of mine last year, and it made it into the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. 02 Now You Say Yes by Bill Harley In Bill Harley's newest work, the middle-grade novel Now You Say Yes, we follow newly orphaned fifteen-year-old Mari and her on-the-spectrum nine-year-old stepbrother, Connor, as they strike out on a cross-country journey in a desperate attempt to avoid foster care. Mari, who finds that she's tough in the face of adversity, is bent on staying with her brother, preserving the only family they each have left. But she's not legally an adult, and she doesn't have many options of who she can rely on to keep them safe. Harley's story about loyalty, loss, and pushing forward is beautiful; it's sometimes heartbreaking and consistently lovely. 03 Don't Look for Me by Wendy Walker Molly Clarke is dealing with bottomless grief. Her youngest daughter died in an unthinkable accident, and for Molly, making her way through each day is like wading through waters threatening to drown her. So she walks away--from her distant husband, her always-furious oldest daughter, her absent middle son, her broken life, and her relentless pain. At least, that's what the clues left behind seem to indicate. But the truth of what has occurred is horrible, terrifying, twisty--and fascinating. Walker's premise is difficult to read and experience on the page, but the character depth, exploration of grief, and self-actualization she offers in Don't Look for Me is pleasantly surprising and continues to build and grow. I'm flying through this tale and can't wait to find out what's what.

This is introspective literary fiction in which Krishan examines his young life, analyzes the romantic twists and turns he's experienced, and questions his place in the world. At the beginning of Arudpragasam's A Passage North, twentysomething Krishan has moved home to live with his mother and grandmother in the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Then he receives a message that Rani, his grandmother's former caregiver, who lived in the household with all of them for a time, has died suddenly at her family's rural home in the north. He begins the long journey to the war-torn area of northern Sri Lanka to pay tribute to Rani, and along the way he's forced to more fully consider the devastating effects of his nation's thirty-year-long civil war as he views the destruction along his route. The process of letting go of a person was always done in gradual stages, from what he'd seen, from the actual body to a reduced body to a symbolic body that was always kept in the house, an acknowledgment both of the difficulty of giving up the body and also of the fact that the bodies of the ones we love can never be fully renounced. A Passage North is introspective literary fiction in which Krishan examines his young life, analyzes the romantic twists and turns he's experienced, and questions his place in the world. We spend the bulk of the page time within Krishan's swirling thoughts and in his head. Much of the book focuses on Krishan's revisiting of the past as he considers various aspects of war and love, but his journey to the north inspires him to consider issues of class and loyalty and family in ways he hadn't before. This is a slow journey and often so lovely that I marked to save endless long passages about loss, letting go, aging, and interpreting the world. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Arudpragasam is also the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage. I received a prepublication digital copy of this title courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley.

Teenaged April has been dealt a difficult hand in life, and watching her struggle to make her way and connect with others in Allison Larkin's new novel alternately broke my heart and made it soar. My friend Suzanne brought this upcoming book to my attention, and I was immediately hooked by its premise. In Allison Larkin's new novel The People We Keep, April is struggling. She's failing out of school, working some shifts at a diner, and living in a nonfunctioning motorhome that her father won in a poker game. She lives in a town where she's never felt like she belongs, within a family where she doesn't feel that she matters. Her parents have allowed her to flounder, growing up without any sense of security and without providing any foundation for her life--and are largely not even present, forcing young April to fend for herself. (The level of neglect made me furious.) A borrowed car and an open mic night open up new possibilities, while a fight with her dad sharpens her focus on leaving. April flees, heading out on the road with few expectations, aside from changing the trajectory of her life. Along the way, she meets various people and must decide whether to open her heart to them or to keep herself at a distance; she considers what she truly wants from her life; and she writes songs to cope with and interpret the world around her. The songwriting feels at first as though it will loom large in the story, but ultimately it isn't nearly as weighty an element as April's constant fight to connect with and to to trust others--and to learn to trust herself. Not everyone she meets is worthy of her time or her faith, but she does intersect with imperfect, lovely gems of human beings, and these scenes broke my heart in the best way. Larkin makes small moments, including difficult ones, feel visceral and immediate. April has been dealt a difficult hand, and she's had to get tough because of her hardscrabble life, but Larkin doesn't revel in this as though it's heroic--April is desperate to feel safe enough to let down her guard. She's an appealing character who demonstrates immense strength but is secretly vulnerable. From early in the story I found myself yearning for April to settle in and allow herself to just be instead of running. I wanted some constancy for her life, even if it might feel too clean or easy for Larkin's story arc. The ending offers some resolutions (but I did wonder at the omission of what felt like a key character who might have been an integral and heartwarming part of April's life). I received a prepublication digital copy of this title courtesy of Gallery Books and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Larkin has also written several books under the name Allie Larkin. If you like stories about young protagonists facing challenges and realizing their fortitude, you might also like the standout books on the Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Stand-Alone Young Adult Books. For more books about songwriting and making music, check out Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music.

My very favorite books from July! Here are the books I most loved reading during the past month. I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads--or books you've read recently that just weren't for you? 01 This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger Krueger's writing is lovely, and while the adult characters sometimes feel like caricatures of evil villains, his young characters and the vivid setting of 1930s on the Mississippi are pretty irresistible. I listened to Krueger's This Tender Land as an audiobook, and I was satisfyingly immersed in 1930s life along with Odie, Albert, and their best friends Emmy and Mose. They encounter various Depression-era characters who are also struggling to get by, there's some chaste young love, and stresses and crises set off disagreements and conflicts. An adult figure with a magical-seeming ability to read people and to heal them becomes a pivotal and unlikely trusted party in certain crucial situations. The emergence of this character leads to somewhat of an exploration of faith and beliefs. The author has said that this story was inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and it does feel like a modernized take (in terms of cultural sensitivity and perspective) on that type of tale. The writing is lovely and the characters are pretty irresistible. For my full review of this book, please see This Tender Land. For my review of William Kent Krueger's book Ordinary Grace, click here. 02 Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells Fugitive Telemetry is full of more wonderfully grumpy Murderbot, flummoxed by humans' behavior and saving their skins at every turn. It's good to be back with grumpy Murderbot on Preservation Station. In Fugitive Telemetry, Murderbot attempts to solve the mystery of a murder--while generally annoyed and hindered by the slow humans and frequently dopey robots all around it. Fugitive Telemetry is full of wonderful passages in which Murderbot is flummoxed by humans' social conventions; protects various parties from certain destruction with instantaneous decision-making and astute threat assessment; and retreats from overwhelming interactions to watch its favorite show, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I might have liked more page time spent with Murderbot sorting through situations and humans' feelings; I found that I missed that aspect somewhat in this book. For my full review of this book, please see Fugitive Telemetry. Click here for my reviews of books 1 through 3 of the series, my review of the fourth book, Exit Strategy or my take on Wells's fifth book, Network Effect. 03 Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby This was my favorite read of the month. Razorblade Tears is a brutally violent story shadowed with heartbreaking regret. It's a fast read, and after my love of Blacktop Wasteland last year, I'm in for any of Cosby's writing. In S.A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears, two men are coping with the tragic, violent, mysterious deaths of their married sons. Derek and Isiah were estranged from their ex-con fathers, each of whom now regret every moment they didn't make sure the young men knew that they were perfect and beloved. This is a brutally violent story shadowed with heartbreaking regret. It highlights unlikely loyalties forged during desperate times, terrible scenes of cruelty, and shocking, mortal danger posed to everyone even cursorily connected to the situation at hand. This is a fast read, and I'm in for any of Cosby's writing. I loved his gritty, character-driven mystery-thriller Blacktop Wasteland so much that it made my Six Favorite Summer 2020 Reads list. I received a digital prepublication copy of this book--published today--courtesy of Flatiron Books and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see Razorblade Tears. 04 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Ursula unknowingly lives her life over and over again as Atkinson explores how choices large and small cause enormous repercussions for an individual--and sometimes for the entire world. Ursula isn't aware of the countless number of lives she lives. In Life After Life, Atkinson focuses on the character of Ursula, her relationships with members of her family, and details of life during World Wars I and II. This would be a captivating book even without the redoing-life element. But Atkinson's thrusting of Ursula back into her same existence as she shifts her circumstances slightly (with enormous repercussions); opens up her life to be bigger and more fulfilling (and often in these cases, longer); and develops inner strength, conviction, and self-assuredness--that's the real magic. I read (listened to) this immersive story about do-overs from Kate Atkinson at the recommendation of my wise friend Laura. I feared I'd get turned around in time by listening to the book rather than reading it, but narrator Fenella Woolgar's delivery kept me on track. I mentioned Life After Life in the Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories. For my full review of this book, please see Life After Life. 05 Blush by Jamie Brenner Blush centers around a family winery and the three generations whose lives orbit around the vineyard. It also features racy reads from the 1980s in the form of past and current book clubs for women, an element I really enjoyed. This is a lovely light fiction story with elements that offer appealing weight. Women explore traditional roles and push back against infuriating chauvinism; characters consider their life paths and how to find value and passion in them; siblings and spouses alternately support each other and vie to compete to have their needs met. Some characters heartbreakingly sell others short, and there's some satisfying remorse about mistakes made. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see Blush. And for more summer reads, see the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. 06 Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo The moments of redemption aren’t too easy, and I found the various threads building toward the amazing ending to be satisfying and delightful and messy and wonderful. In this second and final book in Bardugo's young adult fantasy King of Scars duology, Nikolai, Zoya, and Nina are king, general, and spy, respectively. They're each coping with loss, facing danger, and are bracing for destruction as they grapple with their own demons and struggle with feelings and connections during an uncertain time. I read this rich, almost-600-page story on vacation, and I think my own timing was one reason I found myself getting distracted from the story in a way I didn't while I was reading King of Scars. The page time in Rule of Wolves was more evenly split between different characters--and especially as related to The Darkling, I found this really interesting. However, I have a mild obsession with Nikolai and enjoyed spending more page time in his point of view in King of Scars. For my full review of this book, please see Rule of Wolves.

I had fun reading about the glamorous modeling-surfing-photography-music star family pedigree. But I felt as though the last hundred pages or so of Malibu Rising shifted into melodrama and too-convenient resolutions. Although her tennis pro husband's recent infidelity with a famous tennis player is putting a damper on things, in Malibu, California, famous model and skilled surfer Nina Riva--the daughter of legendary crooner Mick Riva--is about to throw her end-of-summer party. Malibu Rising tracks each hour leading up to and into the wee hours of the legendary party (and this year's unforgettable end), while interspersing scenes from the past, including Nina's parents' tangled love story, Nina's youth, her famous surfer/photographer siblings' stories, and others. As the party spins out of control, secrets of all kinds are revealed and key characters must each determine their courses of action as they find themselves at crucial forks in the roads of their lives. This is enjoyable light fiction, and I had fun with the various siblings' stories and with the glamorous modeling-surfing-photography-music star family pedigree. But I felt as though the last hundred pages or so of Malibu Rising shifted into melodrama, and from that point on, the story's conflicts and their resolutions felt soap opera-esque. The bulk of the story takes place in hour-by-hour increments over the course of one night with increasingly dramatic revelations and events taking place, and this made the clean, tied-up-with-a-bow wrap-ups and emotionally coordinated resolutions on all parts feel too easy. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of Daisy Jones & the Six, a book I really liked and that I included in the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music, as well as the books The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, After I Do, and others.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading The People We Keep, Allison Larkin's upcoming novel about a young protagonist shaping her life through songwriting and finding human connection; Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid's newest book about siblings surfing and forging their own paths on the coast of California; and Dark Roads, Chevy Stevens's suspenseful novel, out next week, about young women going missing in British Columbia. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 The People We Keep by Allison Larkin In Allison Larkin's upcoming novel The People We Keep, April is struggling. She's failing out of school, working some shifts at a diner, and living in a nonfunctioning motorhome that her father won in a poker game--in a town where she's never felt like she belongs. A borrowed car and an open mic night open up new possibilities while a fight with her dad sharpens her focus on leaving. So April heads out on the road with few expectations aside from changing the course of her life. She meets new people along the way and must decide whether to open her heart to them or to keep up her guard; she considers what she truly wants from her life; and she writes songs to cope with and interpret the world around her. I received a prepublication digital copy of this title courtesy of Gallery Books and NetGalley. 02 Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid Although her tennis pro husband's recent infidelity with a famous tennis player is putting a damper on things, in Malibu, California, famous model and skilled surfer Nina Riva--the daughter of legendary crooner Mick Riva--is about to throw her end-of-summer party. Malibu Rising tracks each hour leading up to and into the wee hours of the legendary party (and this year's unforgettable end), while interspersing scenes from the past, including Nina's parents' tangled love story, Nina's youth, her famous surfer/photographer siblings' stories, and others. As the party spins out of control, secrets of all kinds are revealed and key characters must each determine their paths as they find themselves at crucial forks in the roads of their lives. Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of Daisy Jones & the Six, a book I included in the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music. 03 Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens Chevy Stevens's Dark Roads is set in the wilderness and rugged terrain of British Columbia, along a highway where unsuspecting women traveling alone go missing from time to time--yet a predator never seems to be brought to justice. Teen Hailey McBride's father always taught her to be self-sufficient, to hunt, to stay tough, and to never drive Cold Creek Highway by herself. Now that he's gone, she's at the mercy of her aunt's controlling police officer husband, and Hailey decides to disappear into the wild in the desperate hope that the community assumes she's been taken by the highway killer and gives her up for dead. When Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek to try to track down her sister, who disappeared from the area, she unwittingly becomes a potential target herself--while inadvertently drawing attention to the truth about Hailey's disappearance. I received a prepublication digital copy of this title courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley.

Ursula unknowingly lives her life over and over again as Atkinson explores how choices large and small cause enormous repercussions for a person--and sometimes for the entire world. “It was a long time ago now, and it was yesterday.” Ursula didn't survive her own birth. But she got another go-round at life, and that time she survived being born--only to die young in an accident. When she lived her next life, she lived slightly differently, and her decisions shifted moments and changed the fates of Ursula and those around her. She isn't aware of the countless number of lives she lives, but she often feels buoyed or hindered by a feeling of déjà vu, and occasionally she feels compelled to take a different path, rush to check on a loved one, or take some other seemingly odd action, and she can't quite explain why. In Life After Life, Atkinson focuses her literary fiction lens on the character of Ursula, her relationships with members of her family, and details of life during World Wars I and II. This would be a captivating book even without the redoing-life element. But Atkinson's thrusting of Ursula back into her same existence as she shifts her circumstances slightly (with enormous repercussions); opens up her life to be bigger and more fulfilling (and often in these cases, longer); and develops inner strength, conviction, and self-assuredness--that's the real magic. At times Ursula's decision-making and her unknowing shifting of situations has immense personal impact (as it impacts her own or the fates of her family members) or worldwide-ranging effects (as when she finds herself in Hitler's close circle), it's never stale to experience some of Life After Life's events again, knowing certain things will eventually move in another direction. I read (listened to) this immersive story about do-overs from Kate Atkinson at the recommendation of my wise friend Laura. I feared I'd get turned around in time by listening to the book rather than reading it, but narrator Fenella Woolgar's delivery kept me on track. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I mentioned Life After Life in the Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories. Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Human Croquet are two other Kate Atkinson books I've enjoyed; she has also written the Jackson Brodie series and other books as well.

The moments of redemption aren’t too easy, and I found the various threads building toward the amazing ending to be satisfying and delightful and messy and wonderful. Rule of Wolves is the second and final book in Bardugo's young adult fantasy King of Scars duology. In book one, King of Scars, Nikolai was a king rebuilding the kingdom of Ravka following a long civil war. Bardugo's story line offered great twists and turns, intrigue, romance, and, as always, characters I loved becoming invested in. (I mentioned the author's Shadow and Bone series in the Greedy Reading List Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series, and I adored her Six of Crows duology even more.) Nikolai, Zoya, and Nina are king, general, and spy, respectively, and when Rule of Wolves picks up with these characters for book two, they're all coping with loss, facing danger, and are bracing for destruction as Fjerda invades Ravka. Large numbers of the magical Grisha are being cruelly exploited for their powers by the ruthless Shu queen, and the horrifically evil Darkling, nebulous shadowy forces, and ruthless leaders threaten the safety, peace, and future for all involved. None of this had been fated; none of it foretold.... They were just the people who had shown up and managed to survive. Practical Zoya struggles with her inconvenient romantic feelings for Nikolai (and vice versa) and begins to come to terms with the mysterious beast taking shape within her. Nina lives out a secret identity as a meek and mild young woman in Fjerda while attempting to uncover military plans and plotting the death of Jarl Brum--while protecting his daughter Hanne, who has become precious to her. Meanwhile, Nikolai is harboring enormous, dark secrets about his bloodline and kingship as well as the dark power within him. Revealing either truth would almost certainly lead to his undoing. I read this rich, almost-600-page story on vacation, and I think my own timing was one reason I found myself getting distracted from the story in a way I didn't while I was reading King of Scars. The page time in Rule of Wolves was more evenly split between different characters--and especially as related to The Darkling, I found this really interesting. However, I have a mild obsession with Nikolai and enjoyed spending more page time in his point of view in King of Scars. Bardugo explores interesting gray areas. Each character grapples with dark monster-like aspects of themselves--and must accept others' various darknesses as well. Fjerdan warmongering and the cruel programs of the Shu are condemned. While Ravka’s retaliatory destruction causes some guilt and regret in those carrying it out, the resulting battles and death seem presented as more necessary and acceptable to a reader who is naturally sympathetic to Ravkan characters' interests. She'd been too afraid to say yes to him, to show him the truth of her longing, to admit that from the first time she'd seen him, she'd known he was the hero of all her aunt's stories, the boy with the golden spirit full of light and hope. The Zoya and Nikolai love-that-must-not-be twists and turns without being melodramatic, but it's exquisitely drawn out. Bardugo provides misogynistic, cruel male characters a reader may love to hate as well as a megalomaniacal, lying queen Makhi. Releasing the physically manipulated khergud army--such a focus of book one--is a motivator for action in Rule of Wolves, but Bardugo also delves into the complicated aftermath, lost futures, and broken spirits resulting from the ruthless program. The moments of redemption in Rule of Wolves aren’t too easy, and I found the various threads building toward the amazing ending to be satisfying and delightful and messy and wonderful. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse is made up of her Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, and the King of Crows duology discussed here, which is expected to be the end of the interconnected series. She also wrote The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic, which are twists on folklore, fairy tales, and her own imagined stories that the characters in the Grishaverse might have heard as children; and Ninth House, a book for adults whose story line is not connected to the Grishaverse. The Shadow and Bone Netflix series offers intermingled Grishaverse characters and storylines, and a second season is in the works. I need to begin again after refamiliarizing myself with how the books connect; I was overwhelmed by sorting out the intersections of the books, their characters, and their timelines when I started, but I immediately loved the cast and the visually stunning settings.

The Second-Chance Books I love a good second-chance book in which the main character gets the opportunity to go back and try again, redo their life, shift their circumstances, or change the situation around them. It's an irresistible do-over premise for me: a flawed human gets another shot at existing in this unpredictable, problematic, glorious world--and appreciating it more fully while changing their original outcomes. Three more I'd like to read along these lines include: Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid; Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver Replay by Ken Grimwood Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought! Which other books should I add to my second-chance book list? Here are some of my favorite books on this theme. Two of these books also made it onto my Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes Greedy Reading List--along with four other great stories. 01 All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai There are flying cars in the alternate reality of this book. I think you should know that going in, because it’s not the only fantastic thing, but it is one of the fantastic things in Elan Mastai's All Our Wrong Todays. Our main protagonist Tom makes a decision that strands him in our version of the world, which feels like a dystopia to him. He encounters alternate versions of his loved ones and universe, which are jarring, but they grow on him. He strikes out to explore time and place in an effort to figure out which reality to preserve. Mastai provides a fascinating story with time travel, alternate realities, love, loss, humor, bravery, and moments that made me laugh out loud. I didn't always follow the logic as laid out in the book--including the supposed development of time travel itself and how time travelers affect realities--but I loved suspending my disbelief to be part of it. I loved All Our Wrong Todays! 02 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North “What is the point of me? Either to change a world--many, many worlds, each touched by the choices I make in my life, for every deed a consequence, and in every love and every sorrow truth--or nothing at all.” Harry August has been born (in a train station in 1919) many times. From his second birth on, he is born each time carrying the knowledge from his previous lives, yet nothing seems to change the fact that he will die and begin again. Until his eleventh life, when a young girl arrives at his deathbed. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message." Claire North has crafted a fascinating, twisty, thoughtful time-travel story. The first-person perspective drew me deeply into Harry's life. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is often funny, but North layers darkness into her book, as well as fascinating layers of betrayal. This story really hooked me. Side note: Claire North is a pen name for Catherine Webb, a young-adult author who wrote her first book, Mirror Dreams, when she was 14. 03 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Nora Seed feels like she can't go on. Life is too much, there's no hope for anything better, and her future contains nothing more for her. Her despair leads her to try to end her life. But she finds herself transported to an in-between state that is not life and not death, in the form of a library that exists outside of time and holds shelves full of the "books" of all of her possible lives, from that frozen moment (midnight) forward. Each possibility of a present and future is built upon different combinations of decisions Nora could have made in her life in the past. Some lives are notable, others comfortable, and still others are full of pain. Nora dips in and out of different lives, trying on careers, love lives, travel adventures, fame and fortune, and a settled family life. But not having experienced and remembered each moment that led to her various life options--which she joins in medias res--keeps Nora at a distance from them. I didn't feel emotionally invested in Nora's story although I appreciated the implications of her experiences and was very interested in what would happen. The ending isn't unexpected, but it does feel hard-fought and satisfying. 04 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Ursula didn't survive her own birth. But during her next go-round, she survived being born--only to die young in an accident. When she lived her next life, she met her demise another way. She often feels buoyed or hindered by a feeling of déjà vu, and occasionally she feels compelled to take another path, rush to check on a loved one, or take some other seemingly odd action, and she can't quite explain why. In Life After Life, Atkinson focuses her literary fiction lens on the character of Ursula, her relationships with members of her family, and details of life during World Wars I and II. This would be a captivating book even without the redoing-life element. But Atkinson's thrusting of Ursula back into her same existence as she shifts her circumstances slightly (with enormous repercussions); opens up her life to be bigger and more fulfilling (and, often longer); and develops inner strength, conviction, and self-assuredness--that's the real magic. I read (listened to) the immersive story about do-overs from Kate Atkinson, Life After Life, at the recommendation of my wise friend Laura. I'll post my full review of Life After Life next week! 05 In Five Years by Rebecca Serle Dannie is on the path to achieving her five-year goals in spectacularly efficient fashion. She goes to sleep one evening satisfied--but she wakes up in another life: with a strange apartment, a different boyfriend, and an alternate set of choices behind and before her. And perhaps most confusingly of all, in this second life she's lost some of her original, lifelong, rigid plans for her future, yet she's happy. Very very happy. She returns to her original reality, but Dannie can’t shake the possibilities and uncertainty created by what felt like an actual, temporary shift in her existence. What happened? But more importantly: What does that vastly different set of circumstances and her satisfaction within it mean about how she can and should live her life? Serle's In Five Years totally hit the spot for me, and it also wasn’t exactly what I expected. The setup seems like it’s a romance, but it’s really a story about loyalty and devoted friendship without easy or saw-it-coming resolutions, and not everything is as it seems. I loved it. 06 The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver Lydia had planned to spend the rest of her life with her childhood sweetheart and fiancé, Freddie, in their hometown of Shropshire, England. Now she's coming to terms with the recent and tragic loss of the person she loved and the future she had envisioned. But a medication aimed to help her sleep during this difficult time induces an incredible side effect: when she sleeps after taking it, she exists in a dreamworld where Freddie is still alive. She can see him, smell him, and touch him. He is unaware that this is a second reality for Lydia and unaware of anything odd about this life, and Lydia must fight to not seem as though she is grieving him--fortunately, this is made easier by how real he seems in this other timeline. Life in this alternate sleep reality continues branching off from the daytime life in which Freddie is gone; her sleeping life involves its own joys, tragedies, and increasingly complicated set of circumstances that show the realistically plausible challenges and crossroads the couple might have faced because of their real-life career tracks, senses of responsibility, and diverging paths toward happiness. Josie Silver's lovely book is heartwarming and doesn't feel overly sentimental or emotionally manipulative. The characters' feelings of anger, crushing grief, and hope feel real in both realities she's created. There's joy, and there's sadness, and there are messy routes toward forgiveness and cautious optimism. For my full review, please see The Two Lives of Lydia Bird.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Rule of Wolves, Leigh Bardugo's second and final book in the young adult King of Scars duology; I'm listening to Life After Life, Kate Atkinson's lovely book about second chances (and third, and more) at life; and I'm diving into A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam's recent literary novel about a young man considering his life as he travels to pay tribute to a recently deceased friend of the family. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo Rule of Wolves is the second and final book in Bardugo's young adult fantasy King of Scars duology. In book one, King of Scars, Nikolai was a king rebuilding the kingdom of Ravka following a long civil war--and with twists and turns, intrigue, romance, and characters I loved becoming invested in, Bardugo set up another great storyline. (I mentioned her Shadow and Bone series in the Greedy Reading List Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series.) Nikolai, Zoya, and Nina are king, general, and spy, respectively, and when Rule of Wolves picks back up with these characters, they're all coping with loss, facing danger, and braced for destruction as Fjerda invades. Meanwhile, Nikolai is harboring enormous, dark secrets--and revealing them would almost certainly lead to his undoing. 02 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson At the recommendation of my wise friend Laura, I'm reading (well, listening to) this immersive story about do-overs from Kate Atkinson. Ursula didn't survive her own birth. But during her next go-round with living, she survived only to die young in an accident. When she lived her next life, she lived through her birth and that earlier danger, but she met her demise another way. In Life After Life, Atkinson focuses her literary fiction lens on the character of Ursula, her relationships with members of her family, and with life during World Wars I and II. It would be a captivating book even without the redoing-life element. But Atkinson's thrusting of Ursula back into her same existence until she shifts her circumstances slightly (with enormous repercussions); opens up her life to be bigger and more fulfilling (and longer); and develops inner strength, conviction, and self-assuredness--that's the real magic. 03 A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam At the beginning of Arudpragasam's A Passage North, twentysomething Krishan has moved home to live with his mother and grandmother in the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Then he receives a message that Rani, his grandmother's former caregiver, who lived in the household with all of them for a time, has died suddenly at her family's rural home in the north. He begins the long journey to the war-torn area of northern Sri Lanka to pay tribute to Rani, and he's forced to more fully consider the devastating effects of his nation's thirty-year-long civil war as he views the destruction along his route. Arudpragasam is also the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage. Here he offers a literary fiction story in which Krishan examines his young life, analyzes his romantic twists and turns, and questions his place in the world. I received a prepublication digital copy of this title courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley.

I adored the romantic setup and seemingly ill-fated attraction in Saft's young adult fantasy-mystery, but I was dissatisfied with the reasoning and motivations in the final section. I loved the setup of Saft's romantic young adult fantasy novel Down Comes the Night. Wren is a loose cannon, a fierce soldier, intensely loyal, a magical healer, and she has an uncontrollable spirit--oh, and she's niece to the queen, who would like to be rid of her altogether. Hal is from a neighboring land and is known as the Reaper of Vesria. He's known to be cruel, ruthless, and he's Wren's sworn enemy, a deadly force who has destroyed her countrymen and women in the wars that seem constant between the kingdoms. When the two are unexpectedly thrown together, it becomes clear that Hal isn't precisely who Wren thought. She must determine whether to abandon the force of her formidable healing powers and leave him to die or let go of her long-held anger. Meanwhile she's desperate to solve the mystery of her fellow soldiers and friends who keep disappearing on patrols between kingdoms. Saft's premise is irresistible: supposed enemies realize they’ve been pitted against each other with liiiiies…and seem destined to become star-crossed lovers! The great young adult fantasy elements are all in place here: magic, healing, a defiant main protagonist with a conscience, loyalty, drawn-out romance, wonderfully faulted characters. Saft doesn't overdramatize the "love that must not be fulfilled" aspect, wonderfully structuring the reasons for (and the prolonged tension surrounding) the forbidden romance. There's even a Gothic undercurrent in this book, which I love. Yet in the last 100 pages or so I found myself growing impatient with some false-feeling elements that had significant repercussions for the plot: Certain characters were desperate to find their missing people and knew something dark and dangerous was going on...but huffily announced that they'd wait until they had a search warrant to pursue their potentially life-and-death-stakes lead. There's a key mentioned multiple times...so the confusion about where the all-important key might be felt nonsensical. Characters delay taking action on potentially urgent and lifesaving leads for days and undertake treacherous winter travel only in order to confirm basic facts already known and to reconfirm minor information that was already suspected. I felt dissatisfied with the logistics surrounding much of the resolving of the mystery--as well as with the outcome of that particular situation, because the careless delays seem to have potentially mattered in a significant way. A side note: the title felt so oddly vague that I kept forgetting what the book was called, which felt strange, because Saft's setting and characters were so captivating. I'd rate the first part of the book as 4.5 stars and the last 100 pages as 3 stars for me. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Saft is also the author of another romantic young adult fantasy novel, A Far Wilder Magic. I loved her character-building, her balance with the young romance, her fantastic, detailed setting, and her pacing for the vast majority of Down Comes the Night, and I'd definitely read more books by Allison Saft.

I appreciated learning about various key players in Black Bottom life, and I absolutely adored the vivid details Randall offered about everyday life during different eras, but the fifty-two sections and rambling pace of the book left me feeling unmoored. “...I’ve known women who could argue the paint off a wall and didn’t dream of law. I’ve seen girls who got raped, blamed themselves, not the man, then got talked into thinking sex was evil and they were dirty. And I have also seen women driving Cadillac cars wearing furs who have never voted. That’s what I set out to change at the Ziggy Johnson School of the Theatre. Autonomy, ambition, renewal, pride, and creativity are the five basic positions we teach.” Through the somewhat fictionalized voice of Ziggy, a real-life key player in the storied Detroit neighborhood of Black Bottom, Randall offers short sections about fifty-two mostly real-life characters who influenced the area over a period of decades. The structure and tributes are based on Catholic Saints Day books, and Randall is setting each scene with rich detail. I appreciated the book's highlighting of various key players in Black Bottom life, and I adored the details Randall offered about place, dress, food, and everyday life during different eras. I found this Ziggy take on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the brief summary of his own life's mission particularly interesting: “King doesn’t preach as I would like to hear him on how we treat each other and ourselves. His mind is focused on how the ofays treat us. He works one side of the street; I work the other. King doesn’t let himself get tired. Me, I’m tired of thinking about how white folks treat us, and that is why all year I work to create performances for an all-Black world.” But the pace of the book felt distractingly rambling to me. The book is structured as many sections of Ziggy's storytelling, so some of the meandering felt appropriate (if sometimes jarring). The book is made up of fifty-two relatively short chapters, which necessitates hustling along from story to story, but even within each section, it seemed like Ziggy the narrator was jumping from thought to thought in a way that left me feeling unmoored. The frequency of pithy remarks, zingers, and succinct rules of life added to the zigzagging, shifting tone. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? My book club heard Alice Randall speak last year at the virtual Verse & Vino, our local library foundation's annual fundraising event. We like to add books by some of the authors we hear to our reading list for the coming year. (That's how we ended up reading Kevin Wilson's unique Nothing to See Here and Alice Hoffman's The World That We Knew (featured in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II) last year, and that's how we came to read Black Bottom Saints this year.) The book also includes a recipe for a cocktail inspired by each person featured in Ziggy's account. That's fifty-two cocktails, if you're counting. And I can vouch for the bourbon-based Natchez Belle cocktail listed in the book; my amazing book club friend Sally made them for our last meeting, and they were great!

Fugitive Telemetry is full of more wonderfully grumpy Murderbot, flummoxed by humans' behavior and saving their skins at every turn. It's good to be back with grumpy Murderbot on Preservation Station. In Fugitive Telemetry, Murderbot attempts to solve the mystery of a murder--while generally annoyed and hindered by the slow humans and frequently dopey robots all around it. Fugitive Telemetry is full of wonderful passages in which Murderbot is flummoxed by humans' social conventions; protects various parties from certain destruction with instantaneous decision-making and astute threat assessment; and retreats from overwhelming interactions to watch its favorite show, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (although I might have liked more page time spent with Murderbot sorting through situations and humans' feelings; I found that I missed that aspect somewhat in this book). There are sections of sometimes tedious-feeling logistics, but the pacing of Fugitive Telemetry kept me engaged throughout. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Have I ever mentioned Martha Wells's Murderbot books and how much I love them? Oh, I have? Was it when I reviewed books 1 through 3 of the series? Or when I reviewed the next book, Exit Strategy? Or Wells's next one, Network Effect? Are you a Murderbot fan?

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Down Comes the Night, a young adult fantasy story featuring magical healing and warring kingdoms; Fugitive Telemetry, the newest book in Martha Wells's science fiction Murderbot series; and Black Bottom Saints, Alice Randall's immersive tribute to fifty-two Detroit heroes and heroines large and small--with a cocktail recipe inspired by each. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Down Comes the Night by Allison Saft I love the setup of Saft's romantic young adult fantasy novel, Down Comes the Night. Wren is a loose cannon, a fierce soldier, intensely loyal, a magical healer, and with an uncontrollable spirit--and she's niece to the queen, who would like to be rid of her altogether. Hal is from a neighboring land and is known as the Reaper of Vesria. He's known to be cruel, ruthless, and he's Wren's sworn enemy, a deadly force who has destroyed her countrymen and women in the wars that seem constant between the kingdoms. When the two are unexpectedly thrown together, it becomes clear that Hal isn't precisely who Wren thought. She must determine whether to abandon the force of her formidable healing powers and leave him to die or let go of her long-held anger. Meanwhile she's desperate to solve the mystery of her fellow soldiers and friends who keep disappearing on patrols between kingdoms. 02 Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells Have I ever mentioned Martha Wells's Murderbot books and how much I love them? Oh, I have? Was it when I reviewed books 1 through 3 of the series? Or when I reviewed the next book, Exit Strategy? Or Wells's next one, Network Effect? Well, it's good to be back with grumpy Murderbot on Preservation Station. In Fugitive Telemetry, Murderbot attempts to solve the mystery of a murder--while generally annoyed and hindered by the slow humans and frequently dopey robots all around it. Fugitive Telemetry is full of wonderful passages in which Murderbot is flummoxed by humans' social conventions; protects various parties from certain destruction with instantaneous decision-making and astute threat assessment; and retreats from overwhelming interactions to watch its favorite show, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. 03 Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall My book club heard Alice Randall speak last year at Verse & Vino, our local library foundation's annual fundraising event (during the pandemic it was held virtually). We like to include books by some of the authors we hear to our reading list for the coming year. (That's how we ended up reading Kevin Wilson's unique Nothing to See Here and Alice Hoffman's The World That We Knew--featured in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II--last year, and that's how we came to read Black Bottom Saints this year.) Through the voice of the fictional Ziggy, a dance instructor and key connector of various figures in the storied Detroit neighborhood of Black Bottom, Randall offers short sections about fifty-two mostly real-life characters who influenced the area over a period of decades. The structure and tributes are based on Catholic Saints Day books, and Randall sets each scene with rich detail. The book includes a recipe for a cocktail inspired by each person featured in Ziggy's account.

Castillo's Amish setting is intriguing, I didn't see the resolution of the mystery coming, and I was kept engaged while listening to narrator Kathleen McInerney. A rebellious young woman who left her Amish culture behind and became estranged from her family has returned to Painters Mill, Ohio. But her homecoming ends almost immediately in tragedy: she is brutally murdered in a motel on the outskirts of town. Chief of police Kate Burkholder, who was once part of the local Amish community herself, is called in and is shocked to identify the victim as Rachael Schwartz, a fun-loving, mischievous free spirit Kate babysat years earlier. The crime against Rachael is so vicious as to seem personal, and Kate must try to determine why Rachael returned to town, uncover her buried secrets, and figure out who would have wanted her dead. I listened to the audiobook version of this book--the first I've read in Castillo's thirteen-book Kate Burkholder series (all of the books are set in Amish country), although they've been on my to-read list for a long time. I wondered if it was fair of me to first dive into the story so late in the series, but in an illuminating interview between Castillo and her longtime narrator Kathleen McInerney, Castillo noted that each book is meant to stand alone, while readers following the books in order will note character development over time. I thought the characters sometimes seemed slow to catch on to the implications of events, but the story kept a steady pace. Brutal violence is at the heart of the mystery--and there's enough bashing people over the head that it seems unlikely the injured party could possibly survive. But Castillo's Amish setting is intriguing, I didn't see the mystery's resolution coming, and I was kept engaged while listening to narrator Kathleen McInerney's German dialect given to the Amish characters. The title Fallen seems to refer to Rachael's fall from grace, but the matter of determining who is pure and deserving of grace, who is forgivably faulted, and who is seemingly respectable yet driven by desperation to commit murder is more complex and surprising than it initially seems. I received a prepublication audiobook of this title courtesy of Macmillan Audio and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Did you know that Ohio (the setting of this book) has the highest population of Amish adherents? I didn't, until I listened to an interview with the author Linda Castillo! If you like books featuring female detectives, you might like Paula McLain's When the Stars Go Dark, about a missing persons detective coping with her own tragedy; the historical fiction story A Curious Beginning; or the campy Finlay Donovan Is Killing It.

Spyra's humor is edgy, dark, and far from politically correct as she plays up absurd and disturbing scenarios in the name of satire. This book! Spyra frequently made me verrrry uncomfortable as I read Big Time, her collection of stories. They're satirical, dark, edgy, bizarre, and often outrageous. I'm curious about what unsuspecting readers may think if they go into this one without warnings about dark subjects played up for amusement. Spyra seems eager to leap over the line that separates questionable from almost certainly offensive. She turns situations on their heads, but the majority of stories felt heavy-handed to me. The standout highlights of Big Time for me were two clever, funny stories I really liked, "The Secret Meeting of the Women’s Club" (featuring various real-life female celebrities as part of a private club through which they pull strings and wield power) and "Big Time” (in which a Golden Age movie star is plunged into the future, where her old-fashioned views and strategies come into question, but her spirited attitude turns out to be timeless). Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Spyra was a writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and for The Onion. Other short story collections I've reviewed lately include Sarahland by Sam Cohen, Half Wild by Robin MacArthur, and The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans.

Small moments in this young adult book ring true, and the story feels primarily about relationships, set against a witchy background. In the world of Griffin's young adult fantasy novel The Nature of Witches, witches control the weather. And (this part of the storyline may feel familiar) climate change has weather patterns spinning out of control. Destructive blizzards, devastating tornadoes, desperate heat, and shockingly bitter cold are alternately threatening the land around them--and endangering the lives of witches and shaders (regular humans) alike. Luckily, Clara is the most powerful witch in a generation. Unlike other witches whose powers peak during certain series, Clara's powers as an Ever span all of the seasons, and the promise of what she could achieve--all those she could help and save--is enormous. But she doesn't have a clue how to control her power, and she's destroyed some of those closest to her while trying to test it, so she's understandably hesitant to explore what's possible. The magical school setting reminded me of Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education, although the tone of this book is more romantic without an edge. There are lovely moments of humor interspersed with the action and lots of (literally) flowery language (characters in love communicate by magically creating flowers that hold symbolism). Small moments ring true, and the story feels primarily about relationships with a witchcraft background and setting. A chaste attraction involves lots of romance and a love that must not be (in order to save lives)--and I was up for all of it. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Griffin's second witch-focused, standalone book is scheduled for publication in 2022. If you like books about witches, you might like some of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully Witchy Books to Charm You.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading a bizarre, dark set of short stories by a former Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer, Jen Spyra; Rachel Griffin's young adult fantasy novel The Nature of Witches, in which witches control the weather and find romaaaance; and I'm listening to Fallen, my first book in Linda Castillo's thirteen-book Kate Burkholder series--each of which is set in Amish country. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Big Time: Stories by Jen Spyra This book! I'm not sure what to say (or even to think) about this book so far. Spyra is making me verrrry uncomfortable as I read her collection of stories, which are satirical, dark, edgy, bizarre, and often outrageous. This isn't your typical humor book, and I'm curious about what unsuspecting readers may think if they go into this one without an awareness that dark subjects are played up for amusement. Spyra may be aware of the line that separates questionable from likely offensive, but she often leaps over it. 02 The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin In the world of Griffin's young adult fantasy novel The Nature of Witches, witches control the weather. And (this part of the storyline may feel familiar) climate change is causing weather patterns to spin out of control. Destructive blizzards, devastating tornadoes, desperate heat, and shockingly bitter cold are threatening the land around them--and endangering the lives of witches and shaders (regular humans) alike. Luckily, Clara is the most powerful witch in a generation. But she doesn't have a clue how to control her power, and she's destroyed some of those closest to her while trying to test it. There are lovely moments of humor interspersed with the action and lots of (literally) flowery language; the characters at times talk extensively about flowers and plants. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley. 03 Fallen: A Novel of Suspense (Kate Burkholder #13) by Linda Castillo I'm listening to the audiobook version of Linda Castillo's mystery-suspense novel Fallen. This is the first book I've read in Castillo's thirteen-book Kate Burkholder series--all set in Amish country--although these have been on my to-read list for a long time. A rebellious young woman who left her Amish culture behind and became estranged from her family has returned to Painters Mill, Ohio. But her homecoming ends almost immediately in tragedy: she is brutally murdered in a motel on the outskirts of town. Chief of police Kate Burkholder, who was once part of the local Amish community herself, is called in and is shocked to identify the victim as Rachael Schwartz, a fun-loving, mischievous free spirit she had babysat years earlier. The crime against Rachael is so vicious as to seem personal, and Kate must try to determine why Rachael returned to town, uncover her buried secrets, and figure out who would have wanted her dead. I received a prepublication audiobook of this title courtesy of Macmillan Audio and NetGalley.

My very favorite reads so far this year! I post a monthly wrap-up of my favorite reads, but now that 2021 is halfway over, it feels like time to share the best books I've read in the past six months. Great Circle is my favorite book of the year so far! I also loved A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (see my five-star review below). Reading and adoring that book requires initially reading the first book in the series--which I recommend that you do. I loved Soulmate Equation for solid light fiction. It's fun and romantic with great characters. We Begin at the End is a great character-driven, suspenseful mystery. I was late to the reading game on Normal People because I thought I didn't want to read it--clearly I was wrong. The television adaptation was gorgeously heartbreaking as well. The Great Mistake feels like a beautiful love letter to turn-of-the-century New York and at times its tone reminded me of the lovely A Gentleman in Moscow. Have you read any of these? What are some of your recent favorite reads? Let's do some Bossy book talking! 01 We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker Walk is the chief of police in the small coastal California town where he grew up. Decades earlier his account of a terrible event sent his best friend Vincent to prison. Vincent has tried to make his own suffering as great as possible behind bars by eschewing distraction and comfort, and now he's about to be released. Duchess is a thirteen-year-old girl trying to keep her family together. Her mother Star is old friends with Walk and Vincent, and when Vincent reappears, the tenuous peace and calm Duchess and her steady family friend Walk have been able to secure for her household are disrupted. Walk and Duchess are an unlikely pair, a milquetoast cop and a defiant young teen. But both of the longtime family friends are used to disappointment and both are used to relying on themselves. Can they somehow prevent Vincent and Star from destroying themselves and everyone who cares about them, or are Walk and Duchess inadvertently adding to the collapse? For my full review of this book, please see We Begin at the End. Fun fact: Whitaker is eager to be in contact with his readers and will comment on Instagram if you mention his books! He seems like a kind fellow. If you like character-driven suspense and mystery books, you might also like John Hart's (grittier) books; for my review of his book The Unwilling, click here. Another (also grittier) author I like in this vein is S.A. Cosby; I loved Blacktop Wasteland last year (it was one of my Six Favorite Summer Reads) and I just read and enjoyed his newest book, Razorblade Tears. 02 A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green The ending to Green's duology has tremendous heart without ever flirting with sappiness, offers deep meaning without being pedantic, and it felt blissfully, naturally, and gloriously quirky and lovely. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is Hank Green's sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and is the final book in his Carl saga. It features the fantastic characters from book one, and the plot picks up with a new version of the fight to save humanity from interfering extraterrestrials. I just love love loved A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor so much. My son is reading it and isn't quite as enamored of it as I am, but he does think it's really good. Fun fact: the author is brothers with the prolific and talented young adult author John Green, and the two also put out science videos on YouTube. For my full review of this book, please see A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. And for my review of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, click right here. 03 Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead Maggie Shipstead's story spans the wilds of Prohibition-era Montana, the blustery Pacific Northwest, the unforgiving chill of Alaska, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and the movie-making business, and the stark, brutal dangers of Antarctica, from the early twentieth century to modern day. In interconnected stories--which felt equally compelling to me--Shipstead brings to life these disparate places and times and focuses on various colorful characters within them. The author has created two independent, defiant, appealingly strong young women split by time (and, secondarily, complex male characters the women love as family or romantic partners). Shipstead is a wonderful writer, and I loved every word of this. Both of the timelines had me hooked. I received a prepublication copy of Great Circle courtesy of Knopf Publishing Group and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see Great Circle. 04 Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren The Soulmate Equation is the latest book from the writing pair known as Christina Lauren, and I loved it. Single mom Jess is a data analyst. She's good at crunching the numbers for work, taking care of her daughter, and leaning on her grandparents (who raised her) for help, but she's not comfortable with the idea of dating again. But then her daring best friend (who writes sexy romance novels!) pushes her to consider a DNA-based, data-driven dating program that makes sense to her--and she receives an unheard-of 98 percent compatible romantic match with an unlikely partner. The story is steamy and romantic at times without being dramatic. I love the tone the writing team of Christina Lauren struck with this one! I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Gallery Books and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see The Soulmate Equation. 05 Normal People by Sally Rooney In Rooney's novel Normal People, Marianne, a solitary young woman in a cold, neglectful, abusive family, and Connell, a popular athlete whose mother cleans Marianne's house, grew up together in small-town Ireland but were essentially strangers. Toward the end of high school they begin to hesitantly connect. This intersection of their lives ultimately leads to broken hearts, self-realization, true love, devastating misunderstandings, betrayals, and a strongly forged link between them. Marianne and Connell's bond and the roots of their relationship aren't straightforward or simple, but their draw to each other becomes essential to each of them in feeling like their true selves. Toward the end of the book, Marianne reflects on a potential fracture in their situation--it isn't clear whether it's a temporary break or permanent--yet she is able to sit within the feeling that Connell and their years together (and apart) are an anchor of sorts, regardless of their status: “He brought her goodness, like a gift, and now it belongs to her.” The connection between Marianne and Connell is the beautiful, haunting, swirling source of misery, heartache, and joy and fulfillment in the book. Their link promises more than it ultimately delivers on the page, as they spend long period apart and confused, lonely or hurt, yet are deeply tied to one another. The ending is ambiguous but Rooney manages to convey peace within it. For my full review of this book, please see Normal People. Rooney has a new book scheduled for publication this fall, Beautiful World Where Are You. 06 The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee Andrew Green has been shot dead in front of his stately New York City home at the age of 83. He was elderly but remained an opinionated spitfire who hadn't felt he'd finished making incredibly significant contributions to society. The real but forgotten figure of Green was involved in a gloriously and absurdly extensive array of essential projects—the creation of Central Park, the founding of the Met Museum and the Natural History Museum, putting Boss Tweed behind bars, securing a more equitable New York public school system, establishing the New York Public Library, and combining Manhattan with Brooklyn and Queens into a greater New York. Lee's detail is just fantastic in terms of Green's emotions, hopes, dreams, everyday life at the time, and everything else in this epic story. The Great Mistake feels like a love letter to turn-of-the-century New York and a captivating story. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see The Great Mistake.

Krueger's writing is lovely, and while the adult characters sometimes feel like caricatures of evil villains, his young characters and the vivid setting of 1930s on the Mississippi are pretty irresistible. I listened to Krueger's This Tender Land as an audiobook, and I was satisfyingly immersed in 1930s life along with Odie, Albert, and their best friends Emmy and Mose. At the Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota, young American Indians taken from their families for forced "restructuring" (being forcibly cut off from their culture, traditions, and family members)--along with white orphans Odie and Albert--spend their days being worked relentlessly. They spend their nights desperately avoiding the cruelties and horrors they might suffer at the hands of the almost universally terrible and often caricatural evil adults in charge. Two adults in the children's orbit are heartbreakingly kind, but the reach of their power is limited. When events come to a head and the O'Banion brothers must flee down the Gilead River--in hopes of meeting up with the Mississippi and eventually hitting St. Louis and reuniting with a long-lost aunt--their recently orphaned neighbor Emmy and their steadfast best friend Mose don't hesitate to come along. They encounter various Depression-era characters who are also struggling to get by, there's some chaste young love, and stresses and crises set off disagreements and conflicts. An adult figure with a magical-seeming ability to read people and to heal them becomes a pivotal and unlikely trusted party in certain crucial situations. The emergence of this character leads to somewhat of an exploration of faith and beliefs. The author has said that this story was inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and it does feel like a modernized take (in terms of cultural sensitivity and perspective) on that type of tale. The writing is lovely and the characters are pretty irresistible. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Krueger also wrote Ordinary Grace, which I reviewed on the blog here, and he writes a mystery series (the first title is Iron Lake) set in the north woods of Minnesota that features Cork O'Connor, a former sheriff who is part Irish and part Ojibwe.

Blush centers around a family winery and the three generations whose lives orbit around the vineyard and also features racy reads from the 1980s in the form of past and current book clubs for women, an element I really enjoyed. Jamie Brenner's recently published novel Blush centers around a family winery and the three generations whose lives orbit around the vineyard. Hollander Estates has long been the respected grandfather of North Fork wineries on Long Island, and most members of the Hollander family took for granted that the winery would still be standing when great-grandchildren came along. But the push to shift production to meet current-day wine trends and demands; the disconnect between generations' plans for the business and for their individual futures; and basic, intensely complicated interpersonal family relations are all threatening the vineyard's existence. This is a lovely light fiction story with elements that offer appealing weight. Women explore traditional roles and push back against infuriating chauvinism; characters consider their life paths and how to find value and passion in them; siblings and spouses alternately support each other and vie to compete to have their needs met. Some characters heartbreakingly sell others short, and there's some satisfying remorse about mistakes made. There's some romance. Blush also focuses on racy reads from the 1980s in the form of past and current book clubs for women, an element I really enjoyed. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? In her Acknowledgments, Brenner mentions some authors who inspire her: Mary Kay Andrews, Elin Hildenbrand, Nancy Thayer, and Adriana Trigiani as well as Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins from her teen years. Are any of these favorite authors for you?

This is a brutally violent story shadowed with heartbreaking regret. It's a fast read, and after my love of Blacktop Wasteland last year, I'm in for any of Cosby's writing. In Razorblade Tears, two men are coping with the tragic, violent, mysterious deaths of their married sons. Derek and Isiah were estranged from their ex-con fathers, each of whom now regret every moment they didn't make sure the young men knew that they were perfect and beloved. Buddy Lee and Ike have sworn off their brutal pasts and all of the tangles and troubles that went hand in hand with them. Buddy Lee lost his job while mourning his son and is holed up drinking in his trailer, and Ike, who knows a Black man can't afford to put a foot out of line, has built his landscaping company from the ground up and stayed clean for years. But the cops seem to have given up on the case, the killers are still on the loose, and the men share a deep desire for vengeance. Their old days as hardened criminals could help them satisfy their thirst for revenge--as long as they're willing to potentially give up everything else in the process. This is a brutally violent story shadowed with heartbreaking regret. It highlights unlikely loyalties forged during desperate times, terrible scenes of cruelty, and shocking, mortal danger posed to everyone even cursorily connected to the situation at hand. It's a fast read, and I'm in for any of Cosby's writing. I received a digital prepublication copy of this book--published today--courtesy of Flatiron Books and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I was so excited to see that S.A. Cosby had a new book coming out. I loved last year's gritty, character-driven mystery-thriller Blacktop Wasteland so much that it made my Six Favorite Summer 2020 Reads list.

The first section of Lockwood's story about an internet darling is absurd, frivolous, vulgar, irritating, and frequently disturbing; the second section shocked me with its meaningful and poignant examinations of life and loss. No One Is Talking about This is fiction from Patricia Lockwood, the author of the memoir Priestdaddy. Lockwood is a poet, and Priestdaddy illustrated her truly quirky and off-kilter poet's view of the world. Part I of No One Is Talking About This is outrageous, frequently rude and exceedingly upsetting, clever, and annoying, and it's followed by a Part II that is poignant and often heartbreakingly lovely. In Part I of No One Is Talking about This, a social media darling undergoes an existential crisis and even wonders if her thoughts are being controlled externally. She is compelled to continue trying to engage and attempt to amaze those reading her absurd posts, and she frequently wonders what is real and what is constructed reality--and she begins to wonder what it's all for, anyway. This section of the book is presented in very short snippets that are often comments, jokes, questions, or pithy remarks; reading these somewhat mirrors the feeling of scrolling through the internet. In the main character's take on "the portal," as she refers to the internet, she straddles the line between relatable and startling. This first section of the book is largely satire, with weird, edgy moments that frequently venture over the line of social acceptability into wildly disgusting. Lockwood uses profanity and sex to shine a light on aspects of society, and this is purposely jarring. Yet kernels of these dark, hyperbolic glimpses into humanity and the swirl of social media--as well as the powerful shifts each makes in the other--often feel true and deeply disturbing. About the portal, the protagonist says: “It had also been the place where you sounded like yourself. Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other, through some erosion of wind or water on a self not nearly as firm as stone." But a dramatic, shocking change occurs in the main protagonist's situation in the second part of the book. The situation that arises in her life is so deep and important, the tone of the book shifts to reflect it. Part II of No One Is Talking About This is meaningful and poignant and heartbreaking, and it brought me to tears. Lockwood references the character's frivolity and revolting reliance upon others' attention and esteem from Part I, but the book has grown beyond such insanity and focuses on poetically exploring powerful existential matters. What does living fully mean? What is life? What is health? What are the essential experiences a human should experience before death? What is love? How can you fully love when life is fleeting and when the inevitable, looming loss will undoubtedly break your heart? There are too many beautiful, heart-wrenching passages from this section of the book to quote, and Lockwood's poetic view of the world is gloriously showcased in this section. The Acknowledgments allude to a real-life situation in Lockwood's family that was the basis for this second part of the book, which added a layer of meaning and heartbreak for me as a reader. Patricia Lockwood is a singular voice, and this book is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. But No One Is Talking About This is truly unlike anything I have ever read. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is a book that I really want to talk to someone else about. Have you read it? Let's do some Bossy book talking! If I could give a split rating, I'd give 3.5 stars for the cleverness of Part I--despite how disturbing I found it--and 5 stars for the heart-wrenching, pure beauty of much of Part II.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading an upcoming suspenseful thriller from Blacktop Wasteland author S.A. Cosby; a light fiction story that's multigenerational, features a winery backdrop, and references racy reads from the 1980s; and a story inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn about four young orphans evading danger and coming of age on the Mississippi in the 1930s. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby I was so excited to see that S.A. Cosby has a new book coming out next Tuesday. I loved last year's gritty, character-driven mystery-thriller Blacktop Wasteland so much that it made my Six Favorite Summer 2020 Reads list. In Razorblade Tears, two men are coping with the tragic, violent, mysterious deaths of their married sons. Derek and Isiah were estranged from their ex-con fathers, each of whom now regret every moment they didn't make sure the young men knew that they were perfect and beloved. Buddy Lee and Ike have sworn off their brutal pasts and all of the tangles and troubles that went hand in hand with them. Buddy Lee lost his job and is holed up drinking in his trailer, and Ike, who knows a Black man can't afford to put a foot out of line, has built his landscaping company from the ground up and stayed clean for years. But the cops seem to have given up on the case, the killers are still on the loose, and the men share a deep desire for vengeance. Their old days as hardened criminals could help them satisfy their thirst for revenge--as long as they're willing to give up everything else in the process. This is brutal and heartbreaking and wonderful so far. I received a digital prepublication copy of this book courtesy of Flatiron Books and NetGalley. 02 Blush by Jamie Brenner Jamie Brenner's Blush centers around a family winery and the three generations whose lives orbit around the vineyard. Hollander Estates has long been the respected grandfather of North Fork wineries on Long Island, and most members of the Hollander family took for granted that the winery would still be standing when great-grandchildren came along. But the push to shift production to meet current-day wine trends and demands; the disconnect between generations' plans for the business and for their individual futures; and basic, intensely complicated interpersonal family relations are all threatening the vineyard's existence. So far this is a lovely light fiction story that also focuses on racy reads from the 1980s in the form of past and current book clubs for women. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley. 03 This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger I'm listening to Krueger's This Tender Land as an audiobook, and so far I feel satisfyingly immersed in 1930s life along with Odie, Albert, and their best friends Emmy and Mose. At the Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota, Indian orphans (plus Odie and Albert) spend their days being worked relentlessly, disallowed from speaking their native language or adhering to cultural traditions. They spend their nights desperately avoiding the cruelties and horrors they might suffer at the hands of the almost universally terrible adults in charge. When events come to a head and the O'Banion brothers must flee down the Gilead River--in hopes of meeting up with the Mississippi and eventually hitting St. Louis and reuniting with a long-lost aunt--their recently orphaned neighbor Emmy and their steadfast best friend Mose don't hesitate to come along. The author has said that this story was inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and it does feel like a modernized take (in terms of cultural sensitivity and perspective) on that type of tale. The writing is lovely and the characters are irresistible so far. Krueger also wrote Ordinary Grace, reviewed on the blog here.

ICYMI: thirteen-year-old Frank Dunn experiences crises of faith during the unforgettably complicated and tragic summer of 1961 in his small Minnesota town. In small-town Minnesota in 1961, thirteen-year-old Frank Dunn is focused on following the inaugural season of The Twins, reading comic books, and drinking cold root beer floats from the local soda fountain. But when tragedy strikes the community (and specifically Frank's family: his minister father, artistic mother, musically talented sister, and his jaded younger brother), Frank must grow up quickly. Lies, betrayals, secrets, adultery, accidents, suicide, and murder shape the lives of those in New Bremen that fateful summer, and the Frank of forty years later recounts the mysteries and realizations that shaped him at the cusp of young adulthood. Krueger's characters felt real and appealingly faulted. I feared that the story was going to involve characters continually making bad decisions, which is a setup I have a difficult time reading, but Krueger offered more. The story grew and the characters evolved in a satisfying way. The "grace" of the title refers to the grace of God that Frank experiences during the crises and uncertainty and pain of that summer. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I'm reading (listening to) Krueger's This Tender Land and will share a review of that book soon. Krueger has also written eighteen books in his Cork O'Connor mystery series, including Desolation Mountain.

My very favorite books from June! Here's the gist of each of the books I most loved reading during the past month, in the order in which I read them: Namesake is Adrienne Young's second and, sadly, final book in her duology about the wonderfully strong, ruthless, clever young seafaring woman, Fable; A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, one of my two favorite reads of the month: Hank Green's second book in his quirky, lovely, character-driven, big-hearted science fiction duology; A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi; it involves messy feelings and grief, yet it isn't maudlin or sappy despite the tragedy and yearning at the book's heart; Soulmate Equation, my other favorite read of the month, Christina Lauren's heartwarming, funny story featuring strong friendships, plus it's steamy and romantic at times without being dramatic. I loved this one for a summer read!; The Last Thing He Told Me, Laura Dave's great mystery that offers unexpected (but not manipulative) twists and turns and explores wonderfully complex relationships; One of Us Is Next, Karen M. McManus's great, character-driven sequel to her young adult mystery One of Us Is Lying; and The Great Mistake, Jonathan Lee's lovely, tragic, wonderfully detailed story around the forgotten, real-life figure of Andrew Green and his essential contributions to New York at the turn of the twentieth century. What are some of your recent favorite reads--or books you've read recently that weren't for you? Let's do some Bossy book talking! 01 Namesake by Adrienne Young Namesake is the second and, sadly, final book in Young's duology about a wonderfully strong, ruthless, clever young seafaring woman. I adored the first book in the series, Fable, in which the title character relied heavily on her survival skills and guts. In Namesake, Fable discovers the truth behind looming secrets whose answers her mother took to her grave, establishes the link between the mysteries and dangers facing her crew, and must decide whether to prioritize her lost-and-found love or the makeshift family toward whom she's come to feel loyal. I love Young's tone and the characters she's created in this series. Namesake was fantastic--although I didn't completely buy the wrap-up at the end and had a few other nitpicky issues. For my full review of this book, please see Namesake. For my review of Young's first book in this series, Fable, click here. 02 A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green This was one of my very favorite reads of the month! The ending to Green's duology has tremendous heart without ever flirting with sappiness, deep meaning without being pedantic, and it felt blissfully, naturally, and gloriously quirky and lovely. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is Hank Green's sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and the final book in his Carl saga. It features the fantastic characters from book one, and the plot picks up with a new version of the fight to save humanity from interfering extraterrestrials. I just love love loved A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor so much. The author is brothers with the prolific and talented young adult author John Green, and the two also put out science videos on YouTube. For my full review of this book, please see A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. For my review of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, click here. 03 A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi Miriam lost her husband and teenage twins a year ago and, unsurprisingly, since then she hasn't been able to face any semblance of moving forward with her life. In fact, she's in danger of imploding her career as her beloved church's music director and alienating her friends, and she isn't sure how to cope. When she stumbles across her daughter's elaborate road trip plan, which Talia created for her then-soon-to-be-empty-nester parents, Miriam feels compelled to take the trip. She brings along her family members' musical instruments, envisioning a sort of musical pilgrimage (this is not too easy and is quite lovely), and she meets unexpected characters along the way, encounters dangerous weather, and begins to come alive again--despite her reservations and guilty feelings about breaking from her dedicated mourning. Basi treats the reader with respect and doesn't insert melodrama into an already complex and fraught setup. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Alcove Press and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see A Song for the Road. 04 Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren This was my other favorite book of the month. The Soulmate Equation is the latest book from the writing pair known as Christina Lauren, and I loved it. Single mom Jess is a data analyst. She's good at crunching the numbers for work, taking care of her daughter, and leaning on her grandparents (who raised her) for help, but she's not comfortable with the idea of dating again. But then her daring best friend (who writes sexy romance novels!) pushes her to consider a DNA-based, data-driven dating program that makes sense to her--and she receives an unheard-of 98 percent compatible romantic match with an unlikely partner. The story is steamy and romantic at times without being dramatic. I love the tone the writing team of Christina Lauren struck with this one! I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Gallery Books and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see The Soulmate Equation. 05 The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave In The Last Thing He Told Me, Hannah has just celebrated her one-year anniversary of marriage to Owen, she may be making the slightest inroads with her teenaged stepdaughter Bailey--and she may finally be getting used to living on a houseboat too. But then a stranger shows up at the door with a cryptic message for Hannah, the news says Owen's company was fudging its numbers, and Owen is suddenly nowhere to be found. Laura Dave sets up a well-rounded, fascinating mystery; Hannah and Bailey are pushed to work together to try to find Owen; a US marshal and federal agents are eager to locate him and to pressure his family for information; and the only lawyer Hannah knows to turn to for help is her ex-fiancé, who she left at the altar years ago. The story is wonderfully interpersonally complicated. Dave explores powerful messages of loyalty, acts of true love and sacrifice, and bravery. I didn’t see where this was going and I loved the gutsy, smart power play toward the end. Great, great book. For my full review of this book, please see The Last Thing He Told Me. 06 One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus Last year, in McManus's great young adult mystery One of Us Is Lying, the Bayview Four cut through the destructive gossip app taking down reputations and revealing secrets, and they managed to trace a mysterious murder to its source. This year, gossip problems and power plays are back, in the form of forced Truth or Dare. Friends and siblings are pitted against each other, and some of our main protagonists are faced with crises of their own. McManus offers the wonderful established characters of Maeve, Nate, Phoebe, Bronwyn, and Knox from book one--along with other old favorites and new faces--in a set of intertwined, mysterious circumstances. McManus offers a little of everything in a fantastic mix of teamwork, a health scare, sibling tensions, some teenaged foolishness that leads to trouble, glimpses of satisfying romance, and wonderfully complicated loyalties and betrayals. I listened to this as an audiobook and I couldn't wait to find out what happened. For my full review of this book, please see One of Us Is Next. Click here to read my review of One of Us Is Lying. 07 The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee Andrew Green has been shot dead in front of his stately New York City home at the age of 83. He was an elderly man but remained an opinionated spitfire who hadn't felt finished making incredibly significant contributions to society. The real but forgotten figure of Green was involved in a gloriously and absurdly extensive array of essential projects—the creation of Central Park, the founding of the Met Museum and the Natural History Museum, putting Boss Tweed behind bars, securing a more equitable New York public school system, establishing the New York Public Library, and combining Manhattan with Brooklyn and Queens into a greater New York. Lee's detail is just fantastic in terms of Green's emotions, hopes, dreams, everyday life at the time, and everything else in this epic story. The Great Mistake feels like a love letter to turn-of-the-century New York and a captivating story. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see The Great Mistake.

The various Sarahs of Cohen's stories take on frequently unorthodox searches for self and meaning--while coping with versions of the universal challenges women have faced throughout time. Each of the Sarahs in Cohen's stories copes with societal pressures, identity crises, and misogyny--in ways that felt both familiar to me as a reader yet unique to the characters and their situations. Sarahland is frequently offbeat and often seemingly shallow--yet weighty truths underlie the sometimes bizarre circumstances of each story. The stories are sometimes dark and darkly funny, and the situations range from that of a Sarah who is being paid to act out necrophilia fantasies; to a Sarah who is a reimagined trans biblical character; to a Buffy-obsessed Sarah writing fan fiction to understand her romantic journey. Cohen's collection of stories felt rooted where universal experience intersects with the uniqueness of Any Woman’s experiences in the world, and the author's unusual setups and captivating tones add layers of interest. I felt uneasy a good bit of the time I was reading this, and I never predicted where Cohen was taking me. Gems of details of certain eras (a tin of lip balm, designer jeans, burned CDs, the existence of OkCupid) cement the reader entertainingly in specific times and places. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I mentioned this book (along with Last Summer at the Golden Hotel and The Maidens) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 6/8/21 Edition. Cohen also wrote Withering Leaves, a novel about love and life that was published in 2019.

Young adult Josie's origins--specifically her immaculate conception--have overshadowed everything else in her life. Now she must delve into the darkness of her history to try to save her mother--and uncover her own true identity. Young adult Josie is Girl One, the first of nine baby girls who were famously conceived without male sperm years ago on the now-dismantled commune The Homestead. Josie has spent her life plagued by criticism, misogyny, obsessed fans, and the weight of the fascinating, unusual circumstances of her conception. Yet she embraces her past and aims to further the scientific work of her deceased father figure, the director of the scientific advancements achieved on the commune, Dr. Joseph Bellanger. Josie's studies and desire to learn more about her "virgin birth" drive a wedge between Josie and her mother, and Josie isn't sure exactly why. When her mother disappears, Josie begins to track down the other Girls, and together the young women discover strange, unique powers as they rely on each other and attempt to unravel their shared history. They're learning to trust that the circumstances of their creation do not determine their full identities--or what they're capable of. Murphy presents the Girls as they emerge in all of their feminist, powerful glory. The men in their world are cruel, powerful, and frequently evil, but when they band together, the girls' superhuman abilities repeatedly shield them from the most grave danger--and unlock remarkable freedom for each of the women long plagued by their complicated histories. The journey isn't too easy, there are some identity realizations, love connections, and plot twists, and the ending of Girl One satisfied me. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book through Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Girl One reminded me at times of Body of Stars, but this book held together more successfully for me, and I believed in the characters and their situations more completely. Both of the books felt like young adult reads to me.

Lee shapes a lovely, tragic, wonderfully detailed story around the forgotten, real-life figure of Andrew Green and his essential contributions to New York at the turn of the twentieth century. Andrew Green has been shot dead in front of his stately New York City home at the age of 83. He was an elderly man but remained an opinionated spitfire who hadn't felt finished making incredibly significant contributions to society. The real but forgotten figure of Green was involved in a gloriously and absurdly extensive array of essential projects—the creation of Central Park, the founding of the Met Museum and the Natural History Museum, putting Boss Tweed behind bars, securing a more equitable New York public school system, establishing the New York Public Library, and combining Manhattan with Brooklyn and Queens into a greater New York. In The Great Mistake, inspectors take into custody the man who shot Green; they work to understand the shooter's odd story and to retrace Green's last steps in hopes of understanding the reason for his death. But primarily this is a story about a man coming into his own during that time and in that place. The book tracks backward as young Andrew Green struggles to realize his immense potential despite a modest start in life. He constantly feels that he must disguise and push down his personal and professional desires, and this push and pull affects his life path and his intense drive to achieve. Lee's detail is just fantastic in terms of Green's emotions, hopes, dreams, everyday life at the time, and everything else in this epic story. The Great Mistake feels like a love letter to turn-of-the-century New York and a captivating story. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? The Great Mistake reminds me somewhat of Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow, a book I also adored. Lee is also the author of High Dive, Joy, and Who Is Mr. Satoshi?

Much of this book about a rock star and his (unrecognized) teenaged soulmate didn't ring true enough for me to feel that I could buy into the story. Moonlight Drive relies upon a seemingly implausible premise: Nick, a rock star, doesn’t recognize the person who provided the pivotal, years-long emotional connection in their early teens. The new band “groupie” was really Nick's dearest friend in his (recent) teens. She once went by the name Dani and now goes by Daniela--another reason it doesn't feel like it would be an enormous stretch for Nick to make the jump to identifying her. Daniela soon lives on the bus, is invited to share rooms with the band, and tantalizes the star--all without being recognized by the soulmate of her youth. Nick engages in outrageously destructive, hurtful behaviors. Exploring this brokenness could have been intriguing, but I found his character frustrating and off-putting. He absurdly feels he deserves congratulations for the small measures that he considers restraint (in one example that felt staggering, he receives oral sex from a stranger with his soulmate sitting next to him rather than having sex with the woman, and he seems to feel this is a sacrifice). The relationship at the heart of Moonlight Drive just didn't hold up for me. There were some steamy moments, but the sexiness often felt violent, the racy talk didn’t land for me and at times felt jarring and aggressive, and most importantly, to me, the characters' emotional connection didn’t feel real. A style note: there are many instances of interrupted speech--so much so that sometimes I wasn’t even sure what the characters were getting at--and frequent instances of what felt like unrealistically intuitive mind-reading as characters pieced together what they imagined the other to be trying to express. This felt unnecessarily confusing. I was puzzled as to why the "secret" that Nick, a professional musician, played piano and wrote songs would be considered too sensitive or personal to be made known. This felt forced and a little silly. I also wasn't clear as to how his broken, consistently self-destructive drug- and alcohol-fueled implosions allowed him to feel irresistible, even to the most grounded characters. Even solid mentor Jim inexplicably says to Dani about Nick's appeal, "Keep spending time with him, on him, you're gonna fall in love." The specter of Nick's addiction overshadows much of the story, and this element felt tragic and compelling. Hadley's descriptions of the clothing styles of the musicians of the era were entertaining and a highlight. But much of this felt too convenient and unrealistic for me, and reactions frequently didn’t seem to follow from events. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book through NetGalley and Chameleon Media Productions. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like stories about music, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music or the books A Song for the Road or The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading a romantic book about aspiring musicians with intertwined pasts; the rich fictional history of an esteemed figure in early twentieth century New York and his mysterious death; and a science fiction-slanted story about young women shaped by their unusual creation stories who seek to form their own futures. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Moonlight Drive by A.R. Hadley The title of this book (which is explained as coming from a Doors song) evokes romantic ideas, and so far the story reads to me like a soap opera-esque romance. Moonlight Drive relies upon a seemingly implausible premise--one in which a famous singer doesn’t recognize the person who provided the pivotal years-long emotional connection in their early teens. The “groupie” (really the childhood friend) lives on the bus, is invited to share rooms with the band, and tantalizes the star--all without being recognized by the soulmate of her youth. Currently there are many instances of interrupted speech--so much so that sometimes I wasn’t sure what the characters were getting at--and frequent instances of what feels like unrealistically intuitive mind-reading. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book through NetGalley and Chameleon Media Productions. If you like stories about music, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music or the books A Song for the Road or The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes. 02 The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee Andrew Green has been shot dead in front of his stately New York City home at the age of 83. He was an elderly man, but still a spitfire who wasn't finished making incredibly significant contributions to society. The real-life, forgotten figure of Green was involved in a gloriously absurd array of real-life, essential projects—the creation of Central Park, the founding of the Met Museum and the Natural History Museum, putting Boss Tweed behind bars, securing a more equitable New York public school system, establishing the New York Public Library, and combining Manhattan with Brooklyn and Queens into a greater New York. Inspectors take into custody the man who shot Green; they work to understand the shooter's odd story and to retrace Green's last steps in hopes of understanding the reason for his death. So far this is a love letter to turn-of-the-century New York and a captivating story that reminds me somewhat of Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley. 03 Girl One by Sara Flannery Murphy Young adult Josie is Girl One, the first of nine baby girls who were famously conceived without male sperm years ago on the now-dismantled commune The Homestead. She's spent her life plagued by criticism, misogyny, obsessed fans, and the weight of the circumstances of her birth. Yet she embraces her past and aims to further the scientific work of her father figure, Dr. Joseph Bellanger, who tragically died in a fire on the commune years earlier. Josie's studies and desire to learn more about her "virgin birth" drive a wedge between Josie and her mother, and Josie isn't sure exactly why. Her mother's disappearance leads Josie to track down the other Girls, and together they discover strange, unique powers as they rely on each other and attempt to unravel their shared history. They're learning to trust that the circumstances of their creation do not determine their identities or what they're capable of. I'm taken with this story so far. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book through Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley.

This is a great, character-driven sequel to McManus’s young adult mystery One of Us Is Lying. Last year, in McManus's great young adult mystery One of Us Is Lying, the Bayview Four cut through the destructive gossip app taking down reputations and revealing secrets, and they managed to trace a mysterious murder to its source. This year, gossip problems and power plays are back, in the form of forced Truth or Dare. Friends and siblings are pitted against each other, and some of our main protagonists are faced with crises of their own. McManus offers the wonderful established characters of Maeve, Nate, Phoebe, Bronwyn, and Knox from book one--along with other old favorites and new faces--in a set of intertwined, mysterious circumstances. McManus offers a little of everything in a fantastic mix of teamwork, a health scare, sibling tensions, some teenaged foolishness that leads to trouble, glimpses of satisfying romance, and wonderfully complicated loyalties and betrayals. I listened to this as an audiobook and I couldn't wait to find out what happened. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? McManus also wrote Two Can Keep a Secret and The Cousins; she also has a book set for publication this fall, You’ll Be the Death of Me. Click here to read my review of One of Us Is Lying.

Dave offers unexpected twists and turns and complex relationships in this great mystery. In The Last Thing He Told Me, Hannah has just celebrated her one-year anniversary of marriage to Owen, she may be making the slightest inroads with her teenaged stepdaughter Bailey--and she may finally be getting used to living on a houseboat too. But then a stranger shows up at the door with a cryptic message for Hannah, the news says Owen's company was fudging its numbers, and Owen is suddenly nowhere to be found. Laura Dave sets up a well-rounded, fascinating mystery; Hannah and Bailey are pushed to work together to try to find Owen; a US marshal and federal agents are eager to locate him and to pressure his family for information; and the only lawyer Hannah knows to turn to for help is her ex-fiancé, who she left at the altar years ago. The story is wonderfully interpersonally complicated. The story offers unexpected twists and turns without manipulating the reader or relying on red herrings. The characters’ piecing together of the situation is realistically intricate, doesn’t feel too easy, and is never tedious. The relationship between stepmother Hannah and her stepdaughter Bailey, whose mother has died, is fraught and complex, yet Dave offers hard-fought, minor miracles of peace and joy amid the various tensions. Dave explores powerful messages of loyalty, acts of true love and sacrifice, and bravery. I didn’t see where this was going and I loved the gutsy, smart power play toward the end. Great, great book. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is my first Laura Dave book. Have you read Hello, Sunshine, The First Husband, Eight Hundred Grapes, or any of her others? The Last Thing He Told Me has me ready for more from this author. Another recent mystery I enjoyed was Who Is Maud Dixon? Click here for my review. You can always search by category on the blog; to see posts tagged as Mystery, click here and take a look!

The Robot Books I love a good artificial intelligence- or robot-focused story, and these six (plus, in several cases, their sequels) really captivated me. Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought! Which other books should I add to my to-read robot book list? (Yes, I did say that out loud and heard how gloriously nerdy that sounded.) 01 The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells I've read five of the six books in Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries series, and three more books are planned (yay!). The first four in the series are novellas; Network Effect is the fifth book (and the first full-length book) in the set, and I haven't yet read Fugitive Telemetry, which was published this past spring. SecUnit is a fantastic main character; it's grumpily and charmingly obsessed with keeping its people safe and with not being touched or talked to about feelings. It gleans tips about holding conversations and functioning around others by watching its favorite show, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon; it befriends other AI beings; it's constantly and cleverly problem-solving; it sulks and likes to veg out with its media; and it grudgingly becomes attached to certain humans in its orbit. The Murderbot series is funny and poignant and odd and wonderful. Click here for my glowing reviews of the first three books in this series and click here for my reviews of Exit Strategy and Network Effect. 02 Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson This story features supporting AI and robot characters in an intriguing futuristic setting. Lora Beth Johnson hooked me immediately with the premise of Goddess in the Machine and with main protagonist Andra's voice. Teenage Andra wakes up after being cryogenically preserved for a century-long journey to a new planet. She's a little creaky and sore, sure, but she's ready to be reunited with the team, which includes her mother and the rest of her family, plus many others involved in the complex project. They'll begin the work of bravely populating and building a society on this new planet. Except...Andra soon realizes she wasn't sleeping for 100 years. She was asleep for 1,000. The people, terrain, and language are not what she studied for or expected, everyone she once knew has already lived and died--oh, and the general population, whoever they are, thinks she's a goddess, and they've been waiting excitedly for her to wake up and save them. There's a twist/double twist I didn't see coming, and I found the whole story compelling. For my full review, please see Goddess in the Machine. The sequel, Devil in the Device, is set for publication in August 2021. 03 Machinehood by S.B. Divya In her debut novel, Divya sets the scene in the world of 2095. Humanity around the world is reliant on homemade and commercially manufactured pills--for health, for work focus, for managing bots, for healing, for sleep, and for transitioning between all of the above. The economy runs on robots, partially augmented humans, and humans desperately trying to compete with artificial intelligence and survive in the gig economy. Space! Robots! Artificial intelligence! I wished for more page time spent on everyday tasks and activities (cooking, shifting household modules, travel, and communicating), which were all carried out in Jetsons-level, fascinating, futuristic ways. But Divya is too busy crafting strong female main protagonists (complete with working mother guilt, which exists in the future too) as they: navigate ethical considerations such as pressures on workers and workload expectations; consider modifications to the body to enable faster or more strenuous work; manage the implications of a backlash against artificial enhancements; and face society's inability to extricate itself and the worldwide economy from a reliance on pills. The management of many large-scale issues and their side effects are shown in shades of gray rather than black-and-white, including the meaning and value of personhood; the definitions of health, autonomy, and freedom; sometimes-necessary compromises; and the promise for the future of the world. For my full review of this book, please see Machinehood. 04 Skyhunter by Marie Lu Skyhunter's on this list because of the augmented humans in the book. Lu offers a story about refugees desperately trying to escape becoming conscripted into the Federation army; elite Striker fighters trying to salvage their society despite the Federation's widespread and evil efforts; and the demonization of the "other." A mysterious prisoner from the front arrives who could be friend or foe, and our main protagonist Talin must figure out whether to destroy him or trust him with her life--before things unravel irrevocably for her and her fellow warriors. The surprising ending made my heart stop. Then I remembered that this was the first in a series and that the story would continue past the final complications and shocking events, so I did not hurl the book through the window. There's complex motivation here, as well as clashes between idealism and realism and editorialization about class and race--plenty of substance and depth to make it feel like a book for adults rather than necessarily a young adult title. The sequel is set for publication in September 2021. For my full review of this book, please see Skyhunter. 05 An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a gloriously oddball book with lots of heart. In the middle of the night on a New York City street, April and her friend Andy stumble across something truly weird--a giant metal soldier sculpture that reminds them of a samurai. They happily record a video with the sculpture, which they call Carl, and upload it to YouTube. The next day, the world is changed. Carls have cropped up in cities throughout the world. What is the meaning of these robotlike creatures? Are they neutral, are they sinister, or might they be here to save humanity? The faulted character of April May was wonderful, and I was fascinated by the way her actions and hopes allowed a peek into a fame- and attention-seeking existence. Also: Robin! And: Carl—! For my full review of both books in the Carls series, see An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. 06 Sleeping Giants (Themis Files #1) by Sylvain Neuvel A girl named Rose in rural South Dakota falls into a hole that has intricate carvings covering the walls and wakes up in the palm of an enormous robot hand. Where did it come from? What do the carvings mean? What is the purpose of any of this? Years later Rose is a world-renowned physicist working to unlock the secrets of the hand and the curious artifacts, but the mysteries persist. The interview structure keeps the characters at a distance from the reader, yet Neuvel allows their spoken-only participation in the book to express their growth, hopes, and fears. The characters are relating events that have already happened through the lenses of their own points of view, creating the potential for unreliable narrators, characters who are hiding important information, and many resulting twists and turns. Neuvel explores concepts of personal responsibility, how the possibility of life beyond Earth affects everything, and how manipulation and observation--potentially by other beings in the solar system--shape behavior. Also: the ending--! The next books in this series are Waking Gods and Only Human, and I liked them both.

ICYMI: MacArthur's stories, set in rural Vermont, are tragic, beautiful, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. MacArthur, who is from Vermont and lives on the farm where her grandparents lived and where she was born, here offers stories spanning forty years, featuring women, men, and young people tied to the beautiful and wild land of rural Vermont and to each other. I loved these vaguely interconnected, often beautifully and minorly (or majorly) tragic but never overblown stories set in rural Vermont. The themes feel potentially universal to other small, rural communities. The author has an eye for the details that bring characters to life and a gift for showing readers the grit, emotion, imperfection, and beauty related to the setting that shapes them. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? MacArthur is also the author of the mystery Heart Spring Mountain. If you like short stories, check out The Office of Historical Corrections--a very different short story collection I thought was great.