DNF: Mothered, Weyward, The Dinner Party: A Tragedy

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Mothered: I keep trying each new release from Zoje Stage, but they just don't live up to Baby Teeth.


Weyward: I was attracted to the summary and use of the Macbeth spelling of the word "weird." I hung on with this one until 25% but one of the three storylines was infuriating (plus used a trope I can't stand and never would have even picked up the book if I had known it was going to be used) and the other two were so drawn out that I was bored to death.


The Dinner Party: Drawn to it because it had twins and a dinner party (duh, the title, right?) But the dinner party is only a few pages long. Then we dive into grief and an eating disorder.

Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook

Author: Josh Ku

Publisher: ABRAMS

Release Date: 1.24.23

Publisher’s Summary 

A modern, brashly flavorful guide to cooking Taiwanese-American food, from Brooklyn’s lauded Win Son, Win Son Bakery, and Cathy Erway, celebrated writer and expert on the cuisine

Josh Ku, born in Queens to parents from southern Taiwan, and Trigg Brown, a native Virginian whose mentor was a Taiwanese-American chef, forged a friendship over food—specifically, excellent tsang ying tou, or "flies’ head," a dish of chopped budding chives kissed with pork fat. Their obsession with Taiwanese food and culture propelled them to open Win Son together in 2016. The East Williamsburg restaurant quickly established itself as a destination and often incurs long waits for their vibrant and flavorful Taiwanese-American cuisine.

Ku and Brown have teamed up with Cathy Erway, Taiwanese food expert and celebrated writer, to create this book which explores and celebrates the cuisine of Taiwan and its ever-simmering pot of creative influences. Told through the eyes, taste buds, travels, and busy lives of Ku, Brown, and Erway, this book brings the cuisine of this misunderstood island nation into the spotlight. With 100 creative, yet accessible recipes, this book will unravel the history of this diaspora cuisine. While featuring classic dishes and well-known favorites, this cookbook also stretches this cuisine's definition, introducing new dishes with brazen twists that are fun, flavorful, and decidedly American-born in style.

My Review

I was excited to receive my colorful copy of Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook on a dreary January day. In addition to interesting dishes that I have never heard of like flies' head (spoiler alert, there are no flies in the dish) this cookbook also has recipes for items I know I love but had no idea how to make like lamb wontons, milk bread, and bolo bao (pineapple buns.) I'm not sure what will be first up for me to cook, probably niu rou mian (beef noodle soup) or sticky rice with sausage, shrimp, and mushrooms. The Sloppy Bao is also a strong contender as I believe it would likely be a success with my family of eaters. I also want to try the sesame waffles (paired in a recipe with fried chicken) so bad that I may finally break down and buy a waffle maker. In addition to all the new dishes, I find the final chapter on sauces, spices, and recipe builders extremely helpful because this is where I struggle the most when trying to produce any Asian dishes. 

In addition to the amazing recipes, this cookbook features several interviews, educational sidebars, and insight into Taiwanese-American history and culture. I learned so much during my first overview and am looking forward to diving more deeply into each section. 

The Writing Retreat

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Writing Retreat 

Author: Julia Bartz

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Release Date: 2.21.23

Publisher’s Summary 

The Plot meets Please Join Us in this psychological suspense debut about a young author at an exclusive writer’s retreat that descends into a nightmare.

Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement.

But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell—they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she’s desperate to discover the truth and save herself.

A claustrophobic and propulsive thriller exploring the dark side of friendships and fame, The Writing Retreat is the unputdownable debut novel from a compelling new talent.

My Review

When I first came across this title several months ago I thought "oh yes...gimme!" Then I found my buddy Deb @lonestarwords (who has the closest reading style to mine) didn't like it and thought "uh oh." I didn't totally discount it before diving in, but I was cautiously optimistic and prepared for a probable DNF. Well, I loved it, but can totally see why she didn't. 

Six young women have been invited to an exclusive writing retreat, hosted by bestselling horror author Roza Vallo at her super isolated (nearest neighbor 15 miles away) sprawling mansion, Blackbriar. The women are not only enthralled with learning from a literary icon, but the best manuscript produced during the retreat will also get a book deal with Roza's publisher. Stakes are high and this idyllic writing retreat quickly devolves into a complex game of scheming and, well...shit just goes totally off the rails.

I especially loved that this novel is layered with lots of stories (the attendees' and Roza's personal stories, the multiple manuscripts, and the myth and history of the haunted mansion.) There is also a heavy theme and discussions of who owns what stories (creative trade of ideas among writers, intentional/unintentional intellectual property theft, plagiarism, and lack of oversight within the book publishing industry, etc.)  

It's hard to make comparisons to other stories here in my review without giving some of the plot and scenes away so I will simply say that this is modern gothic horror at its best. 

The Farewell Tour

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Farewell Tour

Author: Stephanie Clifford

Publisher: Harper

Release Date: 3.7.23

Publisher’s Summary 

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a rich and riveting novel with the exquisite historical detail and evocative settings of The Cold Millions and Great Circle that tells the story of one unforgettable woman's rise in country and western music.

It's 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.

Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the tour: the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.

As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian's youth--the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of Nashville--and her middle-aged life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in the male-dominated world of country music, including the hard choices she makes as she tries to redefine music, love, aging, and womanhood on her own terms.

Nearing her final tour stop, Lil is forced to confront those choices and how they shaped her life. Would a different version of herself have found the happiness and success that has eluded her? When she reaches her Washington hometown for her very last show, though, she'll undergo a reckoning with the past that forces her to reconsider her entire life story.

Exploring one unforgettable woman's creativity, ambition, and sacrifices in a world--and an art form--made for men, The Farewell Tour asks us to consider how much of our past we can ever leave behind.

My Review

The Farewell Tour spans the years from the Great Depression to the 1980s, through the eyes of Lena Thorsell aka "Lillian Waters," one of the most hardscrabble, determined, and self-destructive protagonists I've ever encountered. I recommend this widely and especially if you love an underdog story, the movies A Star is Born and Coal Miner's Daughter, or if you have a musical background (a lot of details about instruments, sheet music, arrangements, etc).

The massive amount of research necessary for this novel is evident in the endless details and it's no wonder why, author Stephanie Clifford was an investigative journalist and a New York Times reporter for almost a decade. As a matter of fact, Clifford wove the story of Lillian's life in such great detail, that I had to keep reminding myself she was actually a fictitious character.  

This will likely be chosen for someone's celebrity book club so go ahead and pre-order your copy now! 

The Crane Husband

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Crane Husband 

Author: Kelly Barnhill 

Publisher: Tordotcom

Release Date: 2.28.23

Publisher’s Summary 

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.

Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

My Review

Another slim (118 pages) novel to add to your reading list. The mother of the story brings home a crane and despite the fact that he is a giant bird, it isn't difficult to understand the symbolism of an otherworldly interloper changing the family's dynamic. I'm not sure how to categorize this one. Is it magical realism? Is it horror? Well, the daughter is dealing with the demands of high school, so definitely horror. 

Stone Blind / Arch-Conspirator

  

I received a copy of these releases from the publishers in exchange for honest reviews.

Title: Arch-Conspirator 

Author: Veronica Roth

Publisher: Tor

Release Date: 2.21.23

Publisher’s Summary 

From dystopian visionary and bestselling phenomenon Veronica Roth comes a razor-sharp reimagining of Antigone. In Arch-Conspirator, Roth reaches back to the root of legend and delivers a world of tomorrow both timeless and unexpected.

Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.

Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but Antigone’s parents were murdered, leaving her father’s throne vacant. As her militant uncle Kreon rises to claim it, all Antigone feels is rage. When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest.

But her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.

My Review

You can't turn around these days without a fairytale or mythological retelling popping up. Some are smart and provide genuine joy at reading a new twist on an old story and some are just "easy to read" versions for the "modern" reader. I was not impressed with Stone Blind but am appreciative that it may educate more people about the details of this terribly problematic myth (weren't they all?) and the fact that Medusa was indeed the victim. However, if you are looking to experience a science-fiction, dystopian, and feminist retelling of Antigone, let me direct you to the short story/novella (128 pages) Arch-Conspirator. There are viruses, gene editing, power plays, citizen uprisings, arranged marriages, and a spaceship--this is definitely unlike any other mythological retelling I've ever read. 

Sweetlust

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Sweetlust

Author: Asja Bakić, Jennifer Zoble (Translator)

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

Release Date: 2.14.23

Publisher’s Summary 

The eleven stories in Sweetlust interweave feminist critique, intertextuality, and science fiction tropes in an irreverent portrait of our past, present, and future.

In a dystopian world with no men, women are "rehabilitated" at an erotic amusement park. Climate change has caused massive flooding and warming in the Balkans, where one programmer builds a time machine. And a devious reimagining of The Sorrows of Young Werther refocuses to center a sexually adventurous Charlotte.

Asja Bakić deploys the speculative and weird to playfully interrogate conversations around artificial intelligence, gender fluidity, and environmental degradation. Once again Bakić upends her characters' convictions and identities—as she did in her acclaimed debut Mars—and infuses each disorienting universe with sly humor and off-kilter eroticism. Both visceral and otherworldly, Sweetlust takes apart human desire and fragility, repeatedly framing pleasure as both inviting and perilous.

My Review

This science/speculative fiction, feminist short story collection was just off-kilter enough to keep me guessing and unique enough to keep me reading. Releasing in the US on Valentine's Day, I strongly recommend this for your sweetheart or BFF if they like kooky and sexy modern feminist fables. 

Madame Restell

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist

Author: Jennifer Wright

Publisher: Hachette 

Release Date: 2.28.23

Publisher’s Summary 

“This is the story of one of the boldest women in American history: a self-made millionaire, a celebrity in her era, a woman beloved by her patients and despised by the men who wanted to control them.”

In Madame Restell, readers are instantly transported to the glamorous mansions and bejeweled carriages of pre-Gilded Age New York, where they meet our eponymous heroine: the city’s premiere abortionist. An industrious woman who built her business from the ground up, Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting edge of healthcare, and her bustling “boarding house” provided birth control, abortions, and medical assistance to thousands of women—rich and poor alike. As her practice expanded, her notoriety swelled, and Restell established herself as a prime target for tabloids, threats, and lawsuits galore. But far from fading into the background, she flaunted her wealth defiantly, parading across the city in designer duds and expensive jewelry, rubbing her success in the faces of the many politicians, publishers, religious zealots, and male competitors determined to bring her down.

Unfortunately for Madame Restell, her rise to the top of her field coincided with “the greatest scam you’ve never heard about”: the campaign to curtail women’s power by restricting their access to healthcare. For centuries, midwives and female practitioners, like Restell, had tended to public healthcare needs of both men and women. But after the birth of the medical clinic, newly-minted male MDs were eager to edge out their feminine competition—by forcing women back into the home and turning medicine into a standardized, male-only practice. At the same time, a group of powerful, secular men—threatened by women’s burgeoning independence in other fields—persuaded the Christian leadership to declare abortion a sin, rewriting the meaning of “Christian morality” to protect their own interests. By unraveling the misogynistic and misleading lies that put women’s health in jeopardy, Wright simultaneously restores Restell to her rightful place in history and obliterates the faulty, fractured reasoning underlying the very foundation of what has since been dubbed the “pro-life” movement.

Thought-provoking, character-driven, boldly written, and feminist as hell, Madame Restell is required reading for anyone and everyone who believes that when it comes to women’s rights, women’s bodies, and women’s history, women should have the last word.

My Review

I'm not sure how I've studied women's healthcare and the history of abortion (with at least 20 years of analytical reading and a women's studies degree) and not heard about Madame Restell. Her story may stand out in its details of her wealth and lack of secrecy but the services she provided were also more quietly provided by numerous women during her time, before, and after. I found it interesting to learn so much about a particular person and would recommend this to anyone not familiar with the history of birth control and abortion in America, specifically in the early 1900s. 

The Skeleton Key

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Skeleton Key

Author: Erin Kelly

Publisher: Mobius

Release Date: 1.24.23 in US

Publisher’s Summary 

THIS REUNION WILL TEAR A FAMILY APART...

Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family's insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried – gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore's pelvis remained hidden.

The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous degree. People sold their homes to travel to England and search for Elinore. Marriages broke down as the quest consumed people. A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. Stalked by fans who could not tell fantasy from reality, his daughter, Nell, became a recluse.

But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose.

From the bestselling author of He Said/She Said and Watch Her Fall, this is a taut, mesmerising novel about a daughter haunted by her father's legacy...

My Review

Another long book and another 5-star review!

Please let this be what 2023 continues to bring me. 🙏🏻

Coming in at over 500 pages, this murder mystery thriller is long, twisty, and features an extensive cast of characters (seriously, pay attention as each one is introduced because they are challenging to keep straight.) The Churchers and the Lallys are friends, partners, in-laws, and neighbors. Frank and Cora Churcher are parents to Eleanor (Nell) and Dominic. Lal and Bridget Lally are parents to Rose, who is married to Dominic (see what I mean.) Switching between the 1970s, 1990s, and current days, the story unfolds of The Golden Bones, a treasure-hunting picture book game. Originally published in 1971, the book is about to have a 50th-anniversary collector’s edition released, with each book featuring an individually stamped number and a QR code to download an interactive app (compared to Pokemon Go.) While the new game allows players to collect a virtual skeleton, the original work had fans combing the countryside for hidden bone "jewels," leading to some shocking actions by Bonehunters (super fans.) From this already full storyline there are multiple others expertly woven to create a book that I could not wait to get back to every single time I set it down. There is murder, artistic conceit, betrayal, competition, and a small storyline featuring a character named Rhiannon that was the icing on the cake for me. I really couldn't count how many jaw-droppers were in this novel. I want to say to the mainstream, basic, boring, and formulaic mystery writers out there who keep giving us lazy writing and lame "twists"...take some notes, because THIS is how it's done. 

Collected Works

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Collected Works 

Author: Lydia Sandgren 

Publisher: Astra House

Release Date: 1.31.23

Publisher’s Summary 

High Fidelity meets Where'd You Go Bernadette in this Swedish runaway bestseller, a work of pure literary nostalgia for times just past.

Several years after the disappearance of his wife Cecilia, Martin Berg is tumbling into a life crisis. The owner of an ailing Swedish publishing house, he's left wondering what could have been.

Meanwhile, Martin's old and much more remarkable friend, the artist Gustav Becker, is visiting Gothenburg, plastering billboards across the city that feature the eyes of his greatest muse, Cecilia Berg.

Feeling out of place and restless in the city, Martin's daughter Rakel finds a possible clue to her mother's fate and her world begins to unravel.

A family saga of several generations, Collected Works is a story about enduring love, absence, friendship, and art in the intersection of truth and fiction.

My Review

Despite the title, this is not a collection of works. At just shy of 600 pages, this translated debut novel spans decades and immerses the reader in the lives of Martin, his best friend Gustav, and his future wife Cecilia from their university/post-university years through today. When Martin, now a publisher, asks his daughter to review a translated work for possible publication, Rakel stumbles upon a thread that may lead her to answers about her mother's disappearance. 

I took so many notes throughout my reading in an attempt to properly review this masterpiece but I know I will not be able to do it justice so I'm just going to ramble on for a bit. I loved tagging along with Martin and Gustav as they partied, studied, and discussed art. I loved peering into Cecilia's mind to explore her passion for psychological and philosophical theories, applications, and translations. I loved dropping in to have "a Paris year" in 1986, experience the art market in the late eighties, vacation at family summer homes, and live in cramped artists' apartments. I loved laughing at their obliviousness when they thought that children wouldn't change their lives. "He could rock his baby’s stroller with one foot while he read manuscripts" quickly morphs into "back then, life had fit around his writing, not the other way around." 

As the carefree days of their youth become more distant, the characters accept the reality that "a person’s life is finite from the start, everything that happens does so at the expense of something else." One person accepts this change with what seems to be nothing more than a sigh, while the other two dig in their heels to take their own paths. While this novel is full of Swedish cultural references that might not be fully appreciated by American readers it is perfect for readers who love stories set at universities, coming-of-age stories, stories about art and artists, and stories about the all-consuming aspects of parenthood. 

I also have to include this gem of an ode to reading:

 

"Reading gives you access to worlds other than your own. You can test out being an adulterous Russian noblewoman or an alcoholic mailman who frequents prostitutes. You can tag along on an outrageous road trip across North America. You can be anyone."

Lydia Sandgren (b. 1987) is the eldest of seven siblings brought up in the west of Sweden. She has studied music and philosophy, and is a practicing psychologist today, living in Gothenburg, Sweden. Collected Works is her debut novel.

The Promise of a Normal Life

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Promise of a Normal Life 

Author: Rebecca Kaiser Gibson

Publisher: Arcade

Release Date: 2.7.23

Publisher’s Summary 

For readers of Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth Strout, and Katie Kitamura, the indelible journey of a quiet young woman—the “silent person” in the Seder—finding her way.  

Hailed as “radiant and transporting” (Margot Livesey), The Promise of a Normal Life is a poet’s debut novel, so evocative of life as lived that it transports you to a time and place you can practically see, touch, and feel. The unnamed narrator is a fiercely observant, introverted Jewish-American girl who seems to exist in a private and separate realm. She's the child of a first-generation doctor and lawyer—whose own stories have the loud grandeur of family legend—in an America where Jews are excluded from the country club across the street. Her expectations for adulthood are often contradictory. In the changing landscape of the 1960s, she attempts to find her way through the rituals of life, her geography expanding across the country, across the ocean, and into multiple nations.

Along the way, she meets a glamorous hairdresser on a cruise ship to Israel, loopy tarot-card-reading passengers, and Alice-in-Wonderland lawyers in Haifa. There’s a blue-eyed all-American college boyfriend, a mystified tourist agent in the Lofoten Islands, a handsome eligible rabbi in LA, a righteous and self-absorbed MIT professor, and a clandestine, calculating lover in Boston. Eventually, she finds her own compass, but only after being swept to several distant shores by many winds.

My Review

I found this novel to be transportive but suffocating. The unnamed Jewish-American narrator is the child of a first-generation doctor and lawyer, questioning her place in her family and the world in the 1960s. Her mother is both cold and inattentive while simultaneously controlling. When meeting her future mother-in-law, she "was struck by how much Tom’s mother seemed to admire her son. I didn’t know how to understand a mother who made room for her child’s maturity." The Promise of a Normal Life takes place in a world of privilege but the narrator is unsure of every step. She drifts from her family home to her marital home in a haze, but like many women of her time, she can't quite put her finger on why she's unhappy or even decide what she wants. The author's poetry background shines through in this novel's writing. 

I recommend this to someone looking for a quiet read, or as part of the publisher's summary suggests "for readers of Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth Strout, and Katie Kitamura, the indelible journey of a quiet young woman—the 'silent person' in the Seder—finding her way."

 

Tell Me One Thing

  I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Tell Me One Thing 

Author: Kerri Schlottman 

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Release Date: 1.31.23

Publisher’s Summary 

Outside a rural Pennsylvania motel, nine-year-old Lulu smokes a cigarette while sitting on the lap of a trucker. Recent art grad Quinn is passing through town and captures it. The photograph, later titled “Lulu & the Trucker,” launches Quinn’s career, escalating her from a starving artist to a renowned photographer. In a parallel life, Lulu fights to survive a volatile home, growing up too quickly in an environment wrought with drug abuse and her mother’s prostitution. Decades later, when Quinn has a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art and “Lulu & the Trucker” has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount, Lulu is surprised to find the troubling image of her young self in the newspaper. She attends an artist talk for the exhibition with one question in mind for Quinn: Why didn’t you help me all those years ago? Tell Me One Thing is a portrait of two Americas, examining power, privilege, and the sacrifices one is willing to make to succeed. Traveling through the 1980s to present day, it delves into New York City’s free-for-all grittiness while exposing a neglected slice of the struggling rust belt.

My Review

I've already started my Best Books of 2023 list because of this book. 

Clocking in at just 216 pages, Tell Me One Thing circles around a single Polaroid photo taken in 1980 and spans the years between its creation and the photographer's 2019 artist retrospective. Following both the artist's and subject's storylines, readers are given up close examples of "two Americas." Each woman faces many of the same obstacles, but their experiences are wildly different. Quinn watches her loved ones waste away from AIDS and drugs while she struggles to make a career out of her photography. Lulu tries to scrabble together a bare-bones existence, feeling "she’s been running behind all her life, trying to catch up to something." After an arrest, she wonders "why is she the one here, in the cell" causing me to envision Blake Lively's hospital bed scene in The Town. 

In addition to heartwrenching, raw scenes of Quinn and Lulu's hungers, betrayals, and acts of forgiveness, author Kerri Schlottman layers themes of permissions, privacies, and the ownership of art. I will recommend this gut-punch novel all year to anyone who will listen, while impatiently awaiting Schlottman's next work. This reading experience has also reignited my mission to dive deeper into independent press offerings because unfortunately I'm just not finding stories like this coming out of the "big" mainstream publishers. 

Kerri Schlottman is the author of Tell Me One from Regal House Publishing. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Dillydoun Review, Belle Ombre, Women Writers Women’s Books, Muse Apprentice Guild, and The Furnace. Her writing won second place in the Dillydoun International Fiction Prize, was longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction, and was a 2021 University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize semifinalist.

VenCo

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: VenCo

Author: Cherie Dimaline

Publisher: Random House / William Morrow

Release Date: 2.7.23

Publisher’s Summary 

Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

My Review

Any book lover knows that sometimes the right book finds you at the right time. That is very much the case with VenCo. After a very upsetting stretch of holiday travel, this book was the perfect piece of escapism my poor, anxiety-ridden self needed. I was swept away on a magical road trip full of riddles and network connections. I got lost in the character and setting details, and eagerly anticipated the answers that would come when the seven spoons finally came together. I think I would have enjoyed this book whenever I would have read it, but it holds a special place in my heart for transporting me into a story during a time when I needed it most. 

Nothing Fancy

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Nothing Fancy

Author: Alison Roman

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Release Date: 10.1.2019

Publisher’s Summary 

An unexpected weeknight meal with a neighbor or a weekend dinner party with fifteen of your closest friends—either way and everywhere in between, having people over is supposed to be fun, not stressful. This abundant collection of all-new recipes—heavy on the easy-to-execute vegetables and versatile grains, paying lots of close attention to crunchy, salty snacks, and with love for all the meats—is for gatherings big and small, any day of the week.

Alison Roman will give you the food your people want (think DIY martini bar, platters of tomatoes, pots of coconut-braised chicken and chickpeas, pans of lemony turmeric tea cake) plus the tips, sass, and confidence to pull it all off. With Nothing Fancy, any night of the week is worth celebrating.

My Review

The full title of this cookbook is "Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over" and I just have to laugh because I am not having anyone over, I just want some unfussy food for myself. 😆After perusing the book in its entirety, I'm going to have to say that this chef's style is strange to me. I found the DIY martini bar and Baked Potato Bar odd choices for guests, and if "the beautiful dramatic presentation of storing wine in your sink or bathtub is *chef kisses fingertips*" is a cutting edge concept, I know this book won't have any tips I haven't heard a million times before. As for the recipes, they've caused me to realize I am more of a purist. I don't want peanuts with my steak and kale has no business ruining a perfectly good pizza. On a further personal note, it seems every other recipe features my most despised ingredient--fennel. If you love fennel, this may be the cookbook for you. 

Overall, I really do love the design and layout of this cookbook; the cover and interior photos are sharp, bright, and inviting. I might try the Overnight Focaccia or the Creamy Cauliflower and Onion Gratin but I don't think this collection will be landing on my "favorites" shelf.