Hello and happy Monday! TBH last week was a bit of a meh reading week. These books were fine. But I am nothing if not committed to these mini reviews (and I know you wait on the edge of your seat every Monday morning for them, hehe). Books marked with a * were gifted to me, and books marked with a ^ I was paid to read.

Out Of Step, Into You by Ciera Burch* - I was really excited for this book since I was a huge fan of Burch's debut novel. Unfortunately, though, the plot was sort of like one conversation stretched out to book length. I did enjoy the main characters' complicated history with each other, and the exploration of class difference. There was a lot of depth to the story, just not in the main relationship.

The Price of Mercy by Tristen Hannah^ - I've been into survival stories lately (I blew through all available episodes of Blair Braverman's "What To Carry, What To Burn" podcast in about a week) so this story was welcome right now. The central relationship was so toxic, though. I'm not sure I would have finished it if I wasn't paid to read it. However, I did appreciate that the ending was kind of vague and not a happily ever after.

Fair Market Value by Hailey Edwards* - This is a supernatural mystery with a little bit of romance thrown in, and I did quite enjoy it. The world reminded me of The Undertaking Of Hart and Mercy. The one thing that brought me down on it was that one of the potential love interests was not only a cop but a weirdly possessive one, given that he hadn't seen or spoken to the FMC in several years. I think I will continue the series, though, assuming they don't get together.

This past week was busy busy for me so there wasn't a lot happening on the reading front, but let's get into it. Books marked with a * were gifted to me.

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston* - This was a reread for me, as it was my Spicy Book Club's pick this month. I know this book was divisive when it came out, and I'm glad to say I'm still firmly on the I LOVE IT side. The descriptions of the food and countryside are just so glorious. I am also a fan of how instead of alternating POVs each chapter, it switches once halfway through the book. I think that helps keep the miscommunication from being too frustrating.

Together We See by Ari Tison* - I have never read a book starring the Bribri people of Costa Rica, and this YA mystery made me feel like I was right on the territory with them. It went on a little long with no progress on the mystery for me, though I don't know if that's just a function of it being YA or not. I really liked watching siblings Ulá and Kabék work through their complicated relationships with their father, each other, and their ancestors.

I also had one DNF this week: What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. It wasn't bad, just repetitive. I was listening to the audiobook, which is just audio of the interviews, and it started feeling like I was listening to the same podcast over and over again. I made it 27% in before DNFing.

Happy August! I was on a roll last week, finishing up some books that had been lingering for me. And they were mostly pretty darn good, too! An excellent way to wrap up July. Books marked with a * were gifted to me and books marked with a ^ I was paid to read.

Moss'd In Space by Rebecca Thorne* - Listen, I knew this book was gonna be a slam dunk for me, and I was right. Found family in space is my favorite subgenre by a mile, and then you make it cozy and add in a sentient moss computer? Let's go! I really loved the main trio, and I also liked that the romantic element was in the background (or basically nonexistent) for most of the book. Thorne says she was inspired by Murderbot, and you can easily see that. Basically, if you're looking for Murderbot with less murder, this is the book for you.

A Different Kind of Justice by David D'Alessandro^ - I never would have picked this up if it wasn't assigned to me in my side gig for Books Forward. It's just not my jam. Man looks back on his life and the grudges he's held and decides it's time to enact his own justice. Okay. The one thing I did like about it was the way it highlighted how Italians used to be considered a nonwhite other in this country.

Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon* - I really like Rendon's mystery/thrillers centering on missing Indigenous women. They are painful reads, but I'm such a fan of her headstrong women who take things into their own hands even when it scares them. The audiobook is narrated by bookstagram's own Erin Tripp, and she's just the best.

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim* - A fascinating premise - what if when you crossed a border, there was a chance you split into multiple people, with one of you staying behind and one continuing on? This book was more of a character study than I anticipated, and I think it could have been a little shorter since there was a lot of ruminating over the same questions throughout. That said, I cannot stop thinking about it and what I would do if I found myself in Soyoung or Yujin's predicaments.

Kill All Wizards by Jedediah Berry* - What a funny little book, and I mean that in the sense of funny-haha and funny-strange. Think if Douglas Adams wrote something with a medieval bent. This story takes all kinds of strange turns, which is a feat for something that's less than 200 pages. I already can't wait for the sequel.

Where There's Room For Us by Hayley Kiyoko* - I didn't know I needed a cozy YA sapphic historical romance, but I did! Listening to this book was like snuggling into a warm blanket. There's not a lot going on plotwise, but I was so charmed by the sisters in the central family and their loving, chaotic relationships. The central problem was fascinating and also a bit strange - in this world, queerness is completely accepted, but land and titles still only pass down through male heirs. So it didn't always logic, but it was sweet enough for me to stick with it. Also, Kiyoko and Jemima Kirke are both A+ narrators.

Here we are at the end of another month that felt both a hundred years long and also over in a blink. This is what I read in July, and below that is what I hope to read in August. (Once again, I have pulled too many books off my TBR shelf to actually be possible. Let us not speak of it.) My favorites from July are starred. Books marked with a * were gifted to me and books marked with a ^ I was paid to read.

WHERE THERE'S ROOM FOR US by Hayley Kiyoko*

KILL ALL WIZARDS by Jedediah Berry*

SUBLIMATION by Isabel J. Kim*

WHERE THEY LAST SAW HER by Marcie R. Rendon*

A DIFFERENT KIND OF JUSTICE by David D'Alessandro^

⭐ MOSS'D IN SPACE by Rebecca Thorne*

⭐ THIS PRINCESS KILLS MONSTERS by Ry Herman*

⭐ COLDWIRE by Chloe Gong*

WAITING FOR THE LONG NIGHT MOON: STORIES by Amanda Peters*

STOPS ALONG THE WAY by Anna Sortino*

MAKE ME BETTER by Sarah Gailey*

⭐ THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans*

⭐ I LOVE YOU DON'T DIE by Jade Song*

MURDER IN THE DRESSING ROOM by Holly Stars*

Please enjoy my "up next" shelf, along with our memorial to our late kitty Marcel.

Eagle-eyed readers will note a few books carried over from previous monthly TBRs - Out Of Step Into You, Black Salt Queen, and Chaos. I promise their time is coming! Other books up soon:

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - It's about time for my annual reread of my favorite book!

The Teller Of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong - August's Found Family Book Club pick. Aren't you glad you read this far? Now you're the first to know!

Arden Grey by Ray Stoeve - A YA novel about a girl who thinks she might be asexual. I think this might be a future FFBC pick as well.

Redshirts by John Scalzi - I am slowly reading my way through Scalzi's backlist as part of a low-key, no deadline challenge I set for myself. (Join it on Storygraph if you want!) This one looks fun.

Long Division by Kiese Laymon - Speaking of Storygraph challenges, I realized I've only completed 19% of the Stacks' 2026 Mega Reading Challenge. Yikes! So I've picked Long Division for the prompt "Read a book that a guest of The Stacks said they would assign in school."

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova - Everyone in my book club has raved about this book, so I borrowed a copy from one of them and am hoping to love it too!

Yeah, I will definitely read all those, for sure! Plus a few current reads I'm carrying over: The Pairing by Casey McQuiston* (reread) and Together We See by Ari Tison*.

I thought my August most anticipated list would be short given how big September is for publishing, but there are still quite a few releases I have my eye on. Here are the ones I'm most excited about.

Immortal Game by Alison Saft (8/4) - Six years ago, Shea Fury’s sister was whisked away by the High King of the Otherworld, the ruler of the treacherous land of fae. Although Shea has spent the years since dreaming of rescuing her sister from captivity, the Iron Veil that separates the human world from that of the fae has made it only a wish. That is, until an invitation to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime chess tournament in the Otherworld arrives on Shea’s doorstep. The winner of the tournament may ask the High King to grant one wish, and Shea is finally within reach of hers.

Meet Me In The Garden by Nina LaCour (8/4) - New Orleans, 1944. Odette has always been one of the Honore sisters, glamorous and admired in their Creole community. But while Odette’s older sisters are content to be wives and mothers, Odette has always wanted something else. It is only with her beloved cousin, Delphine, that Odette can tell her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist. Delphine has a secret lover, too, a white man. In the hidden garden they’ve discovered, Odette and Delphine can dream of futures full of passion and freedom.

A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young, translated by Sophie Bowman (8/11) - While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her niece: she’d rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother’s care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life. (This novella was published in 2020 and is now translated into English.)

The Everest Mystery: Sandy Irvine, George Mallory, and the Truth Still Buried on Everest by Julie Summers with Jochen Hemmleb (8/25) - There is no mystery more compelling in the history of mountaineering than the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine close to the summit of Mount Everest on June 8, 1924. Over 100 years after they were last seen ‘going strong for the top,’ the question of exactly what happened to them on that fateful day has not been answered.

I was traveling for a chunk of last week, so I only finished two books this week. They were both excellent plane reads, though, so good job with that timing, me. Books marked with an * were gifted to me.

Coldwire by Chloe Gong* - The sequel to this book is almost here, so I figured I should probably finally get around to it! I have loved every Gong book I've read and this is no exception. I was so drawn into this cyberpunk dystopia. You know I love a prickly girl character, and this book is full of them. It's excellent and horrifying how you can see exactly the trajectory our world might take to become the world of Coldwire. I found it a little hard to follow the reveal near the end, but I think that's on me rather than the author since other reviewers didn't seem to have that problem.

This Princess Kills Monsters by Ry Herman* - I am very into fantasy comedy right now and this one is chef's kiss excellent. It reminded me a lot of The Princess Bride, if that story was more queer. It's deeply silly while also giving old fairytales a new point of view. Literally everything about this book is a delight.

Hello and happy Monday! I'm writing this post earlier than usual because I have been traveling the last few days, so this is really a roundup of books I read up through last Wednesday. I hope you will still trust me after I have woven this web of lies, lol. If this looks like a lot of books read over a shorter than usual time, it's because I finally finished up a few books that had been taking me weeks to finish due to a slight reading slump. Stupid World Cup and Love Island, taking up all my time! Glad those are over! (I'm not, I need more Brinity in my life!) Books marked with a * were gifted to me.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans* - Yes, everyone is right about this book! It's so lovely! It's heartfelt and funny, and I actually laughed and gasped out loud while listening. If you're an audiobook person, I do recommend that route, as it's done with half a dozen or so narrators, which really helps bring the letters to life. I loved that the main character was older and set in her ways, but not so much that she wasn't willing to listen to others' concerns and opinions. My only knock on it is that the ending veered a little tidy and overly sweet to me.

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey* - Sadly, this is probably my least favorite Gailey book to date. It's soooo sloowwww. I did like the blending of cults and the supernatural, and it's fine by me if things never get fully explained. But you can't take what's obvious from like page five and try to make it a grand reveal at the end of the book. The main character kept making small discoveries but none of them ever felt like new information, which made it hard for me to want to keep going. Bummer.

Stops Along The Way by Anna Sortino* - Sortino is an author that I think is super underrated. She writes YA featuring disabled characters, mainly teens who are Deaf/hard of hearing. Her books are so great showing what it might be like to live every day with the specific disabilities her characters have. This one is more of that, plus a road trip story and a couple of gaming nerds. The MCs were so sweet. I love watching characters learn to understand each others' quirks so they can better love and take care of each other.

Waiting For The Long Night Moon by Amanda Peters* - This is a collection of short stories featuring Indigenous characters. The settings range from the colonization of this country to recent anti-pipeline protests. Peters delivers a churn of emotions with each story. These characters are losing family and culture, but they are also finding them and building them anew.

Waaaughhh how is this year half over already?! These are my 11 faves so far (yes, 11, I could absolutely not narrow it down any further than that)! They're in no particular order, and I've popped in my mini reviews for each just in case you missed them the first time around. Books marked with a * are books that were gifted to me.

Shapes of Love by L.V. Peñalba* - SHAPES OF LOVE is my new favorite book featuring an aspec character. This book so beautifully covers the many nuances of aromantic and asexual identities and the various forms their close relationships can take. I really loved how Sasha pushed hard against the idea that friend love can’t be as meaningful and important as romantic love. The book lets her make some mistakes around that belief as well, which I liked. Everyone in this book makes mistakes, learns, and has complex conversations about it all. The characters are racially diverse as well, adding yet another layer to the complexity of coming out. 

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - This is the most devastating book I've read in years. Just absolutely a tear your hair out and lay on the floor crying kind of book. I didn't want to keep reading it but I also couldn't stop reading it. Somehow, it feels like the events of the book are happening to you as you read it. I particularly loved how it both mattered and didn't matter at all that Agnes' husband was William Shakespeare. Who cares, when you're that in the depths of grief? Agnes' touch of the supernatural also added another beautiful, painful layer to her story. I think I can say I've never quite met a character like Agnes.

This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman -  How does this series get exponentially better with every book? Also, sorry to my spouse for the high levels of stress I radiated while reading THIS INEVITABLE RUIN. 

There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone* - THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US shines a light on a population that usually gets entirely ignored. These families are working their butts off, only to get slapped down again and again. Goldstone is great at weaving statistics and research in with the individual stories in a way that contextualizes and humanizes them. One thing I haven’t seen discussed about this book is that four of the five families are headed by single moms. Of those four moms, for three of them, the road to being unhoused began with an abusive husband, boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend. 

A Sharp Endless Need by Mac Crane* -  You know when you read a book and you can’t form words for how you feel about it? Yeah, that’s A SHARP ENDLESS NEED. Crane is so good at writing painful longing. Add in being unsure of your sexuality in a small town, and whew. The longing is so intense it’s hard to look at straight on. My one knock-a-quarter-star-off-quibble is that the ending feels kind of like a throwback. That’s all I’ll say to avoid spoilers. Honestly, I can’t write any more about this. It feels like I want to keep it secret so no one says mean things about it, but I also want the whole world to read it. 

Whidbey by T. Kira Madden* -  We’ve waited a long time for new work from T Kira Madden, and wow, was WHIDBEY worth the wait. This book follows several women who are all impacted by the actions of one man. We see them through rage, grief, shame, defensiveness, love, fear. There’s a little bit of a mystery element to it, but it’s still deeply personal and introspective. Please look at the content warnings before reading. It’s a heavy book, but worth it if you’re up for it.

Luminous by Silvia Park* -  LUMINOUS is the kind of story that sci-fi is best at: what does it mean to be a human? To be a man? To love? To be loved? Siblings Jun and Morgan have both spent their lives trying to make sense of their childhood experience of having a robot brother who got taken away from them during the war the reunified Korea. Everyone in this book is deeply flawed, and trying to build relationships on a cracked foundation. My favorite thing, though, is that in this story of what makes a human (and a human man specifically) is that Jun is a trans man. It adds so many additional layers to what might otherwise be a straightforward robot tale. 

Kin by Tayari Jones* -  My goodness, Tayari Jones is a master of her craft. KIN is so beautiful, loving, and heartbreaking. We follow Niecy and Annie’s story in a way that’s both about the details of their lives and the larger story of being a Black woman in the South. The women in this book all have taken different paths through life, but they have so much common experience as well. I haven’t seen it discussed much yet, but this is a queer story. I’m trying not to give plot away, but know that there are just so, so many layers to this book. I already want to reread it. 

The Maidenheads by Benny B. Peterson* - Listen. As a girl who grew up in the DC suburbs who was very into the local music scene and didn't understand her sexuality at the time...I AM IN THIS PHOTO AND I DON'T LIKE IT. But also, hell yeah. Johnson name checks all my favorite venues in DC and Baltimore and perfectly recreates the grimy love we all had for our local faves. The Maidenheads is messy and mean and full of yearning and good god please go to therapy, my guys. Everyone makes the worst decisions at every turn and I loved them for it.

Searches by Vauhini Vara - I need everyone who uses the internet to read this book. Vara traces the path of her life and the life of the internet, how they overlap and interact, and increasingly, how they have become inseparable. There is so much to think about here regarding how much of our lives we have given over to tech companies, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. Please read it! 

Hold Me Like A Grudge by Celine Ong* - Celine Ong said to herself, "how can I make sports enemies to lovers as gay as possible?" and HOLD ME LIKE A GRUDGE was born. I'm obsessed with everything about this book. Enemies/rivals/pining/coming out/found family/spicy chemistry/soft love/etc etc etc omg can I hug them please! Not to mention all the Supernatural, Fall Out Boy, and various other pop culture references that are hidden about oh so casually. And listen, I know everyone and their mom is going to compare this book to Heated Rivalry...but also it's true! If you're looking for more tender sports yearning, THIS IS IT.

This was a very slow reading week for me. I plowed through two books last weekend during the heatwave and then...stopped, ha. I couldn't focus, and then a migraine whacked me at the end of the week. Anyway, here's what did get read. Books marked with a * are books I was gifted.

Murder In The Dressing Room by Holly Stars* - A cozy mystery about the murder of the owner of a drag cabaret? Yes, please! With this one, I loved the characters and story but not the execution. The MC kept endlessly rehashing old clues without getting anywhere new, and then everything happened right at the end. I did love that our MC was a nonbinary drag queen, and that we got to see how them being Joe vs being Misty was both separate personalities and also impossible to separate.

I Love You Don't Die by Jade Song* - Anyone who gave this one a low rating is INCORRECT. I love love love Song's writing style. This book is less physically visceral than CHLORINE was, but it's...emotionally visceral? Is that a thing? Well, it is. This book is super heavy, but I loved the explorations of the intersections of friendship and love, life and death.

Well, that's all for this week. Come on over to the Discord and share what you've been reading!