Review: MURDER YOUR EMPLOYER by Rupert Holmes

 

Rating: 5/5 stars

I can’t remember how I heard about this book, but I preordered it at the bookstore where I work, and when it arrived and I went to check out, my employer saw the title and asked, “Um, should I be concerned?” And I responded with, “Probably.” But maybe the cause for concern is more that I’ve enticed six coworkers to also purchase the book. I told my manager that we were going to have a book club in the break room and I invited him to join us and he said, “No because I’m scared.” 

In all honestly, I do actually like my employer, so it’s a good thing this book is fiction. 

The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts is a Posion Ivy League university that teaches the art of assassination, or “deletion” as they call it. Students learn all the ways to kill and to avoid being killed, and the mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder. 

“If sensible people can kill themselves because life no longer seems worth living, then I suppose a sensible person might kill someone who makes other people’s lives unlivable, or who risks the lives of others.” 

Even though this book largely takes place in an academic setting and the entire plot is about learning how to properly murder, I wouldn’t classify this book as dark academia at all since it’s actually pretty lighthearted and there’s not really any mystery element involved. 

Murder Your Employer is quite funny (and punny) and clever, and definitely satirical at times. The narrator’s voice was unlike any other writing style I’ve read, and I loved it. 

I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone whose interest is even slightly piqued by the book’s title or concept. This was an immensely fun read with a richly fleshed-out setting and lovable characters and incredible writing. I will be picking up more books by Rupert Holmes in the future because of how much I loved this one. 

Review: THORNHEDGE by T. Kingfisher

 

Rating: 4.5/5 stars 

I’ve recently become obsessed with T. Kingfisher’s novels so I’m trying to get my hands on everything she’s ever written. Thornhedge is her newest adult fantasy novella that’s a reimagining of Sleeping Beauty but where the princess is the villain and the one who curses the princess is the heroine. 

I loved this story. It was so fun to get to know Toadling, a girl who can transform into a toad and who can cast spells. She is patrolling the hedge made of thorns (hence the title) that surrounds the tower that contains the sleeping princess, when one day a man on horseback shows up and wants to explore the land beyond the hedge of thorns. 

I won’t say any more because this story is short and it deserves to have some mystery to it, but I love how Kingfisher wrote this. This is a version of Sleeping Beauty that I’ve never seen done before, and I thought it was quite unique. 

If you love fantastical novellas that take place in dark, creepy forests and stories about curses that maybe shouldn’t be broken after all, then you should check out Thornhedge. It was a delight to read, and I loved the ending. 

Review: THE BODY FINDER by Kimberly Derting

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

I remember the spring of 2013, being in my last semester of high school and going to a local WA thrift store and finding a copy of The Body Finder on the shelf. I had heard friends talk about how much they loved the book, and the cover had a big gold “Seattle Author” sticker on it, so I brought it to the checkout line. 

I’ve always loved reading books that take place in the Pacific Northwest and that are written by local PNW authors, yet somehow this book sat unread on my shelf for ten whole years before I finally got around to picking it up. 

I was very excited to see, however, that the story takes place in Buckley, WA with references to Bonney Lake, Lake Tapps, White River, and Enumclaw. I grew up in Lake Tapps and I’ve been to all of the places listed and could picture the setting perfectly! I’ve never read a book set so close to home before; it was a very neat experience. 

The Body Finder follows Violet, who can sense “echoes” of bodies that they leave behind when they die, both on their own bodies and on their killers’ bodies. Violet’s ability allows her to sense a dead body buried in the woods when she was a little girl, and again another body drowned in the lake when she was a teenager. 

When a string of local girls goes missing and there is no evidence pointing to a potential suspect, Violet decides to use her ability to track down the killer to help keep herself and her friends safe. 

I absolutely flew through this book; the writing was so digestible and compelling, which was this novel’s biggest strength. The story itself was pretty good too. I loved the idea of Violet being able to sense echoes of the dead. 

The aspects of the story that I didn’t like really weren’t any fault of the author. The book feels like it was written in the early 2010s, which it was. As such, there is some phrasing that would not be acceptable nowadays but was commonplace a decade ago, such as references to the “short bus” and calling someone a slut and a complete lack of any diversity whatsoever. Also, this book falls into the trope of the boy saving the girl from all harm again and again. Sometimes it worked with the story (the final scene for sure), but other times it seemed completely implausible (how did he get to this location at the exact right time?). I don’t see a lot of modern books using this plot device anymore, but it is very apparent and present in The Body Finder. 

Also—and this is a personal preference—but the plot was only 50% of the story because the other 50% was centered around the romance between Violet and Jay, which kind of pulled me as a reader out of the narrative that was focused on finding the killer. I think that has more to do with the fact that I am an adult reading a book about a teenager and I’m so over reading about teens pining over each other and communicating poorly, etc. 

However, I fully believe that had I read this book ten years ago when I purchased it, I would have totally loved it and rated it in the high-4s or maybe even 5. My reading tastes have changed drastically in the last couple of years, even more so in the last decade that I’ve been reading. I can see this book being something I would absolutely eat up as a teen, especially since the mystery aspect still intrigued me as an adult. I was kept guessing until the end about who the killer was and how the plot would play out. It was just all the other stuff in the narrative that got in the way of me giving this a higher rating as a 27-year-old adult with many many books under her belt.

Overall, The Body Finder was a really fun read, if a bit dated. The concept is super cool, and I appreciated the execution as well, but the heavy romance element breaks up the story too much for my adult taste. Teens who enjoy crime-thriller-romances would likely love this more than I did, but just know it is a product of its time so don’t expect it to be perfectly written. Also, this novel reads as a standalone even though there are four books in the series, so it’s a good one to pick up if you want a quick read without the commitment. I will not be continuing on with the series, but I’m glad I read this first book at least. 

Review: THE FOXGLOVE KING by Hannah Whitten

 

Rating: 1.5/5 stars

DNF at 50%. 

The Foxglove King is an epic fantasy that reminded me a bit of Vespertine. It features death magic, poisons, catacombs, and a religious setting. 

This is my second Hannah Whitten book, and both For the Wolf and The Foxglove King are 95% vibes, 5% fitting a plot into the vibes. Hannah even said in an interview for For the Wolf that when she was writing the book, she was going for vibes above everything else. And you can totally feel that in both of her books that I’ve read. That must just be her writing style, which is fine, but it’s not my preferred reading style. This is why I feel like something is missing in this book, but it’s also hard to pinpoint what that might be. 

The death magic is not super well explained in The Foxglove King. Lore can channel mortem, which is the essence of death (I think?), which allows her to raise the dead for a small time. This, of course, is illegal, so when she gets caught at the beginning of the book, the king and priest offer her an ultimatum: help them figure out who is slaughtering villages by raising some of the dead villagers to question them, or she will be sentenced to death. So of course Lore agrees to keep her life and help them. 

In the meantime, Lore gets to roam the palace, and she is also given the task of spying on Bastian, the king’s heir who may or may not be a traitor to the crown. And you can already tell, without having read a word of the book, that a romance will form between Bastian and Lore. Not much had happened at the point that I quit reading, but it was very clear from the context that is the direction the story was moving in. 

This book contains lots of discussions about church and court politics without actually setting a good stage for the distinctions between the church and the court and how they operate together or separately. I honestly didn’t love the religious setting here, and I usually tend to enjoy reading about religion in fantasy novels. The importance of the foxglove, belladonna, and other poisons was also not super well explained, and I still can’t tell you why the title of the book is what it is. 

I had the same feeling during this book that I had while reading Whitten’s debut: I kept looking at all the pages I’d read and think, what even happened in all those pages? And then I’d look at all the pages I had left to read and think, what is even going to happen in all those pages? This book is very slow-paced and meandering in its story, which, unfortunately, made it pretty boring for me. I almost DNFed the book twice, at I finally did quit reading it after the third time I contemplated whether I should continue or not. There are far too many books I’d rather be reading than one that bores me so much that I’d rather do anything else than pick it up again. 

I think maybe Hannah Whitten’s writing style just isn’t for me. I like the ideas behind her books, but so far I haven’t really cared for her books themselves. In The Foxglove King, the characters don’t have much development or distinction from one another; the magic system is flimsy at best and largely undeveloped; the setting is not fleshed out beyond “church” and “palace” and “catacombs”; and the plot is very slow-moving while also being extremely obvious what will happen. The combination of all those factors created a book that I just couldn’t push myself to finish, sadly. I think this book will be a big hit for the right audience, but that audience doesn’t include me. I’d be willing to give Whitten one more try again in the future, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll have any better luck with her next series. 

Review: A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES by T. Kingfisher

 

Rating: 4/5 stars

This is only my second T. Kingfisher book, but I'm already obsessed with her writing style and I've made it my mission to read everything she's ever written. 

Last week I read What Moves the Dead because it's a rather short book and I wanted to pick up something non-fantasy that I knew I'd be able to finish in one sitting as a quick palate cleanser. It was incredible, and as soon as I finished it and went to put it back on my bookshelf, I picked up my ARC copy of this book that was sitting right next to it. I thought: I'll just look at it real quick and then move it up on my reading list. Well, an hour later I was still sitting on the floor in front of my bookshelf, fifty pages into A House with Good Bones. 

So I guess you could say Kingfisher's books are quite captivating and grab you right from the beginning, since that's happened to me twice now. 

I don't think I've ever read a horror book before these two books because I don't like to be scared and I generally just prefer fantasy worlds instead, but maybe I'm becoming converted to the genre. I know Kingfisher writes a lot of fantasy in addition to horror, but both of her books I've read so far have been horror, yet neither one of them was scary. They were more creepy and unsettling, giving me an urgent desire to know what mysterious thing is going on. I don't know how to classify this specific horror subgenre, but I like it. 

Overall, A House with Good Bones is a quick read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Pick up this book if you're interested in a modern southern gothic tale, a creeping unsettling feeling that you can't explain, a fat 32-year-old protagonist who's very smart, insects and archeology, lots of ladybugs and roses, generational family trauma, the possibility of severed hands, and vultures. Lots and lots of vultures. 

Review: THE BONE SHARD WAR by Andrea Stewart

 

Rating: 3/5 stars

I really enjoyed The Bone Shard Daughter and absolutely loved The Bone Shard Emperor, but I thought this conclusion, The Bone Shard War, was rather average and a bit of a letdown compared to the other two books. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked this book because I like the characters and the setting and Andrea Stewart’s writing style, but I definitely thought it was the weakest of the series. 

The second book in this trilogy had such an explosive ending that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this concluding novel, but then I felt the beginning (and the middle) of The Bone Shard War moved rather slowly. The plot seems a little disjointed from where we left off in book two. Also, the majority of this installment takes place on a boat, which was quite unexpected and not super enjoyable for me.

The bone shard magic continues to be very cool in this book, and we got to see some pretty neat revelations in relation to how the magic works, which I was very happy about. No spoilers here, but I loved seeing how some questions posed in the first book were finally answered here. I was really satisfied on that front. 

I was also satisfied with the overall ending, but not overly so. I appreciated that Andrea Stewart did not handle the story’s conclusion in a traditional sense and instead sent the plot in a direction that was actually pretty unexpected. Unfortunately, by the time I reached the final battle and the following concluding scenes, I was feeling pretty burnt out from getting through the rest of the book and didn’t feel that I was able to enjoy the ending as much as I wanted to. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the Drowning Empire series and I would recommend it to epic fantasy fans who want something a little different. The magic is very cool and the characters are fun to get to know, especially the adorable animal companions! I can’t wait to see what new worlds Stewart will create for us in the future because she’s an author to watch. 

Review: THE WORLD WE MAKE by N. K. Jemisin

 

Rating: 2/5 stars

The World We Make is the sequel to The City We Became and the conclusion to the Great Cities duology. I definitely liked the first book better, but this one was still not bad. 

This series is very weird. It’s a mixture of urban fantasy and science fiction. The books are technically classified as fantasy but I feel like they are more sci-fi because there are discussions of the multiverse and there is no real magic and they take place in modern-day New York rather than in a fantastical world.

I ended up listening to this novel via audiobook and the audio production was excellent, with multiple voices, background music, sound effects, etc. to make it a full listening experience. I wish more books had a top-notch audiobook production like this one did. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t love how the plot progressed in this book. It picked up soon after the first one ended, with an invasion of an otherworldly being invading the city and the different boroughs of New York having to band together to save NYC and defeat the evil. But some of the minor details of the story just weren’t working for me, and I wasn’t super comfortable reading a fantasy novel that incorporated some elements that so closely mirrored our own real-life world. 

For example, one of the enemies trying to sabotage the mission of the borough avatars is a man who wants to “make New York great again.” Like I wonder who that character is supposed to represent… So while I appreciated that Jemisin touched on important topics like the history of gentrification and racism in NYC, the way it was done felt more like a contemporary fiction novel than a science fiction / fantasy novel, and I thought the execution could have been more nuanced. That’s just my opinion though. 

My biggest complaint about this book, however, was how vulgar it was. I can’t remember if the first installment had as many expletives or not, but this one had constant swearing throughout the whole thing, coming from nearly every character in every conversation. While I know that’s realistic characterization for this story, it still bothered me while I was listening to the book. I felt it was a little bit too much, but again, that’s just my opinion. 

I stand by the statement I made in my review of The City We Became: I think people who are more familiar with New York, like residents or frequent visitors, will enjoy this story more than I did. I have never traveled to NYC so I am entirely unfamiliar with all the different cultures there or how the boroughs differ from one another in any way. There were a lot of references to New York-related things, and I would have loved to feel connected to the story on that inner level, but I wasn’t able to. 

This book would be great for the right audience. I don’t think I was ever the right audience since I read this series solely because it’s by N. K. Jemisin, whose other series I have read and loved. Her Great Cities duology certainly has a unique concept and is well-written, but it still didn’t resonate with me the way her other works did and the way I know it will with other readers. I know I will never reread this series, but I’m glad I read it at least this once. 

Overall, I still feel pretty conflicted about the series as a whole because there were parts I loved and parts I didn’t like. The plot in the first book was much more engaging and much easier to follow than that in this book, but this book adds a lot more character development. So each has pros and cons. It’s just a really weird series though, and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I love N. K. Jemisin and I will continue to read any future books she writes, but I would not recommend this series be your starting place with her works. 

Review: JANUARY FIFTEENTH by Rachel Swirsky

 

Rating: 4/5 stars 

January fifteenth is UBI Day: the day that all citizens receive their universal basic income. This near-future dystopian novella contains four POVs, all from women in different paths of life, as they navigate yet another UBI Day:  

Hannah: a poor single mom in New York who leaves her two young kids at home while she treks out through the snow to collect her UBI payment, hoping they’ll be safe from her stalker ex-wife.

Janelle: a Chicago journalist who is going around interviewing different people on “windfall day” about their feelings regarding UBI.

Olivia: a rich college student in Colorado who is celebrating “waste day” with her friends, where they compete to see who can most ludicrously squander their UBI money. 

Sarah: a very pregnant teen girl in Utah walking to town with her sister-wives to collect their UBI payment. 

The novella is split into different segments of UBI Day: early, morning, midday, afternoon, evening, and late. Each part of the day contains one chapter from each of the four perspectives to follow how the four women’s lives vary during this specific day. 

The idea of universal basic income is very interesting and can be the grounds for both utopian and dystopian stories. January Fifteenth is kind of both.

I really like that the story goes into four very different women’s lives across the country and shows how UBI can be both a benefit and a hindrance. For one woman, it allowed her to escape an abusive relationship. For another, it is normal supplemental income. For one, it is completely extraneous and unnecessary money. And for the last, it is the means to realize a whole new life for herself. 

The one thing I didn’t like about this story was the misrepresentation of Mormon culture. Of course the cult group is located in Utah, and of course they are sister-wives, and of course they are an offshoot of the Mormon religion. It’s like the author knows nothing except for stereotypes about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including the fact that calling us Mormons is disrespectful.  *sigh* I wish people would stop presenting the religion in such a derogatory way because it perpetuates incorrect stereotypes. The Church is not a cult and no one actually has sister-wives. I know the cult in this novella is supposed to be the FLDS religion instead of the LDS religion, but those unfamiliar with either of those churches and their vast differences would not understand that the author is not necessarily speaking badly about the LDS faith. The handling of the religion was my only real complaint about the story. 

Overall, I quite enjoyed January Fifteenth and would recommend it to those interested in dystopian stories that focus on alternate reality ideas for how we live in the present day.