The Diviners by Libba Bray

I absolutely loved this glittering, creepy, magical romp through 1920s New York. It centers on Evie O'Neil, who is sent to live with her uncle in Manhattan after causing trouble in her Ohio hometown, thanks to her ability to read people's secrets from objects belonging to them. Evie is a sixteen year old in search...

Song of A Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik

This quiet novel, based on the life of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzhad, is the beautiful and sometimes harrowing story of a woman determined to live her own life and tell own stories, despite a world that continually blocks her way. It spans ~25 years, from the 1940s through the late 1960s, and it's both...

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

It's hard for me to figure out where to start with this one. I've been putting off writing this review for weeks, because I really disliked this novel. I was expecting to love it. I finally read Jane Eyre last winter, and it completely blew me away. I was hoping Wide Sargasso Sea would enter...

The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian

The Ruin of A Rake is the third installment in Cat Sebastian’s Turner Series, a trilogy of queer Regency romances. This one is about Julian Medlock, a man who has spent years cultivating his reputation as a Very Proper Gentleman and Lord Courtenay, who has spent years cavorting around the Continent without a care for...

All Out: The No-Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages edited by Saundra Mitchell

I was pleasantly surprised by this YA story collection of queer historical fiction. I wasn't expecting it to be bad, of course, but I also wasn't prepared for just how much it moved me. In All Out, seventeen fantastic YA authors writes stories about queer teens, representing a diverse range of gender, sexuality, race, class...

Incognegro by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece

Incognegro, set in the early 20th century, amidst segregation and racial violence, is the story of Zane Pinchback, a light skinned black man, able to pass as white, who goes undercover to report on lynchings in the South. It is brutal. It's a graphic mystery, so it was a quick read, but the plot definitely took...

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

I picked up this book because of the 2018 Read Harder Challenge, but also because I decided it's high time I start reading mysteries. I've read one or two over the years, but other than that, nothing. I don't have a good excuse, either. I'm not a big fan of gore, violence, or creepy stories,...

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

After hearing so much about this book, I was prepared to be disappointed. I was not. Strange, constantly shifting, aways surprising, at turns shocking, baffling, heartbreaking. Saunders turns the world on its head, and yet manages to remain grounded in reality. Once I fell under the spell of his graveyard world of ghosts and not-quite...