Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy by Larissa Pham Review

Goodreads blurb: Endlessly inventive, intimate, and provocative, this memoir-in-essays is a celebration of the strange and exquisite state of falling in love, whether with a painting or a person, that interweaves incisive commentary on modern life, feminism, art and sex with the author's own experiences of obsession, heartbreak, and past trauma. Like a song that feels…

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Brief Thoughts on the Women’s Prize 2021 Shortlist

The Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 shortlist was just announced, so I figured I share my thoughts on it quickly. I've only managed to read 2 and half(ish) books of the longlist, since I was not prioritizing reading it – I have read Luster and No One Is Talking About This and I absolutely loved…

An Ode to the Weird Chicken Book: Brood by Jackie Polzin

Goodreads blurb: Meet Gloria, Gam Gam, Darkness, Miss Hennepin County, and their unlikely owner. Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for another creature entails. From the freezing nights of a brutal winter to…

Women’s Prize 2021 Reviews #2: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

Goodreads blurb: As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a…

The Helm of Midnight by Marina J. Lostetter Review

Goodreads blurb: In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power--the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city with a series of gruesome murders. Now Charbon is…

Women’s Prize 2021 Reviews #1: Luster by Raven Leilani

Goodreads blurb: Luster sees a young black woman figuring her way into life as an artist and into love in this darkly comic novel. She meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage. In this world of contemporary sexual manners and racial…

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Goodreads blurb: A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black artists falling in and out of loveTwo young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - trying to…

What Was The Reason – A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab Review

Goodreads blurb: Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of…

Book Review: Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle

Goodreads blurb: Can you find real love when you've always got your head in the clouds? Maybell Parish has always been a dreamer and a hopeless romantic. But living in her own world has long been preferable to dealing with the disappointments of real life. So when Maybell inherits a charming house in the Smokies from…

Book Review: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

Goodreads blurb: "We should have known the end was near." So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are…

Recently Read: To Have and to Hoax by Martha Waters & Lanny by Max Porter

Today, I thought I'd chat to you about two books I recently read and my thoughts on them. I wasn't sure I'd have to say a lot for individual reviews, so I am joining them in a recently read post! One is a historical romance, and the other is a literary fiction so we are…

Book Review: Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler

Goodreads blurb: On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she's not exactly shocked by the revelation. Actually, she's relieved—he was always a…