Category: Book Reviews

Weaving Hope, by Celia Lake

Weaving Hope is a very gentle, very slow-burn closed-door romance set in magical 1920s Britain.

The Lost Flock, by Jane Cooper

The Lost Flock: Rare Wool, Wild Isles and One Woman’s Journey to Save Scotland’s Original Sheep by Jane Cooper Narrator: Jane Cooper Published by Chelsea Green Press on 9/14/2023 Genres: History, Memoir, Nature Format: Audiobook Source: the library Purchase: Amazon | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Audible | Chirp… Read more »

The Teller of Small Fortunes, by Julie Leong

I loved The Teller of Small Tales, Julie Leong’s debut novel. It’s a cozy quest fantasy with a found-family vibe, set in a vaguely British renaissance-era world.

Buried Deep and Other Stories, by Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik’s Buried Deep and Other Stories is a stellar collection of short fiction that displays all of her skill as a writer as well as the breadth of her imagination. I read it slowly, savoring each story.

It’s All A Game, by Tristan Donovan

It’s All a Game starts off with the ancient games of senet, the “royal game of Ur”, and the many forms of mancala, then delves into a truncated history of chess before moving on to the board games many of us grew up playing.

From the Vault: The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars was easily one of the best books I read in 2018. (Note: I reread it in January 2025, and although I have tweaked a word or two of this review for greater clarity, I wouldn’t change a single sentence.) The story is gripping; the characters are depicted so vividly they could be standing in front of you; and the details, from the physics of an asteroid impact and the experience of piloting an aircraft to the chauvinism of many men involved in the space program, appear to be spot on.

Wooing the Witch Queen, by Stephanie Burgis

Wooing the Witch Queen was an absolute delight, from its sweet, sensitive, traumatized cinnamon-roll hero to its introverted, reclusive, but decidedly not evil heroine.

On the Edge, by Ilona Andrews

It took me a little while to get into On the Edge, but once I did, I was totally hooked. This paranormal romance has great worldbuilding, compelling characters, external threats and internal conflicts that each inform and heighten the other, and a romantic pairing that I was initially dubious about and ended up loving.

Mind Games, by Nora Roberts

I read Mind Games twice in 2024 and once (already) in 2025, which tells you something about how good it is; the book has already joined the ranks of my favorite non-fantasy Nora Roberts novels. Written with Roberts’s usual skill, Mind Games pits Thea Fox, a young woman with the sight, against the psychopath who killed her parents. . .

The Wishing Game, by Meg Shaffer

The Wishing Game reminds me so much of the books and series I loved as a child: the ones that made me fall in love with reading, the ones I escaped into over and over. It has the whimsy and wordplay of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (one of the author’s inspirations) without the nastiness that seemed both funny and disturbing to me even as a child. But I’m getting ahead of myself.