YA contemporary. Hani and Ishu are Bengali-Irish teens living in Dublin. They are among the only desi girls in their school, are very different people, and are not friends. But when Hani is trying to figure out how to stop her white Irish friends from their quite aggressive refusal to accept her identification as bi, …
Literary fiction. Follows a semi-pro wrestler in Nebraska whose life is, relatively speaking, good – he is pretty sure he’s about to hit the big time, he is in a solid long-term relationship, he has a decent day job as a school janitor, and he knows who he is and what he wants. This book …
Speculative short stories. I’ve known Link’s name and reputation for years but never read anything by her before…well, I should say I have never read any entire books by her before, because I realized part way through listening to this one that I had encountered one of the stories somewhere else, though I don’t remember …
Literary fiction that is both historical and has a bit of a speculative element. Coming of age in the impoverished, queer, artistic fringe of the Black Atlantic in the 1990s, coupled with an unexpected look at the burgeoning surveillance culture of that era. Captures the feel of a moment that is passing, of a time …
Contemporary fiction. Short stories. All of them centre Black women, I think particularly Black women in or from the US South, in a range of relations with faith and family and love and friendship and desire. Short, readable, and engaging. Generally speaking, when I read short fiction, I prefer it to be either genre or …
Cosy hopepunk-ish sci-fi, from one of the authors responsible for the recent popularization of that sort of book. It is, in fact, the fourth (and I believe final) instalment in the series that started with Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. This one is set at an interstellar truckstop of sorts, on a planet …
YA sci fi. Set on a future earth that is well down the path to climate apocalypse. Follows two teen girls, one living as a scientifically brilliant (and seemingly neurodivergent?) high-status resident of one of the aerial eco-cities that an older generation created as an attempt to reduce humanity’s impact on the planet, and the …
Literary fiction. Follows a blue-skinned boy being raised as a god in an ashram run by his father outside a small village in Tamil Nadu, India. The promotional copy on the book jacket does not make this clear, but because it becomes evident to the reader pretty early on (though not to the protagonist) I …
YA contemporary. A young woman at the end of high school has spent every spare moment over the last few years making a podcast called *Artists in Love* with her boyfriend, with whom she is in one of those ‘perfect couple’ high school relationships. Except he breaks up with her and announces he’s leaving town …
Fantasy. I picked this one up because the author makes bookish content online that I quite like – her taste in books isn’t the same as mine, but it’s related, and she’s smart and politically interesting so I enjoy her videos. The book is a vaguely-medieval-Europe, dragons-and-castles-and-magic sort of fantasy that I don’t read a …