I try not to have more than one audiobook going at a time so I don’t have to deal with decision paralysis about what to pick up. However, this became available at the library while I was still reading Renegades and I need to know about the characters in the B plot of Spoiler Alert and I’m told we find out what happened to them. I am so excited.
Y’all, this story was adorable. April Whittier is a geologist who writes fan fic in her spare time. Her favorite OTP are Aeneas and Lavinia from a series turned television show called Gods of the Gates. Marcus Caster-Rupp plays Aeneas on the television show. He has the reputation of being hard-working, very pretty, but very dumb. So, no one would know he has a secret. He also writes Lavinia-Aeneas fan fiction. April and Marcus meet online and have a wonderful friendship, never knowing who the other person is behind the screen.
Then April posts a picture of herself and Marcus gets tagged by a bunch of asshole fanboys who are making fun of a fat cosplayer. Marcus wants to make it clear that he’s not on their side, so he follows April and then asks her out. Their first date is bland and Marcus is able to get a second date. Then he realizes the woman in front of him is his friend from the fan fiction community. Can he keep that a secret while also trying to woo April? What if she finds out and they break up and she tells the press? That could ruin his career.
This book was fun. It was very touching. It had spicy sex scenes. It had me texting non-sensical things to Beth while I was listening. I really annoyed the character arcs of both April and Marcus. They struggle and grow, both as individuals and together. I really enjoyed this! I can’t wait to dive into the sequel.
Beth gave me her copy of this to read and I’m excited to get to it. I’ve got the audio book from the library, so I’ll do some listening as well. We’ll see how it goes!
This is the story of Jayne and June Baek. They are two estranged sisters who were once very close. They are completely different people. June, the older sister, has a job in finance and an upscale apartment. Jayne is in school for fashion design and lives in an illegal sublet in Brooklyn. They moved from Seoul to San Antonio, Texas and somehow grew apart. Now they’re in New York City and June startles Jayne with a revelation: she has cancer.
The novel is the story of how these two navigate June’s news and their sisterly conflict. This story was beautiful and it was beautifully written, too. I really enjoyed the dynamic between the two sisters and the slow unfolding of finding out how they first grew apart. The end was very emotional, so keep a box of tissues nearby. But I absolutely loved this and I look forward to reading more things by Mary H.k. Choi.
CW: cancer, possible infertility, disordered eating
A book set in contemporary times on Earth! How unusual for this year! This is a novel with two sisters at the center and that’s all I remember about it. The library didn’t have access to it for awhile, but it does now and I’m excited to check it out!
Nona has only been in her body for six months. Well, it’s not really her body. She lives with her little family, Phyrra, Camilla, and Palamedes and they are trying to help her work out who she actually is. They go to work; she goes to school. A refugee crisis spurned on by decades and decades of war and a solar event make the city they live turbulent and tense. A monstrous blue sphere has appeared in the sky and threatens to kill them all. The story follows Nona and her little family while they solve the mystery of Nona and deal with the ongoing crises around them.
I liked this book, but perhaps not as much as the previous two books. Nona is childlike and sweet and she foreshadows terrible things to come in the next book. I enjoyed the relationships between the main cast of characters and was happy to see returns from previous books in the series. Meh. If this were a standalone, I might not recommend it. But as part of the series, it’s fine. Where the main character of Gideon the Ninth was full of bravado and humor and the main character of Harrow the Ninth was stubborn and (maybe?) insane, Nona is fierce and sweet and that was an interesting departure from previous novels.
This was a fine third installment, but I look forward to the next one.
Am I going to have to re-read all of these in 4 years or whenever the next book comes out? Probably. Am I excited to rip my way through this one? Absolutely.
Harrow the Ninth is a sequel and picks up where Gideon the Ninth left off. Harrowhark finds herself a wreck, but in the emperor’s service. She is not well-liked by her colleagues, she has, at best, acquaintance who will keep her around as long as she’s useless, and she lives on a space station that the angry ghost of a planet is heading towards. Her body is also not on-side. How does she survive all this mess?
This was just has fun and engrossing as the prequel. The writing is spectacular and full of little clues to the bigger picture that made it a fun puzzle to work through. These are really enjoyable reads and I can’t wait for the next one.
I’m am going to lose so much sleep to this series.
2 Women, So Many Books 