Three Bags Full

The movie The Sheep Detectives looked cute, so when I saw Leonie Swann's book at work, I had to read it! Unfortunately I returned the book before writing here, so I'm just going to write something brief since I don't have the book to refer back to.

Three Bags Full tells the story of a flock of sheep trying to solve their shepherd's murder. While I had a hard time getting into the book originally (there are a lot of characters, and the dramatis personae only helps with the sheep, not the humans), once I got through that, I thought the book was a lot of fun! The sheep were all so quirky and different, but most importantly, they felt like legitimate sheep who were mostly doing sheep things (and not really understanding human things) for most of the book.

I also really liked the ending, and how the sheep solved the murder (and communicated it to the humans). I didn't really see the solution coming, which is always a plus in a mystery (I suspected the character who was involved, but wasn't really sure). And the sheep logic was fun - they kind of got to the answer but through the wrong logic (because it was their understanding of things, not how the humans actually did things).

 There is a sequel to Three Bags Full, but I don't think I'm going to read it. While I enjoyed reading the book, I felt like it was self-contained and didn't really need a second part; I'm going to leave things there for now. If I change my mind in the future, I can always get the second book then.  

The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdome and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace

I found The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdome and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace by Pedram Shojai at the perfect time. Life has been incredibly stressful these last few years, throwing one thing after another at me (most recently: wildfires). So I welcomed a nonfiction book that I don't even remember putting on hold showing up to hopefully help me with stress management.

The Urban Monk looks at nine common areas that cause people in the modern world problems, including stress, time management, sleep, and money. Shojai examines each problem and uses his views as both a trained monk and a doctor of Chinese medicine to offer solutions. He then further provides "modern hacks" - things that people in the modern Western World can do now to help break the cycle of each problem. Each chapter also starts and ends with a case study, which is based off of real people that Shojai has helped.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading through The Urban Monk. I found Shojai's suggestions helpful and would really like to try them at length. I thought the book was good for a beginner like me (while I'm familiar with some of the things Shojai talks about, I've never really practiced them in real depth or for long). But at times the book does get a little repetitive-sounding. He doesn't so much repeat himself, as offer similar suggestions for different problems (he provides different meditations to try, or suggests different herbs that are helpful). The structure of each chapter is the same as well, so that adds to the repetition (and might turn you off of reading it if you don't like structural repetition like that). His word choice was also a little off-putting at times in that he uses a lot of colloquial language and swears, which seem at odds with the subject matter (but he definitely wasn't as off-putting as I found Chris Crowley in Younger Next Year). I think The Urban Monk is definitely worth the read if you are stressed out by modern life and looking for a new way of thinking about and approaching what life can be like instead.

Stay for a Spell

I absolutely loved Amy Coombe's Stay for a Spell! I saw it at work and the premise sounded like so much fun: a princess gets cursed to never leave a bookshop until she can find her heart's desire. Her parents decide to send all of the princes of the realm to try to help because as everyone knows, love's kiss from a prince is sure to break the spell. And so Princess Tanadelle (or Tandy, as we get to know her as), is trying to live her life in the bookshop while every so often she's interrupted by the arrival of another prince.

While sometime a bit predictable (I knew what the pirate Bash had left in Tandy's shop when he stole all her books on curses fairly early on), Stay for a Spell is such a fun read. I liked all the characters. It was super fun seeing all of the princes different spell-breaking attempts. And I was really rooting for Tandy to succeed: with her bookshop, with her curse, and with learning how to do things on her own. I also liked the direction the book went with Tandy's curse: her heart's desire wasn't something cliche. :)

 Stay for a Spell was the perfect cozy fantasy read. I'll definitely keep my eye out for more by Coombe!

The Faraway Inn

Continuing my quest for cozy fantasy novels, I came across Sarah Beth Durst's The Faraway Inn. I didn't realize it was a young adult book, so I was originally a bit surprised to find the main character, Calisa, was still in high-school. After a bad breakup with her boyfriend, Calisa decides, at the encouragement of her moms, to go and spend the summer helping her great aunt, Auntie Zee, at her bed and breakfast. But Zee isnt interested in her help, originally telling Calisa to go home, but then relenting and letting her stay for a few days. So Calisa takes it upon herself, with the help of Zee's absent landlord's son, Jack, to start cleaning and fixing up the place, hoping to get into Zee's good graces and be allowed to stay for the rest of the summer. 

Of course, not all is at it first seems. The guests are odd, and there's magic afoot. But with Zee's two rules (don't ask questions, and don't open any doors without permission), how will Calisa figure out what's going on?

...Quite easily, actually. She'll just break the rules every chance she gets. This was my biggest pet peeve of the story. I hoped Calisa might be able to figure out what was going on through some other means. Maybe she would start piecing things together as she was cleaning, or discover things in the library (with the help of the very-helpful library ladder). But nope. She just kept asking questions every chance she got (mostly of Jack), and opening doors (and even stealing her aunt's master key to get into some of the guest rooms) to figure out what was happening.

My other peeve of the story was how over the top Calisa was whenever she so much as glanced at Jack. Yes, he's very handsome. I get it. I don't need to be reminded of it with like every thought you have when you're speaking with him. Thankfully this calmed down a bit by about the midpoint of the book. 

That's also when the book started to get a little more interesting. Auntie Zee disappears while going to get supplies, and after trying to hold the fort, so to speak, for a bit, Calisa and Jack start looking for her. Their adventures take them into some pretty interesting places and they meet some really interesting people. Plus they end up getting to know the few guests at the inn a bit better and helping them out.

Most of the characters were quite good, too. I really liked Jack, and how earnest he was. He was so good-natured and dependable, even though he was obviously struggling trying to maintain everything with his father missing that you just couldn't help but like him. Mulligan was a rather odd guest, but I quite liked him because he was so different (and like Calisa, I had fun trying to figure out if he was something like a vampire or not). The mirror was pretty funny. And I really liked Melidor, the dryad, and her story of taking the time she needed to decide what she wanted for herself, rather than just giving in to the demands of her family.  

Also: Steve, the obviously-he's-a-dragon lizard that Calisa finds in a linen closet. He's very much like a cat, hanging out with Calisa and wanting to be involved in whatever she's doing. I enjoyed him just hanging out and tagging along with her and Jack wherever they went.

 While I had some issues with this book (and Calisa in particular), overall I did enjoy reading The Faraway Inn. :)

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves

I can't remember why I wanted to read The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves. But when I first started reading it, a friend of mine saw me with it and said it was good. So I had really high hopes for it....and almost stopped reading it because I found it rather boring in the beginning. 

In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves, one hundred years ago, the emperor of a country (I think? I'm going to call it a country) disappeared. No one is entirely sure what happened, but the Sea God, who was like a brother to the emperor, forsook the people and disappeared beneath the waves, bringing dangerous storms to their shores. In a desperate attempt to stop the storms, the people started sacrificing women, known as Sea Brides, to the god. And the storms would abate for a year, at which point they would need to sacrifice another girl to the god. This year, everyone knows Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village, is going to be the Sea Bride. But when the time comes for the sacrifice, Mina, the younger sister of the man who loves Shim Cheong, sacrifices herself instead, wanting her brother to be happy and her family to be safe. But when she enters the Spirit Realm, home of the Sea God, everything is not as it seems: the Sea God has been cursed and asleep all this time. And Mina learns that she has just one month to break the curse before she becomes a spirit herself!

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves starts out as a kind of typical teen romantasy - a girl and a guy (Mina and Shin, in this case) who want nothing to do with each other end up thrown together and slowly start to respect and then love one another. Also, Shin just happens to be the immortal being who has been protecting the Sea God all this time (made me think of Twilight, honestly because Mina happens to be 16 - gave me some Edward/Bella vibes in terms of the relationship). Mina also is a typical headstrong female lead character - charging around and doing stuff even when people ask her politely not to. So that was all pretty annoying.

But then somewhere along the way, the narrative seemed to shift. Mina promised Shin she wouldn't leave his House without him....and actually listened. Shin always honored whatever he said he was going to do, and willingly took her to places to help her on her quest. Mina also got to know his guardians/friends/brothers (Namgi and Kirin) well, and everyone started to respect one another, even if they didn't 100% get along all the time. It was...refreshing.

I also really liked all of the main characters. Besides Mina and Shin, I liked the contrast between Namgi and Kirin. Not just the differences between their personalities, but also how they weren't what you would expect (Namgi in particular in this regard - he was a creature that even Kirin didn't really trust at the beginning of the story, but they became brothers in truth by the end of the narrative). 

While some of it was a tad predictable (I had strong suspicions pretty early on about the Sea God, though I will admit I started doubting them a bit as the narrative continued), I overall really enjoyed The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea in the end. It is a really good story about not just love but loyalty and family as well. I liked the world, I liked the characters, I liked the plot; I would be interested in reading more by Axie Oh one day! :)

Operation Bounce House

Someone recommended Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl to me a little while ago. While waiting to get a hold of it from the library, his newest book, Operation Bounce House, came out, so I decided to give that a try.

In Operation Bounce House, the people of New Sonora become the target of a corporation's new game, Operation Bounce House, where human players can pay to build mechs and fight against the evil "New Sonoran terrorists." Only....there are no terrorists, just a bunch of farmers who are trying to peacefully live their lives. But unknown to the game's creator, Oliver Lewis and his sister still have functioning bots who help them on their farm, including an advanced AI named Roger who coordinates the worker drones. And after they come under attack, Roger initiates their defensive mode. These farmers aren't going to just lay down and die while Earth steals their land: they're going to fight!

While I, overall enjoyed Operation Bounce House, I have to admit that the premise and plot made me very uncomfortable. I can see something like this happening, potentially even here on Earth right now. The way the Earthers talked about the New Sonorans being "other" and "subhuman" is a known propaganda tactic used in wars (I remember reading about how soldiers in the World Wars would call the enemy by different terms to make them not-human in their heads). So yeah, be warned if you're reading this book: it is very uncomfortable at times. 

 Plus, you know, a lot of people die. It's not a happy book.

But as I said, I still did enjoy the book. Dinniman is a really good writer, particularly in a cinematic sense: I could picture the action really well (and think this would make a fantastic TV series or movie). I loved all the characters and how they all worked together to try to stay alive (and how they decided to stick it to the game company). The worldbuilding was really interesting, how the main characters were part of the "orphan generation" because all their parents who were born on-world died (and how the fix ended up the thing the Earthers used to claim the New Sonorans were "subhuman," even though they were the same with the exception of that one change in their genes so that they wouldn't die like their parents did). 

I also liked how so much only happened because the Earthers were terrified. The very thing they feared would happen did happen only because they attacked New Sonora. Had they left the planet alone, nothing would have happened.

Operation Bounce House is a fast, addicting read (I stayed up really late to finish it last night). If you're okay with the dark subject matter, it's definitely worth checking out. But do be aware of the subject matter as it is an uncomfortable look at where our culture could go.

The Secret Garden

I remember enjoying the movie The Secret Garden when I was younger, but I never did read the book. So when I saw it recently at work, I decided to give it a try. After all, it's a children's classic (the edition I saw was an Oxford Children's Classic). I thought there must be a reason that it's still in print.

The Secret Garden is, if I'm being charitable, the story of the friendship between three young people: Mary Lennox, the spoiled orphan who finds herself suddenly alone at her uncle's Misselthwaite Manor after her parents dies of cholera in India; Colin, his sickly (and spoiled) son; and Dickon, the sweet animal charmer. The three of them get into Colin's mom's walled garden that his father shut up when she passed away 10 years ago, and bring it back to life. Though if I'm being more realistic, it's the story of two incredibly spoiled and privileged young people somehow becoming good friends because they won't put up with each other's shit while Dickon tags along. And while that is a less charitable explanation, it's also very true. Both Mary and Colin were incredibly spoiled because they were only children whose only companionship was servants who gave into their every whim. Mary's mother just wanted to party and forget about her, while her father was too busy governing or something. Colin's father didn't want to even look at him because he was the reminder of his wife who died in childbirth (and even had her eyes). Both of them had servants tending to their needs (and servants who would never say no to them), so they both grew up to be terrors.

But after Mary's family passed away in India, she found herself shipped off to her uncle's house in England. There, the servants had no time for her, and sent her to amuse herself outside. Having grown up without any real experience with the authority of adults, she does as she pleases and finds her way into the locked garden (while fully aware of the history of why it was locked and forbidden in the first place). At night she sometimes hears someone crying, and though the servants tell her it's just the wind on the door, one night she takes it upon herself to go see what's going on and so discovers Colin. Contrary to everyone's expectations, Colin takes a liking to her, and so their friendship starts. But where he is used to getting his way, so is she; when he has a tantrum she is the first person to ever stand up to him and just tells him off.

While I found the beginning of the book a bit slow and hard to get into, I did like how Mary grew as a person. She starts taking an interest in her surroundings and the people around her, and slowly finds herself liking more and more people. And while Colin has a similar arc to her, he remains a kind of overbearing child, lecturing the others and leading their activities. Unfortunately the latter part of the book seems to switch to be about him; the book ends with the servants seeing him and his father (and so learning of his recovery) and ignores Mary (I was really hoping to see the three of them together at the end, actually becoming a family, because that's what both of them needed. Not just Colin).

I liked Dickon, but he is a much more minor character. He doesn't grow or change at all in the book - he remains the same sweet and rather saintly boy who everyone, human or otherwise, trusts.

The book also took a bit of a weird turn when the children started talking about Magic in relation to Colin gaining strength and recovering. While I think it was supposed to be a nod to children's games, it felt a lot like we were being preached at (especially with Colin lecturing about the subject). I felt like that was a rather unnecessary addition in the book, as just going outside and starting to move around was magic all on its own. 

While a bit tough to read at times (and sometimes a bit odd), I do like the book's message about getting outside and getting fresh air. Just reading it made me want to go out and start playing in my own garden (though I admittedly have to wait awhile still as my garden is still currently sleeping under a blanket of snow)!

Nine Goblins

I've never read anything by T. Kingfisher before (I think she mainly writes horror, which isn't really my thing). But Nine Goblins sounded fun, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Nine Goblins is the story of the Nineteenth Infantry (aka the Whinin' Niners), a goblin infantry troop of the Goblin Army fighting in the Goblin Wars (or the Glorious Conflict Resisting The Ongoing Human Aggression, as per the goblin generals). In their most recent engagement, they attack a wizard, who, while trying to flee the battle, accidentally transports nine members of the Whinin' Niners with him, deep into enemy territory. Now the goblins just want to get home to Goblinhome.

The main goblins were all a lot of fun. There was Nessilka, the reluctant sergeant trying to get everyone home (she was good at leading, but didn't like doing it). Murray, her corporal - an engineer who was demoted to the infantry because he was too good at designing devices (goblins expected giant clunky devices with lots of spikes, not neat little efficient devices). Algol,  her second corporal, an animal-lover. And Blanchett, who, after a Mechanics Corps accident, now only communicated through his one-eyed teddy bear. 

The remaining five goblins were Weasel, their stuttering and shy hunter, Mishkin and Mushkin, the twin new recruits, Thumper, and Gloober. These five were around but not as prominent as the other four.

I was not expecting Nine Goblins to also be about Sings-to-Trees, an elf veterinarian who will care for any creature great or small, mundane or magical. Though since he featured so prominently in the first few chapters, I (rightly) assumed he woukd be crossing paths with our nine goblins sooner or later.

The plot takes some interesting turns. First, skeleton deer appear at Sings-to-Trees' home, looking for help. From his books, he discovers they are cervidians, who only appear around areas of large magical disturbances. Then the Whinin' Niners try to raid a farm only to find it completely empty of both humans and animals (but find a moldy dinner sitting out with a few bites missing). So after finding Sings-to-Trees and telling him about the farm, the main four goblins go with him to try to discover what exactly is going on. And they are not prepared for the horror they find...

Overall, I quite enjoyed Nine Goblins. I loved the main goblins. The world building is really fun (I really liked how in goblin culture, the more you're complaining about something = the more you like it). There is a horror element to the story, so as long as you're okay with reading that genre, Nine Goblins is a rather fun read. :)

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

I, like many people nowadays, have been feeling super burnt-out by like everything. So when I stumbled on Anne Helen Petersen's Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, I was hoping it would be helpful, shedding light on why I feel this way.

Well, the short answer is that life sucks for everyone (particularly in the United States, which is where Petersen lives and is writing about). I thought this book was really good at showing how things have changed over time for everyone (not just millennials): companies have reduced good salaried jobs in favour of hiring more temp workers (aka freelancers), everyone is expected to work more and more hours (and that corresponds to less and less leisure time), people are afraid they will socially move downwards (out of the middle class), and, thanks to social media, people are now performing their lives rather than actually living them. But I thought the book was less good at showing how any of this was specific to millennials. Sure, many millennials were trying to start work during the 2008 recession, making it very difficult to make money, especially when many of them were struggling with student debt. And some millennials (younger ones in particular - this was not at all my experience) were raised in heavily scheduled ways, where everything they did was organized and often in hopes of being a good point for a college application. But these are things that are transcending any one generation. Millennials are parenting their own children in the same way. People of other generations had difficulties finding jobs in the recession. College tuition is even more expensive now than it was when millennials were attending, so younger generations will have even bigger debts. So, while I found this to be a largely informative read regarding the history of jobs in America over the last forty or fifty years, that was all it really was. The book also offers little in the way of solutions (the final chapter admits as much), which is rather unfortunate; it might have served as a rallying cry had there been more than just historical fact.

While, in some ways, I didn't really relate to the things Petersen was specifically mentioning, being an older millennial from Canada, I will admit that there were some areas of the book that really made me stop and consider my own life. One that particularly stood out to me was how everyone seems to feel pressure to monetize their hobbies (which was also kind of top of mind for me after watching Ryan George's video on the same topic just a few days before reading the chapter) instead of just enjoying them. That really made me stop and think.

So if you're looking for an interesting primer on how the working world has changed over the last few decades (particularly in corporate America), while a bit depressing, Can't Even is worth the read. 

Though I will admit, I was annoyed at the grammatical errors in the book - there were a number of places where there were extra words, making sentences a little nonsensical on first read.

Automatic Noodle

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz sounded like a super fun read. A group of robots wake up after being deactivated for a few months in the restaurant they were working in. They decide to open their own restaurant, even though they know they're technically not allowed to own property or businesses (or even own a bank account). So with the help of one of their human friends from before they were deactivated and a sentient car, they decide to start making the best hand-pulled noodles they can. But after some anti-robot activists get wind of their restaurant and start review-bombing them, how will their restaurant dream survive if no one can find them on the restaurant app?

Overall, I quite enjoyed Automatic Noodle. While the first chapter is a bit rough trying to keep all the robots and acronyms straight (there's a lot of world building thrown at you right off the bat), I ended up quite liking the main characters (I didn't have much of an opinion on the sentient truck). My biggest complaint was that the book just kind of ended. Staybehind, the ex-military robot-turned maintenance man for the restaurant, managed to infiltrate the inner circle of the anti-robot group and get evidence of their review-bombing to save the restaurant's online reputation. Then the book fastforwarded to after the reputation was saved, but the robots decided they don't even really want to bother using the app anymore because they have become successful enough using an old-school website and through neighborhood foot traffic. The end. It was very abrupt and underwhelming. 

Project Hail Mary

 A friend of mine wanted to do a sort of book club together with some books including Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. We just happened to start reading it right before the movie is due to come out, so that was a happy coincidence. :)

In Project Hail Mary, astronaut Mark Watney Ryland Grace wakes up from a coma in another solar system. He's really disoriented and doesn't really remember what was happening at first, but he slowly pieces together, with help of his slowly returning memories, that he and two other astronauts were sent aboard the Hail Mary to Tau Ceti in a desperate attempt to save the Earth. A bacteria, Astrophage, has been discovered traveling back and forth between our sun and Venus, and it seems to be feeding off of our sun's light; in just a few short years, without a solution, over half of the world's population will die as crops fail due to the cooling of the air. So the world's governments got together to send a team to Tau Ceti, a nearby star, that seemed to be unaffected by Astrophage (the other neighbouring stars all seemed to have similar dimming problems).

But Ryland wakes up alone; his fellow astronauts passed away in transit. So now he has to solve the problem on his own.

Or at least, that's what he originally thinks until he encounters an alien star-ship. It seems that an alien species from another solar system (40 Eridani) are having similar problems due to Astrophage, and are also at Tau Ceti to try to find a solution. When the aliens saw the Hail Mary arrive, they made contact in the hopes that the two species can find a solution and save both their worlds together.

I loved Project Hail Mary. I wasn't expecting an alien species to make contact with Ryland, and, being a language nerd, I loved how they built up communication together. I also loved Rocky (what Ryland calls his new alien friend), and thought the two of them made a great team. 

The book goes back and forth between Ryland's present at Tau Ceti and his past, where he was part of the team that built the Hail Mary, as flashbacks as he regains his memories. The past serves to help him remember things about the ship and how it works, which in turns helps him use his scientific knowledge (he is a microbiologist) to try to find a solution to the Astrophage. I did start getting annoyed with going back to the past at times once the book got going because I was much more interested in what was going on at Tau Ceti than with what happened while they were building the ship. Though there was some interesting intrigue going on as well, once it became clear that everything wasn't quite as clear-cut as I originally assumed regarding Ryland's presence.

I also felt like Ryland wasn't really his own character, but just a further adventure of Mark Watney from The Martian. While it's admittedly been over a decade since I read The Martian, I felt like they were just too similar. Both were science nerd with a lot of random knowledge that was helpful. They also talked and thought in what felt like a similar manner (though again, it might not be; I haven't reread The Martian recently). 

The book also feels similar to The Martian in that everything that can go wrong (but Ryland and company survive) does. I remember feeling like the book must be wrapping up soon, but looking at how many pages are left to go still and thinking "well, at least one or two things are still going to go wrong from here."  So that was a little bit disappointing.

But honestly, I flew through the book in just a few days, barely wanting to put it down. I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the movie (though it'll be interesting to see how Ryan Gosling interprets Ryland Grace - a lot of how he talks in the book reminds me of Ryan Reynolds).  

A Treachery of Swans

I saw A. B. Poranek's new book, A Treachery of Swans, at the library and of course had to get it. I enjoyed Where the Dark Stands Still a lot and wanted to see what she came up with next. I have to admit, I was not expecting a France-inspired story, but I was still along for the ride. I did have a bit of a hard time getting into it (I'd say it took around 50 pages), but once I got hooked I didn't want to put A Treachery of Swans down!

This time around, Poranek wrote a sapphic romance based on Swan Lake. In this world, a king's sorcière advisor drove the Three Mothers, goddesses who control life, death, and change/magic from their country. Morgane, the Mother of magic, cursed the land as she fled so that nothing beautiful would grow. She left behind a single magical crown that allowed the king to keep the crops growing. But the magic comes at a price, for every time he uses it he falls more steadily into madness. Due to the sorcière's actions, anyone who can use magic, who happens to have gold in their veins instead of the regular red, is shunned, blamed for the blight on the land.

Into this world is born Odile, a girl with golden blood who was taken in, along with her non-sorcière brother, by a sorcière named Regnault. He has been sending Odile on missions to steal Goddess gold, the only thing that can still allow sorcières to summon magic. After many, many years, they have enough for one final heist: Odile will take the place of Marie d'Odette, convince the Dauphin to marry her, and, on their wedding when the magical crown is brought out, they will steal it to summon Morgane back and heal the land! Except....things start to go sideways when the Dauphin's father, King Honoré, is murdered, and Odile's estranged brother is accused of the murder. Odile starts to investigate, wanting to clear her brother's name. She starts to get closer to the Dauphin, as well as to Marie, who witnessed the murder, all the while trying to convince herself that these people are her enemies, and she must stay to her task of stealing the crown.

I honestly quite liked the story (once I got into it). I liked the characters, especially the Dauphin. He is a kind-hearted gentleman, someone who many of the other nobles, his father included, think is too weak, but who has a quiet strength in genuinely caring about the people around him. I also quite liked Odile and how she grew through the story, slowly coming to realize what her father, Regnault, had been doing to her over the years (and what she had lost as a result). I also liked how the other characters, especially Marie, saw the good in Odile, no matter how much Odile insisted she was the villain of the tale.

I will admit that I was able to predict some of the twists and turns of the plot, like who the beast was and the truth of Regnault. But I still enjoyed how the story unfolded and how the characters discovered these things on their own. Though it did feel like there should be a part two to this story (which probably won't happen based on the epilogue), I quite enjoyed A Treachery of Swans as a standalone tale. 

Blind Date with a Werewolf: a Novel in Stories

It's been awhile since I read anything by Patricia Briggs, so it seems fitting that her new book, Blind Date with a Werewolf: a Novel in Stories is the first book I read in 2026! 

In Blind Date with a Werewolf, Asil, the Moor, one of the oldest and scariest werewolves, is given the "gift" of five blind dates for Christmas (which, as he keeps repeating to his "Concerned Friends," is completely unnecessary as he doesn't celebrate Christmas). Asil has been barely controlling his wolf for a long time, after the death of their mate (and has been begging his Alpha to kill him, though the Marrock has always refused), and so thinks this is a bad idea. But his friends are betting against him (the rules are that he must stay with his date for 2 hours, no one must run screaming from the other, and Asil is not to kill anyone) and Asil likes a challenge, so he agrees. The five stories in this book tell the tales (or the aftermaths) of his five blind dates.

Prior to starting Blind Date with a Werewolf, I had been struggling my way through another book (which I put aside in order to read this). I was so happy at the speed in which I got into this book; I finished it in about three nights! Asil is a really fun character: he's full of interesting knowledge because of his age, but is still interested in the people and happenings around him. He's physically gorgeous and likes to play this up, but he never seems arrogant (he's just accepting of it as a thing, and often just wants to get past it). While a very dominant wolf, he is very protective of innocents.

His dates themselves are also very entertaining. He starts out with a vampire LARPer; while Asil isn't into men, he has no problems continuing on the date and even dancing with him. From there he meets someone who loves cats (an interesting option for his "Concerned Friends" to choose for a werewolf!), a platonic date with a fellow gardener, a ghost hunter, and a high society swinger. Of course, nothing goes as planned as vampires, witches, wyrms, fae, and other creatures make their way into his dates.

But along the way, Asil also starts to heal, and even finds his wolf talking to him once again! This is largely thanks to his fourth date, Ruby; something about her calms Asil's wolf, and even though they just go on one short date, Asil's wolf is convinced that she is "their" Ruby. I was really happy with how that all developed, and I hope to one day read more about them. :)

I absolutely loved this book. It was such a fun read and a great start to my year. :D 

The Summer War

I was really excited to see a new Naomi Novik novella was out! I hadn't heard anything about it, and was really happy to see that it was more of the fantasy-style like Uprooted and Spinning Silver (it really reminded me of the world of Spinning Silver, so I was rather surprised that the two aren't connected, even by being in the same world).  

In The Summer War, when Celia is 12 years old, she discovers that she is a sorceress when she curses her brother to never find love again. Desperate to try to undo the curse, she has only a little time to find him before she is wed to the crown prince of the realm. But when the prince and the king pull a double cross, she finds herself at the whims of the mortal's ancient enemy, the immortal summerlings.

I really enjoyed The Summer War. It was a fast read (I read it in a day because it's fairly short). I liked the characters, especially how Celia learned and grew as a person as she grew up. The dynamics between her and her brothers were interesting as well 

I also liked the summerlings and how they thought so differently from the mortals in the story. For immortals, they were very much willing to die in glory so their names could live on in story. Their revenge plan was also kind of funny in that they expected a mortal to do something the way they expected, and were so surprised and angry when they didn't. It was a neat touch that they could only do things in the mortal realm during summetime, and would go running back to their world when the autumn winds hit.

All in all, this was a super fast and enjoyable read (especially after my last few reads). 

The Enchanted Hacienda

I found a review on Goodreads that sums up J.C. Cervantes' book The Enchanted Hacienda quite nicely: "like encanto but boring." The main character, Harlow, is from a magical family, only she alone doesn't have magic. She tried to move to New York and be an editor. But when she's let go, she finds her way back to her family's hacienda to try to figure out her next steps. There she encounters Ben, an intriguing guy who is trying to stay away from his journalist ex-girlfriend by hiding at Harlow's table in the local cafe. Circumstance after circumstance keeps throwing them together and they get caught up in a whirlwind romance until Harlow starts to question whether what they have is real or not.

The Enchanted Hacienda has a really good the beginning.  I was swept away with the Hacienda and learning how all the magic worked, as well as the bond between all of the women in Harlow's family. But then the story became a straight up romance, and it really started to lose me. Harlow and Ben had this amazing connection. He said he wasn't romantic, then did a lot of really romantic gestures. They kept almost having sex, but something made them stop. I found it really boring and almost stopped reading (but I was already so far into the book that I decided to just finish it and be done).

But then, something happened that made the whole romance part make sense, plot-wise. I was still bored reading it, but at least I appreciated it from that point on.

I also found there were some weird inconsistencies. For one thing, for someone who was unemployed, Harlow seemed to be blowing a lot of money (new clothes after her wardrobe had already caught up with her, flying to New York, etc). For another thing, I found it really difficult to tell how much time was passing through most of the book. Did Harlow go to Quebec City immediately after the events with the bouquet, or did some time pass? What time of year was any of this even happening? The book also didn't really explain why certain things happened (William's dream of Harlow, as one big example). And it glossed over other things (what happened with the journalist, even sometimes an event would happen, a chapter ends on a cliffhanger, then the next chapter is a day or two later and has glossed over what happened during the cliffhanger).

While in the end, I didn't mind the story of The Enchanted Hacienda, I definitely wasn't in love with it. I don't think I'll be reading any further in the Estrada family saga.

The Dallergut Dream Department Store

The Dallergut Dream Department Store was the second book that a friend from work recommended to me. It is the story of Penny, who gets a job at the titular Dallergut Dream Department Store, where dreams are sold to the dreamers who visit Penny's world when they sleep. In this world, our brains don't create our dreams; instead, there are beings who craft dreams (and it's a whole big thing in Penny's world, where the big dream makers are celebrities and they have a yearly award ceremony that everyone watches). The dreams are paid for after the fact, with strong emotions that the dreamers experience. Those emotions can be bought and sold, and used as needed (added into cookies and drinks, sprayed on furniture to create a certain feeling, stuff like that). 

The Dallergut Dream Department Store is Penny's first year working for Dallergut, from her initial interview into the new year. She begins learning the ins and outs of the business, and meets some of the dream makers, all the while tending to the dreaming customers' needs. Most of the chapters are interspersed with stories of dreamers in the waking world (and how the dreams they choose to purchase influence them). These dreamers are often loosely connected, in that one may be friends with another, or hear of another's life, but otherwise their stories standalone.

The characters who work at (or around, in the case of the dream makers) Dallergut's store are quite varied and eccentric. I enjoyed a lot of them, especially Dallergut. Dallergut is both wise and infinitely curious, asking questions that make the others around him think. He values curiosity and insight, as that was largely how Penny was hired in the first place. 

Unfortunately, while the world and the characters are interesting, I found the story of the book largely lacking. I started losing interest in reading it part way through (possibly in part because it reads like a bunch of kind of boring short stories after the initial wonder of the setting wears off). I actually really struggled to finish reading the book (I found myself wishing I was reading one of the graded French readers I've been reading lately instead). It's such a shame: The Dallergut Dream Department Store has a lot of promise, but failed to live up to that. :(

The Rainfall Market

A friend at work recommended You Yeong-Gwang's The Rainfall Market to me (as well as a second book) after I told her that I've had a bit of a tough time reading lately. The Rainfall Market is a really quick read at only 209 pages, so I thought it was a great place to start. 

The Rainfall Market is the story of Kim Serin, a girl who feels like her life is a depressing mess. Her father passed away, her sister disappeared, her mother has no time for her, and she has no friends. When she hears that if you write a letter to the mysterious Rainfall Market, a magical place where you can exchange your misery for a better future, she jumps at the chance to obtain an invite. Once there, she has until the rainy season ends (about one week) to make her choice, or she will disappear forever.

But Serin isn't alone. As the holder of a golden ticket, she is given a guide cat, Issha, who can help her find the future she wants. Together the two of them go searching through the Rainfall Market, meeting (and often helping) many of the inhabitants (the Dokkaebi, a race of human-like beings who take and use different emotions and memories of humans) in search of the perfect Dokkaebi orb to bring back to her world for a better future. 

The Rainfall Market is a really cute and overall feel good story (though I admit, even though it has a happy ending that I kind of saw coming, I was crying at some of the events that got us there). This is the perfect read for when you're in need of something more light-hearted. :)  

Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently

I almost returned Caroline L. Arnold's Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently to the library unread. I'd taken out a few self-help books around the same time that were all along the same lines (transforming your life for the better), read a bit, then ultimately sent them back. But something stopped me with Small Move, Big Change. And whatever it was, I'm glad it did!

Small Move, Big Change is all about transforming your life by slowly changing your habits. A lot of your behaviour runs on autopilot, or through habit, as Arnold explains. So when you try to make a big sweeping change, you run up against that autopilot, eventually succumbing back to those habits you always use (this is specifically due to the limited amount of energy your willpower and decision making capability have per day; each time you decide to do something counter to these auto-behaviours, you use some of your will power up until you have nothing left). By targeting small, select behaviours with microresolutions (small resolutions that have instant gratification because they are so small, it's much easier to follow through with them), you can, over time, change your habits by making new ones, which in turn will change your life.

I felt like a lot of this idea was also in Atomic Habits (though this book predates Atomic Habits, so maybe Clear got some ideas from Arnold?) But I really liked how Arnold packaged this. The first part of the book explains the whole process of setting microresolutions, and the rest of the book shows examples in action in different parts of your life (sleep, fitness, diet/nutrition, clutter, relationships, spendig, punctuality, and organization). You honestly don't even really need to read the second part of the book, as you get everything you need from the first part. But there are some interesting ideas based off of examples from the author's life (and from some of her clients and friends). I honestly already started a couple in my own life as I was reading this book (and believe me, as you read it, you get so many ideas for things you can try, it's very hard to limit yourself to the two that Arnold recommends at a time!)

While I was reading Small Move, Big Change, I was honestly struck by how Arnold's method felt like the missing piece in my own attempts at self-improvement and goal setting. I was very impressed with the microresolution method, and I hope it helps me in my own life!

Lost in the Never Woods

I saw Lost in the Never Woods at work and thought it sounded fun. I like fairy tale retellings, and have really enjoyed the Peter Pan stories I've read (specifically The Child Thief by Brom and Lost Boy by Christina Henry). So I was quite excited, especially for a story about a more grown up Wendy trying to remember her time in Neverland.

Lost in the Never Woods opens with a very traumatized Wendy trying to finish her volunteer shift at the hospital. But when the police show up to ask questions about a child who went missing, she is, of course, under suspicion. Five years previously, Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods; only Wendy returned, and she has no memory of what happened during that time. But when, on her way home, she nearly hits a strange boy with her truck, and recognizes him as the boy who she has been secretly drawing for years, she begins to piece together what exactly happened to her family all those years ago.

I really enjoyed Thomas' version of Peter Pan (the character). Out of the Peter Pan retellings I've read, this Peter is the most wholesome. He is upbeat, friendly, brave, and just a really wonderful guy.

I also quite liked the ending of the story, when you find out exactly what is happening (spoilers here): What Peter's Shadow is (the manifestation of the fear and anger of a person) and how he is gaining power (he has been kidnapping local kids and feeding off their fear). What happened to Wendy's brothers (they tragically passed five years ago), what Peter is (he is like a guardian spirit who brings the souls of children who meet tragic ends to Neverland where they can recover and finally move on), what happened to Wendy all those years ago (she was the one and only living girl to go to Neverland; her presence, and also that Peter likes her (she is the only person he has ever really wanted for himself) are what caused Peter's Shadow to start to gain power and split off from Peter), all of that was really well done.

....unfortunately, it is a SLOG to get there. I wasn't prepared for that at all...pretty much nothing happens for a good 50-60% of the book. I very nearly stopped reading it multiple times (and wouldn't have felt bad if I had because it was so boring). A friend of mine suggested I keep trying because Thomas is an author she likes, so I did decide to persevere. The end was good, but you honestly could skip the first 200 pages and wouldn't miss a whole lot. This really should have been a novella, or a Murderbot-sized book; coming in at nearly 400 pages, Lost in the Never Woods should have lost a lot of the excess bloat.

While the end of Into the Never Woods was rather good, I do not recommend this book as a whole. I am proud of myself for making it through though. Unfortunately, having read it, I have no desire to read anything else by Thomas (at least at this time).

The Blanket Cats

I saw The Blanket Cats and thought it sounded like a cute read. The premise is that there's a pet store that rents out cats for three days to people; as long as the cat has its blanket, the cat is fine in the new environment. The endorsement on the cover even said "Utterly charming...I would read a hundred of these stories," so I was ready for some cute stories about cats in temporary homes. So I was utterly unprepared for the reality that is The Blanket Cats: terrible people, terrible situations, and a cat being there for no real reason.

There are seven stories in The Blanket Cats. The first one is about a childless couple who decided to try renting a cat to see if a cat would work in their lifestyle. But the couple is a couple in name only; after they were unable to have children, they basically started leading separate lives at the wife's insistence (they have separate bedrooms, where they go to hang out alone all the time). The wife is enamored with the cat, until the cat catches a mouse when they take her to a park. At that point she wants nothing to do with the cat, though the story sort of implies that maybe the couple will be a bit closer now? I'm not sure though because the story just kind of abruptly ends (honestly, that's how most of the stories in this collection end).

The second one is about a lady who always rented the same cat every few months. The two of them would go off on adventures together. The cat she normally rented had retired, but the pet store owner let the lady take the cat on one more adventure. This one had some supernatural elements to the story, where the cat seemed to be able to show her either memories of people or the future of people. As the story unfolded, it turned out the lady had cancer, she stole from the company she worked for (who were all good people) and was intending to commit suicide. The story ended at the beach where she didn't drown herself, and the cops finally caught up with her.

The third story is about a loud and obnoxious man and his son, who together rented a cat (well, the pet store owner let the boy rent the cat - he didn't trust the father). It turned out the boy had been bullying another kid at school quite badly. The boy named the cat his own name, and seemed to use the cat to work through his own emotions? It was a bit confusing because both the cat and the boy had the same names. Either way, it wasn't a good story.

This was the point where I was pretty sure that endorsement on the front cover was lying.

The fourth story was about a family whose cat had passed. But they were having their grandmother with dementia over for the last time before the grandmother went into a home. And the grandmother had loved their cat, so rather than tell her the cat had died, they rented one in the hopes that she wouldn't notice. This story also featured the family's older daughter lying about breaking up with her boyfriend, so she asked him to come to dinner for her grandmother's sake. 

So basically more terrible people.

The fifth story was arguably the best of the lot. A man lived in an apartment building where no pets were allowed. The landlord would periodically rent a cat from the Blanket Cat place who was a fairly rough, kind of mean cat; he would go through the building and use the cat to find out if any of the tenants had animals (and promptly evict them). The main character's girlfriend wanted to move in with him, but she had a cat, so they decided to rent that same cat in the hopes that the two would be okay with each other come inspection day. Unfortunately, their kitten loved the older cat too much and got super excited when she could smell him.

This story had some of the most interesting and sympathetic characters. The landlord had a very sad story, and while he was a gruff man, he was by no means horrible (when he discovers the kitten, yes he wants the couple out, but he also wants them to get better jobs/be financially better off before they leave). The cat he rented out also had an interesting and tragic story (he was the kitten of his family before they passed), so while the man didn't want the cat living with him full time, he still gets him to visit often. This was the one story that I genuinely thought was good - I didn't feel like anyone was horrible.

The sixth story was also really good. This one was the only one from one of the cat's perspectives. One of the cats gets rented out to someone who seems like a pretty horrible cat guardian. So the cat takes off on the first chance he gets. He jumps into the back of a truck to get away, and discovers two kids who are running away from home. The cat helps them, then at the end of the story moves on with the intention of helping others.

Again, this story had some good people going through some tough things. Some of the things going on from the cat's perspective were a bit weird, but overall I really enjoyed this one, too.

But we can't end on a good note, can we? No, of course not. So that brings us to the final story of the collection. A man was laid off from work, and his family will need to sell their house and go back to a smaller apartment. The man feels like he has betrayed everyone, and wants to make even just one dream of his kids' come true: they had told him they wanted a cat before, so he rents one for a few days. His wife is against it. His daughter basically doesn't want to give him the time of day. But his son is quite excited. The two of them attempt to build some memories (with the women wanting no part in this). But when their real estate agent surprises them with some clients who are interested in viewing the house, the couple send the kids and cat to the park. And their daughter takes the blanket from the cat's carrier and purposefully leaves it at the park.

Now, this one didn't feel as horrible as the earlier stories in the collection. I felt like these were good people dealing with a traumatic situation. But the story itself wasn't a good read. It dragged in weird parts (like when the dad tried to get his son to guess what was in the cat carrier....why would a moment like that need to go on?) but also wrapped up too quickly. This story felt like it could have been more fleshed out. This was especially true of the end; the end just sort of happens, and I didn't feel like there was good closure (the father and daughter went back to the park to retrieve the blanket).

So that was The Blanket Cats. It's not a charming read, and I would not read hundreds of these stories. These seven were enough, thank you.