Hello and happy Monday, Epic folx! No announcements today, so we’ll get right to the good stuff.
What Are You Reading?
Hello hello, Insiders! It’s me, Vanessa, back again with a little reading check in to start the week off. By the time you read this I’ll be back in Portland where the rain is in full force. Rain and cold temps can be a bummer, I know, but this girl can’t wait to watch the rain from my window with a fireplace ASMR vid going on my TV. I do what I can with what I have, okay!?
Now back to the books!
I finished Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson and can’t recommend it enough. It was so fun! The witchy magic, the characters and their complex relationships, the humor, the giant middle finger to JKR… it’s just swell. I was not prepared for that ending though and dramatically yelled, “Porque??!!” in my best Telenovela Spanish at the closing paragraph. I won’t spoil it but good grief!! I will be very impatiently waiting till May 2023 for the sequel, The Shadow Cabinet. Shoutout to the audiobook narrator, Aoife McMahon. I loved McMahon’s delivery of each distinct character’s voice and vibe.
I also finished and really enjoyed The Cloisters, but! I do want to give a disclaimer. I think it’s billed as being much creepier and occult than it really is, and it is not even close to a comp for The Secret History if you ask me. Neither of those is a bad thing, and I still recommend the book! I just went in expecting something a little different (folks are real fast and loose with those Secret History comparisons, methinks) and readers might be disappointed if they do the same.
As for this week’s reading, I am in the middle of The Secret Society of Irregular Witches like I teased last week. Just give me all the brujas, it’s my brand at this point. I’ve also just started Even Though I Knew The End by C.L. Polk which I was only a little bit mad at Liberty for stealing on last week’s episode of All the Books. I love, love, loved C.L. Polk’s Kingston Cycle (Witchmark) series and The Midnight Bargain too, so they’re pretty much an auto-read for me at this point. Even Though I Knew The End is a slim volume at less than 150 pages and speaks to me on so many levels: it’s supernatural, it’s noir, it has a magical detective, a serial killer vampire on the loose, an impossible choice, and some romance. That just sounds like a good time.
Speaking of auto-read authors, lemme talk to you about Alexis Hall. Hall is a self-described genrequeer author of kissing books and I’ve loved everything I’ve read. I came a little late to his work with Boyfriend Material, the audiobook of which convinced me that I’m looking for someone who will talk to me like Oliver does to Luc. Then Husband Material dropped and I stand even more firmly by that statement. Slide into my DMs, Oliver sound-alike. Just saying.
So this week I’m going to do Hall’s most recent release on audio, Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble, the follow up to the hilarious and delightful Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake and second book in Hall’s Winner Bakes All Series. This one follows a young man whose roommate enters him in a baking competition show (Bake Expectations!). To his surprise he’s sort of killing it week to week and develops a lil’ romance with a fellow contestant, but his fear and anxiety threaten to get in the way of his happiness. I just love the way Alexis Hall writes romance, especially the banter between the love interests and overall humor in all of his writing. Some other favorites from Hall include his Kate Kane series (a paranormal investigator in London chasing down—and occasionally bedding—demons and vampires, yes please) and the Kobo exclusive Murder Most Actual, a whodunnit set in a fancy hotel in the Scottish highlands that pays homage to the golden age of mystery. On my near futurish TBR from Hall are The Affair of the Mysterious Letter and A Lady for a Duke, but his backlist goes even deeper than that. Is that a challenge? Yeah, I think it is.
What are you reading this week? Sound off in the comments!
Stay bad & bookish,
Vanessa