Category: Read This Book

I first read Enríquez when her first book was translated into English, Things We Lost in the Fire, which was an incredible short story collection. But having only read Enríquez’s short fiction, I didn’t know what to expect from Our Share of Night, which comes in at almost 600 pages. But let me tell you, I was blown away by this novel.

The story is set in Argentina during the 1980s and begins with Juan and his son Gaspar traveling north from Buenos Aires to Juan’s in-laws’ house in the country. We aren’t sure why the two are headed north, but as the pair grow closer to their destination, Juan is filled with dread. We learned that his wife has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Juan, who lives with a life-long heart condition, struggles to be a solo parent while also still grieving for his wife.

Soon, Juan and Gaspar are engulfed by a mysterious group just called “The Order” that holds a sinister grasp over Juan and his son. The novel is horror at its best, examining the evil in this world, who holds the power in society, and what suffering under that power does to people’s mental and physical health. Enríquez delves into the question, who are the real monsters in our society?

Megan McDowell has given us a beautiful translation that seamlessly creates a sinister and creepy atmosphere throughout the story. I felt immersed in the story from the first chapter and flew through this book, finishing it in just a couple of days. This is a book perfect for the spooky season, or really any season where you want to be terrified. Just as a content warning, this book does contain graphic violence towards women and children throughout the novel.

It’s the middle of the night and there seems to be some kind of pied piper situation where there is music that is enchanting and luring away all the children of a village. Someone cries out about the children being stolen and then the book takes us elsewhere.

It is the morning of the Harvest Festival which is also the day that Abeni celebrates her birthday. She is 12, not yet grown, but almost. After she gets ready, she goes outside and her mother tells her the story of her birth, which Abeni is tired of hearing. When Abeni’s mother was pregnant with her, it was a very dry season and there hadn’t been much rain. They were worried about the pregnancy and the village healer sent Abeni’s father to see the old woman. Most of the adults call her the old woman but the children of the village call her a witch. She lived in the forest and hadn’t come to the village in a long, long time. She gave Abeni’s father a ritual to perform to help bring Abeni out and apparently it worked because Abeni was born and also, it rained for the first time in a long, long while. Because of this, folks in the village call Abeni “little rain bringer.”

The Harvest Festival begins and it’s fun and exciting and loud until suddenly, everyone falls silent. The witch has come walking out of the forest toward everyone. She had warned them to leave, that something very dangerous is coming but the adults in the village did not take heed and they’re basically ignoring her. She tells them she can no longer protect the village and she has come to collect her payment for protecting the village all these years. Her payment is to be one of the village’s children. The villagers deny her this and say they will protect themselves and start gearing up for war. Abeni’s mother goes to try to negotiate with the witch and ends up saying that the witch can take Abeni. The village is suddenly under attack by terrifying creatures that snatch up all the adults and lure away all the children. The witch is only able to save Abeni.

And this is just the beginning.

Kara has just separated from her husband, she’s broke, and she has nowhere to go. Rather than crash with her mom, she accepts her uncle Earl’s invitation to come live and work at his museum of odd and weird things in a small, southern town. She’s grateful for the place to land and her work helping catalog the museum, even if it’s deeply weird. When Uncle Earl needs surgery and leaves Kara in charge, she thinks it’ll be an easy few days. Instead, a hole appears in the wall in an exhibit. And when she investigates this rather large hole with Simon, the barista next door, she discovers a portal to an alternate dimension where unseen beings stalk them, and a mysterious message — pray they are hungry — haunts them. This was not on Kara’s BINGO card.

I love the humor in this book, and I love how the characters never take themselves too seriously. Kara and Simon are great friends and have an awesome dynamic, and while they don’t want to believe that there is a portal to a different dimension in the wall of the museum, they get on board pretty quickly. And they go exploring, like you do — even though they know it’s maybe not the best idea. And when they get lost in the otherworld with danger around every corner, well. Whoops. Despite the seriousness of their predicament, I do love that they keep a good sense of humor about the whole thing. Call it a coping mechanism, but the humor balances the tension really nicely. There are also so many odd and weird details about this other world, and about the museum, and about the mystery of how and why the portal opened, that I was kept on the edge of my seat. Never in a hundred years could I have come up with a world like Kingfisher describes, and it’s so understatedly creepy that I know it’ll haunt my brain for years to come. Kara’s first-person narration also feels really chatty and intimate, and I was completely drawn in by her voice and her story.

Kingfisher is a prolific author — she writes for kids, teens, and adults and writes horror as well as fantasy, and this is one of her more folksy horror novels. If you enjoyed her book The Twisted Ones, you’d definitely like this one. But really, don’t sleep on any of her quirky (and sometimes creepy) books! I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Hillary Huber, and it was excellent.

Toya, a young Black artist from Atlanta, returns to her ancestral home in North Carolina to finish her MFA. As she’s working on an art installation that honors the generations of Black women in her family, she begins thinking about the Confederate monument in town and starts calling for its removal. At the same time, a young deputy comes across a list of influential men who are all part of the Klan. Unsure of what to do with this information, he takes it to the sheriff.

Those We Thought We Knew looks at a community with far too many unspoken truths. Toya, determined to confront the county’s history of racism head-on, joins a local Black church in their plans to hold a protest calling for the statue’s removal. As the day of the protest approaches, the town begins to boil over.

David Joy’s stories are often described as crime novels, but their strong literary bent makes them somewhere in between. The crime happens almost halfway through the book. And I have to admit, it was completely unexpected. The sheriff and the young deputy travel around the county, interviewing a series of shady characters. I didn’t see the end coming and gasped out loud during one of the last scenes. This book is a wild read, but it asks a lot of important questions of its readers.

Joy has a special way of capturing the communities in the mountains of North Carolina. He was recently featured on PBS’s Southern Storytellers series. Other authors in the series include Jesmyn Ward and Jericho Brown. The American South is a complex place, full of many different communities and cultures, and Joy has dedicated his career to writing stories about the working-class people he grew up with and the North Carolina community that he’s still part of today.

This is a historical romance that takes place primarily in the southern United States in the late 1870s, and race and racism are very much a part of this book. This is technically the third book in Jenkins’s Women Who Dare romance series, and as someone who has only read this book in the series, I can tell you that To Catch a Raven totally holds its own without having read the two other books first.

I am an absolute sucker for a book that has a con artist as the main character. This book not only has that, but it has an entire family of con artists, and each person is an absolute delight. First, outside of this con artist family, we have a father and son in Boston: Harrison and Braxton Steele. They are well-off Black men, as Braxton’s maternal grandfather had a fleet of merchant ships. Braxton is used to comfort and he is a tailor, and Harrison is a painter and illustrator.

Well, Harrison’s past has come back to cause some trouble. Before Braxton’s mother, he was in love with a woman named Hazel Moreau. Hazel, like her mother, her siblings, and now her children, was an incredibly talented con artist. When Hazel and Harrison were together, Harrison would produce incredibly good counterfeit paintings that they sold. At present, a detective has threatened Harrison (and Hazel, who is still living down in New Orleans) with arrest unless they convince their respective children to help pull a heist to recover something that was stolen.

Hazel and Harrison haven’t talked for decades, but suddenly he and Braxton find themselves in Hazel’s home in New Orleans, meeting with Hazel and her daughter, Raven. The detective has told them that a copy of the Declaration of Independence has been stolen, but the detective knows who has it: a former Confederate official in South Carolina. The detective wants Braxton and Raven to pose as husband and wife, go work for this man and his wife disguised as a chauffeur and housekeeper, and find (and steal) back the copy of the Declaration of Independence. Apparently, this Confederate official and his wife only hire Black people as servants because they like to feel like they are still owning enslaved people. So, you know, terrible all around.

Braxton is a goody-two-shoes and super judgmental of the life that Hazel, Raven, and their family lead, but he will do anything to keep his father out of the penitentiary. Raven finds Braxton absolutely insufferable. This animosity and tension does not last long, and things definitely get spicy. There is a good helping of sex on the page as well as some very touching acts of kindness that made my heart melt.

During the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t seen as a domestic terror group. Instead, millions of white Americans bought into the idea that the KKK was a society of brotherhood, American values, and fellowship, despite the white supremacy they preached and the violence they enacted against Black and Jewish Americans, Catholics, and immigrants. A man named D.C. Stephenson was responsible for scamming his way into the upper echelons of the KKK national organization, and recruiting tens of thousands of people in Indiana, making it the state with the most KKK members. He was the law in Indiana and had set his sights on Washington, D.C., when his path crossed with a young woman named Madge Oberholtzer, who would bring his empire of hate crashing down.

If you’ve spent any time in the U.S. or know anything about 20th century American history, you’ve likely heard of the Ku Klux Klan. I’d never really learned about their history and therefore didn’t realize just how pervasive they were in American life and culture in the 1920s — far more so than I realized. They started as a vigilante group following the end of the Civil War but were quashed under President Grant’s term (though never eradicated) until they rose again to prominence in the 1910s and grew and expanded until membership reached the hundreds of thousands in the 1920s. At the height of their power, they marched unmasked in Washington, D.C., and drew tens of thousands of supporters.

I appreciate that Egan makes no excuses or apologies, and he’s very frank on his representation of the facts: Many, if not most, people in the Midwest were a part of the KKK at this time, and they were blatantly violent and hateful. It is likely that many white Americans had ancestors who were members. The parallels between the justification that many used to join the group feel eerily similar to today — all excuses about preserving American values and protecting Christian families, which is chilling. What’s even more horrifying is that Stephenson and the KKK’s rise seemed unstoppable, and his presidential candidacy seemed inevitable until Stephenson met Madge Oberholtzer. She was a young woman without any power or influence, and when Stephenson targeted her for his cruel and sadistic ways, her story just happened to go public — and her tragic run-in with Stephenson changed everything for him and for the KKK on a national scale.

Despite the chilling nature of this story, I think it’s really important to read histories like this to understand where we’ve been and recognize when we’re going too far down that road again. This book is meticulously written and researched, compelling like a train wreck, and really heartbreaking. But until we face the darkest parts of our history, we can’t truly reckon with what it means to be American. The tragic truth is that it took a horrific crime to be committed, some brave souls to publicize it, and a brave jury to find a man guilty to slow the spread of the KKK’s hate. So while this is not an easy read, it is an essential one.

Back in 2013, New Zealand author Eleanor Catton became the youngest person to ever win the Booker Prize with her novel The Luminaries. Now Catton is back with her second novel, Birnam Wood. Unlike the sprawling historical fiction novel that won her the Booker Prize, Birnam Wood is a shorter, more contemporary novel. 

The story centers around a New Zealand nonprofit called Birnam Wood. The organization focuses on ideas around mutual aid and ethical food production. To the head of the organization, Mira, this looks like growing crops on public land and sneaking on unwatched corners of wealthy land-owners, cultivating seedlings in her living room, and trying to sort out Birnam Wood’s funding.

When a landslide closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, the town of Thorndike was cut off, leaving a farm empty and unattended. Mira decides to head over and see if the farm would be a great potential space to grow some crops without the owners of the property noticing a bunch of twentysomethings starting a little garden on their land. But when she’s caught by an American billionaire, she makes a deal that seals the fate of everyone at Birnam Wood.

Heading into this novel, I had no idea what to expect. I remember listening to The Luminaries, marveling at Catton’s skill, but I also was very confused. Birnam Wood is much more straightforward, possessing twists and turns reminiscent of crime novels. Catton’s characters are complex. She has this way of conveying so much in a single conversation between two characters. So while I haven’t given you many details here, that’s for good reason — I don’t want to spoil it for you! But let’s just say I saw none of the plot twists coming. 

I’ll be talking about this book on the next episode of Book Riot’s Read or Dead podcast, so head over there if you want to hear more!

This is part of the absolutely lovely nonfiction comic Quick & Easy Guides collection. The author & illustrator, A. Andrews, is a disabled cartoonist. They make it very clear that they are neither a doctor nor a sex educator, but they have plenty of lived experience as a sexually active disabled person.

Disabled people are the largest minority group in the United States and make-up an estimated 20% of the population. That being said, many disabled folks are sexually active, and there aren’t nearly enough resources for disabled people on how to have sex that is pleasurable, comfortable, and safe. Not only are there not enough resources, there aren’t even enough conversations around sex and intimacy for disabled folks. This book hopes to open the door a bit wider, knowing that disabled folks remain less likely to receive adequate sex education and sexual healthcare at the same time as being more likely to experience trauma and stigma around sex. As mentioned in the title, this is a quick and easy guide. It does not get very deep and detailed, but it’s a wonderful starter for conversations and exploration. It’s written in a super casual, conversational tone that I really appreciate.

The author talks a bit about how they are defining disability and then some common myths about disabled bodies. I love that the author starts with communication as the main contributor to having sex that is enjoyable. This is true for all people, disabled or not, but for disabled folks interested in having sex, there may be more people to be talking to than just their partner or partners. Sometimes a conversation needs to be had with a personal care attendant, for instance, to arrange furniture or pillows before date night. Another example may be a conversation with your healthcare provider about contraception.

There’s practical information beyond communication in this comic as well about positions and toys and lube and more. The primary audience for this book is disabled people, but honestly, this is a fun, informative read for anyone. The artwork has a wide range of bodies and genders and skin tones and it’s wonderful.

Charity has been working at Camp Mirror Lake, which was the filming location of a cult classic slasher flick and is now a full contact horror simulation game, for two summers. She has the coveted role of final girl, and she loves her job—so she doesn’t mind that much that their owner can’t be bothered to show up half the time. But when one too many of her coworkers take off before the season is over, she calls her best friend and her girlfriend to help finish off the season. Only their final night takes a turn for the very real when it becomes obvious someone is hunting Charity and her friends, and she’ll have to uncover the camp’s secrets to figure out why.

If you enjoy movies like Scream or the Netflix adaptions of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books, then you’re going to devour this one. It’s a relatively short read and it moves quickly, revealing Charity’s workplace confidence and love of the horror genre. The setting of a full contact horror simulation game is one of those amazing/terrible ideas that is either the last place you’d expect to find a killer on the loose, or the first, but Charity takes her job very seriously. And she’s no fool when it comes to creepy occurrences and weird things going bump in the night, and because she’s so savvy, it makes the moment when she realizes that she’s not playing a game anymore all the more satisfying. With really great characters and breakneck pacing, Bayron takes readers from one thrill to the next and the secrets behind Camp Mirror Lake are definitely intriguing. While I don’t think anyone should go into this book expecting the most mind blowing of twists and turns, if you enjoy solid horror and self-aware plots that explore popular horror tropes, this one is a winner. Bonus points for most of the characters being Black and for Charity being queer, which adds some much-needed diversity into a traditionally very white and straight genre. It’s a great read for spooky summer nights!

Chang-Eppig has created a fascinating historical fiction novel that grips you from the first few pages. The story begins when Shek Yeung finds herself in a tenuous position. Her husband has just been killed by the Portuguese. But he named his adopted son his heir and successor, not one of Shek Yeung’s two sons. To ensure her position as co-leader of the fleet, she marries the adopted son and promises to provide him with an heir.

Shek Yeung is one of the most notorious pirates in all of history. She led an alliance across the South China Seas. She was brutal and vengeful, a pirate queen in a time that saw Europeans starting to make contact with the East. Chang-Eppig’s novel showcases the rise of Shek Yeung from her humble beginnings. Her father’s fishing boat was attacked by pirates, who then sold her into prostitution. But when a powerful leader of a fleet of pirates takes a liking to her, she agrees to become his wife.

Rising to become co-leader of the fleet, she sets up new rules. The men are not to rape the women they capture, and she beheads the ones that do. She provides a safe haven for a girl she makes her personal assistant, a woman who keeps track of the fleet’s finances. But how does she justify herself when there are hundreds of other women that she has enslaved or killed?

I had heard of Shek Yeung, who has made a lot of “notable women throughout history” lists for her villainous career as one of the greatest pirates of all time. But I had never thought through her life and how she might have ended up turning to piracy. Chang-Eppig brings Shek Yeung to life in a way I’ve never read before, which makes for a fascinating read.