Category: Read This Book

Mexican Gothic is set in a remote corner of the Mexican countryside, where a crumbling, old mansion sits almost forgotten amid high mountains and jagged ravines. High Place was once a beautiful, English-style Victorian perched above the Doyle family’s prosperous silver mine. But political turmoil in the country spelled the end of the mine a generation ago, and now the house is falling into ruin while the family passes out of existence one violent death at a time.

This is the family into which Noemí’s cousin Catalina marries, falling out of touch with her family until a frantic, barely coherent letter arrives at Noemí’s home, begging for help. Catalina claims that her new husband, Virgil, is trying to poison her. That her life is in danger at High Place. That the house itself, full of death and rot, is trying to do her harm. Convinced that either Catalina’s husband really is hurting her, or that at least her cousin is in need of psychiatric help her new family will not provide, Noemí makes the journey into the mountains to discover the truth. But what she finds behind the aging veneer of High Place is much darker than she could have imagined.

Steeped in rot and romance, from its beautiful but forbidding landscapes to its moldering aristocratic family, Mexican Gothic is a novel with a deep respect for its literary roots. But Moreno-Garcia’s novel also interrogates its own origins, introducing the Doyle’s as not just a wilting example of European dynasticism but also as a brutal colonizing force preying in more ways than one on the land they have usurped and the people they deem beneath them.

Mexican Gothic is dark and visceral with a gruesome biological twist, and for fans of Gothic fiction it’s a must have for any summer horror TBR.

Nedra Glover Tawwab is a therapist, content creator, and expert at boundaries. While this book is built on the premise that boundaries are healthy and make strong foundations for healthy relationships, it goes well beyond just cheerleading. There is actual concrete advice for drawing boundaries from what words to say and how to say them to advice on when boundaries should be drawn.

So many of us resist drawing boundaries out of fear. Fear that we will appear mean by drawing boundaries. Fear of the guilt that comes with drawing boundaries. Fear that drawing boundaries will end a relationship. Fear that we don’t deserve to have boundaries with a certain person or people, like our parents. She addresses all of this in explicit detail and it is simultaneously a wake-up call and a hug of support.

Tawwab is often asked how we can draw boundaries without feeling guilty and her answer caught me by surprise. Because her answer is, you don’t. Guilt is a natural part of drawing boundaries and her goal is to not try to alleviate guilt, but instead to offer some solid ways to manage the guilt that always comes with the territory. I, for one, was certainly shocked to learn that my guilt around drawing boundaries isn’t because of some internal weakness.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is on understanding the importance of boundaries. What are they? What is the cost of not having boundaries? What are the six types of boundaries? And more. One particularly potent chapter in this section is on what boundary violations look like. I was in a full-body cringe reading about guilt trips. The second part of the book is some solid advice on how to do the boundary work in your own life.

Set Boundaries, Find Peace is the best book I’ve read this year and it may end up being my favorite book of 2021, not to mention an automatic addition to my annual rereads list.

No one knows what caused the blackout that took out all of the country’s major systems – cell service, electricity, water – only that, so far as anyone can tell, they’re not coming back on. And it turns out that civilization goes downhill pretty quick when no one can flush a toilet or turn on the lights. Which is how Arden and her roommate John ended up hiking cross country from Rochester, New York to his parents’ cabin near the Canadian border in search of food and safety.

But when they are attacked a few miles from the cabin, it becomes clear that nowhere is safe, no matter how remote. Gabriel, John’s older brother, comes to the rescue – sparking off an antagonistic attraction between him and Arden – and brings more bad news: their parents are missing. The only ones left in the cabin are Gabriel and their little sister Maggie. Now the four of them – Arden, John, Gabriel, and Maggie – are sharing the cabin, isolated not just geographically but by what seems to be an increasingly hostile world outside their four walls.

I loved this book. So much. I expected to like it because, again, genre mash-ups are my catnip. I did not expect to love this book with every fiber of my being. I did wish at times that it could have more suspenseful, more intense, with regards to the post-apocalyptic portion of the novel. But Radio Silence is primarily a romance novel, so the focus of the novel is on Arden and Gabriel’s sharp chemistry while the blackout serves more as an impetus for their love story, bringing them together and keeping them in close proximity to one another until their attraction has a chance to boil over. That being said, there is definitely still enough of a “threat of the unknown” to keep the tension high, so romantic suspense fans won’t be left wanting.

Kiera wakes up alone on the forest floor, in the dark, with no memories of her past and the sound of nearby gunshots ringing in her ears. While fleeing from her pursuers, she takes shelter with the local pastor who offers to let her stay in the abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage next to the cemetery until she finds out who she is. The Whispering Dead is the first book in Coates’ new Gravekeeper series, which means that we haven’t yet found out who Keira is, who was chasing her, and why she has a head full of covert training that she can’t explain. She’s a bit of a Bourne character, with the notable exception that one of Keira’s inexplicable talents is the ability to see and communicate with the dead.

While we aren’t yet privy to all of Keira’s secrets, it turns out that there is plenty of plot to be had in the picturesque town of Blighty. Soon after Keira arrives she becomes entangled with the ghost of a woman who, according to a grisly chapter in local history, was torn away from the man she loved and murdered by his cruel, overbearing father. But the man who killed Emma was caught, and is himself long dead. So what is keeping her here, roaming the cemetery outside Keira’s cabin? With the help from some new friends, Keira sets out to solve the mystery, and unearths a few of Blighty’s darker secrets in the process.

Though I would definitely still categorize The Whispering Dead as horror, it would be a great crossover recommendation for frequent cozy mystery readers who are looking to make the jump to horror. It has plenty of suspense and ghostly goings on to satisfy horror fans, but it has the obligatory “unusual small town” setting, quirky secondary ensemble cast, and general feeling of a cozy mystery. And while Kiera’s missing past hints that darker things may be waiting later in the series, for now we have budding friendships, the promising of a blossoming romance, and one very, very cute black cat.

Content warnings for abduction, violence, including murder, and abuse.

This book is told via points of view of a few different characters. One of these characters (and one of our heroes) is Florian, formerly Flora. He and his brother Alfie joined the crew on the pirate ship, the Dove, when they were children. They were small, starving, orphaned, and prepared to do anything, even kill, to have the opportunity for somewhere to belong. The opportunity to join the crew of the Dove arose, and it was an offer they could not refuse.

The Nameless Captain, the captain of the Dove, has a hustle where he disguises the ship as a passenger ship for wealthy folks. After a couple weeks into the journey, far enough from land where the “passengers” cannot escape and get to a shore, the captain then tells them they’re all prisoners and he will sell them off into slavery for a significant profit.

One of these wealthy passengers of the Dove is Lady Evelyn Hasagawa, a young high-born Imperial woman. Her parents are sending her off to get married against her will, one of the reasons being that she is queer and the parents are awful. Florian is ordered by the Nameless Captain to guard Lady Hasagawa, especially from the more aggressive men on the crew.

In this story, the sea is sentient and has one really big rule, which is to not harm the mermaids. The thing is, mermaid’s blood, when drunk by humans, is a powerful drug that can take memories away. If you drink mermaid’s blood, then you are automatically an enemy of the sea and an enemy of the Pirate Supreme, who serves the sea.

Of course, the crew of the Dove has no interest in following the rules of the sea.

This book centers queer characters of color in a beautiful, sweeping adventure that is just a delight and it is definitely a must-read.

Dark Lullaby is a bleak portrait of a future in which the world’s population has contracted. Sharply. Entire villages stand empty, abandoned, as the remaining population squeezes into city centers. Infertility has reached a staggering 99.8%, and natural conception is nearly unheard of. Children can only be conceived by Induction, a dangerous and difficult process of conception that kills women nearly as frequently as it succeeds in impregnating them.

And the trials don’t end there. Children have become the world’s most precious resource, and their rearing the primary business of the ominous Office of Standards in Parenting (OSIP). Fail to meet their exacting standards of perfect parenthood and your child will be extracted… for its own good, of course. In a society in which the majority of parents have their children taken from them, Kit knew the risks when she chose to have a child. But that doesn’t mean that she’s going to allow anyone to take her daughter from her without putting up a fight.

This book was such an upsetting read for me because you could clearly see how a future like the one Polly Ho-Yen depicts could be possible. Every description, every terrible reality that for these people was simply the “norm”, every bit of propaganda – it was so anxiety-inducing because I could see where Ho-Yen had found her inspiration. The world of Dark Lullaby is our world, just with all the dials turned up to ten. And being able to see that reflection of ourselves in the terrible mirror that Ho-Yen holds up was so unsettling that there were times when I felt physically ill.

Dark Lullaby is definitely a must read for horror or dark sci-fi fans. But be forewarned: this is not an easy read. It will enthrall you from page one, and haunt you long after it’s done.

Michael W. Twitty is a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian, and historical interpreter. The Cooking Gene is culinary history, cultural history, and Twitty’s personal genealogical discoveries all woven together. His U.S. geographical focus is what he refers to as the Old South, which is what he calls, “the former slaveholding states and the history and culture they collectively birthed from the days of contact through civil rights.” Twitty traces what many Americans know as southern food back to its roots through the enslaved people who developed it and back to parts of Africa as well. He brings us along with him, through stories and chats with other food historians, through his work as a cook for civil war reenactments, personal stories, and information from his deep research.

Most every page of this book taught me something I never knew or had never even considered. There were no timers in the kitchens that the enslaved cooked in, so sometimes the songs they would sing were used as timers for the cooking. How the racist trope associating watermelon with Black Americans is even more depraved than I had known, as watermelon was actually a life-saver to perpetually dehydrated enslaved people working in the fields.

Twitty shares his personal experience with genealogy as a Black person in America. It is far from simple. While the internet makes it so much easier to access things like historical records, when it comes to enslaved people and descendants, detailed notes weren’t necessarily kept. Families were broken up and sold off. Slavers didn’t necessarily keep records of where people were abducted from.

Twitty does such a fantastic and often difficult job of tying the past to our present. His writing humanizes enslaved people in ways that they often aren’t, such as how many enslaved people were sent to France for culinary school and to be taught pastry-making. These were skilled workers. If they were paid, they would have been considered professionals, even experts in their field.

This book is a brilliant study on how food, racism, power, and justice are linked.

Chances are that if you follow any book related social media you heard about The Lady from the Black Lagoon when it was published back in 2019. Mallory O’Meara’s biography of monster creator and artist Milicent Patrick shines a light on a forgotten figure in Hollywood history, and is also part memoir and part scathing critique of the ways in which men have done their best to oppress talented women in art and film industries for decades.

The star monster of Creature from the Black Lagoon, the much beloved Gill Man, was the last of Universal Studios classic monsters to make his on-screen debut. These days, his appearance is iconic but the woman responsible for his creation is largely unknown. Or she was, until Mallory O’Meara began researching what would become The Lady from the Black Lagoon. And the more O’Meara shares with her readers about Patrick’s life – as one of the first female animators at Disney and a creator in an industry that was, and a genre that still is, largely dominated by men – the more you realize what an incredible life she led.

And O’Meara’s recounting of her research journey is as fascinating as it is entertaining. Her footnotes frequently had me laughing out loud, which is what you want from footnotes if you can possibly get it. So whether you’re a horror fan, a fan of old Hollywood History, a devotee of amazing women, or all three, The Lady from the Black Lagoon should definitely be on your TBR!

Content warnings: frequent use of the word “fuck,” advocating for violence, discussions of sexual assault, violence against women, genital mutilation, and lots of misogyny.

This book is incredibly intense as is clear from the first line, “I wrote this book with enough rage to fuel a rocket.” The author did not come to play nor coddle. She has zero tolerance for the patriarchy, including the women who uphold it who she refers to as “the foot soldiers of the patriarchy.”

Mona Eltahawy is known for starting the hashtags #MosqueMeToo and #IBeatMyAssaulter. She is also known for making a bunch of folks in Australia clutch their pearls, when, on Australian national television she asked, “How many rapists do we have to kill to get men to stop raping?” If you are the kind of person who thinks that violence is never the answer, then this book is maybe not for you.

As titled, this manifesto goes through the seven necessary sins that we must embrace to destroy the patriarchy. Not fight nor combat but destroy. Mona Eltahawy wants our feminist tagline to be “fucking fear me!” The sins are Anger, Attention, Profanity, Ambition, Power, Violence, and Lust. After the introduction, she goes through each sin and tells us how each is integral to our tearing it all down and moving forward.

This is not nice, neat, clean feminism. It’s also not centered on Americans, as so much tends to be. It is a global view of feminism focusing on all women. There is so much going on in countries outside of the U.S. with regards to feminism and the fight for human rights that I learned about in this book.

This is another book that I read annually and encourage everyone to give a try.

Malik and Karina stand on two separate sides of the same world, on the brink of a religious festival that comes only once every 50 years. For Malik, Solstasia means a new beginning not just of an era but of a new life in Ziran for himself and his two sisters, Nadia and Leila. Their home has been devastated by war, and what is left of their family cling to survival in a refugee camp, relying on the money that he and Leila will send back. But when Nadia accidentally makes a bargain with a dangerous dark spirit, Malik is forced to strike a deal as well: kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran. His sister’s life for that of the princess.

But when Malik joins the Solstasia champions in a bid to get closer to the princess, he doesn’t realize that he’s involved himself in another deadly game, this one of Karina’s making. Her mother, the Sultana, is dead; a closely guarded secret being kept from the thousands who flocked to Ziran for the celebrations. Karina has until the moment that secret gets out to stop it from being true. She will do whatever it takes to enact the ancient ritual that will bring her mother back from the dead, including marry the champion who wins the Solstasia competition as a means of acquiring the rarest component for the spell: the still-beating heart of a king.

Inspired by West African folklore, A Song of Wraiths and Ruin sings with color, music, and magic. And while there were some aspects the did feel underdeveloped at times, that didn’t at all detract from what ended up being an engaging, suspenseful battle of wills between the two protagonists caught up in magical forces far greater than themselves.