Category: Read This Book

Alison is a thirtysomething artist living a reclusive life in the small town she grew up in, painting commissions. When a wildfire nearly destroys her home and takes Alison’s life, she’s incredulous to be alive. When she discovers a strange car in her driveway with a dead woman inside, killed by the radiant heat, she’s horrified. But that horror turns into fear when she discovers her own name and address on a piece of paper with the woman. Alison can’t imagine why a stranger would be seeking her out, but when she starts her own investigation, it leads to a past she’d rather forget and a mystery she can’t ignore.

This book has all the markers of a great psychological thriller — a protagonist with a secret past, a natural disaster that forces a community to a breaking point, and lots of secrets. The writing has a literary edge that is very absorbing, and while Alison has her secrets, the writing is such that I never felt as though secrets were being kept from the reader for the sake of keeping secrets. On the surface, it feels like a thriller about paranoia, fear, and survival, but if you dig deeper, it’s a chilling account about obsession and how far one woman will go to protect herself. The environmental aspect of the story — the wildfires that affect the entire community — goes hand in hand with Alison’s story. It’s a metaphor for how something terrible and large can happen to you, and there is no ducking it: you can’t run from it, and it destroys everything in its path. The only thing to do is face the fallout and try to get ahead of it. The book weaves flashbacks and present tension well, and I genuinely wasn’t sure how it would be resolved. Overall, this was a great pick if you’re looking for a standalone Australian-set psychological thriller in the vein of Jane Harper!

A few years ago, I participated in Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words of Summer initiative, which ran for a couple weeks in June. The idea was that you would write 1000 words every day. If you signed up for Attenberg’s newsletter, she’d send you an encouraging email every morning. She asked some of her friends and colleagues to guest write some of the emails, including authors like Kiese Laymon, Lauren Groff, Carmen Maria Machado, and more. It quickly became one of my favorite summer writing initiatives.

Now, Attenberg has turned 1000 Words of Summer into a writing book that is intended to inspire you all year around. 1000 Words takes the best of Attenberg’s letters and expands on them, making an incredible book on writing. The book is structured around the seasons — a metaphor for the different stages of writing — splicing letters from different writers with Attenberg’s short chapters.

Sitting down to write this, I had a moment to think through why I loved this book so much. For me, it’s the combination of practical, detailed advice on ways that you can schedule your day or plan your writing that will give you the skills and motivation to succeed. For example, Alexander Chee explains how a new pen and pad of paper can be inspiring to him. He says, “And what I know by now: the legal pad and pen is like a change in the wind in my heart, a new idea raising its hand.” And Lauren Groff gives excellent advice on the importance of seeing your writing project to the end: “If you can attend to your beast with patience and faith, you will encounter the beautiful truth, which is that the mere fact of showing up will one day be good enough.”

If you or a friend is struggling with their writing project, I can’t recommend 1000 Words enough. It’s the kind of book that will be read, reread, and adored over and over again.

Our main human character is Janelle Baker, aka “Ellie,” who is Black, queer, and has anxiety. The story starts in New York City. An alien race, the Ilori, have taken over Earth. They tried to be peaceful, but the Earthlings fought back, and here we are at the beginning of the story, where humans are in Ilori-controlled confinement with little idea of what is going on. Ilori have learned that the arts, music, and literature inspire humans to rebel, so they destroyed every related item that they could. There were massive burnings of books, musical instruments, record albums, you name it. Many humans hid what they could, and it’s considered contraband. Our hero, Ellie, started an illegal underground library with about 60 books she was able to hide. She and her friend Alice have developed an intricate way of having people request books. Ellie then sneaks the books out from her storage in the basement into the desperate hands of the individuals. The stakes are incredibly high: if Ellie gets two infractions, she could be executed. Ellie’s parents are not doing well. Her father has been affected by the Ilori and is a mind-controlled member of the security team. Ellie’s mother has sunk deeply into paranoia and alcoholism.

In an alternating point of view, we meet Morris, an Ilori who is in charge of making a special chemical that will be given to all remaining humans. We learn that there are two tiers of Ilori: the true Ilori, who are incredibly wealthy and stay up in space, and the lab-made Ilori, like Morris, who are sent down to do all the dirty work on Earth and the other planets they colonize. Morris is different from both the true Ilori and the other lab-made Ilori in that he feels emotions. He has fallen in love with human art and music and literature. When he stumbles upon Ellie’s hidden library, he decides he must meet this beautiful human girl.

The book not only alternates between Ellie’s point of view and focusing on Morris but there is a third, seemingly unconnected focus, which is on a group called The Starry Eyed. The Starry Eyed was a popular music band on Earth. This book is a love letter to music and books, a sci-fi romance, and an exciting and anxiety-inducing race to save Earth from colonizing aliens.

Kerry and Annie are best friends, bonded by their love of feminism and their mission to make the world a more welcoming place. They’re also social outcasts (Annie’s penchant for screaming about periods and vulvas may have something to do with that) who aspire to be an investigative journalist and a detective, respectively, so when a mystery about popular girl Heather’s harassing messages on Instagram turns up, Annie volunteers them for the job. This leads them to a popular crowd party, where a girl is found dead with a menstrual cup stuffed in her mouth…and that’s just the beginning of what the media dubs “the Menstrual Murders” — murders where period products are left behind on the victims. Annie is certain they can crack the case. Kerry isn’t convinced. Either way, they’re in too deep to back out now!

This was a very funny and madcap mystery that actually reminded me of the TV show Sex Education — but with murder! The closest YA book equivalent I could think of was the Trouble is a Friend of Mine series by Stephanie Tromly (also excellent), but suffice it to say, if you like shenanigans and ill-advised schemes and sweaty palms over both murder and first kisses, then this book is for you! It’s told from the point of view of Kerry, whose mom is a sex therapist, and encourages open communication, much to her frustration and occasional horror. Annie is her best friend, whom she loves dearly, even if she is always pushing them into social situations that seem a bit absurd, all in the name of improving their social standing. Kerry isn’t thrilled about being dragged into an investigation involving the popular kids in their grade, mostly because they’ve never looked at Annie and Kerry once, but she is very much into Scott, the new boy who will definitely be at their parties. Their hijinks are absurd yet endearing and even somewhat relatable (who amongst us hasn’t angsted over a new crush and done absurd things in the name of pursuing love?), and the mystery keeps them all on their toes. Kerry and Annie’s friendship is what shines throughout this book — like the protagonists of Booksmart, they are relentlessly supportive of each other, and they know their worth. Their clear-eyed view of feminism and the way they critique the patriarchy also comes across as funny and real and not a bit didactic, making this book funny and smart. 10/10 would read another crime novel starring this investigative duo!

Growing up, my brother and I both experienced chronic daily headaches and migraines, a combination of genetics and traumatic brain injury (TBI). I struggled to describe my experience with symptoms like memory loss, word confusion, and constant pain to my friends and youth group leaders. Eventually, I gave up and pretended I was fine. That was easier, wasn’t it?

When I started reading Liontas’ memoir, I had to stop everything I was doing. I just sat down and listened to Liontas describe her concussions — she suffered from three in one year — and how those injuries to her brain are still with her to this day. Her descriptions of migraines, confusion, and brain fog jump off the page with their intense detail. Her prose is lush, beautifully woven together across the page. She has to get off a train while traveling to go teach. She has to flag down a law enforcement officer because she realizes too late that she can’t make the short walk to a friend’s house. She keeps calling a colleague by the wrong name on a work call.

The title stems from a beautiful essay in the book where Liontas describes how sex with her wife became impossible. Something she used to crave now caused her pain. Her brain disrupted her joy as well as her close relationship with her wife. Much of this memoir centers around Liontas’ relationship with her wife. We are invited into their world with snippets of redacted conversation transcripts, and we, as readers, wonder if their relationship will make it until the end of the memoir.

I adore this book’s structure, how Lontas tells her story in fragments, moving from moment to moment. She stops, starts, corrects herself, mimicking how many people with TBIs think. She tells her story in a way that gives readers a little glimpse into how her brain works. In this way, she doesn’t cater to neurotypical minds. Instead, Liontas embraces the way her mind works now, inviting those of us with similar conditions to do the same.

This book is told from multiple viewpoints divided by chapter. We have three main characters, all young adults: Adiah, Koffi, and Ekon. It all takes place in Lkossa, a large town on the edge of The Greater Jungle. The Greater Jungle is an utterly terrifying place, and most people, if not all people, who go into the Greater Jungle do not make it out alive. There is a demon in the jungle called the Shetani that murders anyone who enters. It’s the most feared beast ever known and yet not much is known about it because no one meets the Shetani and lives.

Adiah is a daraja, which is a person who can use magic; however, in this book, it’s not called magic; it’s called the Splendor. The Splendor is something that a daraja can pull from the world around them and allow it to move through them as they use it. It is really dangerous to keep hold of the Splendor inside them, so they just act as conduits.

Koffi and her mother are indentured servants at the Night Zoo, a place that has all kinds of wild and fantastical beasts. The owner of the Night Zoo is Baaz, and he is an incredibly awful person. Koffi and her mother have been working there for years to pay off multiple kinds of debts that her father had owed.

Finally, there’s Ekon, who was raised in the temple of Lkossa with his brother. They were orphans, and their father was killed by the Shetani. All Ekon has ever wanted was to be a warrior, and when we first meet him, he is about to do his final test to become one.

There is so much I want to say about this book, but I don’t want to give it all away. It was really fun, and some parts were creepy and definitely violent. There are a few great twists, and the viewpoints and stories are woven together. This first book definitely ends on a cliffhanger, but the second book is already out, and the third comes out tomorrow, so there’s no need to wait.

Cara is a detective with the Anchorage Police Department, but she sets out for the isolated town of Port Mettier, AK, when body parts wash up on the shores of the sound. Her job is just to collect evidence, but she’s got an ulterior motive for this errand — her husband and son disappeared a year earlier and were later found dead, and she wants answers. Port Mettier is only accessible by one road into town or boat, and all of the town’s residents live in the Davidson Condominiums, a large apartment complex abandoned by the military in the ’60s. When a snowstorm strands Cara in Port Mettier, she soon finds that dark secrets lurk in this small town, especially when all its residents live under one roof.

If you want an intriguing mystery with a thought-provoking setup and vibes for days, then this book is it! The setting of Port Mettier is based on a real town in Alaska. Whittier and Yamashita do an excellent job at building a really interesting setting populated with eccentric and interesting characters. Despite how interesting it is and how much it made me want to go there, there is a claustrophobic feeling that permeates the book, which just adds to the tension. The book is mainly told from Cara’s point of view, and she is arguably the protagonist, but we also get interludes from other residents of Port Mettier, all of whom have their own secrets and reasons for living in such a secluded and remote area. (None are from the killer’s perspective, though! I know some readers don’t love that.) Cara’s investigation ties into her own personal anguish, making the stakes higher at every turn, and there are some really riveting and dangerous scenes that underscore the risk people take by living so far away from easy access to hospitals and central communication hubs. While the mystery isn’t the most complex I’ve ever read, the questions raised and the unique setting kept me turning the pages. This book does have a good resolution to the central mystery, but it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger for Cara — so don’t miss the sequel, Village in the Dark, which is out the first week of February!

As you all may know by now, I’m always looking for more books by disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, and neurodivergent authors. As a disabled person, I often see articles by well-meaning nondisabled people declaring that this or that technology will “cure” disabled people and that these new inventions will “fix” us. I never had the words to describe why these articles rankled me. But then I read Against Technoableism. 

In one of the first volumes in the new Norton Shorts series, author Ashley Shew describes the prevalence of what she’s coined as “technoableism”:

“I came up with the term ‘technoableism’ to describe a pattern disabled people see over and over—and a pattern observed by many others too…Technoableism is a belief in the power of technology that considers the elimination of disability a good thing, something we should strive for. It’s a classic form of ableism—bias against disabled people, bias in favor of nondisabled ways of life. Technoableism is the use of technologies to reassert those biases, often under the guise of empowerment.”

In the handful of essays in this slim book, Shew describes the different ways that she observes technoableism manifesting in society. As a cancer survivor and amputee, Shew shares her experience with prosthetics and interviews other prosthetic users. She explains how, while these mechanical limbs can be useful, they don’t magically make disabled people nondisabled. I really appreciated how Shew doesn’t assume that the reader has any prior knowledge of disability studies. She also doesn’t coddle the reader, finding this perfect balance in her writing.

Against Technoableism is a great primer for folks wanting to dive into some subcategories of disability studies or for readers interested in how technology impacts disabled people. The book is perfect for both casual and academic readers. Plus, I really appreciate Shew’s classic disability-related dark humor that’s right in my wheelhouse because, yes, disabled people are funny too.

While I started this book with the expectation that it would be about how to become a better friend, I quickly realized it is so much more. In the exploration of friendship, the author is not limiting the idea or relationship of friendship only to your inner circle and expands the idea of friendship as a way of relating to other people, whether they be people you know or don’t know or maybe even people you don’t like. Thinking of friendship in this way makes room for friendship as a practice to help mitigate and maybe heal some of the ongoing trauma that is life in a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, as well as act as a catalyst toward collective liberation.

If you are familiar with Buddhism, it can help with relating to this book, but if you are not, I still think there is value for you as well. Johnson writes that oppression is fundamentally fragmenting, and it is the essence of oppression to separate us and tear us apart. She posits that friendship is the way to heal this fracture. The bulk of the book is focused on the Mitta Sutta, a passage from a longer body of the Buddha’s teachings called the Anguttara Nikaya. The Mitta Sutta offers seven qualities of friendship. After some real talk about making friends with ourselves, Johnson then goes through each of these seven qualities, what they mean, how they show up in the world, how they show up in us and in friendships, and the ways we relate to other people, family included. The latter part of each chapter is about how we incorporate these qualities into a meditation practice as we also cultivate these qualities in ourselves.

As I mentioned earlier, there is also a lot of discussion on how white supremacy shows up in Western Buddhist practice. It is notable that a lot of the faces you see of authors writing on Buddhism and speaking at conferences and retreats are white. Because of this, some cultural touchpoints are often left out, such as the importance of connecting to our ancestors. Johnson also talks about many ways white supremacy shows up in Western Buddhist practice that I hadn’t even considered, like ideas of perfection or senses of urgency, two things I often struggle with when meditating — same with the frequent ideas that there is a right way or a perfect way to meditate or that I can bully myself into meditating correctly. This was an unexpected and excellent read.

Berlin, Cameron, and Jessie all work at Pink Mountain Pizza, a popular indie pizza spot in their small Canadian town. It’s the dead of winter, and Berlin is teetering on the edge of her depression. Her best friend stopped talking to her weeks ago and won’t explain why. Cameron is grieving the disappearance of his cousin and trying to keep his family together. Jessie comes from the richest family in town, but she is desperately trying to escape their suffocating grasp and strike out on her own. Two things happen to throw their worlds into turmoil: first, Berlin thinks she spots Cameron’s missing cousin one night working the late shift. Second, the news that Pink Mountain Pizza is being sold to Jessie’s father becomes public. Over the course of one very tumultuous week, Berlin, Cameron, and Jessie must contend with these upsets, all while making tentative steps toward friendship.

Oh my gosh, this novel — I wasn’t sure quite what to expect going in, but it ended up totally capturing my heart. This is a book with three point of view characters, although we spend the most time in Berlin’s head, so she really feels like the anchor of this book. Her heartbreak and confusion over losing her friend are palpable, and she doesn’t have an outlet for all that hurt and frustration, so she takes it out on Cameron, whom she’s known forever but isn’t exactly friends with.

Cameron is a character who laughs at everything because if he doesn’t laugh, he’ll probably cry. Money is tight at home, his parents are largely absent, and he’s doing his best to hold it all together for his younger sisters while grieving the loss of his cousin and privately raging at a world that gives up on missing Indigenous teen girls.

Cameron and Berlin clash spectacularly, and then Jessie comes in to shake things up a bit. As the daughter of the man trying to buy their pizza joint, she understands that her presence is awkward, but she’s making an earnest effort to go to a trade school and make her own life, something her parents don’t understand or condone. She sometimes makes reckless choices, but she has a heart of gold.

Sometimes, the plot feels a bit meandering, but that’s okay — I was so drawn in by the characters and their day-to-day lives and struggles and their passion for Pink Mountain Pizza. The book has a slow burn build, and it confronts some dark themes, but the ending is ultimately hopeful and inspiring and reminds readers of what can be accomplished with a community that cares for one another.