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Gothic indeed! Besides the often mentioned touchstones--The Mysteries of Udolpho, Jane Eyre, and Rebecca--Morene-Garcia has hit the sweet spot between The Netflix version of the Haunting of Hill House and the works of Jeff Vandermeer. “They're altogether ooky, the Addams family.”

Quite different from his steampunk Djinn novels, but equally good at mixing myth and contemporary social issues. This one’s a gorier monster fantasy that somehow successfully mixes magic swords, Gullah, juke joints, Brer Rabbit tales, and A Wrinkle in Time.

Amusing and quirky range of point-of-view characters. Good details on the workings of a pizzeria. A solid, modern YA novel, though a bit rushed in the wrap-up.

This first episode of The Most Dangerous Woman series was first released in 2018 as A New Journal, but is now eponymously titled Marian Holcombe. It’s a rousing historical pastiche that follows up on the characters in Wilkie Collins’s A Women in White. It’s also very much in the spirit of other Victorian countryside sagas such as Alcott’s early novel The Inheritance. Clough’s first in this series is a well-researched tale incorporating British law at the time, with details about life in prison, housing inadequacies of the urban poor, and the travails of middle class pregnancy. It’s also suspenseful, and often very funny. I see that there are a dozen novels in Clough’s Marian Holcombe series coming out, which I look forward to exploring.

Let's say 4.5 stars. This was so beautifully captured, and so apt in its straining teenage susceptability to consumerism. I’d give it a 5, except for a creeping unease with the author’s fascination with destroying women’s bodies. (cf. the very different and also very good The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. In both cases there are valid plot reasons for the violent actions, but… there’s got to be another way to effectively present these themes.)

Satisfying because it resonated so personally--the honeymoon spent at the British Museum, repeat visits to London spent eating and drinking around Bloomsbury. Real life did not contain a murder or a ghost, though, fortunately. I also really loved the bookmaking details, and the twisting path the manuscript took over time.

A moving and hilarious romp. I’m tracking down the sequel right now. And recommending this book to friends of many different ages.

This was the perfect read to accompany the crazy below-freezing weather that swept through Texas in February 2021. And also a sweetly satisfying update on the apprenticeship of Tiffany and her coven-mates and mentors.

A lovely, leisurely read for a cold, rainy day. Lots of nuanced character development and local landscape detail, which sets up some satisfying twists.

It was interesting to have read this directly after Recursion, as both feature the point of view of ex cops with ex wives and distant daughters. But very different in tone.