Books shelved under “Ebook”

There’s a now-classic sketch from comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb called “Are We the Baddies?”. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, but to spoil the bit, it’s about two SS officers having a conversation on the front line in which it gradually dawns on them that they might be the bad guys in this war. Involving Nazis in your comedy is always a dicey proposition, but Mitchell and Webb pull…

What’s better than a romcom? A story about friendship in the style of a romcom. Dear Wendy checks off so many boxes that it’s actually eerie: aro/ace protagonists, supportive secondary cast, plenty of humour, and a compassionate story to its core. This was one of my most-anticipated books of 2024, and that does not surprise me. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Feiwel & Friends in exchange for a review.

Sophie and Jo…

The phrase “burn it all down” is a popular one, but how many people really mean it? What would that look like? A.D. Sui explores this in The Dragonfly Gambit, a revenge novella featuring a former fighter pilot with nothing to lose, an empire staving off a rebellion, and a small cast of supporting characters caught in the middle. I received a review copy.

Inez Kato was a hot-shot pilot for the Rule—until an…

With most memoirs, I already have a good sense of who the author is, like in the case of Making It So, and I’ve picked up the memoir because I’m interested in hearing their story in their own words. In the case of But Everyone Feels This Way, I hadn’t heard of Paige Layle before. Instagram recommended a Reel by her. I don’t remember the Reel or what she said in it, but…

The description of Floating Hotel overtly likens it to The Grand Budapest Hotel, and this comparison is both correct and compelling. Recreating the same tragicomic balance with her wandering space hotel, Grace Curtis takes this story places I didn’t expect it to go. Simultaneously heartwarming and heartwrenching, this is a book about doing what you love—and then saying goodbye to what you love. I received a copy in exchange for a review.

Carl is…

Amid the calumnious pushback in the United States against so-called “critical race theory” (it’s not) in schools remains the single truth: you don’t learn the true history of the US in school. The same goes for Canada, where we learn about the enslavement of African people in the US, but we don’t learn about slavery in Canada or our own history of anti-Black racism following abolition. So I do my best to read and learn,…

Sometimes we get stuck in a loop, too stubborn for our own good. Sometimes we have good reason to be stubborn. I was thinking a lot about trauma as I read These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart, by Izzy Wasserstein. This is a novella that knows exactly what it’s about and does exactly what it’s meant to do. Although it didn’t end up wowing me, I still thoroughly enjoyed its premise and execution. I…

I touched the ocean only once. In 2014, flying back home from England for the first time, I stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to attend the wedding of two Canadian teachers who had been colleagues in England. The timing was perfect, and it also allowed me to visit an old friend who lived there. The two of us took a trip out to Peggy’s Cove, and I touched the Atlantic. Beyond that, I have barely…

How far will you go to save everything you hold dear? Will you betray your values? Fight your friends? Become the very thing that you are fighting against? These are questions eternally asked in fiction, especially in science fiction, where the things we imagine we could become can be frightening indeed. Weapons of the Mind continues a long tradition of fugitive arc stories in which a scrupulous protagonist has no choice but to enter the…

Finally got around to picking up Our Violent Ends, the sequel to These Violent Delights. These books are a close-knit duology—although the main plot of the first book is resolved, Juliette and Roma’s story is not. Chloe Gong wraps it up here in a poignant, melodramatic way that remains true to the source material while also elevating it in complexity and scope.

Spoilers for the first book but not for this one.

The…

Epic fantasy heist. Those three words in the subject line of an email were all it took for me to windmill slam “yes” on getting an eARC of The Queen of Days from NetGalley and publisher HarperVoyager. Some marketing person knew the magic words that would pique my interest instantly. I was excited to dive in, and thankfully, the book lived up to the hype! This is a delightful, powerful adventure that left me wanting…

The summer(?) of witches continues with The Witches at the End of the World, by Chelsea Iversen. From contemporary romance we travel to historical fiction with this small tale of sisterhood nestled in the woods of Norway centuries ago. I’m impressed with how Iversen won me over despite my qualms about the book’s pacing and plot! I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Sourcebooks in exchange for my review.

Kaija and Minna are…

Asexuality is everywhere, yet because it is classically the absence of something, its presence can be difficult to see. Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection is an attempt to foreground asexuality within a variety of environments. Madeline Dyer has assembled an ace team (oh, you know the puns are just starting) of authors to contribute stories and even a poem that get you thinking. Cody…

What would you do if a relative died and left you her creepy house, and fortune, on the condition that you relocate your life to live on the property? Oh, and everyone around you keeps acting super sketch? That’s Cordelia Bone’s problem in The Witches of Bone Hill. Part romance, part thriller, all fantasy, this book uses a lot of classic tropes, often to good effect. Ava Morgyn’s writing took me a while…

My summer of witches has extended into an autumn of auguries by dint of my reading schedule attenuating in these waning days of 2023. What Became of Magic is a book I was looking forward to reading on my deck at the end of August, but it also worked well in the cooler days of September. Paige Crutcher brings a dazzling dash of creativity to her storytelling. Alas, I didn’t enjoy her narrative style or…

Back in my day, the internet used to be better. I feel old saying that—I only just turned thirty-four—but it is true. When I first started using the internet in the early 2000s, the web had become functional enough to be fun, the walled gardens of nineties CompuServe and AOL had come down, and anyone (including fourteen-year-old Kara) could make a website for free on a place like Geocities.

And then it…

This is one of those rare books that is exactly what the cover copy promises: “A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-room thriller.” The Death I Gave Him lives up to this hype, and I can easily see how some people would adore this book. I loved Em X. Liu’s obvious love for Shakespeare, and as far as Shakespearean retellings go, this one is pretty good. As far as thrillers go—well,…

Another story about stories, this time a metafictional romp through a Scientologyesque religion and the end of the universe. Lavie Tidhar’s The Circumference of the World is imaginative and, dare I say, quite a bit wacky; however, it never coalesced into something I would call enjoyable. Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC.

Delia is a mathematician from Vanuatu, though now she lives in London. Her boyfriend’s disappearance causes her to start looking…

Time travel stories can come in so many forms! It has been a while since I’ve read a Benjamin Button–style story. A Second Chance for Yesterday has its protagonist, Nev, hurtling backwards in time. The title is everything: sibling authors writing under the name R.A. Sinn ask us if a person can reform simply by having the chance to do things over, albeit in reverse. Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Solaris for the eARC.

Nev…

The system doesn’t care. This is a lesson some of us learn sooner than others—and a few don’t ever have to learn it at all. In this timely novelette, Ai Jiang looks down the uncaring maw of capitalism in the form of the exploitation of workers “competing” with artificial intelligence. I AM AI rides the echoes of cyberpunk decades past into a future that is not far off, in many ways, from our distinctly dystopian…