March Reading!

New(ish) format:  Title, Author (format - if other than print) - recommendation source - my thoughts

1. The Wolf and the Woodsman, Ava Reid (audio), embarrassingly a book that I never finished despite loving - Ahem.  Yeah.  Didn't finish it the first time around.  or the second.  Which is weird, because it is exactly my sort of book.  Finally checked out the audio and finished the whole darn thing.  Reid is an amazing writer, and because she does explore themes around the trauma people go through her characters feel more real than most.  Beautiful book!  

2. The Dragon's Promise, Elizabeth Lim (audio), sequel - Oddly, I didn't get this preordered.  Strange, because I absolutely adored the first book, which was a take on the Seven Swans fairy tale.   I don't think this was quite up to the quality of the first book...but it was pretty darn good!  

3. Backpacking Through Bedlam and 4. The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went, Seanan McGuire, newest Incryptid novel and novella - Just fun.  But I'm wondering where McGuire will next go with this series because she's running out of family members to base the stories on.  

5. You Just Need to Lose Weight, and 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon (audio), a fan of her podcast, Maintenance Phase - Everyone needs to read this book.  Everyone. And listen to the podcast.  There is a lot our culture and society get wrong about everything to do with weight and diet culture, and this book provides an important correction to the narrative.  As someone in recovery from a lifelong Eating Disorder, I'm grateful to Gordon for doing this work.  

6. A Tempest at Sea, Sherry Thomas, newest Lady Sherlock - I still love these books.  Thomas's version of Sherlock Holmes is a delight.  7 books in, and they still have the magic!  

7.  The Magician's Daughter, H.G. Perry, newest by an author I admire - It's a very sweet fairy tale, maybe too sweet for what I want right now.  There was a lot I truly enjoyed about this book, and yet I don know if I truly loved it.  Maybe a tiny bit derivative of many other stories.  I will say it was very well written, and the characters were charming.  But I stopped to read two other books in the middle of it - which says something.  

8.  The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty (audio), love this author and will read anything by her - I love, love, loved this book for so many reasons.  Let's start with the fact that our main character is a middle-aged woman with a child and a bad knee.  You almost never see fantasy books centered around women with a history - they are almost always teens or in their early 20's.  I could write novels about how much I love that Chakraborty did the unexpected thing with her heroine with a checkered past.  And the audio was super fun and well performed.  And it was about pirates and sea monsters.  And you should all read everything Chakraborty writes if for no other reason than it's fantasy not based on white, European-centric culture.  Cannot wait for the next book about Amina.