Posts

a mystery for Austen-ites and a real ripped bodice, Ok. I take it back. A closer look at the cover of the delightful, satisfying, this-is-like-a-pint-of-your-fave-ice-cream When a Scot Ties the Knot reveals that her bodice is secure. And because this is a deliciously modern romance, our hero would never—NEVER—rip it unless she consented. Sober, and in full possession of her senses. You know I love a good rom-com. And I’ll dabble back in regency rom-com, too. But (probably like you) in adulthood […]

possibly my favorite trope–and the best book I’ve read yet this year, Give me ALL the writers behaving badly. Stealing, plagiarizing, stalking, stabbing one another in the back—in books, mind you, not in my real life—and I will read them, savoring every shadenfreudian moment. (Apparently that’s not a word but it should be and I’m leaving it.) If you, as I did, loved The Plot, Who Is Maud Dixon?, The Writing Retreat, Dear Committee Members and countless other stories in which writers go to extreme […]

that is the question… that should help me not drop $28 on a hardback from an author I usually love! It’s taken a while. Ok, I still mess it up. But there are book plots, tropes, topics, even structures that are just not for me. Doesn’t matter if they’re well done. Doesn’t matter if everyone else loves them. Doesn’t even matter if the author is a friend. For me, some things are non-starters, and if I want to insist on […]

I’m a fall BuzzBook! So, there’s this industry email. That, ok, often generates FOMO, or something like it…because it’s all the new book announcements for books you didn’t write! And deal announcements for movies and TV and foreign sales! And prizes and buzz and awards and you can see where I’m coming from, I presume. But once in a while you get to be on top of it, and that’s why we get it. Because we LIKE sticking our heads […]

Of Nina Hill… I have TWO recs for you!   The Bookish Life of Nina Hill was fun… and also thoughtful. A coming of self more than a coming of age, a chance to hang out in someone else’s head—with just the right amount of found family and romance to satisfy. If you felt that way too, I have two suggestions for you this week! And not just because of the title echoes… honestly there are many, many books that […]

Future you called, they need a book to read and THERE IS A SALE!   Imagine this: you’ve just turned the final page of a fantastic book. Perhaps it was The Bandit Queens, or Murder Your Employer. Or How High We Go In the Dark (in which case, go take some deep breaths, it will be okay) or Georgie All Along. You had so much fun!! And now you have to pick a new book. I have lots to say about what one should […]

I don’t want to read your diary. Or your letters. But these I want to read… I don’t like the idea of a novel written as letters (or emails. or texts. or What’s App posts). But somehow, I often like the execution. I might not even click on a novel in that format. Or, for that matter, a memoir done as a diary entries. But again—when it’s done well, not only do I really like it… I somehow can’t stop […]

If you binged Dirty John or Inventing Anna, I have a book for you.   The two POVs in The Fake slowly revolve around an unheard third, coming closer and closer to the truth about the young woman who’s entered both of their lives… but not, in classic con-artist thriller fashion, with any particular ill intent. She will not murder them or steal their identities or ruin their lives, exactly. Not dramatically, anyway. In fact, she’ll make things better. For a while. […]

Purply darkness revealed… I’m gonna need to up my eyeliner game. It is perhaps true that even I, who love all things fall and Halloween, am not exactly ready to launch myself into that distant season just yet. It’s been a long-ass winter (and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last…*) and I am very much not wishing away spring and summer just yet. BUT This fall will bring the release of Playing the Witch […]

  I’ve just had the extremely strange experience of being happy when a book broke the spell I was under and revealed itself to be a book. I’d already begun an adversarial relationship with this book—How High We Go in the Dark, a novel in short stories about a pandemic that begins with the release of a virus through melting permafrost. I was lured in by the promise of black humor in the idea of an amusement park for plague-ridden […]