Rachel is Reading

Grayscale book cover of Tilt by Emma Pattee featuring the title in large font, diagonally across the screen, with a small bird below the title. Kobo eraser sits on a multicolor quilt.

I’m not typically a Lit Fic reader, but this short disaster novel is incredible. Heavily pregnant Annie is at IKEA when an earthquake hits Portland. This is her journey to find her husband and herself, via the story she tells her fetus. It’s emotional, tense, heartbreaking, and brilliant. 💙📚

I read literary fiction in June, July, and August for a Litsy buddy read that is usually 90% lit fic. I go in expecting to hate it, but knowing discussion will be amazing. I end up loving almost everything but am so emotionally wrung out, that I don’t touch the genre for the rest of the year! 🤣

Hardcover edition of Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy on dark blue blanket. Cover is a muddy gray and brown with violent, frothy waves across the center. Book title and author’s name in all caps, blocky font, and a brownish orange color.

I HATE literary fiction, especially when it’s done well. It rips your heart out, leaving you angry, exhausted, and overwhelmingly sad. This book is riveting, with complex characters you can’t help but care for deeply, multiple POVs that are so well-written, and it is emotionally devastating. 💙📚

Bookshelf featuring 9 Narwhal and Jelly books with spines facing out, and the Narwhal and Jelly picture book, This Book is Dangerous by Ben Clanton, facing cover side out. The cover features a top and bottom border of pointed teeth (they glow in the dark), the title in white chalk font along the top, and the character, Jelly the jellyfish, in the center on a dark blueish-greenish background. The authors name is in white above the bottom row of teeth.

This Book is Dangerous is the Narwhal and Jelly version of Sesame Street and Grover’s The Monster at the End of this Book (my childhood favorite) and it is equally delightful. 💙📚

Kobo e-reader displaying grayscale cover of One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig.

…and with that Rachel Gillig becomes an auto buy author for me. I loved One Dark Window. The writing is immersive, the characters are compelling, and the magic system is unique and clever. That ending, though! It’s a good thing I already have book two. 💙📚

It’s worth reading this for the gargoyle alone. I love him so much. 💙📚

Cover of The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig. Text is silver overlaid on image of woman with blond hair covering her eyes, left half of her body clothed in silver armor and the other half in a slate blue dress.

I asked my indie bookstore for a book that would block out the world, a story that would pull me into its pages and keep intrusive thoughts at bay. They delivered. The writing and world building are immersive, the magic system is fascinating, and the characters are complex and contradictory.

Why? Why can’t we edit? 😭😭 It’s a classic for a REASON not for a read. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Cover of audiobook for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre. Dark blue square with author and title in block letters and a black image of a staircase and a man in a suit at the bottom of the stairs

Dreamscape Media recently began re-recording John le Carrè’s work with Simon Vance as narrator. Vance is brilliant. I just finished The Spy Who Came in From the Cold for the eleventy-billionth time. It’s a Cold War spy novel classic for a read. I love it more with each reread. 💙📚#booksky

Cover of Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Black text on cream background with blue mousepad in the center. Mousepad has a shark fin in the upper left corner.

I’ve seen other reviewers say “no matter how horrible you think Facebook is, the reality is worse”. I am horrified by the depths of the depravity. I wish the author had acknowledged her own complicity better. There’s an astonishing lack of self awareness, but I appreciate this memoir. 💙📚

Image of 2025 Free Comic Book Day special issue of I Hate Fairyland “Once Upon a Time” by Skottie Young. Cover sketch shows a young Gert reading “I Hate Fairyland to a terrified boy who is in bed. Larry, Gert’s Fairyland guide, hovers over a bedside table lamp, smoking a cigar.

I love I Hate Fairyland. Gert is truly horrible, but I just love her. 💙📚

I finished the Greater Charlotte Book Crawl today! 22 independent bookstores spread across 7 counties. It was fun, but it was also A Lot. Looking forward to spending Indie Bookstore Day tomorrow at my “home” store. 💙📚

I really love mysteries with older female protagonists. Vera just makes me so happy. Enjoy!

Book cover image of Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) by Jesse Q Sutanto. Text in cream on a red-orange background with an illustrated image of an older woman with gray hair, glasses, and a blue shirt, carrying a black and white composition book, peeking around the orange background as if peeking around a wall.

I adore Vera Wong and this cozy mystery series. It makes me yearn to be part of Vera’s adopted family. She is good-naturedly nosy and manages to fumble her way into trouble and into the solution to the murder. This series is a murdery book hug and I am here for all the hugs. 💙📚

Paragraph from The Book of Lilith by Barbara Black Koltuv, Ph.D. that reads: “Lilith, whether cast out by Gilgamesh’s heroic sword of masculine consciousness, or fleeing from Adam’s divine right to lord it over her, chooses the wilderness. She will not be cut down, nor will she be pinned down. She will not submit. A woman experiences Lilith’s flight in a fiery rage wherein she refuses to submit to an over-weening masculine power like logic, but chooses instead the desolate wilderness and the company of demons”.

Currently reading The Book of Lilith by Barbara Black Koltuv, Ph.D. and came across this passage. Clearly women have been choosing the bear since the dawn of time. 😮‍💨
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That’s my favorite of his books. Enjoy!

I’ve apparently stumped @thestorygraph.com filter for the onboarding challenge reader profile match prompt. In their defense, when you mostly read mysterious, adventurous, dark fiction and have to exclude Mysteries (& books in a series) you can’t be surprised when the filter returns no results. 💙📚

(Forgot to tag 💙📚) 🤦🏻‍♀️

Book cover of Heartwood by Amity Gaige. Blue text on pale green background. Image of a woman’s profile created in trees and leaves.

Happy Pub Day to Heartwood & Amity Gaige. Thanks to NetGalley & Simon/Schuster for the ARC. This is an engaging character study of three women centered around the search for a missing hiker on the AT in Maine. Well-written and compelling, I was invested in the women and the outcome from page one.

It was gorgeous. I absolutely loved the book. It just took me a hot minute to figure out what was going on with all of the tense POV shifts.

Review by dgrachel - The Spear Cuts Through Water There are so many POV shifts, interjections and one liners that are spoken by other people in ...

app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/6765...
Review of The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. Audiobook narrated by Joel de la Fuente. 💙📚

Cover of Love Languages by James Albon. Two women crossing paths under a red awning. One is carrying a tote bag, wearing slacks and a long coat. She has long brown hair. The other is Asian, with short black hair, wearing a yellow jacket and jeans, pushing a small boy in a black stroller. The child is wearing a black and white striped shirt.

Out 5/6, free ARC from NetGalley, Love Languages is a queer romance graphic novel. The art style isn’t my favorite, but Albon does a great job using color to evoke mood. There wasn’t much chemistry between the leads. It was a slow shift from strangers to friends to lovers which was believable. 💙📚

Cover image of The Gods Time Forgot by Kelsie Sheridan Gonzalez. Cover features a woman with red hair wearing a green gown back-to-back with a tall man in a dark suit holding a cane.

Out April 1st, I received a free copy thru LibraryThing’s early reviewers program. It was good, but not great. Historical romance set in late 1800s NY, with Irish mythology mixed in. The only characters with depth were the leads. Everyone else was a stereotype/caricature. 💙📚

Yesterday, I finished 4 books: 3 digital ARCs and an audiobook I started in January. Today, I can’t decide between another eARC and a MG mystery. Am I mentally ready for dark adult books (mystery/thriller/suspense) again or do I need to go back to lighter fare? 💙📚

Image of book The Swifts: A Gallery of Rogues by Beth Lincoln and my tan chihuahua-mix

Shenanigan’s hunt for a gang of art thieves takes her to France, the French branch of the Family’s hotel. Full of great characters with even better names, chaos and murder abound. This offers a deep dive into lessons on processing big emotions, reparations, legacy, and greed among others. 💙📚

Image of two dogs sleeping on blankets on a couch.

It took weeks of slowly introducing the new girl to the old chihuahua, but it was worth it. 🥹

I love the Aru Shah series.

So true!

Reread an old favorite, read something really short (finishing anything gives a nice little dopamine hit), try something totally different, or just take a short break from reading. Don’t force yourself to finish something you aren’t enjoying.

Image of black dog on blue blanket next to paperback copy of The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln with illustrations by Claire Powell.

For the sake of my mental health, I’m completely throwing out my serious/dark March TBR and I have replaced it with MG delights, starting with The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln which is a quirky gothic mystery with delightful characters. 💙📚