Cabin in the City

According to Goodreads, I’m pretty much on-pace with my 2024 goal of finishing 40 books. Here’s what I picked up in the last throes of spring and early summer.

Where You End by Abbott Kahler • ★★★☆☆

I try not to critique books (or TV or movies or whatever) for what they aren’t or for what I thought they should have been.

But like with Mister Magic, the premise of Where You End was so intriguing yet the story wasn’t what I hoped for. In Where You End, Kat awakes from a coma with no memories. Her identical twin sister Jude fills her in on what she’s forgotten—or does she?

What Kat has forgotten is the time she and her sister spent in a new age-y cult. It sounds great, but I was underwhelmed.

A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley • ★★★☆☆

A witchy read in the middle of spring? Sometimes you just can’t control when your number at the library is going to be called.

A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon was better than I though considering how absolutely daft the title sounds. Like many other witchy rom-coms, the main character, Mariel, struggles with her magic. Is she the worst-ever witch or is she just good at some very niche spells?

Throughout the book, Mariel begins to find out, even if it means accidentally summoning and falling in love (real or not) with a demon.

This book was charming, but nothing I insist that you pick up—particularly outside of witchy reading season.

In Charm’s Way by Lana Harper • ★★★☆☆

This is the fourth installation in The Witches of Thistle Grove series. I enjoyed the first three books, but I’ll say that I really didn’t care for this one.

Delilah, the protagonist in In Charm’s Way was sympathetic and I really enjoyed how Harper picked up her story from the previous book and gave her a monumental challenge to overcome.

What I didn’t care for was the love interest in this story. Or rather—SPOILER—how this terrible love interest returned and managed a second chance. Ick.

The Manor House by Gilly Macmillan • ★★★★☆

I never know what to expect with domestic thrillers. Sometimes they’re un-put-down-able. Other times I know why they were a $1.99 Kindle deal or always available at the library.

The Manor House delivered in a big way for me. I ripped through this one in about four days.

Why was it so good? An English couple wins the lottery and moves into their dream home packed with fancy smart features, big windows and a pool. They live near some very fancy neighbors with their own live-in housekeeper. Their new life has them almost forgetting all about their weird friend who keeps asking for more money and random hikers that keep hiking through their yard.

But then the husband is found dead in the pool. And of course it’s great because there are plenty of feasible suspects. And his drowning might not even be the only mystery! And smart home features are scary! (Don’t tell my Nest thermostat which I fully believe has a mind of its own.)

The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden • ★★★☆☆

A governess flees her hometown after the death of her husband to take a new post for a mysterious family at a dilapidated manor far from home? Sign me up.

The Secrets of Hartwood Hall has almost all the gothic elements you could ever want. Not enough ghosts for me, but still a nice read. Yes, I’m deducting a star for lack of ghosts.

One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware • 🎧 • ★★★★☆

I love a good Ruth Ware read. In a Dark, Dark Wood and One by One are such good snowy thrillers, and I was thrilled to find that her latest outing was set somewhere tropical.

One Perfect Couple hits on a lot of really great tropes in terms of summer reading and page-turning thrillers: a reality TV show, mismatched couples, shipwrecks, remote islands, and DRAMA.

I won’t share more because if you like Ruth Ware’s work or any of the tropes above, you’ll be in good hands with this one. I’d also recommend One Perfect Couple if you liked Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins.

Keep up with what I’ve read over on Goodreads! Also, if you’re an audiobook fan, I encourage you to try Libro.fm—you can support your favorite small bookstore while downloading your next listen.

It’s been a really trying month. My mom is gone. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling empty and trying to fill days with low-effort, benign entertainment. Reading often counts. So does Antiques Roadshow.

Nora by Nuala O’Connor • ★★★★☆

Michael and I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in a pretty low-key way: We ate homemade brown bread, shepherd’s pie, and shared a Guinness. We also listened to the Significant Others podcast on Nora Barnacle, James Joyce’s wife. The historian on the show recommended this book, and I figured it was the perfect way to enjoy the rest of the holiday.

From what I understand, not a ton is known about Nora Barnacle. Joyce’s letters to her have survived (and they are absolutely batshit), but her correspondences have been lost. O’Connor does a good job at pasting what is known about Nora together in this rather lengthy book.

A lot of what I’ve read about Nora is that she was uneducated and kind of a bumpkin. O’Connor shows that this certainly couldn’t be true. She portrays Nora as being savvy, smart and stubborn. While Joyce runs around Trieste, Zurich and Paris with his cronies, Nora keeps their life as stable as she can and gives Joyce the space to write.

I think this is a must-read for James Joyce folks.

Death and Croissants by Ian Moore • 🎧 • ★★★☆☆

Immediately after my mom died, I needed mental respite. This took form as reruns of Superstore and The Great British Bake Off. It also meant reaching for a genre that I find entertaining but not taxing: a cozy mystery.

Death and Croissants is set in the Loire Valley, a part of France I visited last year. It was enough for me to bite. This little mystery was funny and absolutely full. How Moore managed to fit a chicken-loving innkeeper, nudist swingers, bounty hunters and mafia members into a short book is beyond me; but he did it and it was the respite I needed.

Fever by Mary Beth Keane • ★★★★☆

I’ve read and learned about Typhoid Mary in the past. The way the story goes is that Mary Mallon, an Irish cook and asymptomatic typhoid carrier, went from home to home cooking for families, always leaving death in her wake.

This typical telling makes Mary out to be calculating and cruel. Fever flips this narrative on its head. In Fever, Mary cooks so she can earn a better living than she ever could as a laundress or maid. She cares for the families she works for. When her employers fall ill, she’s saddened but moves on to wherever she’s needed next so she can keep a roof over her head.

This perspective is one I never really thought of. Even Keane’s telling of how Mary continued to cook despite knowing her diagnosis was sympathetic. I think Mary Mallon is due this sort of story.

A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand • ★★★★☆

Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall is one of the best-ever moody, spooky reads. I knew that A Haunting on the Hill, a riff on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, would hit all the right notes.

A Haunting on the Hill had the slow, creepy build that makes so many books and movies perfectly spine-tingling. A woman on vacation comes across the infamous Hill House while on vacation. She is immediately taken with the home, and convinces her girlfriend and a small crew of actors to join as she workshops her upcoming play.

Personal dramas, secrets from the past and general eeriness all start to seep into the rehearsals, and it’s wonderfully spooky. This is a great vacation read — if typical light beach reads aren’t your thing.

Keep up with what I’ve read over on Goodreads! Also, if you’re an audiobook fan, I encourage you to try Libro.fm—you can support your favorite small bookstore while downloading your next listen.

This month, I needed books for escape and support. Here’s what I managed to read and listen to.

The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell • ★★★★☆

In January, I read Romantic Comedy which is set around an SNL-like show. This month, I read The Golden Spoon which riffs of The Great British Bake-Off. Sometimes these obvious parallels are tedious but not so with either. Instead, they provide a sort of shorthand for the set-up.

In this instance, a handful of bakers arrive at the Grafton estate for a reality competition. From the jump, the show is off: There’s a new host, one baker uses salt instead of sugar and another has a total meltdown over a secret ingredient. And then someone turns up dead. Oh, and all this is on top of maybe another mystery?

I read this in a flash. It was the equivalent of binging five eps of GBBO or inhaling a pretty good chocolate croissant.

People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd • ★★★★☆

I read The Club by Lloyd back in 2022. She proved in that book and in her newest outing that she’s a master at slowly revealing the rotten insides of fame and influence.

In People Like Her, Lloyd explores the world of “you do you, mama!” parenting influencer Emmy. Emmy shares her rise to fame from magazine editor to diaper-shilling Instamum. Meanwhile, her husband is disillusioned by her phony stories and perpetually sharing their lives. And a follow or two seem to have it out for her. I couldn’t put this one down.

This book is not for everyone. It deals with a lot of really sensitive and triggering issues like infertility, death and postpartum depression.

The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life’s Final Moments by Hadley Vlahos • 🎧 • ★★★★☆

I’ve had some trouble lately with books (or movies or TV) that hit a little too close to home. I gave up on a holiday rom-com a few months ago because a character was dealing with memory loss. I pressed pause on TJ Klune’s Under the Whispering Door because it was discussing the afterlife.

By that logic, The In-Between, a book written by a hospice nurse about her experience with end-of-life care, is the last possible book I should be listening to. But The In-Between didn’t repel me; instead, it made me meditate on lives well lived and what may come next.

Done and Dusted by Lyla Sage • 🎧 • ★★★☆☆

I have mixed feelings about this one. I picked up Done and Dusted because I needed something different than what I’d been reading lately. I’ve read a lot nonfiction (at least for me) this year and some heavier novels. The inverse of that to me was a cowboy romance.

In some ways, I really enjoyed Done and Dusted. I appreciated the fact that the MC, Emmy, had ADHD. That experience was woven into Emmy’s experience and how her loved ones cared for her. I found that to be very thoughtful.

But some of the specifics of the characters’ romantic relationship were a little iffy and uncomfortable to me.

Keep up with what I’ve read over on Goodreads! Also, if you’re an audiobook fan, I encourage you to try Libro.fm—you can support your favorite small bookstore while downloading your next listen.

February was a slower month for me in terms of reading and just at-home activities. I’ve pressed pause on a lot of hobbies like sewing and stitching and puzzles. Instead I’ve been watching The Great British Bake Off‘s early seasons on the Roku Channel (who knew?), playing Hogwarts Legacy and listening to podcasts (I’ve really been enjoying Queers Gone By).

This all being said, I did get through three books this month (and part of another before I decided that I did not want to listen to another six hours about professional wrestling).

Empire of the Wild by Cherie Dimaline • ★★★★☆

My favorite way to enjoy books is via the library. It’s free, it’s supporting an invaluable institution. It also means that sometimes a book you put on hold becomes available when you’re not quite in the mood for it. That was the case with this book. But within just a few pages Dimaline changed my mind.

In Empire of the Wild, Joan mourns her husband who disappeared a year earlier. However, when she stumbles upon a revival tent, she finds that the preacher looks just like her husband but the man doesn’t recognize her. WILD.

This book has such a wonderful sense of mystery and urgency. I loved it and how it wove in Metis lore as well.

Wintering by Katherine May • 🎧• ★★☆☆☆

This book has been on my radar for a minute. I felt like the timing was right. It’s February and I am going through literal and figurative winter. It sucks. I thought this book might give me some insight. The online description bills it as “An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down,” and “Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times.”

With that description in mind, I downloaded this book hoping to learn about nature, about dealing with loss, about embracing slow times. Instead, Wintering was more memoir than anything. May focuses nearly exclusively on herself (fine if it’s a memoir, not so fine if the book promises more sweeping perspectives).

Listening to this book was tedious (nothing against the wonderful narrator) and unhelpful. I wish I hadn’t spent the time with this one. It left me feeling worse than when I started.

Matrix by Lauren Groff • ★★★★★

While Wintering was a flop, I knew I could count on Lauren Groff to turn this month of reading around. Groff is one of my favorite authors; her writing is beautiful and each book is so different from the next. Even though I first read it 15 years ago, her short story collection Delicate Edible Birds still has a hold on me.

Matrix takes place in one of my least favorite settings for historical fiction: medieval England. But Groff won me over in an instant. Marie, a low-tier French royal, is sent off to a convent in England to where the nuns are dying to either help turn it around or to perish herself.

Marie thrives in this environment. She turns the convent around, she fortifies its nuns, she builds a damn labyrinth to confuse enemies and, when the town priests die in a fire, she starts saying Mass herself.

Matrix is sweeping and wonderful. It’s heretical and delightful. It’s majestic and real. Everything that Groff does best.

Keep up with what I’ve read over on Goodreads! Also, if you’re an audiobook fan, I encourage you to try Libro.fm—you can support your favorite small bookstore while downloading your next listen.

2023 was a good year for reading. I smashed my reading goal of 40 books. By the end of the year, I racked up a whopping 58 books! In the end that was more than 10 full days of listening and nearly 10,000 pages of reading. Thank you to the Milwaukee Public Library for the major assist (also, please follow their phenomenal socials).

According to Goodreads, my average book score for the year was a measly 3.2 stars. Three stars isn’t a bad review, in my opinion, but nothing that I’d go out of my way to recommend.

But I would recommend a few reads off my 2023 list. Here are my top picks of the year—the ones that earned four or five stars. I suggest you add to your TBR for the year ahead.

One Night on the Island by Josie Silver

I read a good amount of romance this year—more than a dozen titles—but One Night on the Island is my favorite of the bunch. It’s by Josie Silver, author of one of the best holiday romances of all time: One Day in December (I named it a top Christmas read last month).

This book has all you could ask for in a cozy read: a burnt-out woman taking a break from publishing (hey, that was me!) and heading off to Ireland (also me!). The ending wasn’t how I’d write it, but it was still a good one that will make you smile.

The Farewell Tour by Stephanie Clifford

In 2023, I went on a bit of a country kick. I spent weeks listening to Tammy Wynette. I visited Nashville and loved every second. I even asked myself if my outfit was yee-haw enough before going to the Grand Ole Opry (it wasn’t).

The Farewell Tour spoke so much to this phase of my year, but it was so much more. This book followed an artist in the same vein as Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn and how she rose to fame—even later in life. But The Farewell Tour was about so much more than fame. It was about reckoning with your past, forging your own path and facing the future—even if it’s uncertain. I loved every second and think it deserves all five stars.

The Chelsea Girls by Fiona Davis

Fiona Davis does such a wonderful job portraying women. In every novel of hers, she paints brilliant portraits of complicated fictional people in equally complicated (though very much real) times.

In The Chelsea Girls, Davis manages to transform a part of history I don’t find particularly appealing—the Cold War and the Red Scare—into a riveting tale of talent and friendship. This is a must for any historical fiction fanatic.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

I love a gothic thriller, and I am forever on the hunt for one that hits all the marks for me: gloomy atmosphere, characters with mysterious pasts, supernatural (or supernatural-seeming) elements and a vaguely unsettling feel. The Only One Left managed to tick all the boxes.

Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith

This book was a slow burn. I’ll admit, it took me a moment to warm to it, but as the drama developed—and later took an entirely different path—I couldn’t stop listening to it.

What starts as a family drama of one type soon unfurls into something much bigger and profound. And the ending is superb.

The Fervor by Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu does historical fiction-turned-scary so well. She takes parts of history that we think we know, like the sinking of the Titanic in The Deep and the Donner Party in The Hunger, and turns them into something that’s somehow more eerie.

She does the same in The Fervor. This book of Katsu’s is perhaps the most affecting as it bends and twists the already horrific story of the Japanese internment camps in the US. It sounds dark—and it is—but it’s hauntingly readable.