69 book reviews in 24 minutes 📚 | One Sentence Reviews January - June 2025

A charming, cozy, and easygoing historical mystery that I had a lot of fun with.

261 chapters and they delivered so little except maybe an existential crisis. Two stars

While the themes of language, translation, and colonization were fascinating, the execution of the plot and the characters themselves left me disappointed on first read and on this reread.

Okay, we have grief, cults, trauma, and also purwine and excessively gassy dogs all mashed up into an incredibly mismarketed romcom that is less romcom and more depressing contemporary fiction.

But as the story and the characters themselves matured over the course of the novel, the themes were explored in increasingly complex and nuanced ways, culminating in a powerful exploration of colonization and oppression. Five stars.

This was a really short and intense horror novel that was both exciting and fast-paced and entertaining, but also slightly ridiculous.

But honestly, Baldry worked his charming, quiet magic and made me emotionally invested in this story and these characters and these relationships, and I did not want to say goodbye. Five stars.

Beautifully descriptive, immersive fantasy with a haunting exploration of what makes someone a monster that is a little bit rushed and excessively brutal at times. Still, it's a compelling and deeply emotional read.

This novel's gorgeous pros couldn't save a story weighed down by unbalanced points of view, underdeveloped characters, and a missed opportunity to create an innovative or at the very least self-reflective and thoughtful sappic vampire story.

Tingle mixes his patented humor and brutality in this one yet again, but the tonal mismatches and lack of focus and depth left me wanting more.

While the protagonist was bland and frustrating, this is a novel with a really atmospheric setting, vivid characters with very strange family dynamics, and a mystery that is compelling, but also possible to solve.

And I absolutely loved the recreations of the POV, but I did find the slightly more YA writing style and the side quests into melodramatic romance took away a little bit from the overall impact of this story.

team leader leads a team in space. Except she's terrible at her job and this book is a mess. One star.

With its charming blend of humor, spice, and vulnerability, this was a much sweeter and steamier historical romance than I expected, and I ended up really loving it.

A somewhat repetitive and meandering finale to this series that left me less connected, less charmed, and mostly indifferent. I truly do feel that this series would have been better as a standalone.

Interesting enough, but lacking the spark and the charm of the first book. Felt a little bit superfluous.

a Panie De meter retelling that made both Pphanie and Deer incredibly unlikable to the point where I started to root for the island itself to just gobble them all up and make that one cool tree the protagonist, but the writing was lovely.

This was up to this point my favorite Emily Henry that I had read, and that is basically entirely because of the male love interest, Miles, who is essentially my husband.

A unique take on speculative fiction with a fascinating world, engaging characters, compelling relationship dynamics, so much queer rep, and a little bit of a closed room mystery, all injected with a huge amount of humor. Five stars.

The vibes were vibing in this gothic horror, but the characters were infuriating.

This is my new favorite Emily Henry novel. And while not a perfect book, this book was perfect for me and came into my life at the perfect time.

Harrow the Ninth is whiplash in the best way possible. I am incredibly impressed by Muire's ability to write in such an abstract nonlinear way and to create characters that jump off the page and make you so obsessed with them.

As a bisexual millennial woman, reading this series has been surprisingly healing and emotionally devastating. And I am so grateful to have read it.

As a bisexual millennial woman, reading this series has been surprisingly healing and emotionally devastating. And I am so grateful to have read it.

As a bisexual millennial woman, reading this series has been surprisingly healing and emotionally devastating. And I am so grateful to have read it.

This memoir had two stated aims and I think it succeeds beautifully at the one which is reaching out to fellow queer Muslims offering representation and hope and community and succeeds a little less at the other which is reaching out to communities outside of Islam to foster understanding. But regardless, this was a very raw and vulnerable memoir.

A really useful introductory guide to using AAC devices with your animal companions that I found really useful in deepening my use of talking buttons with my cats.

This is a love story with an absolutely preposterous premise that portrays suicide in a really insensitive way and has a complete lack of chemistry or romance or sexiness.

While the romance leaned a little melodramatic for my taste, this had a really fresh, engaging premise that kept me hooked despite those silly moments here and there.

A brutal and brilliant near future novel that explores the corrosive dynamic of codependent and competitive friendships. Artistic envy and privilege within a fragmented and elitist art world told through the cold and calculating perspective of our protagonist Enka whose obsession with her gifted yet traumatized best friend reveals a horrifying yet ordinary cruelty. Five stars.

This installment leaned a little bit too heavily into action and battle scenes and focused a little bit less on the power of stories and the characters and political intrigue. All the aspects that made me love the first novela in this series so much, leaving me feeling pretty emotionally disconnected.

I'm going to review these in a single sentence for the two of them, which is love the aliens and the magic, hate the characters in the romance. Three stars for both.

A tense thriller that thoughtfully explores its themes of racism, privilege, and the violent entitlement that can arise when some feel threatened by others successes.

This was a compulsively readable thriller that was really fun at times, but also had such an arrogant and pretentious main character and quite a few plot holes that I ended up feeling very conflicted when I finished it.

This novel was so full of heart and potential, but it was a little too sprawling for my taste, focusing on far too many characters with clashing subplots, and I just ended up feeling very disconnected from the story.

A gut-wrenching, blood so horror novel that masterfully explores the trauma of parentification. The complexities of sibling dynamics and the brutal reality of keeping a young black teenage boy alive in a world that wants him dead.

A heartbreaking and devastating exploration of abuse and trauma using a haunted house as a metaphor. Or is it?

A fun novel with interesting characters that was a little bit tainted for me because Agith the Christie refuses to tell her readers any of the pivotal clues needed to actually solve the mystery.

A first half that is gentle and funny and full of paos that ramps up quickly into an action-packed, a little bit chaotic, loreheavy conclusion that was a little bit overwhelming, but also overall a story that I enjoyed immensely and characters that I really grew to love. Five stars.

A short yet packed African futurist novela that blends thrilling sci-fi with a meaningful exploration of its themes. What makes us human, climate change, capitalism, and more, making it a really engaging read. Five stars.

One star for Carer and zero for literally everyone and everything else. This melodramatic nonsensical mess almost broke me.

The first book did everything it had to do, and this one just repeated the first book's greatest hits less effectively and with less emotion, but it was fine.

Morrison doesn't pander and Sula doesn't flinch. This book will challenge you and stay with you. Five stars.

This is a work of non-fiction that has a totally reasonable starting point, but buries it under bad science, broad generalizations, and honestly really harmful depictions. and discussions around identity, gender, and mental health. And I hated it with every fiber of my being.

I thought this was going to be an in-depth analytical history of the modern bookshop, but what it actually was a series of vignettes highlighting a handful of specific bookstores and their lore, and honestly read a little bit more like a travel blog than a cohesive work of non-fiction.

This is a fantasy that had a really cool premise and a lot of potential that just fell flat with really unremarkable characters and a lack of tension.

A book with an incredible cover and an awesome premise that was so mind-numbingly dull, I resent every hour I spent on it.

A gorgeously written character-driven sci-fi story with vivid worldbuing, thoughtful exploration of grief and identity and so much more. It is honestly such a breath of fresh air to read sci-fi this emotionally resonant and beautifully crafted.

An engaging thriller full of messy, morally gray characters that explores sisterhood, loyalty, and the very fine line between protection and enabling.

A Latin American classic set in the Ecuadorian jungle where the jungle fights back against colonial settlers who are reigning chaos and destroying the natural equilibrium. Four stars.

A fun character study of everyone's favorite adopted uncle, Fermin. That was a little light on plot and mystery and intrigue, but definitely heavy on the side of character development and relationships.

A lyrical and immersive fantasy tale that meanders somewhat in the middle, but really soarses with its emotionally devastating conclusion.

This was not only nonsensical and silly, but every character was unlikable, and I hated literally every moment of reading it.

A fantasy novel that combines immersive worldbuing, a fascinating magic system, and a really engaging, fast-paced plot with a main character that is so overpowered and so irritating. He was the Gary Stewiest Gary Stew of them all and some questionable decisions and loose threads.

a historical fiction set during the Vietnam War, focused on a nurse who went to war and came back with PTSD that not only doesn't explore PTSD with very much thoughtfulness or depth, but also doesn't give the reader any necessary information about the Vietnam War that you might need if you are not American, didn't learn about the Vietnam War in school, and also weren't alive at the time. Also, it was melodramatic as hell, essentially a soap opera.

an excerpt of a fictional self-help book from a TV show that was absolutely hilarious and definitely worth the read if you're a fan of Severance.

As someone who's not a big memoir fan, I was absolutely enthralled by Kelly Bishop's story and very jealous of her amazing career on Broadway and I had a lot of fun with it.

This is a slowpaced, cozy, and queer, but thematically rich exploration of colonization, identity, culture, and belonging with absolutely adorable dragons. such adorable dragons and a main character who really grounds the story, never wavering in her convictions.

With a surreal style and feminist lens, this offered a disturbing yet compelling look at religious indoctrination and exploitation and the complex dynamics of female desire and power.

I'm going to review these in a single sentence for the two of them, which is love the aliens and the magic, hate the characters in the romance. Three stars for both.

A bleak, intense, and philosophical sci-fi novela that really captivated me with its imaginative worldb building and complex technology and also its examination of its themes, memory, identity, and humanity.

An alien stranded on Earth fills the void with human flesh in more ways than one in a metaphor for the dehumanization of queer and disabled people that was gloriously strange, propulsive, and oddly touching.

And it was more a how-to guide for how to run a bookshop, which is fine, but not what I wanted out of the book. It also was a little too full of trit life lessons for my own personal taste.

a flawed and extremely overwritten fantasy that had uneven pacing, was way too long, didn't give us enough in terms of the magic system and the dragons, and included some genuinely concerning tropes that still managed somehow, don't ask me how, to be emotionally resonant and compelling and engaging and actually kind of fun to read. I'm so conflicted on this one still after all this time.

King's most recent short story collection that felt less like a collection of horror stories and more like a meditation on aging, mortality, family, and the haunting weight of loss. Four stars.