AndromedaGal

Libby user on the Kobo! (she/her)

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My Taste

The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

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AndromedaGal is interested in reading...

Still Life

Sarah Winman

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades. As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot -- a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics -- he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills. With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.

AndromedaGal TBR'd a book

The Once and Future Witches

Alix E. Harrow

In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in Alix E. Harrow's powerful novel of magic and the suffragette movement. In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters -- James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna -- join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote -- and perhaps not even to live -- the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive. There's no such thing as witches. But there will be. An homage to the indomitable power and persistence of women, The Once and Future Witches reimagines stories of revolution, sapphic love, motherhood, and women's suffrage--the lost ways are calling.

AndromedaGal started reading...

The Sirens

Emilia Hart

A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine 2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever. 1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies. A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.

AndromedaGal paused reading...

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

The spellbinding story of two young people whose fates will intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of LossBehind every love story are the myriad stories of two families.In the snowy mountains of Vermont, Sonia is lonely. A college student and aspiring writer homesick for India, she turns to an older artist for inspiration and intimacy, a man who will cast a dark spell on the next many years of her life. In Brooklyn, Sunny is lonely, too. A struggling journalist originally from Delhi, he is both beguiled and perplexed by his American girlfriend and the country in which he plans to find his future. As Sonia and Sunny each becomes more and more alienated, they begin to question their understanding of happiness, human connection, and where they belong.Back in India, Sonia and Sunny's extended families cannot fathom how anyone could be lonely in this great, bustling world. They arrange a meeting between the two—a clumsy meddling that only drives Sonia and Sunny apart before they have a chance to fall in love. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

AndromedaGal is re-reading...

The Last Time I Lied

Riley Sager

Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she--or anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips. Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings--massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends. Yet it's immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price. In the new novel from the bestselling author of Final Girls, The Last Time I Lied follows a young woman as she returns to her childhood summer camp to uncover the truth about a tragedy that happened there fifteen years ago.

AndromedaGal left a rating...

Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)

AndromedaGal

May 18, 2026

4.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

AndromedaGal finished a book

Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)

Matt Dinniman

The apocalypse will be televised! A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style. You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big. You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

AndromedaGal commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Wombworm

Writing Hate/Negative reviews publicly, go or no-go?

So today I was talking with a bookclub I was going to join, but decided against it because unfortunately I was very very different from them and they just wouldn't have a good time since I don't fit in at all. (Womp womp for me. Maybe next time!!)

For a moment, we actually almost started an argument. They brought up the last book they read, and I meantioned that I also read it and unfortunately didn't like it... I know I shouldn't have said this, I was just nervous and blurted it out!! But the conversation basically turned into an argument that hate-reviews and/or overly negative reviews should not be public if they aren't constructive because the author spent a lot of time on their book and it won't change now that it's published, that if you aren't an editor or author yourself you don't have the credentials to offer such criticism, and that all reviews should offer some kind of constructive criticism to help the author grow for their next work...

And more, but... I didn't really feel like retelling how a group of people yelled at me... 😭

So. I write pretty negative things about a lot of books. Unfortunately I am very fussy and picky with books most of the time, and I have definitely written a hate-review(?) or two before. But I NEVER tag authors or insult them as a person. I always thought that if you buy a product, you are open to criticize and dislike it, because reviews aren't for the one that made the product... but for people looking to buy said product.

The whole thing made me feel some type of way, and I'm not sure if I'm just being sensitive because they called me out but I just wanted to know what other people think and how you guys write your reviews! Do you think authors belong in reader/review spaces? How do you go about writing your reviews? I'm very curious and I want to do better with my own reviews.. 🦭

141

AndromedaGal commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

anwyn

just graduated college! pick my first guilt-free read!!

The Shining by Stephen King My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante Commonwealth by Ann Patchett The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman

AndromedaGal started reading...

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

Post from the Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1) forum

AndromedaGal

Thoughts from 33% (page 100)

As a gamer I have found this really charming and enjoyable. At the same time, I am wondering if it's going to be kind of the same thing all the way through. I mean, I get what they're doing and now I'm thinking ok that was cute, do I need to read any more? Thoughts?

AndromedaGal commented on a post

mahoo

Thoughts from chapter three

how many times am I going to read the full name of Anna Pavlovna? this could be a drinking game my god 🥴

AndromedaGal commented on a post

GhostBonesnTea

Thoughts from 7% (page 31)

All I picture is Danny Devito as Mordecai in a rat suit. For the love of God, if this becomes a movie, make it happen. That — and make Jim Henson in charge of the creatures.

AndromedaGal is interested in reading...

The Unhaunting

Micaiah Johnson

Award-winning author Micaiah Johnson invites you to Abernathy House.A house, itself, is nothing. It’s not a shelter until it is sheltering someone. A house is a housefire, waiting for its match. A house is a ghost story, waiting for its death.At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the confederacy made what she thought was an innocent to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up.When Shantell’s best friend, Avery, tells her he has inherited a house big enough to make their dreams of a sanctuary come true, she’s too cautious to be optimistic. A lifetime of loss — her father to the Iraq war, her brother to police violence, and her mother to suicide — has taught her cynicism, and even though Avery swears the house has never experienced a tragedy, she goes along expecting everything from black mold to evil spirits.But not only is the house in better shape than they’d expected, it makes them better Shantell’s anxiety stops flaring up, terminally shallow Avery is suddenly capable of deeper emotions, and Tobias, Avery’s older brother and the contractor for the job, even quits chain smoking.There’s an eeriness to the calm, and it’s almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. If nothing bad has ever happened here, where are all these ghosts coming from? As they dig into the house’s history, Shantell, Avery, and Tobias discover that there’s only one thing worse than a house that’s a house that desperately wants to be.

AndromedaGal wrote a review...

AndromedaGal

May 13, 2026

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

I quite like this author generally speaking, and his combination of absurd and humorous, but this was sad and somewhat distressing. I did not enjoy reading it. CW: psychological abuse.

AndromedaGal finished a book

The Family Fang

Kevin Wilson

Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief. Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world. When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance -– their magnum opus -– whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.

AndromedaGal started reading...

Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)

Matt Dinniman

AndromedaGal commented on ranthesolarpunk's review of Suffer the Children

ranthesolarpunk

May 11, 2026

3.0

Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 3.0Characters: 2.5Plot: 3.0

⛑️

💉

⚰️

Eh. The concept of the book was interesting enough to hold my attention, but it lacked depth. All the kids in the world die and come back after 3 days, hungry. Okay. They want blood, okay.

The parents struggle with whether or not to give them blood, and then eventually they do.

Yes, I definitely believe that a parent would give their children blood just to see them again. 1000%. However the catch is, the cure doesn’t keep the kids alive long enough for any real life to be lived and it’s here where the book could have been deeper to me and even started to lose me.

As a parent and as a parent who has lost an infant the author displayed the grief the parents initially feel, realistically. He was on point with the rage, the unfairness, the everything. However, at one point, I stopped reading to see if the author bio would reveal if he had any children because at that point it didn’t read like it.

Yes many parents would do anything for their kids, but there comes a point that even with the desire to “provide” for their kids, parents would see reason and I think the book could have been deeper and even scarier examining what it would mean for the parents to realize that what kids are doing isn’t living. I’m Just one person, but I’ve been in forums with parents about grief and what we would do for more time and why we made decisions we made and I don’t think Dilouie actually talked to parents, which I think would have given the story more depth.

Because in short: I don’t know a parent who would put these kids through what these parents put their kids through, for only a few more hours.

The characters were flat. Often the women were all: “You don’t know what it means to be a mother” and the men were like “I’m a man. I must provide. Eat the rich. I’m getting blood for my kids. Roar”

And idk reading it felt like watching a crazy Lifetime movie. Like something that looked like it had promise but then you end up texting your friend like: “Girl let me tell you about this crazy ass movie.” And then you spend the rest of it crying-laughing because what in the hell??

I hope this made sense.

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