
Seherinia is interested in reading...
12h

Bone of My Bone
Johanna van Veen
Bram Stoker Award–nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force—perfect for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull's grin is eternal… The year is 1635. Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint. It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost. At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.
Thank you NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for the chance to read and review this collection.
For a debut collection, Maha Hashwi did pretty good. I genuinely did enjoy some of the poems in her collection. That being said, I feel like I was jumping all around the place in this collection and some things just dragged when they didn't need to and I wasn't a huge fan of the whole set!
Looking forward to reading her work in the future

Seherinia finished a book
12h

The Pomegranate is a Grenade: Poems
Maha Hashwi
A powerful debut from an Arab Muslim poet and activist, offering intimate, accessible poems about identity, family, and belonging that speak directly to anyone navigating culture, change, and the work of finding home.The Pomegranate is a Grenade is a debut poetry collection that examines what it means to grow up Arab and Muslim in the United States, where home is both inherited and continually reshaped. Maha Hashwi draws from the textures of an immigrant household—food shared across generations, religious traditions carried forward, the weight of displacement, and the small, steady acts of love that hold a family together.Hashwi’s poems move between personal narrative and cultural memory, exploring how identity changes with time, migration, and the stories passed down through parents and community. She writes of resistance, tenderness, and the contradictions of belonging to more than one place, offering readers a vivid look at the emotional landscape of the diaspora.Honest, accessible, and rooted in lived experience, this collection invites readers into the rooms, rituals, and relationships that shape a life between countries—and asks what we carry, and what carries us, when we call more than one place home.

Seherinia started reading...
12h

The Pomegranate is a Grenade: Poems
Maha Hashwi
A powerful debut from an Arab Muslim poet and activist, offering intimate, accessible poems about identity, family, and belonging that speak directly to anyone navigating culture, change, and the work of finding home.The Pomegranate is a Grenade is a debut poetry collection that examines what it means to grow up Arab and Muslim in the United States, where home is both inherited and continually reshaped. Maha Hashwi draws from the textures of an immigrant household—food shared across generations, religious traditions carried forward, the weight of displacement, and the small, steady acts of love that hold a family together.Hashwi’s poems move between personal narrative and cultural memory, exploring how identity changes with time, migration, and the stories passed down through parents and community. She writes of resistance, tenderness, and the contradictions of belonging to more than one place, offering readers a vivid look at the emotional landscape of the diaspora.Honest, accessible, and rooted in lived experience, this collection invites readers into the rooms, rituals, and relationships that shape a life between countries—and asks what we carry, and what carries us, when we call more than one place home.

Seherinia TBR'd a book
3w

Thrall
Rebecca Mahoney
Author of THE MEMORY EATER and THE VALLEY AND THE FLOOD Rebecca Mahoney's THRALL, in which a college student is infected by a vampire and teams up with the women on campus determined to stop him, including a radio host and an infuriating (and beguiling) archery champion, to break free of his control before she fully turns, to Olivia Zavitson at Hyperion Avenue, for publication in spring 2026, by Kari Sutherland at kt literary (world).




Loved the plot, loved the lore. I want a prequel to learn about the family history. I want sequels to see how Care does!

Seherinia finished a book
4w

The Mortons: A Novel
Justine Larbalestier
Meet the Mortons: In this family, murder is currency—and business is booming.The Mortons are a modern day, old-money dynasty with impeccable taste, from their exquisitely crafted cocktails to their expertly tailored vintage garments. They are also stone-cold killers. For the Mortons, homicide is heritage.They, along with the other legacy crime families, send their progeny to Helshire College, where the legacy kids strategically intermingle with ordinary students from wealthy families. Jessica Morton has always excelled at Helshire, secure in her knowledge that she is the prodigy of her generation. Now, having committed her first kill at her matriarch's behest, it should be Jessica's moment, her honor. But that kill will cut more ways than one, unknotting deep secrets that propel a series of revelations, spanning the Mortons' country estate, the New York City art world, and Helshire itself.What happens to Jessica when all of her dearly-held certainties face the axe?Sharp and hypnotic, The Mortons is an epic novel of alliances and power, loyalty and kinship, and the consequences of ruthless ambition.

Shockingly dull for a book about sex.
This may have been a successful column, but after a while the stories get old and you also see toxic patterns emerge. Like what do you expect from the guy who has to get his wife to practice "tolyamory" (where she tolerates an open relationship on his side and doesn't want to know more).
Shelasky also flattens everything down into the same tone. Part of being a writer who tells the stories of others should mean that you kinda allow each person to really shine through. Very few of them became memorable.

Seherinia finished a book
4w

Sex Diaries: Real-life Stories of Non-Monogamy and Polyamory
Alyssa Shelasky
Intimate, captivating, never-before-seen true stories from the edge of modern sex and dating, compiled by Alyssa Shelasky, in the style of her wildly popular New York Magazine column—with an introduction from Esther Perel, renowned psychotherapist and NYT bestselling author of Mating in CaptivityPolyamory is hardly a new cultural touchstone, yet as it continues to enter the mainstream dating world, its realities often remain opaque. What does the everyday life of someone with multiple partners actually look like? How do you navigate the daily logistics and the competing schedules? How do you deal with jealousy? In this candid, groundbreaking compilation of anonymous accounts, told by real people navigating sex and dating outside the bounds of traditional monogamy, Alyssa Shelasky pulls back the curtain. A 67-year-old woman keeps a collection of well-endowed lovers in various corners of the world; a restaurant owner is jolted back to life when she gets illicit messages from a married man; a Brooklynite plans a porn brunch for her birthday, reveling in the fact that she finally feels at ease in her body.Some diarists are just beginning to question their relationship with monogamy, others have been polyamorous for a long-time. Some accounts are graphic and dishy, while others focus on the search for lasting connections that feel genuinely liberatory. Every single one is strikingly honest and authentic, revealing expansive tales of love, lust, longing and desire.

Seherinia started reading...
4w

Sex Diaries: Real-life Stories of Non-Monogamy and Polyamory
Alyssa Shelasky
Intimate, captivating, never-before-seen true stories from the edge of modern sex and dating, compiled by Alyssa Shelasky, in the style of her wildly popular New York Magazine column—with an introduction from Esther Perel, renowned psychotherapist and NYT bestselling author of Mating in CaptivityPolyamory is hardly a new cultural touchstone, yet as it continues to enter the mainstream dating world, its realities often remain opaque. What does the everyday life of someone with multiple partners actually look like? How do you navigate the daily logistics and the competing schedules? How do you deal with jealousy? In this candid, groundbreaking compilation of anonymous accounts, told by real people navigating sex and dating outside the bounds of traditional monogamy, Alyssa Shelasky pulls back the curtain. A 67-year-old woman keeps a collection of well-endowed lovers in various corners of the world; a restaurant owner is jolted back to life when she gets illicit messages from a married man; a Brooklynite plans a porn brunch for her birthday, reveling in the fact that she finally feels at ease in her body.Some diarists are just beginning to question their relationship with monogamy, others have been polyamorous for a long-time. Some accounts are graphic and dishy, while others focus on the search for lasting connections that feel genuinely liberatory. Every single one is strikingly honest and authentic, revealing expansive tales of love, lust, longing and desire.

Loved this very short book by Natasha Brown. Basically about how we're all kinda complicit in all the garbage happening around us

Seherinia started reading...
4w

The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny
Laura Bates
Misogyny is being hardwired into our future. Can we stop it? We like to believe we’re moving closer to equality, riding the wave of technological progress into a brighter, fairer future. But beneath the glossy surface of innovation lies a chilling truth: new technologies are not just failing to solve age-old inequalities—they’re deepening them. In The New Age of Sexism, acclaimed author and activist Laura Bates exposes how misogyny is being coded into the very fabric of our future. From the biases embedded in artificial intelligence to the alarming rise of sex robots and the toxic dynamics of the metaverse, Bates takes readers on a shocking journey into a world where technology is weaponized against women. This isn’t a dystopian warning about what might happen. It’s a harrowing account of what’s happening now and the dangers we face if we don’t act. With clarity and urgency, Bates reveals how these advancements are dragging society backward, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, and jeopardizing decades of progress in the fight for gender equality. Eye-opening and empowering, The New Age of Sexism is a rallying cry for awareness and action in a world where the battle for equality has entered a dangerous new frontier.

Seherinia TBR'd a book
4w

Lobster
Guillaume Lecasble
Aboard the Titanic, Lobster watches Angelina devour his father, before being plucked out of the aquarium himself. Just as he is put in the boiling pot, the ship hits the iceberg and the pot is thrown to the floor. Lobster survives, with some changes: he finds himself sexually attracted not only to a human, but to the very human who ate his father. He gives her one life-changing orgasm before their tragic separation, following an ugly incident in one of the lifeboats. Thus begins a love story like no other. But this is not only a surreal concept. Lecasble's rich symbolism — about the shells we build to protect ourselves, the difficulty of communication, and the profound changes engendered by love — is further enhanced by powerfully erotic, vivid prose.

Seherinia TBR'd a book
4w

Chain-Gang All-Stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom. In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences. Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

Seherinia TBR'd a book
4w

Innamorata
Ava Reid
The next exciting novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid. A visionary and atmospheric gothic fantasy about necromancy, vengeance, and soul-consuming love, the first in a duology from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning and Lady Macbeth Once there was an island where the dead walked the earth, and seven noble houses ruled by the arcane secrets of necromancy. A conqueror’s blade brought them low, burning their libraries, killing their lords, and extinguishing their eldritch magic. But defiant against the new order stands the House of Teeth and its last living members: beautiful Marozia, the heiress to the House, and her cousin, the uncanny Lady Agnes. Though she has not spoken a word in seven years, Agnes is the true carrier of the House’s legacy. And she has her orders. She must recapture the secrets of death magic and avenge her family’s fallen honor. She must arrange the betrothal of her beloved cousin Marozia to Liuprand, heir to the conqueror’s throne, for access to the forbidden library in his grotesquely grand castle. Revenge burns in Agnes’s heart but so do stranger passions—and it is Liuprand, the golden prince, who speaks to her soul. This passion is as treasonous as it is powerful, poisoning the kingdom’s roots and threatening to tear the already shattered realm in two. For Agnes’s final order is the gravest: She must not fall in love. Book One of The House of Teeth Duology