bookish_mk
đłïžâđFantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror! 99.999999% women/nonbinary authors.
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21h
What a great YA debut!
Set in New Orleans, this is a story of a young woman and her family/coven/friends dealing with the passing of their Queen (our MC's grandmother) and sudden mysterious illnesses/deaths that are targeting witches. Mikaela has to find out what's going on and solve it before more witches are harmed.
There's tarot, magic, sibling relationships, grief, family, and a sapphic crush. Death Card is a fast-paced read that was hard to put down.
The author did a great job of throwing us off the track in guessing who the baddies were, although some things were more obvious than others and at some point we are waiting for our MC to catch up to what we suspect.
If you needed another reason to read this book, LEGENDBORN, is referenced here :) Speaking of references, this book is set in present day so there are references to MAGA and current events (politics).
I enjoyed this and would recommend to anyone looking for a great fast-paced YA read that centers black women using their power to fight evil and navigate growing into their own and taking the lead in their family and community. LOVED IT.
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21h
Death Card
Jasmine Smith
A dark contemporary fantasy featuring witchcraft, tarot, death, and a bit of romance that's perfect for fans of Immortal Dark and Cinderella Is Dead.
On an ordinary Monday morning, eighteen-year-old Mikaela Broussard receives the shock of her life. During a customerâs tarot reading at her familyâs occult shop, she turns over the Death card and envisions the beautiful stranger stabbing her in the heart.
In order to determine why the girl, Joelle, wants to kill her, sheâll have to keep her close. But the more time Mikaela spends with her soon-to-be murderer, the more irresistible she finds her.
As if imminent death isnât worrisome enough, witches are turning up with their magic stolen. And itâs clear some very dark magic is at work. Mikaela, as the next Witch Queen of her coven, is tasked with figuring out whoâs behind the horrific actsâa mystery that will put her and her power to the test.
Death Card is a dark, pacy, and romantic fantasy about one witchâs journey to find the strength to fight for herself, her future, and her beloved community.
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bookish_mk DNF'd a book
2d
Buzzard
Inez Ray
In 2086, corporations are monitoring fertility. Abortion is illegal. And the last woman alive who can perform the procedure is in hiding.
Seven years ago, midwife Mae Bastet was arrested for infanticide in the fractious Arizona Territory for providing health care to women in need. She was torn from her sons and sent to Buzzardâan experimental private prison deep in the Sonoran Desert, run by the paramilitary corporation Obsityan.
Desperate to reunite her family, Mae tries to keep her head down, swallow her prison-issued hormone supplements, and do her job as a glorified school nurse to Obsityanâs army of teenage drone pilots. But when mysterious, improbable pregnancies begin cropping up in her charges, she uncovers a web of secrets that has the power to destroy Obsityan. Mae must stay complicit in Obsityanâs crimes or hold fast to her midwife principles and risk never seeing her sons again.
Buzzard is a ferocious dystopian debut that traces the possible trajectory of our current political and technological realityâand the power of our deepest human bonds.
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bookish_mk started reading...
2d
Death Card
Jasmine Smith
A dark contemporary fantasy featuring witchcraft, tarot, death, and a bit of romance that's perfect for fans of Immortal Dark and Cinderella Is Dead.
On an ordinary Monday morning, eighteen-year-old Mikaela Broussard receives the shock of her life. During a customerâs tarot reading at her familyâs occult shop, she turns over the Death card and envisions the beautiful stranger stabbing her in the heart.
In order to determine why the girl, Joelle, wants to kill her, sheâll have to keep her close. But the more time Mikaela spends with her soon-to-be murderer, the more irresistible she finds her.
As if imminent death isnât worrisome enough, witches are turning up with their magic stolen. And itâs clear some very dark magic is at work. Mikaela, as the next Witch Queen of her coven, is tasked with figuring out whoâs behind the horrific actsâa mystery that will put her and her power to the test.
Death Card is a dark, pacy, and romantic fantasy about one witchâs journey to find the strength to fight for herself, her future, and her beloved community.
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2d
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5d
Earthlings
Sayaka Murata
Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?
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5d
Walking Practice
Dolki Min
Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human.
After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled by Earth's gravity. To survive, they will need to practice walking. And what better way than to hunt for food? As they discover, humans are delicious.
Intelligent, clever, and adaptable, the alien shift their gender, appearance, and conduct to suit a prey's sexual preference, then attack at the pivotal moment of their encounter. They use a variety of hunting tools, including a popular dating app, to target the juiciest prey and carry a backpack filled with torturous instruments and cleaning equipment. But the alien's existence begins to unravel one night when they fail to kill their latest meal.
Thrust into an ill-fated chase across the city, the alien is confronted with the psychological and physical tolls their experience on Earth has taken. Questioning what they must do to sustain their own survival, they begin to understand why humans also fight to live. But their hunger is insatiable, and the alien once again targets a new prey, not knowing what awaits. . . .
Dolki Min's haunting debut novel is part psychological thriller, part searing critique of the social structures that marginalize those who are different--the disabled, queer, and nonconformist. Walking Practice uncovers humanity in who we consider to be alien, and illuminates how alienation can shape the human experience.
Walking Practice features 21 black-and-white line drawings throughout.
Translated from the Korean by Victoria Caudle
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bookish_mk wrote a review...
5d
I love this little book so much.
Although, it was a lot milder than I was expecting! (In terms of violence, aka there is none lol)
If you feel or ever felt that you didn't fit in with the "norm", this book is for you.
Convenience Store Woman follows Keiko Furukura, a woman who isn't like everyone else and doesn't follow the paths their society pressures them into. She fits working at a convenience store and that's that. But of course, everyone else wants her to either get married or get a better job.
This book is funny, wierd in the best way, and walks through how societal norms exclude people who want something different.
It's a very short read, I read it in one day in a few hours.
I'd highly recommend this!! Especially, if you are looking for more translated fiction written/translated by women. Or if you are looking to get into "wierd girl" fiction - although this is mild on the scale of "wierd girl" books I know of lol so it's a good place to start!
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5d
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata
The English-language debut of one of Japan's most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.
Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of âSmile Mart,â she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interactionâmany are laid out line by line in the storeâs manualâand she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a ânormalâ person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate actionâŠ
A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.
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bookish_mk started reading...
6d
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata
The English-language debut of one of Japan's most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.
Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of âSmile Mart,â she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interactionâmany are laid out line by line in the storeâs manualâand she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a ânormalâ person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate actionâŠ
A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.
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6d
White Trash Witchcraft
Rowan Brighton Brown
Southern inheritances are always darkâwhether itâs a penchant for pills, a blood-soaked family farm, or an ancient magic. Sierra wants to break the generational curses, but when an otherworldly illness threatens her family, she must choose which monsters to slay and which to become.
Growing up on a farm in the foothills, Sierra learned from her grannyâs folk magic and her dadâs addiction that healing comes at a price. By now sheâs used to the opioids that were meant to help her dad leading to distance and disappearances instead, but after he misses her graduation, sheâs sure thereâs something else going on.
After tracking her dadâs last-known location to the local methadone clinic, Sierra meets Blight, an intoxicating and infuriating intern who offers her the chance to work with them on the clinicâs harm reduction program and gain access to information about what happened to her Dad. As Sierra and Blight explore their relationship and the opioid-riddled underworld of the Blue Ridge, they find a disease creeping through usersâ veins like kudzuâand it looks a lot more like Grannyâs magic than any mortal infection.
But in order for Sierra to uncover her familyâs true history and heal the cycles of addiction and abuse, she must embrace and inhabit the same dark magic that started it all.
This queer Appalachian horror examines the monstrous consequences of generational trauma alongside the backwoods magic of methadone, motorcycles, and Mothman.
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6d
Call Me Traitor
Everina Maxwell
A thrilling and romantic fantasy adventure from Everina Maxwell, bestselling author of Winterâs Orbit.
En is a weapon.
Battle spells are carved into her skin, sheâs trained to work through pain, and sheâs magically compelled with loyalty to the archmage. When she's sent on a mission to retrieve a group of infamous traitors from exile in a land of unpredictable and deadly magic, she's forced to team up with a common soldier to have any chance of success, or survival.
Tamol is a disaster.
En isnât fooled by the soldierâs silver tongue and good looks. Tamol is flighty, cowardly and the worst soldier En has ever met. But sheâs also brilliant at magic and kinder than En has any right to expect. When she saves Enâs life, it takes everything En has not to start falling for her. That is, until En discovers Tamol is one of the very traitors she seeks.
The empire never forgets.
Years ago, the exiled traitors were just normal students with a vision for a better kingdom. They put their lives on the line fighting for it and lost. So they were exiled to the Far Peninsula to die. But now, the empire discovers the traitors may yet live, and theyâve unearthed something in the wilderness that the archmage will pay any price to get.
But the might of an unforgiving empire isnât the greatest force in all the land. Something monstrous is living in the Far Peninsula that does not discriminate between soldiers, traitors, and kings.
The future of the empire is unexpectedly in the hands of En and Tamol. At least the perfect soldier would never betray her orders, no matter how much she starts to question her command. Would she?
Call Me Traitor is an enthralling sapphic adventure from academia into exile and beyond.
Everina Maxwell's books have been recommended by NPR, BookRiot, Paste Magazine, and featured in The New York Times "Romantasy: A Starter Pack"!
Expect:
Opposites attract
Assassin falls in love with target
Forbidden love
Found family gone wrong
Slowburn
Dark academia
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bookish_mk wrote a review...
6d
A quirky emotional sci-fi/fantasy rollercoaster that climbs slowly, freefalls, then zooms around all of the corners and when it finally stops, youâve got a headache from the seat harness bashing your ears between itâs two sidesâŠwhat a hell of a ride!
Iâm feeling dizzyâŠ
Bullet points for those short on time:
- queer quirky found family
- monsters and magic
- lots of secrets!
- sisterhood
- save the day
- genderfluid MC
Donât get me wrong from the intro - I enjoyed this rollercoaster! But there were a lot of places where I was like, huh? wha? oh okay, erm sure lol
On paper, all of the elements of this book, I LOVED. A magical Winnebago with endless rooms that drives itself? Chupacabras? Werewolves? Queer found family and a genderfluid MC? Sisterhood? Magic? Heck YES!
But putting those elements together in a way that flowed well was not this bookâs strongpoint. It started off stronger but then got a biiiiiiiit messier as things intensified. Perhaps a stronger/tighter edit might have helped but I am not an editor nor an author so I have a hard time seriously criticizing these things unless itâs really obviously bad making it more difficult to read (and this wasnât!).
I would still recommend this though to someone who is looking for something along the lines of what Iâve described above. And for a debut, itâs great. Iâd be interested in seeing more from this author in the future!
Thank you to Bindery Books for the review copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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6d
Strange Lights
Mira GonzĂĄlez
Parenting is never easy, but itâs a hell of a lot harder when your toddler is a chupacabra.
Paranormal investigator and cryptozoologist Reggie has embraced her fate as parent to an adopted toddler, Eldiâa blood-sucking chupacabra with a fondness for goats. Reggie wants nothing more than to put her complicated past in the rearview mirror and fade into as much obscurity as her toddler will allow. But a rash of UFOs in the night sky and a couple of crop-circle-carving Roombas force Reggie into an investigation that attracts the attention of an old enemy, an anti-supernatural agency hunting for creatures like Eldi. To outwit them, Reggie must team up with Calvin: a podcaster-turned-werewolf whose charm is a real threat to Reggieâs rule against romantic attachments.
With Reggieâs history quickly catching up to her and Eldi in the agencyâs crosshairs, any shred of normalcy evaporates. Reggie must decide: Can she confront her dark past to save Eldiâand an entire alien speciesâfrom getting wiped out of the universe?
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bookish_mk TBR'd a book
1w
The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass
Leslye Penelope
For four years, Zahara Douglass has been haunted by the mystery of her sisterâs disappearanceânot where she went, but whether she ever existed at all.
In April 1995, Zahara watched her twin sister, Annica, get hustled into a strangerâs car and disappearâonly to return to a world where no one has heard of Annica. Not her mother. Not the police. No one.
Four years later, as the world braces for the looming Y2K crisis, Zahara finds evidence proving her sister was real and hires a private investigator to dig into her familyâs shadowed past. When the investigation leads to two charismatic men who once served with her father in Vietnam, Zahara realizes she and her sister may be pawns in a dangerous power struggle with unthinkable consequences.
To find Annica, Zahara must face the truth about her family, her memories, and the power lurking within her. But the sistersâ reunion comes at a priceâone that could bring about the end of the world.
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bookish_mk TBR'd a book
1w
The Intrigue
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a sizzling noir about desire, danger, and greed, in which seduction is the ultimate con.
Handsome con artist Ulises has long charmed lonely women via letters to steal their money, but money is hard to come by in 1940s Mexico. Ulises knows his looks won't last forever, and he's desperate to get his hands on a real fortune.
He thinks he's found it when he captivates his newest correspondent, Perla, the owner of a small-town boardinghouse in picturesque Veracruz. But when he meets her, he finds something he didn't expect. The woman has a niece, InĂ©s, who is as observant as she is desperate to escape her auntâs household.
When InĂ©s discovers Ulises' true intentions, she wants in on the scheme. Theyâll convince her aunt that Ulises is a great catch, Perla will marry him, and her money will vanish. Easy, fast and clean.
But Perla is not the desperate, silly spinster Ulises imagines. She harbors secrets. And although Ulises does not believe in true romance, Inés is more alluring than he bargained on. Suddenly, a simple plan may become perilously complicated.
Venture into the streets of a small town where the patina of convention and good manners conceals a cauldron of avarice and lust.
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bookish_mk TBR'd a book
1w
Bound By Fury
Noelle Monét
Some secrets canât be taken to the graveâŠ
The ancestral magic and feuding bloodlines of WITCHES STEEPED IN GOLD meets the themes of ACE OF SPADES, but set in a town infused with magic like in THE RAVEN BOYS, in this atmospheric debut YA Contemporary Fantasy with Dark Academia and Romantic elements.
When her 16th birthday comes and passes without the magic promised by her now deceased grandmother, Harper feels vindicated in her doubts about Gigiâs fanciful stories featuring pretty brown girls with magic in their blood. But when a rage-inducing encounter brings forth strange new abilities, Harper follows them to the one school she promised sheâd never attend.
Perched atop a small Appalachian town called Earnest, Black Mountain Academy looms in the background of every memory worth having. Creaky, old, and haunted by the townâs insidious past, Harper is sure BMA has the answers sheâs looking for. But when the truth about a missing student parallels her life in more ways than one, what Harper finds is more sinister than she ever imagined.
Ancient magic, vengeful ancestors, and Kai Matsoukasâher childhood best friend turned disgustingly hot mortal enemy. The closer she gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes: if Harper wants to survive BMA sheâll have to do two things first. Kill Kai Matsoukas and transform into something she never knew existed.
A prophecy incarnate.
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bookish_mk TBR'd a book
1w
Call Me Traitor
Everina Maxwell
A thrilling and romantic fantasy adventure from Everina Maxwell, bestselling author of Winterâs Orbit.
En is a weapon.
Battle spells are carved into her skin, sheâs trained to work through pain, and sheâs magically compelled with loyalty to the archmage. When she's sent on a mission to retrieve a group of infamous traitors from exile in a land of unpredictable and deadly magic, she's forced to team up with a common soldier to have any chance of success, or survival.
Tamol is a disaster.
En isnât fooled by the soldierâs silver tongue and good looks. Tamol is flighty, cowardly and the worst soldier En has ever met. But sheâs also brilliant at magic and kinder than En has any right to expect. When she saves Enâs life, it takes everything En has not to start falling for her. That is, until En discovers Tamol is one of the very traitors she seeks.
The empire never forgets.
Years ago, the exiled traitors were just normal students with a vision for a better kingdom. They put their lives on the line fighting for it and lost. So they were exiled to the Far Peninsula to die. But now, the empire discovers the traitors may yet live, and theyâve unearthed something in the wilderness that the archmage will pay any price to get.
But the might of an unforgiving empire isnât the greatest force in all the land. Something monstrous is living in the Far Peninsula that does not discriminate between soldiers, traitors, and kings.
The future of the empire is unexpectedly in the hands of En and Tamol. At least the perfect soldier would never betray her orders, no matter how much she starts to question her command. Would she?
Call Me Traitor is an enthralling sapphic adventure from academia into exile and beyond.
Everina Maxwell's books have been recommended by NPR, BookRiot, Paste Magazine, and featured in The New York Times "Romantasy: A Starter Pack"!
Expect:
Opposites attract
Assassin falls in love with target
Forbidden love
Found family gone wrong
Slowburn
Dark academia
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bookish_mk TBR'd a book
1w
Buzzard
Inez Ray
In 2086, corporations are monitoring fertility. Abortion is illegal. And the last woman alive who can perform the procedure is in hiding.
Seven years ago, midwife Mae Bastet was arrested for infanticide in the fractious Arizona Territory for providing health care to women in need. She was torn from her sons and sent to Buzzardâan experimental private prison deep in the Sonoran Desert, run by the paramilitary corporation Obsityan.
Desperate to reunite her family, Mae tries to keep her head down, swallow her prison-issued hormone supplements, and do her job as a glorified school nurse to Obsityanâs army of teenage drone pilots. But when mysterious, improbable pregnancies begin cropping up in her charges, she uncovers a web of secrets that has the power to destroy Obsityan. Mae must stay complicit in Obsityanâs crimes or hold fast to her midwife principles and risk never seeing her sons again.
Buzzard is a ferocious dystopian debut that traces the possible trajectory of our current political and technological realityâand the power of our deepest human bonds.
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