esteemreading
Reader & reviewer đź“š Midwestern lesbian about town. 33. They/them.
190 points
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esteemreading wrote a review...
1w
esteemreading
Jan 26, 2026
Jan 26, 2026
5.0
Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0
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A unique, engrossing Paradise Lost retelling with heartbreak, adventure, and godesses and gods from various pantheons.
This was so difficult to put down as we join Eve, known as the first woman, on a journey that takes her beyond the parameters of wife and mother in Adam's orbit.
She seeks knowledge and understanding about the world beyond her home and family and implores other women to do the same.
Out of everything, my favorite moments were with Lucifer and Eve, and the various gods and goddesses she interacts with/who become invested in her journey.
Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for a review.
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esteemreading wrote a review...
1w
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esteemreading wrote a review...
1w
I understand why this book took it's time setting up what would happen later. If there isn't an emotional build up beginning with Lenore being so removed from her own emotions and desires - where's the payoff in her finally realizing and giving into them?
The novel takes it's time for awhile, and I found myself skimming parts. But once things kick off and Lenore sets her mind to revenge, I couldn't put it down
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esteemreading finished a book
1w
Hungerstone
Kat Dunn
The fiercest, most powerful novel of 2025. For what do you hunger . . .?Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them from London to Sheffield, and with his success hinged on a hunt, an old tradition looms over the home; the hunt is a time to settle old scores. If a bullet finds a human home, then it is only that they were foolish to become prey. In the weeks leading up to the hunt, a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who will not eat meals with the family, Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a terrible hunger . . .Set against the violent wilderness of the Peaks and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution HUNGERSTONE is a compulsive feminist reworking of CARMILLA, the book that inspired a captivating story of appetite and desire.
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esteemreading started reading...
2w
Hungerstone
Kat Dunn
The fiercest, most powerful novel of 2025. For what do you hunger . . .?Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them from London to Sheffield, and with his success hinged on a hunt, an old tradition looms over the home; the hunt is a time to settle old scores. If a bullet finds a human home, then it is only that they were foolish to become prey. In the weeks leading up to the hunt, a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who will not eat meals with the family, Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a terrible hunger . . .Set against the violent wilderness of the Peaks and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution HUNGERSTONE is a compulsive feminist reworking of CARMILLA, the book that inspired a captivating story of appetite and desire.
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esteemreading finished a book
3w
The Woods All Black
Lee Mandelo
The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s AppalachiaLeslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares.Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he'll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.The Woods All Black is a story of passion, prejudice, and power — an Appalachian period piece that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town religiosity, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are.
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esteemreading started reading...
4w
The Woods All Black
Lee Mandelo
The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s AppalachiaLeslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares.Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he'll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.The Woods All Black is a story of passion, prejudice, and power — an Appalachian period piece that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town religiosity, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are.
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esteemreading DNF'd a book
4w
The Vegetarian
Han Kang
Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.
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esteemreading started reading...
4w
The Vegetarian
Han Kang
Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.
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esteemreading finished a book
4w
What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
Eric A. Johnson
The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust still present some of the most disturbing questions in modern history: Why did Hitler's party appeal to millions of Germans, and how entrenched was anti-Semitism among the population? How could anyone claim, after the war, that the genocide of Europe's Jews was a secret? Did ordinary non-Jewish Germans live in fear of the Nazi state? In this unprecedented firsthand analysis of daily life as experienced in the Third Reich, What We Knew offers answers to these most important questions. Combining the expertise of Eric A. Johnson, an American historian, and Karl-Heinz Reuband, a German sociologist, What We Knew is the most startling oral history yet of everyday life in theThird Reich.
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esteemreading made progress on...
4w
What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
Eric A. Johnson
100%
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esteemreading started reading...
5w
What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
Eric A. Johnson
The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust still present some of the most disturbing questions in modern history: Why did Hitler's party appeal to millions of Germans, and how entrenched was anti-Semitism among the population? How could anyone claim, after the war, that the genocide of Europe's Jews was a secret? Did ordinary non-Jewish Germans live in fear of the Nazi state? In this unprecedented firsthand analysis of daily life as experienced in the Third Reich, What We Knew offers answers to these most important questions. Combining the expertise of Eric A. Johnson, an American historian, and Karl-Heinz Reuband, a German sociologist, What We Knew is the most startling oral history yet of everyday life in theThird Reich.
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esteemreading started reading...
6w
A Map of Home
Randa Jarrar
Nidali narrates the story of her childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Egypt, and her family’s last flight to Texas, offering a humorous, sharp but loving portrait of an eccentric middle-class family.
Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates the story of her childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Egypt (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), and her family’s last flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a sharp, loving portrait of an eccentric middle-class family, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to her father’s home in the West Bank; the fights with her father, who wants her to become a famous professor and stay away from boys; the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday; and the scare she gives her family when she runs away from home.
Funny, charming, and heartbreaking, A Map of Home is the kind of book Tristram Shandy or Huck Finn would have narrated had they been born Egyptian-Palestinian and female in the 1970s.
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esteemreading DNF'd a book
6w
The Bones We Haunt
Josephine Taylor
In November of 1905, Jane Sterling, a young American socialite and familial black sheep, seeks a chance to indulge in her love for paleontology between attending archeological lectures at the University of Cambridge in her father’s stead. After a chance reunion with Terence Hayes, a reclusive gentleman, offers her the once in a lifetime opportunity to appraise fossils found on his property, she can hardly resist, and lets him whisk her away to his ancestral home of the Drowning House.
Isolated in the middle of the vast Wolf’s Run marshes that are marred by unfriendly locals and legends of beasts stalking the reeds under the cover of night, Jane finds she is all too happy to leave when her work is finished. But when violent storms cause waters in the marsh to rise, washing out the roads, she becomes trapped on the grounds and is forced to face something hungry that comes to scratch at her door — something not quite… human.
Imprisoned in the house by the marshes and a potential beast stalking within the reeds, Jane is pulled into a game of survival as she deciphers demonic secrets plaguing a family’s bloodline and battles her growing attraction towards a man caging dark secrets beneath his skin.A gothic werewolf historical romance that is a blend of THE WOLFMAN, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE.
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esteemreading TBR'd a book
7w
But I Hate Him
Page Powars
From New York Times and #1 Indies bestselling author Page Powars, a sizzling queer YA romcom about academic rivals who face off at the most competitive camp in the country. Perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Alice Oseman.Rory is academic royalty. As the heir to the most successful tutoring company in the world, he can be nothing less than perfect if he wants to gain his parents’ approval. So it's simple. Rory studies harder than anyone else. He does not make mistakes. And he never loses. Except to Luca Melendez. The infuriatingly good-looking hockey player who wins every academic competition without even trying.When Rory has a very public meltdown, throwing a smoothie at Luca and shattering his own public image in the process – it feels like one more thing Luca ruined. To salvage his reputation, Rory has his sights set on winning the most cutthroat academic camp in the country, BRAIN. There is nothing standing between Rory and the final medal. Until, Luca Melendez shows up. This means war and Rory has the perfect Make Luca fall in love with him. And then break Luca’s heart right before the final competition.
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esteemreading DNF'd a book
7w
Done and Dusted (Rebel Blue Ranch, #1)
Lyla Sage
She’s off-limits, but he’s never been good at following the rules.
For the first time in her life, Clementine “Emmy” Ryder has no idea what she’s doing. She’s accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favorite thing: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape.
Luke Brooks is Meadowlark’s most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy’s older brother’s best friend, Luke spent most of his childhood antagonizing her. It’s been years since he’s seen her, but when she walks into his bar and back into his life, he can’t take his eyes off her. Despite his better judgment, he wants to do a whole lot more than just look at her.
Emmy’s got too much on her mind to think about romance. And Luke knows he should stay away from his best friend’s younger sister. But what if Luke is just what Emmy needs to get her spark back? Or will they both go up in flames?
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esteemreading started reading...
8w
Done and Dusted (Rebel Blue Ranch, #1)
Lyla Sage
She’s off-limits, but he’s never been good at following the rules.
For the first time in her life, Clementine “Emmy” Ryder has no idea what she’s doing. She’s accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favorite thing: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape.
Luke Brooks is Meadowlark’s most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy’s older brother’s best friend, Luke spent most of his childhood antagonizing her. It’s been years since he’s seen her, but when she walks into his bar and back into his life, he can’t take his eyes off her. Despite his better judgment, he wants to do a whole lot more than just look at her.
Emmy’s got too much on her mind to think about romance. And Luke knows he should stay away from his best friend’s younger sister. But what if Luke is just what Emmy needs to get her spark back? Or will they both go up in flames?
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esteemreading finished reading and wrote a review...
8w
esteemreading
Dec 07, 2025
Dec 07, 2025
5.0
Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0
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This might be my favorite read of the series so far.
I love Ryan Price, big boy defenseman who has been slotted into the role of enforcer, who lives with anxiety and struggles with his place in the sport he's supposed to love.
And flamboyant artist Fabian Salah. The Salah's were Ryan's billet family as a teen. And seeing one another all of these years later brings up old feelings and something new to explore.
I adore Ryan. As someone with wicked anxiety, it was relatable and such a rewarding journey for the couple.
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esteemreading started reading...
8w
Tough Guy (Game Changers, #3)
Rachel Reid
They have nothing in common—so why does Ryan feel most like himself whenever he’s with Fabian?Pro hockey star Ryan Price may be an enforcer, but off the ice he struggles with anxiety. Recently traded to the Toronto Guardians, he’s determined to make a fresh start in the city’s dynamic LGBTQ Village. The last thing he expects to stumble upon in his new neighborhood is a blast from his past in the fabulous form of Fabian Salah.Aspiring musician Fabian loathes hockey. But that doesn’t stop him from being attracted to a certain burly, ginger-bearded defenseman. He hasn’t forgotten the kiss they almost shared back in high school, and it’s clear the chemistry between them has only intensified.Fabian is more than happy to be Ryan’s guide to the gay scene in Toronto. Between dance clubs and art exhibits—and the most amazing sex—Ryan’s starting to feel something he hasn’t experienced in a long time: joy. But playing the role of the heavy on the ice has taken its toll on his body and mind, and a future with Fabian may mean hanging up his skates for good.
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