madyct

She/her 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇺 Fantasy, sci-fi lover - but mostly a lover of any novel that will cause me physical pain. Here to put my incessant comments somewhere and expand my TBR list into infinity.

2908 points

0% overlap

My Taste

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance (The Tithenai Chronicles, #1)

Reading...

70%

Murdle: Volume 2, 100 Elementary to Impossible Mysteries to Solve Using Logic, Skill, and the Power of Deduction

39%

madyct is interested in reading...

Our Share of Night

Mariana Enríquez

A woman’s mysterious death puts her husband and son on a collision course with her demonic family. A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality. For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate? Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,” says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”

madyct is interested in reading...

Livonia Chow Mein

Abigail Savitch-Lew

In the vein of Happiness Falls and Family Lore, a gripping story of family history and political upheaval centered around a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brownsville, Brooklyn and its impact on the neighborhood’s Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century. In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong. Who exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason’s daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed. Joining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville’s residents and organizing a Livonia Avenue community land trust. A stunning debut from a new talent, Livonia Chow Mein contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia and challenges us to consider what it would take for us to truly live in harmony.

madyct is interested in reading...

Her Majesty's Royal Coven (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #1)

Juno Dawson

If you look hard enough at old photographs, we're there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple.At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right. Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.

madyct is interested in reading...

All We Hunger For

Anna Mercier

A young woman sneaks her way into a magical baking contest but gets pulled into an elusive aristocrat's lavish world and his nefarious plan as rebellion brews in their city―for fans of A Magic Steeped in Poison. In Anespérer, where magic comes alive through artistic skill, Elara Rousseau knows she'll never be selected for the Objet d’Art. The high-stakes baking competition will elect a new Souverain to join the ruling council, and someone from the slums would never be considered. But when a brooding figure from her past sneaks her into the Objet, Elara has the chance to compete for a better future... as long as no one uncovers her traitorous secret. Nikolas Dupont will do whatever it takes to impress his powerful father, a Souverain who hasn't officially recognized his son―like handpick a contestant to win and become his father's political pawn. But Elara is more than he bargained for, and she ignites his own subdued passions. Against all odds, Elara excels and becomes a hero to the city's poor, all while Nik’s faith in his father crumbles and the sparks between them burn brighter. As the competition heats up, Elara and Nik must choose: fight to win the competition and secure a future of safety for them both, or use the power of Elara’s art to spark a revolution.

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Lola & the Millionaires: Part Two

Kathryn Moon

madyct started reading...

Lola & the Millionaires: Part Two

Kathryn Moon

Lola is being hunted by her past, stalked with every step she takes. Sheltered with the pack of her dreams, at first it seems like the hardest challenge isn’t even staying safe from Indy. Tensions at work are at a tipping point and after taking the role of management’s spy, Lola’s in the crossfire if anything goes wrong. As romances between Lola and the pack members are developing left and right, the woman who swore she wanted nothing to do with alpha is turning to them like a bloom to the sun. If only it weren’t just one monstrous alpha that twisted her own thoughts. Lola is quickly realizing that her worst enemy is herself, and it’s like walking the tightrope to find a balance with the pack that gives her strength rather than sends her toppling to the ground. But Indy won’t be ignored. One way or another, he’s determined to get his hands on her again. Lola needs more than a pack to shield her. She needs to be ready to fight.

madyct commented on genfinn's update

genfinn started reading...

The Poppy War

R.F. Kuang

When Rin aced the Keju — the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies — it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard — the most elite military school in Nikan — was even more surprising. But surprises aren’t always good. Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power — an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive — and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school. For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away. Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity ... and that it may already be too late.

madyct wrote a review...

15h

madyct

Aug 09, 2026

The Stranger

3.0

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

🔫

🏖️

⚰️

I like need to take a deep breath. This book filled me with so much RAGE.

However, I am late to the party. I read up on the author, and now I can only assume the entire purpose of this novel stems from hoping the reader has a hatred for the main character - because if not then I am at a loss.

I am giving this threes because I despised this reading experience BUT if that was intentional of the author....then good job for making me realize with certainty how deeply I hate men who believe everything will work out for them because they are men, who ignore the suffering and abuse of animals, and who actively encourage the abuse of women. (This hatred is not a new realization but wow are my emotions primed right now)

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15h

Summer 2026 Readalong

Read at least 1 book in the Summer 2026 Readalong.

madyct finished a book

15h

The Stranger

Albert Camus

Published in 1942 by French author Albert Camus, The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."

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15h

madyct

Thoughts from 51% (page 63) - Beginning of Part II

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16h

madyct

Thoughts from 51% (page 63) - Beginning of Part II

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17h

madyct

Thoughts from 17% (page 21)

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The Stranger

Albert Camus

madyct is interested in reading...

With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn

Amber Dawn

A rebellious anthology of porn stories about sex and the modern femme: no-holds-barred queer sex tales that reinvent lesbian erotica in ways that are transgressive and empowering. Starting off where other lesbian erotic anthologies end, these are not your typically delicate, lace-and-feathers kind of stories; instead, they’re blunt and hard-hitting and challenge traditional notions of gender roles when it comes to getting off. The anthologists argue that good, clean lesbian smut is difficult to come by these days, overwhelmed by political correctness and authorial self-censorship. Unabashedly raunchy, these stories prove that femme porn can be sexy and smart at the same time. Includes stories by Nalo Hopkinson (author of The Salt Roads and co-editor of So Long Been Dreaming), Anna Camilleri (author of I Am a Red Dress and editor of Red Light), Rachel Kramer Bussel, Daphne Gottlieb, Ducky Doolittle, Zoe Whittall, and many more. Amber Dawn is a writer and poetry editor of PRISM international magazine. Trish Kelly is a writer and festival organizer who has been published in numerous anthologies. They both live in Vancouver.

madyct started reading...

Legends & Lattes

Travis Baldree

A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes. After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time. The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success—not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is. If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone. But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.

madyct wrote a review...

madyct

Aug 07, 2026

What We Are Seeking

4.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 4.0

🚐

🍛

🚀

This review may be incoherent because of how I am feeling in the wake of this book. And that is the best way to write a review.

The state this book left me in is - complete and irrevocable emotional devastation? And I honestly do not know how. It completely sneaks up on you.

I feel like I lived entire life times with these vibrant, imperfect, heart filled, complex characters. I almost feel like, without knowing it, I am mourning the loss of friends just from ending the book.

This story takes place primarily on a new planet being, frankly, colonized by humans from separate worlds. What follows is a study on how the same issues that plague humanity today - gender politics (aka JUST LETTING PEOPLE LIVE HOW THEY WANT TO LIVE DAMN IT ALL), colonization, prejudices, us vs. Them, survival, kindness in the face of strife - and puts these themes into a space where there are other ways to create a community life if the characters - and us readers - are just considerate enough of others to try. You see characters hit up against their own morals versus loved ones and struggle with real and wrenching dilemmas in a sci fi setting.

I will say this book was absolutely brilliant to me. I will give a warning - there are many, MANY descriptions of alien plant life,biology, medicine, and other sciences that truly felt like I was reading scientific texts of other worlds. The author? Genius. I do think some folks would find it a little long and like it slows the story but ir works for me.

Read this. Its good.

madyct finished a book

What We Are Seeking

Cameron Reed

From Cameron Reed, the acclaimed author of The Fortunate Fall, comes a soaring novel of queer hope and transformation, perfect for readers of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar.On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects, trees can drag you to your death, and armies of animals graft native plants into human crops.John Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves.The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage.He must find some way to make a life here.But on Scythia, survival means transformation—and not everyone is willing to accept change.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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madyct

Thoughts from 47% (page 159)

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What We Are Seeking