melybelly0

A little escapism, as a treat 🍪

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Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

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A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

T. Kingfisher

2021 LODESTAR AWARD for BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance. But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…

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Winter 2026 Readalong

Read at least 1 book in the Winter 2026 Readalong.

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A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

T. Kingfisher

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A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

T. Kingfisher

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A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

T. Kingfisher

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Thirsty

Jas Hammonds

It’s the summer before college and eighteen-year-old Blake Brenner and her girlfriend, Ella, have one goal: join the mysterious and exclusive Serena Society. The sorority promises status and lifelong connections to a network of powerful, trailblazing women of color. Ella’s acceptance is a sure thing—she’s the daughter of a Serena alum. Blake, however, has a lot more to prove. As a former loner from a working-class background, Blake lacks Ella’s pedigree and confidence. Luckily, she finds courage at the bottom of a liquor bottle. When she drinks, she’s bold, funny, and unstoppable—and the Serenas love it. But as pledging intensifies, so does Blake’s drinking, until it’s seeping into every corner of her life. Ella assures Blake that she’s fine; partying hard is what it takes to make the cut. But success has never felt so much like drowning. With her future hanging in the balance and her past dragging her down, Blake must decide how far she’s willing to go to achieve her glittering dreams of success—and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.

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Hekate

Nikita Gill

A propulsive, electrifying and enraging retelling of the life of Greek goddess Hekate, child of war turned all-powerful goddess of witchcraft and necromancy, by internationally bestselling poet Nikita Gill. Born into a world on fire, Godling Hekate has never known safety. After her parents are on the losing side of the war between the ruling Titans and new Olympian Gods, Hekate is taken by her mother Asteria to the Underworld, where Styx and Hades agree to raise her. Meanwhile, Asteria is pursued across the world by Zeus and Poseidon and, to escape their clutches, transforms herself into an island in a stormy sea. Orphaned and alone, Hekate grows up amongst the horrors and beauties of the Underworld, desperate to find her divine purpose and a sense of belonging in the land of the dead. When Hekate finally uncovers her powers and ascends to Goddess status, she realises that even the most powerful Olympians are terrified of her. But when immortal war breaks out again, threatening to destroy everything from Mount Olympus to the Underworld itself, the Goddess of witchcraft and necromancy is the only one who can bring the deadly conflict to an end. . . ADVANCE PRAISE FOR HEKATE ‘In Hekate, we are plunged into a vivid and imaginatively wrought divine world that is monstrous, magical and beautiful through the perspective of a bewildered child of war who grows up to understand and embrace her power. It's a timely and achingly resonant reflection on conflict, fear and the unbreakable bonds of family conveyed in exquisite, evocative poetry.’ – Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne ‘In a wholly original, incandescent take on the myth of Hekate, Nikita Gill captures the beauty, brutality and otherworldly strangeness of the ancient world like no other writer. This beautifully imagined tale of a Refugee Goddess's. . . quest to find her destiny among a kingdom of outcasts is both deeply moving and absolutely captivating. . . This poem is pure magic.’ – Elodie Harper, bestselling author of The Wolf Den trilogy

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Bound

Ali Hazelwood

A reluctant con artist and professor with too many secrets are bound together in Ali Hazelwood’s intoxicating new dark academia romance – available only in audio! Veronica “Vero” Mercer grew up with grifters for parents, and she knows her way around a con. When grad school bills pile up and her friends are in trouble, she turns her art history skills into a forgery side hustle. It’s supposed to be a short term deal, but her work draws the attention of Dr. Viktor Ashworth, a reserved, very British professor. Instead of turning her in, Ashworth kidnaps her – politely – and makes an unusual offer: forge a mysterious ancient manuscript for him. Soon Vero finds herself spending long nights with Viktor, bent over rare vellum samples and obscure inks. But as the con grows riskier, Vero has to wonder: what does Viktor really want, and why can’t she stay away?

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The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley

A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley. In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts. Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future. An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

Toshikazu Kawaguchi

What would you change if you could go back in time? In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know. But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . . Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

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Theory & Practice

Michelle de Kretser

With echoes of Shirley Hazzard and Virginia Woolf, a new novel of startling intelligence from prize–winning author Michelle de Kretser, following a woman looking back on her young adulthood, and grappling with the collision of her emotions and her values In the late 1980s, the narrator of Theory & Practice—a first generation immigrant from Sri Lanka who moved to Sydney in her childhood—sets up a life in Melbourne for graduate school. Jilted by a lover who cheats on her with another self-described "feminist," she is thrown into deeper confusion about her identity and the people around her. The narrator begins to fall for a man named Kit, who is in a “deconstructed relationship” with a woman named Olivia. She struggles to square her feminism against her jealousy toward Olivia—and her anti-colonialism against her feelings about Virginia Woolf, whose work she is called to despite her racism.What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? In Theory & Practice, Michelle de Kretser offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in this gap. Peopled with brilliantly drawn characters, the novel also stitches together fiction and essay, taking up Woolf’s quest for adventurous literary form.

melybelly0 commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

jenniferPagebound

New Feature: Feed Customization Preferences [11/26/25]

The long-awaited feed customization toggles are live both on web and app (please update your apps!!). You can customize the following elements of your home feeds:

if non-spoiler posts from TBR books show up in your Main and My Books feeds
if non-spoiler posts from Interested books show up in your Main and My Books feeds
if Pagebound Club activity from people you follow shows up in your Main and Following feeds

Everyone is default opted-in to each of the above options, so you must manually opt-out if you don't wish to see that content. You can access these toggles from the Preferences menu in Account & Settings (click the gear icon on your profile, or click "Settings & FAQ" from the More menu in the app).

We know folks have strong opinions on if PB Club and TBR/Interested books should be in your feeds, so we're really happy to be able to provide a customized experience for everyone :) If you previously wished to take away TBR/Interested books from your feed for fear of spoilers, we're happy to share that the spoiler toggle is auto-on for all book forum posts and now must be manually toggled off if the post does not contain spoilers. Since we do not show spoiler posts from TBR/Interested books, you can now be more confident that you will not be spoiled. Keeping TBR/Interested posts in your feed can help remind you which books are on those lists, and give you inspiration for which book to pick up next as you see discussions roll in.

A note about Book Forum Posts We've seen a ton of growth since the app launch, and while it's been wonderful to see how lively the forums have gotten, there's also been some unforeseen challenges. We've seen an uptick in people posting dozens of times in a single forum, sometimes dozens of times a day, and have been forced to implement a 5 post per forum per day cap. We never wanted to implement a post cap, and are sad to have to do so now, however the forums are like a public resource that can only stay enjoyable for all if we take care of them and stay community-minded. Abundant low quality posts bloat the forums and make them overwhelming and unenjoyable to navigate. Most folks will never reach this cap; this limit won't affect you if you're using the forums as intended (a place for evergreen discussion), posting thoughtfully, and engaging in the comments on existing posts rather than always making a separate post (reminder: posts and comments are worth the same amount of points because comments are just as essential to quality discussions as posts are!) We have other ideas to improve the forum experience that we will be working on early 2026; our intent is always to preserve both the joy of posting and the joy of reading the forums, so you can expect more fun & positive forum features in the new year.

Readalong Note: The Fall Readalong will end and the Winter Readalong will start on Dec 1st at 12pm CT to give folks in all timezones the full day on Nov 30th to complete the Fall Readalong. You cannot earn the Winter Readalong badge until it officially starts at 12pm!

Thanks everyone and happy reading, Jennifer & Lucy

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Games & Trials

Bronze: Finished 5 Main Quest books.

melybelly0 finished reading and wrote a review...

melybelly0

Nov 25, 2025

4.0

Enjoyment: 3.5Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 3.5

🤠

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🦇

It took me a long time to get into this story. I don't do well with horror, and my relationship with my Mexican identity is fraught. Reading felt like getting pet against the grain. But Néstor is so well written, that I continued. Definitely one of the best written characters that I've ever read.

melybelly0 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

EatTheRich

How does your neurodiversity impact your reading experience?

Ive had a tumultuous journey with reading over the years, from loving it as a kid/tween to not picking up a single book from 15 through to 20. I'm now much happier with my little book routine :)

As the title suggests, I think the fact that I'm autistic impacts my enjoyment (for better or worse) of books in a huge way. For instance,

Pattern Recognition

I am so bad for noticing when an author uses the same phrase, word or even sentence structure repeatedly, and once I start noticing, I can't stop. Sometimes that means my enjoyment of the book is waaaay lower, as I become very critical of the writing.

But also....

Joy and stimming

I know this might be weird to say, but I feel I get a little extra joy out of a good book? Getting to a good metaphor, or action scene or big twist, and having it be so great that my reaction becomes physical and i start to stim. That's the good shit right there.

So, if you are also neurodivergent, do you feel that impacts your reading journey?

melybelly0 made progress on...

Vampires of El Norte

Isabel Cañas

83%

melybelly0 made progress on...

Vampires of El Norte

Isabel Cañas

41%

melybelly0 TBR'd a book

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

bell hooks

Everyone needs to love and be loved—even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.

melybelly0 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

buttercheese69

Shadow Daddy

Does anybody hate reading a 7 feet guy with 46 pack abs and an extremely small incapable girl but gets angry very easily, trope? Don't get me wrong, I've thoroughly enjoyed some books with this trope but why do I feel every romantasy incorporates this nowadays, can I get a fresh perspective please? 😭

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