The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas A Mannequin for Christmas Timothy Janovsky, 2025 New Release! I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review.  After thoroughly enjoying a couple of this author's holiday romances last year, I was happy to give this one a shot. I was a little skeptical of the set-up, but soon won over by the consistent heart and humor.  Henry thinks he'll never find love. He feels like he'll always be that socially awkward kid who just wanted to hide away in his great-aunt's vintage shop and let the world pass him by. He had thought he had something with his only long-term boyfriend, but he was cheated on and dumped unceremoniously. In desperation, he makes a wish, and that night, one of the mannequins in the vintage shop (he now runs it) comes to life. Henry, understandably, freaks out and doesn't believe it at first, but eventually accepts that he accidentally created a person. A person who doesn't know anythi...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Christmas at the Women's Hotel Daniel M. Lavery, 2025 New Release! I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review.  This is a holiday-themed spin-off from a longer novel (titled simply Women's Hotel) imagining the lives, loves, tragedies, and triumphs of a group of women living in a fictional women's hotel.  The real-life women-only residential hotels were a phenomenon created by a specific time in history, from about the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Young, single women wanted to move to a city to get work, but they didn't have family to stay with. Enter the women's hotel, seen as a safe, respectable place for unchaperoned middle-class secretaries and assistants to live (until they marry and move to the suburbs). I read half of a nonfiction book about one of the most famous women's hotels years ago and found the concept fascinating. I hadn't heard of the original Women's Hotel novel, but...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year Ally Carter, 2024 Premise: Maggie writes mysteries, and she's really good at it. But it's been a year since her husband destroyed their marriage and her life fell apart, so she's not looking forward to Christmas. When her publisher sends her to spend the holidays with her literary idol, she thinks perhaps things are looking up... until she sees who else is invited. This is a holiday-mystery-themed romance novel with a good amount of humor, action, and heart. It does a good job establishing our lead and her current world, while slowly revealing her past situation.  I liked that Maggie's flaws and struggles seemed realistic. She's not perfect, but neither is she dumb or dealing with problems that have easy solutions.  The male lead is a bit more complicated. By the end, he's a lovable, strong romantic hero, but you don't start getting his perspective until around halfway through. Until ...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas The Holiday Honeymoon Switch Julia McKay, 2024 I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I got this title too late in the season to cover it last year, but better late than never? Premise: Besties Holly and Ivy decide to swap their planned holiday getaways after Holly's fiancé breaks off their relationship just before their Christmas wedding. They both find new friends and possible love by taking the road they didn't plan on. This book is two romances in one, and that fact leads to both the story's flaws and its joys. The good: two stories means that they switch off, meaning neither one is likely to get boring or overstay its premise. Holly's fiancé (who Ivy has doubted but tried to be cool with for a long time) jilts her for another woman, causing her to be numb and sad for a lot of the beginning of the story. It's good to break this up with Ivy's concern for her friend. Meanwhile, Ivy is...

Sunrise on the Reaping Suzanne Collins, 2025 Premise: Another Hunger Games prequel, this one following Haymitch when he was a kid sent to the games. Largely about propaganda, power, and the difference between appearances and the truth. Oh ouch. This was a hard read.  If you read/watched The Hunger Games, you knew this couldn't end well for Haymitch in order for him to be a bitter, broken drunk by the time he meets Katniss 25 years later. But still... ouch.  The book, of course, introduced characters who did appear/will appear in other books, but not in a way that felt too much like fanservice. More like: look, here are the forces that make this character who they will be in the future.  From the start, when Haymitch isn't initially called for the games but forced to sub in after the name ceremony is disrupted, there's a strong theme about appearances. The Capitol spends a lot of energy appearing faultless - in video, dress, coordination, everything. And that pays off for...

The Incandescent Emily Tesh, 2025 Premise: In an alternate present where some schools teach magic, Doctor Walden is teaching teenagers how not to get eaten by demons while dealing with constant bureaucracy and her own nonexistent love life.  I really, really liked this book. I'm not sure I loved it as much as the author's first novel , but that one was a truly unique experience. The two stories are different beasts, although there are commonalities, like occasionally unreliable narration and sapphic relationships. I liked the characters a lot, and I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the kind of nonsense that any elite school deals with - teenage drama spilling into the classroom, teacher infighting, the tension between kids from rich families and the handful of kids on scholarships, etc. - and potentially life-and-death magical incursions by extradimensional forces. As a stupid American, I did sometimes have trouble following the British school terminology (how old is a what number...

Persuasion and Once Persuaded, Twice Shy Jane Austen, 1817 and Melodie Edwards, 2024 Premise: Anne Elliot was once in love. But someone convinced her that her beau wasn't right for her, and she broke it off. Eight years later, she hasn't found anyone who lives up to her first love, and now he's back in town and she's going to have to see him again. I've seen several lists claim that Persuasion is the best of Jane Austen's novels. It's been so long since I've read any others that I can't speak to that either way. Being in the habit of more modern writing, it took a bit of adjustment when I started this book, but I liked it fine.  It was an interesting portrait of a family with more pretensions to nobility than cash to support said pretensions. Anne's foolish father and sister insist on their own importance in a very obnoxious way, while pragmatic Anne is sad about renting out their family home, but ready to get on with what's necessary. It...

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games) Suzanne Collins, 2020 Premise: This prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy shows the youth of Coriolanus Snow. Explores the impact of war, deprivation, and propaganda on the children of the Capitol - choices are made and paths are set.  I really liked this, but going by the reviews, some people do not understand it. I empathize with a reader who doesn't want to read from the villain's perspective, but some people seem to think the reader is supposed to always identify with the protagonist.  The whole point of this book, as far as I can tell, is that there were a lot of factors shaping the kids in the Capitol, but Snow could have chosen differently. Yes, he was exposed to significant propaganda from a young age. Yes, he was under pressure from his family to be a certain way and from his society to think a certain way. But the book makes a point of showing other characters who find themselves with similar opportunities, and mak...

The Electric State Simon Stalenhag, 2017 Premise: Michelle is traveling to the coast to find something important. No one can help her. Many people are dead or nearly so, hooked into a VR technology that gave people something so much better than reality that they were lost to it. Accompanied only by a robot, she reflects on her life and tries to avoid ominous forces. After not finishing the recent Netflix adaptation because it's boring, I found many people online bemoaning how bad the movie was compared to how good the book is. So I asked the library to send it my way when there was a spare copy. A few months later, here we are.  It's a really cool book, y'all. It's largely an art book, made up of these huge, eerie paintings, depicting a tech-heavy world crumbling under its own inventions. Lonely vistas overseen by abandoned towers or half-buried robots, watched by ubiquitous advertising, but no people. The images are accompanied by text describing sections of Michelle...

Mrs. Victoria Buys a Brothel Talhí Briones, 2025 Premise: It's 1865 when Victoria finally leaves. She leaves her abusive husband with no destination and hardly any plans. A friend helps her flee Salt Lake City, and she ends up in a tiny Western town with only enough local cowboys to support a few small businesses. There, she'll find friendship, purpose, and maybe actual love. Awwww.  Say it again.  Awwwww!  This romance novel was super-cute. I loved the cast of quirky, complex characters, the setting, and the story. This wears its fandom origins on its sleeve, but that just means it doesn't apologize for spending time on characters' feelings or for packing the cast with a huge array of diverse backgrounds and personalities.  I like a romance that balances the romance storyline with additional plot elements and this definitely delivers. Victoria and love interest Natane are both older women with lots to learn about each other. Victoria challenges herself to do what s...

The Pairing Casey McQuiston, 2024 Premise: Theo and Kit haven't seen each other in four years, since their epic lifelong-friendship-turned-relationship imploded. Somehow, they each separately decided to finally take the European food and wine tour they had canceled due to their breakup, and now they're stuck on a gorgeous three-week vacation together. In an effort to let bygones be bygones, they decide to try being friends again (and to compete to see who can hook up with more hot Europeans while on the tour). But maybe nothing compares to having just the right partner. I'm not sure I loved this quite as much as I loved the frothy fun of Red, White, and Royal Blue or the paranormal adventure/history lesson of One Last Stop , but I did really, really like it.  I liked both protagonists. Wine genius, pop-culture aficionado, and self-described fuckup Theo narrates the first half, and we see their insecurity and their determination. Pastry professional and art geek Kit takes o...

All the Murmuring Bones A.G. Slatter, 2021 Premise: Miren O'Malley (last true daughter of those O'Malleys, the ones who fortune used to favor) has always lived in the big house by the cliffs by the sea. That's where her grandparents raised her and where she expected to live out her days. But when her grandfather dies and her grandmother tries to arrange her marriage to restore their family fortunes, everything changes overnight.   This was a very cool book. I've seen Irish/Celtic elements in many fantasy novels, but this world was completely steeped in them. It was extensive to the point that early on I wasn't sure whether it was set in an alternate world or just Ireland with real magic. And just the feel of it - combining a generations-long story of family secrets with supernatural and dark fairy tale elements (and in-world fairy tales as well). Very cool. Much like some of the oldest tales and myths, the story does meander a bit, and ends up as a journey containin...

Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor, 2025 Premise: Zelu is struggling. Struggling with her career, with her body's limitations, with her family and her art. She decides to write a new story, and everything changes. First, I loved this.  I loved Zelu and all her complications. She's a young woman disabled by a childhood injury, but that's only a part of who she is. She's the product of a complex, demanding Nigerian-American family, but that's only another factor. She's an author, but when we meet her, she's struggling with that. The book flips between Zelu's life in the near future/alternate present and excerpts of the sci-fi novel that makes her famous. It's impressive that I liked both sides of the narrative. I wasn't skimming through the "real world" parts to get to the more overtly sci-fi sections or vice versa.  I really, really liked the characters and the story and the themes. It explores the relationship between art and the public...

Some Desperate Glory Emily Tesh, 2023 Hugo Winner - 2024 Premise: It's not easy being the last outpost of humanity. You have to give up a lot. You have to be committed to the cause. You have to not listen to the propaganda that says that maybe you're actually in a cult... What a book! It might have first gotten on my radar for winning the Hugo, but I had forgotten that by the time I read it, so I was unexpectedly delighted with this.  At least a few SPOILERS must follow here, but before we get there, I'll say that I recommend this for anyone who likes complex/morally messed-up protagonists and some heavy topics in your sci-fi adventure.  I've seen it recommended for fans of the Locked Tomb (not just for the blurb from Tamsyn Muir on the cover), and I agree with that. It starts from a place where you don't know what the protagonist doesn't know about the world they live in, and discovering the truth behind their home is incredibly compelling. (The author's n...

Previous Bookshelf Update post The continued adventures of reading and rereading books I'm not sure I want to keep on my bookshelves. The Robots of Dawn Isaac Asimov, 1983 Whoops. This has sat on my shelf for a very long time, and I think that when I bought it (on a dollar rack, surely), I thought it was one of the collections of Robot stories (I read some of those many years back and remembered enjoying them). Instead, this is an odd novel. This is the third in a series I haven't read any other book in, written decades after the others, and serves as one of a few pieces written around this time that were clearly meant to directly connect the Robot series with the Foundation novels. The characters are fine, if nothing all that special now. The mystery plot is okay, but a bit slow. The book ends with an extremely awkward reveal/twist that's a big part of the aforementioned tie-in with Foundation and I really could have done without it. Overall an ok book, but not one I'm...

Assassin's Apprentice Robin Hobb, 1995 Premise: The life of a royal bastard is always complicated, but it's even more so when certain powers might run in your bloodline.  I tried a different book by this author many, many moons ago and was put off by it enough not to try another. But this one was chosen for a book club, so I decided it was time to give her another try.  Verdict? It's fine.  The characters are fine - nothing too exceptional, nothing badly done about them, except maybe that most are a bit obvious from their first appearances. There's a bit of a Shakespearean feeling to them which is enjoyable, but (again) makes them a bit dramatically predictable.  The plot has moments of real cleverness and tension alongside stretches where I had trouble convincing myself to pick the book back up, which averages out to... fine. I did really like the way the book handled what is effectively a confusion spell being cast on the viewpoint character - that's a fine line ...

Midnight Beverly Jenkins, 2010 Premise: Despite her father supporting the British, Faith Kingston is secretly supporting the rebels in revolutionary-era Boston. Her determination is only increased when the son of her father's long-time rival comes back to town - and he's cute. I have been reading more romance lately (partially for a book club) and when this one turned up on the list of possibilities for last month, I decided to take the opportunity to read one from this prolific author. And it was charming and well-written as expected, but not exceptional. Faith's struggle to work with a father who will never respect or care for her was complex and sympathetic. Her love interest, Nick, is too good to be true, but not more so than is typical for romance.  My biggest criticisms are two-fold. I read this partially for the pitch that she's a secret spy for the Rebel army, but although that is a secret in the beginning, she only does a few things during the action of the bo...

Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman, Book 1) Olivia Waite, 2025 Premise: Investigating a potential murder on a spaceship is tricky enough. Now try doing it in someone else's body. A sci-fi murder mystery by one of my favorite romance authors? Sign me up! I thoroughly enjoyed this story, but I'm hesitant about the idea of it being a series. The sci-fi technology and setting which were integral to this particular puzzle seem unlikely to hold up to scrutiny through more stories.  Maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I am. I would love a great series of cozy-ish detective in space stories. But I have so many questions about the setting. Dorothy is a detective on a spaceship that has sidestepped the problem of the generation ship (the idea that if humans were to travel to another livable planet, it would take so long that it would be the great-(some number of great)-grandchildren of the original crew who would actually arrive). On this spaceship, once your body dies, you simply downloa...

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution R. F. Kuang, 2002 Premise: Robin was rescued from death in China as a boy, and he loves so much about his new life in England, especially the chance to study, to perform the translation that underpins the magic that runs the world. But what is the cost of the system? What if Robin isn't willing to pay it anymore? I'll admit that this book first got on my radar as "the book that should have won the Hugo for Best Novel" if not for bad behavior on several fronts. [ https://www.npr.org/2024/02/23/1233355111/the-hugo-awards-scandal-has-shaken-the-sci-fi-community] And it would have been a worthy winner. A tour de force combining fantasy and history to focus an intentionally painful spotlight on the global and personal impacts of colonialism and privilege, it was both compelling and horrifying. In the character of Robin, the tension and inner moral struggle between accepting som...

The Palace of Eros Caro De Robertis, 2024 Premise: A retelling of Psyche and Eros, blending ancient myth with fluid gender and sexuality.  A fascinating book, which I enjoyed a lot, but didn't completely love. The writing is very poetic and languid, which isn't for everyone. It drags in the middle, but the ending is fairly lovely. This mythological romance-adjacent novel mostly follows Psyche, who is at first much like her traditional counterpart - she is impossibly lovely and universally sought after, which eventually raises the ire of Aphrodite. Of course, this book explores how she feels about all of this - the loss of her connection with her sisters as her beauty sets her apart, the feeling of being unpleasantly talked about and watched for nothing that she'd done.  Eros receives less internal examination through much of the book, but is where the story most diverges from the original. Eros is explicitly and supernaturally nonbinary; she/he/they (mostly uses she in the ...

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi Shannon Chakraborty, 2023 Premise: Many have heard of the exploits of the pirate Amina Al-Sirafi. Few know that she retired years ago to raise her daughter, and fewer know that she still misses the sea, as she barely admits it to herself. When a former shipmate's family asks for help (then uses bribes and threats to compel her), she'll have no choice but to regain her ship and her crew, but they've never faced anything like this before.  Middle-aged mom goes on an adventure? Sign me up for this book.  More seriously, I was very quickly drawn into the world and the characters. Medieval-era Muslim seafarers in the Indian Ocean already makes for a colorful and intriguing setting, and as each character was introduced, their backstories added more dimensions and nuances. The blending of different mythologies and religions was especially fun. Amina knows the rules about some kinds of supernatural things, but her Islamic background doesn't hel...

Adrift in Starlight Mindi Briar, 2002 Premise : Tai is a good enough courtesan that they can be somewhat discriminating with their clients. However, a famous actor's money is too much to turn down, even though the request - seduce the man's standoffish fiance - seems shady. For better or worse, professorial Aisha checks boxes Tai didn't know they had. And that's before they end up fleeing the planet together.  Aww, this was adorable. A gender-neutral courtesan flirts with an asexual xeno-archeologist/historian in a universe out of some brightly-colored sci-fi fever dream. Add in a scattering of other fun characters, telepathic alien creatures of a few different types, and multiple unexpected settings, and you've got a super fun romp. Both Tai and Aisha were great to get to know, and I empathized easily with both their problems and hesitations about each other and the solutions. (Because there are solutions. This is a romance, and Aisha is asexual, not aromantic. Als...

I'm paring down my physical bookshelves again (making room for some new stuff). Last year (or the year before?) I read many of the books that I had bought but never read. Now I'm working my way through some that I read many years ago to see if I still like them. I don't have enough to say for full reviews, but I want to record my reactions.  Lythande and The Gratitude of Kings Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1986, 1997 Oof. Talk about problematic authors. I always wanted to like MZB's stuff more than I actually liked her work, even before I found out about her being probably a terrible awful person . (I have a strong memory of throwing Mists of Avalon across the room in fury as a teenager, although I still overall enjoyed it at the time.) Lythande is a book of short stories about the wizard Lythande, whose power depends on keeping the fact that she's a woman a secret. ( The Gratitude of Kings is another story about the character written a decade later.) I liked these storie...

The Stars Too Fondly Emily Hamilton, 2024 Premise: Chloe and her friends meant to break into the old spaceship and try to find out what happened to the crew. They didn't intend to end up on a trip across the galaxy.  This is a light fluffy read if you're in a light fluffy romance mood. I didn't hate it overall, but the sci-fi parts were terrible. I didn't find the characters particularly compelling, but the story was interesting enough, at least at first. The group felt a little checkbox-y, by which I mean that our main protagonist Chloe was "just" a lesbian, but the others "checked off" a bunch of other minority groups, but not in a way that really affected the story, other than the fact that they were a bunch of different flavors of queer and a tight group of friends.  So they are exploring this ship that was supposed to be humanity's great attempt at the stars 20 years earlier, but the crew vanished on the day that was supposed to be the laun...

Tangled Up in You (Meant to Be Series) Christina Lauren, 2024 Premise: Ren had hardly ever been off her parents' remote homestead when she finally convinced them to let her attend college. Once there, she tried to live by her parents' rules, but her curiosity about the world (and about one cute troublemaker) would lead her to an unforgettable road trip that would reveal the truth about her past.  So, I admit that I was very skeptical when I learned that Disney was hiring romance authors to write novels inspired by their animated films. I decided to try this one because I'd been entertained by another romance by Christina Lauren ( https://bluefairysbookshelf.blogspot.com/2021/12/in-holidaze.html ) so I figured this one would hopefully be passable. But I was worried that it would devolve into a game of spot-the-reference and be full of sequences that only made sense in the context of the original movie.  Happily, this was not the case. This wasn't like a fanfiction that ...

The City in Glass Nghi Vo, 2024 Premise: A love story about a city. And a demon. Destruction, history, and rebirth. This novella was fascinating, weird, heartbreaking, and beautiful. I'm not sure what else to say.  Vitrine is a demon and the patron of a thriving port city. She loves the city and the people, but at the beginning of the story, the city is destroyed by angels, all its people murdered. She spends decades recoving from this blow, remembering what was, and slowly seeing what might come next.  That's it. That's the story. During this emotional journey, she is also troubled by one of the angels, who falls in love with her. But love between these beings isn't like mortal love. She has cursed him, and he suffers. They fight and work together and fight again, helping the new city to grow on the ashes of the old in their own ways. And the ending is delightfully weird. They do not "get together" in any human sense, but... how can I say this without complet...