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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Book Review: The Merriest Misters Timothy Janovsky, 2024 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics. This romantic spin on The Santa Clause makes for some real holiday magic. Premise: Patrick and Quinn met, fell in love, got married, moved into their own house. Everything you're "supposed" to do. But their marriage is cracking under the pressure of family expectations, unspoken resentments, and unfulfilling careers. That's when Patrick unexpectedly gets a most unusual opportunity, and Quinn's along for a wild ride all the way to the North Pole.  Well, the library gods were kind to me and provided this last-minute holiday gift! This might be my favorite Christmas read of the season.  Think The Santa Clause, except instead of a guy killing Santa, becoming Santa, and fixing his relationship with his son, Patrick injures Santa (who unexpectedly quits), becomes Santa, and fixes his relati...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Book Review: You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince Timothy Janovsky, 2022 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics, although despite the title, it turned out this story is more inspired by/related to Grinchy themes than a retelling of any kind.   Premise: Matthew can't believe he's spending Christmas in the tiny town his mom grew up in, instead of with his friends in NYC, preparing to throw another epic New Year's Bash for the (other) richest kids in town. But apparently he made one mistake too many and has been banished while PR is spun. Making things worse, he's sharing space at his grandparents' home with a local student who is entirely too self-righteous (not to mention gorgeous).  Okay, I might have an addition to my list of favorite romance authors. (I have enough for a list now! Years ago, I never would have thought it.) This was delightful.  First I want to acknowledge the big...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Book Review: Faking Christmas Kerry Winfrey, 2023 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics. Whether Christmas in Connecticut is a holiday classic is debatable, but it has inspired several adaptations and remakes, including this one.   Premise: Laurel didn't mean to lie to her boss. She just really needed a job, and one misunderstanding spiraled out of control. Now she has to pretend that her sister's life is hers for one memorable Christmas.  You know what? I liked this one!  Laurel is funny and relatable. She's acknowledges that she's made bad decisions and is trying to do better, gets frustrated, wears her heart on her sleeve, and is fundamentally optimistic, despite also being hugely self-deprecating.  The best parts of Christmas in Connecticut (the banter, the humor and the fun characters) are largely intact, while the occasional sexism of the original is left behind. Laurel got her...

A Crime in the Land of 7,000 Islands Zephaniah Sole, 2023 Premise: How do you cope with horror? How do you cope when it's your job? How do you explain the worst things to a child? I read a strong recommendation for this book on a favorite author's best of the year list, and soon took the opportunity to read something a little out of my usual genres. This book is half a crime thriller, and half a completely unique work of mythmaking.  The story follows both FBI agent Ikigai Johnson, in her work on a specific case trying to bring a man who preys on children to justice, and her daughter piecing together the story of the case years later. When Ikigai traveled to the Philippines in search of witnesses to the man's crimes, her then-preteen daughter demanded that her mother explain the case that took her so far away.  And eventually she does so as a beautiful work of myth, in which planes are giant birds and boats are powerful turtle spirits and her mother is a warrior called by t...

He Who Drowned the World Shelley Parker-Chan, 2023 Premise: Sequel to She Who Became the Sun . Zhu continues her fervent quest to become emperor of all China (while hiding her original gender). The Mongol general Ouyang still burns with his desire to take revenge for the murder of his family. Many other characters are waiting in the wings to interfere. This was an incredibly satisfying and fitting sequel. The most interesting thing, I thought, was that the first book was about gender and identity, contrasting Zhu's ambiguity with Ma's femininity and Ouyang's obsession with not being "really" male. This book is about bodies and identity. The relationship between a person and their body. That can include their gender, but there's more to it. Zhu learns to manage a new physical disability and struggles to maintain her troops' confidence in her, as many people see a physical lack as evidence of some deeper problem. She and Ouyang continue their strained, pain...