I read and loved Lucy Foley's other books, The Hunting Party and The Guest List, so when I saw that she had written another book I pounced on it.

I will definitely read these books again after I have made all my friends borrow them and read them too. I have already foisted them on my first unsuspecting friend and am excited to discuss it further.

It is no secret that Elif Shafak is my favorite author and The Island of Missing Trees keeps proving why. As always, the descriptions and imagery are rich and immersive and the explorations of identity are nuanced and thoughtful. In this book, we follow Ada, a teenage girl in London, living with her Greek Cypriot father and mourning her recently deceased Turkish Cypriot mother. There is another timeline set in the midcentury, which shows the early lives of Ada's parents and their struggles to cross the Green Line in Nicosia.

The story revolves around Devon, a dedicated musician, and Chiamaka, a driven queen bee, who are the only Black students at their fancy private school. Then, like "A" in Pretty Little Liars, anonymous texts from "Aces" start circulating at school which dredge up Devon and Chiamaka's dirty secrets.

Gynecology is hugely important as a field, and also to me personally because I have endometriosis. As important as it is, it is just as important, if not more so, to confront the history of gynecology and how the field started and evolved into its current form.

A small subset of its staff, though, were wary. One former manager recalled being told to "drink the Kool-Aid," in a positive way. He was confused: Did these millennials not know about the 1970s cult and ensuing mass suicide that had inspired the term?

A Short History of Coffee is exactly what it sounds like and I really enjoyed reading it.

Aubrey Gordon recommended this book, so of course, I had to read it.

When I saw this title in the Netgalley-verse, I was immediately intrigued, as I remembered the My Favorite Murder episode about Belle Gunness. Bruce makes an imaginative deep dive into the background and crimes of the real Belle Gunness and I really enjoyed it, despite the heavy subject matter.

Needless to say, this book is very sad and heavy. Kate continues to feel lost for the remainder of the book and we watch her life fall apart slowly.

I had high expectations for this book and it somehow exceeded them. I have been following Chloe Angyal's Substack, My Pointe Is..., for a few years and have been eagerly awaiting this book ever since she announced she was writing it. Angyal covers a lot of ground with attention to detail, empathy, and nuance in 300 short pages.

I appreciate that Sancton draws from a variety of firsthand accounts – including diaries previously un-cited – and acknowledges and points out the discrepancies between the accounts of different crew members

“Like all perfect moments, this one is ruined by other people.”

Hard same, Maeve.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell is a multi-family, intergenerational family drama set in [what is now] Zambia near Victoria Falls, colloquially known as "The Old Drift" in the colonial period. It follows a set of grandmothers (Sibilla, Agnes, and Matha), mothers (Sylvia, Isabella, and Thandiwe), and their children, (Joseph, Jacob, and Naila). Intertwined with the story of the characters through time (1939-2023), is the drone of mosquitoes and the threat of malaria.

Starvation follows Wes, a teenage wrestler whose introduction to disordered eating comes from his ballet dancer girlfriend, Caila, who is also battling an eating disorder of her own.

I have not seen The Greatest Showman, but I am highly suspicious of it. P. T. Barnum sought to profit off people with disabilities, "deformities," and disfigurement, which is certainly not a good look. This book follows a similar "freak show," but makes clear from the beginning that Barnum's business model was terrible and damaging. In addition, Elizabeth Macneal describes other very real people who had been "displayed," including Charles Stratton (a.k.a. Tom Thumb) and Sara Baartman (a.k.a. The Hottentot Venus), for creepy and often racist reasons.

Is Kumiko a werewolf? We never get an answer.