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80. Unnatural Creatures ed. by Neil Gaiman. 5. Really excellent anthology of short stories around cryptids of various types.
81. This Way Out by Tufayel Ahmed. 3. A young Bangladeshi man comes out to his family. I kind of hope this is heavily autobiographical - there are a number of plot wanderings that are kind of self-indulgent and unfocused unless they're true. But charming.
82. You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo. 4.5. Madcap adventure when a band of ex-military turned chefs get accidentally kidnapped by space pirates. Part funny, part devastating, may be setting up for a sequel? I kind of hope so.
83. Book Lovers by Emily Henry. 5. Literary agent and editor enemies-to-lovers while trapped in a small town neither of them want to be in. The dialogue is just so sparky.
84. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. 4. The first chapter, about a forensics course for people trying to figure out which species of animal is responsible for various murders, maimings, and property destruction, is hilarious. The rest is still interesting if somewhat less witty.
85. The Roommate by Rosie Danan. 3.5. Prissy trust fund heiress falls for male porn star. Very hot, as is appropriate. But on the other hand, some of the threads of the plot are resolved in a kind of slapdash way I found unsatisfying.
86. Well Met by Jen DeLuca. 3.5. Well darn, now I want to go to the Renn Faire. I didn't love the male lead's being an asshole for most of the first half of the book, and the plot requires him to insert his head in his butt too frequently. But there were enough flashes of good humor to keep me going, and I love the trappings.
87. Musketeer Space by Tansy Rayner Roberts. 5. Ok, so I have a love/hate relationship with The Three Musketeers - love the swashbuckling plot, hate the unbelievably rampant macho sexism. (I read a lot of old fiction. This one is so bad, guys, even for the time.) Gender flipped version with cleverly done SF trappings? Yes, please.
88. A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean. 4. There are so many ways for the grumpy-guardian, fiery-ward trope to go bad, but this one pulls it off.
89. The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era by Gretchen Bakke. 5. Really fascinating exploration/explanation of how our electrical grid is set up and why it needs to change.
90. The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan. 5. Re-read. He's a scandalous geneticist, she's a proper lady...who secretly is the one who did all the research.
91. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. 4.5. World-hopping where that's barely the point - the point is more the story-within-a-story, the bounds of love, and the dismantling of colonialism. And an awesome heroine.
92. Speed & Scale: A Global Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis by John E. Doerr. 5. Is this terrifying? Yes, it should be. Is it kind of weirdly self-congratulatory, and focused on the companies this dude's VC firm funds? Yes, that too. It's also...weirdly hopeful? Like, you know how bad things are. But this actually does lay out an extremely ambitious but actually pretty rational plan, and shows where we're making a lot of progress. Enough progress to get you fired up on the "oh crap we gotta get moving here" level, rather than "we're so screwed there's no point" level.
93. Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire. 4. Cora the ex-mermaid got captured by Lovecraftian elder gods in the last book, so in this one she signs herself up for a significantly shittier school than Eleanor West's to get free. I suspect this isn't the last we'll see of the Whitethorn Institute.
81. This Way Out by Tufayel Ahmed. 3. A young Bangladeshi man comes out to his family. I kind of hope this is heavily autobiographical - there are a number of plot wanderings that are kind of self-indulgent and unfocused unless they're true. But charming.
82. You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo. 4.5. Madcap adventure when a band of ex-military turned chefs get accidentally kidnapped by space pirates. Part funny, part devastating, may be setting up for a sequel? I kind of hope so.
83. Book Lovers by Emily Henry. 5. Literary agent and editor enemies-to-lovers while trapped in a small town neither of them want to be in. The dialogue is just so sparky.
84. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. 4. The first chapter, about a forensics course for people trying to figure out which species of animal is responsible for various murders, maimings, and property destruction, is hilarious. The rest is still interesting if somewhat less witty.
85. The Roommate by Rosie Danan. 3.5. Prissy trust fund heiress falls for male porn star. Very hot, as is appropriate. But on the other hand, some of the threads of the plot are resolved in a kind of slapdash way I found unsatisfying.
86. Well Met by Jen DeLuca. 3.5. Well darn, now I want to go to the Renn Faire. I didn't love the male lead's being an asshole for most of the first half of the book, and the plot requires him to insert his head in his butt too frequently. But there were enough flashes of good humor to keep me going, and I love the trappings.
87. Musketeer Space by Tansy Rayner Roberts. 5. Ok, so I have a love/hate relationship with The Three Musketeers - love the swashbuckling plot, hate the unbelievably rampant macho sexism. (I read a lot of old fiction. This one is so bad, guys, even for the time.) Gender flipped version with cleverly done SF trappings? Yes, please.
88. A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean. 4. There are so many ways for the grumpy-guardian, fiery-ward trope to go bad, but this one pulls it off.
89. The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era by Gretchen Bakke. 5. Really fascinating exploration/explanation of how our electrical grid is set up and why it needs to change.
90. The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan. 5. Re-read. He's a scandalous geneticist, she's a proper lady...who secretly is the one who did all the research.
91. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. 4.5. World-hopping where that's barely the point - the point is more the story-within-a-story, the bounds of love, and the dismantling of colonialism. And an awesome heroine.
92. Speed & Scale: A Global Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis by John E. Doerr. 5. Is this terrifying? Yes, it should be. Is it kind of weirdly self-congratulatory, and focused on the companies this dude's VC firm funds? Yes, that too. It's also...weirdly hopeful? Like, you know how bad things are. But this actually does lay out an extremely ambitious but actually pretty rational plan, and shows where we're making a lot of progress. Enough progress to get you fired up on the "oh crap we gotta get moving here" level, rather than "we're so screwed there's no point" level.
93. Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire. 4. Cora the ex-mermaid got captured by Lovecraftian elder gods in the last book, so in this one she signs herself up for a significantly shittier school than Eleanor West's to get free. I suspect this isn't the last we'll see of the Whitethorn Institute.
