Books

Book 802: The House in the Cerulean Sea – T.J. Klune

I knew I was going to like this going in because of how much I enjoyed the quirkiness of Klune’s The Extraordinaries, but I didn’t know I would like it this much! I’m now desperate for Flash Fire (the sequel to The Extraordinaries), but have months to wait!

The House on the Cerulean Sea is the story of Linus Baker, a cog in the machine that is the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). He is sent to Marsayas to investigate the orphanage run by Arthur Parnassus, an extraordinary caretaker who cares for and teaches his wards but has his own secret.

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Books

Book 797: My Drowning – Jim Grimsley

Jim Grimsley is probably one of the most depressing writers I’ve ever read, and yet I keep going back to him every 5-10 years. Depressing may not be the correct descriptor, he just writes such desolate books and truly embraces the southern gothic style and maybe that’s what draws me to him?

This was my first time reading My Drowning and it was very different from Winter Birds and Dream Boy but at the same time very similar (mostly through that southern gothic style). In addition to the style, he really excels at writing children’s voices.

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Books

Book 790: The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

OMG ya’ll, clearly, I should be judging the next Booker Prize. First Wolf Hall and now this, I get why they choose these beautiful books as winners. I’m only partially serious. I still think so many of the books are boring old stuffy books that are specifically chosen because of the inability of large swaths of the population to comprehend or appreciate them. So, boo on that.

All kidding aside, this was an incredibly beautifully written DEBUT novel. I was floored when I found that out. The way she wrote and the way time flowed eerily (and seamlessly) backward and forward in this novel it truly felt like a master class in novels. No wonder she won the prize—I’m definitely going to have to read her only other fictional work, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, at some point because everything else she’s written is nonfiction (what?!).

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Books

Book 785: Lonely Hearts (Love Lessons #3) – Heidi Cullinan

What was missing from Heidi Cullinan’s Love Lessons series? A fake boyfriend romance, so of course that’s what she provided and I soaked up in the third installment Lonely Hearts.

Picking up immediately after Fever Pitch, Cullinan dives right into the story of Elijah, the jaded and toying with the lines of addiction and safe sex roommate of Aaron from the last book, and Baz, life of the party big man on campus, but hiding a soft inside with a heartbreaking backstory.

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Books

Book 772: The Remaking of Corbin Wale – Roan Parrish

And a bonus Hanukkah novel for what was initially my final book in the 12 Books of MM Holiday Romance binge. I’m capping it at 16 because that’s how many I apparently had already downloaded to my Kindle ¯_(ツ)_/¯. I honestly wasn’t paying attention and as I read and removed I added more. Don’t get me wrong there will be more MM romances, but I need to save the hundreds of others for future years, right?

I say this is a bonus Hanukkah novel because I had completely forgotten this one was Hanukkah rather than Christmas based. I saw it on a holiday list, recognized Parrish’s name and had to grab it. I read Better Than People earlier in the year and found it to be beautifully written and have had a copy of In the Middle of Somewhere sitting on my Kindle since then, so yeah of course I grabbed this.

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