We’ve got mixed feelings for this debut about a young immigrant woman trying to find love and community in the Midwest. This week we read by Sarah Thankam Mathews. Content Warnings: sexual violence In May we will be reading books from or about a…

Content Warnings: violence, self-harm, so much blood, sexual violence, we also swear If you really enjoyed this book, we’re sorry, you may want to skip this one. A Darker Shade of Magic is a contemporary fantasy novel that’s short on background…

April’s challenge prompt is to read a book recommended to you by a bookseller or librarian. Ideally, you’d ask a bookseller or librarian for one, but also we know there’s a lot of reasons you may not want to do that and that’s ok! There are other…

by Nicola Griffith is an amalgamation of genres, part autofiction, part disability activist story, part metaphysical, and part crime thriller. Mara Tagareilli is a martial arts master and heads up a successful and important AIDS non-profit in…

by Rivers Solomon is a 2017 science fiction novel about the class and race structure on a generation ship making its way through the universe toward the promised land. It features a well drawn main character and a lot of confusing world mechanics, so…

This week we read the classic noir novel, I. We love it for subverting typical noir tropes and tackling American machismo at the same time. March’s promopt for the 2023 Bookstore Challenge is to read a book by an author with a disability or about…

For February’s prompt to Read a Western or Pulp Fiction/Noir, Becca’s pick is True Grit by Charles Portis. The novel was a bestseller immediately upon publishing in 1968, and has been adapted twice into movies. We loved this entertaining, funny,…

For January’s prompt, to read a book published in a year ending in 3, Becca had us read It was published in 1953 and known for being one of the first popularly published novels about positive homosexual romance. Despite some language differences…

Hello, this is our first episode of the year! January’s prompt for The Bookstore Challenge 2023 is to read a book from a year ending in 3. Corinne’s pick is , published in 1953. It’s out of print in the US but you can still buy in the UK, and you…

Hello, this is our last episode of the year. We made it! This Year in Review is much like the ones from past years, we go over what we did, what we accomplished, any surprising trends we noticed, and have some fun with picking superlatives.  If…