marywahlmeierbracciano's reviews
827 reviews

Stranger Skies by Pascale Lacelle

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Drowned Gods Trilogy is perfect for anyone looking for a dark academia fix, but make it queer and all about the moon.  Even more so than its predecessor, Stranger Skies is viscerally world-based, despite its taking place in multiple dimensions.  The story alternates between two points in time and groups of characters—not quite mirror-images of each other—while also bringing to life a story within a story.  In this breathless adventure, good and evil are not black and white, and only time can make clear the roles people will play.  It takes its time at the beginning, but once it gets going it doesn’t stop!  Everyone has a power to them that manifests in its own unique way.  What they will do for power…now that’s another story.

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Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health by Toni Weschler

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informative

4.75

 Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler is an essential reference guide for natural birth control or pregnancy achievement.  Since getting off the birth control pill, I’ve used it to get to know my cycle and my body, as the menstrual cycle–made invisible by hormonal birth control–is indicative of overall health.  I highly recommend this to anyone who menstruates! 
Freedom Is a Feast by Alejandro Puyana

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adventurous challenging medium-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Freedom Is a Feast cleverly illustrates history’s repetition in both personal and political contexts via a multigenerational saga set in Venezuela.  The story takes place around the rise and fall of Hugo Chávez, brought to power by revolution, only to cultivate corruption.  In the 1960s, a young revolutionary falls in love, escapes capture, vows to free his friends, and is failed by the movement.  A single mother is barely scraping by in 2002 when her son is shot in the midst of a coup, his life saved by a chance encounter.  Regret, guilt, love—gained and lost—rage, survival.  What does it take to be free?

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Godfather Death by Sally Nicholls

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dark reflective medium-paced

5.0

This cautionary tale reimagines a Brothers Grimm story with hauntingly beautiful illustrations in a warm palette.  A poor fisherman forgoes God and the Devil to choose the most honest man - Death - to be his son's godfather.  This gorgeous, spooky story is good for cultivating familiarity with and respect for death and the hard truths of life.
What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird by Sy Montgomery

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informative lighthearted relaxing

4.5

This delightful little book packs a punch!  Sy Montgomery’s avian anecdotes are interspersed with scientific research findings that prove the haters wrong.  Chickens are much more intelligent (and docile) than is widely believed.  This glimpse into the “Chicken Universe” will enlighten readers to the bravery, playfulness, and individuality of the world’s most common bird.  Montgomery’s stories of rural life in New Hampshire are a balm for the overstimulated mind.

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How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster by Muriel Leung

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

In this queer speculative novel where ghosts are commonplace and food is scarce, residents of a single New York apartment building find routine in hunkering down from weekly acid rain.  Upon moving back in with her mom, Mira is heartbroken that her partner, Mal, chose to stay behind, alone, in her late parents’ home.  To pass the time and process, she begins a talk radio show, and later falls in love with one of her listeners, a headless (and also heartbroken) man called Sad.  With rotating narration and an all-BIPOC cast—excluding a beautifully tender, gay cockroach ghost—this debut is existential, surreal, and electric.

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The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández

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challenging dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.5

The Twilight Zone, which reads like true crime and is inspired by true events, is a distressing but essential story of political violence in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, juxtaposed with modern life and allusions to American media.  Fernández dives deep into the multiplicity of reality in her poetic imagination of the lives of the disappeared and their loved ones.  Frequent leaps between timelines illustrate the repetition of history, the unfathomable horrors of what happened, the mysteries that still remain, the gaslighting, the candles still burning.

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The Lies We Conjure by Sarah Henning

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

After being paid to impersonate a pair of granddaughters, two sisters find themselves in a mysterious mansion straight out of Clue, complete with the death of their hostess and the locking of the gates to begin the game.  They’ve unknowingly walked into a sort of witches’ family reunion turned power struggle; everything is at stake, and being found out could have dire consequences.  The sisters’ relationship shines in this breakneck thriller, with constant banter and a thoughtful examination of strengths across opposing personalities.  Breaking tradition can be deadly, but can something good come out of it?  Fans of Knives Out will love this!

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Sound the Gong by Joan He

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Best read directly after its predecessor, Sound the Gong continues the story of Zephyr and the Three Kingdoms.  Again filled with incredibly brave, badass warrior women, this book sees Zephyr navigate strategy by inhabiting the bodies of others.  The characters in this story will do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals in a (sometimes literally) cutthroat environment, and yet, the chess pieces they manipulate in order to do so are not only pawns but also friends, allies, rulers.  Zephyr’s powers are put to the test as she tries to change fate to get what she wants, but history is cyclical and destiny powerful.  Will her choices have been worth it?

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Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Amidst a restrictive church community, three friends were drawn together by their covert queerness.  In a moment of danger, they made a wish to the forest Patron, and now one of them is gone, and the others have forgotten everything.  Five years later, Fern’s vying to be cast as the female lead in her senior musical (Grease) like her three older sisters.  Jaq is on track to attend college alongside her sweet boyfriend, whom she’ll someday marry.  A chance encounter leads them to the forest again, and they slowly start to remember.  Told in dual timelines—before the wish, and after—this heart-pounding story exemplifies the pain of suppression, the necessity of safe spaces, and the boundlessness of queer identity.

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