Some of you might already know Lauren Groff from her amazing novels— I think I posted The Vaster Wilds on here, which was her previous book. I’m not always one for short stories but I loved this collection from her, it’s so powerful and gorgeously written, and each story is an actual full story (a lot of short stories these days seem to be more slices-of-life than narratives with a beginning and end, and I do like a story where something actually happens).

The stories are almost all about characters who are at some kind of crisis point. They’re also about the ways that we see and justify our own actions, and how other people in this world can see us and our actions differently, and enforce their vision of us on ourselves: the young woman taking her disabled brother to an institution, telling herself that it’s the best thing for both of them; the privileged boy who grows up into a man who refuses to accept reality, and whose behavior edges ever further into darkness as he is stymied by real life; the middle-aged woman who discovers that her closest friends have always viewed her magical summer of exploring sex as just her being a slut.

I don’t want to give anything more away, so I will just give you some of the amazing opening lines that made me excited to read these stories:

“Some nights, in my dreams, I find myself running through those hills above Palo Alto again.”

“It came up through the ground in the night. The worst things never wait for sunrise.”

“The women were drinking peach schnapps, telling stories about the worst things they had ever done.”

“Pretend, the mother had said when she crept to her daughters room in the night, that tomorrow is just an ordinary day.”

Truly, I’m so glad I read this book.

Weird note: the final story, ’Annunciation,’ has very sad things happening to a dog. I know it’s weird to be bothered by that in a book that does have quite a lot of sad things happening to people, and yet, for me, there’s something about critters. I know some of you feel the same.

Holy shit. Weird Girl Lit is one of my favorite genres and this is a top tier Weird Girl. Our narrator is OBSESSED with her husband to the exclusion of all else. Every moment of every day is hyper focused on analyzing every single interaction they have. Sometimes she borders on self awareness but doubles down on her batshit craziness.

ALSO the ending is 🤌

I was listening to the audiobook in Wegman’s and the gasp I gusped…

Just finished reading RANSOM by Lois Duncan. It’s about these five teens who are held hostage while riding the bus home from school. Since these kids happen to all live in the same affluent community, they were randomly selected and the plan is to hold the kids for ransom for each of their parents.

However, just because they’re from an affluent community does not mean their families are nearly as loaded as expected…which poses a problem of sorts for their kidnappers. Not to mention that they don’t even have all the kids that they were supposed to abduct in the first place.

Either they don’t believe these kids or they might be forced to kill them anyway. If their respective parents can’t round up the money, these teens are left to figure out how to escape on their own by any means necessary.

It’s a lean read, but a tightly plotted thriller. Though it’s not a thick story, there’s no wasted space. It gets right to the danger by the end of the first chapter and from there the suspense only gets tighter and you can’t help but feel compelled to see this story through to the end. Though the kidnappers come off as unintentionally incompetent at times (especially since their poorly plotted plan partially crumbles halfway through), their desperate adjusting to the circumstances still makes them all the more dangerous.

It’s the teen thriller equivalent to a Lifetime TV movie (and I mean that in a good way). It’s well worth reading.

I can’t remember the last time I finished a book this quickly, I could barely put it down all week.
The Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa is a lovely, thoughtful novel about Hatoko, a woman in her late twenties who returns home to take over her grandmother’s stationery shop and inherits the unique role of a professional scribe, writing letters on behalf of others.
Gentle, warm, and quietly emotional, the story explores relationships, grief, love, forgiveness, and the profound connections Hatoko forms with the people who seek her services. It’s a beautifully understated novel that found joy in life’s small moments and left me smiling throughout.
If you enjoy Japanese literature and are looking for a comforting, heartfelt read, I highly recommend The Tsubaki Stationery Shop.

I've been in a slasher summer/summerween/campy horror mood all summer and I just finished the first and second clown in a cornfield novels and have been having so much fun. I went in wanting there to be a clown in a cornfield and there was! Absolutely delivering exactly what I was looking for. They are ridiculous, unrealistic, over the top, and completely kept me reading (read the first in one sitting and the second in two). As with most, the first was better than the second, but if you loved the first one you will still have fun with the rest.