Happy Monday, Boozie Book Nerds!

Ginny’s Update

What Ginny Finished:

Well last week I was pretty much knocked down by some food poisoning. Now, however, I feel great! I spent the weekend at my favorite bookstore surrounded by people who love books and it just felt rejuvenating.

• Sorry Bro by Teleen Voskuni: Nareh gets proposed to by her boyfriend in the last way she’d want to be proposed to. So she kind of breaks it off with him and asks her Armenian mother with help finding her a man. Except when she starts attending the Armenian events she ends up falling for Erebuni. I loved and strongly disliked things about this book. The narrator seemed to have little understanding of consequences, leading to some of my least favorite tropes. Plus I think the narrator (audiobook) made a choice about Nareh and Erebuni’s voices that I think should have been swapped. That being said, I loved the peek into the Armenian culture and I really liked the way the book progressed and the secondary characters were great!

What Ginny is Currently Reading:

• Network Effect by Martha Wells: MURDERBOT, MURDERBOT! Murderbot is working on a job with Preservation when it’s old friend ART shows up an attacks. Clearly something is wrong and it’s Murderbot’s job to figure it out. I continue to love this series with poor Murderbot having to deal with FEELINGS. I think I’m getting hints of what’s to come and I’m really happy about it.
• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett: I’m so enjoying this book. Emily is a dryadologist, or someone who studies the fae living in a world where the fae exist. She ends up in a Nordic country accompanied by her (maybe fae) coworker looking into the “Hidden folk.” Emily seems wildly autistic and I’m loving that kind of focus in a book about faeries (considering the whole autistic/changeling connection) and that her hyperfocus is on this research. She’s such a fun character.

Sam’s Update

What Sam is Finished:

• Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey: This was NOT what I thought it was going to be. Sarah’s books are usually steeping in a little more sci-fi but this one was very dark. Our main character Vera is home for the first time in like 20 years because her mom is dying and she’s asked her to clean up the house. There’s a creepy artist there. It becomes pretty clear that her mom hates her, but we’re really not sure why until we find out Dad was a serial killer. ANYWAY this was an interesting mystery trying to figure out the details and the journey Vera goes through.
• Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa by Julian Randall: this is a cool MG portal fantasy based in lore from the Dominican Republic. I gobbled this up. It was so cute.
• Arsenic & Adobo by Mia P. Manansala: I literally listened to this audio in two days. I read it for Magical Readathon! It’s a murder mystery. And i loved it. Extremely diverse, steeped in Filipino culture, and it was great.

What Sam is Currently Reading:

These two are on hold at the moment, but I JUST finished Arsenic & Adobo like an our ago.

• That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming: I have been waiting to read this for a while for the title alone. From what I can tell, our leading lady Cinnamon was in her way home from a bar and knocks this demon out of his stupor and saves him. He threatened her family so now they’re going on a journey to rid the world of a witch. I’m in. This accidentally made it back to the library so i am waiting for it to come back
• Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes by David Chang and Priya Krishna – I read a review online that said this book is meant to be read cover to cover like a novel… so that’s what I’m doing and it’s actually fab. It helps that they’re talking a lot about Asian flavors (naturally) and I’ve been dying to learn more about those flavor profiles.

Until next time, we remain forever drunkenly yours,

— Sam, Minda, and Ginny