Happy Monday, Boozie Book Nerds!

Ginny’s Update

What Ginny Finished:

• The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest: Lily cold-emails her favorite author (from a one-run book published years before) and ends up in a year long correspondence with Strick. Strick disappears and to keep her sisters off her back, Lily asks her neighbor for help finding a boyfriend. Said neighbor is Nick, aka Strick. The book is charming and honestly, it’s one of those books where the lack of communication does kind of make sense. Honestly, the best part of this book was the correspondence between Lily and Strick at the beginning. They had so much chemistry!
• Empire of Light by Alex Harrow: Damian is a hired gun who is trying to protect his magic quasi-boyfriend from a despotic government, while also being hired to kill so many people in the government. He also has major eyes for the shady guy who keeps following him. I thought the plot of this book was a ton of fun and I enjoyed the intrigue (though at times it was fast-paced enough that I had trouble keeping up with the most recent double-cross.
• Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb: This was the third book in the farseer trilogy. Fitz is assumed dead and wants to take revenge on the asshole who put him in that situation, meanwhile he’s being called to an epic quest. And yes, that’s vague. Third book baby, trying to avoid spoilers. But also the first half of this book felt so slow. About halfway the pace picked up and I couldn’t put it down. It was a really satisfying end to what was frankly a really dark series.

What Ginny is Currently Reading:

• When in Rome by Sarah Adams : Rae is a popstar looking for some quiet before a world tour, and Noah is the grumpy baker who owns the house her car breaks down in front of. I’m about 25% of the way into this book and I don’t really have strong feelings. It reminds me of a netflix movie that came out recently with Freddie Prinze Junior. It’s cute enough
• Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom: This book is non-fiction and about the rise of for-profit colleges, why they exist, and how they target the people they target. It’s one of those books about an insidious part of our country that you won’t necessarily experience if you aren’t one of the people targeted. That being said, for-profit colleges fill a particular void. There’s no obvious solution to fixing the somewhat predatory nature…

Sam’s Update

What Sam is Finished:

• The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older: I read this for Magical Readathon. I was extremely pleased with this Novella and I’m very excited to have read it. You all know how much we love Malka and her writing. This was a murder mystery sci if with a professor and an investigator and it was awesome.

What Sam is Currently Reading:

• The Poison Season by Mara Rutherford: Another Magical Readathon read. There’s an island called Endla (I think that’s the spelling, I’m listening on audio) where there’s a forest that kills things. The forest needs sacrifices to not kill things and who better than the islanders who can sing like sirens and lure their prey or whatever living creature hears it (humans included). But ALSO, they are surrounded by a poisonous lake. Obviously a human makes it on to the lake and will inevitably fall in love with our other islander.
• 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