Dona's Book Blog

Thank you to the editors Shelly Page and Alex Brown, and publishers Kensington Books, as well as NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of NIGHT OF THE LIVING QUEERS. All views are mine. I enjoyed many of the stories in this collection, but a few fell flat. Below is a sentence or two about each story. Introduction: [Halloween is] a time for... acceptance, remembrance, celebration, and rebirth. It's when many people feel they no longer have to hide the best parts of themselves. loc10 1. Welcome to the Hotel Paranoia - Mexican Gothic, spooky hotel, lots of ghosts and spirits, it all stands for something else, but what isn't clear enough, this one is a little anticlimactic.  2. The Visitor - I had to listen to this one with the screen reader like 8 times. It really doesn't come together well. 3. A Brief Intermission - This is a story that becomes worth it in the final lines. 4. Guested - What a perfectly miserable execution of the second person narrator, but a ver...

Thank you to the author Anne Gudger, publishers Jaded Ibis Press, and Get Red PR Books, for an advance paperback copy of THE FIFTHCHAMBER. All views are mine. Opening quote : Field Guide to Christmas Grief: ...27. Find 12 flattish round rocks and nestle them at the base of your blue tree. Gifts. Moons. One for each month you've kept you and your boy alive. Write words on the bottom of the rocks, where they're hidden, where they're just for you. p106 Three (or more) things I loved: 1. Sometimes the way she cuts time is incredible, like the transition from the bottom of p55 to the top of p56. The narrative moves from a very visceral first person account of a near drowning directly to the panic that narrator feels when going to grief therapy for the first time after her husband died.  2. The headache descriptions are so accurate and I felt connection with the narrator because of this trait. I too get terrible headaches, and I wondered while reading what the pain...

Thank you to the author Helen Hardt, publishers Entangle: Amara Press, and TLC Book Tours, for an advance paperback copy of THE WITCH HITCH. Thank you also to NetGalley for an accompanying widget. All views are mine. 𝘈𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘸! When I was invited to read BLOOM, Helen Hardt's follow up to BLUSH, I said absolutely, yes, I mean, have you seen these covers? They are gorgeous! I asked to read BLUSH first, so I could see where the story started  and I went in completely blind. I like surprises. And wow was I surprised. BLUSH is a deeply personal story of Amanda, a successful but lonely young woman, who discovers her place among an underground S&M community, and falls in love with the perfect partner for her. I was impressed with the beauty of the prose here, and how sensuous the spicy scenes are. I think this book is an example of how fine smut can be: a good story and perfect spice. BLOOM was not such a surprise, of course, and I don't think I enjo...

Thank you to the author Avery Blake, publishers Sterling & Stone, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of ᴀ ʀᴜᴛʜʟᴇss ᴘᴏsɪᴛɪᴠɪᴛʏ. All opinions are mine.  A Romeo and Juliet for a new age, a story of forbidden love between two young people with too much in common: both hiding from every other important detail about their own identities. Hiding behind their virtual selves, Kam and Lyle maneuver their AI world to keep seeing each other, the real worlds in which they can never meet in order to survive, and the political world that rules both AI and real worlds, trying to build a resistance to the rampant wealth disparaty.'' Much of the setting and story reflects a ghostly immage of the nonfictional world, making the stakes feel higher to this reader. That's good, because the storyline is convoluted and hard to follow in places. There's quite a bit of discussion about the story world's politics and societal unrest. This was a pretty good b...

Thank you to the author T Kingfisher, publishers Tor Books, and NetGalley for an advance audio copy of ᴛʜᴏʀɴʜᴇᴅɢᴇ. All views are mine. Three (or more) things I loved: 1. I connected to the idea of "The Greenteeth," magical folk who are both skilled and queer, who keep themselves to themselves and according to their own and not that of the "civilized world." 2. I love characters that have a hard time. Antiheros and unlikeable characters are the best. But I have speciaI love for underdogs. Both of the main characters in the book, the main character, Toadling, and her "knight" figure, are hard luck babies. Toadling...well, she's named Toadling, so that's a start. And her knight is a hapless, unsuccessful, third in line prince with very little confidence. They help each other throughout the book, and grow equally (despite what this means for cgaracter diversity). 3. This story includes some beautiful and important themes, like even outsider...

Thank you to the author Kathy Elkind, publishers She Writes Press, and as always, NetGalley for an advance digital copy of TO WALK IT IS TO SEE IT. All views are mine. Three or more things I loved: 1. Chocolate! Elkind writes a lot about chocolate! A quick search reveals 52 instances of the word "chocolate" in this slim volume. Chocolate happens to be one of my favorite foods, which I think of as so much more than a melty sweet treat. As a commodity, I think of its availability as a thermometer for our planet's agrarian health. It's a beautiful cooking component that can bring surprising depth to dishes. I don't eat much sugar these days for health reasons, but I do still love my chocolate. It is one indulgence I would covet even in the spartan conditions Elkind sometimes finds herself. It represents something important to Elkind both in the book and on the road. 2. I really respect the author's openness about communication challenges with her part...

Thank you to the author Julie Schumacher, publishers Doubleday, and as always, NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of THE ENGLISH EXPERIMENT. All views are mine. Jason Fitger is an American professor of English who is essentially bullied by his department provost to accompany several young students on the best "Experience: Abroad" programs to England. Fitger's lack of enthusiasm and general jadedness with being a writing professor to entry level college students provides ample opportunity for wit and dry humor, both of which the author handles adeptly. For my friends on Bookstagram, this book will be a fittingly hilarious read as Schumacher riffs on bad form, both in writing, and also in being bitter about writing, even the imperfect kind. This book boasts many funny moments, but I'd like to share one of my favorites here, which is one student's letter, an assignment all the students were supposed to write to someone back home about something that h...

ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙᴇʀᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴀʀᴛs  𝘑𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘺 𝘉𝘪𝘭𝘣𝘳𝘰, 𝘑𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢 𝘏𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘴𝘰𝘯, and 𝘋𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘥 𝘏𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘰𝘯, eds.  Plough Publishing 228p    🅟🅤🅑 🅓🅐🅣🅔 9.5.2023 Thank you to the editors, publishers, and as always @NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙᴇʀᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴀʀᴛs. Three or more things I liked: 1. This book and the essays that comprise it are short but still impactful. Sometimes writers of nonfiction topics tend to run on, but this collection of essays keeps things tight. 2. Interesting form helps keep things moving. Each of these brief essays, written by different nonfiction authors, attempts to [respond to] one widely held perspective that we hear in today's culture, questioning the value of the liberal arts. "Practical Matters" 3. Sccording to the chapter, "Practical Matters," Due to the support of the CCCU and Plough Publishing House, we are able to donate the proceeds from this book to four organizations th...

Thank you to the author Brando Skyhorse, Avid Reader Press and Simon and Schuster, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of MY NAME IS IRIS. Thank you also to TLC Book Tours for having me on this tour and arranging for my physical and digital copies. All opinions are mine. This is the story of Iris Prince. She attempts to pull her family, who immigrated to the US or who are second generation USians, together through their own struggles while resisting racism in their city to varying degrees of intensity, everywhere they go. These repeated experiences of exclusion seem to collect in force and lead up to the ending, which is equal in intensity and opposite in tone and internal logic to this long journey. The ending embraces a surreal form and logic, as if to weird the form of magical realism counter to the very idea and existence of racism. But before this surreal conclusion, the story unravels its internal logic, as though challenging the very fabric of the ra...

Thank you to the author Melanie Smith, publishers She Writes Press, and BookSparks, for an advance paperback copy of UNFINISHED BUSINESS. All opinions are mine. I am more than the stories I have told myself and more than the stories I have been told about myself and who I should be. p78 Being a survivor of childhood trauma and the onset of disability late in life, I'm certainly no stranger to trauma, and tend to read about it. When the oppourtunity arose for me to review a copy of UNFINISHED BUSINESS, I was eager to accept. What I found is this book surprised me, I would say. I wasn't expecting to find a step-by-step guide to a process on reprocessing trauma and other significant life events. She introduces a number of terms I've never encountered before, but her concepts are familiar, she's composed them in what appears to be a useful way. Smith designed the work in the book to be done over several weeks, which I don't have, unfortunately. But I could ...

Thank you to the author Joanne Intrator, publishers She Writes Press, and BookSparks, for an advance reader copy of SUMMONS TO BERLIN. All opinions are mine. This book is a very personal account of one Jewish family's separation from their belongings, indeed their very identity, during the modern era's most evil and violent time. The book's author and narrator, Intrator, undertook a quest of epic proportion when, upon hearing her father's deathbed challenge to her to be courageous, she accepted it to mean: she was the one to settle this long unsettled ghost in her family's history. She was the one to reclaim her family's holdings from the beneficiaries of the evil men who stole them.  SUMMONS TO BERLIN is without a doubt a fascinating story. Reading about some of the red tape Intrator encountered in trying to recover her family's assets made my blood boil! On fellow, who stymied her at every turn, who would not ever give Intrator her due, until s...

Thank you to the author, publishers, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of Time's Mouth. All opinions are mine. Time's Mouth is a time travelling story, but this element is more than that term implies. More on that in a moment. This story is also story about mothers and daughters linked into the past and future, and it is this maternal connection that powers the time travel in this story.  The women and girls in Time's Mouth are tattooed by trauma at one another's hands, in the form of abuse and neglect and abandonment and fierce, indomitable love, the kind that leaves scars. The magic these women possess exists in themselves in a series of moments in time. But their power is limited in a way that can empower the women against other, only not all of them know it. Wonder what would happen if the family suddenly takes back the cards from the one whose always been helding them all? I didn't invest too much in the main character's perso...

Thank you to the author Sarah Pekkanen, publishers Macmillan Audio, and as always NetGalley, for an advance audio copy of GONE TONIGHT. The narrator, Kate Mara gives an excellent reading for this book; it might actually be my favorite performance from her ever. This is one of those books that had me making wild guesses the whole way through, and I was always wrong, and always wildly entertained! Red herrings galore, and twists and turns, which were entirely appropriate, given how far this story travels both in time and along the different character arcs. I was just astounded as I watched Pekkanen peel back the layers, a petal at a time, and I'm thinking the whole time she's taking me into the eye of a peony, but...it was something else altogether, not even a flower at all. More like a hurricane, all frilly and purple at the edges where she'd torn away to reveal the fury of her fiction. My headlights shone on a black corvette tucked in the furthest corner of the...

Thank you to the author Allison Ashley, publishers MIRA Books, as well as BookSparks, for an advance physical copy of ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴏᴏᴍᴍᴀᴛᴇ ᴘᴀᴄᴛ. This book is a sweet and chaotic story about two roommates, Claire, a tough and lovely nurse with a traumatic past that haunsts her and every relationship she's ever had, and Graham, the thrill-seeking extreme sportsman and firefighter who can't see himself as serious enough to have a serious relationship or capable of love. But what do two close friends do late at night when they've been drinking but make bad bets? So they agree to be each other's fall back plan if they each hit their fortieth and are still alone. Making the pact suddenly allows Claire and Graham to be more vulnerable with each other. After all, why not? That's their future spouse! This vulnerability encourages them to be more open in their friendship, and eventually, to the idea of real intimacy and romance between them. I like that this book does not...

Thank you to the author Sherry Sidoti, publishers She Writes Press, as well as BookSparks, for an advance physical copy of ᴀ sᴍᴏᴋᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ sᴏɴɢ. "'Practice listening.... [your dad's] just a man. And men have limits.... Remember, his truth may not be your truth or the truth at all, for theat matter. Everyone has their side of the truth."p66 Sidoti's memoir grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I felt so connected to this young girl, growing up in the 80's, whose parents were uninvested in a child's affairs, especially their emotions. I grew up in the same decade, and it's true: parents of that era just didn't care about the same things that they do now. That was, "my daughter's my best friend" and "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" era. When Sidoti wrote about trying to make her parents and sisters happy, and how elusive that goal was, I felt the potency of the scenes. How could adults expect ...

Thank you to the author Amy Engle, publishers Dutton and Penguin Group, and as always NetGalley, for an advance audio copy of I DID IT FOR YOU. I've been getting more into crime novels, but I need a really creative human connection in the narrative in order to enjoy them. Selections in this genre tend to come in close to a killer's mentality from the human side, rather than the horror side, which can be uncomfortable for me for two reasons. First, when a killer is written from a horror framework, it puts a great deal of idealogial distance between the reader and the killer. The book's own opinion is that the reader and the killer are very different kinds of people. Crime novels, on the other hand, when their killers are written from this human place, close the distance between the reader and the killer. I most enjoy crime novels that exploit this proximity in clever and creative ways, expecially if they cause me to exercise empathy in new way. I DID IT FOR YOU ...