December went by like a flash. I attended Dis Con III, visited my family for Christmas, and write you from Chicago. Please enjoy this final reading recap of 2021. What a year it’s been.
Tomorrow, we have my annual recap coming up. I hope you’re excited.
ARCs
- All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes (adult, horror, queer)
- Polar exploration horror with a trans protagonist
- Atmospheric as it is psychologically scary
- First author interview of 2022
- The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska (young adult, fantasy, queer)
- Rival witch servants try to take down the same boy
- So fun, so magical, much winter, wow
- Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children #7) by Seanan McGuire (adult, fantasy)
- The other school where wayward kids go is frighteningly obsessed with rules and “normalcy”
- Heartwrenching is ways that feel too real
Audiobooks
- Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult by Faith Jones (2021, adult, nonfiction)
- Memoir of a woman who escaped the Children of God cult
- Deeply empathetic and self-aware, but be very mindful of the content warnings
- The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky (2021, adult, literary fiction)
- Deeply narcistic portrait of young wealthy millennials
- Sharp commentary, but not sure the journey to the ending is worth it
- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica (2020, adult, fantasy)
- 1984 meets The Jungle where society has resorted to farming humans for meat
- Compelling and deeply engaging with its use of language
- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca (2021, adult, horror)
- Two lesbians meet on a forum and things devolve from there
- A little 2 edgy 5 me
Kindle Copies
- Leather & Lace (Southern Gothic Series #1) by Magen Cubed (2021, adult, urban fantasy)
- Monster hunters a cowboy and a vampire fall in love and solve a murder mystery
- Characters as sexy as they are compelling
- The Marek Series by Juliet Kemp (2018-2021, adult, fantasy)
- Marek is a city whose magic is channeled by an angel
- Their magicians both cause problems and solve them in interesting ways that make for a great epic despite the relatively close location
Manga
- Can’t Stop Cursing You Vol. 2 by Kensuke Koba & Natsuko Uruma (2021, shonen, horror)
- This series continues to be edgy nonsense
- So excited for the next volume with the new transfer student making an appearance
- Dai Dark Vol. 3 by Q Hayashida (2021, shonen, dark fantasy)
- Gnarly damage and corpses in between the laughs
- Continues to be full of mysteries
Until next year,
Jo
Jo Writes Fantasy 