My May goals were fairly modest: get new glasses, start the process of renewing my passport, and continue working on the revision. I did all that! And I worked out 3-4 times a week, and I feel like things are steadily trucking along. I think I can finally listen to audiobooks again, and I super missed it.

There was an author interview practically every week. Take a look:

• Maya MacGregor had their YA debut with The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester
• Ren Hutchings celebrated several release days across formats with Under Fortunate Stars
• Francesca Tacchi welcome xir debut novella, Let the Mountains Be My Grave

June is my birthday month! And my goal there is to catch up on my reading goal (I’m 4 books behind), especially since I’m traveling at the end of the month.

ARCs

• Dead End Girls by Wendy Heard (young adult, thriller)
  • Be gay, do crime by faking your death to escape your family
  • Surprisingly tender, especially in the way the book handles Frankie and Maud’s backstories
• Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White (young adult, horror)
  • A trans boy is being turned into a literal monster due to medical experimentation by an eco-fascist, Christian cult
  • Body horror and gore galore
  • Forthcoming author interview on 6/9/2022
• Inheritors by Asako Serizawa (adult, historical fiction)
  • An intergenerational story about imperialism, trauma, and cycles of violence from colonial Japan going into the future
  • Reads more like an oral history than fiction in the best way
• Primal Animals by Julia Lynn Rumor (YA, horror)
  • A sapphic horror taking place at a summer camp that harbors its own cult (the cult is not the camp itself, to be clear)
  • The fantastic anxiety rep might be hindering the horror aspects as it’s hard to discern plot danger from the things the main character fears
• Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (adult, historical fantasy)
  • All the glitz, glam, and grime of old Hollywood with elements of fae rules as Luli Wei makes her way to stardom
  • One of my favorite things is names as currency and leverage and oh boy, is it plot relevant in this one
• These Prisoning Hills by Christopher Rowe (adult, science fiction)
  • The Southeast US had been taken over by a rogue AI, overthrown, but one of the automatons had woken up
  • A great worldbuilding exercise starring a middle-aged woman

Audiobooks

• The Memory Librarian And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe (adult, science fiction, 2022)
  • Five stories about community and humanity in a world where people’s memories are a currency and fighting back doesn’t always look like big set pieces (though it can!)
  • Incredible characters, queer as fuck, and superb world-building that keeps humanity at its core
• The Resting Place by Camilla Sten (adult, thriller, 2022)
  • A woman with faceblindness has to settle her grandmother slash surrogate mother’s estate but things go awry
  • Compelling past that weaves neatly into the present that also covers the topics of power imbalances between servants and their employers
• Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes (adult, true crime, 2022)
  • Paul Holes is famous for catching the East Area Rapist aka The Golden State Killer
  • An introspective memoir that also examines anxiety, introversion, and PTSD

Physical Copy

• The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas (adult, horror 2022)
  • A Book of the Month selection
  • In 1800’s Mexico, a young woman seeks autonomy in marriage and gets a horribly haunted house instead
  • There’s a priest who’s also a witch, examinations of privilege, politics, and evil men who experience consequences

Light Novels

• The Holy Grail of Eris Vol. 1 by Kujira Tokiwa & Yunagi (supernatural secondary-world fantasy, 2022 )
  • A young noblewoman is haunted by another young noblewoman who wants revenge for her execution
  • Large cast with interesting international and national politics

Manga

• Can’t Stop Cursing You Vol. 3 by Kensuke Koba & Natsuko Uruma (horror shonen, 2022)
  • The edgy nonsense continues with a school-wide, deadly game of tag
  • I really liked the character development and twists in this volume
• Colorless Vol. 1 by KENT (science fiction seinen, 2022)
  • A solar flare knocked out all the colors and replaced it with monstrosity
  • Interesting art and the wiped memory trope
• Made in Abyss Vol. 10 by Akihito Tsukushi (dark fantasy seinen, 2022)
  • The Hollow Village arc finally comes to an end
  • Riko gains a new friend and traveling company, but holy shit at what cost