The heart wants what the heart wants, and our hearts want books.

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Let’s chat about the proper order of things!  The Grishaverse is complex and needs to be read in order.  Unlike the TV show, we are trying very hard not to spoil things, but please beware, Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse includes the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology (which sort of appears in the Netflix show), and the King of Scars duology.  These seven, YES SEVEN, books should be read in that order as they all take place chronologically in the same universe and do intersect with each other.  From here, it’s going to get more spoilery, because that’s what happens when you review book seven in a (loose) series.  If you prefer not to have spoilers, please check out our review of Shadow and Bone.  If you prefer your spoilers in order, start with Shadow and Bone, remember it’s a trilogy, and then pick up with our review of the Six of Crows duology.  And now on to your regularly scheduled book review!

Before I dig in, I want to own that I most definitely had to look up some of the events of the end of Ruin and Rising to remember how we left our cast of characters in Ravka, or rather how I left them nearly a year and a half ago, even though a handful appeared in the Six of Crows duology, which was nearly a year ago for me.  So yes, these are all very much linked, and I very much adored getting to revisit these characters!  

King of Scars is about our favorite Ravkan king trying to piece the country back together after the events in the Grishaverse, roughly three years after Ruin and Rising and one year after Crooked Kingdom.  Ravka has been ravaged by civil war, the Fold has been destroyed, and the second army is slowly rebuilding.  Our titular character has his triumvirate to support him, as well as his diplomacy skills, and he’s trying to make friends and influence people in new and exciting ways.  For those who (like me) don’t remember, the Darkling left Nikolai a little present of a monster sharing his body during that final battle, and that is the piece that drives our current plot.  It’s getting more active, and it needs to go, but how?  Nikolai is also the last of the royal family and needs an heir as part of his efforts to stabilize the country and help his people heal.  Both issues are … complex, and then there’s Nina spying and trying to save Grisha in Fjerda and Zoya trying to help Nikolai pull all this off and rebuild the second army so Grisha can have a place to belong and thrive rather than survive.  Yes, we have multiple POVs, lots of action, and so much else that I am so excited to finish reading in Rule of Wolves.  I’ve already checked it out, so I’m hoping to consume it in the next two weeks and know how the story ends.  

King of Scars is a gloriously plotted continuation in the Grishaverse with beautiful writing and snarky dialogue.  The characters are beloved and dimensional and I have high hopes for the ending Bardugo will bring us.  I’m giving this title four solid stars and hoping the ending is everything I want it to be.  While I don’t know that I’ll reread any of the Grishaverse books, I’m slowly enjoying season two of Shadow and Bone and still thinking on many of the themes, even from the titles I read almost two years ago.  If you enjoy YA fantasy, please don’t sleep on this series!

What’s a book (or series) you’re excited to see transformed to screen?

~Nikki 

You know what I’m not going to do this time? Write about Leigh Bardugo and all her awards and accolades for her millions sold Grishaverse series, or her adult fantasy Alex Stern series. (The internet says prepare for four books in this series – probably one book per year for Alex’s years at Yale. #Speculation)  Or how she lives in Los Angeles. Or how Netflix made the Shadow and Bone series that’s now in season two, or how the Ninth House series is slated for production from Amazon studios…I’m also not going to tell you how Kaz Brekker, master thief in Six of Crows, uses a cane because Bardugo has osteonecrosis and also sometimes needs to use a cane to walk. I’m not going to tell you any of that and just get along to write about King Nikolai Lantsov and our favorite Grishas from King of Scars.

Yeah. I said it. Forget all that Santka Alina, Sun Summoner, savior of Ravka crap. Zoya Nasyalensky, the unforgiving commander of Ravka’s armies is my favorite. Nina Zenik and David Kostyk and Genya Safin are all amazing, too, but none can hold a candle to the give-no-effs badass that is General Nasyalensky for me. Yeah, I definitely have a girl crush on this lady. I also love Nina Zenik, trained by the great General herself, but of more use as a spy than a soldier. The journey she goes on emotionally and physically into Fjerda was like a dagger into my heart that got healed as Nina found her purpose. Oh the twist in her story at the end, Chef’s Kiss! These ladies are worth suffering through Alina Starkov’s weirdness for sure.

Now, Nikolai Lantsov, King of Ravka, has no trouble making friends and influencing people with his unwavering charm, dashing good looks, and subversive intelligence. He’s witty and a master player of the game, always multiple steps ahead of anyone else in whatever myriad intrigues are going on at court and abroad. But, what he didn’t plan on or expect was the darkness growing inside of him, coming out at night as some winged monster terrorizing his court and his people. He needs a queen and an heir to solidify his future but you know what his royal dumbness does?! (minor spoiler alert) He avoids his feelings for his general. Even I’m not avoiding my feelings for Zoya and he needs to get with the program. What won’t come as a surprise to you, darling readers, is that Zoya is avoiding her feelings for Nikolai as well. I can’t wait for Rule of Wolves to get off hold so that I can finish up my Grishaverse reading and find out what happens. I’m torn wanting a big fat bow or wanting more, more, MORE.

Bardugo takes characters from her two other Grishaverse series and sets them on adventures in King of Scars. These characters are separated by geography but are working towards the same goal – to save the Grisha and their home in Ravka. I am so glad that Zoya and Nikolai and Nina have more time on the page, because I love reading about when the ‘secondary’ characters get their stories told. Four stars, obviously.

~Ashley

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Darling readers, it will come as a surprise to few that life plus our Kindle Unlimited subscriptions and life got in the way of our regularly scheduled reviews, but we’ll catch up and get you all that was promised in the days to come!  

I’m not sure what I expected from The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, but it more than delivered.  Both Anne Bogel and Jamie B. Golden said to read this amazing book about the publishing industry and the complex issues of race, so you can just stop reading now and grab a copy!  In this engrossing story, Nella has been the only Black employee at her publishing house for two years (aka the whole time), until Hazel shows up.  Nella and Hazel are bonding and supporting each other, until a series of things happen and suddenly, they are clearly not BFFs.  This is all I remembered from the marketing copy / recommendations, so you can imagine my surprise when the story takes a thriller-ish turn and threatening notes start showing up.  Nella’s career is at stake and something weird is going on, and Hazel just has to be connected, according to Nella at least.  

I was not ready for several of the twists and turns this book took me on, and that epilogue!  Wow.  The Other Black Girl is layered and detailed and so well paced.  I was absolutely the basic white woman looking up some of the Black hair talk and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and the pretty direct invitation in the text to use an Internet search engine to inform myself.  Here is the part I can’t stop thinking about – the dichotomy of how these two women think about code switching when in majority culture.  I am probably overly simplifying this, but considering how you physically present in a space, if and which filters you apply to yourself (and not just the way you speak) when entering into a situation, and just how honest to be about real life stuff.  I think many of us face versions of this as we go about our day switching “hats” as we switch environments.  What the (not Black) reader gets to see through the window as these characters walk through the story, and presumably most Black people and people of color, especially women face, is so much more than I have to think about and the idea is just exhausting.  THIS is the work of reading fiction and how it helps build empathy in us as readers as we experience the characters working through the plot. I am so very grateful for authors and teachers like Harris.  

I am so hopeful for more amazing things from Harris.  While The Other Black Girl is her debut novel, she’s published essays and book reviews and spent three years working in book publishing and it shows in her descriptions of the industry and her phenomenal writing!  I’m giving The Other Black Girl four solid stars.  I’m still thinking and dissecting and wondering long I’ll be stuck in the rabbit hole I’ll fall down if I look up author interviews.  

What’s a title that was so much more than what you didn’t know you wanted?

~Nikki

What happens when a debut author writes about the industry they have been working in long before becoming an author? An amazing, showstopping, emotional rollercoaster of a New York Times bestselling first novel, that’s what! Zakiya Dalila Harris lives in Brooklyn with her husband and plant collection, got her MFA in creative writing from The New School, attended The University of North Carolina for undergrad, and grew up in Connecticut. Harris’s other writings have been published in such prestigious periodicals as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Guernica, the Rumpus, and the New York Times.  Hulu is currently in production for a TV adaptation of The Other Black Girl. And if that doesn’t give you another reason to go pick up a copy and read this book, I don’t know what else we have to say.

I have so many feelings about this book. It has made me feel such a lack of diverse friendships in my life because I, too, had to rely on google for the education on different curl types and their struggles. Women talk about hair all the time. It’s a thing for everyone, and we can all complain and be joyous about it together. I was also intrigued by the dynamic of Nella having Hazel meet her white live-in boyfriend, Owen. Nella was weirded out, jealous, and concerned all at the same time. I have read multiple reviews on Goodreads from Black readers and it seems that many of them find this satire very problematic in its portrayal of Blackness and Black women. It’s unclear if the readers knew it was more satire than thriller and if that was known if that would have cleared up their issues with the book.

I can only give my opinion of it and, thriller or satire, I thoroughly enjoyed this four star read. I want to share one quote that I find is still really important, even though it was ‘said’ by fictional blacktivist, YouTube star, Jesse Watson: “With heightened awareness of cultural sensitivity comes great responsibility. If we’re not careful, ‘diversity’ might become an item people start checking off a list and nothing more—a shallow, shadowy thing with but one dimension.” And, darling readers, that’s what we’re hoping to avoid.

~Ashley

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The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

Darling readers, let’s start with some important information out of the gate – the action in this epistolary novel takes place shortly after a tragic mass shooting in their community.  While that awful event does not take place on the page, the main character was present for it, and is a widower because of it.  The story is about him, other survivors, and those who love them and others who were lost that day.  I was very nervous to start reading We are the Light by Matthew Quick when I realized the tragedy mentioned in the marketing copy is all too similar to a tragedy in our own community that happened merely days before.  While this may not be the case for all readers, Quick’s work offers me hope.  Please care for yourselves in the books that you chose to read, and know our DMs are open if we can be of help.

Before starting We are the Light by Matthew Quick, I knew it was a book about grief, and as I continued through Lucas’s letters to Karl, I learned more and more.  It’s also about the power of love, the beauty of tight-knit communities, and the intrinsic need to process feelings.  With the business of society that we thought might never return after the virus that shall not be named, some can seek to stuff down their feelings so they can keep moving, but it comes out in weird, often suboptimal, ways when we do this.  If Harry’s Trees is a healthy way to grieve and keep moving, then We are the Light is its dysfunctional, slightly dark, yet endearing counterpart.  

As we read through We are the Light, readers learn that Karl was Lucas’s Jungian analyst before the tragedy which left both their wives murdered, and afterwards Karl stopped seeing his analysands.  Lucas is left trying to function as an independent adult, even though he can’t bring himself to return to work at the local high school.  He’s subsisting with the help of his wife’s best friend Jill, who’s moved in with him.  Then Eli, the younger brother of the perpetrator of the tragedy, starts camping in Lucas’s backyard, while also avoiding his last year of high school.  From there, we follow along via Lucas’s letters to Karl as Lucas attempts to help Eli, himself, and the other survivors of the tragedy find some healing.  Chaos, hilarity, and drama ensue, all of which lead Lucas to be forced to face his trauma and loss in some unfortunate, but productive ways.  

Though I was nervous, I really found We are the Light to be a bit cathartic personally.  I recognize it’s not for everyone, but the sarcasm, levity, and realistic feel Quick brings to the page through his writing was definitely for me, perhaps a bit in spite of the subject matter.  I’m giving the novel four solid stars for an inventive story, gorgeously told and a special thanks to Coach Knox McCoy of The Popcast with Knox and Jamie for Greenlighting it. I’m definitely interested in Quick’s other works, and will be trying to remember to sandwich them in between some delightfully predictable romance novels in case they’re a bit too real for comfort.  

What’s a novel that was hard to read, but oh so worth it?

~Nikki 

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar winning movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, as well as eight other novels including his newest release, this week’s title We are the Light. He and his works have been nominated for countless awards and lists including the LA Times Book Prize, Summer’s Best Books for NPR, and The Hollywood Reporter’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. He lives in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with his wife, novelist Alicia Bessette.

Majestic, Pennsylvania, is the small, fictional town where the epic tragedy occurs that causes our narrator, Lucas Goodgame, to become the town hero. Even before the tragedy that begets the necessity of Lucas writing letters to his Jungian analyst instead of attending sessions with Karl, we come to find out through bits and pieces of the letters that Lucas was already somewhat of an unsung hero in the town. Throughout his years as a high school counselor it seems that Lucas was able to guide many a troubled teen through adolescence, including Bobby the cop who we get to meet on several occasions. His work with Eli is not a surprise from a career standpoint, but one of recent personal history with Eli’s family. I did feel like Lucas was a bit of an unreliable narrator because of his recent personal tragedy, so take that information and do with it as you will. 

I enjoyed the way Quick used Lucas’s letters to his Jungian analyst Karl as the way to chronicle Lucas’s journey in and around his grief after becoming a widower in a very unexpected and tragic way. I have not read many epistolary novels, and We Are The Light was an excellent read, especially given the recent parallel tragedy in my own community just a few days prior to reading it. Definitely read the marketing copy and do not fear to put it down and not pick it back up if the themes are too heavy for you at any point. I also found it cathartic and even slightly fantastical in the way the community helps Lucas and Eli in their project and everyone heals some part of themself. I am giving We Are The Light 3.5 and rounding up to four stars for the writing, pace, and characters. I did love Bobby the Cop, especially at the end. Grief’s journey is different for everyone, and this look into Jungian psychology is readable and recommendable.

~Ashley

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