Books and Sensibility

We're an Open Book

Kat C

The Dry by Jane Harper and One Little Mistake by Lucinda Berry

     Leave a Comment

I read more thrillers!

The Dry by Jane Harper

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Finance investigator Aaron Falk hasn’t visited the struggling farming community of Kiewarra in over 20 years—not since he was run out of town for his association with a dead girl. But when his childhood best friend commits a grisly murder-suicide Aaron is called to attend the funeral and gets roped into the investigation.

This was a solid crime novel, to quote one of the blurbs on the back; it has twists on every page. My favorite thing about Jane Haper’s books are her endings–she writes revelations right up to the last word on the last page.

I’ve been experimenting with crime thrillers this year and this is one of my favorites. I liked that it had a character-driven angle with Falk’s past.

…

Read this Post

The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

     2 Comments

Rating: 4 out of 5.

384 Pages | Roaring Brook Press | Science Fiction YA | 5/4/2021

This book was very much Black Mirror but make it Cli-Fi.

…

Read this Post

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

     2 Comments

  13 Hours 33 Mins | Simon & Schuster Audio | Literary ? | 6/1/2021

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Editorial assistant Nella Rogers is used to being the only Black girl at Wagner Publishing. Then Hazel McCall is hired as a new editorial assistant. Nella is optimistic that the new Black girl–with her activist lineage and “Harlem cool”–will help her challenge the company’s diversity problem. Instead, Nella finds herself slowly pushed out of the comfortable place she secured for herself in the company.

I’m not the biggest fan of books where racial trauma is used like this but I came into this book thinking it was a thriller so I assumed I’d at least get enmeshed in a unique world and it would have compelling plotting. But this book toes the lines more of literary fiction with speculative elements. It has elements of modern Black horror like Get Out and social satire like The Sellout but at the end of the day doesn’t really say anything. I just thought this was kind of silly and found it extremely tedious.

I do not know how to review this book without spoilers so….

*Here be spoilers *

…

Read this Post

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

     Leave a Comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

11 hours 5 minutes | RandomHouse Audio | Historical | 6/1/2021

I guess this is my first ‘TikTok made me read it’ book.

I recently learned that is book is connected to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo so I’m not sure this was the best place to start with Reid but it came in first on my library holds. My experience with this book was like when you watch an amazing TV show you can’t stop talking about and then by the end you just get annoyed but still have to see how it ends.

…

Read this Post

Black Friday Readathon Sign Ups !

     Leave a Comment

It’s that time of the year again! Jess and I are so excited to host the Black Friday Readathon with Alysia from Mocha Girls Read and Amber from Du Livre. It’s a day for reading, prizes and making new bookish friends.

…

Read this Post

The Herd by Andrea Bartz

     Leave a Comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

  336 Pages | Ballantine | Mystery/Thriller | 3/24/2020

I rarely read long-form journalism but I devoured this piece in the New York Times Magazine about the false utopia of the all-female co-working space The Wing, so when I saw this book had a similar premise I had to pick it up.

In this book, the fictional aspirational feminist co-working space is called The Herd and the novel follows the twisty aftermath of disappearance of the founder, Eleanor Walsh.

The Bradley sisters, Katie and Hana, are best friends with the missing Eleanor and as they search for the truth their own dark secrets surface.

…

Read this Post