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Hnngh. The Audible "hack" is making the rounds again, with people claiming you can use your Audible credit to listen to a book and then return it "for free." While I am the first among many to say "fuck Amazon and we should gullotine Jeff Bezos," I need you all to know it's not Amazon refunding you.

It's the authors.

They take that out of our royalties. And that's after they take 80% of our royalties on sales we do make.

(Note: Also, do not assume that your credit is worth the price listing that Amazon shows. Amazon does not pay us the cost of the listing. ((WHICH THEY PICK, we cannot set our own prices on audiobooks and then that forces us to use the Amazon price for the rest of the market!!)) What we get is 20% of the credit's value, so my book might appear on Audible for $20-30. However, if you received an Amazon credit for one of those $4.99 deals, I'd get 20% of $4.99. Yes, it's fucked, it's all fucked. Yes, other audio retailers do the exact same thing. This is one of the reasons authors don't make half as much money as people think they do.)

This became such a big issue that they had to make it impossible to return books after a certain point without talking to a customer service representative, because people were using Kindle/Audible and Amazon's return policy "like a library," and some authors (myself included) were getting royalty checks that showed negative income.

At this point, I don't even know if the Audible "hack" still works (Amazon has made changes to protect authors from this kind of thing at a glacial pace), but I need you to know it's not Amazon that's refunding you. This isn't a fun little "fuck Amazon" thing. The way Amazon has it set up, it's directly fucking the authors over.

So, yeah. Obviously, if you download something and can't get into it, or if something pops up on the author's side that makes you not want to support them anymore, yeah, process that return. Yeet the bitch. But please don't use it "like a library."

It's really harrowing to see your predicted income based on sales and then find out you're getting one-tenth of that because of refunds. And it's not even because people didn't like your book. They're just using the wrong place like a library and fucking over your algorithm as well, because once you get too many returns, you stop getting promoted.

Try using a library. You can access places like @queerliblib for FREE provided you have a US library account that you've hooked up to Libby. It's a little bit of work, but once you've got a card number, you're golden.

Just, y'know, throwing it out there because I don't think people realize this is how it works. You're not taking something back to Walmart, and Walmart is eating the refund before dumping the item in the garbage. Amazon takes the refund, turns to the author, and takes it off our plates.

Note: this does not affect Kindle Unlimited. Flip through the end pages to give the author maximum pages read, and then return that bad boy so the author can get paid. But also, please, maybe think about switching to a Kobo+ account instead. It offers the same subscription-based membership without demanding exclusivity, so authors aren't locked into just Amazon the way they are with KU. (Royalty rates are roughly the same, but it's a better deal in terms of allowing broader market access.)

This has been a rambling and exhausted PSA from your local peddler of weres.

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Genre: Fiction, Adult, Thriller, Mystery

Rating: 2 out of 5

Content Warning: Death, Blood, Murder, Cursing, Gun violence      

Summary: Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect—her.

Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer.

*Opinions*

This is a classic case of it’s not you, it’s me. I picked this book out of the library because I am doing the “ABC” challenge again this year and this is an author that my grandmother reads often. There was nothing wrong with the story or how it was composed, it just wasn’t something that I enjoyed. 

Zero Day follows CID Investigator John Puller as he is sent to West Virginia to investigate the murder of the military and his entire family. Yet, when Puller gets to the small coal town, he finds that the local police are not prepared for the number of bodies that are piling up and the military is not interested in sending him any sort of support. Puller pulls in the local police detective, Samantha Cole, to help him unravel what mystery is leading to so many deaths. However, like in many small towns, everyone is related to everyone and gossip travels fast. What neither of them can expect is the reason for the deaths can have far-reaching consequences for the entire country. Time is running out, the military is antsy, and more people are dying. With personal family drama not making his life any easier, Puller needs to work fast if he’s going to save himself and perhaps all of West Virginia. 

This reads like a procedural TV show episode, which is a little ironic as NCIS and CSI are referenced in this novel. There is the red herring, the family drama, possible romance, and the main character having to deal with the demons of his past. As someone who grew up watching those shows, that didn’t bother me. What didn’t connect with me about this novel was that I thought it was way too long, and none of the conversations read like actual people talking to one another. Normally I don’t mind a slow-moving story, but with people dying constantly, the pages of conversation that revealed nothing to the plot or the characters started to drag by the end of the novel. This has the same vibe of a hard-boiled detective novel, but it isn’t something I enjoyed in this setting. 

Puller was a bland character, but that is by design. This is a man who grew up in a military household and was in the Army himself, so it he is very task-focused. The writing is also in short sentences, describing the surroundings in a tactical sense and not how most authors would write it. This isn’t something that I personally enjoyed, but it might not bother other people. We also didn’t get a lot of emotion from Puller, which makes sense given his training and upbringing, but wasn’t giving me a lot to care about him as a main character. I wasn’t even sure that the romance was a romance because everything was so choppy and clinical. Other people might like that, but for me it kept me far away from the characters which isn’t something I enjoy. 

This was a perfectly serviceable palate cleanser, but I don’t think I am going to read the rest of the series. I would say that people enjoy procedurals will enjoy this story, but don’t expect deep character work. This was a two star for me, but I can see it being harder for other people. 

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@pscentral event 18: adaptations

SAM CLAFLIN PAGE TO SCREEN ADAPTATIONS

Daisy Jones and the Six (2023) dir. James Ponsoldt, Nzingha Stewart, Will Graham Journey's End (2017) dir. Saul Dibb The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) dir. Francis Lawrence Love, Rosie (2014) dir. Christian Ditter The Riot Club (2014) dir. Lone Scherfig Me Before You (2016) dir. Thea Sharrock Enola Holmes (2020) dir. Harry Bradbeer Adrift (2018) dir. Baltasar Kormákur My Cousin Rachel (2017) dir. Roger Michell Their Finest (2016) dir. Lone Scherfig

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"Bad things don't dig down through your life until the pit's so deep that nothing good will ever be big enough to make you happy again. No matter how much shit, there will always be wildflowers. There will always be Petes and Maggies and rainstorms in the forest and sun on the waves."

January Andrews Beach Read by Emily Henry

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By Rose Sanderson

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"At this point, it honestly might be easier for me to pack it in on the upbeat women's fiction and hop aboard the Bleak Literary Fiction train. At least it would give me an excuse to describe boobs in some horrifying new way. Like bulbous succulents of flesh and sinew. I never get to say Bulbous succulents of flesh in my books."

January Andrews Beach Read by Emily Henry

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The Drowned Halls

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Hey hey, as a librarian, can I just say don’t pace yourself at the library. I get a lot of customers saying “oh I shouldn’t get too many books out at once” but like you should!!!! Max out your card, take everything we have on a subject you’re interested in, make a book fort in your home. We love that shit! It doesn’t matter if you read them or not; just take them for an adventure and bring them back whenever they’re due!

For public libraries, one of the ways we secure funding year to year is lending. Governments don’t want to fund more books if they’re not being used and the way we measure use is by issues. Regardless of whether you read it or not, whether you have it for a day or a month, if you issue it to your library card, we get the stats! It makes the library look good!

Help your local library; get books out even if you know you can’t read them all!

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Genre: Fiction, Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Rating: 3 out of 5

Content Warning: Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Medical content, Vomit        

Summary:

A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass” scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,” and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she can’t refuse.

*Opinions*

I had heard a lot about Abby Jimenez from being in bookish spaces but didn’t know anything about this book specifically. However, it did have the advantage of having a title that started with a “Y” which is what I needed for my ABC reading challenge. As someone who works in a hospital, I was interested to see how Jimenez handled the medical side of things since it isn’t at all how it is depicted in Grey's Anatomy. I really enjoyed the depiction of work in the hospital and the two main characters, but I did have some pretty serious issues with this story. 

Yours Truly follows Emergency Department doctors Briana Ortiz and Jacob Maddox. Both are having very rough years, Briana’s divorce is about to be finalized and her brother needs a kidney transplant and Jacobs's ex is about to marry his brother. After a chance encounter in the ED, they start to form a relationship by writing letters to one another. When Jacob finds out that he is a perfect match for Briana’s brother, she agrees to pretend to be his girlfriend so that his family won’t continue to hold a grudge against his brother and ex-girlfriend. However, the lines between pretend feelings and real feelings start to blur, both Jacob and Briana have to confront fears from past relationships if there is any hope for a new one to emerge. 

There was a pretty good amount of plot at the beginning of this novel with Briana and Jacob attempting to piece together their crumbling lives. The focus on Benny and what his disease was doing to him and the people who loved him really highlighted the toll that caregivers face when a loved one gets ill. Jacob’s desire to see his brother happy, but unsure how to do that without having a partner to show that he was over his ex was also well done. However, once the relationship became the main focus of the novel, I felt that it got stuck in a loop. This novel could have been at least 100 pages shorter with all the chapters of both Briana and Jacob mentally beating themselves up because they think that the other one is faking their relationship. Also, the final issue at the end of the novel felt very completely out of left field and a completely severe reaction that was quickly wrapped up. While it was clear that Birana had been traumatized by her divorce, the addition at the end seemed to come out of left field. This was a four-star read until the last third before dropping to a low three. 

I liked Briana as a character, she was kind, caring, and full of life. While I was expecting what she did to her ex after she found him cheating to be a little more extreme, I think it was perfect for who she was as a character. Her hesitation around wanting to try and have another relationship, especially with someone she worked with, was also extremely valid. However, knowing how bad Jacob’s anxiety was and how well she was at communicating with him in regard to other things, you would have thought she would have confronted him about her feelings and believed that he was still in love with his ex way earlier than when it happened. Then her complete shutdown at the end of the novel seemed to come out completely left field because Jimenez didn’t foreshadow that part of her trauma at all. 

The way that Jacob’s anxiety was portrayed was really well done and started to kick up my anxiety in certain sections. He was also a much better person than I am because if my ex left me and then got engaged to my brother within three months of the breakup, I would not be nearly as gracious. However, my complaint with him was the same as with Briana, literally everyone in his life, even those who knew the two of them dating was fake, was telling him that she actually liked him, yet he couldn’t believe it. So, for the last 100 pages of him wallowing about how much he loved her, but not saying anything about it I just wanted to shake the man. Especially after he got jealous of Levi. 

Overall, this book needed to be about 100 pages shorter, and the breakup at the end needed to be better foreshadowed throughout the rest of the story. It doesn’t help that it has both the miscommunication trope and another of my least favorite tropes present. I would be willing to read another Jimenez novel with a troupe set I liked better, but this was a low three and not one I will pick up again. 

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𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔫𝔶 𝔴𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔰𝔱𝔲𝔡𝔶

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Wouldn't it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

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𝔟𝔞𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢

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Genre: Fiction, Adult, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism

Rating: 5 out of 5

Content Warning: War, Death, Violence, Medical content, Death of parent, Medical trauma, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Murder  

Summary:

The sweeping new novel from New York Times bestselling author Katherine Arden. World War One, and as shells fall in Flanders, a Canadian nurse searches for her brother believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise in this gripping and powerful historical novel from the bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.

January 1918. Laura Iven has been discharged from her duties as a nurse and sent back to Halifax, Canada, leaving behind a brother still fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Now home, she receives word of Freddie's death in action along with his uniform - but something doesn't quite make sense. Determined to find out more, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about ghosts moving among those still living and a strange innkeeper whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could this have happened to Freddie - but if so, where is he?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped under an overturned pillbox with an enemy soldier, a German, each of them badly wounded. Against all odds, the two men form a bond and succeed in clawing their way out. But once in No Man's Land, where can either of them turn where they won't be shot as enemy soldiers or deserters? As the killing continues, they meet a man - a fiddler - who seems to have the power to make the hellscape that surrounds them disappear. But at what price?

A novel of breathtaking scope and drama, of compulsive readability, of stunning historical research lightly worn, and of brilliantly drawn characters who will make you laugh and break your heart in a single line, The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a book that will speak to readers directly about the trauma of war and the power of those involved to love, endure and transcend it.

*Opinions*

This is probably the best impulse purchase I have ever made because this might be the best book I read this year and it has instantly become one of my favorites. I had heard a lot about Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy, so when I got an email for the Fairyloot special edition of this novel, I decided to buy it. What I got was not only a beautiful book, but also an emotional story about the love of siblings, the true cost of war, and the bounds that grow on the ruined battlefields. Arden excellently walked the line of horror, desire, hopelessness, love, and human determination. 

The Warm Hands of Ghosts follows Laura Iven, an honorably discharged and injured Canadian nurse, and her bother Wilfred ‘Freddie’ Iven, a Canadian soldier. In Laura’s timeline, the Halifax Harbor disaster has just happened and Laura has lost everything. Then, she receives a trunk with her brother’s belongings, though no one can tell her when or how he died. When Penelope Shaw comes to Laura’s employers for a psychic reading, the spirits state that her brother is not dead. Along with Penelope, Laura returns to Europe in the throws of World War I in an attempt to find out what has happened to her brother and bring him home if she can. In a timeline that is a few months before that of Laura’s, Freddie is stuck in an overturned pillbox with a German soldier. They form a tense alliance to find a way to get out of the pillbox alive, but once they are out into the mud-coated battlefield, neither man is willing to let the other man die. Eventually, Freddie is able to get the German soldier Winter medical care, but to do so he has to pose as dead. This is when the fiddler, a battlefield legend, takes him into his care. All he asks for is a story every night, but the fiddler is not what he seems and the story is not just a story. Yet, no matter how much the fiddler presses, he refuses to tell him what happened in the pillbox and Winter. Laura and Freddie’s timelines are set to collide, but it is unclear if either of them will escape the battlefield and return home in both body and spirit. 

The plot of this story is rather straightforward in both of the timelines, yet there is something very engaging in the tale that Arden wove. With Laura, you see a woman attempting to stay upright when she has lost everything and attempting to hold onto the one part of her life that might still be available to her. She has the logical mind of a nurse and determination, but throughout the story, she finds just how broken she is and how deeply her wounds go. Freddie is desperate to stay alive, but once he is out of immediate danger, he realizes that war has taken almost everything from him. He doesn’t want to remember what he did and what he experienced and the fiddle Faland gives him the oblivion that he desires. Both timelines focus on the human cost of war, not just the deaths and injuries, but the mental scars that they suffered. If you are a fan of the Band of Brothers miniseries, I think that you will enjoy this book because it focuses on a lot of the same themes. 

Someone could write an entire college thesis on the role Faland plays and what he stands for in terms of the psychological damages of war. While I enjoyed the folklore aspect, especially because I had never heard of the myth of the fiddler in regards to battlefields. While Arden never confirms who Faland is in the narrative, it is clear from the hints and afterward that he is the devil. Yet, even though he is an antagonist in the story, she still paints him as a very complex figure. He shows some vulnerability to Freddie and that he has also suffered some of the horrors of war. Faland also stands in for all the self-medication and other unhealthy coping mechanisms that many soldiers have used to attempt to forget the horrors they experienced day in and day out. Faland offers oblivion and after suffering so much, that seems preferable to all the pain that all those who suffered through the world hold. 

I really like Laura as a character, a woman who cannot let herself have hope after so much death and grief, yet needs to find out what happened to the last member of her family. Her desire to care for others and the guilt she holds for surviving the explosion at the Halifax Harbour are so well portrayed. Laura is also human and is pulled in so many directions once she reaches the Forbidden Zone that she is unable to take care of everything on her own. Yet, it is clear that she cares for those she meets on this journey and takes her role as a nurse very seriously. 

While I liked Laura, Freddie became my favorite character in this novel. The amount of mental anguish that he endures, yet Arden never makes it feel repetitive or angst for angst's sake. He is a young man who wants to be a poet and artist and is thrown into a world of horror that he cannot escape from on his own. His relationship with Winter and everything he does to protect him shows the snap decisions that need to be made in the chaos of war. The way that Freddie refuses to give up his memories of Winter also speaks to his character and his romantic nature, even though the reader does not get to see Freddie before the war. Arden gives Freddie a satisfying ending that is a little unrealistic, but that is the beauty of fiction, people get to have good endings. 

Arden very deftly worked the romances into this narrative so that it enhanced the story being told and didn’t take anything away from it. Both relationships were believable and showed that even beautiful things can grow among horror. The twist of the novel was so surprising because while I saw a little of what was going to happen, I could have never completely figured it out. Yet, when it was revealed, it made perfect sense. A story rarely surprises me the way that this one did. 

I could sit here and sing the praises about this book for hours, but I don’t really want to spoil anything and I want everyone to read it. A five star read and this might be my favorite book that I read this year. 

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𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔯 𝔰𝔦𝔪𝔭𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔱𝔶

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"It's the pattern of the times. Were you expecting honest justice? There's none. It's a new world now. It eats you up, sinners and saints, all alike."

Faland The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

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