#november book

[starrlikesbooks]

It's hard to believe it's already November!

Check out how many great books are out this month!

Kiss Her Once For Me by Alison Cochrun is the sapphic Christmas romcom of your dreams! When Ellie agrees to fake an engagement with the already enormously rich Andrew, the money offered makes it an easy choice- but that's before she realizes the one night stand that broke her almost exactly a year ago is his sister. This book also has demi rep, and most of the cast are POC!

Even Though I Knew the End by CL Polk is another I already had the fortune to read. This is a fantasy noir novella starring a queer detective, cast out of her magical society due to a forbidden deal.

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson is a fantastic coming of age story set against the Satanic Panic. This is a book is awkward teenage years, guilt, and desperation to mean something.

Astrid Park Doesn't Fail by Ashley Herring Blake is the sequel/spin-off to the wildly popular Delilah Green Doesn't Care, this one focused on her sister. Just like the first, this is a sapphic adult romance.

At Midnight edited by Dahlia Adler is an anthology of fairy tale retellings! With Adler editing you know it's going to be an inclusive, entertaining collection.

Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzales is another fun, bi romance! This one is set during a dating competition- that the main character enters in the hopes of revealing the bachelor, her ex, as the bastard he is. What she doesn't expect is to have to share a room with the very girl he cheated with her on. Or for feelings to start getting involved.

[badgalbre]

November read 💚

[academic-vampire]

“September came in with golden days and silver nights,”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

[joytri]

the creeping in of winter

[bornanoldsoul]

autumn pls hurry up i need dark academia weather to take over

[luciferslilith7]

Search me in the November Wind Picture Credit ~📍pinterest

@luciferslilith7

[reddy-reads]

Solstice Wood, Patricia A McKillip

Okay I finished the book!

Thoughts (and spoilers) under the jump

1. I wasn’t sure I was going to finish it. I bought it months ago, possibly even a year ago, and it sat about 1/3 read on my nightstand for months--that usually bodes ill. Then, of course, I decided to make it the November book so that, one way or another, it’d be taken care of by the end of this month.

2. I picked this book up more-or-less at random after seeing it discussed in a thread about “books that have a magic system that hinges on something ordinary/everyday rather than Great and Obscure Spells” (a la Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books). In this case, the magic is worked through needlework and threadcraft--the witches’ coven in the book is the local Fiber Arts Guild. They work their magic through sewing, quilting, crochet, knitting, macrame... and they use it to maintain and defend the boundaries between the mundane world and the Fair Folk.

3. The magic system is awesome! What we see of it. It’s not explained much, but it does get some description, and I loved that. The plot is... okay? Like I said, I plowed through a little less than half of it and then didn’t feel the need to finish it. Normally my favorite books get their momentum up before then. But more on this in a second.

The chapters are have varying character POVs, but it’s not really used to a super amazing extent (for the most part). If it wasn’t for the chapter headings like “Chapter 2: Steve” I’m not sure I could have told you who was narrating which chapters? Not to toot my own horn but I think even I have stretched myself a lot re: having the narration be really flavored by the POV character, and I think the characters’ voices could have been more deeply developed.

3b: Plot: having damned with faint praise re: plot and pacing just now, I will say that when I did pick the book back up again, the book did start to snap along pretty well. When the changeling appears, things really get moving. I think I said something like “oh man I hopped off too early this is actually kinda good,” so if you can get over that hump, it’s easy to finish. That said, I really don’t think authors generally intend for their books to sag in the early-middle.

4: Philosophically speaking, I did like the conclusion. Instead of ending in a big battle or dramatic sacrifice or big violent orgy, the book wraps with the matriarch of the family (and the head of the Fiber Arts Guild)... changing her mind. She has a perspective change, and she changes her previous stance of “the Fae must be kept out at any cost, they can never never never be allowed in our world” to “maybe we can see what happens if we stop reinforcing our spells. Maybe we can see if they’re as dangerous as we always believed, or if they’re only as dangerous as human people.” She doesn’t do a full 180 and suddenly embrace Them, but she does realize that maybe, in keeping out what she is afraid of, she is also keeping out too much. (Also, a great number of people she cares about turn out to be either part-fae or in love with a fay, so she changes her mind largely for them because she doesn’t want to drive them away any farther than she already has.) And I do love a book that has that sort of shift at its heart.

5: In conclusion: I’m glad I read the book, I’m glad I stuck with it and finished it. It definitely has some good points, and I think they largely outweigh the so-so things about it. But I’m not keeping the book, and I’m not sure I’d recommend it. It feels like a “if this seems like your kind of story, go for it. But if you’re not quite sold on it, maybe just see if you can get a library copy.”

And that’s November’s book: Solstice Wood, Patricia A McKillip.

[avoiltaire]

[fallinginlove-20s]

📚🎃

[fallingforfall13]

Cozy autumn 🍂 ☕️

[fromdarzaitoleeza]

{On November 1 by Franz kafka from the dairies of Franz Kafka 1910-1923}

[theamericanpin-up]

Bill Randall - "Priscilla" - November 1965 Date Book Calendar Illustration - Kemper-Thomas Calendar Co. - American Pin-up Calendar Collection

[academic-vampire]

🥮🍪☕️🍁

[moonsnqil]

tell me i'm not the only one who regularly has this thought

[champagnexowishes]

[wedarkacademia]

My heart is crowded full of foolish thoughts, like early flowers in an April meadow, and I must give them to you, all of them, before they fade.

— Sara Teasdale, Love Songs; A November Night