Welcome to October! Here is my first batch of review books, yay!

If You’re Not the One by Farah Naz Rishi
The Hushed by K.R. Blair
The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August
Deep Space by Rob Hart & Alex Segura
I’ll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong
Sargassa by Sophie Burnham

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If You're Not the One by Farah Naz Rishi
Published by Quill Tree Books on October 8, 2024
Pages: 352
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Edelweiss

This funny, electric rom-com follows a teen struggling to reclaim her perfect life and the perfectly wrong guy who sees through her facade, from the acclaimed author of It All Comes Back to You.

Anisa Shirani is…well, perfect. A fact, not an opinion. Of course, it’s all a front to feed her own praise-obsessed ego. Behind closed doors, she is—some might say—a little slobbish and snobbish, and she works obsessively to maintain her God-given talents. Fate has favored her, but Ani knows better than anyone that fate is made by effort.

But she must, especially when all signs point to her being a top-notch lawyer with a top-notch education and being destined to marry Isaac, total heartthrob and eldest son of the richest family in the community. A perfect girl deserves a perfect life, and Ani’s perfect life is going exactly the way it should…

Until Ani’s parents announce they’re getting divorced.

Until Isaac shows all the signs of…cheating. Sort of.

Until she starts catching feelings for Marlow, an overly friendly weirdo she’s hated since the moment she laid eyes on him in class.

How can fate be so wrong?

So full disclosure, when the book started, I loathed main character Anisa. And I was so sad that I was not going to enjoy this one, when I have really enjoyed everything else the author has written. But I shouldn’t have worried, because friends, this delivered on the character growth! When we first meet Anisa, she’s basically… look, I hate to say she’s vapid, but she’s kind of vapid. She’s borderline obsessed with appearances, and how she is going to live this “perfect” life with her quasi-fiance (it’s an arranged marriage but it is super clear that he’s far less sure about this faux-future than she is), and our girl was making me mad, frankly.

But suffice it to say, subtle shifts start to take place in Anisa’s life. Maybe things do not actually have to be perfect- outwardly or otherwise- to be good. I feel like a lot of the lessons Anisa learns can apply to literally any one of us. Who among us hasn’t, at some point in our lives, gotten caught up in the “shoulds”- we should do a certain job, or follow a certain path, or look a certain way, or enjoy a certain type of activity. And when you add social media to the mix, and it looks on the surface that everyone else has it all together… you get the idea.

So Anisa grows. How, you ask? Well that is for you to read about! But I promise the journey is worth it. Farah Naz Rishi hasn’t steered me wrong so far! Bonus points for therapy positive rep, the wonderfully detailed cover (iykyk), and just the entire character of Marlow.

Bottom Line: Another hit from Farah Naz Rishi- with my sincerest apologies for ever doubting that this was going to be another banger!

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The Hushed by K.R. Blair, Katharyn Blair
Published by Blackstone Publishing on October 1, 2024
Pages: 320
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Perfect for fans of The Last Thing He Told Me and A Flicker in the Dark, The Hushed is a haunting paranormal thriller—infused with a dangerous, forbidden romance—that introduces a brand new type of undead …

Eerie Ashwood may look like a regular college student—she has a job at a local diner and attends classes at the community college—but she’s not. She’s a Hushed, a living secret made of flesh and blood, spawned by the death of a human who had something to hide. While the Hushed blend in among humans, they are haunted by an overwhelming urge to spill their secret to those whom it would hurt the most. But once a Hushed tells their secret, they drop dead.

Unlike most Hushed, Eerie and her brother Fabian can’t remember their secrets. All they know is they’re connected to the infamous Ironbark Prison fire, but everything else is a blur of smoke and fear. Everything changes when Eerie meets Logan Winspeare, the hell-raising son of one of the victims of the fire, who is searching for answers about the night his mother died. Eerie knows she should stay far away from both Logan and the mysteries surrounding that night, but she can’t escape her curiosity—or her growing attraction to Logan.

But the harder Eerie falls for Logan, the closer she comes to her secret—and her death. And as she uncovers more about her past, Eerie discovers her secret is tied into something even bigger—a tangled history that leads back thousands of years to the very first of her kind, and a covert organization of ancient Hushed who pledged vengeance on the human world.

The Hushed is such a fun and different premise: it’s basically some kind of cabbage patch teens/adults who pop up whenever someone dies with a big ol’ secret. And the Hushed’s role is to… well, I don’t know if they’re supposed to tell or keep the secret, but if they let it slip, they vanish back into Xavier’s Cabbage Patch or whatever. Problem is, they feel a pull to tell their secret, so… they often don’t have long and prosperous “lives”. I really enjoyed the main crux of the story, with Eerie’s found Hushed family, the whole dynamic of being a Hushed, and of course, what secrets may lurk! And adding to the fun, Eerie does not feel the pull of her secret, because guess what? Our girl has no idea what it is! I loved that- added another fun layer to the Hushed lore and Eerie’s story.

I had a few minor qualms, and they’re as follows: One, the storytelling was sometimes nonlinear, which is usually not a problem for me. But sometimes, Eerie would tell things like we were supposed to know (we didn’t), and then reveal the thing, like five pages later. Which admittedly was a little confusing. Then there are some “past dreamworld” parts and those I didn’t super love either. Neither of these are dealbreakers, as I really dug the rest of the story, but worth mentioning.

So the characters were a win, and the plot was very engaging, especially all the contemporary current era stuff. The atmosphere was also incredibly on point, and the treatment of the Hushed folks provided a lot of very relevant real world commentary. Seems like this is meant to be a series, and I for one will definitely be picking up the next installment!

Bottom Line: High stakes not just for the Hushed, this book was atmospheric and full of secrets and a definite win for me!

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The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
Published by Tordotcom on October 1, 2024
Pages: 224
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

In this new standalone, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.

And then the angels come, and the city falls.

Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.

She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.

Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.

I have truly adored everything I’ve read by Nghi Vo. She outdoes herself on the regular in the Singing Hills series. Banger after banger, frankly. So it is with the deepest sadness that I report that this one just didn’t quite do it for me. Look, the writing is lovely, as always. I just didn’t feel any pull to the characters or the actual story, which is truly sad for me. But! Please understand, I am definitely in the minority, as the Goodreads reviews are pretty strong for this one so far. And like- I’d read Nghi Vo’s shopping list, so it wasn’t a waste of time, it’s just… well, her shopping list would have probably inspired me to make some fun meals or something.

I even liked the concept and the ideas, it just almost felt like too much pretty prose and not enough substance, but I can also admit that I just may not have totally “gotten” it, since symbolism can be lost on me sometimes. That is to say, if you like Nghi Vo (which I unequivocally do) and also like more symbolic, understated stories (which I am less a fan of), this could very well be for you!

Bottom Line: I’m still here for any and all of Vo’s work and gorgeous writing, but this one just didn’t quite hit for me.

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The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August
Published by Hanover Square Press on October 1, 2024
Pages: 288
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

A dying universe. A search for answers. An adventure at the end of a trillion lifetimes.

When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last ones left – and whatever came for the others will one day come for them.

Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals – anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.

Now Scout, their brother and their sometimes-fearless, space-faring cat, Pumpkin, must race to save what matters most.

The Last Gifts of the Universe is a quick and emotional story- in fact, much more emotional than I’d assumed based on the cover! (I do love the cover- I just didn’t expect the feels, basically!) It’s a pretty cool concept, humanity has figured out how to explore the universe, only… there’s no one left to visit. There’s evidence of plenty of long-dead civilizations, but no one is still currently around. So when we meet Scout, their brother Kieran, and cat Pumpkin, suffice it to say things are a little lonely. Scout’s mission is basically recovering relics from the long-gone groups on the planets they check out.

I really enjoyed the sibling dynamic of this one, and the differing perspectives. I, personally, am more of a Kieran. I want to be where the people are, where Scout is super content to be on the ship with their tiny family forever. But before they can worry about all of that, they all need to figure out how to keep humanity from facing the same fate as the ancient aliens did. So the stakes are certainly high, and the emotions are too. I feel like this might be a series, or at least, has the potential to be one?  I’m here for it, if it is!

Bottom Line: Loved this sibling adventure to the edges of the universe, and the cat, we cannot ever forget Pumpkin the cat.

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Dark Space by Rob Hart, Alex Segura
Published by Blackstone Publishing on October 8, 2024
Pages: 304
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Bestselling and acclaimed authors Rob Hart and Alex Segura join forces on Dark Space, a sweeping sci-fi spy thriller that blends the epic scope and character-driven spark of Star Trek with the intrigue of John le Carré’s Smiley novels.

If life were fair, ace pilot Jose Carriles should have ended up a desk jockey like his former friend Corin Timony, back on the lunar colony of New Destiny. Instead, he’s the pilot of the Mosaic—a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union’s first-ever mission to outside our solar system.

Timony should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony’s international intelligence arm. Instead, she’s been demoted to admin duties like monitoring long-range communications. She has no one to blame but herself—and maybe Carriles.

But when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren’t exactly on the up and up.

At the same time, Timony’s old instincts kick in as she realizes the distress call she received from the Mosaic has been wiped without a trace.

As people start to end up dead and loyalties are tested, Timony and Carriles find themselves entangled in a star-spanning conspiracy that drags them through the darkest corners of their government—and their own personal failures—and face-to-face with a reckoning that could destroy humanity as we know it.

I adore author Rob Hart’s books, and this one gave me epic The Last War vibes, so that is kind of all you need to know, yeah? No? Okay fine. I’ll try to do better. So the story is told on two fronts: Corin Timony’s, back in our solar system, and Jose Carriles’s on a ship in, well, you guessed it, deep space. These two have a past, but that is part of the story so you can figure it out for yourselves. They also are both grieving, as Timony lost her lover, who Carriles replaced (unfairly, in her opinion) on this mission, and Carriles has lost his mother, and basically everyone’s respect.

But as the ship Carriles is piloting heads to the edge of the known universe, Timony is finding that things are not adding up back at home. Communications are being deleted, and she’s getting straight answers from no one. Meanwhile, Carriles is facing all kinds of problems on the ship, and these seem very fishy, too. It’s a race against time and power to see if they can save each other, save humanity, even. And it is definitely a ride! There were a few points, especially in the first half of the book, that felt a wee bit long, but that is a minor gripe. Overall, I adored this one, because the stakes are epically high, I love anything that gives me The 100 vibes, and I really loved that the characters were able to grow even during these harrowing times. I think the mix of action and adventure and personal relationships was great, and I am glad I got to read this one- and be introduced to a new great author via one I already loved!

Bottom Line: Loved the adventure, the power struggles, the commentary, and the characters! Definitely a win.

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I'll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong
Published by St. Martin's Press on October 1, 2024
Pages: 336
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

From New York Times Bestselling author Kelley Armstrong comes a spellbinding new tale of supernatural horror involving a haunted-house, seances, lost loved ones, and a sinister spirit out for blood...

Nicola Laughton never expected to see adulthood, being diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a child. Then medical advances let her live into her thirties and she met Anton, who taught her to dream of a future… together. Months after they married, Anton died in a horrible car, but lived long enough to utter five words to her, “I’ll be waiting for you.”

That final private moment became public when someone from the crash scene took it to the press—the terminally ill woman holding her dying husband as he promised to wait for her on the other side. Worse, that person claimed it wasn’t Anton who said the words but his ghost, hovering over his body.

Since their story went public, Nicola has been hounded by spiritualists promising closure. In the hopes of stopping her downward spiral, friends and family find a reputable medium—a professor of parapsychology. For the séance, they rent the Lake Erie beach house that Anton’s family once owned.

The medium barely has time to begin his work before things start happening. Locked doors mysteriously open. Clouds of insects engulf the house. Nicola hears footsteps and voices and the creak of an old dumbwaiter…in an empty shaft. Throughout it all she’s haunted by nightmares of her past. Because, unbeknownst to the others, this isn’t her first time contacting the dead. And Nicola isn’t her real name.

That’s when she finds the first body....

In this atmospheric, thrilling new ghost story, Kelley Armstrong's full talents are on display to thrill, chill and leave the reader guessing how Nicola escapes with her life--if she can.

I’ll Be Waiting was finally my first Kelley Armstrong book, after owning at least five and just… not getting around to them. Well reader, I have been missing out! In this twisty, exciting book, Nicola always planned to be the first to die. She was born with cystic fibrosis, and thanks to medical advances, has far outlived her initial prognosis. Even though she’s doing well, she and husband Anton always planned for his survival, not hers. That all changes with a terrible car accident and Anton’s untimely death.

Because of her diagnosis, she became headline fodder. “Terminally ill woman outlives husband” was everywhere, and Nicola could not escape it- or Anton’s last words to her, the titular “I’ll Be Waiting”. Was it just him saying he’d be waiting for her in death? Did it mean something more? Nicola has been contacted by all sorts of mediums, psychics, and general fraudsters, trying to use her story to their gain. Eventually, Nicola takes one last chance, on a professor who also studies spiritualism, and they head to a weekend retreat/seance at Anton’s childhood house that has been turned into a B&B.

There, things take all kinds of turns. The atmosphere is incredibly on point, and you certainly cannot help but feel for Nicola. Even though she is harboring some secrets of her own, it is still awful to think about what she’s been through. And it is clear from the start of the trip that she really can’t be sure who is being honest with her and who is using her for their own pursuits.

I enjoyed the many twists and turns, and trying to figure out what had happened, both in Nicola’s past, and in the present at the retreat. I also found that I learned a lot about CF, including all the medical advances, so that was a big plus. I found the story to be very readable, though I did find the ending a tiny bit overwhelming, the story as a whole was very much worth it.

Bottom Line: Lots of twists and lots of uncertainly, this one definitely kept me hooked!

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Sargassa by Sophie Burnham
Series: Ex Romana #1
Published by DAW on October 8, 2024
Pages: 416
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

An unlikely group of rebels are ready to burn down the empire in the first book in a new speculative trilogy that explores gender, sexuality, and oppression within an empire teetering on the brink of rebellion

Told from multiple POVs: a young heiress, an undercover spy, a bastard brother and a fugitive who has history with all three, Sargassa equal parts political intrigue, queer romance, and revolution

Selah Kleios is twenty-two years old and suddenly one of the most important women in the empires. The role of Imperial Historian is her birthright, something she’s been preparing for since birth—but she was supposed to have more time to learn the role from her father, the previous Historian. In the wake of her father’s sudden and shocking assassination, Selah finds herself custodian of more than just the Imperial Archives, the towering central library that safeguards all collective knowledge of the Roman Imperium and its client empires. There’s also the question of the two puzzling classified items her father left in her care—an ancient atlas filled with landscapes that don’t exist, and a carved piece of stone that seems to do nothing at all.

Soon, though, it becomes clear that the Iveroa Stone is more than just a slab of rock. With the reappearance of an old lost love who’s been blackmailed into stealing it for an unknown entity, Selah finds herself in a race to uncover the mysteries the Stone holds. But she isn’t the only one with an interest in it—she’ll have to contend with the deputy chief of police, an undercover spy, and her own beloved half brother along the way. What begins as an act of atonement and devotion ultimately pulls her into the crosshairs of deep state conspiracy, the stirrings of an underground independence movement, and questions that threaten to shake the foundational legitimacy of Roma Sargassa’s past, present, and future.

Gosh, Sagassa was fabulous! In fact, I am now epically sad because I am forced to wait for more. The only thing stopping me from giving it five full stars is that it did start out a little slow for me, and I was a wee bit confused. But please do not let that stop you, because it gets so good. And so twisty, and so freaking exciting! Look, I don’t even know how to review it because there are so many mind-bending twists! You might think you know, but you have no idea. So I shall keep it purposefully brief.

I read a review (after I finished the book, thankfully!) that says not to even read the description, and that is spot on. Actually- don’t even read the genre tags, because I feel like they spoil stuff too. Just. Okay- if you like complex characters, really high stakes action, incredible relationships, and ultimately just falling into a world wholly, then this is the book for you. There is political mayhem, survival, relevant commentary on both past and present society… this book legit has it all. If you can get through the little rocky first bit where you might be a tad confused (and I think you should!), this will be unputdownable.

Bottom Line: Need. Next. Book!

Have you read any of these books? Plan to? Let us chat about them!