I tried the audiobook first, but the prose of this one was too dense. Add some architectural horror nonsense and it just floats my boat. The ensemble story was impressive and coherent and her actual skill as a writer continues to baffle me. Even this story set in somewhat real New York made me fall in love with a city that I don’t actually love. Talking about creating worlds, Jemisin is a master of worldbuilding. There’s a softness to her writing, a hopefulness, that I absolutely adore. Harrow creates and the characters that inhibit those worlds. I cry easily, but this book together with Addie LaRue and The Song of Achilles had me bawling at some of the conclusions and for once I was thankful to read it at home instead of somewhere in public. HarrowĪnother sweep me off my feet novel about witches, suffragettes and sisterhood. None of this is probably the real Reve, but it’s really fun to speculate about what kind of person he was from these essays. I kept reading him as an ultimate romantic in this book, someone who keeps looking for a love that will sweep him off his feet, but also a man too stubborn and self-loathing to actually believe this can happen. Both are great books, works of memoir/fiction in which Reve is such a character. I’m not very well-versed in Dutch literature, but after much praise from two people whose opinion on books I value a lot, I decided to give this one and Nader Tot U a try. It broke me and built me back up during a time where I really needed it. Schwab, but not all her books hit this hard. Even though I couldn’t sit in a coffee shop and read a book, this book felt like I was doing it anyway. Walking through all of these cities and all of these time periods with Addie and Henry made me long for a normal world and reminded me of the power of stories. When the pandemic was hitting me hard, this book felt like a balm for my soul.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E.Co-host of Bored to Death book club + owner of this blog

The promise damon galgut goodreads