A Most Puzzling Murder is a murder mystery novel with puzzles that the reader solves alongside the protagonist for clues to figure out whodunnit. Now, I love mystery novels and puzzles, so I was expecting to love this novel as well, but this novel is not it.
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Nnedi Okorafor is a writer of sci-fi and fantasy novels for both adults and children. Death of the Author is the first novel of hers that I have read, and I would say it is more literary fiction than sci-fi even though it has much to say about technology and Artificial Intelligence. I wasn’t sure I was going to like Death of the Author because of the sci-fi elements to the story (sci-fi isn’t really my jam), but I ended up really enjoying this novel.
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What drew me to Isola is its basis in historical record of a sixteenth-century French noblewoman who survived being marooned on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence for two years before she was rescued and returned to France. Like the author, I wondered how the heck this woman survived two Canadian winters mostly on her own in the sixteenth-century. Unfortunately, we will never know the true account of Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval’s survival, but I found Goodman’s fictional account of Marguerite’s story compelling.
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I really should examine the psychology behind why I, a childless cat mom, keep choosing to read mom-noir. I’ve read Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth, Ashley Audrain’s The Push, and now Helena Echlin’s Clever Little Thing, all novels about mothers who think there is something disturbingly wrong with their daughters (it’s always the daughters). And I keep reading these books even though I know they are not going to be great, and Clever Little Thing is the worst of the three.
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I feel like I was misled into believing that The Berry Pickers is a mystery novel. It is a mystery, for the characters in the novel, but for the reader there is no mystery as to what happened to a four-year-old Indigenous child that goes missing. I feel some disappointment with this novel because I love a good mystery, but The Berry Pickers turned out to be an emotional story about family and trauma.
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I enjoyed Xochitl Gonzalez’s Anita De Monte Laughs Last so much that I decided to read her first novel, Olga Dies Dreaming. At first, I wasn’t sure I was going to like this novel because of the problematic titular protagonist, but Olga, and the novel, grew on me, and I ended enjoying this story almost as much as Anita De Monte Laughs Last.
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If We Were Villains has been compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which initially was enough for me to give it a hard pass. But my curiosity triumphed (as well as my desire to fill up my Book Outlet cart with enough books to get free shipping) and I am pleasantly surprised to say that I like this novel because not all the characters are insufferable, and I would recommend it over The Secret History.
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V. E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil seems to be marketed to readers of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue rather than readers of her YA novels. I am not a fan of Schwab’s YA novels, and I loved The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, so my expectation was that Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil would be a slam dunk for me, but as interesting as I found the novel’s setting, the story ended up falling flat.
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The Safekeep is Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and recently won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I can understand why. It is an exquisite study in character, women’s desire and love.
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I enjoyed reading Cherie Dimaline’s VenCo so much that I decided to read another one of her novels (I am sure I will eventually work my way through all of them). I do not like Empire of Wild as much as I like VenCo, but it is still an interesting novel inspired by the Métis traditional story of the Rogarou, a werewolf-like creature that is used to inspire fear in disobedient people.
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