Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A cozy fantasy.
The Utterly Uninteresting & Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant, by Drew Hayes.

​This book reminds me of Robert Asprin's Myth series. Fred's tales are both interesting and adventurous, but we know he'll be safe in the end.

Fred is a socially awkward accountant who unexpectedly gets turned by a hungry vampire, and he's adjusting to his new nocturnal lifestyle. In the first story, he goes to his 10-year high school reunion and reconnects with an old friend, Krystal. She turns out to work for an organization that fights rogue monsters. Soon they're a team - and falling in love.

Through the later stories, we meet zombies, werewolves, mages and more. Fred winds up with a large "found family," and even onetime enemies sometimes become friends. Each time Fred is dropped into a situation that seems headed for bloodshed, it's resolved with wit, creativity, and some judicious use of Krystal's martial arts skills.

​It's light and fun - and if that's your thing, there are 7 more books in the series.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book published in 2000.
The Sibyl in Her Grave, by Sarah Caudwell.

This is from Caudwell's Hilary Tamar comedy-mystery series. As with the other 3 books, set in the era before cell phones, much of the action is communicated by letter. The erudite Professor Tamar (whose gender is never revealed) is ably assisted by four young solicitors: brilliant Serena, ditzy Julia, saintly Ragwort and goofy Cantrip.

Julia's aunt Regina gets involved in some British smalltown drama. The vicar is, ahem, "close friends" with an attractive young man. There's also a fortune teller with a wealthy secret client. In London, Selena is advising a bank president who suspects one of his underlings of leaking confidential information. Could the city and country plots be related? The fortune teller is found dead of natural causes....or was it?

I found the resolution a bit less satisfying than the other books in this series, but there was definitely a twist I didn't see coming. My favorite of the Hilary Tamar books remains The Shortest Way to Hades.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: An enemies-to-lovers story.
Pride and Protest, by Nikki Payne.

This is of course a modern take on Pride & Prejudice. Liza Bennett is a DJ and organizer trying to stop the gentrification of her neighborhood. Dorsey Fitzgerald is a reluctant CEO trying to uphold his mother's legacy of philanthropy. At issue is a housing development that his company's Board wants to build.

It's hate at first sight, they eventually soften toward each other, and he bungles his first declaration of love. The plot generally follows the classic original: he refuses to dance with her when they meet, her mother's trying to throw her at a rich guy, Dorsey's best friend falls for Liza's sister Jenae, etc. The scandal with Liza's younger sister is updated for the 21st century. There's also a tragic backstory for Jenae (trigger warning: child death) that has no counterpart in Pride & Prejudice.

One other way the story's been updated: there are some very sexy scenes, and an innovative variation on the "only one bed" trope. The conflict over the housing development is resolves with surprising ease, but it's a romance - love is supposed to conquer all.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A second-chance romance.
ASAP, by Axie Oh.

Teenagers Sori and Nathaniel first appeared as side characters in XOXO, but either book can be read as a stand-alone. Nathaniel is a Korean-American who has soared to stardom as a K-pop idol in a group called XOXO. Sori is a model being groomed for K-pop stardom by her mother, the CEO of the struggling entertainment company. Two years ago, they were caught in a relationship that violated the "no dating" clause that's common in contracts for K-pop stars. Sori's mother forced them apart, but their feelings for each other haven't changed.

The story is told from Sori's point of view, as she navigates the crossfire between her parents (who hate each other) and mentors a younger girl, Hyemi, in their newly formed musical group, ASAP. Sori begins to question whether she really wants the stardom she's been working toward.

We get appearances from Jenny, Jaewoo, and other characters from XOXO. Hyemi's crush on Nathaniel seems an unnecessary complication, but very quickly resolved, and I suspect we're being set up for a third romance with Hyemi and one of the other XOXO boys.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with a 42-year-old main character.
Presidential Mission, by Upton Sinclair.

This is book 8 in Sinclair's Lanny Budd series, taking place immediately after A World to Win. It begins with Lanny and his new wife Laurel arriving back in the US, and Lanny debriefing with his close friend, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  The early parts of the book are largely recap, setup, and "checking in" with characters from earlier books.

Lanny's success as a secret agent comes from hiding his socialist views, and pretending to be an apolitical businessman who views World War 2 only as a hindrance to his work as an art dealer. Prior to the war, he used a mutual interest in art to get close to some high-ranking Nazis, including Hitler himself. Lanny wants FDR to send him on a spy mission to Germany. FDR refuses, deeming it too dangerous. Naturally, fate intervenes in a big way.

Lanny must be incredibly smooth, because people constantly take him at his word, even when it endangers them to do so. Nazis, anti-Nazis, the French underground,  they all seem to believe whatever he tells them. Laurel shares his ideals and accepts the risks he takes, but the rest of his family never seems to question his months-long "business trips" away from his now-pregnant wife.

There's a particularly heart-rending scene where Lanny is contacted by a Jewish woman in Germany, who se family have all been "deported." She begs Lanny to do a sham marriage with her to get her out of Germany. Lanny can't endanger his mission, so he has to refuse - knowing she won't get out alive.

As with all the Lanny Budd novels, it's a mix of history, high-stakes adventure, political idealism, colorful characters, and a satisfying hero.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about dragons.
The Dragon's Hoard 2, edited by Carol Hightshoe.

Is it cheating on the challenge if I use an anthology where I'm one of the contributors? I really enjoyed the other 21 stories in the book, all about dragons and their treasure hoards. The stories are from the human's point of view; The Dragon's Hoard 3 has stories from the dragon's perspective.

The opening tale, "this story possesses you," by Adam Strassberg, makes very effective use of second-person narration to literally put the reader in the story.

Quite a few of the dragons hoard items other than gold. In "Domestication," by J.S. Rogers, the dragon collects bicycles. "The Hoarder of Songs," by Laura J. Underwood, has a nearly blind dragon obsessed with music. "Bookworms & Bookwyrms," by L.A. Knight,  is about a dragon librarian.

There are several comedy stories. "Whackin' Dragons," by John Lance, has an ill-advised attempt at ridding the narrator's house of a small dragon infestation. My favorite, though, is "Strange and Unusual Hoards," by Brooksie C. Fontaine, which includes a reality show about dragons who collect unlikely items.

And if you like the comedy stories, my "Inside Job" reveals how the dragon got all that treasure: frivolous lawsuits.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book that came out in a year ending in 24.
This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Black Contemporary Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander.

In the introduction, Alexander notes that Black poets are often "expected" to write about woe and struggle, and certainly some powerful writing has come out of those topics. But equally necessary is poetry about joy and wonder, and this volume is filled with poems of love, family, faith, heroes - and occasionally struggle, because joy can be found in standing up for justice. The contributors include many familiar names: Nikki Giovanni, Jericho Brown, Sonia Sanchez, Amanda Gorman - and many more who were new to me.

From the title poem, by Mahogany L. Browne:

There is no room on this planet for anything less than a miracle
We gather here today to revel in the rebellion of a silent tongue
Every day, we lean forward into the light of our brightest designs 
      & cherish the sun

There are poems about love: romantic, familial, and spiritual. There's the instant-classic Clint Smith poem This is an Incomprehensive List of All the Reasons I Know I Married the Right Person. And Alan King's Refractions, which describes a woman and her friends passing a group of men, bracing for the expected rude catcalls:

And when there were no thirsty stares,
did they see brothas aching for love's prism
to send each of them beaming in all directions?
Yo, D said, I want a family.
J shook his head, This single life is for the birds.

Is that why the sistas lingered, just close enough to hear y'all doo
wapping blues on a Friday with the late spring dawdling beyond
the threshold of dusk?

Is that why one of them found the courage to approach and said, I never
knew guys talked about things like this?

Even the poems about oppression are triumphant, refusing despair and fining meaning in the fight for something better. Whispers on the Wave, by Tanya Marie Matthews, begins:

whispers on the wave say daughter 
when I asked God why take me through such troubled water
He said your enemies can't swim.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book in a genre you normally avoid.
Slade House, by David Mitchell.

I'm a wimp when it comes to horror, but I've always liked David Mitchell's science fiction and uncategorizable books, so Slade House sat on my shelf for a long time. The plot is simpler than his longer books, but follows the pattern of having several shorter narratives, spread over different eras, that fit together. 

Slade House is a haunted house, but the creatures inhabiting it aren't ghosts. They're a sister and brother trying to achieve immortality, which requires devouring a soul from a specially-chosen victim every nine years. Most of the sections are from the victims' point of view, which gives maximum creepiness, but also requires a lot of exposition in dialogue in order to be understandable, so we get a lot of the villains bickering, and one outright villain monologue.

The book includes Dr. Marinus, a recurring character from all of Mitchell's books, and there's one character whose brother was a character in Mitchell's earlier book The Bone Clocks. Just as the sections of Slade House fit together into a narrative, each book works as a stand-alone but also fits into what Mitchell calls his "meta-novel."

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A memoir by a woman in rock & roll.
I, Tina: My Life Story, by Tina Turner with Kurt Loder.

This book follows the Queen of Rock & Roll from Nutbush, Tennessee (where she was born Anna Mae Bullock), through her early years of performing on the road with Ike Turner, and her eventual rise to stardom and emerging from his shadow. The book came out in 1986, so it's not her full life story, but there's plenty about the music, the family, and oh yes, the violence.

No matter how low your opinion of Ike Turner, it will be worse after reading this. I'm kind of amazed he agreed to be interviewed for it. Constant abuse of Tina, and also of the women he cheated with, and the kids. He couldn't keep musicians long because of his outbursts of rage. Interestingly, one of the things Tina credits with helping her endure this was her frequent visits to psychics and card readers, who promised a brighter future ahead.

The book quotes extensively from interviews with the people in her life: family members, colleagues, even the other women in Ike's life, some of whom became friends. The portrait that emerges is an unstoppable survivor, a woman whose powerful voice transcends the music.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with an unreliable narrator.
The Blessed, by Remy Apepp.

This is a strange, dark and gruesome story with a lyrical, poetic voice. It can be read as a sequel to Sand to Glass, but either works as a standalone. The Blessed is essentially a single story told twice, but from two very different points of view.

Luxanthus (Lux) wakes with no memory. His caretaker (jailer?), Illiaz, won't give straight answers to his questions. Why does he have nightmares? Why is he not allowed in the sunlight? What are he and Illiaz to each other? And what happened to his memory? We learn that Lux fought monsters known as the Accursed, and this may be related to why there are no mirrors available for Lux.

Things become clearer from Illiaz's point of view. Illiaz is almost inhumanly beautiful, and his love for Lux is absolute. Each was said to be Blessed, Lux as the perfect weapon, Illiaz as the perfect irresistible ornament. And yet each has reason to view himself as cursed.

A story that will bend your mind and break your heart.

​Trigger warnings for violence, terminal illness, and euthanasia.