Popsugar Reading Challenge category: Healing fiction.
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig.

I'd never heard of "healing fiction," but this title came up a lot in discussions. Maybe this genre just isn't my jam.

Predictability is not necessarily a fatal flaw in a book. We all know the detective will solve the mystery, and the romance will end with happily ever after. But in this book, the predictability is so obviously in the service of Making a Point.

After a series of emotional blows, a depressed Nora Seed takes an overdose. Hovering between life and death, she finds herself at the Midnight Library, with an infinite number of books. Each represents one of the different lives she could have had, if she'd made different choices. Nora can try out as many lives as she wants, and stay if she finds one she'd rather have.

You see where this is going, right?

Every life turns out to have its own disappointments. When she makes an objectively "better" choice, it leads to a tragedy that could not have been foreseen or prevented. In her original life, her father's death was devastating for Nora. But when she winds up in a life where he survived, she still chooses not to stay. It would seem inevitable that she would experience some guilt (however irrational) that his chance of survival was indirectly due to a choice she made, but this is just glossed over.

Finally she finds a life that's perfect. But wait - it's too perfect.

It can't possibly be a spoiler to say that she returns to her original life. And lo and behold, it wasn't as bad as she thought. There were people she thought had rejected her, but she'd misunderstood. Things that she'd thought were her fault, actually weren't. A brighter future awaits.

​The book deals with some heavy issues: suicide, addiction, mental health. But the "Making a Point" tone makes it feel like it was written for kids.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book that takes place at a luxury resort.
Floating Hotel, by Grace Curtis.

The Abeona is a spaceship that functions as a luxury hotel, making the rounds between the planets of the Empire. The Empire has two obsessions. One is denying the existence of aliens - even fiction about the possibility is illegal. The other fixation is catching the Lamplighter, a mysterious figure who pens revolutionary missives - and whose schedule in spreading them coincides exactly with the Abeona's route.

Everyone among the staff & guests has a secret or a tragic backstory. A refugee from a mobbed-up planet. A former pop star. A pair of hired killers. A servant casually left behind when her employer disembarked. And, of course, a couple of academics who've discovered a message from aliens. The book is almost like a collection of overlapping short stories.

And somewhere, in the midst of all that, is the Lamplighter.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book where nature is the antagonist.
The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin.

​This book is third in the Broken Earth trilogy, which began with The Fifth Season. The story takes "nature as the antagonist" to a whole new level: the earth is sentient, and it's very, very angry at what humans have done to it.

The point of view alternates between Essun, the main character of the previous books, her daughter Nassun, and Hoa, Essun's stone eater companion. Nassun was taken from her mother and endured a whole lot of trauma discovering her powers. Like Essun, Nassun is an orogene, with power to control earth and stone. Orogene children sometimes accidentally cause earthquakes, or turn people to stone.

The earth is enraged that the moon has been knocked out of its orbit, drastically changing the climate. (Hoa explains the how and why of this, but I found it somewhat confusing.) Essun plans to sacrifice herself to bring the moon back; Nassun plans to use the moon to destroy the earth. Naturally, they wind up facing off.

This series is original and ambitious, but really grim. There are multiple instances where some have to suffer or die for the Greater Good - but as Hoa points out, these supposed necessities are choices, and there were always other options with a different price to pay. As with the Inheritance Trilogy, Jemisin is ultimately optimistic, but trigger warnings for pretty much every form of cruelty, including toward children.

Popsugar Reading Challenge Category: A prompt from the 2015 Popsugar Reading Challenge (The first book by a famous author).
Evelina, Or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance Into the World, by Frances Burney.

Frances Burney was one of the most popular authors of the late 18th century, but I'd never heard of her until I read Jane Austen's Bookshelf. I was expecting her work to be stuffy and moralizing, like Samuel Richardson's Pamela. or Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple. Considering Burney's influence on Austen, I should have known better. Evelina is entertaining, funny, and surprisingly relatable.

Evelina is the daughter of a nobleman, but her mother died young, and her father denies their secret marriage and has never claimed Evelina. She is raised by a country clergyman, who allows her to visit London with some friends, with warnings about the dangers of the city.

At her first London  ball, Evelina is approached by an unpleasant man who asks her to dance. She politely (if falsely) claims she's already committed to dancing with someone else. The guy follows her around the whole evening, haranguing her with questions and generally making a pest of himself. I thought: wow, some things haven't changed in 250 years!

The "gentleman," Sir Clement Willoughby, quickly becomes the bane of Evelina's existence, always popping up on her excursions and even insinuating himself with the family that's hosting her. He has a knack for weaponizing the rules of politeness against her: when he offers her a ride home in his coach, she can't refuse without appearing to accuse him of ill intent, which would be rude of her. But he does exactly what she'd feared, "accidentally" giving the coachman wrong directions so she's stuck alone with him.

Not to worry: there's a much nicer gentleman, Lord Orville, around to give Evelina her happily-ever-after ending.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book that includes something from your bucket list.
Psychic Hang Gliding, by Pittsburgh Pat.

I was only able to find one novel about hang gliding. Psychic Hang Gliding is a fun, quirky book. Putting "a sexy beach book" on the cover seems a little over the top, and the focus of the story is definitely on the psychic parts, not the sex.

It's 1990, and Blaze is a 23-year-old student of spiritual practices. He develops involuntary telepathy, which makes his bartending job overwhelming, and he quits to work as a hang gliding instructor in a remote area. His psychic powers include levitation, healing, and weather control. What he can't control is his yearning for the woman who left him, even when someone new is aggressively pursuing him.

The author does a good job of putting the reader in the scene, giving us the feel of hang gliding and even of spiritual experiences.

There's a weird epilogue where Blaze's spiritual mentor visits him with a warning. It feels like it's setting up a sequel, but as far as I know, there isn't one.

"Yay! All Queer" is a forthcoming fiction anthology from Inkd Publishing. It includes my short story, "Victorious Love," a rom-com about two women who fall in love at an "ex-gay" conference.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about a running club.
Where They Last Saw Her, by Marcie R. Rendon.

This is a thriller set on an Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota, and the author weaves in information about the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Quill is running in the woods when she hears a scream, and later learn that a woman has disappeared. She has suspicions about the nearby "man camp" of pipeline workers. Other women and girls disappear over the course of the book, and Quill and her friends start running together for safety.

The author does a good job of creating atmosphere: the cold quiet of a Minnesota winter, the vivid red of the women's skirts at an event to draw attention to the missing women (because red is the only color spirits can see).

Fictional characters are allowed to make mistakes, of course; it would be boring if they only made good decisions. But Quill makes SO MANY bad decisions that I got completely exasperated with her. Repeatedly putting herself in danger. Keeping information from her husband. Hanging on to evidence that should go to the police (and for an unconvincing reason). And missing a whole clothesline's worth of red flags when a friend is in danger.

Some of the disappearances end in rescue, some in rescue - and, realistically, there's at least one where we'll never know what happened.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book you've always avoided reading.
The Fifth Season, by  N.K. Jemisin.

Trigger warnings for extreme violence and cruelty, including toward children.

​This category caused a lot of consternation on the Goodreads discussion boards. What qualifies as "always avoided reading"? Why would you then choose to read a book where that was the case? But I immediately knew it would be this book. I'd read and enjoyed Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy, and had heard great things about the Broken Earth trilogy, a triple Hugo winner that starts with this book. But I'd been warned: "This one will break your heart."

The warning was entirely called for. This book is interesting and well written, but it is GRIM. It starts with a three-year-old being murdered by his father, and that's not even the worst thing that happens to a child in this book.

As often happens in science fiction, some people are born with special powers, and they are feared and hated as a result, sometimes killed by their own families. Orogenes have power over earth and stone, including controlling earthquakes. The fear of them isn't entirely irrational: there are multiple instances throughout the books of orogene children accidentally killing people. An organization called the Fulcrum takes the children to teach them self-control, and assigns them guardians. There are definite hints that there is something sinister about the Fulcrum. And now, an unnatural disaster has hit, blotting out the sun with ash and leaving the world in danger of starvation.

There are three narratives. Damaya is a child whose parents hand her over to the Fulcrum. Syenite is a Fulcrum-trained orogene, sent on a mission with a powerful man (and ordered to produce a baby with him). Essun is fortyish, and hid her orogene powers until her husband killed their son and fled with their daughter. Essun is referred to throughout the story as "you," and eventually we learn who's narrating her story to her, and what the connection is between the three characters.

​It's an ambitious series, with complex characters and world-building. But it absolutely will break your heart.

I now have my very own  Little Free Library! You can find the ones near you on the LFL website. Take a book and/or leave a book!

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A redo of a 2024 category (I chose "book with a title that's a complete sentence").
Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud, by Becky Holmes.

Like most women who spend too much time online, I get approached on social media by men who give off massive scammer red flags. I block, delete and move on. Author Becky Holmes decided to have some fun with them instead.

Scammers who target women tend to follow similar scripts. (The scripts are a little different for male victims, which may be the subject of the next book.) They usually claim to be widowed, and either a soldier or an oil rig worker (jobs with a built-in excuse for any lapses in contact). They start with “love bombing,” a too-good-to-be-true online romance with promises to meet in person (but plans keep getting delayed). Then there’s an “emergency” where the scammer needs a relatively small amount of money, maybe a few hundred, which for some reason must be delivered via crypto or gift cards. The emergencies and demands for money keep escalating for as long as the victim can be strung along.
Some will even run a secondary scam where, once exposed, the scammer will claim “I started out trying to cheat you, but I’ve developed real feelings for you.” Others have infiltrated Facebook support groups for scam victims, claiming to know someone who can get their money back — just send them a few bank details. Holmes includes resources for scam victims in the UK.

One scam variation is the celebrity imposter, who wants money for a “private, unadvertised performance for superfans only,” or for a charity (but the money has to be sent through him, for tax purposes). At one point, Holmes created a group chat for the five Keanu Reeveses who were following her. She also heard from scammers claiming to be Liam Neeson, Brad Pitt, Prince William and, inexplicably, Prince Andrew. (Holmes drily notes that she’s a few decades too old for Andrew’s reputed taste.) 
​
Holmes enjoyed messing with the scammers, dropping comments like, “Can I bring my sister when we meet? I’ll have to release her from the tumble dryer, but she should be dry by then.” She gave out addresses in imaginary towns with names like Knackered Sphincter. She sent  “gift card codes” like 5UCH 4 RU8815H 4TTEMPT or U 4R3NT V3RY G00D 4T TH15. She occasionally claimed to have flown to Los Angeles (or wherever the scammer was supposed to be) so they could meet up for a quickie wedding. When nothing else got rid of them, she’d claim to have just killed someone. (At least one scammer said he could connect her with someone who could get rid of the body — and would take payment in gift cards).

The book provides serious information, examining the practical and emotional damage of being scammed, but also manages to be scathingly funny.