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.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book that was turned into a musical.
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.

This book is a mood. The narrator can be in a flower garden, and she can make the lilacs sound sinister and the azaleas downright hostile.

The narrator's future husband comments on her "unusual and lovely" name, but we never find out what it is. Du Maurier said later that she could never come up with a name that fit. But her namelessness seems nicely symbolic: especially at the beginning, she feels like nonentity, terrified of everyone, completely overshadowed by Maxim's first wife, Rebecca. We're told that Rebecca died in a drowning accident, but from the start it feels like there's more to the story.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, is hostile to the narrator, usually in passive-aggressive ways. She briefly pretends friendliness in order to give "advice" that leads the narrator into humiliation, then tries to taunt her into suicide. In large and small ways, she reminds the newcomer that she can never replace the legendary Rebecca.

*SPOILERS FOLLOW*

There's really no way to discuss this book without talking about the ending. At first I thought this was going to be a "Jane Eyre" situation where the first wife was locked in the attic. But no, Rebecca really is dead - because Maxim murdered her. The last part of the book is all about how Rebecca was a Bad Woman who deserved to die. She was constantly unfaithful, and she told Maxim she was pregnant with another man's child. The people who know about the murder (the narrator, Maxim's agent, even the magistrate) are entirely focused on protecting Maxim from the consequences of his actions. This is made to seem okay with the revelation that Rebecca had her own reason to deliberately goad Maxim into killing her.

Even before hearing the reason, the narrator's reaction to learning of the murder is relief. She'd been obsessed with the idea that Maxim still loved Rebecca, and she's thrilled to learn that he hated Rebecca, and loves his wife instead, yay! Du Maurier's descriptive powers are amazing, but I'm thinking this guy's love isn't such a prize, and the narrator seems more of nonentity than before.

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Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book by a blind or visually impaired author.
Agent of Change, by Ronald Linson.

This story is loaded with sensory detail. For instance, a character wears camouflage  on a rooftop with no greenery around, so he stands out "like a road flare." Elsewhere: "His clothes feel pink, blue, and green, and the sound of his breathing smells like roses and vinegar."

This is a brief novella (about 50 pages) where the narrator has been hired to travel back in time to stop a mass shooting - without harming the shooter. As often happens with time travel stories, the changes create complications down the road. The twist at the end makes perfect satisfying sense.