Book #41 of 2025: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow An atmospheric modern gothic / romantasy, in which a feisty heroine from the wrong side of the tracks is drawn to the creepy haunted house in her community and its reclusive and volatile caretaker. My favorite part of this story is its rural Kentucky setting, …
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Book #161 of 2022: A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (Fractured Fables #2) I enjoyed A Spindle Splintered for its fresh take on fairy tales (by means of a terminally-ill young queer woman from our world discovering she’s an iteration of the Sleeping Beauty trope and then traveling throughout the multiverse rescuing some of …
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Book #332 of 2021: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (Fractured Fables #1) This delightful novella is one of the more original fairy tale retellings that I’ve seen, pitching its version of Sleeping Beauty as a young woman from our world, suffering from a debilitating illness predicted to kill her within a year, who …
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Book #275 of 2020: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow I like the concept of a historical fantasy novel where the women’s suffrage movement is accompanied by a resurgent interest in witchcraft, and how author Alix E. Harrow uses that framework to offer some incisive feminist commentary on marginalized voices preserving knowledge …
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Book #195 of 2019: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow This is a lovely fantasy debut about portals to other worlds, the power of stories, and the tension between stable stagnation and unpredictable change. The prose is lyrically beautiful in the Laini Taylor fashion, and the plotline of a mixed-race girl …
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