I read a lot of different genres last quarter. This post contains historical fiction, true crime, Shakespeare, modern fantasy, science fiction, and memoir. Every book was a different genre! Let’s stop talking about them and get to the reviews. 

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Devil’s Brood (Sharon Kay Penman) – “A.D. 1172. Henry II’s three eldest sons conspire against him and align themselves with his greatest enemy, King Louis of France, but it’s Eleanor of Aquitaine’s involvement in the plot to overthrow her husband that proves to be the harshest betrayal. As a royal family collapses and a marriage ends in all but name, the clash between these two strong-willed and passionate souls will have far-reaching and devastating consequences throughout Christendom” (x).

I’ve read most of Penman’s novels, and this was one of the remaining ones. To no one’s shock (as, again, I’ve read most of her novels), I loved it. 

This is a time period that has always been fascinating to me, beyond just the general medieval time period. I’ve read a bunch about Eleanor and Henry’s passionate and intense relationship, and a bunch about the end of Eleanor’s life and the reign of her sons. But I hadn’t read as much about the time period in between: when they were estranged and Eleanor was (literally) kept prisoner by her husband.

This book covers so much time, from the start of their estrangement to shortly after the death of Henry II and the start of Richard I’s reign. Perfect for history nerds like me, but you don’t have to read her other books to read this one. 

20+ of the Best History Novels

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (Michelle McNamara) – “For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, Michelle McNamara […] was determined to find the violent psychopath she called ‘the Golden State Killer.’ Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was. […] Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic—one which fulfilled Michelle’s dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer” (x).

Ohhhhh my goodness this was so good. And I’m SO glad that they caught him! I was glued to this from the second I started, and after I finished I immediately went to go read more about GSK and his capture. I think this is a book that you don’t have to be interested in true crime to read and enjoy.

​​17 Classic Novels Worth Reading

King Lear (Shakespeare) – “The play tells us about families struggling between greed and cruelty, on the one hand, and support and consolation, on the other. Emotions are extreme, magnified to gigantic proportions. We also see old age portrayed in all its vulnerability, pride, and, perhaps, wisdom—one reason this most devastating of Shakespeare’s tragedies is also perhaps his most moving” (x).

I’ve been slowly but surely catching up on all of the Shakespeare I didn’t read in undergrad or grad school, and King Learn was one of them. 

Like many plays, it’s better seen or read aloud than read in a book, so towards the end, I started reading pieces of it out loud to myself in my apartment, which made it so much better. I then watched the TV version with Emma Thompson and Florence Pugh, which was also super good. 

All of this is to say that I enjoyed King Lear, but I got more out of it when I watched it or read it out loud, unsurprisingly as it’s a play. I also totally get why King Learn has been described as a very difficult play to move to film as it’s dark and devastating. 

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The Subtle Knife (Phillip Pullman) – “Lost in a new world, Lyra finds Will—a boy on the run, a murderer—a worthy and welcome ally. For this is a world where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and witches share the skies with troops of angels. Each is searching—Lyra for the meaning of Dark Matter, Will for his missing father—but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, their destinies are bound together…until they are split apart” (x).

This was a reread, and I definitely enjoyed it. The more I read The Subtle Knife, the more I like it, but it’s definitely my least favorite of the trilogy. But I still love it!

19 Retellings of Classic Fiction You Need To Read

11/22/63 (Stephen King) – “It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

“So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying” (x).

I don’t know. I mean, I read it, and I’m glad I read it, but it took me SO LONG to get into it. I didn’t start wanting to read it regularly until I got to the last third of the book. And I have absolutely no desire to watch the TV show. 

The other thing I’ll say about this book is that it’s very clearly not Stephen King’s main genre. If you told me that this book was written by someone who had published over 60 novels, I wouldn’t believe you. 

Don’t read this unless you really want to read it and it had been on your TBR list for years, like me.

17 Modern Classic Novels

I’m Glad My Mom Died (Jennette McCurdy) – “Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called ‘calorie restriction,’ eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, ‘Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?’ […] In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (‘Hi Gale!’), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants” (x). 

This book was everything everyone said it was. McCurdy is a super-talented writer and I definitely recommend it. She lived through some intense, upsetting things, but I do think that the most horrible of it has already been publicized, so don’t worry about worse things being in the book and not publicly discussed. 

That being said, I don’t recommend this book if you’re triggered by messed-up family dynamics. 

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