Author: Jessica Crawford

Book Review: SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN by John Wiswell

| Jessica Crawford

Holy moly! This is one unique story!

This is a sapphic romance where the monster falls in love with a woman in a family of monster hunters, told from the POV of the monster. It is GRISLY, full of body horror, but also rather charming and sweet. It tackles so much, including issues in regards to healthy relationships. It touches on autonomy, consent, and working through trauma; love, sexuality (and asexuality), and diverse feelings toward begetting and raising offspring. These things are masterfully woven into a story that is complete with a(n) (anti)hero, truly awful villains, romance, harrowing fights, and many things besides. This book may churn your stomach at times, but it is also guaranteed to warm the cockles of any fantasy-reader’s heart and/or egg sac (that’s a little monster humor there, you’ll have to read the book to be in on the joke.)

I can honestly say I’ve never read anything else quite like this before, and am truly impressed!

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Battle of the Book Covers March 2024 Edition!

| Jessica Crawford

Here are the books that I read in March that have differing book covers. Which ones do you prefer?

A decaying horse or human skeleton covered in insect and plant life? I can’t choose, both are perfectly horrifying! I suppose I like the font the the UK cover of What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher a bit better, if I had to find something off of which to pick a favorite.

I think both of these covers for Blake Crouch’s Recursion are fine, but I’ll go with the US edition this time, because the UK cover makes me think of a spaceship or some other form of alien technology, which is not what it’s meant to do.

Although the cover image including the manor house might be more fitting, I hands down prefer the US cover of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan – beautiful color scheme, enticing swirling smoke imagery, mysterious lady in gorgeous apparel, shadowy hands, oh my!

I think the US version of the cover of How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin has a super cute and engaging art style, much more so than the UK version.

I think the cover design of the US version of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is unique and interesting, plus I’m just not a fan of the colors used in the UK edition.

So other than the T. Kingfisher Sworn Soldier novella, which was a close call anyway, I guess this month is a big dub for the US of A. What are your thoughts?

Book Review: HOW TO SOLVE YOUR OWN MURDER by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

I greatly enjoyed this whodunit with a twist, that being that the murder victim left behind clues in all her research into figuring out who was going to kill her!

Annie Adams finds herself written into her Great Aunt Frances’ will without ever having met the woman, but then almost immediately Frances winds up murdered, just as a fortune teller told her she would be when she was seventeen years old. Her recently revised will stipulates that Annie and one other relative must compete to figure out who murdered her; whoever wins, gets the entire inheritance. If neither solves the crime by the end of a week’s time, then the estate goes to property developers who will likely turn it into a county club and golf course.

While investigating, Annie also reads through her great aunt’s journal from the time when her (mis)fortune was originally told. In its pages, she meets the teenage versions of many of the same villagers she is just meeting in person, a whole cast of characters in an idyllic English village.

I did have to suspend my disbelief a bit when some parts of the mystery were too far-fetched, but I was having enough fun that I didn’t mind doing that. I was kept flipping pages to find out what had happened! It keeps you guessing right up until the end. I do wish we delved a little deeper into some of these characters, but I can see how that would be a challenge with first person narration.

Overall this was a fun read. Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: THE DJINN WAITS A HUNDRED YEARS by Shubnum Khan

| Jessica Crawford

This book checks off a lot of boxes for me: Gothic, poignant, slow burn, literary. I enjoy reading Gothic tales in new and different locales other than your standard British moors. And there was a lot of nostalgia for me here, bringing me back to all the time spent at the home of a childhood friend where we watched Bollywood movies and I learned a bit of Hindi.

After the death of her mother, Sana and her father leave their farm in South Africa and move into a dilapidated mansion on the coast. The grand estate was abandoned in a rush in 1932 and has been falling apart ever since, eventually being turned into tenement apartments that draw an eclectic group of individuals all seeking to forget their pasts. What a cast of characters!

“…those people who live at the edge are the ones who are really living–they know what it is to exist“

Sana was hoping to leave behind the things that haunt her when they moved, but not only is she disappointed in that, she finds her new home is itself haunted by its own tragedy. The quiet, curious girl looking to understand the world around her starts digging, and much to the house’s chagrin, begins unearthing the secrets of the original inhabitants who fled over 80 years before.

It has sensed for a long time her uneasy presence in the house but it has ignored it the way it always ignores the presences of other things unrelated to its grief.

I really liked both timelines in this book: the history of Meena and Akbar, as well as Sana and her fellow misfits doing the best they can in their current day circumstances. For whatever reason stories that include twins often wind up being some of my favorites, and so the conjoined twin who did not survive the separation surgery was like an added bonus here, even though she’s horrible.

My one complaint is that I wanted a bit more from the ending. It ended okay, but the execution of the climax and resolution seemed a bit lacking to me, compared to how wonderful the writing throughout the rest of the book was. But I loved every minute building up to that point!

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Book Review: WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT (SWORN SOLDIER #2) by T. Kingfisher

| Jessica Crawford

“Blessed Virgin,” I whispered, even though I couldn’t even hear myself. “Why must you keep sending me innocent monsters?”

Another atmospheric, creepy, entertaining and delightful novella in the Sworn Soldier universe.

Sworn soldier Alex Easton has invited mycologist Eugenia Potter to stay at their father’s old hunting lodge in Gallacia to study the local mushrooms. They arrive to find the lodge in disarray, as it turns out the caretaker has recently died, although folk from the local village are hesitant to say what killed him – natural causes, or supernatural ones? What is superstition and folklore, and what is a very real threat? The story also touches on subjects such as war and PTSD.

Soldier’s heart doesn’t know the difference between terrible things. Fungus or cannon fire, it’s all just the war.

As always, Kingfisher’s writing made me laugh out loud at times, while also being perfectly spooky and evocative.

Miss Potter gave him a much warmer smile over her shoulder than I’d ever seen her give to anything that didn’t have spores.

This is Gothic writing at its finest, with a healthy sprinkling of Eastern European folktales, humor, and admirable messages. You love to see it!

“May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,” I said, lifting my wine.

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BOTBC February 2024

| Jessica Crawford

February was a slower reading month for me (at least compared to how much I have typically been reading this past year or so), and only one book I read appears to have different US and UK cover designs. That book was How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files #1) by Kristen Perrin, with an upcoming publication date of March 26th (review to come!)

There is no contest with these two, I vastly prefer to US cover. The style and artwork, the colors, everything!

What are your thoughts? Is there something you like better about the UK edition?

Book Review: 2024 HIGH CALIBER AWARDS

| Jessica Crawford

This is a collection of the winning entries to a science fiction/fantasy/military novella contest, published by Cannon Publishing (J.F. Holmes), with writing from Kevin Harris, Sam Rob, Brian Gifford, SC Visel, K.M. Sykes, Tim Hanlon, Doug Goodall, J.P. Staszak, and John M. Campbell.

One of the authors is a coworker of mine, and an all around great person, and so I purchased this anthology to read his work, but the quality of writing across the board was great!

Each story here was either a 3 or 4 star read for me. If some of them were turned into longer works I might rate them even higher – the shorter form just doesn’t always work for me personally, and although these meet the word count for novellas, they just felt a bit more like short stories to me, giving readers a snapshot of life in the imagined worlds rather than a complete and fully fleshed-out story arc. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that format, I just find it’s harder to wow me with it.

There were two entries that I wound up skipping, but again it was a personal taste thing, not a quality thing. One had a very interesting premise but the entire story was the details of a single battle, and as a reader (and even while watching movies), I find nothing more boring than that. But obviously that’s me, and if you found yourself picking up this anthology because of the “military” bit in the description, then clearly there is a good chance you will feel differently!

But overall I really enjoyed these stories of monks, trolls, alien invasions, and dark magic. There is a lot of talent on display here, and these authors are worth keeping an eye on for sure. Bravo, everyone!

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Book Review: THE WALTHAM MURDERS by Susan Clare Zalkind

| Jessica Crawford

For whatever reason, I was OBSESSED with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, and all things tangential – including the Waltham murders, and Ibragim Todashev’s fatal interview with the FBI. There has been a certain lack of transparency in regards to some of these things, and Zalkind’s book with all her own investigative journalism on the topics was everything I could have hoped for and more. I was absolutely riveted from start to finish.

Zalkind’s reporting style here is top notch. She shares all of her primary and secondary sources as she is able to, and is sure to point out that people may or may not be telling the truth and that she can’t tell you which it is, but she presents what evidence she has that may either support or refute what others have told her in her interviews. In the end she is able to say, “Here is what the evidence shows happened in Waltham/with Todashev, and here is why authorities have never told the public about it (not even the families of the victims murdered over a decade ago)”. Her investigation and reporting is thorough, and she never makes unsubstantiated claims, but rather always supports her conclusions with what she was able to learn, with the caveat that there may be more we don’t know and what that other information might possibly pertain to. Her personal relationship with one of the murder victims does not prevent her manner of reporting from being admirably professional.

The organization of the book did throw me a bit at times, but I assumed the author had her reasons for presenting the information in the order she chose, and I was always able to follow.

My Kindle tells me that I made 275 highlights in this book – some of those are of multiple paragraphs! There is just so much here that I want to be able to look back at. I think this likely means I should just reread the whole thing sometime. I got the ebook version for free through the Amazon Prime First Reads program, but am planning on buying a print copy of the book to support the author and all the amazing work she has done over the past 10+ years, uncovering truths about a topic I have long been fascinated by.

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Book Review: THE FOX WIFE by Yangsze Choo

| Jessica Crawford

An emotional and intriguing tale incorporating elements of Chinese folklore, presented as historical fiction with a side of magical realism.

Chapters alternate between two POVs. Snow’s chapters are told in first person past tense (presented as her diary entries), Bao’s in third person present. Both were equally fascinating, although I did at times take issue with being pulled from one storyline at a particularly good part to shift back to the other. But chapters were never super long, so you never have to wait long to switch back.

Snow is a fox, the kind that can take the form of a human. Once she planned on making the thousand-year journey, a morally refining spiritual pilgrimage, with her mate. But after the greed and cruelty of humans shatters their world, she sets out on a mission of vengeance instead.

Meanwhile, Bao is an older gentleman who has had the ability to hear when someone is lying ever since his childhood nanny prayed to a fox spirit for him. Using his talent, he has become a freelance investigator of sorts. When he is tasked with discovering the identity of a woman found frozen to death in an alleyway, he finds himself on a path that seems to be leading him ever-closer to the subject of a lifelong fixation of his: foxes.

I really liked the unique and fully fleshed characters in this book. The mythological elements added a very nice mysterious and enchanting touch (what is just superstition, and what is something more?). But what resonanted the most with me was the story of grief, and the changes people go through as they process it. I love how the Yangsze Choo’s novels always feature this beautiful mix of magical and moving.

There were several fantastic quotes in this book that had me wishing I was reading it on my ereader so I could highlight them with the swipe of a finger, but I was too lazy to note them any other way. Maybe the quotes other readers submit here on Goodreads will help me out here.

I definitely enjoyed this book a lot more than The Night Tiger (which I still really liked!), but I don’t know if it can oust The Ghost Bride’s spot for number one in my esteem — I think perhaps a reread of that is called for to be sure!

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