If there’s one thing us Nerds love to do, it’s READ. We love books and are more than happy to let you know how we feel about each one!
Picture this: You finally move into the perfect house with your new husband, except it’s haunted…by his ex-wife… and everyone gaslights you about it. The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas takes the classic haunted house trope and drapes it in the rich texture of a gothic nightmare set in post-independence Mexico.
Taking well-known concepts and stories and breathing new life into them is a concept that I absolutely rock with and Silvia Moreno-Garcia shows a great a talent for it in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake feels like watching a sapphic Hallmark movie, but more human and with a sharper edge. The titular main character fits the cookie-cutter “big city girl” trope.
I went into City of Bones with mild curiosity, as I know people that have been really into the series years. What I got was… mixed. On the surface, it’s a decent urban fantasy. There’s hidden societies, demon-hunting, and secret bloodlines. But then it leans hard into that Special Girl Trope. The main character who discovers she’s not ordinary at all but actually super important and central to everything. Sometimes I can roll with it. I’m a Buffy guy! But here? It felt tired and predictable.
Grr, arg! I grew up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was SO ready to jump back into the universe with a new entry. In Every Generation by Kendare Blake had such an exciting premise: bringing the Slayer mythos into a new era with a fresh spin. The story takes place nearly two decades after end of season 7 of BtVS and follows Frankie, Willow’s daughter, a witch and somehow the new Slayer.
Middle books in trilogies are tricky. You’ve got to carry the momentum of book one while setting up the last book, and One Girl in All the World definitely leans into that “middle book” energy.
A book about reading books? What’s not to love?
Bookshops & Bonedust, the cozy prequel to Legends & Lattes captures everything that makes Travis Baldree’s world so endearing
Eartheater by Dolores Reyes definitely caught my attention with its premise. On paper it sounds super interesting: a girl who can see the brutal truth of crimes by eating dirt. It’s both strange and visceral with a lot of promise. However, for me, it never quite finds its footing.
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a haunting dive into cursed film, a skin-crawling horror romp that will leave you unsettled.
Blood, rage, and ruin. A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson is a love letter written like the kind of poetry that makes you stop mid-page just to breathe it in. Told through the eyes of Constanta, one of Dracula’s wives, it’s less a gothic romance and more the long, unflinching memoir of someone who’s survived the most intoxicating and destructive relationship of their life.