Clara's Reviews

Journalist Doug Bierend takes us on a world tour of fungi people, exploring unique fungi-focused subcultures, groups using mushrooms to transform ecology and medicine, and people in the big business of mushrooms. He invites readers to question our assumptions about social structures, biology, and the process of science. Citizen scientists and leftists looking to nature for more sustainable and less extractive models of living will find lots to ponder in In Search of Mycotopia. 
—CLARA

With some of the best WLW (women-loving-women) erotic scenes in romance, the novel that Twitter dubbed “the MILF book” is a hot and surprisingly feelings-filled read. Cassie is an effortlessly cool college senior trying to move past her rocky beginnings. Erin is chic and hyper-successful, with no time for post-divorce romance. A spur-of-the-moment bar hookup during family weekend at her daughter’s college spirals into taboo passion and sizzling tension.  
—CLARA

It's hard to talk about this book without drawing comparisons to Daniel Wallace's Big Fish, and that's a great thing! The story travels back and forth through time in telling the multigenerational story of a family and their land in Alabama. This history is being passed from one generation to the next in this hodgepodge storytelling that captivates as much as it obfuscates. - Clara

Dunnett’s historical fiction reads like epic fantasy in its breadth of memorable characters, complex political intrigues, and extremely detailed world building. If you thought Game of Thrones was too dense, skip this one. If you want to hear a villainous rogue speaking in Shakesperean riddles while engaged in madcap adventures, this is your new favorite series! - Clara

An acid-trip of environmental fiction. As I tried to follow the narrator's stream-of-consciousness I found myself in a tug-of-war between frightening questions about the shapeshifting protagonist and the seductively luscious prose. The book contains violence, misogyny, climate apocalypse, and the dark-side of mankind’s clannish instincts, so content warnings apply. - Clara

If every family has ghosts in their attic, think how many more accumulate in a sprawling family-run hotel. The Sikorsky family members come alive in their respective vignettes with their unique voices and inner worlds fully explored even as the broader plot unfolds. What makes The Hotel Neversink really sing to me is that the atmosphere and eeriness are always partnered with a vivid grittiness. There's blood and sweat on these pages and I couldn’t put it down. - Clara

Gideon the Ninth is as if a liberated, lesbian Bronte sister wrote about necromatic death cult nuns in space, gothic drama and all. That is to say, this book makes dreams come true. Mouthy jock/swordswoman Gideon is pulsingly alive in the center of a mileu of fascinatingly macabre characters. High fantasy world building, brilliant, quick-witted dialogue—you can't ask for a more fresh, visceral, or mind-blowing fantasy debut. Read it! - Clara

A new mom breastfeeds the devil. Lady thieves dance with ghosts. A school boy falls in love with a 2,000-year-old bog mummy. Every story in Karen Russell's new book thrills me. The close cooperation of the mundane and the fantastic feeds a witty, insightful perspective on humans and our inner worlds.  - Clara

I want to be Vivian Liao when I grow up. Tech genius, revolutionary subversive and chosen by a god, she is at the center of a whirlwind adventure across the galaxy to save space, time and autonomy. I loved the unique, brash characters running around in Gladstone's magic and computer-science-based world. So fun! - Clara

In the center of New Orleans's Reconstruction efforts, Drake LeVeq and Valinda Lacy are trying to build a better world for the newly free city. I'd never read a historical novel set in this era before and I completely devoured this. Jenkins brings this world to life with all its competing factions, lively rebirth, ruling families, and steamy passion. Laissez les bon temps rouler! - Clara