A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (audio)

Posted on March 30, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Loving everything I’ve read by Sangu Mandanna, but **especially** The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, I was delighted to hear about this new one on audio. Thanks, Liz!

This is quite in the spirit of that other title, with themes of family, love, belonging, finding one’s own tribe, and owning one’s own strengths, weaknesses, and specialties. When we meet her, Sera Swan is a teenaged witch in training. More or less abandoned by her parents, she lives with her much beloved great aunt Jasmine at the Batty Hole Inn, which they run together. They have recently been joined by a witch in fox’s clothing (she is trapped in a fox’s body after a spell gone wrong) named Clemmie. When Jasmine dies in the garden, Clemmie gives Sera the spell to resurrect her, which Sera quickly does. She is probably the most powerful witch in all of Britain – despite being a girl, and still young, and most upsettingly to those in charge, a half-Icelandic, half-Indian, nonwhite person (the British Guild of Sorcery being as stodgy and, yes, racist as we might expect it to be). Jasmine is indeed brought back to life, along with (accidentally) her long-dead pet rooster, Roo-Roo, a mere rooster skeleton but avidly underfoot. But this great powerful spell has cost Sera virtually all of her magical power. This is devastating, because Sera loves her magic. Because the resurrection spell was not strictly legal, Sera has been exiled from the Guild to boot. (None of this is especially spoiler-y as it all takes place in the first few pages.)

Fast forward, and an adult Sera remains at Jasmine’s side, managing the Batty Hole Inn with much frustration, creative cursing, and precious little magic. She still mourns what she has lost, and thinks constantly about how to regain her power. But she is lucky to have Aunt Jasmine, for one – and Roo-Roo – and a motley crew of other residents: there is Nicholas, an awkward young man who thinks himself a knight, complete with shining armor and a very real sword; Matilda, a grumpy older woman who loves to garden (badly) and has become close to Jasmine; Sera’s cousin Theo, another young witch whose immediate family has abdicated; and still Clemmie, still a grumpy, meddling fox-witch. One of Sera’s spells from back before she lost her powers still protects the inn from those who wish harm, but reveals it especially to those in need of its particular kind of succor, which is how Sera has found herself surrounded by such loveable, messy eccentrics. And then a new addition to Batty Hole arrives. Luke has long been at odd angles to the Guild, but finds meaningful work in academic research if he keeps his head down; but his younger sister Posie is not so under-the-radar. At nine years old, she is a powerful witch and also autistic, which means she is not inclined to follow rules, including the all-important one about not letting mainstream society find out about magic. Luke is running out of options to keep his dear sister safe; they are quite on the run when they arrive at Batty Hole. The refugees only mean to stay a short while, but the two magical children, Theo and Posie, do well together, and Luke and Sera (onetime misfit magical children themselves) may have assistance to offer each other in turn. The newcomers fit neatly into the inn’s batty little family. Sera might even get her magic back – but at what cost?

Sera had always been good at fortitude. Fortitude was her friend. She had fortituded her way through undependable parents, megalomaniac mentors, scheming foxes, the death of a loved one, the resurrection of said loved one, the loss of her magic, and quite a large number of fiascos big and small since then. Unfortunately, she and fortitude seemed to have now parted ways, because Sera, glaring fearsomely at an empty glass teapot, was at her wits’ end.

So. There is a lovely built family of oddballs, finding ways to relate to each other on nontraditional terms. There is the trick of finding where we each fit in, and caring for children – and adults – who are different, but not less than. There are many kinds of love, including familial and romantic (and just a little sex), and at every stage of life. There is awe and magic, and there are bad guys and one battle in particular. There are absolutely laugh-out-loud lines, and Nicholas’s loveable but quite silly jousting. It’s extremely sweet, but I brought a sweet tooth to this cozy fantasy tale about community and gumption. Samara MacLaren’s narration was fun and expressive (and great points for so many accents) – perfect. I am 100% all in for Sangu Mandanna.

Rating: 8 scones.

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Wolfsong by TJ Klune (audio)

Posted on March 20, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I took great pleasure in this great big Klune novel, first in a series (squeal!). At 19 hours, and over 500 pages in print, this is a nice deep dive: make sure you have the time, and it will be well rewarded.

We meet Ox when he is 12 years old, and his father, a violent drunk, is leaving. The father is not seen again, but he looms throughout the story, quoted as telling Ox that he’s stupid, that he will get shit all his life, that men don’t cry. Ox does go through some shit, but also finds so much love and surrogate family. The father is proven wholly wrong in the other respects, repeatedly and throughout, but Ox will be the last to believe that he is not stupid, that he is special, strong, capable, loved, and that his tears are okay.

Ox does have a lovely mother, and over time, forms bonds with his father’s former boss, now his own: Gordo, who runs an auto shop. The other employees at Gordo’s treat Ox as their own, too. And then, on his sixteenth birthday, he meets a ten-year-old boy named Joe, and will never be the same. Joe and his family are charismatic, powerful, beautiful people; they take Ox as one of their own, although it takes a little while to figure out what-all that means.

What follows is the building of family ties that are both literal, in this fantasy world, and figuratively, rather a fantasy of what we regular people might dream possible: indelibly strong connections and complete commitments. But also, drama and violence and betrayals, death and loss and grief; and also such love and passion, and just one or two extremely hot and fairly detailed sex scenes, quite late in the book. There were lines of absolutely exquisite humor, even among some of the worst and most painful parts. I wanted to include some of those here, but they were either too spicy or too spoiler-y, so please just believe me when I say Klune can make me laugh and cry at the very same time. For this reader, at least, he just excels at making me feel so much, so deeply. I would follow these characters anywhere.

This story is set in Green Creek, Oregon, a small, working-class town where the gritty real-world sort of bad things happen, but magic is also possible. A young boy who was told that he was big and dumb and slow can grow up to find and do surprising things. A young boy who has been horribly traumatized can remake himself, surrounded by love. I think I’ll stop here, because I want this beautiful book’s many, deep, complex twists and surprises to find you – if you choose – as they found me, unawares. I’m really excited about the rest of this series.

Kirt Graves narrates this audiobook beautifully. I’m sad that I’m not listening to him right now.

Rating: 9 slices of cucumber.

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The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

Posted on March 16, 2026 by pagesofjulia

That’s what magic was: words that brought thought to life. And Terlu was very, very good with words – or at least with words like this. She couldn’t guarantee that the right ones were going to come out of her mouth in a random conversation, but this… this she felt confident about.

I love this series. It is snuggly and comforting – that is, it begins in a very different place, cold and lonely and frightened; but it spends these long hours getting to a place of calm and warmth.

At the end of The Spellshop, in my audio edition at least, readers (listeners) were treated to a bonus beginning of this novel. In that first chapter, we learn a little bit about what happened to Caz’s creator. The sentient spider plant was spelled to life by a librarian named Terlu Perna. Terlu was not a sorcerer, and therefore her magic was illegal; but she had been hopeful that it might be overlooked, because Caz’s creation was harmless, resulting only in new life. Her magic was not overlooked. In chapter one, we see her convicted and sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue. It seems she is doomed to be a statue – a mostly aware statue, but unable to move or speak – forever. Indeed, in The Spellshop, Caz and Kiela assume that when the Great Library burned, Terlu burned with it.

But now we know she didn’t. She awoke, came all the way back to flesh and blood, in the snow in an unfamiliar forest. Alive, but still alone, which is Terlu’s least favorite thing. She had created Caz because she was lonely and friendless, and needed a friend so badly that she risked everything. Now here she is, grateful to be back in her body, and then on the verge of freezing to death, and still alone.

She finds her way into a greenhouse. She meets a man, a gardener, apparently the only gardener in what he calls the Greenhouse of Belde, an enormous, elaborate, all-containing place, with many, perhaps even countless rooms. There is a greenhouse just for roses, one just for tomatoes, and four for vegetables, one in each season of the year. There is a greenhouse of singing plants, and one filled with saltwater and ocean plants. Terlu has never heard of the island of Belde or its wondrous, mythic greenhouses. The terse, grumpy gardener, a very handsome man named Yarrow, tells her he is the only one left. The sorcerer who created the Greenhouse is dead. All of the other gardeners had been sent away. And the greenhouses are slowly dying, one by one.

Terlu is likewise alone in the world, and moved by this puzzle, especially because the fate of Yarrow and his beloved Greenhouse seems tied to her own: she has nowhere else to go. And so, slowly, they build something. With the eventual company of a sentient rose named Lotti, and then a whole squadron of talking plants, they determine to try to repair what is failing on Belde. For Terlu, this means working illegal magic again, risking her worst nightmare coming true a second time. For Yarrow, it means trusting, opening himself up again after being abandoned by everyone he ever cared about. The story grows from there.

It wasn’t lost on me that Terlu made herself a friend – Caz – out of loneliness, because she deeply needed fellowship. And then Caz was inherited (so to speak) in book one by Kiela, who insists she needs no one and would prefer to be alone – but I think we can see now that her solitude is enabled by the company of the wonderful Caz. Terlu nearly lost everything, but Kiela was perhaps saved. And there is still time in their world for the good deeds to keep on snowballing.

For what it’s worth, I love that Terlu is solidly an academic. She enjoys study. She speaks (and reads) many languages, and likes to puzzle and learn. Also, as we know, it’s central to the plot that she is very social, needs company and conversation. There’s a charming bit (which I can’t find, because audiobooks can’t be riffled through like print ones) in which she recalls telling her family she wanted to be a librarian, and then having to explain to them that no, not all librarians just shush people and hide in the stacks; there are public-facing, people-oriented librarians, too. I love that! (Kiela was the other kind, happy to hide.) Faced with the markedly unfamiliar challenges of Belde, Terlu wants to be of assistance, and luckily finds a way to help through study, reading, and linguistics. Hooray!

The Enchanted Greenhouse is about loneliness and company, about finding where one belongs, about overcoming fears (and paranoia, even), taking risks and trusting. It’s about fellowship and building community. It does end in romance, as did book one. And there are plant friends (and a charismatic winged cat named Emeral). Variously labeled romantasy and ‘cottagecore’, this is a decidedly cozy novel, filled with good food and other comforts (but especially lots of good food). It moves at a decidedly measured pace – some readers will find it slow, but I’d offer the more positive descriptor, that it proceeds in leisurely or even cautious fashion, and rewards the reader’s settling in. Trusting, even. Once again, Caitlin Davies’ narration feels perfect. I’m anxious for this trilogy’s third installment, coming later this year, and will be looking into Durst’s other work. I’m delighted I found this one.

Rating: 8 honey cakes, obviously.

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Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree (audio)

Posted on March 9, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I am completely taken with this very sweet series. Here, we get a big flashback from Legends and Lattes, to Viv’s youth. We meet her when she was just a young mercenary orc, on one of her earliest missions: full of cocky bravado and the joy of battle, she made the sort of error that cocky young warriors do, and found herself badly wounded. When she awakens from the fever of infection and pain, she finds that her crew has left her to recuperate in the small seaside village of Murk. Her boss has paid for her ongoing medical care and for the start of her lodging costs, and she is well funded to take her time recovering. But Viv is deeply frustrated to have been left behind – even though, when she tries to walk on her bad leg, she has to admit she could never have kept up with the pace of battle.

So. Viv is set back, cooling her heels, physically limited, furious, bored. She begins stumping painfully around town, looking into what there might be to do (not much), and committed to keeping up her training, as her injuries allow. It’s terrible! But she slowly discovers: a bookshop (terribly dusty and smelly, but staffed by a charmingly foul-mouthed ratkin named Fern who becomes a friend); books (reluctantly, then fiercely, she learns to love reading); a wonderful bakery (with a proprietor who finds Viv most appealing); and an indomitable young gnome who aspires to be a mercenary like Viv. She begins to find a rhythm, a new way of living. She helps Fern around the bookshop – together, they clean and reorganize, bring in a local author for a reading, and start a book club. Viv even, slowly, befriends Fern’s pet, a gryphet named Pot Roast. She enjoys a bit of a romance with the gifted dwarf baker, Maylee. And she develops a camaraderie with the gnome, Gallina, whom we already know from the later timeline. Viv is aware that these ties will be short-lived; she is anxious to get back to work with her mercenary crew when they come back through for her (fingers crossed). This gives the young love, in particular, a bittersweet flavor. Then, just to highlight how much she’s learned to care about her new friends in Murk, a threat arises. In her warrior work, Viv had been on the hunt for a necromancer called Varine the Pale. In her convalescence, it seems that Varine’s forces have come to her. It may take all she has, in both limping physical prowess and cleverness, to keep safe the people she’s met in her short stay on the coast.

This is just the sweetest tale: young love, earnest friendships, and the hard, dusty work of running a bookshop. (I feel a bit misled by Legends and Lattes: Viv did have some retail experience.) There are once more delicious pastries, and a quirky, sometimes-snuggly pet. The story ends with Viv’s departure, back on the road and back to slinging steel; but an epilogue ties these youthful events directly to Viv’s later life with Tandry at the coffee shop, and neatly sets us up for the next installment, Brigands and Breadknives, for which I am most anxious. Stay tuned! I’m entirely sold on this cozy fantasy series. Onward.

Rating: 8 bottles of bonedust.

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“Pages to Fill” by Travis Baldree (audio)

Posted on March 2, 2026 by pagesofjulia

“Pages to Fill” followed Legends and Lattes, packaged in with the same audiobook, read by the author*, and offering a tidbit of prequel background. At just about an hour long, it’s a good short view into Viv’s world of magical beings, and her own character and yearnings. It informs the novel I just finished, and keeps me interested in more. (I’m starting Bookshops and Bonedust next.)

I’ll keep this short, especially for such a short work. I enjoyed learning about Viv: a bruiser, but not invulnerable, and already showing signs of the special interest we see in Legends and Lattes, as well as the disillusionment with her then-current livelihood. She’s got a soft spot, which is beginning to be a point of conflict with her more hard-nosed colleague Gallina, despite their close relationship. I’m also left feeling curious about what happened to this short story’s antagonist. I’m excited to get into the rest of the series!

*Travis Baldree’s narration of his own work is something I failed to address in that earlier review. I liked it very well, not least because I love knowing how the author thinks a certain character will sound, or how a certain line will be delivered. If anything, this feels even more important in fantasy, where some names or other words may be the author’s inventions, or, we may have less context for what orcs and gnomes sound like than we do with fully human characters. I love hearing things the way the author imagines them, assuming the author has some basic performing chops – as this one certainly does. Baldree has other narration credits beyond (and predating, I think?) his own work. Definitely keeping this series in the mix, and stoked for it.

Rating: 7 bottles.

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Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree (audio)

Posted on February 20, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I somehow got this book recommended, I think as a comp for The Spellshop which I loved. It was a good rec! Legends and Lattes is likewise cozy, although not without threat and even violence; offers subtle romance; and incorporates fantasy and worldbuilding elements. It was on the short side, and I got so engrossed I finished it in just two days! (I’m currently engaged in the included short story, a prequel, and will write that one up for you soon.)

This novel features Viv, an orc who has worked as a mercenary – hunting bounties, killing bad guys and monsters – with a small group of associates (who are mostly also friends). She’s been dreaming of getting out of the game, though. Her back hurts. As the story opens, we see her grasp a mysterious item, a bit of a good luck charm. She journeys along ley lines to the town she’s chosen for its advantageous position. Between her luck object, the ley lines, a witching rod, and a nest egg she’s saved up, she methodically sets about establishing the first coffee shop in the town of Thune. In an interesting retail challenge, no one in Thune has ever heard of coffee; Viv herself had only encountered it in a distant gnomic city. Not only is she embarking on her first retail venture, she’s introducing an unheard-of product. Bean water?, her first few acquaintances ask her, clearly doubtful. But she has her good luck charm.

The truly cozy aspect of this story lies in Viv’s earnest desire to leave behind a life by-the-sword in favor of a more wholesome one – ‘cozy’ is in fact the word. The gnomic coffee shop she’d fallen in love with was warm, bustling, with a sense of community, as well as delicious drinks. In Thune, she slowly builds her own version of this, making friends (almost by accident and almost without noticing it) along the way. First she hires a builder, an expert craftsman but one disregarded by his local society, making him ready to appreciate Viv’s valuing his services. Next she hires an assistant, also a bit of a social outcast, but who turns out to be PR/marketing whiz (and an artist, who enlivens the chalkboard menu and signboards). Then she stumbles almost by accident on a baker, a tiny ‘ratkin’ of few words but a genius with dough and flavor. A painfully shy giant comes in to play the lute. An awkward scholar comes to study and eventually share his skills. Viv wanted a new life and livelihood; she winds up establishing a community, even a built family. And good thing, because the troubles of her old life are just around the corner.

Sweet, entertaining, page-turning. Can’t wait for more.

Rating: 7 Thimblets.

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Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (audio)

Posted on February 13, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I don’t even know what to do with this book which is in the running for the best of the year! I am overcome. I feel like I’ve found another Brian Doyle: this story is set in a small community, filled with mostly good people, but some maybe not. There is whimsy and not literal magic, but certainly the kind we can find in everyday life, and mysterious forces in nature and human nature… there is a sense of everythingness that I associate with Doyle and with Amy Leach. So many things happen, and they’re all disconnected and they’re all unlikely, but that’s life, too.

Virgil Wander is a middle-aged man in the small town of Greenstone, Minnesota, somewhere north of Duluth on Lake Superior. He owns and lives above an antique movie theatre where he spools up reels of old film for his few neighbor-customers, operating at a loss. We meet him shortly after he’s accidentally launched his old Pontiac over a small cliff and into the freezing lake; a fellow Greenstonian pulls him out, and he’s recovering from a TBI, physically off-balance, linguistically working without adjectives, and struggling to sort through his memories. He thinks of the past version of himself as “the previous tenant,” as in, he feels like he’s living in someone else’s apartment, wearing someone else’s clothes, and surmising what that other guy would have done. In a word, the new Virgil is less fearful of giving offense, still mild-mannered, but more likely to speak his mind (mostly sans adjectives).

This book is about many of Greenstone’s motley citizens, but always centered on Virgil, our narrator. Early on, Virgil meets Rune: an old man, new to town, avid flyer of wildly ornate and lovely kites that he makes himself. Rune wants to hear everyone’s stories about Alec Sansome, a former minor-league baseball pitcher and Greenstone resident who disappeared one day in a small plane over Superior, leaving behind a notably beautiful wife Nadine and a young son, Bjorn. In perhaps my favorite of Virgil Wander‘s many bittersweet tragic threads, Rune has only recently discovered that he had a son, Alec – but Alec has been missing for a cool decade now. The old man desperately wanted a child all his life, and in one fell swoop gained and lost one. Now he hangs around Greenstone, delighting the locals with his kites, investigating the lost Alec, and attempting to build family with Nadine (amenable) and Bjorn (as a teenager, less so). There is also the Pea family with their streaks of bad luck and big fish; the mayor and her hope to turn Greenstone’s luck around with the annual fair; the sisters who run a small cafe; and a returned prodigal son who is either the town’s best hope or worst enemy. There are terrible losses and griefs, but also love and new beginnings, fishing and kite flying, reinventions and reinvigorations. Greenstone is an odd place of hard luck, whose history involves deaths and disappearances as well as that one time it rained frogs (yes), and there is more to come. It’s a completely fascinating place and story.

Here are a few of my favorite lines – I’ve decided against offering them any context. Enger is a thrilling writer of single sentences as well as larger plot.

He peered around as though not wishing to be seen accepting birthday wishes from a cheerful moron up to his chin in the freezing sea.

There is nothing wrong with being kissed on the cheek by a sweet round woman in a cafe after you have nearly died.

She had a marvelous eye roll, refined through long discipline, precise as acupuncture.

I’d lived years without a woman to tell me small things. Her work went well and she wanted to say so, and I was the man who was listening. That fact swung open and light came in.

There is no better sound than whom you adore when they are sleepy and pleased.

And all of this read for us by MacLeod Andrews in a delightful sort of humble Minnesotan accent (and Rune’s Norwegian one, which amplifies the reader’s sense of him as a twinkling elf of good cheer). I do not know how this book could be improved upon, except to have more of it. I am devoted to Enger – and sadly halfway through his works. Do yourself a favor and spend some time with Virgil.

Rating: 10 pots of boiling milk.

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The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

Posted on February 2, 2026 by pagesofjulia

What a sweet, charming fantasy/romance story about librarians, sentient plants, and the challenges of stepping outside one’s comfort zone. I’m a new fan of Sarah Beth Durst.

We meet Kiela just before she discovers that the library is burning. She’s been sort of lackadaisically sorting books into crates for rescue, not really believing that the rebels would really burn the library – books are sacred! But we quickly escalate through smoke into evacuation: Kiela, eight or so crates of precious spellbooks, and her assistant and best (and only) friend, a sentient spider plant named Caz, load up in a small sailboat and pole out into the imperial city’s canal network and then into the sea. As the city burns, they sail for a place Kiela’s not seen nor thought much about in many years: the island of Caltrey, where she was born and where she lived until her late parents moved the family to the city when she was nine. Kiela and Caz move back into the family’s cottage – not too badly decayed – and immediately face a shortage of both food and funds. They also face a neighbor named Larran, who is handsome, kind, and too friendly for Kiela’s tastes: “We prefer neighborly,” he responds when accused, “but ‘nosy’ is probably just as accurate.” To be clear, Kiela is a total recluse: for years, since her parents died, she’s lived in a corner of the imperial library where she also worked, ordering and receiving her meals without human contact. It’s been an embarrassingly long time since she even talked to another person. And now she is challenged to deal with the inhabitants of Caltrey. Larran is helpful, but Kiela has trouble appreciating this quality, at least at first.

Indeed, at first Kiela feels a little off-putting. Her attitude toward a new acquaintance who’s trying to help is a bit harsher than felt warranted, and I found it strange how unprepared she was to do the simplest things for herself: not knowing how to forage for food or start a fire is one thing, but as an extremely well-read librarian, how has she not at least encountered the concept of survival skills, as in, enough to appreciate how little she knows? But she picks things up quickly. First, she realizes that the island is not quite as idyllic as remembered. The plants and trees are sickly, the springs drying up, the storms worsening, and the merhorses unable to reproduce. (Merhorses are essential to the island’s fisheries, and Larran’s special love: he is a merhorse herder.) Bravely, and not quite legally, she decides to use the knowledge she’s brought to the island. She opens the spellbooks she saved from fire and tries to help. Because remember, this is a magical world: Kiela’s skin and hair are both (naturally) blue. One of her new friends in town has antlers, and another the hindquarters of a horse. The island’s natural rhythms have been thrown off by an imbalance of magic, which is a political issue: the empire’s capitol keeping powers for itself and ceasing to care for its outlying islands like Caltrey. And then there’s Caz, a wonderful character, a wonderful researcher, Kiela’s devoted friend, and possessed of profound anxiety.

Even as I’m writing this review I’m realizing how many facets of this book I found intriguing. I loved the cozy community of Caltrey, both in its flora and fauna and cottages and bakery, and in its community-mindedness – imperfect, as ever we are, but still cozy. I loved the well-built fantasy element, the merhorses and winged cats and purple-swirling storm sky and Caz the spider plant, et al. I did appreciate Kiela’s character, however prickly and hapless she was up front; she has a background of both suffering and neurosis to explain her personality, and best of all, she experiences a real arc of change and growth throughout the book (while retaining, believably, some of her quirks). I loved Larran, and found their trajectory snuggly and loveable, if not complexly plotted. There was a political thread to the story, one that mostly passes Kiela by, at least in her former life: the empire’s power, helping only its urban and upper-class citizenry, what it allows the outer islands to suffer. Even the misapplication of magic that’s led to ever worsening storms is a thinly-clad metaphor for anthropogenic climate change. The politics are not front and center to this story, but I appreciate the sense that Kiela lives in a realistically complicated world, whether she chooses to engage with those parts of it or not – and, realistically, she finds that those elements touch her life and the lives of those she loves, regardless.

This was a really fun, absorbing adventure. I was sad when it ended, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next related story. For the audio production, I thought narrator Caitlin Davies did a fine job acting and enunciating. I’m all in.

Rating: 8 cinnamon rolls.

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I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (audio)

Posted on January 19, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Liz was right. This was beautiful and worth it, even though I was a little bit leery of the dystopia. A gorgeous book, and gorgeously read for us by David Aaron Baker. Glorious.

The novel is set in a world very like our own, maybe just a little further down the road to ruin. The narrator, Rainy, lives in town of Icebridge, which I think is on the American side of the border with Canada, on the Great Lakes. Political, economic and environmental collapse have advanced beyond our current situation. Rainy lives in a leaning but charming three-story house with his wife Lark, who is a golden person and one of the town’s most beloved. She runs a bookshop, possesses a great and contagious love of art and literature, and holds wisdom and appealing beliefs. At the story’s beginning, they take in a lodger, Kellan, who eventually admits to being on the run from the ‘astronauts’ he was pledged to as indentured worker. (‘Astronauts’ are not literal, but simply the astronomically privileged and wealthy in an increasingly divided world.) Rainy likes Kellan; but it is true that, as predicted, he brings devastation upon the household. In its wake, Rainy is forced to take to Lake Superior, that great inland ocean, in an ancient sailboat imperfectly restored by hand. He has it in mind that he might find what he is looking for if he can reach the Slate Islands, where he and Lark once sailed, fifteen years ago, on Rainy’s only sailing venture ever until this point. His voyage – really, his quest – will be circuitous, at the mercy of weather patterns and storms, and beset by people who mean him harm. There will also be friendlies along the way. He will pick up a most fascinating passenger, a nine-year-old girl named Sol.

This story is compared to the Orpheus myth, but I don’t see how we can miss Odysseus in it, too, or any quest you choose. It has large, nearly all-encompassing scope, and beautiful ideas about how we make the world around us and what friendship looks like. It considers literature and art and music, and offers hope where it seems unlikely. It is lovely at the sentence level. The lake “was a blackboard to the send of sight, and any story might be written on its surface.” “There’s something in romance if it puts you on a boat with the one you adore in a harbor no storm can penetrate with an affable ghost anchored nearby.” Its events are often horrifying, but I’m left with the weird sense that I’d still be satisfied to follow Rainy anywhere within his world.

This is one of those I’d happily take a high-level lit course in. Solid rec, Liz. Thank you.

Rating: 9 steaming mugs of coffee.

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When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (audio)

Posted on December 15, 2025 by pagesofjulia

I don’t recall where I got this title from, but I loved this book, and am grateful to whatever review or list sent it my way. Also to my lovely partner who gifted it to me for the long drive from Texas to West Virginia.

When Women Were Dragons: Being the Truthful Accounting of the Life of Alex Green–Physicist, Professor, Activist. Still Human. A memoir, of sorts is a living, breathing tale, ever expanding, filled with metaphor that reshapes itself with the reader’s interpretation. It opens with a strange letter from a Nebraska housewife in 1898 to her mother, shortly before the woman spontaneously dragoned. Next we have an excerpt from the opening statement given by Dr. Henry Gantz to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1957. Then we get into the first-person narration of Alex Green, who will tell most of this story, with brief insertions mostly from Dr. Gantz’s work – bit of an epistolary format. (The audiobook is narrated by Kimberly Farr, as Alex Green, and Mark Bramhall, as Dr. Gantz, which I thought was a great choice.) “I was four years old when I first met a dragon. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t think she’d understand.”

I think this must be right around 1950. Alex grows up in small-town Wisconsin, in a pretty 1950s world: there are many things we just don’t talk about, including cancer, menstruation and most aspects of girlhood and womanhood, what to expect on one’s wedding night, diversity in sexual orientation and gender expression, our feelings, and dragons. When Alex is a little girl, her mother goes away for some time – months – and no one explains or even acknowledges the change; likewise when her mother returns, gaunt, weak, different (she doesn’t even smell right). The reader understands better than little-girl Alex when her mother’s chest is glimpsed, missing breasts, two scars like smiles. This world is recognizably our own except for the dragons. Women in this world can dragon (that’s a verb), or become dragons, at which point they sometimes eat their husbands (this seems to happen frequently with very unlikeable, not to say abusive, husbands) before flying away. Dragoning is a poorly understood phenomenon because, as with much that is female or feminine, society judges it too shameful to examine, and science mostly averts its gaze. Dr. Gantz is a rare exception: he believes in the scientific mandate to learn, whatever truths are revealed. Biology should never be shameful. His research articles and responses to an oppressive world are useful seasonings to this story, and he is himself a delightful character, alongside the heroic librarian Mrs. Gyzinska.

And oh, Alex’s auntie Marla, a wonderful woman who comes and cares for her while her mother is away in cancer treatment, a big powerful woman who flies airplanes during the war and works as a car mechanic and wears men’s clothes and takes very little shit, and who we lose to the Mass Dragoning of 1955. When Marla dragons, she leaves behind an infant daughter, Alex’s cousin Beatrice, who from here on is raised as Alex’s sister. Such is the gaslighting of Alex’s family and world that she learns to really believe – almost – that she has no aunt, that Beatrice has always been her sister. (Echoes of 1984. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) And boy, the time Alex has raising her younger sister, Beatrice, a delightful dragon of a child if there ever was one.

Despite all I’ve just thrown at you, I’ve barely scraped the surface of this remarkable novel. It contains many stories and many layers, much that is very recognizable from our ‘real’ world, and lots of potential metaphors to ponder. I wondered at different times if dragoning were a metaphor for menstruation; for puberty; for “un-american activities” (certainly, HUAC seems to conflate them); for simply being independent, self-determining, and female (except that those who dragon are overwhelmingly but not universally girls and women). This story tackles the way we handle difference, and especially gender, sexuality, and gender expression. It contains such maddening (if entirely realistic) renderings of sexism that it was sometimes hard to listen to. It contains transcendent moments of personal discovery, joyful academic inquiry, love and coming-of-age, and some lovely iterations of family and built family, which I always appreciate. “Sometimes,” confides Alex at an advanced age, “the expansive nature of family takes my breath away.” There is such good fun; I especially liked the line “If that dragon was hoping for sympathy, she was crying in front of the wrong teenager,” which I got to share with my favorite dragon-loving teenager. It considers the looping of time and relationships. It’s got science and wonder, a bit like A Tale for the Time Being, but I liked this better. I’m a bit over the moon about it, and am giving it a perfect score. Also, I loved the audio format, with the one caveat that I wish I could pull more quotations that I loved.

Do give it a go, and let me know what you think.

Rating: 10 military-issued boots.

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