The librarian of burned books / Brianna Labuskes
What is it: women fighting ignorance
Did I like it: of course I did

Librarians are awesome and as such make awesome characters in stories. And although I’m not-so-slightly biased, it’s also a fact that every genre has books with librarian protagonists. I’m now kind of curious about books with librarians as the baddies; if you know of any, kindly let me know in the comment section.
Something else: starting in the new year, I will no longer be working as a librarian as I’m moving to a new and exciting position outside of the library. I have a feeling there are a lot less books about civil servants in office jobs available, but if the catergory ever pops up in a reading challenge again, we’ll find out about that.

Onto the book!
This story is set at three different places and times and features three different women. Althea, Berlin, 1933. Hannah, Paris, 1936. And Vivian, New York, 1944.
What the women have in common is that they love books deeply, they don’t understand the banning of books, and they refuse to back down from men or general opinion.
Althea is a published author from rural Maine, and she has been invited by the Nazi party’s propaganda machine to come to Berlin on a scholarship. She loves being in the big city and is swept along on the wave of NSDAP events, taken by a handler appointed to her to make sure she doesn’t miss anything.
Hannah is a German Jewish refugee in Paris and has experienced firsthand how damaging the Nazi ideology can be as her brother was arrested in Berlin for his political beliefs. After that, Hannah and her parents fled to Paris for safety. Hannah works in the Library of Banned Books which stands to promote Jewish culture. She also spreads political brochures and uses her Berlin experiences to warn her Parisian friends.
Over in New York, Vivian has lost her soldier husband and is working in the Armed Service Editions; an organization that sends special small edition books to the troops overseas. Vivian is enrolled in a vendetta against a senator who wants to impose a ban on books, which includes a ban on this particular service.
Each of the women has a personal reason to become an activist, and their stories are equally well developed. The women each get the same amount of time on the main stage, resulting in three equal main characters.

I must admit it felt like this was one of many of kind-of-the-same books I had already read: The banned books of Berlin, The librarian spy, The last bookshop in London, The Paris library. Their covers look alike, and their stories have similar topics and set-ups. It got to the point where I thought I had bought a book I had already read because even the synopsis on the back didn’t clear things up enough. I guess we can safely conclude that I’m a sucker for books on librarians and books, especially in a historical setting. What sets this book apart is an lgbtqia+ angle.
I think these books are popping up in big numbers because a) I’m not the only sucker for them and b) book banning has unfortunately become a hot item again and the best example for how bad that situation can get, is the Nazi-example.
All in all, this book was an easy and fast read and I really enjoyed it.

Saltblood / Francesca de Tores
What is it: an adventure like no other
Did I like it: aye!

To be honest, of all the categories left on this year’s reading challenge, this was not the one I saw being filled before the end of the year. But, life is unpredictable and so is my reading. This book was brought to my attention (and borrowed from) friend M and sheesh, was I happy about that.
This book tells the story of Mary Read. History knows her for two things mainly: she was a pirate, and she dressed like a man. I only knew she was a pirate, so I had a lot to learn. The story reads like a classic adventure and halfway through I had to remind myself that Mary was a real person; I completely got swept along with the story.

In the late 17th century, Mary is born as her half-brother dies. This leaves her mother with a problem because along with Mark dies the inheritance money he received. So, Mary is turned into Mark, making it possible to keep collecting money from his grandmother a couple of times a year. Mary learns to walk and talk like a boy and because she can pass, she is sent into service as a footman once she looks old enough. Her mother tells her to keep up appearances, because it is safer to be a boy than it is a girl, and boys earn more than girls. (Depressing how little has changed in 300-odd years.) After a few years, Mary makes her escape from the stifling stillness of the house by way of enlisting in the navy, and while the other boys who are enlisting add years to their age to earn more, she shaves a couple off to explain her smaller figure and higher voice. She finds her calling in the navy, enjoys her time aboard the ships more than anything, even though it is a dangerous place to be found out as a woman. After a couple of years at sea, she moves to the army and is sent to the battlefield. The longer she spends on dry land, the more she misses the sea, and she’s desperate to survive her enlistment so she can return to the water.
When she does have an opportunity to return aboard a ship, she no longer hides herself and presents as a woman. The merchant ship she works on, finally ends up in Nassau, the Bahamas, the pirate capital of the world at the time. Here, she meets Anne Bonny, and is mesmerized by her. Anne at the same time, is intrigued by Mary, who learns she herself is something of a legend, known as the “sailing woman”.
When she has the chance to join a pirate crew, she takes the opportunity with both hands and realizes she never felt so free before. She’s an equal member of the crew and as such gets to earn as much as the men, gets to vote, and is appreciated for her knowledge of sailing and dealing. It takes being a pirate to be considered equal. But piracy isn’t a career that offers longevity and there is a dark cloud hanging over the story.
And wow, what a story. The story is about gender, about survival, about making choices, about discoveries, and about an incredible woman. And the wonderful writing only added to it and left me turning page after page after page. I was so into this book, that I missed my stop on the metro, and I didn’t mind one bit as it gave me extra time to read as I made my way back.
If you want to read an amazing adventure story that features strong main characters, this book needs to be added to your read-list.

The bookshop ladies / Faith Hogan
What is it: a cozy read
Did I like it: I sure did

The story kicks off in Paris, which hasn’t been a small town for many centuries, but then quickly moves to Ballycove, Ireland. Having lived in Ireland, books set there always make me happy, even the dark and heavy ones. This book is warm and cozy and made me extra happy.

The first chapters introduce the three different characters: Joy, an American woman living in Paris, Robyn a young woman living in Ballycove, and Fern, a young artist breaking through in the art scene with a show at a fancy gallery.
When Joy’s husband dies, he uses his dying breath to reveal a big secret. Deeply upset, Joy has her world turned upside down and is unsure of how to move on. When she learns that her husband left a painting to someone living in Ballycove, Ireland, it gives her something to focus on and she wraps up the painting and travels to western Ireland.
In Ballycove, she finds Robyn who owns the only bookshop in town. Running a bookshop has been Robyn’s dream but she’s a shy bookworm, more likely to sit reading in her store than actually running it. Realizing she needs help, Robyn puts up a sign asking for volunteers. When Joy enters the shop, she is mistaken for an applicant and accidentally talked into accepting the non-paying job. By the kind of coincidence that only happens in books or movies, Joy has had a career in bookshop marketing, and she knows what she’s doing. She’s happy to be back at work, and she brings the kind of energy that isn’t overpowering but allows Robyn to grow into her own as a businesswoman.
Then Fern arrives as well, and soon the three of them become a team. But there are some secrets lurking in the background and when they are brought to light, it changes the team dynamics. With the big official launch of the shop only days away, it is bad timing and the three of them need to find a way to make things work or walk away.

The town of Ballycove sounds just lovely and there are some interesting background characters moving around, which I’m assuming might be popping up in the other books by this author. From what I could tell the books aren’t an official series, just mostly set in the same place, at least that’s what it reads like. The main characters are nice but have their flaws and show growth, and the setting made me want to drink coffee and enjoy the sound of seagulls in the distance.
If you’re looking for a cozy read set in a small-town and or bookshop, you will like this one.

The Apple Pie Ice Cream Parlor: a Dream Harbor Novella / Laurie Gilmore
What is it: special edition novella
Did I like it: nope

This book was published to promote the Week of the English Book. Lucky me I got out of the reading funk and into a book-buying spree just in time to receive this little book along with the stack of books I purchased.
As happy as I was with my other finds, I ended up reading this one first because of course. The Dream Harbor series is very popular, and I’ve seen the books everywhere. I hadn’t read one yet but that was no problem for this book; there is a handy map at the front of the book, (which I’m guessing is in all the books of the series), which greatly helped set the scene. A lot of characters pop up in this story that I figure have their own stories in the series. On the plus side, this helps build the world of an everybody-knows-everybody small town, which the limited space of a novella really needs. On the minus side, there’s barely enough space in a novella to create a believable storyline, especially when it’s about two people falling in love. To constantly have additional characters pop up, felt a bit cluttered at times. Even the main characters got annoyed at one point because they kept getting interrupted during conversations.
Those main characters are Leo and Charlotte, both teachers, and best friends of three years. The story kicks off with them mid-kiss, something they are both shocked about.
As they are both scheduled to volunteer at an event to raise money for the local fire station, it makes things uncomfortable to say the least, especially when they both end up scooping ice at the titular ice cream parlor. The kiss makes Charlie see Leo in a completely different light, and she can now only notice how handsome he is, how defined his muscles, and how delightful his voice, and is no longer able to have a normal friendly conversation with him. So far, I was able to keep up with the story and thought: at least it’s not as bat-shit crazy as last year’s book!
But then the story turned on me. Charlie doesn’t know how to deal with her turned-upside-down emotions and instead of taking a step back and thinking things over, she proposes that they sleep together in a non-romantic way so they can get the feelings out of their system. There’s a backstory of her pink hair and piercings leading guys into thinking she’s kinky in the bedroom. It felt crammed into the story just to give it a bit more weight and backstory to the Charlie character but because the story is so short, it came out of nowhere and was solved way too easy. Leo’s backstory involves two affairs with two former colleagues so clearly teachers are his type.
Their one night of non-passionate passion is followed by four days of pining and agony at work, and then they inevitably bump into each other outside of work because it’s a small town, have a chat and declare their love.
The second half of the story definitely ruined it for me and I’m just glad this meant I got to cross out another item of my reading challenge real fast. Onto the next one!

Shady characters : Ampersands, interrobangs and other typographical curiosities / Keith Houston
What is it: all things punctuation and then some
Did I like it: yes exclamation mark

Me: Everything I had ever wondered about weird symbols and punctuation is answered in this book.
Friend C2: You wonder about punctuation?
Me: You don’t‽

The foreword was an indication that the author and I wonder about the same things. The difference between us is that he couldn’t let it go and ended up with so much research that it could be bundled into a book, whereas I only had to buy his book to have my questions answered.
I didn’t read this book because I’m a purist where it comes to punctuation, as anyone who is can probably easily tell from my writing: I throw in commas and (semi)colons where it feels right, rather than bother to investigate and make sure they are in the right spot. At best I use the Word grammar check to help me out, but the squiggly lines annoy me and often I’m not sure whether the suggestion is actually right, so I click “ignore this” way too often. My interest in punctuation is more the history of it, who came up with something and why, and what’s with the names of the symbols. This books covers it all and then some.

I learned about this book because articles about “stories hidden in your keyboard” are total clickbait for me. Fresh out of my reading slump, I skipped to the bookshop to get my hands on this read. And boy, does it deliver: the author did a deep dive into the pilcrow, octothorpe, and ampersand. If these names don’t mean anything to you, I’m sure you recognize their symbols: ¶ # &. These and other symbols each get their own chapters. I liked how the author put the symbols to use in the text, creating easy and clear examples. I’ve already memorized the code for entering an interrobang (‽ : a combination of an exclamation mark and a question mark) on a windows computer (alt+8253) and have probably been using it too often.
The one thing I found annoying, but that’s a general pet peeve and not something particular to this book, is when the text of a footnote continues onto the bottom of the next page. It disrupts the reading experience, and I would prefer a footnote that is limited to one page, even if it were to take up more space than normal.
Moving on.
This book taught me so much about typography and editorial work, and I’m sure the book is a standard in those worlds, but it is a dream to read for grammar nerds and curious minds as well; there are plenty of images to illustrate topics, there is an index and a vast list of notes. It’s not boring at all, in fact, it’s rather entertaining; the chapters travel through time, from graffiti in Pompeii to Johannes Guthenberg’s printer to touchtone telephones and the first email. It is worth pointing out that the book focuses on Western writing and publishing.
Bonus points for the wonderful title.

The banned books of Berlin / Daisy Wood
What it is: historical fiction with a solid alliteration title
Did I like it: so-so

I gave this a so-so because this book has two storylines, and one felt weaker than the other.
Let’s dive in.

This book starts off with an author note to provide historical context and then we’re off to Berlin, 1930, where Freya is losing her mother to cancer. Ingrid has been her ally, has made sure Freya gets to continue her studies, and Freya knows that everything will change once her mother is gone: she will be expected to quit school and take over Ingrid’s sewing business and the running of the household, leaving her without time to study and write, which is her biggest passion. All Freya’s fears come true, and to make things worse, the dire economic circumstances in the country mean that people can no longer afford to splurge on new clothes, and business goes down fast. So, she fires her assistant, closes the sewing room, and instead makes it available for rent. A lodger allows for a steady income and gives Freya a chance to explore the world outside of the suffocating house, finding employment as a seamstress and costume designer at a cabaret theatre. Although this is still far from being her dream job, it allows her a level of freedom, and a social circle of openminded free spirits.
Her new friends encourage her creativity, and she starts to write short stories. It is her dream to get published but when the nazi’s order a book ban, she learns how dangerous writing can be.

Then there is the story of Madeleine, who lives in the present in Los Angeles.
Madeleine is a journalist, and she got trolled after a story she wrote was not as well-received as she had hoped. One troll in particular is posting hurtful messages and Madeleine can’t deal with it. Instead of turning off social media and moving on with her life, Madeleine hops on a train and travels home to LA. Home is not quite the calm and relaxing environment though, as her mother and brother are at odds and her grandfather is freaking them out with his death cleaning. Madeleine is a little bit more accepting of this and helps him and even goes along on a trip to a Death Café where they meet Eva and her grandson Daniel. During the cleaning they have found letters and papers belonging to her great-grandmother, but they are in German which neither of them can read. When they learn that both Eva and Daniel can read German, this meeting turns out to be very lucky.

Unfortunately, one of these timelines was much stronger than the other and I wonder if it might have worked better if the weaker one got scrapped altogether as it didn’t seem to add much. The biggest reason the LA setting didn’t work for me, was the Madeleine character. I got rather annoyed by her: she’s paranoid and suspicious about anyone and anything even though she does exactly what she assumes and fears people will do with her; researching them online. This adds hypocritical to the list of traits I disliked her for. And while Madeleine is intrigued by Freya’s story and wants to be like her, she misses Freya’s fierceness and never truly stands out as a headliner. Madeleine’s grandfather and brother are the more interesting characters in the LA storyline, and they drive that storyline and thereby create Madeleine’s story. There also was more growth and development in their characters than in Madeleine’s.
Freya’s story in Berlin is set in a time and place that is as intense as it gets, yet this story still is more driven by character than setting. It takes a lot of a character to achieve that, and Madeleine pales by comparison.
The difference in storylines was not just about the characters, but the Berlin storyline also stood out due to the tension and action built up gradually. The LA storyline has no real tension built up and the big reveal in the ending felt rushed.

I really wanted to like this book, but it ended up never being more than an “it was okay”.

Zero stars, do not recommend / MJ Wassmer
What it is: Lord of the Flies in the dark
Did I like it: thumbs up

By sheer coincidence this is the second book in a row I read that has an emoji on the cover.
By extra coincidence this book also gave me strong vibes of familiarity, of basically being a retelling.

Dan and his girlfriend Mara were enjoying their second day of a holiday in the Bahamas when the sun exploded. Or melted. Nobody knows exactly how it happened but one thing is for sure: the light’s gone out.
The newly opened resort and the island it is on are owned by a billionaire youngster who doesn’t know what to do or how to handle the crowd. So, Lilyanna Collins steps forward. She’s a fitness guru and influencer and a guest staying in Building C.
The resort contains three different buildings, originally named A, B, and C. Building A offers basic facilities with just staircases, rooms with small tv’s and no balconies. B offers elevators, bigger tv’s and balconies. C is all about luxury and if you’re not staying at C you won’t know what it contains because you’re not welcome there.
In record-breaking time Lilyanna turns into a James Bond baddie, running the resort-in-crisis with an iron fist and only caring about getting herself and her husband off the island and back home by whatever means and at whatever cost.
This could have made Dan the James Bond of the resort, if only he hadn’t already been preoccupied by a bit of an existential crisis. He’s been feeling stuck in a job that prevents him from becoming something “more”, and fears he never grew into a “real” man and that he doesn’t deserve someone like Mara in his life. Mara, in the meantime, isn’t aware of any of his feelings and simply loves him for who he is, imperfections and all.
Their room neighbours Alan and Charles suggest they team up, find a way to get home themselves, and have each other’s backs all the way. Dan is hesitant but Alan assures him this conversation is happening all over rooms at the resort and they can’t waste any time. Because the two couples are getting along and Alan seems to be a “real” man with a plan, Dan agrees.
Except the plan keeps changing because the circumstances keep changing and self-doubting Dan learns to make some tough decisions along the way.

The story is a retelling of Lord of the Flies with adults and in the dark, and with hints of Animal Farm thrown in. (It is also very much something else that I won’t mention here as it would spoil everything.)
Seeing as the world is a pretty dark place at the moment and humanity is not exactly treating the planet with the best intentions, it’s kind of scary how this book seems not too futuristically dystopian. Putting that aside, it’s an easy read that contains plenty of snarky-ness to keep it entertaining. Although Dan started out on a four-out-of-five on my annoyance radar, he redeemed himself by showing growth and letting go of his dick-y behaviour. I guess some people need a near-apocalypse to become a decent human being. I started out by liking Mara more than Dan, but eventually I rooted for them as a couple.

All in all it was an entertaining read and if you’re in for some light-hearted dystopian adventure reading, look no further than this book!

Everyone in the group chat dies / L.M. Chilton (2025)
What it is: hip murder mystery
Did I like it: it was okay

This book falls into what I call the “hip murder mystery” category: a story that contains a lot of current cultural references, chat/text messages and slang. There’s a fine line between this all being used right or wrong: too much of any of it risks the book not aging well and or alienating readers. Books that do this well however, are easy and fast to read, and tend to be a lot of fun even if there is a high body count involved.
For me, this book skirted the line and it just made it to the safe side.

The story is about Kirby who has escaped Britain and is not living the dream in Spain where she is cleaning up the pool area of a hotel full of 18-to-30-year-olds in party mode, while she desperately tries to forget the past year, and the fact that at thirty-one she’s too old to join the party. An incoming text message in an old group chat makes everything even worse: Miss me?
It’s not so much about the question but more that it was sent by Esme, who died a year ago.

Da-da-da-dum.

The story keeps switching between last year and now to explain why the message has Kirby in a tailspin.
The Kirby of a year ago is living in a shared flat in Crowhurst back in England. The flatmates call themselves The Deadbeats because they’re all pushing thirty yet cannot afford to live on their own due to their terrible career tracks and the fact that they’re all stuck in a rut.
Then one day Esme arrives at the flat. Esme is a social media content maker and in town “to catch a serial killer”. Esme is very Gen Z and the Millennial Deadbeats are confused by her career and behaviour while Esme in return does not understand the cultural references the Deadbeats throw around.
Esme plays Sherlock on ShowMe (“the edgy version of TikTok”), and she digs into murders and disappearances that have gone cold. (And yes, her followers are called Watsons.)
Crowhurst is a boring and in-decline kind of town and the only thing noteworthy that ever happened there was a killing spree at the local fair in the nineties during which five teenagers were killed. The killer was killed as well though, so the Deadbeats are confused by Esme’s declaration that there is news to discover.

Da-da-da-dum.

This book did what it was supposed to do: it was easy and fast to read and it had a decent mystery. However, about half-way through the fun started to disappear a bit and it became more angsty and just an updated version of I know what you did last summer. By the last quarter it was definitely more serious than (dark) fun and I got a bit annoyed by Kirby.
While I happily kept picking up this book to continue reading I’m afraid I will have forgotten all about it in a few months as it really was just an average breezy read.

I recommend this for people who want something light and breezy with a mystery to solve.
I do not recommend this for people who want something original.