The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young 5/5 Stars
This was my first read of 2024 and it was an amazing one. I read other reviews to make sure we’re talking about this and it seems like we are: this is an absolutely beautifully written magical realism mystery time-travel-gone-wrong love story. I feel like there’s nothing more I can say that the synopsis doesn’t cover that also wouldn’t have spoilers. I love the story. Moments from it came back to me days later as a basked in the glow of just finishing it. I’d love more about June’s second life, perhaps a found diary from her time spent there? Read this book!

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss 5/5 Stars
I put off reading this for many years because of it’s length and popularity. Until recently I’ve generally avoided overly long books due to moral objections and I’ve found a lot of really popular books to be duds for me, but this one proved both of these “usuals” wrong for me. This is curled-up-by-the-fire in book form for me. Cozy and interesting intwined. I started reading the next book immediately after finishing, this time in audiobook format so I could learn to pronounce some of the more odd names. I love this book and can’t wait to recommend it to everyone I can.

The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland 3/5 Stars
I really, really, really loved the first 60-70% of this book. It is beautifully written (I mean beautifully; I was completely sucked into this story until my gripe with it started) and a different sort of “vampire” book than any other I’ve read. I love the stories of all of Colette’s past lives and I really like that the “present” setting in the book is in the 1980’s, almost 40 years before the book’s release. Really my issue with this book, and I think it could have been resolved with a little more insight or planning, is that I don’t understand Colette’s inaction when she started noticing her body changing. One day, decades after being turned into the creature that she is, she starts to have insatiable hunger and night walking. I guessed the reason for the hunger immediately, which is fine, but she never thinks to seek out an answer for this change, she just thinks, “oh I’m so much more hungry than I used to be, I wonder why.” She’s not on great terms with her creator but she can contact him; why doesn’t she? When someone from her past visits her, why doesn’t she ask him? It just doesn’t make sense to me why an intelligent woman would ignore these alarming changes to her body and behavior. One way to justify this would have been to put her into a more manic state where she also mentally isn’t herself. This left me very unfulfilled with an otherwise beautiful book. I would still recommend this book though and look forward to more from this author.

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