Review: The Puppeteer by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

 The Puppeteer is the second book in Kathryn Ann Kingsley's Harrow Faire series centering around the truly delightful Cora Glass. She was an every day girl who once dreamed of being a photographer before Ehlers Danlos Syndrome's chronic pain took her dreams from her and landed her in a boring 9 to 5. Now she's caught up in what she likes to call a Man-Eating Murder Circus, more or less compliments of Simon.  Oh, Simon, the Puppeteer. If you have been following Kingsley's work, you aren't going to be surprised by what I'm about to say.

I love that evil madman, and I love him even more every time Cora puts him in his place.
Romantic lead yes, hero, no. Evil, yes. Loveable, yes. Good guy? No. Sexy as all get out? Yes. Desirable? Yes. Sane? No. Do not forget this. Do. Not. Forget. This.

Ooh, our feisty heroine has so much delightful snark and wit coupled with a tenacity that just won't stop. She's smart and always ready to fight. I big puffy heart her, and it has nothing to do with all the ways she can bend, whether it's on stage or in her bedroom. Get your mind out of the gutter, none of that... yet. So far as I'm saying. You have to read it to find out.

And you have to read it.

This series needs to be read not just for the hotness, and there's hotness. Read it for the glorious characterization. Read it for the fact that you're not normal and neither are the characters. Read it for the heart touching way that Cora sits on the grass and carries on a conversation with a mute character. Read it for genuine human connection in an inhuman world. Read it because we are all living in isolated little pocket worlds these days, and that makes it all the more painful to see Cora's world being ripped from hers.

The menacing and eerie carnivorous circus has all the best setting vibes for this self discovery and otherworldly super dark romance. Do yourself a favor and give yourself permission to indulge and enjoy it. Just remember, I warned you. He's a not a good guy.

Ooh, I just can't wait for the next one! There's a series shaped hole on my bookshelf.

Review: The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang

 Do you like your characters quirky, with a side of brilliant? Do you like your stakes dire? Do you like a story where you accidentally learn a little anatomy and history? 

You're going to love The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang. Following the days and nights of Cora Lee, medical marvel and astute business woman, and her twin brother Jacob, resurrectionist, The Impossible Girl is a detailed adventure through graveyards, medical museums, libraries, houses of ill repute, and medical school dissection galleries. I'll let you decide which of those just might be the more unsettling in descriptive detail. Speaking of detail, I appreciate that Kang's details are straight forward. She doesn't wax poetic when describing corpses or what might otherwise be an unsettling environment. She lets the environment or object speak for itself with concrete terms. I like it.

The Impossible Girl, like so many other books worth reading, doesn't allow itself the luxury of only telling its own story. It weaves in the politics of the era: economic politics, gender politics, racial politics, and even scientific politics. It all plays a role in every step of the tale's unfolding, carefully unfolding as a near inevitability. 

After finishing the story, my kids, as has become a sort of tradition this summer, asked me to tell them about a book I'd read recently while we swam. There were a few key things I had to edit out of the story because the 11 year old is 11, but both the 11 year old and the 21 year old were utterly captivated at even the abbreviated messed up out of order version. Let's just say "mom's book talks" aren't exactly the most A to B things. There's a lot of "guuuuuurl, and then creepo from the museum," (because the guy who runs the museum is 100% a creeper) and "so she straight up follows him like a grade A stalker."

You'd probably have to be there. So since you weren't, you'll just have to read the book. 

Serioiusly. Read it. It's good stuff.

Review: The Contortionist by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

 

Remember the time you were driving on your daily commute and you saw it: that one thing that was just entirely not the way you remembered it being, and you were dang sure that you didn't see the changes taking place? That Mandela Effect feeling of "something is very wrong in the universe?"

Well, welcome to Cora's world when one day the long abandoned and decaying Harrow Faire is suddenly no longer abandoned or decaying, but open again and hungry for guests.

Kathryn Ann Kingsley creates a glorious blend of creepy circus and carny freak-show with modern wit and skepticism.  If I had to toss a few stories in a blender to lead you to The Contortionist, I'd start with Something Wicked This Way Comes, add a little The Night Circus, and follow up with some good old fashioned Black Butler. 

I'd just go with an emphatic "do read," but it's more than that. Read it for the way Kingsley writes differently abled characters. Read it for the spider's web of atmosphere. Read it for the way you find yourself wanting the heroine to walk into the maw of the beast. Read it for the villains: the gloriously sexy villains. Read it for the existential questions it begs you to ask yourself, like "what would you give," and perhaps a little more on the nose, "what's your favorite color?"

It's book one. I want to devour the whole series like a glutton. I want to bathe in the atmosphere, and glut myself on surreal nightmarescape. I want to drink this story in and roll it around on my tongue and taste all the sweetness with the faint bitter edges. Beautiful stuff.

Fans of Kingsley's work might be surprised that it isn't particularly graphic. Regardless, it's breathtaking. 

I'm looking forward to having this whole pretty set on my library shelf soon.