May & June 2025 Reviews: Books & Other Stuff

Okay, so, life happened and pretty much all of May and June got away from me so we’re going to do something a little different so I don’t end up writing a post so very long that no one even reads it. We’re gonna do a couple of posts over the next week-ish, breaking things down into category of books, movies, and, uhhhh, other. So you can just skip whatever you’re not interested in? idk man life sure is life-ing right now.

Books: May

• Second Night Stand, Karelia & Fay Stetz-Waters—Ballet dancer vs. burlesque dancer against the backdrop of reality TV. This fits perfectly into the category of travel reads for me - kind of fluffy, nothing that's going to make me think too hard, with the added bonus of potentially scandalizing a nosy person or two who tries to read over my shoulder at the wrong page. The broad strokes of the plot are fairly predictable, and it's a romance so you know there's going to be a HEA. The journey to get there was enjoyable, even if the third act seemed a bit contrived. I don’t know how I felt about the main characters having such similar issues — financial problems for their dance troupes combined with some level of family/mom issues/drama. It made the storylines feel a bit too same-y. I dd also have a hard time telling how much time had passed sometimes. This wasn't perfect but I enjoyed it and would seek out other books from these authors.

• My Fair Brady, Brian D. Kennedy—Shy nerd asks for help from popular hot kid to help him learn how to be popular too, drama ensues. This was fine. Melodramatic, messy, over the top. Honestly I'm kind of glad that YA-as-we-know-it didn't exist in the same way in the late 90s-early 00s, because I would have felt even less seen than I already did, because once again a contemporary YA romance looks almost nothing like my high school years. Anyhow, I think this would be a hit with the appropriate age range; as an adult I'm not the target audience and don't think my quibbles with the story/characters/etc. mean all that much.

• Mr. & Mrs. Witch, Gwenda Bond—Witch and witch-hunter find out each other’s true identities… at their wedding. This started out okay but never quite came together in a way that worked for me. It's fluffy and a quick read, but all of the characters sound the same (even characters who are supposed to be centuries old) and the ending just wraps up neatly in an unbelievable way. Savvy and Griffin had good chemistry from a spice perspective but I wish we could have seen more of their whirlwind romance so I could see why they were so good together other than just a lot of banter and wanting to jump each other all the time. I didn't really care about any of the human characters and didn't feel particularly invested in what happened to any of them.

• Shoot Your Shot, Lexi LaFleur Brown—Struggling hockey player starts playing well after he hooks up with a Not Like Other Girls girl, obviously a romance ensues. Oh, I so wanted this to be good. The author’s husband is a former NHL player and she’s made a name for herself online talking about life as the wife of a hockey player, and skewering stereotypical over-the-top hockey romances that get even basic details of the game wrong. As both a hockey fan and a romance fan, I was looking forward to seeing what she came up with in her debut and sadly I was very disappointed. I didn't hate this as much as I thought I would but that doesn't mean it was good. Its worst sin honestly is that it's boring. Lucy is a jerk, Jaylen's only personality trait is "nice", and the only relatable part was Lucy getting mad when Jaylen got rude about her cat. (I ghosted a guy once who I didn't think treated my cat very well when he came over.) For a book marketed as being different than other hockey romances, it really, honestly wasn't. I've read and written fan fiction that manages to blend the needs of romance with the desire to write, like, biblically accurate hockey. This wasn't it.

• Working on a Song: the Lyrics of Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell—From the writer of the Hadestown musical, a look at the lyrics of each song and how they evolved from their earliest concepts to the versions we see on stage today. Despite thinking of myself as at least a little bit of a writer, the act of songwriting has always been a mystery to me, and songwriting for the stage an even bigger enigma. Here, Anaïs Mitchell goes song by song in Hadestown, pairing the lyrics as they are today with her thoughts and observations from the long road it took to get the show to Broadway. Seeing how these songs evolved to clarify and enhance the story Mitchell was trying to tell, and getting a glimpse of some beautiful words that just didn't make the cut, was a fantastic peek behind the curtain at the way the whole process works.

• It Takes Two to Tumble, Cat Sebastian—Grumpy Naval captain returns home from sea to his unruly children and a charming vicar. Cat Sebastian has become one of my favorite romance authors, and having read so many of her books now, it was interesting to dive into her back catalog with this one. I love reading older works from authors and a) seeing how far they've come and b) seeing themes that they've tackled later in their career show up this much earlier. Grief is a common theme for Cat Sebastian, particularly grief of the "I can't share this with anyone else" variety - most recently in "You Should Be So Lucky", but also all the way back here, with Phillip Dacre grieving a dead lover whom no one can ever know about. I think this story was a bit too over-stuffed with sub-plots, which made it sometimes hard to keep track of what the most pressing issue was at any given moment. The sub-plots set things up nicely for the other two books in the series, but I could have gone with seeing things with the side characters be a bit more pared back here but given more context in the other books. Regardless, the slow burn between stubborn, closed-off Phillip and sweet, idealistic Ben was a delight to read and as always Sebastian writes the most fantastic, moving intimate scenes between her characters.

• Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia—In a world where the existence of vampires is common knowledge, a street kid meets a vampire on the run from some very powerful, dangerous enemies. This book is very serious, dark, and violent. I think Moreno-Garcia's writing has matured since this was initially published in 2016 (though I believe the currently available version did receive a new edit), it felt somewhat unpolished compared to more recent works. There's a lot going on here and I think it might have benefitted from being one installment in a series, but that's not the way this shook out. I loved the totally new take on vampires, drawing from Aztec (and other cultures) lore to show how vampires evolved around the world. And I loved the alternate history aspect of being in a world that knows that vampires exist and is still struggling to deal with that. I liked this and if anything else existed in this universe, I'd read it, but I can't say I felt particularly moved by this particular story.

• Seducing the Sorcerer, Lee Welch—Down-on-his-luck man (Fenn) discovers magic horse and meets his land’s dangerous court sorcerer (Morgrim). This has really high reviews on Goodreads but didn’t do it for me. There were aspects that I really liked—the different forms of magic were interesting, and I liked how they were trying to unravel the mystery of Fenn's horse. I’m also always a sucker for Common Man/Fancy Man romances, especially when they are both in their 40s and I shouldn't have to anticipate any of the BS that comes with a relationship between two much younger people. But Morgrim's characterization was all over the place, and when he wasn't trying to be a Big Scary Sorcerer, his personality and actions read as much younger. There's some good justifications for both Fenn and Morgrim to be distrusting and paranoid but it gets a bit tiresome after a while. I did really like the queen and wished we'd have gotten to see more of her. Also the story just... like... ends. Nothing really gets resolved other than "well I guess we'll see what happens". I could see it being left open in hopes of justifying a sequel but unfortunately I would not be checking back in to see if that ever happens.

Books: June

• Feast While You Can, Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta—I Will Never Leave My Home girl vs. I Left This Place Immediately girl, only this time with monsters and body horror. This book was absolutely wild. I hope someone turns it into a movie so I can spend half of the run time looking away from the screen. Deliciously messy. Small town nightmare, obscure family lore and traditions that everyone just knows, main characters who are complicated and stupid and impulsive but not in a way that feels like a "too stupid to live" kind of situation. Pacing is a bit weird and it took a few tries to get into it, but once things started getting wild, I was hooked. Other people have put together comprehensive content warning lists, if you're a more sensitive reader you'd probably do well to check that out. Bonus points for the Mountain Goats-inspired title.

• A Gentleman Never Keeps Score, Cat Sebastian—Fancy man about town has secrets; barkeep with a heart of gold would do anything for his friends. Like the prior entry in this series (It Takes Two to Tumble), I think its age shows a bit in terms of Cat Sebastian's writing having matured more over the years. I think the writing and plotting would be a lot tighter if she'd written it now, but, well, that's how time and progress work. I really liked Sam and Hartley and how Sam was so open and understanding of Hartley's issues, didn't pressure him to talk about it or get over it, and created space for him that he could be himself and be comfortable. I liked the side characters here, too, and feel like a pretty fleshed out world was created around Sam and Hartley. I was curious to see how the main impasse between them (Hartley's status as a [somewhat disgraced] gentleman vs. Sam's working class life) would get solved and thought that the ultimate solution worked for all of them and honored the character growth that everyone had shown.

• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna—Witches are required to be solitary individuals, thanks to the rules that get handed down from generation to generation, but Mika finds herself bucking the rules to teach three young witches to control their magic. A cozy romance, cute but overall forgettable. (I kept forgetting details as I was reading, if that says anything.) I think things that are cozy/twee are just not for me, ultimately. I was reading just to get to the end to see how the main problem got resolved. The characters, particularly the three little girls, all feel interchangeable and speak with the same sort of Tumblr-y, for the lack of better words, voices. The trope-y grumpy man/cinnamon roll woman romance felt like it didn't develop naturally so much as just was in there because someone said this book needed a romance. And so much interesting stuff takes place off the page, just so we can spend more time with a bland romance. Everything gets wrapped up neatly and without controversy. I just wanted more out of this.

• My Best Friend’s Honeymoon, Meryl Wilsner—Indecisive, no backbone Elsie finally stands up for herself and breaks up with her mediocre fiancé and instead takes her best friend Ginny on the trip that was supposed to be her honeymoon. Surprise: they’ve been secretly pining after one another the whole time. This is such a solidly three-star book - some stuff I loved, some I rolled my eyes at, but overall engaging. Elsie (indecisive) and her ex (zero emotional IQ) embody a lot of the worst traits of my ex and I had to push past that giant red flag at the beginning. I like the writing overall, and the sex scenes are out of this world, but the Third Act Breakup hinges on miscommunication and assumptions and not talking about feelings, which are all things that I'm totally over as a reader. I respect the choice to have our main characters actually spend serious time apart, and I did appreciate that their issues weren't solved in like two pages. But man, I just am so over miscommunication. I did have to keep reminding myself that Elsie and Ginny are basically just a few years past college aged, which helped explain a lot of their most annoying actions. Bonus points for femme pan/masc NB representation.

• Sky Daddy, Kate Folk—Linda thinks that she’s destined to die in a plane crash, except hornier. The thing I enjoyed most about this book is that it takes its premise - awkward 30-something woman with a sexual fixation on planes - seriously, in that while everything about it is funny, Linda herself is never played for laughs. Her first-person narration acknowledges that she's different from others but even as things start to spiral out of control, it's not like the story is punching down at her. People find her unsettling but she's not the butt of a joke. It would have been real easy to write this book with your main character as a joke, and that would have been a book that I was much less interested in. This is certainly one of the most unique premises I've ever read, and it kept me wondering how things were gong to be resolved. The book is an easy read and Linda's no-nonsense, incredibly blunt inner voice helps drive everything forward. This book definitely isn't for everyone but I'm excited to see more from the author.

Book links go to an affiliate page on Bookshop.org, where I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase.

What Else?

The 2025 Live Music Playlist has been updated with the acts that I saw live in May and June: Haley Blais and Martha Wainwright (Schubas), Judy Collins (Cahn Auditorium), Quinn Christopherson and Samantha Crain (Schubas), and The Early November and Jack’s Mannequin (The Salt Shed).

I also engaged in some theatre shenanigans:

• Hadestown (national tour, CIBC Theatre): the downside of having seen Hadestown on Broadway several times is that the touring version starts to feel like it’s missing a certain amount of spark. I did particularly enjoy Nickolaus Colón as Hades, though - while much younger than any of the other Hades (Hadeses??) I’ve seen before, he brings a lot of menace and intensity to the role that is at times legitimately frightening.

• Titaníque (Chicago, Broadway Playhouse): a parody musical by millennials for millennials. Wildly over the top and incredibly funny if you’re in the age group that spent your teen years with Jack and Rose.

• The Antiquities (Chicago, Goodman Theatre): a timely look at a dystopian future world where the AI wins. Intense, captivating, a little depressing.

Also, here’s a picture of one of my foster cats, Decaf. He already got adopted, so you really missed out.

What’s Next?

In the next installment I’ll talk about some movies and travel and whatever else I’ve skipped out on mentioning.

July’s already got a bunch of stuff on deck: two nights of Bandits on the Run, Jason Isbell in Rockford, two nights of Murder By Death, maybe The Swell Season if I can find an affordable ticket, a very highly anticipated trip to Denver to see Andrew McMahon play in all three of his bands at Red Rocks, and then closing out the month with The Decemberists playing in the northern suburbs.

Anyway, what are you all up to?

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