reviewing 7 recently read books || axiom's end, catherine house, mexican gothic and more! 

The way you talked about it really makes me want to read Catherine House now! And I'm so glad you talked about Axiom's End, it's one of the books I'm really interested in reading and I feel like your criticism of the pacing and Cora as a character is going to help me set my expectations going into it!

I love how thoughtful all of these reviews were. You are so skilled at identifying and describing these little truths of books and your experience with them and I appreciate it so much. I haven't seen anyone talk about Catherine House yet and I so appreciate that your review was the first I heard about it. I'm not 100% sold on it being for me yet, but it's on my radar now. I never tried the Mercy Thompson books but the Alpha and Omega series was once of the first paranormal romance series I ever read (I mean, I quit 3 books in, but still) so it is nice to hear you talk about some Patricia Briggs books here.

your catherine house commentary is everythinggggg

I just appreciate seeing Patricia Briggs get talked about on booktube, I rarely see it and she is one of my favorites. I also recommend the Alpha and Omega series by her.

Awesome review, so happy to see that someone else enjoyed Catherine House. As a bio major, the plasm storyline just connected with me, how in some ways in the research, you are essentially giving away your time, your intellectual property and your soul, to these institutions. But that goes for any field in academic the commitment and dedication to these schools are truly cultish and cut throat. I also really enjoyed Mexican Gothic, I agree with you about Moreno-Garcia's descriptive writing skills, I am the worse at visualization but I saw everything she described in my head vividly. I also liked the eugenics storyline.

You made Catherine House sound super interesting with the added context, I'm definitely gonna check it out! Great video, as always :)

i also read Catherine House because many people talked about it, i liked the book a lot! the dreamlike atmosphere is definitely the best part. i'm looking forward to reading Elisabeth Thomas's other books if/when she publishes them.

I would be so interested to hear your thoughts comparing Catherine House and Ninth House, just because of the Yale connections.

I've been thinking about reading Axiom's End but just haven't gotten to it yet. Thanks for your review, it helped me put if off a bit longer, lol.

I also loved Catherine House! I thought from hearing people describe it that it would be hard to follow but it wasn’t! Also love the slight avoidance of questions at the end 🙈

yessss so excited to watch this!

About Mercy Thompson’s series - the next book for you is River Marked and that’s the one where Mercy finds out more about her origins and why she’s always in the middle of the action. Mercy is my favorite character in Urban Fantasy.

I really enjoyed Mexican Gothic, so now I definitely have to check out Catherine House!

I'm glad I'm not the only one that had some issues with the pacing in Axiom's End. It's hard to find a lot genuine criticism of the book.

Love your analyses, Mari :^D Thanx for keeping me company again while I work

"is anybody editing Nora Roberts" MARIIIII OMG AHHAHAHAHAH

Catherine House sounds great!! I recently picked up my first Moreno-Garcia book (Certain Dark Things) and ended up putting it down. I’m going to give it another shot and try and pick up something else by her because you make her books sound so great! I want to love her!

ooh the end of everything does sound intriguing. i just preordered the disordered cosmos by chandra prescod-weinstein so i'm like i want to read more books about science, space and such. i tried to start catherine house and just couldn't get into it at the time, does sound interesting though! totally agree on your thoughts on mexican gothic, i enjoyed it and going through the journey with noemi and the eugenics and colorism was like angering and definitely added to the story and i still left feeling like i wanted a bit more from it. always love hearing your thoughts!

You've sold me on Catherine House. I never really considered picking it up before, because I don't tend to care for standard thrillers. I actually really enjoyed Axiom's End but I think your critiques are super valid (lol). I think you can definitely tell it was a debut novel.

Oh I loved Mexican Gothic! I agree that the themes were one of the strongest parts. I also *loved* Noemi. We just don't get enough feminine girls allowed to stay that way and still be competent. Also I'm realizing that S M-G has this amazing skill of writing characters I get invested in with a lot less focus on them than I'd normally want/need? kind of like what you were saying about wanting more descriptions about feelings. It didn't bother me because I felt like I got enough to go on, and the personality aspects we got were interesting enough that I didn't feel like I was missing something, if that makes sense? I think that's also why the slight romance element worked for me - I know some readers felt like it was underdeveloped (which I get!) but the sprinkles we got throughout the story were effective enough (maybe partly because of the way they contrasted with the creepy story) that it felt like it made sense even though it didn't get a ton of pagetime. I didn't used to use .75 ratings but then I read a book that I mostly really liked except for an awful ending and I went to bed without rating it, woke up and realized I was actually angry at the prospect of giving it a 4 stars when the ending left such a bad taste in my mouth, and slapped a 3.75 on it 😂 And...now I use .75 ratings LOL

Thank you for your thoughts on these books!

so glad you liked Catherine House! it didn’t fully work for me in the same ways it did you, but the people who didn’t think it was scary or tense confuse me. I think you’re onto something with SMG’s writing. she definitely has a descriptive way of writing, but like you said it doesn’t feel as emotional. I think that’s true of all of her work and why I generally find myself loving the story but distanced from the characters. I’m not as emotionally involved with them, especially the ones that read kind of cold, since I’m SUCH a feelings-forward person.

I love urban fantasy and really enjoy Patricia Briggs. Other urban fantasy I think is worth a read is Seanan Mcguire's October Daye series or, on a more snarky note, the Incryptid series. Anne Bishop's The Others series is also very good but could possibly be considered edging into horror. But my absolute favorite, by far, is the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. First two books are not quite as good as the rest of the series but I think each book gets better. And, amazingly enough for an urban fantasy series, it's actually finished.

I’d heard Kayla taking about Catherine House but you went into so much depth and now I really want to pick it up!

I don't know if you've continued the Mercy books yet, but you start getting more answers about Mercy's background and how she's able to do the things she does in book 6. I love the series a lot, but I also definitely agree with your points about the lack of female characters. It's distressing because I think it would be so refreshing for Mercy to have that community of women to rely on and it feels like such a missed opportunity. I don't know if you're looking for other urban fantasy series, but both of Seanan McGuire's (October Daye and InCryptid) are a lot of fun, and there are a ton more female friendships in those books.

This was a near-perfect description of 'Axiom's End'. It was something of a bait-and-switch, whereas I thought I was buying a first contact, conspiracy theory laden story. Those elements are very small portions of the story. I was hoping I had found my new favorite book series, but I struggled to finish it, and I don't anticipate buying any of the sequels.

Okay I need Catherine House now...

Yours is the first review of Catherine House that I've watched that's made me go 'okay, maybe I should read this??' lol. Great reading month though.

Your office looks like an instant boost of serotonin. I'm so jealous. The Mercy Thompson novels sound interesting. Is the romance smutty?

I’m so glad we shared similar feelings and thoughts on Catherine House and Mexican Gothic! I feel like so many people on booktube felt the opposite and I was feeling like the odd one out for adoring CH and being underwhelmed by MG 😂

catherine house sounds amazing tbh added to the tbr

I'm here for your comments on Mexican Gothic . . . hmmm, interesting. I do get what you mean. Overall, I really liked it. I gave it 4 stars. Didn't love it, but it was a great read for me. I think you gave it more thought than I did, and I appreciate your wisdom here

I would love to see/hear your thoughts on Magic for Liars - it's like a private detective investigating a murder at a wizard school! I had mixed feelings about it, I was really into the first half and then it was all wrapped up so fast, I kind of wished the book was just longer so I got more time with the characters

I agree, there were parts of Axiom's End that were very introspective. The middle was kinda slow for me and the politics of the aliens were a bit complicated. Honestly, an explanation guide would have helped.

"those are all good questions" lol best possible way to end a video

I also have axiom's end as an audiobook, but I don't tend to listen to audiobook versions of scifi books. Will see what I think about it.

I love Nora Roberts books, she's one of my favorite authors. But I have been so scared of reading her newish releases cause the reviews have been not great. I bought the awakening last week and you are the 3rd person who says it just a long prologue. I might just stick with rereading my favorites by her.

I'm about 70 pages into Catherine House and wasn't sure I would continue but okay, okay, I'll try for a little bit more lol

To me, Axiom's End felt like Ellis getting a bunch of foundational stuff out of the way before getting to the grander story she wants to explore. I'll see if that's the case once the next book comes out!

Mexican Gothic (and SPOILERS ahead for those who haven’t read it) kind of let me down a bit because I was hoping for the mushroom entity itself to have its own resolution. The family patriarch stole this thing from native people, massacred an entire religious community that lived in harmony with the fungal ecosystem, and there goes Noemí: “Fungus BAD!” (which, fair, I guess) and burns it to the ground.

I want to read Mexican Gothic!

How is Nora Roberts' depiction of Ireland?

I know this is an old video. But Mercy books are something I wanted to start recently. But I was concerned about a white person writing a Native American character. Especially as I’ve heard that she doesn’t do anything with that identity until maybe in the later books. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Oh man I struggled with Axiom's End and I really liked Lindsay Ellis before. I think I had REALLY high expectations. I DNFed at about 150 pages in but I plan to try again someday. I don't like Cora at all though and tbh I don't like the writing style.

i felt similarly about mexican gothic. the reveal happened a little bit too early for my liking and after that the story lost momentum for me.

I read Mexican Gothic and liked it well enough, it wasn't anything too special, but I liked it. And then I read Catherine House... and. actively hated it. Not going to lie. That book made me very frustrated. I can't think of a single thing about it that i actually liked.

Have you read the Chicagoland Vampire series by Chloe Neill?

I have been entirely underwhelmed by Nora Roberts. I try them when friends read them, but I end up picking them to pieces. I haven't found a good one yet.

I really appreciate your take on Mexican Gothic. I just finished that book as well, and while I really enjoyed it, I was also left wondering about some of the ideas presented in the book. For me, I struggle with books like this that are about colonization but gloss over the fact that the Spanish were colonizers too. I know that wasn’t the point of the book, but it felt so odd to me that so much emphasis was put on how different this English family was from the rest of the city, particularly it’s indigenous inhabitants, but barely any mention was made of how the Spanish would have acted any differently. I might be reading way too much into it, but I guess I was hoping for something that was a much more of a discussion on the complexities of Latinx identities.

The structural problems in institutions re: Catherine House sounds interesting, but I'm one of those folks who found it incredibly boring. I actually wish it had been more atmospheric and less college-aged drama because I found those interactions just meh. And I've always wanted to check out the Mercy Thompson series, but I get a bit wary when I see Native characters written by non-Native authors (I don't think Briggs is Native but would love to be proven wrong).