"My akka said that you couldn't be happy for long, but that you got these moments of pure joy - when everything feels just perfect. Like when you've eaten just enough to feel full, but not enough to feel bloated. Or you bite into a piece of frui that's just right... The trick is to recognise those moments when they happen, so that you can remember them when you need to later."

GENRE: Romance
RATING: 4.75/5
FORMAT: eBook ARC
Tropes: Wedding planning, Traveling, Love Triangle, Romance Author x Literary Author x Wedding Planner

Review:

Having read 2 of Jeevani Charika's book, I was super excited for this and it did not disappoint! This time, we get to follow Kalpana, Sampath and Marcus as they try to plan a wedding in Sri Lanka by taking a trip there while managing their writing and author careers

This differed a bit from Charika's previous books and yet, we dive into our emotional themes in a wholesome way that feels like a hug, which we get to see in a lot of the author's books. I thought the concepts of learning who we are and not having to choose one part of our identity was handled quite well in here. Additionally, we get to see a bit of grief and learn how joy adds so much beauty to our lives, whether it's in the form of a book (Romance, of course!) or different aspects in our lives, like colours, traveling and so much more.

I really enjoyed getting to know Kalpana and seeing her develop as a character, watching her embrace who she is and her career as a Romance author. We slowly see her understand the importance of what she does and how spreading joy is just as important as writing any other genre, even if others don't see it! This leads to a theme of embracing joy and understanding that actually being happy and spreading it is important for who are we without it?

And Sampath, well he starts out as the wedding planner and turns out that he already likes Kalpana's books (yay) so its definitely quite lovely to see their journey unravel and watch how he get to learn more about Kalpana and notices the red flags in Marcus that are being ignored. And well, as for Marcus, you'll just have to read the book because I definitely can't express my dislike for him without spoiling the book!

I think what Charika does so well is that she expands on the small moments and dives into them, making the book feel so much warmer and gives us insight into who the characters are and what they want on a deeper level. I'd highly recommend all her other books that I've read, especially Playing for Love and How can I resist you? if you enjoy this one!

I was provided a free advance reader copy and I’m sharing my honest thoughts.

Y'all, where is the year going????

Seriously, it's almost September. How did that happen?

This week both flew and draggggged by for me, with so much going on at work that it felt like every day was a million hours long. I managed to finish one book this week, but it was a good one, so I'm happy about that.

Before I tell you about my reading, I want to take a second to share the most amazing news! A few weeks ago my favorite BookTuber, Carly at The Pastel Bookshelf, reached out to me to ask if I would participate in a collaboration post featuring HER favorite BookTubers. I was like "who, me?" To say I was starstruck is an understatement. We both started BookTube around the same time and her channel has BLOWN up and for good reason. I love her content so much, so to be part of one of her videos is such an honor. She shared the video this morning and my subscriber count has definitely seen a boost, which is amazing. But that aside, I get to brag that I was once part of Carly's content. 🥹 Go watch the video to find out what book I recommended!

Ok, now for the books. I am DEEP into The Witches of Cambridge with hopes to finish it later today if I can get all my editing done. It's SO good and just may be my new favorite Alice Hoffman. It's definitely much darker than some of her other work that I've read, and because of that I am enjoying it.

I started Meet Me in the Garden on audio this week and am SHOOK. It's so lush, with stunning prose and a really lovely flow. It sometimes feels like a stream of consciousness, with much more showing than telling, which I very much appreciate. It has 5⭐️ potential for sure. I want to spend some time with the physical book to get the "reading with my eyes" experience, so I've temporarily set the book aside because I will otherwise blow through it on audio. It really is beautiful!

My next audio will be the new short story collection from Colm Toibin, The News from Dublin, which is a past due ARC that I'm determined to read and review before the end of the month. I have news coming soon about Netgalley, and let's just say I think it will shock some folks.

I finished A Time of Witches this week and really enjoyed it. Madeline Martin is a very gifted storyteller, and her foray into witchy books was a success. While I can't quite put my finger on why, it wasn't a 5⭐️ book for me. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm reading THE best witchy author at the same time, so it made Martin's book feel a bit "light." Overall, it was a really good book that I think a lot of people will love. Look for a more detailed review coming soon! 4⭐️s

ICYMI

• I wrote a long-form book review for the first time in a while; it just so happens to be about The Calamity Club

• If you're looking for a coming-of-age novel that's actually good, look no further than Where the Girls Were

• a little of this, a little of that: book recs based on books you loved

• an honest book review on Habits of the Sea

• spooky season recommendation: The Fourth Wife

• it's time to vote for the September BBFL read!

Hear It Here First:

I have a lot of editing to do (10 hours of footage to be exact 😳), but my goal is to bring you episode 2 of Let's Go to the Library this week.

Ok, off to edit and enjoy a lazy Sunday!

Happy reading 😍

xoxo

c

The Sunday Prescription

One reading topic, one week of plans, and plenty of books administered weekly for chronic readers.

Symptoms: Are Special Editions Falling Out of Favor?

Happy Sunday everyone, and welcome back to another Sunday Prescription! Hope you are all having a great week and enjoying the last few weeks of summer as we head into fall. I don't know about you, but I for one am ready for cool weather and spooky season!

Speaking of spooky season, you all know I greatly enjoy reading horror books, and I have been a subscriber to the Illumicrate Evernight Sub box for awhile now, and I'm thinking about dropping it. This is along with some interesting discussion on our Discord server recently, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about!

I first signed up for Evernight because I was hoping to explore some new and different horror. For the quality of books you get the price seemed reasonable, and I figured it would be fun to try out. Now, the books have been wonderful in terms of physical quality for sure, and I have no complaints there. However, the books themselves have been very hit or miss in terms of my enjoyment of them. A few folks on our Discord server have also been talking about other subscriptions, especially subscriptions where the special editions are newer books, and the sentiment seems to be that more and more people are thinking of dropping subs where they get new release special editions.

I think this is interesting, because I'm seeing more and more creators leaning into indie books, paperbacks, used books, and discount stores for cheaper or more affordable books. For a long time, book socials were heavily leaning toward the sprayed edges and special covers of special edition books, but I'm starting to see that change. I know for me personally, I have always preferred the reading experience of a paperback - especially a trade paperback with my eyes these days. I buy a lot from my local indie store and bookshop.org, but I also buy a lot from Pango used and will even head to our local nd and Charles. But I do enjoy some special editions as well, especially for books that I know I love. I found my way onto the Broken Binding's SF&F sub recently, and those three books have been great choices that I know I was interested in, but they are pricey. Fortunately there is a decent skip allowance for that one, which is nice.

I also had a less than pleasant experience with another special order special edition this last year. It took forever, the communication from the company was poor, and I enjoyed the book, but in retrospect it wasn't so good I would have wanted to have a special edition of it.

So I know for me, I'll likely be dropping Evernight here, especially given I find most of my horror through word of mouth these days, but will be keeping SF&F for now. And I will still buy some special editions for books I love, but I don't see myself buying any special editions of books I haven't read outside of that sub in the near future. But I'm interested to know from you - what's your relationship with special edition books, and where do you see it heading?

The Rx: What I'm Reading and Doing

Lots going on this week, and life is going to be getting back to the regular routine now that kids are heading back to school. A few things to look out for:

• I'll have another book review to post here on bindery this week - The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay. This was tremendous, and I think for me is going to be a book of the year contender.

• Also be on the lookout for our Q4 Book Club poll that I will be posting tomorrow!

• For September's Bindery book club, we have Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman coming up.

• For September's Fable book club, we're going to be reading Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. This sounds stunning!

We have also had some new members join in the Dark Traveler crew, so thank you all who have joined! I'm working on our Dark Traveler monthly pick a book, which is King Sorrow by Joe Hill. And Tracie got to pick the Dark Traveler book for September, which is Road of Bones: The Ashen Series, Book 1 by Demi Winter. That's right - I'll be dipping my toes into the romantasy waters for the first time, and I'm pretty excited! I also have some Bindery ARCs I'll be working on in the next few weeks, including A Compliment of Scoundrels, which has me pretty pumped.

In terms of hobbies, with Minas Tirith done it's time to go back to puzzles for a little bit. There are a series of Lord of the Rings puzzles I'm working on, so those will be fun. I'm also going to be diving back into woodworking here - I have some built ins to do, as well as a desk that I want to get done.

If you are not on our Discord server, you should consider hanging out! I do exclusive giveaways there, and I have some really exciting ones planned for the next few months! I don't really do giveaways on IG/TT because I like to reward you all in our community, so be on the look out for those. And speaking of Discord, Bindery, and content ideas, I am working on a new membership tier for 2027 that is going to include a quarterly book box! More to come, but if you have any thoughts or ideas, let me know.

Hope you all have a great week of reading and life, and I'll see you next week!

Want More In-Depth Access?

If you enjoy getting into the details with me about reading, then consider upgrading to The Dark Travelers tier! My Dark Travelers get an exclusive Discord role and channels, a weekly deep dive reading update video, early access to YouTube videos, and each month they get to pick a book for me to read. This can be a book they want to read with me, or something they want me to try for them. It's super fun and a great tight knit group that I really enjoy talking books with, and I'd love to have you part of it!

Chapter 5

I’m losing my mind, Icarus decided. He surveyed the exploded contents of the file box scattered around his office. He had not slept or seen the inside of his flat for two days. How could he? It had settled in when he finally worked up the nerve to look inside and start reading through the investigation. 

Daedalus was not dead. Disappeared, sure. Habeus corpus--that you have the body. Quite literally, there was no body therefore the Church could not conclude there was a crime. Yet they had still deemed Daedalus deceased at the end. Why? What was he missing that made them so sure?

Somewhere in his bone marrow Icarus had always known the investigation was incomplete. What could he have done other than resign himself to their findings, which was a lot of absolute nothing. Now, staring at the contents of what made up the barest of minimums the investigators had put into locating his father, he could see exactly how many gaps existed in their work. Holes. Canyons of emptiness. 

He slumped into an armchair and stared at the wall. Whiskey swirled in a glass with a twist of his hand before he swallowed whatever was left and dropped it. He had meticulously copied every artifact in the box and made duplicates of photographs and newspaper clippings, then pinned them in groups by evidence type. Then hated that, pinned them again by timeline. Hated that, pinned them again by importance. 

His vision blurred and he rubbed at his eyes. 

“When did you last sleep?” He jumped. Maren made no noise on the carpet of their office. Normally, he liked it. She snuck up on unruly clients and set them off balance. Directed at him, though, he loathed it. 

Icarus shrugged, “Last night, I think.”

“Hm,” she scanned him, the half-empty decanter, then his wall of madness. “You should go home for a few hours. I’ll keep your research safe.”

There was no condescension in it, not from Maren. Never would be. If anyone understood his revived obsession, it would be her. He knew she was right. Not sleeping would not lead to less mistakes, nor would several glasses of cheap liquor, but he could not bring himself to rise and leave. Instead, he leaned forward and steepled his fingers, opening and closing them methodically. 

“It doesn’t make sense, Mare.” He shook his head, “Their concluding report is so certain he’s dead, but I can’t find anything in there that justifies it.”

She stepped farther into his office and examined the board. After walking its length twice, she looked back at him, “How might a bodach fit?”

“Sorry?”

“Consider it was a bodach who said it. If we’re looking for connections to your father, how might a bodach specifically be connected?” She softened her tone as best she knew how, “And consider how a bodach’s nature might be. You can’t rule out it may have simply lied.”

He frowned, the beginning of a fight brewing between them, “Even if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t answer the glaring holes in their documentation.”

“Redactions,” she had not meant it to come out as sharp as it had. “Who’s to say they didn’t seal some portions? It would explain their surety.”

His mouth tightened into a stubborn line, hands clenched, “I checked the appendix, it’s all here. They didn’t say anything about-”

“How often has the Church lied to us?” She folded her arms casually, “Why would they lie any less now?”

He opened his mouth to argue, but drew a blank. His chest was tight, head pounded, throat parched. He ached too much for this argument and had no idea how to even start it if he wanted to. He looked back at the board and shook his head, “I’m missing something.”

“I’ve no doubt.” She touched his shoulder lightly, a form of apology, “I know how it feels, you know that. I’m not dismissing you. I just don’t expect us to find the answers in that box from an order of priests who have no problem disposing of evidence.”

A knock sounded in the doorway and they both turned. Edith glanced at the board and paid it little mind. Icarus and his eccentricities were part of the job, “Pardon the intrusion. You have a client. No appointment, but you seemed… available.”

He sighed and waved at her, “I’m not. Take a message, we’ll call on them later.”

Unfortunately, small offices leave little room for privacy. A woman leaned around the other side of the doorframe, face drawn and grey. Her rich green eyes were dull and red from crying. She was Edith’s height, long-limbed and lithe without being skeletal. Her fierce red hair had been tamed in a flourish of plaits atop her head. When the light struck a loose wave, it turned gold. If she had not looked so forlorn, she would have been quite pretty. 

Her skirts whispered when she crossed into the room uninvited, gloved hands twisting in the handle of her purse. For a moment, she looked like she would burst into tears. She took a deep breath and blinked resolve back into her sharp-angled features, “Please. I don’t know who else to ask for help.”

Maren shot him a look and Icarus argued with her in silence. As always, he reneged and moved to sit behind his desk, “Sit. What’s your name?”

“Eilonwy Callahan,” she settled in the chair opposite before holding out her hand. “My family live in Fairview. They’re good folk. I keep my own apartment in Cabra, so I can only tell you what I’ve seen when I stop by.”

He shook it gently, “Alright, Eilonwy Callahan. What seems to be the problem you can’t get solved?”

She hesitated and stared at her palms for a while. Long enough Icarus glanced up at Maren to urge her intervention, “Something dark has made a nest inside my brother. Nobody believes me. When I--they can’t see it when they look at him, but something in him is… wrong.”

It was her tone that sparked the interest in him. He leaned forward, “How do you mean?”

“His eyes are the wrong color in the dark.” Her gaze snapped up to meet his so suddenly he sat back again, “They reflect the light even when there is none. When he speaks, I hear two voices sometimes. Nobody else seems to notice it. I--I don’t know why I do. He came home the other night and looked as if he’d been fighting someone, but I couldn’t find a wound. He passed out for two days. When he woke up--I don’t know. It’s like my brother was… gone. Something else was playing the part of him. Wearing him like a costume.”

Maren had eased herself into the other remaining chair. Edith stood in the doorway, attention rapt. Icarus noticed, but could not explain what was happening. The woman’s voice captured their attention in a peculiar way. Every word left her like a muted note in a song, drawing them in. It did not make him uneasy, though it probably should have. Her manner of speech was calming despite the grim contents. 

“Please,” her tears threatened to fall, “nobody believes me. The Church won’t even let me speak to someone about it. Even if I’m wrong, I--I just want to be sure.”

He sighed and looked towards his blown-open investigation, then Maren, then Eilonwy. She was clearly distressed and needed someone to tell her what to look for. He knew turning clients away was foolhardy as close to broke as they were, but he could not just abandon his investigation to start a new one. 

Eilonwy sensed the hesitation in him. Her hand shot out and grabbed his fingers with more strength than he expected from someone so slight, “I’ll pay double your rates. Just for you to speak to him. Ease my fears.”

With a pat of his free hand over hers, he began the slow shake of his head, “I’m sorry, Miss Callahan. We’ve got a full caseload right now. If you leave your number with Edith, she’ll call when-”

She withdrew her hand and stood. Her straight-backed posture commanded the room and she gave him a curt nod, “I see. So she’ll call me after it’s beyond help and my brother is dead or a murderer."

Icarus frowned, “Beg pardon?”

“Whatever is in him, Father Ulrich,” she held his gaze. The room bent around her, making her seem taller, “It’s going to kill him or someone else. But it means death. I feel it sure as I will feel the winter wind when I step out of your offices--alone with no recourse.”

Eilonwy turned abruptly and left. Edith parted for her and watched as she hurried down the stairs. The small bell shuddered when she slammed the door behind her. Maren and Edith descended on him immediately. 

“Icarus,” Maren warned, “we can’t afford to ignore her case and work on yours for free. You know that.”

“You most certainly do not have a full case load,” Edith chided at the same time.

He groaned and waved both of them off, “I can’t drop what I’m working on to help her! There’s Netherists aplenty in Dublin, it’s not like we’re back in Baldongan. She’ll move on to the next office and be fine. As for our finances, the payment from Reed will clear in a day or two. We’ll be fine for a few months.”

The women exchanged fearsome looks. Edith, this debate well below her pay, closed the door with an indignant humph that made her position on his white lie very clear. Maren stared down at him, arms now tightly folded across her chest. He would not meet her face. He knew what he would find there--the argument he had not been able to start earlier. 

“Icarus.”

“Maren.”

“Icarus.” She slammed her hands on his desk, forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were alight, caught between empathy and anger, “Listen to me. I know finding your father is important. I know this case matters to you, it’s everything to you. But what on earth is going to change in a few days’ time that hasn’t budged in fifteen years?”

He was quiet, leafing through every reply he could think of. She mistook his racing silence for defiance and leaned forward in determination to make her point clearer. 

“We have a job to do,” she spoke firmly but kindly, “and we can’t stop doing it because of a bodach that may or may not have been trying to throw you off at the midnight hour of its life.”

He stared at his thumbs and picked idly at a hangnail. It was not that doubt had failed to cross his mind. Quite the opposite. Everything about this stroke of madness was buried to its neck in doubt. She was right about the Church probably hiding evidence or sealing it away. She was just as right about the bodach lying to him. Still, something needled at him he could not shake. Fatigue was an option, but this had followed him since he left Father Reed’s. 

“Next case that comes in,” he exhaled, “I’ll say yes to it. Ten minutes or ten days from now. Alright?”

She stood straight again and studied him carefully. After she ran her mysterious calculus, she nodded, “Fine. But I want it known that I don’t like this and I think we should have taken her case.”

He made a gesture of absolution in the air, “So it is known.”

***

In the morning, lost in the dreamless sleep of the exhausted and drunk that never fully satisfies the truly tired, Icarus slept loudly on his long office couch. Maren kicked him in the shin and threw the paper in his face before he could shout his protest. 

“Read!” she snarled at him. Her genuine anger was a rare thing and it startled him into immediate compliance.

He rubbed his leg and sat straight, trying to blink the sleep away so he could see. He shook the paper out and saw it splashed across the front page. Enormous boxy letters taking up a quarter of the space above the fold. 

GRISLY MURDER IN FAIRVIEW! POSSESSION? OR PSYCHOPATHY?

His stomach dropped into his feet. He was going to throw up. Rationalizations constructed themselves swiftly through his mind. Surely it was a coincidence, Fairview was not exactly a posh neighborhood. There were dozens of families with questionable sons in that part of the city. 

But Icarus was too seasoned at this to believe in coincidences.

He scanned the text and frowned. Two adults, a teenager, and a young child. Throats mangled, found by a neighbor in the morning who dropped off bread every other day. Bodies almost drained of blood, coupled with a grim photograph through some shuttered side window of a kitchen splashed with black like an ocean tide had rolled through it.

Throats mangled, he reread the line several times. 

“Mangled,” he muttered and took the mug of coffee Maren shoved at him. Her displeasure was very clear, “Not cut. They used that word.”

“Cut is a toss-up,” she was working very hard to bridle her fury, “but mangled is always one of them.”

She did not need to elaborate. Demon, most likely, but fae were not to be ruled out. They were violent, angry little things when they wished to be. Demons rarely mangled, they loved the torment of cutting and terrifying their victims before they died. Fae took a more animalistic approach when they committed violence like this. His sleep-addled mind tried to roll through the possibilities. 

“We have to find her,” Maren was staring out the window into the swell of morning grey. “She said Cabra and she’s not listed in the paper.”

He put it down and ran a hand over his face, draining the coffee and ignoring the burn he knew he would suffer on his tongue with a wince. On his feet, he paused to check the mirror behind the couch. He looked like a wraith. They could not go anywhere if he did not tidy himself up a little, otherwise they might think he was the possessed missing son. 

“Give me ten minutes,” he ushered Maren out the door. 

Ten minutes later, tidied and in a fresh black shirt knifed at the neck by the crisp white tab collar he so enjoyed wearing, he shut the door to his office and locked it. No taking chances with the material he had pinned up in there, even with Edith standing guard like a bear at the mouth of its cave. 

Maren briskly took the lead, pulling away from him in her hurry. His strides were longer and she could not stay out in front of him for long. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she whirled. For a moment he expected her to shout at him, but she just stared placidly up at him. He hated when she shut him out like that. It made him feel like a child set in the corner for bad behavior. 

“She won’t be at Cabra,” he offered, trying to make peace with her, “she’ll be at the family home in Fairview.”

“How do you-?”

“Where did you go when they found yours?”

Maren’s face rippled with some memory Icarus only ever touched when he needed to. She nodded and waited for him to redirect them. She did not pull away from him this time, sticking shoulder to shoulder while they walked to the tram. In the din of the car, he leaned so only she could hear him. One hand found her shoulder with a firm squeeze. 

“I was wrong, Mare. We should have taken it. I’m sorry.”

She looked him over, weighing the heart of his apology against the feather of her anger. In a quiet decision only he could see her make, her expression opened back up to him and he dropped his hand. He knew better than to draw attention to it. Now, he had to focus on finding Eilonwy and dissecting what force had chosen her brother as its vessel of violence. 

Hey y'all,

We're still reading Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar for August. We will not be having a voice chat this month but I'll put some questions in the Martyr! chat on Discord at the end of the month.

I plan on putting out a poll for September's pick in the Discord, so make sure to join if you haven't yet. The goal is to read a book by a Latine author to celebrate Latine/Hispanic Heritage Month so feel free to leave a suggestion here or in the Discord.

XoXo,

Rae

Hey Sickos, it's the time of the month where we vote on what the Fiction & History Sickos Book Clubs will be reading in September! I'll have the polls up this afternoon in our Discord. As always, bribery and bullying are expected and encouraged. You'll have exactly 72 hours to force your will upon folk.

Quick reminder: to participate in the voting and discussion forums, you'll need a membership at the Sicko or above tier, that unlocks those channels (and a bunch of others) in our Discord.

Now I'm kinda lying because I've decided to pull the dictator card for the Fiction Sickos for the first (and last?) time this year. We had some excellent recommendations in the Discord for potential options and some of those are already plugged in for the October vote, but one of the recommendations is one that I simply need to read next month before the adaptation comes out on Netflix on October 1st.

You may have guessed it by now but the Fiction Sickos will be reading EAST OF EDEN by JOHN STEINBECK!

For the History Sickos we have a requested topic from the 'cord leading things off, a biography about a coo coo bonkers emperor, a nonfiction book I've been meaning to pick up, and a 2nd place vote getter from a previous round of voting. Here are those options with blurbs about 'em:

FIFTH SUN: A NEW HISTORY OF THE AZTECS by CAMILLA TOWNSEND

"In November 1519, Hernando Cortes walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story - and the story of what happened afterwards - has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards... the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves... The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence..."

NERO: MATRICIDE, MUSIC, AND MURDER IN IMPERIAL ROME by ANTHONY EVERITT & RODDY ASHWORTH

The Roman emperor Nero’s name has long been a byword for cruelty, decadence, and despotism. As the stories go, he set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. He then cleared the charred ruins and built a vast palace. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her... This is the bloodstained story of one of Rome’s most notorious emperors: but in Everitt and Ashworth’s hands, Nero’s life is also a complicated, cautionary tale about the mettle required to rule.

WE DON'T KNOW OURSELVES: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF MODERN IRELAND by FINTAN O'TOOLE

"... weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history...."

THE CELTS: SEARCH FOR A CIVILIZATION by ALICE ROBERTS

"The Celts are one of the world's most mysterious ancient people. In this compelling account, Alice Roberts takes us on a journey across Europe, uncovering the truth about this engimatic tribe: their origins, their treasure and their enduring legacy today. What emerges is not a wild people, but a highly sophisticated tribal culture that influenced the ancient world - and even Rome..."

Hello my dear Rebels! On Monday I'm interviewing Sophia Benoit about her historical romance debut The Very Definition of Love. She is also the author of the essay collection Well, This Is Exhausting.

What are you dying to know about her career and her craft?

Submit your questions in the comments by Friday 8/28 and I might ask her during an upcoming episode of Rebel Ever After.

You can purchase The Very Definition of Love in the Rebel Ever After affiliate bookstore here. Get ready to learn a lot about Regency-era slang terms for bonking. It rules.

I just REMOVED over 70 books from my TBR!

and oooooohhhhh did it feel good!

Why?

Short answer: it was too much, and I was getting stressed.

But if you want more context, keep reading :)

You know when your room, apartment, or house just has a bunch of things you don't use, and you suddenly get that feeling of being trapped and overwhelmed? To fix that, you then get rid of everything you don't need anymore and clear up some space. That's essentially what happened. My virtual room was overstuffed with books, I could barley walk in there! I needed to cleanse my TBR.

I had three different book-tracking platforms, each with its own TBR list. That's just too much! Most of those over 70 books I removed were ones I'd completely forgotten about and don't see myself reading anymore. The books I added to my TBR three years ago are way different from what I'd add now, tastes change, and I wanted my TBR to reflect that.

We all know there's an overconsumption of books. I mean, there are worse things to overconsume, but it's definitely affecting the quality of books being published, because of the rush… okay, I'm getting off topic here!

What I'm basically trying to say is: having way too many books on your TBR is absolutely fine, in fact, it represents curiosity and passion. But having a yearly or quarterly TBR purge can be nice, it can lighten the stress, it frees up space for new books and it can give you the feeling of actually beings able to complete all the books on your TBR!

:)

Hello my friends! And welcome to another installment of Trans Joy Thursday*, where I forget the days of the week, only to realize I missed Thursday entirely. My sincerest apologies! With that being said, Onward!

This week is my long week at work (I work a 2,2,3 schedule - while that does mean I have my entire year planned out work-wise, every other week is a "long week to work" and those are exhausting.) This means, very little time to play, BUT it does mean that I have to create pockets of joy in the downtime.

I have diagnosed inattentive ADHD, so I tend to hyperfocus on one thing, or several things, at a time, lose interest, move on to the next, times infinite. I have been currently working on a personal curriculum for the rest of this year and for all of next year - I attempted to make one for this year, but it was TOO MUCH. So, for next year, I narrowed it down to easier themes and broke down the books to read by chapters for each day when applicable. I will share more if you are interested (let me know in the comments), but creating this, as a lifelong learner, has definitely brought me massive amounts of trans joy this week!

I have also secured our Beyond The Rainbow chats with Dr. Kiki Fehling AND Anita Kelly for next month! I am so incredibly stoked for these two chats. Catch the flyers on socials soon, and here for the zoom info!

ALSO, in relation to my own trans joy - my wife began her LAST FIRST day of nursing school Monday! She graduates in December, already has a job lined up, and is just cruising right along. To say I'm beyond proud is an understatement!

In other, therapeutically aligned news, this is my first week without therapy (grief or regular) since my Memaw passed in June. (Not by choice, it just happened that way - I will resume next week). And honestly? For the most part? I'm okay. I'm doing it. I'm focusing on what needs to be done around the house and for work, distracting myself with books, and doing all the self-care I can.

One big shout-out that I missed yesterday - it was National Latina* Day! I hope all of you who are Latinx always feel supported, welcomed, included and loved in not only this space, but every room you walk into. You are deserving and worthy of celebrating. Never forget that.

Before I wrap up, if you are a paid subscriber I have exclusive news dropping NEXT Thursday (8/27) that you will not want to miss. Stay tuned.

I will leave you all with my favorite quote to round the week as we head into the weekend:

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that's all." - Oscar Wilde

My wish, and hope, for all of you, is that you truly live this weekend - in the hustle and bustle of every day life, may you take a small moment and spend it in gratitude - however that looks for you.

See you Sunday for Trans History Month, Volume 3.

With all my trans joy,

Sawyer Cole