My ability to lose myself in books has taken a serious hit as the year goes on. I was incredibly thrilled, though, by Jeannie Lin’s return to her Pingkang Li/Lotus Palace mysteries with The Hidden Moon. And I zipped through Tiffany Reisz’s The Pearl, all while googling the gorgeous artwork she name-checks in this very… Read More Mala’s August and September 2020 Reading Rundown

You ever finish a book and immediately want the sequel? That was me with Zoraida Córdova’s Incendiary last month. Zoraida is one of those authors who can genre-hop with ease and who just keeps getting better and better with each book. Renata might be my favorite heroine of hers to date! Speaking of awesome heroines, I’d… Read More Mala’s July 2020 Reading Rundown

May was not a great month—for multiple reasons. So it’s not surprising that I didn’t get much reading done. I DNFed several books, too. :/ I’ve combined posts with June for the sake of efficiency—-and so I’d have more than four books listed. June, fortunately, was WAY more productive. I read so many brilliant advanced… Read More Mala’s May and June 2020 Temperate Reads

Is it really May? I could swear we’re still in March or April. Mapril? I’m glad I’m tracking books, because otherwise I would have no idea how much time has passed. Last month, I was lucky to get access to advance copies of some highly anticipated summer releases—-and they couldn’t have come at a better… Read More Mala’s April 2020 Cool Reads

March put the U.S. smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and pretty much all of my creative interests took a massive hit. Very little writing. Very little reading after the shelter-in-place order. But before everything went topsy-turvy, I fell into some of my favorite books of the year, as well as books that… Read More Mala’s March 2020 Cool Reads

I packed a lot into a short month—and I didn’t even finish a book on that extra leap day! Ann Aguirre was generous enough to give me a sneak peek at her latest Ars Numina book, The War Priest, and I was immersed immediately in grumpy bear (literally!) Callum and sunny songbird Joss’s romance! I… Read More Mala’s February 2020 Cool Reads

I started 2020 as I mean to go on—-by reading a lot! The find of the month was definitely Ann Aguirre’s Strange Love, an inventive, sweet, sexy—and side-splittingly funny at times—tale that’s equal parts Predator, The Bachelor, and The Hunger Games. This is an alien romance where the alien isn’t just some oversized humanoid with… Read More Mala’s January 2020 Cool Reads