Shanghai Immortal

Written: A. Y. Chao

First line: The steaming Shanghai night drapes heavy over my bare shoulders. 

Why you should read this book: Fast paced, luscious, fresh, and edgy, this is the story of Lady Jing, bad girl half-vampire half-fox spirit, consigned to live under the thumb of the King of Hell (Chinese version) since her grandmother's court rejected her outright as an abomination and her mother subsequently abandoned her. Devoted to rejecting tradition and making trouble, her life is upended the day she's commanded to escort a living mortal through Hell (the King of Hell needs advice on creating a viable banking system) and ends up sent to the mortal realm for her own protection. Jazz age Shanghai is a new world, where Lady Jing discovers she has friends, mortal and otherwise, and devotes herself to unraveling the conspiracy that catapulted her from the world where she endured for ninety years, just in time to finally grow up. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You aren't stirred by the idea of a half-vampire half-demon in a world that blends Chinese mythology with the advances of the early twentieth century. 

Station Eternity

Written by: Mur Lafferty

First line: Nobody ever believed murders "just happened" around Mallory Viridian.

Why you should read this book: This fun near-future science fiction murder mystery takes place primarily on the sentient space station where Mallory has fled to escape the constellation of murders that seem to happen all around her on Earth, where nobody believes they're not her fault even though she always finds the real killer. Surely the curse cannot follow her across the cosmos if she's only one of three humans on board, but her peace of mind is shattered when she learns that more earthlings are on their way. Suddenly, she's surrounded by death and mayhem again, and needs to use all her resources to unravel a series of mysteries and save the lives of every life on the station, including the station itself.

Why you shouldn't read this book: There are a couple main characters and many supporting characters, and the narrative perspective shifts frequently, often giving entire chapters to the point of view of a minor character for an entire chapter, which, to me, can be jarring. 

Yesteryear

Written by: Caro Claire Burke

First line: This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself. 

Why you should read this book: Natalie has always known that everyone around her is stupid, and that her beliefs about marriage and family and femininity are the only intelligent ways to view those concepts, so naturally, when her marriage falters after the birth of her first child, she focuses increasingly on creating a media empire based on her identity as a "trad wife," showcasing a perfect farm life based on conservative ideals. But Natalie's perfect world is shattered when she wakes up mysteriously transported to some strange nineteenth century farm, held hostage and forced to serve as a wife and mother to a husband and children who are sort of like her real husband and children on land that is a lot like her actual home, but not quite. Told in a series of flashbacks, Natalie's journey exposes the dark side of the lifestyle and the hypocrisy of the young women influencers promoting it. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Natalie is an utterly irredeemable character, smug and self-righteous with zero self-awareness, an unreliable narrator who absolutely deserves every awful thing that happens to her, which is interesting to read, but an unusual way to write a protagonist. 

The Bog Wife

Written by: Kay Chronister

First line: On winter nights, the burned heavy bundles of dried peat in the hearth and inhaled the scent of sacred ground burning while their father paced the length of the room, reciting the history of the Haddesley compact.

Why you should read this book: All their lives, the young adult Haddlesley children have been taught to honor the ancient compact between their family and their bog, which every generation offers up one magical wife to the eldest son, to continue the family line. But their vague, eldritch bog mother has mysteriously vanished, and one of the siblings has fled the land, and there are increasing doubts about the eldest son's suitability to serve as patriarch, and meanwhile, in true southern gothic fashion, the weight of their own history is literally crushing the family home. Naturalistic and supernatural, this delightful novel chronicles the breakdown of old family narratives about power and responsibility.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe everything your parents told you despite all evidence to the contrary.