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A Darker Mischief by Derek Milman (A): A gay teen from the south finds himself and his crush inducted into a posh boarding school’s secret society that is way more sinister that he thought. Such a fun read, and it would make a good limited series.

The B-List

Wellness by Nathan Hill (B+): A sprawling (600 pages) tale of a couple who met in the 1990s and in the 2010s are dealing with everything going on. This could have been an A had a lot been edited out, as it was just too long for what it was. However, the section on how Facebook targeted and caused the main character’s older father to become a conspiracy theorist should be required college freshmen reading.

All the Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani (B+). Trigiani has been hit or miss for me. I loved the Big Stone Gap series, but her other stuff hasn’t been great, so I was pleasantly surprised to read another hit. This is a story of old Hollywood and the relationship between Loretta James and Clark Gable told through Loretta’s assistant who has a secret back in Italy. Trigiani wrote this before Young’s daughter said that Gable sexually assaulted her, which makes the book…completely different in retrospect (whitewashing SA), but as it was published before her daughter spoke out…so I guess in the end I wouldn’t recommend it because of how it reads today.

Silas Marner by George Eliot (B+). A classic for a reason. Silas is banished from his town for a robbery he didn’t commit and ends up becoming a caregiver for a young girl in his new location (more or less that’s the plot).

Underburn by Bill Gaythwaite (B): A 70ish year old woman and her gay son travel from LA to Maine to deal with her mother’s estate and is forced to deal with her sister who she is estranged from. I enjoyed it, but it could have been better.

The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee (B): I recently watched the Nicole Kidman limited series and…was wanting an explanation for things that I hoped would come from the book…and it didn’t. A group of expat women in Hong Kong are connected through the disappearance of the youngest son of Nicole Kidman’s character.

The Great Influenca by John M. Barry (B). A very detailed historical account of the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. A bit too detailed…but I learned a lot.

A Fine Romance by Candice Bergen (B) I’ve loved Bergen since I was a kid and she did the Sprint commercials (we were a mainly ABC family so no Murphy Brown, but I wanna see it! Alas not streaming). Some parts were dry, but I enjoyed the story of her life overall.

Slayer & Vampires: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Buffy & Angel by Edward Gross & Mark A. Altman (C). The book came out in 2016, and the entire book seemed to be kissing Whedon’s a**, which was kinda gross knowing what we know and what Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters sorta alluded to at times. I did find the parts about Angel more interesting as I already knew the Buffy stuff.

The C-List

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult (C+) It seems like forever since we’ve had a new Picoult book, so I was really eager to read this one. It has two timelines, 2024 and the time of Shakespeare. In modern time, the main character writes a play about the woman who wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays,and who uses her Black gay man as a writer when she finds out that a former professor is the one in charge of getting the play produced (he hated her writing in the past). In the Elizabethen Era, we have Emilia Bassano writing for Shakepeare and living her life. I really struggle with historical fiction, which is why I really didn’t like the book. I loved the modern part though.