Welcome to Litsy!

Swapping out my #DoubleSpin #MonthlyNonfiction2025 for a #BookSpinBingo nonfiction because mood reading 😂

4.5⭐️

A hilarious and entertaining new cozy mystery series. The Dog Ladies started off with a murder mystery party that turned into a real murder, and I thought, "Oh great, another one," but I was wrong. I feel in love with Gloria, Pryia, and Ryan. Gloria and Pryia are lonely women in their eighties, and Ryan is a lonely IT young guy. They all have dogs and a cat. When murder happens at the party, they decide to solve it.

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A cute modern #lgbtq+ YA retelling of Jane Austen‘s Emma! Very enjoyable, and it‘s a quick read.

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Published in 1980, only four years after Belenko's escape from Russia (and well before the fall of the Berlin Wall), this book was quite fascinating. Belenko actually had more or less the ideal situation in Russia as the MiG-25 pilots were highly valued and treated well (by Soviet standards). Reading about his slow recognition of the cognitive dissonance between what he was being taught about his country vs the west and what he could actually ⬇

Sadly, the sequel to Ashlords had even fewer phoenix-horses 😞 This book is all about the war, and while it overall did work, the ending where everyone just suddenly is going to get along despite generations of being enemies felt... unlikely lol (If we just take all the money from the rich people and give it the poor people, then everyone will be happy!!! ...riiight) But still, it was an engaging read with characters that I liked. These books ⬇

This book had all the ingredients that I should enjoy, but somehow they just didn't work here. Miss Carter is a middle-aged woman, never married, who lives by herself in a small flat in London and works for the censor's office during WWII. Through a series of events, she finds herself in possession of an ifrit (i.e. genie). Part of the reason this book didn't quite work for me was that the ifrit's magic never really made sense to me. Apparently ⬇

This is one of those books where I loved the concept more than the execution. It's a great world with an intriguing idea - the existence of horse-phoenixes, whose ashes can be mixed with different elements to create a horse with different powers when it rises again in the morning. My problem: I wanted MORE about these horses, but they ended up just kind of being a tool for the story. The other issue is that this book was about a (phoenix) horse ⬇

This one is truly lovely. She might be my new Valerie Perrin back up author. I have no idea if these are being translated into English. Yet. They definitely should be.

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This is good if you're interested in this topic. The author came to one of my social groups. She's lovely.

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4.75⭐️

Based on true events, Such Quiet Girls by Noelle W. Ihli grabbed me at the beginning. Full of suspense, I wanted to listen as fast as I could to find out what happened to the kids on the bus. The only problem I had with the book is that I wish Ili would have gone just a little further to let us know what happened to the teacher and mom.

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