Julie Tudor is Not a Psychopath by Jennifer Holdich

July 27, 2025

Julie Tudor is Not a Psychopath by Jennifer Holdich

Julie Tudor is 49 years old and has found the love of her life in Sean, her 25 year old coworker at the large financial services company where they both work. But he doesn't know that. All he knows is that she makes him uncomfortable. Julie knows that she and Sean are star-crossed, meant to be together until a young woman named Xanthe starts work at the company and throws a wrench into Julie's plans. But Julie isn't about to settle for anyone coming between her and Sean, so she decides it's time to take decisive action.

Oh, Julie, you are definitely a psychopath. Julie has a flirtatious relationship with reality at the best of times. Her unique world view and interior monologue kept me turning the pages - I felt like my mouth was hanging open in disbelief half the time. I admit I felt sorry for Julie when her coworkers were making fun of her and she didn't realize it, while at the same time cringing at some of the things she did. It's a fast read that is perfect for vacation or beach reading, dark, disturbing, creepy and funny all at the same time. If there is a more unreliable narrator out there, I don't know who it is. There are hints of animal cruelty, so sensitive readers should be warned. I could see this becoming a miniseries on Netflix. Love the cover art!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend by M. J. Wassmer

July 11, 2024

Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend by M. J. Wassmer

Dan and Mara are vacationing at a new island resort when the sun bursts. And not in a giant explosion in the sky, more like a pop and then broken egg yolk dripping down the sides of the sky, and then darkness. Not only are they trapped on the island, an athleisure-wear entrepreneur named Lilyanna (think Cruella DeVille dressed in Lululemon) who sounds like Dolly Parton has taken control of the resort - as well as the only plane on the island. But there is an observatory on the other side of the island, and the resident astronomer believes there is something strange going on - well, stranger than the sun exploding.

It's class warfare at a new luxury resort, where the rich people in building A take over all the resources and put the guests in buildings B and C to work for them. Except for Lilyanna and her head of security (boo, hiss), the characters might be clueless but they all have a lot of heart. BTW, this is the kind of thing that would happen to me. I suspected the answer about halfway through, but it was still a fun read. Recommended for readers who enjoy not-too-serious dystopian fiction.

Dystopian resort

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

June 3, 2024

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

After 20 years of struggling, writing mostly B-level horror films, Misha has been nominated for an Oscar for one of his short films and has finally landed a gig as a screenwriter on a successful television show. He has a boyfriend that he is crazy about and friends who care about him. But as soon as two gay characters fall in love, the studio heads instruct Misha to kill them off since they think it will improve the show's arc. Misha is pissed about this and refuses to kill off the characters, which may cost him his job. But that's not the worst of it -- characters from Misha's horror films (The Smoker, Mrs. Why, Black Lamb, The Bride) are stalking him and his friends.

This was one of my selections for Pride Month 2024. I'm not a huge horror fan (although I do seem to read more horror than I think I do) but this was pretty entertaining. BTW, the Bury Your Gays trope is a literary trope where a gay character dies tragically, usually right before or right after declaring their love for another gay character. The really screwed up part is that the surviving gay character "realizes" that they're not really gay at all, and they console themselves by falling in love with a straight character. Horror fans will enjoy the dark humor as well as the creepy characters.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Movie studio

Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet

January 24, 2024

Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet

Recent high school graduate Ismael Reyes (aka Izzy) is searching for a life plan. His original intention to be a Pitbull impersonator falls through when he receives a cease-and-desist order from the artist's attorney, so he decides that his next best option is to become a gangster by imitating the fictional Cuban gangster Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. He enlists his high school friend Rudy to be his sidekick (and briefly becomes involved with Rudy's beautiful sister Julisa), and the two begin planning their new life of crime. Meanwhile, there is a female orca (calling her a killer whale or Shamu is not PC) named Lolita at the Miami Seaquarium who has somehow begun influencing Izzy's thoughts and dreams. While Izzy pursues his goal of gangsterdom, he inadvertently begins asking dangerous questions about his mother, who drowned after they left Cuba on a raft.

Life imitates art in this edgy contemporary novel/fantasy that has been described as the offspring of a marriage between the movie Scarface and the novel Moby Dick. Possibly due to his youth, possibly due to his circumstances, Izzy fails to recognize the dangerous people he is already associating with, even though all the signs are there. There is plenty of dark humor in this quirky read as Izzy stumbles his way through life.  Honestly? Things probably would have worked out better for Izzy if he had tried to emulate Joe Montana rather Tony Montana.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Al Pacino as the gangster Tony Montana in the movie Scarface

Murder Your Employer: the McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes

September 19, 2023

Murder Your Employer: the McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes

Tucked away in the idyllic countryside of somewhere (not even the student body is sure exactly where they are) is the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts. The applied arts that the students study are how to get away with murder. The three characters that the story focuses on all want to murder their employer, a feeling that most of us have had at one point. But in order to graduate, the students must successfully complete an all-night hunt where they are hunter, prey, or both.

The Hunger Games meets Hogwarts and Naomi Novik's Scholomance series. Not really a mystery since we know from the start who the targets are and who wants to murder them. The format is clever, since it is written in the form of a textbook with student evaluations included. It had humorous moments and held my interest until it got to the all-night hunt. The second half started to drag and would have benefited from having at least 50 pages edited out of the second half. 

Confidence by Rafael Frumkin

February 13, 2023

Confidence by Rafael Frumkin

Ezra and Orson are best friends and sometime lovers, both growing up poor, who meet as baby criminals at Last Chance Camp, one stop before juvie. Ezra has his first experience with con games when he's ten, and he and his mother stop at a tent revival meeting, and his mother cons the church goers. He and Orson run their first scam together on a site like Etsy, then get into a bigger con game involving Bitcoin, because most people don't actually understand what it is or how to use it. Their target market is the ultra-rich, "the man," the blood suits (as Orson and Ezra call them), the kind of people who are so rich they have no idea what real life is like and don't bother to closely research the schemes of con men like Orson and Ezra. They are also the kind of people that the rest of us secretly enjoy watching get swindled because they deserve it and they can afford it. What does it matter if they get taken for a little money? But then the boys come up with an idea for a much bigger scam, a (phony) behavior altering device/program that takes off when they market it to the wives of ultra-rich men. They find themselves riding a billion dollar wave until it comes crashing down. Who needs the American Dream, these guys have the American Con.

Pyramid or Ponzi schemes have been around for a long time, as have con artists. Famous con artists include P. T. Barnum, L. Ron Hubbard, and Donald Trump, and Ezra and Orson aspire to join their ranks. The key to a successful con is offering something that is too good to be true, and making it a little obscure so that people don't understand exactly what they are buying. Orson and Ezra are opposites: Ezra is short, nerdy, brilliant, introverted and addicted to the internet; Orson is movie star handsome, charismatic, charming, and a born salesman. Ezra literally has tunnel vision, suffering from glaucoma and progressively poor eyesight, and he has a hard time seeing Orson for who he really is. Greed is always their driving force, but their real problems begin when Orson starts believing the BS that they are selling. 

Mel Brooks made a movie called The Producers, about a Broadway producer who concocts a scheme to produce the worst play ever written and make a killing by over-selling shares to investors (The Twelve Chairs is another Brooks film about con artists). 

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

The Producers

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

January 31, 2023

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

Geeta lives in a village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where she supports herself by making wedding jewelry. Five years earlier, her no-good husband Ramesh walked out on her. It wasn't much of a loss, since Ramesh beat Geeta, stole her money, and drank heavily. After he ran off, a rumor began to circulate that Geeta had murdered Ramesh, and the story persisted. Although it troubled her at first, it kept the men (and also many women) away from her out of fear. Struggling to construct a life for herself as a single woman of undefined status living on her own (i.e., not under a man's control), Geeta's role model is Phoolan Devi, India's Bandit Queen who took revenge on all the men who abused her (physically, sexually, verbally). But now the women in the village have begun to come around, wanting Geeta's help in disposing of their own no-good husbands.

In this contemporary novel, Shroff explores issues that trouble modern India: caste, gender roles, religion, discrimination, domestic abuse. Another rec;urring theme is motherhood and the pressure placed on women to have children (preferably male children), as well as men abusing children (especially girl children). There is a lot of humor and the women are clever about getting around the men in their lives. One of my favorite aspects of the book is when Geeta rescues and adopts a street dog that she names Bandit. One of the best lines in the book is when the wanna-be don tells Geeta's husband Ramesh "killing people makes me a don; shooting a dog just makes me a psychopath. Great cover, too.  Recommended.

Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen who exacted revenge on the men who abused her and later was elected to Parliament (she was assassinated at the age of 39)

The Seven Moon of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

December 1, 2022

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Maali Almeida (photographer, gambling addict, promiscuous gay man) wakes up in what appears to be a government office, to find out that he is dead and his dismembered body has been thrown in Beira Lake in Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). He has no idea who killed him (although he has an idea why), and he learns that he has seven days (moons) to get any answers to his questions, including contacting his lover and his best friend about some explosive photos that he took.

Winner of the 2022 Man Booker Prize and deservedly so. There are threads of folklore as well as hints of books like Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders), A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry), and Elsewhere (Gabrielle Zevin). You also learn a lot about Sri Lankan politics and the civil war along the way. BTW, I knew who the King and Queen were long before the characters realized. Highly recommended, although not for everyone since the style is somewhat experimental.

Colombo, Sri Lanka, capitol city of Sri Lanka

Beira Lake, which figures prominently in the novel

Soldier in Sri Lankan civil war

Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon

September 12, 2022

Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon

Will Bear (one of his many aliases) has lived off the grid for most of his adult life. He is a 50 year old man who basically does not exist: he doesn't have a regular job, home address, telephone, credit card, bank account, or even a Social Security number. All transactions are cash. He does jobs for a shady organization, mostly delivery cargoes, both human and inanimate, and he regularly doses himself with a variety of legal and illegal drugs. His closest relationship is with his rescue dog, Flip, who suffers from PTSD (so does Will). He is on a job to drop off a prisoner in Utah when he starts receiving calls on his many burner phones from a woman who claims to be his biological daughter. He tries to get rid of her but she persists, although he can't figure out how she found him or continues to trace him. But the more she talks to him, the more he believes that they are caught up in a much larger conspiracy.

Futuristic, dystopian, wonderfully paranoid, full of dark humor, and noir-ish. Will isn't a traditional noir hero, more of an antihero: he does questionable work, he gets involved with women he should avoid, he lives by his own code of ethics, he is loyal to his friends, he lives in a dark world. I enjoyed this offbeat novel very much (and yes, the dog is okay at the end of the book). I listened to the audiobook and the narrator had the perfect stoned-out hippie intonation.

Dystopia artwork (hero frequently has a dog in dystopian fiction)

Naked Came the Florida Man by Tim Dorsey

September 4, 2022

Naked Came the Florida Man by Tim Dorsey

Florida's favorite son Serge A. Storms, loveable psychopath and Florida fanatic, and his bestie Coleman are back for another tour of Florida. This time, Serge is taking Coleman on a cemetery tour, visiting the final resting places of famous Floridians including Flipper the dolphin (who was actually a girl dolphin named Mimi) and author Zora Neale Hurston. Other stops include landmark motels and the Golden Corral restaurant (famous for its chocolate fountain). His ultimate destination is the Muck Bowl, a high school football game between rival schools near the sugar cane fields. Other characters are hunting in the same area for buried treasure rumored to have come from a ship that was borne inland during a hurricane. Along the way, Serge finds ways to right wrongs committed against wildlife, senior citizens, and military veterans.

Everyone has heard the news reports that being "Florida man (or woman)..." I have friends who retired to Florida and they tell me that Floridians are pretty crazy. Highly entertaining in a sick way that I enjoy. Serge/Tim Dorsey is a font of Florida trivia. His reverence for vintage Florida motels makes me want to go stay at one.

Vintage Florida motel

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

November 3, 2019

10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

Tequila Leila, a sex worker in Istanbul, has been murdered and her body thrown into a dumpster near the waterfront.  Although her heart has stopped, her brain continues to work for 10 minutes and 38 seconds.  During that time, she recalls her life, mostly through memories of taste and smell.  She remembers her dysfunctional family and the uncle who molested her repeatedly as a child, and how her family disowned her when she ran away to Istanbul.  But mostly, she recalls her five close friends who would do anything for her.  When they learn of her death, the five friends resolve to give Leila a decent burial.

Shafak’s descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of Istanbul make the city just as much a character as Leila and her friends.  I quickly became absorbed in Leila’s story in the first section of the novel.  The second part focuses on Leila’s friends, with a much-needed injection of dark humor.  The last section winds in the final threads and lets the reader know that Leila will never be forgotten by her friends.

Highly atmospheric with wonderfully drawn characters and expressive writing, this novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Man-Booker Prize, and rightly so.  Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist who is an advocate of freedom, equality and free speech for women.  I highly recommend this for readers of literary fiction.