17:100 When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

No one knew how Miel had come to be in the abandoned water tower but that's where she appeared one night, at about the age of 5, with roses that grew out of her wrist. The first one to run to her when she emerged was Sam, a young boy about whom not much was known of him or his mother since they recently appeared in town.

It's been years and Sam and Miel are still inseparable, she with the roses growing from her wrist and he who paints moons and hangs them all over town. They are odd and generally left alone until the Bonner girls decide that their sway over the town, the magic that has been the right of the Bonner girls for generations, has been waning and that Miel's roses are what can fix it for them. Now they will use all of Miel's secrets, including those that involve Sam, to get what they want.  

This book wove such a beautiful spell that I was captivated immediately and didn't want to put it down. The imagery, the characters (even when they were being stupid teenagers), the magic all combined perfectly for me.

Page count: 288p/4,533p/351,923p

16:100 Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

 Fatima is from a small village in Ghana where the shea trees are farmed. She loves to climb trees and especially the one in her yard. She wants nothing more than to climb to the top. Then one day, she finds a green stone nestled in the roots of her special tree. She treasurers it but one day, her father sells her stone away from her.  In that next year, she starts developing an internal heat and a green glow that comes upon her sometimes and when it does, she can kill. And then came the day of the accident, when her village was wiped out but for her and she forgot her name.

Now she is known only as Sankofa, the Adopted Daughter of Death. No one remembers where she came from but all know that she travels alone with only a fox as her sometimes companion, and her touch brings death. She searches for the stone that was taken from her, the part of her past that she thinks may heal her.

While this is definitely SciFi, and specifically Africanfuturisic, the technology plays such a small part in the overall story. It's such a human tale of longing and suffering and discovery. You can't help but feel for this girl who wanders alone while everyone fears her or wants to use her in some way and it's that, the heart of the story that draws you in and doesn't let go.

Page count: 160p/4,245p ytd/351,635p lifetime

15:100 Calculated Risks by Seanan McGuire

Well, shit just got really weird for Sarah, her cousins Annie and Artie, Annie's new adopted brother James, and the cuckoo Mark who had been helping them try to save Sarah from her biological family who was trying to turn her brain to mush so she would open a portal to a new world for them to devour while destroying the Earth in the process.

Instead, Sarah's friends and family helped her figure out how to turn things around and while she opened the portal and took the cuckoos through, it did not turn her into a cabbage nor did it destroy the Earth she left behind. What it did do, however, is turn the other cuckoos into mindless zombies and the friends and family she had with her into people who no longer know who she is and have lumped her in as being just another cuckoo.  

Now, she has to convince Annie and the rest (please most especially Artie whom she has loved forever) that she can be trusted, that she is family, that she is not a cuckoo to be killed, all while trying to figure out how she did what she did and how she could possibly do enough of it again to get them and at least the other humans that were also accidentally dragged along back to Earth. 

Sarah is not my favorite narrator for this series. She's okay but doesn't grip me as the others do. I also admit to being annoyed at constant repetition in books, even when it's totally in keeping with the story as it was in this case. And while all the Incryptid books tend to rely a bit on deus ex machina, this one went a little further down that path than I would have preferred. Again, I get why and it does work within the story so this is just my personal taste here.  All that to say, it dropped this book down to a 4/5 stars for me. Still enjoyable and would still read again but not my favorite.

Page count: 433p/4,805p ytd/351,475p lifetime

14:100 The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

 Cora Seaborne is a new widow who feels that she can finally breathe and start being true to herself after all the years being ground under her husband's heel. Having a scientific bent, she is entranced by the idea of the Essex Serpent that some claim to have seen near a small village so she, her son, and her son's nanny head there to check it out. What she finds is more than a mere prehistoric creature could have dreamed up.

The book was slow and trying too hard to be too many things so it only sort of succeeded at some of them. Cora is supposed to be the main character but I found her cold and immature but somehow teeming with friends and people fawning after her which made no sense to me.  The Reverend needed some good shakes and his wife and children deserved the sympathy as did Cora's other suitor. There were a few side characters that were more interesting and were given some good story lines but I just felt it wasn't enough. The author was trying too hard to draw out the suspense and make the story super complex but I think making the main character a little more likeable with a few less bad choices would have made it more enjoyable.

Page count: 433p/3,652p ytd/351,042p lifetime

13:100 Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

The play based on the Greek myth of the same name and eventually turned into the musical My Fair Lady. 

Eliza, a girl who sells flowers on the street, is taken in by Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering in a bet to see if Higgins can teach her how to speak and act like a lady. 

I've lost track of how many times I've seen the movie with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn and since much of the dialogue in the play was used in the movie, it wasn't really a new take on what I knew until we got to the author's notes at the end where we get his impression of what would have happened with Eliza after. The movie deliberately leaves it vague after she returns to the Professor's house after their row at his mother's.  I can't say that I was a fan of what the author thought would happen after, Eliza marrying Freddy and their starting a flower shop with her doing much of the work to support them both (with a lot of help from Col. Pickering) but at the same time, considering the time period that was probably the likely outcome.

Page count: 96p/ 3,219p ytd/350,609p lifetime

12:100 The Turn by Kim Harrison

 The prequel to the Hollows series with Rachel Morgan, this book tells the tale of how the world got into the state it was in when we first get introduced to Rachel in Dead Witch Walking. From those books, we know that somehow tomatoes started killing humans but not Interlanders so they chose to come forward and help save the human population. Now, we know what happened....

Trisk and Kal (Trent's father) have always been in competition but she as a dark elf was always seen as lesser than to his light elf even though she is probably smarter than he is (although he is much more devious). They are both on paths to try and save the elves from their decline that has been going on ever since the demon wars but they have very different ideas on how to actually accomplish the task. Trisk ends up looking like she will be more successful after her work has proved to work well with tomatoes to create a way to help feed the world and also her way of modifying the genetic weapon being created in the same lab to make sure it does not affect Interlanders. As a result, Kal is pulled off his pet project to check on hers and then he decides that his is right so he's going to screw with hers to make sure the funding is pulled (and hopefully redirected to his).

That's when all hell literally breaks loose and the tomatoes that should have helped end world hunger instead unleash a plague that kills somewhere between one-quarter and one-half of the human population. This is now the world of the Hollows that we know.

I really liked Trisk and hated the way she got screwed over the entire book. Kal goes through the entire book manipulating everyone to make sure the blame lands on Trisk rather than himself because he's a smarmy bastard and I spent most of the book just wanting to punch him repeatedly. I get that was the point but he just was completely awful and I could not find anything to actually redeem him and that made the book harder to read for me. The characters that were good and likeable just go so completely shafted at every turn for that ass with him not having to be accountable at all and get away with everything. Sorry, I read books to escape from that kind of reality.

Page count: 441p/3,123p ytd/350,513p lifetime