MADreads

True crime books, tv shows, and podcasts are everywhere, but every now and then a crime, or series of connected crimes, breaks out of one format to overtake them all. The tale of the Murdaugh family in a rural part of South Carolina is one of those. From the first stirrings about the boat crash that killed a pretty young teenager, to the deaths of a mother and her son, to the father claiming to have survived an assassination attempt and then the revelation that there were two deaths that preceded all of this? This was a crime story that had everything and then some.

Sylvie Cathrall's debut is an epistolary novel - a novelistic style that sometimes works for me and sometimes does not. Here it mostly does. I was immediately drawn in by the dreamy, carefully anxious letter that E. is writing to Scholar Henerey Clel. E. (you'll learn her full name later) lives alone in an underwater abode called The Deep House. She writes to Henerey and her sister Sophy and an array of others to stay in contact with the world. This world is one that is about 99% covered in water and most abodes are on floating islands.

Jane Austen (like Arthur Conan Doyle) has had her books and characters re-imagined more times then I could possibly count. And for me I think, the retellings and re-imaginings of Jane Austen's books and characters have more often been a miss then hit. The Other Bennet Sister is that rare thing for me, not only a hit, but one that has knocked it out of the park. The titular sister is the one most often overlooked, middle-sister Mary. Granted I've always had a soft spot for the socially awkward, stern Mary, so to say I was sympathetic from the start is fair.

Locus Magazine has published their recommended reading list for 2023 titles and wow is there so much goodness to discover. They suggest best novels in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but also have best in young adult and first novels (so happy to see To Shape a Dragon's Breath, which I loved).