Murchie Plus Books: November 6th to 12th

I make my dog pose with every book I read, barring single issue comics. The photos go live on Instagram as I edit them and appear here in digest form every Sunday, with descriptive alt tags and additional commentary.

YOTSUBA&! Volume 13 [Amazon] delighted me exactly as much as I expected it to; so, a hell of a lot. I laughed so hard I'm surprised I didn't fall off my stationary bike, or pull a muscle, or give myself a coughing fit.

If you've missed all my previous gushing about this series, I'll refer to my review of volumes one through twelve.

I made it sixty pages into Elise Kova's AIR AWAKENS [Amazon] before I admitted it wasn't working for me. I couldn't click with Kova's syntax, which made it mighty difficult to care about the story.

Apparently abandoning popular YA novels is my schtick.

This one's probably for the best, as my library doesn't own any of the other books in the series and they've all been removed from Scribd.

Then everything went to shit, and I found it impossible to find joy in anything.

I tried, though, with Rebekah Weatherspoon's final Sugar Baby novella. SO FOR REAL [Amazon | Scribd] is a lovely capstone to Kayla and Michael's story. Even more than that, I'm excited about the little blurb in the back for NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP, Weatherspoon's first book about Daniella. Trans rockstar romance yay yay yay!!!!!!!!!!

So that's something to look forward to.

I spent a Scribd credit on KNOCKOUT ANDREW [Amazon | Scribd] as part of my ongoing quest to read all Willow Scarlett's books. This novella didn't hit me the same way as her slightly longer offerings, but I think that was at least partly because of my current mood. I did have a good time with this story of former BFFs reconnecting, then starting to date, years after a failure to communicate tore them apart.

Here's the thing: I feel like I should've had a lot of fun with BATGIRL VOLUME 3 [Amazon], but I didn't and I'm not entirely sure why. Was it the no joy thing? Did I leave too long a gap between this volume and the last? Or am I simply destined to fizzle out on every single DC series I sample?

I don't have the energy to search for a clear answer, so I'll just direct your attention to Murchie's paws-over-snout move. Sometimes the little dude gets grumpy when I ask him to pose, and his grumpiness is mighty adorable.

Next week: ONE HOT DECEMBER by Tiffany Reisz, which I actually finished yesterday but couldn't get Murchie to pose with. (Sometimes his grumpiness is less than adorable.) Probably some space opera, too, and a smidgen of YA contemporary.