February Recommended Reads

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February is the shortest month of the year, but I somehow managed to exceed my reading goal for the month! It may have something to do with the gray winter skies here in Vermont, which make me want to do nothing but cozy up inside with a book and a cup of tea.

Here are my favorite titles among the books I read this month:

The Death of Mrs. Westaway
By Ruth Ware
★★★½

Young tarot reader Hal Westaway is used to scraping by. What she’s not so used to is dodging the local loan shark’s debt collectors. So when a mysterious letter brings word that Hal has been left a sizeable inheritance, it seems like the answer to her problems. There’s just one hiccup: Hal’s grandmother died when she was a toddler, and she simply doesn’t see how she could be related to the woman who’s named Hal in her will. Spurred by fear and desperation, Hal travels from her home in Brighton to the funeral in Cornwall, where she must ingratiate herself to her long lost “family.” But she soon realizes this clan’s tangled past — and her role in it — is stranger and darker than she ever could have imagined.

One of my favorite things about Ruth Ware’s books is her ability to craft a truly creepy atmosphere, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway is no exception. Much of the novel takes place at a remote, sprawling estate known for its population of magpies, which comes complete with an unsettling housekeeper and rooms that only lock from the outside. Cue the shudders. This book also serves as a good example of how to use different narrative modes, as diary entries written in first person are sprinkled throughout the text. The writer of these entries is not revealed until well into the book, and each interlude heightens the suspense as the reader becomes privy to secrets the protagonist hasn’t yet uncovered.

Nightbitch
By Rachel Yoder
★★★★★

After two years as a full-time stay-at-home parent, the mother at the center of Nightbitch is tired. Like, bone-tired. That might be why her husband, who travels every week for work, brushes off her concerns about a newly-sprouted patch of fur on the back of her neck. But no — she can’t be imagining it, can she? The signs are clear. Her canine teeth are growing sharper. Her sense of smell is becoming stronger. And her hunger is growing more urgent with each passing day. Already grappling with the loss of leaving behind her art career, the mother begins to question her grip on reality as the changes plunge her deeper into a primal and frightening wildness. Her only solace is a book, A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography, that offers a glimpse into the potential source of her sudden transformation. The more she tries to resist what she’s becoming, the more the mother finds that, actually, she might not want to.

The narration in this novel is truly striking. Yoder’s description of the mother’s transformation is both comic and visceral, if at times a bit gory, and I found myself thinking about several of the passages long after I had put the book down. Though written in third person, the book’s scant use of dialogue and deliberate omission of certain characters’ names give it an eerie quality, almost like looking directly into the main character’s brain. The sense of time is also ambiguous, which only adds to the uncanniness of it. And beneath the mother’s sardonic musings and the particulars of her canine conversion, the novel ponders art, power and motherhood in a way I’ve never seen before. Overall, Nightbitch is an exquisitely original book, and one of my new all-time favorites.

The Other Black Girl
By Zakiya Dalila Harris
★★★★½

In the two years Nella Rogers has been working as an editorial assistant for Wagner Books, she’s always been the only Black girl on staff, and her efforts to encourage internal conversations about diversity and inclusion have mostly fallen flat. That’s why Nella couldn’t be more excited to get to know the latest hire, Hazel, who seems to navigate the overwhelmingly white office with ease. But soon after Hazel’s arrival, Nella starts to receive mysterious and vaguely threatening notes urging her to leave Wagner. And when Nella takes Hazel’s advice to confront an author about a racist depiction in his novel, the conversation promptly blows up in her face. Nella begins to wonder if Hazel could somehow be behind the notes. But why would she want to push the only other Black girl out of the office? The more Nella searches for answers, the more she begins to understand that something is going on — something much more sinister than a run-of-the-mill professional rivalry.

This debut novel from Zakiya Dalila Harris had me completely engrossed from the first page to the last. What at first seems like a typical cutthroat workplace drama slowly evolves to bring in elements of satire, horror and magical realism, leaving the reader guessing about pretty much everything until the very end. I will say that this is definitely a slow burn, and for me, the beginning seemed to drag on a bit too long before getting to the real meat of the story. However, Harris did a commendable job of building suspense throughout the early chapters, and seeing the pieces finally start to fall together was very satisfying. The Other Black Girl would certainly be a useful read for writers interested in combining different genre elements in one work.

And with that, I conclude this roundup of my February faves. Check back in late March for my next series of reviews, and in the meantime, feel free to reach out and share your thoughts on the titles I’ve recommended so far.

Happy reading,
Meg