Sponsored by Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian, from Park Row Books.
It would be easy to underestimate Chloe… She’s a freshman honor student, a legging-wearing hot girl next door, who also happens to be a psychopath. She spends her time on yogalates, frat parties, and plotting to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who grievously wronged her. Chloe is one of seven students who are part of an unusual clinical study of psychopaths—students like herself who lack empathy and can’t comprehend emotions like fear or guilt. When one of the students in the study is murdered, a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins, and Chloe goes from hunter to prey.
Welcome to Read This Book, a newsletter where I recommend one book that I think you absolutely must read. The books will vary across genre and age category to include new releases, backlist titles, and classics. If you’re ready to explode your TBR, buckle up!
This week’s pick is one that is a must-read if you love sci-fi, but be aware that it does come with a lot of content warnings: racism, sexism, homophobia, violence (some of it graphic), sexual assault (some of it graphic), systemic discrimination, enslavement, depictions of gore and surgical procedures, and death, including death of a child.
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
In Solomon’s debut novel, a generation ship full of thousands of people is hurtling through space, destined for a planet that can sustain life. They’re only in the middle of their journey, and passengers can’t quite remember how many generations have been born on the ship. Aster lives on the lower decks of the HSS Matilda, where the people are pressed into backbreaking and cruel labor for the comfort of those who reside on the upper decks. Aster is an unusual person, preoccupied with the journal her mother left behind before she disappeared years ago, and while most people are content to let Aster be, when she attracts the unwelcome attention of a cruel overseer, life becomes even harder than it already is. Aster is swept up in the politics of the upper decks while trying to survive and decode the mysteries of her mother’s journal. When she finally cracks a piece of it, it could change her fate—and that of everyone on the Matilda—forever.
This is an intense and harrowing book that looks at how cruel people can be to one another when sealed in a vacuum, hurtling through space without any accountability. Aster’s life is beyond rough, and is at times difficult to read about, and it’s not difficult to see the parallels between how she and her people are treated to the ways of the Antebellum South. But at the same time, Solomon provides such a rich and interesting culture to Aster’s life on the lower decks, and the world-building is always fascinating, especially when it becomes apparent there is a darker history on the ship that has been deliberately obscured. While there is lots of violence, I was sustained through this book by Aster’s mission to find out what her mother knew, how she documented it, and where exactly she ended up before she disappeared. It’s a fascinating puzzle that is cleverly put together, and left me wanting to re-read it just to see how Solomon pulled it off! It’s part social commentary, part space exploration, and part mystery as Aster navigates a brutal life with hope she barely allows herself to feel. I highly recommend it if you love sci-fi and you like futuristic books that speak to the very real social issues we face here and now.
Happy reading!
Tirzah
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