Michelle

There studious let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.

Five easy, glorious stars. I'm having a crisis. I have been confidently standing on business about The Atlas Six and how it would undoubtedly be my top book of the year...

There studious let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.

Five easy, glorious stars. I'm having a crisis. I have been confidently standing on business about The Atlas Six and how it would undoubtedly be my top book of the year... Until I read this one. And now I have the best problem a bookworm can have: I have here two beloved books that have found me within six months of each other. Can you say an embarrassment of bookish riches? Shout out to my bookish bestie Ellie for BOTH of these recommendations.

"Just remember Lethe doesn’t care about people like you and me. No one is looking out for us but us.”

Alex Stern is back, and she is HELL BENT on righting wrongs. Hell Bent basically picks up where Ninth House left off. Alex is back for another school year at Yale and as a member of Lethe, the shadowy organization that oversees the magical and ritualistic happenings of the eight secret societies of Yale. New characters are introduced, and old faces return.

Without being too specific, the next writing project I've been thinking about is inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice, and let's just say I was greatly inspired by Hell Bent.

“You taste like the grave.”

Alex, the main character, was a bit of an acquired taste for me in Ninth House, but I am fully on board the Galaxy Stern Express - choo choo. I have greatly enjoyed her character development, going from a scrappy ex-drug addict swinging at shadows to a haunted, but confident quoter of Milton who holds her own as a leader of Lethe but with her own flair for violence and law-breaking. The side characters here are all wonderful, too.

"When did you get so wise, Stern?"

Lastly, is it too early to predict that Daniel Tabor Arlington V will be my next great book boyfriend?

Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.