Reading In/Out 11/3/2026

I got about as much reading done as I expected this weekend, viz. not that much.

OUT

When Life Gives You Vampires by Gloria Duke - As predicted, I finished this one on Saturday. I had a good time. Lily wakes up as a vampire one evening, but doesn't remember what happened. Turns out, the 300 year old vampire she took home the night before thought she had consented to his drinking her blood, instead of the kiss she thought she was consenting to. Now, she is a vampire and they are both in trouble with the vampire council and head vampire dude, because her turning was "unauthorized." Tristan, the vampire, has no clue about modern women, and thinks she should stay home and let him solve the problem. She thinks not.

Lily is a plus-size woman. She has major body image issues. She can't imagine how someone like Tristan would be interested in her. She thinks everyone who is skinny has a perfect life because they are skinny, and if she could lose weight, she would be happy, too. This is fine. This is a common problem for women today. The problem I had with it was how easily the whole problem was solved at the end. Her mom says, "Oh, I am sorry I made you feel less than perfect for being fat." And suddenly, she accepts her body how it is and it's all good. Seems fake.

The other thing I had a problem with was that Lily blamed herself for everything bad that happened to anyone around her. Her being turned into a vampire triggered this guy at work to become a vampire slayer. She didn't ask to be turned. She didn't want to be turned. How is it her fault? But she takes the guilt for every bad thing that happens to anyone she's ever met. Annoying.

That being said, I enjoyed the plot. Lily takes no shit from centuries old vampires. She has a fantastic best friend who accepts her new status and helps her steal discarded blood from a blood bank. Not the stuff that's meant to go to people who need it. Just the stuff that is past its use date. Or from someone with a disease (which Lily can't catch, so it's fine.) It is pretty spicy, but it's not too cringey, and it doesn't happen so often that it overpowers the actual plot.

CONTINUING

Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon - Saturday was nuts, so I didn't get to read at lunch. I read a few pages today, but we haven't advanced the plot at all. I'm still at just over 50%.

One Dark Window by Rachel Gilllig - This book looks absolutely huge. I checked the page count on my copy and was please to see it is just under 400 pages. Shocking. I guess it just has fat pages. There is a lot of crap at the back. An interview with the author, or the first chapter of the sequel. Whatever. What matters is that I got to the 30% mark this weekend.

I had the book at dance, and one of the girls said, "Oh, I've heard that's really good!" So there's that.

IN

Bodies of Magic by Freya Marke - I started this audiobook Saturday evening. This is Dark Academia Fantasy and it is clearly a French-based world. All the names are French, a lot of dialog is in French. I think it might be vaguely Victorian? In this world, children are tested for their magical abilities. If they have magic, then they are tested for what kind of magic they have. If they are healers they go to this special medical school to learn how to use their magic to do surgery and heal wounds and whatnot. In their 5th year, they have to go through an Exam with a group of their peers. Once a day for 5 days, they are presented with a medical case they have to identify and figure out how to treat in one hour. There is no individual testing; the group fails together or passes together. The group that contains our main characters is first up on the first day. They enter the exam room and find one of their cohort dead on the floor. They have to deal with the exam case first, because if they open the door, they fail the case. After the first round, they agree to find out what the heck happened to the girl who died violently in their exam room.

The point of view switches between all the characters in this group of med students, essentially. They are not really very nice people, as it turns out. Everyone appears to be having sex with everyone else. They all have family pressures and insecurities and secrets. It will be interesting to see how they figure out what happened while keeping their little secrets.

And there you have it. I'm just working through the list. A little here, and a little there. Doing my best.