TOP PICKS – February 2024
Welcome to a new year of Top Picks!
Every month, we’re going to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month.
A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part!
Let’s find out what the team has started the year off with…
Nils: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
I started off with a buddy read with Beth of Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan, an East Asian inspired fantasy with a medley of mythological sea creatures, and I also read The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden, a historical fantasy in which a Canadian combat nurse searches for her missing brother amongst the trenches in WW1. Unfortunately both reads didn’t quite hit the spot for me.
However, another buddy read with Beth had us both completely hooked—The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton was such a twisty, captivating dystopian murder mystery, which I loved. I also read my first book by Premee Mohamed—a fairytale-esque novella called The Butcher of the Forest. We follow a middle aged woman as she is forced to save The Tyrant’s children from the deadly forest they are trapped in, and Mohamed’s writing is absolutely stunning.
My favourite read has to go to The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett which was a Sherlock Holmes and Watson-esque murder mystery set in a world of deadly plants and altered humans. This book was so entertaining, so inventive and the characters were just my kind of quirky, the mystery was also very compelling and the world was extremely eerie as it was filled with monsters.
Hil: Shanghai Immortal by A. Y. Chao
I second Nils with The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, murder mystery against a backdrop of aggressive botany? Count me in!
My pick of the month is A.Y.Chao, Shanghai Immortal. Chinese/western mythology mashup heist set in 1930s Shanghai? It ticked all of my Liz Williams Inspector Chen boxes and I can’t wait for a sequel, if there is one. Loved the main character, with all of her confused genealogy, and her foster father is a legend. You need to read it. End of.
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Beth: An Education in Malice by S T Gibson
I had such a great month for reading, and two buddy reads! The first, Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan, was a little jumpy but on the whole good – our full review will be up next week. Out second, The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton was amazing. A properly twisty murder mystery with strong end-of-the-world apocalyptic vibes, it’s everything I’ve come to expect from Turton and didn’t disappoint.
For my top pick of the month though, I’ll go with An Education in Malice by S T Gibson. It was my first of hers, and I tore through it in three days, not being able to put it down. It harked back to the Point Horror books I used to read as a teen, set in New England colleges with their dormitories and everything, as well as a particular author I read a lot of in my early twenties. It was also my first proper foray into dark academia!
Kat: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
I’ve had a particularly surprising reading month with 5 unexpected 5 star books! Scales & Sensibility (Stephanie Burgis) is a regency romance but with little pet dragons; The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Amos Tutuola) is a bizarrely brilliant Nigerian story about a man in search of his missing wine tapper; Ink, Blood, Sister, Scribe (Emma Torz) is a contemporary fantasy about book magic and mirror portals; Fog & Fireflies (T H Lehnen) is about a village surrounded by insidious fog that kills adults and leaves children alone to protect them; and Someone You Can Build a Nest In (John Wiswell) is a delightfully gory romance from the point of view of a shapeshifting monster! My top pick of the five has to go to Someone You Can Build a Nest In!
Cat: Bone White by Ronald Malfi
A couple of my Best of Feb books have already been mentioned here, so I’ll go with my first ever Ronald Malfi, Bone White. It’s supernatural horror but with such Twin Peaks vibes: mysteriousness in a remote Alaskan town, a slowly unfolding mystery, growing uncertainty about what’s real and what isn’t… I devoured it in a couple of days and am now looking into his back catalogue. Always great to find a new favourite author, even if I am a bit late to the Malfi party!
Jonathan: The Book of Love by Kelly Link
a bit of an odd month, so I’ve not read as much as I’d have liked. I have read Kelly Link’s first novel The Book Of Love, which is absolutely astounding. As a huge fan of Link’s short stories I was keen to see how her work translated to the novel, and The Book Of Love did not disappoint, delivering all the kicks of a Link short story across over 600 wonderful pages.
What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments!
