#TBR Challenge 2024

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

I’ll be participating in the #TBRChallenge from Wendy the Super Librarian once again!

Themes for this year are:
January 17, Once More With Feeling: Territory by Emma Bull.
February 21, Furry Friends: The Wider Worlds of Jim Henson, edited by Jennifer C. Garlen and Anissa M. Graham.
March 20, Not in Kansas Anymore: Was by Geoff Ryman.
April 17, No Place Like Home: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.
May 15, With a Little Help From My Friends: My Dear Watson by L.A. Fields.
June 19, Bananapants!: Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 by Sean Stewart.
July 17, What a Wonderful World: The White Mosque: A Memoir by Sofia Samatar.
August 21, Everyday Heroes: Dancing Bearfoot by Elva Birch.
September 18, Drama!: Blackout by Connie Willis.
October 16, Spooky (Gothic): All Clear by Connie Willis.
November 20, It Came From the 1990s!: Robert A. Heinlein : A Reader’s Companion by J. Daniel Gifford and James Gifford.
December 18, It’s a Party!: TBA.

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Welcome to Refuge!

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Victoria Janssen

This is the official website of writer Victoria Janssen, author of A Place of Refuge, is science fiction #hopepunk following three former guerillas who lose their fight against a fascist empire but escape to a utopian planet. They’re figuring out what’s next with the aid of pastries, therapy, and other people. A Place of Refuge is now available in an omnibus edition with extras. New! Dissenter Rebellion: The Rattri Extraction, a Refuge prequel.

Victoria is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and serves on the Romance Steering Committee.

You can also find these novellas at Goodreads, StoryGraph, and LibraryThing.

Email: victoriajanssen@victoriajanssen.com.

Social Media:
Goodreads.
Bluesky.
Romancelandia at Mastodon.
Wandering Shop at Mastodon.
Tumblr.
Facebook Author Page.

Last update: 01 October 2023.

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#TBR Challenge – Spooky (Gothic): All Clear by Connie Willis

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

October 16, Spooky (Gothic): All Clear by Connie Willis (2010) is the second half of Blackout, which I read for the September Drama theme. It actually does fit the Spooky theme a bit, as the characters navigate London during the Blitz in World War Two, stumbling through blackouts and huddling in Underground Stations as bombs drop overhead.

In Blackout, three time-traveling historians who’ve landed in different times and locations in England during World War Two are reunited and have begun trying to figure out what’s happened to them and how they might get back to their home of Oxford in 2060. The continuation in All Clear is even more stressful, with more of the anxiety-dream feel of constantly being thwarted, while at the same time making connections with others and learning how to cope and endure the horrors happening all around.

I have no idea how accurate all of the World War Two historical details were, but it certainly felt real to me. I am not sure this was the right time for me to read these two books; in recent years, I’ve lost a lot of my desire to read books that require large quantities of emotional energy. That said, I was gripped by the characters’ plight and by various mysteries involving time travel, historical events, and characters throughout that propelled me forward whether I liked it or not. They were both page-turners!

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#TBR Challenge – Drama!: Blackout by Connie Willis

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

Blackout by Connie Willis came out in 2010, the first of two books that are really one book, so it ends on a cliffhanger and continues in my next month’s book, All Clear. Does it fit the theme? Oh, yes, it does.

The book opens in Oxford, England, in 2060. For the past forty years, historians have been traveling into the past to observe events; from experience, they have figured out a few rules, such as you can’t be in two places at once, so if you’ve been to a time period, and you go there again, it’s a “deadline” and you die. There are also certain major events that no one is able to visit, which seems to be a sort of natural phenomenon of the timeline. Here, Willis takes the time travel conceit and begins to explore it in depth, because what if the “rules” are not truly rules? What happens when all the time travel does begin to affect the timeline and time travel? And how do they figure it out?

This book and its second half are both very long and very tense. At first, Willis’ trademark rapid banter obscures (deliberately) the seriousness of what’s about to happen. The head of the program, Mr. Dunworthy, has begun to change the dates and times of when historians leave the lab and where they’re going, which throws their preparations into chaos without much explanation. For the most part, the point of view characters are three historians who travel to different points in World War II England. They are supposed to report back frequently, and return at a set time through their “drop,” a set point that gets them back to 2060 Oxford. Instead of progressing smoothly, their difficulties mount and their solutions don’t work out. This happens again, and again, and again, while they become more and more emotionally entangled with the “contemps,” or people who are native to the time and place.

Fair warning: if you read this, have both volumes on hand. They are both very long, but you don’t want to be dangling while you wait for the second volume to show up.

For me, this book was like an anxiety dream. It was stressful and frustrating, at times feeling like an impossible task. But I couldn’t stop reading, which says something to me about Willis’ skill at creating relatable characters I cared about.

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My August Reading Log

Posted on September 13, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Encore in Death by J. D. Robb/Nora Roberts is fifty-sixth in this massive series, which I continue reading not only because it’s a comfort read for its familiar characters and justice prevailing, but because I enjoy seeing, from a craft perspective, how the author walks a fine line between the formula that keeps readers returning and her own desire to mix it up; also, it has to reward new readers at the same time. This particular installment features famous actors and had a couple of good plot twists that kept it from being stale. I realized, partway through, that Roberts seems to have dropped Peabody’s humorous obsession with her weight, replacing that trait with obsessing about decorating her new house, which makes me very happy; at one point, Peabody gets eggs and bacon sandwiches for her and Dallas with zero comment. Long may that continue.

Fanfiction:
Faster, Higher, Stronger by everwitch is an Olympics AU of Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston in which figure skaters Henry Fox and Alex Claremont-Diaz are both determined to win gold at the Olympics. I found it pretty gripping, and loved how easily elements of their characters from the canonical material transferred to a new arena (see what I did there?).

Hot Ice by SlantedKnitting is a Merlin Olympics AU in which Arthur is a short-track speedskater, his sister Morgana is a snowboarder, and Merlin is a figure skater. Arthur is dealing with the fact that his disparaging father is a terrible coach for him, and what that means for his career. Then Morgana drags him to see Merlin compete and he gains a new perspective.

Advertise what makes you crazy (The Olympic Figure Skating AU) by Khashana is a Check Please! AU in which Kent Parson is a trans figure skater who doesn’t meet Jack Zimmermann until after Jack’s breakdown, and their relationship works out better. Kent’s mother is a thinly-veiled version of Tanya Harding. Eric Bittle adds an extra element to that relationship in the sequel. The Olympics are more of a starting point for the story, which then moves on to their college experiences at Samwell.

The Consultants by thebratqueen is an Avengers/White Collar crossover in which Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are a couple who call in the FBI and their art theft expert about a stolen painting. I loved this and would read another hundred thousand words or so of it.

The Making of Monsters by shuofthewind is a massive Daredevil AU series which adds Darcy Lewis, The Little Black Dress of Fandom, into Columbia Law School with Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson, and adds in a familial relationship with another major Marvel character as well. The story was written soon after the first season of the Daredevil Netflix series, so other Marvel characters who appear have characterizations distinct from what eventually happened in various Disney Plus series. There is an eventual Matt/Darcy romance and a lot of discussion of vigilantism and justice, as you might expect. Warning for canon-typical violence.

Of Twin Stars and Other Eccentric Satellites by winterhill is a much more lowkey Reboot movies version of the ST: TOS episode “Amok Time” in which T’Pring ends up with a much better role and a much superior future.

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#TBR Challenge – Everyday Heroes: Dancing Bearfoot by Elva Birch

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

August 21, Everyday Heroes: Dancing Bearfoot by Elva Birch is a confection, a short paranormal romance set in Alaska between single dad Leland/Lee, who owns a construction company, and his daughter’s preschool teacher, Patricia. Lee is a big bear of a man who can turn into, you guessed it, a bear; Patricia struggles to stay afloat by working as a waitress when she’s not teaching.

Lee knows Patricia is his soulmate as soon as they meet. Patricia doesn’t get the greatest first impression of him, but their interactions via his daughter Clara, and their experience subsequently of being trapped together in a snowstorm, quickly lead to a low-angst resolution with some humor when his shifting ability is revealed. I actually read this earlier in the year because I was in the mood for something light, and was pretty happy with my choice.

This story is part of a long series, “Green Valley Shifters.”

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My July Reading Log

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki (Author) and Jesse Kirkwood (Translator) is set in contemporary Japan and opens with a former tv scriptwriter whose career took a downward turn; she is now writing scripts for a dating game. The eponymous Full Moon Coffee Shop appears, as you might imagine, at the full moon; the waiters are talking cats who can read your birth chart and help you with your problems. I felt this was a mosaic novel; there are different narrators who all experience similar events, but their life experiences in the past have a link that is fully revealed at the end. The experience of reading it, from a narrative standpoint, is fairly static, an exploration of character rather than a plot that surges forward and up into a climax; it was very mindful, if that word can be applied to reading. I felt it could definitely fit into the “cozy vibe.”

Fanfiction:
K’diwa: A Steamy Novel of Interspecies Romance, by Jim Kirk by branwyn is a Reboot Star Trek AU, K/S slash, set at Starfleet Academy. On a bet, Jim Kirk has written a human/Vulcan romance novel; then his abusive ex-boyfriend Gary Mitchell posts it to everyone. Meanwhile, Spock is assigned to read the novel to see if there’s any speciesism in it…when he was already reading it with fascination. Fair warning that Kirk is a bit woobiefied in this story, but I love the meta commentary about Romance novels that’s happening throughout, and the characterization of the Orion cadet (Uhura’s roommate), Gaila. There’s also some good McCoy happening.

floating, sinking by shuofthewind is an AU sequel to Star Wars: Rogue One in which the characters survive and then must deal with their injuries, their traumas, and the politics of the Rebellion amid the events of A New Hope. Also of interest as the story casts Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor as greysexual demiromantics.

Ready for Love by idiopathicsmile is an adorable Singin’ in the Rain threesome followup. Cosmo Brown FTW! This is great.

Ekphugion by fourteenlines for Loligo is a really cool Vorkosiverse/Reboot Battlestar Galactica crossover, and oh how I wish it was longer.

you said love fills you up by napricot is an AU splitting off from Avengers: Endgame. When Steve Rogers goes back in time to dance with Peggy Carter, he creates a new universe and gives her all the information she needs to, first, rescue Bucky Barnes and second, hopefully stop Thanos. And also find his other self in the Arctic. I loved this. I loved the slow build between Peggy and Bucky; I loved non-traumatized Bucky; I loved the eventual threesome and the happy ending.

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#TBR Challenge – What a Wonderful World: The White Mosque: A Memoir by Sofia Samatar

Posted on July 17, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

What a Wonderful World: The White Mosque: A Memoir by Sofia Samatar (2022) hasn’t actually been on my TBR for very long; I just couldn’t wait any longer! I’ve been a fan of her poetic prose since reading her 2013 novel A Stranger in Olondria.

“A pilgrimage has a trajectory: the end is already known. But I’m interested in the randomness of movement. More than just interested: I’m desperate.”

The title of the book references the whitewashed church of a nineteenth-century group of Mennonites, who followed their leader to Uzbekistan, where they settled to await the return of Christ which their leader had predicted for 1889. Samatar, whose mother is Mennonite, began to research this fringe group and their long journey; the memoir begins when she is on a tour of Uzbekistan, but it’s not only about the trip, it’s also a thoughtful reflection on her own past and identity, a mosaic of history and memory. And, the best part, unexpected connections and insights along the way.

The tour was organized by a Mennonite group, so as Samatar writes of the associated memoirs she’s researched for this trip, she intersperses times when their guides read sections of the same memoirs aloud on the tour bus. This results in a vivid overlay of the past over the present. The historic travelers, leaving Russia because they were no longer protected from the military draft by the tsar’s decree, travel doggedly across the desert, knowing that the government of the place they want to settle does not want them but heading their anyway. There is epidemic illness, and the death of their children from disease and hardship; they are attacked and cast out by soldiers; they endure having their crops destroyed and their houses robbed, even a murder. Even after their prophet was proved wrong, more than once, and lapses into mental illness, they stayed until cast out. Their journey was harrowing and didn’t improve much after they settled, but it’s a compelling narrative. The contrasts with the comfortable tour bus and a valley that was desert in the past, but now is crammed with irrigated crops, throws their travails into sharp relief. I felt I understood Mennonites more, as when Samatar points out the determined pacifism of the “Bride Community” under attack, and the pain of separation when some of the community acknowledge they cannot stay, and depart for new lives in America.

I know this is not the cheeriest book, yet at the same time it’s clear-eyed, thoughtful, and compelling as she thinks on communities, being part of communities, and being being broken from them. Some of the chapters are very short, more like meditations spinning off from the previous section of narrative. It feels poetic, which makes sense, as Samatar is also a poet. I loved this book, and recommend it highly; for me, it resonated with today as well as with the past. “In the collective will to harmony, personal failings are subsumed, caught up, stripped of significance, transformed into music. From this inside, this concord feels like grace. It only hurts if you’re outside.”

If you’re an audiobook reader, a friend highly recommended the audio version, which is read by the author herself.

An excellent interview with Samatar at the Chicago Review of Books.

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“The Persistence of Enchantment,” Readercon 2024

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

Before my own panelist duties at Readercon 33 commenced, I attended a Readercon panel that was a conversation between Sofia Samatar and Greer Gilman about Greer’s Cloudish novels, Moonwise and Cloud and Ashes, and Sofia’s A Stranger in Olondria and The White Mosque. Below are my notes, which hopefully captures some of the flavor of their discussion.

Greer said The Owl Service by Alan Garner stuck with her, especially the aspect of people being taken over by Myth. In Cloud and Ashes, a person who becomes Ashes is silent for a period of time, except for “telling the dead” (sending them on their way); Ashes must not keep anything. Greer mentioned a mirror/chiral self, but I didn’t get the whole thought down in my notes!

Sofia pointed out all of the Theater in Greer’s work, and how that intersects with characters taking on the roles of gods. Greer describes her traveling actors as “louche friars” who show people the embodied gods; it’s forbidden for them to write down their roles.

Greer brings up Sofia’s A Stranger in Olondria. Olondria is “the country of books and angels.” Olondria has writing and books; Cloud does not. Sofia notes that her Somali father was illiterate until his late teens, and while she was writing that book she was teaching English in South Sudan, an ambivalent feeling because though she was asked to teach reading and writing, at the same time learning English is a factor in local language loss. The angels in Olondria are spirits of the dead, oracles; Literature and Death; written down language is dead. Greer: “The burden of godhead.” Olondria: books are “a weird kind of living dead – you can read the words of the dead!” Conflict of literary and oral culture. She explored what happens when a person’s world changes (protagonist becomes literate); the person is slow to catch up.

Sofia noted, “I don’t think a novel is for resolution [of her questions]. A novel is for experience.”

In Cloud, the world literally changes. Some discussion of “The Thinning” at the end of Cloud and Ashes. A third Cloudish book has just been completed, set at a women’s college envisioned by Margaret at the end of Cloud and Ashes.

Sofia: We are captive to myths of hierarchy and scarcity.

Greer on Cloud: shows the status of myths as the world is changing. We’re excited by the beauty of the myth; studying it makes it poetry, you tame it, put myths into metrics, i.e., the horrors and tragedies and beauties of the former world. Actors taking on bearing gods eats them out from within.

Greer talks about Sofia’s memoir The White Mosque as a mosaic [I agree!]; the Mennonites in the book go on a quest and are living a myth while Sofia follows in their footsteps. It’s an Epic mosaic. Sofia: “How do you come back from the wreck of your hopes?” The Mennonite group stayed in Uzbekistan approximately fifty years until cast out by Bolsheviks, even though Jesus didn’t appear 3/8/1889. They’d traveled two years to reach their destination. Most Mennonites find this episode shameful, but there’s now a Mennonite museum in Uzbekistan of the things they weren’t allowed to take away with them, so they gave to their Muslim neighbors.

Sofia mentions her essay in Realms of Imagination, which accompanied a British Library exhibit. She described five dynamics operating in Epic and in modern fantasy. Epic: combining different episodes. Cloud: centers women and the domestic, not considered Epic. Digression: Romance invades the epic.

Sofia recommends the book Planet Narnia; theory tying each Narnia book to a different planet, Lewis thinking medievally. She didn’t entirely buy the theory but loved the book.

Greer says Cloud is more Romance (like the Mabinogion) than Epic. The whole thing is a Digression; what if women wrote epics? And coming out of the Underworld rather than going into it. Greer writes about Persephone a lot; Sofia as well, and including Isis and Osiris version.

[end of my notes]

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My June Reading Log

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Welcome to Boy.net (Earth’s Shadow Book 1) by Lyda Morehouse is set in Earth’s solar system a good while after the Archangel books, long enough that most people thing Earth is largely abandoned; also, you don’t have to have read (or remember) the prior books to enjoy this. Mars is now the dominant power, and the people farther out avoid their area of influence, and their ENForcer space marines, as much as possible. This book follows a lesbian couple, one from the science-focused and culturally progressive Moon, the other a trans defector who fled the ENForcers, who want her back to reprogram both mentally and physically via nanobots and her cybernetic enhancements. Though the opening felt like a held breath, the plot swiftly starts rolling and doesn’t really stop through a sequence of different environments and encounters with fun, quirky secondary characters. It’s a very inclusive book, with disabled characters who use cybernetic enhancements, a character with dyslexia, a Deaf character, and people with a range of genders and sexual preferences. Also, at a key moment activists show up and I love that for this story. We need more books showing activism happening in different ways. This is from a small press, so I hope it gains traction and we get more in this series!

Fanfiction:

Inappropriate Connections by Maykenfan is an epic imagined future of the Vorkosigan clan, featuring the children of Miles and Ekaterin, Gregor and Laisa, etc. as well as Nikki Vorsoisson, and the relationship of Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan and Oliver Jole. Note nobody dies! I was wary because Miles is in poor health throughout, but he was still going strong at the end of the story.

Catch Your Voice by lavvyan is a fairly old school Hawkeye/Coulson slash story with fluff and pining in which, again, nobody dies.

A Loose Thread by FortinbrasFTW is an Andor sequel in which Kino Loy survives! And Cassian Andor finds him. This had some beautiful, thoughtful prose.

REBEL Y/N? by skitzofreak for RoverKelevra is a story for those who love robots and artificial intelligences in spaaaace. Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso are on an infiltration mission and suborn a tiny cleaning robot. And things escalate from there. The robots are characters, and points of view characters, and I was invested in them. Warning: a couple of the robots are destroyed, but their legacy lives on.

Not the Destination by KiaraSayre is a lovely Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson romance road trip.

Let Me Come Home by prosopopeya for marbleflan is a Supernatural AU which has no supernatural elements; instead, Dean Winchester works at a garage and has foster kids, while Castiel Novak, who’s had a rough time since being disowned by his religious family, has come to town after his niece is left in the foster system. This story is for those who like stories that have teenagers and lots of sweetness and struggle while trying to find a home.

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Readercon 2024 Schedule

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

I’ll be at Readercon 33, July 11 – 14, 2024 this weekend, in Quincy, Massachusetts, for the first time in several years. Check out my schedule below and stop by my Kaffeeklatsch if you’ll be there!

Salon A Friday, July 12, 2024, 12:00 PM EDT
History of Readercon
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; David G. Shaw; Greer Gilman; Michael Cisco
Veteran Readercon participants and organizers will tell stories of Readercon’s nearly 40 year history. Learn about the awards and ceremonies that are or have been hosted here, events that have come and gone, clandestine attendance by rockstar authors, and maybe a little bit of drama if the panelists think it wise to share. Come to the second annual edition of this panel, now with a different mix of participants for the full Rashomon effect!

Salon 3 Friday, July 12, 2024, 2:00 PM EDT
Retroactive Problem Solving in SF
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Caroline M. Yoachim; Sarena Straus; Karl Schroeder; Matthew Kressel
A lot of the more hopeful SF is written in worlds where the most urgent problems facing our society today have already been solved, and the characters face other, different problems. But by imagining futures where our current crises are of the past, are we missing out on an opportunity to blaze a real path into such futures? What does it mean to tell stories about solving our problems, rather than stories where the problems have already been solved?

Salon 3 Friday, July 12, 2024, 3:00 PM EDT
Fanfic Writers Going Pro: the Most Recent Generation
Kate Nepveu [moderator]; Wendy Van Camp; Cecilia Tan; Sunny Moraine; Victoria Janssen; Claire Houck
Pro authors have always also written fanfic, but prior generations were likely to limit their public connections to their fandom pseudonyms. In the last several years, newer pro authors are openly linking their fannish identities, and publishers are buying works first published as fic, including original fic. What are the effects of this greater openness on individual works, authors’ careers and oeuvres, and the overall field? What, if any, relationship does this have to fic writers filing the serial numbers off stories for self-publication?

Meet the Pros(e) Salon 3 Friday, July 12, 2024, 10:15 PM EDT

Salon B Saturday, July 13, 2024, 11:00 AM EDT
Archeology in Reality and Speculative Fiction
Alexander Jablokov [moderator]; Kathryn Morrow; Victoria Janssen; Jeff Hecht; Katherine Crighton
Archeology is the study of human cultures through their material remains. Professional archeologists will examine archeology’s past flaws, current practice, and future potential, and suggest ways that their field can inform speculative fiction, including what archeology tells us about the range of human cultures and how an archeological mindset can strengthen worldbuilding.

Basalt, Saturday, July 13, 2024, 12:00 PM EDT
Kaffeeklatsch: Victoria Janssen

Salon A Saturday, July 13, 2024, 2:00 PM EDT
Paranormal Romance, Romantasy, or “Just” Fantasy?
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Cecilia Tan; Mark Painter; Natalie Luhrs; C.S.E. Cooney
Significant amounts of romance in a fantasy novel can lead to its being designated as part of a romance-focused subgenre, such as paranormal romance or romantasy—which can be a restrictive pigeon-hole or a way of reaching new audiences. Panelists will discuss the reader expectations that come along with these designations and how authors can attempt to write within a particular subgenre, to deliberately subvert reader expectations, or to resist such categorization altogether.

Salon 4 Sunday, July 14, 2024, 11:00 AM EDT
Defining and Appreciating Cozy SFF
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; John Wiswell; Caitlin Rozakis; Steven Popkes; Natalie Luhrs
At the blog Lady Business, forestofglory argues that cozy SFF “generally has small stakes,” “focuses on community-building,” and “honors the importance of domestic labor and other undervalued jobs.” She also argues that its main failure mode is “insularity”: failing to ground a story by situating it within a larger context, or failing to recognize the implications of its background worldbuilding. Panelists will explore how this framework illuminates cozy SFF’s appeal, scope, and relationships to other subgenres.

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#TBR Challenge – Bananapants!: Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 by Sean Stewart

Posted on June 19, 2024 by Victoria Janssen

Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman definitely fits this month’s category! First in a trilogy, it’s a teen mystery/thriller with speculative fiction and interactive elements, such as phone numbers you can call to get actual messages and websites you can visit, or at least could visit when the book came out in 2006. I did call the phone number in the title, and the message was still there in 2024! My hardcover edition also had supplemental print materials in a pocket inside the front cover.

All that said, you don’t need the supplementary materials to enjoy the story. The main character, high school senior Cathy, has just been dumped by her boyfriend and subsequently has a fight with her mother. Soon after, as she talks with her friend Emma, we learn the boyfriend is much older than Cathy, and might have done something shady before the breakup.

I thought this was an intriguing concept for a book and apparently it sold quite well when it came out. Sean Stewart is one of my favorite fantasy writers, and his characterization and prose are truly excellent. I did not attempt, however, to use the supplemental clues to solve anything, so I can’t speak to that element. But I’m glad I finally pulled this one off the TBR shelf!

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