The Saucy Wenches Book Club

The fact that my reading plate was full last year — proudly flaunting Marie Kondo’s 30-book rule without even taking my several bookcases into consideration — didn’t keep me from lurking about in various online book groups in hopes of adding more to the pile.

I stalked a lot of fantasy groups, especially a Karen Moning fans spinoff group that focuses on fae fantasy. A year ago, they inspired me to finally read all the Sarah J. Maas books that Wench Merit had been telling me to read. Since that was such a delightful experience for me, I’ve been taking notes about the other series that have inspired them to rave for weeks on end, and eagerly awaiting the opportunity to dive into a few of them.

So here’s the list of recommendations I’ve compiled from my lurking notes. Plus a few books I didn’t get to last year. These should work nicely for the categories Wench Angela has provided in the latest Saucy Wenches reading group challenge on Goodreads.

Maybe I should get a cat. 

The thought invades my head fully formed and utterly obvious. A cat. Another little sociopath to curl up beside me at night and keep me warm.

Jane Doe
~~Victoria Helen Stone

“We were twelve years old, but we walked along the hot streets of the neighborhood, amid the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to each other. No one understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one another.” 
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

In a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
~ Madeline Miller,
Circe,

“Datable basically means you wear your bra when they’re around, and you don’t talk about bodily functions or pimples. Not datable or gay: anything goes.”
Dating You Hating You, Christina Loren

People are forever thinking that the unthinkable can’t happen. If it doesn’t exist in thought, then it can’t exist in life. And then, in the blink of an eye, in a moment of danger, a figure who takes power from our weak desires and failures emerges like a rib from sand. ... Some strange combination of a military dictator and a spiritual charlatan. A war-hungry mountebank. How stupidly we believe in our petty evolutions. Yet another case of something shiny that entertained us and then devoured us. We consume and become exactly what we create. In all times.

~ Lidia Yuknavitch, The Book of Joan