Author: Yangsze Choo

To be fair, I started reading this several months ago, and I'm still only maybe a third of the way into it. It's very serious, and while it definitely started off strong and interesting, I've not been in the mood for super serious lately. I'm hoping to finish it before school starts back in January so I can finally cross it off my list.

Anyway, this is about Ji Lin and Ren, two young people living very different yet connected lives in Malaysia. Ji Lin is secretly working in a dancehall to pay off her mother's gaming debts when she picks up a severed finger from one of her partners. Meanwhile, Ren is on a mission to find his former master's finger so it can be reunited with him in death.

Author: Pip Williams

I remember when I came across this at the bookstore. I was so intrigued by the summary that I couldn't resist buying it, but then it sat unread on my bookshelf for months. I picked it up and started reading it a couple of months ago, but like The Night Tiger it's pretty serious. I'm about halfway through it now, and the story is very well-written.

Esme spent her childhood beneath the sorting table at the Scriptorium, the building in which her father and other men are collecting words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. As she grows older, Esme begins collecting her own words - those that have been discarded by the dictionary men or which have been deemed unworthy of the publication. Many of those unrecorded words relate directly to women and/or common folks' experiences.

Wild Honor (Dragon Royals book 4)

Author: May Dawson

I'm so glad I gave this book group recommendation a try. I've read the first three books of this series and have just started book four. The fifth and final book is set to be released at the end of this month. To give you a brief synopsis of the series overall, Honor is an impossible female dragon shifter. In order to keep her secret, she masquerades as a man to attend the shifter academy to learn to control her newfound powers. Along the way, she uncovers secrets about her family and learns that she is at the center of a prophecy that will change the world.

I really like Honor and the banter she shares with the other dragon royals. I will say that as the series has progressed, the number of errors (typos, grammar issues, punctuation mistakes, etc.) has increased, which is a bit frustrating, but I'm excited to see what the author does with this series and how everything concludes.

Author: Greg Mongrain

I'm not very far into this one at all: just far enough to get the gist of the mystery and a general idea of the type of man the main character is. Sebastian Montero has been hunting killers for 700 years. His latest case involves the ritualistic murder of a teenage girl by who investigators have dubbed "The Voodoo Killer."