Rutabaga's Reads 2025: Part 19

A third adult fiction compilation post?! I’m surprised, too!

Dreadful (May 28, 2024) by Caitlin Rozakis.

<This is a standalone novel.>

You know it’s bad when you wake up in a partially-destroyed workshop with no memories and no eyebrows. There’s an abducted princess in a cell of the evil wizard’s castle and the goblin workforce fatalistically expects to one day be immolated on the whim of the evil wizard. Also, the evil wizard is ... him. What is his name? Others refer to him as Dread Lord Gavrax, but as he has no memories of the time before, he refers to himself as Gav. He plans to fake it until he makes it, but he might still die a horrible death at the hands of the evil wizard leader, Zarconar. Or maybe the moat squid will succeed in eating his face. Or he’ll self-immolate accidentally. He doesn’t want to die, and he also doesn’t want to be like Gavrax. He wants to be a, well, not a good wizard, but also not an evil wizard. He wants to be a wizard Orla will talk to about a hosting menu in her gamboling monster kitty apron that her granddaughter made her. And a wizard that Grrribeetle isn’t afraid of and will do more than mumble to. And a wizard that Princess Eliasha (apprentice name Wren) wants to be friends with. There is something truly evil at work. The princess is definitely only there for a nefarious purpose, which will assuredly mean her death. There’s a gathering of evil wizards, an upcoming summoning of demon evil, the arrival of hero types doing Artharno the White Wizard’s bidding and a village garlic festival. Candied garlic or garlic brittle, anyone? Gav has lots more to worry about than his flames-adorned cloak. He needs to decide who he wants to be going forward.

            I definitely judged this book by its sprayed edges, which are black and include skulls in the decorative edge-work, but I only bought it after I read the jacket copy and found myself intrigued. This adult fiction novel is a comedic fantasy with splashes of violence. There’s even a little gore, but it’s a quick scene, so it can therefore be sometimes spicy with dashes of darkness. Gav, with his missing memories, is more a bumbling fool than any threat to anyone – except the guy he turned into a chicken – so the story’s more entertaining than anything and not scary. I don’t know that I’d call it cozy, but it is genuinely funny. It contains wit, self-awareness and empathy, giving a fresh take on fantasy tropes. This book won’t bite, but if you’re not careful, something from the story might, so beware!

Gone Before Goodbye (Oct. 21, 2025) by Reese Witherspoon & Harlan Coben.

<This is a standalone novel.>

A renowned combat surgeon with a renowned combat surgeon husband and co-founder of a successful medical mission called WorldCures, Maggie McCabe was making a positive impact, and she had it all. Her reality now is a life where her medical license has been revoked, her husband is dead, her sister is going through a messy divorce, and both sisters are struggling financially. She’s thrown a mighty lifeline, and when she accepts, debts are erased, litigation against her is suddenly resolved, and she has a whole lot of money in her bank account, and that’s only half the payment. Absolute discretion is imperative, but she knows HIPAA. She arrives at a remote location in Russia. It’s a palace, and one of her clients is a reclusive oligarch. When he goes missing while he should still be under her care, Maggie becomes a fugitive herself around people who can afford Bugatti Tourbillons that cost $4.1 million (starting) and can jet-set in their own private planes with their own Michelin-star-level personal chefs. Her combat training as well as her medical expertise are going to be tested, and the truths she might uncover may cost her her life.

            There’s cutting-edge technology, state-of-the-art equipment and people who can live in gluttonously opulent luxury in this adult fiction, mystery and medical thriller by Academy Award-winning actress Reese Witherspoon and internationally bestselling thriller author Harlan Coben. The novel is action-packed, though it really didn’t pick up for me until an intense escape about 150 pages in. It’s also part globe-trotting adventure, part psychological thriller. The story contains twists and suspense, the plot is high-stakes, and the story is dynamic and pedal to the metal. It has me wondering what I’ve been missing out on since this is my first Coben novel, and I don’t know how much of the writing Witherspoon did, but this collab really works.

The Second Chance Convenience Store (June 17, 2025/US edition) by Kim Ho-Yeon.

   Janet Hong, translator.

<This is a standalone novel.>

The owner of the Second Chance Convenience Store, Mrs. Yeom, is a retired history teacher who keeps her store open in Cheongpa-dong to keep her few employees employed. She’s distraught over the loss of her purse until she receives a call from Seoul Station. Dokgo is an unhoused man who can’t remember his past or his actual name due to alcohol-related dementia. To thank him for returning her purse, she invites him to come to her store every day to receive an unexpired boxed lunch free of charge. He comes, but insists on only eating the expired boxed lunches. He even cleans up the picnic table, though it’s wintertime and very cold. When Dokgo saves the store from a robbery attempt, Mrs. Yeom offers the big, bear-like Dokgo the night shift. She requires him to stop drinking alcohol, but she buys him new clothes and a haircut. He learns fast and quickly wins over the denizens of the neighborhood, though his coworkers are slower to warm up to him. He’s grateful to his new boss, and business sees an uptick with his customer service, slow and methodical though it may be. The better business upsets Mrs. Yeom’s ne’er-do-well son, Minsik, who wants to try to convince his mom to back his latest venture (and they either tend to fail or turn out to be scams). Minsik hires a man to look into Dokgo’s past, because his mom’s convenience store is an inconvenience store to him.

            In this adult, cozy, urban fiction story, already an international bestseller from Korea, readers will find a broken man who gets his life back, a store owner with a kind soul and a wayward son, a caustic morning shift employee and a mid-shift employee who’s questioning what to do next. The fiction is realistic and sometimes unpleasant, but it’s encouraging and compassionate, too. It’s a story of community and healing. Overall, it’s a soft, heartfelt novel.

Rutabaga's Reads 2023: Part 8

If you think I regularly read adult fiction since I am an adult, you would be mistaken. It has taken me this long to compile an adult fiction compilation post. Better late than never! For those out there who do read adult fiction on the regular, who are your favorite authors?

The All-American: A Novel (Apr. 4, 2023) by Joe Milan Jr.

<This is a standalone novel.>

Thanks to my childhood friend, Kristi W., for gifting me this novel! It’s written by a Creative Writing colleague of hers. All opinions are expressly my own.

            The paperwork wasn’t filed correctly because the check bounced, so after a fight sends 17-year-old Bucky Yi to the police station, the U.S. government deports him to South Korea. It’s a totally foreign land to him, and he doesn’t speak, read or write the language. He can’t even properly pronounce his own name! (It’s Yi Beyonghak.) All Bucky wants to do is fulfill his all-American goal to get out of rural Washington state and become a college football player. But he doesn’t get scouted, and now he’s stuck in Korea. His raw physical strength gets him a job at an expat bar in Seoul until he gets notices of loans overdue courtesy of the bio father he doesn’t know taking out massive loans in his name and soon enough he’s forced into his mandatory military conscription. There’s more remoteness than his backwoods home, but with extras like an erratic sergeant and North Korean spies (they might be chasing shadows). Bucky has to start from the ground up by learning a new language and figure out how to reformat himself with no guide on how to rewrite the code.

            This unique take on undocumented immigration makes for a strong debut. It’s propulsive and irreverent, bold and dark. It is a story of identity, and Bucky goes through quite the disorienting crisis to find who he is or at least who he can be. There is drama: drama feeding into his desire to return home to Washington, drama when it comes to his sexual desires, drama in his family and drama trying to manage his ego. It’s understandable that Bucky has very strong negative feelings surrounding his deportation when he should’ve, like me, been a naturalized citizen from a very young age. But it’s hard to feel bad for Bucky. He feels powerless to control what is happening, everyone and everything seem to be against him, which is very Kafkaesque, but his ego gets in the way of everything. He so often turns to violence. Mad about this? Fight. Mad about that? Fight. Mad in Korea? Fight. I never connected with Bucky, and he never truly grew as a character in the story. I wanted to be impressed by a young man working without the model minority stereotype to rise above the hand he was dealt. But nope, he remained a jerk throughout the story. Chantal should stay far from him. She has wings to fly, but Bucky’s volatile personality, his quick anger, will box him in.

Murder Your Employer (Feb. 21, 2023) by Rupert Holmes.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

Welcome to The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts. Dean Harbinger Harrow opens with a Foreward and entreats readers not to use this as a guide to the McMasters campus, but “for those engaged in home study.” “There is no more unpredictable force of nature than the sadistic employer.” With that said, the three students featured all look to delete an employer: Cliff Iverson, Gemma Lindley and a Hollywood starlet referred to as Dulcie Mown. Cliff’s perspective features the most with his journal entry chapters. He’s the rare student who has a sponsor, unknown to him. He refers to his sponsor as X. There’s an annual “Track Meet” (“track your quarry, meet your quarry, and delete your quarry,”) that carries grave weight in calculating a student’s average for the term and readiness for one’s thesis. Thesis, in this case, outlines the motivation and justification for deleting someone (deleting, if you haven’t figured it out already, is synonymous with murdering, but murdering is so vulgar, where deleting is classy). A successful deletion equates graduation without any pomp or circumstance, as all who graduate to deletists must never receive the credit they deserve. Those who aren’t successful will themselves wind up deleted. Life isn’t easy, nor is it fair, especially with the likes of Merrill Fiedler, Leonid Kosta and Adele Underton still breathing. Best of luck to those fortunate enough to be admitted. Here, have a sherry. Or maybe not. It’s probably poisoned.

            I thoroughly enjoyed this story! It’s delightfully diabolical and completely compelling in a twisted sort of way. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college is expansive, luxurious and killer. The wordplay is jaunty, the writing witty, and the plot is clearly that certain sadistic employers will hopefully cease existing, but with so many chapters featuring Cliff’s journal entries, it reads conversationally much of the time. Details into the master plans of Cliff, Gemma and Dulcie give delicious insight and enable readers to craft credible and detailed pictures in their imaginations. Holmes creates an entertaining and specifically educational story set on the campus of a clandestine college and back in “civilian life” (a.k.a. “the battlefield”). It is cheeky and cleverly wicked. It’s a literary dark comedy. Anyone looking to be admitted to this covert school where you can ”learn to live each day as if it might be your enemy’s last?”

Poster Girl (Oct. 18, 2022) by Veronica Roth.

<This is a standalone novel.>

From a time well before Sonya Kantor was born, the Sea-Port (Seattle-Portland) megalopolis lived under constant surveillance from the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and action, rewarding or punishing according to a strict, static moral code set forth by the Delegation. Offering a handkerchief to an elder would earn you DesCoin, while whistling would debit two DesCoin. 10 years ago, the Delegation fell, and was replaced by the Triumvirate. The Delegation’s most valuable members were locked away in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. Where everyone in the Aperture still has the Insight implants, everyone in the outside world does not (supposedly). Sonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has lived in the Aperture for 10 years. Her parents (August and Julia) and older sister (Susanna) are all dead. Also dead: Aaron Price, once her betrothed. Not dead: Alexander Price, Aaron’s older brother. Alexander comes to her with a deal to earn her freedom. All she has to do is find a missing girl who was “rehomed” (stolen) when the parents had a second child, which was disallowed unless a couple had earned that second child and obtained the proper permit (Exception to Protocol 18A). Her search will bring her in contact with the very leader of the Analog Army, a rogue organization that has gone from threats to planting explosives and murdering others. The path Sonya takes will be dangerous and more illuminating than she could ever have guessed. She’s going to learn that her family’s past has deep, dark secrets. How will this affect her view of the Delegation she grew up under and as the face of it, no less?

            I knew I wasn’t going to purchase this novel of Roth’s, but I happened upon it at my local library and decided to check it out. It’s no secret that Roth has a knack for fascinating world-building, and her plot is intriguing, especially watching as Sonya’s morals shift through the story. Self-awareness comes gradually. Sonya’s lived in a world ruled by technology, which readers may think mirrors our own, but it’s definitely not. You’re not just constantly monitored, you’re potentially, constantly rewarded and punished. Like being graded 24/7/365. It’s alarming only in the sense of how close to reality it could be. The novel is fairly slim, but there’s complexity within. I didn’t love the book, but as someone whose bookshelf once contained plenty of dystopian YA, this dystopian adult novel was interesting. Don’t read this if you’re looking for a happily-ever-after. Do read this if you want a story where privacy’s been, essentially, surrendered (especially for those who still have Insights) and technology has been abused. Do read this if you want to see the revelation of complicity and the terrible outcome that comes of it. The story is cold, but there is fragile humanness beneath the chaos and the guilt.