Tantalizing Tales — February 2025 — Part Two

Hello, readers! It seemed like January just crawled on by but February hit the gas before we knew it! Let’s take a look at some of the delightful books I haven’t yet been able to cram into the shortest month, beginning with Margarita Montimore’s The Dollhouse Academy, a thriller that combines dark academia with celebrity in the most delicious way.

Ramona and her best friend Grace are thrilled to be accepted into The Dollhouse Academy, a bootcamp-style school for aspiring entertainers that churns out some of 1990s Hollywood’s biggest stars. As they train relentlessly in all things showbiz, Grace’s star begins to rise while Ramona discovers that her skills may not be up to par. When they meet their idol — singer, actress and Dollhouse graduate Ivy Gordon — Ramona soon realizes that life for the pop princess is not all that it seems.

Struggling to keep up with Grace’s rise to fame, Ramona soon begins receiving threatening anonymous messages telling her to leave The Dollhouse Academy while she still can, leading her to uncover the dark, secretive underbelly of the school’s star machine. Does she have what it takes to become the ultimate star, or will the cost be too great?

I’m ngl, I watched every episode of the sci-fi TV show Dollhouse back in the day and 100% picked up this book because of the name and the tangentially related concept. But I’m also fascinated by the idea of talent bootcamps, from the ones that created so many of the 90s boybands I love, to the KPop academies still extant today. I’m really hoping I have time to eventually slot this into my reading schedule, as I love everything about this concept.

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The second book we’re featuring today is about another kind of school, as eight women with radically different backgrounds enroll in a Roman college. Cuban Italian feminist author Alba de Céspedes’ novel There’s No Turning Back was the first of her books banned by the Italian fascist government shortly after it was published in 1938. Now it’s available in a new English translation by Anne Goldstein, the same translator of Elena Ferrante’s acclaimed works.

This coming-of-age novel explores the inner lives of eight students who come to college for very different reasons. Some are there to study, while others are trying to escape a scandal or keep a secret hidden. During their time in Rome, they’ll experience the challenges of love, work and emancipation.

Considered subversive, experimental and revolutionary for its time, this modern classic is a great way to kick off Women’s History Month, starting tomorrow! It’s always fascinating to see how our predecessors fought for their rights and beliefs decades before many of us were born, and how we can apply those lessons to our own lives in the modern day.

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Nick Newman’s The Garden is a modern fable that opens in a place and time unknown, with elderly sisters Evelyn and Lily living in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. The pair have only ever known each other. What was before the garden they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know. Each day is spent in languid service to their home: tending the bees, planting the crops, and dutifully following the instructions of the almanac written by their long-departed mother.

So when a nameless boy is found hiding in the boarded-up house at the center of their isolated grounds, their once-solitary lives are irrevocably upended. Who is he? Where did he come from? And most importantly, what does he want? As suspicions gather and allegiances falter, Evelyn and Lily will be forced to confront dark truths about themselves, the garden and the world as they’ve known it.

I can’t be the only one getting strong Garden of Eden vibes from this description. I’m absolutely here for reworkings of the Genesis myth, however, and can’t wait to either confirm or debunk my own suspicions by diving into this book.

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An actual retelling lies at the heart of my next selection, Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone. Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla — the novella that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula — this feminist novel puts the sapphic undertones of the original front and center.

After ten years of matrimony, the relationship between Lenore and her steel magnate husband Henry has soured, especially without a child to fill the distance that keeps growing between them. Henry’s ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband went on a hunt. Though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

Preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore’s life. Carmilla is weak and pale during the day, but is vibrant at night. Carmilla stirs a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon, girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger themselves.

Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the cravings that Carmilla’s presence have awakened in her, Lenore begins to unravel her past. In doing so, she’ll uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk.

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For more modern-day crimes and investigations, we turn to the fourth book of Lisa Black’s Locard Institute series. I adored the debut, Red Flags, and while I didn’t find the second book, What Harms You to be quite as jaw-dropping, I was genuinely sad that I didn’t have time to check out the third installment, The Deepest Kill.

And now we have the fourth book, Not Who We Expected! Forensic experts Ellie Carr and Rachael Davies are enlisted by legendary rock star Billy Diamond to find his missing daughter. A level-headed student at Yale, Devon left six months earlier with her boyfriend Carlos for a career development retreat in Nevada. As the months passed, her calls and notes became less frequent until they stopped entirely. Billy wanted to give his daughter space, but after learning that Carlos’ body was found a few miles upstream from the ranch, he needs answers.

Rachael and Ellie hatch a plan: as Ellie goes undercover at the retreat, Rachael will work with Billy to investigate the rest of Devon’s life. But Rachael has a second agenda. Why does Billy seem so familiar with her late sister Isis, whose little boy Rachael is raising? The music idol is clearly hiding something, but what?

Meanwhile, Ellie discovers that the southwest ranch is full of surprises. Devon is not only alive but thriving, and no one mentions Carlos. The attendees follow their leader Galen with slavish devotion, and their daily mind-body exercises stretch from brain-numbing to downright dangerous. If Galen is behind some nefarious scheme, how does it relate to the rock star and his daughter?

To answer these questions, Rachael will also have to ask who her sister really was, potentially drawing both herself and Ellie into deeper danger. For in Billy’s world and in Galen’s, the living, the missing and the dead all have secrets that some people might very well kill to protect.

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Finally, we have the latest book in another series I’m longing to catch up with, Amanda Flower’s I Died For Beauty. This third installment of the Emily Dickinson mystery series once again features the famed poet as an intrepid sleuth, capably assisted by her loyal (and fictional) servant Willa Noble.

Amherst, 1857. The Dickinson family is bracing themselves for one of the worst winters in New England’s history. Trains are snowbound and boats are frozen in the harbor. Emily, her maid Willa and the families of Amherst are all doing their best to keep their homes warm even as concerns regarding fire safety abound.

The town’s worst fears come to pass when a blaze breaks out just down the street from the Dickinsons’ home in Kelley Square, the Irish neighborhood in Amherst, leaving a young couple dead and their child orphaned. The deaths appear to be a tragic accident, but Emily finds herself harboring suspicions there may have been more to the fire than meets the eye. She and Willa must work together to crack the case while withstanding the frigid temperatures of the New England winter.

I loved the wonderful cameos in the first book, I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died, and can’t wait to see what delights Ms Flower has in store here for all us lovers of classic American literature and history.

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Let me know if you’re able to get to any of these books before I do, dear readers! I’d love to hear your opinions, and see if that will help spur me to push any of them higher up the mountain range that is my To Be Read pile.

And, as always, you can check out the list of my favorite books in my Bookshop storefront linked below!