A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo

Title: A Mouthful of Dust
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle #6
Author: Nghi Vo
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Tordotcom; October 7, 2025

Synopsis from Goodreads...

Hunger makes monsters in this dark new tale in Nghi Vo's Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle.

Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desserts made of dust, they discover the secrets of what happens when hunger stalks the land and what the powerful will do to hide their crimes. Trapped in the mansion of a sinister magistrate, Chih and Almost Brilliant must learn what happened in Baolin when the famine came to call, and they must do so quickly... because the things in the shadows are only growing hungrier.

Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle continues to be a favorite series of mine. The latest installment, A Mouthful of Dust, saw the cleric, Chih, return for another journey. But, this time they chased the complicated and tragic history of the city of Baolin.

This series has always had its moments of darkness woven within the stories imparted to the reader through Chih and Almost Brilliant’s experiences with the people they’ve come across in their travels. The characters are always complicated (not always sympathetic, but complex), but the series has always stressed the idea of the importance of every story, no matter how small or who it comes from. That’s part of what I love about the Singing Hills Cycle.

The tone of A Mouthful of Dust, however, felt especially bleak with aspects of horror. In particular, it was a story of demons and folklore, food and hunger—a tale of people driven to the brink and what they did in their most desperate hour. And though the famine was buried in Baolin’s history, the city’s past was restless. There were secrets that refused to stay buried, and Chih as well as Almost Brilliant are caught in the thick of it.

Overall, A Mouthful of Dust was excellent, and I’m looking forward to what Vo has in store for this series next.

About the author....

Nghi Vo is the bestselling author of the novels Siren Queen, The Chosen and the Beautiful, and The City in Glass, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began with The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and Lambda Literary Awards and the LA Times and Ursula K. Le Guin Prizes, and has won the Crawford, Ignyte, and Hugo Awards. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Tordotcom) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Sisters Before Misters by Amelia Diane Coombs

Title: Sisters Before Misters

Series: The Finch Sisters #2
Author: Amelia Diane Coombs
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Mystery
Publisher/Publication Date: Thomas & Mercer; October 7, 2025
Synopsis from Goodreads...

A missing husband, a sister acting sus, and a tantalizing tangle of lies—well, there goes Remi’s plan for a chill Halloween.

Remi and her sisters, Maeve and Eliana, have a knack for stumbling into murder mysteries. And after a killer family camping trip last year, they’re back together for a Halloween they’ll never forget. Remi is living her best life in Seattle until Eliana’s husband, Chad, who refused to sign their divorce papers, disappears on the spookiest night of the year. Eliana swears she has no idea where he is, though her obvious motive and weird behavior don’t really weigh in her favor. Nor does the severed finger they find in his house… Torn between loyalty to her sister and mounting suspicions she can’t ignore, Remi and her boyfriend, Leo, embark on a manhunt to find Chad—or the rest of him. But the further Remi digs into Chad’s movements on Halloween, the more trouble she finds. With a ruthless detective on their tail, threatening texts, a mysterious hard drive, and dubious legal advice from a kooky aunt, the Finch sisters are in over their head. But Remi is determined to prove her sister’s innocent, even though the bloody evidence points right at her.

Have you encountered a book that’s just…fun to read? Well, for me, the latest novel to scratch that particular itch was Amelia Diane Coombs’s new mystery, Sister’s Before Misters. It promised humor, hijinks, and a case centered on the disappearance of Chad, Eliana’s lousy, soon-to-be ex-husband.

The sisters were quirky and eccentric, and the dynamic between them was chaotic and entertaining. Remi, who defaulted to humor no matter what was going on, but she really wanted to be included, relied on, and have a sense of closeness with her older sisters. Business savvy Maeve built a lucrative social media/brand empire. And Eliana, whose perfect façade started to show more and more cracks after her ex refused to sign the divorce papers and she becomes the number one suspect in his disappearance.

Throughout the novel, the sisters bickered and cracked jokes at each other. When it comes to humor in novels, I’ve found that it can be particular and subjective. And while the jokes in Sisters Before Misters didn’t always land (for me), there were a few instances I found funny.

I was mainly here for the mystery, though, and it was the part of the book that I found the most fun to engage with. What I assumed was a straightforward whodunit, quickly went off-the-rails and headed into a few surprising directions (which I won’t spoil).

At the end of the day, Sisters Before Misters was a fun mystery with some humor, which also explored the relationship between three sisters.

About the author....

Amelia Diane Coombs is the author of Keep My Heart in San Francisco; Between You, Me, and the Honeybees; Exactly Where You Need to Be; and All Alone With You. She’s a Northern California transplant living in Seattle, Washington, with her spouse and their Siberian cat. When she isn’t writing or reading, Amelia spends her time playing video and tabletop games, road-tripping, and hiking the Pacific Northwest.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Thomas & Mercer) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!