Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

This discussion thread is to mark your completion of the January challenge to fulfill prompt #43 A book that includes a nonverbal character! National Dress Up Your Pet Day is January 14, 2025!

Please include the following information about this book:

Title:
Author:
Would you recommend this book?

Title: Out of My Mind
Author: Sharon M. Draper
Would you recommend this book? Yes, it was a wonderful read!

I have been finishing a series of novellas I begin in December, so here is where I used the ones I read in January.

Ensii
Author: Elisabeth Wheatley
Prompt: #21 (main character politician)

Warsworn
Author: Elisabeth Wheatley
Prompt: #12 (road trip)

Cursebound
Author: Elisabeth Wheatley
Prompt: #25 (main character is immigrant)

Mercy Vow
Author: Elisabeth Wheatley
Prompt: #7 (cult)

Magian
Author: Elisabeth Wheatley
Prompt: #28 (unlikely friendship)
Recommend?: Yes, I would recommend this entire series of novellas (Warlords of the Sandsea) if you like Xena/Gladiator/slow burn/enemies to lovers

Faking a Murderer
Author: Kathy Reichs
Prompt: #24 (happily single)
Recommend: Yes, I love Temperance Brennan (Bones). This is a novella she wrote with Lee Child in an anthology of mystery writers paired up with their famous detectives. A great concept, and if I read more mystery writers I would have probably read the whole anthology.

Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest
Author: Trina Moyles
Prompt: #26 (career change)
Recommend: Yes. This non-fiction book follows the author getting burned out in NGOs and deciding to come home to Canada and work for a summer in a fire tower to watch for forest fires. Alone for four months. I was swept away by the juxtaposition of the beauty of nature she witnessed and her own internal struggles.

The Fated Sky
Author: Mary Robinette Kowal
Prompt: #48 (married couple living apart)
Recommend: Absolutely. This is the second in the Lady Astronaut series, an alternate-history sci-fi where a meteor strikes earth in the 1950s and the space program takes off in an effort to save humanity as catastrophic climate change is happening. Lots of chances to be thankful we live in times without such a strong gender bias about......everything.

Articulated Restraint
Author: Mary Robinette Kowal
Prompt: #49 (dystopian novel happy ending)
Recommend: Yes. A novella in the above series, this one I think qualifies as dystopian (end of the world is rapidly coming), and yet it ends on a high note, perhaps due to its novella nature.

The Dressmaker's Doll - an Agatha Christie Standalone Short Story
Author: Agatha Christie
Prompt #43 (non-verbal character)
Recommend: Yes, a quick read and an unusual story.

Title: Homer and the Holiday Miracle
Author: Gwen Cooper
Would you recommend this book? Yes for those who love cats, or those who need a book to lift their spirits. It may be too sweet for others, but I liked it. I've read Homer's Odyssey and I just fell in love with this mini-panther! He communicates extremely well non-verbally, as does my adorable intelligent black cat.