Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme where we randomly select a book from our Goodreads To Be Read list and share it with the world. It’s been hosted by Lauren’s Page Turners, but I’m not sure if that blog is active anymore. Please enjoy this preview of what I want to read in the future!
Opium and Absinthe
by Lydia Kang
Historical Fantasy
379 pages
Published July 1, 2020, by Lake Union Publishing
From Goodreads: New York City, 1899. Tillie Pembroke’s sister lies dead, her body drained of blood and with two puncture wounds on her neck. Bram Stoker’s new novel, Dracula, has just been published, and Tillie’s imagination leaps to the impossible: the murderer is a vampire. But it can’t be—can it?
A ravenous reader and researcher, Tillie has something of an addiction to truth, and she won’t rest until she unravels the mystery of her sister’s death. Unfortunately, Tillie’s addicted to more than just truth; to ease the pain from a recent injury, she’s taking more and more laudanum…and some in her immediate circle are happy to keep her well supplied.
Tillie can’t bring herself to believe vampires exist. But with the hysteria surrounding her sister’s death, the continued vampiric slayings, and the opium swirling through her body, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a girl who relies on facts and figures to know what’s real—or whether she can trust those closest to her.
I was back and forth as to whether or not I wanted to keep this on my Goodreads TBR. Then one morning, I was listening to the morning show on my local NPR station and they were interviewing the owner of a local indie bookshop. She was talking about the books by local authors she’s been talking up in her shop, and Opium and Absinthe was one of them, as Lydia Kang lives in Omaha. It’s not completely local, but close enough. There aren’t many authors from Nebraska who are heard of outside the state (I guess we’re not cool enough, here in our flyover state). And because I’ve been intrigued by the synopsis, I’m going to give it a shot.
Traveling in Books 
I read this and really enjoyed it! Its an interesting historical mystery😁
I was thinking, as I clicked on this post, whether or not you chose to remove any TBR books through these meme. It sounds like you do sometimes?
I am all about supporting local authors! It seems like there are quite a few hubs for authors, but Wisconsin isn’t often one of them. We have a great Writing program at UW Madison, so often we’ll have published authors come from the program. But properly local authors are few and far between. I’m so glad NPR caught you at this time!
I do sometimes remove books from my Goodreads TBR. Sometimes they’ll have languished there for years and I’ve lost interest, and sometimes I’ll have heard poor reviews from reviewers I trust, so I’ll get rid of it.
It always seems like the authors I hear about are from one coast or the other, like publishers think it’s just 3,000 miles of empty space between New York and Los Angeles…
I’m planning to read this one! It was a free choice from Amazon a couple of months ago, and it sounds really good!
Amen. Most of the American authors I’ve read lately live and/or were born on the east coast. So odd! Perhaps authors think they need to live in NYC or LA in order to be published? Hopefully this new norm of working remotely will embrace more authors from across the United States.
I hope so. I’d love to see stories that aren’t set in New York City or Los Angeles. Sure, there are a lot I love that are set on the coasts, but there’s this whole interior that’s completely overlooked.
More farm-focused stories! XD Well, contemporary ones. It’s always shocking when I tell people who aren’t from Wisconsin that I own a farm. They always look at me like I’m insane. It’s not that weird! I swear.