I have learned so much from Katherine during the time she has been reviewing for LJ. She has a wonderful talent for situating books within larger contexts and discourses, allowing librarians to understand how different works might fit within their communities. I deeply appreciate her layered insights into the audio experience, which capture the interplay between the narrator’s performance and the author’s words and give readers a sense of the power of accents, tones, pacing, and more.

‘‘Bradley’s captivating debut is uniquely suited to audiobook format, living as it does in the spaces between words. Its melancholic longing is matched only by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War. From Katherine’s review of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, narrated by George Weightman & Katie Leung

When did you start reviewing for LJ?

2023, in both print and audio.

What are your favorite kinds of books to review?

I like romance, sci-fi, horror, and fantasy, but my favorites are multigenre mashups. Think romantasy, slipstream, SFFH mystery, science-fantasy, etc. The key is balancing what you’re promising readers with the genres you’ve picked. You can still blow up these expectations entirely, but you have to let the audience [in on] the game for it to work. When authors can strike that balance—or create a whole new one!—the result is a thing of true beauty.

What do you like most about the reviewing process?

Mostly that I’m not writing into the void. As a librarian who uses reviews all the time, I know mine will be used in turn. I try to focus on different parts of the book than those emphasized in publisher summaries to offer a more complete collection development/readers’ advisory picture for librarians. The word limit is also a creative challenge that forces economy and precision in descriptions: how do you distill an entire reading experience into a single paragraph? Finally, I’ve been lucky enough to have authors pick quotes from my reviews for their marketing, and it makes my day every time.

Can you share three books that you have enjoyed reviewing for LJ?

Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. This was hard because I reviewed it as both an audiobook and in print! I had to pick out the standouts carefully so as not to repeat myself. Other favorites are Jelena Dunato’s Dark Woods, Deep Water and Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays.