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What did you just finish?
On A Desert Shore by S.K. Rizzolo. The fourth in a mystery series set in Regency-era London, starring John Chase, a Bow Street Runner; Mrs. Penelope Wolfe, a writer abandoned by her artist husband; and Edward Buckler, a ~~clinically depressed~~ melancholic lawyer. I haven't read the previous three books in the series, but a) most mystery series are designed to be dipped into without necessarily reading them in order, so I figured I'd be fine, and b) a particular element of this one's summary caught by attention.

A diversion: In Vanity Fair Becky Sharpe goes to school with "Miss Swartz", a wealthy heiress who is the mixed race child of a Caribbean planter and a slave woman. Miss Swartz isn't much of a character, one-dimensional and vaguely racist in a way unsurprising for a book written in 1847, but I've always been fascinated by the idea of her. Here we have a black woman attending elite finishing schools, going to house parties, and ultimately marrying into the nobility! Given how much we love to set stories in the Regency today, why aren't there a hundred Miss Swartzs written with modern sympathies? Especially in the romance genre! Romance loves the "she's rich but not suitable, he's noble but poor, together they have an arranged marriage and ultimately fall in love" trope, and yet I can't name a single instance in which the rich heiress is black. When books from 150 years ago are doing better than you in terms of racial representation, there's a problem. So I was very excited to see On a Desert Shore, because it finally seemed to be the new Miss Swartz I'd been waiting for.

Marina Garrod is the mixed race only child of Hugo Garrod, wealthy British merchant and owner of a Jamaican plantation. However, strange things have been happening around her, and it's unclear if Marina is having a mental breakdown or if someone is trying to put a (voodoo) curse on her or otherwise harass her. Hugo hires John Chase to be her bodyguard, but before Chase can figure out what's going on, someone poisons Hugo and the race is on to figure out who the murderer is before the will is read and all of Hugo's money is claimed.

This is a promising premise! Unfortunately, the book fails to live up to its potential in any way. One of the things I was most irritated by was the author's failure to describe what race any of her characters were. You can't write a book about racism and make your readers guess at who is white and who is black! This is necessary information! I'm aware that some readers dislike excessive, exoticizing description of minority characters' appearances, and I suspect Rizzolo may have been influenced by advice to avoid that. That's fine! But "She was a black woman" is not excessive or exoticizing! If I can only figure out a character is black twenty pages after her introduction by putting together context clues, you have failed.
Even after finishing the book, I'm unclear if Marina was supposed to be able to pass for white (because sometimes strangers seemed unaware of her heritage) or not (because sometimes strangers seemed to know immediately), which is a basic piece of information I would have liked to better understand the plot. I mean, it's one thing to leave characters' races vague if the book is not focused on race, but when it's the central motivating factor of your plot, you need to be clear.

In addition, every one of the "good" characters is not only totally a forward-thinking abolitionist (which, again, fine! I don't want to spend two hundred pages sympathizing with racists anyway, even if it would be realistic for the period), but completly modern and "colorblind" in their attitudes. These people supposedly live in 1813 London, and yet are surprised and shocked at the existence of racism around them. Despite the plot centering around the prevalence of racism. I don't know, it doesn't really make any more sense while reading it.

I was also disappointed by the depiction of depression. I was pretty excited once I realized this was a historical series with major character who suffered from depression – again, not a thing I think I've read before but which I totally want to – and yet it bore no resemblance to reality. Buckler is energized and happy when his romantic relationship is going well, and sad and lethargic when it takes a downturn. That's not clinic depression, that's normal moodiness. Social contact can be a treatment for depression, but love does not actually cure bad brain chemistry.

The writing and the mystery itself were adequate, I suppose (though Rizzolo's afterward, where she describes her research, suggest that she intended several things which I did not pick up in the actual text at all), but ultimately I was very disappointed with the book, because there were so many aspects I should have loved that were done poorly. Even the promise of "woman writer in a shippable OT3 in Regency London!" is not enough to get me to read the rest of the series.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

Turbulence by Samit Basu. On a flight between London and Delhi, every passenger mysteriously gains superpowers, based on their deepest wish or what they happened to be dreaming about at the time. This does not always lead to useful powers – there's a few "Superman" types, but there's also a teenager who can control the weather based on how his stomach feels, an actress who can make anyone fall in love with her, and an architect who can grow houses directly from the ground.

Aman, the main character, gains the ability to surf the internet with his mind, becoming a super-hacker who can bypass any security system, read anyone's email, or steal anyone's bank account. He decides that the people given these powers should team up to benefit the whole of humanity, and so sets out to gather a team of superheroes. He's opposed in this by Jai, who also plans to create a team of superheroes, but his goal is for India to conquer the world. Cue lots of fight scenes, double crossing agents, spying, and short-lived allies.

The real pleasure of the book isn't so much the plot (which is pretty similar to most superhero stories), but the writing style. It's full of jokes, pop-culture references, and absurd descriptions, a bit like if Douglas Adams decided to write about modern-day Mumbai. I really enjoyed reading it, even if I don't think it'll stick in my memory for long.

What are you currently reading?
Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan, another novel from NetGalley.