Bookworm: October 2025
'Chicano Frankenstein,' 'To the Moon and Back,' 'The Paris Express,' 'Coded Justice,' 'It Had to be Him'
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Happy Halloween! Here’s hoping you’ve been able to treat yourself to plenty of good reading this month.
Other than a Frankenstein retelling in honor of Halloween, this month’s featured books have a theme: authors appearing at the Nov. 8 Portland Book Festival. I let the library choose the books for me by entering a bunch of festival authors’ books into my hold queue and then reading whatever showed up. If you haven’t been to this event, I encourage you to consider attending. It’s invigorating to be in community with thousands of fellow bookworms from throughout Portland and beyond.
Table of contents
Fiction: “Chicano Frankenstein,” by Daniel A. Olivas
Fiction: “To the Moon and Back,” by Eliana Ramage
Historical fiction: “The Paris Express,” by Emma Donoghue
Thriller: “Coded Justice,” by Stacey Abrams
Queer romance: “It Had to Be Him," by Adib Khorram
“Chicano Frankenstein”
The classic tale of Frankenstein gets a fresh retelling in this intriguing novel by Daniel A. Olivas, a Mexican American author.
Olivas’ unnamed protagonist lives in a world whose population includes reanimated humans. Their memories wiped, they live under new identities, their locations kept secret from their former family and friends. Many are able to pass as regular humans, but our protagonist wound up with a pair of mismatched hands that consistently give him away.
He leads a modest life, working as a paralegal and sticking to neighborhood runs as his main extracurricular activity. But then he and other reanimated Americans find themselves targeted by a mean-spirited, foul-mouthed president who is casting about for a way to whip up her base as she runs for re-election. She launches a crusade against “stitchers,” calling them “fake people” with criminal intentions and urging voters to “Make America Safe Again.”
Amid this turmoil, the paralegal meets a Mexican American lawyer named Faustina, and sparks fly. As he becomes part of her life, meeting her friends and family, he begins to wonder about the loved ones he once had.
Olivas deftly probes themes of belonging, bigotry and humanity in this taut satire.
“To the Moon and Back”
In Eliana Ramage’s debut novel, Steph Harper has been dreaming big since childhood: dreaming that she’ll be the first Cherokee to go to the moon. Ramage traces Steph’s trajectory as she slowly (so slowly, and rather frustratingly) comes of age over three decades.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Steph is obsessed with the moon, rather than, say, Mars or another astronomical body or just “outer space.” The moon has long had a feminine mystique, and Steph’s most prized relationships are with other women: her mother, sister, niece, classmates, colleagues, lovers.
Like Steph, the novel roams far and wide, their ambition sometimes exceeding their grasp. There’s an event late in the book that feels like the equivalent of a TV show’s “jumping the shark” episode. But Steph’s determination to knock down every real or perceived roadblock between her and her goal is memorable.
“The Paris Express”
Fans of Paris and historical fiction, your train has arrived.
Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, inspired by an 1895 event, is a page-turner with a streak of suspense: An anarchist on the titular train wants to use it to make a statement with horrifying consequences. Donoghue raises the emotional stakes by introducing us to many of the passengers and crew, most of them real people, and turning the express into its own multilayered world.
“The Paris Express” is a welcome escape into a simpler world. It also carries a strong, and much-needed, message of hope.
“Coded Justice”
Yes, the author is that Stacey Abrams, the lawyer and onetime Georgia state lawmaker. She’s now an established author as well, with 15 adult and children’s books to her name.
“Coded Justice” is the third in Abrams’ Avery Keene series, featuring a brilliant young Supreme Court law clerk. In this book, Avery has left the Court to join a law firm as an internal investigator. But this being fiction, she’s not doing anything as mundane as, say, looking into dubious car insurance claims. Instead, she finds herself on the cutting edge, checking that all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed for the sale of a company that provides custom, AI-assisted health care for veterans.
Naturally, the investigation kicks off with a mysterious death. Naturally, the AI is alarmingly more sophisticated and sentient than Avery expected. More unsettling deaths follow. And when Avery follows the money, she finds billions at stake, and people who will do just about anything to get their hands on it.
“It Had to Be Him”
If you’ve ever wondered about that high school crush who got away, this is your book. Best-selling author Adib Khorram alternates between past and present to tell the story of Ramin and Noah, who bump into each other in Italy 20 years after they last saw each other as teenagers in Kansas City.
In high school, Ramin and Noah had one of those relationships that seemed unlikely from the outside: Ramin was an awkward kid who got picked on, while Noah was a popular wrestler who somehow decided to befriend him. Now they’re both nursing emotional wounds. Ramin’s boyfriend just turned down his proposal. Noah’s ex-wife is thinking about moving to Italy to be closer to family, which means the son he adores might be moving, too.
What Noah doesn’t know: Ramin carried a torch for him that reignited at the sight of him. What Ramin doesn’t know: Noah is bisexual.
Khorram sketches both his characters and his Italian setting in loving detail, making for a thoroughly satisfying romantic escape.
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Happy reading!
Wow, the concept of reanimated humans with wiped memories in Chicano Frankenstein really stood out. It makes me think about identity and consciousness in AI systms. A deep read for sure.