Nightshade and Oak – The Bookish Mutant

Happy Thursday, bibliophiles!

This is a scheduled post, so I’ll be going back into my gopher hole for at least another week (or thereabouts), but one thing about me is that I love to categorize and wrap things up, in spite of it all…

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

I’ve been in the weeds of finals for the past few weeks, and I only just submitted my last final. Which also happened to be my last final…and the last assignment I’ll ever submit for undergrad. Jesus. I graduate college tomorrow (!!!), and I’ll continue to be busy, so expect that I’ll be radio silent for at least another week, with the exception of one other scheduled post aside from this one.

As you could probably gather from the amount of times I randomly dropped off the face of ~~the Earth~~ this blog, March and April have been very busy for me. It’s been a time. In late March, I defended my honors thesis, which was nothing short of nerve-wracking. But it was worth it—guess who’s graduating summa cum laude?? After that, I barely even considered that there would even be a semester after my honors thesis, since working on it swallowed up most of my semester. Of course, I only had a week or two before finals swallowed everything, but such is life. And college.

And now I’m about to graduate. What people don’t tell you about college is that, aside from graduation, there’s no real fanfare for the end of college. I just had a single, completely uneventful class on Thursday afternoon, and then I was just…done. With undergrad. Four years, all culminating in some random class I only took for the upper-division elective credit. You expect it to end with firecrackers and confetti and not just shuffling out of class and taking the bus home, but that’s the way things go sometimes. Sometimes things just end. And that’s okay. But maybe it’s fitting, in a way. I spent so much of my life being petrified at even the thought of going to college and being away from my parents. There was so much catastrophizing in the years and months leading up to college. But it ended so quietly, so ordinarily. In the end, it was uneventful, and it was all fine. Well, more than fine, I’d say. I came away with a GPA that wasn’t too shabby, so many wonderful friends, a ton of new experiences that I’ve braved…not to mention that summa cum laude I mentioned!! Come on!

So maybe it’s for the best that things end quietly. I can look back and be at peace, knowing that everything I struggled through was worth it, and hardly anything turns out as badly as your anxieties make it out to be. About a month back, one of my best friends introduced me to Rilo Kiley’s song “A Better Son/Daughter,” which…first off, you know who you are, and that was diabolical to do that to me right before graduation. Dastardly, even. OW. But I find myself drawn to it again and again, knowing some of the lows I’ve experienced recently in college (and in life), and that I came out the other side a more independent, self-assured, and hopefully more whole person. I sure feel better, knowing that I’ve made it to this point in spite of it all. So thank you, said friend, for bringing that song into my life.

MARCH READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books in March! Unfortunately, I had my first DNF of the year (I gave it an extra star because there were a few good ideas in it, but overall, Pleasure Activism got on my nerves and life is short), but aside from that, I had an excellent reading month! I focused on books by women for Women’s History Month, and I had a blast with new-to-me authors, longtime favorites, and treasured re-reads.

2 – 2.75 stars:

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good – adrienne maree brown (anthology) (DNF – ⭐️⭐️)
The Lightest Object in the Universe – Kimi Eisele (⭐️⭐️)

3 – 3.75 stars:

Thrill of the Chase – Kathryn Nolan (⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
Who Fears Death (Who Fears Death, #1) – Nnedi Okorafor (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Greenteeth – Molly O’Neill (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
She and Her Cat – Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
The Actual Star – Monica Byrne (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)

4 – 4.75 stars:

Red Star Rebels – Amie Kaufman (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community – Natalia Molina (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
To Ride a Rising Storm (Nampeshiweisit, #2) – Moniquill Blackgoose (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Black Disability Politics – Sami Schalk (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Five Ways to Forgiveness – Ursula K. Le Guin (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)

5 stars:

The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei (re-read) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH (not counting re-reads): Five Ways to Forgiveness – 4.5 stars

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

The Bookish Mutant’s Feminist Books for Women’s History Month

APRIL READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books in April! Ratings-wise, this month was a rollercoaster—I had a 5 star read and my first DNF of the year one after the other (I kid you not), so there have been lots of ups and downs. But most of the books I read came out somewhere above average, so I can’t complain. The ones that were excellent made up for the bad and the mediocre.

1 – 1.75 stars:

Escape Velocity – Victor Manibo (DNF – ⭐️)

3 – 3.75 stars:

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain – Lisa Feldman Barrett (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Nightshade and Oak – Molly O’Neill (⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
According to Plan – Christen Randall (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age – Manuel Castells (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
You Started It – Jackie Khalilieh (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi – anthology (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
The Serpent Called Mercy – Roanne Lau (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)

4 – 4.75 stars:

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot – Mikki Kendall (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Tall Water – SJ Sindu (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Slow Gods – Claire North (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)

5 stars:

Tune It Out – Jamie Sumner (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Tune It Out – 5 stars

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Autism Acceptance Month (2026 Edition)

Today’s song:

holy fuck, Earthling is phenomenal…I’ve really been feeling that “music meant to be listened to on drugs at the club/me listening to it sober doing the dishes” meme while listening to it while knitting on the bed though 💀

That’s it for this wrap-up! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 🍀 Thankfully none of you can pinch me through the screen, but is a book with a bright green cover and “green” in the title enough for you?

I’ve had my eye on Greenteeth ever since it came out last year—the focus on Jenny Greenteeth and the gorgeous cover (shoutout to Leo Nickolls) caught my eye, but I’ve passed it up in favor of other books…until now. (Shoutout to the Boulder Bookstore, where I got myself a copy!) Though it had its fair share of flaws, Greenteeth was a touching, fantastical story of unlikely friendship.

Enjoy this week’s book review!

Greenteeth – Molly O’Neill

Jenny Greenteeth has lived in her lake for thousands of years. Most humans that she encounters are passing fascinations—or simply a meal. But when Temperance, a human witch sentenced to drown, comes upon her lake, Jenny decides to take her in. Temperance desperately wants to return to her family, and Jenny cannot break a promise. They decide to find a way back to Temperance’s family, but what they discover along the way may hint at a darker rift between the humans and the faerie realm—one that may lead Jenny to discover more about her monstrous lineage than ever before.

TW/CW: animal death, violence, blood, descriptions of injury, grief

For some reason, I thought that Greenteeth was going to have a sapphic element to it, but that’s fully on me constantly having the Gay Goggles on for everything. In retrospect, this might be the one time where having a queer relationship between the main characters would be a bad idea, because a) Temperance is happily married and b) Jenny’s at least 1,000 years older than her. God, that would’ve been a mess.

Greenteeth filled a void that I’ve felt in a lot of fantasy, and that’s the unabashed embrace of all of the weird parts of faerie folklore. I’ve been intrigued by Jenny Greenteeth ever since I read the incarnation of her that appeared in the Hellboy comics, and it’s safe to say that these adaptations of her are very close to the inherent weirdness of the original folklore. Said folklore of Greenteeth draws from classic British, Scottish, and Welsh folklore and Arthurian legend, both of which I indulged in. O’Neill introduces a delightful cast of characters and creatures, and makes the faerie realm feel truly weird, something that a lot of fantasy seems to miss. O’Neill’s atmospheric prose rendered this realm in vibrant color, and I loved every minute of the quest.

Jenny was obviously the heart of the story here, and O’Neill did an excellent job with her! She was just so lovable—like I said above, I love that she didn’t hold any punches with making her truly weird and monstrous. Jenny acts exactly like you’d expect a 1,000+-year-old creature that lives in the bottom of a lake and barely talks to anybody to act, which made Greenteeth a delight from the get-go. With Brackus as her foil and Temperance to teach her about the world, Jenny made for a charming protagonist. However, I’m not sure if O’Neill hinted at the reveals about her past (not the really big one—more on that later) well enough, because by the time they’d been established, it seemed out of character for her to hide something so drastically, lie about it so badly, or even convince herself that these things hadn’t happened at all; with her baby, I get not wanting to reveal that, but they were only revealed when we knew Jenny as a character who wouldn’t necessarily hide these parts of herself in the way that she did. I didn’t buy all of that, but aside from those unfortunate quirks, she was a delightful character. Plus, once we got over the hurdle of said reveals, her character arc became even more poignant.

What made Greenteeth suffer the most, I think, was the tonal shifts. Ultimately, I think it was indecisive about what kind of novel it wanted to be. A lot of reviewers have pegged this as cozy fantasy, and there are a few scenes that would lead me in that direction. However, with the rapid shifts into violence and decidedly more fast-paced and action-packed sequences, I really don’t think this fits the bill. (Also, I feel like most cozy novels wouldn’t pull the move of having a dog get stabbed unceremoniously and then completely brush over this in a few sentences. Not necessarily the dog-stabbing bit, but the fact that they basically go “Oh no! Anyway,” and move on. Justice for Cavall!) It was just so inconsistent in terms of the stakes; we only get to the real meat of the objective of the characters about halfway through. Frankly, I would’ve enjoyed Greenteeth whether or not it decided to be a more cozy, found family quest or an epic, Arthurian quest, but this novel could not decide which of the two it wanted to be. I’m not sure if the half-baked limbo between the two options was the way to go.

That being said…I could not get enough of the ending twist! Personally, it’s too good for me to spoil it, but without revealing anything big, I think it gave Jenny’s arc a deeply emotional conclusion. I’m no expert on Arthurian legend, but internally, I jumped out of my seat like a football fan when said Big Reveal got revealed. However, I think it added some oomph that Jenny’s arc was in need of; the reveals we get about Jenny’s backstory came too late and with too little preamble for the seemingly heartrending emotion that came along with them, but here, I think they reached the potential that they always needed. Jenny’s true origins gave her a real sense of purpose, and even though it was more of a symbolic gesture, it gave her proof of what she needed to hear all along: that she was a powerful, important being, full of love and the potential for greatness…as all of us are.

All in all, a heartwarming fantasy novel that faltered in parts of the plot, but blew it out of the water when it came to atmosphere and the tender relationships between its characters. 3.5 stars!

Greenteeth is a standalone, and Molly O’Neill’s debut novel. O’Neill is also the author of Nightshade and Oak, which came out this February.

Today’s song:

heard this before the Jeff Tweedy show on Friday night…

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Tag: Nightshade and Oak

Book Review Tuesday (3/17/26) – Greenteeth