Review: "Invisibly Unwell" by Paige Lavell

Invisibly Unwell by Paige Lavell
Published March 2026 via Life to Paper Publishing
★★★

From the outside, Lavell knew that her life looked cushy: a stable marriage, a stimulating job with wardrobe to match, a house and a mortgage. On the inside, she was barely hanging on—and she knew it was time for a change.

This is framed largely around Lavell's experience with autoimmune disorders, which took her a great deal of time and money and energy to get properly diagnosed and treated. As much as that, though, it's a story about a particular type of perfectionism and a desire to get it "right", even when "right" means doing things that are popular rather than things that work for you specifically. I don't (to the best of my knowledge) have any autoimmune disorders, but I'm not sure how much I'd take away from this if I did, other than solidarity and a reminder that it's important to find doctors who will listen to the full story.

That's not so much a bad thing; part of Lavell's experience involved getting sucked into wellness culture and chasing cures that did not, in fact, cure, and it's much better for her to tell her story in a nonprescriptive way than to assume that the exact things that eventually worked for her will work for others! With that in mind, though, I'd probably look at this more for the story of trying to fit into the wrong size and shape of box before realizing that it's okay to look for something that does fit rather than continuing to try to make yourself fit.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Soon by You" by Dahlia Adler

Soon by You by Dahlia Adler
Published May 2025 via St. Martin's Griffin
★★★★

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride—and Arielle is fine with that, for now. She's not ready to settle down. But in her modern Orthodox community, young marriage is the norm (not least because there are a whole host of restrictions on what you can do with the opposite sex before marriage), and her friends are all pairing off, and she finds it easiest to keep things no-strings. That is...until a very buttoned-up wedding singer comes into the picture, and no-strings gets more complicated.

Adler's books are a delight, and this is no exception. In many ways this is a standard romance novel (enough so that I hesitated before picking it up, because Adler's queer books are my favourite, and the primary romance here is heterosexual), but with the not insignificant twist that the characters are almost all observant, Modern Orthodox Jews. This means: keeping kosher; keeping Shabbat (no work, no electronics, etc., from Friday evening to Saturday evening); men not listening to women sing; observing a whole host of different holidays that I know little about; and—for some of them—no touching the opposite sex. Now...this is a very steamy romance; some of the characters are more observant than others about who they will and won't touch (and some are more observant than others about whose music they will listen to, for that matter). The concept of a tefillin date sent me, because...well, of course in every religion that has more than one follower, there will be differences in belief and practice, but I haven't given all that much thought to what that might look like in Modern Orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, the relationship is doing interesting things. Arielle has a reputation, and it doesn't bother her—she knows what she wants, she knows her boundaries, she knows who her friends are, and she knows that the right guy will take her as she is. So when she and Judah have reservations about the possibility of a future, it's not really because of either of them not knowing what they want; it's because they haven't worked out (alone or together) how they can make their visions for the future align. And, well, there are some other complications along the way, but by and large we have a heroine who knows exactly who she is and what her limits are and a hero who is still figuring himself out but knows enough to respect the hell out of the heroine's autonomy. Plus, really genuinely interesting discussions about individual interpretations of religion and related choices.

I would have liked to know more about Arielle's job. (I applied for a job like that once; I still regret that I never got an interview, because I would have killed the interview and probably excelled at the job.) And also would not mind *cough* a bonus scene that takes place after the end of the book...although on the whole I really can't complain. Someday I will finish making it through Adler's backlist, and that will be a sad day until her next book comes out.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Finding Our Way" by Steven Gallon

Finding Our Way by Steven Gallon
Published September 2022 via Peace Corps Writers
★★★★

In the 60s, Gallon and his wife graduated from university, got married...and immediately set off for Peace Corps service in South Korea. At the time, Korea was not the highly developed country it is today: It had only relatively recently come out of war, connections with the rest of the world were of course not what they are today, and although major cities were of course more developed, that's relative.

After fifteen months in Korea, we were accustomed to a lack of development: dirt streets, open sewers, aging buildings, and an economy that primarily operated on the backs of manual laborers. Pockets of prosperity and economic signs of progress were emerging; new construction was on the rise and new businesses were popping up in the cities. Urban infrastructure, however, and life in rural villages contained few conveniences. Most people had little, and their lives were harsh. Per capita GDP in Korea at the time was less than $200 per year. (232)

(I assume that's 1960s dollars, so a quick inflation calculation: $200 in 1967 would be a bit less than $2,000 in 2025.)

It sounds like a wildly challenging experience and a wildly rewarding one. Gallon and his wife perhaps had an easier time of it because they had each other to lean on—most PCVs have their cohort, sure, but that's not the same as living with someone you know and love and who shares your cultural context—but I suppose it also takes a particular type of person to excel at being dropped in another country and another language and to make the best of it, and the Gallons were that type of person.

There's a richness of detail here that makes me think that the Gallons kept good notes and wrote long letters at the time; there's also a lot of affection for the people they met and, in some cases, lived with. Were I to join the Peace Corps I'd find public health work more interesting than teaching English (this assuming I qualified to do public health work!), but it sounds like they had, overall, an extremely rewarding time with their students and with their lives in Korea. An interesting story, well told.

Finally, one apropos-of-nothing quotation, because it made me laugh:

Our meals during training were never very popular. The cooks in our cafeteria were contractors, and to prepare us for what we would find in Korea, Peace Corps had requested they make something akin to a Korean diet. Everyday Korean cuisine traditionally consisted of homemade soup, moist and sticky rice, and spicy kimchi complemented with a variety of mostly vegetable side dishes. The basic menu was the same for each meal of the day. To introduce us to such a diet, the cooks served us Lipton chicken noodle soup and Uncle Ben’s instant rice, both out of a box. Side dishes didn’t make it to the menu, except maybe some toast at breakfast. (22)

Children's books: Marine animals: "How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub", "Float", and "The Octopus

How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub by Lynsey Martin, illustrated by Colleen C. Coggins (MamaBear Books)
Float by Larry Daley (Bookling Media)
The Octopus by Guojing (Two Lions)

Back into the world of children's books...this time with marine animals!

In How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub, it's bathtime, but there's a problem—there's an alligator in the bathtub!

Luckily this particular alligator is reasonably charming (snobby, yes, but good-natured). The boys want their bathtub back, but they pretty quickly get over any residual fear of being eaten (though...parents in Florida...maybe remind your kids that alligators in the bathtub are all good and well, but only in fiction?). It's a quick-moving and playful story, with equally playful illustrations to help carry the story along.

I read an ARC and hope that there's been a last round of proofreading since the ARC was made available; I appreciate that they story isn't in rhyme (rhyme can be nice, but it takes some serious skill to keep it from feeling contrived), but there are some minor punctuation errors. I learned so much about grammar and punctuation through reading as a kid (ah, the American education system, where teaching these things is considered a "nice to have" rather than a "must have"!) that I always wonder what kids pick up from small errors. (I am probably overthinking this.)

All that said, this is super cute, and I can imagine little kids dreaming up their own alligators in the bathtub. A good one to pair with an alligator stuffed animal as a birthday gift.

In Float, Rosie's been waiting for weeks for just this day—field trip to the aquarium! There's a baby sea turtle, and she could not be more excited. As a bonus, she has the best lunch ever...until a seagull steals her lunchbox, and she has to leap into action to rescue her snacks.

This is adorable. The illustrations are colorful and detailed—probably my favorite illustration is the one where the seagull actually steals Rosie's lunchbox, but Rosie sprinting through the aquarium's atrium, leaving chaos in her wake, is a close second—and the story lively. Rosie is clearly a live wire, and, ah, stopping to think before she acts is not her forte.

Adults reading this with kids might want to have a bit of a discussion about how running in an aquarium or similar is not advised, and jumping in the aquarium tanks is definitely not advised(!). I would also not advise that adults take Rosie's lunch box as a guideline, as she seems to have about 75% junk and 25% food that will not make her crash in an hour...but I think kids will enjoy the colorful chaos of the book.

And finally, in The Octopus, a little girl finds a baby octopus struggling on the beach—and when she helps it get to safety, she goes on an underwater adventure.

My family had a copy of Jan Ormerod's Sunshine when I was growing up, and my gosh I loved that book. Like The Octopus, it's a wordless picture book, all the character's emotions and thoughts played out across their faces and actions rather than through words. A successful wordless picture book takes such a tremendous amount of skill, and it was such fun to see how things played out in The Octopus. The illustrations are lovely, with soft colors and some intentional haziness. The little girl's adventure is so fantastical (that picture of all the seashells glowing like gems!), and it also has a subtle message about the damage pollution does to marine life.

This one should probably be read to young kids with a clear reminder that no matter what happens to book characters, real-life kiddos can't breathe underwater and shouldn't go gallivanting near the water's edge without an adult nearby! But my gosh it's sweet. At the end, you can just hear the little girl chattering to her mother about her adventure, and her mother enjoying the imagination of a child.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing review copies through NetGalley.

Review: "Basta, Àle" by S.A. Sterling

Basta, Àle by S.A. Sterling
Published December 2025
★★★

Growing up, Sterling knew she was different—she wasn't allowed to forget it. When her sisters were encouraged to finish their plates, Sterling was put on diet after diet. The resulting shame followed her into adulthood.

This brief memoir spans decades and continents; Sterling grew up in Italy but moved to the US as an adult and also moved around as part of her studies and her military marriage. I think its comp titles (Educated, Hunger, Crying in H Mart) may be doing it a disservice, as those are not only major titles but pretty specific ones, and I think Basta, Àle would benefit from comps to smaller titles...but I suppose I digress. It's a quieter, more thoughtful story than I expected; more than anything, my takeaway was about the way shame can follow one long, long beyond the point that those inflicting the shame expected. Perhaps one for readers who have had to do some unlearning of unwanted lessons of their own.

Review: "Operation Boyfriend" by Zarah Detand

Operation Boyfriend by Zarah Detand
Published May 2026 via Storm Publishing
★★★★

To get his family off his case about dating, Dean needs to produce a semi-serious boyfriend as his date to his sister's wedding—except he's very single and doesn't have the time or inclination for a relationship right now. And Tay could really use a vacation—except he doesn't have the cash to spare. A meddling mutual friend sees an opportunity for both of them...and soon they're plotting a fake relationship for the ages.

This was 1) fluff and 2) adorable. I'm kind of (and by kind of I mean very) over the reduction of romance novels to TikTik-friendly tropes (in this case, mostly #fakedating and #onebed), but I genuinely appreciate the way the fake dating part of things plays out here. To start with, Dean and Tay go into this with clear expectations and a lot of prep work. They're doctors, so they're well versed in studying, and they're determined to do this right; they know that to pull this off they need a level of knowledge about and comfort with each other well before the wedding. And what that means is that by the time the wedding trip rolls around, well into the book, they already know each other pretty well and, better, like each other as people and not just as strangers who are (surprise! except not actually a surprise here) sharing a bed.

The conflict is relatively mild and realistic (no evil villains!); aside from their own hang-ups, Dean and Tay need to consider the fact that they have different seniority levels at the hospital, and gossip could have serious implications for their careers. It's not over-dramatic, which was really nice. Ooh, also, there's very good banter.

Solid beach read; would read more.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "The Edge of Forever" by Meghan P. Browne

The Edge of Forever by Meghan P. Browne
Published May 2026 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★★

Maisie had plans for the summer, and they didn't include being dropped with her aunt for the summer while her mother pulls their lives back together. But it's been a hard few years, and Maisie doesn't have a choice—and so she finds herself in Heaven, Texas, where the rules are a bit different than she's used to in the city.

There are a number of interlaced plotlines here: Maisie's family situation and her feelings about being away from her mother for the summer (and what she learns as the story goes on); Maisie's love for the library and books; her budding friendship with a local boy; some bits about his family; a plan she uncovers to turn a rural gem into an overpriced hotspot; adjusting to rural life; her aunt's background in the entertainment industry; and on it goes. Most of it intersects one way or another, even if it doesn't all tie in directly.

Maisie as a character is great—she has a lot going on upstairs, even if she doesn't let it all out (...most of the time). She's curious about the world around her, and although she's still a kid and doesn't always see things with the perspective that she might see when she's older, she has her head screwed on right. I wouldn't have minded seeing her spend a little more time with kids her age (there's Walt, but that's it), and also for that matter more about her aunt Gertie; we eventually learn some about Gertie's past, but Maisie is able to quietly slot into Gertie's life without much friction or information. (Perhaps along these lines, I might have preferred one fewer plotline, to give the others a bit more space.)

But I love this kind of relatively quiet story, with kids figuring it out and safely stretching the bounds of their independence. I can see this one having wide appeal.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Royal Summer" by Kass Morgan

Royal Summer by Kass Morgan
Published May 2026 via HarperCollins
★★★

Hannah's plan is simple: escape her dysfunctional parents for the summer by interning for one of her favorite authors in Edinburgh. From there she'll write a novel of her own, paving the way to an MFA and eventual success as a writer. There's just one problem: the author bails at the last minute, leaving Hannah without a plan...or an income...and no desire to return home. Lucky for her, the solution is also simple: A prince swoops in, sets her up with a job and new accommodation, and helps heal her heartbreak while he's at it.

Oh, YA. Now, it's an established fact that I am a sucker for royalty books. Royalty in real life: problematic! Royalty in fiction: escapism! I've tried (admittedly not very hard, but still) to develop more elevated reading tastes and all that, but, well, sometimes we just need our escapist fluff.

And escapist fluff this is. This was fun and fast, but there's not all that much that's new here—we have your classic "she's the only girl he's ever met who doesn't recognize him and thus the only girl he's ever met who doesn't immediately throw herself at him, so he is immediately smitten"; the also-classic "his ex is prettier, more polished, and possibly a bitch"; and of course "she's a commoner and an American at that, so his parents don't like her". Oh, and don't forget "he was a playboy troublemaker until she came along, but her sweet innocence is enough to reform him". There's also quite a bit that defies my limited ability to suspend disbelief (the whole thing where Hannah steals a horse comes to mind), but then I suppose that's also pretty par for the course. Summery fluff.

A quick note on genre: This is marketed as YA, and for the most part that feels accurate—it's simple enough and light enough that I'd put most of the book at the younger end of YA. However, there's some pretty explicit sex in here (way more than in the last adult romance I read), putting this closer to NA. On the whole I don't take issue with sex in YA books (real-life teenagers are going to boink whether or not book teenagers do; better to have open discussions about it than to pretend it's not happening), but I'm not a fan of the disconnect between young-YA voice and steamy strip-teases (to say nothing of what follows said steamy strip-teases). Do with that what you will.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Archie, Vol. 6" by Mark Waid and Audrey Mok

Archie, Vol. 6 by Mark Waid and Audrey Mok
Published October 2018 via Archie Comics
★★★

This is the end: It's the spring dance, and although the only romance in the air is between Moose and Midge, everyone is determined to have a good time...just, one of those "everyone" people is determined to have a good time by holding the school hostage at gunpoint.

So...here we are. I liked that Betty and Veronica are fast friends in this—they've both put Archie aside, at least for now, though they're both resigned to the possibility that that might not be forever. I like that the point of this last collection in the series really isn't romance, despite the could-be-romantic setting of the dance.

But oooof the gun plotline rubs me the wrong way. This was published in 2018—the same year as the Parkland high school shooting that left seventeen people dead; the same year as a shooting in a Santa Fe school that left ten dead—and it just feels, in that context, so wildly irresponsible to depict, for shock value, gun-related violence at a school that is resolved in part by incredibly dangerous heroics. See also: The police are almost immediately onsite (the teenagers of today's Archie comics have cell phones, after all), but they don't bust in because...well, either because plot, or because Uvalde hadn't happened yet and so people weren't thinking about the scope of destruction when police are actually needed but sit on their asses instead. (Although seriously—this was a lesson we learned with Columbine, no? Almost twenty years before this volume was published? And at least with Columbine they had the excuse of following what was at the time protocol.)

I don't know. I guess it feels as though all of the plotlines that have been building throughout the series (Betty and Archie! Veronica and Archie! Betty's injury! Reggie's delinquency! Dilton's crush!) are shoved aside to make way for an ill-thought-out school shooting plotline, and I'm not so much here for that. Bringing in the guns and yet going out with a whimper rather than a bang...

Review: "The Fallen" by Louise Brangan

The Fallen by Louise Brangan
Published May 2026 via Simon & Schuster
★★★★

In 1951, when the Laundries were at their height, for every one hundred thousand males, twenty-seven were in prison[...] While for every one hundred thousand females, seventy were in a Laundry. These were not peripheral: They were Ireland's main carceral institution. (loc. 179*)

The Fallen traces the history of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, the last of which did not close until the mid-1990s. If you haven't heard of the Laundries, the short version is that they were just that—laundries—except run by nuns and staffed by women who had been consigned to the Laundries for infractions real and imagined.

Pregnancy outside marriage, yes, but mostly for being lively girls, abused and abandoned daughters, or because their families were pulled apart for not fitting the mold of what a family should be. (loc. 3247)

Brangan is careful to draw a distinction between the Laundries and the Mother and Baby Homes that also operated; there was certainly overlap between the women and girls who spent time in them and in the Laundries, but fundamentally the Mother and Baby Homes were there to hide women's pregnancies, and the Laundries were there to punish women and girls who had transgressed.

For Brigid, having played fast and loose with school rules, it was a life sentence. Adult men sentenced [for] murder in the twentieth century were rarely expected to serve more than seven years. Somehow, by the 1940s, the mildest transgression of girls and young women caused more outrage than the taking of a life. It was Brigid's mother who finally came to liberate her daughter. By that point, she was thirty-nine years old. (loc. 523)

I've read about the Laundries before, but everything I read adds something new. Brangan is determined to hold the nuns who ran the Laundries accountable in her words, but she's also clear that it's not just the nuns, or the church, who hold responsibility. The Laundries always reflected the mores of the society around them (loc. 2131). Take that and extend it a bit more broadly: the residential schools in Canada (and elsewhere); the troubled teen industry in the US; the way women have always been punished for stepping outside the lines.

I highlighted so many things in The Fallen—there's so much history wrapped up in how the Laundries came to be and how they evolved over time. At first I found the history a little dry, but then it became clear just how important it was to the overall picture. And then of course there are the personal stories, which Brangan pulls largely from existing testimonies, and the broader cultural context, and it's just...a lot of food for thought.

No one explained to Carmel what was happening. Nor did she ask. There were no rewards for curiosity in Catholic Ireland. (loc. 432)

Would recommend to anyone who has heard of the Magdalene Laundries and wants to know more, and also to people generally interested in the odder intersections of religion and women's history. And I'll leave you with this:

Some women at Sunday's Well were made to line up and repeat this after the nuns: "I am nobody, I am nobody, I am nobody." (loc. 1552)

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.