Review: "The Immortal" by Christopher Pike

The Immortal by Christopher Pike
Published 1993
★★★

I got it in my head recently to read a few old Christopher Pike books that I read in childhood. As with many of the books I read as a kid, I really don't know how this one ended up in our house; it isn't and wasn't in my family's usual genres. (Maybe my sister; she definitely went through a Greek mythology stage.)

I'd forgotten some significant things here, like how present the Greek gods storyline is; Pike made up his own additional mythology for the sake of this story, and it works well. It's been long enough since I read this that I'd forgotten some key details, which is always nice, and honestly? This was fun. I remember Pike's books being treated as sort of...trashy fiction...or very pulpy, anyway, and although it's not that this isn't pulpy, in many ways it could comfortably hold its own against more recent YA. Josie and Helen aren't squeaky-clean, and neither do they particularly want to be; for their trip to Greece they want nudist beaches and R-rated summer flings and just maybe to beat the other in a game of boys.

With all that said: This is absolutely a book written for horny teenaged boys. I suspect this is a theme in Pike's older books; as I write this, I'm reading (rereading) Master of Murder, and, well...we'll come back to that theme. I don't know that I can really recommend this as a first-time read—but it was a nice bit of nostalgia.

Review: "Baby Steps" by Chelsea Frank

Baby Steps by Chelsea Frank
Published August 2026 via Hot Goss
★★★★

Avery is nearing the end of law school, and the future seems bright—except for the matter of her pesky eating disorder. Oh, and also the unplanned pregnancy that she doesn't discover until it's late enough that her options are limited. And thus she finds herself flying across the country for treatment she doesn't want in order to support a pregnancy that she doesn't really know how to process.

The combination of pregnancy and an eating disorder is not entirely new in fiction, but it's unusual—offhand I can only think of one, though I'm sure there are more (honestly, I'm sure I've read more, I just can't think of many at the moment)—and I like different takes.

This is semi-autobiographical (inspired by the author's real-life experiences, says the book), although of course I don't know which parts are more directly from real life and which parts are fully fiction. (Although: I checked out Frank's Instagram while I was confirming that I'd read somewhere that it was semi-autobiographical, and she tells a story about her teenage-years bully showing up to treatment at the same time she was there—and that's something that's not in Baby Steps, and it's kind of fascinating to me because it's the sort of thing that feels too perfect(ly awful) to be reality, and in a novel people might say "this is unrealistic"...and yet.)

At any rate. By and large I found this to be a quick read, with a nice balance of figuring out the eating disorder and figuring out pregnancy. The cast is relatively diverse, and I really appreciated that this didn't devolve into romance—not that romance and eating disorders can't coexist, obviously, but I've read a few too many "my romance helped cure me" books and also a few too many "now that I'm magically cured I'm ready for romance" books. I also like that Avery isn't always all that likeable; she has her moments, but she's also deep into difficult stuff and mostly not that interested in making herself more palatable just to make someone else's life easier.

Other things I wasn't as sure about. There's a friendship late in the book that comes in, burns bright, and falls off the page again, and I wasn't really sure what the point of that section was; I found myself wondering whether that was one of the more autobiographical bits that maybe should have been left in real life. And...there are a couple of plot points that are very standard in eating disorder fiction, and I might have preferred that the book go in a different direction.

3.5 stars (and a cautious rounding-up), then, for a mixed bag but a read that kept me engaged.

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

Review: "Laboratory" by Emily York

Laboratory by Emily York
Published September 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★★

Everyone has a mental image of a laboratory—test tubes and beakers, perhaps; lab coats; a microscope or two. But what is a laboratory really, when it's divested from the imagination and brought into real life?

We're back in my favorite nonfiction series, and this time it's all about science. In some ways I think this book is broader than "laboratory", but then, science is a field rather than something tangible. One of York's points, though, is simply about how broad the definition of a laboratory can be, much bigger than something constrained to chemical reactions and safety glasses.

Like many of this series, Laboratory dips a toe into what AI means for the future (and present, for that matter) of the material at hand, but it also touches on topics ranging from building a social sciences lab to historical and not-so-historical instances of staggeringly unethical medical experiments. (File under Things I Would Read a Whole Book About!)

I love the range of these books; some are broad and some are narrow and all of them take me somewhere I didn't expect and teach me something I didn't know. This one is on the broader side of things, but it also pushes the reader to think outside the box a bit.

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

Review: Short story: "Just Say I Do" by Catherine Walsh

Just Say I Do by Catherine Walsh
Published November 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

It's the eve before Chloe and Robbie's wedding...and as much as Chloe wants to marry Robbie, she didn't want it this way. She'd pictured something small and intimate, or at least something on the more relaxed side. Instead, thanks to family excitement, she's getting a whole Production.

This is part of a collection of holiday romance short stories, and it is very predictable fluff. That's not a criticism, just a statement of fact—sometimes what you want is predictable fluff, and it's clear from very early on in this story exactly how things will eventually go down. What's interesting to me, actually, is that in some ways this story is the climax from a full romance novel, plucked out and rejiggered to fit the shape of a short story.

No real surprises here, then, but perfect for a quick read on the subway or a day when you just want something light and largely drama-free.

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

Review: "Living with Strangers" by Robin Rosenbluth

Living with Strangers by Robin Rosenbluth
Published October 2026 via She Writes Press
★★★★

Rosenbluth's childhood was happy and stable—until her mother died, and everything went downhill. But her childhood is only half the story here; the other half is the year in college that Rosenbluth spent in rural Kenya, teaching primary school and learning Swahili (and some of the local languages) and generally finding a kind of stability she didn't have growing up, despite cultural divides and the temporary nature of the placement.

I picked this up because I gravitate (and probably will always gravitate!) toward stories of people moving to other countries, and I'm especially fond of the more off-the-beaten-path stories; never mind Paris, give me a memoir about someone moving, for the short term or the long, to North Macedonia or Western Sahara or East Timor or South Africa (see what I did there?). I mean, give me the Paris book too, but it's a lot easier for me to get to Paris than it is to get to rural Kenya. It's worth noting that I'm always also a bit trepidatious about books where people from the Global North go off to somewhere in the Global South, especially when the experience was some time ago; there are just a lot of ways for that to go wrong, in the doing or in the writing.

Happily, Rosenbluth avoids those pitfalls. She went to Kenya in 1973 as part of a college program (she attended Friends World College, which I'd never heard of but which sounds fascinating; students spent their entire four years traveling and living in different places and learning about the world), but it sounds like even then she was aware of not just her White and American privilege but also of the...let's say the dangers of assuming that privilege means knowing more, and also the inherent problem of White people swanning in and thinking they can fix things. It's clear that she knew her role there was limited, and that in the long term (in the short term, for that matter) it would be better for a local to have her teaching position, and that she wasn't there to change anyone. It's a better book for the perspective. Also, I think, a better book for the fact that she kept extensive journals (a college requirement) during her travels; I assume she was able to draw on those to keep the memories feeling fresh and the stories feeling fleshed out even fifty years down the line.

The juxtaposition of Rosenbluth's time in Kenya against her childhood took some getting used to. This isn't a criticism, just a reflection of the fact that she really did go quite far afield of what she knew. I'll let most of the details stay in the book, but I will say that Rosenbluth was left, from a shockingly young age, to parent her even younger sister and generally take care of the household (while her father, having left to live with his girlfriend, occasionally dropped by to leave some paltry grocery money and to criticize her housekeeping skills). When somebody finally stepped in, Rosenbluth and her sister were sent to live first in a children's home and then with a foster family, the latter of whom provided material stability but not emotional support. (Just as some people should not be parents, some people should perhaps not be foster parents.) As Rosenbluth observes, this experience prepared her for living in other places...though I wish that kind of resilience and adaptability could be bottled, because I think it's the exception rather than the norm.

Altogether an engrossing read.

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

Review: "They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful" by Elena Dudum

They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful by Elena Dudum
Published October 2026 via Atria
★★★★

I will never have the authority of proximity. I have its absence. Distance is the condition of my inheritance. I am who I am, because someone else left. (loc. 3181*)

A memoir of family and generational trauma and what it means to be Palestinian American. Dudum's grandparents immigrated to the US as young adults, and Dudum's parents (but mostly her father) were determined that she would not forget their history; she would not forget how much was lost to their family. As a child, Dudum wasn't interested; she just wanted to fit in. As an adult, she started to understand where her father's lectures were coming from.

You don't have to look far to know why I was interested in this book at this point in time, but the book isn't about current events—it's about growing up in a culture that tells you that the place your family is from no longer exists, that you must mean your family is from Pakistan, that you have no right to do so much as visit the place your ancestors are from. That it is not your, shall we say, Birthright.

There aren't a lot of answers here—mostly, there's a circling of facts and context as Dudum's understanding of the past gradually comes into clearer focus, and as it also becomes clearer how few people around her know enough to say something coherent on the matter. This is the sort of story that doesn't really end; it changes shape as time goes on. Written a couple of years later, I suspect this would have to take yet another shape. Don't read it for current events as they stand, but read if you want a better grasp on some of the things surrounding those current events and for a diaspora perspective.

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

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Raising Bilingual Bambini" by Eric Dregni

Raising Bilingual Bambini by Eric Dregni
Published October 2026 via University of Minnesota Press
★★★★

Having lived in Italy and Norway as adults, Dregni and his wife were determined that their own children would be bilingual by design rather than only starting to learn a language as a teenager or older. The plan was simple: Dregni's wife, Katy, would speak to them in English, while Dregni would speak to them in Italian. And somehow, this works.

Kids' brains are so much more flexible and so much more receptive to new language, but gosh, I love the way kids' brains work:

At first, my mother wants to give away the secret to Eilif that I do indeed speak English. But she finally goes along with the ruse, explaining to Eilif, "Your papà needs some English lessons from his grandmother too. We'll help him out."

The irony is that Eilif hears me speaking English all the time to Katy and everyone else. Directly to him, though, I only speak Italian. Somehow, he accepts this disconnect. (loc. 126*)

At some point they must have figured it out for real, of course, but it sounds like Dregni and his wife really committed, as he describes multiple instances of the kids calling him out for speaking English to them—as in, that was rare enough that they noticed.

A lot of the book ends up being less about raising bilingual kids and more just about raising kids, and all the chaos and cuteness that brings. The "moving to Italy" part of things is actually only three months, which is too bad—I mean, I can't fault Dregni and his wife for that! Moving abroad is an enormous commitment, not to mention a logistical nightmare with kids; it's just that as much as I love a travel memoir, I even more love a relocation memoir. Ah well. It's fun and fast-paced, though. 3.5 stars for me; I'm rounding up because I read it at just the right time for this sort of book (heavy on the lighthearted anecdotes), though in a different mood or a different week I might not have gotten so much out of this. (Recommended to people wondering whether they should pursue parenthood, though; even as someone who does not have kids I think it captures the chaos well.)

As for what Dregni's kids did with that hard-won (hard for Dregni and his wife, that is) Italian: Well, you'll have to read the book to find out!

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

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

Review: "The Wings of a Falcon" by Cynthia Voigt

The Wings of a Falcon by Cynthia Voigt
First published 1993
★★★★★

Oh man, this book. Major spoilers below.

I picked this book up in a secondhand bookstore in the late 90s. I'm still not entirely sure why—maybe my book tastes were less established, maybe it was just a phase, I don't know. Fantasy, or fantasy-esque books, never called to me terribly loudly...except The Wings of a Falcon did. I read it, and I read it again, and I scoured various bookstore shelves until I also found and read Jackaroo and On Fortune's Wheel and Elske, and then I came back to Wings and read it again. I cannot overstate how much I loved Wings of a Falcon—I am a voracious reader now, I was a voracious reader then, and there was a period of several years when I consistently identified this as my favourite book. It's been years since my last reread, but I've recently been going through some of my childhood books (partly so I have a record of them on Goodreads), and when this one came up, I couldn't resist.

(Major spoilers, I said. If the above paragraph has tempted you, at all, read no further.)

What fascinates me so much is that I don't think this book would be published in its current form today. (It was republished in 2015 or so, sure, but not published new.) There are so many reasons for this: there's limited romance, when today "YA" is often synonymous with "romance lite"; characters who could take up an entire book drop from the page when the main characters move on, never to be heard from again (in a contemporary book, Nikol would probably show up again and again as the Big Bad); intensely serious themes are treated as matter-of-fact (war, women having very little agency over their lives and their bodies, the risk of incest in certain situations). But most of all: Oriel is not entirely good.

I wish I could read this again for the first time, because I still remember the gut punch at the end of the book, when Oriel is killed and Griff takes over the story. Up until that point, Oriel has been positioned as the hero: Griff is his moral compass, yes, but Oriel has strength and charisma and his wits about him, and he is determined to use those gifts to rise as far as he is able. This holds true no matter what context they find themselves in: On the miserable island of their youth, Oriel dreams of becoming the Damall (effectively a slavemaster who trades in boys, and the only adult on the island); in the freedom of town, he positions himself to inherit a saltwell (and the wealth and prestige that comes with it); captured by Wolvers (perhaps akin to Vikings), he knows that he too could find success as a Wolver, if that is where life leads him. It's Griff who is Oriel's checks and balances, but it's also Griff standing behind Oriel and supporting his decisions at every turn.

Oriel is a leader from the beginning—and in a contemporary YA book, he'd be the hero throughout. But for all that Oriel is a leader, and seeks to be a good one, he is...not always a good person. He is not terribly troubled by the idea of throwing the weakest to the Wolvers, as it were. His relationships with women are complicated, not that he sees them as such—that is, he views his love as true and unerring, but his interest in women throughout the book is built on what he might be able to achieve through them. He falls into a relationship with one woman; he sets off to pursue (with the first woman's understanding) another woman who can offer him far more material wealth and power; he learns that the first woman is pregnant with his child, and he asks "What will you do?" because as far as he is concerned, that child is really no business of his. (If this book were set in the present day, Oriel would absolutely be a would-be politician instead of a would-be earl.)

Oriel's death is, as I said, a gut-punch near the end of the book. I remember, hazily, how wrong it felt at first to have Griff take over the narration. He wasn't supposed to be the hero, after all; Oriel was finally getting all that he'd worked for. And yet...the farther into Griff's short section we get, the clearer his strengths. He does not have Oriel's vision or charisma or drive—but he does have a gift for seeing people, for thinking ahead to consequences, for seeking to do the right thing even when it is not the easy thing. And yet...in a contemporary book, I think it is Griff who would die near the end, if anyone did (maybe Griff would just be seriously injured), and his death would be a final turning point for the hero that is Oriel. The book is far better for not being my imaginary contemporary version.

I wish I could read this again for the first time—but also, I don't know what I would make of it now, if it had not been such a formative part of my childhood reading. I hope I would still love it. I still have my original copy, and I hope I'll still love it in another decade or two.

Review (Deutsch): "Adele möchte die Welt umarmen" von Sabine Bohlmann

Adele möchte die Welt umarmen von Sabine Bohlmann
Herausgegeben 2026 von Silberfisch
★★★

Adele und ihre Geschwister wollen noch ein weiteres Kind—sieben ist natürlich die perfekte Zahl. Der Arzt hat gesagt, dass es nicht möglich ist...und so müssen die Kinder einen Plan machen.

Deutsch ist für mich keine Muttersprache, und ich finde Hörbücher für Kinder nützlich (einfacher als Hörbucher für Erwachsene zu verstehen!). Hier haben wir eine mehr oder weniger einfache Geschichte: Ein paar Kinder wollen ein Geschwisterchen, und ihr Plan ist, gute Taten zu vollbringen und dann zu später Stunde eine Zeremonie zu haben. Es gibt hier viele gute Lektionen für Kinder (z.B. nette Dinge, die man ohne viel Mühe tun kann), aber ich habe die Prämisse ein bisschen komisch gefunden—viele Kinder wollen, okay (auch mir komisch, aber etwas das viele Leute wollen!), aber so specifisch eine Zahl...

Die Autorin hat das Hörbuch selbst eingelesen. Die Stimme ist klar und gut verstandlich, aber mir war es auch ein bisschen hoch (die Erzählerin der Geschichte ist ein Mädchen). Gut aber für Kinder! Ich denke, dass ich der Serie nicht fortsetzen werde, aber für ein Kind aus entweder einer grossen oder einer ganze kleinen Familie könnte sie spannend sein.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Review (Deutsch): "Die Nervknödel" von Maria Kling

Die Nervknödel von Maria Kling, gelesen von Karoline Herfurth
Herausgegeben 2026 von Silberfisch
★★★★

Milla und Mats wollen ein Haustier...Mama und Papa wollen kein Haustier. Und dann finden Milla und Mats im Garten drei Nervknödel...

Als Hörbuch war das ganz lustig—viel Energie, verschiedene Stimmen, etwas für die Kinder, aber auch für die Erwachsenen. Was Milla und Mats lernen, ist natürlich, dass Elternsein (auch wenn die Kinder Nervknödel sind) ganz, ganz schwer ist.

Ich denke an Das Klugscheißerchen: Die Geschichte ist anders, aber das Gefühl ist ähnlich; hier ist ein Geschichte für Kinder, die Kinder erst später komplett verstehen werden. So viel Chaos! So viel Geduld...und auch so viel Ungeduld. Ich wurde das Buch definitiv Kindern empfehlen, die Haustiere wollen...und auch vielleicht Kindern, die kleine Geschwister wollen.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.