Review: "The Summer Scrapbook" by Florence Migga

The Summer Scrapbook by Florence Migga
Published May 2026 via Carolrhoda Books
★★★

It's the last summer before high school, but it's not what the ABCs* had planned. Instead of spending the summer together, hanging out at the pool, they'll be doing parent-planned things: Ava is off to London with her family, Becca is going to sleepaway camp (no phones allowed), and only Cat will be home in Chattanooga. The solution to staying connected: snail mail letters and collection of material for a summer scrapbook.

I love me a friendship story, and once upon a time I read as many YA and MG summer travel stories as I could (who am I kidding? I still read them). This is basically three summer stories in one (camp, hometown, abroad), plus the friendship thread to tie them together. I'm also thrilled to see a book featuring three Black tweenagers; there's way too little diversity/representation in this sort of YA/MG summer-adventure book, and it's about time.

The downside of having three different summer stories is that it's harder to pack in as much characterization and so on as I'd have liked. Early on in the book I gave myself a little mnemonic to remember who was who—Ava was off on an Adventure, Cat was home in Chattanooga (I figured that was enough, so I didn't work Becca into it, but then when I got to the part about Becca feeling like the afterthought sometimes I felt bad. Becca was in Bunk beds at camp all summer). That helped, but I struggled to find serious differences between Cat and Becca in particular (both quiet, a bit shy; Becca's the reader; Cat's the writer; one of them develops an interest in fashion, but I didn't even realize that was an interest until she mentions it at the end of the book). Ava's easier, as she's more outgoing, but I would have liked a bit more space to get to know each girl, quirks and warts and all. Ditto the new friends they make; we get a bit of the personalities and interests of Cat's new crowd, but there's just not really the time to get to know three separate girls in different locations, and the shape and arc of their friendship, and their new friends, and in some cases their new romantic interests. (The romance is sweet and pretty mild, but in a MG book especially I'd always rather that the romance be chucked in favor of friendship content. But if it's going to be in there, at least it's done well.)

All that being said—I liked all three of these storylines (and all three of these main characters), and if I would have preferred them broken into three different books, then...oh well, that's probably a me problem. Yes to the summer vibes, yes to themes of friendship and navigating growing up, yes to tweenagers being forced off their phones for a summer, yes to supportive families and snail mail and tromping all over London.

*That they do not call themselves this is one of the book's few serious flaws.

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

Review: "Immersions" by Kyle McCarthy

Immersions by Kyle McCarthy
Published May 2026 via Tin House
★★★★

Frances has always felt herself to be in her sister's shadow—both dancers, but Charley is older and more celebrated. Until recently, Charley was racking up accolades as a modern dancer. But then came the marriage, and the career-changing injury, and Charley's retreat to a convent in France. Frances is sure that Charley's ex-husband Johnny knows more than he's saying...and she's determined to find out what that means.

I am fond of books in which characters do messy things and make questionable decisions without being either going over the top (slapstick isn't my cup of tea) or just straight up being toxic. Frances is a great fit for this: she's young and impressionable and rash, sometimes, but I found myself biting my fingernails for wanting her to slow down and be more careful, empathizing with her being young and not always making good decisions rather than...well, wanting to stay far out of her orbit.

The ease with which I left my life convinced me it had never been my real life. (loc. 2339*)

And make no mistake: Frances does not always make great decisions here. Nobody here is squeaky-clean, and neither are they particularly trying to be. This ends up being about money and power and family dynamics, and gender and sex and power (yes, power is in here twice)—but also, it's about a young woman coping with the loss of her sister as she knows her.

One for readers who like lit fic and complicated family dynamics and perhaps some ethical grey areas.

*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: "Saturn Returning" by Kim Narby

Saturn Returning by Kim Narby
Published May 2025 via Bindery Books
★★★★

Trace and Silvia have built a happy life together in Seattle—they're living together, settled, engaged to be married. But then it all comes tumbling down.

The book pulls us between past and present: the present, when Silvia has fled Seattle for New York, where Jordan, their best friend from college—the third of their trio—lives. And the past, as they fall into each other's orbits at their small liberal arts college, come of age, start figuring out who they are. Trace and Silvia are a pair almost from the beginning, and Jordan brings a level of stability and outside perspective that balances the other two out.

It had always been like this with Silvia. She burned bright but went out fast. (loc. 2173*)

It takes a while to see where the book is going—or rather, it takes a while to see how they got where they are when the book opens. Trace and Silvia love each other fiercely, and yet...the shape of that love is not always what either person in the relationship wants. Trace clings, and tries to mold herself into the perfect partner, and sulks when she feels Silvia pulling away; Silvia pulls away and comes back, and keeps secrets, and finds Trace's insecurities and...not exploits them, maybe, but prods at them.

And honestly: That's what made the book. Trace and Silvia aren't always likeable (Jordan, while she of course has her own flaws, exhibits them in a less pointed way), but it's in a way that makes them interesting and human rather than unrelatable. All three have complicated family situations (some more so than others), and each of those situations also has its shades of gray. There was a while when I wondered whether one character was going to be the "bad guy" of the story, but the more I understood the characters and their histories, the hazier that all got, until nobody was the bad guy, and the question became Where do they go from here?

Messy and intense, in a way that makes me glad not to be in my 20s anymore...but also in a way that is very compelling to read.

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

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

Review: "This Is a True War Story" by Robert K. Brigham

This Is a True War Story by Robert K. Brigham
Published April 2026 via University of Chicago Press
★★★★

Brigham grew up with only the barest of information about his biological parents—what he gleaned was that his biological mother had died young from cancer, and his father had been in Vietnam. This spurred a decades-long search, starting when he was still a child...but when he eventually learned the truth, it was far more complicated, and closer to home, than he could have imagined.

I was realizing that my Vietnam War story was true and untrue. (loc. 2550*)

This Is a True War Story, says the title, and it is. But for years Brigham told himself other versions of a war story—first that his biological father was off at war and would come home and find him; then that his biological father must be a POW. Eventually Brigham concluded that his biological father must have died in the war. Some of this was based on a child's magical thinking, but as Brigham grew older, the research skills he developed for the sake of this quest led him to a career in academia, studying the Vietnam War.

Being adopted wasn't an event. It was an active part of my life and would be with me forever. (loc. 72)

I didn't always understand the assumptions Brigham led with—e.g., once he concluded as a child that his biological father had died in the war, he focused pretty much solely on the war dead rather than also looking for those who had come home alive. I understand that insinct for a child telling himself stories, but less so for an adult with a more sophisticated understanding of the world. Granted, the things I wondered throughout the book (why assume that if his mother had been sixteen—itself not information from a great source—his father would have had to be seventeen or eighteen? when he eventually received more information about his birth, why not include the name he learned in his search parameters?) would not likely have ended his search sooner (and also granted—the task sounds incredibly daunting as it was, and doing things like expanding search parameters to include all soldiers would have been...a lot), but I wondered nonetheless.

Much of this story is about the Vietnam War, of course, but just as much or more is about the trauma of foster care and adoption. Brigham had loving and supportive adoptive parents—but that wasn't the point. The point was that he didn't know his history; he didn't know his background; if there was pertinent family medical history, he didn't know it. He didn't know who his biological parents were, not their names nor their personalities, and he felt this as a loss.

It's well into the book before Brigham starts to make real progress into his quest. I admit that at times the earlier years felt a bit slow, but also, I'm cognizant of the fact that it took me two days to read the book, so I only had to wait until the next day to find out what happened; meanwhile, it took Brigham decades to find any kind of answers. And, again...that's where it gets more complicated.

There is so much I would like to say about the circumstances of Brigham's birth and what he eventually found out about his parents' lives, but that's information that comes late in the book, so I think it's best left out of a review. What I will say is that I'd recommend Claudia Rowe's excellent book on foster care, Wards of the State, to anyone wanting to know more about the failings of foster care.

Brigham eventually got answers, if not always the ones he was hoping for and only after many, many dead ends. But it's a hell of a story along the way.

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

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

Review: "An Unexpected Christmas Helper" by Lee Tobin McClain

An Unexpected Christmas Helper by Lee Tobin McClain
Published October 2025 via Love Inspired
★★

Ooohh but the righteous misogynist vibes in this one are strong.

I meant to write a full review, but motivation is lacking, so I'll keep it short: at one point the Dark History Heroine (DHH) describes the Righteous Hero (RH) as "a strongly moral man with a judgmental streak a mile wide" (90), and that...seems about right. He's quick to judge, quick to assume, slow to believe what DHH tells him, and slow to forgive. He also 1) makes DHH's employment contingent on her answering invasive personal questions about her health and 2) spends most of the book alternately kissing DHH, who again is his employee, and suggesting that she's not good enough to take care of his daughter—in other words, making her already tenuous employment and housing situation ever more uncertain. Ooh, and then he blames her for not telling him sooner about things that have no bearing on her job that she was correctly afraid would make him kick her out. (Naturally RH then goes full whiplash and tells DHH that he wants to marry her, all before they're even in a relationship.)

The interesting part is that other characters call RH out all the time—DHH does repeatedly (RH always has a comeback for her, including that since she's taking care of his daughter—which he has hired her to do—it is reasonable for him to discipline her son and then expect DHH to apologize for being upset by this, what the actual fuck), but so do both her family and his. Mostly, RH listens to the family; mostly, he does not listen to DHH.

While it's nice that he eventually listens to people who aren't DHH and decides that she isn't a morally bankrupt liar who is only "pretending to be a decent human being" (162), it would be a lot nicer if that came more than about ten pages before he proposed, and a lot nicer if any of this came about because he trusted DHH rather than only the people around her.

So much for a short review. Moving on now...

Review: "The Girl Who Sang" by Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos

The Girl Who Sang by Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos
Published January 2024 via Roaring Brook Press
★★★★

As a child in Poland, Enia Feld (later Estelle Nadel) loved to sing—but when the Nazis came to power and Germany invaded Poland, singing—and just about everything else in her life—became dangerous. What followed were harrowing years and an impossible scope of loss...but also incredible love and resiliance.

This makes for a lovely and detailed, if heartbreaking, look at one young Jewish girl's experience surviving the Holocaust. It's written for an MG/YA audience, so although violence is not shied away from, it's never gratuitous. Children the age of the target reader—to say nothing of children Enia's age—shouldn't have to think about these things, but such as the world is...if it has to be talked about (and it does), this is an age-appropriate way to do so. The losses are multiple and tremendous, but the authors choose to put more of the focus on hope, and on the people who were instrumental to Enia's survival.

The art is a bit simpler than I'd prefer, though I suppose that's at least partly a reflection of Enia's young age in the book and also of the target audience. I love that, in addition to seeing Enia's struggle throughout the Holocaust—the struggle to find somewhere to hide, to find enough to eat, to stay together as a family, to protect loved ones, to keep from imperiling those helping them, to escape—we see so much of her life after the war...because the war might have been over, but the struggle was not. I also love how much of this is a love letter to Enia's family, but in particular her brother, who stepped up again and again and again. So many people in this story had to grow up too fast, and he is no exception, but...well, sometimes it is striking what a child, or near-child, can and will do when adults are unwilling or unable to step up in the same way.

Review: "Doubles" by Nora Gold

Doubles by Nora Gold
Published May 2026 via Guernica Editions
★★★★

1968: A girl is sentenced to stay in an institution for troubled youth for reasons she only sort of understands. She's twelve, and what she does understand is that numbers make sense in a way that people don't. She understands that home might not be a safe place, but this institution is not much better. She understands, eventually, that it might be a long time before she gets out. And she understands that this might be the thing that breaks her.

My I is fading so fast that it might not be here tomorrow. Soon all that will be left of me is the She that the counselors observe. (loc. 672*)

This is a tight, short, intense book. It's designed to make your heart quietly break for this girl, who has—through no fault of her own—virtually no options left. A math book in the institution library gives her some hope, but...there's not much else that does. There's the occasional adult who is kind, but many of them are overtly out for their own interests or just don't care; like our narrator, they too have perhaps gotten more jaded over time.

We see the events of this story through our narrator's lens as a child, not as someone looking back, so the change is gradual and subtle—a girl changing from someone innocent, someone with hope, to someone hardened and more desperate.

Though this takes place in 1968, much of it feels relevant for today, too—nothing I've read suggests that institutions are happier places for children now than they were then, and although there are different options in place for children for whom home is not safe, well...nothing I've read suggests that those options are great either.

Highly recommend; this is tightly written and quietly devastating.

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

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

Review: "This Is Not About Running" by Mary Cain

This Is Not About Running by Mary Cain
Published April 2026 via Mariner Books
★★★★

Cain was born to run. At an age when most kids are groan to think about running the mile in PE, she was winning races and setting records—and not everybody was happy about it. There were the other teenagers who didn't like to see her succeeding when they were not, and more to the point there were the parents who didn't like to see her succeeding when their daughters were not. There were the online trolls convinced, even when she was in middle school, that she must be doing something illegal, or simply insulting her appearance (to...bring a literal child down a peg, I guess?). And then there were the coaches who cared more about their own success—and about Cain's weight, and about whether she was doing exactly what they told her to do—than they did about Cain's success, or her health, or her happiness.

My strongest takeaway from this book is that Cain is angry, and that she has every right to be. Her writing is so clear and so direct, with chapter after chapter highlighting just how hard others made it for her: bullying from classmates and their parents; her school basically shrugging and turning away; her coach subjecting her to his whims and creeping around her bedroom when she was partially clothed and insisting on undernourishment because he was convinced that lighter would mean faster, no matter how "lighter" was achieved, and pushing her to train on debilitating injuries when she should have been resting. But I want to be clear, too: Cain writes all of this plainly, but the tone is not poor me; the tone is where were the people who should have intervened? Cain's parents sound solid, but she describes an environment in which other parents did not speak up; other coaches did not speak up; doctors employed by Nike (the employer of her coach; she trained with a "Nike project") did not speak up; her teammates did not speak up. Or, if they did, they spoke against her. And she asks: How can a literal child see that this is wrong when the adults around her refuse to do so?

This memoir is not about running. This memoir is about how sports normalizes the abuse of young athletes. (loc. 174*)

It's impossible not to read this and think of other well-publicized abuse cases. The way gymnastics turned a blind eye to Larry Nasser, for example, because in exchange for access to underage athletes he was willing to say "she's fine to keep training". Or even what happened with Kamila Valieva; there was so much discussion of positive drug tests, but realistically, any doping was likely to be the direct result of whatever her coaches told her to do. Cain is writing about abuse within the context of running, but it's fair to say that what she underwent is the tip of the iceberg as far as women's sports go, especially in contexts where the athletes are young. At some point things become less about athletic excellence and more about who has power over whom.

This was not an easy read. I took a break at around 30% because it was clear that it was going to be a while before things got better, and they were likely to get worse before that happened. Absolutely worth the read, but also perhaps a good idea to pace yourself.

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

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

Review: "Other Women: And Other Stories" by Nicola Maye Goldberg

Other Women: And Other Stories by Nicola Maye Goldberg
Published April 2026 via Verso Fiction
★★★★

A novella and three short stories. In the titular "Other Women", the novella of the bunch, a young woman struggling with the end of an affair abandons college and moves to Berlin as a nanny. In "Paris, 1979", a woman stakes out an apartment in Paris, watching as a former actress does...well, not much, most of the time. In "All Girls", a group of middle school girls grapples with the disappearance of one of their classmates. And in "The Virgin", a college student grapples with a crush and an assault.

"Other Women" was previously published as a standalone novella, and I don't think the cover design does quite right by this new version (why does the cover say "a novel" rather than "and other stories"?). But the image is striking and the stories within tightly woven.

"Other Women" is the titular story for a reason. The narrator is young and perhaps depressed and making decisions that are sometimes objectively bad and sometimes just impulsive; she finds herself sleeping with the wrong people and seeking out attention for not the healthiest reasons and making decisions because the option is there and not necessarily because she's thought the decision through.

You asked me why I dropped out of school. I told you: "I thought I wanted to be a poet, but I really just wanted to be a poem." (loc. 92*)

"Other Women" is told in the second person, addressing the man the narrator is infatuated with; a man who is sleeping with her but in a relationship with another woman. This isn't a story about drastic steps: the narrator knows that it is, if not a lost cause, not meant to be. And yet.

I think that if you'd wanted me less, you might have loved me more. (loc. 344)

This is the strongest of the pieces in the book, I think, and well worth the prime positioning as the book's title. A high 4 stars.

"Paris, 1979" sets us in the perspective of a woman staking out the apartment of a former actress. Our narrator has a male counterpart, but he is incidental. My knowledge of 1970s history does not tell me how likely this particular scenario is (the short version is that they are government agents, and the government doesn't trust the actress), but if the actress has secrets, she is hiding them well; very little happens until the story reaches its climax. That is not criticism—I prefer a slow build to something action-packed—but I also found this story to be the least memorable, and it was my least favorite of the bunch. 3 stars.

"All Girls" made up for "Paris, 1979" in spades. Here we're in the first-person plural, no one voice rising above the rest: These are, after all, 11-year-old girls, learning to exist as pack animals, filtering whatever they know or think they know through each other. One of their lot has gone missing, she's not somebody that our collective narrators know particularly well, and they find themselves trying to figure out how to navigate this sort of loss of a sense of security when they aren't even sure how to feel about the girl herself. I never experienced such an event (though I'm sure many of my classmates were going through difficult things that I knew nothing about), but there's a tangible sense that these girls are on the cusp of something, that this moment is pivotal in ways that they will only later understand. 4 stars.

"The Virgin" is the last story in the book and one that should probably come with a trigger warning. In it, a girl sees her first year of college as something wide open with possibility—until she is assaulted, and she has to both figure out how to frame that assault for herself (and what to do with it) and deal with other people's reactions and opinions. This is technically well done (in particular, excellent balance of showing and telling), though it felt to me like a story that has been told many times before...although, to be fair, partly because it is a story that so many young women have experienced. 3.5 stars.

Overall, a tightly wrought but not terribly happy collection. I'd recommend a break between pieces to let them sink in before moving on to the next one—but if you can take some darkness in your litfic, this is one for you.

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

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

Review: "Sweet Clarity" by Rhiannon Richardson

Sweet Clarity by Rhiannon Richardson
Published April 2026 via Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
★★★★

The summer before senior year, Clarity went off to Christian summer camp and fell in love. It didn't end all that well—but that's not this story. This is the what happens after.

I never went to summer camp as a kid. My sister, older by one year, went to Christian summer camp (I assume it was cheap) and came back mildly indoctrinated,* so that was the end of summer camp for our family. And I think Clarity's experience is part of why my parents made that decision: Because when Clarity is different from the other campers, that difference is not celebrated but shamed.

"Girl goes to summer camp" is not a new story; neither is "girl goes to summer camp and falls in love" or for that matter "girl goes to summer camp and falls in love with another girl". But the story after that story feels much newer: Clarity finds herself back on her home turf, but with many of her classmates and other teenagers at her church (not to mention the woman who runs Sunday school) knowing that she's not straight, and she's terrified of how her parents might react if they find out, and she doesn't know how—or whether—to continue the relationship she started over the summer.

Some of Clarity's decisions in pursuit of staying in the closet are...not great. It's good for storytelling purposes, of course, and realistic that a teenager wouldn't always think things through (I'm not complaining), but towards the end of the book I think she's apologizing for the wrong reasons—apologizing for asking someone to keep her secret rather than apologizing for actively using someone, for example.

But it's a really nice twist on something classic, with a solid set of secondary characters (Clarity's parents are great, and the Sunday school teacher plays an unexpected role). A satisfying addition to the genre.

*The mild indoctrination did not last, and she still remembers being scandalized by saying grace...

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