Review: "As Long as You Loathe Me" by Swati Hegde

As Long as You Loathe Me by Swati Hegde
Published March 2026 via Delacorte
★★★★

Meera and Lucy were the best of friends...until Lucy abruptly ended their friendship and started dating Meera's crush. And now, in their senior year, Meera is determined to get back at Lucy...except that then things get more complicated.

I say this often, but the state of queer YA romance has come so far since I was a teenager. Here we get not just queer romance but one in which one of the heroines is Indian American, speaks multiple languages, has two fathers...and, better, though Lucy's mother is less than accepting, there's not really a villain here; it's mostly just the two girls figuring out how to be the people they want to be. It's still quite sad to me that Lucy feels a need to be so deep in the closet—the community seems largely accepting—but it's also unfortunately still realistic that family is the sticking point there. (I'm torn on the way she eventually comes out to her mother; on the one hand it's basically right after she says that she's not ready, and on the other hand...she's a teenager, so...)

This is a 3.5-star read for me, but I'm rounding up for diversity and lack of bad guys—in particular, I find the plotline with Sushant (Meera's neighbor and good friend; Lucy's boyfriend) to be really interesting. He gets kind of the short end of the stick out of this, but he still manages to be a decent person about it, and he has a role beyond "the one who wasn't the one".

Finally, one off-topic thing to note... If you're wait-listed at your dream school, don't just sit and wait to see what happens! Write to tell them that they're your top choice; send updated grades if they will strengthen your case; etc. Among other things, colleges want to know that the students they accept will in turn accept the offer, because that is a statistic that matters to colleges—so show them you're a strong bet for them. (And maybe a second thing...not illegal to photograph the Eiffel Tower at night; just illegal to then use those photos commercially.)

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

Review: "The Faraway Inn" by Sarah Beth Durst

The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst
Published April 2026 via First Ink
★★★★

Calisa's looking for an escape this summer—she's recovering from a broken heart, and her great-aunt's inn, deep in Vermont without even a whisper of mobile data, seems like the place to be. Only: Aunt Zee doesn't want her there. And the inn has fallen into disrepair. And the closer Calisa looks, the more she understands that the inn is a little more...complicated...than Calisa first thought.

I read this largely on the strength of The Lake House, which gripped me by the throat for much of the book. The Faraway Inn is something else entirely—still a delight to speed through, but much more on the "charming" end of the scale than the "throat-gripping" end. I'm reminded of the phone game Matchington Mansion (which I did not reinstall when I had to get a new phone, because it is too much of a time suck), in which rooms gradually open up to the player...new place after new place to discover and restore. The inn isn't quite like that (we don't get enough details of, e.g., the library), but...at the same time, it kind of is. Every time a door opens, Calisa discovers something entirely new to her.

I was prepared for, I don't know, dark forces trying to bring the inn down, but the reality of the book is a lot calmer. There are problems, and Calisa ends up having to do quite a lot of problem-solving (and quite a lot of work), but not so much a Big Bad. I could have used a little more by way of details about what went wrong and how they're sure there's a long-term fix, but the general vibe is just very cozy in a way that turned out to be just what I was looking for in a book at the time.

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

Review: "Heal Me" by Lujaine Saeb

Heal Me by Lujaine Saeb
Published January 2025
★★★

Back to Kindle Unlimited and a quick look at poetry. This feels inspired by Rupi Kaur and the like—all lowercase, not a lot of metaphor, a lot of first person, titles (of a sort?) at the end of the poems rather than the beginning. (More rhyming than I usually expect from this type of poetry, but rather simplistic rhyming.)

I don't think this one will stick with me, but it'll likely be a good fit for those who gravitate toward short, emotion-driven poetry.

Review: "The Keeper" by Tana French

The Keeper by Tana French
Published March 2026 via Viking
★★★★

Book three—of three—in the Cal Hooper series. Time has passed: Trey is growing up; Cal and Lena have settled into their technically-engaged routine; Cal knows by now that Arknakelty doesn't have the predictability he'd thought he'd find in a small village. Still, there should be enough on their plates without a young woman gone missing, without that young woman's body turning up in the river.

This is, like the other books in the series, a slow boil of a story—character-driven, built around the intricate knots of small-town life, beautifully placed twists just when you're hoping the characters will get out of this one unscathed. I don't want to get into plot here (and will keep this review uncharacteristically short), because better to let the book unfold as it's written, but French writes a devastating story. Even as a reader, I'm not ready for Trey to grow up or to go places Cal can't follow; I'm not ready for Cal and Lena to find the cracks in their relationship. And: I've read French's Dublin Murder Squad books. I knew going in that the stakes are raised for the last book in a series, and also that French is willing to push the plot to where it needs to go, even if that means hard things happening.

Time has passed, and time continues passing, and even as Arknakelty stays the same, it too must change—and Cal & co. with it, whether they like it or not. And so too must this series end, whether I like it or not. Book one is my favorite of the three, I think, but this one had my heart most in my throat.

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

Review: "What We Did to Survive" by Megan Lally

What We Did to Survive by Megan Lally
Published March 2026 via Sourcebooks Fire
★★★★

It's spring break, and Hannah is living it up with her friend Emmy at a beach resort in Mexico. And everything's great...right up until Emmy's latest crush invites them, and Emmy's brother, to go sailing. On a random boat whose owner he's paid off. With a storm on the horizon...

I'm not a fan of boats, but despite (because of?) this, I'm fond of locked-room murder mysteries taking place on boats. This isn't a mystery per se—when the first body falls, Hannah (and the reader) knows exactly what happened. We might not have the details of why, but we know what and who. The question becomes what the limits are...and of course what Hannah & co. will have to do to survive.

Lally's first book, That's Not My Name, won me over partly for the tight pacing and partly for the twists that kept things surprising, and What We Did to Survive manages something similar. I don't want to get into plot details, because they're more fun if you go in blind, but I love how much of this ends up being about Hannah and Emmy's friendship, and them figuring out to stay close, stay relevant to each other, when they're heading off in different directions.

Also, have to love this dedication: For all my fellow anxious travelers. This book probably won't help your anxiety much, but your next vacation can't possibly go as badly as this one... (loc. 29*)

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

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

Review: "Sea Legs" by Jules Bakes and Niki Smith

Sea Legs by Jules Bakes and Niki Smith
Published February 2025 via Graphix
★★★★

Like most kids, Janey goes to school and comes home—but unlike most kids, "home" for Janey is a boat. And it's time to set sail again, which means that Janey is back to homeschooling and hanging out with adults and adventures that sometimes aren't as stimulating for a kid as they are for an adult.

I love a good graphic memoir, and this is a really interesting one just for being about such a unique experience. For Janey's parents, boat life is a desirable shift from a more standard way of living, but for Janey, it's often just...lonely. Staying in touch with Janey's best friend on land is hard, there are rarely other boat kids, and even when there are, they aren't always people Janey would choose to be friends with normally. Her situation is unusual, but she's still just a normal kid with normal kid desires and emotions.

Janey's friendship with Astrid ends up being some of the most interesting material of the book. That plotline ends in a complicated way—one of those things where you wish this were fiction so that you could know more about what happened after the fact!

The art is a little cartoony for me, but it grew on me as the book went on, and it made sense for the target age range. I hope there's a follow-up eventually.

Review: "Coming of Age in the Cannibal Isles" by Fred Bell

Coming of Age in the Cannibal Isles by Fred Bell
Published December 2022 via Peace Corps Worldwide
★★★★

Today in Peace Corps memoirs! Bell was sent to Fiji in 1969 for a two-year forestry stint, and it was a good enough fit that he ended up extending another two years.

Two things that I really appreciate: First, Bell is not shy about acknowledging his own failures when he was in the Peace Corps—sometimes relatively small things, like committing cultural faux pas because he didn't know all the ins and outs of Fiji culture, and sometimes bigger things, like recognizing when he picked up local racism and had to work to recalibrate. (He also acknowledges the advantages he had in being male, and that there were things that were a lot harder for women than for men.) And second, even decades later he's still just really enthusiastic about his experience, and interested in describing things he learned about the culture and place.

The book is a little repetitious in places, and there isn't as much character development for other characters as I'd have liked—the latter I think is just the result of decades passing between events and writing. But it's generally good energy, and I love reading about experiences that I'm unlikely to have myself.

Review: "Notes from a Sickbed" by Tessa Brunton

Notes from a Sickbed by Tessa Brunton
Published November 2022 via Graphic Universe
★★★★

Well before long COVID hit the scene, Brunton got sick in a way that most people didn't understand—chronic fatigue and post-exertional malaise curtailed her plans and consigned her to, mostly, a couch and a bed. For years. Eventually she found ways to reduce some of her symptoms...but that is not this story. Rather, this is the story of those years on a couch and in a bed, working up the energy to do something only to crash the next day.

I suppose this is a story that is just better understood than it would have been just a few years ago (when, say, Brunton was still in chronic-illness limbo). I think it does an excellent job of balancing the boredom of that stuckness, of everything being curtailed just as you're getting going. I am curious about Brunton's choice not to write about those strategies she was eventually able to employ—not sure if that's a matter of "maybe for another book" or a matter of "better but not well and don't want to confuse the two" or something else. I'm also curious about what various medical professionals were saying at the time, and whether any of it was helpful; Brunton doesn't really get into that, except for mentions of things not covered by insurance and the frustrations of not getting better.

It's a timely read. The art style isn't my favourite, but it gets the job done, and it's a really admirable effort at turning an experience that must have been both exhausting and often terribly boring into something not boring.

Review: "Almost Life" by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Published March 2026 via S&S/Summit Books
★★★★

When Erica and Laure meet in a sweltering Paris summer, it's a blip in their lives—until it isn't. That blip becomes a hookup, becomes a romance, unspools into something all-consuming. But Erica is only in France for the summer, and it's 1978, and being together requires a series of choices that Erica knows will upset the direction of her life. So she goes back to England—but that's really only the beginning.

She knew she could not live how Laure and her friends lived, at the edge of things, even in Paris. [...] She didn't want to exist like that. She wanted to get married, to have children. She wanted to write novels [...]. She wanted simple joy, simple happiness, simple love. And loving Laure, even if she were a man, would not be simple. (loc. 1123*)

Erica and Laure make for such messy, complex characters—maybe at the beginning one seems more straightforward than the other, or more confident in herself, but as time goes on the lines blur. They drink too much; they make bad decisions; they make good decisions; they have friends and lovers and dramas; some of their sharp edges blur into something more palatable and some of their more endearing personality traits wither over time. For Laure in some ways the question of their relationship is simpler; she is already entrenched in queer (though they would not use the term then) life in Paris, and when Erica dreams of them being together, it is back in Paris. Laure has already set aside a need for convention. But for Erica, in the 70s and 80s and beyond...she can see multiple paths, and multiple paths that would bring her joy. Some of them are easier than others.

I'm good at forgetting the book description by the time I read a book I'm interested in, so I didn't realize right away just how much time this would cover. Theirs is not a quick story, over in a summer—theirs is one of those relationships that pulls you in and spits you back out and you wonder, time and time again, if that was the one who got away...or rather, you know that was the one who got away. And what's left is what to do with that knowledge. Very much recommended to anyone with a queer one who got away and to lovers of character-driven stories.

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

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

Sample-Chapter Showdown: Young Adult III

Fortress of Ambrose by J. Elle (Penguin Young Readers Group)
Queen of Faces by Petra Lord (Henry Holt and Co.)
Behind Five Willows by June Hur (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group)

It's time for a sample-chapter showdown! Three YA samplers enter...only one survives. Well, or, only one can be at the top of my TBR. If others end up on there too...who's telling?

Fortress of Ambrose:
Things are coming to a head for Quell: a surplus of enemies means her life is at risk, and her options are few—but she's not out of options just yet.

This is book three in a series, and it hits the ground running. In just the first few chapters, we have murder, theft, hints of romance, and a promise of adventure. I haven't read the first two books (my error—I picked up these sample chapters without realizing that the book was part of a series), and I'd definitely suggest starting with book 1; this is clearly not a standalone story. I started to catch up by the end of the sample, but there's clearly a lot of context in the first two books that would be helpful for readers. It seems like a complex magical world (set in an alternate form of the US), modernity meeting something that feels a bit like anarchy.

I won't be picking this particular book up just yet (see: definitely better to start with book 1), but it feels like it'll be a very high-energy conclusion to the series, with plenty of drama to keep things moving.

Queen of Faces:
In a world where bodies are disposable—and, more to the point, replaceable—Anabelle has drawn the short straw. She has a replacement body for the one that could not survive her youth, but the clock is ticking on this body, too. Entrance to Paragon Academy would solve all her problems...if only she could pass the entrance exams. And when she's eventually offered a deal that might save her, it comes with so many strings that it is just as likely to bring about her downfall as it is to allow her to survive.

The sample I read contains the first five chapters, and they flew by—no lack of action here. The sample gives me hope for the worldbuilding in the full book, but what interests me more is the potential for gender-bending here. Anabelle's replacement body is that of a boy, and though the sample doesn't get into it much, there's so much potential for discussion of what that means in terms of gender dysphoria...or possibly the idea that gender might mean something different where anyone (well. anyone with large amounts of money, anyway) can slip into a new body at will.

Two different characters' POVs are represented in the sample, so I'm not sure whether the full book will have just those two or more. Typically I gravitate towards books with fewer POVs, but we're definitely being set up for major conflict between these two POVs, which could be interesting. I don't read tons of fantasy these days...but I may have to make an exception for "dark academia" with an intriguing premise.

Behind Five Willows:
In Joseon Korea, Haewon doesn't have much—her family is poor, and she is expected to remain a model young woman so that she can make a good marriage match...and so that the rest of her family, too, can stay in society's good graces. But: Haewon's older sister is reaching an age at which she will be forced to marry. And Haewon's younger sister is spending time with gisaeng (courteseans), which could bring ruin upon their family if she is seen. And meanwhile Haewon herself is earning her spending money by copying novels...in a time and place when fiction is forbidden.

The note at the beginning of these sample chapters discusses book banning in Joseon Korea, and it sent me down an Internet rabbit hole. The idea of fiction being banned overall is just fascinating, in a dystopian-but-can-also-imagine-it-in-the-near-US-future kind of way. Now: My rabbit holes did not turn up a full ban on fictional works in Korea (bans on Catholic texts, yes), though I'm not sure whether that's because the bans in Behind Five Willows are stronger than the real-life ones for the sake of fiction or because the English side of the Internet isn't as up on Korean book-banning history as it could be (e.g., King Jeongjo's Wikipedia entry is surprisingly short for someone who ruled Korea for almost a quarter-century). Also fascinating to me: Haewon's work transcribing/copying novels. The speed of transcription mentioned in the book makes me think that the books (or sections of books) Haewon is reading and copying must be quite short, so it'll be interesting to see whether that's discussed more in the full book.

Altogether, this is a promising start to historical fiction set in a time and place I don't know enough about.

The Verdict:
If I'd guessed ahead of time, I would have said that Behind Five Willows was the lead contender here (things that send me down rabbit holes always intrigue me!). But...I also really want to see what this fancy school in Queen of Faces looks like. And I can't tell you how, but somehow it has snuck onto my library list...

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing these sample chapters through NetGalley.