Review: "The Roommate Rule" by Georgia Stone

The Roommate Rule by Georgia Stone
Published July 2026 via Harper Perennial
★★★★

Dylan is due a vacation—and if six all-expenses-paid weeks in Wales with a stranger weren't what she had planned, well, she can go with the flow. Definitely. For sure. Especially since there will definitely be separate bedrooms. Definitely.

I read this more or less entirely for the setting: I haven't been to Wales, and it's relatively high on my list of places to go. And six weeks there seems like more than enough time to get a feel for it! Happily, I liked the relationship a lot; Max is not my type, but then, Dylan thinks he's not her type either, and she eventually realizes otherwise. They do a lot of talking, some of it about more serious things than others, and while they have clashes (again, some more serious than others), they're good about not letting those fester for too long.

There are plenty of secondary characters, which is nice—Dylan and Max get to know each other not just on their own but within the context of other people, which feels important (like, you should know how your romantic interest interacts with their friends, you know? And also with relative acquaintances who they don't necessarily want to befriend). One character does kind of drop off the face of the earth once Dylan and Max heat things up a bit; it's nice that there isn't unnecessary drama there, but it did feel like a bit of a loose end. On the other hand, if I read things right, there's room for a related book with yet another character in the future...

Now, quibbles: On a practical level, the setup for this book does not make sense. Max has been invited for an influencers' weekend six-week, all-inclusive trip. It's a new venue that's trying to build some buzz, so inviting influencers makes sense—but six weeks is a huge chunk of time to host a bunch of influencers. Financial cost aside, that's weeks and weeks and weeks to entertain a group of people with varied personalities and needs and expectations. There are lots of excursions and events planned, but most of them they seem to do only once, even over six weeks; what's more, excursions aside, I don't think anyone leaves the compound—they seem perfectly happy to be off at summer camp with no ability to go to the shops or the cinema or whatever (or, say, to replace a critical but lost item...), and while I believe that for some of them, I don't believe it for everyone.

Obviously it's nicer for Max and Dylan to have six weeks to get to know each other, outside the requirements of their (well, Dylan's) ordinary lives. But...I can't help but think that it would have made a lot more sense if the Wales part of things had taken up one week, not six. (Also...at an influencers' retreat, surely everyone—but especially the people not used to being filmed—should have to sign some version of a UK GDPR form?)

That's a long quibble, but it wasn't actually one that bothered me much—just something that I started wondering about midway through and then wasn't quite able to let go of. Would recommend; would stash away in case I need a feel-good reread in the future; would consider getting overalls just to replicate Dylan's look on the (US) cover, except I'm too short to pull them off. (I don't think they're true to the book, but the overalls vibe is true to the book, so I'll take it.)

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

Review: "The Acrobat" by Wisława Szymborska

The Acrobat by Wisława Szymborska
Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak
Published July 2026 via Ecco
★★★★

I like maps, / because they lie. / Because they give no access to the vicious truth. / Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly / they spread before me a world / not of this world. (loc. 369*)

Szymborska was an award-winning (Nobel-winning, in fact) Polish poet, and it's easy to see why. This collection pulls together some of her works, translated in English.

I haven't read any of Szymborska's poetry before, but honestly, these are poems I'd like to return to. I don't always understand them, but that's my preference in poetry; they're accessible enough that I could take something from each poem and complex enough to make me think, and think again.

He made himself a glass violin so he could see what music looks like. (loc. 564)

I don't speak Polish and can't comment on the translation, but I loved the introduction—for all that I enjoyed Szymborska's wit and sly commentary, I think I would have gotten less out of it without having read the introduction, written by one of the translators, first. Cavanagh spends some time talking about how they chose to approach the poetry, including rhymes and neologisms and alliteration. It was something I came back to again and again as the book progressed. How might this look in the original Polish, for example?

So much world all at once—how it rustles and bustles! / Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels, / the flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather— / how to line them all up, how to put them together? (loc. 497)

You can see that the translators leaned hard into rhyme and alliteration, presumably at the expense of literal translation. I imagine this is a judgement call for anyone doing translation work, not only but especially of poetry: When do you go for precision, and when do you go for vibe? I take no issue with the choice to go with vibe, but I'd be dead curious to see a translation that went for something directly literal, too.

Look at the happy couple. / Couldn't they at least try to hide it, / fake a little depression for their friends' sake! (loc. 687)

A high four stars and one I'm likely to return to.

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

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

Blog tour: "Summer of Love" by Kerri Maher

Summer of Love by Kerri Maher
Published July 2026 via Berkley
★★★★

In the present day, Dawn is struggling—she's stopped drinking, but sobriety is a tenuous thing, and she can't imagine telling her mother, a renowned vintner, that her relationship with alcohol is so different from her mother's. And in the past, Winnie too is struggling: She's rejected the stability of her upbringing in favor of a life as an artist, and while she finds creating rewarding, her relationship (passionate, complicated) leaves things to be desired.

How the stories overlap gradually becomes clearer as the book goes on. Or rather: It's clear early on that Winnie and Dawn's mother are sisters, but Winnie's been gone since Dawn was little; she's never had a chance to know Winnie as an adult, but she and Winnie have more in common than she knows to ask about.

I read this largely for the portion of the story that takes place in the past. I go through phases of wanting books about the 60s and 70s, though (unhelpfully) I can never quite decide whether I want something realistic or something idealized. This falls more in the former camp; although Winnie is wrapped up in the countercultural movement, this isn't all hippies and Woodstock and free love. Instead Winnie is trying to figure out how to eke out a creative life, and constrained by the limitations of the time and place, and unable to fully advocate for herself within her relationship or within her family. Meanwhile her sister Miranda—Dawn's mother—is taking over the family business, and although she has a head for it and a love for it and a strong support system, the 60s and 70s are not an easy time to be a woman in male-dominated business.

Overall it's a fairly quiet book. My heart went into my throat when Winnie had the ethics run-ins (vague to avoid spoilers!), but that's resolved quietly too. At some point it became clear to me how the family parts of things were going to play out, and from there it was largely a matter of the pieces all coming together, a climax for the past storyline, a climax for the present storyline. Perhaps worth noting that there's a fair amount of discussion of drinking and sobriety, which will be appealing to some readers and warrant caution to others; there's no glorification of rock-bottoms, which is nice, but it's something that Dawn in particular spends a lot of the book thinking about.

3.5 stars for a thoughtful family story with some food for thought.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley and for inviting me to take part in a blog tour.

Review: "Glasses" by Adam Geczy

Glasses by Adam Geczy
Published July 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

Back to my favorite nonfiction series! This Object Lesson is about (you guessed it) glasses, an object that I know both quite well and not as well as I ought to. Did reading this inspire me to figure out where my poor neglected spectacles are and tote them with me to an evening class? Yes. Did they help? Arguably. Did I then immediately put them aside and go back to my glasses-less life? Yes.*

But I digress. In Glasses, Geczy traces the phenomenon of four-eyed life, delving a bit into the physical history of glasses (which, all things considered, haven't been around that long) and quite a bit more into the cultural history—who has historically worn glasses in TV shows and movies, what the implications are for character development, etc. It will probably surprise nobody to hear that glasses are often a stand-in for nerdiness or undesirability, though Geczy also discusses the role of sunglasses as symbols of mystery and privacy.

A couple of missed opportunities here. Geczy says that, looking at Pixar films, he can find only two uses of glasses, in "Inside Out" and "Turning Red." But...what about "The Incredibles"? Edna wears glasses, and the entire family wears masks at various points (not glasses but might be an interesting discussion point). I haven't seen most Pixar movies, so I took a quick scan of a Wikipedia list and immediately turned up "Up" and "Soul" as well; there might be others. Now, the inclusion of Edna would not weaken Geczy's broader point about the portrayal of characters with glasses, and I'm guessing that neither would the inclusion of the characters in "Up" and "Soul" and whoever else a more detailed look at Pixar movies turned up. That said, I tend to want more research than vibe in this series, and when I can so easily refute something the author says, I'm disappointed. (I also hoped for significantly more about glasses and the Khmer Rouge—it's something that Geczy brings up late in the book, but only in passing, which is too bad when it's something that makes such a strong point about the assumption that people with glasses have an intellectual bent.)

Although this isn't memoir, Geczy also tends to extend his own (unhappy) experience of wearing glasses as a child to what he assumes glasses-wearing is like for all children. I don't know that there's anywhere where more kids are impressed than unimpressed by glasses, but as someone who was very excited to get her first glasses at the age of eight (and for whom they were, socially, a nonevent), I think there's more nuance there, probably tied to location and gender and generation, among other things. I'm resisting (valiantly) the urge to poll my college alumnae about their experiences wearing glasses (or not) as children, and I'm only hanging on to that resistance because it would be an extremely unscientific poll (mine always are), but...this might have been a good opportunity for a more scientific poll.

More pressingly: Geczy makes several comments about eyewear sometimes being used to hide deformities or facial oddities, not just for the sake of the wearer but for the sake of the viewer. His comments about this are generally tangential (he doesn't go into this in any depth), or perhaps just flippant, but the implication throughout is that it's a good thing for people to not have to see people's disabilities or differences, and...well, it did not sit well. It reminds me of ugly laws, and surely we have come beyond those? It's a small part of the book but brought the whole thing down for me.

All told them, some interesting points and a lively voice, but since these are short books maybe not enough room to go into depth on all the things I would have liked to see. Not my favorite of the series so far, but I'm excited to see what else the series brings.

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

* The eye doctor told me that they were my driving glasses. I don't drive, I said. Then they're your not-reading glasses, he said. But that's never, I said. He thought I was joking, so I still don't really know when I'm meant to wear them.

Review: "The Weight of One Pomegranate" by Brynne Rebele-Henry

The Weight of One Pomegrante by Brynne Rebele-Henry
Published July 2026 via Soho Teen
★★★

Isa's sister Eleni was her north star—but Eleni died recently, suddenly, unexpectedly, and her death has torn Isa's whole world apart. And to make matters worse, she's only now finding out just how much Eleni didn't tell her.

I read this largely on the strength of Rebele-Henry's Orpheus Girl. I'm cautious with books about grief these days, but I like a coming-of-age story and stories with queer characters, and, well, curiosity calls. Isa's grief is still new and raw, and she's still trying to understand her place in the world now that her sister is no longer there to show her the way.

Some mornings, when I wake up, I've forgotten. Then I swing open the bedroom door only to realize that it's not the door to our room anymore. And something dark and sharp edges its way into my throat and makes it hard to speak. It's like falling, the remembering. (loc. 49*)

That grief is visceral and real, but I struggled to connect with the characters in other ways. Isa's parents are shadows of themselves and whispers on the page (or, more often, off the page); she starts to understand her sexuality throughout the book, but it's unclear how close she really is to the person she likes and whether she really likes them or more the idea of them. I can read Isa as neurodivergent or as someone who simply hasn't found her people yet, and though it doesn't really matter for the purposes of the story, I'm left with a lot of questions. (There are some letters in the book, incidentally, one of which brings Isa some peace but for me again raises some questions.)

The language is lovely, and I do wonder whether I might take more away from this one if I come back to it in the future. Not a bad one to pick up for poetic writing and a quieter look at grief.

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

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

Review: "70,000" by Lenna Jawdat

70,000 by Lenna Jawdat
Published July 2026 via Central Avenue Poetry
★★★★★

In 1948, alongside the other events that comprised the formation of the Israeli state, some 70,000 books were removed from Palestinian homes and libraries. Some 6,000 are now in Israeli libraries, where most Palestinians cannot access them; the remaining 64,000 have presumably been lost to history. Jawdat, herself a poet of Palestinian descent, set out to illustrate this loss in the simplest of ways: by writing out the numbers 1 to 70,000.

The numbers start out simply—columns on a page. The columns tighten as Jawdat seeks to fit more numbers on each page, pens change, the columns expand and contract and fit themselves into and around art, interspersed with history (family history, Palestinian history) in the form of poetry.

I ask my partner to help me write numbers, notes Jawdat. He wrote less than 20 before tiring. (168*)

This is an inherently political book—there is no way for it not to be—and it is sharp and pointed and painful. Palestine is for Jawdat an abstraction to a point, a place her forebears fled and a place she does not know if she will ever be allowed to visit. And it is also, to her, an intensely real place, one tied up in family and scent and memory and war. And still a place she does not know if she will ever be allowed to visit.

What I like in poetry is sometimes idiosyncratic, but I like poetry that asks me to work for it, that asks me to think, that do something interesting with form. And this delivers in spades. My favorite poetry collection that I've read in a good long time.

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

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

Review: "Ungodly Rich" by Katharine McGee

Ungodly Rich by Katharine McGee
Published July 2026 via Crown
★★★★

When Julia meets her boyfriend Harry's family, it's something of a shock to the system—they aren't an ordinary family but a business empire in and of themselves, and they're jaw-droppingly powerful and rich...some might say ungodly rich. And there's just one tiny thing that Harry hasn't told her...his name isn't Harry. It's Ares. And there's a reason his family is so powerful.

The squeal I squelt when I saw that McGee had a new series in the works—I'm still not over the fact that the American Royals series is complete, and the Queen's Match duet sent me down so many Wikipedia rabbit holes that I'm surprised my laptop didn't overheat and die. Like many kids, I had D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, and you'd better believe it stuck with me...so this was a total delight.

This is the Greek gods if they'd managed to make it into the modern age with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of savvy. They've adapted—maybe people are no longer leaving offerings or building temples, but they've found other ways to stay relevant and powerful, and they've found ways to maintain privacy even in a world where everyone has a camera and the Internet in their pocket. What they haven't found is a way to make peace with each other...or a way to welcome newcomers into the fold.

This is full of drama, and it's delicious. McGee doesn't write her characters squeaky-clean—rather, some of her most interesting characters are grasping and determined and focused. They want to maintain their positions or gain better positions; they have power without necessarily accountability. They make bad choices, and choices that hurt other people, and at the same time you're able to root for them, because it's possible to see where they're coming from just how much they have on the line.

Not sure how long this series will be, but I'll be along for the ride.

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

Review (Deutsch): "Die romantischen Tragödien eines Drama Kings" von Harry Trevaldwyn

Die romantischen Tragödien eines Drama Kings von Harry Trevaldwyn
Übersetzt von Henriette Zeltner-Shane und Sylvia Bieker
Herausgegeben 2026 von Dragonfly
★★★★

Es ist ein neues Jahr, und Patch hat einen Plan: Jetzt ist das Jahr, dass er seinen ersten Freund finden wird...seinen ersten Kuss bekommen...und natürlich die Hauptrolle in dem Theaterstück gewinnen.

Auch natürlich: Nicht alles geht genau nach Plan.

"Drama King", sagt der Titel, und der Titel hat Recht. Patch hat viele Emotionen und viele Ideen und viel Persönlichkeit. Er ist ein echter Charakter, mit Ecken und Kanten; er macht nichts ruhig. Patch kann ganz schön anstrengend sein—aber er ist auch (normalerweise) ein guter Freund und jemand, der immer (okay, fast immer) das Richtige tun will.

Ich freue mich, dass ich nicht mehr Teenager bin. Es macht doch immer noch Spaß, Bücher über dramatische Teenager zu lesen, und Patch ist keine Ausnahme. Sein Herz ist (mehr oder weniger) an der richtigen Stelle, aber er ist immer noch jung und hat kein Augenmaß.

Diese Übersetzung passte mir (als eine nicht-flüssige Leserin) hervorragend: schnelllebig, mit unvergesslichen Charakteren und schlagfertigen Dialogen. Und hey! Ein neuer Zungenbrecher für mich: Auf den sieben Robbenklippen sitzen sieben Robbensippen, die sich in die Rippen stippen, bis sie von den Klippen kippen (loc. 3016). Sag das fünf Mal schnell!

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Review: "Tadpoles in the Milk" by Mildred Roseman Gackle

Tadpoles in the Milk by Mildred Roseman Gackle
Published November 2018 via Wasteland Press
★★★

In 1950, Gackle set off for rural Kenya. She'd taken a position as a missionary nurse, and she stayed for the better part of a decade, until persistent illness took her home.

I didn't realize the time frame when I picked this up—I hadn't clocked the author's name, which might have given me a clue, and I guess I assumed that this was a much more recent experience. I was interested in the book for the medical-care-in-a-different-context aspect (what can I say, I like medical memoir), but the time frame ended up being one of the more compelling aspects.

Some things fascinated me: At one point some women in the community were scared by a streak in the sky, and Gackle writes that Fortunately some of the missionaries returning from the States had told us about these marks and the new planes that made them (96). To think how recent that was! I mean—Gackle was in a different generation (she died in 2024 at the age of 100), and this was literally a lifetime ago, but still.

Later, she describes an event where the missionary doctor came in and said we were going to have to do something we had never done before, and we needed to get started right away. [...] We had never done a blood transfusion. (102) A blood transfusion as the height of modern medicine! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised—if I remember correctly, there's a Cherry Ames book from roughly the same time period that I think also discusses blood transfusions in very basic terms—but it's just...a reminder of what limited means they had, I suppose. To add to this, the mission hospital had electricity but not plumbing, so (for example) scrubbing in for surgery involved washing with water that had been hauled in and boiled.

Other things horrified me: During the Mau Mau Rebellion, the colonial government issued guidelines to protect oneself...and those guidelines included things like "do not let Africans walk behind you" and "be suspicious of all Africans" (28). Again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but really! What rot! Fortunately Gackle realized pretty quickly that that wasn't a way to live, and she writes about the locals with respect and affection, but it was striking to read.

Or this (Ernie being the lone doctor): Ernie's habit was to pray with each patient before surgery. He briefly explained the plan of salvation, asked if he or she would like to accept Jesus as Savior right then, and followed with a short prayer for health and recovery for the patient and for wisdom and guidance for us. (105) I understand that this was a mission hospital, and conversions were paramount (perhaps more so than medicine, as we'll discuss in a moment), but this troubled me. Here the doctor was in a position of significant power—a white man in a colonial setting, presumably the most educated person for miles around, the only person for miles around who was capable of performing surgery, the patient's life literally in his hands. The pressure to accede to the doctor's request must be immense in that context, no? Whether or not you fully understood what he meant, and whether or not you wanted to.

This story is told in the context of those blood transfusions, and—mild spoiler, sorry—the patient survived the surgery but ultimately didn't make it. What he did do was tell his wives that they were Christian now, and so his story is treated as a success: What to include when I had an opportunity to speak [in the States, about mission work] was easier this second furlough. [...] The story of Arap Segem, his three wives, his blood transfusions and his conversion was a good way of demonstrating the value of having a doctor at Tenwek. (111) Now...I understand that I'm coming at this from a different context and background and so on, but oh gosh. If I'm ever in hospital, I really don't want it to be a hospital where the medical staff will consider it a success if I die so long as they manage to convert me to their religion before that happens.

With all that in mind...Gackle's telling makes for a lively book, and she seems like a good person to know. The obituary I found said that she'd written this with her grandchildren in mind, and I do hope they'll keep copies in her memory.

Review: "Sourland" by Ariel Delgado Dixon

Sourland by Ariel Delgado Dixon
Published June 2026 via Random House
★★★★

Sourland is one part an institution and all the other parts nothing but rejection of the institution. There, Sapphire has spent year upon year building a hardscrabble queendom of weed-growing misfits. Into that kingdom stumble Frankie, an erstwhile ballerina, and Fizz, a local with a complicated past of his own. And everyone has a hidden agenda.

I had to think for a while about what it was about the premise that appealed to me here. I'd not be cut out for work on an under-the-radar weed farm—I'd be too worried about getting busted, I guess. And while I'm all for broader legalization of pot, my personal interest in it is somewhere between "limited" and "none." But: I like messy interpersonal relationships. I like a bit of grit. I like learning about things that have nothing to do with my daily life. Sourland has all of those.

Three months became five years, five years went to dust. (loc. 112*)

Sapphire is by and large secondary here; she's the one calling the shots and it's her farm that brings people in (and, sometimes, chews them up and spits them out), but really the story is Frankie and Fizz's. Frankie, who knows what she wants and, mostly, what she's willing to do to get it; Fizz, who is perhaps more used to letting the currents take him where they will, but...those are some powerful currents, and he is also a strong swimmer. Nobody is terribly good and nobody is entirely likable, which is about as things ought to be. All the lines I highlighted to take down as quotations are from Frankie's chapters, but of course nobody really sees themselves clearly; just as Frankie sees parts of Fizz and Sapphire that they themselves would not like to see, they see parts of her that are not in her own line of vision.

You don't need much more than the title to tell you that this is a bit of an odd one, but then...lucky for me, I like oddities.

*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.