Review: "Spindlewood" by Freddie Kölsch

 

Spindlewood by Freddie Kölsch
Published July 2026 via Balzer + Bray
★★★★

Lilac is the newest student at a secret boarding school for Seers—but there's just one problem. She isn't a Seer. She's never Seen a ghost in her life...and if she wants to stay in this new adventure, she'll have to keep everyone around her convinced that she can, in fact, See.

This makes for such a lively and compelling middle grade read. Lilac is great fun—she's book-smart but not always people-smart; she wants to be honest, but she also wants to stay at Spindlewood, and she's perfectly willing to engage in deception to do so; if she could See, she'd probably be near the top of her class, but...well, she can't. (There's a wry nod or two to the fact that Lilac, despite being the main character of this book, is not in fact the Chosen One...although I think we'll be learning more about Lilac's power, or lack thereof, in future books.)

I'd love to see more of the school and school grounds, but the cast is nicely diverse—a mix of ethnicities and body shapes and disabilities and genders and sexualities. I'm afraid Lilac does do one of my pet-peeve things in that she immediately identifies everyone by their correct gender, including the one character who is nonbinary (or at least uses they/them pronouns); as always, I am compelled to note that this isn't how it works, and I'd have been happier if she'd gotten it wrong and the character had said "Actually, these are my pronouns," and Lilac had had to course-correct. But it's a relatively minor thing in a book that is making a point to show a broad range of diversity.

There's also a rather arch narrator, and I am very curious to see what else might come out about the narrator as the series continues. It's very break-the-fourth-wall in places, and I kind of loved it because I don't read as much middle grade as I do books for a YA or adult audience, and it reminded me of the way that books for younger readers sometimes get away with more interesting structures than books for older readers—just like plays, I think, though I'm getting very off-topic here. Generally speaking I liked the characters, though. Lilac and her friend Emmanuelle have the most depth, but I really enjoyed the way they're good people but not too good and smart but not too smart. I hope the other characters get rounded out a bit in the next book, just because that'll complicate things even more.

So: engaging, smart, and inclusive; with any luck book two is already in the works, because I'd pick it up promptly.

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

Review: "A Ghost in the Middle Kingdom" by Anna Keibler

A Ghost in the Middle Kingdom by Anna Keibler
Published July 2025 via Black Rose Writing
★★★

Keibler was teaching English in China when she fell into an unlikely romance: Her paramour was a yak herder, and there were significant cultural and financial barriers to them being together. But Keibler believed in their romance, and she was determined to make it work—even if that meant putting her passport up as collateral to get the money Alimu needed to buy a truck so that he could earn more money and they could more easily be together. Even if that meant believing him when all the evidence suggested that he wasn't truthful. Even when...well, some things are better left for the book.

I felt better after hearing Alimu's explanation. [...] I wanted to believe Alimu, so I did. (112)

I went back and forth (and back and forth) on whether to round up or down from three and a half stars. It's a fascinating read: Keibler is a good writer, and more than that she's wide-open about the many bad decisions she made; no apology, no regrets, just "here's my experience" and keep moving. I had to take a break from reading midway through, because—and this is not criticism, just statement of fact—my own decision-making process is so different from Keibler's that I spent much of the book wanting to read with my hands over my face, peeking through my fingers.

I will say that the way she portrays things in the book is not the same as what the book description indicates. For example, the description says Not only does Alimu convince Anna to barter away her passport—rendering her ensnared in his embrace, but the way she tells it in the book, she made that particular deal on her own, and Alimu said after she told him that it was a bad idea. (This is about the only time in the book that I agreed with Alimu—terrible idea! Don't use your passport as collateral!) The overarching point is still the same, mind; it was a deeply problematic relationship and a precarious situation that got more precarious over time.

So, very much one in which no one person is making all the bad decisions—there are plenty to go around. (Also maybe worth noting that Keibler had a safety net in the form of her parents; she acknowledges this but also didn't want to ask them for help. And I get this, though it sometimes adds to the fingers-over-eyes sense.) Your enjoyment of the book might depend somewhat on your own personality; it's a compelling read, and there's a lot to learn about expat life in China, but whether or not it's relatable (and it doesn't have to be!) really comes down to the reader.

Review: "Lost Secrets of the Scottish Castle" by Jane Lovering

Lost Secrets of the Scottish Castle by Jane Lovering
Published July 2026 via Boldwood Books
★★★★

Pax knows she and her brother have bitten off more than they can chew when she sees their ancestral castle—the castle that is little more than a ruin and that they have just bought. But the ruin holds far more secrets than she could have bargained for...

Now, here's what I expected from the cover and the description: a present-day castle that has some issues but also a lot of potential, probably a romance, and oh, did I mention the present day? But it turns out that there is very little of the present day here: In very little time at all, Pax finds herself whisked off to another dimension...or at least another time.

Time-slip books are not something I've ever gravitated towards (though castle books are), and I'm honestly not sure this is one I'd have gone for if I'd realized that that was the direction it would go. Pax tumbles into something weird at the beginning of the book, and there was a while where I still thought that she'd get back to the present day sooner rather than later, but as it turned out...that was not to be. As it also turned out, I didn't really mind; it was a week when I desperately needed something light to read, and this fit the bill quite well. Pax isn't alone in the past—there's a group of archeological misfits with her, plus a whole bunch of people from the long-dead past who can't see the present-day group.

It makes for something quirky and a bit absurdist. I liked the characters—not all of them are fully fleshed out, but they do a remarkable job of being adults about the situation in which they've found themselves. There's a romance, but it's pretty low-key; much more of the book is really just figuring out what on earth is going on and of course how they get themselves out of their predicament. Go into it for the whimsy (and also to be grateful that you live in the present day) and with an open mind.

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars; rounding up because it was a right-time, right-place kind of read for me.

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

Review: "Dancing with a Demon" by Valerie Foster

Dancing with a Demon by Valerie Foster
Published July 2026 via Black Rose Writing
★★★

Foster's daughter Jenna seemed to be sailing along—until she stopped eating, and things got hard, fast. Suddenly conversations turned from college decisions to residential treatment programs, and everything about the future became uncertain.

Dancing with a Demon was first published in 2017, though even then it had been some years since Jenna's illness. This is helpful in terms of the telling of the story; though Foster clearly still remembers the fear and anguish of that time period, and remembers it viscerally, she also has enough distance to take a step back and look at the broader picture. (There are also excerpts from Jenna's own journals; previous editions of the book credit Jenna as a cowriter.) I do wish that this updated edition had removed weights from the book, as there are other ways to convey the seriousness of illness without including details that will be harmful to some readers.

Overall, though, there are some excellent points, including the very real limits to conversations with other parents in Foster's position and the inadequacy of many treatment programs. This thousand-dollar-a-day program was all about weight, and with our insurance covering it only on a week-by-week appeal, in-house treatment was very regimented. They could not keep a patient once he or she reached a certain number on the scale, whatever they determined as a reasonable weight for maintaining life, regardless of any real progress, mentally or emotionally. (loc. 659*) This is not an exception—insurance so often dictates what treatment somebody will get, as very few could afford that kind of out-of-pocket cost. Can you imagine the same thing for cancer? "Well, radiation has shrunk the tumor to a manageable size, so we're not covering surgery or chemotherapy, even though the tumor will almost certainly regrow without them."

A good addition to something of a sub-sub-genre.

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

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

Review: "Conflict of Interest" by Zarah Detand

Conflict of Interest by Zarah Detand
Published July 2026 via Storm Publishing
★★★★

Finn is days away from the next chapter of his life when he does something out of character—he plays along when a hot guy mistakes him for a prostitute. It's harmless fun...until he gets to his new role at the hospital and realizes that that hot guy is one of his supervisors. And also, neither of them really wants to leave the past in the past.

I had a bit of trepidation about this one, because "guy mistakes another for a prostitute" has so many possible ways to go wrong. The others of Detand's books that I've read have been delights, though, so I took the jump—and really, I should not have doubted. I'm very much enjoying the way Detand takes a look at the obvious route and says, in effect, "hmm, maybe not". The characters don't get it right all the time; they have minor misunderstandings and make decisions that don't always have a whole lot of common sense and take risks that they probably shouldn't. And at the same time...they have conversations as mature adults, and they take ownership of their actions, and they're good at (and passionate about) what they do without being unrealistic Wunderkinder. In short, they're people I would genuinely want to spend time with, which is both my favourite starting place for a romance novel and (let's be honest) though a depressingly low bar, one that many romance novels simply don't clear.

(Brief tangent: "Travis" is absolutely an evil-ex name in romance novels. Note that I'm talking specifically about romance novels—if your name is Travis, or your partner's name is Travis, or you named your kid Travis, that's great; I'm sure you or they are absolutely lovely. But in a romance novel? Absolutely a sign that they're not the end game.)

Altogether a satisfying read. I did note that the conflict had some similarities to that in Operation Boyfriend, but happily both the characters and the way the plot plays out are quite distinct. I'd happily read more in this series, and from Detand.

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

Review: "Our Knives Will Save Us" by Nephi Craig

Our Knives Will Save Us by Nephi Craig
Published July 2026 via Penguin Press
★★★★

Growing up, Craig had dreams of being a professional skateboarder—it was something of an accident (literal and figurative, I guess) that landed him in culinary school instead. It was culinary school that would get him out of the hole he'd found himself in...but it was a new look at traditional, Indigenous cooking that would ultimately pull him out of the holes that followed.

I didn't learn any of this in culinary school. During my formal education as a chef, the subject of Native foods never came up. The message I received from teachers and mentors, again and again, was loud and clear: When it came to cooking, all things French reigned supreme. (loc. 149*)

I'm perennially curious about stories and backgrounds that are not my own, and I have a growing list of books by Indigenous writers that I'm gradually working through (mostly while visiting my mother, whose library is much better for this than mine). Conveniently, Our Knives Will Save Us overlaps with another reading interest of mine, food memoir—the hook was baited, and this reader was caught.

This makes for a complicated story about family, heritage, addiction, loss, and coming home again. I love how much discussion of traditional foods Craig includes, as well as how clearly he calls out the ways in which Native cooking has been erased from history (or rather, appropriated by other cultures). I'm a rather disinterested cook (to the eternal dismay of my spouse), but I would cheerfully pore over a full book of recipes from Craig, ideally with even more history and context. (Would I make these recipes? Uh...I'd give the book to my mother, who is a much more interested cook than I, and then I'd hope she chose to make something with neither meat nor tomatoes.) I also love how straightforward he is in telling his story; when he makes excuses, it's in the context of coming back around and realizing that the excuses are just that, and gradually moving forward to make the changes he needs to make. A good one for those interested in memoir, Indigenous voices, food, recovery stories, and history.

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

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

Review: Short story: "Heat Trap" by Ellery Lloyd

Heat Trap by Ellery Lloyd
Published July 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

It's time for the annual girls' trip, this time to France. Lizzie's done the legwork, as usual, and if she isn't sharing all the details...well, there are reasons for that. But this is the first year she's brought a romantic partner with her. Mal is a dream boyfriend...except he isn't sharing all the details either.

This is relatively long for a short story, and it's satisfying. Too often stories with this general premise (group of friends off for a weekend) go off on a predictable route of "everyone is horrible to the point that the reader is happy when they start dying", but these friends are actually friends—maybe they take each other (or at least Lizzie) a bit for granted sometimes, but they genuinely want to spend this time together. This shouldn't be a surprise in this kind of story, and yet it was...and a pleasant surprise at that.

Another nice thing: There's a villain, but honestly a fairly run-of-the-mill one rather than an Evil Villain Who Is Evil. There's villainy, but it's an appropriate amount for this length of a story; I enjoyed that the story briefly got my pulse up without tipping over into caricature.

Honestly, my only complaint? I would have liked to read a version of this as a full-length book. And that's not much of a complaint at all.

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

Review: "Daughter of the Mountains" by Fatimah Asghar

Daughter of the Mountains by Fatimah Asghar
Published July 2026 via One World
★★★★

Poems of homeland and family and love lost.

This is a fairly wide-ranging collection, drifting from mountain yearnings to observations on history and homeland to more maybe more expected reflections on relationships that have seen better days.

My favourite pieces here are about homeland and history, my favourite lines about yearning for the mountains. The poem [the women in my family] talks about names lost to time: women's names, that is; only the winds & only the mountains / keep them. we've forgotten the names, writes Asghar (24*). This year I sat down with my in-laws and asked for as much family history, as many names, as they could tell me; the men's names stretched back generations, but the women's names (many of which had been changed in marriage, anyway) had been lost to time. (One of those things that transcends culture, I think: Men's names hang on and women's names drop off the page.)

Another poem, [other life], tells itself in reverse, and if I'm going to pick apart one of these poems on my own time it's going to be this one—I love a bit of structural play in poetry, a bit of the unexpected. The poems about romance (and romance lost) didn't work as well for me, less because of facility with language and more because those are themes I see a lot of in contemporary poetry, but the range here means that a lot of readers will find something of interest.

*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 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.