Review: "The Boxcar Children" by Gertrude Chandler Warner

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
First published 1924
★★★

Four orphaned children in the 1920s find an old boxcar and move in. This was one I read in childhood, and when I stumbled across it I thought I'd give it a quick reread to see how memory held up.

This is of course a deeply romanticized version of homelessness, and also a deeply romanticized version of orphanhood. The children are all sickly good and sweet and hardworking—never the smallest complaint—and for all that they're living rough in the 1920s, they also don't struggle: There's never any question that Henry, the eldest, will be able to find work to support them (and indeed, on his first attempt he finds a wealthy doctor who is more than happy to pay Henry handsomely, and daily, to do odd jobs—imagine if this had been written a few years later, in the Depression!); they never struggle to find sufficient healthy food (within a couple of days they're cooking up hearty stews); when they decide they need plates and cups and so on, off they go to find a dump in the woods, and lo! A dump appears, with everything they could possibly want. If there's any grief over the loss of their parents, we don't see it; they're perfectly happy and self-sufficient until their extraordinarily wealthy grandfather steps in, and then they're perfectly happy to step into a rather more pampered life.

Now. With all that in mind, I remember this being wonderful for the imagination as a child—who among us who read this as a kid didn't dream of running away to live in a boxcar in the woods? Sometimes I still wish it were a possibility. (I also remember a moment in the book where one of the characters is cross for a half second, and everyone is shocked because it's so out of character, but that didn't happen in the book I just read...so I do wonder whether there are a couple of different editions floating around out there!) Sort of a shame that they're only actually in the boxcar for a single book, as reading about rich kids with basically unlimited resources is less fun than reading about kids figuring it out, even if in a very improbable way.

I'd forgotten that their grandfather tells them that they should all go to college, which is great—there's certainly a fair amount of class-based expectation there, I wonder how many girls in the 1920s had the good fortune and privilege for college to be a given.

Also fascinating to see the different covers on this; for a book about children in the 20s they wear some awfully 80s clothing on the covers! I understand why (more appealing to contemporary, or contemporary-at-the-time-of-an-edition-being-published, readers), but this would have been so different a story in the 80s.

Review: "My Chance to Fly" by Samantha Tonge

My Chance to Fly by Samantha Tonge
Published August 2026 via Boldwood Books
★★★

Una's life is regimented, and that's just the way she likes it. She's open with her best friend and with this mother, but with really nobody else: She keeps her communication direct and to the point and avoids doing anything new. So flying to southern Germany on a whim is not exactly in character...

I picked this up because, as much as I love travel books, they don't often take the characters to Germany, and I was curious about what Una's experience would be like. I enjoyed her time in Germany—she gets to do some things that a lot of tourists don't necessarily get to experience, and Konrad, her German contact-turned-paramour, is good company. It's probably lucky that they turn out to be a good fit, because it could be awkward if he kept wanting to do things together and she really wasn't into it, but generally he comes across nicely. It's also interesting how much her interactions with Konrad bring Una out of her shell—less a matter of "he's the one who really sees her" (which is good! I'm not a fan of romance in which, you know, only he sees the beauty behind her glasses or whatever) and more a matter of...he's the catalyst for positive change in her life.

On the one hand I find the premise a little silly (fly hundreds of miles in the hopes that a specific bird will show up?), but on the other hand it's sweet. Life throws a few unexpected wrenches at Una, including one that forces some...different questions than she necessarily expected to need to answer. I didn't mind that (didn't see that particular twist coming until shortly before Una did), though I didn't love the way things with her parents resolve (felt a bit 180). There's a fair amount of German sprinkled throughout the book, and for the most part it's solid; nice that it goes beyond "ja" and "nein".

All in all, a fun romance that takes readers somewhere new, and I can't argue with that.

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

Review: "Suffer a Witch" by Joy McCullough

Suffer a Witch by Joy McCullough
Published August 2026 via Dutton Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Admit it, the priests told you, and twelve years was old enough for you to know you must listen to church authorities. Old enough to know the truth didn't matter anyway. Old enough to know someone had to pay for a boy's wounded pride. (loc. 669*)

McCullough was a young teenager, a preacher's daughter, when a new youth pastor was hired at her father's church. That is not the point she describes as the tipping point, the moment when things could have been different—but fundamentally, this pastor who groomed her and sexually assaulted her tipped her life upside down. And: He was not subtle. And: Nobody spoke up, not when it was McCullough and not when it was her sister and not when it was the next girl behind closed doors with the youth pastor.

The story is devastating. McCullough is so clear about what happened and the ways in which she was silenced, both then and later; also the ways in which it affected her, then and later. (I won't get into the family parts of things here, but...if she's not still angry, she's a more forgiving person than I.) Her story comes in conversation with women accused of witchcraft—in Salem, in Sweden, in Scotland, beyond. (See the quotation up top.) It's also in conversation, at times, with itself: I do say that, in a previous draft, in a poem my editor says / isn't quite landing (loc. 855).

I had some trouble with the story format—verse works best for me when I can't just read it as sentences flowing one into another with extra line breaks, and when I have to slow down and reread to get all of the nuance and wordplay. While there is some play of structure and word choice here, for large parts of the book I was able to just read straight through. This is more personal preference than anything, but I probably would have found this a better fit for me in a different format (more prose, or a different style of poetry, or maybe a play). That said, maybe also worth noting that the formatting wasn't quite right on my Kindle (I read an ARC and assume this will work better in the final version, so not something to worry about), and if I'd realized earlier I would have switched to reading on my phone, where things like page breaks came across more clearly. And if you like your poetry on the more straightforward side, this is likely to be a better fit for you.

3.5 stars; structure wasn't for me, but the story is powerful and important, and I love the tie-ins to history. At one point McCullough mentions a previous book being called "timely" when it came out in 2018, and she notes that it was timely then and now and in the 1970s and in the 1610s and in so many years in between, and this feels the same way. It's a timely book, published now when so many stories have been told about abuse within churches and religion (and when restrictive evangelical religion is doing its best to take over the US), but it also would have been timely five years ago or ten or fifty, and I expect it will be timely still some years from now.

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

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

Review: "Beyond Borders" edited by Sue Averill

Beyond Borders, edited by Sue Averill
Published 2016
★★★

A short collection of essays about nursing in humanitarian contexts. I picked this up because I'd read a longer collection by the woman who edited Beyond Borders and found it engaging; also because humanitarian work (while not without ethical problems, sometimes significant ones) is interesting to read about, so I probably would have picked this up anyway.

In many ways, I knew it would be like this, but I don't think it is possible to viscerally feel the depth of this challenge without actually being inside it. (Heather Starshine McLeod, "Burst Wide Open," loc. 207)

Beyond Borders is short, coming in at well under 100 pages by Kindle estimation. There are ten essays, and several writers contributed more than one; I suspect One Nurse at a Time (the organization through which this book was published) was quite a small outfit, and judging by its website, which was last updated in 2023, it may since have closed its doors. The writing quality here is variable (some proofreading would not have gone amiss) but overall decent; for the most part I really just would have liked longer essays, and more of them. (Interestingly, a number of the essays in this book seem also to be in Nurses Beyond Borders, which was edited by one of the contributors to this book and published a few years earlier; I may have to see if my library has that one.)

One interesting thing: Sue Averill writes in "T Girl" that Children in my world don't play with other kids one day and die the next. [...] Children in my world don't die in my arms, with me impotent to offer more than mumbled assurances that she was among friends. (loc. 732) It's a poignant moment, but it is not lost on me that her cowriter for the previous essay in the book, "Susy" (and also her cowriter for On a Mission), writes in yet another essay in this book ("Mae Mae"), about the premature death of her own son. It's not in and of itself contradictory; Averill is writing about her own experience, not about Elizabeth Coulter's. But that disconnect could be the starting point for a book all its own.

Review: "Solstice" by Carol Gilligan

Solstice by Carol Gilligan
Published August 2026 via Random House
★★★★

Two people come together, and fall apart, and come together again. It's a push-pull relationship: Eve and Gabe have a happy marriage, three children, a partnership. They've been together long enough that sometimes their attention strays. But sometimes the rules change, or maybe the consequences, and so Eve finds herself alone in Amsterdam, choreographing a ballet and wondering what comes next.

Gilligan is best known for her feminist theory, and although I haven't read In a Different Voice, I've run across it enough times to be intrigued when I saw that Gilligan has turned to fiction. (Also, not to be shallow about it, but that cover!)

The book is functionally historical fiction, though it covers some world events that are, ah, extremely timely. What interests me most is the way the scenes are set up—there's often a significant time jump between scenes, so even if Eve is having (for example) a fairly intense or upsetting conversation in one scene, by the next scene things have moved on.

In places it gets a bit...I was going to say "theoretical", but I think "abstract" is more accurate. For my tastes, anyway—there's always a sweet spot of enough bridges to keep connections clear but not so many that readers feel talked down to; I think in places a bridge or two would have been helpful to me. (Though, too: Not everything has to be related!)

3.5 stars and some food for thought.

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

Review: "On a Mission" by Sue Averill and Elizabeth Coulter

On a Mission by Sue Averill and Elizabeth Coulter
Published 2017
★★★

Averill's work as a nurse has taken her around the world, and On a Mission focuses on various trips she took to places in dire need of more medical care. This is organized as a set of essays, most (not all) covering experiences during those trips: to Darfur, to Sierra Leone, to Uganda; to Pakistan, to Ethiopia, to the Philippines (though the Philippines chapter has a somewhat different focus...).

It's a fast and interesting read, if at times a difficult one; there's so much loss and devastation and senseless violence. Averill's experience is both wide and deep, and this kind of work calls for an innate ability to think on one's feet and come up with creative solutions.

Most of the book is told from Averill's perspective, but a couple of chapters/essays pull more from her coauthor's side of things (Coulter being a nurse and writer). I didn't love those chapters—there wasn't enough context for me to understand immediately who was talking and why, and the extended "joke" about pretending that a (fictional, mercifully) new nurse was a sexual predator was...not actually funny. Shockingly. On the whole I probably would have preferred a longer-form memoir to these largely disconnected essays, but then, I always prefer a longer-form memoir to largely disconnected essays, so there's that.

There are a couple more books published by the volunteer organization that Averill seems to have worked with (though the actual trips were, as I understand it, through Doctors Without Borders), and I'd be interested to pick those up too.

Review: "Tales of Tanzania" by Hamish McGlashan

Tales of Tanzania by Hamish McGlashan
Published May 2015
★★★

McGlashan was a young doctor in 1960s Britain when he decided he wanted an adventure, and also less medical red tape—so off he went to Tanzania, where the salary was better and the opportunities broader (assuming you were White and British and male, of course).

It must have been a fascinating time in Tanzania, which only (with the exception of Zanzibar) gained independence in 1961. McGlashlan was, as he notes, the last of the breed (90); the British of course only trusted themselves to provide medical care, and so he was in Tanzania in the last years of Britain sending medical staff down on colonial business. It is worth noting, incidentally, that McGlashan readily acknowledges the racism inherent in his appointment; he says, among other things, that I was still underqualified and underexperienced for the role and there must have been many Asian doctors in the country who could have claimed precedence (90), had they been allowed or trusted to do so. (He says earlier that there were no African doctors in Tanzania in the 60s, which I assume is why he specifies qualified Asian doctors here; I'd be curious to know more about the state of medical education for Africans before and after independence.)

So by and large it's an engaging book. There's a certain amount of cowboy-ing, of course (common in memoirs discussing medical work in underresourced places...especially if those memoirs are written by men), and I imagine that practicing medicine in Tanzania now is a very different ballgame. The book could have used a final polish, as there's a certain amount of repetition (I didn't need a third mention of using rotting bananas to attract butterflies!), but if this is the sort of thing to interest you, it's not a bad addition to the subgenre.

Review: "Alchemy of Souls" by Adriana Mather

Alchemy of Souls by Adriana Mather
Published August 2026 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★

Grayson wants to bring down his uncle. Eloise wants a better life for her family. They've been in each other's orbit for years, but kept their distance...until they have no choice but to work together to ensure their mutual survival.

I had it in my head that this would be a boarding school book, but it's more of a restrictive college with boarding school rules (curfew, very limited freedoms, sneaking out to drink, etc.) setting. This is a highly regulated society with strict class division, which plays a huge role. Think dystopia books from the early 2010s; Eloise and her family are on the poverty track with very limited options for upward trajectory, while Grayson's family is high up in the food chain and determined to keep it that way.

I loved the premise (and the cover!) but could have used a bit more by way of worldbuilding. It was late in the book before I got a sense of what the wards were, and I never did figure out why Eloise's bestie from Maine has an aggressive Irish(?) accent. (Maggie doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose in the book—she's mostly accent and Eloise feeling guilty that she doesn't have time to hang out with Maggie because she's trying to save her own life.) I'd also be curious to know more about how the wards, which seem to have quite strict and limited borders, work across continents, and what exactly they do beyond keep out the "riffraff".

This is YA, so there's a romance; it's not really my jam, but it'll be good for readers who like enemies-to-lovers and a pretty high level of knight-in-shining-armor heroics. I wondered for a while whether this might be the first in a triology (again: dystopia books from the early 2010s!), but things feel fairly wrapped up by the end, so while it's possible that it'll spin off in other directions (or with other characters?), this makes for a quick read on its own.

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

Review: "Stepping Up" by Kiara Valdez, illustrated by Diana Tsai Santos

Stepping Up by Kiara Valdez, illustrated by Diana Tsai Santos
Published August 2026 via HarperAlley
★★★★

Andover was an opportunity Valdez couldn't pass up—an excellent education, a bit of breathing room from a sometimes complicated home life, the promise of future opportunities. It was also a place where she did not fit the mold, and where students who did fit the mold kept reminding her of that...and a place where, eventually, she found her people.

There are relatively few boarding school memoirs out there (though plenty of fiction!), and even fewer written by people who were minority students. For Valdez, Andover represented a certain amount of culture shock—her family and friends did not have the money to go to Broadway shows, or buy the new iPhone, or take fancy vacations; Andover was also way Whiter than she was used to. (Wikipedia says that Andover is more racially diverse than Massachusetts generally, but still very different from Valdez's New York.)

For the most part, Valdez writes Andover as something that was for her a good experience—she made close friends and tried things she wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to do. (And, well, my own boarding school was very different from the prep school environment of Andover, but boarding school is an experience that is really like none other.) There are few big dramas here, and certainly not any involving Valdez directly. This isn't always exciting as far as book plots go, but I can't object because 1) that's certainly better for Valdez! and 2) honestly, I'm still looking for a boarding school book that echoes my own experience, and while this isn't it (for myriad reasons, most of which I knew going in), this does feel like much more a reflection of, well, a normal experience of boarding school. What Valdez did experience, over and over again, were microaggressions—sometimes unthinking ones and sometimes, ah, they were not unthinking. (And not so micro.) I can imagine this being a really valuable book for a teenager who is changing environments in the way that Valdez did, not necessarily to boarding school but...things along those lines.

As an aside, I loved the inclusion of step here—it's something I haven't seen performed in a very long while, and it was so lovely to see as an important part of Valdez's experience at Andover. I don't know that much about step, so I'd have loved a bit more history here, but it's a nice plot point. A bit more about Valdez's family also would have been interesting, though that may not have been somewhere she wanted to go for any number of reasons, which is of course entirely fair.

3.5 stars; this is one I'd like to see in a lot of high school libraries.

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

Review: "Gingerbread Bones" by Lindsay Lovise

Gingerbread Bones by Lindsay Lovise
Published August 2026 via Entangled: Mayhem Books
★★★★

Georgie knows exactly why she and her brother are two of the teenagers selected to take part in a reality TV program that drops a group of "troubled" teenagers in the woods and forces them to learn some survival skills and adapt: Their parenting-influencer stepmother is the one who conceived of the show, and that same stepmother hates them. Georgie figures they can get through a week or two in the Maine woods, and they'll be eighteen and out of the house soon enough...but what she doesn't know is that "learn some survival skills" is about to get really, really literal.

Everyone thinks Ashley is so kind and wholesome, when really she's the razor blade hidden in the Halloween candy. (loc. 139*)

I picked this one up for the woods: I love me an everyone-might-die murder story set in the woods, because who doesn't? (Don't answer that.) What ended up interesting me most, though, is the fact that all of these teenagers have been labelled as "troubled". They've been cast for drama, of course; every one of them has their own backstory and their own problems. Every one of them is also likely to be, in the eyes of the show and the public, a perpetrator rather than a victim. Their voices don't count. No matter what happens.

We are disposable. And I'm afraid [the production company] knows it. (loc. 2362)

The romance didn't (surprise!) interest me much, but I loved how much the characters—well, mostly the teenagers—were allowed to grow throughout the book. Early on, especially, they're all guarded and angry and not happy to be there. And certainly they don't get any happier to be out in the woods; the woods make sure of that. But I've read too many mysteries (written for teenagers and adults alike) in which virtually every character is so perfectly awful that I'm just hoping that their death will come sooner rather than later, and Gingerbread Bones sees that and steers mindfully away from it.

There's a paranormal element, which is not generally my jam; entirely personal preference, but I like it better when the big bads are all things that can happen in real life. Paranormal stories just don't give me that visceral thrill. That said, I did know going in that there was a paranormal element, which helped, and that part of things was done well. There's a twist toward the end that I had half guessed at, but in a shape that I couldn't have known to guess at, which was great. All in all, a speedy read that will be perfect for autumn when the weather cools down a bit.

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

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