Review: "Overdue" by Stephanie Perkins

Overdue by Stephanie Perkins
Published October 2025 via Saturday Books
★★★★

Ingrid has been stuck in somebody else's dream job for too long. (You might say she's overdue for a new job.) Her coworker Macon goes a long way to keeping that position tolerable—but Ingrid has never been able to act on her attraction, because she has a long-term boyfriend. But when Ingrid and her boyfriend Cory agree to take a month-long break, a hiatus to explore dating other people (which they both think is...overdue) before getting back together and planning their long-awaited (overdue?) wedding, it seems like the perfect chance to hook up with Macon.

One minor snag: Macon doesn't agree. And that complicates things.

I read all of Perkins' YA books back in the day, so I was eager to see what she'd do with an adult romance. This is both slow and lively: Overdue takes place over a year, and it's late in the book before Ingrid and Macon have a real conversation about their feelings and decide to give it a go; consequently, a lot of the book is about Ingrid dating around with other people, and figuring out next steps with her career, and building a stronger platonic friendship with Macon. It sounds like some of the career stuff might be inspired by Perkins' own trajectory, though of course I don't know how much of it.

Two favorite things about the book: first, there are no evil exes. I comment on this all the time when I read romance novels, so I know I'm a broken record here, but I love it when the ex is allowed to be, like...just a person. A good person, even! Just not the right person. Cory, Ingrid's boyfriend-turned-temporary-ex-turned-whatever could so easily be a cliché; instead, he's allowed to be a decent person and decent boyfriend who just isn't sure that this is the right relationship for him. He and Ingrid talk about their relationship and their break like the adults that they are, and when they get jealous or have questions they, well, talk it out. Macon's ex is a little less fleshed out, but she's not evil either—again, she's just not the right person for Macon. As ever, although this feels like a small thing, it does a lot of work to elevate the book. And the second, related thing: Ingrid does date around while on her break from Cory. Sometimes it's terrible one-off dates (I hope the more entertaining and less traumatic ones are pulled from real life), and sometimes things go further—and, again, it's not all smarmy assholes who are just after one thing. She meets good people and people she clicks with...and that doesn't mean it works out. Romance-novel heroines who get to date around in a way that is completely normal are freaking unicorns. (Weirdly, this was more common in 1960s romance...but I digress.)

All of this makes for a pretty slow burn, though. On the one hand I'm glad of it—I don't need (or want) a rapid-fire friends-to-lovers-in-under-two-weeks sort of thing. On the other hand I started wondering whether a plot point could be taken out to tighten the book somewhat. (Macon's mother, maybe? I get why she's there, and she adds a different dynamic to the relationship, but the stuff with his aunt might be enough.) I'm on the fence about the house makeover; part of it sounds delightful, but part of me thinks that it's a little...not red-flaggy, but yellow-flaggy for a friend you aren't actually all that close with yet to let you redo their house entirely in your style. (Also. This is neither here nor there, but the cupboards should have been white or wood, and the curtains should have been blue and white, dang it.)

At any rate, a nice shift to adult fiction—I'll be interested to see where Perkins goes next. I'm not quite sure where this lands for me on a no-half-stars scale, but let's call it 3.5 stars.

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

Review: "Miss Matty" by Edeet Ravel

Miss Matty by Edeet Ravel
Published February 2025 via Linda Leith Publishing
★★★

Montreal, the early 1940s: Fran dreams of being a star—dreams of something far away from her humdrum life of poverty. Her secret boyfriend is away in the military, and she wants to be a young bride, to live in a beautiful house, perhaps to be so far away from her parents that she doesn't have to pretend not to know them in public. Her best friend Rita, who is comfortably middle class, has no such aspirations; she's just happy to be falling in love and enjoying life as a teenager.

Overall I found Miss Matty to be a bit slow but interesting nonetheless. The chapters are loosely split between Fran and Rita, with occasional departures into letters and other material; Fran's story is a regular narrative, while Rita's side of things is told in diary entries. Fran is not a particularly appealing character—so desperate for a life other than her own that she is constantly scheming, secretly at battle with the world; she's also so head over heels for her secret boyfriend that she can't hear see of the warning signs—but that's actually what makes the book interesting. Rita, whose story has less plot, understands Fran perhaps better than Fran does herself, and so we see both Fran's self-perception (which really only becomes more accurately self-aware at the end of the book) and Rita's more realistic perception. One for readers of quiet books; the dual perspectives made it worth the read for me, but I was glad it wasn't longer.

Review: "Call of the Camino" by Suzanne Redfearn

Call of the Camino by Suzanne Redfearn
Published October 2025 via Lake Union Publishing
★★★★

Reina has long wanted to follow in her parents' footsteps and walk the Camino. And when a chance comes, she takes it—better yet, it's a chance to one-up a work rival. So off she goes in the present day...and meanwhile, in the 90s, another woman is setting off on her own, rather different, journey.

When I was preparing to walk the Camino, more than a decade(!) ago, I read everything I could get my hands on—which turned out to be almost exclusively memoirs plus the occasional more academic book. It's only recently that I've been seeing more Camino fiction, and I can't tell you how much joy I've gotten from that.

I didn't really check the details on this one before picking it up (because really, did I need to know anything other than Camino novel?), so it took me a moment to get used to the two timelines (I had it in my head that the book was about a few middle-aged friends walking together...I was wrong), but once I got used to that it was all go. One of the characters is from Andorra, which was a delight; I once went to Andorra la Vella as side trip from Barcelona, but I don't think I've ever read anything set there.

Some of the plot points didn't feel necessary to me (a few too many near-death experiences), but what I really loved was the way Redfearn's own experience on the Camino, and her respect for it, comes through. You don't have to have walked the Camino or really know anything about it in order to appreciate the book, but if you are familiar with the Camino, you'll recognize a lot of the moments Reina experiences here.

A minor note if you read this and are thinking about walking the Camino yourself: the Camino does not take a minimum of 33 days, as Reina claims; I walked from SJPdP in 30 days, I knew other people who walked the same distance in less time, and there are any number of starting points and routes that take different amounts of time. Don't let Reina's confident but ill-informed estimate put you off if you don't have a month or more!

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

Review: "Cat" by Rebecca van Laer

Cat by Rebecca van Laer
Published October 2025 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

van Laer grew up with cats—cats and dogs and, really, something of a menagerie. More creatures than humans at times. And van Laer loved the dogs...but cats were her first love.

This is one of Object Lessons—a series of short books exploring ordinary objects. Now, whether cats can be called objects is debatable—I don't really think mammals are objects, so I'm going to go no, but Merriam-Webster is actually pretty vague on the subject, so let's run with it. The structure of the books varies, and for better or for worse I have fallen head over heels in love with the ones that are mostly history and research. What can I say? I'm a nerd. A catless-cat-lady nerd, as it happens, so I was hoping for some catnip for nerds.

Cat is largely memoir: an exploration of the cats that have helped to shape van Laer's life, first in childhood and then as an adult. She explores competing stereotypes of cat lovers and dog lovers—and, critically, what she needs in her life to be fulfilled. Numerous cats slink onto and off the page, but she focuses mostly on two: Gus, the cat van Laer brought into her relationship, and Toby, the cat her partner brought in.

I've heard it said that this is the key difference between pet owners: dog people wish their dogs were people; people wish that they were cats. (loc. 96*)

There's a lot of riffing here, which honestly feels kind of right for cats—I suspect that if cats could talk, many of them would be pretty selective about what they talked about...but a significant proportion would be good at riffing on whatever subject caught their attention. I could have used a bit more citation at times—there's a robust enough selection of references, but when van Laer suggests that people are more likely to return cats to shelters than they are to return dogs (she says this in the context of human allergies to pets, though within the context of the chapter it reads as a more general thing), I took myself down something of a rabbit hole to see what the data said. The short answer is that I still don't know, but one of the studies van Laer cites mentions the opposite (lower number of cat returns compared to dogs in study samples), and one of the studies that study cites looked at 3,204 dog relinquishments and 2,755 cat relinquishments, suggesting that there are in fact more dog relinquishments than cat relinquishments (in Denmark)...though this does not tell me whether this is proportional to the numbers of dog owners and cat owners, or pet dogs and cat dogs, or dog and cat adoptions, and I don't know if those numbers are generalizable to the US, so actually my research has done very little except prove that I am, in fact, still a nerd. How's that for a riff?

At any rate. This is a nice little memoir for cat lovers—though with the warning that if you have a hard time with discussions of pet deaths (van Laer talks about more than a few of them), this is likely not the book for you. (I'm generally unfazed by that sort of thing, but know yourself and your reading preferences.) I think I'm left wanting an Object Lessons book about animal shelters—to complete the research I didn't finish!

*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 Weaver Bride" by Lydia Gregovic

The Weaver Bride by Lydia Gregovic
Published September 2025 via Delacorte Press
★★★

Lovett's life is a ticking time bomb: unless she marries a Weaver, who can use her magic to enhance his own, before she turns twenty-one, she will be banished to the cloisters to spin her hair into magic until her power wears out in a few years. What happens after that, nobody knows; nobody returns from the cloisters alive. And so when a chance to compete for the hand of a wealthy Weaver comes her way...well, she can't turn it down.

This feels like one for fans of The Selection and Wither. I'm probably dating myself with those references, but they're what I thought of, with this combination of reality-style competition and girls desperate to survive past their twenties. There are elements of a fairy tale here (a little bit of Sleeping Beauty, a little bit of Rumpelstiltskin), but what interested me most was Lovett's magical gift (her Wit, in book parlance): she can get through any door, regardless of locks. There's a moment when it seems like this will be an advantage, something to set her apart from her competition—and then you're reminded that every girl maiden ("maiden" count: 130) in the competition has a Wit, and some might prove more valuable than others. What do you think you could do the most with? One maiden can find anything, as long as she knows what she's searching for; one maiden can mark windows and look through them later; still another can force truth with a kiss. It's not clear if most silkwitches have Wits that are so useful for, well, sneakery, but I think it's probably more that the ten who have been chosen for this competition have been chosen partly on the grounds of their Wits.

I was a little disappointed not to see those Wits used more heavily. Oh, Lovett sneaks around the manor, and a few of the other maidens do some sneaking of their own, but mostly the competition is a bit passive—waiting to see how they will be judged. And judged they are: It takes Lovett well into the book to realize that it isn't a fair competition (the men doing the judging are looking for, among other things, a maiden who is powerful but docile), and that even if she wins, her life will not necessarily be easier. The men are not shy about their disdain for certain maidens, because magic or no magic, it is the men who have the power. Lovett is not really in it to marry the man who is this competition's prize, but I wish she were a little more strategic—she's conspiring with a man named Eliot to find out what happened to his sister in the previous year's competition, but every time he reminds her that they have to be subtle and he can't show her favor, she agrees and then gets wildly huffy when he doesn't immediately make his interest in her public. ("smirk" count, mostly the two of them: 43) She's a teenager, so I suppose there are hormones and underdeveloped brains to consider, but it ends up feeling like she rarely acts in her own best interests.

Judging by the ending, this will likely be spun into a duology or trilogy—in which case I'd hope to see a closer look at this convent that unmarried silkwitches are consigned to. Lovett probably still has quite a bit of untangling of her life to do before she can rest...

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

Review: "Misty Copeland" by Gregg Delman

Misty Copeland by Gregg Delman
Published September 2016 via Rizzoli
★★★

Second of two books of photographs of Misty Copeland that I found at the library—after checking out the first one, I had to see how this would differ. This is more varied than Henry Leutwyler's take; the photos with Leutwyler look like they come from one photo shoot, with a uniform style, while the photos in Delman's book are from multiple shoots over multiple years. Some overtly balletic, in motion or still; some with Copeland in what appear to be costume pieces; some in simple leotards; some that would not look out of place in Vogue. (And, I think, some outtakes of a shoot for Copeland's memoir?) Again very limited words—a foreword by Copeland and an introduction by Delman (the latter a bit more interesting than the former, which holds little more than praise).

The photos are, again, great. It would be hard for them to be anything else! Not all to my style (a little too much sexy in places? Personal preference; I think I prefer ballet photos that are simpler but have explosive movement), but it's impossible to miss the skill on both sides of the camera. But what can I say—the word nerdery runs deep, and I'm reviewing my experience of "reading" this as a book, not just what I think of the photos themselves. My rating would have gone up with more words on these pages.

I do want to know: where are the photo books of other ballerinas? I'm not questioning why there are multiple books of photographs of Misty Copeland—you only need to look at a picture or two of her, or see her perform, to understand that (plus she either has a good PR team or is very good at PR herself). But why am I not also seeing books of photographs of...I don't know. Megan Fairchild, Isabella Boylston, etc.? Don't tell me Instagram has become the new coffee-table book!

Review: "Under a Spanish Sky" by T.A. Williams

Under a Spanish Sky by T.A. Williams
Published September 2025 via Boldwood Books
★★★

2016: Amy and Luke are taking a slow road trip across Spain, loosely following the (or rather, a) pilgrimage route to Santiago. They're traveling together out of necessity rather than fully free choice, but something pulls them together.

1314: Aimee and Luc are taking the slow route across Spain, slipping on and off the (or rather, a) pilgrimage route to Santiago. They were not the ones meant to be making this trip, but necessity bands them together...and something else pulls at them too.

Now. I cannot resist a Camino book. I have tried, and I have failed, and frankly I no longer try. And this one is interesting for a couple of reasons: First, the parallel story. I've read very little Camino fiction (when I originally looked for some, I could find precious little other than some pulpy-looking murder mysteries, and it turned out that I was able to resist those), but the little fiction I have read has been entirely contemporary; the one other historical novel I have on my Camino shelf is not even about the Camino, and I read it because it was about a different pilgrimage and that was the closest I could get at the time. Although my fourteenth-century history is not exactly stellar (and for the most part I prefer contemporary fiction anyway), it's clear that research went into this, and I enjoyed both the historical details—especially the info about the Templars—and the contrast between now and then.

The second thing that is interesting is that both Amy and Aimee are blind, and relatively recently so. I was a little disappointed that the contemporary story did not involve a more traditional pilgrimage (that is: walking), as that would have added another dimension. But I come at this from a biased place (I miss the Camino), and I got over that disappointment fairly quickly while reading. It helps, of course, that the 1314 story is on foot! In any case, nice to have blind main characters: they experience the world from a different perspective than Luke and Luc, and they're both quick to establish that while there are things that others can help with, they're neither incompetent nor helpless.

A few quibbles: First, Luke's backstory is a Dramatic Backstory that doesn't serve much purpose other than to give him, well, a Dramatic Backstory. It might have worked if there had been more follow-up on it, but it kind of drops off the face of the earth Finisterre, and we're left in the dark about how his career (among other things) will move forward, and what that means for him and Amy. It's a weak spot in a well-crafted story. And second, there are odd comments here and there that either rub wrong (Luke's friend asking, ahead of time, if he'll be able to "cope" with escorting a very attractive woman—what, has this man no self-control?—or Amy assuring the reader that she had a friend make sure that Luke was good-looking before she agreed to travel with him...it took many chapters for her to regain my respect) or just don't make sense (Amy's comment about her "guardians," who are never mentioned again and who have no place in the life of a fully competent adult woman). They aren't dealbreakers, but they were headscratchers. I also couldn't quite decide how I felt about the way the storylines intersect—clever or contrived?—but on the whole it worked for me.

A satisfying addition to my Camino library.

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

Review: "Outer Space Is Closer Than Antarctica" by Michelle Ott

Outer Space Is Closer Than Antarctica by Michelle Ott
Published September 2025 via Chronicle Books
★★★

Antarctica is a place of superlatives, writes Ott again and again. The biggest and the coldest and the iciest and so it goes. She made several months-long trips to the ice when she was younger, working janitorial and kitchen jobs not because those jobs were where her passions lay but because they let her, well, go to Antarctica.

This is something of a hybrid book: a memoir, but with perhaps a quarter or a third of the pages given over to illustrations. I can't really evaluate the illustrations, as I don't think they rendered properly in the advance copy that I read (leaving the black and white illustrations more or less intact but the more colorful ones with huge gaps), so I'm giving the book the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they'll make more sense in the final product.

The writing fell rather flat for me. I've been curious about Antarctica, and books about Antarctica, for years—since I was eleven or so, I think, sitting in the backseat of the car on a road trip while my mother read Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris aloud to us. Then there was Jerri Nielsen's Ice Bound, which, my gosh, I must reread... In the early days of blogging, I remember following someone who was working a similarly unglamorous job to Ott's first jobs in Antarctica and writing about it, and even now I sometimes think that maybe it's not too late; maybe I could uproot my life for a year and be a janitor at the bottom of the world.

This kind of floats from topic to topic, though, unstructured (or: there is a structure, but not one that made for a linear story) and without a lot of strong feeling. (I'm sure the emotion was there in the writing, but it didn't translate to me as a reader.) And I always want the hard facts, the specific stories: what a day looked like, what a week looked like, what the dorm rooms looked like, what it felt like dressing to go outside in Antarctica, more people and personalities. I'm also not quite sure what to make of the "outer space" part of things, either; as Ott notes, most places are farther away than outer space, and when I realized that some of the satisfaction of a good title was lost.

So...rated solely on the written portion, a low three stars for me. Will presumably be improved with the published versions of the drawings within. Did make me dream anew about Antarctica, though.

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

Review: "Salt Baby" by Falen Johnson

Salt Baby by Falen Johnson
Published September 2013 via Scirocco Drama
★★★★

Salt Baby's living in the city now, but the reservation is in her blood, and she's not quite sure how to reconcile the part of her that wants things the reservation can't offer and the part of her that will always find it home. But she's trying: dating a white man, seeing how much he can understand, contemplating whether a DNA test will get her closer to her history.

I always skim the drama shelves at the library when I visit my mother, because they have so much that is so interesting and that I'd be unlikely to stumble across elsewhere—and in particular, the library is really good about stocking First Nations writers with diverse perspectives. I like the way this one is done; it's mostly straight scenes between people (even if they don't always say quite what they mean) but with the occasional drift into the unreal (conversations with ancestors, dreamscapes) because...that's a sort of thing you can do in plays and have it make sense. Would be a nice one to see performed.

Review: "Boom Time" by Lindsay Bird

Boom Time by Lindsay Bird
Published 2019 via Gaspereau Press
★★★★

A couple of years ago I had the good fortune to hear both Lindsay Bird and Kate Beaton speak while they were on tour together—Bird talking about Boom Time and Beaton talking about Ducks. Despite the different forms, their books cover the same basic experience: working on the oil sands of northern Alberta.

Smoke fumbles from
stack edge to sky end
in a twenty-four-hour
flutter. On the coldest days
it will separate into
nonsense curlicues.

This is where all the cursive
went when they stopped
teaching it
in school. (12)

Spare and evocative. Perhaps my favourite poem is "Garland", describing a man of that name who knows his job but not how to read, but my favourite lines are those ones about the twisting smoke. I read this not long after visiting my father's hometown in rural BC, where the landscape is dominated by a smelter and smoke and steam belch constantly into the sky.

It took me a while to find this—I'd look for it when I visited my mother and her wonderful library system, but the library kept losing it, and unfortunately I think it may be out of print now. But the library finally located their copy, and I was finally in the right place when that happened, and it's worth the read if you come across a copy, or if you read Ducks and want to hunt down related material.

Review: "Meet Me Under the Northern Lights" by Emily Kerr

Meet Me Under the Northern Lights by Emily Kerr
Published 2021 via One More Chapter
★★★

The third stop in my northern lights tour! In this one, Lucy has a job problem and a drinking problem (only one of which she acknowledges), and she's packed off to Finland to help out at a retreat and ride out the worst of her problems.

What worked well for me here: well, Finland, obviously. There are some nice specific small things that we get to see—for example, Lucy helps to pull snow down from cabin roofs, which is the sort of detail I love; not something I've ever had to do, and not something Lucy ever expected to do, and not something tourists in cold places generally have to think about. I also like how limited any misunderstandings are; Lucy and Tommi have a rocky start, but we're spared the done-to-death thing where the hero thinks the heroine is into someone else (or vice versa), or that she might actually be guilty of the thing she's been falsely accused of, and so on.

What didn't work so well for me: Lucy is—said gently—kind of a train wreck. Her intentions are always good, but I cringed every time she had a bright idea that she thought she'd surprise the hero (and other more Finland-competent people), because it was always immediately clear that something was going to go badly. Messy heroines are, through no fault of their own, not my jam, and Lucy definitely leans messy.

The northern lights books I've read so far have varied pretty widely—Alaska, Iceland, and now Finland; heroines who are a photographer, an event planner, and now a radio personality; heroines whose personal growth involves very little, building some confidence and self-worth, and now some substantial personal demons plus villains. What's interesting is that the heroes vary rather less: In Alaska, we had a floatplane pilot who runs a wilderness retreat; in Iceland, a bus driver and tour guide; and in Finland, another wilderness retreat operator. Also of note: in every book, it's the heroine who comes in from a better-known city and falls in love with the Alaskan/Icelandic/Finnish way of living; it's the heroine who uproots her life for romance.

This is not a comment on these books specifically; it says more to me about what is common in romance novels generally. I have one more northern lights book on my list (not out yet, so can't compare yet!), and it'll be interesting to see how much it adheres to—or deviates from—the norm here.

Review: "Replaceable You" by Mary Roach

Replaceable You by Mary Roach
Published September 2025 via W.W. Norton & Company
★★★★

There are not all that many authors whose books can make me say out loud, under my breath, "oh no" while I'm walking down the street with my nose buried in my e-reader. (The bit about the drill and the cornea, if you're wondering.) And there are not all that many authors whose books infiltrate my dreams (...butt creases). And yet Replaceable You managed to do both, which is honestly on par for Roach's books. Also on par: I had to switch to reading something else several times over meals, because Roach delights in the occasional ick factor. It's all fascinating, so I'm not really complaining, but...you have been warned.

Roach writes pop science books, and in Replaceable You she turns her gaze to transplants, artificial replacements, and...well, some of the weirder things involved in both. I love weird medical things (museums of medical oddities are my absolute favorites), and this touches on a number of topics that I've long found intriguing—osseointegration prosthetics, iron lungs, etc. (Truly, rarely have I felt so jealous of an author as when Roach talks about having had the opportunity to spend the night in an iron lung.)

I would happily have read full books about many of the independent medical advances (and sometimes fails) that Roach describes here—heck, I have read full books about a number of these things. But Roach provides a marvellous jumping-off point for curiosity, plus a high number of asides that make it clear just how much she loves the sort of research that she gets to do in writing these books.

Take this (square brackets and ellipses original to the book): Here is onetime army surgeon Frank Tetamore describing one such invention—his own—in an 1894 paper: "These artificial noses are made of a very light plastic material. . . . They are secured on the face by bow spectacles made especially for the purpose." To obscure the lower border of the prosthesis, "a mustache [was] fastened to the nose piece." Forty years before novelty companies began selling Groucho Marx glasses, Frank Tetamore had invented a medical version. (loc. 122*)

Or this: Department of ghastly but true sentences: The chain saw got its start in the delivery room. (loc.1195)

Or this, for that matter: The current decade has seen a Mr. Potato Head Goes Green, made from plant-based plastic, a gender-neutral Potato Head set, and a low-carb Mr. Potato Head one-third the size of the original. Only one of those I made up. (loc. 2560)

You can't beat that energy. Highly recommended to anyone interested in science, playful snark, and medical specificity.

*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 Dirt Beneath Our Door" by Pamela Jones

The Dirt Beneath Our Door by Pamela Jones (with Elizabeth Ridley)
Published September 2025 via Matt Holt Books
★★★

When the day ended, I would be one of two things: either dead, or free. Right now, either option sounded good. (loc. 65*)

Jones wasn't supposed to be born into polygamy: Her father, seeing what it did to his own mother, swore that he didn't want that life. But then, well, things changed. And by the time Jones was born—her mother's second child, and her father's eleventh—I think it's fair to say that her father had gone all in on polygamy, decreeing that Jones would be named after a high school girlfriend and eventually taking up with eleven plural wives. And although Jones knew she didn't want to be a second or third (or tenth or eleventh) wife, she saw only the path that was laid in front of her: marry young into polygamy (in Mexico, where her family lived because there was less government scrutiny), have children, have more children, welcome new wives into the relationship.

Sometimes I was asked to babysit church members' kids, only to arrive and find the husband home alone, "just waiting" for his wife and kids to return. Then the flirting started. Even stranger, when the wife and kids arrived home, they joined the campaign to add me to their family as the next plural wife. (loc. 1193)

It sounds like a terribly hard upbringing. Jones didn't know anything different, of course, but she was never able to have what most people would consider a normal childhood—too much cooking and cleaning and childcare; not enough school or friendship or innocence. Dozens of siblings but very little one-on-one time with her father (and too much fear when she did have time with him). And terribly warped expectations for marriage:

"What more do you need?" He pulled away as his voice rose in irritation. "You can cook, sew, clean, and take care of children. What else is there, Rina?" (loc. 1447)

Jones paints a devastating picture of life in a cult. I'm surprised by how little strife she discusses between her father's wives, though honestly it sounds like she (and her mother) had limited contact with a lot of them. Or maybe they were all just too focused on survival for infighting—fear of their own husband, fear of Ervil LeBaron, just simple struggle to get enough food on the table to feed a household with no financial (or other) freedom and almost no financial (...or other...) support.

Most of the book takes place during Jones's upbringing and first marriage. There are some true jaw-droppers in here—I think they're worth reading in the full context and don't want to include spoilers, but I'll just say that her first husband's approach to marriage was...something else. Jones is able to find some compassion for him (he, too, grew up in the cult, and his actions very much reflect that distortion), but it's incredibly telling of how hard their community's demands were on girls and women.

Jones doesn't talk as much about her time after the cult, or about how her relationship with her parents changed as she got older. Her father ultimately helped her out with some things that surprised me, given the context of his chosen religion, and I'd have liked to know more about how that came about and how their relationship evolved as Jones struggled through her first years of freedom. I'd also have liked more about Jones and her kids figuring things out once they were outside the cult, though I'm not sure how much of that story she could reasonably tell while allowing for whatever levels of privacy her kids prefer. (I'd someday love to read a memoir from one of those kids, though, because I expect that their experience of leaving was in some ways even more jarring than Jones's.)

All told, a gripping read. Very much one for those with a preexisting curiosity about culty books, but also a reminder of just how much control a certain subset of people want to exert over others.

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

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

Review: "Everything She Does Is Magic" by Bridget Morrissey

Everything She Does Is Magic by Bridget Morrissey
Published September 2025 via Delacorte
★★★

Darcy's life revolves around Halloween: in the small town of Fableview, Halloween keeps the town running, and her parents are effectively the masterminds behind it. She's about to graduate from high school, and the job of keeping things running exactly as they always have, with no changes whatsoever, is hers to take over...whether she wants it or not. Meanwhile, Anya is in a bind—she needs a human to act as her protector so that she can join her family's coven when she turns eighteen, but finding someone she can trust is harder than it seems. And to get the pressure off, she's told her parents that Darcy is up for the job...

This was a cute, fast read. The way the town approaches Halloween is intentionally over-the-top cheesy—they know they're a tourist destination, and they long ago decided to lean into it. For Darcy's parents, Halloween is about candy-corn-printed cotton fabrics and cutesy fairies and bobbing for apples, not blood or zombies or the Salem Witch Trials. (Think Sabrina the Teenage Witch, not Scream.) For Darcy, it's gotten stale, but she's not looking for Scream either, just...I've run out of analogies. Darcy's just looking for a bit of change, and for the chance to find out what she does when her parents aren't running the show.

So I enjoyed the playfulness here—this fully leans into cozy vibes. A bit of a Sarah Dessen feel, actually, at least in the way the quirky best friend plotline plays out I'm not sure if a sequel is planned, but there is space for that quirky best friend to get her own story... I could have used a bit more exploration of Anya's powers, though; for me, witchy characters are basically wish fulfillment, because who doesn't want to be able to send some tingly power through their fingertips and effect instant change? Anya barely seems to use her powers, and I'm not sure if that's because she's not very powerful (though we're told that she is), or if there are serious limits to how much power a witch can use (does she need to recharge?), or if there's something to do with her being under eighteen, or something else. Anya's magic is in fixing things, of course, not creating rainbow glitter or whatever, but...I guess I wouldn't have minded a bit more of her family coming in and making things more magically chaotic. (Surely one of them can create rainbow glitter at will?)

A good one for those looking for a super cozy, low-heat, queer autumn YA read.

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

Review: Short story: "Bad Date" by Ellery Lloyd

Bad Date by Ellery Lloyd
Published September 2025 via Amazon Original Stories

Fay is off on a first date. There's just one problem: He's not what he seems, and he knows more than he appears to.

But then, there might be another problem: Fay also knows more than she appears to.

This is a dark little story. It's clear early on that nobody is what they are trying to present to the world; I'm not sure that any of the characters in this story could be considered mentally stable. Fay is an actress whose career has dried up (and with it her money); Oliver is a fan who badly wants more; Wolf is Fay's son who has never had a normal life; Poppy is Fay's best friend who knows exactly where the bodies are buried. The question is how far each of them is willing to go—and who will have the upper hand in the end.

I liked this more as I got farther into it and it became clear that Fay knew more than she was letting on (did not enjoy being in Oliver's head, thank you). The ending was a bit of a letdown—it was clear that that was the direction the story was going in, but I actually tried to swipe forward to the next page multiple times before realizing that no, the story was over; the ending was that abrupt. Still a fun little thriller (well—can I call this fun, when we had to be in Oliver's head and also contemplate Wolf being let loose on the world?), but I was glad that this was a story rather than a book.

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

Review: "Let's Get Together" by Brandy Colbert

Let's Get Together by Brandy Colbert
Published September 2025 via Clarion Books
★★★★

Brandy Colbert takes on The Parent Trap? Yes please.

In Let's Get Together, everyone's favorite secret-twins movie gets a modern twist. For Kenya, starting grade 6 is just another move in the right direction. She has a happy life with her father and grandmother, and she sees no reason for a new direction. But for Liberty, things are more complicated—she's in the best foster home she's ever had, but her entire living memory is nothing but uncertainty. And Kenya is the biggest uncertainty she's seen in a while—because although Kenya and Liberty have never met before, they're mirror images of each other.

Although this is based on The Parent Trap, in some (limited) ways It Takes Two is a more direct comparison—in The Parent Trap (and yes, you'd better believe that I've seen the 1998 and the 1961 versions, and also read the original Das doppelte Lottchen), the girls are both happy in their single-child-of-a-single-parent lives, not a little spoiled (especially in the film versions), and in their predicament because their parents willingly split them up. It Takes Two mixes it up with doppelgängers rather than twins, and with one girl living in a truly miserable foster care situation. (Man was that movie terrible, and also man did I love it. I wonder whether the library has a copy...?)

Colbert delivers a more realistic take: without spoiling the "how" of the split, I'll say that the reason the girls were split up is, you know, not a case of the parents dividing the assets. And although Liberty has had her fair share of rough foster placements—the book doesn't go into details, and it doesn't need to—she's finally in a good one, one that feels like it could be the real thing...until her world is turned upside down. Again. Now, I've read enough about foster care (although not specifically in a California context) to question some of the details of the book; as far as I know, some of the plot points (like Liberty's foster mother and biological father being able to decide Liberty's medical care) are...very unlikely...but then, this is a middle-grade book and I don't think those details need to be pitch perfect to work. I love how readily Liberty and Kenya take to being sisters—they're cautious (Kenya in particular has to get used to sharing her space), but they want it to work, so (well, for the most part) they try to reach out and put themselves in the other's shoes. I also like that things don't work out exactly as the girls plan—again, no spoilers, but there's another twist of a sort at the end, and it keeps things interesting.

A good one for middle-grade readers...but also for those of us adults who grew up on lost-twin stories and love a fresh take.

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

Review: "Every Step She Takes" by Alison Cochrun

Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun
Published September 2025 via Atria
★★★

Sadie could use a shakeup in her life—and that comes in the form of a surprise trip to complete a pilgrimage across Portugal and Spain and in the process help out her sister. Meanwhile, Mal has been shaking up her own life over and over again since coming out to her father backfired...and now, with his funeral looming, she's taking a break to walk one of the Portuguese routes of the Camino de Santiago. What they don't anticipate when airplane turbulence inspires Sadie to shriek out all her secrets and insecurities: they're on the same tour. What they also don't anticipate: chemistry. But whether either of them is ready for a relationship, well...

What worked well for me:
- There isn't enough Camino fiction out there, and a lesbian romance? Yes please.

- This takes place on the Portuguese route, too; the Camino Francés (which runs across northern Spain) is the most popular route by far, with the Camino Portugues (which runs north through Portugal and Spain) a distant second, and the Francés is much much more common in both fiction and memoir. (I walked both, back to back, but—if it's not confusing enough already—a different variant of the Portugues route.)

- Sadie is unapologetically fat, and although she has some related insecurities, for the purposes of the Camino her weight is treated as a nonevent.

- I liked the tour group more than I expected to (Stefano is a little over the top, but Rebecca is an unexpected gem).

- I liked Sadie's doom-spiral on the plane (as someone without flight anxiety but with travel anxiety...relatable).

- There's room left at the end for a possible sequel (perhaps on a different route?), which I'd be all in favor of.

- This shouldn't be relevant by the time the book is published, but I read an ARC that hadn't been through proofreading yet, and some of the small errors (which are, again, normal for this point in the process) were choice. We have an aircraft maker named "Boing" and a tibia located in a character's forearm—I'm here for it. (Yes, this point is in the correct list. One of the oddities of my nerdery is that I have favorite typos.)

What didn't work so well for me:
- Too many brand names (often 10+ per chapter) and cultural references. I get why authors include them (especially for more recognizable brands, they convey info quickly and add some detail), but too many brand names always reads to me as...well, kind of lazy, and something that will quickly date the book.

- Neither Sadie nor Mal really did it for me as a heroine, and together I wasn't convinced of their chemistry. Their introduction (though not the reader's introduction to Sadie) involves Sadie drunk and crying and yelling on a plane, and even if Mal finds that cute, the cringe feeling followed me for the rest of the book. This might just be me—"messy" heroines have never really been my thing. Mal could be a balancing point, but the deeper we get into the book the more Mal's veneer of having-it-togetherness cracks and the messier she gets too. That has its positives, of course (keeps her more complicated), but it also made me wonder about the stability of a relationship between two people who are individually on such unsteady ground. (And—not to be shallow—but it killed the cool-girl appeal! Fine in real life, but sometimes in romance you just want your unapproachable cool girl to be approachable after all...but still mysteriously cool.)

- (Minor spoiler in this BP) I would have preferred a setup other than faking dating. Other than being a bit trope-y, the way Sadie and Mal eventually end up in bed together (spoiler: one character begs another) sat badly with me. That should have been a point for one of them to say "whoa, we're getting in too deep" or "hey, this is getting too complicated for me", not to demur for three seconds and then go ahead.

So where does that leave me? I came out of this with some significant reservations but am still pretty thrilled that it exists. I probably won't return to this one, but if there is a follow-up book set on the Camino or another path in the future, I'll happily read it.

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