Review: "A Perfect Match" by Rachael Sommers

A Perfect Match by Rachael Sommers
Published February 2026 via Ylva Publishing
★★★

Erin's been the star of the Manchester women's football world for a while now, but when an injury sidelines her, her future in football is uncertain. Enter Lia, an up-and-coming star fleeing trauma of her own...and they clash immediately.

I just cannot resist a lesbian soccer (sorry, old habits die hard, and I can't say "football" without thinking of a pointing oblong ball and permanent brain damage) story. Plus, you know, cute cover, and (shh, don't tell) I do in fact judge a book by its cover. This was an extremely quick read—I read half of it in one evening at the gym and finished it before bed the same day—and there's a really satisfying amount of soccer in the book. Lia and Erin both do a lot of thinking with their hearts rather than their heads, for better or for worse, and they don't really go at things in a half-assed way...which is probably just what a successful soccer player needs.

(The next couple of paragraphs are a bit longer than I intended, so if you just want to know who I recommend this for, skip to the last paragraph!)

Two things gave me pause: First, this doesn't feel like a healthy relationship. There's Erin's distrust of Lia—she might be a soccer superstar, but it makes me think that she isn't much of a team player. This is reinforced by the shape of the relationship, as while Erin and Lia are able to play well together on the field, much of the book sees one or both of them refusing to treat the other one civilly and no consideration of what this might mean for team dynamics. On top of this, there's quite a lot of jealousy throughout the book—e.g., Erin getting jealous when another woman hits on Lia—and between that and the push-pull dynamic they set up early on (pulling together and then pushing each other away), it just doesn't feel like the setup for something healthy in the short or long term.

Second, I don't love the approach to workplace relationships and power dynamics. Though there isn't a direct power dynamic between Erin and Lia (Erin has no say over Lia's play time, her position on the team, etc.), there is an indirect power relationship (Erin is about a decade older, more senior on the team, and Lia's childhood sports hero). I think this is probably in line with the fact that the author's other books seem to be age-gap romances, which is fine but not my jam; I would have liked more discussion of it within the book, but this will still be a good fit for readers who like more power play between their heroines. Also didn't love, in the context of a problematic player–coach relationship, repeated references to the player "getting away with it"; i.e., not being publicly shamed for it (though the coach is) and another character unfairly taking some of the blame. And while yes, the player should take ownership for cheating, that's a whole different ballpark (soccer field?) from the subordinate in an unequal relationship deserving a public lambasting.

So while this didn't work as well for me as I'd have like...it's still a fast read with soccer, and interesting family relationships as B plot, and a decent amount of spice. A better fit for those who like age-gap romance, workplace romance, power dynamics, and enemies to lovers. And of course one for sports fans!

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

Review: "Born at the Gates of Hell" by Maria Milland

Born at the Gates of Hell by Maria Milland
Published February 2026 via Steerforth
★★★★

I have been to other refugee camps before. But right away I can tell that this camp, with its residents, its army of aid workers, and the massive presence of guards, is like nothing else I have ever experienced. This is a detention camp storing people. (loc. 388*)

The al-Hol refugee camp in Syria was not Milland's first foray into humanitarian work, but it was unlike anything she'd seen before. There as an OB/GYN with the Red Cross, her work was constantly complicated by security concerns and cultural mores and just plain uncertainty. At al-Hol, again unlike anything Milland had seen before, oxytocin was routinely used to speed delivery—not for medical reasons but because both patients and staff had to be out of the hospital before dark, because it was too dangerous to leave later. Or: Milland learned early on that before she asked if a woman could be pregnant, she had to ascertain whether the woman was married, because it wasn't possible for an unmarried woman to be pregnant. (And if an unmarried woman were pregnant, she'd have to give birth in secret and quietly give the baby up.)

The statistics are striking. Milland describes a camp that had been open and closed, open and closed again; established for 15,000 people but holding around 57,000 when she worked there. That's roughly the population of Chapel Hill, NC, or Casper, Wyoming, but where Chapel Hill might see one or two murders per year, al-Hol saw 85 deaths to violent crime in 2021 (loc. 1459).

It's a thoughtful book. In addition to an overall view of what it was like working at the camp, Milland discusses individual patients she saw, the people she worked with (and learned from, since the context is so specific and unlike medicine performed in wealthier contexts), and just the sheer exhaustion of providing care in such a harsh environment. I appreciate the way she talks about the value her interpreter brought to the process—interpreting not just language but also cultural meanings and the like. This is a kind of memoir that I love (telling hard stories about things I am unlikely to experience firsthand but that are so important for more people to know more about), and does not disappoint.

One thing of note: Milland wrote the original in her native Danish, and then she did her own translation for this English edition. I can't speak to the exact translation, of course, because I speak precisely zero Danish, but I am so impressed with the outcome nonetheless; translation is an art rather than a science, and if it hadn't been noted in the book I would not have known that this was not a professional job.

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

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

Review: "Limelight" by Andrew Keenan-Bolger

Limelight by Andrew Keenan-Bolger
Published February 2026 via Penguin Workshop
★★★★

Danny dreams of something more. Life is better than it was—there's less money, but now that he and his mother are out from under his father's thumb, there's more room to breathe. But Danny has bigger dreams...and a chance at a performing arts school in Manhattan seems like maybe, maybe a way to make those dreams come true.

This book is a love letter: to New York of the 90s, to found family, to teenagers coming out and figuring themselves out. In Manhattan, Danny is a fish out of water—his Staten Island roots run deep—but he learns, and the people he meets are also willing to learn, and gradually his world grows bigger and brighter.

There's a bit of an element of magical realism here, and usually I'm not keen on that, but it worked really well in Limelight—a combination of the voice of the narration (which sometimes zooms out a bit) and the light touch of the magical realism. The characterization of the teenagers is great (in places the book reminded me of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda), and Danny's mother is wonderfully complex. It's the 90s, and she's not ready to contemplate the possibility that Danny might be anything other than 100% straight, but the way she phrases this makes it clear that she's coming from a place of heartbreak (I don't want to say too much, but it makes sense in the book), not shame or hatred.

There's some family stuff throughout the book, and I'm not sure how to feel about the ending—it's what the book builds to (well—one of the things the book builds to), but there are a couple of ways that plotline could have gone within that, and as it is some things still feel a bit unresolved. But...if I had to guess, I suspect that Keenan-Bolger is pulling on real-life experience there, either his or that of people in his circle. And sometimes not everything can be tied up with a bow, especially when you're a teenager with so much of your story left to write.

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

Review: "Everything Changes Everything" by Lauren Kessler

Everything Changes Everything by Lauren Kessler
Published February 2026 via Balance
★★★★

When Kessler set out on the Camino de Santiago, she was navigating grief, and she needed to take that grief somewhere. Call it a reason or a purpose or a call.

This, also, is a lesson of the Camino that translates directly to life: that occasionally and gloriously, there are true aha moments, but mostly there is the long slow toward making sense of who you are. (loc. 1762*)

I came into this have read 1) nearly every memoir about the Camino that I've been able to get my hands on and 2) two of Kessler's previous books, one of which I loved and one of which I loved less. The combination seemed like pretty good odds, to be honest, and—as it happened—the odds made good.

There's a lot here: Kessler weaves between the now and then, between her journey on the Camino and all the things that came before. She's slow to share the details of that Before, so I won't spoil anything (the shape of it becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on, but, you know...in its own time), but suffice it to say that the details are a doozy.

One of the things I love so much about Camino memoirs is that although the path may be the same—there are multiple Camino routes,** but the Francés is the most heavily traversed, and even on other routes the basic idea is the same—each person's journey is different. Walking through restlessness or grief or change; walking with months and months of preparation or only the barest of knowledge; staying in cheap municipal lodging with fifty bunks to a room or in boutique hotels with crisp sheets and hot showers; processing big things or simply having an adventure. Maybe this is what I love so much about memoir in general.

Kessler makes excellent work of telling a complicated, messy story with very little judgement or shame. Parts of the story are quite dramatic, and it works in the book's favor that Kessler stays steady throughout, drawing on journalistic skills to tell the story without letting emotion (and to be clear: very valid emotion) take over. I wouldn't recommend this as the only Camino book you read, but down the line or as something to read when thinking about grief? Yes.

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

**And judging by Kessler's social media, the Francés is not the last one she walked

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

Review: "Why Fly" by Caroline Paul

Why Fly by Caroline Paul
Published February 2026 via Bloomsbury Publishing
★★★★

A meditation on flight, relationships, and adventure.

We were like those knitters who knit to pass the time in DMV queues and then unwind what they've done almost dispassionately, then knit again. (loc. 343*)

I read Paul's Fighting Fire a decade ago, and it's one of those books that I still think about on a regular basis. Now—Fighting Fire hits one of my more random reading interests, while I don't have a particular interest in flight. But Paul's writing is so tight and engaging, and it's so clear how much she loves flying (and in particular, flying gyroplanes! I didn't even know gyroplanes were a thing) and how much she's thought about it. This is a love letter to flying, and also a love letter to a deteriorating relationship (I promise this makes sense in the book).

Why Fly travels through historical record and memoir and recent aviation events, mishaps and triumphs. It culminates in a cross-country gyroplane trip, and my gosh, while this does not make me want to learn to fly (which is just as well; flying lessons are not in my budget), it does make me want to backtrack and read Paul's Tough Broad.

One for flight enthusiasts, yes, but also one for those who are just curious.

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

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

Review: "Dino Scores" by Lola Faust

Dino Scores by Lola Faust
Published February 2026
★★★★

Lola Faust is back, and I've never—well, actually, it's the middle of February, so I've definitely been happier. But a new Lola Faust book improves that a lot.

Me: There's a new Lola Faust book!
(pause)
Partner (sounding very weary): The dinosaur woman?
Me: Yesss!
Partner (even wearier): Uh-huh.

Anyway, let's start with the content notice:

Homophobia, biphobia, homophobic language and slurs (Russian and English), Canada, Canadians, Canadian media, gun violence, death, mild-to-moderate limited-scope gore, voyeurism (lack thereof), sports, toxic masculinity, Russia, Chechnya, rain (a lot), Vancouver, Yaletown, Gastown, seagulls, Seattle, anxiety, being picked last for a sports team, fainting, tuna melts, dinosaurs (genetically modified), Kyle, assholes (physical and metaphorical), organized religion (assorted), athleisure, hyperlocal brands, international brands, poetry, hockey (loc. 5*)

This is in many ways the most standard of any of the romances Faust has written—the author's note at the end acknowledges that it parodies Heated Rivalry (which I have not read; I read one gay hockey romance and concluded that I'd need more interest in both hockey and m/m romance to continue...apparently I make exceptions if there are dinosaurs involved) and that it is not erotica but contains a sex scene involving a prehensile tail (loc. 1204), and if you think I did not spend some time going "dear god, no" in that scene, then you do not understand what these books are or why I keep reading them against all logic. Note that the sex is otherwise very tame—erm, as far as it goes—so if you've been curious about dino romance but haven't yet worked up the courage to go there, this is a decent entry point.**

In what other romances do you get the words His breath smelled meaty and bloody (loc. 275) when the characters are tantalizingly close to hooking up? And don't get me started on how far the vending machine metaphor is pushed...

"You smell like steakhouse," Khasanov murmured with amusement, stepping away.

The moment shattered. Stone's head spun and his shoulders sagged. How could he have been so careless...

"It is good thing I like steak." (loc. 547)

This is horrifying, obviously, though maybe it's less horrifying to less ardent vegetarians. (Come to think of it...what is Stone's diet made up of?) But that is genuinely part of the joy of these books; they lean in hard to exactly what they are, so hard that you think they might topple over, and yet here they are, still standing. I did get stuck for a while on some of the logistics: If Stone is cold-blooded (and I do sort of love that this comes into play), is playing an ice-based sport really in his best interests? (Is living in Canada at all really in his best interests?) Should he really, on the cover, be wearing shorts at the ice rink? (Can he maintain enough heat on the rink even by moving quickly? And while we're on the cover, how do his feathers extend through his sleeves?) I know, I know; I am missing the point.

All he wanted was to ride this dino-man into the sunset. (loc. 442)

This review does not need to be as long as it is; you need very little other than the cover to know whether this is something you'll find entertaining. If not, that's okay! But you're missing out, I tell you.

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

**The things I find myself saying when I read these books!

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

Review: "Stock Photo" by Simona Supekar

Stock Photo by Simona Supekar
Published February 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★★

Let this book be a tale about how when some things are seen, they cannot be unseen. (loc. 96*)

For years, Supekar had a job that I've never so much as considered: she keyworded stock photos. In addition to giving her an inside view of an industry that most of us have probably spent very little time thinking of, it illustrated the way representation matters...and the way representation so often doesn't happen.

I read this because the Object Lessons series is a delight, and the books almost always teach me something...and Stock Photo delivered, because really, I have spent very little time thinking about stock photography. There was a brief moment when the sale of stock photos could make a comfortable living for photographers, but the market has changed, and with AI it is changing again.

(Notes Supekar: The AI site generator I used to create this image asked me to "Select All Pictures of Film Reels" to confirm that I was human. (loc. 182))

AI plays a role in the dialogue here, as well it should, but mostly Supekar's focus is representation: who appears in stock photos, and in what contexts; who is readily findable as a doctor or lawyer or woman laughing alone as salad, and who is represented mostly as a person hitting a piñata or as a drug user or as a terrorist. And alongside that: what landscapes one can readily find, and which cultures' foods, and which keywords are popular when.

Other than representation, what interests me most is the positivity with which Supekar talks about stock photos in general. To the extent that I've thought about them, they mostly read as "stuff I wouldn't want on my walls"—either too much manufactured quirk or too generic, I guess. So it's nice to have the food for thought of what else they can mean, and how they can be useful in so many contexts.

Three and a half stars; not my top ever Object Lessons book (that's still Pregnancy Test), but satisfying.

*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 Summer I Fell" by Sli Ndhlovu

The Summer I Fell by Sli Ndhlovu
Published October 2025
★★

A brief young adult romance set in South Africa. My library recently started purchasing large numbers of indie/self-published ebooks, which is a decision that intrigues me—I'm both glad that indie authors have the potential to get more of an audience and appalled by some of the blatantly, and blatantly terrible, AI covers. (The cover comment is not about this book, but if you've seen the sort I'm talking about...you know.) I'm very curious about what their criteria are (and also, perhaps, what the overall reception is), but I have nobody to ask, so...here we are.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I read this out of curiosity, and as far as I can tell it's a self-published book by a young writer. Young characters with big emotions and family drama and family money and a lot of angst and hormones. Reminds me a little of some of the fanfic I read as a teenager, not so much for the plot as for the angst/emotions and general writing style. Would have been a better fit for me as an also angsty teenager; as it is, I'm glad to have gotten to read something outside the mainstream but am unlikely to continue with the series.

Review: "The Dreaded Pox" by Olivia Weisser

The Dreaded Pox by Olivia Weisser
Published February 2026 via Cambridge University Press
★★★★

Slip back a few hundred years and catch a carriage (maybe after a ship?) to London, and maybe you have an idea of what you could expect—or maybe not. And probably the pox doesn't factor into those calculations, but it should...because if The Dreaded Pox is anything to go by, the pox was everywhere.

In London of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, "the pox" was something of a catch-all diagnosis for just about everything that we now know as sexually transmitted infections, and there was a thriving economy built around the pox: potions and pills and recipes and, ah, rather more disturbing cures.

Weisser doesn't get into what those cures actually did. I'm guessing that in most cases the answer was "nothing good" (honestly, the book made me wonder just how humanity has survived this long; I will spare you the description of some of the side effects of mercury treatments, but...), but the point is more how the pox, and pox treatments, came into play socially: how society understood the pox and how it was transmitted; who was considered suspect or blameable (hint: racism, sexism, and classism, plus general xenophobia, were major players); how the pox factored into certain types of trials; how it could tell a story that people sometimes socially could not.

And yet, midwives did not wield the same authority in court as medical men. The very subject of midwives' expertise – women's bodies – paradoxically made their knowledge suspect. (loc. 2303*)

The actual text of the book is short—some 40% is notes—but it makes for an engaging read and an unusual lens into history. Somewhat academic but very accessible for the lay reader. I'm not sure, after all this, just how much brain space the pox took up in the average Londoner's mind or how likely one was to end up with said pox (or, for that matter, what the scene was like in smaller places), but I loved the comparisons Weisser draws to more modern ailments. How far we've come, and yet how little some things have changed.

One for those who like those corners of history that are often left to gather dust in the corner, and also for those interested in medical curiosities of both the then and the 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: "Snack" by Eurie Dahn

Snack by Eurie Dahn
Published February 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★★

—and there may indeed be people who snack on fruits and vegetables and, certainly, these foods qualify as snacks. However, this book will not take any part in this business. (loc. 709*)

Snacks are secondary...except maybe in their status as a cash cow, and except maybe in enjoyment of food. In Snack, Dahn examines the experience of snacking and some of the cultural considerations that make it what it is.

This isn't really a microhistory; snacking is so broad a topic that you'd need a much longer book (series!) to cover it all, and Dahn doesn't try. She defines snacks by six categories: absence of fire, lack of utensils, duration, portability, volume, and vibe. There are qualifications to most of these (for example, I won't be eating a tub of yoghurt with my fingers anytime soon), but on the whole it's a reasonable definition—though, as someone who is on the whole not too interested in cooking and perfectly happy eating some crackers and veggies and hummus for dinner (my partner despairs), I suspect that I have more overlap between meals and snacks than many.

I'm on record, repeatedly, as loving this series; that holds. How can you not love a reference to The Flamin' Hot Cheetos to academia pipeline (loc. 469)? And more than that, I appreciate that Dahn looks at the sociocultural implications of snacking—both the "back to childhood" sense that a particular snack can bring and the ways in which snacks, and (for example) playground reactions to snacks, can differ so widely.

I do not know if you know much about US public school culture in the 80s and 90s but dried squid and fish jerky were not necessarily hot commodities on the playground. (loc. 982)

Now I'm thinking that I'd like to see an anthology about snacks—essays from authors from different parts of the world, or different parts of a country, or who grew up in different eras, talking about the snacks they grew up with and how their relationship to snacking has changed...is that an odd thing to wish for? Probably. Now you'll have to excuse me while I go make myself a snack...

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

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

Review: "Our Numbered Bones" by Katya Balen

Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen
Published February 2026 via HarperVia
★★★★

When Anna leaves London for a writing retreat in rural England, she is at loose ends—bogged down in grief, unable to do so much as start her overdue book, not sure how to move forward or if she even wants to. Then the body surfaces in the marsh—not a recent body, not something for the local police unit, but someone from a much different time. And Anna is drawn to that body, that woman, in ways she cannot explain.

I wanted to shrug off the city and slip into someone else, someone far away. (loc. 75*)

There's something about centuries-old bodies in bogs that really captures the imagination. I read this partly because of how much Ghost Wall intrigued me, I think; it was an itch that Excavations (which is not at all about bogs) deepened rather than scratched. When I visited a bog outside Tallinn a couple of years ago, with its eerily clear water and spongy soft ground on either side of the wooden walkways, my mind drifted again and again to ancient bodies in bogs.

I'm trying to think how best to describe Our Numbered Bones: eerie, perhaps, though not overly so; sharp but swathed in soft edges; theoretically fragmented but grounded in dirt, in bog, in grief.

The only story tapping its way in my brain is the one I ever want to tell. The words of it are chattering in their chains. (loc. 421)

This is an odd one (mostly for some stylistic choices) and a good one. I'll note that this one comes with a trigger warning or two around the grief part of things; it's late in the game before Anna's full backstory is told, so I'm reluctant to give details, but there are both complicated family dynamics and recent loss to consider. Approach with caution if there's been recent loss in your life, but it's a good one if you're interested in character-driven stories with interesting settings.

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

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

Review: "The Ex-Perimento" by Maria J. Morillo

The Ex-Perimento by Maria J. Morillo
Published February 2026 via Berkley
★★★★

Maria has it all worked out—her next career step, her boyfriend's (imminent, she's sure) proposal, what the wedding will look like and where they'll live and vacation. Yes, her boss is a bit of a diva, and no, Alejandro's family doesn't like her much, and no, her friends and family don't like Alejandro much...but they're meant to be. That is, until he breaks up with her, and the resulting fallout torpedos her job, and suddenly all of those plans are dust. There's just one thing to do: Get Alejandro—and with him her job—back.

I read this for the setting. I've read precious few books set in Venezuela—the most recent was Paula Ramón's memoir Motherland, I think, and the idea of a romance novel set in Caracas piqued my interest. So I think this'll be a two-parter: the romance, and the setting.

The romance: In her quest to get Alejandro back, Maria enlists Simón, the lead singer of one of her favorite bands...who just so happens to be the on-screen talent she's assisting at the temporary gig she scores while trying to find her way back to her journalism job. As a male lead, Simón is super solid: He's honest about what he thinks of Maria's "experimento" (that Maria can do better, but if Alejandro is the guy she wants, she's going about it all wrong), but when Maria is determined to sally forth anyway, he commits to his job as wingman. There's clear chemistry between Maria and Simón, but he lets her figure it out on her own time, which felt surprisingly refreshing. It probably helps that his band is written as popular, but in an up-and-coming way rather than an international-sensation way—the book doesn't have to take pains to paint him as down to earth despite his success, because that success is...aspirational without being unrealistic, I suppose.

The setting: I'm guessing here, but I'd say that Morillo is making a concentrated effort to depict a Venezuela that she knows and loves—not the side of Venezuela that is so often depicted in the international news. I've never been to Venezuela and am running on guesswork and Googling, but my understanding is that most people in Venezuela are not living as comfortably as Maria. I noted three (relatively oblique) mentions of Venezuela's precarious political/financial situation in the book, but other than that the book is largely written in a way that suggests that the worst is over and things are stable again. Again, mine is not the analysis I'd trust on the subject, but I don't know how realistic it is. That isn't really a criticism, though: This is romance, not hard-hitting nonfiction, and more than that I can well imagine an author from a country that does not get a lot of press, let alone good press, wanting readers to come away from the book focused on the country's treasures, not its struggles. So: Don't read this to learn about Venezuela's current political situation, but do read it if you like having fuel for your wanderlust.

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

Review: "Pilgrim Wheels" by Neil Hanson

Pilgrim Wheels by Neil Hanson
Published 2015 via High Prairie Press
★★★

Let's set the scene: It's March of 2015. I'm weeks away from quitting my job and flying on a one-way ticket to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. I've read almost every book about the Camino that I can find and have moved on to looking for more general books about pilgrimage. I'm also desperate for adventure and for books about adventure, and a book about someone cycling across the US fits the bill.

Fast-forward a decade. I'm slightly less desperate for adventure...but Pilgrim Wheels is still on my to-read list, and I've finally gotten my hands on a copy.

I'll cut to the chase: This wasn't the book for me. It's pretty short (more on that in a moment), so it was a fast read. It's more interesting to read about a journey when there's an inner journey as well as an outer journey, though, and to me this felt mostly about the outer journey. A bit repetitious (lots of commentary about hills, wind, highway vs. smaller roads). There's a fair amount of ruminating and riffing on various subjects, but mostly the thoughts felt relatively surface level. Also on the surface level: discussion of how attractive various women are (over and over and over again), including once a promise to the reader that one particular woman who stopped to make sure Hanson and his friend were okay wasn't flirting (I don't think any female readers needed that assurance, but maybe the target reader is a man). It got...pretty tedious.

One of the things Hanson ruminates on is how the experience of traveling is different when you're on a bicycle (or on foot, or sometimes on a motorcycle) than it is from an air-conditioned car (...or a scooter with car support). He tries quite hard not to be judgemental about it, or at least to check his default judgement and look at it from a different perspective. It comes up a lot, though, so I ended up with the sense that he kind of had to push himself to the different perspective. Even this comment about what people are eating: The early risers in town stop by to pick up their coffee and donuts as Dave and I wolf down liquid and calories (loc. 2388).

I find this phrasing so accidentally fascinating. It's not the first (or the last) time that Hanson refers to eating as "liquid and calories" (liquid: 7 mentions, one of which is unrelated to food; fluid: 7 mentions; calories: 28 mentions, almost all of which are in the context of "gather[ing] calories at the convenience store", etc.). Maybe he's not a foodie (fair, neither am I), and I understand the necessity of just taking in huge amounts of both...calories and liquids...when you're on this sort of adventure, which just requires a lot of energy. But of course those early risers he mentions are also fueling themselves, even if their caloric needs for the day are different. Am I overthinking this? 100% yes. But here we are.

Anyway. I either forgot (likely, as it's been ten years) or never noticed that this is only part 1 of the story—the second half of Hanson's journey is covered in a second book. So although the Kindle version of this is under 200 pages, part 2 is almost 300 pages, making the whole story almost 500. I don't plan to pick up part 2 anytime soon, and that's fine (I sort of just wanted to check off a book that has been on my TBR for a decade!), but I think I might have enjoyed this a bit more if the two books had been tightened into one ~300-page book.

Review: "Tall Water" by S.J. Sindu and Dion M.B.D.

Tall Water by S.J. Sindu and Dion M.B.D.
Published August 2025 via HarperAlley
★★★★

Nimmi has grown up in the US, living with her father and communicating with her mother only through letters—but when her father has the opportunity to return to Sri Lanka, where Nimmi is born and her mother still lives, she's desperate to go too. Sri Lanka is still at war, though, and Nimmi soon feels in over her head. And: It's December of 2004. None of them can know what's coming.

This is a graphic novel for young adults, but it's one for readers who can take heavy themes. The major themes are the war in Sri Lanka and the Boxing Day tsunami—Nimmi finds herself witness to the first and right in the middle of the second. (I was going to say that it doesn't hold back, but I don't think that's entirely accurate—for all that Nimmi witnesses, she's on the periphery of violence and presumably has significant protection conferred by her dual citizenship; this would be a very different story if it were about someone living in the thick of it. Nimmi hears some of those stories, but she and the reader are spared the worst of it. She sees bodies (I remember reading news story after news story and just not being able to comprehend the scale of the disaster), but the reader is again spared the worst of it.

It's well done. I didn't need the mini romance of the book (I never need the mini romance), but there's a lot of complexity packed into a relatively short story. War, natural disaster, romance, identity, family history, family reconciliation...I hope this ends up in a lot of high school libraries.

Review: "Living Proof" by Tiffany Graham Charkosky

 

Living Proof by Tiffany Graham Charkosky
Published October 2025 via Little A
★★★

Charkosky was eleven when her mother died of cancer. It was a tragedy, and it tore her life apart—but cancer is common, and Charkosky and her family found ways to move forward as best they could. But decades later, when she and her husband were trying for their second child, Charkosky got news that turned everything upside down again: There was a good chance that Charkosky's mother's cancer stemmed from a genetic condition that made certain cancers almost inevitable, and if she'd had it, there was a 50-50 chance that Charkosky and each of her siblings had inherited it.

Almost two years passed between that car ride and actually losing her. The part that seems the cruelest is that my memories of her sickness have eclipsed most of my memories of her life. (loc. 263)

I read this partly because I read A Fatal Inheritance not too long ago. In A Fatal Inheritance, the author describes a different genetic quirk that made cancer run rampant through his family, and he dives into the science behind it and the quest to figure out just what went wrong. It's both fascinating and devastating.

Living Proof doesn't go so much into the science (Inheritance is part memoir, part reportage; Proof is straight memoir), but it's equally devastating to consider all the factors that Charkosky had to consider, starting with the simplest: get tested or not? Testing doesn't change the facts, but it might change the outcomes; knowing that you have a gene that predisposes you to major medical things can mean regular, targeted testing in the interest of catching things before they're a problem. It also means upheaval, and complications like suddenly being ineligible for life insurance, and deciding whether to have preventive surgeries, and wondering whether your own children have gotten the gene. And for Charkosky, it wasn't just herself—she had two siblings who had the same chances of inheriting the gene that she did, and they had to make their own decisions about whether or not to get tested, and what to do with the information either way.

It's a lot to wrestle with. Charkosky does a good job of unpicking those things, which are of course further complicated by the grief of having lost someone to the same thing you're now facing. I hate the subtitle, perhaps irrationally so ("how love defied genetic legacy" reads to me as "how love cured a gene mutation", which of course is not what it means, but still), but it's otherwise an interesting read, especially if you're curious about the ways genetics can get tricky.

Review: "Starving Doll" by Bleuen Gauguin

Starving Doll by Bleuen Gauguin
Published August 2025
★★

What the (sub)title says—this is a memoir of an eating disorder. This is a pretty grim one; the book starts with a difficult relationship with Gauguin's parents (the relationship starts with emotional abuse and never really deviates) and moves on to unhappiness after unhappiness. I'm not sure I'd describe it as angsty, but it's one of those terribly unhappy books that is really devoid of any levity or joy that might break things up; even when Gauguin describes starting a graduate program that interests her or entering a new relationship, the focus goes almost immediately to, for example, the new lover's faults and why things clearly (to the reader, if not to Gauguin in the moment) aren't going to work out. And hey! Sometimes that's how life feels—if things are dark enough emotionally, it can be hard to find any joy even when it should exist. But it's not all that fun to read something that is mostly that pain and has no glimmers of light, no sense of looking back from a happier place.

I also struggled with the lack of context for the book. For a significant chunk of it I was trying to figure out where the author is from—from the name I guessed France or French Canada, but since the name also seems likely to be a pseudonym (among other things, there's a random mention of Paul Gauguin, who is never mentioned again), that's not a sure thing. I started flagging the limited clues I could find: mention of Gauguin's brothers taking holidays to Florida and Montreal, a mention of the author's monthly budget, which was in euros, and finally(!) a comment that she was going to Paris over the weekend to visit her brothers, which I guess answered the question. (Well. Kind of...could still be, e.g., set in Belgium.) But that's it. I think a bit more setting might have helped break up some of the darkness, plus give a bit more more, you know, sense of place and time.

So not really the book for me, but you never know til you try.

Review: "I Will Always Love You (Maybe)" by Dana Hawkins

I Will Always Love You (Maybe) by Dana Hawkins
Published February 2026 via Storm Publishing
★★★★

Meet Cute in Minnesota is back, this time with an unexpected pairing! Colby has isolated herself since losing her wife six years ago—her golden retriever is all the company she wants or needs. And Josie loves her work as a vet tech, but in every other part of her life she's restless. They don't have a meet-cute so much as a meet-stress...but then Josie offers to help Colby out with Kona, and it just so happens that a storm sweeps in. And suddenly they have all the time in the world to get to know each other.

Lesbian romance has come, my gosh, so far since I was a semi-closeted teenager trawling through Fun Home to make lists of every book mentioned and try (and mostly fail) to find them at the library. Romance in general can be quite hit-or-miss—like any genre, of course, but there's so much romance out there, and...everyone has their own tastes. (Incidentally, I once upon a time aced a job interview in which I used my dislike of alpha heroes to illustrate how I was comfortable working on things that I was not personally interested in. But I digress—that's another, more heterosexual story.)

I haven't read the first of this series yet (just the second and now third), but this has confirmed for me that book 2 was no one-off. Hawkins does such a wonderful job of subverting romance tropes. Is this a forced-proximity romance...sure. Am I sick of every romance novel and its mother being defined by its tropes, yes yes. But there's remarkably little tension of the negative sort: no sniping and getting in each other's way and misunderstanding each other. Instead we have two characters who sometimes clash...and then they talk about it, and they figure it out. They hook up, and they both have misgivings (for different reasons), and there's an awkward moment and then they talk it through. Even the secret Colby is hiding pans out in an unexpected way: It's clear that at some point that secret will come out, but it's less clear what shape that will take, or how much control Colby will have over how it comes out. It's clear fairly early on what the most dramatic option would be, but Hawkins neatly sidesteps that and goes for something more subtle (if still with its own fair share of heartbreak).

Not sure if this series will continue, but I'll happily keep reading if it does.

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

Review: "Medicine at 50° Below" by Mary Ellen Doty

Medicine at 50° Below by Mary Ellen Doty
Published February 2026 via Nelson Bond Publishing
★★★

Doty was new to her role as a nurse practitioner when she took a job that was off the beaten path—literally and figuratively. A clinic in the remote wilds of Alaska needed staffing, and a two-year commitment would pay off her loans and give her (or so she thought) a relaxed entry into her field.

I picked this job in a similar manner to the way I picked my husbands—hot, exciting dates, commitment in the middle of the night, and then donning dark glasses the next morning to block out any sunlight on our way to the chapel. (loc. 192*)

As it turned out, Doty loved it, and stayed well beyond her two-year commitment—but it was not relaxed, and she soon learned that there were deep staffing shortages for such positions, both because of the challenge (she was a one-woman family medicine clinic and emergency department and preventive health services clinic all rolled up in one) and because two years is a long time to uproot yourself and your life. And eventually it occurred to her that there must be a better way.

The first half of the book I found really compelling—Doty finding her footing in Alaska, falling in love with the community, the community gradually starting to trust her. (The previous provider was...not one to inspire trust.) It was not easy, and she does not make it out to be: It was more than she signed up for, and she quickly understood why so many didn't stay the distance; she was effectively on call 24/7, and depending on the situation it could be just Doty standing between life and death.

We had been flying for over an hour and a half, and not since that last small mountain to the northwest of Fairbanks—about 150 miles ago—had I seen a road. (loc. 107)

In the second half of the book, Doty describes leaving her first posting in Alaska—first for somewhere a bit less isolated, then back to her home territory of Montana, where she tried and quickly became disenchanted with corporate medicine (basically the opposite of what she'd been doing in Alaska). When she realized she wasn't the only one, she started to dream up a better model of locum care for remote clinics in Alaska, one that would let providers from the lower 48 practice the way they wanted to practice without uprooting themselves and would ensure continuity of care for remote communities. I admit that I did not find this part of the book as interesting; I find medicine (and especially the less discussed parts of medicine, such as work in villages with extremely limited resources on hand) compelling to read about, but the stress and frustration of building a start-up rather less so. A lot of that material is about long hours in cramped quarters, overworking to the point of burnout, and meaningful dreams, and while there are absolutely readers who will love this, for me as a reader that part of the book wasn't as engaging.

Still. This was the hardest work I had ever loved, writes Doty (loc. 801); that she was able to take that feeling and translate it into something that enabled other people to love the same work is nothing short of wonderful.

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

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

Review: "Once We Are Safe" by Alessandra Carati

Once We Are Safe by Alessandra Carati
Translated from the Italian by Linda Worell and Laura Masini
Published October 2025 via Amazon Crossing
★★★

At home, I asked my mother if it was true that the war was coming. "No," she said, "it will never come to this village." I believed her. (loc. 92)

Aida is six when her family flees the Bosnian War and takes refuge in Milan—their village is no longer safe. It's temporary, her parents assure her, assure each other, over and over again. They'll be back to the village before they know it. But the war drags on, and they get settled in Italy, and by the time it's safe to go back most of what they knew is gone.

We didn't even hug goodbye. Everyone kept saying that it wouldn't be for long—two weeks at most, and then we'd go home. (loc. 159)

I was eager to read this because I've read precious little about this time and place. I was too young when the Bosnian War was happening to know that it existed, and it was only ever an afterthought in my history classes. And beyond that, even Italy in the early 90s is not something I've read much about. Literature in translation...yes please.

I found that the structure of the book impeded my interest somewhat, though. The book is short, and the chapters shorter; I sped right through. But each chapter feels more like a snapshot than anything: Despite the brief nature of the chapters, there's often a gap of time between one chapter and the next—sometimes only a day, sometimes much longer. Sometimes the breaks are longer; Aida jumps from seven years old to choosing what to study in high school, and later she jumps from studying classics in high school to a professional degree that she's previously shown no interest in. Her parents, meanwhile, change little; her mother never gets beyond the grief of leaving her homeland behind, or of losing so many of her loved ones.

There's one line that reminded me of something in The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro: I couldn't understand why Abraham didn't just defy God and try to keep his son anyway. Babo would never have given up a male child, not for all the world, not even if he'd been asked by Allah. (loc. 572) It's striking for the understanding Aida has as a young child—she's still about six when she says this—how much more boys matter in her world, in the world generally. Her statement is neutral, matter of fact; it doesn't occur to her that her father might think the same way about a daughter. This is followed up on somewhat throughout the book, but I think I wish it had been covered a bit further. Aida's younger brother, who is born after this point in the book, eventually becomes the focus of the family's energies, though for different reasons than Aida expresses here, and so too does the book lose focus on what it is to have a homeland torn apart by war. I wish there had been a bit more of a sense of place; I didn't pick up all that much of a sense of being either in Bosnia or in Italy, and if the story had been picked up and put in the context of a different conflict, I don't think all that much would have to be changed.

So...glad to have read this, but I'm not sure how well it will stay with me. A quick read, though, and always nice to pick up something about a situation I don't know enough about.

Review: "Strangers" by Belle Burden

Strangers by Belle Burden
Published January 2026 via The Dial Press
★★★★

Burden had a picture-perfect life—a New York apartment and a summer house; an excellent education and legal work she enjoyed, but also the financial flexibility to be a stay-at-home parent; three kids; a happy marriage that had lasted almost twenty years. And then her husband walked away from it all.

Strangers traces their marriage, and the dissolution of it—the man she thought she knew, and the red flags that it just didn't occur to her to see, not in the context of a happy marriage. There are...a lot of labels that could be applied to her now-ex-husband; I'm reminded of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing, in which that author and her therapist decide that the ex-husband in question must have a personality disorder. But Burden applies none of those labels: She simply tells the story of what happened, and acknowledges again and again that she'll probably never know why.

It's a painful story to read. I had to put the book down briefly at around the 1/3 mark, because it was so clear that some financial decisions throughout their marriage were going to come back to haunt Burden. I say there were red flags, and there were, but: it's also so clear that she couldn't see the red flags for the green, and so clear that so many others also would have seen just the green. Also painful: Burden's discussion of people's reactions, both after her husband left and after she started publishing material about the split. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still staggering to think how many people will tell women to hush, be quiet, take on his shame as your own. Talking about her life being torpedoed treated as something equally bad as, or worse than, her ex-husband torpedoing her life in the first place.

Burden is not vindictive here. I think it's fair to say that she's writing from a place of pain but also a place of healing, one where she can express how it felt but also see a way forward. And...I'll be honest. Burden is careful in how she writes her story, careful to strip out any remaining vestiges of anger, but I have no such compunctions; I am going to cheerfully hope that the publication of this book simultaneously sets Burden up financially and make's her ex's life a social misery. (Surely that's the barest of bare minimums due to a man who would intentionally, and for no apparent reason, abandon his wife and kids and then do his best to ruin them financially—something he seems to have been preparing for for years?)

A well-crafted story, and a reminder to be a decent person—in your own relationships, and when talking to people about theirs.

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

Review: "Archie, Vol. 4" by Mark Waid and Pete Woods

Archie, Vol. 4 by Mark Waid and Pete Woods
Published 2017 via Archie Comics
★★★

And into volume 4 we go! This picks off right about where volume 3 left off, with the crush of the third volume actually going somewhere (I wasn't sure it would). I'm sure there were similar subplots in the original comics, but if there were they never went very far. We also get a bit more from the Blossoms, though theirs seems to be a long-haul sub-plot (info drabbled out across volumes).

But if the Blossoms were the big bads (well, Cheryl, anyway) of the previous volume, it's Reggie this time. He hasn't had much role in the series so far, but...here he is, leering at girls and pushing Archie's buttons until Archie snaps. And that snapping leads to one of the stupidest decisions of the series...and then some other equally stupid decisions. (Spoiler: If you're trying to stop an illegal car race, the thing to do is not to drive headfirst into it.) Archie gets off scot-free, of course, because the cops know Reggie as a troublemaker, and...honestly, that's sort of a problem, no? Oh, very consistent with the Archie comics of old, but it's very much a "reputation is all that counts" thing. And of course the volume ends on a cliffhanger...which I suspect will not last more than midway through volume 5, but hey! Not quite there yet.

Review: Short story: "Famous Once" by Jane Green

Famous Once by Jane Green
Published February 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

In another life, Astrid Lane was a model married to a rock star. Then things came crashing down—his affairs, mostly, but also a mysterious death with numerous open questions. Decades later, Astrid is living a much quieter life, working as a caterer and struggling to pay the bills...but when even her daughter starts asking questions, Astrid can't help but get involved.

This short story made for a very quick read, though in a way that also felt a bit rushed. We learn a bit about Astrid's earlier life (meeting her rock star husband, flashing forward to the relationship not working out as she hoped) plus of course the present day. A lot less about the mysterious death; the woman who died is little more than a name. There's a brief threat against Astrid, a briefer worry about what uncovering the past might lead to; and then basically a jump to the conclusion. Ultimately I think the brief length of this story is working against it; there's enough time to get interested in the various threads of the story but not enough time to explore any of them in depth.

I'm also, if I'm honest, uncomfortable with the way Astrid's (ex) husband, Callum, is portrayed so positively. When Astrid first has a conversation with him (in the backstory part of things), his manager has just sexually assaulted Astrid. Callum's reaction boils down to "yeah, he's an asshole but good with money, so I keep him around", and...I guess Callum's non-apology is supposed to be enough to make it okay that he willingly associates with this abusive sleazeball. (As I write this, the news is full of revalations from the Epstein files. Callum isn't responsible for somebody else's actions, no, but who one willingly associates with—and what one knows about one's associates' actions—is telling.) And yet Callum is portrayed throughout as someone who is still dynamic, whose fatal flaw is that he's not faithful; he's portrayed of someone deserving of sympathy for eventually being held ever so slightly accountable for his ongoing relationship/friendship with the manager.

So...has its moments but did not have the substance or space to be really satisfying.

(One thing I did find funny: When Astrid's daughter discusses where an article could be published, she mentions <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>The Sunday Times</i>, and <i>The Daily Mail</i>...how the NYT has fallen, to be mentioned in the same breath as a rag like <i>The Daily Fail</i>!)

<i>Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.</i>

Review: "Lipstick" by Eileen G'Sell

Lipstick by Eileen G'Sell
Published February 2025 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★★

The latest in one of my favorite thought-provoking nonfiction series! Lipstick delves into (surprise!) some of the sociocultural implications of lipstick. G'Sell is herself an enthusiastic (passionate, even) wearer of lipstick, and has been since her youth, but what lipstick means for a White woman of a certain generation is not what lipstick means for everyone.

Margaret, a visual artist and professor, submitted "a passionate thesis" for her undergraduate honors degree in 1975, "on makeup as a masking, negative abomination. Fifty years later, she joked to me, "I was wearing lipstick when I wrote it, a natural-looking gloss. And the strange thing is, I adore lipstick now." For many Boomer women in their youth, lipstick seemed a sexist throwback in a time that demanded radical change. (loc. 630*)

I love the nuance of this book—G'Sell talks about people to whom lipstick represents oppression and people to whom lipstick represents freedom; people to whom lipstick represents conformity and people to whom lipstick represents uniqueness...and sometimes people to whom lipstick has represented all of those things, depending on time and circumstance. Think sex and gender and race and nationality and economics and capitalism and much more.

Makeup has never really been my thing (I said when I read Snack that my partner despairs of my approach to dinner...well, my mother-in-law despairs of my approach to makeup). I'd put that down to my parents (quasi-hippies both), but my sister did get whatever recessive makeup gene I didn't, so... In any case, G'Sell hits it on the nose when she observes that lipstick can feel like an easy just-one-thing (and again when she observes that, for many, it can also feel like too much). This doesn't make me want to start wearing lipstick on the regular—and that's not the point of the book anyway. But it does make me think hmm, maybe a bolder color next time we go see the in-laws.

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

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

Review: "A Fabulous Thru-Hike" by Derick Lugo

A Fabulous Thru-Hike by Derick Lugo
Published February 2026 via Mountaineers Books
★★★★

When Lugo set out on the Appalachian Trail, it changed his life—and a decade or so later, it was time for a new adventure.

A tiny fraction of the number of people who hike the Appalachian Trail hike the Continental Divide Trail. It's almost 50% longer than the AT; it's more rugged; trail signs are limited; and on it goes. Consequently, there are a lot fewer books about the CDT than books about the AT, so I was pretty pleased to pick this one up.

The Continental Divide Trail Coalition (CDTC) estimates that only 150 to 400 people attempt the trail each year, compared with about 3,000 for the AT. However, the CDT has a completion rate of around 80 percent, while on the AT it's closer to 25 percent. (loc. 111*)

What I loved: This felt like a lighthearted, good-natured romp. Lugo had strugglebus days on the CDT, but he knew what he was doing (see: why a higher proportion of starters on the CDT complete their hike than starters on the AT), and he seems like a pretty social guy who was just happy to meet new people, be out in nature, and hike hike hike. It also helps that Lugo's introductions of people are pretty positive-neutral—this is a low bar, but I've read far too many hiking memoirs by men that comment extensively (and subjectively, and sometimes lecherously) on women's appearances, and that is (yay) not the case here.

What surprised me: Lugo's journey on the CDT was way more social than I expected. I've read only two other CDT memoirs, and both of them took place well before Lugo's hike (and also, it's been a while since I read either of them!), so in retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised; there was of course also a time when a tiny number of people walked the AT, or the Camino, and so on. But I didn't expect Lugo's journey to so quickly turn to his trail family. That's neither a good thing nor a bad one, but I suppose it reflects the changing shape of thru-hiking.

What I wanted more of: Most of this book is about the external journey. As Lugo says, he had nothing to prove; he was doing the CDT for the joy of hiking (and also perhaps to write another book!). That's okay—not every hiking book needs a deep backstory—but I wouldn't have minded a bit more of the internal. Lugo also touches very briefly on some of what it's like to be hiking this sort of trail as a Black and Hispanic man; I imagine it's not what he wanted to focus on, and that's of course entirely his call, but it's an experience I haven't read much about, and it seems like an untapped opportunity. (Underrepresented hikers...I want to read your memoirs!)

I'd put this at 3.5 stars; it would have been higher with more internal journey, but I'm rounding up for the sake of more CDT-focused books.

*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 Cut Line" by Carolina Pihelgas

The Cut Line by Carolina Pihelgas, translated by Darcy Hurford
English translation published February 2026 via World Editions
★★★★

Rural Estonia: Liine has fled to her rural family cottage in the wake of a much-needed breakup. It's peaceful, and it's not: war hovers just around the corner, climate change is making its mark, and more than anything Liine doesn't really know what's next.

When everything is quiet, when the guns aren't firing, this is the most beautiful place in the world. (loc. 119*)

I'm fond of novels in translation for a couple of reasons—first, I often get to read about places that aren't so commonly written about in English; second, the rhythm and style of books written in different languages is often different. (Think, e.g., about the recent uptick in interest in translations of Japanese novels—could be wrong, but I assume one of the reasons for this is just that the style of writing is different than what most English-medium authors are doing.) As far as I can remember this is the first novel out of Estonia that I've read(!), so far be it from me to paint all Estonian novels with the same brush, but...nice to see contemporary things from places about which I know little.

Anyway, back to more specifics: The Cut Line is told in a not-quite-stream-of-consciousness style, as Liine works and ruminates and tries to avoid falling back into the angry orbit of her ex; as her family asks if he was so bad, really; as gunfire echos nearby; as nothing happens and everything changes anyway.

The description highlights climate change and the threat of war; the mention of climate change made me a little hesitant to read this (I already read too much real-life news), but I found nearby military action to make more of a impact when reading. (Also stressful, and also a little too close to real life! But worth noting that this is not a war story.) I don't know any Estonian, so I can't speak to the translation accuracy, but this made for a smooth read, and I never found myself wondering about the original—a good sign.

One for readers of lit fic and those looking for something slow, quiet, deeper currents moving under deceptively calm waters.

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

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

Review: "Archie, Vol. 3" by Mark Waid and Joe Eisma

Archie, Vol. 3 by Mark Waid and Joe Eisma
Published 2017 by Archie Comics
★★★

Volume 3! In which Mr. Lodge has had a hissy fit and moved the family away from Riverdale, Veronica has been shipped off to a Swiss boarding school (she's miserable, but honestly, that was my dream as a teenager), and we meet Cheryl Blossom. Cheryl's basically there to be the new Big Bad so that Veronica can be a bit softer—the Veronica of the first couple of volumes wouldn't have thought twice about participating in a mean-girl trick or two, but the Veronica of this volume has developed Morals, and perhaps a Conscience. There's very little of Betty here, except for a moment when Cheryl uses her to learn more about what makes Veronica tick, and we get a minor subplot involving a secondary character who has a crush on Betty...though it remains to be seen whether that plotline goes anywhere.

It's interesting—some things about these comics have been updated. At the end of this one there's a sneak peek into one about Reggie, and in that he raids his father's liquor cabinet, which he'd never have been allowed to do in the squeaky-clean originals; of course the shape of the Betty-Veronica rivalry is a bit different; Kevin (who was introduced to the Archie universe specifically to be The Gay One, because heaven forbid that any of the original characters might come out) is no longer the only queer character. Other things are just the same. They're as over the top as they ever were, with characters who are at times caricatures of the originals...who were themselves already caricatures. That's the point, I suppose! It's the whole genre. But I do wonder what this would look like in a different graphic novel form, with a less slapstick take.