Review: "A Life Half Lived" by Sherri Jolie Fowler

A Life Half Lived by Sherri Jolie Fowler
Published January 2026
★★★

I am writing this book for many reasons, but mostly for Monica. (9)

Fowler's daughter Monica was a teenager when she set out to lose a few pounds—and when anorexia took hold and refused to let her go. In A Life Half Lived, Fowler chronicles her daughter's life, from precocious child to woman devastated by illness. Much of the book is about what didn't work—by the time Monica was in more intensive treatment, the illness was truly entrenched, and fundamentally nothing made much of a difference. At some point it became clear that anorexia was likely to be a death sentence as well as a life sentence, and that it was a matter of time. A book by a parent who has lost a child is a specific thing—a love letter; an obituary; a perspective that nobody else has. Fowler is open about the places where she sees that she and her husband could have done differently (acting sooner, for example, or understanding that just because their daughter wouldn't usually lie didn't mean the eating disorder wouldn't), but ultimately they were trying their best with the information and the knowledge they had.

Of note: The cost of eating disorder treatment in the US is wild. Take this: Dale and I paid a whopping $60,000 upfront for just two months of treatment, requiring us to sell some of our stock market holdings to cover the cost. We had no idea how we would afford anything beyond two months if she needed additional treatment, but in our minds, it didn't really matter. We were elated that she actually wanted to try to get better. If we needed more money, we'd find a way when the time came. (109) It's obviously a privileged thing to be able to pay tens of thousands of dollars for treatment...let alone treatment that didn't work. (I'm reminded of Light, in which Nancy Levine recounts telling her daughter that relapse was out of the question simply because they wouldn't be able to afford more treatment.) But, gad, a $60,000 price tag as a starting point for treatment is just bonkers. (The Internet tells me that half of Americans have less than $500 in savings, and that median liquid cash is about $8,000—that wouldn't include stock market holdings, but just...even this inadequate treatment is out of the question for so many.)

Review: "The South Korean Diplomat's Wife" by Yoon Jeong Kim

The South Korean Diplomat's Wife by Yoon Jeong Kim
Published October 2025
★★★

Kim has had a more adventurous life than many: As the wife of a diplomat (a travelling spouse), her normal life has included a lot more picking up and changing countries than the average person.

These interconnected essays are structured around some of the places Kim has lived—London, Berlin, Brasilia, Chicago, Kampala. (I don't know how diplomatic assignments are set, but some of these seem pretty cushy assignments, so I think her husband must have been doing well for himself within the diplomatic corps?) The book is particularly interesting to me for being by somebody who does not come from an English-speaking country—I've read diplomat memoirs, and diplomat-adjacent memoirs, by people from the US and the UK and Australia, and of course by people who were posted in countries where the lingua franca wasn't English, but Kim simply has a different context based on her own country of upbringing, and that's something I love in memoir.

Ultimately less of the book is about life as a diplomatic spouse specifically than it is about cultural differences that Kim experienced and/or noticed while living abroad. I found some of these discussions interesting and insightful, but I think there was a point at which I wanted a bit more about the diplomatic life, and about daily living in each of these places (what did daily life in Kampala look like after living in Chicago?). Still a quick, engaging read, but not so dramatic as the subtitle would have you think.

Review: "The Fifth Year" by Marlen Haushofer

The Fifth Year by Marlen Haushofer
Translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside
English translation published May 2026 via New Directions
★★★★

Somewhere in the Austrian mountains, a young girl is growing up with her grandparents. The in-between generation is gone: some lost to illness, some lost to war; it is unclear what, exactly, befell Marili's parents, partly because she is old enough to ask questions but not really old enough to understand the full weight of the world in which she is growing up. Instead we see that Marili's grandparents are still grieving losses—some old, some new—that she can register but not, yet, put into context.

This was Haushofer's first published book, with the original Das fünfte Jahr coming out in 1952. War must have been so present still, in broken buildings but especially in the missing and the dead. "This," says Marili's grandmother, "is where they lie, Hans and Franz and your mother. We don't know anything about Stefan and your father, they're somewhere in Russia." (loc. 472*)

I'm reminded a bit of Heidi, of course (though these grandparents are neither recluses nor grumps), and of Claire Keegan's Foster, though the setting and situation are different. Mostly this is a sweet and charming story, but an undercurrent of darkness runs throughout the story, starting with Marili's fear of the crucified Jesus painting hanging in her room and continuing through the grief her grandparents will so clearly carry for the rest of their lives. (I'm extrapolating, but I got the sense that raising another child is more than they'd bargained for, but also that being able to do so in the face of such loss is one of the things that helps them get up in the morning.)

3.5 stars for a quiet and curious book.

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

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

Review: "The Maidenheads" by Benny B. Peterson

The Maidenheads by Penny B. Peterson
Published May 2026 via Dutton
★★★★

For a moment in high school, Jamie dreamed of something big—she and her girlfriend Mari had a band, and though they were young and largely untried it was clear that if the stars aligned they could go somewhere with it. But the stars didn't align, and instead, as an adult, Jamie is working a job she can do in her sleep, and drinking too much, and sleeping with her ex-boyfriend just to not feel alone. And then her past comes calling.

I read Long Island Girls recently, and while they're very different books it's fascinating to see what historical fiction looks like when it's about an era I lived through. I was never involved in any kind of music scene, of course, while for Jamie and her cohort music is something as natural as breathing. And: if I'm honest, my decisions were mostly a bit less chaotic than Jamie's.

At the core is this messy, unresolved relationship between Jamie and Mari. It fell apart in high school in large part due to (let's keep it vague) a big mistake of Jamie's, but in becomes clearer and clearer in the present-day story that their relationship was never going to be, is never going to be, easy. In a lot of ways this is a book full of bad decisions, but human ones; in other ways it's sort of a stand-in for millennial uncertainty.

It's not always an easy read, and I took a few short breaks in reading when I needed a step away. There are a number of places where you just kind of want to reach through the pages and say "whoa, slow down, think this through"—but at the same time, while I can't necessarily imagine Jamie's life for myself, it feels viscerally possible.

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

Review: "Lost in Taiwan" by Mark Crilley

Lost in Taiwan by Mark Crilley
Published May 2023 via Little, Brown Ink
★★★

In which a jaded teenaged boy is sent to Taiwan to stay with his brother, only he finds himself lost and with no way home...

I found this to be...okay. I've never been to Taiwan and like reading books set in places I've never visited, so this was something of a no-brainer. Plus, I liked some things about Crilley's art in My Last Summer with Cass, and art can make or break a graphic novel.

But the plot felt kind of...teenage boy wet dream? Like, I can see what Paul sees in Peijing: She's cute and nice and drives a little too fast and is happy to shepherd him around and show him the best of Taiwan and put up with his ignorance and flirt with him. But I have a harder time seeing what Peijing sees in Paul. Granted, the reader sees more of him than Peijing does—we see that at the beginning of the book, he's a rude dweeb who is hell-bent on throwing away the chance to explore part of a foreign country. He's polite to Peijing, and fairly quickly starts to see the value of new experiences, but other than Paul saying "yes, go for your dreams"...what is she getting out of their budding relationship? She's getting a boy who calls her "exotic" and thinks it's a compliment (though he does recognize the error of his ways and apologize); a boy who admits that he puts no effort into relationships and instead cuts out the moment things get rough; a boy who is foreign and thus perhaps exciting to her but really doesn't seem to bring much else to the table.

The art is indeed pretty (though I don't really understand why Peijing's irises are often so much bigger than Paul's—the Disney effect, where hot girls have enormous eyes and the boys have normal eyes?). The glimpse at Taiwan is nice, and I read this while visiting my in-laws in India, so I could relate to some of the cultural disconnects. But...the plot is thin, and Paul's character development is too abrupt for me to trust that it'll last. Nice little romance for them, but hopefully it fizzles out and Peijing can find herself someone who knows better to think that his culture is the "normal" one and hers is the "exotic" one.

Review: "Queerleaders" by Olivia Cole and Ashley Woodfolk

Queerleaders by Olivia Cole and Ashley Woodfolk
Published May 2026 via Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
★★★★

They're here, they're queer, and they're ready to cheer...whether or not the local stick-up-their-bums crowd has anything to say about it.

This is a delightful take on Bring It On—or, I guess I shouldn't say it's a take on Bring It On; it's more accurate to say that there are plenty of sly nods to the classic (fewer, unfortunately, to But I'm a Cheerleader...but I can't have everything). This is a squad that's out and proud and also good at what they do. And we've come a long way in the last quarter-century(!!), which means that they're a team that has the good sense to be supportive of each other, and not food-shame or body-shame, and skip as much of the mean-girl drama as possible. And now they just need to spin that into a good showing at Nationals...

So it's a lot of fun. There's a conservative media personality who tries to make a stink (I'm reminded of the time the college conservatives brought Ann Coulter to my college, ugh), and I would say she's over the top, but...Ann Coulter. Lots of Big Personalities, but for the most part they manage to be Big Personalities who try to bring out the best in each other. There is of course a romance, and while Kendall and Davie manage to make things a little more angsty than strictly necessary (they're teenagers; it's allowed), I genuinely liked both main characters (and the side characters), which made them easy to cheer root for.

One quibble: I found it hard to believe that a team that is regularly a contender at Nationals—which are, let's be honest, a big deal—would struggle so much to find qualified, or even adequate, new cheerleaders. Kendall and her sister swoop in at just the right time...and, to be fair, the way things play out here makes sense in the context of Bring It On. But I honestly think that a team good enough to contend (and to know that they'll contend) at Nationals would have hopefuls moving into the school district, or driving/flying in to try out with a parental pledge that they'll move if they get on the team (because this is a thing in sports), or frankly the team having the ability to recruit from other schools or at least have a middle-school-to-high-school cheer pipeline. And probably a JV squad, for that matter. Have you seen the stuff top competitive cheerleaders do? They are not falling into those athletic feats by chance (or, for that matter, changing things at the last minute). It's not a huge deal (again: Bring It On context), but just something that made me think.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have to go convince my very disinterested partner that it is time to watch Bring It On, and also But I'm a Cheerleader...

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

Review: "Calling Me Home" by Laurin Becker Macios

 

Calling Me Home by Laurin Becker Macios
Published May 2026 via Holiday House
★★★★

Jenny is fresh out of high school and off to Europe for the summer. It's not her first time in Europe, but it is her first time traveling alone, on her own terms, on her own schedule. It's not quite what she expected...and then she changes the parameters, and the parameters change themselves, and suddenly her expectations of her future change.

I had nowhere else to go, just a goal / of communing with the caryatids, of letting / my eyes wander among the milk-white stones / that dotted the wild grass—lime-green, overgrown, / sun-yellow blooms holding their own against / the Mediterranean breeze. (53*)

Verse made this a very quick read—I probably should have spread it out over two days, but I was invested enough to read straight through. Jenny is a compelling character, and seeing her grow is great. Initially she thinks her summer story is going to be defined by going off plan and doing her backpacking with a little more spontaneity than she'd expected, but eventually she has much bigger decisions to make and bigger shifts in her understanding of herself.

Perhaps my favorite thing: There's quite a lot of backstory (Jenny's nomadic childhood, previous relationships), but it's slipped in quietly; although any of those things could be a story in themselves, here they're used to flesh out the story and make more sense of Jenny's actions and reactions.

I hope this one makes it into a lot of high school libraries.

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

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

Review: "Invisibly Unwell" by Paige Lavell

Invisibly Unwell by Paige Lavell
Published March 2026 via Life to Paper Publishing
★★★

From the outside, Lavell knew that her life looked cushy: a stable marriage, a stimulating job with wardrobe to match, a house and a mortgage. On the inside, she was barely hanging on—and she knew it was time for a change.

This is framed largely around Lavell's experience with autoimmune disorders, which took her a great deal of time and money and energy to get properly diagnosed and treated. As much as that, though, it's a story about a particular type of perfectionism and a desire to get it "right", even when "right" means doing things that are popular rather than things that work for you specifically. I don't (to the best of my knowledge) have any autoimmune disorders, but I'm not sure how much I'd take away from this if I did, other than solidarity and a reminder that it's important to find doctors who will listen to the full story.

That's not so much a bad thing; part of Lavell's experience involved getting sucked into wellness culture and chasing cures that did not, in fact, cure, and it's much better for her to tell her story in a nonprescriptive way than to assume that the exact things that eventually worked for her will work for others! With that in mind, though, I'd probably look at this more for the story of trying to fit into the wrong size and shape of box before realizing that it's okay to look for something that does fit rather than continuing to try to make yourself fit.

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

Review: "Soon by You" by Dahlia Adler

Soon by You by Dahlia Adler
Published May 2025 via St. Martin's Griffin
★★★★

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride—and Arielle is fine with that, for now. She's not ready to settle down. But in her modern Orthodox community, young marriage is the norm (not least because there are a whole host of restrictions on what you can do with the opposite sex before marriage), and her friends are all pairing off, and she finds it easiest to keep things no-strings. That is...until a very buttoned-up wedding singer comes into the picture, and no-strings gets more complicated.

Adler's books are a delight, and this is no exception. In many ways this is a standard romance novel (enough so that I hesitated before picking it up, because Adler's queer books are my favourite, and the primary romance here is heterosexual), but with the not insignificant twist that the characters are almost all observant, Modern Orthodox Jews. This means: keeping kosher; keeping Shabbat (no work, no electronics, etc., from Friday evening to Saturday evening); men not listening to women sing; observing a whole host of different holidays that I know little about; and—for some of them—no touching the opposite sex. Now...this is a very steamy romance; some of the characters are more observant than others about who they will and won't touch (and some are more observant than others about whose music they will listen to, for that matter). The concept of a tefillin date sent me, because...well, of course in every religion that has more than one follower, there will be differences in belief and practice, but I haven't given all that much thought to what that might look like in Modern Orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, the relationship is doing interesting things. Arielle has a reputation, and it doesn't bother her—she knows what she wants, she knows her boundaries, she knows who her friends are, and she knows that the right guy will take her as she is. So when she and Judah have reservations about the possibility of a future, it's not really because of either of them not knowing what they want; it's because they haven't worked out (alone or together) how they can make their visions for the future align. And, well, there are some other complications along the way, but by and large we have a heroine who knows exactly who she is and what her limits are and a hero who is still figuring himself out but knows enough to respect the hell out of the heroine's autonomy. Plus, really genuinely interesting discussions about individual interpretations of religion and related choices.

I would have liked to know more about Arielle's job. (I applied for a job like that once; I still regret that I never got an interview, because I would have killed the interview and probably excelled at the job.) And also would not mind *cough* a bonus scene that takes place after the end of the book...although on the whole I really can't complain. Someday I will finish making it through Adler's backlist, and that will be a sad day until her next book comes out.

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

Review: "Finding Our Way" by Steven Gallon

Finding Our Way by Steven Gallon
Published September 2022 via Peace Corps Writers
★★★★

In the 60s, Gallon and his wife graduated from university, got married...and immediately set off for Peace Corps service in South Korea. At the time, Korea was not the highly developed country it is today: It had only relatively recently come out of war, connections with the rest of the world were of course not what they are today, and although major cities were of course more developed, that's relative.

After fifteen months in Korea, we were accustomed to a lack of development: dirt streets, open sewers, aging buildings, and an economy that primarily operated on the backs of manual laborers. Pockets of prosperity and economic signs of progress were emerging; new construction was on the rise and new businesses were popping up in the cities. Urban infrastructure, however, and life in rural villages contained few conveniences. Most people had little, and their lives were harsh. Per capita GDP in Korea at the time was less than $200 per year. (232)

(I assume that's 1960s dollars, so a quick inflation calculation: $200 in 1967 would be a bit less than $2,000 in 2025.)

It sounds like a wildly challenging experience and a wildly rewarding one. Gallon and his wife perhaps had an easier time of it because they had each other to lean on—most PCVs have their cohort, sure, but that's not the same as living with someone you know and love and who shares your cultural context—but I suppose it also takes a particular type of person to excel at being dropped in another country and another language and to make the best of it, and the Gallons were that type of person.

There's a richness of detail here that makes me think that the Gallons kept good notes and wrote long letters at the time; there's also a lot of affection for the people they met and, in some cases, lived with. Were I to join the Peace Corps I'd find public health work more interesting than teaching English (this assuming I qualified to do public health work!), but it sounds like they had, overall, an extremely rewarding time with their students and with their lives in Korea. An interesting story, well told.

Finally, one apropos-of-nothing quotation, because it made me laugh:

Our meals during training were never very popular. The cooks in our cafeteria were contractors, and to prepare us for what we would find in Korea, Peace Corps had requested they make something akin to a Korean diet. Everyday Korean cuisine traditionally consisted of homemade soup, moist and sticky rice, and spicy kimchi complemented with a variety of mostly vegetable side dishes. The basic menu was the same for each meal of the day. To introduce us to such a diet, the cooks served us Lipton chicken noodle soup and Uncle Ben’s instant rice, both out of a box. Side dishes didn’t make it to the menu, except maybe some toast at breakfast. (22)

Children's books: Marine animals: "How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub", "Float", and "The Octopus

How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub by Lynsey Martin, illustrated by Colleen C. Coggins (MamaBear Books)
Float by Larry Daley (Bookling Media)
The Octopus by Guojing (Two Lions)

Back into the world of children's books...this time with marine animals!

In How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub, it's bathtime, but there's a problem—there's an alligator in the bathtub!

Luckily this particular alligator is reasonably charming (snobby, yes, but good-natured). The boys want their bathtub back, but they pretty quickly get over any residual fear of being eaten (though...parents in Florida...maybe remind your kids that alligators in the bathtub are all good and well, but only in fiction?). It's a quick-moving and playful story, with equally playful illustrations to help carry the story along.

I read an ARC and hope that there's been a last round of proofreading since the ARC was made available; I appreciate that they story isn't in rhyme (rhyme can be nice, but it takes some serious skill to keep it from feeling contrived), but there are some minor punctuation errors. I learned so much about grammar and punctuation through reading as a kid (ah, the American education system, where teaching these things is considered a "nice to have" rather than a "must have"!) that I always wonder what kids pick up from small errors. (I am probably overthinking this.)

All that said, this is super cute, and I can imagine little kids dreaming up their own alligators in the bathtub. A good one to pair with an alligator stuffed animal as a birthday gift.

In Float, Rosie's been waiting for weeks for just this day—field trip to the aquarium! There's a baby sea turtle, and she could not be more excited. As a bonus, she has the best lunch ever...until a seagull steals her lunchbox, and she has to leap into action to rescue her snacks.

This is adorable. The illustrations are colorful and detailed—probably my favorite illustration is the one where the seagull actually steals Rosie's lunchbox, but Rosie sprinting through the aquarium's atrium, leaving chaos in her wake, is a close second—and the story lively. Rosie is clearly a live wire, and, ah, stopping to think before she acts is not her forte.

Adults reading this with kids might want to have a bit of a discussion about how running in an aquarium or similar is not advised, and jumping in the aquarium tanks is definitely not advised(!). I would also not advise that adults take Rosie's lunch box as a guideline, as she seems to have about 75% junk and 25% food that will not make her crash in an hour...but I think kids will enjoy the colorful chaos of the book.

And finally, in The Octopus, a little girl finds a baby octopus struggling on the beach—and when she helps it get to safety, she goes on an underwater adventure.

My family had a copy of Jan Ormerod's Sunshine when I was growing up, and my gosh I loved that book. Like The Octopus, it's a wordless picture book, all the character's emotions and thoughts played out across their faces and actions rather than through words. A successful wordless picture book takes such a tremendous amount of skill, and it was such fun to see how things played out in The Octopus. The illustrations are lovely, with soft colors and some intentional haziness. The little girl's adventure is so fantastical (that picture of all the seashells glowing like gems!), and it also has a subtle message about the damage pollution does to marine life.

This one should probably be read to young kids with a clear reminder that no matter what happens to book characters, real-life kiddos can't breathe underwater and shouldn't go gallivanting near the water's edge without an adult nearby! But my gosh it's sweet. At the end, you can just hear the little girl chattering to her mother about her adventure, and her mother enjoying the imagination of a child.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing review copies through NetGalley.

Review: "Basta, Àle" by S.A. Sterling

Basta, Àle by S.A. Sterling
Published December 2025
★★★

Growing up, Sterling knew she was different—she wasn't allowed to forget it. When her sisters were encouraged to finish their plates, Sterling was put on diet after diet. The resulting shame followed her into adulthood.

This brief memoir spans decades and continents; Sterling grew up in Italy but moved to the US as an adult and also moved around as part of her studies and her military marriage. I think its comp titles (Educated, Hunger, Crying in H Mart) may be doing it a disservice, as those are not only major titles but pretty specific ones, and I think Basta, Àle would benefit from comps to smaller titles...but I suppose I digress. It's a quieter, more thoughtful story than I expected; more than anything, my takeaway was about the way shame can follow one long, long beyond the point that those inflicting the shame expected. Perhaps one for readers who have had to do some unlearning of unwanted lessons of their own.

Review: "Operation Boyfriend" by Zarah Detand

Operation Boyfriend by Zarah Detand
Published May 2026 via Storm Publishing
★★★★

To get his family off his case about dating, Dean needs to produce a semi-serious boyfriend as his date to his sister's wedding—except he's very single and doesn't have the time or inclination for a relationship right now. And Tay could really use a vacation—except he doesn't have the cash to spare. A meddling mutual friend sees an opportunity for both of them...and soon they're plotting a fake relationship for the ages.

This was 1) fluff and 2) adorable. I'm kind of (and by kind of I mean very) over the reduction of romance novels to TikTik-friendly tropes (in this case, mostly #fakedating and #onebed), but I genuinely appreciate the way the fake dating part of things plays out here. To start with, Dean and Tay go into this with clear expectations and a lot of prep work. They're doctors, so they're well versed in studying, and they're determined to do this right; they know that to pull this off they need a level of knowledge about and comfort with each other well before the wedding. And what that means is that by the time the wedding trip rolls around, well into the book, they already know each other pretty well and, better, like each other as people and not just as strangers who are (surprise! except not actually a surprise here) sharing a bed.

The conflict is relatively mild and realistic (no evil villains!); aside from their own hang-ups, Dean and Tay need to consider the fact that they have different seniority levels at the hospital, and gossip could have serious implications for their careers. It's not over-dramatic, which was really nice. Ooh, also, there's very good banter.

Solid beach read; would read more.

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

Review: "The Edge of Forever" by Meghan P. Browne

The Edge of Forever by Meghan P. Browne
Published May 2026 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★★

Maisie had plans for the summer, and they didn't include being dropped with her aunt for the summer while her mother pulls their lives back together. But it's been a hard few years, and Maisie doesn't have a choice—and so she finds herself in Heaven, Texas, where the rules are a bit different than she's used to in the city.

There are a number of interlaced plotlines here: Maisie's family situation and her feelings about being away from her mother for the summer (and what she learns as the story goes on); Maisie's love for the library and books; her budding friendship with a local boy; some bits about his family; a plan she uncovers to turn a rural gem into an overpriced hotspot; adjusting to rural life; her aunt's background in the entertainment industry; and on it goes. Most of it intersects one way or another, even if it doesn't all tie in directly.

Maisie as a character is great—she has a lot going on upstairs, even if she doesn't let it all out (...most of the time). She's curious about the world around her, and although she's still a kid and doesn't always see things with the perspective that she might see when she's older, she has her head screwed on right. I wouldn't have minded seeing her spend a little more time with kids her age (there's Walt, but that's it), and also for that matter more about her aunt Gertie; we eventually learn some about Gertie's past, but Maisie is able to quietly slot into Gertie's life without much friction or information. (Perhaps along these lines, I might have preferred one fewer plotline, to give the others a bit more space.)

But I love this kind of relatively quiet story, with kids figuring it out and safely stretching the bounds of their independence. I can see this one having wide appeal.

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

Review: "Royal Summer" by Kass Morgan

Royal Summer by Kass Morgan
Published May 2026 via HarperCollins
★★★

Hannah's plan is simple: escape her dysfunctional parents for the summer by interning for one of her favorite authors in Edinburgh. From there she'll write a novel of her own, paving the way to an MFA and eventual success as a writer. There's just one problem: the author bails at the last minute, leaving Hannah without a plan...or an income...and no desire to return home. Lucky for her, the solution is also simple: A prince swoops in, sets her up with a job and new accommodation, and helps heal her heartbreak while he's at it.

Oh, YA. Now, it's an established fact that I am a sucker for royalty books. Royalty in real life: problematic! Royalty in fiction: escapism! I've tried (admittedly not very hard, but still) to develop more elevated reading tastes and all that, but, well, sometimes we just need our escapist fluff.

And escapist fluff this is. This was fun and fast, but there's not all that much that's new here—we have your classic "she's the only girl he's ever met who doesn't recognize him and thus the only girl he's ever met who doesn't immediately throw herself at him, so he is immediately smitten"; the also-classic "his ex is prettier, more polished, and possibly a bitch"; and of course "she's a commoner and an American at that, so his parents don't like her". Oh, and don't forget "he was a playboy troublemaker until she came along, but her sweet innocence is enough to reform him". There's also quite a bit that defies my limited ability to suspend disbelief (the whole thing where Hannah steals a horse comes to mind), but then I suppose that's also pretty par for the course. Summery fluff.

A quick note on genre: This is marketed as YA, and for the most part that feels accurate—it's simple enough and light enough that I'd put most of the book at the younger end of YA. However, there's some pretty explicit sex in here (way more than in the last adult romance I read), putting this closer to NA. On the whole I don't take issue with sex in YA books (real-life teenagers are going to boink whether or not book teenagers do; better to have open discussions about it than to pretend it's not happening), but I'm not a fan of the disconnect between young-YA voice and steamy strip-teases (to say nothing of what follows said steamy strip-teases). Do with that what you will.

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

Review: "Archie, Vol. 6" by Mark Waid and Audrey Mok

Archie, Vol. 6 by Mark Waid and Audrey Mok
Published October 2018 via Archie Comics
★★★

This is the end: It's the spring dance, and although the only romance in the air is between Moose and Midge, everyone is determined to have a good time...just, one of those "everyone" people is determined to have a good time by holding the school hostage at gunpoint.

So...here we are. I liked that Betty and Veronica are fast friends in this—they've both put Archie aside, at least for now, though they're both resigned to the possibility that that might not be forever. I like that the point of this last collection in the series really isn't romance, despite the could-be-romantic setting of the dance.

But oooof the gun plotline rubs me the wrong way. This was published in 2018—the same year as the Parkland high school shooting that left seventeen people dead; the same year as a shooting in a Santa Fe school that left ten dead—and it just feels, in that context, so wildly irresponsible to depict, for shock value, gun-related violence at a school that is resolved in part by incredibly dangerous heroics. See also: The police are almost immediately onsite (the teenagers of today's Archie comics have cell phones, after all), but they don't bust in because...well, either because plot, or because Uvalde hadn't happened yet and so people weren't thinking about the scope of destruction when police are actually needed but sit on their asses instead. (Although seriously—this was a lesson we learned with Columbine, no? Almost twenty years before this volume was published? And at least with Columbine they had the excuse of following what was at the time protocol.)

I don't know. I guess it feels as though all of the plotlines that have been building throughout the series (Betty and Archie! Veronica and Archie! Betty's injury! Reggie's delinquency! Dilton's crush!) are shoved aside to make way for an ill-thought-out school shooting plotline, and I'm not so much here for that. Bringing in the guns and yet going out with a whimper rather than a bang...

Review: "The Fallen" by Louise Brangan

The Fallen by Louise Brangan
Published May 2026 via Simon & Schuster
★★★★

In 1951, when the Laundries were at their height, for every one hundred thousand males, twenty-seven were in prison[...] While for every one hundred thousand females, seventy were in a Laundry. These were not peripheral: They were Ireland's main carceral institution. (loc. 179*)

The Fallen traces the history of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, the last of which did not close until the mid-1990s. If you haven't heard of the Laundries, the short version is that they were just that—laundries—except run by nuns and staffed by women who had been consigned to the Laundries for infractions real and imagined.

Pregnancy outside marriage, yes, but mostly for being lively girls, abused and abandoned daughters, or because their families were pulled apart for not fitting the mold of what a family should be. (loc. 3247)

Brangan is careful to draw a distinction between the Laundries and the Mother and Baby Homes that also operated; there was certainly overlap between the women and girls who spent time in them and in the Laundries, but fundamentally the Mother and Baby Homes were there to hide women's pregnancies, and the Laundries were there to punish women and girls who had transgressed.

For Brigid, having played fast and loose with school rules, it was a life sentence. Adult men sentenced [for] murder in the twentieth century were rarely expected to serve more than seven years. Somehow, by the 1940s, the mildest transgression of girls and young women caused more outrage than the taking of a life. It was Brigid's mother who finally came to liberate her daughter. By that point, she was thirty-nine years old. (loc. 523)

I've read about the Laundries before, but everything I read adds something new. Brangan is determined to hold the nuns who ran the Laundries accountable in her words, but she's also clear that it's not just the nuns, or the church, who hold responsibility. The Laundries always reflected the mores of the society around them (loc. 2131). Take that and extend it a bit more broadly: the residential schools in Canada (and elsewhere); the troubled teen industry in the US; the way women have always been punished for stepping outside the lines.

I highlighted so many things in The Fallen—there's so much history wrapped up in how the Laundries came to be and how they evolved over time. At first I found the history a little dry, but then it became clear just how important it was to the overall picture. And then of course there are the personal stories, which Brangan pulls largely from existing testimonies, and the broader cultural context, and it's just...a lot of food for thought.

No one explained to Carmel what was happening. Nor did she ask. There were no rewards for curiosity in Catholic Ireland. (loc. 432)

Would recommend to anyone who has heard of the Magdalene Laundries and wants to know more, and also to people generally interested in the odder intersections of religion and women's history. And I'll leave you with this:

Some women at Sunday's Well were made to line up and repeat this after the nuns: "I am nobody, I am nobody, I am nobody." (loc. 1552)

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

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

Review: "Mother Tongue" by Sara Nović

Mother Tongue by Sara Nović
Published May 2026 via Random House
★★★★

When Nović was a teenager, she started to lose her hearing. At first, panicked and in denial, she hid the loss, developing a robust set of tricks and tactics to pass. And then, eventually, she got herself into an ASL class and unlocked a whole new world.

I read Nović's Girl at War some years ago and loved it. (It's been almost a decade, and I still think about it sometimes. If you can stomach some intensity, go read it.) And then I read True Biz, Nović's novel set at a school for the deaf, and while it was of course written well, what has stuck with me from that is the sense that what Nović really wanted to do was write a nonfiction book about deafness and deaf culture. And, well, now we have Mother Tongue, which is partly a memoir but also partly a nonfiction book about deafness and deaf culture, and it clicked for me in a way that True Biz did not.

Don't go into this expecting a detailed memoir; some of this is Nović's own story, but she is careful about which parts of her own story (and her family's) she chooses to share. But in practical terms, this is fascinating. I'd say that I've spent more time thinking about deafness and deaf culture than the average hearing person, but at the end of the day it's still an experience that is fundamentally not mine, and there's still far more that I don't know than what I do know. I might know theoretically that people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing face discrimination, but I hadn't thought about the disconnect, for example, between the push for oral-only education for deaf children (in other words: force them to use only cochlear implants and hearing aids and lip-reading, and deny them ASL) and the enthusiasm for simple sign language for young hearing children. Or this, during the early days of the pandemic:

But as shelter-in-place orders continued to roll out across the country and deaf students at residential schools were sent home from their dorms, I heard from a friend—a hearing teacher at a deaf school—about the frantic calls they were fielding from parents: that their children were completely out of control, and they could not communicate with them. Almost none of the parents knew even basic ASL, with one woman contacting the school begging for someone to please video-chat her young child and explain that it was time to go to bed. (loc. 1424*)

I just cannot imagine. I've read enough about deafness and politics around deafness and so on and so forth to think that if I had a kid with hearing loss I'd skip the cochlear implants, tap into whatever deaf community I could find, and put us both into sign language classes pronto. And while I'm not in anybody else's head or life, and I'm not here to judge people I know nothing about, and I don't know how fluent I'd be able to get or in what time frame if I were in someone else's shoes, I just cannot imagine knowing that the best way to communicate with my kid was to learn another language and then not learning even the basics in that language. Maybe this is less about those parents itself, though, and more about what Nović talks about throughout the book: the way that society at large has pushed people with disabilities to the margins and refused to make room for them.

At times I might have liked more about Nović's story (making no assumptions here, but it was not lost on me that she says little about her parents' eventual understanding of her hearing loss), but also, I hold a firm belief that memoirs need not be tell-alls and should only share as much that is personal as the author is comfortable sharing, so I can't really fault the book for that. Overall an excellent and thought-provoking read.

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

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

Review: "Oh My Affogato!" by Daphne Ang and Donna Ghorbanpoor

Oh My Affogato! by Daphne Ang and Donna Ghorbanpoor
Published May 2026 via Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
★★★

It's the summer after high school, and Soraya is ready for the rest of her life to begin—starting with a grand tour of Europe with her best friends. And if it just so happens that she's planned the trip to start where her totally not toxic ex, Wes, is hanging with his frat boy bros, well, she can't help coincidence, right? And if they're going to be in the same place anyway, now is obviously the time to secretly get back together...

Now. I read this because even in my relative dotage I cannot resist a fluffy YA travel story. And fluff this is; Soraya is bound and determined to spend as much as her time as possible getting a sunburn on the beach and drinking cocktails and swooning over boys, and as little time as possible doing anything involving history or local culture. If I had met Soraya in high school, we would not have been friends. We would have been perfectly cordial to each other, and probably gotten along fine for small talk, but she's the sort of person to think that someone decked head to toe in expensive brand names looks "effortlessly cool", while I am the sort of person to think that such a look is both stunningly unoriginal and the opposite of effortless. She would quietly dismiss me as an uncool nerd (this is accurate); I would quietly dismiss her as being a boy-crazy birdbrain; we would both be happy; and after graduation we would never speak again.

So that's where I found myself with Soraya: disappointed that she prioritizes a boy over her friendships and that her peak travel dreams involve doing the exact same things she can do at home (with a boy who jerks her around just as much in Italy as he did in Georgia). This latter point is not a character flaw (and nor is it meant to be), it's just that for wanderlust reads I prefer a bit more adventurousness. And these are learning points for Soraya, of course; she figures some things out for herself over the course of the book, and one is left with the impression that when she returns to the States for college she will at least do so with a bit more curiosity about the world. But...I'm also sort of left with the impression that if she couldn't switch over from a toxic boy to a nontoxic boy, she'd still have a bad case of the Wes Nile Virus (which, to give the book its credit, is excellent wordplay) by the time she went home.

With all that said: It's a fun and quick read. I did not click with Soraya, but I did read the entire book in one day and still have time to finish off another book at the gym. I'm not sure who exactly the target reader is (there's a bit too much spice to aim this at younger teens, but not a ton of depth either, so...I suppose older teens who just want something really light). There's some casual diversity, which is nice; also nice is that Soraya and her friends are on careful budgets and have no intention of blowing those budgets. It looks like this might be the first of several books, with the next one potentially taking place in France, and even years (decades!) out of my teens, I'll take whatever light travel books this series can throw at me.

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

Review: "The Trad Wife" by Carrie Hughes

The Trad Wife by Carrie Hughes
Published May 2026 via Hera
★★★

Melissa's not living the trad wife life, not by a long shot—she's a single mother to a seven-year-old, living a fast-paced life in New York, and occasionally self-soothing by watching trad wife social media content. She even has a small-scale podcast on which she discusses not being a trad wife but trying to bring some of that vibe into her own life. Her favorite content creator is Faith, a woman living with her husband and six kids in rural Utah...and when Faith offers Melissa a job, well, it's too good an opportunity to pass up.

Except, of course, everyone has ulterior motives...not least Melissa.

Now. I went down a trad wife book rabbit hole recently, and this is one of the places I landed. This is not the first trad wife thriller I have read, and it won't be the last, and while it is fascinating to me that so many of these thrillers seem to have basically the same premise (podcaster/journalist investigates ballerinafarm-inspired influencer), that broader discussion will have to wait...because I have a whole (virtual) pile of books titled some variation of "The Trad Wife" to get through. And oh but I cannot tell you how excited I am to be able to discuss all of these as a batch.

But I digress. We're not there yet. In this particular narrative, Melissa is skeptical...to a point. From early on in the book, it's clear that she has something of a parasocial relationship with Faith; they've never met, but despite what Melissa knows about the realities of conservative religion and the lives of women whose freedom is curtailed by men, she idealizes Faith's more "wholesome", rural life: that Faith bakes her own bread, that her children never seem to throw tantrums, and on it goes.

It was clear to me early on that Melissa was maybe not...making the best decisions. She has reasons to want to leave her New York life, yes. She also has reasons to want to get close to Faith. But once she's actually out in Utah, her freedoms disappearing one by one (or perhaps dozen by dozen), she's deeply passive. Shut down her podcast? Okay, whatever, she can start it again later. Hired for videography and editing, but her duties include cow-milking? Well, okay, everyone has to pitch in. Shamed for buying store-bought dairy products and told to drink unpasteurized milk? Well, Faith does look healthy... Hand her child over for unaccredited homeschooling that mostly consists of force-feeding religion down the kids' throats? No biggie, they'll just listed to some extra Taylor Swift. Not allowed to learn to drive? Well! She'll have to put her foot down about that!

Now, there's a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek—there's a reference to the Australia mushroom murders, for example, and of course the whole thing is heavily inspired by, well, social media trends of today. (See: unpasteurized milk. Y'all, pasteurization is literally just heating up milk to kill off bad bacteria. Save yourself and your kids from potential, and potentially dangerous, food poisoning!) But Melissa is also maybe not the brightest bulb in the box, and by the time she realizes that every other adult on the property also has ulterior motives, she's in way deeper than she'd expected.

Melissa reads to me as, if not unhinged, having a screw or two loose—but as the book goes on it becomes clearer that a loose screw or two still puts her among the more stable adults around. I could have used, umm, a few more screwdrivers to go around, I think; the book escalates quickly, and gets a lot darker than I expected (except, still fast, so it didn't feel dark so much as a lot).

Content warnings for this one will likely be spoilery, so I'll put them in footnotes,* but if you're someone for whom content warnings influence reading decisions, I'd consider checking them first anyway.

So where does that leave us...? This is the third book in this general vein that I've read to date (see Yesteryear and Her Beautiful Life), and it's not my favorite. But it's doing some very specific things, and I am genuinely fascinated by the sudden appearance of this subgenre...and eager to see where other books on the topic go with it.

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

* Content warnings: heavy-handed toxic religion, mention of past rape, mention of past suicide, on-page sexual assault, on-page physical violence

Review: "The Summer Scrapbook" by Florence Migga

The Summer Scrapbook by Florence Migga
Published May 2026 via Carolrhoda Books
★★★

It's the last summer before high school, but it's not what the ABCs* had planned. Instead of spending the summer together, hanging out at the pool, they'll be doing parent-planned things: Ava is off to London with her family, Becca is going to sleepaway camp (no phones allowed), and only Cat will be home in Chattanooga. The solution to staying connected: snail mail letters and collection of material for a summer scrapbook.

I love me a friendship story, and once upon a time I read as many YA and MG summer travel stories as I could (who am I kidding? I still read them). This is basically three summer stories in one (camp, hometown, abroad), plus the friendship thread to tie them together. I'm also thrilled to see a book featuring three Black tweenagers; there's way too little diversity/representation in this sort of YA/MG summer-adventure book, and it's about time.

The downside of having three different summer stories is that it's harder to pack in as much characterization and so on as I'd have liked. Early on in the book I gave myself a little mnemonic to remember who was who—Ava was off on an Adventure, Cat was home in Chattanooga (I figured that was enough, so I didn't work Becca into it, but then when I got to the part about Becca feeling like the afterthought sometimes I felt bad. Becca was in Bunk beds at camp all summer). That helped, but I struggled to find serious differences between Cat and Becca in particular (both quiet, a bit shy; Becca's the reader; Cat's the writer; one of them develops an interest in fashion, but I didn't even realize that was an interest until she mentions it at the end of the book). Ava's easier, as she's more outgoing, but I would have liked a bit more space to get to know each girl, quirks and warts and all. Ditto the new friends they make; we get a bit of the personalities and interests of Cat's new crowd, but there's just not really the time to get to know three separate girls in different locations, and the shape and arc of their friendship, and their new friends, and in some cases their new romantic interests. (The romance is sweet and pretty mild, but in a MG book especially I'd always rather that the romance be chucked in favor of friendship content. But if it's going to be in there, at least it's done well.)

All that being said—I liked all three of these storylines (and all three of these main characters), and if I would have preferred them broken into three different books, then...oh well, that's probably a me problem. Yes to the summer vibes, yes to themes of friendship and navigating growing up, yes to tweenagers being forced off their phones for a summer, yes to supportive families and snail mail and tromping all over London.

*That they do not call themselves this is one of the book's few serious flaws.

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

Review: "Immersions" by Kyle McCarthy

Immersions by Kyle McCarthy
Published May 2026 via Tin House
★★★★

Frances has always felt herself to be in her sister's shadow—both dancers, but Charley is older and more celebrated. Until recently, Charley was racking up accolades as a modern dancer. But then came the marriage, and the career-changing injury, and Charley's retreat to a convent in France. Frances is sure that Charley's ex-husband Johnny knows more than he's saying...and she's determined to find out what that means.

I am fond of books in which characters do messy things and make questionable decisions without being either going over the top (slapstick isn't my cup of tea) or just straight up being toxic. Frances is a great fit for this: she's young and impressionable and rash, sometimes, but I found myself biting my fingernails for wanting her to slow down and be more careful, empathizing with her being young and not always making good decisions rather than...well, wanting to stay far out of her orbit.

The ease with which I left my life convinced me it had never been my real life. (loc. 2339*)

And make no mistake: Frances does not always make great decisions here. Nobody here is squeaky-clean, and neither are they particularly trying to be. This ends up being about money and power and family dynamics, and gender and sex and power (yes, power is in here twice)—but also, it's about a young woman coping with the loss of her sister as she knows her.

One for readers who like lit fic and complicated family dynamics and perhaps some ethical grey areas.

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

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

Review: "Saturn Returning" by Kim Narby

Saturn Returning by Kim Narby
Published May 2025 via Bindery Books
★★★★

Trace and Silvia have built a happy life together in Seattle—they're living together, settled, engaged to be married. But then it all comes tumbling down.

The book pulls us between past and present: the present, when Silvia has fled Seattle for New York, where Jordan, their best friend from college—the third of their trio—lives. And the past, as they fall into each other's orbits at their small liberal arts college, come of age, start figuring out who they are. Trace and Silvia are a pair almost from the beginning, and Jordan brings a level of stability and outside perspective that balances the other two out.

It had always been like this with Silvia. She burned bright but went out fast. (loc. 2173*)

It takes a while to see where the book is going—or rather, it takes a while to see how they got where they are when the book opens. Trace and Silvia love each other fiercely, and yet...the shape of that love is not always what either person in the relationship wants. Trace clings, and tries to mold herself into the perfect partner, and sulks when she feels Silvia pulling away; Silvia pulls away and comes back, and keeps secrets, and finds Trace's insecurities and...not exploits them, maybe, but prods at them.

And honestly: That's what made the book. Trace and Silvia aren't always likeable (Jordan, while she of course has her own flaws, exhibits them in a less pointed way), but it's in a way that makes them interesting and human rather than unrelatable. All three have complicated family situations (some more so than others), and each of those situations also has its shades of gray. There was a while when I wondered whether one character was going to be the "bad guy" of the story, but the more I understood the characters and their histories, the hazier that all got, until nobody was the bad guy, and the question became Where do they go from here?

Messy and intense, in a way that makes me glad not to be in my 20s anymore...but also in a way that is very compelling to read.

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

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

Review: "This Is a True War Story" by Robert K. Brigham

This Is a True War Story by Robert K. Brigham
Published April 2026 via University of Chicago Press
★★★★

Brigham grew up with only the barest of information about his biological parents—what he gleaned was that his biological mother had died young from cancer, and his father had been in Vietnam. This spurred a decades-long search, starting when he was still a child...but when he eventually learned the truth, it was far more complicated, and closer to home, than he could have imagined.

I was realizing that my Vietnam War story was true and untrue. (loc. 2550*)

This Is a True War Story, says the title, and it is. But for years Brigham told himself other versions of a war story—first that his biological father was off at war and would come home and find him; then that his biological father must be a POW. Eventually Brigham concluded that his biological father must have died in the war. Some of this was based on a child's magical thinking, but as Brigham grew older, the research skills he developed for the sake of this quest led him to a career in academia, studying the Vietnam War.

Being adopted wasn't an event. It was an active part of my life and would be with me forever. (loc. 72)

I didn't always understand the assumptions Brigham led with—e.g., once he concluded as a child that his biological father had died in the war, he focused pretty much solely on the war dead rather than also looking for those who had come home alive. I understand that insinct for a child telling himself stories, but less so for an adult with a more sophisticated understanding of the world. Granted, the things I wondered throughout the book (why assume that if his mother had been sixteen—itself not information from a great source—his father would have had to be seventeen or eighteen? when he eventually received more information about his birth, why not include the name he learned in his search parameters?) would not likely have ended his search sooner (and also granted—the task sounds incredibly daunting as it was, and doing things like expanding search parameters to include all soldiers would have been...a lot), but I wondered nonetheless.

Much of this story is about the Vietnam War, of course, but just as much or more is about the trauma of foster care and adoption. Brigham had loving and supportive adoptive parents—but that wasn't the point. The point was that he didn't know his history; he didn't know his background; if there was pertinent family medical history, he didn't know it. He didn't know who his biological parents were, not their names nor their personalities, and he felt this as a loss.

It's well into the book before Brigham starts to make real progress into his quest. I admit that at times the earlier years felt a bit slow, but also, I'm cognizant of the fact that it took me two days to read the book, so I only had to wait until the next day to find out what happened; meanwhile, it took Brigham decades to find any kind of answers. And, again...that's where it gets more complicated.

There is so much I would like to say about the circumstances of Brigham's birth and what he eventually found out about his parents' lives, but that's information that comes late in the book, so I think it's best left out of a review. What I will say is that I'd recommend Claudia Rowe's excellent book on foster care, Wards of the State, to anyone wanting to know more about the failings of foster care.

Brigham eventually got answers, if not always the ones he was hoping for and only after many, many dead ends. But it's a hell of a story along the way.

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

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

Review: "An Unexpected Christmas Helper" by Lee Tobin McClain

An Unexpected Christmas Helper by Lee Tobin McClain
Published October 2025 via Love Inspired
★★

Ooohh but the righteous misogynist vibes in this one are strong.

I meant to write a full review, but motivation is lacking, so I'll keep it short: at one point the Dark History Heroine (DHH) describes the Righteous Hero (RH) as "a strongly moral man with a judgmental streak a mile wide" (90), and that...seems about right. He's quick to judge, quick to assume, slow to believe what DHH tells him, and slow to forgive. He also 1) makes DHH's employment contingent on her answering invasive personal questions about her health and 2) spends most of the book alternately kissing DHH, who again is his employee, and suggesting that she's not good enough to take care of his daughter—in other words, making her already tenuous employment and housing situation ever more uncertain. Ooh, and then he blames her for not telling him sooner about things that have no bearing on her job that she was correctly afraid would make him kick her out. (Naturally RH then goes full whiplash and tells DHH that he wants to marry her, all before they're even in a relationship.)

The interesting part is that other characters call RH out all the time—DHH does repeatedly (RH always has a comeback for her, including that since she's taking care of his daughter—which he has hired her to do—it is reasonable for him to discipline her son and then expect DHH to apologize for being upset by this, what the actual fuck), but so do both her family and his. Mostly, RH listens to the family; mostly, he does not listen to DHH.

While it's nice that he eventually listens to people who aren't DHH and decides that she isn't a morally bankrupt liar who is only "pretending to be a decent human being" (162), it would be a lot nicer if that came more than about ten pages before he proposed, and a lot nicer if any of this came about because he trusted DHH rather than only the people around her.

So much for a short review. Moving on now...

Review: "The Girl Who Sang" by Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos

The Girl Who Sang by Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos
Published January 2024 via Roaring Brook Press
★★★★

As a child in Poland, Enia Feld (later Estelle Nadel) loved to sing—but when the Nazis came to power and Germany invaded Poland, singing—and just about everything else in her life—became dangerous. What followed were harrowing years and an impossible scope of loss...but also incredible love and resiliance.

This makes for a lovely and detailed, if heartbreaking, look at one young Jewish girl's experience surviving the Holocaust. It's written for an MG/YA audience, so although violence is not shied away from, it's never gratuitous. Children the age of the target reader—to say nothing of children Enia's age—shouldn't have to think about these things, but such as the world is...if it has to be talked about (and it does), this is an age-appropriate way to do so. The losses are multiple and tremendous, but the authors choose to put more of the focus on hope, and on the people who were instrumental to Enia's survival.

The art is a bit simpler than I'd prefer, though I suppose that's at least partly a reflection of Enia's young age in the book and also of the target audience. I love that, in addition to seeing Enia's struggle throughout the Holocaust—the struggle to find somewhere to hide, to find enough to eat, to stay together as a family, to protect loved ones, to keep from imperiling those helping them, to escape—we see so much of her life after the war...because the war might have been over, but the struggle was not. I also love how much of this is a love letter to Enia's family, but in particular her brother, who stepped up again and again and again. So many people in this story had to grow up too fast, and he is no exception, but...well, sometimes it is striking what a child, or near-child, can and will do when adults are unwilling or unable to step up in the same way.

Review: "Doubles" by Nora Gold

Doubles by Nora Gold
Published May 2026 via Guernica Editions
★★★★

1968: A girl is sentenced to stay in an institution for troubled youth for reasons she only sort of understands. She's twelve, and what she does understand is that numbers make sense in a way that people don't. She understands that home might not be a safe place, but this institution is not much better. She understands, eventually, that it might be a long time before she gets out. And she understands that this might be the thing that breaks her.

My I is fading so fast that it might not be here tomorrow. Soon all that will be left of me is the She that the counselors observe. (loc. 672*)

This is a tight, short, intense book. It's designed to make your heart quietly break for this girl, who has—through no fault of her own—virtually no options left. A math book in the institution library gives her some hope, but...there's not much else that does. There's the occasional adult who is kind, but many of them are overtly out for their own interests or just don't care; like our narrator, they too have perhaps gotten more jaded over time.

We see the events of this story through our narrator's lens as a child, not as someone looking back, so the change is gradual and subtle—a girl changing from someone innocent, someone with hope, to someone hardened and more desperate.

Though this takes place in 1968, much of it feels relevant for today, too—nothing I've read suggests that institutions are happier places for children now than they were then, and although there are different options in place for children for whom home is not safe, well...nothing I've read suggests that those options are great either.

Highly recommend; this is tightly written and quietly devastating.

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

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