Children's books: Deutsch II: "Ein Herz für Elefanten", "Sturmgefühle, Schattenbilder", und "Bagger Bens Tag am Meer"

Ein Herz für Elefanten von R.G. de Rouen
Sturmgefühle, Schattenbilder von Michelle Müller-Nagy (Verlag Monika Fuchs)
Bagger Bens Tag am Meer von Dörthe Horn (Lingen Verlag)

Kinderbücher...nochmal auf Deutsch!

Ein Herz für Elefanten ist die Geschichte von Daphne Seldrick, eine Frau, die als Kind ein Herz für Tiere entwickelt hat...und als Erwachsene hat sie ihr Leben den Elefanten gewidmet.

Ich habe dieses Bilderbuch zuerst auf Englisch gelesen, und natürlich wollte ich die Geschichte auf Deutsch probieren. Es gibt hier nichts zu kompliziert: einfache Wörter, einfache Bilder, am Ende interessante "Elefakten" (ich liebe ein gutes Wortspiel). Ich hätte gern ein bisschen mehr zum Thema Kenia (die 50er und 60er waren interessante Jahre!), aber das Buch ist kurz, und es gibt viel Information, besonders am Ende, für Kinder zum Thema Elefanten.

Sheldrick ist 2018 gestorben, aber sie hat auch ein paar Bücher geschrieben. Vielleicht wurde Ein Herz für Elefanten ein gutes Geschenk für ein Kind sein...und Eine afrikanische Liebesgeschichte (von Sheldrick) ein Geschenk für die Eltern sein.

Sturmgefühle, Schattenbilder ist ein nachdenkliches, informatives Buch für junge Kinder, die entweder starke Gefühle oder Eltern mit starken Gefühle haben. Sammy liebt seine Mutter...aber sie darf nicht mit Sammy und seinen Großeltern wohnen, weil ihre innerer Drache manchmal zu laut ist. Sammy hat ein gutes Leben mit vielen Leuten, die ihn lieben, und trotzdem gibt es auch komplizierte Dinge. Schön zu sehen, dass seine Mutter nie die Bösewichtin ist—und Sammy kann auch erkennen, dass der Drache auch nicht so böse ist.

Die Illustrationen passen gut zu der Geschichte: nicht sehr detailliert, aber evokativ. Außerdem ist es sehr schön, dass das Buch bewusst inklusiv ist.

Süß: Bagger Bens Tag am Meer ist ein neues Abenteuer für Bagger Ben, ein (surprise!) Bagger. Ben und seine Freunde haben einen Tag am Strand...ein Tag für Spaß und Spiele und Sonne und vielleicht ein bisschen Arbeit.

Dieses Buch hat viel für Kinder: Maschinen, die Umwelt, ein wenig Zerstörung (und Wiederaufbau). Die Bilder haben viele Farben und Details, und die Baufahrzeuge sind interessant und hilfreich—sie wollen Spaß haben, ja, aber sie wollen auch gute...Leute?...zu sein.

Es gibt andere "Bagger Ben"-Bücher, und ich werde sie definitiv für Kindern, die die Baufahrzeuge mögen, empfehlen.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing review copies through NetGalley. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Review: "Dan in Green Gables" by Rey Terciero, illustrated by Claudia Aguirre

Dan in Green Gables by Rey Terciero, illustrated by Claudia Aguirre
Published June 2025 via Penguin Workshop
★★★

Dan's life with his mother hasn't been the most stable thing ever—they're on the road, bouncing from place to place, following his mother's whims. But when she takes him to stay with his late father's parents, everything changes.

This is, of course, a play on Anne of Green Gables, one in which a queer boy in the present-enough day finds a new home in Tennessee. Marilla and Matthew's roles are flipped here: Dan's grandmother welcomes Dan and every part of his identity with open arms, while his grandfather is not really prepared to take in an outsider, much less when that outsider is visibly queer and refuses to bow down to the fire-and-brimstone church minister. I had mixed feelings about that—on the one hand, I don't think it's unrealistic for someone of Dan's grandfather's generation and culture and so on to be quite homophobic (and racist) and to have very specific expectations of boys; on the other hand, it's quite a departure from Marilla's hard-but-mostly-fair attitude.

On the whole this is really thoughtful, with both Dan and many of the characters around him needing to do some growth. I think I would have preferred it as a more standalone book rather than a reimagining of something else, but it was an interesting addition to a subgenre.

Review: "Trad Wife" by Sarah Langan

Trad Wife by Sarah Langan
Published September 2026 via Atria Books
★★★★

And we're back on the trad wife book train! In Trad Wife (not to be confused with Tradwife or The Trad Wife), Jenny's writing career has just imploded, and in a last-ditch effort to save it, she takes on a challenge: She'll spend a week with one of the country's most popular trad wives, Mia, and write about the experience. It'll be a close-up view of a life much of the country is desperate to get closer to, and a view that few people get. Under the circumstances, whatever she writes is likely to go viral. What she doesn't know is just how Wrong life at Black Swan Farm is.

Now. This is one in a string of trad wife books that I've read, and I don't want to go into detail on differences just yet, because there are still a few more in my queue (I do love a theme). One thing that has struck me, though, is that a disproportionate number of the protagonists are journalists or journalist-adjacent. I imagine part of this is simply because the world of influencing overlaps with the world of reporting (whether this should be the case is another question entirely), and part of it is because "writer investigating something weird" is a solid way to get someone unconnected with a particular world involved in it...but it's still odd to me.

This is one of those with a journalist, of course, and also one of those where the journalist goes in expecting to write some big exposé. In this case, Jenny thinks that her exposé is going to be partly about abuse—abuse of Mia or abuse of Mia's children or possibly both—but the truth goes far deeper, and far weirder, than she can possibly imagine.

For the most part I like Jenny. Her decisions aren't always the best, but to be fair, she didn't expect to land in a story with supernatural elements. Those supernatural elements are not really my favourite—personal preference, but supernatural stories just aren't as alarming to me as things that can happen in real life (see: trad wives), and so instead of making a story more creepy to me, they make the story rather less creepy. But so far, this is pretty high on my list of this weird and wild subgenre. 3.5 stars and one to read if you've read Yesteryear, of course, or if you haven't but are curious about what might happen if ballerinafarm got...weird. (Or maybe just weirder than it already is.)

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

Review: "The Velvet Knife" by Maureen Johnson

The Velvet Knife by Maureen Johnson
Published September 2026 via HarperCollins
★★★★

Stevie's back! And this time she's off to New York to avoid spending the holidays with her parents...and to lick the wounds of her breakup. No murders to solve...until a neighbour in the apartment she's staying in in New York dies, and things get complicated.

I've loved this series, and The Velvet Knife is no exception. Stevie has a knack for getting pulled into strange cold cases, and if this is one where she doesn't really understand until well into the book that there is a cold case at all.

She was Blue now. Helen was gone, her old identity falling away like a feather from a bird's tail. She would try to snatch it back later, but you can't put a bird back together again, feather by feather. (loc. 353*)

The mystery is standalone, though it helps to have read at least some of the earlier books to follow all of the relationship details. I did find myself wishing that I'd done a reread of the earlier books in the series before diving into this one, just because it's been a while. Stevie's personal life is very much the secondary conflict here, though, and I quite enjoyed the past storyline (something to do with me enjoying things set in the 70s, I suppose). So perhaps this is impetus for a reread!

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

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

Review: "From Beijing, with Love" by Bei Lin

From Beijing, with Love by Bei Lin
Published September 2026 via Alcove Press
★★★★

Daniel's trying to push back against his instincts and be spontaneous—except, spontaneity lands him in China at the exact time that his best friend isn't around, and frankly, changes in plans are not really Daniel's forte. Luckily, his friend has booked him a local tour guide...

I do love a travel book, so this felt like an obvious fit. There's a lot going on here: Daniel is way out of his comfort zone in China, and neurodivergence impacts his experience in ways that people around him might not consider. Meanwhile, Yang—a PhD student making some extra cash as a tour guide—is putting everything he has into advancing his career, though he's hampered by the fact that what he's really passionate about does not quite align with his advisor's interests. Add to that that Daniel, a Canadian living in Amsterdam, is used to being out and proud about his sexuality, but Yang does not feel the same freedom (legal is one thing; socially accepted is another). There are a lot of reasons they shouldn't work...and yet.

Altogether, this made for a super solid read. I loved the travel details; Daniel manages to see a fair amount (and eat delicious-sounding food) while working to balance his discomfort with the unknown with his desire to go outside his comfort zone. What I liked best, though, was the way that Yang, upon registering some of the things that make navigating the unknown more difficult for Daniel than for the average traveler, adapts accordingly—figuring out the small things that can make situations a bit easier for Daniel and then treating those small things as a matter-of-fact attitude. (Honestly something that is underrepresented in romance.) I didn't really need the academic mystery in the book, but it ended up being a smaller part of the conflict than I had feared, so it worked out. I want more books like this—where the characters are fundamentally good people who are figuring things out...and where there's a bit of travel to boot.

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

Review: Short story: "High Side" by Jaime Oliveira

High Side by Jaime Oliveira
Published September 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

Since his accident, Billy's world has narrowed to a tiny scope: his father's (now his) failing auto-body shop. Then his brother turns up and offers him an out: rob some banks, get some cash, get out and disappear.

This is your classic action short story—most of the characters we're following are realistically the bad guys in the picture (yes, they're aiming not to injure anyone, but they're still, you know, busting into banks while carrying serious firepower.

I think I might have preferred fewer characters. They each had a role, but it was hard to be all that invested in what happened to each one when there was very limited time to get to know them. (And: Especially when some of them are less committed than others to nobody getting injured.) I'm reminded a little of Oceans Eleven, although probably that's because my pop culture references are limited and dated. Interesting to read this after The Spider Silk Scarf, which also asks the reader to sympathize with the person (or here people) committing crimes; in this one I found a bit less sympathy.

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

Review: "Izzy, Willy-Nilly" by Cynthia Voigt

Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt
Published 1986
★★★★

It's the 80s, probably, and Izzy has it pretty good—smart enough, popular enough, a cheerleader, a happy home life. And then she goes out with a popular older boy, and in a moment her life changes forever.

This was a childhood favourite—for whatever reason, I never got around to reading Voigt's Tillerman Cycle books, but I read and reread Izzy, Willy-Nilly and The Wings of a Falcon (reading this one triggered a reread of that) as a tweenager. Here, Izzy loses her leg in a car crash and has to deal with the fallout: the permanent physical effects, of course, but also the way she understands her place in the world and the way other people interact with her.

This was the 80s, remember: Izzy has very little context for physical disability, and she can't exactly open up TikTok and search for people with similar experiences. It's safe to say that Izzy's life has been very sheltered and that her bubble has been very white and very privileged. She has excellent medical care and excellent familial support, but her friends quite frankly don't know what to do with her now that she falls outside their norm. (Like: a friend calling while Izzy is still in hospital to make sure that Izzy is going to protect the boy who drove drunk...? Hopefully in a modern-day version of the book their friendship would not survive, purely on this basis.)

But on the whole, this stands up to the test of time. There are some extremely 80s attitudes, yes (Izzy's understanding of race is one of them), but there's also a lot of interesting work around privilege and class and friendship and priorities. Needs to be taken within its context, but I'd read this again in a decade or two.

Review: "Someday Perfect" by Kat Schneider

Someday Perfect by Kat Schneider
Published April 2026 via Random House Graphic
★★★★

Meg is off to Bible camp for the summer. She'll be back with her friends, and after a recent switch to public school it's something of a relief to be back around people who share an upbringing. But this year, she's also starting to feel the restrictions of Bible camp in ways that she hasn't before, and starting to notice the differences in how boys and girls are treated. And there's a boy, and she likes him, and she thinks he likes her too—but the rules make it hard to know what to do about it.

This was a very highly anticipated book for me this year. I've read a strange amount about conservative American Christianity for someone who did not grow up with religion, but then, conservative American Christianity feels more and more politically relevant these days. And Someday Perfect feels so terribly on point and aligned with just about everything else I have read on the subject. Meg loves Bible camp...but she isn't so sure that camp is fair. She believes what her parents and teachers and pastors have told her...but she's starting to wonder if there are limits to that belief. She's excited to have a part-time job at camp...but doesn't think it's fair that the girls should pay to wash their own clothes, but that the boys have their clothes washed (also by the girls) for free. And she definitely doesn't think it's right that a skirt that falls just above the knee, and that her parents are presumably okay with, should get her in trouble.

The climax of the book is almost tangential—that is, it's relevant to one of the book's major plotlines, but the biggest difference (Meg starting to question the unquestionables she's grown up with) is subtler. I think this one will punch hardest for those who grew up with conservative religion and have since rethought some things, but it's an excellent book regardless of your background.

Review: "The Hearing Test" by Eliza Barry Callahan

The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan
Published March 2024 via Catapult
★★★

A young woman in New York—not named until the very last page—wakes up to hearing loss that is both abrupt and progressive. It throws an enormous wrench into her personal and professional life, and she drifts through the next year from appointment to appointment and half-baked connection to half-baked connection.

It's an odd book. Very stream-of-consciousness, which will work for you or won't. I found it helpful that I knew going in that it was stream-of-consciousness, which isn't really my jam but at least set my expectations appropriately. It was fairly quick going, though I had to stay quite focused, as the narrator's train of thought switches tracks very often. There are also lots of literary and other references, though I stopped trusting their accuracy when the narrator mentioned a plane crash and said that the sole survivor's mother (who was also on the flight) was never found; as it happens, I've read about that plane crash, and that's not true.

I know nothing about Callahan other than what's in her bio (and even that I only skimmed), but a few things made me wonder whether there are parts of this story, like that last page, that are her own. Maybe literally nothing more than the bare bones of her bio, and in any case it doesn't really matter, but I suppose I can make a bit more sense of it if there's some element of personal experience here.

Recommended mostly (or only) to those who are in for stream-of-consciousness and general malaise.

Review: "Someone to Daydream About" by Sydney Langford

 

Someone to Daydream About by Sydney Langford
Published March 2026 via Farrar, Straus and Giroux
★★★

Natalie just wants to make enough money to save the Deaf Center her family runs—and Felix, pop star extraordinaire, needs an ASL tutor and is willing to spend $$$ to have Natalie on call 24/7. It's a match made in heaven...if they can just get their dang teenage hormones in line.

I have a habit of reading a book description once, putting the book on my TBR, and then completely forgetting what it's about by the time I read the book. Why reread the description when you already know it's something you want to read? By the time I picked this one up, I'd forgotten that deafness (which I suspect was why I shelved it in the first place) was a feature of the book, so I had the unexpected/unplanned experience of reading a bunch of books involving deafness in a row—The Queen's Granddaughter, which has a significant side character with hearing loss; Someone to Daydream About; Mother Tongue, which is a memoir about deafness and deaf culture; and (at the time of writing, one of my current reads) The Hearing Test, which is about a woman who experiences sudden hearing loss.

I like getting the different takes, and I love that Natalie is so passionate about making sure sign is accessible to her community. There's some quiet conflict about money and accessibility, which makes sense—if Mother Tongue reinforced anything, it's that the deaf (and Deaf, for people who prefer the capital letter) community is continually and systematically pushed to the margins.

I did wish that a bit less of this book had been so...awash in teenage hormones. I thought for a while that I would have liked the book better if it had been coded more adult romance (with older characters, etc.) and less YA romance, but I think the author might be quite young, which makes the target audience make a little more sense here. That is...maybe I'm just over the hump of my YA reading days (and so this book is for many people, just not so much for me), but I'd still have preferred a little less teenage dramatics. I enjoyed this a bit more in theory than in practice.

Review: "Half Light" by Mahesh Rao

Half Light by Mahesh Rao
Published September 2026 via Pushkin Press
★★★★

2014: Two men meet in a hotel in Darjeeling. Neville, a hotel guest, sees promise of a hookup; Pavan, a hotel employee, sees mostly the likelihood of ruin.

2018: Pavan and Neville meet again, by chance, in Mumbai. The country is changing, and the Supreme Court is on the verge of handing down a decision that will (in effect) determine whether homosexuality is decriminalized.

In a few weeks they would be told by the court whether this time they would be allowed their freedom. The news pieces said it would be the last such opportunity in their lifetimes. It was written down for anyone to read and so Pavan supposed it was true. But it felt like a distant matter, which would have no bearing on his life, whatever was decided. (152*)

This makes for a fascinating read. I like stories about experiences and cultures that are not my own (I always learn something), but more than that, what interests me is the ways in which Neville and Pavan are so deliberately different. Neville isn't wealthy, but his family is comfortably middle-class; he has education and opportunities and, perhaps more than anything, the cosmopolitan and (when he wants it) anonymous background of Mumbai. Pavan, meanwhile, is from a rural place with far fewer options and far more opportunities to fall through quicksand; materially, he has less to lose, but he also has a whole lot less of a safety net than Neville does. Experience has taught Neville that he can push the boundaries with impunity; experience has taught Pavan that the closer he stays to the straight (no pun intended) and narrow, the safer he will be.

For much of the book I wasn't sure whether this was a pairing I was meant to be rooting for. It's not a pairing Pavan wants, necessarily; his risk–reward calculations are different than Neville's. It is a pairing Neville wants, but that's less because of Pavan himself and more because...well, initially because Neville is bored, perhaps, and later because he's not used to being told no. But if Neville doesn't come off terribly well, it's intentional and what makes him and interesting character, and I'd rather have interesting characters than bland perfection. (Though they way my heart leapt into my throat at the climax!) They're from different classes and possibly different castes (my partner, who is from India, asked if Pavan's last name was mentioned, which would tell him something about caste dynamics between the two men; I could not find a last name, so who knows, but in any case let's assume layers upon layers of complicated dynamics), and their actions cannot help but be informed by their individual backgrounds and circumstances. No tidy endings here, but a lot of food for thought.

Recommended as a snapshot of a time and a place and perhaps of human fallibility.

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

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

Review: "We're All Going to Die Tonight!" by Veronica Bane

We're All Going to Die Tonight! by Veronica Bane
Published September 2026 via Delacorte Press
★★★

It's bad enough that the Coastal Canyon debate team didn't do well at their competition—first a flat tire forces them to trek through the woods to their Airbnb, and then there's no Internet. And then comes the blood...and the body.

This made for a fast-paced, quick read. Not quite a locked-room thriller (the teens aren't sure whether there's someone outside or whether one of their own is responsible for the blood and the body and so on), but they're in over their heads pretty much before they even know there's something to worry about.

We get the story from all of the teenagers' perspectives, with each chapter moving from one character to another. All seven of them have their POV moments, though the chapters aren't evenly split (i.e., we're in some characters' heads significantly more than others). I had mixed feelings about so much changing between characters. The voices are distinct, which is helpful, but I still found myself flipping back to check whose perspective I was reading (harder with seven voices than with, e.g., two!). On the other hand, multiple POVs makes it harder to predict who will and won't survive (since only one POV suggests that that character, at least, will). There's some effort to make at least some of the characters possible to root for, which also helps; we have some seriously toxic characters and some people I wouldn't want to be stuck in an elevator with, but we also have characters who are imperfect but doing their best.

The actual mystery ends up being a bit convoluted. I guessed some of the pieces before the end, but not most of them, and while I am fond of mysteries where I don't figure it all out, I do think that any semicompetent investigator would have a field day unpicking the real story. (To say nothing of what they would have made of the scene if the original plan had gone exactly as planned!)

Would be good as a beach read, or for travel—keeps the attention and doesn't require too much thinking.

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

Review: "The Secret to Belonging" by Megan E. Freeman

The Secret to Belonging by Megan E. Freeman
Published September 2026 via Atheneum Books for Young Readers
★★★★

It's the 80s, and our narrator dreams of a fresh start in college—somewhere far away from California, far away from her brother's addiction, far away from the parents who have poured so much of their love and energy and focus into helping (or enabling) her brother that it often feels like there is none left for her. And when they use her college fund to pay for yet another round of rehab, well, there is her college dream gone to dust too. And so she finds herself, on little more than a desperate whim, applying to study abroad and accepting an opening in Norway, a place she can barely locate on a map.

Because I am predictable, I read this for the setting—I always want more fiction, and more YA fiction specifically, that takes place in far-flung but less-travelled places. (I love a good book set in Paris or Rome, sure, but those are also easy to find; give me travel fiction set in Finland or Botswana or Kazakhstan, please.) And when our narrator goes in, she goes all in: Again, it's the 80s (though this is only mentioned in passing, well into the book), and she cannot spend her time in rural Norway on the Internet; she can write letters to friends, yes (and home on occasion), but mostly she learns to study and socialize in Norwegian, and she learns what it is like to live in a family that does not have her family's demons.

the post arrives / a letter from Alison / a postcard from Maura / you feel giddy / you feel rich (loc. 763*)

(Every family has its demons, or at least its skeletons in the closet. But for our narrator, it's still refreshing to think that there is something out there beyond what her own family has been able to offer her.)

It's a complex book with a lot going on. I enjoyed the use of verse here—it made for a fast read without feeling as though it was just short sentences with extra line breaks. The characters, too, are allowed complexity. Perhaps my favorite thing is the quarter the narrator is given, relatively early on in the book, and what happens with the quarter; I don't want to say too much about it, but it's such a small moment that speaks volumes about the narrator and the way she views her family situation.

Really glad I picked this one up. I hope it makes it into lots of high school libraries and encourages kids to think beyond the confines of their towns.

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

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

Review: "Game On" by Zarah Detand

Game On by Zarah Detand
Published September 2026 via Storm Publishing
★★★★

Stellan's job is straightforward, and also not: He engineers opportunities for people to stray...and if they do, someone is in place to get photo proof. He does it because he's good at it, but also because it's one of few opportunities he could get as someone with an underprivileged background and limited education and resources. And that's fine...until he realizes that his current job doesn't involve catching someone cheating, but outing someone who isn't ready to be out.

Detand has yet to disappoint. This is a premise that would make me nervous in the hands of a lot of romance authors—actually, I've read a book with a very similar premise before (minus the queer outing), and it drove me batty, not in a good way, that the "hero" of that book spent most of the book hiding the fact that his job involved making public other people's indiscretions of various shapes and sizes...and once the heroine found out, it of course all still worked out fine, even though he'd been plotting to bring her down (not because there was anything wrong with what she was doing, but because $$$) for most of the book. And that's what interests me so much here: In so many books, Stellan would be hiding his role in things for a huge chunk of the book, at which point Matt would find out and there'd be a huge conflict. Instead, here, Matt knows more or less from the beginning who Stellan is and what role he played in those pictures of Matt...and that's something they have to find a way to work through (or not, as the case may be).

As ever with Detand's books, the dialogue and pace are tight and the characters ones you'd like to spend more time with. I'm going to have to go through her full backlist at some point (so much to read, so little time), but in the meantime I'm thoroughly enjoying reading what comes my way.

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

Review: Short story: "Love Antidote" by Brynne Weaver

Love Antidote by Brynne Weaver
Published September 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

Isla has a target, a deadline, and a problem—the problem being the maybe-a-restaurant-critic who has eaten the poisoned dessert meant for her mark.

This makes for a fast, fun short story with just a bit of Mr. and Mrs. Smith coding—I mean, different plot and setup, and maybe (almost certainly) my references are dated, but something about "competing spies" is always going to read Mr. and Mrs. Smith to me. Here, the characters have to figure out who they can trust and just how far that trust should extend...and then whether or not they can get the job done. One way or another.

There's actually a little less poison in here than I expected, but then, it's a short story. Is it weird that I think it would be fun to have a whole set of short stories about assassins, each of whom has a different specialty of ways to kill?

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

Review (Deutsch): "Die Schwestern vom Buchladen" von Alice Hoffman

Die Schwestern vom Buchladen von Alice Hoffman (übersetzt von Marina Ignatjuk)
Herausgegeben von Amazon Original Stories

Eine Geschichte von Schwestern. Interessant, diese Geschichte auf Deutsch zu lesen—ich habe schon ein paar von Hoffmans kurzen Geschichten über diese Familie gelesen, aber nur auf Englisch.

Hier haben wir zwei Schwestern, die jetzt nicht wirklich...eng...sind. Die jetzt nicht wirklich Freundinnen sind. Sie sind aber immer noch Schwestern, und, na ja, man tut, was man für die Familie tun muss.

Ich mag Schwestergeschichten (und Freundinnengeschichten); Liebesgeschichte, nicht so viel, aber meistens geht es hier um die Geschichte zwischen Isabel und Sophie. (Es gibt eine Romanze, aber sie ist relativ klein.) Insgesamt ein bisschen zu süß für mich, aber das war schnell gelesen.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Review: "Pining for You" by Stef Ferrari

Pining for You by Stef Ferrari
Published September 2026 via Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
★★★

Bennie just wants two things: To get into film school so she can make queer holiday movies, and to get her first kiss. A chance encounter with a cute girl at the Christmas tree farm where Bennie works increases the chance of the latter...if she can just find the girl again. And what's Christmas if not a chance to take a road trip to NYC, attempt her first-ever documentary while she's at it, and get the girl?

I like a cute Christmas book, I like queer romance, and (if we're being honest here) I really like punny titles. And this was good fun—Bennie has a solid friend group, all with well-developed senses of adventure, and they get up to some good-natured minor chaos in NYC. (I also appreciated that this wasn't their first time in the city; they're still functionally tourists, but slightly less wide-eyed than they might be.)

Bennie's "documentary" plot felt a bit thin; she puts down her camera every time someone does or says something that doesn't fit with her view of Christmas magic, even if it's an objectively interesting moment (or if there's something more interesting to say than "look! magic!"). I did like the way her film school arc plays out—not unrealistic—but I was waiting and waiting for a moment when it would get through to her that she was going to have a hard time making her documentary if all she was filming was a montage of context-free happy moments, and that moment really never comes. (And...I know I'm old, but 27 uses of "ya know" is at least 25 uses too many.)

The romance is fine; I see what Bennie likes in Eve, though their romance is really based on vibes and fumes (could turn out great! Just, the entire book is kind of an extended meet-cute, so who knows how things would go once they actually got to spend real time with each other). In the end it's a cute, fast, fun holiday read, albeit probably one that won't stick with me.

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

Review: "The Queen's Granddaughter" by Diane Zahler

The Queen's Granddaughter by Diane Zahler
Published March 2026 via Roaring Brook Press
★★★

Blanca of Castile loves her life just as it is—but when her grandmother comes calling, Blanca finds that she must embark on her first true adventure, a move to France for a politically advantageous marriage.

Now, I read this almost entirely for the grandmother. Eleanor of Aquitaine is my historical heroine, which has nothing to do with her politics (which were horrific and Isamophobic and often extremely violent—it was not an accident that she went on the Crusades) and everything to do with the fact that she had an astonishing amount of power for a woman in the Middle Ages, and while power itself does not make a person interesting (and a great deal of privilege went into that power), she didn't end up with that kind of power by being wet behind the ears. More on her politics in a moment, but I'm always delighted to find a new take on Eleanor of Aquitaine, and this comes at it from a perspective that I haven't seen before: Eleanor in her later years, as seen by one of her granddaughters.

The late 1100s were of course a very different time. Travel was an Ordeal. In The Queen's Granddaughter, Blanca's mother (Eleanor, Queen of Castile, named for her own mother) says that she hasn't seen her mother (aka Eleanor herself) since she was twelve, presumably not long after she married. And of course this sort of thing is not unheard of now—some children are still pushed into marriage, and some children are still separated from their parents for years or decades because of conflicts or borders. But in the late 1100s this was, you know, normal. (Or at least normal for those for whom marriage was heavily political.) I will note that Zahler says in the history section at the end of the book that Eleanor (the OG, not the queen of Castile) was born in 1122 and married at the age of fifteen, but to the best of my knowledge the year of her birth isn't actually known (at the time she was born, she was "just a girl", and nobody had reason to think that she'd end up being the powerhouse that she was, so a record of her birthday wasn't important...or if there was a record, it's long since been lost), and while she might have been born in 1122 a lot of scholars think she was born in 1124, which would have had her married at thirteen, not fifteen. On one level it doesn't matter, but I'm not a fan of the choice to present one of those years as fact, without any acknowledgement of the unknowns.

But I digress. This isn't Eleanor's story: It's Blanca's. Blanca's best friend and confidante is a girl named Suna, who has a level head to Blanca's rasher nature. Suna is hard of hearing following childhood illness, and her family is Muslim, which in Castile (at least according to this book; I do not know any history of the area) is a nonissue but in Eleanor's France is...more of an issue. (See: Crusades.) I appreciate that the book makes an effort to address this—both Eleanor's prejudices and the difficulty of being in a minority religion, anywhere and anytime. There is some element of glossing-over (I find Eleanor fascinating but, again, wildly problematic; even in her old age I'm not convinced she'd have come around in the way she does here), but one that makes sense in a middle grade book.

Blanca I didn't love. She's twelve in the book, but I didn't know that going in (I know—it's the first line in the description—but I shelved the book months before I read it, and I don't usually go back and read the description in between), and when Blanca was first introduced I genuinely thought she was about seven: listening at doors and stomping her foot when she didn't get her way. It's not that I think that twelve-year-olds, then and now, don't do that, but twelve in the Middle Ages was a different thing. Twelve was old enough to get married, old enough to be doing a lot of household work and preparation for the future. It's not that I think that twelve-year-olds were more mature in the 1100s than they are now, but I think they were maybe expected to be more mature anyway, and that doesn't really jive with stomping around like an elementary-school student having a fit. I suppose she's written for the modern twelve-year-olds, but I didn't love it.

Still, it's a lively adventure story and an interesting look at a different part of Eleanor's life than we usually get. This one was a priority for me from the moment I saw it was coming out, and even if I've aged out of it somewhat I'm glad it's out there for the actual twelve-year-olds to enjoy.

Review: "She's a Doll" by Barbara Truelove

She's a Doll by Barbara Truelove
Published September 2026 via Bindery Books
★★★★★

Lucy's dead—but death isn't going to stop her. She's a little messy and a lot angry and oh, by the way, she's currently possessing a bride doll.

I don't read a ton of horror, but I was so curious about this one that I just couldn't resist. There's something just so delightfully creepy about a haunted doll, and even better that the book is told from the perspective of said haunted doll.

Lucy's refrain throughout the book is simple and heartbreaking:

Why did he do that to me?
Why couldn't I stop him?
What's going to happen now?

This isn't a one-off lament—even without the minor detail of being dead, Lucy's been through some serious trauma, and there aren't really simple answers to any of those questions. She struggles throughout the book: with anger, with physical limitations, with getting used to what she can and cannot do as a possessed doll, with loss after loss. This isn't just the loss of her life; it's the loss of her future, her family, her dog, any romantic aspirations, her freedom as she knows it, the ability to taste food and take a shower and communicate freely.

It's messy. Lucy is messy. The friendship she develops with Nicola, eventually, is messy. The beginning of the book notes that Lucy is a liar, but for most of the book it's not even that she lies; it's that she's so desperate to get vengeance for her murder that she can't see past her own nose. Or, sometimes she can see how hard things are for Nicola too, but rarely can Lucy hold on to that long enough to rein herself in. It makes for such a complicated relationship and such a complicated book, even as Lucy is storming around in a mold-infested body with cracks in her porcelain head and a stick for a makeshift arm. It's dark and it's fabulous.

I said I don't read a ton of horror, and that's true, but honestly, between this and Bethesda maybe it's time to rethink that?

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

Review: "Morfran, Dark Lord Reformed" by S.B. West

Morfran, Dark Lord Reformed by S.B. West
Published September 2026 via Ace
★★★★

Morfran is tired of beheading his subjects—tired enough that he has ended his marriage to the gleefully violent Ravana, fled his castle, and reinvented himself as Bernard, a goat farmer (and of course expert jam-maker). But when his goat farm is burned down by Ravana's soldiers, and he finds himself saving a group of rebels, he is forcefully adopted by said rebels...and they want Bernard to help bring down Morfran. As in, himself. As in, oops.

This is best read with tongue firmly in cheek and a well-developed sense of absurdité. I actually regret reading this almost as soon as I got a copy, because frankly I could use a light and irreverent read now!

"Is that my sword?" Morfran sat up as high as he could, angrily incredulous to the image. His sword had become something of an icon to his legacy as Dark Lord of Ruthven™. Black and wicked-looking, it was forged with sweat, tears, and red food dye #7, and a blood amber topped off its devilish appearance in the pommel. It was so popular kingdom-wide that his men had taken to having their swords styled in a way just like it, and Morfran was quite pleased to know he was a trendsetter among his villainous peers. (loc. 546*)

The whole book goes a bit like this—there's plot, and there's character development, and there's quite a bit of fighting (and of course a romance along the way), but it's cloaked in satire and silliness. High notes include (but are not limited to) Bronwen's curse and Morfran's constant thwarted attempts at escape...not to mention the goats.

I will note that while I loved the book, I didn't love the way Morfran was eventually asked to atone for his actions. It makes some sense in the context of the story, and certainly it's in line with the tone of the book, but it also felt a little easy (not to mention as though it could cause big other problems in the future). The flip side is that his atonement had to be very big gesture (his entire previous identity was wrapped around killing people), and not much else would likely do the job, so that that as you will.

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

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