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: "Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter" by Katya Suvorova

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova
Published September 2026 via Alcove Press
★★★★

When Suvorova was three, her mother took her from their home in Russia to Mexico and then across the US border. I will never go back home again, she writes, but I don't know that yet (loc. 135*). What followed was a desperate chase for the elusive green card: men who promised stability; men who said they were looking for love; men who dangled the promise of a green card application as a carrot always just out of reach; men who threatened to turn Suvorova and her mother in to the authorities.

I didn't know it then, but there will be many, many men opening their arms in front of their apartments, town houses, homes, and saying the exact same thing. Have you ever seen anything this nice before? Only Joe will be able to say it in Russian, but we will understand. (loc. 177)

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is Suvorova's story of growing up undocumented and on unstable ground, not only with the men who fell in and out of her mother's life but with her mother herself. And it is a gripping story. I read half of it in one day and then slowed down (a bit) so it would last a bit longer. The story is told in two timelines, with the majority taking place during Suvorova's upbringing and a later timeline discussing her finding her biological father in adulthood. But the strongest material, by far, is about Suvorova's relationship with her mother.

With time, I will realize how scared she was. I will realize that my mother knows desperation in a way I never will. (loc. 240)

My grandmother often tells me how she begged my mom to leave me with her, but my mother refused. I think regularly of what a life in Russia would have looked like for me, who I would have become had my mom left me. Would I be someone I like more? I also never got to know the version of my mom who grew up in her home country. [...] I wonder what direction our relationship would have grown if she hadn't taken me with her to this country. (loc. 560)

This is complicated, messy material about complex, real people. It's so clear how many layers Suvorova's understanding of her mother has: someone who was smart and resourceful and determined; someone who missed her own mother; someone who took the limited options available to her and ran as far as she could with them; someone who perhaps never understood and perhaps never tried to understand her daughter; someone who looked the other way when her daughter was abused; someone whose desperation changed her irrevocably. Suvorova sees this, and she loves her mother; she sees this, and she knows that a relationship under these terms cannot be healthy for her. There's both compassion and clear-sightedness here, a difficult and delicate line that Suvorova treads well.

I'll leave out the nitty-gritty of the story, but the subtitle alone should tell you that this is an interesting one, and often a difficult one. A high four stars; recommended to anyone who is interested in complicated families or who has been thinking about immigration lately.

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

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

Review: "What the Ancestors Say" by Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau

What the Ancestors Say by Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau
Published September 2026 via Broadleaf Books
★★★★

It strikes me as strange that Indian boarding schools are always referred to as schools. The focus of these institutions was hardly ever education. That word was just a fancy bow, designed to hide the fact that the US government was eager to exterminate Indigenous people in any way possible. (loc. 158*)

Nadeau was working on a news story—the remains of hundreds of children who attended one such school had just been found—when she stumbled across the last thing she expected: the names of family members, ones who had attended one of those schools. Nadeau knew about the Indian residential schools, of course (more detail on them in a moment, if you're not familiar); surely there is nobody in her community who does not know about them. But she didn't know how close to home that history came.

I must be missing something, I think. No one in my family has ever spoken of Indian boarding schools. No one has mentioned that entire generations of our family attended one of the largest institutions that operated in Michigan. For decades. (loc. 233)

I've been making an effort to read more from Indigenous authors lately, for a number of reasons but not least because these are voices that (still) too often go unheard. As Nadeau notes (loc. 570), the Indian boarding schools are not really about Native history; rather, they're about the history of colonization and colonizers. And yet they're part of a history that had (has) a devastating and ongoing effect across generations. These schools operated across the US and Canada, and the aim was simple: take Native children away from their culture and instruct them in the ways of the White people; teach them to be maids and cleaners and laborers so as to build a servant class while erasing entire civilizations. Some parents sent their children to these schools voluntarily (or more or less voluntarily), hoping they'd get an education, but authorities also forcibly removed many others. Mortality rates at the schools were shockingly high (I read a report recently that referenced one school, in Canada, that had a mortality rate of 47%), and those children who survived were often not allowed to go home for years at a time.

What Nadeau was able to find out about her own family's history with the residential schools is limited. Most of what she finds is then more general; some stories of individuals who survived these schools or whose family did, but much of this is broader history. I cannot fault her or the book for not including more about her family, because erasing stories was one of the things the boarding schools did well, and anyway, even if they hadn't, nobody should be required to trade on their family's pain. Personal stories do tend to resonate best with me, and because I recently did quite a bit of fact-checking on Indian boarding schools for a work project, much of the general history was familiar to me already. So...didn't learn quite as much as I might have hoped, but I'd very much recommend this to those looking to learn more on the subject.

I think of the homesick ones, the traumatized and terrorized ones, the angry ones, and those who longed to burn it all down. (loc. 1826)

*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: "Beyond Limits" by Shelley Sella

Beyond Limits by Shelley Sella
Published June 2025 via Beacon Press
★★★★

Sella was an abortion-care provider for decades, in Kansas and then in New Mexico, though her interest in reproductive health long preceded her specific calling to third-trimester abortion care. In Beyond Limits, she follows six patients—three with fetal indications for abortion, and three with maternal indications—through the paths that led them to her clinic and then through the steps of a third-trimester abortion.

Third-trimester abortions are rare, but the situations that drive women to seek them are not. What really differentiates third-trimester patients from those in the first and second trimesters is the degree of desperation they feel. (loc. 158)

I'll keep this short: This book will not change the minds of people who believe that third-trimester abortion (or abortion in general) is never acceptable; Sella herself nods to this in the book. What it can do, though, is speak to people who simply want to know more, and to those who have ever wondered why someone wouldn't just get an abortion earlier, or go the adoption route, and so on. Sella does discuss these things, directly and in detail, but also:

There are better questions to ask instead of why did she wait so long? And the answers to these questions should inspire compassion rather than judgment. What were the barriers to abortion care the patient faced when confronting an unwanted pregnancy? What were the life circumstances that compelled her to seek an abortion in the third trimester? (loc. 2390)

Wholly recommend to anyone looking to learn more.

Review: "Abider" by Melissa Crowe

Abider by Melissa Crowe
Published September 2026 via University of Pittsburgh Press
★★★★

But this morning / in the wet grass I saw rotting / windfall pears clustered with bees / who, vibrating, seemed both / ravenous and surprised by their luck. (87*)

Meditative and lush, full of wanting and requited and unrequited yearning, people who fit just right at exactly the wrong time and those who used to fit and no longer do.

I like having to work for poetry (me with my prose-laden, non-poet brain), and work for this collection I did. I read this slowly, a poem here, a few poems there, to allow each page time to percolate. Lots of layers here, lessons learned and unlearned, a balance of learning where the writer belongs and knowing that there are so many possibilities, but they can't all be true at once.

I'm not so wild anymore. / Even untutored, I learned how a woman's / meant to temper her hungers, cross her legs // and shut her mouth. But I taught myself to feel / good. Can't unlearn. (18)

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

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

Review: "Damned if She Does" by Sarah Stankorb

Damned if She Does by Sarah Stankorb
Published September 2026 via Broadleaf Books
★★★★

In Disobedient Women, Stankorb zeroed in on women who forced a church reckoning. Now, in Damned if She Does, she steps back to look at women who, on the whole, concluded that they couldn't make the change that they wanted to—and so they cut their losses and left.

This is a book about women and the church. But it's also a book about where people start to draw a line within a community to which they once were willing to give their time and money and entrust their children. (loc. 125*)

I've found religion fascinating for a good long time, though what interests me is generally less the specifics of a person or community's beliefs and more how they interact with those beliefs. This sort of thing has been incredibly topical of late, as certain strands of religion get wound ever more tightly around the neck of American politics, and in many ways that's exactly what this book boils down to: What happens when people take a good hard look and ask themselves how much of what they've been taught to believe is about belief and how much of it is about power.

Stankorb handily ties together personal stories with broader looks at history and context—why women, in particular, are leaving churches; why men are staying. (Short answer: power. Slightly longer answer: Power structures within churches are typically set up to reward men, not women, who are involved.) What "leaving" means varies, of course, and what this will look like in the long term (how many will leave, and how many will stay, and what trajectories those groups will take) remains to be seen—but in the context of the US right now, it's pretty on point.

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

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

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: "Becoming the Ocean" by Erin Russ

Becoming the Ocean by Erin Russ
Published September 2026 via Twenty Fourteen Press
★★★★

Upending their lives and taking to the seas was supposed to solidify their marriage. Instead, what became clear was that something had to give.

We had never sailed alone together on the ocean, and never overnight. [...] Neither of us had ever stepped foot onto a sailboat until we owned our own, so we had to learn everything: from how to raise and lower the sails, to how to avoid hitting rocks and capsizing. (loc. 304*)

Despite an irrational dislike of boats (I am an excellent swimmer, but there's just something about the idea of being out beyond the sight of land and knowing that you're too far out to swim to safety if need be), I have a thing for "packed up my life and sailed away" sorts of books. Russ went into the sailing adventure with limited (though, for their purposes, adequate) boating experience and even more limited confidence.

Brian oozed competence—it's what had drawn me to him all those years ago. He had all the qualities I desired and wanted to attain for myself: he was confident, capable, and knew who he was[...]. Initially, I'd hoped some of his confidence might rub off on me. But over the years, I'd ended up hiding behind it at the expense of my own. It was easier to let him take the lead than to risk making a mistake. Now, I couldn't see past him. Everything I knew about myself—from my likes and dislikes, to my sense of who I was—had taken shape within the confines of our relationship. And I only knew how to be the person Brian wanted me to be. (loc. 332)

So it's a sailing story and a relationship story and a self-discovery story. It's evident early on that the status quo of the relationship suits Russ's husband well, but Russ less well; the question becomes what to do with that, and what their relationship will look like when all is said and done. The events of the book took place some number of years ago, which for book purposes is great; it means that Russ has had the time to think it over and process and figure out how the pieces fit together. The emotions are still there but not the same kind of raw that can come across when the story is still new. I'm curious about more of the what came after, but I also understand why it's out of the scope of this book.

Readers looking for more along these lines might like Love with a Chance of Drowning.

*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.