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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "Just Between Us" by Adeline Kon

Just Between Us by Adeline Kon
Published February 2026 via Dial Books
★★★

As a skater, Lydia is at the top of her game—her technical prowess is unmatched, and she's confident that she can win any competition she sets her sights on. Her attitude, though...that leaves something to be desired. Enter Elaine, against whom Lydia has competed for years; Elaine does not have quite the consistency or skills that Lydia does, but she still finds joy when she steps onto the rink.

Now, I cannot relate to either of these characters on a skating level: I can just about keep my balance on the ice, and that's where my skill starts and ends. But skating is fun to watch and fun to read about, and the illustrations here do a great job at capturing the athleticism and grace required to be competitive at skating.

The characters I didn't love. Or rather: Elaine's character felt a bit indistinct. She's pretty close to unfailingly kind, a golden girl who gets along with just about everyone and is highly respected in her sport to boot. She's also hiding a thing or two about her personal life. But...not a lot beyond that. Lydia, meanwhile, has isolated herself from just about everyone around her; her response to kindness or rudeness or praise or concern is to snap at the person in question and, if they too are a skater, to remind them that her ranking is higher than theirs (or if they aren't a skater, to tell them that they don't understand the pressures of being on top). Part of Lydia's journey throughout the book is of course to let her walls down a bit and be...a bit kinder to people...but until she gets to that point there's quite a lot of bitterness and ego, and after that point there's quite a bit of teenage angst. Had its moments, but by the end I was ready to move on to something else.

Review: "Natural Selection" by Clare Edge

Natural Selection by Clare Edge
Published August 2026 via Delacorte Press
★★★★★

There are predators in Riverside. It's why everyone knows to carry bear spray, to watch out for grizzlies. But those are only the predators that people talk about. The girls of Riverside know: The predators aren't only in the woods.

Power is intoxicating. It's safety. It's certainty you will be okay because you can tear the safety away from those who might threaten it. (loc. 3352*)

This was gripping, and I think my favorite YA novel of the past two years. Make no mistake: It's a dark book, with multiple types of violence and a fair amount of blood and gore and boys carrying shotguns around the school with impunity. The plot is not entirely unexpected, though it gets intense far faster than I would have anticipated—let's just say that revenge is the beginning of the story, not the end.

But what I'm really here for is the intensity of the friendships. Megan and Outlaw (can you guess which one of these is a nickname?) have been friends forever, and Bee is relatively new in town. They don't click immediately: Megan doesn't want to hear the hard truths, and Outlaw holds a barrier between herself and the world, and Bee is (rightly) afraid of her role as newcomer and outsider. Megan is the school's alpha girl, and Outlaw does her own thing but is—largely—untouchable, and Bee knows full well that her brand of different is not really welcome here. But: I love how hard Megan has to interrogate her own reactions and instincts. I love that the three of them have to work to make it work. I love that they wrestle, over and over again throughout the course of the book, with the implications and consequences of their actions.

And yet: There are predators in Riverside. And it's time someone did something about it.

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

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

Review: "Armaveni" by Nadine Takvorian

Armaveni by Nadine Takvorian
Published March 2026 via Levine Querido
★★★

I recently read a couple of graphic novels (Tall Water and Silenced Voices) that cover genocide in Sri Lanka and Guatamala, respectively, and since I know shockingly little about the Armenian genocide, this felt like a natural extension of that reading. Armaveni is a fictionalized retelling of Takvorian's own story and her family history.

As a story, it's heartbreaking. Again, I don't know much about the Armenian genocide, but you don't need to know the specifics of a conflict to understand fear and loss. I could have used more details of the historical background, because I simply don't know that much about the time and place—even the time frame was something I had to look up a couple of times. As a graphic novel, then, it didn't fully do the job for me: I would have liked more history wrapped in with the memoir. The book is also in one color scheme, and while past and present are clear, I struggled to keep track of the different characters in the earlier timeline. (I eventually stopped trying.) I'm not sure if a multiple color schemes would have helped me keep track, but I think I just needed something more.

With all this said, it's an interesting book about a conflict that isn't enough discussed (Türkiye in particular has worked to suppress discussion of the genocide and to reframe it as something, well...pro-Türkiye); a decent one to add to a library collection about oppression and conflict in both past and present.

Review: "Suffer a Witch" by Joy McCullough

Suffer a Witch by Joy McCullough
Published August 2026 via Dutton Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Admit it, the priests told you, and twelve years was old enough for you to know you must listen to church authorities. Old enough to know the truth didn't matter anyway. Old enough to know someone had to pay for a boy's wounded pride. (loc. 669*)

McCullough was a young teenager, a preacher's daughter, when a new youth pastor was hired at her father's church. That is not the point she describes as the tipping point, the moment when things could have been different—but fundamentally, this pastor who groomed her and sexually assaulted her tipped her life upside down. And: He was not subtle. And: Nobody spoke up, not when it was McCullough and not when it was her sister and not when it was the next girl behind closed doors with the youth pastor.

The story is devastating. McCullough is so clear about what happened and the ways in which she was silenced, both then and later; also the ways in which it affected her, then and later. (I won't get into the family parts of things here, but...if she's not still angry, she's a more forgiving person than I.) Her story comes in conversation with women accused of witchcraft—in Salem, in Sweden, in Scotland, beyond. (See the quotation up top.) It's also in conversation, at times, with itself: I do say that, in a previous draft, in a poem my editor says / isn't quite landing (loc. 855).

I had some trouble with the story format—verse works best for me when I can't just read it as sentences flowing one into another with extra line breaks, and when I have to slow down and reread to get all of the nuance and wordplay. While there is some play of structure and word choice here, for large parts of the book I was able to just read straight through. This is more personal preference than anything, but I probably would have found this a better fit for me in a different format (more prose, or a different style of poetry, or maybe a play). That said, maybe also worth noting that the formatting wasn't quite right on my Kindle (I read an ARC and assume this will work better in the final version, so not something to worry about), and if I'd realized earlier I would have switched to reading on my phone, where things like page breaks came across more clearly. And if you like your poetry on the more straightforward side, this is likely to be a better fit for you.

3.5 stars; structure wasn't for me, but the story is powerful and important, and I love the tie-ins to history. At one point McCullough mentions a previous book being called "timely" when it came out in 2018, and she notes that it was timely then and now and in the 1970s and in the 1610s and in so many years in between, and this feels the same way. It's a timely book, published now when so many stories have been told about abuse within churches and religion (and when restrictive evangelical religion is doing its best to take over the US), but it also would have been timely five years ago or ten or fifty, and I expect it will be timely still some years from now.

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

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

Review: "Alchemy of Souls" by Adriana Mather

Alchemy of Souls by Adriana Mather
Published August 2026 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★

Grayson wants to bring down his uncle. Eloise wants a better life for her family. They've been in each other's orbit for years, but kept their distance...until they have no choice but to work together to ensure their mutual survival.

I had it in my head that this would be a boarding school book, but it's more of a restrictive college with boarding school rules (curfew, very limited freedoms, sneaking out to drink, etc.) setting. This is a highly regulated society with strict class division, which plays a huge role. Think dystopia books from the early 2010s; Eloise and her family are on the poverty track with very limited options for upward trajectory, while Grayson's family is high up in the food chain and determined to keep it that way.

I loved the premise (and the cover!) but could have used a bit more by way of worldbuilding. It was late in the book before I got a sense of what the wards were, and I never did figure out why Eloise's bestie from Maine has an aggressive Irish(?) accent. (Maggie doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose in the book—she's mostly accent and Eloise feeling guilty that she doesn't have time to hang out with Maggie because she's trying to save her own life.) I'd also be curious to know more about how the wards, which seem to have quite strict and limited borders, work across continents, and what exactly they do beyond keep out the "riffraff".

This is YA, so there's a romance; it's not really my jam, but it'll be good for readers who like enemies-to-lovers and a pretty high level of knight-in-shining-armor heroics. I wondered for a while whether this might be the first in a triology (again: dystopia books from the early 2010s!), but things feel fairly wrapped up by the end, so while it's possible that it'll spin off in other directions (or with other characters?), this makes for a quick read on its own.

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

Review: "Stepping Up" by Kiara Valdez, illustrated by Diana Tsai Santos

Stepping Up by Kiara Valdez, illustrated by Diana Tsai Santos
Published August 2026 via HarperAlley
★★★★

Andover was an opportunity Valdez couldn't pass up—an excellent education, a bit of breathing room from a sometimes complicated home life, the promise of future opportunities. It was also a place where she did not fit the mold, and where students who did fit the mold kept reminding her of that...and a place where, eventually, she found her people.

There are relatively few boarding school memoirs out there (though plenty of fiction!), and even fewer written by people who were minority students. For Valdez, Andover represented a certain amount of culture shock—her family and friends did not have the money to go to Broadway shows, or buy the new iPhone, or take fancy vacations; Andover was also way Whiter than she was used to. (Wikipedia says that Andover is more racially diverse than Massachusetts generally, but still very different from Valdez's New York.)

For the most part, Valdez writes Andover as something that was for her a good experience—she made close friends and tried things she wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to do. (And, well, my own boarding school was very different from the prep school environment of Andover, but boarding school is an experience that is really like none other.) There are few big dramas here, and certainly not any involving Valdez directly. This isn't always exciting as far as book plots go, but I can't object because 1) that's certainly better for Valdez! and 2) honestly, I'm still looking for a boarding school book that echoes my own experience, and while this isn't it (for myriad reasons, most of which I knew going in), this does feel like much more a reflection of, well, a normal experience of boarding school. What Valdez did experience, over and over again, were microaggressions—sometimes unthinking ones and sometimes, ah, they were not unthinking. (And not so micro.) I can imagine this being a really valuable book for a teenager who is changing environments in the way that Valdez did, not necessarily to boarding school but...things along those lines.

As an aside, I loved the inclusion of step here—it's something I haven't seen performed in a very long while, and it was so lovely to see as an important part of Valdez's experience at Andover. I don't know that much about step, so I'd have loved a bit more history here, but it's a nice plot point. A bit more about Valdez's family also would have been interesting, though that may not have been somewhere she wanted to go for any number of reasons, which is of course entirely fair.

3.5 stars; this is one I'd like to see in a lot of high school libraries.

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

Review: "Gingerbread Bones" by Lindsay Lovise

Gingerbread Bones by Lindsay Lovise
Published August 2026 via Entangled: Mayhem Books
★★★★

Georgie knows exactly why she and her brother are two of the teenagers selected to take part in a reality TV program that drops a group of "troubled" teenagers in the woods and forces them to learn some survival skills and adapt: Their parenting-influencer stepmother is the one who conceived of the show, and that same stepmother hates them. Georgie figures they can get through a week or two in the Maine woods, and they'll be eighteen and out of the house soon enough...but what she doesn't know is that "learn some survival skills" is about to get really, really literal.

Everyone thinks Ashley is so kind and wholesome, when really she's the razor blade hidden in the Halloween candy. (loc. 139*)

I picked this one up for the woods: I love me an everyone-might-die murder story set in the woods, because who doesn't? (Don't answer that.) What ended up interesting me most, though, is the fact that all of these teenagers have been labelled as "troubled". They've been cast for drama, of course; every one of them has their own backstory and their own problems. Every one of them is also likely to be, in the eyes of the show and the public, a perpetrator rather than a victim. Their voices don't count. No matter what happens.

We are disposable. And I'm afraid [the production company] knows it. (loc. 2362)

The romance didn't (surprise!) interest me much, but I loved how much the characters—well, mostly the teenagers—were allowed to grow throughout the book. Early on, especially, they're all guarded and angry and not happy to be there. And certainly they don't get any happier to be out in the woods; the woods make sure of that. But I've read too many mysteries (written for teenagers and adults alike) in which virtually every character is so perfectly awful that I'm just hoping that their death will come sooner rather than later, and Gingerbread Bones sees that and steers mindfully away from it.

There's a paranormal element, which is not generally my jam; entirely personal preference, but I like it better when the big bads are all things that can happen in real life. Paranormal stories just don't give me that visceral thrill. That said, I did know going in that there was a paranormal element, which helped, and that part of things was done well. There's a twist toward the end that I had half guessed at, but in a shape that I couldn't have known to guess at, which was great. All in all, a speedy read that will be perfect for autumn when the weather cools down a bit.

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

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

Review: "The Ginghams" by T.C. Kemper

The Ginghams by T.C. Kemper
Published July 2026 via Henry Holt and Co.
★★★★

Joni's excited to get home from camp and see her best friend, May, again—except, when she gets home, May has changed. The town has changed. And not, Joni fears, for the better.

Now, I read this because—bear with me—I've been down a trad-wife-thriller rabbit hole lately, and something told me that this might be the middle grade version of that. And I was right, or right enough for my (very arbitrary) purposes, which made this a super fun comparison point.

As a middle grade read, this feels just right. Joni is stubborn and sometimes a bit rash, but her heart is in the right place. There's a clear villain (we'll come back to this in a moment), and a fair amount of action, including a bit of blood (the ears, oh gosh), and a librarian who is part of the resistance, as a middle school librarian should be. I'm reminded a bit of Eventown, though The Ginghams is a fair bit darker.

I spent a fair amount of time thinking, while reading this, about ways in which this book might be different if it were written for an older audience. The first thing is religion—there's no mention of religion here, though there are clear influences from certain parts of white American evangelical Christianity (and of course the Stepford wives). In that way the book feels a bit sanitized for a younger audience, but in a way that is fair. Interesting to see, though, that one of Joni's friends is queer-coded without being explicitly identified as gay, and that's something that the bad guys pick up on too (to them it's officially a problem of standing out, but we all know where their real prejudice lies...)

And the second thing is how the bad guys are structured. Again, The Ginghams has a pretty clear villain here, which feels appropriate for middle grade. It becomes obvious farily early that there's an element of force to the changes in town: the people taking on new views and new personalities do not have a choice in it. And yet again, I think this makes sense for a middle grade read. But there's an extent to which this makes it a much less alarming read for me as an adult—it's one thing to have one main bad guy who is controlling the people around him, one main bad guy who can be vanquished. In a book for older readers, I would expect much more of an element of choice to it—imagine how much more difficult it would be for characters to come out of this book knowing that their fathers and mothers and friends had chosen to go down this track. (Do I have to watch The Stepford Wives now? I've never seen it, and I don't know where it falls on this.) Women choosing to give up their rights and men choosing to exert total control on women and girls is far more terrifying than a clear bad guy who can be vanquished.

Because The Ginghams is a middle grade novel, this is all fine, of course; I'm pushing the boundaries of what is on topic because I have tangential interests! Given the recent rise of trad wife thrillers (and everything that is the contemporary mashup of politics and contemporary religion), I would not be surprised to see more along these lines in the near future.

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

Review (Deutsch): "Eine Wichtige Entscheidung" von Irene Margil und Andreas Schlüter

Eine Wichtige Entscheidung von Irene Margil und Andreas Schlüter, gelesen von Henning Nöhren
Herausgegeben 2026 von Silberfisch
★★★

Yao liebt Fußball—und wenn er die Chance, in einem Fußball-Internat zu studieren, hat, kann er nicht "nein" sagen. (Seine Eltern denken anders...aber was für eine Aktionsgeschichte würden wir haben, wenn sie "nein" gesagt hätten?)

Dies war lebhaft und voller Energie, mit vielen Soundeffekten. Yao und seine neue Freunde sind grundsätzlich gute Kinder, aber sie sind Kinder, und ihre Energie braucht manchmal...Grenzen. (Lust auf eine Kissenschlacht?)

Es gibt nicht so viel Fußball in diesem Buch, aber das Buch ist kurz, und andere Bücher mit denselben Figuren folgen. (Ich hätte lieber zwei Erzähler:innen, wenn es mehr Mädchen in der Geschichte gibt—ein Mann und eine Frau—aber mit den verschiedenen Jungenfiguren kommt Nöhren gut zurecht.) Für sportliche Kinder wäre diese Buchreihe perfekt; es gibt Abenteuer und Action und ein bisschen Chaos.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Review (Deutsch): "Seaside Sisters: Lenes Inselcommerglück" von Mia Andersen

Seaside Sisters: Lenes Inselsommerglück von Mia Andersen, gelesen von Chantal Busse
Herausgegeben 2026 von Silberfisch
★★★★

Sommer ist hier, und Lene freut sich. Sie hat ihren Zwilling, ihre beste Freundin...und vielleicht ist es die Zeit, dass Max sie bemerken wird.

Seaside Sisters: Lenes Inselsommerglück war für mich ein fast perfektes Hörbuch—klare Stimme, nicht zu schnell, eine Geschichte, der ich ohne Probleme auf Deutsch folgen konnte. Lene und ihre Schwester und Freundinnen sind normale (junge) Teenager mit normalen Minidramen, und ich fand es echt super, dass die Dramen nicht zum Thema "schlechte Freundinnen" gehörten. Es gibt Missverständnisse, aber am Ende sind diese Mädchen gute Leute und versuchen, gute Freundinnen zu bleiben.

Es gibt natürlich "side plots" und Themen—Journalismus, Tourismus, Respekt vor Wildtieren, und so weiter. Eine gute Option für junge Leser und Leserinnen diesen Sommer. Ich würde das zweite Buch gern lesen.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Review: "Spindlewood" by Freddie Kölsch

 

Spindlewood by Freddie Kölsch
Published July 2026 via Balzer + Bray
★★★★

Lilac is the newest student at a secret boarding school for Seers—but there's just one problem. She isn't a Seer. She's never Seen a ghost in her life...and if she wants to stay in this new adventure, she'll have to keep everyone around her convinced that she can, in fact, See.

This makes for such a lively and compelling middle grade read. Lilac is great fun—she's book-smart but not always people-smart; she wants to be honest, but she also wants to stay at Spindlewood, and she's perfectly willing to engage in deception to do so; if she could See, she'd probably be near the top of her class, but...well, she can't. (There's a wry nod or two to the fact that Lilac, despite being the main character of this book, is not in fact the Chosen One...although I think we'll be learning more about Lilac's power, or lack thereof, in future books.)

I'd love to see more of the school and school grounds, but the cast is nicely diverse—a mix of ethnicities and body shapes and disabilities and genders and sexualities. I'm afraid Lilac does do one of my pet-peeve things in that she immediately identifies everyone by their correct gender, including the one character who is nonbinary (or at least uses they/them pronouns); as always, I am compelled to note that this isn't how it works, and I'd have been happier if she'd gotten it wrong and the character had said "Actually, these are my pronouns," and Lilac had had to course-correct. But it's a relatively minor thing in a book that is making a point to show a broad range of diversity.

There's also a rather arch narrator, and I am very curious to see what else might come out about the narrator as the series continues. It's very break-the-fourth-wall in places, and I kind of loved it because I don't read as much middle grade as I do books for a YA or adult audience, and it reminded me of the way that books for younger readers sometimes get away with more interesting structures than books for older readers—just like plays, I think, though I'm getting very off-topic here. Generally speaking I liked the characters, though. Lilac and her friend Emmanuelle have the most depth, but I really enjoyed the way they're good people but not too good and smart but not too smart. I hope the other characters get rounded out a bit in the next book, just because that'll complicate things even more.

So: engaging, smart, and inclusive; with any luck book two is already in the works, because I'd pick it up promptly.

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