THE POOLS by E. Lockhart comes out October 2 - and you had better gird your loins...

 

...because it's weird! I read this in nearly one sitting and I will be going back to read it again. It is a novel in verse that had some weird formatting in NetGalley, but I got a paper ARC at ALA (signed by E. Lockhart, no big deal. I was first in line at her signing. I made her laugh. Whatever. It's not like I have been revisiting that glorious moment for the past 5 days...) and the formatting was lovely. But that's not the point. 

So Lexie and her family move to a new town to share . Her mother is ill and she is essentially parenting her younger sister, I think there is a dead dad, but I can't remember specifically. Luckily, she meets Chester and they fall in love. But one day Chester and the little sister and some other folks go to the local healing "pools" and as a result they turn into birds. Yep, I told you it was weird. Some stuff happens and it stays weird and some things get better and some things never do. I stan a pair of lesbian swans and I felt like I needed to read it again, but I don't know if I will. 

This felt very literary to me and Lockhart's note about the poetic formats she used was helpful in determining that I was correct. I read some reviews that mentioned parallels to depression and other issues and I can see it in retrospect, but as you know if you have read any of my other reviews, I'm about as deep as a wine pour at a chain restaurant so I rarely see those things when doing a first read. Hence the inevitable reread. 

The enjoyment factor, strong story and well defined characters are usually huge for me. I didn't necessarily enjoy this book. The story, however, was strangely captivating. And while the characters didn't spring to life, I think because of the format, there were several that I fell in love with - the aforementioned swans, the little sister and her best friend and the no-nonsense aunt. It was a strange, sad read and I couldn't put it down and, for me, that is key - the insistence on knowing what happens and why. Well, Lockhart gave me the first part and, ever since reading it, the second part has been swirling around in my head in a most gratifyingly mysterious way. 

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC and E. Lockhart her damn self for the print ARC. 

I HOPE THIS EMAIL FINDS YOU IN HELL by Mackenzie Reed comes out September 1

 

I love a road trip. I'm on one now! Headed to Chicago for ALA and currently hunkering down in rural Michigan. I do not love hell. Raised, as I was, in Christian evangelicalism, I fear you-know-who and his minions. Do I believe they walk among us? Well, I've been spending the last 40+ years convincing myself that they do not. But yes, when I hear a funny noise at night, I have been known to mutter, "Get thee behind me, satan." just to be on the safe side. 

So I get really nervous about books where demons are super hot and conflicted. A friend told me that it's fine to fool around with demons in otherworld books, but in real life books they are bad. This seems like kind of a gray area for me, so I have sworn off fooling around with demons altogether. Spoiler: Brie does not!

So the background is that Brie works at a shit company. Her parents died in a car crash and she is too scared to drive at night now. She has cut ties with everyone from her previous life and is pretty isolated and messy. She has one friend at work who tries to get her to rejoin the land of the living and has great hair. She is the only one who ever refills the water jug and fixes the fax machine. And her boss is hot!

He ends up being a demon hunter, her friend gets kidnapped and dragged to hell and Brie and Luke (the hot demon-hunter boss) have to go save her. Guess what happenes??? I mean, a lot happens. There is plenty of action here, which I usually find exhausting. But it is delivered from Brie's perspective and she mostly just hits the high points. Which I appreciate. 

No need to go into the details of plot, it's The Sure Thing except instead of hooking up with Nicolette Sheridan, Luke needs to repair the veil between the underworld and the overworld - potato/potahto... There's even a creepy bar scene when they are staying at a hotel. And the chemistry is excellent. You know what a delicate flower I am regarding the spicy bits, but this one didn't go overboard but did offer something for the naughty reader to sink their teeth into. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this. There is definitely room for more adventures in this world, but if not, the ending was satisfying. I would watch this Netflix series, even though I would complain about how murdery it is. 

ATTACHMENTS by Rainbow Rowell

 

Since this is a reread, I am not legally obligate to review it, but I want to because it was my first adult Rainbow Rowell and it made me realize that this woman writes from a place that I absolutely love. 

Beth and Jennifer and best friends who work at a newspaper in different departments in 1999. Even though they know that the powers that be may be flagging and reading their emails, they can't help but write each other hysterically funny, honest emails most days. Lincoln, the IT guy hired by the powers that be finds he looks forward to reading their flagged emails and even goes looking for the ones that aren't flagged because he is really interested in Beth. He has never seen her, but he starts to fall for her based on her writing, which is a delightful way to fall in love with someone. I did it myself back in the 80s and never looked back.

There are stories of bad boyfriends, selfish girlfriends, pregnancy, movie theaters, living with mom as an adult, Y2K, and overarchingly, the importance of kindness. Beth sees Lincoln at the paper and starts to refer to him as her "cute guy" and his joy and wonder when he realizes she means him is a balm to his soul as well as to the soul of the reader. These crazy kids just might make it work!

It was a pure pleasure to see Lincoln take control of his life, to see Beth realize she deserves better and even see Jen relax into the life she wants but won't allow herself to expect. Rainbow Rowell is a national treasure. 

Skip this part if you haven't read Slow Dance. I thought the character of Lincoln's ex girlfriend was the prototype for Shiloh in Slow Dance and it made me so happy that even though Sam was pretty unremittingly awful in Attachments, she got a bit of sympathy and redemption later in Rowell's work. 

MY FRIENDS by Fredrick Bachman

 

So many people told me this book is amazing and would make you feel all the feels and they were right. So I don't know why it took me nearly a month to read. In retrospect, I think it is because it is so very, very sad. 

There is a young girl, Louisa, who has run away from foster care to see a painting that has inspired her to be an artist and has given her comfort throughout her shitty, shitty life. There is Ted, the best friend of a world renowned artist who dies in like the third chapter, and then there are Ted's friends who are a collection of wonderful kids, encased in amber in the painting, who support each other when no one else does. 

The story slips around in time as Louisa and Tim make their way back from the art show where the artist expired, with his ashes and the painting that made him famous. Their stories are bleak and funny, but wind out slowly. 

I think this book made me so sad reading it that I was unprepared for the ending which was beautiful and well deserved. I think if I had powered through and read it in a couple days, I would have loved it more. As it was, it was still a moving and funny read. I think this one is on me because I just wouldn't devote my reading time to it. But I throughly understand why everyone loves it so much. 

INTO THE BLUE by Emma Brodie

 

This was my book club book and I think some of my church lady friends are going to clutch their pearls when they read how spicy this gets! Or maybe not, several of them had babies back when we read the Outlander books back in the aughts and you and I both know that was no coincidence!

I loved this book. It has family drama, video stores, improv and love, true love. AJ works in a video store in high school and she meets co-worker Noah who is the tortured son of an acting dynasty. His Aunt Eudora who was in the famous space improv show Astronomicals. She offers AJ and Drew improv lessons and they are amazing at it. They have ridiculous chemistry, but life gets in the way and Noah disappears just as AJ realizes she loves him like crazy.

Flash forward seven years and they are brought back into each other's orbits on a prequel show of Astronomicals called Into the Blue. Sparks fly, but there are a LOT of issues and miscommunication and it takes a long time for them to get where the reader NEEDS them to end up. But after a lot of really interesting acting, coms and family tragedies, they learn to lean on each other. And there is a dog. 

This was damn near perfect and even the spice - which is done well, but not overdone - didn't make me feel icky. I had to laugh in the acknowledgements because Brodie talks about the awkwardness of writing it. Which makes me like her even more. Yes, I will be reading Songs in Ursa Major after a 25 week wait. I love you, Libby, but you really make me consider doing some Kindle purchases. Good thing I'm so cheap!

VALLEY OF THE MOMS by Hannah Selinger

 

Well, I hate Hamilton, and even I found this book to be a little heavy-handed. I enjoyed it and read it in 2 days, but man, it was humorless. Of course, it is the story of a young mother who may or may not have been murdered by the president of the PTA and her bereaved husband's quest to clear his name, but I like my murders with a few yucks. I'm not proud of it.

So Anna is kind of a self-righteous judgy bitch, but she is also a pretty good mom and a good wife. She lives in a town that is way too full of itself (just like the real Hamilton!) and the thing that made me buy this on the recommendation of Thalia from Paper and String (in Hamilton!!) is that there is a pivotal scene that takes place in the very health club that I call my beloved home away from home! Just to get this out of the way, they kind of nailed the vibe at Life Time. At first I was irritated that Selinger didn't smush the space from between those words. I have always typed it LifeTime  - show some freaking respect, Hannah! - but I just looked it up and I have been wrong all along! Anyhow, she has clearly been on the pool deck and has seen the horror show when the whistle blows for adult swim. 

The mystery was good. Her husband Denny has to deal with all kinds of complications after her death and when it turns out that it was foul play, he was - as everyone knows from Dateline - the prime suspect. So he goes about trying to find out what happened. And he is not overly stupid or careless about it, which is refreshing. 

The book starts with Emily being pissed that she can't sign her daughter up for "Ziti with your Sweetie" an embarrassingly named PTO fundraiser, and she finds out that there is a prestige level of PTO membership that you have to pay for and those folks got to register first. Well, her indignation turns to action and she decides to run for president of the PTO. If this were played for laughs, written by someone with Selinger's chops, it would be one of my reads of the year. Sadly, no. It just gets murdery. I read the occasional mystery and I don't mind them, but I like a little sauce. This was very well written, it just wasn't quirky enough. That being said, I thought the structure of alternating viewpoints between Anna and Denny to be well done. I loved that the ending was solid and while I was left with questions, they weren't the questions I thought I would be left with. And the cover is to DIE for!

This would be a GREAT book club book. Maybe not in Hamilton, though.

THE INTROVERT'S GUIDE TO KISSING IN EUROPE by Brenda Janowitz comes out August 18

So I have been trying to review every new book I read this year and I have a bit of a backlog, but I just finished this little delight and I want to write what I loved about it before I forget. 

I love the title. It's cute, even though Emily seems more nervous than introverted. At first. This girl, doing a gap year across Europe after high school, sheds her inhibitions pretty quick when she smacks one on the lips of a cute boy in a train station in Spain. He is Chekov's cute boy and you can bet he comes back around. Meanwhile, she befriends Penny, aka @PennyForYourThoughs, an instagram travel influencer. And she meets all the expats that Penny is traveling with. So she spends the whole book almost never alone and doesn't seem to have an issue with it. Hence, not an introvert.

In other news, her grandma was in an early rock duo with her sister back in the 60s and Emily wants to go to all the places her grandma played. Oh, and she had a sister who died. And part of the book is written in her grandma's journal entries. And she is Jewish. She doesn't talk much about the belief system, but she is observant of the holidays and you can tell her Judaism is an important part of her identity. 

Okay, I didn't read any of the Goodreads reviews yet, but I did notice that mine will be the first 5 star one. Not only because I give out 5 stars like tee-ball coaches give out trophies, but because I just LOVED the opportunity to see a bunch of expats wandering around Europe. I spent the fall and early winter of 1990 in Brussels, which is a bit of the kissing-your-cousin of expat experiences, but I did make very close friends with a bunch of other expats who I never spoke to again after those months. I found it fascinating to see it in fiction. I just thought I was great at making friends and bad at keeping them. 

Yes, WAY too much happens in this book. There are so many issues, some of them quite serious, but they are handled in such a blase way that they didn't hurt my feelings. The cover makes this look like absolute fluff and even though I got it from my best friend NetGalley and didn't see the cover that prominently, it must have influenced my reading. This seemed like a light fun read that occasionally went deep. And I found that kind of refreshing. Did it matter that I read this on the last day of school and first day of vacation, my own personal high holy days? Perhaps. But I still closed it with a feeling of utter satisfaction!

SEASON OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS by Jillian Cantor comes out August 4

 

The Handmaid's Tale was one of the first adult books I read as an adult and it has really stuck with me. I feel like there wasn't a lot of dystopian YA when I was growing up and the bleakness of the world really hit me hard. Well, there is a LOT of dystopian YA now and yet, it is still a kick in the teeth when I see so many parallels to the world we are living in and hopefully not becoming.

You would have to be living under a rock to not recognize patterns between the start of this book and the current American experience. Substitute greed for pride in the overblown buffoon in office, substitute racism and fear for, I don't know, scientific understanding and gender roles, and we're nearly there!

But because this is YA, the lines are drawn pretty simply and the story boils down to a resistance adventure. In a good way! 

I try not to wallow in the doom that many folks gobble up and I don't judge those that live in fear now, but I appreciated the stark black and white of the fictional world. There is an elected "dictator." People are given "reeducation" (involving what sounds like some pretty good drugs) to make them more amenable to the new world order. Everyone is painted in black and white so that it is easy to see if they are a goodie or a baddie. It's kind of refreshing to know exactly who to hate. 

And the story kicks butt! It appears to be about Ellie, a girl who was frozen with her family to wait out an administration who hates science with the passionate intensity of a thousand burning suns. Which half the country would not ever be able to calculate because girls don't get to go to school anymore. But it is half the story of Scott, her little brother who ran away before he could be frozen and now lives in the wilderness with the partisans. Stir in an unstoppable grandma and sweet plot twist involving food allergies and you have a nonstop adventure in how to resist fascism. 

There are some great details in here. My favorite is that all women, who are expected to be married by 18 at the latest, are required to dye their hair blonde. The hatred of science is the main thrust of the police state, and it is explained by the end of the book, but it doesn't hit as hard as a more realistic idealist lynchpin. But no matter, this book isn't about defining the paradigm of the overlords so much as the freedom intrinsic to resistance. Wow, those last two sentences might be the word-salad-iest sentences I have ever written, but they are accurate. 

TLDR - I loved this book and will 100% be nominating it for the Mass. Teen Choice book award list. And I can't wait for the inevitable sequel, even though I will have to reread this one before reading it unless Jillian Cantor already wrote it and is going to release it before I forget all the salient details. Unlikely, but I live in hope!

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital ARC.

MOONSINGERS by Robin J. Pritzker comes out June 14, 2026

 

Well this was a cozy one! I am not the sort of reader who constantly seeks out the cozy, but I can appreciate the appeal. I think I am guilty of assuming a cozy read will be a simple story and yet there is a lot going on here.

Ismay has come to Glenmaidens Village to work as a teacher for three wild girls in hopes that she can put in minimal time and get out of there with a reference that will allow her to find more a more conventional teaching job going forward after an accident with one of her former students derailed her previous job. 

Needless to say, she falls in love with her new charges and gets embroiled in the life of the village, which is, complicated. Since the jacket copy informs us up front that the family she is working for is fairies, I can share that it really complicates things. 

Ismay has a bad train experience getting to the village and, as any good educator will do, she writes a strongly worded letter suggesting that the line be extended into the village. But there is a magic tree that is the portal to the fairy world and as cool as a fairy world sounds, it's a weird place to visit and I wouldn't want to live there. 

By the time she has realized that this is a problem, the train company - society? I don't know what they are called - sends a guy to figure out how to do this. He is Hamish Breck (awesome name!) who is fascinated by both train efficiency and Ismay. There is a slow-burn romance and a race against the clock as Ismay learns the error of her ways and tries to stop the extension to help her employers. 

The magic aspects of the book are far less interesting to me than the minutiae of rail planning (Hamish, too) and the way that the girls get into the whole process shows a wonderful aspect of teaching - often the best thing you can do is get kids fascinated by something and then let them take on ownership themselves. 

The story was delightful, the setting was comfy and the whole thing gave me a sweet feeling of coziness right down to my soul. And that cover is delicious!

ONCE UPON A K-PROM by Kat Cho

 

Now this was a high school book I can get behind. It has a lot going on. A teenage girl who doesn't like to be the center of attention, a much cooler sibling, a friend from way back who gets famous and love, sweet love. However it is rife with the kind of miscommunication that I find so annoying, but is kind of necessary to propel the plot. 

Elena is just trying to get through high school and maybe save her beloved community center when Robbie Choi, her childhood bestie and first crush, comes back to town and asks her to prom. Several times. Publicly. He is now a huge K-pop star and her refusals are broadcast to all his followers, complicating her life immeasurably. She has been volunteering at the local community center and comes up with the great idea that her classmates could take all the money they would overspend to go to prom and donate it to try to keep the center going while they wait to hear if it will be funded going forward. Shockingly, her classmates find this annoying and her social stock, already embarrassingly low, falls further. 

The publicity inherent in having Robbie seem somewhat obsessed with her adds to the equation and if you have even read a book before, you are going to figure out what happens. But it is a delightful ride.

What I loved about this is the inside look at the life of an idol. It is a very narrow range of acceptable behaviors and you are constantly under scrutiny. This is horrible for Elena who likes to stay under the radar, but it is also stifling for the other characters who live in this world full time and are chafed by all the monitoring. It plays out sweetly and made the book a little more of an educational process for me rather than just a puff read. I put this down with a satisfied feeling of connections made and a desire that these crazy kids just might make it work. 

YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke

 

As much as I didn't enjoy much about Yesteryear, I did enjoy the experience of reading it. I am not usually a fan of an unlikeable narrator and I usually just don't even bother with books that have them. Olive Kittridge is about as unlikeable as I get and there is a core of decency in her that made me love her. I don't think there is really a core of anything in Natalie. I mean, she has a core of steel and she appears to be a woman of faith, but mostly she seems single mindedly obsessed with herself and her own success. Maybe the joy of this book was supposed to be in seeing her brought low, but I didn't. 

I found the whole thing fascinating, but I wish the book had continued to focus on Natalie and her real life BEFORE the throwback times began. It was interesting to see her try to make a go of it in the actual homestead experience, but I didn't get off on her suffering the way I think I was supposed to. I just felt bad for her. You are allowed to feel bad for people who also are kind of insufferable and I feel like the book didn't want me to. 

It was very well written and a fascinating commentary on, well, a lot of things. I kind of want to read it again, knowing how it ends, but I also don't really want to spend more time with these people. I can see why it has been kind of polarizing and kudos to Burke for making that conversation happen. But it wasn't for me. 

The Thrashers by Julie Soto - Mass. Teen Choice Book Award Nominee

 

I did not expect to enjoy The Thrashers. It seemed scandalous and set in a high school which is usually problematic for me. Unless it is a romcom or written by someone who has spent a lot of time in an actual high school exactly like the one I work in. I just hate it when "realistic" high school books don't feel real to me. Like I loved Fake Skating, but there is no way in hell that they wouldn't let a new kid join any freaking club they wanted to! 

Back to The Thrashers. There is a popular clique that is actually NAMED The Thrashers (strike one), there is a younger kid who thinks that they will let her join because she is in love with the main thrasher (strike two), she kills herself the night of prom (strike three), the Thrashers are all called in to the police station about it (can you have more than three strikes?). I mean, I was suspending so much disbelief that my arms were shaking. 

And yet it kind of worked. I needed to know what actually happened and Soto pretty much told me by the end. It got way weirder than I anticipated, but I didn't mind the ride. Sure, Zach is a douche from day one, but high school girls are notoriously attracted to those. Lucy and Paige were essentially interchangeable to me. And I found it really hard to believe that with all the Logan Echols vibes Julian was throwing off that he and Jodi never connected at all before the shit-storm. But the whole thing was better than the sum of its parts. 

I have been booktalking the MTCBA titles and this one always puts a gleam in the eye of several kids who want to read about really horrible high school experiences, maybe as a way of making the actual horrors of high school seem more benign. And more power to them!

ATMOSPHERE by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

It feels so strange to read a book just, you know, to read it. This middle-aged-lady book isn't for the Mass. Teen Choice Book Award or Netgally and I just picked it up for no reason (other than I really loved Daisy Jones and the Six, Malibu Rising and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - although Reid's earlier books can kiss my butt) but then I put it down because it begins with a horrible accident in space and then proceeds to make me fall in love with all the people who are likely going to die in the carnage. No THANK you!

But then my book club chose it and I was back on board. So I guess I broke my rule about not reading anything that I don't fall in love with, but for me and Atmosphere, it was a slow burn. I did end up loving it. 

Maybe it is the fact that I read before bed and often fall asleep with my book on my lap, but I had a really hard time lining up the secondary characters in my head (my fault, not Taylor's) but once I did, this beauty really came together for me. 

It deals with women in the space program in the 80s who fall in love and it ticks all the ideological boxes pretty deftly. I didn't feel preached to, but I did feel I was given a little lesson. No harm, no foul - it's important stuff. It is also about family and expectations and love and drive - alittle something for everyone. 

My book club liked it overall and I had an interesting conversation with my goddaughter - a grown-up now and a voracious reader - and she said that while she loves pretty much the same TJR books that I do (she also loathes the early ones) she didn't care for Carrie Soto is Back. I haven't read that one, and I may yet give it a try, but I theorized without having read it, as I so often do, that one of Reid's strengths is creating a sense of unexpected community and maybe that was what was missing. Frankly, I can't remember if she said that was the case or if we just became distracted by the cheese board. But I digress...

This was an engaging and heartfelt work of historical fiction (from the 80s, for the love of God...) that made me interested in the space program for the first time since the moon landing in 1968. And I am not even sure I was interested then, but there is a picture of toddler me sitting enraptured in front of the TV as Neil Armstrong made his famous leap for mankind. Maybe I was just thrilled to be able to watch TV in the daytime. Who can say?

Bridget and Gabe are Not Okay by Lex Croucher comes out August 11, 2026

 

It has been a long time since I stayed up after midnight to finish a book, but that is just what happened last night! I loved the previous book in the Camelot Disasters (ha!) series Gwen and Art are Not in Love in which Croucher visits Camelot a few hundred years after Arther Pendragon did his thing and made pretty much everybody a gay new adult. This followup looks at the aftermath of the violent events of the last third of G&A (mild spoiler) and I am here for it. 

The first book focused on Gwen, the king's daughter, and Arther, a descendent of the original recipe Arthur who has been destined to wed Gwen since babyhood. The plot focuses on the funny feelings Gwen gets when she sees Bridget (Sir or Lady depending on who you ask) who is a kick-ass knight in the tournament circuit. She knows she will never marry Art. He is annoying and an attention whore, although quite funny and charming. He is also looking with interest at Gabe, Gwen's brother and the heir to the throne. I'll leave you to read that delightful (until the last bit with the huge fight scene that was necessary but irritating) romp.

So everything is back to normal. Bridget and Gwen are growing organic vegetables and run a farm to table restaurant and Gabe and Art are fixing up a B&B on the seaside. Just kidding! Everyone is trying to deal with the aftermath of the rebellion and is miserable and, except for Arthur and to a degree, Gwen, think that the best course of action is to turn their backs on the one person who makes them happy.

Bridget has PTSD that is causing her to be hypervigilant to any danger. Gabe is having panic attacks and hates kinging, even as he begins reforms to education and "friends of Lancelot" legislation trying to normalize queer love. Gwen is just sad but is doing a great job of helping her brother rule. 

Then Lady Odessa (or something like that), the king's PR person and Gwen's new role model, suggest a reboot of the round table where Gabe, Gwen, and a bunch of knights travel around England trying to explain his new normal to the populace - adventures, hilarity, and renewal ensue. 

Croucher does a lovely job of updating the adventures of the original round table - the Green Knight, the Lady of the Lake, the freaking GRAIL - with our heroes revisiting them to different results, The secondary characters are the BEST! Sidney and his beloved Agnes are back, there are a couple of hot-daddy knights, a stick in the mud head of security knight and the son of one of the attempted usurpers who is writing their adventures and "comforting" Arthur, much to Gabe's dismay. 

This is one of my favorite kinds of adventures, a scrappy band of misfits going on a quest, and the parallels to Arthurian legend are delightful. The dialogue is often laugh out loud funny despite the grief and mental illness, and everything turns out okay. I loved seeing these kids try to change the world for the better and sometimes succeeding. The parallels to the current divisiveness in the US are hard to miss, but they are portrayed as hopeful.

I would love to nominate this for the MTCBA, but I am really not sure if it would work as a standalone, I don't remember the details of the first book, but the main story arc did give me a shortcut to the characters motivations. I may give it a shot and see what the rest of the committee thinks. I think it may not qualify as it is being touted as a sequel, but I loved it so much and want everyone to read it, so we shall see...

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy!

TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS by Jaclyn Moriarty comes out August 4, 2026

Wow, this was a sheer delight from beginning to end! I have read Jaclyn Moriarty's YA novels and appreciated their humor and the exotic Australian setting, but this took me by surprise with its depth and sheer magical storytelling. 

The blurb mentions 3 main characters - Anna, Teddy and Jade - but as I read it, I was mostly fixated on Anna. She was my gateway character and I adore her. She is a mother first and foremost, of a nerdy little wonderful middle schooler and is nervous about her parenting. She shouldn't worry, she is making all the right mistakes. 

Teddy is a cutie pie, a good friend, a solid listener and an appealing possible love interest for Anna. 

Jade didn't do much for me. I found her kind of an annoying, self-centered person who seems to put herself first in most situations. I read the sections from her point of view with some interest, but also a little bit of disdain. Until her world and Anna's shift closer and their daughters become embroiled in one another's lives - then I liked her even less, until she realizes she is dropping the ball and - Dare I say? - she becomes a wee bit self-aware. 

But I haven't even mentioned the time travel!! In this version, any trip a visitor makes to the past through the agency starts a new shoot into the multiverse. Travelers can choose to just be an observer or to have corporeal form. They can interact with people in the past, knowing that it won't change their future. Of course most people think it is a clever immersive kind of special effects matrix at best or a bunch of hooey at worst. It is beautifully rendered and I loved the shout out to Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

So Anna works there (with some great secondary characters), Teddy uses the service to try to deconstruct why his marriage fell apart and Jade goes to a creativity workshop upstairs from the offices.  To tell you anymore would give too much away. Suffice to say there is humor, grief, regret, renewal and some vicious tween girl drama. 

This is in my top 5 of the year so far - and that is saying something!

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced readers' copy.

ABBY OFFSIDES by Anna McCallie comes out June 23, 2026

 

As someone who has binged Ted Lasso 11 times, I came to this book with some expectations. And I am thrilled to inform you that they were all met, nay EXCEEDED! 

This delightful rom-com is about Abby who, in the wake of a bad break-up, leaves her job with the Boston Red Sox to take on a marketing role for a Liverpool football team. 

Maybe it's World Cup fever, or just my own shock that I have developed a love for an actual sport (although, frankly, just fictional versions) but this book hit hard! 

First off, the banter is DELICIOUS! These characters are so quippy and funny that my family nearly lost their vision rolling their eyes at my braying laughter. 

Abby is a delight. She is complex and suffering, but also mustering her wits and standing in her own defense. And Lachlan is a freaking dreamboat. Jamie Tartt's looks,  Roy Kent's conflicted backstory, and just a touch of Coach Beard's compelling weirdness. 

Of course there is the annoying bit where a simple honest conversation could have headed off the last third of the book. But if it didn't exist, there wouldn't be a last third of the book and that would make me sad, so I'll allow it. 

Of course I am a little disappointed that this is McCallie's first book so there is no back catalog for me to devour, but she is a strong writer with a gift for dialogue and I will read whatever she deigns to put out!

RETRO by Jessica M. Goldstein comes out June 23, 2026

 

In the words of the great Fred Kwan - That was a hell of a thing! Jessica Goldstein's debut novel is a wild ride through time and I know it is not my place, but I DEMAND a sequel! 

The premise could have gone many ways - an out of work actress with a lot of regrets gets a job at a time travel company and it spins her life completely out of control. She begins to notice changes in her everyday life, even as her colleagues and boss assure her that her constant visits to other points in time will not affect the timeline in which she lives. I don't want to go into too much plot detail because one of the main charms of the book is the change/no change conundrum. The other thing that got me hooked was the details in the time travel events. Goldstein has a flair for setting you in the, well, the setting, with a confident level of detail. 

In my research to make sure that she is a young person who will be writing novels I am going to love for ages, I discovered her celebrity interviews and humor colums and DANG she is amazing! 

Great cover design too!

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC and for introducing me to this compelling and entertaining voice. 

BETTER THAN BEFORE by Courtey Walsh is coming out June 8, 2026

 

Well this was a delightful romance-ish, second chance-y book about the importance of community. This is a new favorite subgenre of mine and I was thrilled that it turned out to be the theme of this story. 

Claire's selfish asshole husband leaves her for a younger woman when she is in her 40s and, after a horrific scene of embarrassed devastation that almost resulted in me only giving this book four stars, she moves from Colorado to Chicago. Okay, the Chicago of this book could have been Any-city, USA, (and so I caved to the 4 stars that feel like a death-knell to me) but the people she meets are delightful. This is a rom-com with a slow burn and some nice vindication. Of course there is a bakery because every romcom has to end with a fucking bakery, but it isn't too predictable - it's just predictable enough for me!

No, there isn't anything new in this book, but the familiar rhythms of starting over and finding new love (and opening a bakery) washed over me in the most comforting way. 

TRUTH IS by Hannah V. Sawyerr and THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS by Kenneth Oppel

 Okay, these two books have nothing in common except that I read them back-to-back-ish in my quest to read all the Mass. Teen Choice book award nominees. But now that I think about it, they share a thread of the eternal teenage struggle of maintaining one's individuality and identity in the face of near-constant observation. It might be a stretch, but hear me out. 

TRUTH IS is the story of Truth Bangura who is the daughter of a distant and controlling mother who reminds Truth frequently that giving birth at 17 ruined her life. Truth's dad has never been in the picture. When Truth is 17 she finds herself pregnant and has an abortion. But this is not the whole story. Truth is a poet, a talented and devoted poet who is part of a slam poetry team. When one of her performances is recorded, a performance that contains the story of her complicated relationship with her mother as well as her choice to terminate her pregnancy, it goes viral. Everyone now knows her biggest secrets. 

This is a novel in verse that reads like a novel in VERSE. It is not one of those books that claims to be, but really just leaves out the descriptions and character development to have fewer words. Truth contains multitudes, as do the secondary characters - her parents, her teammates and her shitty school friend. Her anguish and her victories feel earned and I closed the book feeling like I knew Truth.

THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS is a bit sci-fi, a bit dystopia and compulsively readable. Xavier goes to sleep at his parents' lakeside cabin one night only to find that in the morning the lake has disappeared, along with the lake, the car, the wifi and every other person on the planet. He, his dad and his pregnant step-mom figure out that they are stuck in a bubble with seemingly no escape. There is a time jump and we see the family, now with a little bother. Soon another family shows up with a completely different perspective on their situation and, well, they have some problematic politics. (That's a nice way of saying they are southern conservative racists. At least the parents. 

So I read some Goodreads reviews to try to find the little brother's name and it seems like lots of people have a problem with the fact that the Canadian liberals vs. American conservatives set up is anti-American. To which I would reply not all Americans! But still people like that exist in both camps and I think Oppel is going for the conflict, not for a nuanced commentary on our relationship with our neighbors to the north. Also, there are complaints that the female characters are not a fully developed as the male ones. My thought is that since it is a male protagonist and the secondary characters are SECONDARY, this makes sense. I read it for the story - How will they get along? Will they escape? Both of these questions were answered satisfactorily in my estimation. Yep, no one is perfect, but they did the job for me. I whipped through this book and found it to be an interesting ride. 

The more I think about it, the more I think this should have been two separate posts, but it's too late now!

THE BEAR by Andrew Krivak

This book was chosen as the "One Read" for the city in which I live so I decided to give it a try for the summer reading list at the high school. I was completely pulled in! It is weird because I don't like books about nature as a rule and I REALLY don't like books about animals (except Princess Donut in Dungeon Crawler Carl). There was something about this beautiful post-apocalyptic father/daughter survival story that just hit me hard. 

The father and the girl live off the land. The mother died when the girl was too young to remember her, not quite in childbirth, but shortly thereafter. The father has been teaching the girl all the things she needs to survive. Every year he gives her a gift that will help her with a new skill and by the time she is 11, she is adept at survival.

And this is a good thing because when they go to the ocean to get salt, they are separated and she has to make her way in the world alone. Alone except for the creatures of the forest, including the bear. 

The story was inspired by the area around Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire - a mountain climbed by many a car from my area of the country - and the setting is vivid. The girl is focused on staying alive and it is interesting that because of that, her personality is practically nonexistent other than her cleverness and tenacity. I cared deeply about her in spite of the fact that her inner life was so fixated.

This book is not at all something I would ever have picked up on my own, but I am so glad I did. And I did put it on the high school summer reading list. It is so easy to booktalk - I just reference HATCHET by Gary Paulson and they are all on board! 

You Know What - part the second!

 So my most recent post was flagged and briefly put behind a warning label. So racy! But apparently someone read it and realized it was just book reviews for a slightly naughty class. Here are the second three books - the ones I actually enjoyed.

Contemporary Assigned Choice:
The Billionaires Wake-up Call Girl by Annika Martin

Summary:

Finally, I know my favorite genre. It HAS to be the rom com. I appreciate the humor in my romance so much. And I like a heroine who isn’t a victim. If she wants to get bossed around a little, that’s okay, but she doesn’t depend on it and she doesn’t let her bedroom antics influence her real life. Unless they teach her to love again. Then I’m 100% in her corner! The story is uptight guy meets flighty girl. She teaches him to enjoy life, he teaches her to trust again. And Lizzie and Theo are perfect for each other! I loved the secondary characters - Lizzie's bestie (the protagonist of the sequel that I am DEFINITELY reading once I finish my last book for this class) and Theo’s sister are both solid, supportive anchors for our lovers. The setting might as well have been Mars for all I know about corporate America and billionaires, but it worked for me. And the connection on the phone? As a child of the 80s who regularly called late night DJs to practice flirting, this was RIGHT up my alley. Five stars, I absolutely loved it. Even the naughty bits!

Trope:

Enemies to lovers, boss/subordinate, trust issues, with just a hint of manic pixie dream girl

Triggers:

Embezzlement, dead parents

Favorite characters:

How to choose??? I guess Lizzie because she had been through so much and still had a positive attitude and a plan. I respect a girl with a plan.

Favorite thing:

How they really fulfilled a need in each other - him for stability and stalwartness, her for a balanced perspective and sense of fun - but they were also smouldering!

Least favorite thing:

There always seems to be a point in every romance I have ever read where if the characters just admitted how they feel and what they need, communication wouldn’t break down. However, Lizzie was very clear in her communication and STILL they found a way to not speak to each other for a little bit before the denouement. 

Discussion Questions:

1. What did you like most about this delightful book?
2. What do you think of the “evil business woman trying to get ahead but also attracted to the boss/Sigourney Weaver in WORKING GIRL” trope?
3. What is it about flirting on the phone? Is this only for those of us who have crossed the menopausal gauntlet? How do you youngsters feel about it?
4. Why do so many romcoms have bakery themes?
5. What is your favorite flavor of microwave popcorn and why?

LGBTQ+ Assigned Choice

Trans Girl High by Cami Kates

Summary:

Jenny is a stunning trans girl who was terribly bullied in Buffalo. She and her supportive parents have moved to the Pacific Northwest for her dad’s job, which allows her the chance to have her senior year in a new place where no one knows her past. She has sex with Zach by accident. Then she  is outed by the bully from her old school who - a little too coincidentally - is at her new school. And even though she is trans, Hunter, Zach’s bestie is super hot for her and they fall in instalove. Hunter has some issues and suggests they form a throuple with Zach when he learns of their history. They have a bunch of young people sex, a misunderstanding, a breakup, a life-saving reunion and a sequel where we learn how they all ended up.

Trope:

MFM throuple, trans life, high school

Triggers:

Bullying, religious intolerance, sexual assault

Favorite characters:

I loved the parents! Jenny’s folks are the gold standard (except her dad for a bit at the end, even though he was kind of right) who accept and love her and want what’s best for her, Hunter’s parents probably think they are great,  fostering independence in their high achieving son, but they don’t realize they are neglectful. Poor Zach’s batshit crazy, hyper-religious  mom and his drug-fueled ignorant father are the stuff of nightmares, but very effective with little screen-time. 

Favorite thing:

I love how these kids came from religious backgrounds but when their pal Riley came out and the church closed ranks against her, they thoughtfully looked at their faith and determined that there are many ways to interpret the Bible and it is important to put the love of your fellow human before a rickety dogma. 

Least favorite thing:

The bully was fat and had bad skin and our heroes were stunning. Ugly people need love too!

Discussion questions:

1. What did you learn about male to female transitions from this book?
2. How comfortable were you with the medical details (for want of a better term) of Jenny’s sex life?
3. Could you have a relationship with two people who are also friends? Is this a generational acceptance thing?
4. How did you feel about the religious aspects of the book?
5. Did you find it the tiniest bit creepy that they were still in high school, even though the writer was careful to tell us everyone was over 18?

Disabilities/Neurodivergent Assigned Choice

Daydreamer by Susie Tate

Summary:

This is the story of Lucy who has social anxiety, Reynaud’s Syndrome and a tendency to disassociate from reality. When the book starts out we learn that, while she is a very successful high-fantasy writer, she has moved to London to take a job in business to force herself out of her comfort zone as well as to reconnect with her childhood crush, billionaire Felix something-Italian. Their dynamic is mostly Lucy being shit at her job and Felix trying to fix her. This does not go well. But when we get a bit of their backstory and mix in the office politics - including an abusive boss and some really badly missed communication - it all comes together. There is a lot of community building, which is one of my favorite tropes, as well as some fairly steamy, but not too yucky or physically impossible, sex scenes. And a very badly trained pony. It all ends happily and there’s a bit of humor so I was completely won over! I am so thrilled that the books in this class got progressively more to my taste as the course went on. It would have been my instinct to ease in slowly, but being thrown directly into the deep end, content-wise, and then getting to more conventional romance really worked for me!

Trope:

Childhood crush, boss/subordinate, crabby asshole to nice boy, childhood trauma, trust issues

Triggers: 

There is an assault that, refreshingly, wasn’t sexual, although the perpetrator’s reasoning seemed to be because Lucy wasn’t interested in his advances. 

Favorite characters:

I love Victoria and Lottie. Victoria is a high powered business exec whose autism actually helps her be successful. Lottie is her assistant who works to help her navigate social interaction. I was really hoping they would fall in love too, but apparently Lottie has a thing with Victoria’s brother in the second book of the series which I will definitely be reading!

Favorite thing:

While the characters were kind of just their tropes at the outset, I loved the two first person perspectives. It fleshed them out really well.

Least favorite thing:

Oh my gosh, the lack of communication was frustrating until they - particularly Felix - learned to just say what they mean!

Discussion questions:

1. What did you think of the dynamic of Lottie and Victoria?
2. Can you diagnose everyone in this story, please?
3. What did you think of the epilogue, did it feel real? What would you change about it?
4. What do you think about Felix’s obsession with keeping Lucy warm at the expense of the comfort of others?
5. Did Lucy’s outburst at the family dinner feel real to you? Why or why not?

And there we have it! I really enjoyed reading a bit outside my comfort zone. But I'm not going to take a horror or true crime class any time soon!

Dirty Books - part the first

I am taking my last class at USM and the course is Service to Library Clients: Romance and Erotica. My professor is a researcher in erotica and really threw us into the deep end with her selections! I am putting the first four here and I am just going to copy and paste my class responses and my Goodreads ratings. 

Brace yourself...

Week #1 - PEN PAL by J.T. Geissinger

I read PEN PAL as a requirement for a special issues in libraries course about romance and erotica. Now I love some romance, but I have said of erotica (well, I said it of porn, but it tracks for erotica too) Reading/watching erotica/porn and thinking it is a realistic depiction of sex is like watching a Marvel movie and thinking that it accurately represents law enforcement. I just can't suspend my disbelief when people are having orgasm after orgasm at just the right time and with SO MUCH TALKING!! I know, it's a book, we need dialogue, but good grief.

And (mini-spoiler) the main character's husband has just died at the beginning of the book and she is hopping in the roofing guy's bed about 20 minutes after she leaves the funeral! And there is some master/slave stuff that I know people are into, but honestly straight-up irritates me. I am happy when people find something that makes them happy, no judgement, but I also don't want to read about veganism or crossfit. It's me, not them.

So about halfway through, I went to Goodreads to see how others perceived it and it has over 200,000 ratings and the average is 4.11! Granted, people who like this kind of thing are probably reading it, which explains the score, but 200,000 people?? That's a lot of ratings! And so I started to read a review and immediately saw a spoiler shield and clicked on it because I couldn't stand the book and didn't care if I read a spoiler. It was a HUGE spoiler and completely changed my opinion of the book. Of course I would have loved to seen the reveal come out a little at a time, but knowing the twist made me really appreciate the story more. And I am notoriously bad at "seeing it coming" for someone who reads as much as I do, so I would have had to hate-read this thing for another 100 pages or so. So thank you, stranger on the internet, for the info.

I can't really write much about the plot other than Kayla and her roofer get it on, she thinks her house is haunted and she likes getting spanked. And it has almost nothing to do with penpals. I probably wouldn't recommend it, but if someone told me they were reading it, I would definitely want to discuss it with them after. There is some excellent structure in the writing and some parallels to classic literature that were recognizable to me even though I try to avoid classic literature. I blew through it pretty quickly once I stopped judging Kayla for moving on so quickly, I was hooked.

So I guess I can read erotica. I am just looking for more of a ramp up. And maybe a male character who realizes that there is no foreplay more effective than vacuuming without being asked.

I gave it three stars on Goodreads. 

[Going forward, they will be in the format of the assignment.]

Week #2 - Week 2 Reverse Harem Assigned Choice

NANNY FOR THE BOSSHOLES by Rebel Bloom

Summary: Aggie (Who named their kid Agnes that late in the 20th century?? Already having to suspend my disbelief.) is great at her job as a business problem solver, but her toxic boss/boyfriend cuts her loose when she refuses to have his baby. She approaches his rivals, the Graves brothers - each of them hotter than the others - with an offer to work for them and destroy the jerk who fired her. They don’t believe her but she bonds with their orphaned niece so they hire her to be a temporary nanny. And then they have lots of sex with her AT THE SAME TIME!! The brothers never touch each other, but they are not shy about getting it on, industrial style, in front of each other and at the same time. They all fall in love, there is a misunderstanding and then a final act where I lost a little respect for them all, but the happilied-ever-after in a fairly satisfying way. 

Trope: Reverse harem

Triggers: Gangbanging, I guess? Abusive relationships, orphans

Favorite character: I loved Aggie’s old hippie dad who just accepts his daughter is in a relationship with all three brothers without batting an eye. 

Favorite thing: I loved the relationship between Aggie and Gracie. The fact that they both lost their mothers young is a bond that they have and I feel like the care Aggie took with her was very genuine. I loved the actual story part of this book and really enjoyed the unconventional love aspect of the brothers who share everything, if not the sex.

Least favorite thing: The sex, particularly the first scene where they all get it on in the library right out of the gate her first night at the house! What the heck - she seemed completely unfazed, but I was fazed. Very definitely fazed.

Discussion questions:

1. Which brother did you like best?
2. How messed up are Grace and Max going to be if they ever walk in on their uncles and aunt?
3. How can she legally marry three men?
4. Did you feel like the baby at the end was a stupid way to wrap things up and why was termination never even mentioned as an alternative? 
5. How many problems regularly come up in business that have to be figured out and how do you quantify that?

I gave it three stars on Goodreads. 

Week #3 - Dark, BDSM, Mafia Assigned Choice

HIS PRETTY LITTLE BURDEN by Nicci Harris

Summary: Fawn is young and pregnant and ends up in the home of Clay Butcher, the head of the mob in Anytown, Australia. Clay is planning to use her as bait to get her father, a fellow mobster who turned on him, to come out of hiding. Instead he falls in love with her in a rather lovely way and has a bunch of sex with her in an exhausting, bossy way. There is lots of sex and murder, she was assaulted by her foster brothers and when Clay finds out he executes them in a, I must admit, pretty satisfying way. Fawn is often really stupid, but also brilliant. Clay is dreamy, but kind of a monster. He has a bunch of brothers, luckily, he doesn’t want to share Fawn with them. The writing was full of emotion and strangely satisfying and I think that the obvious emotional connection between Fawn and Clay made it actually less cringey than the other steamy scenes that I have read for this class. 

Trope: Dark, light BDSM, Mafia, age difference

Triggers: Where to begin?? The assault scene was brutal, but to the author’s credit, it wasn’t sexualized AT ALL, it was monstrous. (Needless to say, I only skimmed that part.)

So assault, bossyness, betrayal, aggressive blowjobs, power struggles (that may only be a trigger for me…)

Favorite characters: I loved Clay’s brothers! They each brought something to the table that was different and showed why he was basically a decent guy for a capo.

Favorite thing: I loved that they were devoted to each other and clearly, and somewhat annoyingly, they felt like they were with their soulmate. 

Least favorite thing: The whole using her as bait and the description of her assault by her foster brothers. 

Discussion questions:

1. How do you think Fawn’s daddy issues will be resolved?
2. How can Clay stay married to his wife and still provide the protection Fawn needs?
3. What did you think of the age difference?
4. What do you think of how emotional the writing was?
5. What do you think happens next?

I gave it two stars on Goodreads.  

Week 4  - Monsters and Aliens

HOOKAH SMOKING CATERPILLAR by Beatrix Hollow

Summary: Well this is my bad for picking the book based on the title alone. I thought it was going to be a Jefferson Airplane/Summer of Love setting and it ended up being an Alice in Wonderland knock-off. There are not enough words in the English language for how irritating I find the actual Alice in Wonderland, so I actually liked this a bit better. But that is not saying much.

The premise is that Alice is maybe actually the White Rabbit (argh - rabbit metaphor again…). She is deeply in lust with the caterpillar (who is also kind of a man) but the Cheshire cat is obsessed with her and wants her to be his own private sex worker. There might be some poisoned tea murder. There are mushrooms. 

Trope: Retelling of a disturbing classic, monsters

Triggers: tails, drug use, monsters, forced prostitution, signing contracts before you read them

Favorite characters: The characters were described beautifully, but had basically no personality beyond the biggest picture stuff created by Carrol, but the physical description of the caterpillar was really stunning. And I am not one for physical descriptions, so kudos to Beatrix Hollow. 

Favorite thing: Honestly, the sex was pretty interesting. It still seemed worky and just a little too effective, but it was interesting to see how they do it in Wonderland. Perhaps the actual shift from a real world based erotica to a fantasy based was the space I needed to not be irritated by the steamy parts. 

Least favorite thing: The woman has basically been the victim of both society and her potential sex partner in just about every book I have read for this class. Are there no strong woman protagonists in erotica?

Discussion questions:

1. What the hell did we just read?
2. Cheshire cat or caterpillar - who do you choose?
3. If you could smoke those pheromones, would you? What do you think would happen?
4. What monsters do you think are hot? (I’m looking at you, Shape of Water guy!) 
5. What other classics of literature do you think could use a smutty makeover?

This was my first one star review on Goodreads!

I don't know if I just got used to the course, or if I chose better, but I REALLY liked the last three books I read for this class. So I will post those little gems togeter. 

Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinola came out yesterday!

This story of four siblings at turning points in their lives is funny and heartbreaking in turn.

Sola, a former instagram influencer, has just moved back to Chicago after a humiliating breakup and is struggling with her new, less public, life, Her brother Ola is expecting his first child with his wife and trying to figure out how to be a good father and a good husband, even as he reconnects with an old girlfriend, Anjola is in love with her best friend and plans to tell him at an event where he proposes to his new girlfriend. And Karen, the baby, is struggling with family expectations regarding her studies and her sexuality. Their traditional Nigerian parents, particularly their prickly mother, play the roles of “oh THAT’S why they’re like this” in a realistic manner. 

The relationship between the siblings, their parents, their partners and friends is what makes this book so compelling. Past traumas are revisited, new connections are made and old patterns rear their ugly heads in the most entertaining and moving way. And while there is certainly tragedy, there is plenty of humor and love. 

I appreciated what felt like a window into a fully formed family and I found myself hoping that they could learn to accept each other as adults instead of repeating old, damaging patterns. I wish I could accurately describe how much I loved this book and how it felt so real. But honestly, you just have to read it for yourself!

SHUT UP THIS IS SERIOUS by Carolina Ixta

 This is beautifully written and kind of gutting. Belen is clearly depressed and not doing anything to come out of it. Mostly because no one in her family talks about anything like mental health, although they are all reeling from the fallout of her father leaving them and not looking back - and taking all the money their mother saved to keep the family going. She is halfway through her senior year with no prospects for college or adulthood. 

Belen's best friend Leti is an academic high flyer who is pregnant and at odds with her parents because they don't approve of her boyfriend due to their racism and hyper-religious attitude. Belen is trying to be there for Leti, but keeps getting pulled into her own sadness. She hooks up with a much older college boy in a series of scenes which are so painful and real that they might be too much for some readers. As someone who dated college boys in high school I can assure you that Ixta NAILS the amount of forgiveness that high school girls give their college "boyfriends." This is Ixta's debut novel and she was robbed of the Morris award, in my opinion. I can't wait to see what else she writes. She makes her setting of Oakland come alive and I hate settings and usually just skim over every description of place in books. And she makes Belen's trajectory feel victorious without pandering. This may be my favorite read of the year so far.

WOODWORKING by Emily St. James

 This was recommended by a colleague who has impeccable taste. I was looking for books for the summer reading list that were written for adults but would have appeal to teenagers. This is the story of a teacher named Emily who is currently residing in the body of Mr. Skyberg. Even though she knows she is a woman, she was born into a body that leads people to believe otherwise. When she comes out to the new trans student in her school, she finds herself leaning on the kid way more than a teacher should depend on their student. Abigail, the student, is pretty miserable, having been kicked out of her parent's house and currently she lives with her sister and the sister's boyfriend. She is hooking up with the son of a prominant conservative family in the town of Marshall, South Dakota where the book is set.

The small town vibe is accurate and the characters, all of whom are deep in the chasm of change, feel distinct and realistic. For me, this book gave me a ringside seat to the many paths of transitioning. It answers a lot of questions for me about mindset and it is clear to the reader what is not okay to ask. From time to time I found myself irritated with Abigail and her view of herself as the center of the world. And then I remembered that she is supposed to be 17 and adjusted my expectations accordingly. This is a heartwarming story of people going though huge stakes transformations in what feels like a very small world. 

A FORTUNE OF SAND by Ruta Sepetys - expected publication May 26, 2026

 

I gave this book 5 stars in Goodreads and my spreadsheet, but really, for Ruta Sepetys it is a 4.5. It is as good as I have come to expect from her, but for some reason her adult debut didn't ring as true for me as her YA has. It's was still a perfectly researched, fascinating work of historical fiction, but it didn't hit as hard. 

The setting is the city of my birth - Detroit, Michigan - while it was in the process of becoming the Motor City. In 1927, the auto industry was nascent and new money shenanigans were all the rage. The Lennox family makes glass that provide those handy windshields, but they are tacky as hell. The oldest daughter is a social climber who is married to a glorified criminal. The next is the only son who has a facial injury, a chip on his shoulder and a fake job writing obituaries for the newspaper that is investigating his family. The third is a daughter who is actually writing the obituaries her brother is taking credit for because she is fascinated by death but is a girl so is supposed to be delicate. Marjorie is the youngest who says what she means and means what she says so is obviously considered insane by pretty much everyone.

Marjorie is the sibling we follow the most and when she runs away to join an art collective, things get really interesting really quickly. There is some romance, some mystery and a lot of family drama. Everything is resolved satisfactorily, and I enjoyed it. Even though it is not my favorite Sepetys, it's still a lot better than most. And look at that gorgeous cover!

GRIT, SPIT AND NEVER QUIT: A Marine's Guide to Comedy and Life by Rob Riggle

 

I am always looking for a good military book for summer reading but it is hard to find one that I even want to finish. I am also always looking for funny books for summer reading, but often they are a little too salty for me to recommend to all the children. Imagine if I found a book that combined a respect for and interest in the military along with some really funny stuff about improv comedy in the early 21st century. Well, behold! 

Rob Riggle's memoir is interesting and funny. He served in the US Marine Corps for years before and during his quest to become a comedian/actor. This book covers his childhood in the midwest, his early military career, his struggles in the New York improv scene, his 9/11 experience and subsequent redeployment and his eventual comedy success. 

There is nothing earth-shattering here, but it is a nice, engaging story about a man who served his country and also went for the easy laugh almost every time. And that is a compliment. 

THE UNCOOL, PENPAL by Cameron Crowe and JT Gessinger, respectively

 These two books were opposites in my humble estimation. 

I went into THE UNCOOL prepared to adore it and just giving it every chance to charm me. 

I went into PEN PAL with a sense of dread. I mean, look at the cover. This is going to be all humpin'and pumpin'.

I finished THE UNCOOL thinking, well I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite live up to my initial hopes.

I finished THE PENPAL impressed. Don't get me wrong, there was a ton of h&p that I didn't love, but the story itself was really well done. 

Let's start with THE UNCOOL. It's lovely. Cameron Crowe writes like a dream and he gives the inside story of his work as a rock journalist. Everything he writes feels true, but it feels incomplete. Does it make me a bad person that I didn't like it that he didn't talk shit about anyone? I know that hindsight is 20/20, but I feel like he polished all the edges off. 

It starts really strong. In addition to being recollections of the cool and famous, Crowe also makes it a love letter to his family. The story of his older sister who wasn't portrayed in Almost Famous was absolutely heartbreaking. His father, also left out of the movie, seems like he was a stand up-guy. He doesn't say much about the sister who DID appear in the movie, but what was there was good. I can't believe that the running into her in the airport at his lowest point scene in the movie was true! And finally, I like it when a man loves his mother, I really do, but there was so much more of her in the book than I needed. Honestly, this could be because my own mother's health is failing and so maybe I bristled at that. 

I don't regret reading it and I am thinking about putting it on the summer reading list for the high school. It's beautifully written. It just wasn't hitting right for me by the end. 

I read PEN PAL as a requirement for a special issues in libraries course about romance and erotica. Now I love some romance, but I have said of erotica (well, I said it of porn, but it tracks for erotica too) Reading/watching erotica/porn and thinking it is a realistic depiction of sex is like watching a Marvel movie and thinking that it accurately represents law enforcement. I just can't suspend my disbelief when people are having orgasm after orgasm at just the right time and with SO MUCH TALKING!! I know, it's a book, we need dialogue, but good grief. 

And (mini-spoiler) the main character's husband has just died at the beginning of the book and she is hopping in the roofing guy's bed about 20 minutes after she leaves the funeral! And there is some master/slave stuff that I know people are into, but honestly straight-up irritates me. I am happy when people find something that makes them happy, no judgement, but I also don't want to read about veganism or crossfit. It's me, not them. 

So about halfway through, I went to Goodreads to see how others perceived it and it has over 200,000 ratings and the average is 4.11! Granted, people who like this kind of thing are probably reading it, which explains the score, but 200,000 people?? That's a lot of ratings! And so I started to read a review and immediately saw a spoiler shield and clicked on it because I couldn't stand the book and didn't care if I read a spoiler. It was a HUGE spoiler and completely changed my opinion of the book. Of course I would have loved to seen the reveal come out a little at a time, but knowing the twist made me really appreciate the story more. And I am notoriously bad at "seeing it coming" for someone who reads as much as I do, so I would have had to hate-read this thing for another 100 pages or so. So thank you, stranger on the internet, for the info. 

I can't really write much about the plot other than Kayla and her roofer get it on, she thinks her house is haunted and she likes getting spanked. And it has almost nothing to do with penpals. I probably wouldn't recommend it, but if someone told me they were reading it, I would definitely want to discuss it with them after. There is some excellent structure in the writing and some parallels to classic literature that were recognizable to me even though I try to avoid classic literature. I blew through it pretty quickly once I stopped judging Kayla for moving on so quickly, I was hooked. 

So I guess I can read erotica. I am just looking for more of a ramp up. And maybe a male character who realizes that there is no foreplay more effective than vacuuming without being asked.