MATURAL SELECTION by Clare Edge

YIKES! I need to take some time to catch up on reviews. I will get there... For now, this is the first book I read for the Mass. Teen Choice Book Award committee. 

Well, it was sad and scary but I finished it anyway. It was grippy, I'll give it that. I was into the story right away. I didn't like any of the Megan's particularly, but I really felt for them. I did think they were realistically drawn even with all the WTF-is-going-on? stuff. It definitely skews older what with the opening masturbation, multiple rapes and all the swearing, (okay, in context the swearing doesn't seem that bad) but it also feels quite timely. I second the charm of the Outlaw/Bee relationship. This is not my usual thing, but I'm glad I read it. And I think it will be very empowering for some kids. 

Killer cover, too!

THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans

 

The world probably doesn't need another review of this book. It was the must-read of the summer for most of the middle aged ladies I know. It's an epistolary novel - which is a favorite format of mine. And the full-cast audiobook was a real treat. It's the story of a retired prosecutor who is prickly and loves to write letters. She considers her correspondence to be a way of achieving immortality. Her words will live on beyond her lifespan, even if they are spread to the winds. Which I think is a lovely sentiment. 

Sybil VanAntwerp is going blind and reassessing her life and choices in the letters she writes. She has an ex-husband who is dying overseas, a few kids with whom she has complicated relationships, a sister-in-law who is going through a lot, a garden club festering with drama, a couple suitors, a stalker, former co-workers, a closer than normal relationship with a customer service agent, a young man who needs her far more than either of them realize, and a mysterious recipient of an unsent letter. 

She also writes to writers - Joan Didion, Ann Patchett and Larry McMurtry are all name-checked. (I was inspired to revisit LONESOME DOVE and regret nothing!) - with confidence and respect. She's a good writer (both the character and the author) and her correspondents are fleshed out and lively. There is a narrative arc, and it works, but what kept me reading is the way the letters seem random, but slowly reveal a life that is finally examined. 

IT'S ONLY DANCING by Jasmine Guillory and RADIO FREE TEXAS by Libba Bray were lovely gifts

 I went to ALA back in June and it was bittersweet. I have gone for the last 4 years on MSLA's dime and every time I have found myself both overwhelmed and right at home. I mean, book people are my people and it is so easy to strike up conversations when you are in line to get a book signed by an author you love. I was lucky enough to get to attend a lunch where 5 or 6 middle grade and teen writers presented their new titles with an adorable readers' theater presentation. Two of them were all time favorites Jasmine Guillory and Libba Bray. I was thrilled to get to see them in action. (SO much charisma!) And I was even more thrilled when I was going down the escalator later that day and went by them as they were heading up. Like a loon, I pointed at them and breathlessly said, "It's YOU!!" They both smiled and I was never so inclined to run up a downward heading escalator in my life! (Of course, I didn't because of physics...)

Anyway, I finally got around to reading the books they were presenting and both of them were absolutely wonderful! So full of truth and nostalgia, I could barely put them down. 

First. up was Jasmine's IT'S ONLY DANCING. (We basically met on the escalator, so I am confidently first-naming.)This is a subtle retelling of DIRTY DANCING that hits on so many levels. I am sure you don't need to be familiar with the classic film to enjoy it, but it definitely adds to the pleasure if you are. Kitty (or Kat, if you don't want her to roll her eyes at you) was a devoted student of ballet before the microaggressions and body-shaming of her teacher and classmates made her turn in her toe shoes. She has vowed not to dance anymore and is focusing on her college application process. Well, she is actually using that as an excuse to spend time along while her family is attending an all-ages camp the summer before her senior year. 

You're not going to believe this, but when she is out exploring, she comes across a dance party for the employees of the camp and meets a hot and sweet dance teacher and his partner and forms a friendship! At first she thinks Jordan and Toni are romantically involved, but she learns that they are just besties and dance partners. Well, shockingly, it seems that Jordan needs a dance partner for a big performance and Toni has another obligation so guess who volunteers to step (ha!) in and learn hip-hop dancing in a very small window of time. Guess!! Yep, it's the Sheldrake all over again. 

Sparks fly, misunderstandings are overcome and this book is shockingly not at the mercy of bad communication between the potential lovers. I adore Jasmine's adult romances (ROYAL HOLIDAY is the best post-menopausal romance ever written and I will fight anyone who says otherwise) and was thrilled that she nailed a younger demographic. This book was a joy to read  - touching on themes of reinvention, acceptance, obligation, and, yes, romance. 

While IT'S ONLY DANCING looked like fluff but contained more depth, RADIO FREE TEXAS looked like it was going to be depressing as hell, but made me laugh consistently and made me believe that this crazy story of kids running a pirate radio station in 1980s small-town Texas might just have been true.

Okay, Libba Bray is a YA goddess. My YA students at Salem State regularly reference BEAUTY QUEENS as a perennial favorite and UNDER THE SAME STARS was transcendent. This one is firmly entrenched in both the nostalgia and the brown grit of a Texas setting and there is a realism that I have never seen from Bray before. And she fucking nails it!

Bowie begins his senior year taking the fall for a prank by Comet, a new likely-MPDG who is trying to get expelled, and is forced to perform community service at a local radio station run by Marlon who is just the drunken drug-addled Mr. Miyagi he needs. He ends up corralling a group of his peers (including Comet)  to help out at the station and it changes the tenor of the town. Yes, the kids are out of control and the powers-that-be in the town force things to a head and everyone learns and grows, but in the best possible way. 

There is friendship, romance, and really well-written adults who have depth. Except for the principal. He really sucks. Is there a "happy" ending? Not conventionally. And there is a subplot about suicide that (dare I say) feels a little tacked on, but these kids felt so real to me and I kept staring into space trying to decide where I would fit into the group. (Maybe the chubby, funny girlfriend of one of the Boston boys?) The music references had me hitting YouTube for the songs every 10 pages or so and I loved every minute of it. What on earth is she going to do next?

A SEASON FOR FALLING by Kate O'Shaughnessy comes out September 22

 Yes, I look at the Goodreads ratings sometimes when I am reviewing a book and can't remember anyone's names and need a little refresher. And so, I can see why this has less than 4 stars, even though I adored it and am, of course, giving it 5 stars. I loved everything about it except for the inevitable scene where just SAYING HOW THEY FEEL would shave 50 pages out of the narrative. Alas, plot devices... But whoever write the blurb deserves a smack for saying "Gilmore Girls-esque". Yes, it takes place in Connecticut. Yes, there is a single mother who is maybe a little on the younger side, but honestly, not a single GG vibe was felt by me the entire time I was reading it. 

Also, not for nothing, most pre-reviewers are really stingy with the stars. I think they read more so their expectations are higher, maybe? I loved FAKE SKATING by Lynn Painter and nominated it for MTCBA, because I am the romcom girl and I will be nominating romcoms with my last dying breath. Well, someone sent an email to the whole nominating committee about the dangerous heteronormative gender roles in the book and everyone nodded in agreement and it fell off the board. Now that was probably the right choice, but now it is making me nervous about nominating this one because it is a cis/het/white couple at the center of the romance. I will surely be nominating it anyway, but I will brace myself. 

But perhaps I should just review the book? It ticks so many of my boxes - child actors, friends to lovers, bad stage parents, single moms, siblings with different popularity levels at the same school, secret identities, friendship & honesty - and it also had a really nice current about children's agency and the need for them to be protected. Clare used to be a child actress, she is retired and lives under a different name in Stars Hollow-light and now her former costar who is a big up-and-coming movie star is coming to town to film what is likely to be an career-defining role and he looks her up. All kind of shit ensues. 

The high school setting didn't set off any alarms, the parent stuff was solid, the sibling relationship was actually MORE delightful than usual. I just want kids to behave like siblings, but this book went beyond in showing how important it is to be able to rely on one another. And the romance, while stalled to allow for a big old grand gesture at the end, was pretty sweet and respectful. 

WISH YOU WELL by Jamie Sumner came out four days ago and I should have reviewed it WEEKS ago!

 

But you know me. Just forgetting stuff all the time. So I loved THE FAULT IN OUR STARS and I can't help but compare every sick kid book to that and often find it wanting because it lacks humor. I mean, I will fall in love with a kid and watch them suffer as long as they at least get to be snarky. 

Well, Violet is very, very snarky. She is also going blind. She does all the teenage things like hide issues about her health from her mother and her doctors because sometimes kids are stupid. And she is so, so angry. She has cut ties with most of her friends because they don't know how to deal with her and they try to be sympathetic, which is her kryptonite. Then she meets Wyatt and Noor at a hospital picnic and they decide to use their Make-a-Wish wishes together in the weirdest possible way and it is wonderful. 

This is another of those importance of community books that I love so and it really helps that it is hilarious. It is also realistically the viewpoint of a kid, but shows nuance with most of the parent interactions. The kid doesn't see nuance, but the reader does. Nicely played, Sumner! I also love that Noor out-snarks Violet. (Wyatt is pretty positive, but he can't eat hot dogs for shit...)

This book has a bit of everything and it all comes together perfectly. It feels a little caper-y in that they are planning the wishes on the sly, but that is really just the structure used to absorb the healthy example of unhealthy kids. Will I nominate this for MTCBA? You bet your sweet bippie I will. Will someone snark that it is middle grade. Of course they will. But whatever, it's a damn near perfect book and I loved it. 

I mean, I read them: Cookbooks and Media

I am keeping track of everything and reviewing everything that I have read this year, but it feels weird to do the middle grade nonfiction graphic novels and cookbooks in a singular post. So the theme of this post is, I read it really quickly, but it was good and informative. I don't think I will put these on GoodReads and StoryGraph because, well, I I don't have to justify myself to you!

I read Killer Underwear Invasion by Elyse Gravel and it was adorable. Basically it broke down the idea of information literacy for middle school kids using underwear based humor and I was there for it. The information is solid and the format works for this age group. Okay, I'm 60 and it worked for my age group, too! It talks about the ways we can be manipulate by media without any blaming of the victim. I was a fan. 

My son's girlfriend is an amazing cook and she is, despite being a digital native, a cookbook person and she has loaned me several. What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking by Caroline Chambers and the cleverly titledWhat to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking 2 were both a delight and I have been told I will be receiving the first one for Christmas or perhaps even birthday. There are great tips for using up what you have in your kitchen. There are pep talks about putting together a home-cooked meal, but the thing that I really love is that it is et up by how long you have to prepare a meal. Sign me up! (The first had more recipes that sounded good to me, but the format of both was terrific. 

Armor for Liars by S.E. Grove

 

Oh my gosh, it has been a MONTH since I finished this book and it is still resonating for me! I guess this is my attempt to pretend like I am not woefully behind in my reviews. This is the first New Year's resolution I have ever kept and it is so close to slipping through my fingers. I go back to work Monday and I plan to do so with a completely clear google sheet with all reviews completed. Dare to dream, Barb.

So back to the book at hand, It was spectacular! I was predisposed to love it because I had read Grove's THE WANING AGE and adored the world building. This one also had a fascinating setting. I started reading it when I was taking a history class at the Boston Athenaeum and even though it is set in Salem and Beverly (and the Lynn Woods) the Athenaeum was the perfect spot to begin it. 

Okay, so the opening scene is SO evocative! There is a carriage going down the road, it is stopped by a seemingly benign person who ends up ruining EVERYTHING! I am not sure if I can do the magic in this book justice, just allow me to say that it is intricate, but not to intricate; scary but not too scary; and perfectly described. It boils down to an alternate North Shore in the early 1900s and Clem is disguising herself as a boy to attend the Commonwealth School to learn magic. The magic in this world is very anti-woman, anti-poor person, basically, anti-anything that isn't a white, rich guy with no conscience. I read a review on Goodreads that said, "I adored this book because it’s an excellent example of what happens when someone gets right that part of Fantasy novels that almost every book gets wrong: The actual magical system itself." and that is absolutely true. The magic is an entirely new type for me and it is perfect. And I don't even usually really like the magic! I am all about the drama and the interpersonal relationships. Grove gets those right too. There is a strange friendship between the young woman in question and a dead boy who is trying to help her. There are family obligations, and there is a delicious quest for revenge. It doesn't move fast (until it does) but the build up is really compelling. Even though the story is fairly straightforward, there is a ton of subtext about equity, entitlement, and communication, 

I have to admit that I got a thrill seeing the action take place in my own stomping ground, but I would have loved this if it took place in Ottumwa, Iowa. I should also mention that S. E. Grove is a local writer and is actually doing a kick-ass event at the Beverly Public Library in October so I will get to tell her in person how much I loved this book. I am not going to nag her about writing a sequel because the book ended without the need for one. But I would really love to read more stories set in this world. 

The Bureau of Unknown Fates coming out December 8 2026

You know I hate to give anything less than 5 stars to a book that I have finished, but this one is only getting 4 and it's probably my fault. It is a fascinating story of a woman who works for a group that researches people and items the were involved in the Holocaust. I liked the research aspects, but I never warmed to Irene, the main character. She has let her work take over her life and it shows. 

I like the idea of lost items and the talismanic nature of her work, but she never felt like a person I would want to spend time with. I would like to sit next to her on a plane for 3 hours and ask her about her job, but I don't want her calling me in the evening to ask if I think her son misses her.

The writing is good, and maybe I just read it after too long a glut of feel-good books, but it didn't grab me and that is really all I ask of a book. I finished it because I wanted to know what happened. The plot seemed to speed up at the end and I appreciated it, but there were too many strands for me to keep track of. I may just be too dumb for this book. It has happened before. 

Outside Their Comfort Zone: The Summer Girlfriend by Kristina Forest And Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure by Rhys Bowen

 Two books I just picked up this summer were delightful! I didn't read them because they were on Netgalley, I didn't read them for the MTCBA, I just read them because I saw them at the library and they looked delicious. And they were!

First up was The Summer Girlfriend. I love a fake-dating trope and this one did not disappoint. Noelle works at a bookstore and has decided that, after a disastrous first undergrad experience ruined by a stupid boy, she is ready to go back to school to achieve her dream of being a librarian. So, of course, she is awesome. She gets fired from her bookstore job due to the economy and nepotism and has to rely on her side gig as a bridesmaid for hire. Oh, I know, just suspend your disbelief. 

Jeremiah is the younger son in a family run baked goods company, but his shame over previous bad behavior has led him to go work in a different field where he is relied on for his charm rather than his smarts. This does not help with his self-loathing issues at all. 

Jeremiah hires Noelle to pretend to be his girlfriend for a weekend at Hart Beach, the family compound on the Jersey Shore and sparks fly. Well, not really. They aren't sparky as much as they are warmly perfect for each other. Even though Noelle is the one who is really struggling financially, Jeremiah's family drama is more compelling. His family is damn near perfect, but he can't seem to find his place in it. Would it surprise you to learn that they help each other as they fall in love? Would it surprise you that I fell in love with them too? Surely not!

Mrs. Endicott's husband has left her. It's the '30s in England and he has a newer, younger girl and Mrs. E. is to be put out to pasture. Instead of taking a dreary bedsit in London, she endevours to see some of the world and ends up taking her maid Mavis (who escapes an abusive husband) and an overbearing society spinster from their town who is running out the clock on a bad heart and off to the French coast they go.

Europe is ratcheting up for WW2, there is a gorgeous, rundown villa to be restored and there are interesting townsfolk, including two available men who may or may not be the best thing to ever happen to a couple middle aged women who were not expecting to find love again. Add in a pregnant vagabond, a speedboat and a hot priest and you have a lovely slice of Enchanted April-ness that takes the reader into a charming world on the brink of war. 

Even though these books have little in common, other than the seaside settings, they both feature women who don't know their own strength, but learn to have confidence in their abilities to change their lives for the better and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them!

Bad Behavior Leads to Loving Friendships - ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Fredrick Bachman and THE MOTHER-IN-LAW BOOK CLUB by Kate Hash coming out October 26, 2026

 Well, who knew that being kind of a dick was a window into building community? I recently read two absolutely delightful titles that made it clear that you never know when you are going to meet your chosen family. 

I found ANXIOUS PEOPLE in a little free library outside a dive bar in Chicago as I was just finishing LIFE OUT OF ORDER and was sure that whatever I picked up next was going to pale in comparison. How wrong I was! While I throroughtly enjoyed LooO, I absolutely adored ANXIOUS PEOPLE and only grew to love it more as I read it. 

I should just know that Backman is going to poke me in the feelings until I barf up a glowing five-star review. His characters are always so flawed, but so inherently lovable. Just like people in real life. In this book, a bank robbery leads to a hostage situation and we meet the bank robber, the hostages, even the father and son police officers who are investigating. Every character starts out basically unlikeable. Each one has flaws that make them super-irritating, but the situation and Backman's unfailing ability to bring humor out of even the most dire events kept me reading until I couldn't stop. 

It's an older book, 2019, so I won't go into the details of who did why and why - also, I don't want to spoil the joy of watching it play out. I will say there there are deep wells of meaning - death, savior complexes and the ridiculous cost of real estate are all plumbed for both humor and pathos. Even the characters who seem the absolute worst at the beginning of the book turn out to have hidden depths and motivation that will make you feel good about the world. 

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW BOOK CLUB was a delight from start to finish. It looked like it was going to be a Backman-ian intergenerational story of friendship and community, and it certainly is. But there is also a layer of sweet, sweet mostly closed-door romance that added the cherry to the old fashioned. (Hey, give me a choice between ice cream and bourbon, I'm going to go brown every time!) Andi is going through a divorce from her Dr. McCheatingjerk, soon-to-be ex and one bright spot in her miasma of failure is that she will never have to deal with her cold and judgey in-laws again. Unfortunately, she ends up sitting across the aisle from two ladies-of-a-certain-age who are bonding over talking trash about their own adult children's spouses. Andi can't hold back and lets them have it from the perspective of someone used to forced proximity to people who just don't approve of her. She feels badly about it afterwards, but also, they're strangers who she will never see again. 

Until Marilyn comes up to her at the baggage claim and apologizes and asks for advice. And that's how she gets invited to book club. Marilyn's friends are all excited to get the skinny on the younger generation from someone who doesn't have a dog in the hunt of their family dynamics and a community is born! Andi is staying in Durham for work (she's REALLY good at her job) and is chuffed to make some friends, even if they are all 30 years older than her. Factor in a cute tour guide and a bit of work drama and it is pure delight. And you know Chekov's dirty ex is going to show up in the final bit to very rewarding results. This book was a little slice of heaven and I can't wait to see the Netflix series eventually. 

LIFE OUT OF ORDER by Audrey Niffeneger is out October 6, 2026

 

I was so excited to get an ARC of this at ALA last month. Since the conference was held in Chicago and I ended up spending an extra few days alone in the city after, it was the perfect time to read a book set in that toddling town. I spent three very hot days reading this amazing tale of climate change, time travel, political activism and interpersonal relationships. 

Many of the familiar characters from The Time Traveler's Wife are on deck and there are some wonderful new additions. It's basically the second generation and things are not going well. There is divisiveness in the populace, global warming is out of control and time travel is more annoying than you'd think it would be. 

Niffeneger is able to avoid the patina of "grooming" that retroactively colored many readers' experience of TTW and even addresses it in the text. The daughter of Henry and Claire, Alba, is also a time traveler. She has a bit more control, or maybe awareness is a better word, of how her abilities work, but it still does a number on her. Her love interests are Zach - a sweet boy who anchors her to the present and another mysterious gentleman, the less said of, the better.

This doesn't have the sweeping romantic feel of her parent's story. And frankly, Abla is not all that interesting or loveable on her own. What is wonderful about this book is the sweeping narrative and the pockets of action that, while set in what is becoming a dystopian hellscape, echo into the world we live in today. 

I had a very hard time putting this book down. And while I don't think I'll ever get to the point of opening it and reading once scene to brighten my mood - the way I do with Claire and Henry's "first" meeting at the Newberry Library - I will definitely be visiting this world again. 

SEARCHING FOR SUNDAY by Rachel Held Evans and ENORMOUS WINGS by Laurie Frankel

 

I may have mentioned here that I was very involved in evangelical Christianity from the age of 12 until about halfway through my college career. My folks had a great awakening of spirituality when my Dad committed to AA in the 70s and gravitated to a conservative nuts and bolts, second Timothy 3:16-17 "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." kind of faith. There were many really wonderful things about this time - a sense of community is the first one, but also the feeling that there was a greater power  - thanks Bill W. - that could restore us. While it breaks my heart to read my adolescent diaries and read that it is no wonder that my life is a shit-show, because I am such a depraved sinner, I am so grateful that I retain faith in the higher power that gives my life comfort and meaning. 

So this summer, I am in the season of elderly-ness where I want to make sure I am doing right by my loved ones, and since Jesus is number one (much evidence to the contrary) I have been making a concerted effort to do more reading of a spiritual nature. However, my personal creed that I don't have to read more than 40 pages of any book that doesn't capture me precludes doing too much Bible reading and also the current political situation makes me really irked by many people who share my spiritual beliefs and background teamed up to make it something of a challenge to find something that both helps my relationship with Jesus and doesn't make me really snarky.

Enter Rachel Held Evans. Her book Searching for Sunday is the story of leaving the evangelical church while attempting to keep her faith intact. I found so many parallels in my own life. She was a popular blogger, like me. (I have a reader now! Hi, Constance!), she was deeply disturbed at how right wing politics had coopted Christianity and she loved the gays. 

To go on at length about the book would require me to remember specifics and while I loved her take on community and ...a bunch of other stuff that has now become an amorphous blob in my head... one thing that remains clear is her take on the interpretation of Scripture.

"Even the apostle Paul.. said in his letter to the Ephesians, "Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies...Ironically, this very letter is often invoked to support hierarchical genders roles in marriage, because earlier, in urging all members of a household to 'submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,' Paul describes a typical first-century Greco-Roman household, complete with a male head-of-house who has authority over his wives, slaves and children. In the past, some Christians referred to this passage to argue that the hierarchy between master and slave is God-ordained, and in the present, some continue to use it to argue that hierarchy between men and women is God-ordained. Paul is not arguing that the first-century Greco-Roman household structure is the best for humans flourishing and therefore God's design for all people everywhere. Such a question was not within his purview. Rather, he is explaining that when Christians imitate Jesus in their relationships, when partners in marriage serve one another rather than fight for dominiance, we catch a little glimpse of the mystery of Christ's relentless, self-giving love for the church."

This spoke to me SO HARD! I could go on at length about my own thoughts on Biblical interpretation and the incredible damage of assuming that Christians are a monolith, but I shan't because this is ostensibly a book review. Suffice to say, I am a huge RHE fan and have her A Year of Biblical Womanhood up next on my nightstand. 

Searching for Sunday is a memoir about leaving the toxic aspects of organized religion aside and finding a faith community that allows for many voices and interpretations and it also made me laugh out loud. 

Which brings me to Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel. The premise is that Pepper Mills (yes, her name is addressed) is a 77 year old woman who moves to an old folks home, falls in love and gets pregnant in fairly short order. It has that "finding community" vibe that I love so deeply and it is hysterically funny in places. It also brings up the specter of abortion in all its divisive glory. 

In three of the four educational institutions I attended in my adolescence, it was a given that we were all anti-abortion, I mean pro-life. We watched The Silent Scream in science class and there was an active group on my college campus that picketed Planned Parenthood as a regular activity. But I also know many people for whom abortion was a life-saving procedure. It's almost as if having different experiences gives people different attitudes about life. 

Frankel is clearly in the bodily autonomy corner, and she does a wonderful job of showing how different people's experience (or lack of) inform their attitudes about women's choice. I picked this up because I have been spending a fair amount of time in an assited living facility and the details ring true. I thought the idea of having a baby at an advanced age (one of my own personal nightmares) would be fun to read about - and it was - but I was rewarded with a lot more to think about than I expected. 

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, cons 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 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 1969. 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 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!