Book: Seasons of Glass & Iron Author: Amal El-Mohtar Publisher: Tor Publishing Group Year: 2026 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass And Iron : Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from New York Times bestselling author Amal El-Mohtar.”
Review :Seasons of Glass & Iron is a lyrical, deadly, and captivating peek through the looking glass into worlds unknown; full of whimsy and wonder, joy and horror, it is a dream and a nightmare tangled in the same web, woven and unwoven, creating a gleaming portrayal of humanity and, at times, something a bit other than humanity. El-Mohtar has deftly curated a collection of perfectly layered stories, giving the reader just enough to whet their appetite before moving swiftly on to the next. As someone who prefers long-form, I cannot speak highly enough of how intentional this collection is, how smooth the transitions, and how seamless the tie-ins. El-Mohtar shares in the introduction that this book may not have much of a “coherent aesthetic argument”, rather, it’s a love letter to women. Regardless of whether the introduction is read or not, you cannot simply pick this book up and not come to the conclusion that the author has a profound love for womankind in all her forms.
Seasons of Iron & Glass is queer, sapphic, and beautifully pro-Palestine. It wiggles a little deeper under the skin with each story, like an ear worm attaching itself in your brain, hooking it’s little fingers into your heart and tugging at just the right moments. It is a profound work of love and loss and becoming and undoing and redoing all over again. There are gorgeous poems written to those surviving the genocide in Gaza, retellings of Welsh fairy tales, stunning creations of fantasy, and incredible stories of unbelievable creativity and artistry. When I read the final words, I cried.
I fear my words do a disservice to how artfully and skillfully crafted this collection is. El-Mohtar states that these works were written between the years of 2008 and 2023 and there are stories that I can easily align myself with, the energy and understanding of them being laid out on LiveJournal or Tumblr feels so visceral I can almost taste it. Yet, each story weaves a broader narrative that cannot be unseen – despite ranging broadly in time, in place, and in content. There are stories I desperately wish were part of a broader narrative, stories I crave to know more of, and still each story is carefully wrapped up in the end, perfectly beginning and ending in ways that, while imperfect, as short stories are, is truly perfect. At the end of the day, try as I may, I can hardly come up with the words to do this book justice, all I can simply say is read this book.
Advice : If you have any interest in Welsh folklore, in short stories, in fantasy, in reading tales of women, then this book is for you. If you want to read folklore that takes the narrative out of the hands of awful gods and puts it back firmly in the hands of the so often downtrodden and abused women in them, this book is for you. I genuinely believe everyone should read it. It’s perfection. Mark your calendars for March 2026, place an order ahead of time, you don’t want to miss this one.
Book: Lady X Author: Molly Fader Publisher: Ballantine Books Year: 2026 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Los Angeles, 2024 Margot Cooper’s life explodes after she discovers that her A-list actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media. Desperate to get away from the world – and the paparazzi – Margot flees to her childhood home, with her teenage daughter in tow. But home isn’t the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she and her sister find damning evidence about a mysterious vigilante named Lady X, including a blurry newspaper photo from the 1970s of a woman who looks an awful lot like their mother. It turns out that Margot’s husband isn’t the only family member harboring secrets. New York City, 1977 Ginger Daughtry is living her best life with her two beloved roommates, until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from the police, the young women take things into their own hands and find themselves igniting a movement that suddenly takes New York City by storm. Soon what began as a little bit of revenge against terrible men – vandalism here and there, singed collectively as Lady X – starts to take on a life of its own. Their enigmatic reputation spirals beyond their control with copycat criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic Lady X. When a body is found fallen – or pushed – from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point. But Lady X has vanished into thin air.”
Review :Lady X is not for everyone. Lady X is a novel full of thick, intoxicating, divine rage that fills your chest cavity, runs down your fingers, and sizzles off your skin as you recount the statistics of women who will be assaulted by men in their lifetimes; as you field yet another “you should smile”; as unwanted fingers run up your arms and legs to touch tattoos without consent; as you recall being asked, by a man, if you’re on your period. It’s the rage of thousands of years of patriarchy; the idea that feminism somehow has nothing to do with global atrocities, and being told that it’s worse somewhere else, so you should be grateful. Lady X is a heralding beacon in a bleak, dark, inky black night sky. It’s timely in a way that this subject will never not be timely without radical, dramatic, civilization altering change – it’s pointed, it’s aggressive, it’s feral, and yet it’s deeply soft, prodding the softness of your humanity and heart with fingers that gently turn your head and say “don’t look away”.
Lady X is a vigilante masterclass on how meekly our culture has shifted over the last fifty years, revealing the dark truth that while women have only had access to bank accounts and credit cards without their husband’s approval since 1974, the culture of men doing so much more than taking advantage of women has hardly changed in all that time. While the culture has certainly shifted, at least in part thanks to #metoo, the truth is that women still make a fraction of what men make in the workforce, are continuously being legislated against, often without exception for medical emergencies or anomalies, and still face the backroom absurdities and assaults that happened in the 70s. Only now, with a president who has openly spoken (and been found guilty of!!) about assaulting women; with younger generations of young men coming into the political field with open misogyny and a bloodlust for the voting rights and the bodily autonomy of women. Molly Fader has perfectly encapsulated the energy that sizzles and dances through every person who has ever been assaulted or harmed at the hands of men who have let their belief in male superiority take complete control. She’s written a novel that hits the button labeled “Rage” that sits in the very center of my chest and flung it right where it hurts. And it’s perfection.
Written between the perspective of Ginger Daughtry in 1977 and her daughter, Margot Cooper in 2024, Lady X jumps between narratives with ease, only ever leaving me frustrated at critical points in the story arc. The unfolding mystery of who Lady X is and what might have happened to her is a thread tying two generations of women together as they simultaneously navigate what it’s like to live in a world where men take and take and take. And before you get upset at how misandrist this sounds, Lady X is the perfect embodiment of the understanding that while not all men are the cause of assault, all women have been or know someone who has been assaulted by a man. Lady X became a folk hero, during a time when New York City was embroiled with the Son of Sam, labor shortages in the police force, and a rolling, city-wide blackout. Created perfectly to fit into our real world, Lady X could have easily come to fruition in real time in 1977, or 2024, or 2025. Lady X became a vigilante figure who gave entire groups of people, not just women, the sense that they could speak up, they could point the finger at their abusers, those who have continuously gotten away with cruelty, and that they could enact real change that might make the world a better, softer place for themselves and other marginalized folks.
Fader has created a world that feels so real, that speaks so pointedly to the time we’re living in and all that’s come before us to get us to where we are, that she goes so far as to write in a Lady X campaign that, fictionally, took place during Trump’s second inauguration. It was so pointed, so necessary, so perfectly, seamlessly correct for the time that I found myself weeping. This is not for everyone. It’s for those who have a belief that a better world could exist, those who dream of a matriarchy, of a third way forward, those who have been hurt and know people who are hurting, and those who wish, desperately, for there to be some small measure of justice in this world. Or, maybe not so small justice. Lady X is a guttural scream in the night, a shattering of that hard exterior shell that keeps you safe and looking the other way, it’s our survival instinct screaming, crying out that yes, this is how it changes.
Advice : I would be remiss not to mention content warnings before sending you to the bookshelves in May 2026. Lady X mentions sexual assault, rape, physical abuse, battery, police brutality, harassment, stalking, catcalling, solicitation of a minor, sexual exploitation, cheating, and vigilante violence. That being said, if you feel you can read the above list in a safe way, this book is an excellent read and perfect for anyone who would like to see the bad guys get what’s coming to them. I flew through this one and found it to be utterly unputdownable. I highly recommend pre-ordering it.
Book: In Deadly Company Author: L.S. Stratton Publisher: Union Square & Co. Year: 2025 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “As the assistant to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Nicole Underwood has plenty of tasks on her to-do list – one of which is the blowout celebration for her nightmare, on-percenter boss, Xander Chambers. But when the party ends in chaos and murder and Nicole is one of the survivors, suspicion – from the investigators to the media – lands on her. Was she the reason for all the bloodshed? A year after those deadly events, Nicole tries to set the public record straight by agreeing to consult on a feature film based on her story. However, while on set in Los Angeles, she’s sidelined by inappropriate casting and persistent, bizarre script changes – and haunted by persistent visions of her now-deceased boss. It seems clearing her name ins’t so simple when the question of guilt or innocence is…complicated.”
Review :In Deadly Company is an enjoyable, inventive, and easy to read thriller with a truly unique plot that doesn’t fall into the trap of the unreliable female protagonist trope so many thrillers seem to adore. It’s well written, quick moving, and leaves you guessing all the way until the end. While I did find the final reveal to be a bit obvious and contrived, it was still fun to get there in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed this read, found myself wanting to slow things down so it wouldn’t end quite so soon, and have been chewing it over since I finished it yesterday – all hallmarks of a good book.
The narration jumps a bit, and doesn’t hold fast to a set-in-stone pattern which I found to be unnecessary, but provided some texture and certainly helped give context to the way events played out. Between Nicole’s present day and her past, we watch the fateful events of her boss’s birthday party unravel, not only the alluded to murders (yes, plural), but the behind the scenes goings on in Nicole’s personal life that we are only granted glimpses of throughout the book. In the present, Nicole is watching and “consulting” on the movie retelling of the events of her boss, Xander Chambers’ birthday – she wields almost no say in how the story gets told, but she’s been hired by the production team and so she’s there, on set, watching the events play out once more despite very clearly having PTSD. In the past, we simultaneously watch the events play out in real time, catching little bits here and there that might reveal who ends up murdered and why, but never enough to fully catch on to the carnage that would eventually play out by the time the birthday weekend was over.
This review will be short and sweet, nearly anything else I have to say would include spoilers that might truly wreck the ending for you, so I’ll leave things where they are. I will say, however, that I wish the ending had taken a slightly different turn – without giving you the details, you’ll have to read those for yourself, the final twist at the end felt contrived and forced, giving the power of the novel a bit of a lackluster finish. It didn’t feel well thought out, but it did feel a bit messy. Things could have tied up in a nicer way, been a bit less all over the place, and not included one of the most obvious plot twists in history. Okay, that’s all. If I say more, I’ll spoil it for you!
Advice : This was such a fun read! If you’ve been disillusioned by thrillers written from a female perspective, I think you should really give this one a shot! Be warned, there are graphic descriptions of blood, gore, and death; the author describes PTSD flash backs; and there’s mention of the date rape drug as well as what happens when it’s used.
Book: The Last Resort Author: Erin Entrada Kelly Publisher: Scholastic Press Year: 2025 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Just before her Grandpa Clem’s funeral, twelve-year-old Lila makes a shocking discovery. He didn’t die of natural causes – he was murdered. Possibly by someone who wanted to control his inn…and its secret portal to the afterlife. Now, a girl who’s vowed to become “less dramatic” must uncover her grandpa’s killer AND stop the ghosts desperate to make it back to our world.”
Review :The Last Resort is a super fun and enjoyable mid-grade read (grades 3-7) about the power of friendship, family, and finding places where you can be yourself. Lila, a twelve year old whose so-called best friends have described as “too much” and “overly dramatic” and, worst of all, “immature”, is ready for summer vacation so she can work on being as calm as a rock, as cool as ice, and as mature as her two besties think they are as they all head toward seventh grade next year. Her friends have stopped hanging out with her and have begun to hang out without her, she doesn’t have much time to regain their friendships. So when a relative she’s never met, Grandpa Clem, passes away unexpectedly and her family decides to travel out of state for his funeral, Lila is distraught. With the backdrop of frenemies / bullies who find Lila to be too much, we delve into Grandpa Clem’s world of ghosts, crystals, and portals to the world beyond the veil – a less than perfect scenario for a pre-teen who’s trying to be a lot less.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was cute and fun and had some twists and turns that, while I saw coming, didn’t fully take shape until they’d arrived. It doesn’t talk down to the reader or assume the reader’s too young to understand new concepts and it presents unknowns and uncertainties in a way that makes it a true learning experience. I’m always pleased to find a middle grade read that doesn’t feel incredibly dumbed down for a kid to read and The Last Resort really held up. It did include some scary imagery, so I think this might be a proceed with caution book if you or your reader are a bit antsy when it comes to large spiders, the idea of death, or ghostly apparitions – but all in all I found it to be a safe and spooky walk on the paranormal side, perfect for fall! In the finished copy of the book, there will be ghostly illustrations who will come to life on the page via a QR code, which is such a fun addition to an already ghostly book, I think it’ll help bring the book to life in a way that’ll keep the reader thinking about it for a while.
While at Grandpa Clem’s inn, Lila meets a neighbor who’s her age, a boy named Teddy. It’s through Teddy’s friendship that Lila finds her place with someone who doesn’t view her as too much, who lets her be exactly who she is, and who doesn’t dismiss her as being an overly dramatic person. It’s an important lesson without being preachy, that bullies have no place in our lives, and that shrinking ourselves down to fit into the box of other people’s expectations makes us a shell of ourselves. In a world where even adults struggle with this concept, and even the concept of not being bullies to other adults, I found this messaging to be a refreshing change of pace from what we see day-to-day. Ultimately, Lila’s friendships are the cornerstone for this book, not the ghosts!
Finally, I gave this book 4 stars rather than 5 because I felt the ending was too abrupt and lacked the closure I wanted from it. It didn’t need to be drawn out or even significantly longer than it already is, but it would have benefitted from a little more than it received. I think the door was left open for further books down the road, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that this adult will absolutely be reading whatever Kelly comes up with next if she decides to continue this book into a series!
Advice : If you have enjoyed any iterations of Disney’s Haunted Mansion (including the ride), I think you’d enjoy The Last Resort! As advised above, if you or your reader have any squeamishness around spiders, near death experiences, dogs, crows, the threat of death, or ghosts, this might be one you approach cautiously. I think it’s the perfect amount of spooky and calm – a great way to dip the toes into a paranormal subject without diving in head first and scaring the bajeesus out of yourself.
Book: Undead and Unwed Author: Sam Tschida Publisher: Quirk Books Year: 2025 Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Tiffenie may be three hundred years old, but she’s still a hot mess. The vampire is tragically single, works a dead-end job at a blood bank, and spends her nights marathoning Hallmark Channel moves with her cat. When Tiffenie inherits a fixer-upper home in Valentine, Vermont, thanks to a case of mistaken (okay, stolen!) identity, she seizes the chance to get her life back on track. With her newly undead neighbor (it was an accident!) in tow, Tiffenie is determined to live out her holiday rom-com dreams in this picture-perfect town. But between the mystery of her stolen identity, small-town drama, and the arrival of her insufferable vampire ex-boyfriend Vlad, getting her happily ever after with a smoking-hot Christmas tree farmer won’t be easy. Tiffenie must embark on a journey of self-acceptance – with the help of a few therapy sessions – for the first time in her immortal life.”
Review : Over the last few years of writing ARC reviews, I believe I’ve only given two other books a star rating lower than 2. I give a truly low review only when it feels absolutely necessary – sparingly, you might even say. While my reviews are always honest and truthful and they may be, at times, scathing, I’m always hesitant to give someone a low rating for something they’ve crafted. It feels deeply embarrassing to me that Undead and Unwed has garnered as high a review as 3.5 stars on GoodReads, which is really all I need to say when I tell you that I do not use or read GoodReadsreviews. Having read over 100 advanced reader copies (sorry, only 90 of those have made it here), I can honestly tell you that I have never received an advanced copy as unfinished and unpolished as this book was. It’s not a surprise to find small errors in an advanced copy, some grammatical mistakes, misspellings, an unfinished sentence here or there – it is a surprise to find a book with so many glaring mistakes as Undead and Unwed, and to be completely frank, that’s not even what scored this book 1.5 stars for me. It’s just part of the chaos and nonsense of the entire experience.
This is the first time I’ve wanted to say this : I read Undead and Unwed so you don’t have to. Please. Take my word for it. You don’t have to put yourself through this. The most frustrating aspect of this entire journey through such an incredibly poorly written book and nearly unreadable premise is that I actually liked the initial idea behind the plot. It could have been so much better, it could have been something readable. Execution, however, has failed. We find Tiffenie, a 300 year old vampire, living and working in L.A. at a blood bank – okay, expected, at least to some degree. She’s depressed, doesn’t know how to stand up for herself, and has little will to live beyond caring for her cat, Cat. We learn fairly early on that for a vampire to continue to exist in the world in any kind of feasible manner, they need to take on someone else’s identity in order to rent an apartment or buy a car or work a job – you know, they need a social security number and a real life name. Tiffenie is currently living under the stolen / bought name Tiffany Amanda Blair, an identity she purchased via the “black market” (I’m using quotes here as there’s no real explanation for this and it’s glossed over, so one can really only assume). When she receives a letter in the mail informing her of an inheritance in her namesake’s hometown of Valentine, Vermont, she hops in a hearse (yes, really) and heads out of town. Of course, I’m glossing over a lot of the minutiae here, but this is how things unfold : girl assumes identity, girl receives inheritance meant for the person whose identity she assumed, girl moves to claim the inheritance. Meanwhile, Tiffenie has accidentally drained her neighbor within an inch of her life and is forced to turn her into a vampire and take her on the road to Vermont because…well, just because. There are so many instances where things happen in the book without a good reason, the reader is forced to go along with what’s happening just for funzies because Tschida said so and it makes for poor storytelling.
Evidently, it’s been just ten years since the real Tiffany has moved away from her hometown of Valentine, yet even though Valentine is a tiny, rural town and Tiffany lived there for her entire life as a child and adult, ten years is somehow enough for Tiffenie to show up as a totally different person under the assumed identity of Tiffany and pass for this other person with an entire backstory and history in the town. And no-one blinks an eye. This was the first (of many) glaring issues I took with Undead and Unwed, as an assumed identity does not mean you also look like the person whose identity you stole! We only get a small explanation by way of Tiffenie dying her hair blonde because Tiffany was also a blonde. Yes, you read that correctly. In all other accounts, everyone Tiffenie runs into, be they old flames, friends from high school, or people who knew her family, all really, truly believe that Tiffenie is actually Tiffany. It is as asinine as it sounds. Next, we encounter the trouble with Tiffenie’s bank account – namely, she was dirt poor in L.A., working a job for peanuts, somehow living alone, and yet when she moves to Vermont without a job, she has enough money to start paying thousand dollar fines for living in a condemned building. There’s no explanation for this change in circumstances beyond the inheritance of a condemned property. There hasn’t been some grand windfall, no change in her lifestyle, only that she’s gone from L.A. to Vermont.
If this isn’t enough, Tiffenie is written just as the synopsis describes, as a hot mess. She’s flaky, irresponsible, somehow and for some unknown and never fleshed-out reason, she’s obsessed with not drinking blood, and she has a shopping problem. I don’t love this characterization, but I can get on board with it if it’s how she’s written, unfortunately, Tschida goes back and forth between our modern-day Tiffenie and the Tiffenie of the past who had children, knew how to bake for her family, and lived a real life with big ideas and plans. It’s a stark contrast and the jumping back and forth between these two versions of the self is stilted, as though Tschida threw them in at random without any planning or thought. Further, the conversations are so choppy and robotic, they’re nearly impossible to read. When it comes to story writing, Tschida has landed so far from the mark it’s almost laughable. There are so many instances where someone’s speaking and the only response will be “Yes.” that it became impossible to read with any semblance of seriousness. At one point I actively questioned whether this book was even written or whether it was dictated based on the glaring errors staring back at me from the page. There were multiple instances throughout where the paragraph was re-written but the original was never taken out, so I was presented with multiple directions in which this ARC might go, unsure of which would eventually be chosen for the final copy, and one instance where an entire paragraph was broke up with bullet points. These kinds of errors are not commonplace in an advanced copy, they’re sloppy and lazy and do the author a tremendous disservice – in this instance, Tschida needed all the help she could get and her publishing house did her dirty.
Undead and Unwed is an unreadable mess. I can only hope that by the time it’s actually ready for print it will look dramatically different than it does in it’s advanced copy form, but from my experience this is rarely the case. I suspect this book will be slightly more readable, but I don’t believe it will have improved by much at that point. The concept of a Hallmark Channel-ish story where a vampire moves to Vermont and restores a property, finds a chosen family, and eventually love is actually such a cute idea and I’m actively upset that this book ended up being as poorly written as it was. It needs a significant amount of work, perhaps it would even be worth scrapping the whole thing and starting over, or maybe it would be better to never have started in the first place.
Advice : Don’t. Just, don’t. Don’t fall for the 3.5 GoodReads score. Don’t spend your money. If you really feel drawn to this book, request it at your local library and save your money for something else.
Book: The Housekeeper’s Secret Author: Sandra Schnakenburg Publisher: She Writes Press Year: 2025 Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “A catholic family in 1960s Chicago headed by a narcissistic and demanding father takes on Lee, a housekeeper with a mysterious past. Lee becomes like a second mother to the Krilich children, especially Sandy. After Lee’s death, Sandy begins a determined quest to find out her dear friend’s backstory – and proceeds to uncover one shocking fact after another, even as the story of her own family drama, and the heartwarming role Lee played in the Krilich’s lives, unfolds.”
Review : While this book’s title and synopsis might lead you to believe the entirety of the novel will be spent uncovering a housekeeper’s secret(s), the truth is only about 20% of the book was spent actually delving into Lee’s past. While I don’t particularly think the information Schnakenburg was able to gather about Lee, her beloved housekeeper, is broad enough to fill an entire book, I do find it hard to wrap my head around how little of the book was actually devoted to Lee’s life and how much of it was devoted instead to our writer. I don’t find this problematic as far as storytelling goes, Schnakenburg, nee Krilich, had an extraordinary childhood filled with trauma, neglect, abuse, and a near fatal accident – but the title of the book is The Housekeeper’s Secret and we didn’t begin to dive into Lee’s secret until the book was nearly over. The title and the content didn’t match up.
Like I said, though, I found the story of Schnakenburg’s upbringing to be enough to keep me turning pages, wanting to know how things would evolve in the lives of Sandy’s family members, forced to endure a grueling childhood with a demanding and demeaning father with a roiling anger problem and no regard for the wellbeing of anyone in his path. I found Schnakenburg’s portrayal of her father to be quite interesting – in fact, I believe her storytelling of his abuse throughout her childhood to be far too lenient and more forgiving than I would hope. We spend, as I mentioned, about 80% of The Housekeeper’s Secret growing up with Sandy in a hellish nightmare world of a home, growing with her from the time she’s no more than a toddler until she’s an adult with children of her own. It’s throughout this memoir-like progression that we come to find Sandy’s relationship with her father, and the relationship he shares with her 5 additional siblings and mother, is strained at best. He is, to put it bluntly, a menace. Demanding 7 different types of juice each morning, forcing Schnakenburg’s mother into situations that endanger her life (more than once), forcing a six-year-old to utilize hedge-trimmers with zero supervision, and having a second family are only some of the stories we read in this book – it is well and truly a nightmare. And yet, Schakenburg attempts to humanize her father, explaining that he suffered the loss of a childhood friend in a drowning accident, as if this singular trauma might explain the evil that he unleashed upon his family; it’s particularly glaring when you consider that Schakenburg’s mother suffered from a terrible fear of drowning, so much so that she never learned to swim, and her husband forced her onto multiple boating trips, one in which the threat of drowning was quite real when their boat suffered damage and began to take on water.
*Spoilers Ahead*
When we do finally make our way to Lee’s story, a story she told the children for years she wanted to write (but spent no time actually writing down, nor telling to anyone to transcribe), the story we end up with is one of tremendous tragedy, horror, and loss. It is hard to endure, yet necessary to read. Lee, a Black woman growing up in the 1940s, was brutally attacked, beaten, and sexually assaulted by multiple men while walking to the bus after work. She was left for dead. Because it was winter and there was snow on the ground, she managed to survive the night, but suffered incredibly bodily damage as well as a traumatic brain injury. Being unable to fully recover and in a family that was enduring their own physical ailments and diagnoses, Lee was sent to a sanatorium for care. While there’s significantly more to Lee’s story, I’d like to leave it here and encourage you to read this book if for no other reason than the necessity of hearing a story like Lee’s – a story that deserves to be heard and told. The history of women’s medical treatment is one we should never take lightly, especially as we find ourselves simply not all that far removed from the most egregious “treatment” and experiments performed – often for diagnoses that are now easily managed with medication, therapy, and simple kindness. Women of color, even more so.
I sobbed through Lee’s story, wishing so much that there was more information available, that we could see retribution for the actions of the men in her life who treated her with such unimaginable disregard, wishing Schnakenburg could have dug up and revealed names so we might know them for who they were. It’s the human response, I believe, to reading a story like Lee’s. You want to see justice done, you want to see more come from it than 20% of a book about an abusive father, you just want more. I think it’s commendable that Schnakenburg took up the mantle of this task, but I wish there was less about Schnakenburg herself (perhaps saving it for a separate memoir) and more about Lee. As we meet Lee’s children toward the end of the book, Schnakenburg and her siblings share stories about Lee that were never mentioned at any other point in the book and I can’t help but think this book would have better served Lee’s memory had it included more stories of Lee’s life, even on where she was an employee of a family that was not her own. Schnakenburg dips her toes into the realm of white saviorism at the end, when she learns one of Lee’s children fell victim to the system as an orphaned child born in a sanatorium, suggesting that this child would have been better off in Schnakenburg’s home where her horrifically abusive father ruled with an iron fist of unpredictability. In fairness, I think her intentions were noble in this moment, believing the child would have been better off with Lee, and I agree, but again, I feel she’s been far too forgiving of her father and a bit short sighted, considering how deeply she had previously detailed his abuses. There were moments that left me gasping for air for the sheer horror of it all, moments where I sobbed, and moments where I cringed. Lee’s story is a tragedy that deserves to be heard.
Advice : It’s worth noting that if you choose to read this book it does speak about verbal abuse, emotional abuse, manipulation, gang rape, power dynamics, torture, water torture, sexual assault, traumatic brain injury, a car accident / bicycle accident, and drowning. This book is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re a woman I think it’s a deeply important and impactful story to read.
Book: Boudicca’s Daughter Author: Elodie Harper Publisher: Union Square & Co Year: 2025 Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Boudicca was an infamous warrior, queen of the British Iceni tribe, and mastermind of one of history’s greatest revolts. Her defeat in c. 60 CE by the conquering forces of the Roman Empire spelled ruin for her people, yet still Boudicca’s name was enough to strike fear into the hearts of her enemies. But what of the woman who grew up in her shadow – her daughter Solina – who has her mother’s looks and cunning and her father’s druidic gifts, but a spirit all her own? Solina’s desperate bid for survival takes her from Britain’s battlefields and sacred marshlands to the glittering facades and treacherous politics of Nero’s Rome, where she must decide what it truly means to be Boudicca’s daughter.”
Review :Boudicca’s Daughter is an intense, 400+ page work of historical fiction that left me crying at times, enraged at others, and sent me down a google rabbit hole to find the truth. In all honesty, I’m not sure where I sit on the fence of historical fiction, and in all likelihood it’s probably closer to the “I’m not sure this is something we should do” side of things than not. In this instance, so little is known about Boudicca’s actual daughters – yes, plural – that the story could be filled in however Harper chose to see fit. It’s an interesting conundrum that a woman who held such a role in history, whose two daughters were deeded the rights to rule the Iceni tribe once their ruling father passed, made so little a mark as to have left two nameless daughters to the annals of time. I appreciate Harper’s work here in bringing these very real people back to life, even if created purely from imagination. We might suppose that some of what came to pass in this book could have been real, truthfully, Harper put in a great deal of work to get the historical facts correct; the rest, however, is mere speculation. While Harper suggests in her letter to the reader that humanity is largely the same even spanning across thousands of years, I suspect she’s written the characters we find here with more grace, humility, and kindness than might necessarily be warranted them.
Boudicca’s Daughter breaches the real world and enters into a historical fiction narrative complete with love, betrayal, and blood sacrifices that play out into the real world. I grew to love Solina, our protagonist, as we encountered her throughout four dramatic stages of her life. My biggest complaint about our time spent with Solina in the Iceni tribe is that so little of the book is spent in such a broad, wild place and so little time is truly spent on Boudicca’s actual assault on the British Empire. Much time passed during this first quarter of the book, yet the way it was written lead me to believe it was short-lived and perhaps even not so wide of a battle – history informs me that by the time the battles were over, nearly 100,000 people had been killed, British and Roman alike. Harper addresses the grey area that a war inevitably brings with it and asks the reader to critically think about who might bear the weight of the word guilty in a time when cultures are combining, the Roman Empire is conquering multiple people groups, and the masses are doing what they must do to survive. Where does the line get drawn and who holds the weight of responsibility for such a line? Can anyone be truly blameless in war or is everyone at equal rights to blame for the bloodshed? Harper weaves a thread of guilt and shame throughout the entirety of this novel, reminding us that the manner of human life is such that nuance is a necessity and survival is often the only option even in a world like Rome.
*Spoilers Ahead* We are drawn through time with Solina following the death of her mother, carrying the belief that she is truly the last remaining Iceni alive in the world; witnessing her ultimate defeat at the hands of a Roman General, Paulinus; watching her eventual enslavement to Poppaea Sabina, Nero’s wife; and finally her escape and eventual marriage to none other than Paulinus himself – her very captor. I struggle a bit to find the nuance between true devotional love and stockholm syndrome, but I do think Harper does the work necessary to convince the reader that Solina is truly in a headspace to care for the man who ultimately enslaved her, sold her to Nero, and murdered her entire bloodline. It’s hefty to put it all out there like that. This is ultimately why I find myself hemming and hawing on the fence of historical fiction, wondering if there’s truly a place for this genre when the pillage and mass murder of an entire people group at the hands of a brutal colonial empire is tamed to such a degree that we find ourselves in a love story between captor and captive. Does this do justice to the reality of the world? Or are we finding ourselves in an idealized version of history that makes people out to be much kinder, gentler, and more loving than the truth of history might reveal? It’s impossible to know, as we may only speculate upon the truth.
Boudicca’s Daughter held me captive for the entire 400+ pages, at no point did I find myself wanting to stop reading. I found myself roiling with rage over the injustices of the time, watching parallels between ancient Rome and our current world unfold, and simultaneously hoping for a happy ending in which captor and captive might live on forever. It’s well written and beautifully researched, weaving enough real history into the fiction that it feels as though it might as well be true, but again, we have to remember that it also, more than equally, is likely not. This is a struggle I seem to find impossible to ignore. At the end of the day, I enjoyed it for the entertainment value, but felt it could have possessed stronger anti-colonizer themes and less blurred lines between love and insufficient power. All told, it felt worth the week it took me to read it.
Advice : It’s worth mentioning that Boudicca’s Daughter talks extensively about blood, both in battle and in ritual, it discusses sexual assault, PTSD, captivity, forced castration, and suicide. I feel strongly that if you enjoy Outlander, you’ll enjoy this read.
Book: The Book of Lost Hours Author: Hayley Gelfuso Publisher: Atria Books Year: 2025 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Nuremberg, 1938: Eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy is hidden by her father from approaching forces in a mysterious place called the time space, a library where all the memories of the past are stored inside of books. Trapped, she spends her adolescence walking through the memories of those who lived before. When she discovers that government spies are entering the time space to destroy volumes and maintain their preferred version of history, Lisavet sets about trying to salvage the past, creating her own book of lost memories. Until one day in 1949, when she meets an American timekeeper named Ernest Duquesne, who offers her a chance at another life, setting in motion a series of events that puts her own existence – and that of the time space itself – in peril. Boston, 1965: Amelia Duquesne is mourning the death of her uncle and guardian, Ernest, when she’s approached by Moira Donnelly, the head of the CIA’s highly secretive Temporal Reconnaissance Program. Moira tells her about the existence of the time space – accessed only by specially designed watches whose intricate mechanisms have been lost to history – and enlists her help in recovering a strange book her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia enters the time space, she discovers that her uncle may not have been the man she thought – and that the government may have another reason to bring her there.”
Review : Lisavet Levy lives in the Time Space. In the history of time, it seems that no one has ever simply lived in the Time Space – the place outside concrete reality where all memories live and are recorded, where souls who pass go to be placed into books, where our recollection of events are housed. And yet, for over a decade, Lisavet Levy lives within the Time Space. In a world where special watches and only a few select people may generate a doorway into such a sacred place, the governing bodies of countries all across the globe enter and tamper with the Time Space, effectively changing the way people view the world according, literally, to the victor. It’s within the Time Space that Lisavet Levy realizes government agents and soldiers are entering her temporal reality and burning memories, literally destroying the memories of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. In the real world, as a reader, The Book of Lost Hours speaks, at least in part, to the dangers of propaganda and misinformation campaigns. And while we may be in a world without a literal Time Space, nearly one hundred years in the future, the threat of mis (and dis) information looms large. Gelfuso touches on a topic that is near and dear to many of our hearts with her stunning book, reminding us of the importance of preserving the memories of those who perhaps did not fare as well as the victor may have, as we know that indeed, history is written by the victor.
While The Book of Lost Hours is a chilling look into how governing bodies (presidents, say) go about changing and challenging the agreed upon version of events, it is at it’s core a hauntingly beautiful love story that spans not just years and countries, but memories and timelines as well. Lisavet meets Ernest Duquesne in the Time Space and while they court each other in the memories of others, Lisavet begins to change Ernest’s mind about burning and changing the memories of those he’s sent into the Time Space to discard. **Spoilers Ahead** And though Lisavet, as a form of self preservation, must eventually erase all memory of herself and their love from Ernest’s mind, the seed she planted in his mind takes root. By the year 1965, there’s a full-blown revolution occurring within the CIA, even spanning across the globe; soldier’s preserving memories they’d been sent to destroy, thwarting the notion that memories and history must be warped to fit a specific turn of events. Through sheer bad luck and, perhaps, inevitability, Lisavet finds herself captured and under the control of the director of the CIA, Jack, a man who sees her merely as an asset and something to be used to further bolster the American agenda within a growing Cold War. It is outside the Time Space that Lisavet and Ernest meet once again, and again find themselves falling in love – though one of them remembers the past while the other doesn’t.
Jumping between the perspective of Lisavet and Amelia, Ernest’s niece, we piece Lisavet’s story together, from her time within the Time Space to her time spent in the real, concrete world. With several twists and turns that, while easy to spot, don’t detract from the storyline, we navigate a growing divide in the external world and a literal growing chasm in the Time Space, torn apart by Amelia’s mere presence in the world. With just a hint of string theory and quantum physics, The Book of Lost Hours presents a framework whereby we might imagine memories as a collectively agreed upon idea rather than a set in stone foundation of events that well and truly happened. It’s a lot to chew on and offers a unique perspective into the idea of time, memories, and consciousness – all while addressing the very real implications of disinformation. With parallels to our own world, it’s hard to miss the roadsigns. If we aren’t careful, we’ll wrap ourselves up so tightly in a web of lies we’ll never be able to find our way back to the truth again – if we haven’t already.
Advice : This book comes out tomorrow (8/12)!! I think you should grab it. If you enjoy Outlander, time travel of any kind, libraries, and a little bit of science fiction, I think you’ll really love this one. If you’re not interested in a love story, or don’t like books, well, this is probably not for you and what are you even doing on my blog in the first place?
Book: From a Studio in Oakland California : 180 Notes on Existence Author: Enia Oaks Publisher: Self Published Year: 2025 Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “This collection of poems and essays is for those who sit at the crossroads of past and future, wondering which way to turn. Those who have bravely restarted and are building new homes from within themselves. Those who believe in the grand experience of life and living it fully, even when it asks everything of them. Those hurting, healing, or transforming. For the ones who are seeking meaning or a deep exploration of the layers of existence.”
Review : Enia Oak’s debut book, From a Studio in Oakland California : 108 Notes on Existence is not to be read quickly, blown through, or breezed by; it’s made to be savored, slowly devoured, and meditated upon. It does not surprise me one bit to find this book of 108 missives to be a meditation – it’s spiritual in nature. Written in short blurbs, poems, and ideas, FASIOC is filled with logical life advice, imparted wisdom, and personal exploration. It is quite literally packed to the cover with information on how and why and when to grow, on the choices we make as humans, the way we stretch out for someone else to witness our lives, and how we might best look inward to see and gently tend our inner child as fully formed adults.
While Oaks’ synopsis / letter to the reader calls this book a “collection of poems and essays”, I would more likely call this an open letter to someone who’s going through therapy and doing the work to heal. Based on Oaks’ description, I was initially confused by the layout and conversive tone her poems and essays take. They don’t necessarily read as poems, certainly not so when you take the totality of the book under review, but they do read as essays directed toward the reader. Like I said, it reads like an open letter, not like a collection of poems. It really comes down to the naming of the thing, for me – if they weren’t named as poems, I wouldn’t take issue or feel surprised as a reader, but because I was expecting poetry, I found myself a bit taken aback and disconnected as I got into the meat of the book. I do feel that Oaks might have benefitted from a more formal editor / publisher rather than going the self-published route, it’s truly worth mentioning that I have dog eared this book from start to finish. While there are aspects that I feel read in a discordant way, small mistakes, and grammatical errors I wish weren’t included, Oaks has a distinctive point of view that has a place in this world. This book feels important for so many people.
I found Oaks’ work to be most successful in her most experimental forms, where we might call the style a poem (but again, I struggle to view most of these works as poetry), or where the style seems completely unique to the inner workings of Oaks’ mind. Most of the book is written in a direct way to “you”, perhaps at times the reader, perhaps at times the writer, perhaps at times our collective inner child. It’s less a work of interpretation for the reader, and more directions on how to live your life as told by a therapist – of whom Oaks is not, which is worth saying. I found so many pieces of this book aligning with my own lived experience, and while this did not feel profound, it did feel familiar. There were many reasons Oaks’ collection garnered 3.5 stars, but I want to remind you, reader, that that’s more than 50% and I did genuinely enjoy reading this one.
Advice : This book is already available to buy! If you’ve spent time in therapy I suspect you will enjoy this book. If you like a collection of small works that are quick and easy to read at your own pace with no deadline or need to speed your way through, I think you’ll enjoy this.
Book: Five Found Dead Author: Sulari Gentill Publisher: Sourcebooks Year: 2025 Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis : “Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris, hoping for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. Meredith also hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe’s muse awake and he’ll be inspired to write again. And he is; after their first eventing spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. Seems like this trip is just what the doctor ordered… And then some. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin net door has become a crime scene, bathed in blood but with no body in sight. The pari soon find themselves caught up in an Agathy Cirstie-esque murder investigation. Without any help from the authorities and with the victim still not found, Joe and Meredith are asked to join a group of fellow passengers with law enforcement backgrounds to look into the mysterious disappearance of the man in Cabin 16G. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree that leaves five found dead – and one still missing. Now Joe and Meredith must fight once again to preserve their newfound future and to catch a cunning killer before they reach the end of the line.”
Review : It takes a certain level of gumption to write a new take on a famously done murder mystery, possibly none as more culturally known as Murder on the Orient Express, and while I enjoyed much of Five Found Dead, it simply did not live up to Agatha Christie’s famous work. Gentill, to her credit, does much work to lay a foundation wherein her novel would not simply be a retelling, but a fairly meta mystery involving an author, a couple podcasters, and a whole host of law enforcement attempting to sold a crime all while existing within a world in which Murder on the Orient Express might cloud ones perspective of such an incident. It is from this perspective that the entirety of the book ultimately begins to unravel – there are far too many characters, at least a few of whom we rarely interact with; far too much extraneous story-telling happening, some of which does seem to be an attempt at red herring; and far too many details to make this a succinct murder mystery, or really anything that might ever stand up to Christie’s work. And while I think it might be a bit unfair to compare Five Found Dead with Murder on the Orient Express, it’s also exactly what one asks to be done when writing a book about a murder (nay, murders) upon the very Orient Express Christie herself wrote about.
Joe Penvale, a famous murder mystery writer, has undergone an intense period of cancer treatment and upon finding himself in remission, has taken himself and his sister on the trip of a lifetime : a train ride on the famous Orient Express. Gentill managed to set a perfectly cozy scene aboard the train, and after reading her acknowledgments I can clearly understand why, for she herself endured medical treatments and a ride upon the Orient Express. Her understanding of what sets a cozy scene does feel perfectly in line with what I’d like in a murder mystery, even what I’d like within a locked door mystery, but beyond this scene setting, I found the gross majority of the book to be a conundrum. To begin, while Joe and Meredith are twin siblings with a shared family trauma, I found their relationship to be odd and uncomfortable at times. I’m not sure if they were mirrored after a family relationship Gentill has or if they were simply conjured out of thin air, but I did not find believability within their world in the least. If we can look past the strangeness of their written relationship, we find ourselves enmeshed within a world where Covid still has a grip – I was unable to determine during what time frame this story was set and we are given no clues beyond the fact that Covid is still creating new variants. Is there a new variant ravaging the world? Perhaps this was set a few years ago? Or even 2020? It’s unclear and the answer is never given. ***Any further reading will reveal SPOILERS AHEAD*** There is an entire subplot in which we find several passengers have tested positive for a new and deadly variant, a small detour I believe Christie would have used in her own writing, but nonetheless, without more details I found it to be added confusion in a story that is already more confusing than I necessarily agree with.
Upon awakening after their first night aboard the train, Joe and Meredith find that the man in the cabin next to theirs has been murdered or has at least gone missing. What follows is a strange and chaotic 24-48 hours whereby multiple passengers test positive for Covid, five people are murdered, and at we discover that at least seven of the passengers aboard are members of varying international police forces. We encounter so many needless characters that it quickly begins to feel superfluous and needlessly confusing – I suspect in part at least to mimic Christie’s work, but it simply doesn’t play out in a way that lends any ease to the reader. There are so many side trails and intentional red herrings that by the time we do finally unmask our criminal(s) it feels strange, tangled, and frustrating (which, to my mind, is the exact opposite of what you want from a murder mystery reveal). I will say, I was able to determine fairly easily who the man in the cabin next to the Penvale’s actually was, though this does not mean I was able to determine who the killer was. I warned you, here be spoilers. While I won’t reveal the exact nature of the crimes and perpetrators, I will tell you that in the end, it was anticlimactic and disappointing to find the truth. Not to mention, the final chapter reveals an entire podcast episode whereby Gentill undoes much of the convoluted work she’d laid out for us, creating further confusion and disappointment in the ending. I did not find myself pleased with the end result.
Gentill has managed to create a cozy atmosphere aboard the Orient Express, allowing the reader to feel, truly, as if they were on board themselves. Beyond that, however, I found the work to be needlessly convoluted and had to return to past pages to reread sections that didn’t make much sense. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The ending left much to be desired, the second ending even more so, and with a cast of characters limited to those aboard a train, I suspect many readers will be able to sniff out at least one of our criminal elements prior to the “big reveal”. To her credit, Gentill, unlike Christie, has given the reader enough breadcrumbs to figure things out on their own (for the most part) and, even if I didn’t agree with how it all turned out, I do enjoy that aspect of things. All in all, it was fine, I felt cozy, but it wasn’t deeply satisfying or even tremendously challenging. Take that how you will.
Advice : You may find this to be a worthwhile and perhaps even enjoyable read if you love the genre and consume anything you can within it. However, I suspect you will be comparing it to Christie’s works along the way and in that respect, you may not enjoy it at all. It’s 50/50 – maybe check it out from the library before committing to buying. Happy sleuthing!
Paige Reviews Books 