ARC

I Am Made of Death Review

Book: I Am Made of Death
Author: Kelly Andrew
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Year: 2025
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd jobs to help pay his gravely ill mother’s medical bills. When he’s offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas – the hearing child of a Deaf adult – jumps at the opportunity.
But the job is not without its challenges.
A selective-mute, Vivienne Farrow hasn’t said a word in years – not since going missing in Red Rock Canyon when she was four years old. No one knows quite what happened to her out in the dark. They only know that the sound of her voice is now as deadly as a poison. Anyone who hears her speak suffers a horrible death.
Vivienne is desperate for a way to regain control of bother her voice and her body. Because the face staring out of the mirror isn’t hers. It’s something with teeth.
Thankfully, she’s finally found someone who claims to be able to perform a surgical exorcism. She just needs to find a way to get rid of Thomas first. But Thomas can’t afford to walk away, nor is he willing to abandon the mysterious girl he’s falling for, no matter what dark powers threaten to swallow them both whole.”

Review : I Am Made of Death was the perfect antidote for both the book hole I found myself in after finishing The Devils and the disgust I felt over my last unfortunate one star review copy, Anji Kills a King. I needed something to grip me, and I Am Made of Death (IAMOD) did just that. I started and finished IAMOD in just under 48 hours, and had I just a tiny bit more free time available, I would have cut that time way down. Andrew created an absolute page turning, unputdownable read and I am eternally grateful for that.

As a child, Andrew lost her hearing at just 4 years old and it becomes evident throughout this book that Andrew has woven her own story into this dark fantasy, frankly, the personal connection, both to her own hearing loss and to her marriage with a Hearing individual, makes for a super compelling read. Told from the alternating perspectives of both Thomas, 18 year old interpreter for Vivienne Farrow, paid in unspeakably large sums of money by her step-father, Philip, and Vivienne, Thomas’ peer and wealthy heiress to Philip’s fortune who has remained largely unspeaking for most of her adult life. Following a tragic accident in the desert while a toddler, Vivienne has had the uncanny ability to kill with just the sound of her voice, no words necessary. Because of this unfortunate ability, Vivienne has mostly locked herself away, ashamed, afraid of her own voice, and more than anything, afraid of the monster she sees in the mirror. Both metaphor and reality, Vivienne is not merely the body from which a killer voice emerges, but the host to a parasitic demon; a demon who saved her life as a toddler, who continues to save her life as an adult, but for whom the price of existence is murder.

We enter IAMOD to find Vivienne mid-way into the process of entrapping a medical student into performing a highly risky procedure in which he will attempt to surgically remove the supernatural parasite from her body. Unfortunately, Thomas’ ever present self, and how little he knows or understands about the situation, stands between Vivienne and release from the creature who plagues her body and soul. *Spoilers Ahead!* Through the course of the book, told in three parts, we see an ever-diminishing gap between Vivienne’s hatred of Thomas and Thomas’ confusion over Vivienne’s situation. Andrew has written such a perfect foray into the sweetness of first love, it felt both intense and silly all at the same time, I found their quasi-friendship turned love so palpable and enjoyable. Beyond the slow growing love between Thomas and Vivienne, we also find a whole world of occult and magic intermingled with the world of high-stakes finance, law, and even medicine – it makes the somewhat dizzying world Andrew has created feel like maybe, just maybe, it could be part of our world.

Where things took a stumble, however, is in the telling. I can’t get a grasp on whether IAMOD is going to be the first in a series or whether it’s a planned stand-alone novel and that determines how I feel things were wrapped up and explained. If, as I hope, IAMOD is the first in a series, I think Andrew left plenty of room for questions to eventually be resolved and cleared up in a second, or even third, book. There were messy threads left incomplete by the time it was all said and done and as I closed the book I found I had more questions than answers. If this is to be a stand-alone novel, Andrew could have done a much neater job of tying up loose ends and that’s where I struggle with the final rating – there are too many things that went unsaid and too much that needed to be addressed for this to be the end. It’s possible this will be a one-off, but I think that would do a disservice to the characters Andrew has begun to built and a disservice to the broader aspects of the story that were never fully resolved. While IAMOD doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, it almost might as well with how many loose threads Andrew left behind and that’s why I feel this must be the introduction to a bigger world yet to be revealed through a sequel. I guess it’s yet to be seen! Either way, the loose ends as they were, this book was still so compelling, so well written, and so enjoyable that I had no choice but to give it 4 out of 5 stars. I think you’ll understand why when you read it.

Advice : If you enjoy a nail biter, enemies to lovers, dark fantasy, or a sweet first love story, this will definitely be for you!

Anji Kills a King Review

Book: Anji Kills a King
Author: Evan Leikam
Publisher: Tor Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Anji works as a castle servant, doing laundry for a king she hates. So when a rare opportunity presents itself, she seizes the chance to cut his throat. Then she runs for her life. In her was, the kingdom is thrown into disarray, while a bounty bigger than anyone could imagine lands on her head.
On her heels are the fabled mercenaries of the Menagerie, whose animal-shaped masks are magical relics rumored to give them superhuman powers. It’s the Hawk who finds Anji first: a surly, aging swordswoman who has her own reasons for keeping Anji alive and out of the hands of her fellow bounty hunters, if only long enough to collect the reward herself.
With the rest of the Menagerie on their trail, so begins an alliance as tenuous as it is temporary – and a race against death that will decide Anti’s face, and may change the course of a kingdom.”

Review : A couple things to note right off the bat: if you’ve been around for a while you’ll notice that I gave Anji Kills a King the lowest score I’ve ever given – a score I extremely rarely dole out – 1 star. I also want to preface this review by telling you I did not finish (DNF) this book, I made it as far as page 107 (out of 348 in the advanced copy) before I called it quits. I generally try to give a book it’s fair shot by finishing it, and as you’ll note, over the last year I only DNF one other book out of approximately 30 that I received. Anji Kills a King was one of the most upsettingly bad books I’ve attempted to read in quite some time; I chose to DNF and shelve it rather than forcing myself through something I genuinely did not enjoy. Let’s get into it.

After spending years reviewing books online, Anji Kills a King is Evan Leikam’s debut novel and I found it an incredible disappointment to encounter such a poorly written book by a fellow reviewer. Anji Kills a King is being billed as a recommendation for fans of Joe Abercrombie’s work, and as someone who literally just finished a massive tome by Joe Abercrombie, I feel uniquely qualified to say : no. There is simply no universe in which I’d compare Leikam’s writing to that of Abercrombie’s. It is a far, far cry from the dry, witty, enjoyable work of a master talent like Abercrombie, to say the very least. Anji Kills a King begins with, well, Anji killing a king. There’s absolutely nothing to ease us into the story, there’s no lead-up, there’s just Anji, the king, and spurting blood. It’s from the very get-go that we go awry as the pacing absolutely stumbles headfirst through our entry into this fantasy world Leikam has created – and I use the term “created” loosely, as I could hardly tell you what the world was like, I have no idea what it was called, and couldn’t even begin to picture it if I tried. So many aspects of the book feel rushed, almost as though they ended up on the page by mere accident, yet simultaneously we find ourselves trapped in Anji’s inner world for an excruciating amount of time. It makes for a stilted and unenjoyable read from the very first page and doesn’t get better over the next 106 pages, either.

It’s hard to understand why Leikam wrote Anji the way he did, as I found her to be wildly unlikeable. It doesn’t make sense to create a book in which your reader is forced to endure nearly 400 pages with a protagonist who is intolerable to read. Anji is entitled, she’s brash, and she’s incredibly annoying. The annoying aspect is something I’d like to address, because I believe it comes down to poor writing, rather than an intentionally annoying character. Either way, Anji cannot seem to keep her damn mouth shut, and by that I mean Leikam has written dialogue that relentlessly travels the same ground over and over and over, making Anji appear to be dimwitted, though she isn’t written to appear dim outside of dialogue so I have to assume this is the sign of poor dialogue development, and not so much a character trait. The dialogue was so difficult to read I nearly stopped several times prior to page 107, but stubborn me, I wanted to get through it so I could give you a clear idea of the totality of this work – ha!

Sadly, Leikam’s work is not the breakneck fantasy book I was lead to believe it was. Instead, it was intentionally disgusting, not in any way that might have furthered the plot, but in a way that made me feel that Leikam chose to lean on the crutch of foul descriptors and disgusting scenes in order to bring grit to the book he created and instead made this reader feel nausea. Rather than the dark, gritty tone someone like Abercrombie might have achieved through a balance of humor and dry wit, Leikam instead managed to merely create something needlessly gross. With a narrator I couldn’t stand to read, pacing that made no sense, and absolutely no semblance of world building, it’s no wonder that by the time Leikam brutally killed not one, but two animals in his storyline, I closed the book and said “No more.” I couldn’t stomach another page of this truly unenjoyable book. As someone who holds onto the advanced copies they receive, whether good or bad, I hope I can impress upon you exactly how I feel by sharing that this book will go where it belongs : in the recycling.

Advice : If you enjoy Joe Abercrombie’s work, this is not for you. If you like fantasy books that include world building, that paint a picture for you, and that do the work of actually creating systems of magic that actually make sense, this is not for you. Don’t waste your time, it isn’t worth it. Avoid this one at all costs.

The Devils Review

Book: The Devils
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Publisher: Tor Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Holy City, where he is certain a commendation and a divine assignment await him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before hi, it’s a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.”

Review : Weighing in at a whopping total of 547 pages (in the advanced copy), before I’d cracked the spine I assumed The Devils would be slow-going, what I didn’t account for was my own reluctance to finish the book. Joe Abercrombie has crafted one of the single most enjoyable books I’ve had the pleasure to read in longer than I can remember; The Devils was perfection, could I have given it more than 5 stars, I would (being that it’s my own rating system is completely beside the point…I believe Brother Diaz would agree that some things benefit from structure). Abercrombie had me from the word ensorcelment and he didn’t let go until the final word on page 547. There’s a massive book-shaped hole in my life and, full disclosure, I will be filling it with additional Joe Abercrombie works, for surely they are just as excellent as this.

Told through the jumping narration of multiple, though not all, characters, The Devils spans, what I can only assume is, a fairly short amount of time but no shortage of adventure, daring feats, bloody scenes, laugh-out-loud funny dialogue, and is capped off with a dash of romance. Set in a world that feels juuuuuust a little too familiar, Abercrombie has crafted an ingenious fantasy novel that needed so little extra explanation that an entirely new world would beg from a reader, it felt like I was right at home. In a world separated by bickering factions of the church – one lead by a ten-year-old girl as the Pope, the other by a Patriarch, one featuring a wheel, the other a circle – not only was the geography near enough to our world that any differences only served to make me laugh, the morality of the world he’s created feels eerily similar, if not absolutely pointed. We begin The Devils by finding one Brother Diaz, a monk in the service of the Pope, being granted a new post : leader of the Church of Holy Expediency. In a world where the greatest threat to humankind comes in the form of Elf invasion, the church is determined to heal the rift between East and West factions in order to build a solid foundation against humankind’s mortal enemy, who, by the way, is overdue for an invasion that would likely be met with failure rather than success in battle. The Church of Holy Expediency seeks to fight fire with fire – if a war with devils is looming on the horizon, who better to fight devils than the church’s very own band of misfit devils?

The Devils features a cursed knight who cannot die, a jane of all trades, a not-as-decrepit-as-he-seems vampire, a true Scandinavian werewolf, a corpse conducting magician, a semi-invisible elf, and a street rat turned princess. It’s exactly the kind of good time you’d hope from a ragtag list such as this. Tasked, and magically bound, with delivering Princess Alexia (street rat by nature, princess by birth) to the throne of Troy, the crew embarks on a dangerous and bloody adventure, bound only by Papal magic…though, like every good buddy story, friendship and love are not as far off as they may seem. Between Alexia’s many murderous cousins and a leaked copy of the Papal Bull announcing her right to the throne, the crew is met with no shortage of devastatingly gore filled encounters. And YES, this book is incredibly graphic! There are so many fighting, pillaging, and all out scrambling-for-their-very-lives scenes, but…but Abercrombie has deftly wielded the pen, creating humor and humanity with each stroke. I laughed out loud so many times, even in the midst of the Viggo-Wolf ripping limbs and snuffling out the good meat, it was truly a work of art – much unlike the way our beloved Jakob of Thorn, the cursed knight who just cannot die, wields his sword, that is to say, not so deftly.

Intertwined throughout this hilarious, gripping, suspense-filled book we come to find a few profound theological delights. Not only are we told right from the start that these creatures are devils, we’re bombarded with that information throughout every step of the way. Culturally, the world Abercrombie has introduced us to seems to believe that the only people worthy of a soul’s eternal salvation are, well, people. Anyone else is an unrepentant sinner, never mind whether the Viggo-Wolf has been baptized (twice), or whether the cursed knight has spent hundreds of years attempting to earn salvation, or the semi-invisible elf actually yearns for personhood. We find, by the time we reach the final page, that Abercrombie has been tenderly carrying us through to the very heart of his point : that one group of people is not inherently more worthy of salvation than another simply because they were born a certain way. We come to realize that in Abercrombie’s world, the Devils are in fact, no different than the humans. And, while I don’t know this information yet, I suspect humans are really no different than the Elves, either – perhaps even worse.

Bereft. Devastated. Aimless. All words to describe how I feel now that I’ve finished reading The Devils. Absolutely crushed that it’s over. But fear not! Abercrombie has written us a small opening, a thread, if you will. I feel certain that there will be a second book and hopeful that there will be a third after that. While The Devils doesn’t end on a cliffhanger (not so much a spoiler, but hopefully you don’t mind this information), it does end in such a way that makes me want to know more, that has me asking questions that went unanswered, intentionally, I believe, throughout this tome. Like a dark fantasy suicide squad, Abercrombie has a cast of characters who are begging to be put through another gritty adventure and I, for one, cannot wait to read what he comes up with next. I think it’s also worth pointing out that a significant number of the books Abercrombie has written all came in the form of a trilogy, so finger’s crossed!

Advice : The only thing I can really say is that if you really, really, really dislike any mention of blood or guts or gore, you might not enjoy this book. However, if you love witty repartee, a stunning vocabulary, nuanced characters and character arcs, or a buddy comedy, I think you’ll fall as head over heels for The Devils as I did. Put this one on your calendar – May 6, 2025. Preorder it. Trust me.

Give Up the Night Review

Book: Give Up the Night
Author: P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Since becoming Moonstruck on her eighteenth birthday, Wren Nightingale has found herself thrust into a world filled with deception, danger, and murder. Uncovering that their magic was fractured and limited when the original Moonstruck ritual was broken by Selene, Wren is determined to find a way to restore it. But the Elementals are split into two factions – some want the ritual completed and their freedom – and others are so terrified of change that they’re willing to end Wren before she can reach the center of the island where the ritual Selene ruined can be completed.
Between his overbearing father’s arrival, Rottingham delegated him more and more responsibility, and Celeste taking a special interest in him, Lee Young has been struggling to find his own path. As much as Lee wants to take his place in the Moonstruck hierarchy, he knows something’s not right at the Academia de la Luna. He thinks if he can talk some sense into Wren and get her to return to the Academia, that everything will turn out alright.
As Wren and Lee both battle for what they believe is right, they’ll have to uncover who their true allies are…and if they’re even on the same side of this magical fight.”

Review : Dear reader, to be completely honest with you, I’m not sure how I ended up with this early copy. Not only is Give Up the Night a sequel, to a book I didn’t read, mind you, but it’s been co-authored by two people I’m familiar with; if you’ve been here for a little while, you may remember that I reviewed the first and second books in a different trilogy written by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, and if not, you can find them here and here – as an aside, I didn’t realize the earlier of the two reviews was written all the way back in 2021 and now I must sit in shock that I’ve been receiving review copies for four years before I can continue on.

I make a point not to request sequels, and after my last two not-so-kind reviews of the Cast’s work, I’m a little more than surprised to find this book sitting in front of me. I must have made a mistake. Nonetheless, much like last year, my plans for this year include reading and reviewing every advanced copy that comes my way, so I did read Give Up the Night even though I didn’t read Draw Down the Moon, the inaugural book in the Moonstruck trilogy. To their credit, the Casts made it easy for someone to jump in without needing a total refresher of the first book – enough details were organically rehashed by the characters within the first chapter that I didn’t struggle to understand what was happening, despite jumping in at a pivotal moment. However, I do find it difficult to review a sequel without having read the first book, so this review will likely be quite short.

I find the Casts to be adequate writers, and by that I mean they do just fine if you’re not bored with a tired trope, ready for fresh material, or want a truly new, enticing, or compelling story. It’s just fine. Nothing more. I realize this is an advanced copy, but this book was riddled with errors, something I don’t tend to see in the more well put together books I receive – so that’s worth noting. Reading this book had me wondering how much might change between an advanced copy and a first edition; for example, if you have a nonbinary character, it might be worth your time as an author to ensure that you get your own character’s pronouns correct. It might even be worth your time to figure out the pronouns of the magical beings you’ve written into your novel, wouldn’t you think? Rather than jumping around confoundingly between he and she with no real clear reasoning as to why it’s jumping around – no, this is no gender fluid creature, it’s simply poor writing. The storyline matched every damn fantasy storyline you might be familiar with and that felt like an insult to the reader : young woman in a magical world finds herself bestowed with incredible! unbelievable! magical powers after spending time thinking something is wrong with her because her peers are developing their powers as normal while she lags behind; magical creature becomes magically attached to said young woman; young woman becomes marked as special, must go on magical quest to set things right / free everyone / do something spectacular that no one else has ever been able to do before. The “quirky” and “special” angle feels wildly overplayed – I can think of four books without even trying that fit the same mold. It’s overdone.

Lastly, I did find the majority of Give Up the Night to be fairly compelling, inasmuch that I continued to turn pages for a while before I got bored. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a book doesn’t have to be well written to be compelling. Poorly written books with compelling storylines still turn pages. As we neared the ending of this book, however, things took a turn. The clear-cut narrative turned muddled, the geography became redundant, and the quest the characters found themselves on turned on it’s head in a way that made no clear sense. It felt like writing for the sake of wrapping up a book with a wild and crazy twist, not like something necessary to the storytelling at all. It was all a ploy to introduce book 3, which is fine, but not for me. Anyway, like I said…this book was fine. No more.

Advice : If you’re familiar with the Casts’ work already and enjoy it, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Give Up the Night. If you’re not or you’re looking for something that doesn’t read like a watered down Fourth Wing…try again. This one won’t be for you.

The Distractions Review

Book: The Distractions
Author: Liza Monroy
Publisher: Regalo Press
Year: 2025
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Mischa Osborn spends her days as a ProWatcher – keeping distracted people on task and lonely ones accompanies – from her Brooklyn Mega-building, while eating Petri-Meat Steax and working out with her favorite personal trainer, a straight-talking algorithm named Tory.
Her carefully constructed, isolated existence is suddenly upended by a chance realspace encounter with a HighlightReel celebrity, Nicolas Adan Luchano. On their first date, hiking in Kuulsuits and watching DroneBeez pollinate flowers, Mischa experiences a brief but intense realspace connection.
Mischa takes to relentlessly watching Nic onReel. As Mischa’s ReelWatching spirals into an all-consuming obsession, and even realspace stalking, Mischa takes increasingly desperate measures to be seen and valued, sucking others into her vortex of obsession until she completely loses control.
Meanwhile, someone is equally obsessed with Mischa, tracking her every move and perhaps even influencing her choices.
A tale of how technology enables obsession, envy, and unrelenting comparison, told through an eccentric cast of interconnected characters, The Distractions invites us to reflect on who we are watching, and why.”

Review : Liza Monroy’s The Distractions asks what might happen if our lives became nothing more than content for others to watch, taking our current reality several steps beyond where we find ourselves in 2025. Set in some kind of ambiguous future – is it one hundred years, two hundred, a thousand? – The Distractions is an imagining of where our lives might take us if things were simply not to deviate from where they are in the present. In a world where we are constantly attached to our phones, where smart homes, smart watches, smart glasses, and self-driving cars are becoming more and more the norm, it’s not hard to see where Monroy’s concept was born. Mischa, our protagonist, spends years consumed with obsession, literally (no, really) losing herself to the endless succession of constantly streamed video feeds of the objects of her ever-worsening obsession. I think it’s worth noting that The Distractions reads like an addiction spiral and if you’ve found yourself in that space, this may not be the right book for you.

I’ll be the first to admit that dystopian fiction is not my favorite, to put it lightly. I wasn’t completely clear on just how dystopian this book would be until I really got into the meat of it – I knew it would be futuristic as it begins with five pages filled with verbiage necessary to understanding the world Monroy has crafted. Five. It’s a task for any author to fully create a functioning and understandable world, and while this is something I encounter more regularly in the realm of fantasy, Monroy gave herself quite the task with this book. I do think she succeeded in creating a reality that I was able to easily understand after I spent the first chapter flipping back and forth between her compendium of terms and the page I was reading. Once I got into the novel, I was able to seamlessly grasp the terms and concepts as they’re just not that far off from where we are these days and the terms we have in our common vocabulary. I will say, I found this to be less speculative and more progressive, if that makes sense! There was so little imagining of the future and truly so much speeding up from where we are – the understanding is that as a society we only evolve through technology and rampant consumerism and all the rest we just learn to live with. Like most dystopian novels, it was flat out sad.

The Distractions amplifies a world we already find ourselves living within and with an uptick in people considering leaving social media or seeking out other sources of connection, I think Monroy did herself a disservice by choosing not to be speculative. Speaking of the landscape in California, Monroy tells us that everything is on fire these days – the timing of this book feels potent; of the air quality and heat index, one can only step outside while wearing a protective suit and most choose to stay inside instead; of food, we see Mischa et al consuming lab grown “meat” and cricket powders; of bird populations, well, there aren’t any. It’s all so reminiscent of our current reality that as things do change and progress and we, ideally, evolve beyond our need to consume at all costs, I think The Distractions will, at least in small part, become irrelevant and that’s a tough thing for a dystopian futuristic novel. And I don’t think I’m being overly optimistic here, but maybe I am. I just tend to expect that the current and immediate future generations will find ways to connect with each other outside of online spaces, particularly as our online spaces take a turn for the worse.

Where this book fell flat for me, is in the functional flow of the narration and the content within. While written well and given appropriate pacing, particularly as we witness Mischa losing literal years of her life, it felt as though it wasn’t a fully thought out concept outside the actual obsession that comprised 85% of the book. Monroy initially describes Mischa as preferring to keep to herself, to not engage with other humans, and to appropriately divvy up her time. However, the downward spiral into obsession came on quickly, as though this wasn’t the first time it happened, and the inability to even see glimpses of Mischa’s past life felt off. I realize the nature of addiction looks different to everyone, but it felt incomplete, as if we were missing crucial details about Mischa’s life prior to beginning the book. Likewise, the ending of the book was a convoluted, confusing mess that left me wondering why it was written the way it was. I was left with questions that might have served as intriguing methods of concluding the book but instead grew tangled the more Monroy attempted to explain them. It didn’t feel neat, it felt needlessly messy; I can be completely content with messy if it’s purposeful and intentional and meets the standard of the entirety of the book, but this was not that. Finally, yes, Mischa was being watched the entire time, we know this because there’s a second narrator, but the finale (and the back of the book) make this narrator out to be much more sinister than they came across in our time spent with them – and I found the details of just how this being watched Mischa to be convoluted and confusing at best. There’s so little explanation for the voyeur that it almost felt like I wasn’t meant to question it, but of course I did because there was no explanation…you see my problem?

Ultimately, this was an interesting concept that reminded me at times of the movie Wall-E and at times of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I could go on for many more paragraphs about the implications of AL (advanced algorithms in The Distractions), the ethics presented in this book, of autonomous artificial intelligence, and our perceived humanity within the complex matrix of technology, but I’ll leave it here. The Distractions was interesting and clearly fleshed out in ways I will never be able to grasp, but it felt incomplete and perhaps even unnecessary, or at least I can hope. And maybe that’s all that can really be said about a dystopian novel, at the end of the day. It makes you hope and wish for a better future, and this book certainly did that for me.

Advice : If you, like me, aren’t the biggest fan of dystopian fiction, if you prefer speculative fiction, or you’re horrified by the idea of AI or social media taking over our lives, this may not be for you. If you enjoy the ethics and philosophy behind all of the above, you may just well love this one.

We Could Be Rats Review

Book: We Could Be Rats
Author: Emily Austin
Publisher: Atria Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal. Having always resisted the idea of “growing up” and the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend, Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Sigrid was never close with her older sister, Margit, who is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.
Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past, from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to losing Greta’s friendship amid the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.
What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters fingering their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakeable bond.”

Review : Before I dive into We Could Be Rats (WCBR), I would be remiss not to discuss some content warnings. Something I appreciated a great deal about Austin is that she included a singular content warning at the start of the book, a small blurb letting the reader know that suicide would be discussed. But, we can’t simply leave it at that. WCBR does not merely bring up the mention of suicide, it is an entire book about suicide; likewise, it more than mentions domestic violence – within varying familial structures. There are both discussions of and visceral scenes depicting traumatic triggers, discussions of opioid addiction, mental health struggles beyond the aforementioned suicide, sexual assault, and threats of public violence.

WCBR is not merely a stunning work of fiction by Austin, it is at times a funhouse of mirrors, frequently nostalgic, and wildly relatable all in one turn. Not content to simply give us a story, Austin has crafted a well-timed mind fuck of a novel (I think you’ll pardon my language after you read this instant hit). Told in thirds, Austin challenges the reader to steep themselves deeply within a broth of empathy through many, so, so many suicide note attempts through Sigrid’s lens, read as though through the eyes of her older sister, Margit. We spend the majority of WCBR weaving through thinly veiled confessions, dodging twists and turns thrown into the mix with the deft hand of a creative writing genius – I don’t use that term lightly. There were moments, moments I won’t even begin to describe for fear of giving too much away (perhaps to tempt you further to adding this one to your list of books this year), where I found myself skeptical of Austin’s writing, unsure of how her writing fit with the narrative I was being told to believe – enough so that I considered giving this book a 4 out of 5 stars. But then…well. Things changed.

The remaining two thirds of the book are told from the perspective of Margit and Sigrid, respectively. As the story unfolds in the most miraculously unpredictable and loping manner, we bare the honor of witnessing just how alike the two sisters are, despite a lifetime of misunderstanding, growth in opposite directions, and their shared trauma. Without realizing how intertwined their lives have been, Margit and Sigrid find their feet falling into step before they can even recognize what’s happening. Margit, the classic older sister, the protectress and truly the only adult-like figure in Sigrid’s life, finds comfort in caring for others in her own way – perhaps to the detriment of those she aims to care for. Sigrid, on the other hand, finds herself adrift, floating through life like a bird in a sea of monkeys, despite dreams and desires, taking a backseat to the hopelessness and despair of life in a deeply conservative small town struggling with an opioid crisis.

Austin weaves a palpable sensation of otherness into WCBR, I found myself slipping off the human realm of Paige the reader, sidling into Sigrid’s imaginative mindscape with ease. Sigrid feels deeply relatable to me, though I’m not sure this will be universally felt, as a twenty-year-old with no plan or idea for the future. Sigrid writes at times about not knowing yet who she is, of sliding into versions of the self that others wear, trying each on to see what fits best, slipping into the skin of those who know themselves and in doing so attempting to discover who she might be as well. At its core, WCBR is a story about the threads of family trauma that burrow into the lives of those whose lives are intimately touched by it, the threads that tie us to each other, and the ways in which we exist in the world as part of a whole because of, or in spite of them.

Austin asks us to move through the tangible grief within WCBR to see the beacons of light she’s offered in the sacred space of shared humanity. She doesn’t tug at us to touch these spaces, rather, as she gently guides us through we find that we cannot help but brush against them. The light seeps through no matter how hard we try to ignore it. And in doing so, we may just find our own shared connections with Sigrid and Margit – a tiny parcel of humanity of our own.

Advice : I wish you well on your journey into We Could Be Rats. I say so confidently because I feel so strongly that you should read this book. It’s beautiful, it flows well and reads quickly, and it’s an important story whose aspects will likely reach each reader in completely different ways. Add this one to your list.

How We Heal Review

Book: How We Heal
Author: La June Montgomery Tabron
Publisher: Disruption Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “From a vivid portrait of her childhood in 1960s Detroit to her leadership of one of the world’s largest philanthropic institutions, La June shares her full-circle, American story – a coming-of-age journey where she gains a firsthand understanding of how systemic racism prevents our children and communities from thriving and learns about the transformative role healing can play in helping all of us transcend the legacy of racial inequity.
As she rises to her position as the first female and first African American leader of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, La June experiences the power of sharing and listening with empathy. And with the help of mentors and colleagues, she refines the message that will guide the foundation’s mission for years to come : Healing can begin only with truth telling.
Empowered by the mission set forth by its founder to support children and families, the foundation explores a racial healing framework that transforms communities and individuals around the world – from small rural towns and big cities across the United States, including La June’s own beloved Detroit, to Mexico, Haiti, and beyond.
How We Heal serves as a testament to the power of transformation and a blueprint for how each of us, no matter who we are or how we lead, can use racial healing to move from trust to empathy, from understanding to repair – one conversations and one connection at a time.”

Review : Whew. That’s a heck of a synopsis, isn’t it? And though How We Heal is a mere 212 pages long (in ARC form), much like the back-cover synopsis, it packs a lot into those 200-odd pages. While La June spends time detailing what her childhood was like growing up in Eastside Detroit both prior to and after the Detroit Rebellion in 1966, it’s worth noting that the majority of the book describes in detail the work she has and continues to do at the W.K. Kellogg foundation, first as COO and currently as CEO, among other titles. How We Heal is less about La June herself and more about the work that’s been facilitated through the Foundation and through the people who have been impacted by the Foundation’s charitable worn. While the start of the book engages the reader as, perhaps not strictly memoir, but more so memoir adjacent, it’s worth knowing before you dive in that it is decidedly not a memoir.

La June, a direct descendant of Isaiah Thornton Montgomery, the founder of the Reconstruction era town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, describes the pitfalls and structures of power imbalance that have served to create racial imbalances and divides throughout the United States. And while she would have every right to broach this topic with hate-laced accusations and pointed fingers, La June instead describes what she calls the empathy deficit to explain much of what has stunted racial equity and growth, if not rolled back progress entirely. Rather than assuming that the growth of opportunities and formulation of protections around basic human rights might take all of the above away from those who are not Black or Hispanic or Asian or Indigenous, empathy reminds us that we are all worthy and capable of having access to spaces of growth, stable and safe housing, and quality job opportunities with good wages. When racial equity exists, when we find ourselves within diverse communities, studies show time and time again that we all thrive. It isn’t an us vs them narrative presented within How We Heal, it is very much so the opposite, with La June asking us to imagine a world in which our country outgrows its flawed beginnings and continuous, subsequent failings. As La June says “…through inclusivity, we could make the table bigger.” (How We Heal)

Detailing her decades of work at the Kellogg Foundation, La June describes how the Foundation transformed from a world in which race was an unmentionable topic to a world in which the Kellogg foundation runs multiple racial healing circles throughout the world in order to bridge divides between any number of groups of people. Describing the necessary work at play within the Foundation’s days in the early 2000s as it began to transition into a space that directly addressed racial divides and inequity, a member of the board of trustees, Joe Stewart said (paraphrased by Montgomery Tabron) “Either work to fulfill the dreams of everyone in this nation or tear down the Statue of Liberty.” Because we come from a country whose very foundation was built on the backs of enslaved people and Indigenous massacre, we cannot simply step into the realm of reconciliation without actively addressing the root problems, working toward transformation, and find ways to unite. Enter : TRHT, or Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation – a project created by those working within the Kellogg Foundation to bring spaces of true healing into diverse communities impacted by racism, a history of redlining, systemic poverty, gun violence, even apartheid. Racial healing circles are designed based on Indigenous practices worldwide and TRHT has been facilitating circles of healing, understanding, and equity for decades, attempting to reach as many people as possible. When it comes to a blueprint for healing, this is it. La June shares so many stories of positive impact within these racial healing circles, it feels almost hard to believe at times. Rather than creating spaces where fingers are pointed and injustices are gripped tightly to, racial healing circles exist to create spaces of radical transformation through understanding and forgiveness. When we are able to fully hear and see where those who have different lived experiences than us are coming from, we can begin to repair something that began as fundamentally broken.

While How We Heal read at times like a proposal for a board meeting, it was deeply informative, well researched, and concise. It laid out a foundation for our path forward, it did more than present the scary facts and figures, it laid out the work the Kellogg Foundation has been doing for a century to combat those figures – going even further to explain how individuals and groups around the globe could be (and have been) taking steps of their own using the very blueprint the Kellogg Foundation uses to create radical healing where it’s so desperately needed. It’s encouraging to me to read a book like this, particularly as we see racial divides deepening, knowing that healing has a way forward. It can and does exist. There’s hope here. And that’s something you can’t buy – or maybe you can, in the form of this book. I found myself crying multiple times during my reading of this book – the stories of hope, forgiveness, healing, and transformation are incredibly moving. It’s well worth the read.

Advice : I think this is a worthwhile read for anyone who is genuinely interested in seeing healing take place on a global scale, anyone who lives in cities with racial disparities (that’s most of us!), or anyone who’s interested in a new take on an old problem. You’re going to want to read this one.

Murder at Gulls Nest Review

Book: Murder at Gulls Nest
Author: Jess Kidd
Publisher: Atria books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “I believe every one of us at Gulls Nest is concealing some kind of secret.
1954: When letters from Frieda, her dependable former novice, stop arriving, Nora Been asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in one of Frieda’s letters, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a boarding house filled with lively characters.
A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests. But when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest, it’s time to ask whether a dark past can ever really be left behind.”

Review : If ever there was a book (and book cover, for that matter) for me, Murder at Gulls Nest is it. As a lifetime lover of Agatha Christie and a familiar soul in the mystery section of the bookstore, Gulls Nest called to me immediately. It’s worth noting that this book is being marketed as the first in a series – I couldn’t be happier to hear it! And now that I’ve devoured this one, sadly, the wait begins for book two. Jess Kidd has crafted a perfectly cozy, wonderfully intriguing, and marvelously enjoyable whodunit, complete with an amateur sleuth hell bent on doing her own thing, potentially because she’s simply better at this than the actual detectives on the case; a small town filled with interesting characters and all manner of crime; and the back-and-forth, will they / won’t they banter between our protagonist and the town’s slightly cinematic, slightly heroic, slightly overworked detective inspector. What isn’t there to love?

Nora Breen, formerly Sister Agnes, has left her post at the convent, released her vows, and joined the outside world as a middle aged woman with a head for solving puzzles and an interest in what life outside the habit and wimple might actually entail. Kidd has created such whit within Nora’s character, rounding her out and giving depth to someone we’ll spend an entire book alongside – it made for a truly enjoyable and unputdownable book. Nora, following in the footsteps of her friend and former novice, Frieda, is bound and determined to find out what’s going on. Similarly to Nora, Frieda has recently entered the outside world as someone other than a nun, however unlike Nora, Frieda did so for medical reasons. Being afflicted with some kind of heart and lung condition, Frieda was advised to take to the sea, for the brisk and salty air were a balm for her condition. Upon arriving at Gulls Nest, a boardinghouse complete with mysterious long-term boarders and rife with gossip, Frieda begins to fulfill the singular promise she made to Nora when she left : she wrote a letter a week to tell of her new adventure. When Frieda’s letters stop arriving, Nora knows something has gone terribly wrong. Despite her best efforts to convince her Mother Superior that Frieda would never simply break a promise and stop writing, the consensus (among nearly every person she encounters throughout the book) is that Frieda is out living her life, no need to worry. Nora disagrees, and being someone who sees connections where others might not, she knows she cannot sit back and allow her friend to be in potential danger. So she leaves.

** Spoilers Ahead **

It would be difficult to review this book without giving SOME spoilers away, but don’t fret! I promise I won’t tell you who did it, you’ll have to read it for yourself to find out.

Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, under the guise of a former nurse (which, in fact, she was), with a small stipend, a few hand-me-down dresses, and all the gumption in the world. She begins to casually insert herself into the lives of her fellow boarders at Gulls Nest, having rented the room that once belonged to her friend. She reveals her mission to the local detective inspector, one Inspector Rideout, and causes much damage to the police station by way of a thrown shoe – or two. Something I loved immediately about how Nora was written was that not only did we find her grappling with life in the outside world after several decades of life in a convent, we immediately get to know her as so much more than a former nun and nurse. From making friends with the gull who likes to hang out on her windowsill (who she affectionately names Father Patrick Conway, after the priest who saw her through her own novice), to mild harassment of the local police force, to completely ignoring Inspector Rideout’s assessment of her missing friend, to smoking cigarettes just to do it, to riding in fast cars because it was purported to be an enjoyable aspect of life, there is no shortage of facets to our lively protagonist; Nora is a force all her own.

Unlike Sherlock Holmes or even Hercule Poirot, Nora Breen is not indescribably smarter than the average reader – something I enjoy a great deal in a murder mystery. We are given the chance, as readers, to take in just as much information as our protagonist does, meaning we have every opportunity to solve this murder for ourselves. Or maybe I should say murders. Once Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, believing she’s there to solve the case of her missing friend, two more boarders end up dead, most certainly murdered. I was grateful to find that while I did, in fact, solve the murder a little more quickly than our Nora, I didn’t solve it right away or even without much reading. I made it through a good portion of the book before I came to any kind of conclusion, having jumped between several theories at different times and that feels like the making of a good, classic whodunit. We get to be the amateur detective here and that’s something I’ll always appreciate – no missing or hidden clues from the reader, no information we couldn’t possibly have known, just pure and simple, straightforward sleuthing for clues, compiling information, and attention to detail.

Kidd has done an excellent job with her first installment in the Nora Breen Investigation series and I look forward to additional mysteries to come! This is clearly not her first rodeo, having written several book prior to this. The layout flowed well, the pacing made sense, and though it was written in the present tense, which is not my favorite, though the fact that this post is written largely in the present tense is not lost on me, it read easily and without confusion. The fact that I didn’t solve the mystery right off the bat, that I became invested in the whole cast of characters, and that I was sad when it ended and I wasn’t able to order book two immediately all make this a great read in my humble opinion.

Advice : If you enjoy a good mystery, this is going to be a must read for you! This book is for anyone who enjoys Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, or any of the classics. You’re going to love it, I just know it.

Wooing the Witch Queen Review

Book: Wooing the Witch Queen
Author: Stephanie Burgis
Publisher: Bramble
Year: 2024
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing : to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.
When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a bit strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin burn, well…
Little does Saskia know that the “wizard” she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast-growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he’s in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?”

Review : Wooing the Witch Queen was a cute, quick romantasy-ish book about two people who are ultimately misunderstood by those around them. I call it romatasy-ish because while it is a fantasy and it’s being published under Bramble, a romance novel imprint of Tor Books, the actual romance aspect of this book was…light. I think if this were a movie it might be rated PG-13 for implied nudity; the romance aspect of the book was mild, took the entire book to develop, and was about as closed-door as it gets without actually being a closed-door romance, take that how you will!

Outside the actual romance of the novel, which the synopsis seems to more than imply is the majority of the book, the actual plot of Wooing the Witch Queen centers around Saskia’s immediate threat to the throne she stole from her uncle – largely from her neighbors, seemingly under the order of the Archduke Felix.

** Warning, spoilers ahead! **

Being as quick as this read was, there’s very little I could say here that wouldn’t be a fairly immediate spoiler, so let’s just dive into it. What Saskia, or the rest of the surrounding kingdoms for that matter, doesn’t know is that Felix is simply a figure-head, someone who has been held prisoner, who has no formal diplomatic training, and who has no say in what his kingdom does or doesn’t do. On the night his traitorous family is poised to murder him and turn him into a martyr, Felix makes an escape to the only Imperial who has been able to hold off his in-laws : Saskia. Wearing what he doesn’t realize is the cloak of a dark wizard, Felix escapes while donning a swooping hooded cape. When he arrives at Saskia’s court, she assumes he’s a dark wizard answering her call for a temporary laborer to arrange her magical library. Without allowing Felix to get a word in edgewise, Saskia hires him and permits him to wear a mask – something that is, apparently, typical for dark wizards.

The remainder of the book follows this path : Felix bumbles his way through his task, only capable of organizing a magical library because he’s only ever been allowed to participate in the arts, Saskia falls for his gentle personality, and no one seems to be any wiser until he finally reveals himself to her at the end of the book. Ultimately, I found this story to be mildly cute but of no great importance or need to be told, the romance was more actually romantic than what you might expect out of a romance novel, and Felix’s character is written like the reversal of every female protagonist written by a man – deeply hard to believe, full of strange character traits that sound more like a woman who didn’t have any diversity in her beta readers, and not all that interesting when it’s all said and done.

Finally, I found the plot to be thin and weak, Felix’s background was never fleshed out, and I found myself with questions I didn’t ultimately find answers to. I think the trouble with writing a fantasy novel is you have to create a story that’s compelling enough that the reader finds themselves willingly reading about the politics of a world that is wholly made up – if you create a world the reader isn’t invested in, there’s then no incentive for them to involve themselves with the minutiae. Sadly, Burgis did not succeed in compelling me to care about the politics of the world she crafted and so during moments of political discourse (which comprised a good deal of the book), I found myself bored and uninterested. I was never given the chance to become invested in the world when the book moved so quickly and never fully explained the main characters backgrounds in a way that felt satisfactory. Overall, this book was fine.

Advice : If you pick up any romantasy you can get your hands on, maybe this will be for you! If you prefer more romance, more fantasy, more everything…well, maybe this isn’t going to be the one. It might be worth checking out from your local library.

Scrap Review

Book: Scrap
Author: Calla Henkel
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Year: 2024
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Recently dumped and stuck with the mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn down the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi’s husband, Bryce, trace the Duncan’s twenty-five-year marriage. The conditions : Esther must include every piece of paper she’s been sent, must sign and NDA, and must only contact Naomi using the burner phone provided. Otherwise, she’ll spoil the surprise.
As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the nearly two hundred books of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family – until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously. When Esther becomes convinced the husband killed her, she uses the scrapbooks’ trove of information to insert herself into the Duncan’s lives to prove it. But the more Esther investigates, the further she is dragged back to the scorched earth of her own past in the art world.
Laced with pitch-black humor and conspiratorial unease, Scrap is a razor-sharp examination of wealth and power, art and truth, of the line between justices and revenge – and who gets to cross it.”

Review : Sigh. Dear reader, I have struggled with how to write this review. In fact, this is my second try – my first felt…not quite right. I think the struggle I find with reviewing this book is, as I sit down to do this I find that I have reviewed this book before. And before you say anything, no I don’t mean you can scroll back and find Scrap reviewed in the annals of this blog, what I mean to say is this :

In the realm of thriller novels featuring a female narrator, there’s a pretty standard outline whose basic structure is as follows : a woman with some level of mental instability witnesses or becomes aware of some kind of crime; she attempts to investigate on her own despite a crumbling foundation of stability and awareness; she attempts to bring the crime to light by sharing what’s going on with the people in her life and / or the police; her credibility is questioned, maybe laughed at, never believed; she continues to investigate despite all logic saying otherwise; she finds herself in a stick situation where she very well might die; somehow, miraculously, she is saved from impending doom, the criminals are put behind bars, and her credibility is restored at least in part; the book ends.

Sound familiar? I’ve said it before and it remains true, you could head to your nearest bookstore, plant yourself in front of the thriller section, close your eyes, and grab a book at random and find the exact scenario outlined above in a good percentage of the modern thrillers you’d find on the shelf. In fact, this idea is so not unique to me, a mini series was made based on this exact premise : The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. We’re being handed novel after novel after novel (written by different authors) all with the same regurgitated outline and being asked to be okay with it. Frankly, I’m not.

I wanted Scrap to be different; I hoped it would be unique. It was, sadly, not.

Henkel begins the novel by creating a world in which I cannot trust the storytelling right off the bat, by telling the reader that Esther and her now ex fiancé lived in a mountain cabin on 5 acres of land near Asheville, NC they bought for a whopping $110,000. Read that again. Now, I’m not sure what world Henkel lives in, where anything in the Asheville area would cost as little as $110,000, let alone a cabin with a garage slash workspace big enough to host a yoga class in, or say, 200 some boxes of papers for scrapbooking, on ANY acreage, but it certainly isn’t our 2024 world. Or our 2023 world. Or our 2022 world. And, while Esther is not reduced to the wine guzzling woman we so regularly see in these books, she does have a crumbling foundation, one foot barely grounded in reality as she binges true crime podcast after true crime podcast ad nauseam, working herself into an over exaggerated sense of justice.

We find Esther so hyped up by the idea that the police either can’t or won’t do their jobs that throughout the novel she comes to see herself as some kind of vigilante carrying out justice for those who might not otherwise see it served. As she begins to deep dive investigate the death of her employer, she begins to refer to herself as a podcaster, despite not even remotely having a podcast, spiraling further and further out of control. I found Scrap to be difficult to read at times, in a secondhand embarrassment kind of way, cringing at the lengths Esther would willingly go to, seemingly without any sense of self awareness, to find the so-called answers she was seeking. It was difficult to find myself wanting to continue to pick this book up.

I don’t think this book requires a long, drawn out review diving into the meaning of the book. It fit the outline I mentioned above, it was filled with plot holes (particularly at the end), and it was wholly unoriginal.

Advice : If you really, really enjoy thrillers, you just might like this one. If you like a queer FMC, a slow descent into madness, or the idea of an idyllic hippy village where you have to go down a mountain for wi-fi, you might just find yourself getting sucked into this one. If, however, you prefer something that makes you think, something that you can’t see coming a mile away, this is probably not going to be the one for you. And that’s okay.