Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews

A funny, sad, and uplifting memoir of chasing dreams, getting lost, and finding yourself in LA

Can you come of age in middle age? While that typically might be the domain of young adults, Jenny Noa makes it her own in this heartfelt and humorous memoir of loving and letting go in Los Angeles.

While she has been hoping—and honestly, expecting—to make it big in Los Angeles as an actor, it never quite worked out that way. Instead, Noa spent much of her time caring for a terminally ill husband, getting sacked from her job and searching for another, and struggling to understand why the acting roles she had envisioned for herself since childhood still seem so far away. Where had the years of auditions, acting classes, day jobs, and small stage performances gotten her?

In a series of wide-ranging essays and “Bit Parts” that bookend her time in Los Angeles, Noa bares her heart, her soul, her mental health diagnosis, and her unfailing sense of comedy in Bad Dreams: Notes on Life and Los Angeles by a Would-Be Has Been.

Early life lessons at home and school rewarded being quiet and not needing anything to the point where grown up Noa isn’t sure she knows how to speak up for herself, although she does a heroic job speaking up for her husband during his illness. Navigating young widowhood and Hollywood is grueling, and yet Jenny presses on, until she doesn’t.

Unpacking years of trying to be as small and invisible as possible while also desperately hoping to be seen and valued for being special, Noa’s accounting of life in Los Angeles includes honest reckonings of her growing-up years and how their influence has boomeranged through her life.

She is also candid in the way her husband Mark showed her how special she was to him, and her struggles to adjust to being a “newlywid.” Noa’s writing is uniquely aligned with creative life in Los Angeles, too: what does special even look like when there are thousands of others chasing the same role?

With age comes wisdom, they say, and Noa could fill the backyard of the rented home she lovingly describes with all she has learned. Hers is more than a memoir; Bad Dreams is a lifeline for those arriving at that same crossroads. What happens when it appears the life you planned for yourself isn’t panning out, and why? Noa’s conversational writing style is charming and disarming, which makes her essays hit hard and stick with you, yet she never leaves the reader there. She always offers a hand up at the end.

The tight focus of some of these pieces keeps the reader at arms length at times, but the “Bit Parts” are a nice chaser after some of the heavier essays. Noa is nothing if not tender, sincere, and genuinely funny. Her story of searching for creative accomplishment and inner calm in Los Angeles will leave you rooting for her success in her next chapter (and a sequel, I hope).

Thank you for reading Amy Brozio-Andrews’s book review of Bad Dreams by Jenny Noa! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Erin Britton

An explosive sci-fi thriller where magic and technology collide with devastating consequences

A Stellar Spy mixes espionage tension with the intrigue of near-future galactic exploration and the wonder of magic in this compelling tale of double agents, vengeful mages, and corrupt politicians.

A Navasi mage has attacked the Rose Palais, seat of the Rulani government, marking it with a cerulean blue shimmer that exposes the planet’s vulnerability. “I stare at the brilliance as it slices through the night, an illuminated sigil telling me everything’s changed.” Tessa Daevana—ex-wife of Premier Finn Daevana and mother of his two children, Morgana and Sage—rushes to the scene.

Tessa’s desperation to find out what has happened is certainly due to concern about her family, but it’s also due to duty. She’s the Planetary Security Counselor and is responsible for the safety of the regime and its figurehead. Despite this, Tessa has no desire to be swept up in the thirst for vengeance that is sure to consume Rula. “Save me from the bloodlust, the hawkishness, the need to punch back ten times harder.”

Of course, Tessa has to keep the reason for her reticence secret from those around her—she’s a sleeper agent for Elitha, a rival planet, “home to a host of unchipped Navasi, who have been taught to control their powers.” Every aspect of her cover has been planned to perfection, even her drab home. “Like every other facet of my life, it’s curated to portray a certain lifestyle, a certain milquetoast vegetable of a person.” And it’s worked well so far.

However, the attack on the Rose Palais prompts Finn to consider implementing Operation Paradoxum, a “way to destroy the magic of unchipped Navasi on the planet.” It’s supposed to be a doomsday plan to prevent planetary collapse, not a means of revenge against a lone attacker, and it has the potential to spread to other planets and effect chipped Navasi too, including Tessa.

The situation places her in an impossible position. “I stand on a precipice, under which roils a river of magma.” Tessa knows she needs to protect the Navasi throughout the Human Consortium, but she also still loves Finn and wants to safeguard their children. Which way will she leap from the precipice?

Maya Darjani has crafted a universe in the not-so-distant future that is both delightfully fantastical and recognizably human. A great deal of thought has clearly gone into the backstory of the Human Consortium, which was formed “after humanity escaped the gravitational well of Gaia and stumbled its way to interplanetary civilization.”

Such details establish the background to the story well and ensure that a certain sense of realism and logical technological progression is maintained throughout. The worldbuilding in terms of the individual planets is also richly detailed and convincing. For instance, “Rula’s a planet of ash and regolith, of granite and basalt. Indestructible like polymer, but as volatile as lava.” This makes it easy to imagine the environments that the characters face.

Darjani also ensures that the unusual combination of chimerical magic and technological innovation seems organic and flows throughout the story. While both are woven into the fabric of life on Rula, magic is strictly controlled—save for the escapades of the occasional would-be assassin—whereas technology is abundant. Amusingly, the latter even facilitates multilevel marketing: “Buy one, get the second half off on NanoImprove smoothies!”

On a more serious note, despite being the subject of far less suspicion than magic, Darjani stresses that technology can be equally dangerous. From the REALM machine—the gateway to a highly advanced virtual reality environment—found in every home hosting meetings between spies and their handlers to Operation Paradoxum comprising “a technological virus with an activated biological component,” there is peril lurking everywhere.

And then there’s all the espionage and counterespionage. A Stellar Spy is just as much a spy thriller as it is a sci-fi novel, and Darjani provides plenty of detail about the spycraft of the future. From clandestine meetings to dead drops to covert listening devices, all the key aspects of the spy genre are present, albeit in more advanced forms. There are also a few tongue-in-check nods to the classics: “Covert Ops 101, always keep blackmail material, even if you plan on never using it.”

As for the main spy, Tessa is certainly good at what she does, although she doesn’t like it. She ditched her handler and got out of the game years ago, assimilating into her fate life on Rula as best she can, but her conscience pulls her back in following the attack on the Rose Palais. “I have to make a choice. Protect my family, or prevent a war crime.” This sense of conflict permeates the story, adding to the tension.

Darjani provides real insight into Tessa’s thoughts, motivations, and doubts, establishing her as a conflicted and rather surly character who wants to do what is right and save as many people as possible. And despite all the lies and fake background details, she really does care about Finn and love her children. Such emotions exacerbate the difficulty of her situation.

Like all good spy novels, there are double agents and double crosses aplenty in A Stellar Spy, making it difficult to know who to trust and where things might be heading for Tessa. What’s more, the magic-filled action scenes are exciting and the exposition is well handled. A Stellar Spy is a stellar choice for your next read.

Thank you for reading Erin Britton’s book review of A Stellar Spy by Maya Darjani! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

A powerful story of survival about a woman who escaped but still has to hide

The name Kathryn Caraway is a pseudonym. The author had to do it that way; her stalker, like most, was never truly held accountable. This book is not a who-dun-it. It’s a testimony. A warning. A gut-wrenching portrait of how easily women are targeted, disbelieved, and left unprotected.

But Kathryn’s story isn’t about him. This book doesn’t give the monster center stage. Todd is present, of course; his manipulation, charm, persistence, and escalating violence drive the plot. But the lens never shifts away from Kathryn’s experience. She refuses to sensationalize his behavior. Instead, she shows the slow erosion of safety, autonomy, and trust through her own eyes, her own thoughts, her own fear. Kathryn isn’t making him more human; she’s here to remind you that she is. And she’s done hiding in the dark while society looks the other way.

Kathryn lets us into the daily reality of being stalked: the obsessive hyper-vigilance, the isolation, the exhaustion of documenting everything only to be dismissed anyway. “Being stalked is like being a rabbit caught in a trap. Waiting. Always waiting.”

She’s not exaggerating. She’s speaking from experience, one backed by devastating statistics she includes in the Foreword, reminding us that most victims never see justice.

And yet, she keeps going. She logs every incident. She testifies in court. She fights for a system that was never built to protect her. And still, she is the one forced to live under an alias.

I felt so angry reading this. Not because the book is frustrating—it isn’t; it’s magnificently written—but because Kathryn had to endure all of it. Because women like her are still blamed. Because the patriarchy still shrugs when a woman says she feels unsafe or calls her hysterical or asks, “Well, why didn’t you leave?” As if she didn’t try. As if she didn’t scream. As if her silence wasn’t survival.

Kathryn’s storytelling is as structured as it is emotionally raw. Her recollection of events is precise and purposeful, yet deeply personal. She admits to the shame she felt, the self-doubt, the fear of what her loved ones would think if they knew everything. She owns her moments of hesitation, the instinct to protect others from the truth, and the heartbreak of realizing that even when you do everything right, justice may never come.

The specificity of emotion, the physiological response to trauma, and the intellectual clarity she brings to her experience give this book its power. “He is a predator, but you won’t know this the first time you meet him,” she writes. “He looks normal.”

And that is the most chilling—and familiar—part.

If this is where true crime is going, toward centering victims—elevating their voices, and exposing systems instead of glamorizing predators—I am absolutely here for it. I want stories like this. I want women like Kathryn telling us exactly how it felt, exactly what happened, and exactly how hard it was to survive it.

Unfollow Me doesn’t just document what happened. It calls out every person and institution that allowed it. Kathryn Caraway doesn’t just survive. She speaks. And in doing so, she forces the world to listen.

Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt’s book review of Unfollow Me by Kathryn Caraway! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Samantha Hui

A tender story about family, healing, and the power of rediscovering childhood amidst life’s hardest truths

“I guess some things will grow without tending.”

Family secrets grow like weeds in a garden: no matter how many times we try to pull them out, they always seem to return. But when we confront those secrets and care for ourselves and our families with the compassion of a guardian, rather than the control of a gardener, a beautiful, unruly garden can bloom.

Lisa Gerlits’s Rewilding is a middle grade novel that tackles heavy topics such as depression, abuse, and gaslighting through the lens of an eleven-year-old child. Through the symbolism of rewilding nature, the book invites readers to reflect on their own need for healing and self-care.

“What if my sweet, talkative brother spills all our family secrets?”

Joy is the caretaker for her seven-year-old brother, Ian, shielding him from the harsh realities of their world. Since their father left and their mother’s depression has kept her largely confined to bed or the couch, Joy has taken on the responsibility of looking after Ian, providing for their mother, and guarding their family’s secrets. When the school guidance counselor starts asking questions and the threat of Child Protective Services looms, Joy redoubles her efforts to protect her family. But she’s also hiding a secret of her own, one that has earned her the nickname “Bruiser.”

“‘Rewilding? It’s an attempt to undo the damage humans have done and return the land to nature.’”

When Joy and Ian discover a baby bird in their yard, whom they lovingly name Lady, they embark on a journey that not only deepens their connection to nature but also teaches them powerful lessons about childhood, love, and resilience. In their quest to care for the bird, they form an unlikely friendship with Ezzie, the neighborhood pariah, known for her overgrown yard. In exchange for letting Lady stay with her during the day, the children help Ezzie “rewild” her yard, and in doing so, learn how to “rewild” themselves.

“I need to get on with landscaping our life so that no one will have reason to question what we’re doing.”

Rewilding is a poignant exploration of trauma through the eyes of a child. Joy’s character has been forced to grow up too quickly, shouldering responsibilities that no child should bear. Yet, young readers will relate to Joy’s naivety about her home life. She doesn’t see her situation as unfair or traumatic; she simply feels frustrated and confused. While most coming-of-age stories focus on the transition from childhood to adulthood, Rewilding follows Joy as she regains the wonder and excitement of childhood. The book beautifully reminds readers of the virtues of childhood.

“I think of the food webs we’ve drawn in school, the lines connecting sun to plant to animal to bigger animal. I wonder if there are more lines than we ever thought to draw.”

Throughout the novel, touching illustrations by Savanna Durr bring the story to life. Gerlits’s lush descriptions of Ezzie’s garden, teeming with wildflowers and wildlife, alongside the vivid portrayal of Joy’s inner world—her excitements and anxieties—help make the story feel immersive, as though the reader is right there with the characters. The simple, yet emotionally charged illustrations offer a powerful complement to the narrative, drawing readers even deeper into Joy’s journey.

“‘Oh, don’t get all mopey about it. You did the wrong thing. Now you know better, and you’ll do better.’”

Rewilding is a book full of life—innocent and loving, yet unflinching in its portrayal of grown-up struggles. It’s a story for both children and their parents, especially those who feel the weight of family problems on their shoulders. This novel shows us that children understand more than we often give them credit for. But without truth and guidance, their understanding can twist and turn inward, leaving them to carry burdens that aren’t theirs to bear.

I highly recommend Rewilding to young readers and their parents, as it opens a space for honest conversation about the complexities of family, love, and growing up.

Thank you for reading Samantha Hui’s book review of Rewilding by Lisa Gerlits! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

A war against Death herself threatens mortal life, and everything after, in this epic urban fantasy.

May Haines has lived her whole life on the precipice between life and death, never knowing whether today will be the day her faulty heart gives out or the day she is offered a new one. Now, after nearly dying for the umpteenth time, she has a brand-new heart and the chance to live her life without the shadow of death hanging over her.

Actually, she has met Death: an eternal, coffee-swilling being with a terrible temper and a worse problem that needs solving. For countless lifetimes, Death has ferried souls from the world to her realm. A lonely, monotonous experience. But since taking the half-angel/half-demon outcasts known as the Nephilim on as Reapers, it has become marginally less so.

Someone or something is trespassing on her territory, though. In the mortal world, souls are being cleaved from their bodies before their time. Something that has happened only once before, when the Nephilim staged a rebellion against her. If the same situation is playing out again, it will lead to a war that may shatter the world forever.

Death has never needed to rely on anyone else. As an incredibly unskilled Green Witch with a heart on the verge of giving out, May seems like the worst candidate to provide assistance. But the dead are communicating with May, and she might be the only one who can find out what they are trying to say.

In Death’s Company melds multiple mythologies together to create a unique and fascinating world. Told through dual perspectives from both May’s and Death’s points of view, the setting is divided equally between May’s hometown in Arizona and the underworld.

The complexity of the magic in In Death’s Company is fantastic. The world has layers of lore that feel like they have only been touched on in this first novel of an expected series. But even though it feels as though the worldbuilding could and will go far deeper, it is definitely deep enough from the first few pages.

In May’s world, most people don’t know that magic exists. She has been raised by Green Witches, though, and is well aware that the world is not as simple as it seems. Meeting Death is new to her. The entire world of the Reapers, Fates, and Death is beyond her experience. It’s a lovely dynamic, having a main character who understands magic but is being introduced to an entirely different branch of it throughout the story.

Things do get off to a bit of a slow start. Getting situated in the world and meeting all the main players takes a little time. This isn’t a warm-up novel, where all the action is left to subsequent books, but it also doesn’t dive straight in. Trust me: once the plot gets going, it’s a fantastic journey.

There is so much to love in this book. The characters, plot, and worldbuilding all intertwine perfectly to create a wonderfully intricate, immensely bingeable story. Along the way, there are so many hints as to how much subsequent books will ramp things up. There is so much space for characters to grow and for their relationships to develop.

The magic that May has tapped into is still new and has the potential for so much more. And there are indications of enemies waiting in the wings who will become a massive problem later. This is the kind of book that is a pleasure to read, but the anticipation of what’s to come makes it even better.

In Death’s Company is a phenomenal beginning to a promising new series. It teases some parts, leaving plenty of questions and surprises for future books. The mythology, the characters, the plot, the worldbuilding—this is a series you’ll want to get into.

Thank you for reading Joelene Pynnonen’s book review of In Death’s Company by Natalie Johanson! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

An emotional, expansive story that explores the vulnerable, personal consequences of multiverse politics

With multiverse-collapsing twists and a great cast of narrators, The Cold Light of Fate showcases some truly profound humanity. Catanzarite has made an expansive story intimate and accessible.

The chapters cycle through a variety of characters’ points of view. A large part of what makes this such a compulsive read is that all of them are so incredibly different. We are consistently being served new details that we can choose to believe or not. All of these people—no matter which side they’re on—play a part in this “save the planet, protect the universe” storyline. The characters have jobs with real risk, real reward, and a high likelihood that their job is going to change.

“Nothing like visiting your parents to send you back to childhood.”

In her story, Svetlana is desperate to protect her teenage daughter Evan from the dangers of outside universes, while Evan claims she is the prophesied savior in charge of saving the planet from the Moon Children, an alien force trying to make Jovian Earth unlivable.

The Jovian Queen, Caroline, is a frail human now. She is no longer able to take her true form as a six-stories tall powerful Jovian alien. Now she’s experiencing difficult emotions for what feels like the first time, while undergoing one of the most uncomfortable experiences of living in a human body: being forced to confront the fact that you’re getting old. Caroline is brought to her age humbly. Her back aches, and she finds herself getting emotional while talking to old colleagues.

The other universes don’t know Caroline’s body is failing, nor that she’s lost her Jovian power. She is in this strange situation where only the people in her bunker know she’s stuck as a frail human, and they won’t blow her cover because they need her to represent them in the escalating inter-universe conflict negotiations.

There’s a cloud of grief moving its way gently throughout this novel, making sure that the reader never forgets how heavy and haunting the impact of loss can be. The people in power may have moved on to new strategies and their enemies may have created fresh havoc, but the people whose loved ones died still live with echoes of grief in its many forms.

Because of the multiverse and time-traveling nature of the Jovian Universe series, we also feel the anxiety of not knowing whether their loved ones are alive in the other universes (and not wanting/feeling able to ask. ) We feel the looming weight of characters knowing they must tell someone that their loved one has died, and we feel the inner turmoil of them constantly delaying and denying their grief because they can’t fall apart while the world needs saving.

It’s impossible not to think about themes of climate change and environmental conservation when reading Catanzarite’s divine nature writing and the fear of the coming dystopian storm. Her characters have an emotional connection to the trees, to fresh drinkable water, to breathable oxygen. The first thing Natasha, Svetlana’s granddaughter, does when she gets home to Earth is run a bath: “The water would calm her unsettled mind. It had always comforted her. When she’d lived in outer space, it was water that she missed most of all.”

We can’t help but consider the future of our planet and how, all across the globe, the things these characters love about planet Earth are already disappearing. “There is a reason you are here,” Dayana said. “I think it’s because we can’t let Earth die. Or—that sounds so big and horrible.” “No, you’re right. We cannot let it die.”

Catanzarite writes in the sweet spot of balance between pulled back, plot-driven phrasing that conveys her characters’ intense human emotion and vivid descriptive imagery for us to savor: Svetlana describes Caroline’s fragile, aging human form as “so unassuming and small-boned, perched on a stool with her back hunched like a branch made to hold up too much snow.” When Dayana smiled, “the light changed. Evan swore the surrounding plants leaned their thin branches toward her.”

This book imagines a world where the Earth’s precious resources can be honored as they should be, tackles ideas around an oppressed group fighting back against their oppressor, and depicts nations engaging in generations-long strategic battles over the rights to fertile land. I love that great sci-fi stories have a special, specific way of reflecting our lives and our culture back to us.

Catanzarite writes her characters’ disabilities in a way that feels intimately true and nuanced, making them so relatable to me as a disabled reader. This kind of understanding and perspective included in details when we read from disabled characters’ perspective is rare, and though these scenes of conversations and narration are brief, they are so memorable to me.

One area the story might have gone deeper is in its treatment of clones. It doesn’t exactly acknowledge the in-your-face exploitation of them, nor the complex ethical dilemmas it causes since they’re modeled after humans but treated as though they are machinery, sometimes almost invisible.

Of note to readers who are sensitive on the topic, The Cold Light of Fate features mass death of a specific population group by various methods. These events progress from infrequent but newsworthy attacks which communities were prepared for—to widespread, overwhelming global attacks on a scale so catastrophic that “modern society has basically ceased to exist at this point.”

Let’s just say this: don’t start reading this exhilarating book unless you’re ready to stay up through the night. Catanzarite reveals game-changing twist after game-changing twist and does it while ensuring that we’re connected emotionally to its characters. Whether you’re into sci-fi and multiverse adventures or not, The Cold Light of Fate is going to grip you. No one’s doing it like Catanzarite.

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of The Cold Light of Fate by Kim Catanzarite! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Lauren Hayataka

This campaign trail comes with curses, ghosts, and a demon or two.

In The Campaign, the final book in The Council Trilogy, Evette Davis delivers a smart, fast-paced urban fantasy that’s as much about political warfare as it is about personal reckoning. Returning to the series is like settling into familiar territory—only this time, the stakes have gone global, and the monsters wear suits.

Olivia Shepherd, political consultant and reluctant witch, barely has time to regroup after her last mission before she’s rerouted to Idaho on a favor she can’t ignore. Diana Chambers, a Secretary of State with her eye on the presidency, is assembling a campaign—and she wants Olivia by her side. The job would be complicated enough without Stoner Halbert in the mix. He’s not just a campaign rival—he’s the very real face of supernatural chaos, backed by dark magic and a trail of destruction no press cycle can explain away.

With her circle—William, Josef, Elsa, Lily—back at her side, Olivia’s pulled into something much larger than an election. Strange weather, unexplained violence, and ominous visions point to a world increasingly out of balance. And for once, it’s not just the Council calling the shots. It’s the gods. The dead. Her family. Everyone, it seems, wants Olivia to become something more.

The chapters move briskly, and Davis has sharpened the pacing since The Gift. The writing is confident but relaxed, letting the emotional stakes rise without drawing too much attention to them. There’s the expected fantasy flare—werewolf attacks, spectral messengers, cursed amulets—but none of it overwhelms what makes the story work: Olivia herself.

She’s a heroine who still doesn’t quite want the job, still doubts herself, still wishes things could be simpler. But this time, she stops running. Her relationships with William and Josef remain tangled and intimate, especially as she begins to question what love looks like after betrayal—and what it means to be chosen by someone versus choosing them in return. It’s messy, but grounded. Davis never plays the romance for drama. She lets it sit in the background where it belongs, textured but never overpowering.

There’s a heaviness here that wasn’t present in earlier books—grief, inheritance, exhaustion. Olivia’s late mother and grandmother are constant shadows, not just in spirit but in memory, reminding her that power often comes from pain. Her father, once a steady hand at the head of the Council, begins to falter. The prophecy following her for two books now presses closer, demanding more than strategy or magic. It demands commitment; commitment that Olivia isn’t sure she’s capable of living up to.

And still, Davis never forgets to make room for sharp dialogue, dry humor, or the surreal nature of blending campaign stops with ancient rituals. A demon hiding behind a press secretary. A livestreamed witch hunt. A political opponent whose very presence warps the laws of nature. It all works because it isn’t overwrought. It’s just Olivia’s life now—and like her, we’re not surprised anymore.

The book’s final third pivots toward deeper revelations, but Davis keeps her focus where it belongs: on Olivia. The resolution isn’t about fireworks or final battles. It’s about acceptance. What makes The Campaign satisfying isn’t how it wraps up the plot—it’s how Olivia begins to take ownership of herself. The work she does isn’t just in the field. It’s in her relationships. In her family home. In the way she finally stops hiding from the life that’s been waiting for her.

There are still enemies. Still sacrifices. But by the end, Olivia understands the cost of leading—and chooses it anyway.

Thank you for reading Lauren Hayataka’s book review of The Campaign by Evette Davis! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

A psychological thriller where a final summer in paradise turns into a nightmare

To Laurel Greenleaf, Sutton Island is paradise. The one place she and her family can go where they are not hounded by the press or their ruthless enemies. The place that every summer of her life, she has been able to be free. This summer, though, everything is changing. After this summer, her island will no longer be a retreat and her mother’s plan for her will take her away from what she’s always wanted.

Heirs to the affluent, generous Greenleaf family, Laurel and Olive have their lives mapped out for them before they are even born. More legacy than individuals, the expectation is that they will grow to take over their family’s altruistic but controversial business empire. Exuberant, creative Olive wants to avoid this legacy, forge her own path, and be her own person. Laurel, however, hides in the safety of it, letting it dictate her past, present, and future.

Any choices they have for the future vanish when the latest Greenleaf homeless youth center explodes in the middle of the night. With the building in ruins and Olive missing in the carnage, Laurel is forced to navigate her world alone for the first time in her life. This time there is no safety in staying quiet and following someone else’s plan for her. If Laurel wants to find out what happened to her sister, she will need to step out of the shadows and make a stand.

Dragonfly Down is a taut thriller that twines family drama, mystery, suspense, romance, and a couple of nifty twists to make for an unparalleled read. At heart, this is a Young Adult coming-of-age story about a girl who is too afraid of the past to embrace the future. The writing is lovely and evocative, capturing the depth of Laurel’s emotional turmoil as she tries to navigate the difficult hand she’s been dealt.

There are a lot of elements to this novel that make it work like a finely tuned device. Laurel’s entire life is set up around the premise that the empire her family has created and spends all its time nurturing is more important than anything else. More important than her personal goals, more important than her mental health, more important even than her. This notion is overwhelmingly apparent from the very first pages. As we get deeper into the novel, the reasons that Laurel has for accepting this notion begin to unfold. All of the major elements of this novel work together like cogs to move the story along. Every character, every past event, and every major decision slots into place to slowly reveal the whole picture.

It’s difficult to spend so much of a novel following a main character who does nothing but what others push or pull her to do. The payoff, in this case, is worth it. The beginning of Dragonfly Down is a slow burn but picks up some serious pace as it progresses. As we move through the story, all of Laurel’s choices begin to make a tragic kind of sense.

Dragonfly Down is a novel that deftly shows the highs and lows of being in a dysfunctional, loving family. Masters does a fantastic job of portraying a family unknowingly on the brink of implosion. A sense of impending doom hangs over the novel, creating a tense atmosphere that there is little relief from. This is a careful, skillful psychological thriller that ultimately proves the power of love.

Thank you for reading Joelene Pynnonen’s book review of Dragonfly Down by Annette Masters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Timothy Thomas

Great expectations, heartbreaking disappointment, and love that endures life’s great lows

Intrinsic tells a story of passionate, enduring love in the shape of a romantic tragedy, but it becomes much more than that by the end.

Themes of identity, manhood, dignity, kindness, and destiny permeate this work of literary fiction. Coming from the mind of an author known only by their initials, W.H.B., this book shares much wisdom through a stirring narrative that sweeps you away and doesn’t let you forget it.

Christopher Franklin is on top of the world. As the most popular student at the private school he attends and the son of literary giants in New York City, Chris’s destiny is apparent, with the heavy weight of expectation sitting comfortably on his shoulders. As he and his friends celebrate their graduation from high school, he is prepared to embrace adulthood, starting with telling Meghan how he feels about her. Theirs was a match made in heaven: two only children who met in first grade and were since inseparable, their desire for and compatibility with one another are unmistakable to anyone who sees them together. But the night of their school’s big graduation party at the Waldorf Astoria brings with it an unexpected surprise—Mary.

With his ego and his feelings bruised by Meghan’s drunken, disrespectful behavior, Chris is entranced by this alluring stranger from the moment he hears her voice. He is at her side all night, unable to keep his eyes off her, while an increasingly despairing Meghan looks on, powerless to stop the love of her life from falling under the spell of this enchantress. After beginning the night as the best of friends, they end it as bitter enemies, a seemingly impassable chasm opening and all their hopes and dreams falling into it.

In his grief over their dead friendship, Chris invites Mary to the Hamptons, and there, a single mistake marks his first steps into adulthood, leading to an abrupt and brutal fall from grace and utter loss of control of his life. Divorced from the comforts, connections, and privileges of the life he inherited, he must rely on the help of a stranger whose life has been inexplicably intertwined with his own, and whose wisdom gives Chris the courage to build up from rock bottom.

This story is raw and real, probing the consequences of Chris’s actions for every crumb of misery, and yet somehow it manages to stay hopefully optimistic. The depth of emotion will leave a lasting impact as the reader becomes an unwitting passenger on a rollercoaster propelling them forward with the belief that things will turn around for our protagonist.

Part of the tragedy of the story is in its relatability. Ultimately, Meghan ends up being relegated to the-one-who-got-away status simply because they were both too fearful to admit their love for one another. Sometimes, words unspoken can be just as damaging as those you say and can’t take back.

The writing style is direct, on the nose. This can result in the occasional lack of nuance and with some unnatural dialogue and transitions. Thankfully, this issue is not so severe as to make reading it a difficult task, and the content more than makes up for the irregularities of the style.

Intrinsic leaves a bittersweet aftertaste on the heart’s tongue, but this is often the case with great stories. It is not just a story to be read, but a drama to be experienced. If love stories or riches-to-rags stories are your thing, this is definitely worthy of your consideration. Author W.H.B. has created something truly memorable here. It’s been a pleasure to experience it.

Thank you for reading Timothy Thomas’s book review of Intrinsic by W.H.B.! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Warren Maxwell

Melding poetic forms, candid conversations, and calls against injustice, these poems are confessional, communal, rage-filled, compassionate, and above all, kind.

Melding poetic forms, candid conversations, and calls against injustice, these poems are confessional, communal, rage-filled, compassionate, and above all, kind.

“Dustin’s instinct is to argue against the compliment—that’s life with a narcissist parent. He (begrudgingly ) writes thank you.”

Zooming into the experiences, frustrations, and joys of modern life with a magnifying glass, the slim volume of poetry, Repeat As Needed, offers validation, commiseration, and critique of the way we live our lives.

In a fingerprint-like poetic voice that captures the unique cadences and peculiarities of the author, poems like “Things That Definitely Suck” list the myriad awfulnesses that one encounters on a day-to-day basis, or once in a lifetime, in one foreboding block of text .

“Stuck on a Ferris wheel with a full bladder. Missing buttons. Chipping a tooth. A dust allergy. Misogyny.”

Elsewhere, poems are minimalistic haikus, elegant villanelles, literal conversations traded back and forth with other poets, and quixotic repartees against the cliched comments that heterosexual people make about homosexuality. The diversity of form is thrilling, but it’s the poetic voice winding through each piece that makes this an enthralling read.

“Sob.
Sob until God fears
you’ll one up His flood.”

Each poem in Repeat As Needed is accompanied by a subheading that name-checks an inspiration or literary jumping off point. This in itself creates a beautiful sense of poetic lineage and history—it is a collection very much in touch with contemporaries and forbearers.

When viewed in combination with the two explicit conversation poems (“Dustin Wants To Write A Poem With Caridad” and “Dustin Wants To Write A Poem With Nicole”) that trade block paragraphs between Brookshire and another poet—each poet writing about themselves in the third person—this collection takes on the aspect of a community. Many voices are drawn into contact with Brookshire’s. The lively chatter between poets and thinkers actively performs some of the values that become apparent in the collection’s denunciations of homophobia, misogyny, and discrimination of all stripes.

“When I was straight,
my father would say,
I’d rather one of my sons
blow my brains out
than tell me he’s gay.”

Among the real pleasures of reading these poems is discovering the way poetic form and the uses of concrete space inflect a voice. Brookshire’s voice doesn’t falter in navigating brutalist blocks of text, slim lines of repetition, and meandering, minor epic stories of being frightened by religious tales as a child. Yet, each new structure on the page brings out another aspect of Brookshire’s language. There is the heavy potency of a poem that can simply declare “All we had was lust” and let those lines resonate alone on the page. Then there’s the prolix excitement of a voice that loves speaking and free associating as we see in “Things That Definitely Suck” and the conversation poems. Through different forms, the different faces of the poet come into beautiful relief.

A passionate, richly articulated snapshot of life, poetic community, and the many identities that are wrapped up in a single individual, Repeat As Needed is a gorgeous poetry collection.

Thank you for reading Warren Maxwell’s book review of Repeat As Needed by Dustin Brookshire! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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