

Review of The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
The Whalebone Theatre begins with offbeat children's performances on a lazy, decadent English estate in the 1920s and builds to the...
Feb 21, 2024


Review of Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
Donoghue's captivating historical fiction centers around two real-life young women in an early 1800s British boarding school who fall...
Sep 14, 2023


Review of Fourth Wing (The Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yarros
The first in this dragon rider series by Yarros is full of dramaaaaatic teen angst, a cutthroat path to becoming a warrior, bucking...
Aug 16, 2023


Review of Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter
I LOVED this young adult book. It's perfectly charming, funny, quirky, and sweet, yet it deals with grief and fear, hope and forgiveness,...
Aug 1, 2023


Review of The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue
Caroline O'Donoghue's coming-of-age story celebrates friendship, young love, and life-changing decisions and missteps that shape the...
Jul 11, 2023


Review of Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens
Claudia Cravens's story of a young brothel worker in late nineteenth-century Dodge City, Kansas, offers up a tough young heroine who...
Jun 29, 2023


Review of Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash
Beyond That, the Sea is a lovely character-driven historical fiction story about complicated relationships, found family, growing up, and...
Jun 28, 2023


Review of Boys I Know by Anna Gracia
Gracia's young adult debut digs into teenaged June's messy, sometimes disastrous, and ultimately heartwarming teen exploration of...
Jun 15, 2023


Review of Dimestore: A Writer's Life by Lee Smith
ICYMI: Smith evokes a vivid sense of the regional South in her fiction, and in this memoir she traces her Appalachian youth, offering...
May 24, 2023


Review of You Wouldn't Dare by Samantha Markum
Samantha Markum's young adult novel is set in a small town in the Florida Keys, with plenty of teen angst, tests of friend loyalty, burst...
Apr 6, 2023


Review of Foster by Claire Keegan
Keegan offers a gorgeously wrought Irish story of childhood, hope, love, and loss that is spare, lovely, heartbreaking, and that brought...
Mar 21, 2023


Review of The Golden Enclaves (Scholomance #3) by Naomi Novik
The more somber tone of book three and the focus on logistics feel appropriate as the recent graduates of the Scholomance desperately...
Mar 16, 2023


Review of Maame by Jessica George
Jessica George's debut Maame takes on big issues of race, culture, and the challenges of growing up between two cultures while shining in...
Feb 2, 2023


Review of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver offers an epic story of a faulted, unlikely hero in danger of being crushed by exceptionally difficult circumstances. His...
Jan 6, 2023


Review of True Biz by Sara Nović
True Biz is a coming-of-age story, a beginner's primer on Deaf culture, and a captivating novel about romance, disappointment, fury, and...
Nov 23, 2022


Review of Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson
Kevin Wilson's wonderfully odd 1990s coming-of-age novel centers around teens Frankie and Zeke, their mysterious artistic creation, and...
Nov 22, 2022


Review of I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Former child actress McCurdy's account of her mother's narcissistic, harmful, abusive behavior and how it has shaped the author's life is...
Oct 11, 2022


Review of Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu
Hsu's memoir remembers his friend Ken, who was tragically killed during college. He reflects on friendship and on their connection,...
Sep 28, 2022


Review of Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Carley Fortune offers a satisfying story of coming home, young love, mistakes and redemption, romance, lake life, and some past and...
Sep 22, 2022


Review of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
A book about childhood friends making a video game is an unexpected, captivating setup for this wonderfully deep, epic dive into...
Jul 26, 2022