Linda M. Castellitto

Home is where the heart is—but what makes that heart want to live in that home forever? As someone who’s moved 10 times in his adult life and is “fascinated by the kind of people whose grandchildren visit the home that they raised their children in,” interior designer Jeremiah Brent found himself wondering what makes people stay put. As he explains in his heartfelt introduction to The Space That Keeps You: When Home Becomes a Love Story, Brent “wanted to understand what it takes to fall in love with a space, because my fantasy was to truly come home.” The fruits of his exploration are contained in this sumptuous “emotional design” book filled with photos of, yes, beautifully decorated homes, but also carefully curated mementos, as Brent relays stories shared with him by nine families in the U.S. and abroad. From a Venetian palazzo to Oprah Winfrey’s home in Montecito, California, Brent thoughtfully distills what makes spaces special to those who reside in them, offering inspiration and aspiration to readers who appreciate “the beauty of intention and connection, perception and memory, ceremony and ritual—and most importantly, of life and love.”

Jeremiah Brent’s sumptuous The Space That Keeps You offers “inspiration and aspiration” to help you fall in love with your home.

When Debbie Fong took a bus tour with her family at age 8, an illuminated underground waterfall struck her fancy—and ultimately inspired the magical Cessarine Lake central to her wonderful graphic novel debut, Next Stop.

The Ignatz nominee and illustrator of the bestselling How to Be a Person has carefully crafted a contemplative tale that invites readers along on middle schooler Pia Xing’s weeklong summer bus trip across the desert. Her dad meant to come along, but a broken leg strands him at home. No worries, though: Pia’s a smart, trustworthy kid, and the tour guide, Caroline, is a family friend. 

Caroline’s plucky daughter, Sam, immediately befriends Pia, and the other travelers are kind and quirky. They share their hopes for what their visit to Cessarine Lake—known for “mak[ing] IMPOSSIBLE things happen”—will bring them, but Pia can’t bring herself to join the conversation. It’s only been a year since a tragic accident plunged her family into grief, and nine months since they moved to a new town for a fresh start. Pia’s mom blames her for what happened, and Pia’s dad is exhausted by his efforts to console his wife while protecting Pia. Perhaps, she hopes, the lake can help her assuage her family’s pain.

Each day of the trip reveals a new array of cleverly conceived tour-stop wonders, including a chicken-shaped hotel, a cactus petting zoo and a watermelon so huge it casts a shadow over the tour bus. Fong’s illustrations are witty and detailed with a strong eye for color. Sepia-toned flashbacks add context to Pia’s present-day emotions, and vividly kooky set pieces become increasingly peculiar the closer the bus gets to its mystical destination. Might magic be afoot after all?

Next Stop is an immersive, empathetic tale of an important journey that sensitively explores grief and loss even as it celebrates friendship and new experiences. Charming and interesting back matter that reveals more about the author’s creative process and her background (including that childhood bus trip!) nicely rounds out a top-notch reading experience.

Next Stop is an immersive, empathetic tale of an important journey that sensitively explores grief and loss even as it celebrates friendship and new experiences.

Despite her love for logic and science, 12-year-old Sahara Rashad longs for a trip from her home in Queens, New York, to Merlin’s Crossing, a wizard-themed amusement park.

Alas, as Nedda Lewers’ magical coming-of-age adventure Daughters of the Lamp opens, Sahara realizes her dad didn’t find her “Ten Reasons the Rashad Family Should Go to Merlin’s Crossing” list as compelling as the fact that her uncle Omar’s getting married next week, so they’re leaving for a two week visit with her mother’s family in Cairo. Sahara’s frustration at Merlin-deprivation is rapidly overshadowed by nervousness about staying with people she’s never met, in a place she’s never been. All of this is amplified by long-held guilt over her mom’s death while giving birth to her.

In Cairo, when there’s a bizarre break-in at the family store, and a necklace Sahara’s mother left her goes missing, Sahara and her cousin Naima start a mission to find the necklace and reveal the true nature of Omar’s snooty fiancée, Magda. This quest transforms into one to protect their family from ancient evil, in an exciting turn of events that draws poignant connections between present and past—among Sahara, her mother and their ancestors in 10th-century Baghdad.

Daughters of the Lamp is an engaging and entertaining series debut that takes readers on a thrilling journey through magical family history and mystery, while sensitively exploring the nature of identity and thoughtfully examining the ways in which the age-old struggle between good and evil can affect and inspire us all.

Daughters of the Lamp takes readers on a thrilling journey through magical family history and mystery, while sensitively exploring the nature of identity and the age-old struggle between good and evil.

The shocking disappearance of four people infuses suburban Palmetto, Illinois, with confusion and fear in Melissa Albert’s gripping supernatural horror thriller, The Bad Ones.

Among the missing is high school junior Nora Powell’s best friend, Becca Cross. As children, the duo established a creative partnership and spent hours in the woods together, with Nora writing stories about the goddesses they imagined, while Becca took photographs. When Becca’s parents died, Nora did her best to absorb Becca’s grief and be a source of constancy in an unstable world. But as Becca’s demeanor turned darker, revealing a discomfiting desire for vengeance, the girls began to drift apart.

As The Bad Ones begins, they haven’t spoken for months. Nonetheless, when Nora gets a text from Becca in the middle of the night, she rushes to Becca’s house and is nonplussed to discover she isn’t there. Nora’s bewilderment transforms into alarm when she realizes nobody has any idea what might’ve befallen Becca or the other three missing people, thanks to a bizarre lack of witnesses or evidence.

Tentative hope arrives in the form of clues Becca left for Nora, many of them referencing the goddess-centric activities of their youth and the urban legend that inspired them. Perhaps, if Nora can uncover the origins of the goddess game Palmetto students have been playing for decades, she can figure out where Becca went—and what she may have done. Nora eventually allows her classmates—shy, handsome James and amateur reporter Ruth—to join her efforts. Can they unravel the mysteries swirling around that fateful night before someone else disappears?

Albert, bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series and Our Crooked Hearts, expertly alternates between high school mundanity and supernatural spookiness, complemented by an impressive flair for the atmospheric. The Bad Ones is a compelling, often delightfully creepy coming-of-age tale that thoughtfully explores the nature of friendship, grief and the perilous power of unwavering belief.

 

The Bad Ones is a compelling, often delightfully creepy coming-of-age tale that thoughtfully explores the nature of friendship, grief and the perilous power of unwavering belief.

Careful listening and watchful waiting are essential to every investigator’s toolkit, and the characters in award-winning Dublin Murder Squad author Tana French’s suspenseful, slow-burning thriller The Hunter elevate those skills to an art form—not just former Chicago detective Cal Hooper but also his neighbors in Ardnakelty, a tiny village on Ireland’s west coast.

Since readers met Cal in 2020’s The Searcher, he and 15-year-old villager Trey Reddy have established a close rapport and started a carpentry business. Cal is also dating Lena, who’s conflicted about remaining in her hometown: Ardnakelty is lovely, but the shadow of the mountain often feels foreboding, and its residents revel in gossip and grudges. 

The village can be a bit of a pressure cooker, and is especially so this summer: It’s exceptionally hot and dry, and the locals are edgy about the prospect of crop failure and financial hardship. The farmers are getting bored, and as Cal’s amusingly insouciant yet vaguely menacing neighbor Mart tells him, “Boredom makes a man’s mind restless, and then he tries to cure the restlessness by doing foolish shite.”

That’s when Trey’s father, Johnny, reappears after four years away doing who-knows-what. He’s quite charming, wholly unreliable and has a proposition for the farmers: There’s gold in the mountain, and some has washed down to the land—perhaps their land. Would they like to invest in a plan to extract that gold, as led by Johnny and his business partner, a Londoner named Cillian Rushborough? The farmers are intrigued, while Cal, Lena and Trey are skeptical. Their trepidation intensifies as the planning process stirs up hostility among the townspeople, and rises to a fever pitch when a man is found murdered. Who among them did it? And who might be next? 

The Hunter’s finely crafted internal monologues and nerve-wracking dialogues ably convey the unique tensions of living in a remote small town, especially when one is uncertain which neighbor (or neighbors) might’ve committed a crime. It’s an immersive, thought-provoking tale that revels in the quiet moments—whether that of conversational gaps more revealing than spoken words, or a place of natural beauty that offers respite but never promises peace.

Tana French’s immersive, thought-provoking The Hunter revels in the quiet moments, but knows true peace is elusive.

A case of mistaken identity blossoms into a beautiful friendship in Ann Kim Ha’s clever and heartwarming picture book A Friend for Eddy

Eddy, an adorable orange goldfish, lives in a clear bowl with only decorative rocks and a plant for company. He swims and blows bubbles to his heart’s content, but while “his favorite game, / chase-your-tail” is highly entertaining, he longs for someone else to play with. 

One delightful day, a small yellow fish outside taps on the glass of the bowl and joins Eddy in a game of tag. The next day, the fish returns for more hijinks, with another friend in tow! Not only does this new buddy look exactly like the first yellow fish, he’s just as much fun.

It’s an idyllic new state of affairs. Now that he’s experienced the joys of camaraderie, Eddy wants to join his two pals outside, so he takes a big risk by swimming in fast circles, resulting in a whirlpool that propels him out of his bowl. Soaring through the air is glorious (“He felt weightless and free!”) but alas, short-lived, as Eddy plummets to the table his bowl rests upon.

The book transforms into a bit of a thriller as Eddy realizes what readers discovered a few pages ago: Those two yellow fish are not fish at all. They’re a cat’s eyes! Young readers will gasp as the cat rises up—mouth wide open, pointy teeth on display—and draws Eddy into its gaping maw. What will happen to Eddy now? 

Those who connected with Ha’s Walter Finds His Voice will be similarly inspired by the intrepid Eddy, and appreciate his and his feline friend’s ability to buck conventional wisdom and forge a close bond. A Friend for Eddy’s richly hued, evocative visuals convey an exciting range of emotions while drawing readers into Eddy’s watery world. Its upbeat text and surprising storyline highlight the upsides of trying new things—and being open to the idea that friends can be found in the most unlikely places.

A Friend for Eddy’s upbeat text and surprising storyline highlight the upsides of trying new things—and being open to the idea that friends can be found in the most unlikely places.

Daniel Lewis’ informative, engrossing, often poetic Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future is a veritable wonderland of fascinating facts.

Did you know that “a mature redwood adds, on average, a ton of wood to its mass every year”? Or that the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) was founded in Arizona in 1937, and there are 100-plus tree ring labs worldwide? Or that, contrary to its unassuming appearance, “a pine needle is akin to a skyscraper, bustling with movement and life,” including air- and water-movement systems not unlike HVAC and plumbing?

Twelve Trees is also an engagingly written experiential memoir of the author’s quest to learn more about the trees he views as crucial to human life—past, present and future. From California (where he’s senior curator for the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library and teaches at Caltech) to Easter Island, central Africa to Amazonian Peru and beyond, Lewis leads readers on an awe-inspiring tour of a dozen trees that, he writes, “have been on long journeys, have many accomplices as well as enemies, and need our help to survive.”

After all, trees “populate our daily lives. They’ve been part of our sight lines and metaphors, our byways, our contexts.” They record our history: At the LTRR, the author learned how bristlecone pine rings bear evidence of drought, flood and fire, thus providing data that scientists and scholars can use to analyze and predict such events. And they can be vital to culture, health and government all at once. In India, the sandalwood tree’s wood is used in important ceremonies; its oil has “helped millions through both folk and modern medicine”; and it is the subject of numerous laws regarding trade, harvesting, poaching and preservation.

Lewis is fiercely protective of and endlessly enthusiastic about the precious leafy entities—eucalyptus, ebony, baobab, olive and more—that enrich our lives and support our very existence. Twelve Trees offers extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected, for better or worse, and urges readers to remember that the “salvation of trees can be the salvation of humans.”

 

Written with boundless enthusiasm by Daniel Lewis, Twelve Trees offers extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected.

Some of Ben Guterson’s most treasured childhood memories center around two now-defunct grand old department stores in downtown Seattle: Frederick & Nelson and The Bon Marché. They “were absolutely places of magic for me,” the author reminisces in a call from his home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

“At Christmastime, I would go to the second floor and take the escalator down to the first floor. . . . [A]ll the decorations, the trees, the glitter, the tinsel, the displays, the lights, the color, everything slowly revealed itself to me and I’d think I was descending into the heart of winter wonderland,” he says. “I fell in love with department stores because of that.”

Guterson’s appreciation of those bygone commerce centers and cultural touchstones is on marvelously magical display in The World-Famous Nine, his inventive, exciting middle grade mystery-adventure novel set in the storied Number Nine Plaza department store (aka “The Nine”).

The Nine is a blend of cleverly cultivated experiences and artfully arranged merchandise all under one roof. Unlike other department stores, that roof is 19 stories in the air and has an enormous Ferris wheel on top of it. The luxurious floors below contain a monorail, a display with a real iceberg and real penguins, an art gallery, rotating restaurants and more.

On the very first page of The World-Famous Nine, 11-year-old Zander Olinga rides an escalator down to the store’s main floor and into an astonishing new chapter of his life. What’s meant to be a fun five-week visit with his glamorous grandmother Zina Winebee, who owns The Nine, while his professor parents go on a research trip, soon turns into something much more thrilling and dangerous. Zander must undertake an urgent quest to unravel long-held family secrets by solving peculiar puzzles and tracking down a lost object that will protect The Nine and everyone in it from a terrible fate.

Read our review of ‘The World-Famous Nine.’

That’s a tall order for a kid, to say the least, but Zander’s new friend Natasha Novikov is confident the two of them can figure things out. He’s afraid of heights but great at solving puzzles, and she knows the store inside and out. Besides, one of Zander’s hobbies is creating mandalas, which are vital to their mission, if the ten-foot-tall sandstone boulder with “carved elaborate circular patterns” that has pride of place in The Nine is any indication. (Hint: it is.)

Guterson’s own affinity for mandalas—he draws them daily—not only inspired key elements of the complex mystery in The World-Famous Nine but also the artwork that appears within. Kristina Kister’s wonderful illustrations immerse readers in the dazzling world and unique denizens of The Nine, and Guterson’s impressively detailed mandalas grace the book’s pages as well. “I highly recommend it,” Guterson says about drawing mandalas. “It’s a really cool, creative and relaxing thing to do. I don’t want to sound too new-agey here, but . . . to engage in a creative act that’s not verbal or word-oriented in any way, I have found that to be extremely helpful.”

While the mandalas will be new to Guterson’s fans, The World-Famous Nine’s plethora of puzzles and wordplay will feel happily familiar to readers who delighted in the code-cracking, riddle-solving aspects of his previous books: the Winterhouse trilogy (Winterhouse, the first in the series and Guterson’s debut, was an Edgar Award and Agatha Award finalist) and The Einsteins of Vista Point.

Although the author now has multiple mysteries under his writerly belt, he still finds it challenging to strike just the right balance: “You don’t want to make the mystery or the solving of clues so easy that kids can spot it right away and then get frustrated with your hero, like, ‘Why is that main character so dumb when I figured it out already?’” But, he says, “You also don’t want to make it so hard that, when it’s revealed, someone says, ‘No one ever really could’ve figured that out!’”

“I think when you’re that age and you discover a book or an author that you love, it can just completely solidify a love of reading.”

Guterson has found that his true satisfaction and joy is writing for middle grade readers. In fact, he’s got even more books on the way: The World-Famous Nine is the first in a series, with its sequel, The Hidden Workshop of Javier Preston forthcoming. After all, he says, “I think when you’re that age and you discover a book or an author that you love, it can just completely solidify a love of reading. I find it really exciting to think that maybe my books . . . could do for a kid what the books I love did for me when I was that age.”

Photo of Ben Guterson by Harvey Photography.

The author incorporates magic and mandalas in The World-Famous Nine.

By the time she was 12, Ámbar Mondragón knew how to treat bullet wounds. When she turned 13, her father, Victor, gave her a sawed-off shotgun plus shooting and hot-wiring lessons. And as Nicolás Ferraro’s My Favorite Scar opens, 15-year-old Ámbar is tending to her father’s latest injury: He’s returned from a night out with a bullet hole in his upper chest and his murdered friend Giovanni’s body in the passenger seat of his car.

To Ámbar, this horrifying turn of events isn’t all that shocking. Rather, it’s just another terrible moment in the life she’s lived since the age of 9, when Grandma Nuria, who cared for Ámbar after her mother abandoned her, had a fatal heart attack. Dad came to get her, and Ámbar since adjusted to an existence rife with violence and loneliness, one where she wonders if she’ll ever feel happy or secure. After all, while the titular “favorite scar” refers to Dad’s tattoo bearing her name, “He might carry my name on his skin, but he never held me in his arms. He chose my name, but he was never around until he didn’t have any other choice.”

Now, Ámbar has to tag along as Dad embarks on a singularly vicious road trip, determined to exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed him and Giovanni. My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic road novel of unrelenting bleakness that takes readers on a hair-raising tour of Argentina’s criminal underworld. The duo stop at bars, burial sites and hideout shacks where Dad delivers interrogations, warnings and beatings as Ámbar plays lookout or getaway driver, often with sawed-off shotgun in hand.

As in Cruz, his first novel translated into English, Ferraro explores the effects of criminals’ choices on children who become unwitting and/or unwilling accomplices. His deftly created suspense builds with every mile driven, every fake ID used, every drop of blood spilled. Will the cycle of violence ever end? Will Ámbar ever be anything but “what other people have left behind”? My Favorite Scar is a pitch-black coming-of-age tale that reverberates with oft-poetically expressed pain and sadness—and maybe, just maybe, a hint of hope.

Nicolas Ferraro’s My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic, hair-raising road trip through Argentina’s criminal underworld.

Number Nine Plaza, most often called “The Nine,” is a uniquely dazzling place: “the largest, most famous, and most extraordinary department store in the entire world.” And Zander Olinga is lucky enough to be the grandson of the woman who owns it, Zina Winebee, who is going to look after him for several weeks while his parents are away on a research trip.

But as 11-year-old Zander soon learns in Ben Guterson’s imaginative and entertaining mystery-adventure novel The World-Famous Nine, his arrival coincides with what Grandma Zina considers “a very challenging time for the store.” It’s the 90th anniversary of the disappearance of a special sandstone slab with a mandala on it that, according to legend, would touch off massive devastation if it fell into the wrong hands.

Ben Guterson discusses the Christmas magic of department stores in our interview.

There’s a Ferris wheel atop this 19-story skyscraper, and the interior contains wonders like a monorail, a Tiffany glass ceiling and a real iceberg. Aside from being gobsmacked by the fabulous scope of The Nine, Zander is determined to solve the mysteries rising up from his family’s past and save the store. Natasha Novikov, the 11-year-old daughter of The Nine’s plumber, decides to help him. Currently spending several hours a week swinging high above the building’s restaurants to entertain their patrons, she loves The Nine and knows almost every inch of the place. It also helps that the artistic Zander was already fascinated with mandalas and puzzles, and Natalie knows where odd inscriptions are hidden around the building.

Guterson, known for his Winterhouse Trilogy and The Einsteins of Vista Point, once again makes excellent use of his trademark ability to create puzzles and conjure clues in this innovative tale that pits clever and intrepid preteens against dark forces, dodgy family secrets and dastardly adults. Readers will breathlessly turn the pages as they wonder: Can the duo solve the mysteries of The Nine in time to save it from those who wish it—and them—ill? Impressive illustrations by Kristina Kister capture the wild grandeur of The Nine, and hand-drawn mandalas by Guterson himself add to the book’s uniquely appealing mystique.

Ben Guterson makes excellent use of his trademark ability to create puzzles and conjure clues in this innovative tale that pits clever and intrepid preteens against dark forces, dodgy family secrets and dastardly adults.

For 10 years, Julius Gong has lived rent-free in 17-year-old Sadie Wen’s head. He’s her school co-captain at Woodvale Academy and “the most prominent source of pain in my life.” The two compete in academics, athletics and anything else possible to compete in. They communicate mainly via taunting, eye-rolling and impatient sighs.

But despite frequently feeling intense animosity toward Julius (“Just seeing him makes me want to put my fist through something hard—ideally, his jaw”), Sadie hardly ever talks about it or any of her other frustrations. Instead, she vents in email drafts addressed to Julius and also people like Rosie, who won last year’s science fair with work she stole from Sadie, and Ms. Johnson, a teacher who refused to round up an 89.5 to a 90.

The secret emails have helped Sadie maintain her amicable persona, but everything changes when the drafts are somehow sent out all at once in the middle of a school day. After years of assiduously avoiding conflict, Sadie’s suddenly faced with a situation she might not be able to fix or apologize for. What is she going to do?

For starters, she’s mortified at the people now mad at her for being mad at them—and shocked when it turns out that not only is her fabulous BFF Abigail on her side, but Julius just might be, too. Is it possible he’s also been hiding some complicated feelings?

Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You and its protagonists’ attempts to find common ground in heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture the two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability. They’ll root for Sadie to consider what she wants rather than devoting her life to being the best people-pleaser ever. Chinese Australian author Ann Liang’s heartfelt third novel (after If You Could See the Sun and This Time It’s Real) is an engaging story steeped in humor and empathy, encouraging readers to consider that relentlessly striving for success might not be the best path to a truly rewarding life.

Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You’s heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability.

Author-illustrator duo Mrs. & Mr. MacLeod kicked off The Grunions series with their wild and whimsical How to Eat a Book. The series continues with the delightfully riotous The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before.

Twins Gerald and Geraldine and their cousin Sheila live in a grand mansion with many, many doors, all artfully rendered in heavy black pen-and-ink with bold splashes of primary colors. Layered paper cutouts create a 3D effect, and shadows bolster the visual drama so that the story pulses with manic energy. After all, there’s so much to explore when it comes to doors, from the swinging double kitchen doors to a trapdoor in the floor. But to the Grunion cousins’ immense frustration, there is one door in the house that just won’t open. Why is it locked, the kids wonder? And what’s on the other side of it?

The trio aren’t shy about expressing their big feelings about the situation, whether through shouts or leaps or open-mouthed indignation. Sheila “studied the splinters and notches, / the nails and latches” while Gerald, who “closed every door he ever found,” secretly decides to protect the huge red door from the boisterous Geraldine, who “shook as she stomped and wriggled around . . . She screamed at the door and fell to the ground.”

A wild scuffle with a hammer results in a big crack in the door—through which a flowering vine emerges and grows at an alarming pace. What will happen when it fills the house and there’s no more room inside for the Grunions? The story’s brisk pace and rhythmic phrasing ramp up the fun suspense as the kids try to escape the vines, with the mysterious door their only possible way out.

Readers will delight in The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before’s kinetic and expressive artwork that’s rife with clever details (keep an eye out for the kitten) and high-impact type treatments. They’ll have lots to think and talk about when they encounter the book’s final pages, which reveal what’s beyond the mysterious door and will surely build anticipation for the next rollicking Grunions adventure.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Readers will delight in the The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before’s kinetic and expressive artwork that’s rife with clever details (keep an eye out for the kitten).

If you’ve ever watched TV shows like “The Golden Girls” and “Kate & Allie” or considered super-close friend-duos like J.D. and Turk or Abbi and Ilana and thought, “What a great way to live!” then The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center is for you. Like her pop-culture compatriots before her, debut author Rhaina Cohen understands the preciousness of a deep and abiding platonic relationship—no romance necessary.

That’s not to say Cohen is anti-romance: The NPR producer and editor is a happily married proponent of wedded bliss. But when it comes to relationships, she’s not in support of treasuring only wedded bliss. Instead, she urges readers to cultivate and celebrate “devoted, life-defining friendships.”

Cohen’s fervor for the topic was ignited by her own life-altering bond with a woman named M, who “stretched my understanding of the role a friendship could play in my life” and “made the world pulse with more possibilities for intimacy and support than before, and I wanted others to feel those possibilities for themselves.”

Over years of research, Cohen conducted 70 in-depth interviews with proponents of platonic life partnerships. And in eight chapters written with empathy, curiosity and a clear knack for storytelling, she shares the fascinating and heartwarming tales of several of those duos. They vary by gender, age, religion and sexuality but share a willingness to defy convention. Readers will meet youth pastors Nick and Art, whose platonic life partnership has confounded potential romantic partners; Inez and Barb, coworkers who became helpmeets in retirement; Lynda and Natasha, who went from colleagues to coparents; and more.

Cohen notes that due to societal factors including increased housing costs, decreased birth rates, evolving views on marriage and a growing willingness to home-share later in life, non-marital partnerships are more common, while not yet commonplace. The Other Significant Others offers readers an insightful and intimate look at what life could be like if we broaden our horizons beyond “compulsory coupledom” and welcome the idea that “romantic relationships are not the only unions that can shape our lives.”

Rhaina Cohen’s The Other Significant Others offers an insightful, intimate look at how deep, abiding platonic relationships shape our lives—no romance necessary.

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