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Mariel Fechik

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Darcie Little Badger on the power of names

Interview by Mariel Fechik

Names often play a pivotal role in stories—and like many aspects of fiction, their importance is reflected in the real world. The novels of award-winning young adult author Darcie Little Badger draw on the power of names: In Elatsoe, Little Badger’s 2020 debut, the titular character carries the name of a legendary ancestor. Little Badger’s new novel (and prequel to Elatsoe) employs the same convention: Sheine Lende, which translates to “sunflower,” is both the title and the Lipan name of Shane, the book’s protagonist.

Little Badger explains that, in her Lipan Apache tribe, “names were given to a person when they’d grown up enough that their personality and other aspects of them had developed, so it’s a coming of age thing. I got my name after I graduated high school.”

Sheine Lende tells the story of 17-year-old Shane, a Lipan Apache girl in 1970s Texas. Including the diacritical marks that indicate pronunciation, Shane’s Lipan name is spelled Sheiné lénde, but the marks were omitted for the official title. When considered in the context of the story, this difference illuminates much of what Little Badger explores in the novel about names, language and the erasure of native peoples.

“I wanted Shane to be named after a sunflower, and there were a couple of different ways that we could have spelled it. We eventually settled on Sheiné lénde,” she says. “Then I learned from my editor that apparently, the system that’s used to distribute books to booksellers, etc.—it’s really not set up to take diacritical marks. Unfortunately, that means that we had to take off the diacritical marks in the title. It was interesting, because part of the book is Shane learning how to say her name. So it was sad that we couldn’t have the faithful pronunciation indicated in the title itself. But throughout the book, you see the diacritical marks are there. That’s the way it should be,” Little Badger says, as she explains the correct pronunciation (phonetically, it’s close to SHAY-neh LEN-day).

“The Lipan language is currently in a revitalization process,” Little Badger explains. “Lots of people are working on trying to not just fill in holes in our language, but to teach the next generations how to speak it.”

“With Shane,” Little Badger continues, “she does feel embarrassed that she can’t really pronounce her own name. It’s almost like she can’t wrap her head around who she really is. And that makes her wonder, ‘Maybe that’s not me.’ It was important for me to highlight that.”

Shane lives with her mother, Lorenza, and her little brother, Marcos. The family has spent the last several years rebuilding their lives after a devastating flood took their home, community and worst of all, Shane’s father and paternal grandparents.

Now, living far from “la rancheria de los Lipanes,” the community in which they used to live that was composed mostly of Lipan households, Lorenza and Shane scrape by however they can. Lorenza, who is a gifted tracker, offers search and rescue services to local families. Along with their two well-trained hounds, Lorenza and Shane also have the help of a powerful secret weapon: the ghost of their dog Nellie, brought back through their ancestral gift.

To Shane, her mother is the truest rock Shane has had since the flood. But when Lorenza accidentally steps into a wild fairy ring and vanishes while looking for a pair of missing siblings, Shane’s entire world turns upside down. The ensuing search for her mother forces Shane onto her own turbulent path of reconnection to her people, her family and herself.

Sheine Lende, with its animal ghosts, fairies, vampires and other mythological figures, is firmly rooted in genre fiction. But each fantastical element is anchored by very real and historic truths. Even in a magical version of the world, natural disasters are as unavoidable as carnivorous river monsters, and Shane and Lorenza feel they must hide their sacred abilities as they navigate systems of oppression augmented by the dominance of white European magic systems.

“The cool thing about writing fantasy is that you can use a lot of different tools to present what you want to say about the world,” Little Badger says. “For example, I studied invasive plant species in the United States when I was in college, and they’re called ‘invasive’ because they cause ecological and/or economic damage to the environment that they’re growing in. So I was like, ‘Well, these fairy rings and fae people in the world of Elatsoe and Sheine Lende are extradimensional, so it’s almost like they’re being introduced to Earth. What if there are unintended consequences and they start to spread like an invasive plant?’”

The actions we take, often to our own benefit, and sometimes even with noble intentions, could potentially cause negative impacts that carry over into the future.

The role of the fairy rings and their environmental impact in the story contribute to a larger metaphor for collective responsibility and environmental stewardship. Though fairy rings are  magical, it’s easy to draw parallels to real world stories of environmental destruction on Indigenous land, such as the heavily protested Dakota Access Pipeline construction at Standing Rock, or the similarly problematic Keystone Pipeline.

Little Badger hints at the importance of collective responsibility early on in the novel, when Shane’s mother comes down with the flu while on a mission. Despite needing help, she stops Shane from using a flare gun because there’s a risk of it starting a fire in the area, which has recently experienced a drought: “She’s thinking of other people in a wider context, but also there’s this acknowledgement that the land we live on is going to be the land that grandchildren and great-grandchildren live on. There’s one Earth. And the actions we take, often to our own benefit, and sometimes even with noble intentions, could potentially cause negative impacts that carry over into the future.”

“It’s especially hard,” she continues, “because a lot of times, it’s not just individual decisions. It’s the decisions made by corporations or by entire countries. It can make someone feel small and overwhelmed when they’re like, ‘Okay, well, I recycle all the time and I do all these things. And it’s just not enough.’ But I do think that, collectively, if we can move to a place where we take future generations and people who aren’t like us into greater consideration—that’s what Lorenza was trying to teach Shane—it’s always a positive thing.”

Little Badger’s unique approach to genre fiction has been described as Indigenous futurism, an artistic movement considers the histories of Native peoples and uses the past to inform reimagined or recontextualized stories and futures. Throughout Sheine Lende, Little Badger uses fantastical devices to create a fun house mirror reflection of her tribe’s experiences.

The Lipan Apache are not a federally recognized tribe, and there is no Lipan reservation. Search engines offer contradictory information about the tribe. Links to the tribe’s official website and history are brought up next to an article from the Oklahoma Historical Society, which speaks of the tribe in past tense, and claims “little of their culture remains.”

“That’s . . . definitely not true,” Little Badger says. “That’s a choice. It ties into the erasure that Sheiné lénde shows.” Little Badger explains that before the Republic of Texas acquired statehood, “there was a ‘treaty of peace and perpetual friendship’ that Texas made with us. But then Texas became a state. Government officials did talk about potentially making a reservation for the Lipan Apache outside of the state of Texas, but unfortunately—well, they would consider us defiant, but we just couldn’t be rounded up. We couldn’t be captured. So they decided to do an elimination extermination campaign instead.”

By the late 1870s, Congress had made it illegal for any Indians to exist freely in Texas. Without a reservation, the Lipan Apache were among the Native peoples who suffered from this lack of recognition. “Until around 2021, we had no tribal land, so essentially we’d always be one disaster or unpaid bill away from losing our homes and having to start over somewhere else in Texas. I’ve heard people call us ‘disenfranchised natives,’” Little Badger says, referring to the fact that Native groups without tribal recognition from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs lack rights given by the federal government.

“With Sheine Lende, so much of it is about that struggle to survive on land that has been, according to the United States government, taken away from you, on which you don’t even exist,” Little Badger adds. Towards the end of the novel, Shane enters the land of the dead, “almost like she is drawn to the thought that she belongs with the dead.” While a physical concept in Sheine Lende, the underworld also “represents Shane’s mental health and the way she sees herself and her people.” This fever dream sees Shane wandering through enchanted deserts that transition into prehistoric tundras. She encounters strange and terrifying beauty, confronting extinction and memory.

“It’s her struggling against that urge to give into despair and remain there with the dead, which eventually she overcomes by thinking of her family out there waiting for her—and a hope for the future, that those who remain need her to be with them and she needs to be with the living for herself,” Little Badger says. “It’s my meditation on what it means to be a disenfranchised native who is so erased by the law, by the military, by history, by books, by everyone outside of your community.”

Ultimately, “Shane finds strength by looking within herself and her community.” It’s this final sentiment of turning toward living, hope and the people who need you and nourish you, that most fully embodies “futurism,” and it’s where Shane embodies her namesake. At the end of Sheine Lende, her family’s grief has not been magically healed, and the ripple effects of colonialism are far from being calmed. But on the book’s final page, there is a note: “This is not the end.” In that message, there is a fervent reminder of hope, if only one remembers to turn, like a sunflower, toward the light.

 

The author discusses how the strange and beautiful world of Sheine Lende, the prequel to Elatsoe, reflect the experiences of her Lipan Apache tribe.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Icarus

Review by Mariel Fechik

For many years, Icarus Gallagher has slipped into the dangerous Mr. Black’s mansion on opportune nights to steal priceless artworks and replace them with perfect forgeries created by Icarus’ father, Angus. Their strange mission is one of revenge: Mr. Black hurt Angus’ family, and so Angus has spent almost two decades trying to hurt Mr. Black.

As a consequence of his father’s obsession, Icarus lives a half-life devoid of any real connection. At 17, he only has a year before he can leave and never see Angus again. Until then, he’ll keep his head down. 

Except one night, Icarus is caught by Helios, Mr. Black’s teenage son. While he originally appears to be a threat that could expose Icarus, the two soon form a tentative friendship—and then something more intense. For Icarus, a boy made of want, it’s almost more than he can bear. But his connection with the broken, golden Helios might prove to be the key to freedom for both of them. 

K. Ancrum’s extraordinary fifth novel Icarus is an elegant, multifaceted gem about art, power and fear. Ancrum performs a confident high-wire act in balancing the weighty manifestations of these themes alongside those of connection, desire and contradiction. 

Icarus—book and boy—is the embodiment of raw yearning, and all of Ancrum’s characters wear their hearts on the tips of their tongues. Occasionally the book’s dialogue can feel unrealistic or even overwrought, showing an honesty and openness not necessarily common among 17-year-old boys. But there is an intimate truth in the intensity of feeling behind their words, and this is one of Ancrum’s greatest skills as a writer. 

“Some of us lead lives that would require suspension of belief from others,” Ancrum writes in the novel’s dedication. Perhaps she references the unreality of a teenaged art thief who tends ferns and scales buildings, but maybe she’s simply talking about the unreality of everyday injuries and ecstasies: the cold rage of abuse; the emptiness of grief; the rapturous beauty and agony of being touched. 

Ancrum’s prose is also thrillingly decadent in certain moments, channeling the masterpieces of art whose power she telegraphs through every page. Often sudden bluntness, either of sentence length or metaphor, gives an edge to the gilded phrasing. In Ancrum’s novel, Icarus’ wings striving for the heat of the sun becomes both a beautiful representation of queer love and a sharp, artful subversion of the original Greek mythos.

In her extraordinary fifth novel, Icarus, K. Ancrum performs a confident high-wire act, balancing the weighty manifestations of connection, desire and contradiction.
FictionSpeculative FictionLiterary FictionDystopian Fiction

I Cheerfully Refuse

Review by Mariel Fechik

“Here at the beginning it must be said the End was on everyone’s mind,” opens Leif Enger’s fourth novel, I Cheerfully Refuse. In an unspecified near-future, as civilization slowly tips off a cliff’s edge, Rainy and his bookselling wife, Lark, eke out a cautious yet relatively tranquil life in a small community on the shore of Lake Superior. “Quixotes,” Lark calls the pair. “By which she meant not always sensible.”

When Lark brings home her favorite poet’s rare, unpublished manuscript, Kellan, the fugitive who gave her the book, comes with her and becomes their attic boarder. Though Lark and Rainy grow fond of Kellan, they’re uneasy about his past. Then Kellan disappears, heralding a violent sea change in their quiet lives. Kellan had warned of a ruthless pursuer, and when Lark becomes collateral damage in the chase, Rainy’s quixotic existence shatters.

Hounded by grief and the looming shadow of whoever was after Kellan, Rainy boards a tumbledown sailboat and takes to the lake. Soon, he is alone on Lake Superior with minimal sailing knowledge, and only Lark’s beloved manuscript and primal fear for company. He becomes a sort of Great Lakes Odysseus, sailing over a wine-dark sea toward the idea of his wife, and encountering no sea monsters, but instead finding fractious kingdoms and corpses rising from warming waters.

The novel’s ruined world, marked by book burnings, anti-intellectual sentiment, environmental disruption and casual brutality, will feel entirely too plausible for readers. Yet within its dystopian landscape, Enger’s story incorporates fabulism in the most traditional sense, featuring a serpentine quest, a rare and ancient tome, and even a bridge troll. As in the most memorable fables, I Cheerfully Refuse’s fantastical elements heighten the emotional impact of its depiction of violence and grief, elevating the entire narrative.

“I think the sea has no in-between: you get either rage and wayward lightning . . . or such freehanded beauty that time contracts,” Rainy observes early in his journey. Like the turbulent lake, I Cheerfully Refuse is filled with polarities that should contradict but somehow, instead, cohere: hopeless moments infused with light and shocking acts of cruelty depicted through beautiful, memorable prose. Although the struggle to survive leaves room for little else, Rainy still finds delight in simple, ordinary things: the post-storm sun or a ripe tomato. It’s in these moments of earnest wonder that I Cheerfully Refuse is most compelling, like the brief but glorious clearing of a tempestuous sky.

It’s in moments of earnest wonder that Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse is most compelling, like the brief but glorious clearing of a tempestuous sky.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

All That Grows

Review by Mariel Fechik

A boy and his sister wander their quiet neighborhood and admire the life bursting into color around them. The boy’s sister tells him about the burgeoning flowers and trees they pass, dropping small seeds of curiosity that take root in the boy’s mind. 

As the season blooms into summer, the siblings tend to a garden. Though the boy loves to help his sister nurture and weed the vegetable patch, he also ponders the weeds themselves: Why are some plants cultivated, while others are yanked from the ground before they’re given a chance to thrive? 

Award-winning author (When You Can Swim) Jack Wong’s All That Grows is a delicate but powerful ode to curiosity and the delights to be found in the natural world. There is an eloquent simplicity to the story and its contained focus. Wong’s narrator, the unnamed boy, is quiet and thoughtful as he describes his surroundings and experiences in vivid, sensory ways: “Overnight, the trees go from bare to bursting with leaves, turning the streets into enormous green caverns.” In a way, the writing feels like a photographer’s macro lens, homing in on the tiny universes unfurling inside something bigger.

Wong’s illustrations parallel this idea as they zoom in and out of the book’s verdant, sun-dappled setting. The beautifully textured pastel drawings are realistic, but they also possess a subtle whimsy in their decidedly childlike perspective. Whether it’s the way everything seems to glow at the edges or the exclusion of adults (save one lone glimpse), the effect is potent. In some near-intangible way, Wong has evoked the soft haze of childhood summers where a small stand of trees might be seen as a huge forest, and a field of dandelions offers magical, unfettered possibility.

In All That Grows, Jack Wong evokes the soft haze of childhood summers where a small stand of trees might be seen as a huge forest to explore, and a field of dandelions offers magical, unfettered possibility.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

In Utero

Review by Mariel Fechik

From a high-rise apartment, a boy and his pregnant mother witness, in real time, a massive explosion devastate 20 blocks of an Australian city. The cause is never discovered, and in the aftermath, a superhighway is constructed over the site. 

Twelve years later, the same mother speeds down the highway toward an abandoned shopping mall to drop off her disgruntled 12-year-old daughter, Hailey, off at a holiday camp. Bored and frustrated, Hailey is wandering around when she meets Jen, a cool older girl who isn’t with the group. Taking the opportunity to rebel against her mother, she joins Jen on a tour of the decrepit building. Meanwhile, two other boys have split off from the group and made an unsettling discovery. Something is biding its time in the building, and it won’t be contained for much longer.

Melbourne-based cartoonist Chris Gooch’s new YA graphic novel, In Utero, is a brief but clever offering that pulls from both modern and classic monster stories. Echoing franchises like “Stranger Things,” “The Last of Us” and Godzilla while nodding artistically to Junji Ito, Gooch hits many familiar beats of sci-fi horror in a tightly coiled narrative about fear, family and the things waiting underground.

In illustrations that flirt with the uncanny (before eventually giving in fully), Gooch utilizes a unique color palette: Alternating between color washes of red and blue over black and white drawings, he evokes the disorientation of looking at the real world through 3D glasses. The color change typically marks a change in scene or tone, and along with the frequent use of dramatic shifts in perspective between panels, the effect is decidedly cinematic. 

At just under 250 pages, In Utero functions similarly to a short film: The time frame is minimal; the emotional arcs are intense; and the action happens in short, potent bursts. Much of the reader’s processing will likely occur after the fact.

Though Gooch relies perhaps a little too heavily on abstraction (even for seasoned consumers of surrealism), In Utero presents a compelling universe that is more likely to fascinate than it is to disappoint. It won’t be the consistently high-octane monster story that some might expect, but fans of Tillie Walden or Antoine Revoy’s Animus will enjoy Chris Gooch’s head-spinning take on the genre.

Chris Gooch hits many familiar beats of sci-fi horror in In Utero, a tightly coiled narrative about fear, family and the things waiting underground.
Children's & YAYA

Poemhood

Review by Mariel Fechik

In their introduction to Poemhood: Our Black Revival, editors Amber McBride, Taylor Byas and Erica Martin describe the anthology as “a celebration—a homage to the beauty and musicality of Black poetry, folklore, and history.” As the editors themselves go on to reflect, Black culture and art has for too long been subject to an “exclusivity of story,” presented beyond Black communities only in revised forms or erased from classrooms and canons entirely. Poemhood represents a vital corrective to such exclusion. 

McBride, Byas and Martin pull no punches in their anthology’s curation of over 30 writers. Black literary icons such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lord and James Baldwin populate these pages along with an impressive lineup of contemporary poets including Nikki Giovanni, Danez Smith and the editors themselves.

The contents are not organized chronologically “because, in Black culture, ancestors are ever present—their strength and legacy guide us long after they are gone.” Instead, Poemhood takes its structural cues from mixtapes: The poems, listed as numbered “tracks,” are organized into loosely thematic sections called “volumes.” Each track is followed by an “outro,” a short annotation that provides context while resisting analytical authority. The outros’ open-endedness encourages readers to reflect on their own interpretations of the poems, embodying one of the anthology’s goals: to “speak to the eclectic Black experience and emphasize how it is not a monolithic culture.”

For example, in the chilling 1973 poem, “A Fable,” Etheridge Knight (who released his debut collection in 1968 after an eight-year prison sentence) depicts seven incarcerated Black men and women arguing about the true path to freedom. As the poem ends, the prisoners are “still arguing; and to this day they are still in their prison cells, their stomachs / trembling with fear.” In stark contrast, editor Martin’s “(un)chained” is a defiant declaration of hope in the face of mass incarceration. “go ahead— / trap our bodies / in shackles / behind bars,” Martin writes, “as if you could lock up / our will to survive.” 

In her 1991 poem “won’t you celebrate with me,” Lucille Clifton writes, “come celebrate with me / that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed.” What makes Poemhood such a triumphant and necessary work is its uncompromising commitment to the celebration of Black life, in spite of pain. By shuffling classic and contemporary poets together, the editors show how this tension plays out across decades and centuries, but magic, restoration and joy always prevail. In the anthology’s final poem, Nikki Giovanni writes, “We learn to negotiate / The space between / Imagination and possibility / Reality and probability.” The poets in this anthology negotiate the terms of celebration across time and experience, and the result is extraordinary.

Award-winning author Amber McBride teams up with acclaimed poets Taylor Byas and Erica Martin to curate an electric, extraordinary lineup of contemporary and classic Black poetry for young readers.
FictionHistorical Fiction

A True Account

Review by Mariel Fechik

As long as piracy has existed, it has been shrouded in myth, legend and rumor, which compromises the reliability of primary texts describing its major figures. Author Katherine Howe tackles this historical pitfall in her newest novel, A True Account.

Hannah Masury, nicknamed “Hannah Misery” by the clientele at the waterfront inn where she works in colonial Boston, has a small life. As an orphan and a girl, she doesn’t possess much in the way of prospects. When, on a balmy June morning in 1726, Hannah witnesses the hanging of a pirate named William Fly, something breaks open in her. In a matter of hours, a combination of coincidence and terrible timing leads to Hannah running for her life. With nowhere to turn, she seeks refuge aboard the ship of infamous pirate Edward Low, in disguise as a cabin boy.

Meanwhile, in 1930s Cambridge, a bright-eyed freshman named Kay brings Dr. Marian Beresford a tattered manuscript that claims to be a true account of the adventures of one Hannah Masury. Marian almost immediately dismisses it, but her initial skepticism gives way to a guarded curiosity. Could the manuscript be genuine? If it is, did Hannah intentionally alter details to hide something? And if she did . . . what exactly is waiting to be unearthed?

Using dual narratives and timelines to create a work of metafiction, Howe examines the contradictory tales of the real Edward Low through the lenses of Hannah and Marian.  Conceptually, the idea is fascinating, though Hannah’s narrative of transformation is the more interesting and better constructed of the two. Too often, Marian teeters on the edge between character and device, and her sections can veer into a juvenile tone. In contrast, the use of a diaristic narrative to tell Hannah’s story invites readers to feel the rush of clandestine discovery alongside Marian and Kay.

While the novel might have been stronger with Hannah’s voice alone, her half of the story is too compelling to be overshadowed. Readers who found their childhood love of pirates rekindled by the HBO superhit “Our Flag Means Death” (which involves other real-life pirates such as Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and Calico Jack) will be enamored with Howe’s piratical retelling in which the heroes are as unlikely as buried treasure itself.

Readers who found their love of pirates rekindled by the HBO superhit “Our Flag Means Death” will be enamored by this piratical retelling in which the heroes are as unlikely as buried treasure itself.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Ferris Wheel

Review by Mariel Fechik

A boy and a girl live in cities in two different parts of the world. Though it’s not explicit in the text where each resides, it is easy to tell the boy and his mother live comfortably, while the girl and her father live in the midst of war, and their safety is never a given. 

As both pairs go through their daily lives, their respective experiences mirror each other, and their destinations converge upon a single point: a brightly lit Ferris wheel, turning slowly on its axis as it offers a new perspective from every point in the sky. 

Author Tulin Kozikoglu and illustrator Huseyin Sönmezay’s picture book The Ferris Wheel is a beautifully profound yet subtle story about refugees and global connection. This book captures the essence of what a picture book should be: The text and illustrations are in complete conversation, providing context and bolstering each other. 

Across seemingly simple spreads, the parents’ dialogue often matches verbatim: “On the street, Mama says, ‘Be careful.’ / On the street, Papa says, ‘Be careful.’” But small differences carry larger implications: For example, as each pair passes a candy store, the boy’s mother says, “Not before lunch,” while the girl’s father says, “Not anymore.” 

Sönmezay’s stunning digital illustrations are as textured and tangible as if one were standing in front of a physical canvas. Bordered by white frames containing the text, the images possess a strong dimensionality that foregrounds each parent-child pair while offering many background details to explore. Sönmezay makes the meaningful choice to keep the color palettes similar throughout both settings, showing that there can still be vibrance in dire circumstances. The varying contexts depicted in each street scene are likely to prompt questions and fruitful conversations. 

Though drawn from Kozikoglu’s experiences growing up and living in Turkey—which her author’s note describes as “a land of ‘comers’ and ‘goers’’’ due to centuries-old, ongoing political turmoil—The Ferris Wheel itself is not specific about time or place, which adds to the universality of its deceptively simple narrative. While the overarching metaphor of the ferris wheel itself may not be immediately clear to young readers, the book will begin a conversation that can be returned to again and again.

A beautifully profound yet subtle story about refugees and global connection, The Ferris Wheel engages its text and illustrations in conversation, capturing the essence of what a picture book should be.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

What the River Knows

Review by Mariel Fechik

All Inez Olivera wants is to be with her parents in Egypt, where they work as archaeologists with her Tio Ricardo. From her home in Argentina, Inez longs to understand what separates her family for half of every year, and waits hopefully for her parents to send an invitation to join their latest expedition.

Instead, a courier arrives with the news that her parents went missing in the desert and are now presumed dead. Having just turned 18 and inherited both her family’s fortune and Tio Ricardo as a guardian, Inez immediately books passage to Egypt to find out what happened to her parents. She carries with her the last item she received from her father: a gold ring bearing  ancient magic.

Inez is frustrated when Tio Ricardo’s assistant, Whit Hayes, meets her at the dock with orders from Ricardo to send her back to Argentina immediately. Refusing to leave without answers, Inez decides to begin her own investigation. Tio Ricardo is hiding something, and the answers can only be found along one path: down the glittering Nile, into the desert.

Author Isabel Ibañez’s fourth young adult novel, What the River Knows, is a lush and layered fantasy adventure that plays with the magic of ancient Egypt while delivering a multilayered commentary on colonialism. Inez hails from a country that historically suffered under Spanish rule; additionally, she is angered by the impacts of British imperialism in Egypt. Ibañez offers a nuanced look at the complex dichotomies of archaeology and the handling of antiquities: academic conservation and curation versus theft and appropriation of cultural legacy.

Ibañez balances all of this with fun: Fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope will relish Inez and Whit’s growing flirtation, and readers who spent their childhoods poring over kids’ encyclopedias about ancient Egypt will find themselves captivated.

Though the novel’s lengthy exposition is generously sprinkled with compelling depictions of magic and late 19th-century Cairo, readers may find themselves losing steam early on. That said, once Inez and crew begin their journey down the Nile, the plot is captivating and full of intrigue, making great use of a clear influence: Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

What the River Knows is dense and may take some time to build investment, but for fans of atmospheric historical mysteries tinged with magic, Ibañez’s story will be well worth the time.

A lush and layered fantasy adventure, What the River Knows plays with the magic of ancient Egypt and ponders the complex dichotomies of archaeology and the handling of antiquities.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

6 Times We Almost Kissed (And One Time We Did)

Review by Mariel Fechik

For their entire lives, Penny and Tate have orbited each other reluctantly. Since before Penny and Tate were born, their moms, Lottie and Anna, have been attached at the hip, and this permanent package deal means constant, unwanted proximity for the two daughters. See, Penny and Tate are not friends. They’re also not not friends. They just . . . can’t seem to stop almost kissing at extremely inopportune moments. 

But Tate lives with the ever-present threat that her mom’s illness, a genetic condition that impacts Anna’s lungs and liver, will spiral out of control, while Penny lives in the aftermath of a horrific rafting accident that took her father’s life. Penny’s mom, Lottie, has been distant and cold in the two years since the accident, and Penny tries to tiptoe around her while working through her own grief and guilt.

So when Lottie decides to become a living liver donor for Anna and combine their two households to save money while they recover, it’s a shock to the fragile ecosystem that Penny has so carefully constructed. There’s no way she and Tate can survive an entire summer in the same house without exploding, so they decide to call a truce. Its terms include no fighting, no snitching, equitable division of labor and no stressing out their moms. Unfortunately for Penny and Tate, some things between them just can’t stay buried forever, truce or not.

6 Times We Almost Kissed (and One Time We Did) may sound like the title of a sweet, comedy-of-errors rom-com, but Tess Sharpe’s novel is not so fluffy. Although inspired by the “five things” fan-fiction story concept, the book playfully subverts reader expectations by being about much more than six near kisses. Penny and Tate’s story is rich with the complexity of friendship and family and the messiness of grief. Their relationship leans heavily into a number of classic rom-com tropes, including “only one bed,” roommates and height differences. Both girls are well-drawn, grounded characters, and their internal struggles feel emotional and realistic.

One of the novel’s strongest subplots is the arc of Penny’s relationship with her mom. Sharpe never suggests that a relationship as fraught as theirs can be easily fixed with apologies or in a single conversation. Indeed, she acknowledges that such a relationship might not be possible to repair. Teen readers with difficult parental situations of their own will feel validated by the nuance Sharpe brings to this portrayal.

Sharpe untangles the knotted web of her novel with exacting balance and grace while never compromising the love story at its core. This swoony, Sapphic story is sure to please readers who like their romance with a side of emotional devastation.

This love story between two girls who can’t seem to stop almost kissing at inopportune moments is rich with friendship, family and the messiness of grief.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

She Is a Haunting

Review by Mariel Fechik

Seventeen-year-old Jade Nguyen has never forgiven her father for leaving his family in the U.S. and returning to Vietnam. Until this summer, Jade had never visited her parents’ home country, and she isn’t looking forward to the trip. But Ba has made her a deal: If she’ll spend the summer with him in the French colonial villa he’s rehabbing, he’ll give her the money she desperately needs to pay for college in the fall. So she and her younger sister make their way to Da Lat and to Nha Hoa (“Flower House”), nestled in a forest of pines. Trapped in a place that isn’t home with little in the way of companionship, Jade grudgingly works on the future bed-and-breakfast’s website. 

But Nha Hoa soon reveals itself to be more than just a house: It is where Jade’s ancestors worked and toiled for French soldiers, a site of violence done in the name of duty. Jade wakes every night paralyzed and drenched in sweat as figures move on the edge of her vision. Ba works himself to the bone fixing pockmarked walls and rat-infested pipes, but the core of the house remains fetid with rot. Something is eating its way through Nha Hoa and into the minds of its inhabitants, and it refuses to remain in the shadows for much longer.

Trang Thanh Tran’s debut novel, She Is a Haunting, is a welcome addition to the quickly growing canon of culturally diverse, queer horror. Jade’s story is clearly influenced by Shirley Jackson’s iconic gothic novel The Haunting of Hill House, in which self-inflicted psychic damage is as tangible as any physical threat. Like Jackson, Tran mirrors Jade’s claustrophobic paranoia through setting and atmosphere. Just as Jackson’s protagonist suffers from her surreal and isolating surroundings at Hill House, so too is Jade afflicted by the oppressive humidity and unfamiliarity of Vietnam. 

Jade is haunted both by actual ghosts and the specters of colonialism, which take the form of not-so-subtly racist American expats and the crumbling French villas that dot the countryside around Nha Hoa. She is plagued by visions of ruined insects and decay, and she dreams of memories that are not her own, all while attempting to keep a lid on the resentment she feels toward Ba—and herself. 

Jade’s first-person narration is sometimes bogged down as she prevaricates about her feelings, which leaves some of the horror elements to fall a bit flat. Nevertheless, She Is a Haunting successfully combines the alluring aesthetic of gothic ghost stories with the complexity of contemporary immigration narratives. The result is an atmospheric horror novel that teens with a penchant for the grotesque will delight in unfolding, bit by rotting bit.

Trang Thanh Tran’s debut novel, She Is a Haunting, is a welcome addition to the quickly growing canon of culturally diverse, queer horror.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Lucha of the Night Forest

Review by Mariel Fechik

Lucha Moya is a fighter. Born and raised in Robado, on a lifeless strip of land known to its inhabitants as the Scar, Lucha has grappled her way through life alongside her community. Robado is surrounded on all sides by a strange and monstrous forest, and grotesque, skeletal creatures stalk along its edges, leaving the people who live there isolated from the rest of an unknown world. 

Haunted by legends of a demonic presence known as El Sediento, Robado lives under the violent thumb of Los Ricos, who control access to a powerful drug called olvida, which makes users forget their troubles. Lucha’s mother has been losing increasing amounts of time to the drug while Lucha struggles to support herself and her younger sister, Lis.

When Lucha’s mother fails to return from her latest bender, Lucha and Lis are evicted from their home and their precarious existence becomes even more fraught. Amid this desperate situation, Lucha discovers a power she didn’t know she possessed and strikes a dark bargain that will change the path of Robado—and the wider world—forever. 

Acclaimed YA and middle grade author Tehlor Kay Mejia’s Lucha of the Night Forest is a powerful allegorical fantasy novel. Embedded in its story of magic and sisterhood are important questions about addiction, justice and the price of activism. The Scar mirrors real neighborhoods where infrastructure is failing, food deserts are growing and crime is too often the only way to survive. In a place where nothing is nurtured, how can anything grow? Robadan tales of El Sediento and a long-lost forest goddess echo these contradictions, as one figure brings rot and decay while the other promises verdant life. Lucha, too, learns harsh truths about who, in her world, hopes for change and who must bear the brunt of the pain and sacrifice required to make that change happen.

Lucha of the Night Forest is a multilayered novel that will appeal to fantasy readers and young activists alike. Seasoned genre fans will enjoy its fast-paced storytelling as well as its fresh take on nature-based magic within a vivid setting filled with glowing mushrooms and otherworldly forests. A sweet queer romance adds another appealing level to the narrative. But it’s Mejia’s clever and compelling incorporation of familiar social justice themes that make this such an impactful, enduring read.

This powerful allegorical fantasy embeds questions of justice and the price of activism within a fresh, fast-paced story of magic and sisterhood.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Nigeria Jones

Review by Mariel Fechik

Nigeria Jones is a teenager. She’s a warrior princess. She’s a sister. She’s a stand-in mother. She’s a queen. She’s a student. Within the Movement, the Black separatist utopian community founded in West Philadelphia by her parents, Kofi Sankofa and Natalie Pierre, Nigeria is all of these things and none of them. Alongside the Movement’s members, whom Nigeria knows as aunties and uncles, sisters and brothers, Nigeria has spent her life being home-schooled and learning about Blackness—its traditions, its histories, its struggles, its triumphs. The Movement isolates itself from the world, divesting from white supremacist systems, all in service of a vision for the future in which Black communities can thrive, independent from oppressive forces.

But Nigeria’s mother has left, disappeared, and without the woman under whose care and attention the Movement thrived, Nigeria is floundering and filled with doubt. She has internalized her father’s teachings, from his loving, community-oriented leadership to his ire toward all systems, including education, corporate capitalism and health care. Then Nigeria discovers that her mother secured a spot for her at a wealthy private school, and she begins attending classes there. As Nigeria embarks on a journey of self-discovery, she also learns about the world outside the Movement and meets other teens, some Black, some not. As Nigeria moves further from everything she’s ever known, she’s forced to ask: Who is Nigeria Jones?

The best word to describe acclaimed author Ibi Zoboi’s Nigeria Jones is heavy. The novel depicts the horrors of generational trauma while also placing the personal traumas of one girl, one family and one community within a national and even global context. All the while, Zoboi (Pride, Punching the Air) strikes a delicate balance with the story’s political topics, never moralizing or seeking to provide answers but also not leaving things so open-ended as to appear ambivalent. Through Nigeria and her peers’ interactions with the complex, nuanced subjects they encounter, Zoboi offers a flawless depiction of Generation Z’s activist relationship to such topics. 

Nigeria’s upbringing and experiences are unique, and her inner world, her thoughts and reactions, feels exceptionally true to life. Zoboi tells a singular story of a singular girl, and Nigeria Jones opens wide and welcoming arms. 

In this story of a girl who questions her parents' Black separatist utopian community, author Ibi Zoboi strikes a delicate balance with weighty themes.

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