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Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

You Will Never Be Me

Review by Elyse Discher

In You Will Never Be Me, Jesse Q. Sutanto not only gives readers a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of mom-fluencers, she pulls off a twist sure to surprise even veteran thriller readers.

Meredith Lee and Aspen Palmer were once friends, but the cutthroat world of influencing has driven them to frenemy status. When they met, Meredith’s career as a beauty and fashion influencer was on the rise, but after Aspen had children, she pivoted into the mom-fluencer sphere and skyrocketed to fame. Now Aspen and her perfect home, husband and kids are driving Meredith insane with jealousy. She’s been trying to break into mom-influencing with her own baby, but she can’t quite crack it, and Aspen’s easy-breezy success is pushing her to the edge. When Meredith snags an iPad from Aspen, giving her access to all of Aspen’s accounts, she can’t resist wreaking havoc on Aspen’s carefully cultivated internet presence.

When Aspen’s immaculately scheduled and sanitized life begins to fall apart due to Meredith’s meddling (surreptitiously rescheduled meetings, declined sponsorship opportunities, etc.), she starts to question her own sanity. But what Meredith doesn’t realize is that Aspen can only be pushed so far. Her children are tired of playing a role for social media, her husband is distant and resentful of her success, but she can’t quit her online persona because of the six-figure income it provides.

Jesse Q. Sutanto finds the anxiety beneath the aesthetics.

Sutanto pulls back the curtain on a culture that is as intriguing as it is narcissistic. Meredith and Aspen both have to maintain a perfectly curated image in order to monetize their online presences, but those images are far from reality. The dissonance between the real world of crying children, messy homes and diaper blowouts and the aesthetic both women present online is impossible to resolve, and this anxiety, so vividly conjured by Sutanto, is clearly enough to drive Aspen and Meredith to unimaginable acts.

You Will Never Be Me’s truly twisty, unexpected plot will hook readers, even those who don’t find either of its main characters particularly likable—it hardly matters, as both are absolutely fascinating. The eventual confrontation between Meredith and Aspen is shocking and brilliantly executed, the crowning achievement of this truly unforgettable read.

Jesse Q. Sutanto pulls back the curtain on the world of mom-fluencers in her unforgettable, brilliantly executed thriller You Will Never Be Me.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Voyage of the Damned

Review by Chris Pickens

You might think you know what to expect from a book titled Voyage of the Damned. Author Frances White, I’m sure, will be pleased to upend your expectations. Murder, mystery and magic await, but there’s also a generous helping of humor, and an unforgettable narrator, too. Title be damned, this utter joy of a read would be Agatha Christie’s favorite fantasy.

To say that Ganymedes Piscero is a bit of an underachiever is putting it very nicely. To be fair, it’s easy to be an underachiever when your province is the butt of every joke in Concordia. At least he’s one of the Blessed, the heirs to the empire’s 12 provinces. Maybe the upcoming boat trip around the realm will bring him closer to the other Blessed aboard. They’re a varied group of characters, each of them possessing a secret magical talent, and Ganymedes has been more than happy to play the class clown for years. But when one of the Blessed turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Ganymedes finds himself needing to be something he’s never been before: brave. Can he find the murderer and save the rest of the heirs aboard before it’s too late?

At times, fans of the genre can forget how important it is for a fantasy story to be fun. From start to finish, Voyage of the Damned proves just how pivotal a sense of joy can be. Ganymedes is one of the most entertaining narrators in years, full of snarky comebacks and nuanced layers. The mystery elements are sturdily crafted, and surprises abound. There are moments of intense emotion, as befits the subject matter, but White unleashes Ganymedes’ laugh-out-loud humor often, lightening the mood when the going gets rough.

Voyage of the Damned would make a fantastic travel book, sure to keep you reading even as your journeys distract you. Thanks to its mix of murder and mystery, even readers who are new to fantasy will find it impossible to put down. Climb aboard, watch your back and enjoy this juicy caper.

Despite its ominous title, Voyage of the Damned, Frances White’s fantasy-mystery hybrid, is an utter joy.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Flavia de Luce burst onto the cozy mystery scene in 2009, and now the precocious 12-year-old chemistry prodigy is back for the 11th time in bestselling author Alan Bradley’s What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust.

Once again, Bradley beckons readers into post-World War II England—specifically, Bishop’s Lacey, a hamlet in the countryside. Flavia roams the area on her bicycle, Gladys, searching for things to test in her home laboratory (ensconced in Buckshaw, the crumbling de Luce manor) and, lately, places to escape “pestilent little cousin” Undine, who’s come to Buckshaw after becoming an orphan.

Flavia, now an orphan as well, tends to the mansion with the help of two beloved adults: Dogger, handyman and helpmeet, and the estate’s housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet, who’s also been cooking for their neighbor Major Greyleigh, a former hangman who is found dead as the book opens. Alas, the police consider Mrs. Mullet the prime suspect because she accidentally served the major a dish of poisonous mushrooms directly before his demise.

Convinced of Mrs. Mullet’s innocence, Flavia resolves to solve the crime and clear the cook’s name. After all, she’s so important to her—and as a bonus, it’s yet another opportunity to test her sleuthing mettle: “I have to admit that I’d been praying . . . for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift . . . without giving her the opportunity to use it?”

As Flavia questions locals, sneaks into crime scenes and conducts experiments, she realizes the murder is just the tip of a very strange iceberg looming over Bishop’s Lacey. Is the usually chatty, now oddly reticent, Mrs. Mullet hiding something? And some of the American soldiers still stationed at nearby Leathcote air base seem especially interested in the goings-on. Might they be involved? 

Bradley’s intrepid amateur sleuth is witty and whip-smart as ever, and Bishop’s Lacey remains both a colorful backdrop and a microcosm of a nation in transition, paralleling Flavia’s own trepidation at entering adulthood. A layered plot rife with dastardly deeds and shocking revelations makes for an intriguing and entertaining read, and nicely tees up the (one hopes) next installment in the irresistible Flavia de Luce series.

In Alan Bradley’s 11th mystery starring preteen sleuth Flavia de Luce, the chemistry prodigy faces murder by mushroom and her own impending adulthood.
NonfictionScienceEnvironment

Trash Talk

Review by Kelly Blewett

Have you ever wondered what happens to your trash? Or who lives next to landfills? Or why recycling is so complicated? If you struggle to wrap your mind around humankind’s relation to waste, check out Trash Talk: An Eye-Opening Exploration of Our Planet’s Dirtiest Problem by science writer and illustrator Iris Gottlieb.

Gottlieb offers a no-nonsense explanation of the global trash production system that is both timely, informative and digestible. Writing that their goal is not to change anyone’s behavior, but rather to offer more context about the trash crisis itself, Gottlieb avoids berating us for our stagnant composters and single-use floss picks. Instead, they illuminate the complexities of electronic and digital waste, the debate over whether to incinerate or use landfills, the reason that not all paper can be recycled and much more. Readers learn about sustainability interventions in construction, electronics and plastics. The book is rife with discoveries; a particularly shudder-inducing one is of fatbergs, “huge masses” of nonbiodegradable material, fats, oils and grease “that harden into bus-sized, concrete-like chunks” in our sewer systems.

Yet Trash Talk can also be lighthearted, thanks in part to Gottlieb’s whimsical line drawings that illustrate everything from trash barges to scrounging raccoons to subway rats. Quick asides called “Trashy Tidbits” highlight a range of facts and anecdotes, like how Disney World employs underground vacuum tubes to send its trash behind Space Mountain, where it is compacted. Another tidbit tells how a small community on Lake Huron ceremoniously buried 29,188 frozen mushroom pizzas deemed unsafe by the FDA; “Pizza was served at the funeral,” Gottlieb notes. These asides balance out the growing sense of dread readers may feel while confronting how waste management is contributing to global warming.

Like water to a goldfish, our trash crisis is simultaneously omnipresent and invisible. Gottlieb unpacks the way our environments are built and argues persuasively that our society needs major interventions to move beyond linear thinking regarding the use of resources. We also need to reckon with the fact that the poorest and most vulnerable among us are the ones most exposed to danger because of racism and other long-standing social injustices. Gottlieb’s candor and willingness to call out these painful truths make Trash Talk a book readers will remember and share.

 

Science writer Iris Gottlieb uncovers the crisis of our waste management systems in their timely, playfully illustrated Trash Talk.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Zebra’s Great Escape

Review by Alice Cary

The Zebra’s Great Escape is a delightful, action-filled saga packed into picture book format—which its creators use to their full advantage. Katherine Rundell’s text brims with heart and humorous details, while Sara Ogilvie’s illustrations feature explosions of color that nicely contrast with the black-and-white zebras at the center of this adventure. 

An exuberant girl nicknamed Mink befriends a zebra who suddenly appears one day. “Mink was not usually gentle,” Rundell writes. “She liked doing things fast and wild. But it was with all the gentleness in the world that she reached out and laid a hand on the zebra’s fur.” The zebra, Gabriel, communicates through swirling streams of color, and explains that he needs help finding his parents, who have been kidnapped by an evil “Collector” named Mr. Spit.

Mink discovers that she can also communicate via color with her elderly pet dog, Rainbow (aptly named). He is loath to help “the barcode-horse,” but Mink begs, noting, “Daddy says, when people ask you for help, they’re actually doing a magnificent thing—they’re giving you the chance to change the world for the better!” Rainbow is persuaded, with the help of a small bribe, to send a message to all the animals in the city, and off our heroes go, to confront the evil Collector and free an entire alphabet of animals in dire straits. 

The picture book combines an appealing old-fashioned feel with modern flair, in moments such as when oblivious adults, busy staring at their phones, don’t notice a girl riding a galloping zebra through the streets. Ogilvie’s lively illustrations bring Rundell’s delicious prose to life. Mink is so full of zest that she practically leaps off the page, while the dastardly Mr. Spit resembles Captain Hook with his long, thin mustache, jutting chin and fancy attire. The color orange pervades the book—in Gabriel’s fiery communications, in Mink’s polka-dotted shirt, in the burning rage that surrounds the evil Mr. Spit. It’s nicely offset by numerous pages bathed in blue: cozy bedtime scenes, the animals running to freedom and spirited celebrations at the end.

Don’t miss The Zebra’s Great Escape, a kaleidoscopic celebration of communication and the rewards of helping one another. 

Sara Ogilvie’s lively illustrations bring the spirit of Katherine Rundell’s delicious prose to life in The Zebra’s Great Escape, which features a protagonist so full of zest that she practically leaps off the page.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

There Are Rivers in the Sky

Review by Thane Tierney

Water. Generally, we don’t give it much of a thought. Unless there’s too little . . . or too much. Then it fills our consciousness, saturating our brains with phrases like “atmospheric rivers” and “glacial retreat,” or such devastatingly commonplace words as “drowning” and “drought.”

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, here on the head of a learned and cruel Assyrian king, there as a snowflake on the tongue of an impoverished British baby, and yet again as a lifesaving elixir in the possession of a Yazidi grandmother driven into exile by the Islamic State group.

In a fabulist twist, the Booker-shortlisted, bestselling author imbues this recurring molecule with a sense of memory. After a particularly disturbing and graphic passage near the book’s opening, Shafak states her case clearly and succinctly: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

The book opens with King Ashurbanipal in the 640s B.C.E.; then the narrative takes a leap of thousands of years and miles, to Victorian era London. There, a young lad born to an itinerant scavenger is crowned “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums.” Modeled on real-life Assyriologist George Smith, Arthur rises above his station to become a scholar who, like Ashurbanipal before him, is enchanted by the Epic of Gilgamesh.

From there, the scene shifts to 2014, by the Tigris river in southeastern Turkey. There, Narin, a young Yazidi girl, is preparing for a journey to Iraq with her grandmother so that she can be baptized in a sacred temple. When the girl questions her elder about why they are being forced from their land, the grandmother recounts a brief history of the Yazidi people, concluding that “For us, memory is all we have. If you want to know who you are, you need to learn the stories of your ancestors.”

Shafak seems to be on a mission to prevent us from forgetting, whether it’s the majesty of ancient Mesopotamia, the horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated upon the Yazidis, or the fragile ecosystem of rivers such as the Tigris and the Thames. Like water itself, There Are Rivers in the Sky seeps into the cracks and crevasses of our humanity, unlocking a sense of wonder.

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, touching four lives linked by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Volcano Daughters

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Gina Maria Balibrera’s debut novel, The Volcano Daughters, offers the epic early 20th-century tale of sisters Graciela and Consuelo, born into poverty and servitude on a coffee finca (plantation) on the side of a volcano in El Salvador.

In 1923, Graciela and her mother, Socorrito, are summoned to San Salvador for the funeral of the father that Graciela never knew: a peasant who rose to become the advisor to El Gran Pendejo, the strongman ruling El Salvador. There Graciela meets her sister, Consuelo, who was taken from the finca as a 4-year-old, and lives in luxury with her adoptive mother, Perlita. Soon, Graciela learns that El Gran Pendejo intends for her to advise him as her father did, though she’s only 9. Every morning Graciela is driven to the presidential palace, where she listens to the nonsense El Gran Pendejo spouts, repeating it back to him. Meanwhile, the teenage Consuelo, who failed at the same job, stays busy falling in love with her young art teacher.

That’s only the beginning of The Volcano Daughters, which spans 30 years and multiple settings, including Paris, San Francisco and Hollywood. As El Gran Pendejo’s pronouncements grow more bizarre, he lands on the idea of killing the country’s Indigenous people, who he claims are communists. The massacre that follows separates Graciela and Consuelo, as each flees the country thinking the other dead.

The Volcano Daughters is also a ghost story, as the ghosts of Graciela’s and Consuelo’s best friends from the finca—Lourdes, Maria, Cora and Lucia—share the novel’s first person-plural narration, sometimes disappearing into the story, other times butting in with commentary. 

Because The Volcano Daughters covers so much ground (both literally and narratively), and has a large cast of characters, including the ghost narrators, parts of the story slip by almost too quickly for the reader to connect with them emotionally. Still, Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances.

With its depictions of the 1930s Hollywood scene and Paris art world, and its imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history, The Volcano Daughters stands out. 

Gina María Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances, an imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history.
NonfictionMemoir

The Slow Road North

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Rosie Schaap lost her husband to cancer at 42. Her mother died a year later, followed by her ancient, beloved cat. Awash in grief, Schaap needed a place to mourn. She would find it in Northern Ireland, a country still recovering from decades of sectarian strife known as the “troubles.” The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country is a magnificent love letter to a region that brought her back to life.

Glenarm is a small village in County Antrim, along Northern Ireland’s northeastern coast. On a travel writing assignment in 2016, Schaap stayed at the Barbican, “the fairy-tale castle folly at the entrance of Glenarm Castle.” A forest and a seashore, a few small shops, two pubs and a grocery store: She fell in love. “It had a feeling, a spirit, a strong sense of place to which I succumbed. I knew I would be back. And I had a feeling that someday I would stay much longer.”

After her various griefs at age 47, the Drinking With Men author enrolled in a creative writing program at a Belfast college. Her studies soon expanded beyond the classroom as she took in the history of her village and the people there, and the stories of those still being mourned from the troubles. The Irish are excellent at death, she learned. Strangers became friends and empathetic listeners. She could pour her grief out to them and they understood everything.

As idyllic as it all seemed, Schaap was not so much entranced as curious—and cautious. To be asked “What are you?” still meant “Protestant or Catholic?” Her being Jewish confounded them, just as they sometimes did her. A “reticence” she often encountered on the subject of the troubles, was, she believed, “a reflection of the trauma those years inflicted upon the people here . . . too sensitive and painful to discuss, too unhappy to recollect at will.”

Schaap nicely balances lush descriptions of the Irish countryside with sharp observations and wit, as she sheds her old city life and finds a home to tend to her grief. The Slow Road North is a winning memoir about loss and life.

 

The Slow Road North is Rosie Schaap's magnificent love letter to Northern Ireland, the region that offered her solace and community while she was reeling from grief.
NonfictionHistory

The Stalin Affair

Review by Roger Bishop

In the summer of 1941, Germany broke its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and invaded the Soviet frontier. Joseph Stalin was stunned and unprepared, and his army suffered many casualties. Hitler’s about-face was good news for Great Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill. Now, Germany’s forces would be split, and Great Britain and the Soviet Union had a common enemy. 

Only four months prior, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed to aid Great Britain and appointed millionaire businessman Averell Harriman to be his personal liaison to Churchill. As bestselling historian Giles Milton describes in his vivid portrayal of high-stakes diplomacy and personal relations during World War II, The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War, this invitation “would lay the foundations of a remarkable, if bizarre, three-power wartime alliance.”

Soon after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the Soviet ambassador presented a formal request to the U.S. government for $2 billion in guns, ammunition and aircraft. Once the decision was made to help the tyrannical government, with whom the U.S. strongly disagreed on almost everything, Harriman soon found his mission expanded. He worked closely with Churchill and Stalin, coordinating the ordering and shipping of military supplies. He was also FDR’s eyes and ears, reporting back the goings-on of political leaders. Harriman’s astute judgment of Stalin, as a leader suspicious of everyone and focused on dominating all the territories “liberated” by his army, would prove critical. Milton writes that “Averell had helped to manage a complex relationship between three leaders with widely different backgrounds, approaches, and goals,” often assuaging Stalin’s fears of betrayal to keep the alliance on course. 

In addition to relying on a vast archive of official records of events, Milton also uses accounts written by some of the less prominent observers of this political alliance, which brings a sense of immersion and immediacy to The Stalin Affair. Among the previously unpublished sources are letters from Harriman’s daughter, Kathy, who accompanied her father and worked as a news service reporter. Her many letters to family and friends give us a special window into events. 

Milton’s outstanding writing and research make The Stalin Affair an authoritative and lively account that shows how despite tensions, strong egos and different approaches to leadership, these unlikely partners worked together to end the war. 

The Stalin Affair is an authoritative and lively account of the unlikely World War II alliance among the U.S., Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
FictionPopular Fiction

The Life Impossible

Review by Matthew Jackson

In his bestselling 2020 novel, The Midnight Library, Matt Haig told the story of a woman, who, after deciding to end her life, finds herself transported to a new metaphysical plane in the form of a magical library. With his new book, Haig sticks to our ordinary world and makes it magical, which makes The Life Impossible an instantly engrossing, page-turning delight.

The Life Impossible begins with an email, a very ordinary thing, from a former student to retired math teacher Grace Winters. The student, now studying math at a university, shares his grief and despair, and Grace responds with kindness, then sets out to soothe the student’s aching soul by telling the story of a life-changing experience that recently happened to her. Her story, attached to the email as a manuscript, forms the rest of the novel.

A widow living a quiet life in England, Grace is surprised to receive word that a friend she hasn’t spoken to in decades has bequeathed her a house in Ibiza, Spain. Intrigued by the mystery of this gift, Grace heads to Ibiza to unravel the saga of how she came to be left the house, and to learn how her old friend died.

What she finds when she arrives is something much more complex than the unexpected inheritance. Grace, it seems, has been chosen for something that her rational math teacher’s mind struggles to understand, let alone embrace. As she draws closer to the secrets of her friend’s life, she comes to realize that Ibiza could change her own life, not just through its natural beauty and charming, energetic residents, but through a supernatural power.

Grace narrates the action not like a novelist, but like a human searching for meaning in the strangeness of her reality. Haig’s attention to detail and pacing never flags, and neither does his commitment to Grace’s voice, which is resonant with her insecurities, fears and confusion over what’s happening to her. This remarkable balance allows Haig to insert humor, heart and a kind of palpable power into the narrative, and it works extremely well. 

Even beyond the novel’s structural charms, of which there are many, The Life Impossible succeeds because of Haig’s ability to treat Grace’s journey not as a straight line, but as a vibrant interconnected web. As in our own lives, things that happened to Grace as a much younger woman ripple down through the decades, with often unexpected bearings on her present and the future she seeks. Though it deploys familiar fantastic elements, this is a book that refuses oversimplification through genre: It’s part fantasy, part travel saga and part romance with one’s self. Like the bright, yearning human being at its center, it pulses with life, which makes it well worth reading for anyone who wants a hopeful, warm, very human journey that crackles with magic.

Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible is part fantasy, part travel saga and part romance with one's self, and that makes it well worth reading for anyone seeking a hopeful, warm journey that crackles with magic.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

The House on Yeet Street

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s summertime, and 13-year-old Aidan Cross is looking forward to lots of fun with his closest friends: handsome athlete Kai, class clown Zephyr and studious Terrance. They’ll ride bikes, go swimming, play D&D and watch movies. And they’ll engage in the group’s favorite pastime, “yeeting crap at the Witch House,” a tumbledown Victorian mansion with “broken and shattered windows . . . like hungry mouths with glass teeth.”

Aidan has something specific in mind for the yeeting session at the beginning of Preston Norton’s The House on Yeet Street. In addition to sticks and stones, he’ll yeet his notebook into the Witch House, where it’ll be safe from prying eyes. “The inside of this notebook was the one place Aidan was allowed to be himself. It was nice to invent a version of him that did and said the things he was afraid to say and do”—like confessing his romantic feelings for Kai. 

But the thrill of a successful yeet turns appallingly sour when his friends announce an impending Witch House sleepover. Aidan is desperate to grab his notebook before someone else does, and he sort of succeeds: His friends don’t find it, but a ghost does. She’s Gabby Caldwell, a teenaged girl who was found dead in the mansion 20 years ago and has been stuck inside since. Gabby wants Aidan to find out what happened to her so she can escape the house. She also wants him to continue the story he’s been writing in his notebook (his first positive review!). 

Aidan and friends spring into action, investigating Gabby’s demise and delving into the Witch House’s disturbing past. They encounter landmines galore, including a terrifying specter stalking them around town, a mean girl stealing and posting Aidan’s notebook online and extreme parental exasperation. Can the group make sense of the supernatural goings-on before the house claims another victim?

Norton, author of Hopepunk (one of BookPage’s Best YA Books of 2022), has crafted an action-packed, compelling coming-of-age tale about coming out and becoming brave, all wrapped up in a supremely creepy horror story rife with ghosts and legend, hilarious dialogue and daring adventures. It’s scary, sometimes sweet, rollicking good fun.

Preston Norton has crafted an action-packed, compelling tale about coming out and becoming brave, wrapped up in a supremely creepy horror story rife with ghosts and legend, hilarious dialogue and daring adventures.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryCozy Mystery

The Jig Is Up

Review by Jamie Orsini

The Jig Is Up takes readers to the fictional Irish-themed town of Shamrock, Massachusetts, where residents are gearing up to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day—despite the recent murder of an Irish step dancer.

When single mom Kate Buckley receives a text from her younger sister, Colleen, asking for help, she packs up her two daughters and their cat to travel to Shamrock, her hometown. Colleen has a history of impetuous decision making, and Kate fears that this time, her sister is in over her head—or worse, that something’s happened to their aging parents or the bed-and-breakfast that they run. But when Kate and her daughters arrive, Colleen is tight-lipped about her problem. Hours later, Kate and Colleen discover the lifeless body of Deirdre, a champion Irish step dancer and Colleen’s best friend. Kate learns that her sister fought with Deirdre before her death, and Colleen is soon named a person of interest in the case. Believing in her sister’s innocence, Kate sets out to clear Colleen’s name and find the real killer in Shamrock—before they strike again.

The Jig Is Up is a well-crafted cozy mystery that deftly explores complicated family dynamics. Kate is the dependable oldest sibling: She’s an accountant by trade and never stops worrying about her younger siblings, her parents or the B&B. Colleen may prove to be a divisive character; she can be selfish and flighty, and often refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of her situation. Still, Kate and the other Buckleys love and support her, even when her lies threaten their livelihood. Complex relationships like this aren’t always depicted in cozy mysteries, and it’s refreshing to see. And as The Jig Is Up is the first novel in a planned series, there’s plenty of room for Kate, Colleen and the rest of the Buckley clan to grow.

Kate’s daughters, Maeve and Bliz, feature prominently in the story, too. They are authentic, relatable characters who are integral to the plot, especially as their involvement in the local Irish dance show provides Kate with several opportunities to further investigate the murder. Kate’s love for her daughters is palpable, and it underscores the message of the novel: Family is everything.

At times, the mystery of Deidre’s murder does take a back seat to exploring Kate’s relationships with her family, friends and Shamrock itself. However, future installments of the series may very well benefit from the thoughtful world building Mathews has done in this first Irish Bed & Breakfast mystery.

The Jig Is Up is a well-crafted cozy mystery that deftly explores complicated family dynamics while also transporting readers to an adorable Irish-themed town.
NonfictionMemoir

That Librarian

Review by Alice Cary

There Amanda Jones was, living in her hometown of Watson, Louisiana, working as a middle school librarian in the school she once attended—an unremarkable and happy life. Then, everything changed. On a mid-July evening in 2022, Jones gave a short, powerful speech against censorship at her local public library’s board meeting. Four days later, she woke up to an email that included a death threat and accused her of “pedophilia grooming.” That frightening message signified the start of an ongoing social media campaign to destroy her reputation.

Jones was shaken to her core; she slept with a gun under her bed and took a semester’s sabbatical to deal with the turmoil. “What kind of world are we living in that has some of our most devoted community servants living so terrified?” Jones asks in her heartfelt memoir, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America. Along with conveying the sudden terror of her ordeal, Jones shares the urge she felt to strike back. A few days after receiving the email, as she watched a cascade of social media posts and comments assassinate her character, she “wanted to karate chop those responsible in the throat. I don’t think words can adequately express the burning rage I felt.”

Read our interview with Amanda Jones, author of ‘That Librarian.’

Jones is a compelling narrator with a nearly unbelievable story that is a parable for our divided times. In this nightmarish tale of a small-town battle gone viral, she shows immense courage by standing up to her tormentors and refusing to be silenced. Despite her fury, she channeled her emotions into positive action, researching the politics, corruption and financing behind the attacks.

Librarians and readers will especially appreciate the story of her educational journey over the years as they’ll see firsthand how important representation and diversity are in library collections, and what lifesavers such books can provide to patrons of all ages and backgrounds. For all who value books, libraries and the freedom of information, That Librarian is an empowering, triumphant tale.

 

Librarian Amanda Jones recounts her battle to overcome book-banning extremists in her empowering memoir, That Librarian.

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