This title was published on June 24, 2025 by Riverhead Books.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Among Friends.

I love a dysfunctional family saga. Whether in a novel, a movie, or a TV show, I thrive off familial dynamics. So, when I read the synopsis for Hal Ebbott’s debut novel, Among Friends, I knew it was going to the top of my to-be-read list The story follows two lifelong friends, Amos and Emerson, who reunite for an intimate, affluent birthday celebration at Emerson’s country home. What begins as a quiet weekend among friends slowly fractures, revealing how privilege can bury the truth.

From the beginning, everything feels unsettled. The characters perform under a façade—off-key, out of tune. Tensions simmer beneath surface-level smiles. Conversations are awkward. Old grudges linger. Wives smile through tight jaws. Among Friends features all the tropes complete with a large manor house and a group of wealthy friends. So, I settled in for what I thought would be a good ol’ domestic drama.

At first, I wondered when we’d get to the action, specifically the “shocking betrayal” the blurb teased. The slow burn was off-putting at first, and I was getting impatient. But in hindsight, it was a good thing Ebbott didn’t drop us directly into the action: it allowed time to explore his characters and understand their motivations, what makes them tick, and where their loyalties lie.

Emerson is the most complex character and perhaps the most well-written—a Jekyll and Hyde figure who can instantly flip from charm to unbridled cruelty. Ebbott describes him as having “lethal intelligence like what exists in a wolf.” His inner rage and entitlement, bolstered by years of unchecked self-importance, are chilling. And yet, his thoughts sometimes feel disturbingly universal, that feeling when teasing goes too far, when resentment crawls closer between two friends. Ebbott asks, what happens when you can’t take it anymore?

Truth be told, I was expecting something completely different from Among Friends. I tried searching for clues of an affair, a scandal, something more conventional. So, when Emerson sexually assaults his Amos’s daughter, Anna, during the party, it’s a brutal shock. On the one hand, Ebbott gives no clear warning this is imminent. But on the other, it had been part of Emerson’s nature all along. The uneasy silences, the flashes of rage.

Every time we’re immersed into Emerson’s headspace, it gave me chills. There’s a sense of entitlement at claiming Anna’s body and a pride of sorts, fortified by his social status. There’s a poignant line that encapsulates the predatory nature of men like him, “He inhabited the world as though it were a restaurant: a place to order, eat, and then leave.” He sees the assault as an “adventure,” knowing he can get away with it—a fuzzy memory that brings him a wolfish “thrill.” It’s uncomfortable to read, but I enjoyed how Ebbott forced us to sit with the knowledge, knowing this behavior often goes unchecked.

The second half of the novel is a testament to Ebbott’s writing. When the truth of Emerson’s assault comes out, the characters spiral. They aren’t strangers; they’re lifelong friends enmeshed by privilege. Reactions range from denial and quiet rage to deflection, with Anna’s own mother resolute in her conviction that “kids—girls especially” lie. Amos, on the other hand, immediately moves to comfort his daughter when she confides in him, angry with himself for not knowing. But with Emerson, the consequences are nonexistent, and he simply feels “there was nothing to do but move on” and thinks “of it far less than he would’ve guessed.” This casual detachment was done masterfully by Ebbott. It wasn’t over-dramatized but scarily mundane. There is no remorse, just a shrug and indifference.

Of all the characters, Amos is the most frustrating. As someone who’s risen through the social hierarchy, he wavers between action and complacency unsure where he stands when it comes to Emerson, the man who helped mold his path to riches. His wife, Claire, born into privilege, acts as a mouthpiece for the wealthy. She refuses to believe her daughter, and her dismissive line, “Wasn’t there a glory in wounds?” echoes the disbelief often thrown at survivors. She’s dangerously comfortable in complicity, favoring denial over discomfort.

Retsy, Emerson’s wife, is perhaps the most mysterious figure in Among Friends. We only get glimpses into her mind, yet she sees through him more clearly than anyone else. She understands him from the smallest gestures, how “his withholding of laughter, for instance, or the way, by merely touching his chin, he could make clear how unwanted you were.” She believes the accusations, “he’d done it—she knew that he had,” but her decision to stay with him feels tragically understandable. To leave would mean uprooting her entire life. And the wealthy cannot fathom such a loss.

It seems like justice might prevail—the scales finally shifting, a peripeteia of sorts. However, as someone whose favorite novel is Atonement, I should’ve recognized the warning signs—the too-neat ending Ebbott wrapped up with a little bow. This catharsis is simply an illusion, and Ebbott pulls the rug out right at the last second. I understand some readers will feel cheated by the ending, and to an extent, I agree. At first, it felt like a cop-out, the equivalent of the “and it was all a dream” ending. However, after sitting with the book for a while, it felt painfully realistic, as men like Emerson walk away unscathed every day, their reputations intact. Justice would never be served.

 “Why pick fights when it cost so little to just get along.” Among Friends isn’t just about rich people behaving badly. It’s about complicity and how people would rather maintain the status quo than confront the darkness that keeps them comfortable. And Ebbott did that devastatingly.

And for a debut? I see good things for Ebbott.

Nicole Leland’s latest publication, Hearts of Bark and Scale, transported me to a fascinating world of magic, betrayal, and love as sweet as wolfberries. Hearts of Bark and Scale takes place under the harsh desert environment where everyone’s trying to survive—including the poachers on the hunt for magic users.

With magic users considered rare and valuable, Kvisti, a dryad, is trafficked from her village home by poachers to sell her for profit. Gravely injured and grief-stricken over her capture, she finds herself locked in a magic-sealed cell in the poacher’s basement only to discover she’s not alone. Iason, a magic-possessing human and forcibly transformed snake shifter, is trapped with her. As the only snake shifter able to use magic from his human genes, he fears he will be taken to the exploitative snake den by his abusive captors. With Iason’s rare, birth-given magic, they discover the key to unlocking Kvisti’s suppressed power and the cruel truth of its diminishment.

My favorite aspect of Hearts of Bark and Scale is its worldbuilding and how main characters utilize magic to craft creative solutions to overcome obstacles and conflicts. The world’s vast lands and society harmonize with the magic system to feel realistic. With the ingenuity the soft magic system enables, it’s easy to understand why nonmagic users exploit and fear their power.

An example of this was when Kvisiti’s origins with the Mother Tree were established to explained why she and her other siblings/clones were kidnapped (so nonmagic users could have a guardian to protect their village). Further, the way characters share their interactions with other characters and their treatment helps boost the complexity and intrigue of the world. Like when Iason gets picked off the streets as a child to be groomed into the snake shifter’s healer and a vessel to produce more offspring carrying his magic. This was also shown when villagers treated Kvisti with reverence and fear because of her immense abilities yet sold her to poachers once they learned of the potential destruction of her power. Both examples reveal the unilateral, inequitable relationship between nonmagic and magic users, and how they’re often, unwillingly, used as tools to support/protect the lives of the nonmagic majority.

Kvisti and Iason individually serve as a great main cast with their own motivations, fears, and way of thinking. You have Kvisti, whose consideration can be sacrificial; and Iason, whose defense mechanisms are also his tormentor. The POV switch between chapters show how their characteristics help and hinder them, making them multifaceted and relatable.

Regarding their eventual relationship, I appreciated how different yet similar they are to each other and how they help each other face the truth about themselves and their realities. In particular, Iason’s understanding he has agency over his life despite experiencing sexual assault, and Kvisti’s decision to step out of the Mother Tree’s shadow and live on her own terms. Both characters realize others’ inflicted trauma doesn’t define them or their lives. Through understanding each other, they learn they’re capable of love and being loved despite their pasts. It’s an empowering message that feels authentic and realistic, acknowledging trauma doesn’t automatically disappear once you’re in a better place; it’s a long, slow process.

Despite this, I found their relationship rushed at times. In particular, the placement of their first kiss felt too early, taking away the buildup of one of the significant stakes within the novel. This made Kvisti’s discovery that her villagers intentionally suppressed her powers and sold her to magic poachers, and the tension of Iason helping to unlock her suppressed power less emotional than intended. If they didn’t kiss or admit their attraction before the point of no return it would’ve felt more high stakes for Iason and Kvisti.

In the end, it’s their love for each other that frees themselves from their cage, and the permission to accept themselves as they are. This is emphasized by the multiple antagonists who physically and emotionally haunt the duo. Each antagonist approaches Kvisti and Iason with the traumas they’re forced to confront while showing diversity in their level of animosity and the methods used to threaten them. Surprisingly, I didn’t find the numerous antagonists stifling. In fact, they brought more potential for the main cast to show their growth while including additional lore to enrich the narrative.

Hearts of Bark and Scale was an enjoyable read with moments of sympathy, anger, and joy. The chapter and book length kept me invested, and there weren’t any areas that dragged or felt slow, making every moment impactful, important, and invigorating. Character development was realistic without feeling melodramatic, especially once I understood their pasts and traumas.

Ultimately, Hearts of Bark and Scale was a fantastic way for me to settle down in bed while capturing my heart in the process. If you love dark fantasy romance, shorter reads, and complex characters who tackle their traumas in a realistic, mature light, this was written for you!

This title was published on September 10, 2024 by Arcade Publishing.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Vivienne.

Vivienne sort of fell into my lap, and I am so happy it did. I love a debut fiction novel written by a poet, partially because I am also a poet working on a novel, and because I know even if I don’t enjoy the story, it will always give me food for thought. I am delighted to report the latter was not true: this novel checked nearly all my boxes—it felt almost written for me. It was strange, artistic, lyrical, experimental; most of all, it was full of weird, memorable women, which as I’ve mentioned before, is one of my favorite topics in the world to read about.

Vivienne is a novel that primarily tells the story of three generations of women. The first and the namesake, Vivienne Volker, is an artist who creates surrealist clothing, lover to Hans Bellmer, and the maybe-murderer of Wilma Lang. Did she murder Wilma Lang? Who knows. Wilma could have fallen out of that window on her own, and as Vivienne puts it, was of weak temperament. By and large, the novel doesn’t want to give the reader an answer, and seems to ask instead: does it matter—would it color your perception of her work? Secondly, is Velour Bellmer, Vivienne’s long-suffering daughter and foremost scholar on her work, who lives in a tatty, white bathrobe and spends long hours making photo slideshows of her mother’s clothing, which she posts to YouTube. The last is Vesta Furio, Velour’s seven-year-old daughter, Vivienne’s granddaughter and devoted acolyte. She dresses like her grandmother, speaks like her grandmother, watches Ingmar Bergmann films with her grandmother, and follows her to and from Mass—pausing only to baby the massive family greyhound, Franz Kline. The only nonfemale and nonVolker perspective the novel explores is that of Lars, the owner of a gallery preparing to display Vivienne’s first exhibition in several years. Lars stands in powerful contrast to the Volker women; he is vulgar, pretentious, and overwhelmingly creepy, particularly towards Vesta. These perspectives converge in the days before the exhibition debuts, and all the creepy, sculptural baggage the display brings with it.

The plot is almost secondary in Vivienne—it’s important and it keeps the story chugging along its trajectory, but the real treat was the language and structure. You can tell Russo is a poet. She refuses to play by the rules of the novel; it is part prose, part poetry, part internet forum. Time speeds up and slows down. We float between perspectives seamlessly and skip from prose poem to group chat in a moment’s breath. The best part is it felt effortless; not once did it feel like experimentalism for the sake of it, or like Russo was shoehorning in a format change to be different. All the hybrid moments had purpose, from the “comment sections” creating the blathering cacophony of opinions on Vivienne, to the prose-poetry illustrating Vivienne’s slippery memories of the moments leading up to Wilma Lang falling (or shove) out of that window.

One character I have not seen extolled nearly enough was Velour. I love that tired, irritated woman—trapped in the shadow of her mother holding hands with her daughter, yet somehow content to stay there. Velour, the fabric, is imitation velvet; Velour, the woman, is imitation Vivienne, dressed in terrycloth white to her mother’s, and daughter’s, black shrouds. Always the art critic and never the artist, but too tired to resist anymore. She’ll settle for having sex with her mother’s boyfriend under the grotesque supervision of The Machine-Gunneress In A State of Grace, and eventually selling Vivienne’s comatose body to a biotechnology startup.

Which leads me to my biggest question: the ending. To summarize, at the opening of the exhibit, an angry onlooker throws a brick through the front window of the gallery, which hits Vivienne in the head and puts her into a coma. Vivienne remains comatose for years, until Velour sells her body to a biotechnology startup to be used as a human incubator. The startup aims to breed more artists. This is the point of the novel where I wondered if we were veering too far into the surrealism. I understood the purpose—the gutting of the artist’s humanity in the name of commercial reproduction and capitalist profit—but I wonder if there’s a way this could be explored that didn’t feel so disjointed. I feel this could be achieved with Vesta and Lars in some way. Their relationship made my skin crawl, and I wonder if that effect could be exploited further. I know this may be a stretch but make Lars grosser. Emphasize Vesta’s artistic inclinations more; maybe invoke Vivienne. For me, the icky relationship between them was the clearest representation of exploitation of the artist by capitalist profit: Vesta is a would-be artist, groomed by a pedophilic, disgusting gallery owner.

This ending felt almost sci-fi in its tone, when up to that point, Vivienne was a family drama exploring the nature of art and its consumption. At the last moment, it introduced the larger worldbuilding element of this startup when the novel was largely contained to the Volker household, the gallery, and the three Volker women. It left me questioning and drew focus from the book’s core strengths, its commentary. In some ways, this works; it is incredibly jarring and there is a sudden loss of warmth and charm, but it also left me feeling unsatisfied. There was an experimentalism that was intriguing, but I could not find a solid conclusion to the experiment.

Vivienne is a book about artists, their art, and those who discuss and criticize and obsess over their art. It is about women—as humans, as creators, as mothers, as daughters—and how it all bumps and grinds up against one another. It is about capitalism, and how it needs the art but hates the artist. It is surreal, disorienting, and often stunning. It is sometimes disgusting, often depressing, more often than not both at once—but not always. That is the treat of Vivienne. It is never just one quality, one moment, one voice. It’s like one of Vivienne’s impossible garments; defamiliarized, deformed, and then disintegrating in your hands.

This book was published on November 4, 2025 by Mariner Books.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Helm: A Novel.

Helm, written by Sarah Hall, is a book about a specific wind, named Helm. But of course, Helm is much more than just wind. It’s a mythic, folkloric figure, one that spans centuries unchanged, blowing and blasting through its home, a mountain range in Northern England. A specific set of meteorological and topographical conditions combine to make Helm possible. Because Helm, occasionally, is also a storm. To Helm, the span of human history is as speedy as the blink of an eye. As history marches on and the landscape changes around it, Helm twines in and out of lives, a constantly mischievous, occasionally dangerous figure, lurking in the shadows one moment and in the next, bursting onto the scene with characteristic drama. And in the present day, a scientist realizes as indomitable as Helm is, as long-lived and as powerful, it is now in danger, from the very humans that first saw and believed in it.

The first thing I noticed about Helm is how captivating the writing is. The capricious and inhuman being that narrates the first and last chapter (and permeates the book), Helm’s inner narrative swings between second and third person, from highfalutin verbiage to the common vernacular. Helm’s very character is changeability itself—the only constant is how inconstant it is—and Hall’s writing expresses that masterfully.

If the first chapter is a lesson in composition, the following ones are an example of how to pull a reader in with a few pages. Hall rotates through a cast of characters whose only commonality is a fascination with or connection to Helm, from a woman in prehistory, an ambitious Elizabethan scientist, a girl who loves Helm, the scientist that studies it, and a few more. Juggling all those voices, times, and tones is a tall ask, not to mention chopping them up into little bits and scattering them around, so the narrative jumps from moment to moment at the turn of a heel. But Hall does it masterfully, transitioning from windswept moment to moment, leaving the reader breathless, but perhaps with some idea of what it might be like to literally be the wind, gusting through so many lives and feelings in a matter of seconds. The narrative also bends, without telling the reader unnecessarily, into a subtle but unmistakable story arc, as though all the disparate timelines are set to nearly converge, somewhere in the future.

Another thing I loved about Helm (the wind itself and the book, which are distinct but similar) was how effortlessly it grasped huge, intimidating concepts through the smallest of details and the most inconsequential of events. I literally sat up and said, “Oh!” the first time I read one of Dr. Selima’s chapters, when I realized this book might be about the death of Helm, just one more tiny side effect of the sweeping alterations climate change has wrought.

On another level, just beneath the surface, Helm is about love, and what makes us relentlessly and positively human. And Hall includes in that definition all the lascivious and occasionally gross ways we express desire and affection, and all the ways our bodies remind us we are temporary. Helm examines how rarely we allow ourselves to truly revel in how strong our emotions can be, and how liberating it is when we do; when we love something so fully and completely that in doing so, we accept ourselves for what we are, in all our imperfections. As the narration says, in the story of the girl who loves Helm, “There is nothing wicked or sick or ugly, when it is loved.” Like Dr. Selima, Helm marries the concept of environmentalism with the fundamental human impulse for connection, storytelling, and closeness; by anthropomorphizing Helm, the reader begins to understand what it is to save the planet not out of a pure sense of obligation or duty, but out of love.

One thing that surprised me about this book was how the plot slowly but surely ratcheted the tension, meticulously building each individual arc, only to quietly disperse it, as though that anticipation never existed. A few of the stories had some glorious, transcendent endings, but many of them didn’t, or simply didn’t have an ending at all. From a purely audience-level perspective, this frustrated me. I wanted to be satisfied, damn it! But it is a distinctly Helm-like structure, one that forces us to contend with our own, sometimes unsatisfactory, desires. And it leaves the ending of the story open, perhaps as if to say: this is what the world might be like, without Helm. Where would we be then? Perhaps it’s our job to decide if Helm’s story ends here, or if this is just one more storm that will blow over, leaving it (relatively) unscathed.

In the end, my main criticism of this book is how little we see and hear the titular character; the majority of the book is about other people talking and thinking about Helm, who lurks mostly in the margins. But I’m willing to accept that as simply a condition of humanity. Helm was created by belief, so it’s only natural a book about the wind is mostly about how other people feel about it.

Only a few days after finishing the book, I found myself longing for the stories and voice of Helm. One last gift; a small taste of what it might feel like to lose those small, precious parts of the natural world we take for granted each day. Even, like Helm, the annoying, sometimes deeply inconvenient or deadly aspects of the place we live. I loved this book, devoured it in the space of a weekend, the characters and ideas that dance through its pages will stay with me for a long time. And as good as the writing was, I was particularly struck by the last line of Hall’s Acknowledgements, which is as good a thesis as any from this book: “How I hope there will be a Helm when you are old.”

This title will be published on October 21, 2025 by Tor Books.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of When They Burned the Butterfly.

Adeline Siow has a secret: she can summon fire to her fingertip with nothing but a thought, just like her mother. Aside from their fire, they couldn’t be more different. She just didn’t realize how different until she returns home after sneaking out to find their house burning and her mother murdered. The only clue Adeline discovers is a butterfly seared onto her mother’s skin—the same one she saw tattooed on a mysterious girl with fire hours before at a shady bar in Singapore’s redlight district. Adeline’s quest for answers leads her into 1970s Singapore’s criminal underworld, where she encounters magically tattooed gangsters who are the final conduits of their ancestors’ gods. Even more surprising, Adeline’s mother was one of them! She lived a secret life as Madam Butterfly, leader of the infamous Red Butterfly gang—a group of women with fire like Adeline’s. Throughout her dynamic foray into adult fantasy, author Wen-yi Lee’s upcoming novel When They Burned the Butterfly throws readers headfirst into a fiery story of rage, vengeance, and what those emotions can turn us into.

One of the novel’s stand-out elements is the relationship Lee develops between Adeline and Tian, one of the Red Butterflies. Watching Adeline slowly discover how to let another person in is simultaneously rewarding and heartbreaking. She makes a lot of mistakes in the early stages of her friendship and eventual romance with Tian—for example, her instincts are to self-isolate rather than talk conflict out, which leads to difficulty in communicating her feelings—and while it can be frustrating to see her make those mistakes, they lend a level of authenticity to the relationship. Adeline is discovering genuine connection for the first time in her life—of course it isn’t going to be perfect.The reader notices the relationship with Tian developing into something deeper long before Adeline does. She is startled to notice how much she cares for Tian and is delightfully blunt about it in the moment: “Adeline’s heart was pounding again, something bone-deep reaching through her for a second time that day. A realization of herself was starting to form, and with it the world finally falling into place, but it was falling slowly, the exact shape of it still just beyond reach. She stepped forward to it, unconsciously, and when Tian winced this time, she went closer with full understanding of her own desires.” Lee doesn’t shy away from this nuance, which makes Adeline’s personal growth and the growth of her relationship with Tian that much more exciting.

Another strength of When They Burned the Butterfly is its exploration of rage. Anger hangs over Adeline for most of the novel, but her acknowledgement and understanding of it evolves with her character. For much of the story, her rage about her mother’s death, her isolation, and the seemingly insurmountable number of threats facing the remaining Red Butterflies is largely blind; she wields it clumsily and lashes out to regain some control. When she encounters something that scares her, like an emotion she doesn’t know how to process or threats made against her new friends, she responds by looking for a fight she can handle. Throughout the novel, Lee builds a subtle tension; each time Adeline gets closer to avenging her mother or protecting the Red Butterflies from a new threat, something worse happens and there’s nothing she can do about it. When she finally confronts the man responsible for many of the terrible things she and her friends have endured is one of the most powerful scenes in the novel: “All that hurt, all those bodies, and behind it was just a man on the floor who wasn’t even armed and didn’t even fight?” All of Adeline’s anger—at those who betrayed her, at herself, at her own fear—has finally found someone to focus on and explodes in this ultimate, climactic confrontation. Readers will rage alongside Adeline as she sets a fire unlike any she’s set before.

While this overarching theme of rage and the relationship between Adeline and Tian were exceptionally well-developed, I found the initial world-building somewhat lacking. By the end of the novel, readers are immersed in Singapore’s magical criminal underworld alongside Adeline, but in the beginning that immersion is not achieved. A lot of vague information about the magic system is presented to the reader at the start of the story, which is overwhelming and makes it difficult to follow. Readers gain a lot more context in the middle of the novel, but introducing the magic system gradually could have given readers time to process the information and helped the pacing of the first third of the story. The pacing and the worldbuilding in general are handled much better in the final two-thirds of the novel.

Overall, When They Burned the Butterfly is an intriguing foray into adult fantasy from author Wen-yi Lee. Lee handles the marriage between fantastical and historical elements well, making this novel especially appealing to lovers of historical and speculative fiction. The blend of real world and fantastical elements also makes this book a great place to start for anyone diving into the fantasy genre for the first time.

This title was re-issued in May 2025 by Frontenac House.

My discovery of In the Bear’s House came at an eerily apt time. I started reading it on a plane to Glasgow, flying out of Calgary, Alberta. As I read deeper and flew further and further from my hometown, I realized I was traveling the reverse of the characters in the book: out of Glasgow, into Calgary. As I traversed the highlands on various motorcoaches and taxis these characters wandered the prairies and mountains of Western Alberta, down streets and train lines I walked myself; it was the perfect antidote to any possible homesickness that could have afflicted me.

In The Bear’s House is a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman by Albertan author Bruce Hunter. It follows two narrators, Clare Dunlop and her partially deaf son, William “Trout” Dunlop, as she attempts to raise Trout as a teen mother, and he tries to make sense of a world not particularly interested in making sense of him. Clare grows into herself as not just a parent of four, but a woman—finding work, getting an education, discovering her voice. As Trout gets older, he retreats, both figuratively and literally; he goes to stay with his Aunt Shelagh and park ranger Uncle Jack, who’s also partially deaf. On their homestead in northwestern Alberta, he truly meets the land, and its people, for the first time. Hunter explores growing up in a land and country still growing up itself, finding place, finding home, and finding self. 

Though originally published in 2009, Frontenac House reissued In The Bear’s House in May 2025, and I can’t think of a better time to do so. Calgary is changing, again. From “Feel the Energy” to “The Blue Sky City,” we as Albertans, as Calgarians, are trying to decide who we are going to be in a rapidly changing world. Albertan writer, academic, and someone I have been lucky enough to learn from, Dr. Aritha Van Herk, posits that Calgary, and Alberta, are places that don’t yet know themselves, and may never know themselves. We have no clear and recognizable identity, at least not yet. This state is one Hunter captures exceptionally well, particularly through his two narrators. Trout is a boy born in the city, but is drawn to the traditional, rural ways of the land. He finds solace chopping logs, maintaining access trails, snowshoeing with Jack, and tending the garden with Shelagh. In the wilderness his hearing aids are not overloaded; he finds a sense of independence and peace he was never afforded in the city. This representation of disability is a wonderful breath of fresh air. Hunter, who is deaf himself, recognizes Trout’s partial deafness as a fundamental part of who he is, but allows Trout to find competences, ways of knowing, and an identity beyond that. Meanwhile, Clare is initially set up as a traditional stay-at-home wife and mother but slowly sheds that role and becomes increasingly cosmopolitan and outgoing. She emerges from her shell attending night classes, befriending local Greek immigrants and a queer couple, even re-involving herself in the local literary scene after her own poetic inclinations were sidetracked by the birth of Trout and his three sisters. Her journey was its own coming-of-age story, and so often mothers in fiction, and reality, are not afforded that degree of agency. Clare is a loving and supportive mother, but is also a voracious reader of poetry, an adventurous chef and foodie, and a committed peripatetic. 

Hunter also captures the variety of this city, and this province extremely well—every one of these characters, I have met before. With Alberta, Calgary in particular, stories can become all cowboys, teepees, and oil men quickly, and Hunter appreciated those elements are only one part of the story. He highlights everything from Trout and Jack’s deafness to local Indigenous groups, to its thriving Chinese community, and even the diversity of the land. Again, Hunter hones in on the idea that the Albertan identity is patchwork but also recognizes there is no way around it. The bell cannot be unrung, so it is up to us to sort it out.

One facet I do have questions about from In The Bear’s House is how Hunter explores Alberta’s local indigenous population: the Kainai, Siksika, Piikani, Tsuu T’ina, and Stoney Nakoda, consisting of the Chiniki, Goodstoney and Bearspaw. He consulted with local elders and clearly did his research, which I commend, but I wonder about the storytelling choices made. As Trout spends time with Uncle Jack and Aunt Shelagh, he meets Carrie Moses and her grandfather Silas, based on real Goodstoney leader Silas Abraham. They invite him into their tribal traditions—the Sun Dance, the Ghost Dance, and their burying grounds. As Trout becomes familiar with their ways of living, the construction of what is implied to be the Bighorn Dam threatens their land—particularly their burial grounds—which will flood upon construction. This point never achieves resolution in the novel. From both my own research and living in Alberta my whole life, the Bighorn Dam was indeed completed, resulting in the creation of the Abraham Reservoir; horribly enough, named after Silas Abraham, who opposed its creation his entire life. I wish the Stoney were afforded some degree of closure narratively—it doesn’t have to be revisionism, but about three-quarters through the novel that arc was dropped, and I found it jarring. Interpreted good faith, it felt like the story moved on from them; in bad faith, it felt like it forgot about them.

The title of this novel is pulled from a quote from Hunter’s Great Uncle John Elliot, who served as the inspiration for Uncle Jack: “We are in the bear’s house now. Mind your manners.” To fully grasp this story, one must approach this novel in the same way. It is firmly rooted in our land, our people, and our literary tradition—some learning may be required (I recommend Robert Kroetsch, Aritha Van Herk, and Joshua Whitehead), background viewing even more required; ideally out of a car window, at the Three Sisters Peaks, or perhaps the prairie on the way to Drumheller. As I said, this re-issue couldn’t have come at a better time; as we re-appraise what to do with our land and how the people on it can live, fully and with respect, In The Bear’s House is an important reminder that we are not just the oil country, the Blue Sky City, or the home of the Stampede, but we are, first, in the bear’s house.

This title was released on July 29, 2025 by Kokila Books.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of The Last Tiger.

“If we forget who we are, then we can be controlled … Then let’s not forget. Let’s make them remember.”

Sibling writing duo Julia and Brad Riew’s debut YA fantasy novel, The Last Tiger, explores their grandparents’ harrowing experiences of living under Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea during the 1940s. Featuring quotes from their grandparents at the start of every chapter, The Last Tiger is more than a tale of survival; it’s a story of two people from opposite worlds overcoming hardship and forbidden romance to change their destiny amidst an empire seeking to eradicate them.

For years, the people of the Tiger Colonies have suffered under the colonial occupation of the Dragon Empire. They must ration their food and harvest minerals in the coal mines to add to the militaristic Dragon Empire’s prosperity, knowing they’ll face severe punishment if they dare to fight for their homeland. Drained of their resources and politically powerless, the citizens of the Tiger Colonies watch helplessly as their culture gets erased, starting with the death of the revered tigers that once occupied the land, until only one remains.

One night, Lee Seung, a sixteen-year-old servant boy, catches Choi Eunji, the youngest daughter of one of the elite families in the Tiger Colonies, sneaking out of her family’s compound. To keep her secret, Eunji promises to tutor Seung for the Exam—his one shot at a successful and stable future. In return, Seung introduces Eunji to a vivacious world outside of her family’s estate. The two quickly develop feelings for one another before they are separated by unforeseen circumstances. A year later, Seung and Eunji find themselves on opposite sides in the battle for the last tiger as Eunji trains in the Dragon Empire’s renowned Adachi Academy and Seung toils in the Tiger Colony coal mines.

The worldbuilding in The Last Tiger is incredible, blending a thoughtful magic system, references to Korean and Japanese culture, and vivid imagery. Enabling the Dragon Empire’s conquest of the Tiger Colonies is a magical force called “ki,” which takes three different forms based on its kingdoms of origin. Dragon ki grants the Empire soldiers unmatched strength and endurance. The warring Serpent Queendom’s Serpent ki gives the power of mind control. While the long-dormant Tiger ki focuses on the power of human emotion. Each of these forces has clear limits and balances each other out, leading to conflict between the characters and adding to the broader wartime narrative. The Riew’s also include several nods to Korean and Japanese culture through clothing like hanboks and kimonos, food like tteokbokki (rice cakes), and mythology with revered tiger and dragon spirits.

In addition to their worldbuilding, Julia and Brad Riew do an excellent job of crafting well-rounded characters suffering under colonialism. Seung portrays the struggles and rage of living in a political system designed to keep him oppressed, “Everything about the colonial society the empire has built for us—it’s all intended to keep us hoping, striving for a better life, but never quite able to achieve it.” Whereas Eunji offers an intriguing perspective of the “yangban” or Tiger Colony citizens active collaboration with the Dragon Empire to survive. Eunji eventually learns her family’s prosperity is the result of the Tiger people’s losses. Despite her wealth, she’s equally as trapped as Seung due to her gender being perceived as inferior and facing a corrupt system.

Even the side characters are well-developed and offer diverse perspectives, especially Kenzo Kobayashi and Jin. As the military prodigy of the Dragon Empire and Eunji’s arranged husband, Kenzo is a foil to Seung and an antihero with a dark secret. Where Seung is a quiet, attentive listener, Kenzo is the guy who knows “the world was built to serve boys like [him].” But when he accompanies Eunji on her quest to capture the last tiger as her “protector,” he’s exposed as a fraud when he can’t use Dragon ki in battle. Kenzo acts in his own interest to survive, betraying Eunji and Seung by turning them over to the malicious General Isao. Yet, he ultimately helps Seung and Eunji escape, revealing his morality and love for Eunji.

Jin, a Tiger Colony rebel with powerful Serpent Ki, exemplifies how “hurt people, hurt people” in her all-consuming desire for revenge against the Dragon Empire. When she was fourteen-year-old, she was tricked into sexually performing as a “comfort woman” for the Dragon soldiers. Since then, she’s been “so consumed with pain that she can no longer see the humanity” in the Dragon Empire citizens and almost kills Eunji and Kenzo. The emotional baggage of Jin’s dangerous past prompts her to teach Seung, “[Anger] is the most powerful fuel [he’ll] ever have,” and illustrates how victims of trauma may repeat harmful behaviors toward others.

Although intended for middle-grade readers, The Last Tiger’s consistent tension makes for an action-packed read for all ages while also tactfully approaching the mature themes of cultural assimilation, grief, sexism, and socioeconomics. Perhaps because the novel is intended for a younger audience, I found the authors’ voice juvenile at times with simple sentence structures and an over-explanatory tone that told was happening instead of letting readers infer for themselves. For example, Seung doesn’t like Kenzo, but instead of seeing this through his actions or dialogue, he thinks, “If I’m honest, I just don’t like him. He’s entitled, beyond arrogant, seeping with self-loathing.”

Additionally, the inclusion of an over-explanatory epilogue felt unnecessary. In the final chapter, Seung and Eunji reawaken hope, “something that can no longer be stopped,” in the Tiger People through forbidden song. The song unites the Tiger People by reminding them of their collective culture and empowers them to take a stand against the Dragon Empire.

The epilogue had a “happily-ever-after” framework which felt like a letdown after all the challenges these characters endured to save their country, and it made the final chapter less impactful. I would’ve preferred to see more snapshots of Seung and Eunji’s newly restored relationship in the nascent “Tiger Republic” than a fairytale-like “perfect” ending.

Overall, I loved getting swept into the epic fantasy world of The Last Tiger and its compelling message of hope, love, and resilience. Knowing this story was rooted in the tragedy of the Japanese occupation of Korea, and that Seung and Eunji were based on real people, added to the levels of authenticity and raw emotion prevalent throughout the narrative. The Last Tiger is perfect for fans of Mulan and other modern retellings of East Asian mythology, like Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin and Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amélie Wen Zhao.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Foreign Fruit.

This title was released on May 8, 2025 by Canongate Books.

“History is too various to offer a single narrative. Life is composed of shards and glass, all slotted together to make a mosaic. No one is born complete.”

I’ve always struggled with my sense of belonging. Born in Ireland, but ethnically Asian—I was never going to fit in. Not among people who looked nothing like me, nor the diaspora I’ve failed to connect with. My parents did everything to ensure I didn’t stand out: packing me plain lunches, prioritizing Westernized cultural norms, raising me with a temperate accent. And while I’ll always be grateful for my upbringing, it feels like a part of me has been lost in that bid to acclimate. There are few words for that kind of existence; being on the very precipice of “belonging,” but always remaining stuck. After all, what is “belonging,” if not feeling at home?

Perhaps that’s why I was so drawn to Katie Goh’s memoir, Foreign Fruit. Reading its description, I immediately felt connected to Goh’s search for their heritage—tracing their lineage from Northern Ireland to Kuala Lumpur, like a long, ribboning peel. “Seen” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. I hoped Goh’s journey to pull back these ancestral segments, collating stories of a home they half-knew, would help me reckon with my own identity. Needless to say, it exceeded my expectations.

In her own review, Katherine May describes Foreign Fruit as “sharp-sweet”—and if you ask me, there’s no word more suitable. A mix of memoir and social history, Goh oscillates between sweet personal stories and the sourest parts of colonialism. She identifies her own mixed-race, queer identity with the orange, which, like herself, is a hybrid entity. Tracing her journey from past to present, she unravels the migratory origins of the titular “foreign fruit” as it travels through the Silk Roads towards its destiny of globalization.

Through parables, fables, and historical anecdotes, Goh peels back the orange’s rind in a poignant tell-all of its inner segments: how it became a symbol of divinity and fortune, but also death, destruction, and violent greed. Using this foundation, they confront the modern, post-COVID wave of anti-Asian hate, and the echoes of colonial history found within it. It’s during this wave that the memoir begins in medias res, the day after Goh hears of an anti-Asian hate crime:

“The morning after a white man murdered six Asian women, I ate five oranges. They were not dainty tangerines or pretty satsumas or festive clementines. These were unwieldy, bulging oranges, pock-marked and rind-covered fistfuls of flesh. I ate them all until my body ached.”

From this opener alone, this electrifying, utterly infuriating opener, I could tell Foreign Fruit and I would become fast friends. From Longyan to Kuala Lumpur, each chapter is named for a place visited in Goh’s lifetime. Some are set in the distant past, others in the near-present. Immediately, I was gripped by their vivid personal vignettes. I could feel the slick-sweat stickiness of leather seats in a cramped family van, hear the fussy clamoring of aunties and cousins. And most of all, I saw in myself the longing for connection with a culture that’s technically theirs, yet isn’t. This is one of Goh’s biggest strengths as a writer: the ability to place readers directly in their shoes. By drawing out their senses, the reader sees through their eyes, rather than the lens of an observer. All of this is done while never once forgetting they’re telling a story; much like their adult self, Goh doesn’t stay in one place. Their tale is at once one of anger, growth, uncertainty, and home. This eclectic mix is exactly what I seek in nonfiction—never skimping out on the rawest details, while moving along an engaging narrative trajectory. It’s delicious.

It’s also with this ability, however, that Goh excavates the bitter pith from humanity’s past. Woven between these personal vignettes are episodes of social and colonial history. It starts with the orange’s gentler beginnings as a signifier of luck and gradually exhumes its history as a vessel for violent colonialism. The bloody implications behind decadent Dutch still-lifes. The Indigenous blood spilled for California’s citrus trade. How the ethos behind tragedies like the 1877 Chinatown riots is influenced by this violence. How the echoes of Yellow Peril in modern anti-Asian hate have unearthed prejudices long thought to be gone. These accounts are written not to fascinate but to educate and enrage. And I will fully admit it’s uncomfortable to read. So uncomfortable, and I believe that’s the entire point. Goh doesn’t mince words in her portrayal of this ugly past; her ability to craft a scene forces the reader to confront this violence directly. It’s not subtle, and the tonal contrast with the softer personal memoirs is intentionally jarring. We are warned from the opener this is not a comfortable story. The once-blessed orange becomes complicit in colonial violence; a “harbinger of death.”

While Goh’s ability to set a scene is undeniable, I did sometimes find the novel grasped at its connections between historical and personal anecdotes. The style is rich and poignant, and I have no qualms with the tonal contrast; but the transitions between sections often felt disjointed, feeling more like sudden jumps. While the orange remains a grounding element, some parts would benefit from extra connective tissue, especially during the slower and heavier first half. “Southern California” utilizes this transitional element best, and I found myself wishing the first few chapters had the same smooth trajectory.

I sip at a lukewarm bottle of orange juice as I round up these thoughts. I think to myself: whose tired hands picked the fruit that made these? On what land was it grown? Foreign Fruit has given me much to contemplate over the origins of citrus, of people, of violence and compassion and family. Most of all, it helped me reckon with my own identity. As a diaspora child, I can’t claim the same experiences as mixed-race individuals; but I do know the struggle to “belong” is universal. The orange provides refuge from this ache, itself physically and symbolically “a hybrid creation.” By the end, Goh accepts she may never truly “belong”—and, bittersweet as it is, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I will proudly announce that the final chapters of my copy are stained with tears. Foreign Fruit was incredible, and this book will stay with me for a very long time.

This title will be published on June 10, 2025 by Peachtree Teen.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Vesuvius.

“It’s less that I think there is a reason for hurt, and more that faith gives us grace to heal. To come out the other side and try again.”

Don your togas, buckle your sandals, and travel back in time to the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Cass Biehn’s debut LGBTQ and young adult historical fantasy novel, Vesuvius, tells the story of Felix, a clever thief with a mysterious past, and Loren, a tender-hearted temple attendant plagued with nightmares of the future.

When Felix steals the Helmet of Mercury, a coveted artifact no mortal can touch, he seeks shelter in the Temple of Isis. Felix’s stay is anything but pleasant as he’s knocked unconscious by Loren, who’s been haunted by strange visions of Felix burning down the city. Together, Felix and Loren must discover how their fates are connected to prevent Loren’s visions from becoming reality and unleashing disaster upon Pompeii.

Biehn’s creation of two angsty, authentic, and well-developed main characters is excellent. Through alternating perspectives, Biehn gives Felix and Loren clear, distinct voices that serve as foils for one another. Felix is a brash and sarcastic young man who’s quick to think on his feet and constantly in motion. Loren is anxious and compassionate, often putting the good of others above himself. When Felix awakens in the temple, the juxtaposition of their personalities shines. Felix is untrusting of Loren and believes “kindness came with limits,” whereas Loren arrives with grapes and gauze and immediately offers to tend Felix’s wounds. Loren goes so far as to vouch for Felix’s honor, knowing any trouble Felix causes would fall onto his shoulders.

As the old saying goes, “opposites attract,” and Biehn uses this technique to create a slow-burn romance between the two boys without feeling too contrived. Felix grows protective of Loren, feeling seen when “other gazes skated past” him, and Loren admires Felix’s “clever mind” and how he listens to Loren when everyone else dismisses him and his visions. The thread connecting Felix and Loren is that they’re two lost boys looking for a place to belong. Thankfully, their love story is riddled with highs and lows, making it feel less like a tropey YA love story and more like a real relationship with misunderstandings and forgiveness.

The world-building is also well researched. From page one, Biehn grounds us in their rich imagining of Pompeii as we follow Felix on the run, tasting the dust from the street, feeling the warmth of the Mediterranean sun on our skin, and fearing the swift unsheathing of a sword behind us. Biehn sprinkles in plenty of historical context with the inclusion of villas and socio-economic differences in ancient Roman society, the primitive drug of poppy sap, accurate temple layouts, and Roman mythology sure to make history buffs happy.

But the strongest aspect of the book is Biehn’s refusal to hold back from exploring serious social issues like inequality and sexual abuse through Felix as he reflects, “power is under the control of the wealthy, not the masses.” An essential aspect of Felix’s character development is his past trauma and learning to find hope again through his healing relationship with Loren. As a child, Felix was raped by a priest while in the Temple of Mercury. Biehn does a nice job of showing this trauma through Felix’s aversion to physical touch. But when he’s with Loren, Felix realizes, “despite the hurts he had known, there were other things worth believing in … Touch often settled sticky over his flesh, and even gentle hands triggered his instinct to flee. But there was something different about Loren. He didn’t touch in order to take.”

While Vesuvius’s central theme revolves around trauma, survival, and healing, Biehn’s short sentences and casual writing style do a nice job of balancing the more serious moments with the comical ones. Part of this book’s charm is Biehn’s humor erupting through sentences like “Gods, youth are so mouthy these days.”

However, Biehn’s voice was a bit of a double-edged sword and got distracting at times. One of my biggest hangups was Vesuvius’s use of modern-day slang, which jarred me out of the historical setting, like Felix introducing himself as “Fuck” to the temple priest and Loren telling a guard to worry about “the state of his balls” as he attacks. These moments felt inauthentic and immature, decreasing my enjoyment of the narrative. There was also a heavy reliance on similes throughout the book, which made the story feel slightly too “authorial” than character-driven at times.

The pacing and plot were also inconsistent. The novel starts strong as we follow Felix on a heart-pounding chase and quite literally crash into Loren inside the temple of Isis. However, after their initial introduction, there’s a lot of talk and not a lot of action as several mysterious subplots compete. I wished Biehn kept their focus on one of these threads, like Felix and Loren’s backstory and the sure eruption of Mount Vesuvius, rather than adding murder mysteries and political turmoil.

Additionally, there were moments of tension that resolved too quickly. Namely, Loren’s pivotal decision to either let Felix wear the Helmet of Mercury and “learn his memories at the risk of him turning cruel” or to keep the helmet away from Felix to try and protect him from his dark past. Loren only confesses the truth to Felix about the helmet’s ability to restore his memory when Vesuvius erupts. Felix saves Loren’s life by slapping the Helmet of Mercury onto Loren’s head to protect him, ultimately destroying the magic relic and Felix’s chances of making peace with his damaging past. After all the intrigue about the Helmet of Mercury and scenes where Loren communicates with Felix’s “ghost” (or traumatized self) in his dreams, the destruction of the helmet and the boys’ safe arrival at Loren’s family estate in the final third of the book felt like a letdown. I wanted Biehn to linger more in Felix’s losses and grief. But the story rushes past all this to focus on Loren’s self-pity and survivors’ guilt rather than the repercussions of Mount Vesuvius obliterating Pompeii and Felix’s discovered identity as an heir of the Roman god Mercury.

Overall, Vesuvius is a promising debut with an intriguing concept. I admire how Biehn doesn’t pull their punches about the lingering effects of abuse and trauma while still emphasizing the importance of restoring faith and trust in humanity. Biehn’s approachable and sarcastic style makes Vesuvius a fun read and a good fit for fans of Casey McQuiston and Adam Silvera. 

Published on January 28, 2025 by Ten Speed Graphic.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of This Beautiful, Ridiculous City.

Stunning. As someone whose connection to graphic novels and visual forms of storytelling has weakened with age, I am so glad This Beautiful, Ridiculous City by Kay Sohini has re-introduced me to the genre. But this is not just a graphic novel—it’s well researched in the same way an academic paper is. The graphic memoir follows a woman as she considers her experience as an immigrant, a woman, a foodie, a New Yorker, and a human in the greater context of the world through an economics, literary, and psychological lens.

This Beautiful, Ridiculous City has gorgeous art panels with highly saturated colors. The leaves are not just a regular green, they’re velvety in their teal hue. The sunset sparks a pink that hovers over the street signs and casts blue-tinged shadows on the side of metal poles. An empty photo album marked with empty frames conveys absence in its portrayal of the direct loss of Sohini’s grandfather. The perspective of a pedestrian looking upwards to the NYC skyscrapers creates the sense of unlimited, boundless possibilities. The irregular shapes and pastel smoothness are deeply appealing. Perhaps it is telling enough that my favorite panels are so many in number. The memoir is a love letter to color and to art. It’s tasty. It’s crunchy.

Sodhini starts her memoir with New York City. I grew up there, and while our experiences differ, there exists a constant thread between the two of our experiences—the city itself. She writes, “There was something utterly irresistible about New York from afar-….-[because] more than a muse, it seemed to me that the city served as a fix for slightly broken people. It brought out the creativity in them, it eased their sorrows, it made them forget it, it made them laugh, it breathed new life.” And then, Sodhini explains the ways in which life has broken her, and the way New York breathed new life into her.

The world breaks Sodhini by creating cultural dissonances between her home in India in the 1990s and the immigrant experience. As many immigrants may wonder, she reflects on “how I might have become if I had not grown up in a postcolonial nation trying to find itself.” She explains, “Western cultural supremacy is a complex thing. It takes interest away from local culture, especially for the younger generations, and it is utilized as soft power. Yet I do not know how to reconcile the uncomfortable truth with the fact that this strange cultural fraternization made me who I am.” In the same way, I also, am unsure of how to contend with the way American culture has both demeaned and stolen aspects of my culture, and yet, also shaped and changed me into the “American” I suppose I am. Her lucidity and honesty about difficult concepts are refreshing and thought provoking for everyone, but especially so for someone in a similar position.

From there, she moves into food and grief. Her grandfather dies, and the food portrayed so vibrantly in earlier pages disappears. Food becomes a means of subsistence. Solely nutritional. Perhaps it is because I am in a similar position of processing grief, but learning about her experience is healing. Maybe this is my cynicism, but the grief in this section feels eternal, constant, and unavoidable. Despite this, the story persists, it continues into her past, but the reader’s future. In New York, she returns to food. Food is drawn in a vibrant juicy manner. Food returns to her. She once again eats to taste and to experience.

Eventually, we move into her immigration to New York. A map of the city with Woorijip, a cheap Korean takeout store, accompanies the city’s introduction. I’ve been there during the lunch-time rush and saw mostly office workers taking a quick lunch break. It is, unlike Nobu or Catch NYC, a nontourist, not-flashy destination, because Woorijip’s sole purpose is to serve food with convenience. A kind of cheap, tasty, homemade-in-a-store flavor for the busy “normal” people of NYC. This was the moment I realized I loved this book, because it spoke directly to me. This is not about the NYC of upper echelon finance moguls, but the NYC of the common people. I immediately understood Sodhini has truly lived in New York City and viewed it as her home.

Ultimately, This Beautiful, Ridiculous City is a love letter to herself, to her experience, to the immigrant experience, and to New York City. Sohini believes “you belong to New York City instantly or never. I remain a willing victim of the former.” I don’t agree with that. And that’s okay—we have different experiences of the city. For her, it’s a home she belongs to (without roots and all). For me, this is the place that’s shown me the world’s breaks, through experiencing COVID-19, anti-Asian racism, and elitism in many facets (racially, socioeconomically, notions of attractiveness). NYC is the birth of cynic chaos that plagues everyone’s life; it is not a place I have always belonged to. For her, NYC is the place that fights against the “relic of my twenties [that] make me wonder if I am forever doomed to love things and people whose reciprocation is fraught with contradictions.” As such, she refuses to leave the city, because she doesn’t “want [her] New York to turn against [her].” But, I have left. In college, I understood the ways NYC had been against me from the beginning, and I also learned to love it as a place to return to. Perhaps not yet a home, but that is not to say, forever not a home. Perhaps one day, NYC will no longer haunt me, and instead, I will haunt it, where the grime permeates through my skin always, not sometimes. Still, our differences in NYC does not stop me from writing this review as a love letter to this graphic memoir.

Published on December 4, 2024 by Catapult.

I am a self-professed specialist when it comes to “weird-woman lit.” I love when women are strange, creepy, and plain off-putting. It describes the authentic experience of being a woman in an increasingly stupid and malicious world in a metaphorically honest, if not literal, way. Needless to say, Ella Baxter’s sophomore novel Woo Woo was very up my alley.

The story follows Sabine, a self-described “artist” getting ready for the debut of her photography-cum-performance-art exhibition with the help of her husband and social circle of other professed “artists.” As her exhibition date gets closer, Sabine becomes untethered from reality and descends further and further into her world of art, performance, and all the trappings that come with it in our age of social media personas, celebrity culture, and late-stage capitalism. Using absurdism, surrealism, and dark humor, Baxter looks at what it means to be a woman, to be an artist, and to be famous when the whole world has access to you every moment of every day.

The title was apt: This novel was, above all, deeply weird. I don’t mean weird in the increasingly commercial way co-opted by big-box publishers. I truly mean weird. Sabine is strange, her relationships with her husband and friends are strange, the art she creates is strange, and her view of the world is strange. I appreciate Baxter’s commitment to bizarreness in her images, language, character development, and dialogue. This is evident from the first chapters of the novel—Sabine live streams herself messily eating fruits on her kitchen floor in complete silence. Seeking a source of comfort, she lays directly on top of her husband in bed, head-to-head and toe-to-toe, listening to him breathe. Her exhibition consists entirely of self-portraits where she is hanging off bridges by her arms, wearing mesh costumes and masks of her own manufacture. These costumes range from “witch” to “baby,” and she refers to them as her “puppets.” The pinnacle of this being the final appearance of the “Rembrandt Man”— Sabine donning animal bones and driving him out of her home is not an image easily forgotten.

Again, this book isn’t weird for the sake of being weird, it has purpose. That purpose being Baxter’s desire to explore themes of womanhood and feminism, kunstlerroman, and the increasingly dire social conditions in which one creates art in a deeply unsubtle, incredibly memorable, and sometimes oddly poignant way. Though it might take a while, the absurdism did, by-and-large, have weight behind it.

I am of two minds when it comes to this novel’s approach as a kunstlerroman. I appreciate its bluntness of existence as the story makes no effort to hide the fact it is “art about art.” Right away, it’s clear every chapter is titled after a different piece of art, whether it be a performance piece, song, or film. The most obvious allusion I noticed was a fictionalized version of the painter Carolee Schneeman that appears as a hallucination-slash-fairy godmother to Sabine. Schneeman’s appearance highlights how Woo Woo is up front about the fact most literature, art, and theater in our current age is a pastiche of what already exists but rethought and reinterpreted.

However, on the other hand, I was a bit concerned about allusions to artworks becoming too derivative. Towards the end, the story felt weighed down by its own cultured-ness. The referenced art nearly eclipses the story itself. If you are constantly bringing up Marina Abramović and Meat Joy it is a bit inevitable your artistic creation is going to be compared to such works. But perhaps that was the point. Maybe the purpose was to make Sabine seem small compared to the performance-art titans of Schneeman and Abramovic. Maybe the point was to highlight the limits of the novel form in comparison to mediums like visual art and performance. It did give me a bone to chew on, even if I found that it didn’t quite work all the time. 

Most of my criticisms range closer to questions. My biggest question being whether Woo Woo was intended to be satirical. At first, I thought it was—the dinner party scene, in my mind, all but confirmed it. The overwhelming amount of red wine and the bizarre and abstract way Sabine’s friends converse with one another felt like a parody of the interdisciplinary-artist types who only drink artisanal, locally-made liquor and try to hide that their parents have Wikipedia pages. But, the boot of dramatic irony never came down. In spots, it felt completely earnest. Sometimes Sabine live streams herself eating a pomegranate slowly, or rolling around on the floor, and the story moves right along as if it is as thoughtless as doing the laundry. But again, maybe that’s the point. Maybe it is an exercise on purpose—Sabine’s artist-cum-influencer persona is meant to be earnest and ironic in equal measure and, in turn, confusing. 

Perhaps my biggest point of contention with this book is Sabine’s husband, Constantine. Why is he so tolerant of Sabine’s madness? I struggle to see why Constantine sticks with her. At one point, she turns up at the restaurant where he is the Executive Chef, orders massive amounts of food, causes a scene because he doesn’t come out to visit her, and leaves without eating anything. Following this episode, he returns home to her covered in animal bones, slopping around in rotten food from the fridge. Why would he put up with this? For a while, I became convinced Constantine was a figment of Sabine’s imagination, and I am still kicking the idea around. We do not see enough of the build up of their relationship, or really much of their relationship at all, to justify the lack of conflict between them given Sabine’s behavior. Again, maybe he is that great of a guy, and that is the point. Perhaps he is a figment of her imagination. But I didn’t see enough of him to say.

Woo Woo is fascinating and experimental. It’s clever, bizarre, and incredibly memorable. I enjoyed how experimental Baxter was and, for the most part, her efforts paid off. However, there were times Woo Woo wandered so far into “weird” I got a bit confused about how I was meant to interpret the story. That is not to say I didn’t enjoy it all the way through—I got a bit lost at some points, but I enjoyed the journey. It’s certainly a worthwhile read if you’re interested in visual and performance art, social commentary, and surrealism. Overall, Woo Woo is not a book easily forgotten. 

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of The Vengeance.

This title will be released on March 6, 2025 by Solaris.

Morgane’s short life hasn’t been an easy one—she grew up on the sea, leading a violent, dangerous life as the daughter of Captain Anna-Marie, the ferocious captain of The Vengeance. However, after Anna-Marie is mortally wounded during a rage-fueled attack on a Four Chains Trading Company vessel, she confesses this was not the life Morgane should have had as she is not truly her mother. What’s more, the captain of the Four Chains Trading Company vessel was contracted not only to slay Anna-Marie but return Morgane to her wealthy and powerful birth family.

Morgane isn’t the only one in need of rescuing, however. Upon finding a letter from her birth mother on the trading company vessel, Morgane learns her birth mother may be facing some danger of her own, even from within the apparent safety of her castle. Author Emma Newman takes readers on a frantic journey through 18^th century France and all its haunting decadence as Morgane desperately tries to reconcile conflicting internal feelings about the mother she’s known all her life, while trying to save the one she was stolen from.

Those feelings are a central element of this novel’s overarching theme: confronting and overcoming generational trauma. While readers only know Anna-Marie for a short time, it’s immediately understood she is deeply affected by an experience she had with Morgane’s father in the past. This experience impacts her in a profound way and shapes who she is as a person—she can be coldly angry, distant, and abusive at times towards Morgane. These emotional issues have a major impact on how Morgane sees Anna-Marie, which she acknowledges internally but cannot voice aloud: “That was what she remembered most about the woman who wasn’t her mother: the constant anger just beneath the surface.” However, beneath her hard exterior is a woman in emotional turmoil, still reeling from a betrayal twenty years earlier. Anna-Marie’s coldness is a defense mechanism—something built up to protect herself from future betrayals. Morgane recognizes this but still carries a level of resentment towards her for it. This is further complicated once she learns Anna-Marie is not her biological mother.

Throughout the novel, Morgane carries a similar coldness. On one hand, this can partially be explained by her circumstances: She is alone in a strange country and surrounded by social conventions that feel stifling, especially compared to the previous looseness of her life at sea. On the other hand, her behavior is reflective of Anna-Marie’s coldness. Despite conflicting feelings over how to view Anna-Marie, it’s obvious she inherited many traits from her, from the anger she expresses when she feels vulnerable to the hatred and mistrust she expresses towards her father once they are reunited. Newman illustrates this theme expertly through the conflicts Morgane’s defensiveness creates, even among the few allies she makes in France. Readers will finish scenes feeling just as furious and frustrated at Morgane as she is towards herself—a familiar feeling for anyone working through their own generational trauma. Watching her start to overcome some of that trauma and allow herself to be vulnerable with characters like Lisette was one of the strongest parts of this novel.

Speaking of Lisette, Newman does a great job depicting a strong relationship between her and Morgane. One of the most enjoyable aspects of The Vengeance was watching the initial animosity between the two bloom into tentative friendship, and then romance. Both are thrust into a dangerous situation and must learn to lean on each other throughout the novel; Morgane must trust Lisette to safely guide her through France and its unfamiliar customs, while Lisette must trust Morgane to protect her from the terrifying new enemies that emerge during their quest to rescue Morgane’s birth mother. I particularly loved the quiet moments in their relationship, such as the scenes at the inns they stay at along the way where Lisette takes the time to teach Morgane how to read. This gap in knowledge is something Morgane is embarrassed of but doesn’t know how to fix on her own. These scenes were a great demonstration of her character’s vulnerability and Lisette’s endless patience. They are great foils for each other throughout the novel.

The romance, overall, is one that plays out naturally once it develops. However, the initial transition between romance and friendship feels a little rushed—it happens suddenly and lacks the slower build-up of their friendship I enjoyed earlier in the novel. For example, their first kiss occurs suddenly and without much build-up. Prior to that moment, neither of them expressed much interest in each other romantically. After that scene, their relationship grows much more naturally. Slowing down the transition from friendship to romance would provide more time to develop and explore Morgane’s reactions as, prior to this point, she’s never had a serious relationship and grew up watching Anna-Marie discard lovers quickly. It’s a small thing, but one that could add another layer of nuance to the relationship and the secondhand understanding of romance Morgane learned from Anna-Marie.

I also would have liked to see the fantastical elements of the novel expanded upon earlier. About half-way through The Vengeance, Morgane and Lisette encounter a creature that is clearly supernatural. They acknowledge this, but then the supernatural aspect of the plot does not return until the end of the novel. Though the series is called The Vampires of Dumas, that element of the plot is given very little time on the page. Rather, the novel leans more towards the historical fiction genre—a different direction than marketed.

Overall, Newman’s prose is fast-paced and approachable, making it work well in the high stakes action scenes throughout The Vengeance. This novel is perfect for young adult readers looking for a fun, spooky-at-times romp around 18^th century France with a pirate on a mission to save the mother she has never known.