Month: March 2026

Book Review: THE BOOK WITCH by Meg Shaffer

| Jessica Crawford

The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer is a 320 standalone novel from Ballantine Books with a publish date of April 7, 2026.

Genre:

Contemporary Fantasy, Mystery, Romance

The Blurb:

She can hop into any novel, she just can’t stay there. Come along with the book witch in this magical and inspiring love letter to reading from the USA Today bestselling author of The Wishing Game.

Rainy March is a proud third-generation book witch, sworn to defend works of fiction from all foes real and imaginary. With her magical umbrella and feline familiar, she jumps into and out of novels to fix malicious alterations and rogue heroes. 

Book witches live by a strict Real people belong in the real word; fictional characters belong in works of fiction…. Do not eat, drink, or sleep inside a fictional world, lest you become part of the story. Falling in love with a fictional character? Don’t even think about it.

Which is why Rainy has been forbidden from seeing the Duke of Chicago, the dashing British detective who stars in her favorite mystery series. If she’s ever caught with him again, she’ll be expelled from her book coven—and forced to give up the magical gifts that are as much a part of her as her own name.

But when her beloved grandfather disappears and a priceless book is stolen, there’s only one person she trusts to help her solve the case: the Duke. Their quest takes them through the worlds of Alice in Wonderland, The Great Gatsby, and other classics that will reveal hidden enemies and long-buried family secrets.

Opening Line:

All stories are love stories if you love stories.

My Thoughts

If you love books (and if you’re here, I’ll assume you do) and contemporary fantasy isn’t an automatic nonstarter for your reading, then you will be DELIGHTED with The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer!

An unread book is a caged animal, trapped between paper walls. They want reading, need it. To open a book is to set a story free.

So much of this book is about books we love, why we love them, and why they are worth defending (from book bans and challenges all the way up to literal book burnings). The vehicle for delivering this message is an enchanting fantastical mystery story filled with adventure and a healthy dash of romance (and in fact, the book is divided into parts cleverly titled after various genres). The droll writing had me giggling out loud in many places. My favorite books may often be on the darker and grittier side, but this story was indisputably good for this reader’s heart and soul!

“Sorry, this is weirder than when Ebeneezer Scrooge sent me a fruitcake for Christmas.”

Rainy March is a book witch of the Ink and Paper Coven, as was her mother who died when Rainy was a baby, and the grandfather who raised her. When fictional characters manage to slip the confines of their books and enter the real world, threatening to unwrite and rob the world of their beloved stories, those in the storycraft trade escort them back where they belong and erase their memories of the experience. When Burners enter books they do not consider serious or deserving literature and try to light them on fire from within, the witches hunt them down within the pages of the story to stop them before any permanent damage can be done.

“I’m starting to thing you don’t actually read the books you claim to love or hate. No, you wave them like flags in a war no one’s fighting but you.”

Rainy and her familiar, the Russian Blue cat named Koshka, are doing well for themselves in this role, until the day they enter one of the installments of the Duke of Chicago series. Rainy can’t help but be charmed by the debonair Private Investigator. The two wind up falling in love and meeting clandestinely, in his world or hers. But the coven abides by a set of strict rules, one of which is that fictional characters belong in their books, and real people belong in the real world, and fraternizing outside the bounds of ones duties is prohibited. When their secret is discovered, Rainy is forbidden from seeing Duke again.

But when there is a mystery afoot that may mean danger for Rainy’s loved ones (and may answer decades-old questions about the mother she never knew), the 1920s gangland Chicago detective might be the only person able to help her untangle the truth. Risking her livelihood and her very identity as a book witch in order to save the people she loves, Rainy teams up with the man she isn’t allowed to be with to solve the case. If only he would stop making bedroom eyes at her…

“Stop being gorgeous,” I ordered him, pointing at his face.

“You first.”

This story featuring charming characters and humorous writing (and a cameo appearance from LeVar Burton!) is a fun and clever homage to books everywhere, and I am so glad to have read it. Many thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

One last gem of a quote:

“Stories thrive on conflict. You do realize that the fairy tale ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ without the Big Bad Wolf is nothing but a brief paragraph about an uneventful food delivery.”

Okay, fine, that was the second to last one. Now this:

“Reminds me that when the going gets tough, it’s probably time to escape into a book.”

This entire story could be the booklover’s creed!

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Book Review: YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke

| Jessica Crawford

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is a standalone debut novel published by Knopf on April 7, 2026.

Blurb:

A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.

Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.

A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

Opening Line:

This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself.

My Thoughts:

America hates angry women. The Lord hates angry women. You hate angry women. Do not be an angry woman.

Except I am angry. I am very, very angry.

How to categorize this book? I wouldn’t say it fits neatly into any one genre, but I think the closest would be literary thriller. I found it exceedingly interesting, in a very angst-ridden and kind of icky way. I was super engaged and tore through it at a good clip, but goodness are these characters hateful!

[People like her] couldn’t possess a truly principled stance even if someone injected it straight into their faces.

Natalie Heller Mills has the perfect life for a traditional Christian woman – or at least, on Instagram she does. Her carefully curated social media presence shows a devoted wife and mother of five (with a sixth on the way), living on a farm in Idaho and eschewing many aspects of modernity in the name of providing her family with a healthy, all natural and organic lifestyle. Behind the scenes, she in fact has two nannies taking care of the kids, migrant workers running the farm, pesticides and modern appliances hidden from the camera, and a troubled marriage.

That was what they taught you in the forums: to be suspicious of everything. I’d watched [him] grow suspicious of schools, and then of the skies, and then of the world–and now, I realized with surprise, he was becoming suspicious of me.

Then one morning, Natalie wakes up in a home that looks similar to but different from her house, with a family that looks similar to but different from her own. There is no evidence of modernity whatsoever, her husband is the manly head of the household she had given up on him ever being, and they are living what seems to be the actual lives of early nineteenth century pioneers on America’s Western front. Is this a test from God? Is it some new reality show pushing the boundaries? Has she really been transported in time to live the kind of life she had falsely been claiming to live for all of her online followers?

The story is told with alternating timelines, when things are coming to a head in Natalie’s world of Instagram fame, and when she finds herself lost in what seems to be an entirely different world. Pretty much every adult character in this book is terrible, just the worst! But this allows the story to reflect on some key issues in today’s world, making for a lot of compelling social commentary.

Liars. Every Christian woman I ever met had been a big fat lying bastard. Lord have mercy on their big fat lying bastard souls.

I was all in for learning more about Natalie’s story and understanding what was really going on behind the scenes of her life, but for readers who require likeable characters to root for, be forewarned that you won’t find any here! Between all the people being horrible to one another and the fact that the final reveal felt a bit silly to me, I’m calling this a 4.5 star read for me. As long as you don’t count yourself among the group of readers mentioned above, I do recommend picking this very compulsive book up. And the Letter to the Reader included in the beginning explains that a movie adaption produced by and starring Anne Hathaway is already in the works, so stay tuned for that!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

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Book Review: MAD SCIENCE: BITS AND PIECES

| Jessica Crawford

Mad Science: Bits and Pieces, edited by Dave Freer, is a 251 page anthology of science fiction short stories published March 11, 2026 by Raconteur Press.

My Thoughts:

This is a collection of short stories submitted by authors prompted to write something that fits the theme “Mad Science: Bits and Pieces”, however they chose to interpret that.

This was a well done batch of stories! Featuring a range of experiments from genetically engineered and neurally modified animals to cobbled-together inventions that don’t work as expected, these were fun science fiction vignettes. The stakes are quite high in most of them, and several utilize elements of humor in the telling. Personal favorites include UNCLE EUAN: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED by Malory, SONG OF THE SEA BEAST by Bret Nelson, and PAST AND PRESENT by Nate Stone.

Overall the writing is decent, the illustrations add a factor of interest, and the faux advertisements sprinkled throughout are delightful. Well done, everyone!

Thank you to Raconteur Press for the eBook in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: SEASON OF GLASS & IRON: STORIES by Amal El-Mohtar

| Jessica Crawford

Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar is 208 page collection of short stories and poems published by Tordotcom in 2026.

Genre:

Fantasy

Blurb:

Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar.

With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.

Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron includes “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” “The Green Book,” “Madeleine,” “The Lonely Sea in the Sky,” “And Their Lips Rang with the Sun,” “The Truth About Owls,” “A Hollow Play,” “Anabasis,” “To Follow the Waves,” “John Hollowback and the Witch,” “Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers,” “Pockets,” and more.

My Thoughts:

When I read Amal El-Mohtar’s The River has Roots I thought it was fine, but I actually enjoyed the short story from this collection featured at the end, John Hollowback and the Witch, more. I was excited to check out the rest.

This book contains fourteen short stories plus four poems. Full disclosure–I am not much of a poetry person, and I skipped those entries. Sorry, sorry!

But most of the short stories were a success for this reader (favorites include The Green Book, Madeleine, and, of course, John and the Hollowback Witch). The author is very skilled with a pen/keyboard, and so even the few tales that didn’t really hit with me were still not a hardship to read. As El-Mohtar explains in the Introduction, several of these pieces were commissioned for specific projects with a core thematic or demographic concern (witches, steampunk, fairytales; Arab, women, queer). All of the stories have a fantasy element to them, and recurring themes include birds, flowers, gemstones, female friendship (sometimes more), and women fighting back against the patriarchy.

Short stories don’t often resonate with me as well as novels do, but there was still much to enjoy in this lyrical, otherworldly, analytic work.

My thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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Book Review: WAYWARD SOULS (HARKER & MORIARTY #2) by Susan J. Morris

| Jessica Crawford

Wayward Souls by Susan J. Morris is the second book in the Harker & Moriarty series, with a publish date by Inky Phoenix Press of Bindery Books of March 17, 2026.

Genre:

Historical Fantasy, Paranormal Mystery

Blurb:

The delightfully dark sequel to the gothic supernatural mystery Strange Beasts.

Six days before Samhain—the night when the veil between worlds is thinnest—Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, and Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the famed criminal mastermind, are thrown into their next the mysterious disappearance of two Society field agents in Ireland. Only this time, the Royal Society is sending Jakob Van Helsing to keep an eye on them.

Sam and Hel may have solved the Paris case, but that doesn’t mean the Society trusts them. Sam has the power to slip into the minds of monsters, and Van Helsing has sworn to kill her at the first sign of corruption. And if Hel can’t prove her father’s existence, she’ll soon go down for his crimes.

Their investigation takes them from the crumbling ruins of Ireland’s untamed wilds to the occult societies of the rich and powerful. The connection between the Sam and Hel is electric, but as they fall deeper into each other’s orbit, their secrets only multiply. For Hel, it’s the sins she committed when she was her father’s pawn. For Sam, it’s a plague of death omens, mysterious black feathers, and a siren song no one else can hear. And then comes a chilling revelation that is poised to shatter The agents who disappeared were each haunted by a ghost. And so, it seems, is Sam.

With characters drawn from the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, Wayward Souls is a twisty puzzle box of a historical fantasy—perfect for fans of Genevieve Cogman, Theodora Goss, Freya Marske, T. Kingfisher, and Gail Carriger.

Opening Line:

Samantha Harker folded her hands on the scarred mahogany table, grateful her emerald-green riding habit would disguise any hint of sweat.

My Thoughts:

Sam and Hel (the daughters of Jonathan and Mina Harker from Dracula and Professor Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, respectively) are off on another adventure in this sequel to Strange Beasts. This time London’s Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena have sent them to Ireland with Jakob Van Helsing accompanying to keep an eye on things, as they don’t quite trust Hel’s loyalties or Sam’s abilities.

Like its predecessor, the vibes in this book are perfectly on point! Steeped in the darker aspects of Celtic mythology and folklore, this story was perfect for my spooky season reading (but with the Irish setting being such a large part of the story, St. Patty’s Day would be a fine time to pick it up as well!) People in Ireland are disappearing in ways that smack of the supernatural and it’s up to our team of field agents to figure out who or what is behind it all, preferably before the night of Samhain, when the veil between worlds is thinnest and dangers from the Otherworld are at their peak.

A theme of this installment is that no one is only one thing – all good or all bad. Characters who were midlevel villains of the last book have the opportunity here to show that they have another side. Our heroines have to learn to allow themselves as much grace as they do the monsters they confront in their line of work, who are sometimes made the way they are by monstrous acts committed against them.

I hadn’t recalled from the first book that the story is all told with third person POV through Sam’s perspective, so readers can only really get an idea of Hel and Van Helsing’s thoughts and feelings through their interactions with her. I do think a reread of that one would have been beneficial, as I couldn’t recall much about the situation with Sam’s grandfather, which comes into play as a fairly major plot thread here.

One complaint I have with this book is the same one I had for the first in the series – I couldn’t always follow the characters’ reasoning when they came to conclusions about things in their investigation. The answers and explanations here were a bit convoluted, with a lot going on. I kind of had to just enjoy the ride and accept the characters’ determinations without fully appreciating how they arrived at them.

Still, this was overall a fun story and perfect fit for my October reading, and I am grateful to NetGalley, Bindery Books, and Inky Phoenix Press for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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