book reviews

Book Review: MALIBU RISING by Taylor Jenkins Reid

| Jessica Crawford

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a 369 page standalone novel (although part of the “Reidverse”, the author’s works that share a universe) published in 2021.

Genre

Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

Description

Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them… and what they will leave behind.

Opening Line

Malibu catches fire.

My Thoughts

Because, just as it is in Malibu’s nature to burn, so was it in one particular person’s nature to set fire and walk away.

I grabbed Malibu Rising when I was in the mood for a thematic summer read that would transport me to a beachy location, and was not disappointed.

The Riva siblings were raised by their brokenhearted and alcoholic mother after their superstar musician father left. Some of them have now found themselves among the elite of Malibu, and the big bash they throw every year, attracting many partygoers from Hollywood, has become legendary. Some chapters tell the story of their origin and upbringing, while alternating ones detail the events as they unfold each hour leading up to 1983’s Riva party, which we are told is going to end with some kind of reckoning.

Throughout most of my time reading this book I thought it would be a 4 star read for me. I wasn’t super engaged in the story, but TJR just has such a talent for writing things that go down so easy while keeping you entertained no matter the subject matter.

But then the last parts of the book, when things go off the rails at the party while the emotional core of family dynamics comes to a head simultaneously, was superb. It rode that last wave right up to a fifth star (ha ha, a little surfing humor there.)

Overall, I didn’t love this as much The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but definitely more than Daisy Jones and the Six.

She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

Book Review: THE WITCH BELOW THE DREAMING WOOD by H.G. Parry

| Jessica Crawford

The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood by H.G. Parry is a 448 page standalone novel to be published July 21, 2026 by Redhook.

Genre

Historical Fantasy, Retelling

Description

From the author of The Magician’s Daughter comes a captivating historical fantasy where dreams come to life and Arthurian legends are reborn.

Wales, 1941. As the second world war ravages the globe and bombs fall from the sky, people all over the world begin to dream of King Arthur. The dreams spread like a fantastical plague, flooding people’s sleep night after night. Whispers arise of wonders and unexplained sights – dragons in the London Underground, and strange lights over Stonehenge. Self-proclaimed prophets claim they are miracles, heralding Arthur’s return at the time of Britain’s greatest need.⁣
⁣
Elaine Ambrose has never dreamed of Arthur, and she doesn’t believe in miracles. A librarian at the British Museum, she wants only to protect the museum’s collection from the Blitz, and is frustrated to be sent instead to catalogue a reclusive professor’s private library on the coast of North Wales. But all is not as it seems. Soon Ellie must confront what she’s tried to ignore: she dreams not of Arthur, but of Nimue – the Lady of the Lake. And her dreams promise not salvation, but a return to the darkness of the last days of Camelot. 

Opening Line

When we were children under the Lake, my other would tuck us into bed every night with the same words.

My Thoughts

“That’s the trouble with destiny, and with despair. Both make it too easy to tell yourself you had no choice.”

The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood is an Arthurian legend love story that transcends space and time.

The tale unfolds in chapters that alternate between Nimue’s story (told in the first person POV), and that of Elaine Ambrose (third person), a librarian working in London during the second World War. As their nation is embroiled in warfare, the people of the United Kingdom collectively begin dreaming about the once and future king, Arthur. Is the phenomenon spreading by the power of suggestion on the minds of a stressed population, or is there actually something otherworldly afoot?

It was as though the incendiaries had cracked open the earth and allowed something old and primal to slip through.

At first, Ellie resents being sent away from where she can be of most use to the war effort in order to catalogue the library of an isolated manor house in the north of Wales. But events at her new lodgings lead her to believe that Camlan House might in fact have a much bigger role to play in looming world-shattering events than she could have imagined. She teams up with the estate’s groom, honorably discharged RAF pilot Tom Wilder, to try to puzzle out what is behind the unearthly goings-on they witness there.

Both parts of the story were excellent, but I especially delighted at Nimue’s narration of how she was raised by the Lady of the Lake to be Merlin’s doom. Her entire life has been solely about preparing to enact her mother’s vengeance against the mighty wizard and advisor to the king in Camelot through subterfuge, never mind how Nimue herself might come to feel for the man.

Oh, the joy the repartee between Nimue and Merlin brought to me!

“As it stands, I owe you an apology, and probably an explanation. I don’t have an explanation for you, but would you like to learn how to turn into a mouse?”

“I’d better get going. I promised Arthur I’d join him in council.”

“I thought you said you were going to be completely useless this morning.”

“I never promised him I wouldn’t be useless. I never even promised him I’d be awake. I did promise him I’d be human, which is a shame, but he’s learned to be specific over the years.”

And of course we also have the other usual suspects in this part of the tale: Morgan le Fay and Mordred, Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot.

Poor Lancelot. So brave and so honourable, so determined to be all things to all people that he was constantly hurting them in the process… “He can’t turn aside from Arthur, and he can’t turn aside from you, and so he’s going to tear himself apart trying to be everything to both of you at once, and deep down he can’t believe that it will end badly.”

If he could be the best knight in the world while betraying his liege lord, then it meant that knighthood wasn’t what he had believed it to be. It meant that perhaps his standards meant nothing, and never had. It meant everything was falling apart.

Both strands of story weave together epically at the end. There is no time loop here, but if “timey-wimey” plots hurt your brain too much to enjoy a book, you might want to skip this one. However, if you love fantasy stories inspired by Arthurian legend, WWII historical fiction, and grand wistful romances all packaged together with strong moral lessons, you must give this a read!

It will end one day, of course. Everything does. Until then, we have the ground we hold against the dark, and the stories we fill it with.

A thousand thanks to Redhook and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: THE DRAGON HAS SOME COMPLAINTS by John Wiswell

| Jessica Crawford

The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell is a 400 page standalone novel to be published by DAW Books on July 14, 2026.

Genre

Fantasy

Description

In this heartfelt and humorous fantasy from the Nebula-winning author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In, a dragon whose three heads bear rather…different…personalities finds family in the most unexpected of places.

Garrodigh was once a four-headed dragon, among the most powerful in Kardoša. After an unfortunate incident, he now has three heads, one stump, and a daily whirlwind of internal bickering. Centerhead wants to rain death upon all humanity, Bottomhead is like a feral cat, and Upperhead is under the delicate delusion that he is, in fact, human. 

When a nearby battle goes awry, Garrodigh sneaks into an elite dragon rider academy, pretending to be tame to get free food and a warm bed. Lucky for him, rider Rania Albright is desperate enough for a dragon of her own that she overlooks his eccentricities. 

As Garrodigh recovers under Rania’s care, all three heads start to turn, for the first time, in the same direction. Each wants to protect her from the invaders who killed their fourth head—the same invaders who seek to conquer Kardoša. When the academy comes under attack, can this wild dragon and his wilder rider save their homeland together?

This cozy fantasy intertwines epic battles with loving friendships, sharing an utterly unique perspective on what it means to be a “monster.”

Opening Line

What the hell was in his mouth?

My Thoughts

Sometimes that feral weirdo is an inspiration.

The Dragon Has Some Complaints is a new gritty yet humorous and heartwarming adventure from John Wiswell, author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In.

The Great Terror Garrodigh is a three-headed dragon (RIP Lefty), injured and hiding in the wilds from the ravages of human warfare. Rejected by his own kind, he winds up posing as one of the dumb tamed dragons ridden and cared for by the people of the Winged City in order to be fed and sheltered, his ailments treated. After forging a special bond with his rider, the effusive Rania, he winds up helping these humans in their fight against invaders who would steal their home and their dragons.

Although I enjoyed Garrodigh and the different personalities of each of his heads, I found all of the human characters to be more irritating than anything. I wasn’t very engaged in the parts of the story involving weird sex and awkward romance, though it was all done in the name of promoting healthy relationship dynamics, finding ones place in the world, accepting all the parts of one’s identity, and forging therapeutic connections. The parts of the story relating to the dragon goddess Polarka, on the other hand, were absolutely awesome. The rest of the book leading up to that, however, felt too long.

There is some darkness to the adventurous action in this book, but there are also a whole lot of feel good sentiments and healing. For this reader, the details of the story made for a mixed bag, and in all I’d call it a 3.5 star read.

(Seriously, though, the climax part of the story was insanely epic!)

Thank you to NetGalley and DAW Books for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: COUNTRY PEOPLE by Daniel Mason

| Jessica Crawford

Country People by Daniel Mason is a 320 page standalone novel to be published by Random House on July 7, 2026.

Genre

Literary Fiction

Blurb

A rollicking work of lyricism and humor, about one family’s tumble into the unknown, from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of North Woods

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales, and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be his year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate’s words, “a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere.” And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress and a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world’s delusions in a “Inventory of Wrong Ideas.”

The new friends, the enchanted woods, the sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre—perhaps ridiculous—local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all.

Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.

Opening Line

…And so my path descended, through the twisting caverns.

My Thoughts

“I…asserted that the world was mad, and the world said, that I was mad, and confound them, they outvoted me.” ~Nathaniel Lee, 17th century English dramatist

Country People by Daniel Mason, author of one of my top reads of 2023, North Woods, brings readers along on the journey of one year in the life of the Krzelewski-Petrosian family. The parents are in academia, 45 year old Miles still “working on” his dissertation, the topic of which he has changed several times, when Kate gets offered a visiting faculty position across the country. They pack up their two children and the family dog and leave California for a new home in the Green Mountain area of Vermont.

The narration in this book is quite funny. As an example, when the family first cannot resist stopping at every roadside farmstand they pass,

[they] soon found themselves in possession of more zucchini than they had ever been in possession of in their lives, one of those milestones a person passes without fanfare, but a milestone nonetheless.

There is plenty about country life that surprises these Californian transplants, mostly to their delight. Miles’ current dissertation topic involves Russian folktales, having most recently been changed from Russian peasants in the works of Tolstoy. For the purposes of his research, surely the good people of rural Vermont count as being like peasants? Maybe?

Despite his awareness that flat-earthers existed, Miles had never actually met a live one. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it was someone more superficially brain-damaged than Hugh, who, for all his looseness with the world of facts, had seemed, until that point, more like a run-of-the-mill mansplainer in his late-forties. But Miles had apparently been living in a bubble, because here was a person with all his teeth, sensible sun protection, and an alpenstock, now holding forth on Pythagoras, ring laser gyroscopes, and the 2017 solar eclipse. Except, he realized after a while, Hugh wasn’t a flat-earther, Hugh was a hollow-earther, and his disdain for flat-earthers seemed to match even his disdain for the general population who believed the world was solid at its core.

Wow, taking it to another level, thought Miles.

The exciting part was that neither Kate nor Miles, in all their lives, had known this was something a person, a nonmedieval person, could believe, that it was even part of the great stock of possible beliefs. But here it was! And Hugh, who took encouragement from the stunned general silence of these hikers, who were now beginning to doubt not only his credibility regarding snakes and wildflowers, but also their personal safety, expressed surprise that no one else had heard this theory, actually two theories, one that held there was both an Inside and an Outside of the Shell, and another that there was only an Inside, and on the outside was the Void.

The story follows the imperfect but highly relatable Miles, devoted husband and father, as he finds himself slipping into the doldrums of otherwise having no professional purpose of his own and failing to meet expectations. For a time he finds solace in hiking through the woods, zen in scything crops with another failed academic husband in the area, joy in learning to ski along the snowy mountainsides. Winter puts the first two on pause, while a knee injury halts the last one.

It’s then that Miles finds a feeling of community in the most unexpected of places. He befriends an eclectic ensemble of locals who all share a belief in a rather fantastic legend lifted from the alleged writings of a man who claimed to have descended into nearby cave systems so far that he stumbled upon another world, a veritable paradise within the Earth’s core. It almost doesn’t matter to Miles that he does not share this specific belief; a man went into a cave and perhaps saw something, but the magic to him is the enthusiasm among the group of people who gather to discuss the story and their research into its different facets, and the sense of belonging they extend to him.

Honestly, it did take me somewhere between 15-20% of the book before I settled in and stopped asking “What is this, exactly?” and started to really enjoy it. It’s a bit difficult to put into words what exactly it’s about, but I can confidently say that it is witty and well-written literary fiction. I’ll borrow from the blurb on Goodreads, because I find it quite accurate: “Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.” Well done!

Thanks, NetGalley and Random House, for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Goodreads

Book Review: AGNES AUBERT’S MYSTICAL CAT SHELTER

| Jessica Crawford
The above was originally an MP4 video file in which the cat at the bottom is animated and spins around. For some reason, none of the embed codes from Canva work for me in WordPress, so I uploaded it as a JPEG image instead. The result is what you see above–the back view of a cat facing away. I tried, fam! But honestly, I kind of dig this version, too.

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett is a 353 standalone novel published in February of 2026 by Del Rey.

Genre:

Cozy Fantasy

Blurb:

A woman who runs a cat rescue in 1920s Montreal turns to a grouchy but charming wizard to help save the shelter in this heartwarming cozy fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of the Emily Wilde series.

Agnes Aubert leads a meticulously organized life—and she likes it that way. As the proudly type-A manager of a much-needed cat rescue charity, she has devoted her life to finding forever homes for lost cats.

But after she is forced to move the cat shelter, Agnes learns that her new landlord is using her charity as a front—for an internationally renowned and thoroughly disreputable magic shop. Owned by the disorganized—not to mention self-absorbed, irritating, but also decidedly handsome—Havelock Renard, magician and failed Dark Lord, the shop draws magical clientele from around the world, partly due to the quality of Havelock’s illicit goods as well as their curiosity about his shadowy past and rumors of his incredible powers. Agnes’s charity offers the perfect cover for illegal magics.

Agnes couldn’t care less about the shop—magical intrigue or not, there are cats to be rescued. But when an enemy from Havelock’s past surfaces, the magic shop—and more importantly, the cat shelter—are suddenly in jeopardy. To save the shelter, will Agnes have to set aside her social conscience and protect the man who once tried to bring about the apocalypse—and is now trying to steal her heart?

Opening Line

I paused on the threshold of the shop to stamp the frost from my boots.

My Thoughts

As a cat lover myself, this cozy fantasy about a cat rescue shelter hit all the right notes on that front. The author clearly knows the species and the varied personalities one is likely to find among its members, which is delightful.

That being said, the story built around this core is…fine. But honestly nothing all that mindblowing.

Agnes is Type A and dedicated to rescuing strays when she finds herself in a pinch and has to move her shop to the only location within her means, a suspiciously affordable front on the Rue des Hirondelles. She is initially alarmed to learn that her new landlord is none other than the infamous Dark Wizard Havelock Renard, who is using her business as a front for his illegal trade in magical Artefacts in the building’s basement. But not only is Agnes in no position to find another shop, she soon learns that the renowned master magician may just be more awkward and curmudgeonly than evil, and people may have gotten the completely wrong idea about what really happened when the world almost ended three years before. Now it turns out there is a truly wicked magician after Havelock, and Agnes and her cats may be in harm’s way.

It was nice, it was fine. But where this book really works well is in the cozy vibes brought by the cats and the pastries and the crackling fires in the hearth while frost coats the streets of 1920s Montreal. For these reasons alone I enjoyed my reading experience. If you’re looking for a story like that as a nice balm to the soul, give this one a try. But if you want epic storytelling, perhaps look elsewhere. I personally feel like the author’s Emily Wilde series did a better job at balancing the two.

Book Review: FOUNDLING FATHERS by Meg Elison

| Jessica Crawford

Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison is a 192 page standalone novella published by Tachyon Publications.

Genre:

Speculative Fiction, Satire

Description

When a radical think tank clones America’s founding fathers, The Boys from Brazil meets the bicentennial in this ingeniously satirical mashup of U.S. history, cloning, and technocracy gone terribly wrong.

The trouble starts when a curious teenager, Benjamin, finds an iPhone in his privy. The problem is, it’s supposed to be 1750.

Ben takes his discovery to his brothers—Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised in isolation on an island plantation by a firm but kind woman, Mary Libertas. All four of them chafe at Mary’s restrictions upon them—especially Thomas, who has impregnated yet another servant.

Meanwhile, their de facto father figure, Jeff Hancock, complains to the shadowy Antediluvian Society that it is past the time to explain to the boys where they come from and what they must do: Run America the way it used to be run.

In this more-than-slightly-absurdist novella, Philip K. Dick Award–winning author Meg Elison (Find Layla) skewers those looking to an idyllic past to solve the problems they continue to create.

Opening Line

It took Benjamin Franklin twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds to discover there was pornography on the internet.

My Thoughts

This novella is satire that explores what it might look like if a group of billionaires who idealize an imagined paradisiac past for the U.S. cloned some of the nation’s founding fathers so that they might make America great again. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington are between the ages of 15 and 20 when they deduce that the world they live in (on an island full of actors who carry on as if it were the year 1750 in an attempt to mold the young men to be as close as possible to their progenitors) is a fabrication. This story details what ensues.

This book is scathing political commentary. I think the idea behind it is great, and it’s clear the author and I share a lot of views on the subject matter involved, but the experience of reading was nothing stand out for me. But if you’re looking for social critique presented through a smart premise and in an amusing manner rather than a transportive reading experience, then look no further!

Book Review: HEAVEN’S GRAVEYARD by Grace Curtis

| Jessica Crawford

Heaven’s Graveyard by Grace Curtis is a 368 page novel from DAW with a publish date of June 16, 2026. It ties in to the author’s previous novel Idolfire but can be read as a standalone.

Genre

Science Fantasy

Description

From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Floating Hotel and Idolfire comes a science fantasy tale of history and myth, magic and mystery, perfect for fans of Shelley Parker-Chan and A. K. Larkwood

Two thousand years after the events of Idolfire, the world is on the brink of war, and the discovery of the enchanted city of Nivela threatens to push it over the brink

“What do you want to know?”

It’s been 2,000 years since the events of Idolfire, and we’re in a whole new Kite-drawn cargo ships race across thoroughly chartered seas, hauling the latest innovations in convenience and slaughter. It is developed, learned, interconnected, and on the brink of catastrophic war.

Archeologist Cod couldn’t care less about the conflict brewing between neighboring powers. She spends her days in happy obscurity, cataloging relics in the Republic of Asha and searching for clues about her lifelong obsession, the mythical hero Aleya Ana-Ulai. 

Then a letter arrives summoning her home. Cod’s old teacher has made the discovery of a lifetime. But her home is Palgaro, and the discovery—the ruins of the enchanted city of Nivela—is set to change the world. And not for the better…

Heaven’s Graveyard is a sinister lesbian history mystery bringing the magic of Idolfire into a dangerous new century.

Opening Line

Once, on a fine summer evening a long time before everything happened, when they were having something that was not quite a fight and not quite NOT a fight, Sparrow said to her, “That’s the real problem, Cod. By the time we met you’d already fallen in love with a myth.”

My Thoughts

Having studied anthropology myself, a book about an archaeologist working in museum studies is sure to grab my attention. Make it science fantasy, and I’m even more intrigued. The “sinister lesbian history mystery” part at that point is just bonus material!

Dr. Coda Canalully left the relative backwaters of Tessi for the vibrant city of Asha amid some unfortunate circumstances, never planning to look back. But when her mentor, history professor Denali Marr, sends her a telegram requesting she come see him about a “historic discovery”, her interest is piqued. The two of them have long shared a dream of proving that mythic heroine Aleya Ana-Ulai was a real person. But the day Cod arrives back her old university stomping grounds, it’s discovered that Marr has died under suspicious circumstances. What exactly had he discovered, and could there be those who don’t want it shared with the world?

She needed a thousand data points to shield herself from the one fact that mattered: Marr was dead. He’s died that morning. Seven years away from home and she’d missed him by a single day.

This book reminded me very much of the video game Heaven’s Vault in vibes. (Also, the main character in the game is named Aliya!) The game is “an archaeological sci-fi adventure that oozes a contemplative, mysterious, and grand vibe, combining ancient history with cosmic exploration”. This book leans more fantasy with a sprinkling of steampunk, and its adventures are rooted in one imagined world rather than across many (although there is mention of the possibility of visiting other planets some day). The discoveries in the game reveal a concept of repeating, fallen civilizations, and there is a hint of this cyclical nature in this book. It seems it actually references the events of another novel by this same author, Idolfire, which I have not read–otherwise I suspect these hints may have been more like pleasing little easter eggs in the story.

To be an archaeologist was to be a perpetual beggar-detective, sifting through miserly scraps preserved by the whim of time. And the scraps grew smaller the further back in time you looked. The vault of years between Cod and Aleya was as impassable as the space between life and death…

Anyway, the content and vibes of both book and game work well for me, and I enjoyed my time spent within these pages. Academics interested in connecting to the past suddenly faced with danger on top of the inherent mystery in their labors, the details of the legends out of time (the gods, effigy magic, etc), the worldbuilding insofar as the rivalry between the Alliance and Procumbent Church, the swashbuckling ex whose heart Cod broke years before, and the evolving relationship with an adversary–all made for a satisfying adventure. I will be keeping this author on my radar!

Content warning: there is one brutal scene of the killing of an animal, but if you feel like you might want to even just skim over that one part, there is nothing else like it again.

Thanks you to DAW and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Goodreads

Book Review: THIS KINGDOM WILL NOT KILL ME by Ilona Andrews

| Jessica Crawford

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews is a 480 page first novel in a planned trilogy, published by Tor Books in 2026.

Genre

Fantasy

Description

Outlander meets Game of Thrones in this blockbuster new epic fantasy series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo Ilona Andrews.

When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she’s been obsessively reading and re-reading while waiting years for the final novel.

Her only tools for navigating this gritty world of rival warlords, magic, and mayhem? Her encyclopedic knowledge of the plot, the setting, and the characters’ ambitions and fates. But while she quickly discovers she cannot be killed (though many will try!), the same cannot be said for the living, breathing characters she’s coming to love—a motley band that includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, various outrageous magical creatures, and a dangerously appealing soldier. Soon, instead of trying to get home, she finds herself enmeshed in the schemes—and attentions—of dueling princes, dukes, and villains, all while trying to save them and the kingdom of Rellas from the way she knows their stories will end: in a cataclysmic war.

Opening Line

Rain drenched the city, cold and relentless.

My Thoughts

The premise of this book was so fun!

Imagine if a fan of the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series woke up one day IN the fantasy world of the books. Context makes it clear they are in the beginning of the first book, plotwise. They know the key players, they know the events that are to come, and they have the opportunity to try to alter the course of things. They could thwart the major villains and save their favorite characters from terrible fates!

This is what happens to Maggie, but in the world from her own favorite fantasy series. Throw in the fact that any time she dies in Rellas, she comes back to life. The author of her books never finished the series (another parallel to our example books…), and in fact he seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth. What in the world, real or fantasy, is going on here?!

Well, we won’t learn the answer to that question in this first installment, but this is a planned trilogy (hopefully to be completed one day!) On that note, though, be aware that this one does end in a way that will make you wish you had the next book already within your reach.

So this was a great story idea and I had a lot of fun reading it, but I also have to say that this is my first Ilona Andrews book and the writing, friends…well, it’s not great. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great.

One of my biggest gripes here is how they (wife and husband writing team) handle physical descriptions of characters. There are a lot of characters, and when each is first introduced, they are described in full detail in the following order: build, skin color, eye color, hair color, hair style, material and color of each and every visible item of clothing and accessory on their person. One scene featured three men entering a room, and the next four paragraphs are dedicated to listing these things off one by one for each of them. Since this happens ad nauseum, the descriptions themselves got a eyeroll-inducing as well. Three characters have sand colored skin (whichever sand that might be referring to), two with olive skin, one with dark tan skin, one with golden tan skin, one who was naturally pale but had acquired a permanent tan over the years (it doesn’t work that way), brown skin, dark brown skin, rich brown skin, russet skin, even and warm beige skin, beige skin with a peach undertone, and a deeper shade of beige skin with a cool undertone. Yikes.

Apparently Maggie pays very close attention to these details, because at one point she notes a person’s skin, hair, and eye color and immediately knows which character from the books it must be.

Other aspects of the story get infodumpy as well, as something crops up that Maggie already has full knowledge of from reading the story, and so the next few paragraphs will be an explanation of it all, like a character’s background and upbringing and the major events in their life that brought them to the point of their current attempts at political machinations, for example.

The details of the world itself also had me raising my eyebrows a bit, as it’s described as a pretty typical medieval fantasy setting, but has running faucets, lots of different types of paper, and Maggie mentions brushing her teeth (not rubbing them with powder). There’s also something weird about how they use the active voice that I can’t quite put my finger on.

To wrap up my (most major) complaints, it seemed like only one of two authors tried to interject humor in the form of referencing things like Homer Simpson backing into the bushes. Maybe it wasn’t just one of them, maybe they both added it as a reminder that our POV character is from our own modern world, but it only happened sparingly and so really stood out as not matching the overall vibe of the rest of the story. And also, I don’t think they did a great job with the romance in this book. It was very lackluster.

BUT, all that being said, nothing was egregious enough to prevent me from thoroughly enjoying the book! I do think it would benefit from some sort of character guide to reference while reading. I understand there are spoilery reasons why they can’t provide just a list of all characters, but at least something with the Great Families, their key members, and the family’s particular brand of magic would have been very helpful. This is a pretty hefty book, and by the end we saw characters brought up again one or two hundred pages after they were first introduced, and I had not recollection of who they were supposed to be.

Despite these complaints about the writing my final rating was only knocked down to 4.5 stars because I still had a ton of fun reading this story, and likely will read on in the series when the next book becomes available. Hopefully that won’t be too long of a wait!

Note: I started with the audiobook until I got my hands on the hardcover, and felt similarly about the narration as I did the writing technicals: not terrible, but not great either.

Book Review: THE CHILDREN by Melissa Albert

| Jessica Crawford
The Children by Melissa Albert is a 416 page standalone novel with a publish date of June 2, 2026

GENRE

Fantasy, Horror

DESCRIPTION

An intoxicating, haunting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Melissa Albert, in which the estranged adult children of a legendary author, written into their dead mother’s beloved fantasy series, contend with the vine-like creep of legacy, memory, and magic.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.

In one, she lives in the wooded shadow of her family’s isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of her mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where her magical adventures have made her a household name. In reality, Guinevere’s childhood isn’t the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and her older brother are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the lichen-clotted woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.

Now an adult coasting on her mother’s name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family’s legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she’s spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s creative genius?

Wise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, The Children whispers to you from the hallway outside your bedroom, lights flickering as you turn the pages of a book that didn’t seem so scary a moment ago. It’s a story for anyone who’s ever revisited an old favorite and found it cast in a darker light, the line separating magic and memory blurring as the gap widens between the authors we imagined and the people they turn out to be.

OPENING LINE

Rain lashed the windows.

MY THOUGHTS

Wow, Melissa Albert really writes the most delicious dark fairytales!

This adult novel is fantasy with horror vibes. It alternates between two timelines, one of which is in the 1990s when Guin, her brother Ennis, and their parents lived at the Farmhouse in a rural area of Vermont. Their mother, Edith Sharpe, writes five books in a bestselling children’s fantasy series, using her own children’s names and likenesses as the main characters (without their consent, mind you). The home becomes a sort of bohemian commune where other artists of all stripes and talent levels show up and stay for indefinite lengths of time. Meanwhile, the children are left to their own devices (read as: neglected). There was supposed to be a sixth and final book in the Ninth City series, but a tragedy at the Farmhouse leaves the children orphans, and Edith never writes it.

The creeping dread just beneath the surface in this part of the story is masterful. Because there is something wrong with the Farmhouse. There are all the strange carvings, the poem etched into the wall, the stifling and uneasy room their mother writes in; and while none of the adults in their lives seem to pay the children much attention, it feels like they’re always being watched by…something.

The second timeline is current day, when adult Guin has taken on the mantle of mascot for the Ninth City series, and hasn’t spoken to her brother in years. Ennis has avoided and successfully evaded her ever since the night their parents died. But now it seems he is extending an invitation to Guin to come see his newest art instillation, titled Mother. Will it be a reunion or a reckoning? Will it reveal with any more clarity the events of the night of the fire?

Oh, this was such a fun read (as long as you appreciate talented writing giving you the heebie jeebies)! I confess I didn’t 100% understand all of the particulars revealed at the end, which was a bit unsatisfying, but the vibes were ON POINT and I am so excited to keep reading whatever Albert decides to write.

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