Book Review

Book Review: VICTORIAN PSYCHO by Virginia Feito

| Jessica Crawford

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito is a 208 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Liveright, imprint of W. W. Norton & Company.

Genre/subgenre:

Horror, Satire, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Dark Comedy

Synopsis:

From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.

Opening Line:

Death everywhere.

My Thoughts:

Well, that was wild!

I personally got 3 star book enjoyment from this one, but it has 5 star writing, so I guess I’ll compromise with 4.

This is basically super gory satire about the Victorian era. It was weird, and I often like weird books, but this style of weird wasn’t 100% to my tastes – although the absurdities did make me laugh out loud several times. I also prefer suspense and psychological horror to the straight up grotesque. It lacked the depth that really draws me personally as a reader into feeling connected to a story (and in this case, thank goodness for that!) But for what the author was going for, the writing really hits the nail on the head.

So clearly, I have mixed feelings on this one!

Examples of the humorous satire about a truly psychopathic governess living in Victorian times:

As advised by the Ladies’ Journal, I am clothed in a ‘plain and quiet style of dress; a deep straw bonnet with green or brown veil’ (brown, in my case, as the drab color blurs the identifying features further, obscuring my expression of unfathomable emptiness to resemble one a casual observer might mistake for solemnity).

When Mrs. Pounds makes an inquiry into her health, he scoffs at his wife’s ‘slight hysterical tendency’. She has been languishing on settees and refusing meals since witnessing the drowning of their youngest son.

‘Nothing a good rest devoid of intellectual strain can’t cure,’ Mr. Pounds says brightly.

‘Agree wholeheartedly,’ Mr. Fishal says. ‘Mrs. Fishal said writing energised her, so I took away all her quills and now she’s decreed that she’ll write in her own blood if she must.’

There is some good-natured tittering around the table, some good-natured shaking of heads. Women! Theatrical bitches.

If large quantities of gore in an effort to effect satire don’t bother you, you should most certainly read this book. But if you consider yourself on the squeamish side, you should probably give this one a pass.

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Book Review: HOW TO SEAL YOUR OWN FATE by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin is a 320 page novel, the second in the Castle Knoll Files series, from PENGUIN GROUP Dutton with a publish date of April 29, 2025.

Genre:

Mystery

Synopsis:

Kristen Perrin is back with the second novel in her Castle Knoll series. Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades, returning us to the idyllic English village that holds layers of secrets.

Present Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane crosses her path and shares a cryptic message. When Peony Lane is found dead only hours later inside the locked Gravesdown Estate, Annie quickly realizes that someone is out to make her look guilty while silencing Peony at the same time. Annie has no choice but to delve into the dark secrets of Castle Knoll in order to find out just what Peony Lane was trying to warn her about, before the new life she’s just begun to build comes crashing down around her.

1967: A year has passed since her friend Emily disappeared, and teenage Frances Adams finds herself caught between two men. Ford Gravesdown is one of the only remaining members of a family known for its wealth and dubious uses of power. Archie Foyle is a local who can’t hold down a job and lives above the village pub. But when Frances teams up with Archie to investigate the car crash that claimed the lives of Ford’s family, it quickly becomes clear that this was no accident—hints of cover-ups, lies, and betrayals abound. The question is, just how far does the blackness creep through the heart of Castle Knoll? When Frances uncovers secrets kept by both Ford and Archie, she starts to What exactly has she gotten herself into?

Opening Line:

Her name had always been too plain, she thought, as she looked at the prison register in front of her, which required her signature.

My Thoughts:

This was another engaging murder mystery in the Castle Knoll Files.

I do think I would have benefitted from rereading How to Solve Your Own Murder before jumping into this one, to better remember the characters we were previously introduced to, their relationships and motivations. In general they are an interesting collection of folk from a seemingly idyllic English countryside, one of whom offers the possibility of a future romance for our main character, Annie.

This time, it’s the intriguing figure of Peony Lane, the fortune teller who set Great Aunt Frances on her life’s course of trying to solve her own murder before it occurred, that gets caught up in the middle of the action. What might she have to do the Foyles, Sparrows, as well as the Gravesdowns of yore? And why do these crimes always seem to come knocking right at Annie’s door?

Alternating chapters between Annie’s current timeline (in present tense POV) and young Frances’s diary entries got a bit confusing to me, as both included many of the same characters and events, and so it became difficult to keep straight who already knew what in their respective investigations. And the particulars of this mystery wind up being quite convoluted and at times a bit of a stretch.

That being said, I was still definitely entertained by this contemporary whodunnit, and would happily read the next installment of Annie’s adventures in investigating secrets in order to solve crimes.

Thank you to Dutton, Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: EMILY WILDE’S COMPENDIUM OF LOST TALES by Heather Fawcett

| Jessica Crawford

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett is the third book in the Emily Wilde series. It is 358 pages and was published by Del Rey in 2025.

Genre:

Fantasy

Subgenres:

Cozy, academia, Fae

Opening Line:

If there is one subject upon which Wendell and I will never agree, it is the wisdom of attempting to drag a cat into Faerie.

Synopsis:

The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves.

Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.

Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.

Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.

My Thoughts:

“We should start with…the old queen’s ladies-in-waiting.” “Most of them have fled.” “Or they’ve been killed,” Lord Taran said. “Oops.”

What a treat it was to return to the world of Emily Wilde and Wendell! But ultimately this third installment of their tale seemed a bit gratuitous.

When Emily and Wendell travel to the latter’s realm in Faerie to take their places as its rulers, they find that the old queen, in her defeat, has cursed the land. Emily believes the answer to how to address this problem lies in the stories told in Faerie, as the rules of that place don’t necessarily follow the same logics that the mortal world does.

This wasn’t as tightly plotted as the previous books of the series, but it was still a real pleasure to spend time in Emily’s wondrous world, oftentimes as horrifying as it is amusing.

Faerie snails possess a crude intelligence and value their dignity above all things; as such, they spend most of their lives occupied with revenge quests. While their vengeance may be slow in coming, they will always have it in the end.

I do wish I had reread the previous installments before staring this one, as there were several secondary characters I simply did not remember. But this was overall still quite a lark, and I will happily read on in the series should the author choose to write more!

Book Review: A DROP OF CORRUPTION by Robert Jackson Bennett

| Jessica Crawford

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett is the second book in the Shadows of the Leviathan series with a publish date of April 1, 2025.

Genre:

Fantasy, Mystery

Opening Line:

Before there was memory, before there was history, there were the leviathans: the colossal, monstrous creatures that lumbered ashore each wet season and went wandering the plains, bringing death and panic with them.

My Thoughts:

“You know, you are not a stupid person, Din.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, pleased.

“Or, rather, not an unusually stupid person.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, far less pleased.

Ana and Din return in this solid installment in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, investigating another puzzler of a crime.

The events of this book take place in a different corner of the fantasy world than those of book one, but magical corruption and contagion are still things to watch out for. The Empire is in negotiations with the kingdom of Yarrow regarding its impending annexation when a member of the Imperial treasury goes missing from a locked room at the top of a tower, parts of him later found floating in the canals. Once Ana and Din arrive to look into the matter, they come to realize they are pitted against a mastermind of uncanny intelligence and the ability to parse patterns and predict their next moves before they themselves even know what they plan to do.

The investigation sees our unusual duo team up with the local wardens led by a woman named Malo, and an organization of Apoths tasked with obtaining the reagents that provide the people of this fantasy world with their special augmentations directly from the corpses of the dreaded leviathans. We also delve more into Din’s circumstances, his desire to return to Talgaray in service to the Legion in order to both be a hero and to be closer to his lover, as well as into the mystery of what, exactly, Ana is that allows her to accomplish the things she does.

The mystery was good and twisty, and the writing amusing, and the lessons once again go beyond magical mayhem to say something about the ills that come part and parcel with society. I will certainly continue reading on on this series to see what Ana and Din find themselves dealing with next.

Thank you to Del Rey of Random House Publishing and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: CAT’S PEOPLE by Tanya Guerrero

| Jessica Crawford

Cat’s People by Tanya Guerrero is a 304 page standalone general fiction novel from Delacorte Press with a publish date of April 1, 2025.

Genre:

General Fiction, Cozy

Opening Line:

Cat knew to stay in the shadows.

Synopsis:

A stray cat brings together five strangers over the course of one fateful summer in this heartwarming novel about love, found family, and the power of connection.

Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray lives—a black cat named Cat. Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early mid-life crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega? When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they’ve been searching for.

My Thoughts:

This is a heartwarming story about a stray cat, the people he interacts with, and how he brings them together and facilitates the connection they could all use.

Chapters alternate POV. There’s Nuria, a barista in her thirties who works with Trap/Neuter/Return programs and rescue organizations; Collin, a struggling author with severe social anxiety; Omar, a cheery mailman who doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life; Bong, a widowed bodega owner deep in his grief; and Lily, a young woman come to NYC from the South in search of the half-sister she only just learned she had. And of course, we get chapters from Cat’s point of view!

This reminded me a lot of the cozy stories coming out of some Asian countries these days (The Full Moon Coffee Shop from Japan, Marigold Mind Laundry from Korea), although the writing style on display here suits me a bit better – possibly just because it’s more like what I am used to. That being said, it certainly isn’t going to be winning any literary awards. But it succeeds in its aim of being a cozy, heartfelt, inspiring story that also exudes a love for cats and coffee (I am the target audience here!)

This was such an overall sweet story that it took me be a surprise when there was an occasional F-bomb dropped in out of nowhere. It includes queer representation, and gets bonus points for the couple who named their daughter Bernie in honor of the senator they ferociously campaigned for in 2016! For me, this was a 3.5 star read rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press and Ballantine of Penguin Random House for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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Book Review: SALTWATER by Katy Hays

| Jessica Crawford

Saltwater: A Novel by Katy Hays is a 336 page standalone novel from Ballantine Books with a publish date of March 25, 2025.

Genre:

Thriller, Family Drama, Mystery

Opening Line

(After a news article regarding the death of a woman while vacationing with her wealthy family in 1992.)

Money is my phantom limb.

Synopsis:

In 1992 Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of Sarah’s death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

Haunted by the specter of that night, the legendary Lingate family unity is pushed to a breaking point, and Helen seizes the opportunity. Enlisting the help of Lorna Moreno, a family assistant, the two plot their escape from Helen’s paranoid, insular family. But when Lorna disappears and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened, Helen has to confront the fact that everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect—her controlling father Richard, rarely-lucid aunt Naomi, distant uncle Marcus, and their circle of friends, visitors, and staff. Even Lorna, her closest ally, may not be who she seems.

As long-hidden secrets about that night boil to surface, one thing becomes not everyone will leave the island alive.

My Thoughts:

Saltwater by Katy Hays is a tense and twisty thriller featuring family secrets and Rich People Behaving Badly, with a strong sense of place transporting the reader to the glistening shores and plummeting cliffsides of the Italian island of Capri.

The Lingate family is Old Money with a fixation on maintaining appearances, even when this means closing ranks when one of their own dies suspiciously. As an adult, Helen, the daughter of the deceased, just wants to live in the present, but her family seems tied down by the past. She would do anything to escape the bonds of her overly controlling family in order to experience true freedom for the first time in her life. Lorna is similarly ready to free herself from the life she is forced to live in the shadow of the rich and powerful. The two women plot together to free themselves from the unwanted constraints of the Lingates and other families like them.

This was a decent thriller with conspiring, betrayal, and murder, all set in enticing locales such as an Italian villa and on the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Who can trust whom? One aspect of this story that didn’t work so great for me was that the chapters alternating amongst three timelines, but each occurring in the same locations with almost the exact same characters present, got confusing at times. “Okay, so this chapter picks back up with Helen on a boat with Ciro, but is this the time Freddy was there with them, or Lorna? Was this before or after that other event? I can’t remember!”

Things get a tad bit convoluted and farfetched as truths are revealed, but overall I enjoyed this bracing story of suspense.

There is sexual content in this story, but nothing that happens on the page. There is violence, but nothing super graphic.

Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

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Book Review: THE WARBLER by Sarah Beth Durst

| Jessica Crawford

The Warbler by Sarah Beth Durst is a 335 page standalone novel published March 1, 2025 by Lake Union Publishing of Amazon.

Genre:

Fantasy, Magical Realism

Opening Line:

My mother is a willow.

My Thoughts:

The newest novel from Sarah Beth Durst (author of The Spellshop) is magical realism about a young woman looking for answers about her family’s curse.

Her entire life, Elisa and her mother had to move from place to place, never calling a single place home, never leaving pieces of themselves behind or taking any mementos with them. For if they were to start to put roots down somewhere, they would begin to actually turn into trees themselves. This forces them into a nomadic lifestyle that requires them to appreciate each day for itself and to truly live in the moment, knowing that nothing will last. It’s not as easy life to grow up with, when everyone else around you seems to have much more stability and security, even if this means their lives are more predictable and less adventurous.

“Regrets aren’t a thing you can avoid,” Mom said. “They’re just a part of life. Every time you say yes, you’re saying no to a dozen other things you could be doing.”

Now, without her mother around anymore, Elisa chooses each destination based on her family’s history and whether or not she might learn about the origin of the curse, or the answer of how to break it. In this book she winds up in a quaint village with a bookstore complete with its very own resident cat, a stately old home with a porch hung with dozens of cages housing a diverse collection of birds, and a cafe frequented by three blue-haired old women who dispense cryptic wisdom. Could this be her final stop?

Chapters alternate telling Elisa’s story with those of her grandmother, Rose, and her mother, Lori. Each woman wants something different from life, and each faces obstacles in living the life that they want, either because of societal expectations, the consequences of actions (either their own, or someone else’s)…or because of the curse.

The pacing in this book does suffer at times, with the same points being driven home again and again; this occasionally wore on my patience. But overall I enjoyed this lovely and curious story.

Book Review: BLACK WOODS BLUE SKY by Eowyn Ivey

| Jessica Crawford

Black Woods Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey (botanical illustrations by Ruth Hulbert) is a 306 page novel published in 2025 by Random House.

Genre:

Magical Realism, Literary Fiction

Opening Line:

Birdie knew her mistakes as soon as she cracked open her eyes.

Synopsis:

An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.

My Thoughts:

Oh, my heart! I loved this!

This story is saturated with love for the beauty and harshness of the Alaskan wilderness. It’s about 26 year old Birdie and her 6 year old daughter Emaleen scraping by at the Wolverine Lodge, where Birdie works as a server (and sometimes parties too much). Their paths cross with that of Arthur, an odd local man who only makes occasional appearances in town, as he lives up in the mountains on the other side of the river. In Arthur, Birdie sees the kind of life she wants – one closer to nature, away from societal pressures and vices. She and her daughter move out to his rustic cabin with him. But there’s something strange about Arthur…

It wasn’t the manic, head-spinning high she’d always chased. Instead, it was like she’s been kept in small box without any holes to let in the light or air, but now she’d climbed out and could fill her lungs with the fresh mountain breeze.

I liked all of the characters, even if they frustrated me at times. They are certainly not perfect. Birdie loves her daughter fiercely, but doesn’t always prioritize the right things.

Her mom knew how to do lots of things. She knew how to find blueberries and catch fish and shoot a gun, but Emaleen was worried that she didn’t know how to keep them safe.

The “dark fairytale” part of this story I think hammers home the idea that you can’t ask anyone, man or beast, to be better than their nature – you can’t even ask it of yourself.

“Peculiar how similar they are, the stories about bears. All down through the ages…Berserkers and shape-shifters. Wild sows taking in abandoned human babies and raising them as their own. Women falling in love with boars. Girls being abducted by bears and giving birth to their children in mountain caves. Russia, Europe, North America, Japan…Again and again. Did you know, there was a whole lines of Danes who believed they were the descendants of bears?”

“Have you ever seen one skinned out before?”
“What? Oh…a bear? Yeah, years ago. A black bear. When I was a kid. Grandpa Hank shot it on the homestead.”
“You remember what it looked like?”
“Like a person.”
“Exactly. The hands, the feet, the muscles in the legs and chest, you peel back that hide and it could be your brother under it all.

It was tempting, then, to draw a direct line from us to them, to forget the unfathomable void between a man’s moral judgment and a bear’s wild mind.

I spent most of this book liking it well enough, but the last 25% or so broke my heart in the way that some of my favorites do. A beautiful story!

It was bewildering, how closely grief ran alongside joy.

(Hot take version: if you like books about the beauty of Alaska but Kristin Hannah’s writing makes your eyes roll out of your head, and you wouldn’t mind a story that features women making stupid decisions in regards to bears but couldn’t stand the characters in Julia Phillips’ Bear, try this book instead!)

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Book Review: THE WILL OF THE MANY by James Islington

| Jessica Crawford

The Will of the Many by James Islington is a 630 page novel that is the first in a planned series, Hierarchy. It was published by Saga Press in 2023.

Genre:

Fantasy

Synopsis:

At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic – the Hierarchy – may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus – what they call Will – to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.

Opening Line:

I am dangling, and it is only my father’s blood-slicked grip around my wrist that stops me from falling.

My Thoughts:

This was quite good! Reminded me in some ways of Red Rising, but scaled a teensy bit more YA, and a tad of The Name of the Wind, but without the insufferable protagonist constantly singing his own praises as he recounts his past. (To be fair, our man Vis is pretty much the best at everything he tries in this story, but that can be explained by the fact that he received a top notch education beginning early in life, and trains his buns off within these pages).

There is a Roman-inspired republic (AKA Evil Empire) taking over the world, dividing all of its citizens into a hierarchy in which the lower castes must cede their very will to their betters, granting the latter superhuman abilities. Vis is a teenager trying to survive in this new society after it demolished his old one. He winds up being sent to a school for the youth of the republic’s elite in an effort to send him in to infiltrate a very secure location and uncover its secrets. There was good world building and political machinations, both within the school setting as well as on the world stage.

This is a long book, and though it’s not necessarily longwinded or bogged down with extraneous material, it certainly could have been trimmed a bit in some areas. Additionally, it’s hinted at all along that there is going to be some mind blowing revelation of something with which most people in this world are unaware, and I was disappointed that the end only confirms this without actually explaining it yet, leaving readers with no actual answers to the questions we’ve been asking all along. Everything the story had been dangling in front of us from the start was left dangling. But still, I mostly enjoyed the journey and remain intrigued enough that I will likely pick up book 2 at some point, and it may even prove to be one of those sequels that improves upon its predecessor by bringing the story to an even bigger scale.

4.5 stars!