Fantasy

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: 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.

Goodreads

Book Review: THE RED WINTER by Cameron Sullivan

| Jessica Crawford

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan is a 535 page novel published by Tor Books in 2025.

Genre

Historical Fantasy

My Thoughts

What do I think? Let’s see. In less than a minute on the job, you’ve fallen foul of the bishop, got involved with some fancy twit and attracted the attention of a man with the biggest gun I’ve ever seen…Even for you, this is remarkable! That’s what I think.

I loved a lot about this historical fantasy imagining of the real story behind the Beast of Gévaudan, the man-eating animal that terrorized a region of France over a period of years in the late eighteenth century (there are several other works of fiction based off of this part of history, and the one that comes to mind foremost for me is the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf). It’s dark and bloody, it’s got elements of mythology and the paranormal, and it features a doomed queer romance.

The main character, Professor Sebastian Grave, has lived for centuries hosting a Spirit (it’s considered uncouth to use the phrase “possessed by”) called Sarmodel. This book is Sebastian relaying the story of the time a young nobleman called him back to Gévaudan for a contract unfulfilled. As the two travel there together, Sebastian in turn tells him the story of when he first signed the contract some twenty years before. He, among many others, had answered the call of the king of France to hunt down the Beast that had been slaughtering livestock and citizens alike. During this time, Sebastian had carried on a love affair with the nobleman’s father, and shared some of the secrets of his true nature with the man. A couple of decades later, the slaughter has begun anew; it seems the Beast may be back, and the professor practiced in the Arcane arts may be their best hope.

If you’re on board so far for the grisly werewolf origin story, know that this is the kind of novel that involves footnotes – I understand this is a big turn off for some readers, but it tends to really work for me. Here the footnotes are not overused, are often employed to explain some Arcane aspect of the book’s universe, and are occasionally laugh out loud funny. Some of the inner-dialogue between Sebastian and Sarmodel also provide moments of humor, as do the interspersed addendums written by Livia, the succubus bound to Sebastian’s service. (These portions of story reflect back on a period in fifteenth century France, when our protagonist first finds himself up against the figure behind the Beast – and so another thing to know before deciding if this book is right for you is that it does alternate among multiple timelines.)

I do think this story crammed in an awful lot: demons, Archangels, Greek mythology, sorcery, werewolves, Joan of Arc, romance, the French Revolution. I personally enjoyed each of these aspects, but I do feel that the book failed to fully manage to pull it all together into a cohesive whole that 100% satisfied me. Between that and the fact that it felt a bit overly long, I would rate this 4.5 stars in a system that allows for half stars (or even 4.75 if we were going with quarter stars). That’s still fabulous, of course!

In the Acknowledgments section, the author implies that this might in fact be only one book in a potential series of adventures had by Sebastian, Sarmodel and Livia. Considering they’ve had centuries of them, I am curious to see what the next story will be about!

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!

Goodreads

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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.

Goodreads

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Book Review: THE FOX AND THE DEVIL by Kiersten White

| Jessica Crawford
Image created using Canva’s generative AI

The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White is a 368 page standalone novel from Del Rey with a publish date of March 10, 2026.

Genre/Subgenres:

Horror, Paranormal, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Gothic

Blurb:

An obsession with a beautiful serial killer entangles a vampire hunter’s daughter in an immortal sapphic romance in this enthralling gothic fantasy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy Undying.

Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing—doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to studying vampires—up until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that plague Anneke every night.

Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest in forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch her mysterious serial killer. Because her father isn’t the only inexplicably dead body. There’s a trail of victims across Europe and Anneke is certain they’re all connected.

But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps some crucial evidence to infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to Anneke, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola. Devil. The obsession is mutual, and all the more dangerous for it.

The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the less sense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn’t a madman, after all. Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer . . . and much harder to destroy. Because as Anneke unearths more of Diavola’s tragic past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body.

A heart that beats for Anneke alone.

Opening Line:

As the crowd screams, all Henri thinks is that he’s going to be in so much trouble when his parents find out.

My Thoughts:

☠ Nineteenth century Europe
☠ Van Helsing’s daughter
☠ Murder investigations
☠ Found family
☠ Sapphic yearning
☠ Vampires!

It’s so easy to think yourself hunter only to discover you’ve always been prey.

In late nineteenth century Amsterdam, a young Anneke Van Helsing spies a creature of unnatural beauty standing over the prone and bleeding form of her father. The rest of the world believes Abraham Van Helsing took his own life, but Anneke knows better. She devotes the next several years of her life to training in forensic detective work. When a spree of bizarre deaths begin cropping up all over Europe, she alone makes the connection with her own father’s end. Finally she has caught scent of the mysterious woman, and the hunt she has long fixated on begins in earnest.

Have you been hunting me all this time? That makes me sad. He doesn’t deserve your devotion.

Our main character teams up with a lovely crew who together investigate the trail of bodies, becoming like family to one another as they devote themselves to Anneke’s search for her Diavola and vengeance for her father. Anneke spends just as much time pining for the beautiful woman she is pursuing across the continent as she does fantasizing about killing her. When Diavola begins sending her taunting letters, one wonders who is tracking whom? And as she learns more about her quarry, the question arises: have they been hunting the wrong monster all along?

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he whispered. “Men always do.”

The setting in this book is quite fetching–canal houses in Amsterdam, cafes in Budapest, an abandoned village of the Greek islands, and finally to the Paris world’s fair, l’Exposition Universelle, for ultimate added flavor. Cinematographs, magnetic audio recorders, and the advent of the use of fingerprints in crime scene analysis further cement the reader in Anneke’s world.

The characters are easy to root for. Anneke is a competent (albeit obsessed) woman in a male-dominated field, and her companions, though we don’t dive too deep beneath the surface with them (the story is told almost entirely from Anneke’s first person POV), are quite likable. There is romance, but mostly consisting of yearning and with no explicit spicy scenes. On the other hand, LOTS of horrifying murder and corpse examination scenes (the deaths mostly relayed after the fact during the investigation phase rather than on the page).

There was a little while in the middle of this book when I wondered if it really needed to be as long as it is, but that isn’t to say the plot dragged for me at any point. In the end, I was most definitely satisfied with the story that had unfolded. Each of Kiersten White’s books that I read I enjoy even more than the one before, but I’m not sure how long that trend can continue as her work at this point is pretty fantastic! I am intrigued to see where she’ll go from here.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Del Rey for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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Book Review: STRANGE ANIMALS by Jarod K. Anderson

| Jessica Crawford

Strange Animals by Jarod K. Anderson is a 320 page novel with a publish date of February 10, 2026 from Ballantine Books.

Genre:

Fantasy, Urban/Contemporary Fantasy, Magical Realism

Synopsis:

An ordinary man discovers a hidden world of wondrous supernatural creatures—and an unexpected home—in this enchanting contemporary fantasy debut.

one who studies cryptids; an expert in or student of supernatural history.

After a series of inexplicable encounters upends his life, Green finds himself alone and terrified in the Appalachian mountains, full of questions about the transformation he’s undergoing and the impossible creatures he’s starting to see.

When he meets a hermit named Valentina, he realizes that something more than chance has brought him to her door. For she has devoted centuries to researching the hidden world of cryptids that Green is only now beginning to perceive.  

As Green begins his studies beneath her watchful eye, he comes face to face with time-stopping giant moths, cyclops squirrels, and doorways to elsewhere. Along the way come clues about his own nature and the powerful beings who led him here—and, most wondrous of all, a sense of fulfillment like nothing he’s felt before.

But Green’s new happiness promises to be short-lived, because alongside these marvels lurks a deadly threat to this place he’s already come to love.

Featuring incredible creatures and an unforgettable cast of characters, Strange Animals is a charming, addictive fantasy about the magic all around us.

Opening Line:

Green died and then he didn’t.

My Thoughts:

It is not always in our power to decide what a thing is…But what a thing means? That power may often be claimed.

What a surprising little gem of a novel!

The main character, Green, has a very strange (near?) death experience, after which he feels called to reconnect with nature, to rediscover his true self and the things in life that actually matter. He finds himself staying at a campsite in the Catskills, an area populated with some colorful characters.

“I got blood on your coat.” “It’ll wipe off. Or add character. Whichever.”

On his first night there, Green encounters a glowing deer and a horned wolf with mutable shadowy flesh. One of these creatures is a monster, one is prey – but each may not be the one you expect. Not everyone can see these beasts, and this is how Green learns he is a born cryptonaturalist. Thankfully, one of his new neighbors can teach him just what that means. Together, they work to try to protect the mountains and their inhabitants from preternatural dangers.

The characters in this book are interesting, and the dynamic between teacher and pupil is amusing at times. The details of the plot are rather original, and I enjoyed the fanciful elements of “cryptonature”. There is a sort of found family piece of the story that I very much appreciated as well. The author’s love for nature is on clear display in this tale.

How humbling is nature? How many lives could you spend studying a single tree and still feel yourself a neophyte in the school of its character? What a gift it is to know that the ship of our curiosity will never run aground in the seas of Earth’s mysteries.

This book seems to be a standalone, but I would gladly read any sequels further detailing Green’s adventures. If you find yourself drawn to the idea of an urban fantasy (but that takes place in the wilderness!) with engaging characters and a lot of heart, I definitely recommend picking this one up.

Many thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.