The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark is a 328 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Sourcebooks Landmark.
Genre:
Mystery, Thriller
Synopsis:
June, 1975.
The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.
Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she’s offered a job to ghostwrite her father’s last book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it’s not another horror novel he wants her to write.
After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.
Opening Line:
“I know what your dad did.”
My Thoughts:
This is an engaging mystery told through the lens of a ghostwriter penning the memoir of an unreliable narrator and trying to puzzle out the truth about an old murder case. It’s written in the first person present tense, and chapters rotate through three POVs in two timelines – Olivia in the present time, and her father and aunt in the months leading up to the murders in 1975. There’s a lot of nostalgia for those who grew up in the seventies here! We see a lot of flashbacks (and actual video footage from fourteen year old Aunt Poppy’s Super 8 camera) displaying family life and social issues of the era.
Did I side eye some of the details in this book? Sure. Did I remain hooked to the unfolding story anyway? You bet!
I’m beginning to realize that once you lie about your past, you wall yourself off from the present. From the people that care about you.
The Bombshell by Darrow Farr is a 416 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Pamela Dorman Books.
Genre:
Literary Fiction, Popular Fiction, Historical Fiction
Synopsis:
A young woman’s radicalization sparks a widespread movement and media frenzy in this explosive novel of youthful passion, political awakening and first love, by an extraordinary new talent.
Corsica, 1993. As a sun-drenched Mediterranean summer heads into full swing, beautiful and brash seventeen-year-old Severine Guimard is counting down the days until graduation, dreaming of stardom while smoking cigarettes and seducing boys in her class to pass the time. The pampered French-American daughter of a politician, Severine knows she’s destined for bigger things
That is, until one night, Severine is snatched off her bike by a militant trio fighting for Corsican independence and held for a large ransom. When the men fumble negotiating her release, the four become unlikely housemates deep in the island’s remote interior. Eager to gain the upper hand, Severine sets out to charm her captors, and soon, the handsome, intellectual leader, Bruno, the gentle university student, Tittu, and even the gruff, unflappable Petru grow to enjoy the company of their headstrong hostage.
As Severine is exposed to the group’s political philosophy, the ideas of Marx and Fanon begin to take root. With her flair for the spotlight and newfound beliefs, Severine becomes the face of a radical movement for a global TV audience. What follows is a summer of passion and terror, careening toward an inevitable, explosive conclusion, as Severine steps into the biggest role of her life.
The Bombshell is an electric novel filled with seduction and fervor as it explores the wonders and perils of youthful idealism, the combustibility of celebrity, and the sublime force of young love.
Opening Line:
In the hours before her kidnapping, Séverine Guimard claimed Antoine Carsenti’s virginity in a grotto overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
My Thoughts:
Maybe he was a kind of oracle, and maybe they were hurtling towards a cliff’s edge on a train whose brakes she herself had dismantled.
In 1993 Severine, the daughter of the French prefect of Corsica, is abducted by a group of militant revolutionaries. When the minister of the interior refuses to negotiate with terrorists and meet their demands to release a political prisoner, the freedom fighters are left with an egotistical and brash seventeen year old girl on their hands, one who knows how to charm and manipulate people to her liking. After being given reading material about the cleansing force of violence when overthrowing oppressors to pass her time in captivity, Severine decides she wants to join the revolution. She wants to help eradicate injustice, sure – but she also really wants to be famous as the mouthpiece for the organization, and the liberation movement as a whole.
Here was Severine at the top of some mountain, speaking to a camera for five minutes, and consequently, down below, fire, blood, smoke, ash.
I was sucked into this story! Severine was a great main character – not a great person all the time, certainly, but a really fascinating and bold driving force of the story. She is not one to let decisions be made for her, and is often able to mold things into the shape of her choosing using all the wiles at her disposal. And, now, also bombs.
In that moment, she understood something else essential about Bruno: as long as she assured him of his virtuousness and correctness, he’d believe it.
I also actually wound up feeling a certain kind of way for this little found family of revolutionaries! Although I never held out much hope for their chances, when they wound up effectively being led by someone who was in it for the right and wrong reasons.
…[she] had the unsettling realization that everything she’d ever done, any choice she’d ever made, was in consideration of men. Without an audience of even one man, who was she?”
This book doesn’t end in a manner that was as big and revelatory as I had anticipated. It’s a pretty quiet finish to an otherwise explosive story, but still satisfying enough in its own way.
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.
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!
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.
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!)
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.
The Mesmerist by Caroline Woods is a 336 page standalone novel published by Doubleday in 2024.
Genre:
Historical Fiction, Mystery
Opening Line:
The poor young woman, the one everyone would take to calling the “ghost girl”, or worse, in a matter of weeks, found her way to the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers by walking the railroad tracks.
My Thoughts:
The Mesmerist is historical fiction based on a real place in Minneapolis, The Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers, as well as on a true crime story that transpired in the area in 1894.
One night a newcomer arrives at Bethany Home seeking sanctuary, a traumatized young woman who, judging by her dress, worked as a “sporting woman” in a brothel. She does not seem to speak, but she does come with a suspiciously large amount of money on her person.
Abby Mendenhall doesn’t expect her charges at the Home to provide their real names, but she can’t help but wonder who the newcomer, given the appellation Faith, is—especially as it becomes clear there are people looking for her and stories of dead madams and prostitutes begin to circulate. The other inmates in the Home begin to speculate that Faith is a notorious mesmerist, and they keep their distance from her, spooked.
May is a woman whose one year at Bethany Home is almost at end, but she plans on getting herself a proposal from a gentleman before she is forced to choose between returning to grueling work in harsh conditions or else a brothel. She has set her sights on Hal, and when she meets his friends, she realizes that Faith also had crossed paths with them, in her life “before”. But what is the connection, exactly?
I enjoyed the vibes of this late nineteenth century, “Gilded Age” story, spending time among the philanthropic society ladies and unfortunate sporting women, in the parlors where various facets of spiritualism were having their heyday as entertainment. The chapters alternate among Faith, May, and Abby. The mysterious elements of the story were rather good. Sure, I gave the book some side-eye when characters convince themselves they acted against their will because someone with a magnetic personality (i.e. a mesmerist) suggested they do so. And there were some parts I would have liked to have delved into a little deeper. But the experience of reading the story was quite to my liking overall. 4.75 stars!
Dearest by Jacquie Walters is a 304 page novel published by Mulholland Books (Hachette) in 2024.
Genre:
Horror
Opening Line:
When Flora wakes, her mouth is so dry that the inside of her cheeks are stuck to her teeth.
My Thoughts:
Flora’s military husband is deployed when she gives birth to their first child, Iris. By the time the baby is three weeks old, Flora is suffering from infected nipples on top of the sleep deprivation and the concerns about her fitness as a mother – she could really use some help. Somewhat desperate, she reaches out to her mother, who she hasn’t spoken with in four years. Jody shows up to help, but will Flora regret it?
This book started out really strong for me. Much of this horror novel is spent wondering, “Is there something nefarious going on, or is it postpartum psychosis?” Toward the end things went off the rails a bit, and though I still overall enjoyed it, I wasn’t completely satisfied with all of our answers. At one point burning the birth tusk was a bad thing we didn’t want to happen, why all of a sudden is it our goal? That is just one question I was left with, but overall I’d say this was still a 4.5 star read for me.
I listened to this on audio, and it’s narrated by the author herself. She has a nice voice and doesn’t do cringey things with it when speaking the dialogue of different characters, BUT the way she chose to say some things was really odd to me. Like, the parts of character’s lines she chose to emphasize, where she paused a bit too long – if I had read those lines of dialogue they would have come across perfect for the situation, but the way she chose to read them aloud was how no one would actually speak.
Jessica Crawford 