METROPOLITANS: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team, lefties like sports too!

METROPOLITANS: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team
A.M. GITTLITZ
Astra House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending April 5, 2026

The Publisher Says: A wide-reaching, revolutionary narrative history of the Team of Destiny (da Mets, for anyone not keeping score), that takes us from their 19th century inception to their 1962 resurrection to the present day.

A love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City history, Metropolitans brilliantly shows us that sports have long been a site of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. From purportedly calming riots in ’69 through the quality of their play to producing some of the greatest chokes in sporting history, from integration to desperate labor struggle against millionaire and billionaire franchise owners, Metropolitans makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets—and why it should be not just the team of the counterculture, the freaks, and the losers, but anyone with a beating heart.

Gittlitz leads us through baseball’s amateur beginnings to the Mets’ first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements that many Mets players participated in to the bad boy years, the exploitative development of farm academies in developing nations, and their inglorious purchase by a new breed of capitalist—even after which they remained lovable losers.

But this is a book not only for Mets fans, or New York partisans, but anyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players—like the spectators—look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm giving this book five stars because the Miracle Mets defeating the Orioles in 1969 was the first time I understood why my grandmother wanted to live to see the Cubs win the Series again (she didn't), and why my dad took me to freezyfrosty cold Candlestick Park to see the Giants play, and lose.

I can't not love anything about baseball, even as I get more and more uneasy with the concept of these gladiatorial games organized to give people some outlet for their desire to hate that is not threatening to "Them"—the capitalist class that very, very badly does not want you to expend that energy in political action.

Carefully entwined into the history of the US, the story of the Metropolitans and of team sports in general is told here with acuity and concision. It's a purpose and a point expressed best in this quote:

From this communal vantage, the abstractions of statistics and standings are confronted by the reality of what we are really seeing—not a game between two opposing teams, but a common human struggle, within and against the economic, legalistic, and mechanical structure of the game itself, and its role as opiate for the physical and existential pain of wage labor.

I can't really add anything to that statement except to say "+1" to it.

I'm old, so I remember when baseball mattered to lots and lots of Americans, held a real place in our cultural conversation. Football and basketball have that centrality now. But for those of us still loving the sound of a snapped bat connecting on a fastball, this book is catnip. Leftist social critique and economic analysis are seldom more appealingly presented than when entwined with a cultural mainstay of generations-long standing.

I hope I live long enough to see my Mets win the Series again.

MY DREADFUL BODY, five-star novella debunking misogyny's lies

MY DREADFUL BODY
EGANA DJABBAROVA (tr. Lisa C. Hayden)
New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A dazzling debut novel about a young woman's vexed coming of age in a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia, grappling under the weight of Muslim patriarchal norms and a debilitating neurological condition.

The mysterious affliction leaves her unable to control her muscles, plagued by pain and speech disorders, defying diagnosis. Addressing each body part with the scrupulousness of a medical researcher, the narrator explores memories, traditions, and taboos related to her physical self. In the process, a woman once destined for the role of a beautiful marriageable daughter comes to be perceived as damaged goods.

With verbal elegance and poetic power, Egana Djabbarova unveils a hidden world in which illness unexpectedly facilitates her liberation.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Poetically laconic, elegantly simple, maximally affecting prose telling a woman's life of contradictions in identity. For a woman in Azeri culture, her body defines her. It is female therefore these are her options, this set of rules apply to her. Then along comes Egana, like the author's name...probably like the author. She yearns not to be defined by her body, and paradoxically freed by having a woman's body defined by a painful, disabling illness called dystonia blends both those realities.

Eleven body parts define the course of this narrative, under 150pp in length, and still eternal. It's Egana coming to terms with patriarchy and its religious, its community, its intimate controls over women. This is a fierce and outraged shout in the face of a god and a culture that insists femaleness has no agency, can only exist in relation, in submission, to masculine needs and wants. Egana doesn't shout her rage, she trumpets her horrible escape from the unkind fate of a life spent in drudgery and servitude...a decidedly mixed blessing, but a blessing she catalogs in careful, intimate detail. This is what makes this read so different from US feminist fiction: It prescribes no path to follow, defines no road not taken or taken by stricture. Egana has no say in her desirable opting-out from Womanhood's duties as prescribed by her culture. It was wished on her by a bodily dysfunction, a painful affliction; but it serves as a space separate from her culture's expectations so is a vantage point from which to observe the power of normative expectation. It is a meditation and an examination, not a prescription for others to follow.

Possibly the most powerful strand in the tight, compact story for my disabled-by-pain self was not related to that shared experience but the equally defining quality of being in a cultural diaspora. A Muslim and an Azeri in Russia, the colonial power that defined her family's country's course in the modern world telling the story of her intimate estrangement from that community was perhaps the least expected source of empathy and pathos in my read of the story. I felt as though I was fully in Egana's life when I realized how alienated from her Othered cultural reality...doubly, triply Othered by religion, sex, and culture.

It's astonishing how deep this experience of identification was as I considered my own alienation from US culture with its youth-worship, its heteronormativity, its serious lack of interest in including the disabled or the chronically ill. It lifted the read into five-star territory because it managed this feat without once telling me how terrible Egana's fate was. I got to experience her life with her, in her words, grounded in her own body...each discussed part of which I also possess. Nothing in Egana's "dreadful" body is unique to femaleness. It is female because she is a woman. It is discussed as a woman's body in relation to every other cultural reality only because she is a woman.

If you can think of a better way to point up the sheer idiocy of misogyny, its illogic and its sadism, I encourage you strongly to write about it. You'll be a bestseller in no time at all.

As My Dreadful Body should be.

WORK TO DO: A Novel, like "The Office" only meaner

WORK TO DO: A Novel
JULES WERNERSBACH
University of Iowa Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 paperback, preorder now for delivery on 7 April 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When Eleanor founded Guadalupe Street Co-op in the early 1980s, she was in her mid-twenties and madly in love with her girlfriend, Meg. Together, they envisioned an idyllic grocery store owned by its workers and customers.

Forty years later, Guadalupe Street Co-op is an iconic Austin business with a loyal customer base, an antiquated business model, and a disgruntled staff. Roz, one of the store’s senior managers, is too caught up stalking her ex-wife online to notice that her girlfriend, Molly, is plotting with her coworkers to unionize. Roz also doesn’t see that Molly is not-so-secretly in a situationship with Randy, the dairy manager leading their collective.

Unfolding over the course of a single week during Texas hurricane season, Work to Do pings between the co-op’s first year and present day, as the unionization bid reaches fever pitch. The wind howls, the power goes out, and water creeps through the front door, as questions of who owns the grocery store and who has a right to its future are posed. And will the workers ever be paid enough to buy the organic groceries they shelve?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Hierarchies change people, at the top and at the bottom. They're good for, and at, that...yet we're told that being "a family" is not to be in a hierarchy by the kind of lefty person who sets up a co-op. (I was transported to Wheatsville as I read this.) If that's the case, what kind of family did you grow up in? Parents are our first bosses, our first gods. The idea of hierarchy is instilled in us by "bedtime" and "naptime" and, most hated of all, "bathtime." These activities are policed by Authority, ie parents. Thus from a young age we are in a hierarchy called "family"; soon enough, we begin to rebel. We desire to make our own choices, our own lessons learned our own way.

A unionization drive at a co-op is the business equivalent of adolescent rebellion. It felt to me as though all the characters were coping with adolescent emotional states throughout the story. The nature of any group is to experience friction in different strengths and around different topics of disagreement. This story pits idealism...no co-op anywhere ever is founded to make a profit...and pragmatism...how the hell can I pay rent and buy food this month? It's all tangled up with personality conflicts, old grudges, and the inevitable recrudescence of Being Right in any group attempting to make decisions.

Eleanor, the founder of the co-op, is parent to the idea and has powerful, forty-year-old ideas about the concept of the workers as family. Of course no one's paid enough, no one ever is because capitalism runs on scarcity. No matter that you're structuring a business on a cooperative model, you're still in a capitalist system, its pressures still apply. As the founder (owner is not applicable, they all own the co-op) Eleanor's investment is truly, intimately personal. It explains but does not excuse how thoroughly unpleasant Eleanor is during the whole book.

In point of fact, everyone from Randy the unionizer to Roz the manager, through to Eleanor the founder, is thoroughly unpleasant. Not one of them behaves empathetically, with kindness, or in any way not narcissistically. This is not the read for someone who needs to like the characters they're reading about. It's well-observed, with lots of clever lines; it's got the hurricane and its aftermath to give the reader a serious jolt of adrenaline; it's been part of everyone's experience to be a member of a hierarchy that's experiencing change. I was kept in the flow of the story by these structural realities while not invested in any one character's success. It was an interesting experience of being on the outside of a story, looking on as events unfolded, feeling myself caring in an abstract way about these folks.

Anyone who wonders if queer people running things, leftist running things, or multigenerational structure including all ages, are happier workplaces should read this story. Anyone who thinks life is better when x thing is the center of your work, your relationship, your mind should read this story. People are people. They do and say stupid, ill-advised things. Sometimes hurtful words are fixable, sometimes they aren't...don't think you're being Right will carry you through to inevitable victory...or even to happiness. It's all laid bare in Author Wernersbach's smoothly polished prose.

Read Work to Do when you're after a cautionary tale about hubris, a reminder that empathy is always a better choice, that cooperation trumps selfishness but does not necessarily mean getting what you want. It's a very grown-up person's book, and looks at queer people in all their messy, human glory...and snickers behind its hand.

HONEY IN THE WOUND, Korean magical realist family saga

HONEY IN THE WOUND
JIYOUNG HAN
Avid Reader Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 7 April 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lyrical and suspenseful debut novel about a mysteriously gifted Korean family confronting the brutality of the Japanese empire, Honey in the Wound is an epic tale of survival and the reclamation of power.

A sister disappears and returns as a tiger. A mother’s voice compels the truth from any tongue. A granddaughter divines secrets in others’ dreams. These women are all of one lineage—a Korean family split across decades and borders by Japanese imperialism.

At this saga’s heart is Young-Ja, a girl who infuses food with her emotions. She revels in her gift for cooking, nourishing the people she loves with her cheerfulness. But her sunny childhood comes to an end in 1931 when Japanese soldiers crush her family’s defiance against the Empire. Young-Ja is cast adrift, her food turning increasingly bitter with grief. When a Korean rebel fighter notices her talents, however, she is whisked off to Manchuria to join a secretive sisterhood of beautiful teahouse spies. There, Young-Ja finds a new sense of belonging and starts using her abilities for the resistance. But the Imperial Army is not yet finished with her…

Decades later, Young-Ja lives alone in Seoul, withdrawn from the world until her Tokyo-born granddaughter Rinako bursts into her life with the ability to see into dreams. In cultivating a tentative bond, they confront the long-buried past in a stunning emotional climax.

As an unforgettable family perseveres in the long shadow of colonialism, Honey in the Wound transports readers to mountain forests where tiger-girls stalk, to Manchurian teahouses and opium dens where charming smiles veil secrets, and to the modern metropolises of Tokyo and Seoul where restless ghosts stir. This debut novel is a tender yet powerful multi-generational drama that shines light onto the twentieth century’s darkest corners and gives voice to those who bore witness.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Brutality is colonialism's sole common legacy across all colonial regimes. Korea's half-century as part of Japan's empire was certainly no exception. Many are the stories of families ravaged by slavery, by economic disadvantages imposed to benefit the colonizers, by the horrors of the comfort women's suffering. It's not unique to Japan's imperial project...go look at Briseis' life after the fall of Troy, and I promise you she was nowhere near the first to suffer this fate...but its systematic, intentional social sanction somehow makes it a vile twentieth-century model of efficiency in evildoing.

So much of modern US culture is Korean inflected. I've reviewed a fair few Korean translations, Korean-themed stories written by members of its diaspora, stories set in Korea, all sorts really, because the culture of the place is ancient, rich, and deeply rooted as it smoothly takes on the modernity of this century as an economic, therefore cultural, powerhouse. As I gain more and more experience with the stories Koreans send into the Anglophone readership, I see one very, very frequent strand appearing: the Japanese occupation, usually framed in apocalyptic, folkloric ways to distance the reader from the brutal reality and to restore some agency, some meaning, to the country's suffering.

No exception this time. Starting in 1902 when Korea was an independent monarchy, the family we come to know and invest caring into is gradually Japanesed in personal names (pay careful attention, context will tell you if someone is being addressed or referred to as a Korean or as a Japanese imperial subject) and place names. It's like the British stealing India and naming "Mumbai" as "Bombay." (There are so many examples from all over the colonized world, that example is just the one I felt Anglophones would relate to most easily.)

The first 40% of the story is the slowest, with the highest concentration of double names. It's a debut novel. The fact is this is exactly reflective of the reality Author Han relates to us as we start our journey in 1902. Put in some effort and it will all begin to feel second nature to you quite quickly. The delight of a writer whose planning makes your reading more fluent with her intentional shifts in register is one who gets my highest regard. Time changes within few pages of each other are all quietly indicated with characters giving us clues, not with bold chapter or section headings that bring your readerly attention to the shifts themselves not the flow of the story.

This might not sound like it will suit you. I recommend reading a sample after publication day on the 7th. It feels more fluid than I'm making it sound. For example, you'll notice as you read through the book that there is a lot of use of, and description using, the color yellow. It would behoove you to go look into musok, the people's religion of Korea, and its use of colors. Like the shifts of names this is an enriching detail that clues the reader in to the larger thematic purpose of a passage, or a name, or an evocative word.

It made this read one I really looked forward to getting into, immersing myself into again and again. And a good thing indeed these moments were there because the horrific cost to the people of the colonial occupation, then the war, demanded much fortitude of me-the-reader to stay invested in people enduring so much. I had reservoirs of interested, sympathetic caring to draw down as horrors mounted up.

I will say I wish there had been a map in the book. I'm not sure where some place names were, whether they were really elsewhere or were Korean places I had read about renamed. Its lack was not fatal to my pleasure; but I felt it nonetheless.

A story I urge on readers and enjoyers of Pachinko and Whale. A story with depths deeper than its modest 320pp page count implies. An author who is a fine discovery in her debut novel.

AMERICAN WEREWOLVES, Emily Jane's ruminations on end-stage capitalism and toxic masculinity

AMERICAN WEREWOLVES
EMILY JANE
Hyperion Avenue (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: America’s venture capitalist werewolves meet their match in USA Today bestseller Emily Jane’s third rollicking, genre-defying novel.

“It takes aliens (or an Emily Jane) to help us see our society for the bizarre, sugary, microplastic-poisoned dream it is.” —Edgar Cantero

From the author of On Earth as It Is on Television and Here Beside the Rising Tide…

Many full moons ago, a young American boy with ambition in his belly and the moon in his veins followed his destiny west, determined to carve a path to success no matter the carnage.

Two centuries later, a city is captivated by the strange and savage murder of a young woman. Her roommate, Natasha, no longer able to afford their apartment alone—and hounded by both rumors of wolves and a pop-star’s angry fan-swarm—has resorted to living in her car. There’s nothing left for her…except vengeance.

Across town, Shane LaSalle is about to see his wildest dreams come true. He already has a gorgeous apartment and a high paying job in venture capital. Now the partners of Barrington Equity have invited him to board the company’s private jet for an exclusive retreat. But with partnership finally in his reach, Shane realizes he’s losing his taste for just how ruthless and all-consuming the firm is.

Epic and electric, American Werewolves brings readers from the wilds of the New World to the opulent board rooms and golf courses of the twenty-first century, where devouring the weak is an American birthright as old as the country itself.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I was really amused by On Earth as It Is on Television last year. It made me smile and chuckle in a year when those were not my first choices of response to the world and its shenanigans. I'd hoped for the same experience here.

Mostly got it, though entirely without humor. Toxic masculinity and predatory capitalism are worthy targets for Author Emily Jane's sharply observed snark. Told in two narrative strands, this story of modern-day Shane, an ordinary young man who's just found out he's now a partner in an equity-capital firm; modern-day Natasha, a downwardly mobile woman who is determined to find out how her bizarrely murdered roommate, Marie, died and why no one else seems to care; and, in the nineteenth century, a boy called Bit who wends his way West to make his fortune. There's a horrible animal attack on Shane, to bookend Marie's murder by an unknown creature; it's the first of many such events that Author Emily Jane presents in a dry, unsensationalized framework for us to, ermmm, chew over. Why this character? Why now? What really happened here, who's noticed, and why are we seeing the responses that Emily Jane shows us?

It's just incredible that these people are somehow existing in relation to each other. It does feel stretch-y, like the need of the storytelling trumped the need of the characters; none of them are ever going to be easy in each others' headspace. Which is the point. It just left me with a sad, uneasy emotional aftertaste. I'm clear that the rape-culture and misogyny elements are presented in a highly negative and critical light. I don't know for sure that they're necessary to foreground so much...put it down to my dislike of these themes, not the author's overuse of them in making your decision to read the story or not.

I suspect that, my quibbles above notwithstanding, it will be Author Emily Jane's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell-esque urban fantasy elements regarding lycanthropy and its invented factual history that will cause most of y'all to give the read a pass. I get it...the technique can feel off-putting if over- or awkwardly done. I found these elements very well-chosen and did not find them out of place or obtrusive in the author's hands. Werewolves or aliens, from her previous book—makes no odds, each is as unlikely as the other to be objectively verifiably present among us.

Your taste in humor will matter a lot in your experience of the read, so get that sample under your belt. If you run across this: "Veronica tried to convince him that werewolves weren't supposed to cry, until her dad explained that werewolves could cry when they needed to and it didn't make them any less werewolvesy," and do not at least chuckle, this read will flop for you likely quite resoundingly.

Most of the rest of us will, however, get our grin on. I think it's worth the time and treasure it will take to get it read.

CITIZENSHIP: NOTES ON AN AMERICAN MYTH, Daisy Hernández reflects on a cultural sea-change

CITIZENSHIP: NOTES ON AN AMERICAN MYTH
DAISY HERNÁNDEZ
The Hogarth Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A provocative, personal, blazingly intelligent examination of one of the most vexing questions facing the United States today—who is, and should be, a citizen?

“How did ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ turn upside down to where we are today? Everyone needs to read this book, citizens and non-citizens alike. Brilliant!”—Sandra Cisneros

"The most comprehensive book on citizenship/immigration I've ever read. A must-read!"—Javier Zamora

In this one-of-a-kind book, Daisy Hernández fiercely interrogates one of the most complicated subjects of contemporary life and citizenship. Braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism, she exposes the truths and lies of how we define ourselves as a country and a people. Turning to her own family's stories—her mother arrived from Colombia, her father a political refugee from Castro's Cuba—Hernández shows how the very idea of citizenship is a myth and part of the stories we tell ourselves about the American soul and psyche.

Reframing our understanding of what it means to be an American, Notes on Citizenship is an urgent and necessary account of the laws, customs, and language we use to include and exclude, especially those who come from Latin America. With her scholar's mind and memoirist's gift for narrative, Hernández weaves a story both personal and national, while reckoning with our country's ongoing debate about who belongs and providing fresh ways of thinking about citizenship. At once bracing, fearless, and tender, Notes on Citizenship is a powerful portrait of one family's experiences in the borderlands of citizenship and an honest illumination of the country in which we live.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on the deeply contentious topic of ending the age-old concept of "birthright citizenship," very much in the current regime's sights for elimination. Based on the Justice's tenor of questioning the Justice Department's counsel, I don't feel the regime can count on the ruling being in their favor.
This collection of essays has as its core a desire to think through how citizenship has changed in practice. The US Constitution defines citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment, and it's pretty unambiguous about it. (That same amendment gifted us with the legal horror of corporate personhood.) It's been a longstanding desire of racist, fascist scum to make the idea of citizenship into a conditional grant...which, if anyone though about it for a single minute, would mean there's no citizenship for anyone at all.

Author Daisy thinks through the various ramifications of this terrible idea. Once a right is "granted" it can be taken away. That is why every time a law is passed that limits a right, like birthright citizenship, you...you personally...are at risk of losing whatever right it is. If this kakistocracy has not taught you the lesson that believing "they wouldn't/can't do that" is a dangerous illusion, read Author Daisy's essays. They can, and they will, and even court orders will not force the scum to cease and desist from illegal, immoral behavior. Look how many losses in court have been dealt the regime; yet no sign of meaningful compliance, compliance with the *intent* of the orders and laws, exists. This is, in other words, a coup against the form of government we take for granted.

Read these essays, even though the collection feels thematically scattered, because each essay is very clearly argued, and makes excellent points. It is a slowly unfolding disaster but it is unfolding...it's time to pull your socks up and do the work of citizenship.

Follow Author Daisy's example.

STAKEOUTS AND STROLLERS, award-winning debut cozy amateur-sleuth mystery

STAKEOUTS AND STROLLERS
ROB PHILLIPS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Amateur private investigator and new dad Charlie Shaw gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to track down a young girl’s missing father in Rob Phillips’ award-winning debut.

Charlie Shaw is low on sleep. And cash. Otherwise, life is going pretty well for the ex-crime reporter: He’s happily married to his college sweetheart, he’s a first-time dad to the most adorable baby girl in existence, and he’s making ends meet as a rookie PI. But when Charlie meets Friday Finley, a frightened sixteen-year-old runaway on a stakeout-gone-wrong, his world gets a little more complicated.

Friday is looking for her estranged father Shawn, an unreliable alcoholic who left when she was young—and who also happens to be her only shot at avoiding the foster care system since her mother’s death a few weeks earlier. At first, Charlie believes the man is simply hiding out somewhere, avoiding his responsibilities as usual, but the more he investigates, the more unsettling—and dangerous—Shawn’s disappearance becomes. When his own family is threatened, Charlie realizes he’s in over his head, but can he back out now that he’s begun to care for Friday as his own?

A perfect blend of humor and high stakes, Stakeouts and Strollers is a heartwarming story of fatherhood, family, and what it really means to be a “Girl Dad.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This story won the 2024 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Mystery Novel...an "award-winning debut" just sounds odd, at least to me it does.

There's little doubt in my mind that it deserved the award, though. Charlie Shaw was a newspaper crime reporter who, when laid off as it seems all must be in pursuit of more for the ownership class, pivots to using his detecting skills as an actual detective. This is not quite as easy as it might sound, since in addition to losing his reporting job, he's just become a dad for the first time. It's important to the plot: he's so besotted with his baby girl, he has her crib monitor up on his phone at all times thus using up his battery; when he needs to use the camera to document the identity of cheating spouse's side piece, he's got no juice to make the shot. This leads to closer involvement in the perpetrator's life than is healthy...for lots of reasons, Charlie should not get deep into this divorce.

Yet here we are.

Red herrings abound. Ryan, Charlie's wife and co-parent, is in a high position in her company so Charlie's flexible PI schedule makes this job perfect for new parenting, but also means he's sleep-deprived at weird moments so Ryan's making adjustments too. It's a story that brings the stuff of real life into its fictional plot in well-judged ways. All the players in the story are embroiled in family dynamics that give them depth greater than surface level. They all move through life making themselves crazy over trifles, worrying about how to connect better with their families, thinking about what to do to face problems and fix mistakes. It's a very good enhancement to a pretty standard PI plot.

What really sold me on the read was Charlie himself. He's narrating the events with a constant self-deprecating edge of humor. When violent things occur, it's not minimized by his sardonic edge. It's a different register from most PI mysteries, so it comes across as...surprising? fresh?...not as expected, anyway, which is greatly to the story's benefit and Author Phillips' credit.

I can't offer a fifth star, however, due to some squicky stuff around sexism. It's always down to male-gazery isn't it? Noticing and complimenting other women on their appearance, barely avoiding openly comparing his new-mother/full-time executive wife's body and style changes to pretty young things. The "night nurse" Ryan and Charlie employ is more a housekeeper than a nurse, uncomplainingly cleaning, caring for Baby Callie, then taking on a new caretaking job for a teen thanks to Charlie's impulsiveness. It's a stylistic choice to make the story very talky by having dialogue function as exposition at times...why would a man's wife say out loud that his sister died when he was a kid?...which is a trap as often as a bonus chance for emotional resonance.

I'll skip past some stuff that's all on the editor, because the author needs to be able to trust the guidance he's given. Our villain ain't a mystery for long; there are enough red herrings to make it plausible the villain might just be a shitty human being but I pegged the identity early on. *tsk* on you, Editor! Not factored into my rating.

I'd recommend the read, flaws and all, because Charlie's a particular kind of Guy, not a dudebro, not a Cinnamon Roll, but a regular ol' Guy you'll meet on a barstool, at a barbecue, in a post-office line. He means well, he's got a good attitude, he isn't interested in ragey stupid testosterone-y 'tude. I like him, and I think you might too. Get it from the library, by all means, but it's worth getting.