CITY OF SOULS AND SINNERS, second in the House of Devils dark romantasy series

CITY OF SOULS AND SINNERS (House of Devils #2)
KAYLA EDWARDS
Scarlett Press/Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$23.00 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the sequel to City of Gods and Monsters, Loren Calla and Darien Cassel have settled back into their old routines, grateful that the whirlwind of dangers they’d faced on Kalendae and the weeks leading up to it are now behind them—or so they think.

But Loren soon finds herself caught in a new storm of trouble when the Terran Imperator blackmails her into working for him. There’s only one problem: he expects her to use her magic, and she doesn’t seem to have any of it left. To keep Darien and the other Devils safe, she agrees to everything the imperator asks of her. But the secrets she is forced to keep from Darien, and her involvement with the imperator’s son, threaten to drive her away from Darien in ways she might never recover from…

As Randal Slade’s successor, Darien wants nothing to do with the throne his father once sat in, but the city of Angelthene has other plans. The Magical Protections Unit asks for his help in taking down the illegal arms trade his father once dabbled in, and to do that Darien must claim his place at the top of the tiers of Darkslayers—a crown the other circles are willing to kill to possess. As he spirals deeper into the secrets his father kept, he makes enemies of friends and friends of enemies—and finds himself buried so deep in Angelthene’s underbelly that he is uncertain he’ll ever get out of it. And if that wasn’t enough, Darien fears he is going crazy when he starts to see creatures that only he can see…

Return to Angelthene in City of Souls and Sinners, a gripping, action-packed tale that tackles themes of love and loss, light and darkness, and the battle between good and evil—and what happens when you can’t tell which is which.

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

My Review: I somehow did not notice, or possibly retain, the information that this is #2 in a series...and that it's got child abuse as one of its themes. It's a serious no-go area for me. It is presented to us in flashback, so supposed to be cushioned that way...we know it came out okay since it's been survived.

Nope. I'm seeing the damage, the awful burden the adult carries and not happy to see it in the flashbacks. It's also a cishet romance, moderate steam, so not going to appeal to me there either. (At. All.) So how'd that fourth star appear?

Clocking in at 750ish pages, it should've been a serious effort to connect the worldbuilding dots for someone stating here, yet it wasn't. It's possible I'd be more annoyed at the slower pace if I'd read the first one. As it was it felt as though I was being given a shot at really getting in there, getting the lay of the land. I felt the magic system was a bit fuzzy, but then checked my response because it's book two so shuddupppp. I flipped past the steamy bits, but it's not like that's anyone's *fault* I'm just not the audience. Darien does some world-class yearning for Loren. I'm always happy to see a man presented as unashamedly being in his feelings for someone, and dude's down bad for this (dull to me) woman and not a bit hesitant to say so: "Do you want me on my knees? Do you want me to beg, is that it? Because I will, I’ll crawl for you."

The size of the cast wasn't as much of an issue as I'd thought it would be. I took in the nicely detailed map in the front matter, then hit the dramatis personae that kept going and going...and turns out I kept up fine because there was enough real estate to do a decent amount of character building for most everyone.

It's on the downside, though, that there are as many opportunities as there are for the romantasy reader with a taste for the yearn to get their fix. Five fewer would not make a negative impact on the story itself. I'm also not convinced we needed the urpsome flashbacks about horrific child abuse. Like, at all. I'm admittedly totally outraged by the topic, but even someone who does not have my sensitivity could see the ease with which we-the-reader could get along fine with only dealing with the aftermath would give the same result.

I mean:

"You belong with me." His words were a declaration. A shout out into the universe, a claim that could not be challenged. "No one else. This—" He lifted her left hand to his chest, flattening it right above his heart, his strong pulse thumping under her palm. When he spoke, his eyes burned with passion and intent. "This is yours. From now until the day I die, and every day after, I am yours. Got it?"

Who needs the cruelty?

DAGGERMOUTH, start of a dark fantasy series very relevant to the world of 2026

DAGGERMOUTH (The Heart #1)
H.M. WOLFE
Scarlett Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, availble now

Rating: 4 wincing stars of five

The Publisher Says: Set in a corrupt surveillance state ruled by the masked elite, this true enemies-to-lovers dystopian romance that’s Conform meets V For Vendetta follows a mercenary who botches the assassination of the president’s son and ends up forced to marry him.

The first thing you’ll learn in New Found Haven is that mercy doesn’t exist. The second thing is that, from the highest glass atrium in the Heart to the windowless slums of the Boundary, the Veyra are always watching.

The last lesson is the hardest, but you must remember it: Love outside of your ring is a death sentence.

The city is carved into rings of privilege and poverty, ruled by the masked elite who will do whatever it takes to hold onto power. Obedience is demanded. Rebellion is crushed.

Greyson Serel has spent his life caught between two worlds. Publicly, he’s the flawless heir to the presidency. Privately, he’s entangled in secrets that could topple the regime. But when he’s forced into a political marriage meant to bind him tighter to the government’s brutal laws, he finds himself shackled to a bride as lethal as she is unwilling.

Shadera Kael is a mercenary raised to kill, not to wed. Yet when her bullet misses its mark, survival leaves her tied to the very man she was sent to eliminate. Trapped inside the corrupt heart of the city, she becomes both prisoner and wife, her every step watched, her every move tested.

Their union is no love story—it’s a battlefield. As secrets come to light and betrayals fester within the walls of power, Greyson and Shadera must decide between annihilating each other or burning the city to the ground together.

In a world where passion has consequences and loyalty is paid for in blood, their forced bond may be the spark that ignites a revolution. Or the fire that consumes them both.

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

My Review: I read almost 550 pages of a "romance" I was the opposite of invested in. I prefer reading about romances I find involving, those between men; I'm willing read them about women finding and falling for each other; but men falling for women? Not on my Kindle. So I screwed up when I said yes to this DRC. I opened it to get it over with, write my "not for me" dismissal, and vowed to learn from my mistake.

Then I started reading, and the voice hooked me. "The first thing you'll learn in New Found Haven is that mercy no longer exists. Mercy is a weakness, and weakness will get you killed."

I'm sat.

I was able to flip past the "open-door" sex scenes, a term I had not realized was now mainstream enough to be in the publisher's comprehensive content warnings (as an aside, they also have a trigger statement with directions to the mental-health helpline, which...well, good on ya guys), and get absorbed into this only-slightly-darker than reality take on politics, social stratification, and populations under rigid control.

It's first in a set, a duology per the sales material though I suspect if this builds a goodly Tumblr, Threads, and/or Reddit following it could go farther into the world it's created. Goodness knows the potential is there, the commentary on the current state of the world is trenchant and tendentious, while the delineation of boundaries is sharp enough to slice a finger carelessly placed right off.

There's a great deal of strategic maneuvering once the promised rebellion begins, all explained in what might be too much detail for the romantasy-lite reader. I was happy, and involved, and invested. There is a lot of dystopia-defining detail that, honestly, could be pruned...cracks in things are on-the-nose after two, maybe three, iterations. The oppressive reality of living under surveillance is familiar to me as someone who lives in the *heavily* surveilled Bronx, with police cameras literally everywhere including on the light standard a floor below me outside my window. In Long Beach, the boardwalk had cameras everywhere as well. It's the reality of life under capitalism, where all those cameras had to be purchased, maintained, and then the collected data processed...for a fee.

So the read was, for me anyway, useless for the romance but terrific as a warning of "that's the way this parade is headed." I think the couple got together, don't quote me on that they coulda been cheating on each other for all I care; but the FMC is interesting from the beginning and, in a last-minute reveal of a secret, only becomes more so and thus points the next story in a really interesting direction.

This would be an almost-five-star warble of delight absent heteronormativity.

Perfection is not of this Earth.

MARY KELIIKOA'S PAGE: The Misty Pines Mysteries series

KILLER TRACKS (A Misty Pines Mystery #3)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$5.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A peaceful retreat. A maze of smoke and murder. Is their remote getaway about to become a death trap?

Sheriff Jax Turner is worried about going off-grid and leaving his young team of deputies behind. But while his getaway with his ex is meant to help them reconnect, Jax is distracted by signs of a break-in at their rented lookout.

After a string of unsettling events and an approaching wildfire turn their isolated retreat into a danger zone, he’s stunned to find a dead body with marks tying it to a killer he put away a decade ago.

Terrified his attempt at reconciliation has led them both into a fatal setup, Jax rushes back to his estranged wife before she joins the list of victims. But his dedication to serving and protecting could become an Achilles heel as other players join them among the darkening trees.

Can he fight his way out of the woods before the flames of revenge consume everything?

Killer Tracks is the tense third book in the Misty Pines Mystery Series. If you like tangled relationships, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and small town sheriff procedurals, then you’ll love Mary Keliikoa’s page-turning game of cat-and-mouse.

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

My Review: Tangled emotions, a History that beats any failure of your own relationships, and a stressful job as The Crime-Solver in a town as magnetic to crime as Midsomer or St Mary Mead...I am in my happy place. The stakes are very high, the people are familiar enough to be my real life neighbors, and the setting makes me pine away for a small-town life that, if I had it, would make me feel desperate and trapped.

Jax and Abby are still trying to fix what got broken by the awfulness of their shared world...he's an ex-Portland cop (bet they want him back now) and her FBI world...because they just can't quit each other. So while they're off in the patch-up place aka back of beyond, Rachel the deputy is trying her goddamnedest to solve an arson covering up a murder...when in flies her dad, delivering a crucial cold-case clue like a gangrenous carrier pigeon. (Me no likee daddums; he was also Jax's Portland force partner...my hackles will not stay down when he's around.)

Into Abby and Jax's doomed privacy wafts Hannah...wait, who? Exactly! Who's she, where'd she come from, and when's she leaving?

So a series'-worth of Jax pining unrequitedly after Abby, a murder case Rachel really wants to solve without some old man buttin' in (be it her old man or Jax's predecessor as chief), and a serial-killer cold case. Have I forgotten anything?

You'll want to read for yourselves, so I ain't tellin'.

*eville cackle*

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DEADLY TIDES (A Misty Pines Mystery #2)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A missing surf legend. Waterlogged clues. Can he trust his gut instincts to end the wave of murder?

Sheriff Jax Turner is learning to live again. Holding tight to the hope of reconciling with his FBI agent ex-wife, the wary man is determined to keep his focus on his coastal Oregon community. And after a concerned brother requests a welfare check, Jax is troubled to find the absent surf shop owner's tracks lead to a pool of blood.

Now investigating a potential homicide, Turner chases a tip from his former spouse about a severed foot found on the beach. But when a torrent of leads links the victim to a politician's son, a jealous competitor, and a get-straight program for youth, the steadfast lawman fears layers of lies and secret agendas will keep him from stopping a vicious killer.

Can he unravel the fatal agenda before he's the next corpse to wash ashore?

If you like flawed heroes, gritty crimes, and dark twists and turns, then you'll love Deadly Tides, the chilling second book in Mary Keliikoa's Misty Pines Mystery Series.

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

My Review: Local surfer dies mysteriously; unconnected human foot washes up on local beach, handled by Jax's much pined-after ex-wife the FBI agent, who knows he can handle it so hands responsibility over; lying liars lie and abuse people...okay, it's Misty Pines. Good to be back.

Abby, the ex-wife and FBI agent, gets a third person PoV like Jax because we need to know things he couldn't and she feels reluctant to tell his simping-for-her self. It helped me keep details clear in my head. I can't help but wonder why her FBI partner Olek is so present...but I like Jax getting the eager young Rachel onto his deputeam. He's settling in to the job of being The Crime Solver for Misty Pines. He's not as unsure of himself. It begins to feel more like a set team is forming.

I confess I do not see Abby's side of their divorce. It doesn't matter much because, unless decades of series-mystery reading and recognizing the need for ma'at to be restored, they *will* get back together. In their profession of law enforcement, each is the other's ideal mate. This time apart will, I predict, pay dividends.

You will pay an attention tax. This book does not hold to a spanking pace as it privileges introspection and the unending process of grieving. Rather we're shown the emotional gyrations in Jax and, to a lesser extent, Abby, as they circle each other simply by virtue of sharing the most important trait of them all: Values.

I think this book would be so fraught as to be meaningless if one had not read book one, Hidden Pieces (q.v.). The cast, the pace, the fuller backstory, all help defray the attention cost of the story's inward focus. Not to be skipped, but don't start here.

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HIDDEN PIECES (A Misty Pines Mystery #1)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
99¢ ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sheriff Jax Turner is staring down the barrel of his broken past. On the brink of ending it all, he feels like a failure following his daughter's tragic passing and his subsequent divorce. But when a schoolgirl vanishes and her backpack is found in a sex offender's backseat, the weary lawman drags himself into action and vows to nail one last sociopath.

Shocked to discover the teen's aunt had lost her life in an abduction years prior, the devastating outcome that he's taken personally, Jax believes the killer has returned with a vengeance. But as the desperate cop frantically hunts down a mysterious relative in search of a suspect, the girl's time keeps ticking away...

Can the jaded sheriff take down the culprit in time to bring the young girl home alive?

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

My Review: We meet Jax in extremis...the very worst thing possible to happen to a person has happened, the depressingly most-common fallout of that hideous disaster has occurred and he is (he thinks) ready for The End.

He is not.

He is summoned back to participation in life by the disappearance of Allison, a teenaged missing person with frantic parents. Jax can gird himself to be involved, as he badly wants to give someone else the ending he did not get. All set in the scenic, peacfully beautiful coastal-Oregon town of Misty Pines. As a small town, it is of course a place of unspoken stuff Everybody Knows (or think they know) but which Jax, formerly a Portland detective, isn't privy to. And doesn't know he doesn't know.

All of this feeds the man's deep, well-entrenched anxiety about his skills, about his past coming home to roost, about his misery being without his FBI agent ex-wife who abandoned him...After. It's real, it happens, people are not their best selves when crushed by terrible grief. It does occupy a good deal of his mental energy, though not simply as plot dressing. Trust Author Keliikoa. She has a plan.

Why I wasn't offering nosegays and wreaths of stars comes down to the ending. It is something you'll resonate with or you won't. I felt it introduced more complexity than was necessary, even for a series mystery. But...and this is crucial to know...it was not simply pulled outta nowhere and tacked on. As a first in series read, I'll pin my reservations to my mind's corkboard and see if my issues are used to good advantage in a later book.

Definitely a series I recommend you pursue with me!

FLUX, a hard-to-believe-it's-a-debut novel about identity, grief, and Otherness

FLUX
JINWOO CHONG
Melville House (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are covering up a string of violent crimes.

Combining elements of neo-noir, speculative fiction, and '80s detective shows, FLUX is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

In FLUX, a brilliant debut in the vein of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Ling Ma’s Severance, Jinwoo Chong introduces us to three characters —Bo, Brandon and Blue— who are tortured by these questions as their lives spin out of control.

* After 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, his white father, attempting to hold their lives together, begins to gradually retreat from the family.

* 28-year-old Brandon loses his job at a legacy magazine publisher and is offered a new position. Confused to find himself in an apartment he does not recognize, and an office he sometimes cannot remember leaving, he comes to suspect that something far more sinister is happening behind the walls.

* 48-year-old Blue participates in a television exposé of Flux, a failed bioelectric tech startup whose fraudulent activity eventually claimed the lives of three people and nearly killed him. Blue, who can only speak with the aid of cybernetic implants, stalks his old manager while holding his estranged family at arms-length.

Intertwined with the saga of a once-iconic '80s detective show, Raider, whose star has fallen after decades of concealed abuse, the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue intersect with each other, to the extent that it becomes clear that their lives are more interconnected and interdependent than the reader could have ever imagined.

Can we ever really change the past, or the future? What truth do we owe our families? What truth do we owe ourselves?

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

My Review: Creative uses of the time-travel plot don't grow on trees. This one, with its interesting way of weaving Eighties pop cultural touchstones...not, I hasten to say, specifics...lends the proceedings an air of cyberpunk coolth, removed from the moist, sweaty realities of Life.

I suspect that the air of remove was meant to aid in the project of obscuring a fact that was blindingly obvious to me from the off: These three people are one person, albeit the kind of one-person idea that a time-travel-adjacent story produces. It's a good use of the overdone time-travel trope. I was not, however, in any doubt about the fact. I don't know of my own personal knowledge that one is meant not to see this, though the clues point to that being the author's intent.

If I have a gripe about the storytelling, it's Brandon addressing the hero of Raider in the satanic second person. I hate that. It was acceptable...barely...because it wasn't ambiguous who was being addressed, therefore it never ran afoul of my loathing for having an authorial finger poked in my chest.

As a record of how one man integrates the pain of a past that was marred by loss into a present that is ruled by betrayal, the story fires on all cylinders. As a story about the way we anchor ourselves in the ever-shifting emotional landscape of our life, it stands out from the crowd. As a gentle admonition for men to do the work of coming to terms with the emotional baggage they, we, all carry it is effective in its use of pop-culture tropes and constructs to embody the risks of not doing so.

Ambitious and clever and emotionally literate, it was a fine experiment in telling a story about the cost to a man of failing to connect with his own feelings as well as the roots of his identity as a man. Fathers are routinely absent from sons' lives in every way possible in fiction. It's not new territory broken here, either. It's not much explored, more reported, so there's little emotional heft in this take. I wasn't surprised by this though the structure of the time-travel bits made me think this was a missed opportunity. In a story that focuses on pains from loss, why not get into it?

The fact that the betrayal plot I've alluded to comes from Brandon's job being among the tech scum was *chef's kiss* to me. It enabled Author Chong to deal with the orientalism surrounding a lot of tech-centered fiction. It's largely unreflective, most tech narrative use, simply making characters from East or south Asian backgrounds. Here we delve into that identity and its costs more than usual, adding to the mix the character's queerness. That aspect alone wins Author Chong a major reprieve from chastisement for minor amounts of failure to explore satisfyingly some paths he starts down.

I hope all y'all will give this ambitious, quite successful, debut novel of identity, grieving for selves and lives not lived, and coming to terms with one's actual life through fiction, a whirl.

YES TO LIFE: In Spite of Everything, words and concepts I'd very much prefer to continued doomscrolling

YES TO LIFE: In Spite of Everything
VIKTOR E. FRANKL (tr. Joelle Young, intro. Daniel Goleman)
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece, a companion to his international bestseller Man’s Search for Meaning.

Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity.

Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl’s words resonate as strongly today—as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty—as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim “Live as if you were living for the second time,” and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to “say yes to life”—a profound and timeless lesson for us all.

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

My Review: I had a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning in my house all my life. I first read it in one or another of the 1970s, though I can't recall which one; it was at a time of abject misery in my youth. It is a book about healing, and about perspective as the path to healing, messages that resonated deeply with me and still do. One always has the right to choose one's response to troubles and imposed suffering.

The 1946 lecures in this present book are not quite precursors to his larger, later work. They are shorter stems, less fully grown and un-espaliered on his carefully developed walls of philosophy; they're certainly grown on the same rootstock, however. That's how this gem arose to my grateful eyes: "Our perspective on life's events—what we make of them—matters as much or more than what actually befalls us. 'Fate' is what happens to us beyond our control. But we each are responsible for how we relate to those events."

I read this book, which came out early in the pandemic, after seeing Will of The Brothers Gwynne encounter Frankl and his bracing philosophy of using one's trauma for positive growth this month. It was a nudge for me to dig this book out, having shelved it during COVID while watching literal dozens of the people who live in my facility die hacking for breath that was not ever coming back because...honestly because I had the privilege of living and the luxury of only the most minor of symptoms when I caught the disease. It felt too on the nose in 2020, and I just forgot I had it until I saw the young man speaking on YouTube, and then reading his review on Goodreads about how he felt changed by Man’s Search for Meaning after reading it.

I was prompted by young Gwynne's reaction to seek out a similar one. I found several things that were of great value to me in my dotage, and weren't exactly mirrored in the Frankl quotes in my commonplace book, eg: "To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances—because life itself is—but it is also possible under all circumstances." What a mind to come up with this statement after being in Auschwitz!

Viktor Frankl is more than an inspiration. He argued in the face of people who wanted to exterminate him, like Daleks or Borg want to exterminate because they can, all those they Othered and deprived of essential humanity, that everyone, even his oppressors and wannabe murderers, are worthy of dignity and able to find meaning and value in this bizarre thing we call life.

Viktor Frankl is as close as we will see to holy man. He lived for fifty years after his liberation from Auschwitz. His simple continued existence would be inspiring enough. He never stopped, in his long life,espousing his belief in "logotherapy", something that was controversially developed *before* Frankl went to the camps for being Jewish...and while working for a Nazi-affiliated Austrian organization.

Does this make his story a lie? Some very nasty people, who never met Frankl or even conducted primary archival research on their allegations against him, claim he greatly exaggerated his peril as a Jew. Some extremely religious Jews claim he was a monstrous collaborator with the Nazis.

Judging him by his works, I believe they are the exaggerators, and quite possibly the liars. I say this without having done any serious research into the facts they allege to have discovered, only using for them the standard I've used for Frankl: Their works speak loudly. And in my opinion, point to darkness and ugliness in their motivations.

I remain inspired and uplifted by the works and words of Viktor E. Frankel. Thank you, young Mr. Gwynne, for saying the right thing at the right time, thereby reminding me of a good role model for the best use of perspective.

PONY CONFIDENTIAL, urban-fantasy talking animal story meets cozy mystery

PONY CONFIDENTIAL
CHRISTINA LYNCH
Berkley Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this one-of-a-kind mystery with heart and humor, a hilariously grumpy pony must save the only human he’s ever loved after discovering she stands accused of a murder he knows she didn’t commit.

Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with the only little girl he ever loved, Penny, who he was separated from and hasn’t seen in years.

Penny, now an adult, is living an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, accused of murder and whisked back to the place she grew up. Her only comfort when the past comes back to haunt her are the memories of her precious, rebellious pony.

Hearing of Penny’s fate, Pony knows that Penny is no murderer. So, as smart and devious as he is cute, the pony must use his hard-won knowledge of human weakness and cruelty to try to clear Penny’s name and find the real killer.

This acutely observant feel-good mystery reveals the humanity of animals and beastliness of humans in a rollicking escapade of epic proportions.

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

My Review: You know that Swede who writes about cutesy old people? Of course you do, y'all luuuv him as much as Richard Osman! (Only Osman's old people are cool, unlike that Swede's faux-feisty feebs.) Now imagine that Swede decided to take over Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie series.

Yeah. That, and Remarkably Bright Creatures chucked in for good measure. So what's it doing as a regular review, not a Burgoine? "When you like a book, but don't love it, it's a Burgoine," someone is even now saying to their screen.

Penny and fluent English-hearer Pony the pony, separately and together, do some very good mental health work, that's why it's a regular review, and thanks for noticing. Penny's never quite gotten a grip on Life; as a result she is always on the back foot with the people and situations in her life. Being a kindergatren teacher does not make this easier. Being a single mom to a cute kid with a really bad relationship to the father, well...gettin' the drift here? She has a life-altering nightmare hit her square in the chops, and here we come to the first-ever in my reviews spoiler. (Stop laughing! And pointing is rude.)

This para has the spoiler: When Penny was twelve, a terrible, fatal accident occurred and her family has to run away. Pony got left behind, and is still bitter about it. Penny's now being accused of murder, twenty years later, and is hauled off to jail. A mother with a child is hauled off to jail for suspicion of involvement in a twenty-year-old crime.

This is really, really unbelievable to me.

Howsomever, the plot needs driving so drive we shall. Grouchy, misanthropic Pony hears and understands this, decides he's off to save Penny (the one human he's ever loved) and has so many cool adventures...all of 'em opportunitites to shine a light onto how truly unfair and sadistically convoluted late-stage capitalism is. I agree with this and find the looneyness of the animal characters' various voices great fun. They banter together, discuss how rotten humans are. They still say home truths about each other that will get past the guard of all but the most cynical. I'll go with it.

I want to note that suicide and depression are more than minor plot points without being foregrounded.

As a puzzle, the villains are very two-dimensional thus easy to spot. I read a lot of mysteries, though, so ma'at leads my eyes (as the Egyptians said) and I figured it out; honestly, that's not the point here. Read this for feel-good cuteness. Read this for affirmation the world *can* be good. Read this, in short, for fun.

I did. It was. Everybody's happy. (Even Pony.)

ALL THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN, horror rooted in reality and scarier for it

ALL THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN
R.J. McDANIEL
ECW Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 37TH Lambda Literary Awards for TRANSGENDER FICTION.

The Publisher Says: An incisive reflection on identity and wealth, and a refreshing racial queer story of survival

All Things Seen and Unseen follows Alex Nguyen, an isolated, chronically ill university student in her early 20s. After a suicide attempt and subsequent lengthy hospitalization, she finds herself without a job, kicked out of campus housing, unable to afford school, and still struggling in the aftermath of a relationship’s dissolution. Hope comes in the form of a rich high school friend who offers Alex a job housesitting at her family’s empty summer mansion on a gulf island.

Surrounded by dense forest and ocean, in the increasingly oppressive heat of a 2010s summer, Alex must try to survive as an outsider in a remote, insular community; to navigate the awkward, unexpected beginnings of a possible new romance; and to live through the trauma she has repressed to survive, even as the memories — and a series of increasingly unnerving events — threaten to pull her back under the surface.

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My Review: What a wild ride. I knew, by the end of the read, what it feels like to have paranoid hallucinations, and let me tell you it was 1000% more effective than "spernatural" horror could ever be. Tell me all the mishegas is a demon, I check out; tell me the MC is fresh out of the bin and these weird things are happening, I'm terrified. Plus horror in hot climates works better on 80° (Fahrenheit, obvs)-ought-to-be-illegal me than sweater weather ever could.

Add in homelessness, that scourge of the capitalist world we love for its trinkets and need for its ability to keep us alive at the expense of our future, and my knees are knockin'. All of these elements are central to this story. Alex is genuinely unsure what's in her head and what's not. When, ten years ago, I had a stint in the bin, my roommates were schizophrenic...can you even imagine hearing voices, having hallucinations so real you respond to them like they're there? I don't think you can unless you've seen it, and you will never, ever again think of mental illness as a dodge, a lie, a clever ruse to work the system.

So I'm pretty much the perfect reader for this horror story. Where's that fifth star?

I loved Alex's unapologetic, unexplained queerness a lot. She's just...queer. Nothing's made of it; it just is. This does come with a price. Alex is also not connected to reality in part due to trauma that, again, just is. This makes some of Alex's behaviors feel unmoored to the (negligible) plot. That isn't a problem per se but does leave things, eg relating to Alex's ethnic identity, up in the air that could usefully have been expanded on. It's a quibble; I was drawn along by the sheer richness with which Author McDaniel wove the tapestry of Alex's experience of her world.

This is a horror novel for people who do not read horror novels. It's also truly the best novel I've read about the actual experience of mental illness, of fracturing in the mind, about how the world can simply weigh too much to be borne.

BRIGHT OBJECTS, shiny start to a promising new career

BRIGHT OBJECTS
RUBY TODD
Simon & Schuster
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands.

Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.

As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.

A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.

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

My Review: A debut novel from a very accomplished author, one whose best gift is the deft touch of characterization. I felt very connected to Sylvia from the get-go, her fuddled and bewildered survivor's guilt, her unostentatious revenge-seeking against the one responsible for her loss, and her deep but unwilling fascination with a charismatic local cult leader.

The lovely patterns Author Todd weaves among these strands, spinning her threads from the ever-renewed internal structures of loss, guilt, sadness, and outrage, don't sag or drop. They're sometimes not as harmoniously tinted as a veteran writer might choose...the mother-in-law in particular is rather paler than I'd expected, Theo the astronomer a bit too intense...but these are quibbles. Not a line out of place, not a word (even when a not-American word crops up) wasted or obscured.

The lack of a full fifth star on my rating isn't because of some sense of disappointment. I got what I wanted. The plot...revenge-driven widow struggles to cope with her loss and her survivor guilt will catch me in its web every time...is consistent, is finished with an appropriate, yet unexpected, ending. What bothered me, and this is really a very *me* thing to be tangled up in, was the comet. A comet, one on a path to get this close to Earth, is not going to go undetected for very long. We're motivated, since Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked Jupiter so very hard in 1994, to go looking for these kinds of objects.

Okay, so that's a half-star lost. A tiny smidgeon of the tarnish on my shiny loving cup of pleasure also traces to Theo and his own warping loss. It's a trope I find painfully Writerly, is the Conjunction of Damaged Souls. Theo's issues were understandably similar to Sylvia's; his response to her darkness was believable. His discovery of her, in Australia, where he happens to be for the confirmation of a career-defining discovery, is what rings false to me. As always I want this kind of other-directed man to exist; I suspect he isn't to be found in a man about to ascend to the heights of his ambitions. I also see the facile characterization of Joseph Evans, and honestly, since he's such a bell-end of a grifter, I just don't care.

Quibbles and crotchets aside, everything Author Todd does in this story fits. The mystery plot, the way it's rooted in the ugliness of revenge, the focus of the two leads on their personal quests, all works as a whole. The manner in which the ending's made manifest felt satisfying to me. I'm struggling with myself not to spoiler it (though I really want to!) because experiencing the event blind is a pleasure enhancer.

Tyro author does a fine job, will most likely do better next time, and very much deserves your treasure and time.

THE CIPHER, award-winning first novel from Kathe Koja republished after 30 years

THE CIPHER
KATHE KOJA
Meerkat Press
$3.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive."

When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.

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My Review: Republished thirty years on, this debut horror novel far exceeds my memory of it; when it came out, I wasn't interested in its eldritch overtones and dismissed its literary charms far too readily for that reason. Still not that interested in cosmic horror, as horror anyway, since the crap people do to each other every day scares me a lot more than some Evil Force somehow making people do awful stuff or, sillier still, does awful stuff to them despite being disembodied...possession and so forth come under the heading of mental illness untreated or undiagnosed in my materialist worldview.

But honestly, so what. This is a story, fiction with all that implies. Author Koja's been at this gig for decades now, and it's clear she started strong with this debut. Like all well-made fiction, this novel tells us truths about ourselves and our world. Self-harm, suicidal ideation, depression, all come into the story and are treated with due respect. This being thirty years ago, maybe not the way we'd talk about them now, but they aren't presented as reasons to become a victim.

The power dynamics of this book are very intricate. Upper hands slip. Control falters. People don't behave in reasonable ways, ever! The story unspools at a fairly brisk clip and rewards your attention to its details. Since this is a body horror novel, you know violent changes will be wrought on humans. It's part of our culture to revel in this strange obsession with involuntary body modification and/or death. Not always to my personal taste. This story's main appeal isn't its physical violence but its quieter, less obtrusive dealings with the power within a relationship, how it's used, what it does to the parties involved...and, on that level, this story *rocks*! Can't recommend it unreservedly, see the CWs, but recommend it I do to my fellow #Deathtober fans.

PEDRO & DANIEL, when home is not The Safe Place it should be

PEDRO & DANIEL
FEDERICO EREBIA (illus. Julie Kwon)
Levine Querido
$19.99 hardcover, available 20 June 2023

Rating: 4* of five, doubtless the full five or even more for its target audience

The Publisher Says: Pedro and Daniel are Mexican American brothers growing up in 1970s Ohio. Their mother resents that Pedro is a spitting image of their darker-skinned father; that Daniel likes dolls; that neither boy plays sports. Both are gay and neurodivergent. They are alike, but they are dissimilar in their struggles, their dreams, their approach to life.

Pedro & Daniel is a sweeping and deeply personal novel that spans from childhood, through their teen years, and into adulthood. Theirs is a bond that won’t be broken. Together they endure an abusive home life, coming out, first loves, first jobs, and the AIDS pandemic, in a coming-of-age story unlike any other.

Despite everything, there is much joy in the stories in the book. Their resilience and special bond help the boys face one evil after another. While Pedro suffers more at home, Daniel is particularly susceptible to the malevolence of the outside world.

They are similar: gay, neurodivergent Latinos in love with all things Mexico.

Son tal para cual.
They are cut from the same cloth.

They are different: Pedro is darker-skinned, oppressed, repressed, introverted, and agnostic. Daniel is precocious, carefree, mischievous, religious, and unguarded.


Mismo perro, distinto collar.
Same dog, different collar.

CW: References to domestic violence, child abuse, homophobia, colorism, racism, clergy abuse, suicidality, sex, and death.

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

My Review: The survivor always writes the history. Pedro, the in-book pseudonym for Dr. Federico Erebia, a retired physician, who is also an artist, a woodworker, an author, and an illustrator, here tells the story of the horrifying, abusive family life led by himself and his late brother Daniel. Their boyhood having roughly coincided with my own, and their immigrant parents being much like the immigrant parents I knew in South Texas, the dichos and the interspersed poetry with prose, the cultural touchstones were all bone-deep familiar. What added to my sense of coming home was the young men's comings-out, internal and public, between themselves quietly and subtly; being gay in a deeply religious and brutally homophobic culture, during the peak terror of the AIDS crisis, only added to my anxious sense of identification with them.

What makes this story ideal for its youthful intended market is the absolute honesty and clarity of Author Erebia's prose; he couldn't tell a lie in these words, or even invent too much, because the ring of truth is absent when he does. He also never softens any blow, or pretends what hurt wasn't that bad, or helped grow him up, as other authos have in pursuing similar themes. He never takes the tack that it will all turn out okay; his belovèd brother dies of AIDS.

Love does not conquer all. What Love does is help one bear all that misery hateful bigots heap on you from before you know why they hate you. This is honest and it is helpful to young people to be told the truth. Things can hurt so bad in the moment that no one is surprised that you would consider ending your life. No one who's experienced hatred and rejection, however it's presented, is at all ever going to judge you for that. I do enjoy a story that tells young gay boys and girls all that, as well as implicitly supports the knowledge of no you aren't imagining it; yes, they do mean it; but crucially importantly you can and are wanted by others you haven't met to survive all of it. This story says loud and clear the truth: IT DOES GET BETTER.

Why I only rated it 4 stars of five is I found myself almost chanting the metrical dichos and poetic snippets, in that read-aloud to infants cadence. I don't enjoy that sensation. It's not aimed at me, so I present this as a reason, not an excuse. Others have other ideas about this facet of storytelling, and it works in the rap/hiphop/modern spoken word generation a treat. For me and those of my tastes, exercise caution in your consumption.