Isabella Z

BookBrowse Reviewer

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BookBrowse Reviewer Isabella is a BookBrowse Reviewer and has written reviews featured in The BookBrowse Review.

Isabella is a bookworm from the NYC metro area with a degree in English literature from Columbia University. She also writes book reviews for Foreword Reviews and poetry study guides for BookRags. Her interests, in no particular order, include women and paintings (in them, painting them, looking at them, etc.), fairytales and retellings, Impressionism, 19th century tomes, unrequited loved, cats, the persistence of memory over time, the Sisyphean toil of writing a novel, and the language of flowers and gemstones. Between all of that, her favorite hobby is ballroom dancing because she likes pretending she is a spirited young lady who has snuck into a masquerade ball held by the kingdom's nobility. You can check out more of her work at isabellazhouwrites.wordpress.com.

BookBrowse Editorial Reviews (10)

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire
by Don Martin

(8/27/2025)

Verity is a lovable heroine; she works tirelessly to assist those in need, wielding her powerful magic—her specialization is to channel magic and spells through inventive songs—to reassemble homes, revive gardens, and reinvigorate livestock. But she's also a flawed novice: hubristic, self-righteous, and overly reliant on using magic forcefully... To succeed at breaking Earl's curse and complete her training, Verity must hone the mental conjurations central to her spell-making—w

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Room on the Sea: Three Novellas
by André Aciman

(7/30/2025)

"Room on the Sea" explores the paradoxical intimacy between strangers; part of the appeal is "knowing that this could end in a matter of minutes," which preserves the fantasy of romance and a "shadow life" away from the banality of their jobs, their marriages, their real lives, while "Mariana" elucidates the more ugly and selfish parts of unrequited love... these three novellas are representative of both Aciman's character-driven writing and his interest in human connection across personal and h

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Eat the Ones You Love
by Sarah Maria Griffin

(4/23/2025)

At the center of Woodbine, hidden in plain sight in an emerald-green terrarium, thrives Baby, a carnivorous, man-eating orchid, lovingly tended by Neve... And yet because the book's main perspective is Baby's, the reader feels a twisted and disturbing sympathy for and intimacy with his feelings for Neve... Their relationship is more complicated, more interesting, and more incestuous than a straightforwardly "toxic" relationship.

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Dreamover
by Dani Diaz

(2/26/2025)

Dani Diaz's graphic novel Dreamover compassionately illustrates the turbulent period that is young adulthood, painting a sympathetic, and surely relatable, portrait of adolescent insecurities, ennui, and yearning for excitement... The characters cannot forever outrun real life—neither its external obstacles nor the consequences of their own actions—through escapist dreaming; this becomes increasingly explicit the further they fall into their dream.

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Roman Year: A Memoir
by André Aciman

(11/20/2024)

Confessing how "I wouldn't know that I loved [Rome] or wanted to love it until I was about to lose it," Aciman channels tragic undercurrents in his narration. For him, the present, as it is occurring, seems to become automatically synonymous with a past that is never wholly retrievable; he feels the loss of people and places at the very same moment he experiences their currency, admitting to the paradox of "booking my passage back before making the journey out, seeking Italy while still in Italy

BookBrowse Editorial Review

The Palace of Eros: A Novel
by Caro De Robertis

(9/18/2024)

The prose in The Palace of Eros features stunning lyricism, particularly in the chapters written from Psyche's first-person perspective. Persisting in voicing her own story, Psyche's descriptions are built upon earthy and sensuous imagery. Within a context of femininity and soulful physical intimacy, Caro De Robertis's novel does the paramount work of representing nonbinary gender identity and gender fluidity, presenting a viable alternative to the heteronormativity of the traditional Gre

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Masquerade
by O.O. Sangoyomi

(7/31/2024)

Àrèmo's passion for Òdòdó launches Masquerade's plot and creates propulsive dramatic tension. Though Àrèmo is a charismatic man of charming words, bold displays of romance, and martial prowess, for Òdòdó, he is a growing source of frustration and rage. As the novel progresses, it leans into Òdòdó's suppressed fury arising from how her heroic contributions to Yorùbáland's wellbeing are attributed to Àrèmo.

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Enlightenment: A Novel
by Sarah Perry

(6/19/2024)

Grace's regulated religious upbringing is disrupted in the middle of a service when an eighteen-year-old boy named Nathan accidentally shatters the church's glass with a golf ball. Cut on her neck by a shard, Grace finds herself falling for Nathan and his world of delights and pleasures (ripped jeans, cigarettes, and contemporary music) alien to the modesty enforced upon her by Bethesda. This intimacy is met with side-eye and consternation even from Thomas, despite his own complicated feelings t

BookBrowse Editorial Review

Icarus
by K. Ancrum

(5/1/2024)

The titular protagonist of K. Ancrum's young adult novel Icarus lives a double life that mixes the mundane and inexplicable. By day, he is like any other high school senior, managing his classes, navigating student cliques, and preparing for the frightening and exhilarating independence lurking just beyond graduation. By night, his life dips into the bizarre and even outlandish — Icarus is a thief at the behest of his art restorationist father, Angus, breaking into nearby Mr. Black'

BookBrowse Editorial Review

The Warm Hands of Ghosts: A Novel
by Katherine Arden

(3/6/2024)

The Iven siblings, Canadians serving in World War I, have their lives upended in the bloody final years of the global conflict. After a bomb lands on the hospital where she is stationed and nearly takes her leg, older sister Laura is honorably discharged from her duties as a frontline nurse. Mere days later, the orphaned Laura receives news that her beloved younger brother, Freddie, has likely died in the European trenches. Lingering doubts lead Laura to venture back to the front to uncover the

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