Plant Lady
by Kang Minyoung
If Only People Were Like Plants! (6/8/2026)
In a note at the end of her novel Plant Lady, author Minyoung Kang explains "If only we were seeing hope of a better world and society, this novel might have taken a different direction." Her title character, Yoohee, owner of a thriving Plant Shop, believed "humans are just like plants"—none are beyond rescuing if she watched for problems. She realizes that this is not true of her relationships, especially with men. Yoohee's way of resolving these problems for herself and other women is the core of her story. The author's weaving of a love of plants with female rage give the novel a universal feel even though it is set in South Korea. As a gardener I appreciated the book's organization around six different plants, some of them unfamiliar. As a woman, I understand her choice of direction, while hoping we will find a better way!
The Night Hunter
by Natalie Moss
Sisters in South Africa (6/3/2026)
Natalie Moss's debut novel The Night Hunter is the gripping tale of two sisters returning to South Africa to determine the fate of their childhood home following their mother's death. That the sisters are not on the best of terms, their mother was a wildlife conservationist, and the home is in a remote location on a private game reserve means the trip requires a multi-day safari with a guide and a few friends. What follows is the harrowing story of navigating the Reserve by car and on foot and the people and wildlife encountered. Moss's vivid descriptions draw the reader into the story—I imagined the surroundings and felt the emotions the characters were experiencing—and was anxious to learn the outcome! The plot takes many surprising yet believable twists and turns as the author educates as well as entertains her readers during her exploration of this South African wilderness.
Summer's Never Over
by Darby Bozeman
Summer Surprises (4/21/2026)
Darby Bozeman's debut novel Summer's Never Over is the engaging coming-of-age tale of Greer, daughter of Dread's Cove summer camp owner, Anita Olsen. Anita's unexpected death forces Greer to grapple with many relationships from across her lifespan. The story alternates between the present, and five years earlier, when a forest fire devastated the camp. Bozeman held my interest with plot twists that reveal and resolve several questions about mysterious happenings before and after the fire. The cast of characters includes family members who were part of Greer's life since childhood—Aunt Val, camp staff member Rig, and Rig's daughter Chelsea; two men with whom she has history— Wes and Trevor; and two new counselors that fateful year—Steph and Margo—one who died in the fire and the other now an inquisitive journalist. Although not every character and plot turn is convincing, I enjoyed the book and cared about the outcome!
The Take
by Kelly Yang
Not Taken In (4/6/2026)
Kelly Yang's first adult novel, The Take, portrays Maggie Wang's struggles to move from MFA student to published writer. Yang revisits themes of young Asian women struggling with white mentors' devaluing or appropriating their work, demanding mothers, cheating boyfriends, and problematic girlfriends. Despite some interesting plot twists, I wasn't as sympathetic to Maggie's travails as I suspect Yang intended. Maggie seemed self-absorbed and unrealistically impatient for recognition of her work. As she faced several challenges, she seemed to exacerbate her problems, sometimes alienating those who might be able to help. She agrees to a contract for services that will make her wealthy but puts her health at risk. This arrangement forces the central characters to confront their—and societies'—attitudes about women's aging. I was not drawn into the competitive world of fighting for literary agents, film options, and screen-writing contracts so I felt more a bystander than an engaged reader.
Boring Asian Female
by Canwen Xu
Life of a Try-Hard (3/2/2026)
Canwen Xu's debut novel, Boring Asian Female, provides a window into the mind of a college senior spiraling out of control when she learns of an academic rejection. As Elizabeth contemplates the loss of the life she planned, she concludes she is simply too boring, and rejects alternative life paths in favor of a series of disturbing attempts to make herself more interesting. In twists and turns alternately dark and entertaining, Xu explores friendships, dating, and family relationships in South Dakota and New York City. Despite Elizabeth's increasingly implausible strategies to rectify the situation, Xu kept me interested in the outcome. Her exploration of Asian female stereotypes—is an important focus of her work that I was ambivalent about in choosing to read the book, but I found her focus on the interaction among Asian women (and girls) was interesting and informative. I look forward to her future work!
A Beautiful Loan: A Novel
by Mary Costello
Loan Your Time to This Book and Double Your Credit (1/3/2026)
An epigraph from the Qur'an reveals the source of the title of Mary Costello's novel A Beautiful Loan. A one paragraph Prologue introduces the central character Anna and her interest as a 21st century 45-year-old in understanding her adult life up to that point. Costello divides the novel into two parts, each focused on Anna's relationship with a man and how that relationship affects her interactions with her family, friends, work, school, pets, doctors, and her inner life.
I loved this book! Anna spends most of her adulthood in her Irish homeland, but through her partners, friends, some travel, and immersing herself in Carl Jung's psychological theories and Albert Camus' philosophy she becomes more cosmopolitan. Little of her life is easy and her relationships are especially difficult, but Costello exquisitely portrays Anna's efforts to understand herself.
The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives
by Elizabeth Arnott
Wanted more! (12/6/2025)
Journalist Elizabeth Arnott's "The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives" follows her earlier fiction published under the pseudonym Lizzie Pook. All these works are billed as "historical fiction" yet "Secret Lives" seems "historical" only in its setting in the 1960s, which is contrived through the portrayal of women's roles as circumscribed by powerful men and their habits shaped by an era where smoking was widely accepted and tranquilizers were another popular drug of choice. Beverley, Elsie, and Margot met after their husbands were exposed as California serial killers and work together to solve a new spate of killings threatening their community. Although the plot is interesting, I had too many questions about how these women met and their relationships with each other and other central characters to find the book as engaging as I had hoped. Arnott needed to do more to transport the reader to this era and make her characters more believable.
This Here Is Love: A Novel
by Princess Joy L. Perry
Love and Life in Slavery Times (7/30/2025)
Princess Joy L. Perry's first novel, This Here Is Love, is the work of an accomplished writer weaving the stories of colonizers, indentured servants, and slaves in colonial Virginia. As these individuals form families that grow and change over the span of less than two decades, Perry focuses on promises kept and broken, the risks of extending trust, and the meaning of love. Never a fan of historical fiction, I at first questioned if the relationships portrayed were authentic to the period. In the end, her depiction of the interplay of stark choices and emotions parents encountered in bearing and raising children and children faced in becoming young adults forming friendships and partnerships—both business and personal—won my unequivocal admiration. Masters/Mistresses, slave traders, servants, slaves, and freedmen all come to life as complex people, not stereotypes, showing us how life and love may have been and, indeed, continue.
The Bone Thief
by Vanessa Lillie
A Missed Opportunity? (7/3/2025)
The Bone Thief is Vanessa Lillie's second novel about #MMIW2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People). When narrator Syd, a Cherokee and Bureau of Indian Affair's archeologist, mentions two murders in Oklahoma involving Syd and her friend Luna, I was confused until reading this was a sequel to Lillie's Blood Sisters on her webpage! Set in Rhode Island, the missing/feared murdered young Narragansett woman is Naomi, who Syd previously had supervised as an intern. Lillie squanders her opportunity to educate readers about Native issues with a convoluted tale, fabricating a "Founders Society" populated by a cast of improbable participants with serious mental health problems or character flaws. The themes of tribal land theft, "adopting out," and handling of indigenous peoples' remains discussed in the Author's Note, issues with the BIA, and the complexities of human relationships are all contemporary concerns that can engage readers without such dramatization.
The Vanishing Place
by Zoë Rankin
New Zealand Intrigue (6/4/2025)
Zoë Rankin's The Vanishing Place is a location where fear, isolation, and complex family secrets reign. Who is the young girl caught frantically devouring strawberries at a grocery store in Koraha, New Zealand in 2025? What is her relationship to Effie, who currently lives in Island of Skye, Scotland? We piece this together from flashes of Effie's experiences in New Zealand in the early 2000s and her 2025 return to help police locate her childhood home in the bush in hopes of determining the girl's identity. Switching back and forth between snatches of the past and present is an effective way to build suspense, but the author's introduction of a third timespan about three-quarters of the way through the book adds confusion with many new twists and turns. In the end, it is the depth of the young girl's and Effie's characters and their relationship that make this novel worth reading.
Awake in the Floating City: A Novel
by Susanna Kwan
Post-Apocalyptic Possibilities? (5/15/2025)
Susanna Kwan's first novel, Awake in the Floating City, drew me into a post-apocalyptic San Francisco where survivors live in the top floors of flooded buildings where near-constant rains continue to wash away the remnants of civilization. At first, I was a reluctant witness to the main character Bo's hesitancy to leave this place. The pace seemed slow, and Bo's conflicted feelings made me impatient. Soon I appreciated the complexities of Bo's situation and her relationships with Eddie, her sometime lover; Mia, the elderly women she agrees to care for; and the relatives of each of these characters. Her efforts to resume her practice as an artist help her tie together past, present, and future, bringing the reader along to explore ways in which history, memory, and death and dying help us define and preserve the essence of humanity.
Ordinary Love: A Novel
by Marie Rutkoski
Love is Love (4/16/2025)
Emily is the central character of Marie Rutkoski's novel "Ordinary Love." We met her at her country home in upstate New York with her husband Jack, 10-year-old son Connor, and his younger sister Stella. Emily's confronting Jack concerning an incident with the children provides our entry into an examination of her marriage, relationships with childhood friends, her parents, acquaintances, and sexual partners. As is true of most relationships, Emily struggles with communicating, building trust, and resolving conflicts.
Rutkoski writes memorably about these interactions, but the relationships are fraught with missed opportunities for resolution. At a few points I dreaded reading what happened next—would she fail? We get glimpses throughout the book into lives of the elites—wealthy families and top-level athletes—that sometimes made me feel more excluded than informed. Overall, the author compellingly portrays the perils and rewards of the quest for ordinary love.
Three Days in June: A Novel
by Anne Tyler
Three Days in June and Many Lifetimes! (12/6/2024)
I love Anne Tyler's books--that hasn't changed over the 50 years I've been reading them. I especially love the way she portrays her characters' feelings and frailties as she does in "Three Days in June," which focuses on the day before, of, and after Gail's daughter Debbie's wedding. Although more novella than novel in length, Tyler conveys many details of not only Gail and Debbie's lives, but Gail's ex-husband, mother, and employer; the groom, his parents and sister; other assorted significant others; as well as neighbors and seemingly incidental characters, including a cat. Tyler's greatest gift may be how she describes her subjects' feelings, which feelings they want to share with others, and the dialog they use to do so, ultimately revealing how people become who they are and behave the way they do. The expertly handled themes here include betrayals and the complexities of reconciliation across the lifespan.
Girl Falling: A Novel
by Hayley Scrivenor
Another Girl Book? (10/2/2024)
My first reaction to Hayley Scrivenor's novel, "Girl Falling," was the use of "girl" in the title. The success of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" has made "girl" titles so common that I find it off-putting! The novel is well-crafted, but I found it difficult to like the characters. The author focuses on important relationships that Finn and Daphne, the central characters, have with each other, their sisters, their mothers, their therapist, and other friends and lovers. The twists and turns in the plot were clever and surprising, but I found myself dreading finding out what would happen to them rather than caring. The characters' detailed discussion of psychological issues is plausible because of their academic experience, but I found some of their behaviors implausible. Would a particular person really make this sequence of decisions and actions? Would the other characters react to them in this way? I wish I had cared more!
Bright and Tender Dark
by Joanna Pearson
Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson (4/3/2024)
Joanna Pearson's first novel, Bright and Tender Dark, focuses on the January 2000 murder of college student Karlie. Part mystery and part commentary on generational change, we hear the story first from the perspective of Joy, Karlie's freshman year roommate, and others—often strangers—who, in 2019, are obsessed with solving her murder—believing the man convicted is innocent. Then Pearson returns to 1999, revealing more about Karlie, her relationships with her family, religion, and several friends and acquaintances. Karlie's inner life is expertly portrayed, partly through her writings, including poetry. Pearson ends the novel with a return to 2019 and additional details that might resolve the murder mystery.
The writing is wonderful, but some of the characters seem cast primarily as red herrings or to represent diverse groups. This is an engaging read for anyone interested in academia, evangelism, and how we deal with love and rejection.
