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Top reviews:
Margo and Matilda the Halifax twins have been turning heads and causing whispers since the day they debuted. There’s not a man in London who wouldn’t recognize their red hair and Margo has enjoyed the company of several but the twins are too notorious for anyone to court them conventionally. Margo starts to think they may have finally gone too far though when she thinks she discovers Matilda eloping to Gretna Green with the Marquess of Ashford. Panicked she begs her straightlaced friend Henry Mortimer to help chase them down before it’s too late. As Henry has been in love with Margo for years he agrees and on the road together sparks soon start to fly. It’s also not long before the twins run into each other and discover each has more going on than the other realized. This volume brings together two novellas previously available in digital editions starting with Margo and Henry’s madcap adventure followed by Matilda and Christian’s more intense relationship. Both stories move quickly with little extraneous action but plenty of steamy encounters. Though the tales complement each other well they each have their own dynamic and pacing. Matilda’s story is longer and explores mild BDSM elements while Margo’s is faster and more of a romp. Ultimately both twins face the same quandary as they separately struggle with feeling they may have outgrown their reputations while being unsure what the next phase of their lives might look like. Vasti’s fans will be delighted with the addition of a new epilogue.
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Her firstborn daughter Onyesonwu a powerful witch—introduced in Who Fears Death (2010)—transformed the world and left it while Najeeba herself has become more dangerous and powerful—the kponyungo sorcerer of fire wind and dust. Her mission to find and kill the awful spirit that terrorized her father’s family remains unfinished. But where to begin? First birth her miracle child. Warned about the dangers of this baby’s birth she journeys deep into the desert. With only Dedan the baby’s father and their two mighty camels she must find the Vah people who live in a great sandstorm to help her survive the birth. Though the temptation to live in the wind and sand with the community who saves her is strong she must continue her mission. With an unlikely friend from the desert people she finds a way forward. Najeeba will face off with the spirit the Cleanser and become the revenge her father sought. She will finish it once and for all even if it ends her. This is a page-turning novella for all the mothers and daughters faced with impossible tasks who have the resolve to carry on anyway a fable-like story about how to walk straight into the storm face insurmountable challenges and fight for freedom.
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This exploration of Canada’s health network is also part leadership manual blending the personal reflections of the author with stories of his hands-on expertise. Those stories are taken from Rosenberg’s decades in medical practice study and executive positions. The book opens with the author’s career at a crossroads when he was let go as CEO of Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital as part of a restructuring of Quebec’s hospital system. Rosenberg eventually was rehired in an expanded position in the revamped system where he has overseen its transformation into a value-based (as opposed to numbers-based) operation. The author provides real-world insights from someone who’s worked in the field making heavy topics approachable even to readers not familiar with Canada’s health care infrastructure (or even medicine in general). Along the way readers learn Rosenberg’s leadership philosophy: Do the right thing take responsibility for it stay curious and never lose sight of the human stakes behind every decision. The book has a lot of drama—the author takes readers inside operating rooms and ERs aboard shaky helicopters and even to a remote Arctic medical post offering hard-won wisdom about choosing paths forward (his time in the Arctic taught him “key leadership lessons about resourcefulness adaptability responsibility and the importance of decisive action in critical situations”). Rosenberg points out that leaders lose when they rely only on strict rules and numbers missing what works when teams band together around common purpose. The author does an excellent job of distilling complex subjects; he clearly explains value-based care which is basically putting patient results above numbers. The material is clearly aimed at an audience steeped in medical knowledge but lay readers will find it easy to follow. The questions he raises—who takes responsibility how decisions are made under pressure and what organizations owe the people they serve—are universal. Rosenberg’s book is a surprisingly readable examination of leadership in health care that eschews easy answers in favor of moral clarity.
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Rachel Del Rio describes herself as “42 childless and single” and while her comedy career is thriving and her lesbian best friend Scout McDonough is supportive she’s insecure about her personal life. She’s reluctant to attend her 20th college reunion—everyone “who isn’t gay or a crackpot is married with kids.” Rachel finds an unsigned love letter and decides it must be from Jason Smith her sophomore-year boyfriend; when she’s magically transported back in time 22 years she decides it’s an opportunity to win him back. She can also do better by her friends own up to her self-centered behavior and possibly even save someone’s life. Rachel is missing the full picture however and she’ll have to figure everything out before she’s transported back to her adult life. The book doesn’t unpack some internalized misogyny or unhealthy coping behaviors like excessive drinking. This queer-friendly story also includes frequent positive Harry Potter references in the past timeline and readers may be surprised that Rachel who’s distinguished by her sharp tongue and no-holds-barred language doesn’t mention this irony particularly given her commentary on other societal cultural shifts. The full-color art has a nostalgic feeling reminiscent of comics from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rachel has tan skin and black hair Scout presents white and Jason has brown skin.
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Curie’s pioneering research into radioactivity is the hallmark of her astounding career and in this vivid work of historical fiction Jersild a writer and psychologist imagines what her inner thoughts and desires might have been. She does this so well that Curie feels alive. Excavating Curie’s life Jersild lets readers experience the sexism and misogyny that permeated the scientific world in the early 20th century. Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first person to win two Nobels yet she was berated as selfish and unfeminine and “merely” the widow of another scientist. Jersild recreates the way this might have made Curie feel and how it never stopped her from doing the research to which she dedicated her life. Curie’s scientific work was complex and not easy for a layperson to understand and Jersild wisely keeps the terminology and details of experiments to a minimum without undermining their complexity and nuance. She focuses strongly on the things that shaped Curie: her childhood in Poland; the early loss of her mother; her shortened marriage to Pierre Curie who died in a freak accident; and more provocatively a love affair after her husband’s death with a married scientist that nearly toppled her (but not his) career. With a gimlet eye Jersild uses this affair to spotlight the double standards to which male and female scientists were held and the way Curie understandably devastated by her treatment by journalists and the public managed to pull herself back into her research and new discoveries through the force of her will.
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Stine kicks off what he dubs in his introduction an “Everything Scary Story” (inspired by eating an everything bagel) for middle graders and their parents “who read my books when they were kids!” He throws in a cheery evil laugh—“Mmmmwahahaha…!”—before launching into a four-part story that packs a creepy old house just off Cthulhu Street that serves as the main setting with all the stuff of nightmares from his considerable arsenal. In short chapters alternating between two equally surreal storylines that may each be a dream of the other he chucks in an impressive array of disquieting tropes and elements—ranging from spooky creaks and howls to purple worms emerging from noses a mom who sells crocheted body parts online teachers in “weird animal masks” and classics like evil toys and an ominous message scrawled in blood. Even though the point-of-view characters are in a constant state of round-eyed terror this outing is plainly meant to be in fun and aside from being splashed with hot green vomit or spending a little time as ventriloquist’s dummies none of the young people here suffer actual harm from the cascade of supernatural threats for reasons the author explains at the end. The cast presents white.
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Li’s astute sophomore novel opens with lifelong pals Diana Zhang Justin Yu Errol Chen and Vivian Wang graduating into the Great Recession and moving back into their childhood homes in North Potomac Maryland. Navigating a historically bad job market and their Chinese immigrant parents’ unrealistically high expectations the friends must also contend with their own sense of failure: “The four of them formed a line of defense against the cautionary tales other people hoped to make of them.” Their friendships are tested when Grace Li—their sometimes-friend and their parents’ idea of a model child—returns to town. Grace who dropped out of Harvard Law School to the others’ delight is trying to become a documentary filmmaker and asks the group if she can make a film about them. As the novel is set in the early days of internet fame the friends agree without fully understanding what this will mean for them—until Grace’s documentary Bad Asians goes viral. The video which propels Grace into YouTube stardom reveals long-held secrets unspoken animosity and growing cracks among the four friends. Declaring a “delicate truce” to “hold them together through this larger crisis” the friends try to rehab their image in the most ill-fated way possible. Years later when it all comes back to haunt them they must each figure out how to survive the consequences of their actions. The novel follows the friends in the eight years after graduation as they grapple with the ways the video—and their foolish attempt to course correct—has changed the trajectory of their lives. Li is a master at drawing characters that feel distinct layered and outrageously human even if the pacing sometimes suffers. Imbued with humor and sharp social commentary the novel beautifully explores Asian American identity; economic instability; relationships as both anchor and buoy; the malleability of success; and the ways that ambition manifests itself for better or worse.
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The unnamed and unmoored protagonist of Shannon’s debut novel has reluctantly moved back in with her parents: “I swapped the city I found for the city I came from.” Overeducated and underemployed she deals with her lack of direction by becoming obsessed with cleaning. When she gets a job as a cleaner at a local art gallery and meets fellow artist Isabella her life begins to change. The two women immediately hook up despite the fact that Isabella lives with her successful rich and bland boyfriend Paul. As the narrator becomes more enmeshed in their lives she thinks she may be able to have it all (“I wanted both of them at the same time. I wanted both of them in bed”). When Isabella leaves one day without a word the narrator begins to slip into a life that doesn’t belong to her. Written in stream-of-consciousness style the novel is told in one long gulp with no chapters paragraph breaks or quotation marks. The form situates you directly in the protagonist’s mind which can feel claustrophobic because she’s an absolute disaster. Her thoughts ping-pong among sex art death money children thrifting cleaning cooking and everything in between. She is flaky a liar and makes decisions that seem detached from reality. Unfortunately the novel is both too absurd and not absurd enough. The plot when it surfaces between the narrator’s thoughts is so outlandish at times that it’s distracting. Despite this Shannon has imbued the novel with a sardonic humor that serves as a bright spot. When the artist sits down with her family to fill out the census she tells them she’s not heterosexual to little reaction—and thinks “I questioned whether pure uncut indifference was in fact homophobic or progressive.” These moments of levity help the book become less mired in the narrator’s seemingly endless nonsensical loop.
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Ms. Wilson’s lived in apartment 1A so long that she’s become an expert in the weekday comings and goings of her upstairs neighbors the Lams. She knows every step scuffle and squeak. Best of all the absence of sounds means the building is finally empty and she can play her many instruments in peace. Enter Gus the Lams’ new pup. When they leave for the day on Monday morning he happily barks along as Ms. Wilson plays her piano downstairs. But the silence that Ms. Wilson has come to treasure is gone. Just when it seems like the Lams will have to give up Gus however they hit upon the perfect solution. Sookocheff gently establishes mounting tension on both sides all resolved with a realistically satisfying ending where empathy and cooperation win the day. She captures the complexities of apartment life—the ways in which neighbors fall into familiar routines and negotiate a shared existence. Relying on a muted palette of browns beiges and grays her illustrations are enlivened by action lines swirls and confettilike dots that visually convey sound and emotion; thoughtful details make the characters feel all the more vivid. Ms. Wilson is brown-skinned; the Lams present East Asian.
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Ariana thinks of Nowruz as her “secret holiday” because she’s the only one in her class who observes it. Usually Mama helps prepare but this year she’s out of town. So Ariana and her father step into her shoes with some help from Ariana’s grandmother (Nana). Ariana and Dad shop for food and boil and paint eggs; later Ariana decorates baklava with Nana. As they work Nana explains the holiday’s origins. Nowruz which means “new day” is “like a birthday party for Mother Nature. People welcome spring with clean homes new clothes and clear hearts.” Best of all it’s “a chance to start over and be better people.” When Mama returns she’s happily surprised to see a table brimming with vibrant eggs carefully organized cookies a live goldfish and other significant objects including the haft-seen a spread of seven plant-based items. Later Ariana asks Nana why the whole world doesn’t celebrate Mother Nature’s birthday. Nana’s suggestion that Ariana invite her friends to celebrate with her leads nicely into backmatter discussing Nowruz further. Readers unfamiliar with the holiday will emerge enlightened while youngsters who observe it will feel kinship with Ariana. Warm engaging illustrations rife with bright patterns include recognizable Persian holiday hallmarks such as tiny chickpea cookies sabzeh (greens) and elegant gold-bottomed tea glasses.
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In 1910 a year of Halley’s Comet fire breaks out at the Earthshine Soap factory killing seven women. In 1986 another year of the comet 40-year-old Nona Dixon first hired as a 7-year-old to represent Earthshine in its marketing is acting in a soap opera sponsored by the company. Childless and facing divorce Nona lives in fear her character will be killed off. When Nona’s closest friend Halley Tuttle dies after falling out with her grandmother Earthshine’s 99-year-old owner Bertie Tuttle she leaves Nona an old notebook with a recipe for “Comet Pills” signed by someone named Opal Doucet. Domet’s narrative shifts between Nona and Opal with Opal plotting her future and Nona trying to figure out who Opal was. In 1910 Opal isn’t sure herself. A pregnant runaway wife and self-proclaimed spiritualist she’s confused by the voices she hears but believes that her pills make women happy and fertile. Her most important client is sterile Bertie whose husband wants to sell the company unless she can stop him. But is Bertie trustworthy? Is Opal? In 1986 Earthshine is under siege as various anonymous Jane Does claim the soap causes addictive side effects. Nona begins to distrust the Earthshine world to which she has pledged loyalty. As connections between 1910 and 1986 reveal themselves—sterility lost love infidelity greed and ambition to name a few—real mysteries remain unsolvable: What is choice misdeed and/or unintended consequence? Can one person’s spirit be called forth to inhabit another’s body? Is laughter the correct reaction when a striking 1910 factory worker shouts “Our bodies our soap.” Domet’s writing is uneven sometimes overblown sometimes murky but also highly imaginative. Her characters are intriguing if ambiguous.
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In 2006 Popova created the Marginalian which has evolved into a web archive revealing her wide-ranging reading and search for meaning both evident in her latest compendium. Deftly synthesizing a wealth of primary material she considers thorny and ponderous questions: “What is life?” “What is death?” “What are the building blocks of personhood of sovereignty of identity? Where does the body end and the soul begin?” Biography history and cultural criticism inform her portrayals of an eclectic cast of poets and scientists reformers and visionaries including astronomers Johannes Kepler and Edmond Halley intent on mapping the solar system; Captain James Cook who led an expedition to Tahiti in 1769 to see the transit of Venus and whose observations of Tahitian society—so alien from what he knew in Britain—resulted in a primitive version of cultural anthropology; and Mary Shelley shaped by her parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and entangled with a group of poets awed by the “immensity of the universe” and the dark depths of their own minds. There are natural philosophers Volta Aldini and Galvani who delved into the mystery of animal electricity; chemist Antoine Lavoisier condemned to death during the French Revolution who identified and named hydrogen and oxygen; Humphry Davy who “ushered in the dawn of biochemistry”; anthropologist Ruth Benedict with a “porous curiosity about alternative societies” as eager to understand herself as she was to understand other cultures. And there is Walt Whitman the unabashed celebrant of nature. In chronicling her subjects’ intellectual and emotional passions Popova makes much of intersections and interconnections among individuals from various times places and circumstances who have measured dissected rhapsodized and invented as they grappled with the vexing conundrums and the grandeur of being.
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Scout Porter has vowed to never let love distract her from work but she never said anything about lust. As the head engineer for BuzzCorp a sex-toy manufacturer there’s not much that can make Scout blush—that is until Hudson Bailey comes along. He’s BuzzCorp’s handsome new contracted software engineer which means that Scout has to deal with six weeks of being agonizingly horny. The problem isn’t that he’s tall and bookish or that he’s never even used a sex toy before but that Scout’s life turned upside down the last time she fell for a co-worker and got distracted. After a major mechanical failure at Scout’s previous gig caused her to lose her job and end up heartbroken she’s avoided all relationships—to the point that she’s still a virgin. Hudson doesn’t fall for Scout’s work-only attitude though and asks her to “professionally” teach him the ropes about BuzzCorp’s toys so he can better engineer them. While Scout is leery of entering this teaching partnership with Hudson she realizes she could use it to her advantage. How can she manufacture sex toys without ever having done the deed? Plus she can shake off her untamable desire for Hudson by actually having him and by the looks of his er body language it seems he feels the same way. As Scout and Hudson enter their newfound working relationship Scout can’t help but realize her feelings go beyond the bedroom and she might just be head over vibrator in love. Murray’s novel is a hot hot hot and oh-so-fun workplace romance. In a story perfect for fans of Ali Hazelwood Murray brings the heat while formulating a sincere vulnerable relationship between two people with insecurities. Scout and Hudson buzz with tension on every page and Murray’s tongue-in-cheek chapter headings keep the vibes delightfully campy and steamy.
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Carol Quinn was convicted of seven murders although there might have been some that slipped through the cracks. Now 75 she’s lost the urge to kill and been released from prison moving into Sheldon Oaks a posh retirement home near London’s Hampstead Heath. Since only Giles Temple the owner of Sheldon Oaks and Elisa the concierge know of Carol’s past she’s able to make friends by joining activities like the baking club where she and the charming and erudite Margaret do most of the work while Desmond Geoffrey and Catherine mostly look on and enjoy the final products. After a while Geoffrey a former police officer develops a nagging feeling he recognizes Carol from somewhere and finally recalls where. He tells Margaret who just happens to be a former home secretary and they inform Catherine a pathologist. Carol is an intelligent and likable character but now that her lovely new friends know about her past they avoid her upsetting her no end. Then while she’s sitting on her balcony one day a body plummets from the roof. It’s Desmond and Carol—against her own interests—insists he was the victim of a murder. As an experienced killer herself Carol is perfectly placed to investigate. All she wants is a peaceful retirement but the fickle finger of fate has a strange sense of humor. Geoffrey thinks Carol probably killed Desmond but she’s willing to join the club her former friends set up to investigate the murder in which they all have expertise to offer. A little digging shows there were plenty of people with motive to kill Desmond but given her record Carol knows she’ll end up back in prison if she doesn’t prove herself innocent. The group is loath to trust her but cooperation may be the key to solving the crime.
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This wonderful book is a powerful reminder that moral clarity can improve the world. As a boy Lawson had a “transcendent” experience: “a voice beyond myself” forbid him from responding to racist taunts with violence. Thus began his lifelong commitment to nonviolence which guided his work as an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and an organizer of sit-ins strikes and marches that helped to overturn discriminatory laws. A Methodist pastor who died in 2024 his self-portrait is eventful yet modest. In his 20s during a 13-month prison term for refusing to register for the military draft he refined his views on challenging “evil social patterns” as he wrote in a 1951 journal entry. Foreign travel was also instructive. In India he studied Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolence which informed one of Lawson’s civil disobedience strategies—“flooding the jails” with righteous protesters. Lawson ended his pastoral career in California pushing for fairness in schools and the workplace but his public life would be “defined” by his 1960s civil rights work in the South. Faced with church burnings daily assaults and assassinations of numerous allies some in the movement edged toward “revolutionary violence.” Lawson impressed upon young colleagues that such acts would in turn “destroy Black neighborhoods.” He’s transparent about missteps blaming himself for tactical errors during the landmark Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and for not doing more to combat sexism. His chapter on King’s murder demonstrates his visionary courage. As seen in the archival interview transcripts and newspaper articles he cites Lawson counseled his allies to refrain from retaliatory violence which “would be a denial of [King’s] life and work.” This one belongs in every library in the U.S.
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Countess Báthory Erzsébet—or Elizabeth Bathory as she’s referred to in English and throughout this book—was until recently the Guinness Book of World Records champion of serial killers with 650 possible victims all virginal young women and girls allegedly dispatched to provide the blood that Bathory bathed in to sustain her youth. Her legend inspired horror films and a Swedish death metal band borrowed her surname as a sign of its extreme badass-ness. But since the 1980s scholars have taken a closer look at the historical evidence to uncover a story unlikely to satisfy the bloodlust of a true crime or horror fan. Through close reading of Bathory’s many letters and various contemporary accounts poet and writer Puhak uncovers a thoroughly pre-modern Renaissance woman well bred and well read from a distinguished ancient family. Unusually for a woman of that time when her war-hero husband apparently died of the plague Bathory assumed her husband’s political roles in the counties where their vast estate lay and in the national parliament in Bratislava all while maintaining her traditional tasks as lady of the manor and ward of a finishing school for noblewomen and courtiers-to-be. She was known for her keen interest in what the Hungarians call igazság. “This refers to truth and justice in the broadest sense” Puhak writes. Elizabeth was considered “someone with a strong ethical sense…who would fight for what was morally right and not just politically expedient.” How did she wind up with such a ghastly reputation? It’s a complicated story involving Machiavellian intrigue between Catholics and Protestants Calvinists and Lutherans Hungarians and Germans Europe and the Ottoman Empire and of course powerful men stymied by a strong woman.
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As Joseph’s sophomore novel opens Charli is in London doing a reading of her short story about a young girl who meets David Bowie in a grocery store her voice projected through a megaphone from behind a purple tapestry on which she has handstitched all 10000 words of her master’s thesis in the very same shade of purple: “Nigella Lawson came to the private view of our graduate show and said it looked like something she’d hang in her own sitting room.” That’s Nigella’s only appearance in this edgy often viciously funny romp of a novel but the spirit of David Bowie looms large. Charli is hoping to write a Ph.D. dissertation on Romy Haag the trans disco singer who was Bowie’s longtime lover but her life takes a major detour when she meets an ultra-cool extra dry androgynously beautiful musician named Alexander Geist that night in the bar. He’s off to Berlin to become the next Bowie himself and on a whim Charli joins him. Joseph’s head-spinning account of the rise and fall of Alexander and Charli is absolutely stuffed with nightlife name-checking drugs graphic sex smart details and hilarious sentences. Even the rather overwhelmed reader will find many things to enjoy along the way. At one point Charli is worried she has a headache coming on “so [she] took a few Diazepam and nibbled on a chicken stock cube”—truly a great life hack. Her lament that she’s thrown her lot “for so long with such a bastard and [she] had nothing but a paranoid personality disorder to show for it” is ready to put on a T-shirt. There’s a large cast of supporting characters whose subplots are hard to keep straight and a little distracting but then there will be one of those brilliant sentences to keep you hurtling along.
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“Now this Sock Man had dubbed me with his sock and had claimed me as kin and I remembered what I had always known: I was Daughter of Dirk. I was Minion of the Crab Queen. I was in a full fever. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was supernatural. I was uncanny. I was magnificent.” When we meet Celia Dent she has not yet become aware of her uncanny magnificence: She is working at the telephone company where her job is to disconnect the lines of those with unpaid bills—“We called it ripping your lips”—caught up along with her co-workers in the grisly details of the murder of one of their colleagues by her husband which occurred with a second colleague hastily hidden under the bed but a used condom on the floor in plain view. The death of Vivienne Bianco is oddly titillating to Celia which she knows is not the right reaction but ascribes to the oppressive and dull reality of her daily life. Orphaned and alone by 17 she’d made the grave error of marrying a brutish man she refers to as “my Drew” and her home life is so unpleasant that her tedious commute on the train and her depressing job (where she must deal with unsavory callers like the Sock Man) feel like a welcome escape. The death of Vivienne Bianco sets something new in motion and Oshetsky is an author who relishes bold and sometimes surreal swipes of plot—more melodrama and mayhem are on the way noirish twists delivered with a deadpan comic spin. With her collection of desecrated Barbies her naïveté and her poor impulse control Celia is a fetching character for whom the reader dearly wishes a positive outcome despite all the dead bodies that seem to be accumulating around her.
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Eva is a Belgian immigrant and a recently licensed children’s psychiatrist who has just moved to Burlington Vermont to practice at the local university hospital. Though she is academically and professionally accomplished Eva feels the lack of “someone to love someone who will love her back.” Out of curiosity she attends a talk on climate change at the university and there begins a decades-long romance with Lyman the charismatic accomplished environmental scientist giving the lecture. Eva and Lyman get married and have three children: Ezra Gabriel and Olivia. Their family life is mostly loving and comfortable but it’s punctuated by Lyman’s occasional “dark moods.” Eva convinces Lyman to seek treatment (“I’m getting that feeling again of something dark hanging over our lives”) which helps matters. The summer after Gabriel’s college graduation however Lyman reveals that he has stopped his treatment—his dark moods return and he eventually alienates his entire family in his quest for “quiet.” “Quiet” and “space” are the last things Lyman needs however and the family must come to terms with their guilt over giving in to him. Dumont’s novel is an expertly written hyperrealistic portrait of a family torn apart by mental illness. Though the story spans decades of a marriage and family life the plot moves along without plodding through quotidian minutiae. Instead the author adeptly takes a ‘snapshot’ approach; reading the book feels like leafing through an old family photo album. Savvy readers who peruse the author’s note will be able to predict the end of the story but this is not a bad thing as the plot itself is not the primary focus. As a therapeutic tool this book prioritizes realism over melodrama aiming to connect readers with the story and deliver an emotional catharsis.
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Dark-haired dark-eyed Amira Shah is a barista and debate club prodigy whose biggest problems should be her college applications and ex-boyfriend Kaidan Jaziri. But when she sees Kaidan arguing with a strange man in the alley behind Deja Brew before vanishing into “an eddy of swirling shifting air” she’s concerned for his safety and goes after him. Amira finds herself in Duat where Kaidan reveals himself to be a Descendant of Apep the Old Egyptian god of Chaos. Soon she learns that Descendants are being hunted. Despite being warned about the dangers she’s intrigued by Duat—"a place beyond her little city one filled with temples and magic and mystery”—and she insists on joining Kaidan’s mission to catch the culprit. The deeper they dig the more they discover about both Amira’s family history and the identity of the murderer. Soren’s debut deftly fuses Egyptian mythology with modern teen anxieties—framing friendship betrayal and first love against a backdrop of cosmic stakes—while the gruesome murder mystery lends chilling urgency to the story. Despite some foreshadowing the reveal of the killer’s identity feels somewhat rushed and romantic entanglements occasionally eclipse character development. But 17-year-old Amira’s sarcasm and vulnerability make her a relatable and appealing protagonist.
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