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As a baby the protagonist is embraced by her grandmother (“her petals wrap around me and keep me safe”) who “teaches her to be strong like the branches of an ancient cedar tree.” As she learns to talk her grandfather (“like an ocean”) teaches her to be “courageous like a thunderous waterfall.” As she learns to walk her mother (“like a valley”) shows her how to be “gentle like a warm spring day” and instills in her an appreciation for the hills (“your relatives”) and the Earth (“our mother”). And when she begins to run her father (“like the sun”) teaches her to “dream big and shine like a brilliant rainbow.” As they sing to her the family emphasizes that her connection brings with it a duty to serve as a place keeper a guardian of the Earth. Littlebird (Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) weaves together multiple themes; this is simultaneously a story of intergenerational bonds a tale of growing up and building self-confidence and an appreciation of our planet and its resources. Relying on daring colors that resemble those seen in nature and in powwow regalia Littlebird’s sweeping illustrations pair with invigorating text; soaring butterflies birds and bees crisscross the pages uniting the girl with the land.
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There are any number of reasons why people prefer pat formulas—get tough on offenders keep an eye out for broken windows—over science when addressing crime. Science is hard. Yet nonscientific outcomes are as social scientists say suboptimal. In the vein of Freakonomics Doleac turns to scientific method to test a number hypotheses arguing “I…see a lack of rigor as unethical.” As any economist might do she weighs reward versus punishment as incentives for behavior. One insight is that yes there are plenty of people who belong in prison having committed violent crimes such as rape and murder. But a related insight is that most people who enter the justice system are “more sad than scary” perpetrators of misdemeanor offenses such as shoplifting and drug use. Given that most crime by Doleac’s account is not well thought out in advance and that much crime goes unpunished there are remedies such as building a vast national database of DNA—which she maintains has a greater deterrent effect than the threat of imprisonment since DNA evidence can help improve the likelihood of identifying those who commit a crime quickly and thus act as a strong disincentive. (For privacy advocates she notes that such a database is accessible only to law enforcement.) “This intervention breaks the incarceration cycle rather than perpetuating it” Doleac argues. Perhaps counterintuitively she also advocates for lighter sentences for nonviolent crimes given experimental results that show that leniency “reduced the likelihood of showing up in court again with new charges by 53 percent and it reduced the number of future charges by 60 percent.” Other remedies are more counterintuitive still such as providing air filters in school classrooms which “have a meaningful effect on pollution exposure in a way that has big real-world benefits”—including reducing crime.
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Lindsey Norris Sullivan must fight to keep the library open in her Connecticut town of Briar Creek on the shore of Long Island Sound. Her nemesis Gideon Trask is an obnoxious town councilman who wants to get rid of the library to lower taxes. So Lindsey and her staff come up with the idea of a book boat to serve the population of the nearby islands creating more interest in the library. Lindsey’s husband Mike “Sully” Sullivan is just the one to help—he’s a boat captain. Needing a patron to fund the book boat Lindsey enlists the services of her friend Robbie Vine a famous actor. He sets up a meeting with the membership committee of The Club an exclusive country club on nearby King’s Island which is desperate to have him join. Dressing Lindsey in the designer clothes he buys for his girlfriend Chief of Police Emma Plewicki Robbie brings her to meet Mallory Masterson Leslie Stone Tina Baldwin and Harper Winslow who agree to help fund the boat. On its first run the boat stops at Split Island home of the Capshaws and Montgomerys whose long-standing feud has been supercharged by the elopement of artist Ariel Montgomery’s son and Gwen Capshaw’s daughter. On a second trip Lindsey and Sully find Gwen stabbed to death with a palette knife. Of course Ariel’s a suspect but Lindsey doesn’t believe she did it and when they find Club member Leslie Stone killed the same way it looks like Ariel’s being framed. Lindsey thinks the answer lurks within The Club and with Robbie’s help uncovers plenty of motives.
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“I feared AIDS” Kennedy’s speaker declares bluntly in the opening poem “and Cindy feared / being alone so we forged a compromise” (“The Pact”). The speaker fulfills his role of heterosexual husband to Cindy quasi-dutifully killing “dozens then hundreds” of beetles to maintain his “aggressively healthy” roses and grilling brats in the backyard (“Beetle Graveyard”). But the actual orientation of his desire is clear—he covertly meets up with his gardener at an airport hotel (“Sheraton by the Airport”) and grows erect as he watches a man in a public restroom “piss[ing] loud full throttle a mist / of drops against his legs” (“Oasis”). Kennedy moves deftly from Cindy’s salt-craving pregnancy (“Having It”) to the speaker’s own childhood a time of profound confusion and disorientation. His father is killed by a drunk driver (“Accident 1982”) leaving him with a brother and a violent alcoholic mother who sexually abuses him (“Small Bother”). Cruelty and discipline characterize the speaker’s turbulent childhood; he overhears his friend being beaten after the two watch MTV (“Turning the Key”) and receives a black eye from his classmates which his mother ignores (“Open Secret”). Returning to his adult life the speaker finds a lover Randy and comes out to his mother who responds with skepticism and denial (“Out | comes”). Kennedy’s clear novelistic narration is broken up by two poems titled “Mouth of Many Endings”; these are fragmented abstracted interjections in which “a mother marks the water’s anger / the child failures into length.”
Kennedy is at his strongest in passages of acute glistening physical description. Images jut out at the reader hyper-saturated with the intensity of childhood memory—a father’s amputated little toe a “dangling comma” that is “purple // in a frosty jar”; a mother’s backyard “burn barrel” in which a “donut caramelizes / into a small fist.” These objects defamiliarized yet recognizable in Kennedy’s quasi-prosaic language stand in for everything that is unsaid and unsayable in the speaker’s life the sublimated strangeness that cannot be named: “Every house a house / of sin” the speaker and his mother observe “besides our own” (“Until We Saw Our Faces”). The speaker’s tenderness for his mother is profoundly expressed in poems like “Snapshot of a Girl Refusing to Smile 1956” where he pities her hardscrabble North Carolina childhood and her loneliness even as he points out that he “never wanted to be her son.” One or two poems hit duller more expected beats particularly in the framing poems that provide an entry point for the denser weirder childhood material. The scenario of the rendezvous with the gardener feels well worn for instance and “No Leaks” a poem about a suicide attempt is glancing and vague. (“At the hospital I learned to paint butterflies. / I watched the anorexics pick at their meals.”) The collection is at its most piercing when it operates as a dreamlike scatterplot of childhood omens.Read more...
In this candid if carefully crafted memoir Newsom revisits his fourth-generation San Francisco roots lingering over the family mythology behind his political rise. After his parents’ separation Newsom and his sister were raised by their mother Tessa who struggled financially; his father William an appellate court judge and at one time manager of the Gordon P. Getty Family Trust remained a powerful presence. Newsom underscores the hardships that marked his youth—severe dyslexia and academic frustration—while pointing to the confidence and discipline he found on the basketball court and baseball field. Yet even as the likely presidential candidate casts himself as an underdog entrepreneur who built the PlumpJack Estate Winery and hospitality empire before entering politics his origin story cannot entirely escape the glow of the Getty connection which he acknowledges shadowed his rise from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to mayor and eventually governor. “In my life as a husband father and politician the Getty connection would cloud and distort many things” he writes. “In the eyes of the press I was forever the ‘golden boy’ whose daddy had prospered because of his ties to the Gettys and now the son was simply following suit.” The tension between bootstrap resolve and inherited access to privilege becomes the book’s lingering subtext. Newsom surveys his record which includes authorizing same-sex marriage in San Francisco ahead of national consensus and advancing legislation on climate policy gun safety and reproductive rights. He also acknowledges personal missteps among them the collapse of his marriage to Kimberly Guilfoyle. He presents his later partnership with Jennifer Siebel and their four children as steadier ground. The memoir closes in 2024 before the next chapter of national turbulence though he recounts a revealing 2018 meeting with President Donald Trump on Air Force One following the deadly wildfire in Paradise California. That exchange even more than the measured recitation of achievements offers a sharper glimpse of the political instincts that define him.
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Juliet Capshaw may be heavily pregnant with twins but that doesn’t slow her down; she’s still coming up with new delicacies for Torte her bakery in Ashland Oregon and keeping up a social life with her husband Carlos and their neighbors. One of her dearest friends is Lance Rousseau artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival whose productions bring in hordes of tourists. Lance’s wedding to longtime partner Arlo is nearly foundering in the face of Lance’s ambitious plans. At the moment the play on view is Perfect Crime and behind the scenes there’s a great deal of tension between the actors and their director Kean Armitage which Lance hopes will be mitigated by the fabulous cast party he and Jules are planning. Once Jules meets the actors she’s surprised by the hostility surrounding Armitage who harasses the women; feuds with his bitter soon-to-be ex-wife Vera Armitage who claims to be a reviewer; and insists on a method approach that’s turned his male lead into a stalker. Given the short notice Jules and her staff are busy preparing food for the party but it all comes to a screeching halt when Armitage is shot dead in a dressing room. Jules has already helped her stepfather who’s the law in Ashland solve a long string of crimes so she’s ready to pitch in to help the police. After all she’s already spent enough time talking to cast members to know there may be a surfeit of possible killers.
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When Lizzie Dowling Queen Victoria’s Irish-born parlor maid is found drowned near the Quarr Abbey ruins on the Isle of Wight Julia who happens to be vacationing there with her grandfather examines the body over the objections of the local constabulary that the death was obviously accidental and a woman has no business messing with corpses. Julia Scotland Yard’s first female medical examiner doesn’t establish conclusively that Lizzie was murdered but she does discover that she was four months pregnant. And when Lizzie’s younger sister Brigid who’s been summoned from Cork by Lady Susan Styles a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales is strangled along the way it’s hard to believe that both women weren’t killed by the same person for the same shadowy reason. Once his pursuit of criminal fugitive Edgar Romilly ends with an unexpected jolt that sends him back home Richard is free to rejoin Julia to solve this new case. The path to a solution will lead through thieves smugglers gunrunners multiple murders and several acts of anti-English terrorism rumored and actual. Sadly it also leads though dozens of characters some real some fictional some aristocratic some impoverished but very few of them memorable before the secrets that link the Dowling sisters the royal family and the Troubles come to light with little detective work by Julia and not much more by Richard.
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Dr. Gwen Griffith is no stranger to Dillynaidd where she did her undergraduate degree. Now having watched print journalism fade away she sees no future for herself despite her star credentials so she’s delighted to take up the offer from Dean Carolyn Montgomery her old college friend to return to the university. Upon her arrival Ellis her teaching assistant escorts Gwen to her lovely faculty housing. Carolyn arranges a meet and greet with her fellow professors all of whom seem happy to meet her—except Alice Rice who expected to get her job. Soon after Gwen returns to her rooms she hears a loud banging on the door and when she opens it Alice starts to say something and then falls on top of Gwen. When Gwen screams Professor Rhys Davies arrives but though they give Alice CPR they can’t save her. She’s dead. The attractive Det. Gareth Jones seems suspicious of Gwen and questions if it was a natural death. As a long-time investigative reporter Gwen is curious. So is Ellis who wants to write a story that Gwen supports as a teaching exercise. Since Alice was mean to her students the staff and her fellow faculty members the number of people who might have wanted her dead is overwhelming. As Gwen and Ellis take a deep dive into Alice’s past looking for clues it’s clear that Det. Jones doesn’t approve even though forensics has revealed that she was poisoned. When Gwen is followed and gets death threats she knows she’s hit a nerve. Can she uncover the truth and can her new friends help keep her alive?
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After Dr. John McKenzie destroys the equipment of a fellow member the wolf-watching group to which he and his long-suffering wife belong are glad to see him go tired of his tirades. Then Lew Ferris sheriff of the Loon Lake area of northern Wisconsin gets a call about a couple of missing wolf watchers—the McKenzies—whom the state patrol thinks might be in her area. Lew calls part-time deputy Ray Pradt fisherman extraordinaire and the best tracker she knows to help in the search. Ray who coaches a high school muskie fishing team has other things on his mind—he’s furious that one of the members of his team has been threatened by someone demanding he cheat in order to give the man’s sports-betting business an edge. Turning his attention to Lew’s problem Ray has a hunch the McKenzies are in Robideaux Forest and he and Lew set off. Seeing that an old loggers’ cabin has been rebuilt and is now housing crates of high-powered weapons Lew calls in a larger police presence in the hope of catching the gunrunners. Lew is in a long-term romantic relationship with dentist Doc Osborne who shares her love of fly-fishing. His house is on a lake and across the road from Ray’s trailer where Lew meets back up with the deputy who has some new ideas about where the McKenzies may be. Sure enough Ray finds them shot dead and partially buried presumably by gunrunners who caught them near the cabin. When someone takes a shot at Lew through Doc’s window it only spurs them on to solve the murder catch the gunrunners and unravel the sports-betting scam.
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The titular first essay is a perfect way into this almost dauntingly intelligent book employing a few of the author’s signature gambits to winning effect. There are 13 numbered sections: How To Disappear Ways To Disappear What They Will Say People Who Disappeared Why You Are Not Famous and so forth. Each of these is an exhaustive list of possibilities for that item funny provocative relatable vulnerable cynical and sobering by turns. This essay is one of the two most straightforward in the book the other being the third The Uber Diaries a series of vignettes describing the author’s experiences as a rideshare driver after a big Hollywood project he had been involved in fell apart and left him disastrously overextended. All the terrible things one might imagine could happen to a driver at the hands of his riders do indeed happen but lead to an epiphanic ending where the line between driver and rider dissolves. The next essay is much more conceptual or theoretical titled On the Desire To Reject Narcissism: Notes Toward a Follow-Up Essay to “The Uber Diaries.” Possible openings for such an essay numbered from 1 to 131 follow though some are printed with strikethroughs and others only vaguely described and some sections simply reprint poems by other people among them Franz Wright Fred Chappell and Molly Peacock. Heady stuff. Subsequent essays contain autobiographical material from a painful childhood and a spiky writing career plus detailed recountings of certain stories Minor is obsessed with most importantly the fate of eight sailors in a 1968 sailing race. His favorite competitor: “Bernard Moitessier the sailor who quit the race because he simply wanted to sail the seas.” It is poignantly evident that that’s exactly what Minor means to do with this book: quit the race sail the seas. You don’t have to be as smart as he is to enjoy the ride.
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Things are off to a rocky start as Honey Bunny—who’s made of melting honey—oversleeps but Muk Muk the moose rouses her by pulling the Emergency Bunny Wake-Up Lever. Conflict arises as the two disagree over which invention to enter in the convention: the Nut-o-Roombots vs. the Fort-a-Potty. Or maybe the Sweet-N-Sour-Smooth-E-Chomp-R? But Honey doesn’t listen to Muk Muk and bulldozes ahead. When a storm cancels the convention—and reduces all the inventions to rubble—a furious Honey Bunny vows revenge on Mother Nature: “She started this fight but I will end it!” Attempting to rein in the maniacal Honey Bunny Muk Muk encourages her to brainstorm but she blows him off and he works on his own inventions—all of which successively fail. Perhaps collaboration is just as crucial as creativity when it comes to inventions? Bean’s artwork evokes old-time Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the string of improbable Rube Goldberg–esque devices and resulting mishaps keeps interest high. The social message—more prominent than in the first book—adds a bit more gravitas but there’s plenty of goofiness here too; Muk Muk’s spiel in defense of the Fort-a-Potty reminiscent of infomercials is especially charming.
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John Keating’s edgy first-person narrative jumps around over the decades from 1987 to 2021 studded with brilliant character sketches. Chief among them are Keating’s fellow teacher and former girlfriend Enid Smeal a dedicated artist with little time for personal interactions; her awkward son Jacob; the boy’s classmate Clara Hightower serious and calm beyond her years; and smarmy Richard Kingsley Madison IV head of St. George’s the private K-8 school where Keating teaches. Richy as Keating delights in cheekily calling him is obsessed with improving St. George’s endowment and reputation. Key to this goal is Clara who first comes to Keating’s attention at Jacob’s 6th birthday party and by the time she arrives in his 8th grade classroom is clearly brilliant and destined for success that Richy hopes will burnish the school’s reputation. Jacob smart but resolutely underperforming in school and uncomfortable in social situations becomes her unlikely boyfriend and after she breaks up with him when they’re headed for separate high schools painfully in love with her for the rest of his life. As he chronicles their adult lives and his own marriage Keating sprinkles an often sad story with knock-knock jokes and other forms of humor frequently pausing to explain why they’re funny—“Telling people why things are funny can be funny too” he asserts. We come to realize that under his sardonic exterior he is a ferociously dedicated teacher whose mocking self-assessment (“I am desperate for notice.…[I] created a world where I could be the king of my own tiny realm”) masks genuine love and concern for his students. The circumstances leading to his stroke are eventually revealed as is Clara’s unexpected post-school trajectory but what will stick with readers most are the multi-dimensional portraits of complicated flawed human beings most notably the novel’s narrator.
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“We’d been in a manageable amount of danger since we were born” says Mars the narrator one of three brothers whose Black father appears to have been murdered and whose Greek Jewish mother a community doctor up and disappeared. White supremacist paramilitary and fascist groups prowl the shrunken city where ID codes have been instituted at check points that separate the wealthy from the poor. Among the siblings Amilcar or AG having “cooled out with the autodidactic revolutionary blueprint” now works in the mayor’s office—or so his siblings who lost touch with him have heard. Lucius or Lu the “pitbull” of the family and the pop culture savvy Mars have gotten involved in different ways with private security groups and armed resistance. A notable fourth party is Lu’s ex-girlfriend Minnijean Belafonte aka Mini-Bel head of an underground group whose fortifications “would make CIA blacksites proud.” Holmes’ impressive first novel following his story collection How Are You Going to Save Yourself (2018) proceeds with unstoppable energy cutting through its sprawling narrative with tangy dialogue wide-ranging cultural and historical references and stinging social commentary: “Once you turn 30 it’s like they take the heart and soul out of a Black man in this country. And you don’t wanna fight no more.” Extreme weather—dreaded sprees of 110 degrees and conditions so cold that cops “who still had souls” pick up people to keep them from freezing to death—further weakens the city of broad shoulders. One can only wonder what Carl Sandburg would make of it.
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Growing up in Bethlehem Pennsylvania TikTok influencer James never learned how to read. The economically insecure child of a single Black mother he attended schools where “teachers never taught.” He also grew up with OCD ADHD anxiety and dyslexia all of which made school challenging. Despite his lack of literacy James graduated from high school and attended a few college classes before being imprisoned for trafficking guns to make extra money for his mother and himself. Not surprisingly the author’s illiteracy made day-to-day life extremely difficult. Everything from grocery shopping to cooking to texting required a reading level he did not have. “You can’t even make Kraft Mac & Cheese if you can’t read the instructions” he writes. “I had to be shown how then memorize it.” Not knowing how to read also made him dependent on others creating unhealthy relationships and driving him toward coping mechanisms namely drinking. “This isn’t just about reading” James writes. “It’s about survival. It’s about the masks we wear and the parts of ourselves we bury just to make it through the day.” James credits therapy sobriety and veganism for helping to change his life—and allowing him to learn how to read. He sees his journey toward literacy as a journey of healing and liberation. He writes “It’s my belief that reading is that launching pad no matter what your personal struggle is to overcome.” The book’s more expository chapters sometimes drag spending more time on processing than plot but overall this is a thoughtful and inspiring story about vulnerability and courage.
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Local television news reporter Delilah Stewart is beloved in Baltimore for her sunny personality whether she’s delivering the forecast or doing a feature at the aquarium while wearing a turtle costume. Radio weather and traffic reporter Jackson Clark is not so keen on her; she’s silly and chaotic (and always does a terrible parking job in their shared lot) whereas he likes to have plans and structure for everything in his life. When a major snowstorm is predicted their bosses decide the pair should report together from the mountains several hours outside the city where the storm will hit first. They soon realize they have more in common than expected and Delilah even helps calm Jackson’s anxiety and bring out his fun side. Attraction grows and the cozy snowy lodge is the perfect place for secret kisses. But when they return home to family drama and busy work schedules it becomes more complicated to find their way back to each other. Bubbly good-natured Delilah is an absolute gem of a character; she’s unapologetically full of warmth and kindness but there’s more to her beneath her smile. Parts of her life are messy sad and difficult yet she chooses to put her best foot forward even when self-doubt creeps in. Lovable Jackson has his own share of hardships in life and when the couple become vulnerable and open up to each other their mutual support and care is tender and beautiful. Conflict comes more from outside factors (some that feel underdeveloped) than from their relationship but their personal growth feels well-earned while humor and spice are deftly woven into this charming tale.
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During their team’s heyday Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin were enthusiastic postgame partiers. Their revelries became tabloid fodder after the 1957 nightclub brawl that led to Martin’s “exile” from the Yankees. This uneven dual biography is equally interested in the players’ between-the-lines triumphs and “self-destructive” impulses. Martin was a heady hard-nosed infielder his combativeness forged during a hard-knock youth in Berkeley California which Castro narrates in rich detail. The author goes even deeper on Mantle invoking Freud and Shakespeare. As Castro recounted in a previous book Mantle: The Best There Ever Was (2019) young Mantle was sexually abused by a relative. Meanwhile at his father’s behest he worked tirelessly on his baseball skills. Castro contends that Mantle’s “nightlife carousing” and “sexual escapades” constituted “an unspoken rebellion against” his father. Further Mantle’s “overwhelming fear” of failure which surfaced during batting slumps suggests “a hint of possible panic disorder.” This is more armchair psychoanalysis than his research can support. The author who was a reporter in 1970s Texas when he “met and befriended” Mantle bases parts of his 1950s-set narrative on the recollections of the ballplayer’s “longtime girlfriend” whom Castro met and interviewed “half a century” after the events described in the book. Thus do some quotes and scenes feel overly tidy. Castro also pens a “dream sequence” that takes us into “Mickey’s mind” and catalogs his memories. “Traditional attribution felt restrictive” Castro writes “so I turned to a literary approach.” His methods figure to frustrate readers trying to differentiate fact from fiction. He’s much stronger on the Oklahoma-born ballplayer’s fish-out-of-water introduction to Gotham and the Paul Bunyan-esque quality of Mantle’s long home runs. And he has an interesting take on Martin’s Hall of Fame worthiness. But aside from Yankee completists this book’s appeal seems limited.
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In the turbulent circumstances created by the Islamic State’s takeover of Iraq in 2014 Bridget Mathloum an artist and the elderly widow of Haydar finds herself at varying odds with her three adult daughters—Ishtar Zainab and Mediha—over the proper way to preserve the family’s artistic legacy. At the heart of the disagreement are friction and distrust over the disposition of a cache of paintings by Haydar a contemporary painter who was part of an influential group that ushered in a modern arts movement in Iraq during the 1950s. Beyond that Bridget’s daughters differ in their attitudes toward their ancestral homeland and their approaches to their personal artistic endeavors. Nizar Zainab’s son faces his own existential dilemma after his return from a tour as a war correspondent in Yemen and his exposure to terrible brutality and inhumanity. As the family works out how to best preserve and promote their legacy larger questions loom involving the fallibility of memory personal responsibility in the face of state overreach and the value of women’s work in the arts. The corrosive effects of war on the psyche of residents of the Middle East is summed up neatly in an exchange between Nizar and a new lover; when he explains that his own father had died “in the war” before he was born the not unexpected reply is “Which war?” A selected timeline of Iraqi history from 1917 to 2014 is included in the text as well as an author’s note explaining the historical figures upon which Haydar and Bridget’s characters are based.
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Anxiety. Depression. Neurodivergence. Medication. Gender. Social media and peer pressure. American schoolchildren have it rough. What can teachers do to foster climates of acceptance? Greene a clinical psychologist and author argues that we need to “meet students where they’re at” rather than set goals for all. Teachers should recognize each student’s difference early on. They should de-escalate conflict. We should replace “difficulty” with the “unsolved problem”—rather than seeing students as impeded or inadequate find out what’s really holding them back. Work collaboratively rather than individually. Listen more than talk. The author distills his approach into the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model and what he calls “leadership density”: “leadership is not about positional authority but about shared ownership collaboration and collective efficacy.” This advice will be familiar from decades of self-help guides and workplace counseling. Group management of anyone boils down to a few basic tenets of social responsibility. There is much common sense here and the case studies of individual students and teachers reinforce the view that if we only were more patient and supportive school would be a better place. The goals are social: building critical thinkers active citizens skilled communicators empowered individuals. The author acknowledges: “a lot of the outcomes…aren’t related to academics.” What we do not get is an inquiry into the root causes of why kids are not OK. Systemic poverty food insecurity the breakdown of the nuclear family an overzealous pharmaceutical industry? This is a book less about big solutions than everyday management and if it gets some teachers off their high horses and back on all fours it will have succeeded.
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When the orphanage’s night matron attacks Ophelia and Serena white-presenting twins “born on either side of midnight” Serena’s previously untapped magical powers emerge. She sends a bolt of lightning hurtling toward the night matron. Ultimately the twins must be saved by two witches who reveal that their adversary was a Dark Witch in disguise. Their rescuers—Sagittarius who has tawny brown skin jet black hair and “almond eyes” and can conjure portals and Leo a pale-skinned redhead with the power of telekinesis—are part of a coven based on star signs with new members born each year. The Twelve are duty-bound to kill Dark Witches. After they’re whisked away from the orphanage the sisters are introduced to other members of the coven each named for an astrological sign including ebony-skinned Taurus who’s their head witch. Ophelia and Serena are pressured to join as Pisces and Aries in order to help the group assemble the strongest force possible for their inevitable battle against the Dark Twelve who are led by the world’s highest-ranked witch. This atmospheric pulse-pounding fantasy of sisterhood and witchcraft initially seems like a classic tale of good versus evil but quickly becomes something much more ambiguous but no less chilling. Unfortunately it can be difficult to differentiate among the large cast due to some of their personalities being underdeveloped.
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After unseating her corrupt father from his position as the Prime Mancella “Mance” Cliff has spent months wrestling with the burden of leading the Cliff Realm. Unsure of whom to trust and unwilling to burden those she loves such as the former thief Silver she utilizes her newly inherited power which allows her to physically manifest and consult aspects of her character such as Heart Poise and Asset for counsel. However a marriage proposal from the Prime of the Forest Realm along with signs of corrupted magic pushes Mance to face the part of herself she fears the most—and forces Silver to fight for their love. This installment is light on the backstory and requires readers to be familiar with the first book. Mance’s existing ability to summon and wield the animals she’s killed is secondary to her new powers of multiplicity. The chapters are narrated by Mance Silver and Mance’s various personas. While the dark magic is less graphic than in the previous book this entry does feature body horror. The romance between the white-presenting leads is secondary to Mance’s journey toward self-acceptance. The new characters are well rounded but the returning supporting characters feel underutilized and the book overall lacks the emotional depth of the previous volume.
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