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Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Comet & Star

Review by Jill Lorenzini

Magic always occurs when a book’s narration and illustrations are perfectly matched. But an even more special kind of magic happens when the art goes beyond the written word and weaves a quiet message of its own. Comet & Star is a deceptively simple, genuinely sweet story about friendship with an underlying profundity that will touch even the grumpiest readers’ hearts.

Author Juck Lee starts this picture book like a sweet, classic fairytale. Juck’s narration, translated by Stine Su Yon An, is straightforward, if somewhat expected, and lovely as it tells the tale of a charmingly personified, lonely little star. Meanwhile, illustrator Jinhee Lee uses layered colored pencils and varying perspectives to the protagonist’s celestial home and the earth below. 

The gentle-faced little star huddles against a quiet—and empty—space backdrop. High above windswept trees, it earnestly watches for new friends. One day, it meets a comet that passes by every 76 years, finally giving the star someone to connect with. Lee’s soft colored pencil art is full of movement, warmth and emotion; this is a humble little story that is easy to like.

But Lee’s art tells a second story, too: As the comet and star’s friendship unfolds in the skies, their lives are also being carefully documented below through newspaper clippings, photographs and notebooks filled with drawings. Taped sketches, dried leaves and notes of natural observations mark the passing of time and the careful attention of someone who is also watching and waiting. After several rereadings of Comet & Star, a realization hit this reviewer like a comet. The star waits for its only friend to return every 76 years, but here on Earth, it has admirers it could never have imagined—in a sense, friends who observe and love from miles away. That’s the true message of Comet & Star: For every friend you see, there are countless others thinking of you.

Whether you need a gift for an old friend you rarely see, or a bedtime story for a little one who loves to watch the night sky, Comet & Star is the perfect choice. Just like Halley’s Comet, books with this unique magic don’t stop by every day. Don’t miss it.

Whether you need a gift for an old friend, or a bedtime story for a little one who loves to watch the night sky, Comet & Star is the perfect choice. Just like Halley’s Comet, books with this unique magic don’t stop by every day.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

Bright I Burn

Review by Sydney Hankin

As the 16-year-old daughter of moneylenders from Kilkenny, Ireland, Alice Kyteler has learned to trust very little. Only the surrounding brooks and forests, the gold stashed in her floorboards, and her own mind make the cut. One wrong turn could paint an immediate bullseye on her back: For a woman in the 13th century, a charge of witchcraft is just a misstep away. With her mother dead at the hands of her father, and herself aware that she is rapidly approaching the age at which she must marry, Alice has more reason than ever to be on her guard around the men in her life.

Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by the few known details about Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose life author Molly Aitken thoughtfully explores into adulthood and old age. Four marriages—each unmistakably different from the last—shape Alice’s path through the highs and lows of motherhood, work, religion, loss and public life. While her experiences as a young parent are the most emotional and devastatingly palpable, Alice’s defining blend of pragmatism and spontaneity lend a unique outlook to her later years. As she learns to navigate grief and a world awash in fear, Alice’s wistfulness becomes lyrical poetry in Aitken’s hands: “Here, moth larvae nick away at bark until trees crash to the ground, and snow falls, suns set, and rivers change course. It is the place of great sky-shattering storms. A place where two women could stand naked, hair undressed for the wind to dance.”

Memories and dreams, along with letters, songs and the ever-present town gossip, are interspersed with the narrative, creating a quick-moving yet immersive experience that’s better felt than analyzed. While folks looking for a more historically expansive narrative may find Bright I Burn to be too interior, the author’s prowess in character building helps bring Alice’s story to life. Aitken instills a complex and heartbreaking grit in Alice which is both moving and painful to witness.

Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose 13th-century life author Molly Aitken imbues with a complex and heartbreaking grit.
NonfictionSocial Science

By the Fire We Carry

Review by Annie Harvieux

In By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, journalist Rebecca Nagle chronicles generations of land theft perpetrated by the American government against Native American nations, following Native leaders and allies who have pushed back. This vital account not only explains how the United States government and Supreme Court swindled Native Americans out of millions of acres of land designated for them in treaty allotments, but also details how the fight for Native land rights continues today, including the unfolding of a 2020 Supreme Court win upholding much of Oklahoma as tribal land.

In the book, Nagle focuses on threads in two Native nations’ histories, one historical and one contemporary, to lay out the social and legal precedent for our current state of affairs. In the present, Nagle visits Muscogee Nation, where an Oklahoma public defender argues that Patrick Murphy’s 1999 murder of George Jacobs, for which he was convicted and sentenced to death, was committed on reservation land rather than in Oklahoma’s jurisdiction. Murphy’s appeal opens up a broader, fiercer debate over Native land and treaty rights, escalating to the Supreme Court. The other main thread follows Nagle’s own ancestors, 19th-century Cherokee Nation leaders John and Major Ridge, who were confronted with treaty negotiations, land politics and immense strife following the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

With precision and ease, Nagle defines and contextualizes legal terms and historical figures. This sturdy scaffolding allows the reader to gain footholds for ethical exploration and discussion, as well as pass judgment on the supposed impartial nature of the American government and Supreme Court. Making cultural context and treaty details easily accessible, and using the Native legal and cultural advocates who have won back land as guideposts, Nagle clearly demonstrates centuries of precedent in which corruption of American businesses and government alike has undone the legal protections previously given to Native land and livelihood across America.

“The fight over truth is so bitter because power flows from the dominant narrative—the power to shape both public sentiment and public policy,” Nagle writes. By the Fire We Carry is essential reading for considering how the country can end this cycle of irreparable damage and move toward a more just future.

Rebecca Nagle’s gripping By the Fire We Carry chronicles how the appeal of a decades-old Oklahoma murder restored land rights to Muscogee and Cherokee Nations.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Blackheart Man

Review by Ralph Harris

Veycosi, the narrator of Nalo Hopkinson’s Caribbean-inspired fantasy novel, Blackheart Man, is not a good person. He is a near-constant failure with few redeeming qualities; this is a character you may be supposed to hate (and boy did I). We are introduced to Veycosi mid-escapade: attempting to unclog the aqueducts of Carenage Town, a city on the island of Chynchin, with a phosphorus bomb. Despite the fact that he partially floods a whole neighborhood, Veycosi still believes he should receive nothing but praise. At the same time, 15 ships from Ymisen, a country that once conquered Chynchin, appear in the harbor. The rest of Hopkinson’s story features further Veycosi failures and a couple of singular successes as he stumbles through major events in a city wreathed in magic.

Chynchin’s unique culture is one of the most interesting aspects of Blackheart Man. The island’s society is matriarchal after a fashion, with family units typically consisting of one wife and two co-husbands. Only women are allowed to be sailors; men tend to take on supporting tasks such as caring for children. Science (like Veycosi’s phosphorus bomb) mixes easily with obeah, a Caribbean magic tradition that, among other things, can create people like Kaira, a “twinning child” born with no biological father, just a mother. Chynchin is populated by various groups of formerly enslaved people who banded together to defeat their conquerors. Despite that, there are certainly still lower classes, chief among them the Mirmeki, former enslaved soldiers of the Ymisen, who are relegated to physical labor. Hopkinson riffs on French-Caribbean dialect and slang, in addition to including various fictional languages, and readers who enjoy imagining different voices for characters will appreciate Blackheart Man’s plethora of distinct accents and tones.

As the political situation escalates to a breaking point and Veycosi continues on his picaresque adventures, Hopkinson reveals the shrouded, mystical history of Chynchin and its people.  However, as the entire story is told through the lens of the incredibly unreliable and frequently intoxicated Veycosi, readers are basically learning this story from the perspective of the town fool. Time skips forward without warning, and incongruities in the narrative are part of the charm; Hopkinson even includes a passage where the book halts to point out its inconsistencies. By the end of the tale, some secrets have been uncovered, but many remain mysteries. Readers ready for a wild, chaotic series of unfortunate events will enjoy seeing how badly Veycosi ruins everything.

Nalo Hopkinson’s Blackheart Man is a picaresque fantasy adventure following a hilariously unreliable narrator as he stumbles through a series of important political events.
FictionPopular Fiction

Borough Features

Review by Arlene McKanic

Gretchen Sparks, a reporter for a down-at-the-heels New York City newspaper, and the protagonist of Erica Ciccarone’s Borough Features, is a delicious conundrum. She’s not exactly unlikable, but she’s someone you’d best be wary around. She’s an alcoholic and doesn’t seem to understand social cues. Maybe her problematic nature stems from her crazy family, which includes her cloying, long-suffering mother; her father, now afflicted with dementia; and her selfish, silly sister Nico. Some of Gretchen’s troubles certainly stem from her grief over the death of her brother Dominic, a medic killed in Afghanistan.

If anyone loves and understands Gretchen Sparks unconditionally and without drama, it’s her editor, Marty. When the book opens, he’s in the hospital thanks to a heart attack, and it doesn’t look good. Marty and Gretchen are so close that his wife asks Gretchen to write his obituary when the time comes.

Marty is, or was, deeply interested in the local color of the outer boroughs, and when we meet Gretchen, she’s on her way to fulfill his last assignment to her: interview a loony Coney Island lady who claims to have a crime-fighting seagull. Soon after this, she meets a boy named Jaime Padilla, who also has an interesting story. Gretchen and the reader quickly find out that Jaime’s tale is but a tiny piece of a much larger and nastier puzzle. As eager to get to the bottom of a story as ever, Gretchen gets pulled right in.

Ciccarone, who is an associate editor at BookPage, knows much about the folkways, to say nothing of the skeevy politics, of Brooklyn and Queens. Her characters—ridiculous, creepy, heartbreaking and always human—are memorable, none more so than Gretchen Sparks, a woman as devastatingly vulnerable as she is hard and cynical. Borough Features is a great debut.

Erica Ciccarone’s debut is packed with memorable characters, but none more so than Gretchen Sparks, a tough, cynical reporter for a down-at-the-heels New York City newspaper who is currently investigating reports of a crime-fighting seagull.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

Belly Full

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

The colorful, flavorful Belly Full: Exploring Caribbean Cuisine through 11 Fundamental Ingredients and over 100 Recipes accomplishes what might appear to be a daunting task—distilling a multifaceted culture’s cuisine into a 256-page book. Luckily, Brooklyn-based author Lesley Enston understands that challenge, and has chosen to make Belly Full a playful, not overwhelming, read. She organizes the book into fundamental ingredients: beans, calabaza, cassava, chayote, coconut, cornmeal, okra, plantains, rice, salted cod and Scotch bonnet peppers. Beyond that, she describes additional common ingredients—such as culantro, which is similar to but not exactly like cilantro—so that newbies to Caribbean cuisine have an informed approach. Enston grew up in a half-Trinidadian, half-Canadian household in Toronto, and often attended Trinidadian family functions. “We never talked much about the origins of these dishes,” she writes, “but the pride that went into preparing and serving them was clear.” In keeping with its Caribbean subject matter, Belly Full is filled with saturated colors and vibrant photography from Marc Baptiste. Enston’s Trini chow mein is particularly appealing, with its kitchen-sink approach to the traditional Asian dish. It’s also a fun portal into the culture: “This is a clear example of the influence of the Chinese indentured servants brought to Trinidad by British colonists after the abolition of slavery in the region,” she writes. An even deeper dive into cultural distinction is that the dish uses lo mein, not chow mein, noodles. “Why it’s called chow mein when you use lo mein noodles is beyond me,” Enston writes. “I chalk it up to the joy we seem to get from mixing names up.”

 

Belly Full is a charming, playful cookbook that uses 11 fundamental ingredients to distill the multifaceted cuisine of the Caribbean.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Black Butterflies

Review by Freya Sachs

Though the Bosnian War and the Siege of Sarajevo may feel distant, they took place less than 30 years ago. Those terrifying moments in 1992 are vividly imagined in Priscilla Morris’ haunting novel Black Butterflies.

When the war is just beginning, Zora doesn’t believe it will last, and she stays in Sarajevo while her husband departs for England where their daughter’s family lives. As the shelling and attacks intensify, Zora—a painter and professor tied deeply to place—remains. Soon, leaving is no longer an option, and the city is divided by violence, hunger and cold. And yet, she finds ways to survive.

Black Butterflies is a story of how art sustains and gives purpose in moments of desolation and terror. It is a story of art as a connector and community maker. Zora’s determination that there is always meaning and beauty to be found is compelling, as are her efforts to maintain relationships with neighbors and friends despite their differences and the circumstances. Some of the most powerful moments of the novel come when she is working on her paintings, in how Morris renders the horror and devastation of the war through Zora’s ways of seeing and describing.

By presenting the perspective of a civilian, Morris invites readers to engage with what it means to watch a war unfold around you, and to consider art as a mechanism of survival. This novel is both devastating and beautiful, infused with a sense of hope. 

Black Butterflies follows an artist’s life in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, in a story of how art sustains and gives purpose in moments of desolation and terror.
NonfictionArtLifestylesArt

Acts of Creation

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

British author and critic Hettie Judah’s Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood is an essential art history. With 150 color illustrations and a scope that encompasses prehistory to the present moment, this exceptional book reframes motherhood as an important position from which to make and understand art. Judah’s tight prose moves gracefully from poetic to intense to straightforward. From her first sentence, this gifted writer tackles her subject with intellectual and artistic vigor: “A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head,” she writes in the book’s introduction. It’s inspiring to read along as she tackles the long overlooked cultural figure of the artist-mother with gravitas. A chapter titled “Creation” investigates the analogy of creativity and childbearing, noting the irony of the artist-mother’s place throughout the ages: “For much of art’s history, this literal process of baby-making and nurture invalidated a woman’s status as an artist.” Contemporary art enthusiasts will be especially taken with Acts of Creation, which includes insight into heavyweights like Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Carrie Mae Weems and more. But like any good curator, Judah has filled these pages with more obscure and under-the-radar artists, so there’s plenty to discover no matter your familiarity with art, feminism or motherhood. In a chapter called “Mothering,” Judah, with a hat-tip to the writer and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, speaks to “the radical potential of mothering as a form of expanded care,” regardless of gender or social privilege.

Hettie Judah’s insightful Acts of Creation gives motherhood its due, honoring it as an important position from which to make and understand art.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Ash’s Cabin

Review by Norah Piehl

Ash has always felt like an outsider. They have few friends at school, their interests in fantasy novels and environmentalism aren’t shared by their peers, and when they came out as nonbinary and changed their name, their parents didn’t quite get it: “When they don’t think I can hear them, they say the old name to each other.” So when their family decides to take a summer trip to Disneyland, Ash asks permission to head to northern California instead, ostensibly to spend time at their aunt and uncle’s ranch—but actually to solve a mystery.

Ash’s beloved Grandpa Edwin always talked about a cabin he’d built in the wilderness near the ranch. Now that Edwin’s passed away, no one’s sure whether the cabin is real or just family lore, but Ash is determined to find out. They spend weeks researching, planning and preparing. When the time is right, they set off with nothing but their dog Chase and what they can carry on their back, ready to fully embrace a life without judgment—and entirely alone.

Graphic novelist Jen Wang, who has explored issues of gender and identity in previous works like The Princess and the Dressmaker and Stargazing, continues to examine these ideas in Ash’s Cabin through the bittersweet, complicated character of Ash. Though determined to be self-reliant, Ash soon comes to understand just how interconnected humans are with each other and with the natural world. 

Wang’s pen and watercolor drawings tenderly illustrate Ash’s world. Structured as a journal, the graphic novel includes illustrations of fish, herbs and edible plants; but even as Ash, the narrator, outlines all they’re doing to survive in this remote place, Wang’s illustrations also depict the toll this isolated life takes on Ash and Chase, especially when a crisis threatens all they’ve built. Beautiful, complex and affirming, Ash’s Cabin will prompt deep conversations about how best to support one another and our environment, at a time when the future is uncertain and peace can be hard to find.

Beautiful, complex and affirming, Ash’s Cabin will prompt deep conversations about how best to support one another and our environment, at a time when the future is uncertain and peace can be hard to find.
AudioMystery

When We Were Silent

Review by Maya Fleischmann

India Mullen’s taut performance highlights the devastating, long-term effects of traumatic events in the audiobook of When We Were Silent, Fiona McPhillips’ debut novel.

Despite her traumatic past, Louise (Lou) Manson is living a relatively normal life. That changes when Ronan, the brother of her former close school friend, Shauna, shows up. Ronan, now a lawyer, persuades Lou to testify in a lawsuit against Highfield Manor, jeopardizing her newfound stability by unearthing secrets and lies that have been buried for decades. Mullen brings out the complex emotions that surface when Lou is forced to relive the incidents that occurred when she attended the prestigious Dublin private school for girls. With her full-bodied voice and unhurried pace, Mullen conveys an unsettled atmosphere and the intricate dynamics between all the players—villains and victims—as their paths reconverge and the truth of what happened to the girls, including Lou, is revealed.

Fans of Megan Miranda’s The Perfect Stranger and Lisa Jewell’s The Night She Disappeared will enjoy this suspenseful and haunting listening experience.

Read our starred review of the print version of When We Were Silent.

In When We Were Silent, India Mullen’s skillful narration brings out the complex emotions that surface when Lou Manson is convinced to testify against the prestigious Dublin private school she attended decades prior.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Middle grade readers have long reveled in stories where museums and mystery intersect. Notable and beloved examples include E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer and Gillian McDunn’s When Sea Becomes Sky.

Bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Jasmine Warga joins in the artsy, sleuth-y fun with A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, a creative and compassionate tale featuring a stolen painting, a confused ghost and an inquisitive turtle.

Eleven-year-old Rami Ahmed’s mom supervises the cleaning crew at the Penelope L. Brooks Museum, and Rami spends a lot of time there after school. Lately, he’s also been very worried: A painting called “Untitled” has been stolen, and security staff consider him and his mom to be suspects. Things haven’t been good at school either, since his best friends publicly rejected and humiliated him at lunch. A smart, confident girl named Veda has invited him into her friend group, but he can’t stop reliving his feelings of hurt and shame. 

When Rami encounters the girl depicted in “Untitled” floating around the spot in Cherry Hall where the painting once hung, he has to stifle a few screams, but he also feels a glimmer of hope. The girl insists Rami help her figure out who she is, and he realizes his investigation could unearth the art thief as well. Crime podcast-aficionada Veda decides to join him, and even Agatha the turtle has information to contribute, too—if only she can get the humans to see her as more than a creature silently sunning itself on a rock.

Warga deftly layers in suspense and intrigue as the kids research the painting’s provenance, investigate the crime and try to avoid arousing suspicion in the adults around them. (After all, one of them might be the thief!) Through it all, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall exudes appreciation for the transformative nature of art—emphasized by Matt Rockefeller’s lovely grayscale illustrations at the book’s beginning and end—and exudes empathy for those who struggle with loneliness. After all, as one character notes, “It is a singular feeling to be understood. Seen. Connected. It is the best feeling in the whole world.”

Bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Jasmine Warga delivers artsy, sleuth-y fun in A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, a creative and compassionate tale featuring a stolen painting, a confused ghost and an inquisitive turtle.
AudioPopular Fiction

Lies and Weddings

Review by Norah Piehl

Whether you eagerly devoured Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, or you’re coming to his “lifestyles of the rich, famous and problematic” subject matter for the first time, the audiobook of his latest standalone novel, Lies and Weddings, is sure to satisfy. Kwan’s thoroughly entertaining global romp spans locales ranging from Houston to Hawaii to British manor houses to Marrakech, as the three children of Lord and Lady Greshamsbury try to salvage the family fortune—and maybe find true love along the way. Narrator Jing Lusi adeptly captures a broad range of accents among the dozens of secondary characters. The production also unobtrusively integrates Kwan’s footnotes, which offer humorous asides—no mean feat in an audio adaptation. Though it clocks in at just over 15 hours, colorful descriptions of fashion, contemporary art and food—not to mention the hijinks of its characters—will keep readers on board for this splendidly enjoyable ride.

Read our starred review of the print version of Lies and Weddings.

The audiobook of Kevin Kwan’s latest standalone novel, Lies and Weddings, is a thoroughly entertaining global romp packed with colorful descriptions of fashion, contemporary art and food.
AudioScience Fiction

The Ministry of Time

Review by Tami Orendain

Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time proposes a world in which the U.K. government has started collecting people across time and space to test the feasibility of time travel. An unnamed narrator begins work as an assistant for these “expats”—including former spies, WWI captains and explorers from the 1800s—helping them adapt to modern culture.

Audiobook readers George Weightman and Katie Leung use their voices to depict the diverse characters in the audiobook. Leung’s excellent narration covers events in the present, demonstrating a deft ability to recreate the cadences of different time periods for different expats. Weightman narrates moments from the characters’ pasts, giving these reflections a solemn, nostalgic tone. Together, their complementary narrative styles reflect the time-twisting, culture-crossing nature of this book.

Weightman and Leung bring the many histories and personalities of this time-travel adventure to life, making The Ministry of Time a uniquely immersive listening experience.

Read our starred review of the print version of The Ministry of Time.

Audiobook narrators George Weightman and Katie Leung bring the many histories and personalities of this time-travel adventure to life, making The Ministry of Time a uniquely immersive listening experience.

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