By Tom Perrotta
** Publication Date 28 April 2026 **
​4 stars




The early teen years can be fraught with emotions and hormones. Your friends from grade school suddenly become your not friends or even enemies in middle school. You start noticing people in a desirable way. You try ti find yourself and figure out who you are.


For Jimmy, the summer before high school started out in a normal way. Finishing up little league. Hanging out with friends. Although his mom was very sick - cancer. Jimmy is at a little league championship game when it happens. His mother is whisked off to the hospital where she dies because her heart gives out. Jimmy can’t understand this. But it will change his life forever.


At the funeral, Jimmy starts to hear his mom’s voice. He wanders out of the building and runs into a older kid in a Vega. Eddie. Jimmy will become friends with Eddie and spend a lot of time hanging out with him. Trying new things. After all, Jimmy has no idea what his life is anymore. His sister is heading off to college in the fall. His father works extra hours and hangs out at the firehouse. Jimmy is left alone to figure out his summer, his friends, his future.


This is the summer that will make a lifelong impression on Jimmy and his childhood in Creamwood, NJ. Life will never be the same after this summer. 


Somewhat of a coming of age novel, it is a fairly tragic story about being a young teen and trying to understand how you fit into this world. Especially without your mom. Jimmy goes on to do well in life, but when he is summoned back to his childhood community, all the memories of that summer resurface, for good and bad. Beautifully written and quite compelling, this is a messy time in a young boy’s life. It’s a messy time without tragedy befalling your family.


I enjoyed it. Truly interesting.

By kai alonté
** Publication Date 21 April 2026 **
​4 stars




Certain stories are like a warm blanket. They wrap you up comfortably. Some stories are more like hiking through brambles. They tug at you and make you squirm. This novel has a bit of both, but it definitely more like the latter.


Dzifa has two names. Dzifa, which is supposedly her Ghanian name, her once home. Mercy is her Christian name. The one that makes people different from her more at ease. However, she prefers Dzifa.


She grew up mostly in Oakland in a big house with her mother, older sister Esther, but never her father. Though married, her parents are married in name and finances only. Her father is constantly absent. Esther mostly raises Dzifa. Their mother, more obsessed with appearances than care, is emotionally absent. Esther does her best to make sure Dzifa has what she needs. But when Esther leaves for college, it becomes too much. Dzifa is sent off to boarding school.


Eventually Dzifa lands at Elmwood college where she befriends Tatiana. Beautiful Tatiana, so full of self-love and confidence, the utter opposite of Dzifa. Dzifa always considers Tatiana her sister, her best friend. They remain close while living in New York City. They stay in touch when Dzifa escapes back to Oakland and Tatiana to her home in Boston. And when tragedy befalls Tatiana, Dzifa never thinks twice before boarding a plane to Boston to be with Tatiana.


But through it all, Dzifa is never really sure of her footing or her place in the world. She just seems to drift from one place to another, one job to another, never really living. At some point Dzifa will need to find her happiness, and maybe all this drifting is what finally brings her to make choices that will be in Dzifa’s best interest, not anyone else’s.


What a beautifully written piece of literature this was. While Dzifa is most definitely the primary character of the novel, Tatiana’s presence is never far from mind. Almost as though every thought Dzifa has is countered by Tatiana’s response to it. It is amazing to see Dzifa flounder through her younger years and start to finally come to terms with life a bit later. The journey is clearly one of self-discovery and growth, a journey we hopefully all make through young adulthood.


Not an easy novel, definitely rocky and tumultuous, but ultimately so satisfying. 

By Moorea Corrigan
** Publication Date 21 April 2026 **
5 stars




A little bit of fantasy and the fairy world brings us a wonderful story about a mortal woman the the Faerie man she enlists to help her heal her ancestral home.


Mouse is a nurse. She tended to those torn by the war, one of them being her brother Roger. Mouse is the child of an Irish gardener and an English Lady. Lady Dewhurst would have been her mother, had she lived. Her father was brought to the family home of Thistlemarsh, where Mouse and her brother would be raised alongside their cousin Bertie. 


Only Bertie’s father was a wicked man. Never once treating his sister’s children as anything close to his own, and expecting their father, his own brother-in-law, to tend to the gardens. Mouse grew up learning from her father. Roger and Bertie attended Eton, only Roger left after a scuffle with Bertie’s cousin Carlyle.


Eventually the war took Bertie and most of Roger’s mind. Lord Dewhurst passed, and Mouse was left the heir to Thistlemarsh, with strings attached. Those strings would leave the whole estate and inheritance to Carlyle unless Mouse could meet the expectations and demands of the will. 


In comes Thornwood to try to help Mouse right the wrongs, or so she thinks. Taken in by his beauty and magic, Mouse agrees to terms that might not save her after all.


What a wonderful story of Faeries in the modern world. The legends of the Faerie King and his place in rural England is truly a work of magic. There is simply nothing better than escaping into this make-believe world. Mouse is a both a heroine and a train-wreck in alternating chapters. Her strength and will and tenderness are perfect in every way. Thornwood is exactly what you’d expect a faerie to be, part wicked trickery and part beautiful all in one. The relationship between he and Mouse has chemistry from their first pages together.


There are books that stay with you long after you have closed them. Thistlemarsh will definitely take that spot.

A Splinter Effect Novel #2
By Andrew Ludington
** Publication Date 21 April 2026 **
4 stars


The nice thing about reading a series is not having to learn all the characters from the start. You have some inkling, even if time has passed since the previous novel, of whom you’re working with. In a series the stories follow a specific pattern. In a way it’s like visiting a town you know well.


The Splinter Effect series revolves around a time traveler named Rabbit Ward. Rabbit specializes in what is called chrono-archaeology, or travel to a previous time to recover an artifact. Rabbit speaks many dead languages and is well versed in history, so his travel to these spaces is not suspect. However, he sometimes comes up against some pretty fierce characters that don’t want to see him succeed. He’s not just a time traveler, but in many ways a spy and criminal as well.


This trip has Rabbit chasing down his adversary Helen from the previous novel.  He only knows that a cryptic message was left for him, sending him on a goose chase to 68 CE. This is the time when Jerusalem and Rome will do battle. When he runs into an earlier version of Helen, who hasn’t met Rabbit yet, he knows what their future holds. She is on the trail of a murdering time traveler called Einar Eshek. Together they will try to trap this sadistic killer. There might be a bit of buried treasure and a little romance in the works as well.


These novels are endlessly fascinating with their deep dive into history. As not a huge history buff, I like learning about things I may have missed in school. It’s also a lot more interesting when you add in time travel and intrigue. Helen and Rabbit are a great pair. Ludington has done well to match the wits and gifts of them. As always there are a host of bad guys to tackle along the way as well.


I enjoy these books. They can be a fun departure from traditional fiction. This one is no different. Also, while it does help to understand the premises behind current time travel, reading the first novel is helpful, but not entirely necessary.

By Maria Semple
** Publication Date 14 April 2026 **
5 stars




Could I actually love a book more than I loved ‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette?’ Maybe. Sometimes when an author writes a novel as memorable as Bernadette, you think they’ll never be able to match that one. Go Gentle does. I think, maybe, I might like it even a bit more than Bernadette.


Adora Hazzard has had an interesting life in addition to having an interesting name. Originally determined to be a comedic TV writer, after a few stumbles along the way, she finds philosophy and knows this is her life. As a Stoic, most everything rolls right off her. She loves being single. She loves her job working for a very wealthy old money family in New York City. She lives in a historic hotel that was renovated into apartments with her ‘coven’ of female friends. Life is, in her mind, pretty darn perfect. 


All it takes is just a moment and a mysterious man to turn things upside down.


To say I loved this is truly an understatement. I found the information about Stoics fascinating (beyond the adjective ‘stoic.’) I love how grounded Adora actually seems to be. Her employers and their kids are interesting, as are all the other characters in her life. You will laugh out loud at parts of this, because they are funny. It’s just a joyous ride from start to finish.


Well done Ms. Semple.