I finished 14 books in April and reviewed two of them. Will events or my brain quiet down enough that I can do more reviewing this month? I’d say that time will tell, but also, it took me over a week to finish the round-up. At any rate, I read a lot of good books and hope you find something to add to your TBR from my list.

Middle Grade

• Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan. HMH Books for Young Readers, 2011 – I circled back to an older Deva Fagan book, since I’ve loved her recent books. Taiwanese-American orphan Trix is bullied at her private boarding school, so she jumps at a chance to join an inter-galactic circus, where she learns a lot about herself, her parents, and how to be a friend while trying to escape another alien chasing her. I enjoyed this and hope to pass it on to a gymnastics-loving kid I know, though the white author writing an Asian character does date it to that time period when we all realized we needed more diverse books but hadn’t yet thought as much about having the diverse authors tell those stories themselves.
• Ember and the Ice Dragons by Heather Fawcett. Read by Fiona Hardingham. Storytide, 2019 – My daughter and I listened to this, as I hadn’t yet read this Heather Fawcett book and thought she might enjoy the dragons. I enjoyed this story of an orphaned fire dragon turned into a girl, who then tries to work on behalf of the not-yet-endangered ice dragons in Antarctica. My daughter, unfortunately, did not enjoy it as much.
• Gay-Neck: the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Dutton, 1927 – More catching up with older books, this one the first Newbery Award-winning book by a South Asian author. I’d always just assumed that no one really read it any more, but apparently people still do. It uses quite formal language and takes frequent breaks from the action to talk about the beauty of different things and the importance of prayer and belief in God. I’m not usually one who needs an action-oriented book, but this still took quite a while to win me over. Also, note for any tender-hearted readers that several pigeons die bloody deaths.
• Meticulous Jones and the skull tattoo. Inkbound 1 by Philippa Leathley ; illustrations by Brie Schmida. HarperCollins, 2025 – in a world where children are given magical tattoos at age 10 to show their future careers, Meticulous “Metty” Jones was given one of a skull, so that she believes she’ll be a murderer and has been hidden away by her father. Only when he disappears and she goes to find does she learn that it might mean something very different indeed. This is a fun series opener.
• Operation Sisterhood: Stealing the Show! by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Crown Books for Young Readers, 2025. I really enjoyed the first Operation Sisterhood, so I was excited to sequel. It stars Sunday, stepsister and roommate of Bo, the first book’s POV character. Sunday is constantly full of ideas but has trouble following through – will she be able to put on the big musical she’s promised, or will things fall apart on her? I was quite nervous for Sunday, even as I love the NYC setting with its strong community and Black history focus.
• The Queen Bees of Tybee County by Kyle Casey Chu. Quill Tree Books, 2025.
• The Trouble with Heroes by Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, 2025.

Teen

• Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt. Simon & Schuster, 2020 – I’m relistening to the series as the third book just came out. I decided to purchase the whole series on audio, as it’s just that good.
• Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn. Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt. Simon & Schuster, 2022 – I don’t relisten/reread often these days, but I’m so glad I did – there were just so many details that’s I’d forgotten, in addition to the things that look different when you know what’s coming. Also, this is one of the rare series where I’m okay with the love triangle, I think because Bree spends a minimal amount of time agonizing over that aspect, and more just figuring out her relationship with the boy she’s with, when she can get a chance with everything else going on. And I genuinely like both the love interests and am interested their relationship with each other as well as Bree.
• Divining the Leaves by Shveta Thakrar. HarperCollins, 2025 – I checked this book out based solely on the cover. Two Indian-American teens, Ridhi and Nilesh, haven’t been friendly in years. Ridhi’s been a social reject based on her fairy-like fashion sense and open belief in magic, spending her free time going to the forest to beg the yakshas to take her to their magical kingdom. Nilesh was the perfect popular rich boy – until his parents’ marriage fell apart and he ends up staying at Ridhi’s place. But when both of them find their way into the magical forest, neither of them will get quite what they expect. I was expecting a romance between the two based on the cover, but no. The ending was still pretty satisfying, though overall I didn’t love this as much as I wanted to.

Adult

• The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer. Ballantine Books, 2024. – I really want to just do a full review of this, a story of adults who travelled to a portal realm as teens and are now trying to find their way back 15 years later- but one of them doesn’t remember he was there. One of them has made a career of searching for missing girls and women, so the story begins in earnest as a young woman desperate to find the sister who vanished when she was a small child tracks him down and asks for help. Full of longing, the power of family and friends to heal trauma, and the impossibility of choice.
• Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. Macmillan, 2021 – Reread for the ESL book club I help run at the library. They mostly don’t like fantasy, but I thought they’d still enjoy this one, and so far they are. It really is luminous.
• The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski. Read by Nikki Massoud. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024 – I put holds on a couple of cozy fantasy books, only to have them come in partway through my relistening to the Legendborn Cycle. Reader, this was just bad timing. There is nothing to ruin a beautiful cozy read like wanting nothing more than to get back to your intense series. This book is about three orphaned adult triplets who run a fortune-telling cafe while trying to overcome the shadowy curse on them. The only real issue I had with it is that the author believed that the word “threshold” is synonymous with “doorway” and used only “threshold” every time she meant “doorway” or “doorframe.” Since I know that the threshold is just the bottom part of the doorway, this led to some awkward mental images as characters were described as walking through thresholds or leaning their heads against thresholds.
• The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang. Translated by Slin Jung. Read by Rosa Escoda. Ace/Penguin Audio, 2025 – This is a new translation of a Korean bestseller, about a girl who believes that if she gets a coveted ticket to the magical Rainfall Market, she will be able to trade in her sad life for a new and better one. It was, I thought, a good premise, but she never quite came alive to me as a character and every stop on her journey was planned out in advance for her, even when she thought she was making her own decisions, so that while I finished it, I did not love it.

What have you been reading?