Here’s a moving story in verse that includes mountains, blisters, many varieties of chocolate-chip cookies, and finding the space for the main character to reevaluate and come to terms with his deceased first responder father as the pure hero that other people see him as and the more complicated person he was in real life. I picked up this review copy because I’d really enjoyed the author’s The Seventh Wish, and I was glad I did.
The Trouble with Heroes by Kate Messner
Bloomsbury, 2025
ISBN 9781547616398
Review copy kindly provided by the publisher.
You wouldn’t know it from the cover, but Finn does not like hiking or dogs. He is, though, in a bit of a pickle. The year is 2022, and he’s been having trouble with his temper since his first responder father died away from him and his mother in New York City. Everyone wants to tell him that his father was a hero, but Finn would really rather his father had stayed home. Meanwhile, he’s failing a couple of classes due to incomplete work, and the story opens with a newspaper article about a local kid (him) kicking over the gravestone of a beloved local hiker and Adirondack 46ers corresponing secretary. The daughter of the deceased requests that he hike all 46 of the Adirondack peaks over the summer as repayment, because she thinks that Finn needs help more than punishment and her mother believed in the power of the mountains to heal. Furthermore, he needs to bring her mother’s dog with him, as she’d been trying to rehike them all with the dog when she died.
Finn is not happy about this, but his mother assures him that he doesn’t have a choice. The story is written as the poetry journal project he failed to turn in before the end of the school year, and the early poems are about as good as you’d expect from a cranky and uncooperative middle schooler. The hikes are hard, the backpack is too heavy for him, the dog is too slobbery, and he’s determined not to respond to the overly friendly guides (mostly retirees) who’ve volunteered to help him. Slowly, slowly, he reflects on his complicated relationship with his father, a father he loved but who was rarely home and was unhappy with Finn’s too-feminine love of baking when he was home. Slowly, his strength grows, he develops cookie recipes to match each day’s hike, his poetry improves, and he is able to let go of his pain enough to learn more about his father. This also allows his relationship with his mother and grandmother to grow. And while I love all these aspects, there are enough falls in the mud, rainstorms, close calls, and goofy dog antics to make this a very entertaining book to read, along with the occasional tears.
When I got an email asking if I’d like to take a look at a middle grade book from a founding Drag Queen Story Hour Queen and Asian-American, the answer was an enthusiastic yes! This is a sparkling and heartwarming story set in the heat and humidity of a Georgia summer, and one you won’t want to miss.
The Queen Bees of Tybee County by Kyle Casey Chu
Quill Tree Books, 2025
ISBN 9780063326958
Read from a digital galley kindly provided by the publisher.
Rising 8th grader Derrick Chan has had to work hard to be noticed on his basketball team, and is looking forward to going to basketball camp this summer, even though this will be his first summer without his best friend JJ for as long as they’ve been friends. His plans are upended when his father announces that he’s got an intense construction job away from home. Since Derrick’s mother is dead, Derrick will have to spend the summer with his grandmother Claudia in rural Georgia, whom he doesn’t remember ever spending time with. He’s expecting to be very bored, apart from some pickup basketball games with local boys.
It turns out that Derrick’s assumptions are far from the mark. Grandma Claudia first wows him with her loud music and delicious cooking, which ranges from traditional Chinese to guacamole and pancakes. Even though she’s officially retired, she’s still making a few dresses for the local pageant, including one in bold purple with bright fabric poppies that catches Derrick’s eyes. Even though the girl Claudia is making it for, Ro, is more interested in roller derby than the pageant, Derrick soon strikes up a friendship with her and her best friend Giles, a bowtie-wearing photographer. And it doesn’t take much convincing for Derrick to step in as a sub for the dance routines in the town pageant – surely it will help his basketball footwork, too!
But even as he’s deciding that pageant-loving country Derrick and basketball-playing city Derrick need to stay separate, he feels a pull not to give up either side – and his attempts to keep his selves separate start alienating those around him. His journey is bumpy and ultimately triumphant – I was so rooting for him to find his way, and am really looking forward to the next book in the duology.
KYLE CASEY CHU (AKA Panda Dulce) is a San Franciscan Author, Filmmaker and one of the founding queens of Drag Story Hour. In 2022, far-right extremists stormed her Drag Story Hour to silence her. She is now leveraging her global platform to tell even gayer stories. Chu’s writing has received awards and recognition from Sundance, SFFILM, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the California Arts Council, Lambda Literary and more. In 2023, she served alongside Drag Story Hour as Grand Marshall of San Francisco’s Pride festivities. Her debut two-novel middle grade series, “The Queen Bees of Tybee County” (HarperCollins, 2025) was optioned by Lambur Productions into a UK episodic.
Interview with Kyle Casey Chu
Courtesy of Books Forward
You have made quite the impact in the book industry with your work as a founding queen of Drag Story Hour. Have you always wanted to be a writer yourself?
Short answer: Yes! One day, as a 7-year-old in summer school, we were tasked with writing a children’s book. That afternoon, I ended up writing and illustrating five books. Come seventh grade, I wrote a hundred-something-page book: “Brother’s Ethnicity,” a vaguely plotless fantasy adventure novel about four best friends who embark on a cross-country road trip together. Looking back, I realize writing this helped me process the crushy-crush feelings I was developing toward one of my closest friends. Oop! came out to my friend group shortly after completing the book.
Writing continues to be cathartic for me in this way, allowing me to safely unpack and process my internal world, no matter how intimidating, through the safety of scenes and hypotheticals on an open page. It reminds me of what I am capable of. I want kids to access a similar sense of satisfaction and empowerment through reading and writing.
Your protagonist’s journey is inspired in part by your own personal journey. When did you know you wanted to be a drag queen?
Often as a kid, when adults asked me, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” I had at least 17 answers. At certain points, I wanted to be a detective, a figure skater, a writer, a teacher, an actor, a musician or a “face painter,” which I now, of course, interpret as a pull toward drag.
Much like writing, drag encourages you to be and experience all of these things — to imagine outwardly and expansively. As a drag queen, you are at once expected to be a makeup artist, a dancer, a comedian, an actress, a hostess. You can be a figure skater for the night, or a noir detective, until you whirl off a coat at the exact right moment to reveal a show-stopping gown.
People used to tell me I was “a handful” and that I wanted to be too many things. It wasn’t until discovering drag in middle school that I realized the art form could contain all of these wants and more. That in fact, what I wanted, was just enough.
Why did you decide to pick Georgia as the setting?
There’s a couple of reasons (2).
Small town queers deserve ALL of the love!
There’s this pervasive trope in LGBTQ+ media that queer and trans kids living in small towns have to be positively aching to escape. That they are all yearning to turn 18 so they can move away and find true community and acceptance in big, queer metropolises. A real Dorothy mindset. And while I’m sure this is absolutely true for many, it’s not everyone’s experience. And it actually contradicts some of the research I conducted for this book.
Many of the Southern Queer and Trans middle graders I interviewed spoke fondly of their hometowns – of the dripping humidity, the church gatherings and cookouts, and all of the friendships and reference points they’ve cultivated across a lifespan. Some even expressed wanting to stay in their hometowns, and brimmed with love for the lives they’ve built. This was an important learning and counterpoint for me, as a new author whose main point of reference for the South is media. I wanted to touch on this, so I did my best to include the details of these interviewees’ upbringings into Derrick’s story to do these perspectives justice.
As a side note, I’ve found that queer and trans people living outside of major cities are some of the fiercest among us. They organize that much harder, they picket that much louder, and need to be that much more determined to drill their stakes into the earth to proclaim their spaces and their right to thrive. I have such deep respect for that, and hope it comes through in the book.
I’m a nerd who wanted to learn more about Southern pageant culture!
Doing drag during my teens and 20s, many of the queens I met in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City regarded Southern drag as an entirely different drag tradition.
I wanted to know why.
I chose Georgia specifically because Atlanta is commonly regarded as one of the South’s largest queer metropolises. Doing research for this book helped me better appreciate pageant culture, a tradition that focuses more on jaw-dropping regalia — high-stacked wigs, dripping drop-earrings and resplendent gowns — as opposed to the more edgy experimentation and genre-bending performances I was used to, coming from San Francisco.
I also learned how the pageant model is a bedrock for so much of the drag we consume today. For instance, as much as RuPaul’s Drag Race fans tease contestants for being “Pageant Queens,” the show is structured like a pageant!
And let me tell you, I’ve helped my drag sisters train for pageants, and it is NO JOKE. Designing, sewing, tailoring and stoning a host of looks, readying time-constrained talent performances, prepping for Q&As — both silly and deep, intimate questions. The process really forces you to reflect and be honest about who you are and present your best self. It challenges you. At their worst, they can reinforce harmful thinking, but at their best, they can help you better understand who you are, what you believe in and how you want to impact the world. I thought this was a great structure for Derrick to question and explore who he is and what he wanted.
What inspired you to share this story, particularly now?
Queer and trans joy subverts the media’s standard formula and approach to our stories and who we are. Today, LGBTQ+ youth are phoning crisis hotlines in record numbers. Trans kids are being banned from competitive sports despite comprising negligible percentages of youth athlete populations. LGBTQ+ books have been purged from shelves and mischaracterized as overtly sexual content, and LGBTQ+ resources have been expelled from government websites.
The media’s blueprint to approach LGBTQ+ stories is through the lens of trauma, a real impossible-struggle-to-triumph arc. There’s good reason for this, for there’s a lot that we’re up against. It is not enough to live like this, starting on our back foot, always responding to the latest terror. We must also imagine the futures we want and dance toward them.
This is what I hope to put forth in “The Queen Bees of Tybee County.” It is a joyous story about a fish-out-of-water who boldly proclaims who he is, and is met with support that overwhelms any discouragement. Not only is this story, and the world it introduces true, and quite possible, but I think it’s the type of tale we all need right now.
How has your background as an educator and in social work informed your storytelling?
My book draws on a lot of concepts I learned in social work school that wish I’d learned earlier on. Ironically, many queer stories out there still operate on binary terms — having to be one or the other, to choose this identity or that. But queer imaginations are more creative and expansive than that. We have to be. This tale shows us that we don’t always have to choose between our differing parts. That we can integrate our masculine, feminine and androgynous qualities, or our interests in sports and drag, as equal and essential parts that make us whole and unique.
What do you hope your readers can learn from your book that readers and industry critics alike have acclaimed for its authenticity?
Like me, my book’s protagonist Derrick Chan is a Queer fourth-generation Chinese American drag artist, raised by a third-generation, acculturated American parent. He takes a journey that I myself once took — investigating my Asian American heritage and reclaiming it with pride, after growing up with a dearth of positive, dignified and accurate representation. Through this story, Derrick is able to explore his identities alongside trusted loved ones, relatively insulated from the misinformed playground taunts that so often (and inaccurately) equate Asian Americanness with shame, invisibility and a stinging alienation. Connecting with drag, punk music and Asian American history as a teen offered me a resilience and pride in who I am that is distinctly my own. I wish this same sense of power for every reader who picks up this book.
And you use your art as a means of fighting back against those who try to erase or silence LGBTQ+ voices?
I wrote this novel driven by a fire to make up for what happened to me at the San Lorenzo Public Library. For all of it to land somewhere, with a conclusive exclamation point. This was my healthiest point of closure.
It’s important to acknowledge that nothing became of my library incident. The sheriff and authorities didn’t lift a finger until the media caught on, and once the circus died down, they neglected to file a crime report. Today, the authorities still have no record of it ever happening. I don’t want kids to grow up and internalize that being targeted as queer and trans people is a part of life they must simply accept, without consequence.
This story is, in a way, a survival guide. It contains a lot of lessons I learned as both a social worker and a kid who came out extremely early. Support systems are essential. Your friends are everything. And as drag queen Sasha Velour would say, take your broken heart and turn it into art. Simple axioms with a lot of heft to them. Writing this story was a practice in hope and optimism in the face of unrelenting political chaos. It’s been wildly cathartic and healing to the way I relate to both writing drag as art forms.
For your multi-award-winning and entirely grant-funded short film, you decided to shoot on set of the former incident. Why did you feel it was important to revisit that scene?
People often ask me, “Why revisit the incident?” both literally/physically and figuratively. The thing is, I never really left the site of the incident. There’s still a part of me in that reading room. I return to the library often in my head, like when I hear a loud noise while walking home from a drag show, or in the dark, before asleep, when all you can do is think. I can’t help it. Because I never got resolution or closure.
It is difficult to experience something painful. And it can feel altogether more difficult when that first pain goes unacknowledged and unseen.
Writing, producing and starring in “After What Happened at the Library” felt somewhat like an exorcism. Sure, I was back at the scene of the crime, but I also had a script mapping out our day. There were frequent check-ins, and I was encouraged to ask for breaks. I was surrounded by people I love and trust, who believe in this story. There was a sense of care, control and authorship that was wrested from me on the day of the actual incident. This time, the pain was seen and acknowledged.
Are you working on any new projects – either books or film?
I am blessed to have many irons in the fire!
“After What Happened at the Library”: A Debut Feature Film (for adults)
The short film, “After What Happened at the Library,” is a character introduction and proof-of-concept for the eponymous surrealist drama feature film (Comps: “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” “I May Destroy You,” “May December,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”). The feature expands on the world of the short in the days and weeks post- virality, when everyone — friends, authorities, politicians, bad actors — want a piece of Akita. You’ll meet Akita’s absurdist drag sister Tonya; outspoken, neuroatypical leftist work wifey Eve; and charming, anime-obsessed, autistic twin brother Mikey, as Akita’s mind bends around reality in her struggle to reclaim authorship of her viral story.
“Betty”: A Short Film (for adults)
Thanks to a short film production grant from NewFest and Concord Music Originals, we are producing a grimy, heartwarming, absurdist drag queen comedy with the same director of “After What Happened at the Library,” Syra McCarthy (“Grey’s Anatomy”, “The Dropout,” “Josephine”). “Betty” follows Betty St. Clair, mother of an all-Asian American drag family (based on my all-Asian American drag family, the Rice Rockettes), as they perform for an all-Cantonese- speaking senior center (also based on a real-life performance at San Francisco’s On-Lok Senior Center). Betty soon discovers her Yeh Yeh (paternal grandfather), who isn’t aware of Betty’s drag persona, is in the audience! Gulp! Will Betty overcome her debilitating self-doubt and her sisters’ poorly-timed backstage hijinks to come out to Yeh Yeh through an epic drag performance??
“What Kind of Queen?”: A Picture Book on José Sarria” (for kids)
My friend, an LGBTQ+ Historian and I, are releasing a historical children’s picture book on San Francisco drag legend and activist José Sarria, an opera-singing WWII veteran and the founder of the Imperial Court System, a network of regional royal drag courts raising money for charitable LGBTQ+ causes.
Book 2 of “The Queen Bees of Tybee County”: A Companion Book (for kids)
Derrick and JJ’s adventure continues in a forthcoming soft sequel/companion book that I am currently drafting! No sneak peeks to speak of yet, but on the foundation of self-reflection and discovery built in the first book, you can expect more light-hearted adventure, as well as developments on JJ and Derrick’s relationship in this second novel
Dear readers, today I’m excited to bring you a guest post from Nancy McCabe, the author of a new middle grade book, Fires Burning Underground. Read on for more, and let me know in the comments if you’ve read this book or any of her previous books.
Fires Burning Underground by Nancy McCabe
Fitzroy Books, 2025
ISBN 978-1646035601
The last year of childhood: the magical friendship that inspired Fires Burning Underground
Anny, the narrator of my middle grade novel Fires Burning Underground, experiences a transition similar to my own when I was her age. Anny has always been homeschooled, but at the beginning of the story, sets off to attend public school for the first time. I graduated from a small rural elementary school to go to a much larger junior high in a suburban part of the city. Like Anny, I came from a conservative religious family, and like her, I went from being a talkative, imaginative kid to a shy and awkward one. It felt like my personality had suddenly changed.
But then I met M. We sat together at lunch on the first day of school, and around her, I felt braver, able to be my talkative and sometimes silly self. We became best friends. As an adult, I always thought of my friendship with M. as the last months of my childhood.
M. was everything I wanted to be: smart and imaginative and dreamy. Like me, she loved books and was drawn to creative activities. Already an accomplished pianist way beyond my skill level, she was fascinated by ESP and Ouija Boards. She wanted to write a book someday and be an actress and an artist. Together we were always scheming to follow in the footsteps of some of our literary heroines and put on a play, throw a carnival in one of our backyards, go camping in the dry creekbed near my house, and create a treasure hunt for a friend.
I had creative aspirations, but my ambition typically outstripped my ability. I stitched pillows and doll clothes, made rya and latch hook rugs and potholders, tried embroidery, decided to learn to knit, and worked on learning harder piano music. I often abandoned these endeavors without getting very far, and the projects I did complete were less-than-satisfactory, as were my art projects at school. I gave my own haphazard crafting aspirations and failures to Anny as she tries to figure out what she IS good at.
Anny and Larissa also embark on a lot of the same plans and projects that M. and I did. Some get abandoned, some come to fruition though not quite the way they’d imagined, and along the way, some unexpected things happen. Like me at twelve, Anny has trouble talking about what is most weighing on her: questions about her identity and grief over the death of a friend in a fire. Sometimes she’s sure he’s haunting her.
Like Anny, at that age, I also had no interest in boys and was much more focused on female friendship. That was one of the most significant contributors to the deterioration of my friendship with M., who developed a crush on a boy and knew I wouldn’t begin to understand. We drifted apart more gradually than Anny and Larissa do. I had trouble letting my childhood go. I clung to it. I mourned its loss.
I hadn’t seen or talked to M. for more than thirty years when I found her on Facebook and told her that I was writing a children’s book based on our enchanted year. She responded with the exact same words I’d always used to describe that time: “I always think of that year as the last one of my childhood.” In the end, despite all of the difficult parts of childhood, I feel lucky to have also experienced the gift of that magical friendship.
Next Gen Indie Award winner Nancy McCabe draws deep inspiration from her own life. From the tragic loss of a friend in a church fire to the magical relationship with her childhood best friend, Fires Burning Underground is an homage to the youth Nancy left behind, the lessons she learned on her path to adulthood, and the guidance she passionately shares with her audience. When she’s not working on her stories, she shares her passion for teaching young people how to write through her work as a professor. She is the author of a young adult novel, Vaulting through Time, a new adult ghost story, Following Disasters, and several nonfiction books for adults. She lives in northwestern Pennsylvania, where she teaches writing workshops to participants of all ages.
As I’m trying to come to grips with the perennial fact that the number of books I read far outpaces the books I’m able to review, I thought I’d try doing a monthly round-up to catch the ones that I’ve read and want to share but don’t have time to do a full review of. Please let me know what you think of this in the comments!
Middle Grade
Dragonslayer by Tui T. Sutherland. Read by Shannon McManus. Scholastic, 2020 – My teen and I have now listened to all of the Wings of Fire books together. This is the first one to star humans rather than dragons, with plenty of appearances by favorite dragon characters.
What Fell from the Sky by Adrianna Cuevas. Read by Giordan Diaz, PJ Morgan and 6 other narrators (!). Dreamscape Media, 2025. – Cuban-American and Texan Pineda Matlage loves being a prankster, but life produces much bigger adventures when an extraterrestrial arrives on the planet, separated from her parents, at the same time the US Army shows up pretending to be two different sides, but taking over the town for real. Great fun while reflecting on differences and community.
Teen
Brewed with Love by Shelly Page. Read by Sandra Okuboyejo. Joy Revolution, 2025 – Sage, a teen witch, tries to invent a potion to cure heartbreak and save her Nana’s potion shop from a large conglomerate while trying to ignore her former best friend and first crush, Ximena, who’s started working at the shop. Sweet and cozy with realistic looks at the hard parts of relationships.
Brownstone by Samual Teer and Mar Julia. Versify, 2024 – In this Printz and Cybils award-winning graphic novel, Almudena is sent to live with the father she’s never met in the Bronx for the summer. She doesn’t speak Spanish and he doesn’t speak English, but with the help of the community, they muddle through their relationship and fixing up a brownstone. Funny and deeply heartfelt, with spot-on observations about issues from gentrification to homophobia. Also, it made my teen cry, a rare thing indeed. It would be interesting paired with Tangleroot by Kalela Williams, which also features a teen exploring roots she hadn’t been particularly interested in before.
Guava and Grudges by Alexis Castellanos. Bloomsbury, 2024 – Ana Maria (Amy at school) dreams of bringing her family’s Cuban bakery to renewed prosperity with fusion baked goods, and of winning an online baking contest to earn the money to go to a real pastry school. When the boy she had an intense one-day relationship with on college tour in LA shows up in town, part of the family of the rival bakery across the street, will love be able to triumph over the ingrained hatred? Mostly lots of fun, though I got a little tired of how many times Ana Maria fell back into distrusting the boy who was clearly meant for her.
Shadow Thief by Intisar Khanani. Snowy Wings Publishing, 2023 – This prequel novella introduces Hitomi, a street orphan in a cosmopolitan city she wasn’t born to as she struggles to earn a place in the legendary Shadow League, the most coordinated resistance to the evil mage who’s controlling the sultan and disappearing people. I read it first, but having been written afterwards, the characters might mean more to you if you start with Sunbolt.
Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani. Snowy Wings Publishing, 2023 – This story kicks off with a bang as Hitomi struggles to evade soldiers (her features mean that she stands out in her city), work with the Shadow League to rescue the one noble family that’s been resisting the evil mage, and escape when things go wrong. Hitomi has just the right blend of courage, integrity, and stubbornness to keep me riveted to her story, so that I proceeded directly on to the next book in the series.
Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani. Snowy Wings Publishing, 2024 – There’s very little that I can say about this book without spoilers for the first two. Mostly, I cared intensely about Hitomi and her journey. At every turn, things are made harder for her with stakes so high that I often finished reading sessions with my hands shaking. I’m very much looking forward to Debts of Fire, due to come out in July!
Adult
A Duke Never Tells by Suzanne Enoch. Bramble, April 2025 – A young noblewoman disguises herself as her aunt’s companion to investigate the household of the new duke she’s engaged to but has never met. Meanwhile, the duke has his man of business pretend to be the duke so that he can escape the role and visitors he never wanted in this light kisses-only double romance. It took me halfway through to really care about the characters, and then I did enjoy it.
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett. Read by Ell Potter and Michael Dodds. Del Rey, 2025 – The long-awaited finish to the trilogy! What could possibly go wrong if you put a professor decidedly lacking in people skills in charge of a fairy kingdom? Especially if the new king’s stepmother might have found a way to exact vengeance on him for taking the throne back. I waited in line at the library for the first two audiobooks, but just went out and bought this one. I’m sure I’ll be going back to this trilogy.
The Elements of Baking: Making Any Recipe Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Egg-free or Vegan by Katarina Cermelj, Mobius, 2024 – This is an exhaustive and life-changing coverage of baking for special diets, with the first quarter devoted to the theories and chemistry behind substituting out these major baking elements, then going through a suite of basic recipes one by one to make each of the changes in turn. Finally, there are a handful of recipes for each of these special diets. This is more science than I usually read, but as I can’t have gluten or dairy and we have a housemate allergic to eggs, this is opening up recipes like Swiss rolls that I never thought would be possible – so exciting!
Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper. Read by Jeremy Carlisle Parker. Berkley, 2021 – I believe this one was recommended by Stephanie Burgis. I don’t usually enjoy revenge stories, but this tale of a woman returning to the small magical town she was raised with and joining with friends from two of the three other magical families in town to take down the man who cheated on them all, and whose family has been managing to hoard the shared power of them all, was intensely satisfying. Also, a nice spicy sapphic romance, with the remaining two in the trilogy also out.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune. Tor, 2024 – I just love these books. I need to track down the rest of them.
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy. Read by Adenrele Ojo. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015 – Read to see if it would make a good pick for my ESL book club, as it’s set in nearby Detroit. Way too many characters for the learners, plus a tad depressing for me. It covers several generations of a large Black family from the South to finding their way in Detroit and its collapse, and you should perhaps trust the opinion of the National Book Award Committee more than mine.
Watson’s Sketchbook by Molly Knox Ostertag. 2025 – So delightful! Ostertag’s sketches and comic sequences go story by story through the Sherlock Holmes canon, focusing just on the interactions between Sherlock and Watson with the understanding that they’re gay. The dialogue is nearly all direct from the source, but thought bubbles, expressions, and other comments make it both funnier and more heartfelt. You can read it for free on Substack or buy it from their website.
Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis. Bramble, 2024 – I loved this book enough to buy both regular and special editions of it (a first for me) and may purchase the audiobook at some point, too.
It’s always a happy day when Stephanie Burgis comes out with a new book, and this, her first traditionally-published book for adults in many years, is especially exciting. If you’re in the mood for a cozy fantasy romance with crows, fountain pens, griffins, and a magic library, this might just be the book for you. Disclaimer: I sponsor Stephanie Burgis on Patreon.
Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis
Bramble, 2025
ISBN 9781250359599
Read from a purchased copy.
Felix, aged 23, may be the Archduke of Eastarion (easternmost principality of the Serafin Empire), but since he was orphaned as a child, he’s never been allowed near anything resembling government or training to rule. His only ally in court was his wife, Emmeline, and since her untimely death it’s become increasingly clear that Felix’s father-in-law, his former regent, has every intention of disposing of Felix. A sudden desire to live, and live outside of his father-in-law’s control, gives Felix the idea of seeking sanctuary with the wicked witch queen who rules Kitvaria, the next kingdom over.
The queen, Saskia, a few years older, is doing the very best she can to keep her kingdom together since her uncle murdered her parents and tried to usurp the throne. That’s part of why she lives in a remote mountain castle surrounded by glowing skulls, and has just formed an alliance with the queens of two other nearby kingdoms to keep their realms safe from the Empire and has no idea that Archduke Felix isn’t behind the brewing attack on Kitvaria. Saskia also spends a large amount of time working on magical defenses – she might not have a large army, but she is a powerful witch. Even though her First Minister and former lover is doing her level best to convince Saskia to become a more conventional and social monarch, Saskia has neither the patience nor the inclination to do such a thing.
When Felix arrives, he learns of Saskia’s hatred for the Archduke before he meets her, and therefore goes along with her assumption that he’s the dark wizard Sinistro that she had asked to come to catalog the extensive but extremely disorganized castle library. Felix does actually have a lot of experience with books, even if he’s not magical, and takes his new assignment very seriously. Still, despite serious past trauma and inexperience with friendship on both sides, Felix and Saskia find themselves quickly and naturally drawn together. But even as their relationship blossoms, the threat of invasion looms ever closer, and we know that Felix’s secret is going to come out eventually.
I’ve been reading Stephanie Burgis for a long time now, and so will note that this is the spiciest romance I’ve ever read of hers – still not super explicit, but we’re definitely in the bedroom instead of closing the door or fading to black. It’s no longer written middle grade crossover readers in mind, but a decided treat for adult readers.
One of the things that other people fear about Saskia is that she horrifyingly treats non-human intelligent creatures as full citizens, including, as Felix discovers, having her castle run by an ogre major domo, Morlokk, and a troll housekeeper, Mrs. Haglitz, and kept up by a number of goblin footmen. Indeed, Felix gets a stern talking-to from Mrs. Haglitz when he disrespects their hospitality by spending all his time working in the library and not eating or sleeping properly. It’s clear that Saskia has built her own family after the collapse of her birth family, something that Felix has never had. I also appreciated that the two of them have very different attitudes towards religion- Saskia is somewhere between agnostic and an atheist, and while Felix doesn’t discuss his beliefs, he frequently offers small prayers to the goddess of his land. The crows that accompany Saskia are delightful, especially the small one that befriends Felix. I really enjoyed meeting the other two Queens of Villainy, who will of course star in the following books. And especially, I so loved watching Saskia and Felix find certainty through becoming more fully who they are instead of who they’ve been told to be. In a time when so many of us are feeling helpless, a message of finding the strength and purpose to be yourself and use that to work towards positive change in the world with those you care about is one we all need.
It’s Mavelous Middle-Grade Monday, hosted by Greg Pattridge at Always in the Middle! Today I’m reviewing two of the 2024 Cybils Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Finalists that I didn’t get to back when I first read them. They are both exciting adventure stories that deal sensitively with kids facing the fallout of the prejudices of older generations.
Accidental Demons by Clare Edge Read by Karissa Vacker
HarperCollins, 2024
ISBN 978-1335006974
Listened to audiobook on Hoopla
Bernadette Crowley – Ber – is the youngest in a long line of blood witches stretching back to Ireland. (They currently live in Montana, a rare setting.) Blood witches use drops of their own blood to summon demons to do tasks for them before sending them back to their own dimension. But Ber has recently been diagnosed with diabetes, which means she’s constantly pricking her finger and summoning demons accidentally. She’s also powerful enough that sometimes the demons are much more powerful than she would be allowed to summon on purpose at her age. This is especially bad at school, since the magic obviously needs to be kept secret. Tired of the ruckus all the demons cause and with her parents threatening to pull her out of school, Ber and her sister come up with the idea to summon a low-level demon to stay with her to test her blood sugar magically. No need for finger pricking would mean no accidental demons. They’ll just need to be a little secretive, since summoning demons for long term use is forbidden.
However, the demon they end up summoning isn’t a low-level demon. Finn is a very large, very intelligent demon with goals of their own that have nothing to do with Ber’s agenda and a history with Ber’s great-great grandmother and name sake, the Bernadette Crowley of a hundred years ago. Even though it makes her uncomfortable, being able to know her blood sugar at all times is so marvelous that she agrees to keep Finn a secret from the rest of her family. It turns out that Ber isn’t the only one in the family with secrets, though, as it turns out that Maeve is hiding a secret of her own – one that pushes against their family teachings to keep their magical abilities secret even from other kinds of magic workers. And when the adults in the family find themselves over their heads with a rebellious nearby coven, Ber and Maeve will need to use all the magics and the connections they’ve made to help save them.
It is so rare to find a book starring a kid with diabetes! The last one I can remember is Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez, which I also highly recommend. The diabetes does take a lot of focus in Ber’s life and by extension the story, with all the testing and resulting insulin injections or snacking. Trying to manage all of this in the middle of the adventure is a lot, and leads to situations which are sometimes scary and sometimes hilarious. Kids who have to manage serious health conditions, whether diabetes or something else, will recognize its constant presence. The adventure has tension and humor, as well as looking at issues of inherited prejudice and its perils. I listened to it with great enjoyment, and started it over again just a month or so later to listen to it with my teen, who also really enjoyed it.
Sona and the Golden Beasts by Rajani LaRocca Read by Shiromi Arserio
Quill Tree Books, 2024
ISBN 978-0063295407
Listened to audiobook on Libby.
In this colonial-era Indian-inspired fantasy, Sona has grown up in a wealthy Malechian family, the colonial rulers of the country of Devia. Sona herself has never agreed with the official sharp divides between the peoples, especially due to her love of the grandmotherly Devan woman, Ayah, who has cared for her since her mother’s death. Most of all, Sona loves animals and frequently rescues them – kittens, a pony, and, as the story opens, a wounded wolf pup with golden ears. The ears are especially significant because golden ears are how Devans, who have them, can be told apart from Malechians, who don’t. The golden ears mark the wolf pup as one of the Five Sacred Beasts – and it’s clear that she’s being hunted. Sona can also hear music in all the living things around her, despite music being outlawed in Devia, another means of suppressing traditional Devan magic.
The wolf pup – Swara – starts a chain of events that upend Sona’s quiet life. First, Sona learns a family secret with profound impact on her identiy. Then the Hunter comes to find Swara, leading Sona to escape in the night with Swara and her pony to visit Ayah in the village for help. But Ayah is desperately ill from riding through a magical goldstorm to get protection that Sona didn’t know she needed. The only way to save her will be to travel to the other end of the country to get the sacred ingredients. And the only way to travel will be to join forces with Ayah’s grandson, Raag – whose life has led him to develop a deep hatred of all Malechians, most especially Sona, who, even if unknowingly, put his grandmother in danger in the first place.
Sona and Raag’s journey to understanding each other mirrrors the tension in the country as a whole, while their exploration of the country opens Sona’s eyes up to the level of injustice in the country, so that she longs to find a way to improve the lives of everyone there as well as Ayah. This focus helps to give the story an edge, even as the many adventures had, cities explored, and new friends made keep the overall story from feeling as didactic as my review might make it out to be.
This is a beautifully sweeping epic fantasy that feels rounded out in its single volume – great for readers who don’t want to commit to the long series more typical for epics. The social justice aspects would make it pair well with Amir and the Jinn Princess by M.T. Khan. I listened to the audiobook read by Shiromi Arsenio, whose work is increasingly impressing me. This is another winner from Rajani LaRocaa, whose Midsummer’s Mayhem I’ve included on more than one of my lists.
Dear reader, perhaps you, like me, are craving some relief from the awfulness of the news. If so, here are two stories with intrepid heroines facing down dangers, somewhat aided by cats, that are cozy enough to be a relief while still enouraging you to keep caring for the world.
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner
Ace, 2024
ISBN 9781984805881
Read from a library copy.
60-something library director Sherry Pinkwhistle lives a quiet life in a small town in upstate New York, small enough that she’s able to get by without a car. She has a sweet if demanding cat, Sir Thomas More, a waif-like next door neighbor, Alice, regular dates with the distinguished-looking Alan, and a best friend, Janine. Sherry is also regularly called on or pulled into solving the many murders that seem to take place, much to the local sheriff’s chagrin. (I was quite surprised when a murder came up and was solved within the next two chapters!)
Sherry had never questioned this – until someone very close to her is murdered and she decides she just can’t. Then, suddenly, everyone around her – including her cat – is talking to her in voices not their own, telling her that she must investigate. Now Sherry must decide what to do – clearly something supernatural is going on, something that will require very careful handling to figure out just what that might be without putting herself in further danger. Further refletion also begs the question – just why are there so many murders in one tiny town, and why do all the residents still consider it a quiet and peaceful place despite this?
The writing here is hysterically funny, leading me to read or want to read aloud passages every time I read it. A couple of incidents felt a little too dark for a typical cozy, but it is generally a very cozy story. Fairly early on, I started looking for clues as to when the story might be set – something that made me feel quite clever when it was revealed. And though the story is funny and cozy, with a good range of characters, there is a deeper message here of the importance of listening to yourself when you feel that something is wrong, even if no one else really believes you.
The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong. Read by Phyllis Ho
Penguin Audio, 2024.
ASIN B0CVSD89MB
Listened to audiobook through Libby.
Tao has been a happy and solitary traveling fortune teller for many years now, always moving on before people realize that her fortunes really do come true and come after her – for people of Shin ancestry are rarely welcome in the kingdom. That’s also why she sticks to telling only small fortunes, ones that don’t contain anything life altering. She’s always been happy with just her donkey for company – until two rough-looking men help clear a fallen tree from her path instead of attacking her. Mash is a retired mercenary and Silt is at least trying to be a reformed thief, rather than an active one. When Tao repays their help by telling their fortunes, Mash recruits her help in finding his missing four-year-old daughter, whom he believes has been kidnapped. As they travel, they’re also joined by Kina, a pretty young baker who wants to see the world and who bakes delicious if not beautiful treats, and of course the cat shown on the cover.
As they search for Mash’s daughter, they also run across more and more displaced people, running from unrest on the other side of the mountains. But what could be happening, and why is someone looking for Tao in particular? Questions are adding up much less pleasantly than the new friends they have scattered across the countryside.
This is a meandering sort of cozy story, more focused on the characters and their developments than on the plot. There are definitely tense moments, but many more of exploring people and their attitudes, especially towards outsiders and non-coforming women. It builds to an ending with much higher stakes than seemed initially possible.
I listened to the audiobook with some mixed feelings. Phyllis Ho does a wonderful job giving accents to different people and being able to pronounce the Chinese-derived Shin words. I did find it necessary to increase the playback speed, and I had trouble distinguishing between the characters as she didn’t give them distinct voices. If you have an easy choice, I might recommend reading this in print, but I’d still give it a shot on audio if that’s your best medium.
I have loved so many books by Renée Watson over the years, from her YA book Piecing Me Togetherto the middle grade Ryan Hart series up to last year’s picture book Summer is Here and others I didn’t get around to reviewing. Naturally I was thrilled when this ARC showed up in the mail, even if it showed up in the middle of my Cybils reading and I had to postpone reading it for a few months.
All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury, 2025
ISBN 978-1547605897
Review copy received from the publisher
Sometimes I feel like I just can’t do sad books, because life is already tough. I went into this book guessing that it was a sad book – it is – but wanting to read it anyway because of the author. I’m so glad I did! Because the truth that this book so beautifully illuminates is that grief is horrible and hard – and you can get through it, and still find joy in life.
Newly thirteen-year-old Sage has been struggling with a range of feelings about her life since her best friend was killed on the way to her birthday celebration. She’s experiencing grief, anger, guilt, and the terrible work of trying to rebuild a life without one of the most important people in it. Her poems go over many aspects of her life – memories of her best friend, that terrible day, their dreams of their futures, as well as everyday events with her family, getting along – and not – with the other kids in her grief support group at school, and getting to know a crush.
This bare description doesn’t adequately explain how deeply we’re drawn into Sage’s story, the intimacies of her relationship with her great-aunt, Aunt Ini, the way she dives into math to avoid thinking about her loss, only to find meaning there as well. Watson’s gorgeous blank verse makes the story work in a way that prose wouldn’t.
…life after losing someone you love feels like one big ocean of sorrow and you might feel like you are drowning,
but always there is something to hold on to to keep you afloat
Renée Watson, All the Blues in the Sky
This is now available in libraries and wherever good books are sold. Go find yourself a copy.
Here is my annual list of books that I rated at 9 or above. I rate most books I really enjoy as 8, but since that list would be over 100 books, I feel the need to limit myself. I do find it very curious that I rated so many more of my adult reads highly than my middle grade reads – maybe I’m just more critical of the middle grade because I read more of it, or because I’m trying to evaluate things for the Cybils even when I’m not reading directly for the awards? I also didn’t want to duplicate the already-lengthy list of books I shared in Cybils 2024: 15 Middle Grade Spec Fic Books that Got Away, or the excellent selection 2024 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Cybils Finalists my fellow judgees and I put together. Despite loving so many other books, I reviewed only two of those adult favorites, and none of the teen favorites. In any case, here is a small selection of the books I loved last year.
Here is my standard disclaimer about rating books:
“I have never liked doing a public scale rating of books – the librarian in me would rather describe what’s in the book and let you decide if it sounds good for you. But I do give books number ratings on my own private spreadsheet. I shamelessly borrowed the Book Smugglers’ 10-point rating system for this, where 0 is “I want my time and my money back”, 5 is “meh” and so on. For my purposes, 7 is a book I enjoyed, 8 is one I loved and 9 is one I really, really loved. 10 only gets given out retrospectively to books I find myself re-reading and thinking about a lot – a true personal classic.”
The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (the cover image hasn’t updated yet, but it did win the Newbery Award as well as being a National Book Award Finalist.)
Accidental Demons by Clare Edge. Read by Karissa Vacker.- I still need to write up a review of this, but it was both one of the Cybils finalists and one that my teen and I listened to together afterwards and has their approval as well.
Teen
I read this whole trilogy and didn’t have the words to express how much I loved it. I literally screamed out loud (to the shock of the teens in my house) when book 2 ended on a cliffhanger and I couldn’t start book 3 right away.
Thorn by Intisar Khanani. Read by Shiromi Arserio.
The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani. Read by Shiromi Arserio.
A Darkness at the Door by Intisar Khanani. Read by Shiromi Arserio.
In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee
The Bone Spindle by Leslie Vedder – the first in a trilogy. I enjoyed the whole thing, and am listening to the first with my son (slowly, as he can now drive himself.)
Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher
Adult
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang
Every year since 2014, I’ve tried to do an audit of my reading, as well as a list of my favorite books of the year. It’s my way of keeping myself accountable to my goals of reading at least 30% books by authors of color and including good LGBTQ representation as well, though I don’t have a specific goal there.
2024 Overview
This is my fourth year splitting out the digital library loans (Libby and hoopla) from the physical books. My total library reading including those was 80%, back to 2022 levels. I did a fair amount of reading from Netgalley this summer, and also purchased a few more books for myself. Audiobooks are up slightly for the second year in a row. Ebook reading doubled, partly with reading on Libby and partly from purchased and Netgalley books.
What I Read
I read a little more fantasy and twice as much science fiction as last year! My adult reading went from 16% up to nearly 24%, with a corresponding drop in Middle Grade.
The Authors
Sigh! A big increase in reading by white authors, Just for fun, a map of where the authors are from – 16 different countries, two more than last year. I read significantly more books by men this year – 18% as opposed to last year’s 12%. I still gained a percentage point in reading by nonbinary authors. The pink slice is Female-Nonbinary partnerships, representing 4 books.
The Characters
Just ouch. This is the worst I’ve done with diverse reading in years. I’ll definitely need to work on that this year!This graph looks at counts of books with diversity besides racial. I counted religion if the MCs practiced any religion besides Christianity, Economic if they were low income, Ability for physical disabilities. Neurodiversity includes main characters with ADHD, autism, anxiety, etc. As usual, economic diversity is really common in fantasy books.
I’ve been doing these graphs over ten years now – here they are from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. Maybe 2025 will be the year I learn how to do graphs pulling from multiple pages of a spreadsheet to do some composite graphs. As always, if you know of any speculative fiction books that would help me round out the diversity of my reading, please let me know! And if you have thoughts on these stats or other things you’d like to see, let me know in the comments.
alibrarymama 