Month: August 2025

Kate’s Review: “What’s Yours Is Mine”

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Book: “What’s Yours Is Mine” by Jennifer Jabaley

Publishing Info: Lake Union Publishing, August 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publicist.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Determined daughters. Controlling mothers. There’s no such thing as friendly competition in a twisty novel of suspense about ambition, revenge, and unrealized dreams.

Valerie Yarnell is a hardworking single mother who’d do anything for her daughter, Kate. Kate is a dancer with dreams of stardom, just like her talented best friend, Colette. Despite Valerie’s sacrifices, it’s Colette’s mother, former prima ballerina Elise, whom Kate adores. And Colette has become like the practically perfect sister Kate never had. How can Valerie not feel frustrated, ineffectual, and a little jealous of the queen bee of dance moms? Not only has she hijacked her daughter, but Elise is married to the man Valerie pines for.

Rivalries are forming. Tension is mounting. In preparation for an elite dance competition, Kate outshines the more promising Colette onstage, and the pressure is on for Colette to keep her position in the spotlight—and especially to keep her demanding mother happy. Who could have foreseen the violent attack that sabotages everything? Anyone who’s been watching closely.

As ruthless and sinister ambitions are exposed, a media firestorm and an explosive town scandal erupt. Before it’s over, two mothers and two daughters will learn just how fierce and dangerous a rivalry can still get.

Review: Thank you to Sparkpoint Studio for sending me an ARC of this novel!

My kid is five years old and my husband signed her up for soccer this past Spring into Summer. I was talking to book club about this during our cabin weekend and how I’ve somehow been wrangled into the role of ‘soccer mom’ since his work schedule means that more often than not I was the one taking her, and probably will be in the future (as the kid LOVED it), and it was pointed out that at least soccer, comparatively, is cheaper than other popular sports and pastimes (we’re in the land of hockey, after all). One that came up was dance, and I kept thinking about that as I read “What’s Yours Is Mine” by Jennifer Jabaley, a new soapy thriller about teenage dance rivalries spilling into mother’s circles and running amok. It was either a stark reminder that it could always be worse, or a scrying glass into my future (hopefully without the extra drama and bodily harm).

As a thriller, it worked fairly well for me. The set up is simple: Kate and Colette are teenage dancers and best friends, Kate’s mother Valerie being a single mom who works a difficult and time consuming job, and Colette’s mother Elise being a former prima dancer turned powerful and put together housewife. Kate has ambition to be the best, while Elise has that same ambition for her daughter. When it becomes clear that Kate may be outshining Colette, and Kate starts to REALLY want to become the best, tensions rise between friends, and mothers and daughters, until Colette is injured in a suspicious accident. The crux of it is who wants to hurt Colette, and how far are some of these characters willing to go to get what they want? It’s simple, it’s straightforward, but it has a good amount of suspense with lots of suspects, clues, and misdirections to keep me guessing in general. Were all of the reveals surprising? It was a bit of a mixed bag. But the pacing was well done and the suspense was there.

And I mean it’s just so dramatic and soapy, and that is truly my catnip when it comes to domestic thrillers. We have best friends who are now fully competing with each other! We have class wars! We have a former dancer who wants her daughter to be a star no matter what! We have potential affairs! It has so many suds just spilling out of it that I was eating it up and reveling in the histrionics of it all, and I fully mean that in a complimentary kind of way. I liked jumping perspectives between characters so we could get an idea of what they were all thinking, but Jabaley was successful in keeping clues hidden away for the most part even when we were getting into each character’s head. A nice soapy vibe is usually going to be something I like and this book had it and then some.

As a whole I enjoyed “What’s Yours Is Mine”. It has some twists and turns and a lot of dramatics, and if you are still looking for easy poolside reading this summer, this is a good choice.

Rating 8: A tension filled domestic thriller about ambition, rivalry, and passion that kept me guessing and kept me invested. Also, VERY sudsy, which is always a plus.

Reader’s Advisory:

“What’s Yours Is Mine” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but if you like Megan Abbott this will surely be a good fit.

Highlights: August 2025

The mugginess continues! Serena luckily escaped back home to the West over much of July, and Kate performed her usual trick of avoiding the outdoors altogether, unless she’s poolside of course! And with the craziness of school schedules and busyness staring us down, we’re eager to bury our heads in some good books instead. Here are some titles we’re both looking forward to this month.

Serena’s Picks

Book: “Hemlock and Silver” by T. Kingfisher

Publication Date: August 19, 2025

Why I’m Interested: I love how prolific Kingfisher is! It’s always great to find another must-read author. It’s absolutely the best when that same author puts out not only one but often two or three books a year! You get so spoiled! And, while I always enjoy the horror novels that Kate and I co-review, my favorites remain her standalone fairytale stories. And here we have a re-telling of “Snow White!” The great thing about this author is that her re-tellings are often true re-tellings, with only limited call backs or the original story. Often featuring wholly new characters and an entirely new main plot. So excited to see what she does with this one!

Book: “The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk” by Carissa Broadbent

Publication Date: August 5, 2025

Why I’m Interested: Another favorite author, another highlighted title! Not only that, but this is the second book in the Shadowborn duet, and after that massive cliffhanger at the end of the first book, I’ve been on pins and needles waiting for this one. As it’s a romantasy, it’s pretty clear that some of the events at the end of that first book won’t stick, at least not in the way they usually do. But I’m incredibly curious to see how Broadbent resolves the very high stakes situation that has been set up! Not only for our two main characters, but for this world as a whole!

Book: “Katabasis” by R. F. Kuang

Publication Date: August 26, 2025

Why I’m Interested: Third time’s the charm! August is just a banger of a month with all of my favorite authors coming to play! But I’d also be interested in this one on its own. There have been a ton of dark academia titles recently, and even while they haven’t all been a hit, I find I still can’t resist a new entry into the subgenre. Still living off the high that was the “Scholomance” trilogy probably. Whatever it is, I’m incredibly excited to see what Kuang has to offer here. Plus, you know, the cover is incredibly cool.

Kate’s Pick

Book: “Lucky Day” by Chuck Tingle

Publication Date: August 12, 2025

Why I’m Interested: I just love Chuck Tingle, his previous two horror novels being hits for me, and therefore I was of course eager to see what he was going to come up with next! And it sounds really out there and like his most experimental novel yet! It sounds like it’s somewhat post-apocalyptic or dystopian, but mixed in with a Vegas based mystery and some kind of casino that may be leading up to ANOTHER apocalyptic event? It sounds weird, but that hasn’t ever stopped me in the past so why should it stop me now? Also I just love Tingle as an author and a person, so this one was clearly going to make my list!

Book: “What Hunger” by Catherine Dang

Publication Date: August 12, 2025

Why I’m Interested: This one caught my eye at ALA, because look at that cover!! So weird! So pretty but also unsettling! This is the second time that a book by Catherine Dang has caught my attention with a cover, and this one sounds like not only are we getting a coming of age tale with a Vietnamese American protagonist, but also perhaps something a little cannibalistic! After a horrible tragedy has thrown her family into turmoil, Ronny Nguyen now has to enter her Freshman year of high school with little guidance and lots of angst. After she is assaulted at a party and she fights back in a, shall we say ‘different’ way, she suddenly finds herself craving raw meat. And her hunger is becoming insatiable. It sounds creepy and also perhaps tinged with sadness. I’m into it.

Book: “A Game in Yellow” by Hailey Piper

Publication Date: August 12, 2025

Why I’m Interested: I discovered Hailey Piper last autumn and then I got to hear her speak at ALAAC25, and now I have her newest horror novel on my Highlights for this month because it sounds SO gripping and interesting and unique. Carmen and Blanca are in a relationship, but the passion has stalled out a bit, their usual kink filled love life feeling a bit stagnant. But when Blanca finds herself with access to the pages of a mysterious play that COULD drive the person reading it insane should they read its electrifying words for too long, the two begin to read it as ploy to spice up their love life with the danger of it. But things get strange as reality and fantasy starts to become interchangeable. Intriguing to be sure.

What books are you looking forward to this month? Let us know in the comments!

Serena’s Review: “The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy” by Brigitte Knightley

Publishing Info: Ace, July 2o25

Where Did I Get this Book: Netgalley!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Osric Mordaunt, member of the Fyren Order of assassins, finds himself in dire need of an expert healer. As fate would have it, that very healer is Aurienne Fairhrim, a member of his enemy Order, the Haelen.

Aurienne is desperate for funding to heal the sick, so desperate that when Osric breaks into her office to offer her a bribe for her healing services, she must accept. Even if she loathes him.

A forced collaboration ensues: the brilliant Woman in STEM is coerced into working with the PhD in Murders – much to Aurienne’s disgust. Despite being enemies thrown together, as Osric and Aurienne work together to solve not only his illness, but the mysterious reoccurrence of a deadly Pox, they find themselves ardently denying their attraction which seems to only fuel the heat between them.

Review: This is one of those odd reviews to write where, largely, my experience while reading it was positive. But at the same time, there were some glaring hiccups along the way. This made for a very confusing reading experience, as I was having fun, but was also constantly pulled back from full immersion by one thing or another.

Now, I haven’t read the original fanfic (and there are mixed messages going around about whether this is a straight adaptation of that story or a more original tale), but I will say that had I not known this was based on a Draco/Hermione fanfiction tale (and the marketing and cover image hadn’t telegraphed that point so heavily), I wouldn’t have guessed. This speaks well to the author’s ability to remove it from any original points of inspiration, leaving characters and a world that felt wholly unique. If I squinted I could maybe identify pieces that were pulled from Harry Potter; but truly, had I not known, it never would have entered my mind that there was any connection to another story/world in this book.

The story is also a fast, fun, romantic comedy. This last point I think is crucial. While it is marketed as “romantasy” and would fit that criteria, being both a romance and set in a fantasy world, it more strictly aligns with the sort of story you’d likely find in a romantic comedy. There are very few serious moments to be found and the fantasy world-building is mostly just there as window-dressing for this love story to play out. Instead, the story is largely light-hearted (even its darker moments are largely tempered by jokes).

I also very much appreciated the slow-burn nature of the story. It is here that I think some romantasy fans may find disappointment. These two barely make any progress until the very end of the book, and even there, it’s the most minimal of steps. Now, I love slow burn, so I was all about this approach. But for romantasy readers looking for more spice or clearly romantic interactions, this may be a disappointment.

However, I did struggle with this book throughout. As I mentioned above, the world-building and magic system is incredibly sparce. There is a glossary at the end of the book that describes the various magical groups and their beliefs/powers. But if the reader doesn’t discover this bit for themselves, the book does very little to explain any of this within the story itself. We get enough about the main characters’ respective groups, but the groups who aren’t represented on the page are incredibly unclear. Like I said, if I hadn’t scanned the back of the book to start, I’d have no clue about how any of these worked.

The world itself is also fairly confusing. It’s clearly based on the UK, but this version is also split into various smaller nations, many of whom are verging on war with one another. It’s never clear how these places differ from one another, why they are fighting, what goals they are trying to achieve…really, just nothing was given here. I was usually having enough fun just following the interactions between the main couple to forget these niggling details, but the second I stepped back from the book, all of these questions came charging back in. And frankly, there just aren’t any answers to be found.

There is also a strong emphasis on humor in this book. This was also a tough spot, because while I found some of it genuinely funny, there was also a lot of cringy moments. In particular, there was so, so much crass body humor throughout the entire affair. Just ball/dick jokes galore. And that’s just not my thing. It was especially frustrating because there were other moments where I actually chuckled out loud! Mostly, I feel like the author has the skill to write a funny, romantic comedy-style story, but that this one was a bit too stuck in some of the stylized humor that you do find in fanfiction still.

The story itself was also interesting, and, like I said, the pacing was fast. That said, the ending was incredibly abrupt and left me turning pages and looking for the real ending. It’s not even really a cliff-hanger (though everything is still completely unresolved at the end), but more that it felt like the author finished a chapter….and then they just cut the book off there. Presumably to pick up with the very next chapter at the start of the next book! It was just odd.

So, there you go. A very mixed bag read. I’d say that for my actual reading experience, this was fun enough to earn an 8 rating. However, due to the issues with the limited world-building, the sometimes cringy humor, and the odd pacing at the end, I have to lower it down to a 7. I think that readers looking for a fun, lighthearted romantasy (especially those who enjoy a true slow burn) may still have fun with this one though. And I’ll definitely be checking out book two when it comes out!

Rating 7: While I had a lot of fun reading this book, the world-building and pacing were rough at times, and the humor came on a bit too hard at times.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy” can be found on this Goodreads list: July 2025 Most Anticipated Romance Releases.