Category: Kate’s Reviews

Kate’s Review: “On Sundays She Picked Flowers”

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

Book: “On Sundays She Picked Flowers” by Yah-Yah Scholfield

Publishing Info: Saga Press, January 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

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

Book Description: In this sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut, a woman escapes into the uncanny woods of southern Georgia and must contend with ghosts, haints, and most dangerous of all, the truth about herself.

When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.

Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.

But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.

Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I love stumbling upon titles that come out of nowhere for me, and that is exactly what happened with Yah-Yah Scholfield’s horror novel “On Sundays She Picked Flowers”. I saw it on various book influencer posts, and after seeing multiple people recommend it I decided to give it a go. I was intrigued by the idea of haints and a woman running away from an abusive situation, and jumped in, only to find that this book was a lot heavier than I thought it would be.

When it comes to the supernatural elements in this book, I really enjoyed the Southern Gothic feel, combining an unexpected haunted house story along with some interesting folk lore and dark romance to top it off. Our protagonist is Jude, a woman escaping her life with her abusive and violent mother Ernestine and fleeing to the backwoods of Georgia, where she finds a strange house haunted by ghosts and haints that only she can tame. A haunted house story is already great in my book, but Scholfield brought a distinctly Black and Southern vibe to it that made it stand out from other haunted house tales that I’ve read in the past. The house is menacing but doesn’t really come off as evil, and watching Jude slowly gain its trust and tame it in her own way to become an independent and confident woman that works in tandem with the beings inside was really neat. There is also the character of Nemoira, a mysterious woman who approaches Jude’s home one day, which begins a steamy and dark romance between Jude and this otherworldly stranger. This isn’t particularly romantic and has a lot of issues, but ultimately I found their romance to be incredibly interesting, even as some truths come to light that are on the more supernatural side.

But the very true horrors of this novel live within the very real horrors of reality, specifically with the themes of generational trauma, racism, and child abuse, as well as sexual assault and incest. Jude’s story is one that is at the forefront, and we are presented with a bleak and absolutely upsetting reality of her being abused by her mother Ernestine her entire life until she finally retaliates and then flees after the fact. But Scholfield doesn’t want to make it such a cut and dry situation with Jude being wholly good and Ernestine being wholly bad, managing to walk a fine line in portraying a fraught and violent relationship that has a lot of dark influences that aren’t all within the fault and control of the two people who are involved. I found the slow reveal of Ernestine’s background to be shattering, but also appreciated that there were no excuses for her behaviors. It’s a tough read to be sure, so my advice is to go in with the knowledge that there are lots of tough and triggering beats and plot points. They’re handled well, I felt, but it’s still good to know.

“On Sundays She Picked Flowers” is a harrowing horror tale that had me totally on edge as I read it. It’s a difficult one, but one I ultimately found rewarding.

Rating 8: A dark and upsetting Southern Gothic horror tale that has dark romance, generational trauma, and an interesting mythology. It chilled me to the bone.

Reader’s Advisory:

“On Sundays She Picked Flowers” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Black Speculative Fiction”.

Kate’s Review: “The Hostess”

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

Book: “The Hostess” by Courtney Psak

Publishing Info: Hodder & Stoughton, January 2026

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

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Natalie and her husband decide to escape the city for a much-needed break. After suffering from a terrible accident, Natalie needs some time and space to recover. So when they find a gorgeous rental home on an estate in the Hamptons available at the last minute, it seems too good to be true.

The owner of the estate, Sadie, is beautiful, elegant and wealthy, and Natalie is immediately drawn to her.

But as the women begin to bond, Natalie can’t shake the feeling that Sadie is hiding something beneath her polished exterior.

When Natalie discovers that the previous guest disappeared without a trace, dark questions Who exactly is the hostess? What are her secrets? And can Natalie uncover the truth, before it’s too late?

Review: Thank you to Kaye Publicity for sending me an ARC of this novel!

It’s the dead of winter here in Minnesota, with temps dropping well below zero this weekend. In the dead of winter it’s always kind of fun to read books that have a less frigid setting, and “The Hostess” by Courtney Psak is a twisty thriller that also happens to take place in The Hamptons, a beach setting if there ever was one (though to be fair, apparently New York is also getting rocked by cold and snow this weekend, so even The Hamptons get frigid). I hadn’t ready anything by Courtney Psak before, but when this ended up in my mailbox I thought I’d give it a go. I like a suspenseful thriller with unreliable narrators, after all, and this one sounded like it would deliver on that.

We have two narrative voices in “The Hostess”. The first is that of Natalie, a woman who needs to get away from her everyday life after being in an accident that has given her mental health woes and hallucinations (though her past traumas are also causing issues). She and husband Luke luck out in renting a house in the Hamptons, with their hostess being Sadie, a wealthy and charismatic woman, who also happens to be our second narrative POV, and who has some secrets of her own. We alternate between Natalie and Sadie, slowly learning about both of them through flashbacks and the slow reveal of secrets that they are keeping. Natalie and Sadie both have interesting layers, with my opinions starting in one place for each of them and then evolving in ways that I didn’t expect.

I will say that it took a bit for me to get fully invested in this, as for whatever reason the first half it dragged a little bit as the exposition and clues were starting to be set out. There were a few red herrings that I could spot from the jump, and while I was interested to see what surprises were laying in wait, I was also kind of getting anxious to get further into the action and suspense. But that said, once things did click into place, I was pretty well pulled into the story and the mystery at hand. By the time I was getting to the final chapters I was racing through the pages to see what was going to happen, and that, to me, is what ultimately made this story worth the read, and one that would be a solid choice if you are looking for a thriller with some interesting twists and turns.

“The Hostess” is ultimately an enjoyable thriller with some interesting narrative characters. Think about picking it up if you want a mystery on a cold winter night.

Rating 7: Once the pace picked up in the last half I was pretty into it!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Hostess” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but this is probably a read for Frieda McFadden fans.

Kate’s Review: “All The Little Houses”

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

Book: “All The Little Houses” by May Cobb

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Landmark, January 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received and eARC from NetGalley

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

Book Description: It’s the mid-1980s in the tiny town of Longview, Texas. Nellie Anderson, the beautiful daughter of the Anderson family dynasty, has burst onto the scene. She always gets what she wants. What she can’t get for herself… well, that’s what her mother is for. Because Charleigh Andersen, blond, beautiful, and ruthlessly cunning, remembers all too well having to claw her way to the top. When she was coming of age on the poor side of East Texas, she was a loser, an outcast, humiliated, and shunned by the in-crowd, whose approval she’d so desperately thirsted for. When a prairie-kissed family moves to town, all trad wife, woodworking dad, wholesome daughter vibes, Charleigh’s entire self-made social empire threatens to crumble. Who will be left standing when the dust settles?

From the author of The Hunting Wives comes a deliciously wicked new thriller about mean girls, mean moms, and the delicious secrets inside all the little houses.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

When I was a kid I had a nanny that really loved “Little House on the Prairie”. I remember her sometimes trying to get me to watch it, but I found it so utterly boring that she never was able to convert me. I have read a good deal of the “Little House” books (I’m a Minnesota girl after all), but never got into the TV show mythos (as it’s extensive and different from the books I hear tell). When I started reading “All the Little Houses” by May Cobb, it took me a little bit to realize that I was reading a book that was a 1980s kind of interpretation of the “Little House” TV show, but when I did I thought ‘oh, that’s kinda fun!’ Given that Cobb wrote “The Hunting Wives”, which is now a hit show on Netflix (I haven’t watched it yet but it sounds wild), I was really hoping for something unhinged and covered in suds and over the top dramatics. I live for that stuff. And with a “Little House” vibe it felt all the more ripe for the picking. Unfortunately it didn’t click for me.

But first the good stuff. As much as I am not a “Little House on the Prairie” person, I know enough about it to be able to make the connections to the characters that are representative of the characters from the show, and some of that I really enjoyed. Especially because some of the directions that a few of the characters were taken (specifically Ethan, the patriarch of the Swift family, though the reveal here is a bit more in line with the real life Charles Ingalls as opposed to TV show or book… if you know, you know). I also enjoyed the character of Jackson, Charleigh’s best friend who is an interior decorator and happens to be a gay man in the 1980s, feeling a need to be careful while also being flaunted by Charleigh as a novelty. While none of the characters were particularly likable (more on that in a bit), at least Jackson’s prickly and abrasive behaviors made some sense as being a gay man during this time was incredibly difficult.

But there were definitely some stumbles that came with this book. As mentioned above, most of the characters were completely unlikable, and very few of them had the complexities to make their terrible personalities bearable/understandable. This was especially disappointing for the character of Nellie, who is clearly the Nellie Oleson analog but is SO awful that it’s not even fun to follow her in her chapters. And even when we got a slight tread towards making her nuanced or at least a little bit complicated, Cobb never quite pulled the trigger with her to have her move beyond being completely horrendous (and while I haven’t seen “Little House on the Prairie” all that much, I’ve seen enough clips to know that Nellie has a HUGE redemption/development arc, so that made this even more disappointing). Also, these characters seemed to be 1980s caricatures of the TV show, but then also references the TV show as something in universe. Which was confusing. And finally, the ending was incredibly rushed. We got some hints throughout the book about a murder or at least a dead body in the local lake/pond with question as to who it is and who did it, but then by the time we got to the climax it landed with a huge thud, and then abruptly ended. Generally I can forgive a lot if there is a lot of suds and over the top melodrama, but it wasn’t enough to bolster it above the ho-humness of the execution.

“All the Little Houses” had potential but didn’t really meet it. It may work for others, but it didn’t really work for me.

Rating 5: With very few likable characters and a thud of an ending, even the soapy fun couldn’t fully redeem this book.

Reader’s Advisory:

“All the Little Houses” is included on the Goodreads list “2026 Mystery/Thriller New Releases”.

Kate’s Review: “Angelica and the Bear Prince”

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

Book: “Angelica and the Bear Prince” by Trung Le Nguyen

Publishing Info: Random House Graphic, October 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it

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

Book Description: At her lowest point, a teen girl finds solace and a potential crush in her local theater’s mascot’s DMs, sparking a quest to uncover the true identity of this mysterious figure. From the bestselling author of The Magic Fish comes a new fairy tale romance with a twist.

What do you do when you’re the girl who can do it all, and suddenly you can’t?

After burning out last year, Angelica is ready to get her life back together. Thankfully she has amazing friends to support her…including Peri the Bear, the mascot of her town’s local theater. At her lowest moments, Angelica found comfort in private messaging Peri’s social media account, and well, she might have a bit of a crush. Now, Angelica is interning at the local theater in the hopes of finding the person beind the account and thanking them. Who was this mysterious stranger and why did they help her out? Was it just caring for a stranger…or did they feel the same connection that Angelica felt?

Review: I’ll level with people a bit here, I’ve been having an exhausting and draining week with everything going on in the Twin Cities. And whenever I am facing burnout and mental stress, I find it very difficult to concentrate on reading for very long. When I was at a local bookstore gathering information and resources for my community, I saw “Angelica and the Bear Prince” by Trung Le Nguyen. We are reading his previous graphic novel “The Magic Fish” for book club this month (keep an eye out for that in the near future), and one of our members said that she had read this newest book and really liked it. So on a whim I tossed it onto my stack of things and bought it. I figured that maybe my attention span could focus a bit better on another graphic novel. And I was right. Not only because I find graphic novels easier to process during these kinds of times, but also because “Angelica and the Bear Prince” to be delightful and sweet and exactly what I needed.

Much like “The Magic Fish” before it, “Angelica and the Bear Prince” has a gentle feel and a lot of heart. We follow Angelica, or “Jelly” to her loved ones, as she starts an internship at a local theater after having a suffered a severe case of overextension and burnout that left her drained for months. It just so happens that she has struck up a friendship with a fan account of Peri the Bear, the theater’s mascot, and she wonders if working at the theater will help her find out who her new friend is. But a simple rom-comesque premise is actually teeming with a lot of emotion, not just for Jelly but for those around her. The story discusses grief, pushing down emotions, and the downside of trying to persevere, and it isn’t just Jelly who is struggling. We have a rich cast of supporting characters, from Jelly’s mother who is still grieving the death of her own mother (and who has pressed it all down within herself), to Gable, Jelly’s mysterious pen pal who was once Jelly’s friend but is now shy to reveal that they are the person Jelly has been talking with, to Christine, Jelly’s best friend whose relationship is on thin ice. I liked how Nguyen shows all of the different ways that grief and loneliness can affect a person, and how it can apply to so many different situations, be it actual death, or a simple changing of a relationship. But it’s also a story about connection and reconnection, be it renewing old friendships, or a child and a parent finding unexpected commonalities, or finding a new sense of self. It’s just lovely and sweet.

I also liked how it was all backdropped against the fairy tale “East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon”, another fairy tale retelling from Nguyen with similar deconstructions of the themes from the source material. I am not as familiar with “East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon”, but I liked how the bear was Gable’s bear costume for the theater production, and how Jelly was the princess who was trying to find out the secrets of the bear vis a vis figuring out who her mysterious pen pal is. And without going into the story itself as that would require me to talk about spoilers a bit, Nguyen is very creative in taking certain beats of the original story and transferring them to this one, which is more a coming of age contemporary tale as opposed to an actual fairy tale. It just works really well.

And I really like Nguyen’s art style still. He is so good at capturing a contemporary aesthetic as well as a fantastical one, and I really liked how it combined for both kinds of vibes within the story.

(Source)

“Angelica and the Bear Prince” is a charming romance and coming of age tale that felt like a calming balm as I was reading it.

Rating 8: A sweet and gentle romance that talks about grief, love, growing up, and finding connection in many ways. It was a quiet read I needed in this tense and exhausting moment.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Angelica and the Bear Prince” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Novels of 2025”.

Also….

If anyone is wondering how you can help immigrant communities in Minnesota while ICE continues to occupy our streets and cities, HERE is an article that has a lot of mutual aid links of all kinds.

Kate’s Review: “It Rhymes With Takei”

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

Book: “It Rhymes With Takei” by George Takei, Harmony Becker (Ill.), Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger

Publishing Info: Top Shelf Productions, June 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it

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

Book Description: George Takei has shown the world many faces: actor, author, outspoken activist, helmsman of the starship Enterprise, living witness to the internment of Japanese Americans, and king of social media. But until October 27, 2005, there was always one piece missing—one face he did not show the world. There was one very intimate fact about George that he never shared… and it rhymes with Takei.

Now, for the first time ever, George shares the full story of his life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything. Following the phenomenal success of his first graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, George Takei reunites with the team of Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger for a jaw-dropping new testament. From his earliest childhood crushes and youthful experiments in the rigidly conformist 1950s, to global fame as an actor and the paralyzing fear of exposure, to the watershed moment of speaking his truth and becoming one of the most high-profile gay men on the planet, It Rhymes With Takei presents a sweeping portrait of one iconic American navigating the tides of LGBTQ+ history.

Combining historical context with intimate subjectivity, It Rhymes With Takei shows how the personal and the political have always been intertwined. Its richly emotional words and images depict the terror of entrapment even in gay community spaces, the anguish of speaking up for so many issues while remaining silent on his most personal issue, the grief of losing friends to AIDS, the joy of finding true love with Brad Altman, and the determination to declare that love openly—and legally—before the whole world.

Looking back on his own astonishing life on both sides of the closet, George Takei presents a charismatic and candid witness to how far America has come… and how precious that progress is.

Review: One of my biggest regrets at ALAAC25 was not planning well enough to be able to meet George Takei when he was there signing his most recent memoir “It Rhymes With Takei”. As someone who has loved “Star Trek” for most of my life with “The Voyage Home” being my absolute favorite “Trek” film, I’ve had a special place in my heart for him for a long time, following him as Sulu, then as an activist for LGBTQIA+ rights after he came out in 2005. I also absolutely loved his memoir “They Called Us Enemy”, which is him recollecting his time in Japanese Internment camps as a child. So when I was out at a local indie bookstore and saw “It Rhymes With Takei” for sale, I decided that I needed to guy it and finally read it. And much like “They Called Us Enemy”, I found myself really enjoying it.

While “They Called Us Enemy” is a very specific memoir by Takei, “It Rhymes With Takei” is a bit broader in scope and time, though it does have a central theme of him slowly accepting and embracing his identity as a gay man. We start with him as a preteen and then follow him up through marriage equality in this country, with Takei also talking about his experiences as a political activist, as an actor on “Star Trek” and beyond, and as a man figuring out who he is at his heart and being true to himself. I really like how candid Takei is and how he’s willing to talk about a huge swath of things about his life with lots of honesty, heart, and humor. Even though I’ve been a fan of his for years, there were so many things I never knew about him, like how he studied acting in England, or how he had a brief stint in politics and was even appointed to the Southern California Rapid Transit District. I honestly had no idea that he had been soon invested in many social justice and political issues even before he came out in response to the fight for marriage equality in California, and I found his stories to be really engaging. And yes, there are plenty of “Star Trek” stories to be found as well.

I also really appreciated how willing he was to talk about the way that his childhood in a Japanese Internment camp shaped his fears of being othered, and how it contributed to his fear of being outed as gay during a time where it would be incredibly damaging. His introspection about his love for acting and how it helped him compartmentalize the secrets he were desperate to keep was bittersweet and incredibly personal, and getting to see how he lived this whole other life as a gay man where some people knew but many did not was an at times emotional tale (I found myself tearing up while he talked about losing so many friends to AIDS, as well as him coming out to his brother, who did not take it well). Takei is able to be incredibly true to himself and talk about these experiences in a way that never feels dismissive but also feels like the genial and hopeful person that the world has come to know him to be, and I thought it balanced out very well. It was also just nice getting to see the romance between him an husband Brad.

“It Rhymes With Takei” is a heartwarming memoir that allows George Takei to share more of himself with the world on his own terms. I quite liked it.

Rating 8: A deeply personal memoir about his acting career, activism, love, and finally being able to be true to himself, “It Rhymes With Takei” is George Takei’s story on his own terms.

Reader’s Advisory:

“It Rhymes With Takei” is included on the Goodreads lists “AAPI Graphic Novels”, and “Graphic Novels Featuring LGBTIQ Themes”.

Kate’s Review: “Shiny Happy People”

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

Book: “Shiny Happy People” by Clay McLeod Chapman

Publishing Info: Delacorte Press, November 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC at ALAAC25

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

Book Description: A gripping, genre-bending novel about a mysterious new drug plaguing a small town and one girl who must uncover the terrifying truth behind the haunting side effects—or she will be next.

At sixteen Kyra is still haunted by the horrors she saw as little girl living with her mother’s drug addiction. Years later, Kyra doesn’t always feel like she belongs—and disturbing dreams come to her at night.

When a new party drug makes its way to her high school, Kyra’s life becomes an actual nightmare. A challenge spreads among the students thanks to a few videos circulating—and Kyra is unable to escape the inexplicably strange side effects.

Everyone around her seems to be mysteriously changing, including the people she loves the most. Her brother has a new personality overnight. Her best friend suddenly feels like a stranger. The only other person who seems to be noticing the eeriness around them is Logan, the new boy at school. Like Kyra, he has steered clear of the party scene.

But as strange occurrences begin to turn sinister, Kyra can’t shake the feeling that something unnatural is at play . . . as if something deadly spreading is in their veins. With Logan’s help, she decides to find out exactly what is behind the mysterious drug—before they’re next. As they begin to get closer to the truth, the line between Kyra’s past and her present blurs . . . and she will need to face the terrors inside herself to save everyone.

Review: Thank you to Delacorte Press for giving me an ARC at ALAAC25!

When I heard that Clay McLeod Chapman was writing a YA horror novel in 2025, my knee jerk reaction was ‘wait what?’. In part because when I think of hi as a horror author, I think of really graphic, no holds barred, visceral horror. Like VISCERAL HORROR. So the thought was a little out there to me at first. But shortly after my initial ‘um’ reaction, I thought ‘well, I bet he could do it. Probably.’ Because I do find Chapman to be such a great horror writer, even if his books have disgusted, horrified, and sometimes traumatized (kidding… kinda) me. When I read about “Shiny Happy People” I thought that it sounded pretty promising, and I was VERY interested to see how it would compare to the books he writes for an adult audience. I never should have doubted, because this book translates well for a new kind of audience while still being pretty creepy and unnerving.

This is very much an homage to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” stories, with a fair amount of emphasis on the 1978 Version starring Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams (just look for the easter eggs!), but Chapman does a stellar job of making it feel more in tune with modern YA sensibilities. We have Kyra, a girl who had a rough start at childhood due to her mother’s drug abuse and neglect, who is now living with an adoptive family in a small town trying to just have a normal life. Until a new party drug called “Spore” starts making the rounds at her high school, and videos of her classmates taking it go viral, and seemingly improves their lives even if they seem… off. Kyra is a great choice of protagonist for a body snatchers story, as she has a traumatic past with drugs and will not be easily swayed to try anything even before it’s clear that something is up, and I enjoyed seeing her slowly piece things together as more and more people start changing. The tension as she and new kid Logan try to solve the mystery all as time is running out was well paced and taut, and even though I’m familiar with the general beats that this kind of story takes (and therefore could pinpoint what was going to most likely happen next), I still found it to be engaging and suspenseful.

But I also liked how Chapman still takes the idea of a metaphor of the pod people as insert whatever it may be here (as so many stories have had so many kinds of symbolism) and update it for a modern YA audience. Here there are some pretty clear themes about conformity, peer pressure and the need to feel included (viral video challenges on social media always seem to come from this), and drug use, as well as fears of Big Pharma and some interesting takes on gentrification. It can feel a LITTLE scattered at times, but it didn’t really bother me too much because so many of these kinds of pod person stories can speak to so many different kinds of fears, and lots of that can overlap. It’s also really fun seeing Chapman easily jump from writing some really gonzo and grotesque adult horror to a more toned down but still horrifying/in his wheelhouse brand of horror for a younger audience. It’s a testament to how talented that he is as an author.

“Shiny Happy People” is a very fun YA horror tale from one of my favorite horror authors! If you like any kind of pod person/”Invasion of the Body Snatchers” tale, this is a new one to add to the genre you should check out!

Rating 8: A fun homage to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” packaged for a modern teen audience, “Shiny Happy People” is a departure for Clay McLeod Chapman that shows his appeal across audiences.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Shiny Happy People” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Killer Plants in Horror & Science Fiction Fantasy”.

Also…..

Just on a personal note as a lifelong Minnesotan who has lived in Minneapolis, who has friends who live in the Powderhorn neighborhood, who has people I love in South Minneapolis, I just want to say please keep Minneapolis, and Minnesota, in your thoughts. This community, this state, has been through so much pain the past few years. Please keep the loved ones of Renee Nicole Good in your thoughts, as well as the people being targeted by ICE in our neighborhoods. And if you can, please donate to the GoFundMe that is going to support Good’s child and wife.

Kate’s Review: “Beth Is Dead”

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

Book: “Beth Is Dead” by Katie Bernet

Publishing Info: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, January 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

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

Book Description: Beth March’s sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer—until they begin to suspect each other—in this debut thriller that’s also a bold, contemporary reimagining of the beloved classic Little Women.

When Beth March is found dead in the woods on New Year’s Day, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer. Suspects abound. There’s the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two of the girls. Meg’s manipulative best friend. Amy’s flirtatious mentor. And Beth’s lionhearted first love. But it doesn’t take the surviving sisters much digging to uncover motives each one of the March girls had for doing the unthinkable.

Jo, an aspiring author with a huge following on social media, would do anything to hook readers. Would she kill her sister for the story? Amy dreams of studying art in Europe, but she’ll need money from her aunt—money that’s always been earmarked for Beth. And Meg wouldn’t dream of hurting her sister…but her boyfriend might have, and she’ll protect him at all costs.

Despite the growing suspicion within the family, it’s hard to know for sure if the crime was committed by someone close to home. After all, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight months ago when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own daughters. Beth could have been killed by anyone.

Beth’s perspective told in flashback unfolds next to Meg, Jo, and Amy’s increasingly fraught investigation as the tragedy threatens to rip the Marches apart.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

As an elder Millennial I have a very special place in my heart for the 1994 “Little Women” film. I just love the story of the March Sisters growing up and experiencing love, loss, and growth. But I’ve always found the character of Beth to be a little twee, so good and so angelic, only to die a tragic death that is so unfair because she was just SO good. Beth has had some great performers behind her, don’t get me wrong (Claire Danes is perfection), but as a character, to me, she’s there to be a tragedy. Suffice to say, when I saw the book “Beth Is Dead” by Katie Bernet on my various social media and book feeds, it caught my eye. At first I was thinking ‘well that’s a LITTLE grotesque’, as turning a death from a weakened heart due to illness into a violent murder seemed perhaps a little crude. But, as you all know, I’m really big into thrillers and mysteries, especially if the mystery involves murder, and the idea of making “Little Women” into a modern murder mystery was just too fun. I jumped in with no expectations, but ended up really enjoying this re-imagining. And it may surprise some of you to learn that a book that makes Beth March a murder victim actually humanized her more than I’ve encountered in other adaptations and reimaginings!

They mystery at hand is what I will talk about first, just to get it all out there, because to me that was one of the weaker aspects of this novel, if ONLY because if you are familiar with the source material you will probably be able to discern what is going on for basically all of the characters. But that isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy this book, because I found it hard to put down, mostly because I wanted to see how Bernet was going to fit the themes from the original text into a 21st Century murder mystery. And overall she did it very successfully. We have the March Sisters of Jo, Meg, Amy, and yes, Beth (more on Beth in a bit) jumping from their Victorian personalities into a whole new world, but Bernet managed to fit all of them into new boxes in believable ways. For Jo we have an aspiring author who has found her voice in becoming an influencer, creating stories of her day to day life for a hungry audience. For Meg we have an Oldest Daughter Syndrome people pleaser who wants to live up to the lofty expectations of her family and herself, though she can easily be taken advantage of by those around her because of it. For Amy it’s a rebel child who stirs up trouble, dreaming of getting to Europe to pursue and artist’s life at any cost. And for Beth it’s a painfully shy girl who feels like others don’t know her so well, but aches to come out of her shell. I also really liked how in this the father isn’t a soldier who is off at war, but is an author who has taken the lives of his daughters and written a literary novel that is based on their lives, which has set off a firestorm of controversy that causes him to leave in hopes he will stop hurting his children (or perhaps in hopes it will all blow over). It’s things like this that feel like they echo the source material while feeling relevant to our modern world.

But it’s the way that Bernet tackles Beth that worked the best for me in this novel. While the crux of the story is Jo, Meg, and Amy trying to solve their sister’s murder (while also hiding their own secrets from each other), we also get flashbacks to Beth’s final months, and the road that led her to her unfortunate end. I’ve seen this kind of thing in other “Little Women” reimaginings, getting Beth’s perspective at least a little bit, but even in those that I’ve read it feels like Beth is still otherworldly and angelic in those interpretations. In this story where she is murdered, ironically enough, I felt like we actually got the most humanized version of Beth that I’ve seen put to page. She still feels true to her original characterization, preferring her piano and being introverted to being more out there, but it isn’t the only thing we learn about her. We also see her own hopes and dreams, which don’t keep her limited to being the kindest and most loved March Sister due to her inherent goodness. She doesn’t want to just be good, and I really, really liked that.

“Beth Is Dead” was entertaining and suspenseful, and it was a successful twist on a classic that has been so well loved for so many generations.

Rating 8: A fun and suspenseful modern re-imagining of a beloved classic, where sisters keep secrets and a long martyred and beloved March Sister gets a voice.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Beth Is Dead” is included in the Goodreads article “204 Retellings with New Spins on Old Stories”.

Kate’s Review: “I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer”

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

Book: “I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer” by Doug Wagner & Daniel Hillyard (Ill.)

Publishing Info: Image Comics, December 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

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

Book Description: Rennie Bethary has just been accepted into New York City’s most prestigious fashion school. Her designs are daring, edgy, and singular…and made of human flesh. Did we forget to mention Rennie is a serial killer who simply wants to be a fashion designer instead? Stupid, pesky, murderous urges!

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this graphic novel!

Happy New Year everyone! 2025 was a mess in a lot of ways, but we are starting off fresh and we can only hope that we can rise above whatever the hell that was last year (though we’ve said that so many times before). But I thought that starting off with a bit of a bang would be fun, and with that I present a graphic horror/thriller novel that really caught my eye: “I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer” by Doug Warner and Daniel Hillyard just sounded like a lot of campy nasty fun, as someone who likes serial killer thrillers/horror AND satires of fashion and style. I had really high hopes for this one. Unfortunately it didn’t quite match my enthusiasm.

But first the positives! The biggest positive is that the premise is such a freakin’ fun one. I love the idea of a serial killer also having a passion for fashion design and having a dream to become a designer, while also making clothing and muck out of people who are wronging her and those around her, be they her friends, or the downtrodden, or those who are victimized. It feels a bit like “Dexter” while also having a bit of an undercurrent of ‘we love women’s wrongs’ that can be kind of fun in this day and age. I also enjoyed Rennie a lot, as she feels/knows she is a full on psychopath, but manages to find at least a tiny bit of humanity in her heart while she not only pursues a passion, but also makes a human connection with her classmate Sofie, who is so lovely and friendly and serves as a fun (though perhaps a bit old hat these days) foil for our more cynical and dark protagonist.

But on the other hand, I did find the pacing to be uneven. We have a pretty slow build, watching Rennie ease into her school life while also taking out sociopaths and predators, taking a couple of issues to establish her mindset and relationship and aspirations, connecting not only with Sofie but also with various mentors or butting heads with snotty classmates. And then in the third of the book we get some wild reveals and a huge confrontation that felt incredibly rushed and didn’t feel like it paid off because of it. I will say that the big reveal DID have some hints and build up and didn’t come completely out of left field, but at the same time once we did get the reveal out it still fell a little bit flat. I think that if there had been more issues there could have been a bit more of a reveal that matched the slower pacing.

And finally, I did enjoy the artwork, finding it to be cute and kind of retro at times, while also being SUPER disgusting at others. I don’t really want to show any of that here because I know that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Daniel Hillyard’s style matched the story well.

“I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer” had loads of potential and a really fun protagonist, but it didn’t quite hit the levels that I hoped for. I think it’s worth checking out, but I had hoped for more.

Rating 6: The premise is so good and I really enjoyed Rennie as an anti-hero, but it built almost too slowly and then rushed through the ending.

Reader’s Advisory:

“I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of late, but if you like books about women getting grisly revenge on those who wrong them or the patriarchy this could be a good fit!

Kate’s Review: “The Dead Husband Cookbook”

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

Book: “The Dead Husband Cookbook” by Danielle Valentine

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Landmark, August 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

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

Book Description: She has the recipe for the perfect murder…

Maria Capello is a celebrity chef like no other. A household name, an inspiration, an icon. Her dozens of cookbooks and weekly television show, broadcast from her beautiful Italian-style kitchen, not to mention her line of bestselling supermarket sauces. And of course there’s her history. Once just the timid wife of famous chef Damien Capello, she stepped into the spotlight after Damien’s mysterious disappearance twenty years before. An event she’s never spoken about publicly until now, when it is announced that she is looking for a publisher for her memoirs.

Why is Maria willing to finally break her silence? Why does she turn down seven-figure offers from large publishing houses and sign up with a small press? And why does she do so on the condition that it is edited by Thea Woods? Thea is a lifelong fan but has never met Maria and can’t figure it out, plus she had been planning to hand in her notice that very day. But when she is invited to Maria’s remote farm to work on the manuscript, she can’t resist. After all, she may finally learn whether the rumours are that Maria killed Damien for his recipes and the legendary ‘secret ingredient’…

Review: I was kicking myself when I realized that I completely missed an opportunity to read “The Dead Husband Cookbook” by Danielle Valentine in time for the publication date. In part due to the fact that I really enjoyed Valentine’s previous book “Delicate Condition”. But also due to the fact that the premise of a celebrity chef being rumored to have murdered her husband, and potentially spilling all of the T regarding it to a desperate and ambitious editor. Oh, and the implied cannibalism. Because who doesn’t love a weird and twisted cannibal story? But I did eventually get it from the library, and when I started it I had a hard time putting it down, even in the whirlwind of the holiday season! Because “The Dead Husband Cookbook” is compulsive and incredibly addictive, and maybe I’m a weirdo for saying it, but also made me a little hungry…

Is this spoilery? Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll never tell. (source)

The premise is pretty straightforward. Thea Woods is a talented editor, but has found herself on thin ice at her publishing house due to the part she played in a pretty huge scandal that rocked the publishing world. She’s convinced she’s gong to be fired, but is shocked when she is instead requested to be the editor for the memoir of celebrity chef and powerhouse Maria Capello, who rocketed to stardom after her chef husband went missing and she followed in and improved upon his footsteps (and has been hounded by rumors and conspiracies of the role she played in the whole debacle). Thea jumps at the chance, desperate to close this deal in spite of the fact she has to go to Maria’s estate by herself and is soon drawn into weird shenanigans. The mystery at hand (did Maria murder her husband? Why did she insist upon Thea as her editor? Just what is happening at the estate?) is told through Thea’s perspective, as well as chapters from Maria’s memoir as she hands them to Thea bit by bit, and I thought that the structure was tense and intriguing, with both Thea AND Maria acting as unreliable narrators with secrets to hide and a lot to lose. The pacing is fast, there are some genuinely interesting and surprising twists, and I found myself shocked more often than not as I read through. I also really like that I found myself going back and forth in my head about whether or not Maria did, in fact, murder her husband, and I like having to really question the foundation and bare bones of a mystery like this.

But I also really liked the way that Valentine tackles themes of motherhood, the expectations of being a wife, and the way that married women and mothers have to constantly deal with frustrating expectations when it comes to how they can ‘have it all’. Whether it’s Thea who loves her child but feels like her husband doesn’t really understand the true challenges of being a mother and having a full time job, or Maria who had her own aspirations and dreams and ambitions but had to set them aside for her less talented (and caddish) husband, you find sympathy for two women who are both making terrible decisions and, in Maria’s case, possibly committing horrific acts. Valentine touched on similar issues in “Delicate Condition”, and while this one didn’t have the same level of oomph that that one had, it still had my blood boiling at times, whether it was because Thea’s husband was crumbling under the pressure of parenthood after one solitary night, or because Maria’s husband was complaining that she isn’t really fun anymore now that she’s a wife and mother while he’s running a business that she dreamed of. Feminine rage abound, and Valentine captures it quite well once again.

Oh, and yes, there are some really tasty sounding recipes in this book. I was absolutely tickled that Valentine threw in a lot of Italian dishes with some snappy/sarcastic names, and while I’m not a talented enough cook to know if they sounded like they were going to be amazing, I was, nonetheless, very interested in giving at least a few of them a whirl. The only Italian dish that I really know how to do is lasanga, but now I have some ideas to potentially try my hand at…

“The Dead Husband Cookbook” is another fun and suspenseful mystery from Danielle Valentine! I’m sorry I missed it on the first go around, and I will definitely be more in tune with what Valentine comes out with in the future!

Rating 8: A twisty mystery, a lot of righteous indignation about marriage and relationships, and some pretty fun recipes combine to make another enjoyable thriller from Danielle Valentine!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Dead Husband’s Cookbook” is included on the Goodreads list “Food-Related Fiction”.

Kate’s Favorite Reads of 2025: Picks 5-1

Another a year, another almost impossible task trying to each choose our Top 10 Reads of the year! Like past years I won’t be including re-reads, sometimes my opinion of a book could change and evolve after I had read it, so some surprises may be up near the top, as well as perhaps a book or two that didn’t make my reviews on here initially due to genre limitations. But here they are, ready for a countdown! And since it’s the end of the reading year, don’t forget to enter our “Twelve Days of Christmas Giveaway”! Today I’m going to countdown my favorite reads, five to one.

5. “Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng” by Kylie Lee Baker

“Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng” Review

I had read some of Kylie Lee Baker’s YA fiction before I picked up “Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng”, so she wasn’t an unfamiliar author to me. But I was completely blown away by this book, in part because it was so incredibly creepy. But also because I felt like it captured so much of the reality of the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic in its early days, as well as the horrors of racism perpetrated against Asian Americans during that time, especially the violence against Asian American women. Cora is a great protagonist, and the mystery of the hungry ghost following her (who may also be the ghost of her murdered sister) was unsettling and eerie, and sometimes downright nightmare fuel. I am very excited to see what Baker does next (and luckily for me she has a new horror novel coming out in 2026, so stay tuned for that!).

4. “Atmosphere” by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Well it was bound to happen! Sometimes a Top Read of the year for me comes outside of my usual genres, and this time it was Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new historical fiction novel “Atmosphere”! I love Jenkins Reid’s books in general, but I think that this one is my favorite (CRAZY that it could dethrone “Malibu Rising”, but here we are!). This one follows NASA’s Space Program in the 80s when they were just starting to let women into the fold, and we follow two lady astronauts who have big dreams of going to space, not only dealing with the boys club that is NASA, but also dealing with their feelings for each other. It left me sobbing, like so many of Jenkins Reid’s books do.

3. “The Mean Ones” by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne

“The Mean Ones” Review

I am always so excited to discover a new must read author, and that totally happened with Tatiana Schlote-Bonne due to her folk horror/feminine rage horror novel “The Mean Ones”! I had been dying to get this book at ALA and it was one of my greatest finds there, and when I read it I was completely enthralled. There’s backwoods horror! There are unreliable narrator beats! There are complicated/straight up toxic female friendships! All of these things are sure to get my attention, and “The Mean Ones” went pedal to the metal and didn’t let up until it was good and ready to.

2. “Not Quite Dead Yet” by Holly Jackson

“Not Quite Dead Yet” Review

I loved Holly Jackson’s “Good Girls Guide to Murder” books, and when I found out that she was going to take on an adult novel I was very interested to see what that was going to look like. I got “Not Quite Dead Yet” from NetGalley and planned to read it on and off during our trip to Philadelphia, but then ended up just tearing through it, totally invested and also crying on and off. The idea of a woman named Jet having to solve her inevitable murder due to a head wound caused by a mystery person was so interesting, but then I fell in love with Jet and it became all the more devastating. The mystery is sound, the characters are great, and it was just so damn good I knew at the time that it was making my top three of the year. If you were wondering if Jackson could make the jump from YA to adult fiction, “Not Quite Dead Yet” proves that not only could she do it, she excelled at it.

and 1. “King Sorrow” by Joe Hill

“King Sorrow” Review

It had been so long since Joe Hill had written a full length novel, and not only was I looking forward to his return to form, I was looking forward to a horror novel about a dragon!!! And my God, this book completely and fully blew me away. It’s almost one thousand pages but I still managed to read it in a few days because I just couldn’t put it down. Hill has not only created an amazing dragon, but also some fantastic lore, unforgettable characters, INCREDIBLE tension, and a story about friendship, greed, power, and sacrifice. I so loved this book. Joe Hill continues to leave me amazed and in awe of his vision and his storytelling. It was well worth the wait.

That’s it for my favorite reads of 2025! What were some of yours this year?