Haven by Ani Katz

Posted on January 5, 2026 by pagesofjulia

In a masterpiece of tension, set within a lavish island community for the corporate select, a disappeared infant calls into question everything one mother thought she knew.

Ani Katz’s Haven is a chilling story about an apparent utopia that is anything but. As Caroline boards a ferry with husband Adam and infant son Gabriel for an exclusive getaway on a lovely island enclave, she is, first of all, relieved. After a trying period of his unemployment, Adam’s job with corporate giant Corridor gives him the means to join an elite group of friends and coworkers in a spaceship (Caroline’s description) of a house on the outskirts of Haven, a longtime home of the rich.

Caroline has never quite understood what it is that Corridor does–something with “infrastructure”–but she’s grateful that Adam is employed and seemingly less depressed. Now she hopes to relax, get to know Adam’s friends a little better, perhaps strengthen her bond with Gabriel, maybe even get some artistic inspiration back. Ever since becoming a mother, her photography has suffered. She attempted a project about motherhood, but “was getting bored with her baby as a subject.” Even on the island, seeking subjects, she worries: “What if she never made an interesting photograph again?” But in Katz’s tautly plotted psychological thriller, it turns out that photography may be the least of Caroline’s concerns.

Caroline’s roommates for the summer, Adam’s Corridor colleagues, indulge in eating and drinking to excess and unfamiliar, unnamed drugs, but they also coo over Gabriel and give Caroline the occasional break for a proper shower. She is trying to lean into the novel, luxury experience. The island’s wider inhabitants, however, strike her as being just a little off. Tinkly laughter, choreographed dance, and uncanny children degrade into shadowy threats: angry islanders, old rituals and sacrifice, and corporate surveillance. Then comes the nightmarish morning when Caroline wakes up and Gabriel is gone. As she searches for her son and the truth of what happens in Haven, she will come to question even the rules, and the people, she thinks she knows best.

If Haven ever begins to feel like it might trend toward the formulaic, be assured that Katz (A Good Man) is about to twist her tricky narrative again, always catching Caroline, and readers, unawares. This masterpiece of tension turns absolutely terrifying by its finish. Technology, hubris, deception, and mistrust combine in an unsettling corporate dystopia that asks what ends would justify which means. Riveting, thought-provoking, and ever surprising, Haven is not for the easily unnerved.

This review originally ran in the December 23, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 hats.

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Little One by Olivia Muenter

Posted on December 26, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A young woman’s troubled past resurfaces in this novel of psychological suspense and secrets.

Olivia Muenter’s Little One chills and entertains with the story of a young woman whose fresh start is interrupted.

Since leaving the intentional community run by her father in rural Florida, Catharine West has built herself a life from scratch in New York City. She has a successful copywriting career, visits the public library at least once a week, runs daily, and enjoys a snarky friendship over drinks with the disarming Stella, who says of Catharine’s library habit, “You do realize this isn’t actually a Nora Ephron film.” She doesn’t date much, which Stella attributes to a bad breakup or fear of change. Catharine holds people at arm’s length, privately enforcing upon herself some of the same obsessive standards she learned back at the farm, including extreme fasting and self-deprivation. She has shared her past with no one, which is why it’s so alarming when a journalist e-mails out of the blue with questions about “a little-known, now-defunct cult in central Florida.” Catharine’s carefully crafted, tightly controlled existence is threatened. But in balance with that risk hangs the chance that she might recover the one part of her past that she never meant to lose: her sister.

Little One, Muenter’s second novel (following Such a Bad Influence), follows Catharine in alternating chapters marked “Then” and “Now.” Catharine’s remembered Florida begins as idyllic, sunny, verdant, a childhood spent “chasing the coolest parts of the day, picking tomatoes at dawn, bringing each to my nose and marveling at the smell, all at once familiar and astounding.” But what began as a close-knit community with back-to-the-land ethics gradually became something sinister, sticky, and alligator-ridden in the oppressive heat.

In the present-day timeline, Catharine becomes increasingly involved with the journalist, Reese, whom she finds both attractive and off-putting. As she strings him along, giving him just enough to get back the information she needs from his unnamed source, it may be that she’s met her match. Meanwhile, readers recognize past Catharine (in her father’s steely grip) in the present one (wielding an ironclad control over her own life). Fasting becomes exercise compulsion and an obsession with willpower; the concept of hunger, in its various meanings, is central to the plot. Muenter’s expertly moody, creepy-crawly narrative is precisely paced. Secrets as off-balance as Catharine herself are released at a tantalizing rate that might just keep the reader up all night, as the novel accelerates toward a satisfyingly surprising conclusion.

This review originally ran in the November 21, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 car keys.

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Warning Signs by Tracy Sierra

Posted on December 22, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A young boy faces a variety of dangers when he enters deep snow and high mountains with his father in this enthralling novel of horror, suspense, and psychological intrigue.

Tracy Sierra (Nightwatching) conjures a terrifying narrative with Warning Signs, in which a 12-year-old boy grapples with hazards on several levels. This novel of horror and abuse is both enthralling and thought-provoking, liable to keep the reader up all night for a single-sitting read or to inspire nightmares–all worthwhile for the masterful handling of serious topics.

Chapter one introduces Zach, aged 11, his younger sister, Bonnie, and their mother, Grace. They are skiing uphill into the mountains of the American West, toward a hut where they will meet with other friends. Grace, an expert outdoorswoman, educates her young children in assessing avalanche risks, in survival, and how to manage fear. Chapter two jumps forward a year. Zach is 12, headed into the same mountains with his father, Bram. Bonnie has stayed home with a nanny; Grace is gone, for reasons not immediately explained. Where Grace was kind and patient, Bram is visibly short-tempered and exasperated. Zach fears him. They are to meet a group of men and boys at a backcountry ski hut for a fathers-and-sons ski trip, organized by Bram for the purpose of securing investments from the wealthier men he envies and courts. Zach has a role to play, but has always failed his father so far, never the rough-and-tumble, thick-skinned son Bram desires. Ironically, Zach’s skiing and outdoor survival skills (thanks to his mother) far surpass Bram’s, an imbalance that will matter in the coming days.

Over the long weekend, Warning Signs ratchets up the tension until it seems it can carry no more–and then ramps it up again. Zach is aware of at least three distinct threats: the perils of the natural world, including a very real risk of avalanche; his father’s irascible self-interest and capacity for cruelty; and a mysterious creature stalking the dark and treacherously cold high-altitude woods. Bram’s gathered group of men and boys presents a dangerous combination of skill and ignorance, hubris and machismo; Zach possesses good training and instincts, but as their youngest member, will be overlooked and ignored in an irony of Greek-tragedy proportions. Through it all, Zach (in close third-person perspective) continues to mull the absence of the dearly beloved Grace, and approach the horrifying truth about her loss.

With its triple-punch of terrors natural, human, and unknown, Sierra’s sophomore novel is truly and profoundly frightening. Beyond the fine art of the horror or thriller novel, Warning Signs also considers domestic abuse and control, class and ambition, and how we try to care for those we love. Discomfiting, chilling, and unforgettable.

This review originally ran in the December 2, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 lost mittens.

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The Company of Owls by Polly Atkin

Posted on December 19, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A poet and nature writer shares the grace, beauty, and lessons in her quiet observations of “my neighbours, the owls” in this loving memoir.

Polly Atkin (Some of Us Just Fall) brings a poet’s sensibility to a contemplative study of nature and self with her memoir The Company of Owls. From her home in the village of Grasmere in England’s Lake District, Atkin can hear tawny owls calling to one another; on short walks, she feels privileged to watch them hunting, nesting, raising their young. During and after the Covid-19 lockdown, she marveled at their lives, so little known to us, and mused on isolation, companionship, humans’ relationship to the rest of the natural world, and more. Not an ornithologist by training, Atkin feels drawn to her poorly understood subject, associated with both wisdom and death, night-dwelling but sun-loving: “This book is about owls, but it is also about me.”

Atkin, who lives with several chronic illnesses that limit her mobility and ability to work in traditional ways, found herself under lockdown questioning the nature of solitude and our many reactions to it. She made art of Middle English words for aloneness: uplokkid, reclused, onlihede, and solnes, which become chapter titles. “But the more times I wrote the words out, the more shades of meaning leached from my brushstrokes. The more ambiguous I felt my state of seclusion to be, the more ambiguous I felt about isolation.” She related to what she perceives as the owls’ need for both separation and togetherness. In her own insomnia, she connected to their apparent affinity for both darkness and light. “Without other humans to see you and claim you as theirs, you feel less and less like one of them, more and more likely something else. Something nocturnal. Something unbound.” She watched a trio of owlets navigate siblinghood, and worked to resist what felt like anthropomorphism.

This is a classic memoir in its meditative pacing, thoughtfulness, and self-examination. And of course its author, with several volumes of poetry to her name, takes special care with both language and detail. The Company of Owls balances a careful focus on the hyperlocal owls immediately surrounding Atkin’s home, and a survey approach to the history of owls in the region, the humans who study them, and the owls Atkin encounters online via friends and algorithms. Despite the easy assumption (as she notes) that “technology disconnects us from the world around us,” Atkin benefits from a larger world of owls. That wider lens improves her view of what lies just beyond her own home: the Lake District’s tawny owls, in their small movements, births, and deaths. Atkin’s lovely, reflective memoir reminds all readers to slow down, listen, and find joy.

This review originally ran in the November 24, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 tourists.

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When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (audio)

Posted on December 15, 2025 by pagesofjulia

I don’t recall where I got this title from, but I loved this book, and am grateful to whatever review or list sent it my way. Also to my lovely partner who gifted it to me for the long drive from Texas to West Virginia.

When Women Were Dragons: Being the Truthful Accounting of the Life of Alex Green–Physicist, Professor, Activist. Still Human. A memoir, of sorts is a living, breathing tale, ever expanding, filled with metaphor that reshapes itself with the reader’s interpretation. It opens with a strange letter from a Nebraska housewife in 1898 to her mother, shortly before the woman spontaneously dragoned. Next we have an excerpt from the opening statement given by Dr. Henry Gantz to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1957. Then we get into the first-person narration of Alex Green, who will tell most of this story, with brief insertions mostly from Dr. Gantz’s work – bit of an epistolary format. (The audiobook is narrated by Kimberly Farr, as Alex Green, and Mark Bramhall, as Dr. Gantz, which I thought was a great choice.) “I was four years old when I first met a dragon. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t think she’d understand.”

I think this must be right around 1950. Alex grows up in small-town Wisconsin, in a pretty 1950s world: there are many things we just don’t talk about, including cancer, menstruation and most aspects of girlhood and womanhood, what to expect on one’s wedding night, diversity in sexual orientation and gender expression, our feelings, and dragons. When Alex is a little girl, her mother goes away for some time – months – and no one explains or even acknowledges the change; likewise when her mother returns, gaunt, weak, different (she doesn’t even smell right). The reader understands better than little-girl Alex when her mother’s chest is glimpsed, missing breasts, two scars like smiles. This world is recognizably our own except for the dragons. Women in this world can dragon (that’s a verb), or become dragons, at which point they sometimes eat their husbands (this seems to happen frequently with very unlikeable, not to say abusive, husbands) before flying away. Dragoning is a poorly understood phenomenon because, as with much that is female or feminine, society judges it too shameful to examine, and science mostly averts its gaze. Dr. Gantz is a rare exception: he believes in the scientific mandate to learn, whatever truths are revealed. Biology should never be shameful. His research articles and responses to an oppressive world are useful seasonings to this story, and he is himself a delightful character, alongside the heroic librarian Mrs. Gyzinska.

And oh, Alex’s auntie Marla, a wonderful woman who comes and cares for her while her mother is away in cancer treatment, a big powerful woman who flies airplanes during the war and works as a car mechanic and wears men’s clothes and takes very little shit, and who we lose to the Mass Dragoning of 1955. When Marla dragons, she leaves behind an infant daughter, Alex’s cousin Beatrice, who from here on is raised as Alex’s sister. Such is the gaslighting of Alex’s family and world that she learns to really believe – almost – that she has no aunt, that Beatrice has always been her sister. (Echoes of 1984. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) And boy, the time Alex has raising her younger sister, Beatrice, a delightful dragon of a child if there ever was one.

Despite all I’ve just thrown at you, I’ve barely scraped the surface of this remarkable novel. It contains many stories and many layers, much that is very recognizable from our ‘real’ world, and lots of potential metaphors to ponder. I wondered at different times if dragoning were a metaphor for menstruation; for puberty; for “un-american activities” (certainly, HUAC seems to conflate them); for simply being independent, self-determining, and female (except that those who dragon are overwhelmingly but not universally girls and women). This story tackles the way we handle difference, and especially gender, sexuality, and gender expression. It contains such maddening (if entirely realistic) renderings of sexism that it was sometimes hard to listen to. It contains transcendent moments of personal discovery, joyful academic inquiry, love and coming-of-age, and some lovely iterations of family and built family, which I always appreciate. “Sometimes,” confides Alex at an advanced age, “the expansive nature of family takes my breath away.” There is such good fun; I especially liked the line “If that dragon was hoping for sympathy, she was crying in front of the wrong teenager,” which I got to share with my favorite dragon-loving teenager. It considers the looping of time and relationships. It’s got science and wonder, a bit like A Tale for the Time Being, but I liked this better. I’m a bit over the moon about it, and am giving it a perfect score. Also, I loved the audio format, with the one caveat that I wish I could pull more quotations that I loved.

Do give it a go, and let me know what you think.

Rating: 10 military-issued boots.

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Elektra by Jennifer Saint (audio)

Posted on December 12, 2025 by pagesofjulia

I made a 2,500 round-trip drive recently, so check out a few *audiobooks* for the first time in quite a while. I had a blast with them!

I’d been just recently telling a friend my paraphrased-from-memory version of the curse on the house of Atreus, so when I went looking for an audiobook, I was delighted to find Jennifer Saint’s Elektra, read for us by Beth Eyre, Jane Collingwood, and Julie Teal. (It looks like I put this one on a wish list based upon my interview with Claire North aka Catherine Webb.) I liked that this was a retelling with, if you will, a modern angle – told from the points of view of the women – but it is not a modern retelling; it’s still set in the ancient Greek and Trojan world. The three women who narrate their intersecting stories are Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra. The latter gives her name to the novel, perhaps, because she is the one who survives to its end.

I think this is the most in-depth telling I’ve encountered of Cassandra’s story, in which she, a princess of Troy, becomes a priestess in Apollo’s temple and undergoes the conflicting honor and agony of his gift of prophecy, and his curse that no one will ever believe her (always correct) prophecies. She then sees her city destroyed – sees it in advance and experiences it in real time – and is taken as a war prize by the Greek king-of-kings Agamemnon (who, in all tellings I’ve ever found, comes across as a consistently unlikeable man). Her life ends not long after his does, although with a little different nuance in this version.

[Here, an aside. These events, lying somewhere between myth and, in some cases, *possible* history, originate in an oral tradition. There are many versions, but all are translated at this point across both language and transcription; there are many retellings, but it seems there can be no single, original, authoritative one. I like how freeing this is: there is no reliably “correct” version of Cassandra’s story, or any of them, which I think offers a liberty to riff.]

Clytemnestra has always been a puzzler. She kills her husband (using some deceit, and after cheating on him); she has usurped power in a man’s world; many, especially the more traditional versions, paint her in an unsympathetic light. More modern perspectives point out that one of her greatest crimes may be that she holds power with confidence – she possesses traits that tend to read positively when they belong to men. And it’s not always remembered and pointed out that she kills her husband because he killed their firstborn daughter – sacrificed her to the gods for the fair winds needed to sail for Troy. That sacrifice, or murder, is in turn painted differently depending on whether the storyteller believes in the gods’ need for sacrifice (and the Greeks’ need to sail for Troy). What is one young woman’s life against glory in battle for all the greatest warriors ever, etc., etc. The same dual and dueling perspectives apply to Clytemnestra’s famous sister, Helen of Sparta / Helen of Troy. There the great question will forever be: did Paris abduct her? Or did she leave her husband and run away with another by choice? Victim, or whore? (A shocking number of ambiguities in Greek myth turn on the question of sexual consent.) Clytemnestra remains a difficult character in Jennifer Saint’s version of her story. Her grief over the loss of Iphigeneia is sympathetic; her desire for revenge feels righteous, if perhaps bloodthirsty. But because of the third point of view Saint gives us, we’re also aware of how fully she orphans her remaining three children in her singlemindedness about the one she’s lost.

Elektra is herself single-minded and bloodthirsty, and this is the essence of the curse on the house of Atreus: each killing, meant to set right the last, only sets the next one in motion. Clytemnestra means to avenge Iphigeneia by killing Agamemnon; Elektra feels it necessary to avenge Agamemnon by killing Clytemnestra. She has lived her life in father-worship, mostly in the absence of that father (and again, I’ve not read of anybody who spent time around Agamemnon and liked him). It’s notable to me that both Clytemnestra and Elektra show signs of finding some nuance, rather late in the game for it to make a difference. But I think that’s the curse again, inexorable.

I liked the choice, on audio, of three different readers for the three parts. I’m not sure I ever learned the voices well enough to tell from the first few syllables who we were with, but the changes always nudged me to listen for context clues (which take no time at all).

I always appreciate revisiting these stories that I’ve been taking in, in various forms, for most of my life. I love that they are both familiar and always new – every version offers a fresh perspective or a new take, and each encounter I have enriches the later ones; it’s such a genuine pleasure for me to spend time in this known but changing ancient world. ‘Pleasure’ is a strange word, of course: these stories are full of blood and death and rape (so much rape). But I seem to have a great appetite for the big themes, the continual question of predetermination and personal choice, these gods who are capricious and silly and lustful and jealous and awfully human, although immortal. It’s just always captured me. I loved Jennifer Saint’s contribution to my understanding of these stories.

Rating: 7 old dogs.

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A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

Posted on December 8, 2025 by pagesofjulia

Billed as historical fantasy, with a strong thread of queer romance, this was an absolutely delightful and fun read – not always joyful in the moment-to-moment struggles of its protagonists (whom I loved), but ultimately deeply satisfying. There was romance (and sex), intrigue and angst, wonderful humor, and a complex magical world. I’m excited for book two, and beyond.

We first meet Reginald Gatling in his final moments, and witness his torture and death by magical means at the hands of assailants unknown. They want to know where something is, and all they get from him, past a secret-binding spell, is the location: his office. In the next chapter, we meet Sir Robert (Robin) Blyth, who is irritated and mystified by his new job replacing the missing Reggie – in Reggie’s office. (Here we also meet the indomitable Miss Morrissey, assistant to Reggie and now Robin. As both a woman and a person of Indian descent, she is exceedingly rare in British civil service, and will prove to be one of the most capable, awesome, and entertaining characters in this story, although a relatively minor one.) And in bursts Edwin Courcey, who had been Reggie’s special liaison and is now to be Robin’s, although they do not get off to a good start. For one thing, Robin has no idea what his job is supposed to be.

What quickly follows is Robin’s “unbusheling,” which is what the magical world calls it when a nonmagical person is let in on the big secret that magic does in fact exist. Turns out that in Britain’s already heavily stratified society, there is a yet another distinction between magical and nonmagical families, and even the former can have the odd, unfortunate nonmagical individual – like Miss Morrissey, whose sister is a very capable magician. And then there is Edwin, who comes from a powerful, wealthy, magical family, but is the bullied younger son, and though an enormously accomplished academic student of magic, has vanishingly little power of his own. Robin is an athlete, a jock, not a scholar, and though he has a title, his estate is nearly bankrupt, and he has a much-beloved younger sister to care for on his civil servant’s salary. Add to all of this the mystery of the missing Reggie, a curse soon (and violently) set upon the freshly unbusheled Robin, Edwin’s own family traumas, and an enigmatic threat to the magical world as we know it – indeed, maybe the world overall – and Edwin and Robin may need to figure out how to get along with each other even if it does not come naturally.

Phew. I’ll stop here, with much left unsaid. This was a completely absorbing, page-turning adventure, and when we finally got to the sex-and-romance (after a long slow burn) it was a great relief. (Fully realized sexual content, if that’s a concern.) This magical world and its rules are complex, even sometimes a bit overwhelming – but that’s Robin’s experience too, so we’re just wrestling with it all by his side, and will probably survive as he does.

This book is pretty heavily male, but I cannot understate the value of Miss Morrissey, who may not have magic but outdoes all the powerful men who surround her in cleverness and the ability to get things done, including some scathing (and hilarious) observations about gender in society. I would follow Miss Morrissey anywhere. Book two does promise to be centered on women, although (from a glance) unfortunately not Miss Morrissey. I’m still 100% in.

Rating: 9 swans.

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Is This a Cry for Help? by Emily Austin

Posted on December 5, 2025 by pagesofjulia

As its protagonist wrestles with grief and challenges to intellectual freedom, this inspiring and very funny story showcases the power of love and libraries.

In the opening scene of Emily Austin’s fourth novel, a librarian named Darcy narrates her response to a patron watching porn in the library (mainly, per policy, to leave him be). From here, Darcy’s story unfolds to grapple with love, grief, mental health, the importance of libraries, and the navigation of personal, professional, and public relationships. Is This a Cry for Help? continues in the vein of Austin’s winsome work (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead; We Could Be Rats) with a disarmingly candid narrative voice, outrageous humor, and serious thinking on tough topics.

Darcy has a good life. At her public library, she gets to help a messy cross-section of humanity: not only the toddlers, book clubs, and precocious teens she originally imagined, but also people who lack stable housing or who struggle with substance abuse or mental illness, job seekers, immigrants, and people with opinions different from her own. She has a wonderful wife with whom she shares her authentic self, two cats, and a lovely home. But when Darcy learns of the death of her ex-boyfriend Ben, she is thrown off balance. The disruptions to her carefully organized life are often hysterically funny even as they are harrowing and tragic.

Darcy has just returned to work after a two-month leave of absence following a mental breakdown brought on by the news of Ben’s death. “Before this happened, if someone told me they were off work on stress leave, I might have been judgmental too. Now I understand that issues intensify when we smash them down into our boots.” She is not at her strongest for the new challenge of an alt-right self-appointed journalist harassing the library and Darcy for what he deems a series of moral infractions, including the porn-watching patron. Her community holds an array of political views and opinions on topics as personal as Darcy’s identity as a lesbian, and these values will be called into question by an attempted book ban.

Darcy’s first-person narration lets the reader see her puzzle through the motivations of those around her, parsing social cues and questioning her own choices. Since the breakdown, she’s been seeing a therapist (a process she finds “hokey,” but she’s making an honest effort), and she is well served by her earnest analysis of the actions and motivations of herself and everyone around her. “I’m not just thirty-three; I’m twenty-seven. I’m eighteen. I’m nine. I was just born. And I have to carry all of those versions of myself, the feelings they have, and the mistakes they’ve made, everywhere I go.” Thoughtful and self-aware, if often awkward, Darcy strives intentionally to live as best she can. Is This a Cry for Help? portrays a stressful period in her life, but one she ultimately inhabits with wisdom and grace. Hilarious, wrenching, endearingly odd, Darcy’s story is both enlightening and somehow comforting.

This review originally ran in the November 10, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 pigeons.

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Dandelion is Dead by Rosie Storey

Posted on December 1, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A grieving sister finds that hope, silliness, angst, and even love may be possible amid loss in this astonishing first novel.

Rosie Storey’s debut, Dandelion Is Dead: A Novel About Life, is a glittering riot of grief, laughter, missed connections, absurdities, and the joys and pains of life’s many facets. From one unexpected turn to the next, this story will keep readers emotionally engaged and yearning alongside its protagonist.

Poppy Greene is 37 years old and deep in mourning. It has been 231 days since her older sister, Dandelion, died “and, somehow, it was spring again.” Dandelion had been wild, irrepressible, author of all the sisters’ adventures; without her, Poppy (a professional photographer, ever the observer) is unmoored. Going through her sister’s phone, she clicks on a dating app and, on a whim, answers a message from a year-old match. When Jake asks for a date on Dandelion’s 40th birthday, it feels like fate, or magic, or Dandelion’s mischievous hand from beyond the grave. Poppy does not set out with the purposeful intention of impersonating a dead woman (nor of cheating on her longtime boyfriend, Sam), but she finds Jake incredibly magnetic, and soon begins a romantic relationship in her sister’s name. Dandelion Is Dead alternates between Poppy’s close third-person point of view and Jake’s, revealing his own intense attraction to the woman he knows as Dandelion, and his own past traumas. Poppy and Jake are both awkward, ungraceful, and heartfelt in their romance; both commit dishonesties that threaten everything they value.

The aptly named Storey excels at whimsy, delightful comedy, and pathos. Her plot is composed of debilitating losses, madcap adventures, treacheries, secrets, love, and striving. The profound charm and appeal of Poppy and Jake lie in their contradictions. They suffer terrible losses and make poor choices; they are capable of both sweetness and betrayal. The cast is enriched by Poppy and Dandelion’s lifelong friend Jetta (and her loyal husband); the young son Jake is devoted to, and his masterfully nuanced ex-wife; Poppy’s unsympathetic boyfriend; and of course, the mythic Dandelion herself. While its subtitle feels accurate, this debut is also clearly a novel about grief. Poppy learns that if she is going to find a fulfilling life after losing her sister, she must grapple with her own mistakes and those of her loved ones, even those she’s lost. Dandelion Is Dead is a scintillating achievement in emotional range, humor, and wisdom. Poppy Greene thinks she is the less magnetic sister, but no one who meets her will easily forget her.

This review originally ran in the November 7, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 Twisters.

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Yosemite Wildlife: The Wonder of Animal Life in California’s Sierra Nevada by Beth Pratt; photographs by Robb Hirsch

Posted on November 28, 2025 by pagesofjulia

Environmental leader and lifelong Yosemite lover Beth Pratt partners with biologist and wildlife photographer Robb Hirsch to offer Yosemite Wildlife: The Wonder of Animal Life in California’s Sierra Nevada, the first book in 100 years to address this national gem’s diverse animal wildlife. With more than 300 images, Yosemite Wildlife is also rich in Pratt’s accessible prose; this thorough survey of observations and storytelling is designed to update a 1924 publication for the historical record. As a beautifully produced, large-format, glossy presentation, it also exhibits Pratt’s and Hirsch’s expertise and passion for a place that is much more than just its famous geology and dramatic scenery. With plentiful archival records, historical images, and personal stories from park staff and naturalists, it’s an informative document as well as a stunning visual feast.

Conservation success stories and profiles of Yosemite’s human defenders over the years accompany Hirsch’s sumptuous images of the iconic black bear and mule deer, the Sierra green sulphur butterfly, the northwestern pond turtle, raptors and songbirds, dragonflies and butterflies, charismatic predators, shy shrews, quirky herptiles, and more. Exquisite.

This review originally ran in the November 4, 2025 gift issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun.

Rating: 8 push-ups.

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