Nymph by Sofia Montrone

Posted on May 11, 2026 by pagesofjulia

This sensual, yearning novel of personal tragedy and first love in the Northern Italian countryside will transport readers of all ages.

Sofia Montrone’s first novel, Nymph, handles the coming-of-age of a girl named Leo, alongside the aging of her family’s Italian agriturismo. Leo and her family–Leo’s Italian mother, her American father, her one-year-younger brother Max–spend every summer at the rural hotel, helping to run the family business. Readers watch Leo move toward adulthood over the course of two summers, when she is 10 and when she is 18.

When she is younger, Leo cleans rooms, collecting the motley items guests leave behind, and helps prepare food alongside her Nonna Tina. Max, who is better with people, works at the front desk. Their mother is unwell and mostly sleeps. Their father, a professor and a heavy drinker, reads and tells stories; his renditions of the epics of Homer are among the many threads that keep Leo captivated. She and Max “want to know where Atlantis is, what feathers are made of, whether hair grows right out of their scalps or from their tangled ends, and he tells them. They have no sense of what is real and what is play, only that the Absent-Minded Professor is a kind of god, all-knowing, and that with the right password, they will be privy to his secrets, which are the secrets of the world.” Leo idolizes her father. By the novel’s second part, the shape of her family will be changed irrevocably, and is still changing. Her Nonna Tina, the hotel’s faithful employee Davide, and Leo’s immediate family are maturing or withering. The hotel is in decline. Leo herself is on the cusp of the next stage of her life, as a newcomer–an American teenager, curious, creative, and enthralling–captures her attention.

“Nymph” refers to “those maidens that live in the rivers and trees” as well as “a baby grasshopper,” whose short life plays a role in Leo’s. Montrone’s debut tracks these several processes in prose as lovely, fleeting, subtle, and shocking as growing up ever is. Ten-year-old Leo experiences the fallibility of her most beloved elders, and 18-year-old Leo finds her first love and still more loss. These tentative steps toward adulthood are set against a striking rural and natural setting, punctuated by the World Cup games that hold Italy rapt. “The mountains are nimbed with green light. Dark shapes swoop over the grounds, whether bats or birds she cannot say, only that they form black whorls like clouds.” Nymph is concerned with growth, shedding, and origins. “Where does the story of one’s life begin? At birth, with one’s parents or grandparents, the first days of Italy and its legions of secretive, long-suffering women, Odysseus?” This nuanced, wise novel expands with quiet understatement to reach profundity.

This review originally ran in the April 17, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 pearl earrings.

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The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (audio)

Posted on May 8, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Another wonderful story from Kelly Barnhill, and I’m so delighted to learn that there are many of them! Joy!

In mythic tones, we open with chapter 1: In Which a Story Is Told. (All chapters are titled this way.) “Yes. There is a witch in the woods. There has always been a witch in the woods. Will you stop your fidgeting for once?” Some chapters are voiced like this one, with an unnamed storyteller addressing an unnamed child (we get some hints as to their identities only very late); others are more traditional third-person narration. We begin in the Protectorate, a place ruled by fog and cloud and sorrow, where the Elders, led by Grand Elder Gherland, uphold an important tradition. Once a year, on the Day of Sacrifice, they place the community’s youngest baby in a circle of sycamores in the dangerous woods to be taken by an evil witch, that she not destroy everything. The Elders are supported by the Sisters of the Star, who dwell in the Tower, holding all knowledge and skill; they are formidable warriors as well as scholars, mysterious and separate from the rest of the Protectorate, whose citizens, if not Elders, live in poverty and deprivation. We are also informed early on that Grand Elder Gherland knows there is no witch. The sacrifices are instead meant to keep the people subjugated and sad and under the thumb of the Elders.

But we also watch while a witch – a kindhearted, helpful witch, who lives in service to those around her – travels through the woods to collect this year’s sacrificed infant. She has no idea why the Protectorate’s people insist on doing this silly, cruel thing, abandoning infants in the woods, but each year she makes the trip and carries the infant, keeping them safe, warm, and fed, through the woods to the people in the Free Cities on the other side, where she rehomes them with loving families and they grow up safe, happy, loved. So there is a witch, and she does take the babies, but not like the Protectorate thinks.

The witch is Xan, and she is 500 years old. There is a bog monster named Glerk who is poetry-obsessed and much, much older, older even than magic. They are accompanied, in their lives deep in the woods by the bog, by a dragonling named Fyrian, who is just still very small (despite also being 500 years old), but believes himself to be simply enormous, because Xan and Glerk let him think he is – they say that they are giants. These are all characters of love, whimsy, silliness, and good humor, as well as of profound good. They are joined by Luna, the latest abandoned baby, whom Xan accidentally enmagics. And as the story unfolds, we also follow Grand Elder Gherland (not a sympathetic character); his nephew Antain, who wants for the Protectorate to do better; Sister Ignatia, head of all the sisters, who has a murky past; and a mother who becomes a madwoman in a tower but can be so much more. This is a grand fairy tale of a story, with dark, scary woods, dragons, volcanoes, sacrifices born of fear and of love, tigers, shapeshifting, paper birds, devotion, magic, built families… it’s a gorgeous book about everything. The beast, the bog, the poem, the world: “they are all the same thing, you know.” “I am the bog and the bog is me.”

I was reminded of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “The Lottery,” most obviously in the early, baby-sacrifice scenes, but throughout with certain metaphors about what loyalty is earned to whom, and who should give up personal priorities for a greater good. There were several delicious layers of dramatic irony and miscommunication, and misdirection about who the bad guys are (‘guys’ in this case being gender-neutral, obviously). I found it a lovely story about goodness, courage, love, and the many ways we care for one another and make families. Like one of our protagonists here, I have also struggled with the observation that “there is no love without loss,” but Barnhill makes an argument that it’s worth it. Christina Moore narrates tremendously. I’m such a fan. Do check it out.

Rating: 9 bunnies.

PS: I found out after the fact that this is billed as a book ‘for young readers’ and was quite surprised. That is, all violence and threat of violence is quite tame – baby ‘sacrifices’ entail just placing them gently in the woods where they are collected safely, and the worst injury suffered is a bunch of paper cuts (like, the worst paper cuts of all time) – but I found the themes complex and thought-provoking. I was thinking of this as a work of great imagination and whimsy, not one for young readers (I’m seeing ages 8+, and grades 5-9). So, take this as a strong recommendation for all readers.

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Maximum Shelf: The Wild Beneath by Kelly Anderson

Posted on May 1, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on April 7, 2026.

Kelly Anderson’s debut novel, The Wild Beneath, is an astonishing act of imagination, firmly rooted in the physical world of a small coastal village and in the ocean itself. With threads of the magical laced throughout, a limited cast of characters wrestles for balance between land and sea and in their relationships with one another. Ever surprising, this spellbinding story holds both science and wonder, always in close touch with the natural world.

The Wild Beneath opens with a scene of beauty and terror. “She begins with a lullaby that sends coyotes fleeing up mountains. Honeybees abandon their hives to the shrill calls of songbirds and barking dogs. Beneath the seafloor, the tectonic plates loosen and rearrange…. A liquid mountain rises in the Pacific Northwest.” The earthquake and tsunami destroy a human settlement and take many lives; the effect is power and pain and loss, described in harrowing detail, but “the ocean will call it a song.” The ocean is never far from the consciousness of Anderson’s characters.

Annie MacLeod is 19, and it is an accident of timing that she happens to be ashore with her grandmother Ruth when the tsunami hits their Canadian village, Hale’s Landing. In all her life, she has spent very few nights away from her parents and their sailboat, Amphitrite. “Maybe they’re not dead,” Ruth tells Annie, although hope fades with time. The two women scour sand and scum from Ruth’s cabin and sift the detritus on the beach for mementos or for anything useful to meeting their most basic needs. Annie suffers from blinding grief and a change in her relationship to the world around her, due to events just before the tsunami that are not immediately revealed. She’s also experiencing a fracture in her relationship with Evan, the boy she’s grown up with, the two of them pushed and pulled like tides. Evan has spent summers on Amphitrite since they were both small, but for most of the year he belongs to the land, where his father, Isaac Hale, runs the timber company that gives the town its name and livelihood. Where Annie is accustomed to listening to the ocean’s nuanced song, Evan listens to the trees.

Then, at the edge of the land and the end of the world as she’s known it, Annie encounters a new arrival walking slowly down the beach. Washed up on the shore, stark naked, about her own age, with “a startling vacancy about him, not fully there, looking past her. His irises are sea-urchin grey with streaks of silver.” He accepts the name Annie offers him: Walker. It seems to Annie that he emits a hum, a sound she feels deep in her bones, that soothes the parts of her that have been jangled by recent events. “This out-of-place person in front of her… who is he? Why does she want him to like everything about her?” Walker is tall and handsome, but almost above those descriptors: he seems elementally tuned to the ocean in a way that speaks to Annie’s bones. He makes her feel safe in a different way than Evan does. In an entirely disordered world, Annie–raised by her two loving parents and by the sea, mostly outside of human society–is unsure of where to turn. Toward her best friend and first love, who offers both stability and complication on land? Or toward the strange newcomer, whose pulse feels like home, and who beckons her to return to the ocean?

With lyricism and a quiet sense of awe, The Wild Beneath reveals a careful focus on balance, rhythm, push-and-pull relationships. It is inhabited by many paired forces: Annie’s parents, Evan’s parents, the land and the ocean, Walker and Evan, the question of whether one stays or goes. Anderson orders the book by the tides: Low, Slack, Flood, High, Ebb. Within each section, there are shifts in time: Now, Before, Six years after, Forty years before. These cycles punctuate Annie’s experiences, which are highly keyed to the natural world: humpback whales, tide pools, sea stars, sand dollars, wind. Flashbacks also offer glimpses of Annie’s father, who was himself once a young person navigating the push-and-pull of land and sea. He loved the ocean, but Annie’s mother seemed preternaturally linked to it–like Walker now. Annie’s upbringing on the boat was one version of balancing those two approaches; now in adulthood, she must chart her own. In perhaps another cycle, Annie’s life represents an attempt to balance her two parents’ experiences of their world, but readers will wait for most of the book to discover what those experiences were.

Anderson offers a novel that is quietly astounding, beautiful even when it conveys profound pain. With unhurried but propulsive pacing, she draws readers into a plot that is both bewildering and bewitching. The Wild Beneath asks wise, subtle questions about the line between science and magic, and suggests that both are found in the natural world. Annie’s struggles with grief, with coming of age, with tough choices, and with a sense of being pulled in two conflicting directions at once, are both universally recognizable and shockingly unique. Her story is haunting and unforgettable.

Rating: 8 oysters.

Come back Monday for my interview with Anderson.

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Son of Nobody by Yann Martel

Posted on April 27, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Profound, heartrending, and endlessly absorbing, this novel of ancient Greek myth and modern family upheaval will transport any reader.

Booker Prize-winner Yann Martel (Life of Pi; The High Mountains of Portugal) intricately nests one story in another in the excellent Son of Nobody. Protagonist Harlow Donne narrates to a specific audience: his eight-year-old daughter, Helen, named after Helen of Troy. Harlow is, or rather was, a Homeric scholar, and he describes to his beloved, story-loving child the year he spent in postdoctoral study at Oxford University. His discovery there of a previously unknown text relating the Trojan War contained many departures from (and frequently “more offbeat” than) Homer’s version. With a blend of erudition and creativity, Harlow pieces together from fragments what he calls The Psoad. This text forms the novel’s body, with copious footnotes by Harlow detailing both the discovery and restoration of that text, as well as his personal life as it slowly unravels during his year away at Oxford, while his wife and daughter remain at home in Canada.

Harlow’s voice is nuanced, clever, and learned; he paints himself a devoted father if admittedly imperfect husband. The narrative in the footnotes conveys Harlow’s academically controversial restoration alongside his journey through scholarship, love, family, and loss. The Psoad is itself a fascinating read for any lover of Greek myth; Harlow argues “that the heroes of the Epic Cycle, in this case Psoas of Midea, created the space for the appearance of their complement, Jesus of Nazareth, the other foundational figure of Western culture.” These layers, and their quietly complex interplay, showcase Martel’s strengths: subtlety, profundity, humor, pathos.

This review originally ran in the April 3, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish news.

Rating: 8 chameleons.

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Ravensong by TJ Klune

Posted on April 10, 2026 by pagesofjulia

As ever, here you will find spoilers from previous books in the series, but no spoilers for this book.

Book two in the Green Creek series is as devastatingly wonderful as the first. I did miss the audio format, which I’ll be returning to for book three (as soon as it’s available – hurry!).

This is Gordo Livingstone’s story. We know Gordo well from Wolfsong, but only from Ox’s perspective and in Ox’s lifetime; here, Gordo’s own childhood and upbringing with the Bennett pack alternates with a later timeline, starting with the time that Gordo spent on the road with Joe, Carter and Kelly, and beyond the events of book one. Somewhere I saw the four books in this series as being about four relationships; if book one was Ox’s story and centered his relationship with Joe, book two is Gordo’s story and focuses on his relationship with Mark. (No spoiler there: we knew they had something and now we know a whole lot more.) I will also say that there is a developing theme about the legacy of fathers. Ox and Gordo both had fathers who hurt them, and whose words continue to be present for the sons long after they’re gone. Their mothers remain present, too – Gordo’s mother left her son some difficulties, while Ox’s was all goodness – but the fathers-to-sons legacy feels like a greater throughline, especially with the male Bennett alphas taking surrogate places for each man. (Alphas can be female in this world, but the Bennetts, so far, have male ones.)

In some ways this is a continuation in kind. The Bennett pack is terribly powerful; they are a very loving and devoted family but also can be a demanding one; this level of commitment can be painful and costly, but the pack does its best to care for its own even when the process hurts. There is more, as one character termed it, mystical moon magic (romance, love, and definitely sex – not plentiful, but gorgeously written when we do get it). There is violence and war. Other wolves, bad witches, human hunters. There is a new threat in this book. It will take everything they have to stay whole, individually and together. There is love and lust and there is such angst, and for my money, Klune writes all of these (and the sex!) as well as anybody does. I’m stoked about book three, Heartsong.

Rating: 8 tattoos.

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The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos by Kendra Langford Shaw

Posted on April 3, 2026 by pagesofjulia

In the Arctic, homesteaders dive for antique pianos and struggle to survive in this compulsively readable first novel of adventure and familial love.

“My little brother, Finley, drowned the first time wrestling the Napoleon pianoforte under the galactic starlight of an Arctic sunset; the way he later told the story, the piano had it coming.” The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is a wildly imaginative story centered on the adventures and trials of a homesteader family in the Arctic. Kendra Langford Shaw’s first novel follows these determined renegades as they establish and struggle to keep lives, livelihoods, homes, and community in a tremendously harsh environment.

Chapters alternate between characters and perspectives, beginning with siblings Milda, Finley, and Temperance; their parents, Viola and Fry; their ancestor Moose Bloomer, who began his immigration to the Arctic Territory as part of a large train of settlers but was, at 12, one of a few survivors to make it onto the permafrost; and the shrinking but hardy next generation. In a fantastical twist, each settler family brought a wildly impractical piece of equipment. “Issuing each family a map and an orange flag, the deed to their land hing[ed] upon their ability to ‘civilize.’ They were required to bring salt pork, botanical texts, and pianos–music, music being what would elevate the territory from raw, unbroken land into a homeland worth having.” Moose’s train lost and abandoned pianos across the region before settling and striving; pianofortes, surprisingly preserved by freezing waters, washed about the floors of the ocean and the Kamikaze River. Later homesteaders work as piano hunters. Antiques pulled up from the deep command impressive prices. Readers meet Finley when he is a young boy obsessed with recovering his family’s Napoleon, and this obsession will guide several lives.

In this strange Arctic world in which sunken pianos are desirable prey and their ivory keys can be found in the bellies of trout, glaciers melt, sea levels rise, and scant resources dwindle. Families battle the elements for survival, and they love one another in traditional and nontraditional ways. Viola, Fry, and their children live in a house on stilts, farming octopus and collecting sea beans, with a sea lion as a pet. They yearn only for “what other families had long ago achieved in terms of the conveniences of modern life: sanitation and heating ducts, coffee, dental work, telescopes, beehives.” Shaw’s imagination is broad, her characters delightful, and their fates often painful but also transcendent. The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is a lovely profile of a singular, stark place and a small, tight cast of indelibly colorful characters: a heart-wrenching, unforgettable debut.

This review originally ran in the March 23, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 pips.

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A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (audio)

Posted on March 30, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Loving everything I’ve read by Sangu Mandanna, but **especially** The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, I was delighted to hear about this new one on audio. Thanks, Liz!

This is quite in the spirit of that other title, with themes of family, love, belonging, finding one’s own tribe, and owning one’s own strengths, weaknesses, and specialties. When we meet her, Sera Swan is a teenaged witch in training. More or less abandoned by her parents, she lives with her much beloved great aunt Jasmine at the Batty Hole Inn, which they run together. They have recently been joined by a witch in fox’s clothing (she is trapped in a fox’s body after a spell gone wrong) named Clemmie. When Jasmine dies in the garden, Clemmie gives Sera the spell to resurrect her, which Sera quickly does. She is probably the most powerful witch in all of Britain – despite being a girl, and still young, and most upsettingly to those in charge, a half-Icelandic, half-Indian, nonwhite person (the British Guild of Sorcery being as stodgy and, yes, racist as we might expect it to be). Jasmine is indeed brought back to life, along with (accidentally) her long-dead pet rooster, Roo-Roo, a mere rooster skeleton but avidly underfoot. But this great powerful spell has cost Sera virtually all of her magical power. This is devastating, because Sera loves her magic. Because the resurrection spell was not strictly legal, Sera has been exiled from the Guild to boot. (None of this is especially spoiler-y as it all takes place in the first few pages.)

Fast forward, and an adult Sera remains at Jasmine’s side, managing the Batty Hole Inn with much frustration, creative cursing, and precious little magic. She still mourns what she has lost, and thinks constantly about how to regain her power. But she is lucky to have Aunt Jasmine, for one – and Roo-Roo – and a motley crew of other residents: there is Nicholas, an awkward young man who thinks himself a knight, complete with shining armor and a very real sword; Matilda, a grumpy older woman who loves to garden (badly) and has become close to Jasmine; Sera’s cousin Theo, another young witch whose immediate family has abdicated; and still Clemmie, still a grumpy, meddling fox-witch. One of Sera’s spells from back before she lost her powers still protects the inn from those who wish harm, but reveals it especially to those in need of its particular kind of succor, which is how Sera has found herself surrounded by such loveable, messy eccentrics. And then a new addition to Batty Hole arrives. Luke has long been at odd angles to the Guild, but finds meaningful work in academic research if he keeps his head down; but his younger sister Posie is not so under-the-radar. At nine years old, she is a powerful witch and also autistic, which means she is not inclined to follow rules, including the all-important one about not letting mainstream society find out about magic. Luke is running out of options to keep his dear sister safe; they are quite on the run when they arrive at Batty Hole. The refugees only mean to stay a short while, but the two magical children, Theo and Posie, do well together, and Luke and Sera (onetime misfit magical children themselves) may have assistance to offer each other in turn. The newcomers fit neatly into the inn’s batty little family. Sera might even get her magic back – but at what cost?

Sera had always been good at fortitude. Fortitude was her friend. She had fortituded her way through undependable parents, megalomaniac mentors, scheming foxes, the death of a loved one, the resurrection of said loved one, the loss of her magic, and quite a large number of fiascos big and small since then. Unfortunately, she and fortitude seemed to have now parted ways, because Sera, glaring fearsomely at an empty glass teapot, was at her wits’ end.

So. There is a lovely built family of oddballs, finding ways to relate to each other on nontraditional terms. There is the trick of finding where we each fit in, and caring for children – and adults – who are different, but not less than. There are many kinds of love, including familial and romantic (and just a little sex), and at every stage of life. There is awe and magic, and there are bad guys and one battle in particular. There are absolutely laugh-out-loud lines, and Nicholas’s loveable but quite silly jousting. It’s extremely sweet, but I brought a sweet tooth to this cozy fantasy tale about community and gumption. Samara MacLaren’s narration was fun and expressive (and great points for so many accents) – perfect. I am 100% all in for Sangu Mandanna.

Rating: 8 scones.

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So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow

Posted on March 27, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I like these remixes, and I remember Little Women with a warm fondness. Louisa May Alcott’s novel championed strong, outspoken women and questioned classism; and it offered a cozy picture of a certain type of society: in my memory, one that only included white people. Here, Bethany C. Morrow recasts the story in a different frame. Four sisters, bridging girlhood and adulthood, with their adored mother, navigate many changes in a world that is also fast-changing. Their beloved father is away at war or supporting postwar efforts. The novel opens in 1863, and the March family are among the residents of the newly established Roanoke Island Freedpeople Colony. They have their own house, with multiple rooms. Meg teaches the colony’s children to read and write, although she must do so in tents, because the white missionary teachers claim the buildings. Jo and a group of young men work building more houses for the constant influx of new residents. Bethlehem is a whiz of a seamstress, making new clothes for the colony’s people from what the former enslavers left behind. Amethyst wishes to study, to dance, to live all of life; but at 14, she is subject to her family’s wish for her to stay a child a little longer. She helps Beth where she can. Mammy takes transcription for the (white) officers who run the colony.

True to the original, Meg is a nurturer who yearns for her own family; her wish for a husband drives the earliest plot action. Jo is a great thinker and, within the household, speechmaker; it takes her family to encourage her to begin writing down her thoughts, which here center on the value of the freedpeople’s colony. She is driven to argue in favor of such projects, to fundraise, to seek the independence of her community which is so far too dependent and beholden on white folks who, though Northern and not enslavers, still hold the power and purse strings, and consider Black folks inferior. Beth is still sickly, kindhearted, and supportive, and Amy is still a firebrand in her own ways. There is still a Lorie – Jo’s Lorie – who is devoted to her but also challenges her with his different opinions about the best way forward for Black southerners.

These characters debate, for example, the advantages of the freedpeople’s colony versus moving north or beyond, including to Liberia. They question the nature of freedom, and what to do with the limited progress they’ve seen so far: to be no longer enslaved is certainly good, but doesn’t make them want to fall at the feet of white abolitionists in gratitude, because it is only right. And to be free from enslavement doesn’t mean they don’t feel a boot on their neck in many ways. Such debates within the structure of a novel don’t always work for me – they can feel forced or unnatural within dialog. But that’s not the case here. For whatever it’s worth, I find this device true to Alcott’s original, and in both versions, I think it feels true to the characters themselves. One thing I believe we love about the Marches is that they are actively engaging with their world and with one another, in both stories, discussing what they see around them and how they want to be in the world. I think it works, and I think it feels to-the-minute relevant in 2026.

I loved seeing these March sisters head in different directions than Alcott’s did. It’s hard not to tell you here where they go and what they find there – please go read this book.

Rating: 7 skates.

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Wolfsong by TJ Klune (audio)

Posted on March 20, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I took great pleasure in this great big Klune novel, first in a series (squeal!). At 19 hours, and over 500 pages in print, this is a nice deep dive: make sure you have the time, and it will be well rewarded.

We meet Ox when he is 12 years old, and his father, a violent drunk, is leaving. The father is not seen again, but he looms throughout the story, quoted as telling Ox that he’s stupid, that he will get shit all his life, that men don’t cry. Ox does go through some shit, but also finds so much love and surrogate family. The father is proven wholly wrong in the other respects, repeatedly and throughout, but Ox will be the last to believe that he is not stupid, that he is special, strong, capable, loved, and that his tears are okay.

Ox does have a lovely mother, and over time, forms bonds with his father’s former boss, now his own: Gordo, who runs an auto shop. The other employees at Gordo’s treat Ox as their own, too. And then, on his sixteenth birthday, he meets a ten-year-old boy named Joe, and will never be the same. Joe and his family are charismatic, powerful, beautiful people; they take Ox as one of their own, although it takes a little while to figure out what-all that means.

What follows is the building of family ties that are both literal, in this fantasy world, and figuratively, rather a fantasy of what we regular people might dream possible: indelibly strong connections and complete commitments. But also, drama and violence and betrayals, death and loss and grief; and also such love and passion, and just one or two extremely hot and fairly detailed sex scenes, quite late in the book. There were lines of absolutely exquisite humor, even among some of the worst and most painful parts. I wanted to include some of those here, but they were either too spicy or too spoiler-y, so please just believe me when I say Klune can make me laugh and cry at the very same time. For this reader, at least, he just excels at making me feel so much, so deeply. I would follow these characters anywhere.

This story is set in Green Creek, Oregon, a small, working-class town where the gritty real-world sort of bad things happen, but magic is also possible. A young boy who was told that he was big and dumb and slow can grow up to find and do surprising things. A young boy who has been horribly traumatized can remake himself, surrounded by love. I think I’ll stop here, because I want this beautiful book’s many, deep, complex twists and surprises to find you – if you choose – as they found me, unawares. I’m really excited about the rest of this series.

Kirt Graves narrates this audiobook beautifully. I’m sad that I’m not listening to him right now.

Rating: 9 slices of cucumber.

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Mrs. Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung, trans. by Paige Morris

Posted on March 6, 2026 by pagesofjulia

In this bloody but cheerful novel, a middle-aged widow and mother of two becomes a contract killer to support her family, reinventing herself along the way.

Kang Jiyoung’s Mrs. Shim Is a Killer is a kaleidoscopic novel of murder-for-hire, crisscrossing loyalties, self-determination, and dark humor. In Paige Morris’s translation from the Korean, Kang’s matter-of-fact prose reveals a sly, absurdist wit. This playfully murderous thriller is not soon forgotten.

In the first chapter, readers meet Mrs. Shim. A 51-year-old widow, she supports a family of three; her son is of university age, her daughter just younger. Since the death of her husband five years ago, she has struggled to provide for her family by working in a butcher’s shop, relying on her knife skills to eke out a living while dutifully preparing kimchi, soybean soup, and other staples at home. When she loses her job, she is desperate for other work–not easy for an ajumma, or middle-aged woman, to find. At the Smile Private Detective Agency, however, she meets a boss impressed by her use of a knife. “I’d like you to become a killer,” the man says matter-of-factly, and Mrs. Shim finds she is in no position to turn down the gold bar he offers. Reluctant at first but driven by her need to provide for her children, she becomes Smile’s best killer yet, causing surprised rumors to circulate about the knife-wielding ajumma.

Mrs. Shim Is a Killer shifts perspective to follow one character and then another, from a long list of players in Mrs. Shim’s story. Aside from the title character, chapter titles refer to them by epithet: The Boss, The Shaman, The Confidant, The Daughter. Intrigue unfolds in this series of puzzle pieces, which provides varying angles on events where killers and amateurs off killers, bosses, and more. Because not all of these character spotlights take place in the same timeline, old secrets also come to light, and present-day rivals may reveal more nuanced relationships in the past. In final standoff scenes, characters are set against one another in unexpected arrangements and, through it all, readers root for Mrs. Shim, a reluctant but determined assassin.

Kang (The Shop for Killers) plays off expectations about mothers, lovers, and cultural norms to her reader’s constant surprise. With a complexly twisting plot, disarming characters, and a deceptive sense of humor, Mrs. Shim Is a Killer breaks genre boundaries in a surprisingly hopeful package. Bloody but cheerful, this unusual tale is entertaining and strangely cozy.

This review originally ran in the February 26, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 fishcakes.

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