The journey to a destination wedding hits some turbulence in McBreen’s entertaining debut. Ada Gallman is dreading her sister’s wedding in Ireland partly because of their strained relationship, but mostly because she’s flying solo while on a three-month “break” from her long-term boyfriend. After her connecting flight from London is canceled, she wanders into the nearest hotel—but she’s too broke to afford a room for the night. Jack, a handsome stranger at the hotel bar, offers to share his room—but Ada’s too committed to her not-quite-ex to agree to a one-night stand. Still, the two get to talking and eventually realize they’re headed to the same wedding, where Jack’s the best man, the guy Ada’s sister has warned her is the ultimate playboy. With no other flights available, they work together to come up with new travel plans—encompassing trains, cars, boats, and multiple shared hotel rooms along the way. The more time they spend together, the more Ada learns about herself, and she starts to wonder whether her long-term, on-and-off relationship is healthy or just habit. Meanwhile, Jack begins to heal from his own recent heartbreak. The romance burns slow, but McBreen makes it clear that these two are a good match through emotional heart-to-hearts. Their unexpected and realistically complicated path to a happy ending is sure to move readers. Agent: Kim Lionetti, BookEnds. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this entrancing debut chronicle, film historian Meiresonne charts the evolution of Korean cinema against the country’s transformation into a democracy. In the early 1900s, Korean theaters mostly showed European and American films and employed byeonsa (narrators) who stood near the screen to translate intertitles and explain cultural nuances. Japan’s colonization of the Korean peninsula loomed large over the country’s early films, Meiresonne contends, discussing how the blockbuster success of 1926’s Arirang, which follows a Korean protestor driven mad by his Japanese torturers, sparked a nationalist strain in early Korean film. The Korean War spurred a wave of melodramas—whose popularity, Meiresonne suggests, stemmed from their ability to capture audiences’ “extreme sense of helplessness in a ravaged country”—as well as a series of dictatorships that banned any movie “likely to tarnish Korea’s image abroad,” effectively stamping out realist films. Elsewhere, Meiresonne discusses how independent movies tackled such formerly taboo topics as the Korean War after the country’s democratization in the late 1980s, and how such films as Parasite garnered worldwide interest in Hallyuwood (a portmanteau of hallyu, a term for the growing prominence of Korean pop culture, and Hollywood) in the 2010s. Meiresonne seamlessly weaves film and political history into a riveting account of how Korean cinema alternatively capitulated to and challenged autocracy before growing into an internationally celebrated cultural export. Enriched by generous movie stills, this is a must for cinephiles. Photos. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

This unspeakably hot duo of novellas launches the Black Rose Auction series of BDSM-inflected fairy tales. Bestseller Robert (Neon Gods) delivers a decadent contemporary riff on “Little Red Riding Hood” in “Wicked Pursuit.” Spoiled and kinky Mafia princess Ruby Belmonte thinks she’s found love with a mild-mannered, upper-crust prepster named Luke—until a stalker who’s been trailing her reveals that Luke and rival Mob family member Casimir Romanov are one and the same. Virtues (Drag Me Up) takes on Goldilocks and the three bears in “Divine Intervention,” a complex paranormal romance featuring a lineup of angels, witches, and demons. Witch Tlalli, an expert thief, longs to sever ties with her unstable ex-boyfriend, Anthony. She gets a chance to do so in explosive fashion while on a mission with an angel, Elias, and Anthony’s father, Cahuani, to steal an auction item. After all, there’s nothing like hooking up with an ex’s father to send a message. The two stories intersect at the Black Rose Auction, a soiree for the über-rich hosted by the enigmatic Reaper where everything is on sale. Both authors raise the sexual tension to stratospheric heights while sketching multilayered characters and delivering big emotions. Dark erotic romance fans will be eager for more. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hunt continues The Kystrom Chronicles series (after The Immortality Thief) with this entertaining planet-hopping quest to find a missing sibling. Smuggler Sean Wren is on the run from both the human Republic and the genetically enhanced Ministers after refusing to hand over the Philosopher Stone, valuable data containing the secret to immortality, to either government. Now Sean receives a message from his sister, Brigid, asking for his help. But he remembers seeing Brigid’s lifeless body after their planet Kystrene was destroyed in a war between the Republic and the Ministers. Is the message really from her, or is it a trick to smoke him out? Despite his doubts, Sean’s devotion to his family spurs him and his traveling companions, former Republic soldier Tamara Gupta and Indigo, a 300-year-old renegade Minister, on a frantic mission to track her down. They must travel under the radar of their many enemies, including the corrupt Senator Todd Ketal, whom Sean is blackmailing, and the dying clone Ministers who need the Philosopher Stone to revive their race. Cuts between the present and past occasionally disrupt the flow, but Sean’s pluck and determination in a world of government bureaucracy and uncooperative technology makes him a worthy hero. This is a rollicking adventure. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

This piquant treatise from poet Queen (Anodyne) makes the case for adopting a method of literary analysis she calls “radical poetics,” which “urges the mind toward truth via feeling.” Radical poetics should focus on love and its absence, Queen contends, positing that the lack of love with which Ralph Ellison treats the female characters in his novel Invisible Man reveals them to be little more than “thin archetypes.” Proposing that intuition can serve as a valuable form of knowledge, Queen cites as a model the ways in which the archivist figure in Dionne Brand’s poem The Blue Clerk uses imagination and intuition to compensate for the paucity of historical evidence about Black lives during the transatlantic slave trade. Elsewhere, Queen defends Muriel Rukeyser’s assertion that poetry and science share a commitment to “inquiry, imagination, and feeling,” and argues that Natasha Trethewey’s poems are “palimpsestic, asserting the speaker’s memories and observations while erasing what may have previously been accepted.” Though the scholarly prose can be tough going and a chapter recounting Queen’s disillusionment with the restrictive bureaucracy of academia feels out of place, her call to foreground the subjective experiences of characters and readers in literary criticism is thought-provoking. English students and scholars will find plenty of food for thought. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Feeney (Good Bad Girl) stumbles with this hackneyed tale of a grieving mystery author who seeks solace on a remote Scottish island. A year after bestseller Grady Green’s wife, Abby, disappears, his life hits the skids—he hardly sleeps, he’s late on delivering his new novel, and his financial troubles force him to move into “the worst hotel in London.” Salvation comes via Grady’s agent, Kitty, who offers him the use of her deceased client’s cabin on the secluded Isle of Amberley. On the ferry over, Grady thinks he sees Abby; soon, his hallucinations worsen, and he grows wary of the frosty locals. With zero cell service, no car, and a variety of macabre surprises waiting in his cabin, it takes Grady a while to notice Amberley’s conspicuous absence of birds—and men. Feeney assembles her plot from familiar parts: elements of The Wicker Man, Gone Girl, and Shutter Island jostle for space among flat descriptions (“The house... is enormous, by far the biggest I’ve seen on the island. It should have been called the Big House on the Hill”) and flatter characters. Worse, her trademark twists are more far-fetched than ever. It’s a letdown. Agents: Kari Stuart, CAA, and Johnny Gellar, Curtis Brown U.K. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Kohnstamm (Lake City) serves up a splendid, centuries-spanning tale of Indigenous and colonial history in the Pacific Northwest. In 1856, Duwamish chief Si’sia vows to protect sacred land near Seattle from violent white settlers, some of whom are named Stevenson and Stalworth. In 1971, Si’sia’s descendant Larry Dugdale works as a machinist on the prototype of a supersonic jet. Larry is in love with Ruth Hasegawa, whose immigrant ancestors once worked, and then owned, Si’sia’s land. Ruth’s mother, Masako, a Japanese internment camp survivor who established the music program at Stevenson Elementary School, controls Ruth’s every move in an ill-fated attempt to arrange a better life for her. Kohnstamm alternates Larry’s narrative with that of Ruth’s daughter, Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth, who in 2014 spearheads a push to rename the elementary school after her mother, only to be told that the school may have to close. The interconnectedness of the cast creates an addictive narrative tension, and Kohnstamm’s character work is top notch, particularly with the tragic Larry, whose earnest and increasingly drastic actions follow one misfortune after another. Readers shouldn’t miss Kohnstamm’s heartbreaking saga. Agent: Jennie Dunham, Dunham Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Calhoun’s disappointing debut novel (after the memoir Also a Poet) concerns a married writer’s newfound crush on a man she hasn’t seen in decades. The unnamed narrator, a loving mother of a teenage son, Nate, is nudged by her husband, Paul, to consider an open relationship. She kisses an old friend and finds that it doesn’t mean much to her, but after she reconnects over email with another friend, David, she develops an obsession. She puts off meeting David in person out of fear that an all-consuming romance with him would jeopardize her marriage. Meanwhile, the narrator worries about Nate, though Calhoun neglects to develop him as a character, and vaguely alludes to her accomplishments as a writer. Calhoun litters the narrative with quotes about love from authors and philosophers that fail to elevate the material (a quote from José Ortega y Gasset follows the narrator’s clunky attempt to explain her feelings for David: “When you give birth you can’t put the baby back inside you. David and I had love between us; there was no returning it to wherever it came from”). Early in the story, the narrator reveals that she failed to sell a book about the history of the crush; unfortunately, Calhoun’s novel struggles to illuminate much about her narrator’s crush or about crushes in general. This one falls flat. Agent: David Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink