Tag: Fiction

Book Review

The Swan’s Daughter by Roshani Chokshi

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The Swan’s Daughter by Roshani Chokshi is a lavish, strange, and quietly radical fairytale retelling that takes familiar tropes and reshapes them from the inside out. On the surface, it looks like a classic setup: a young woman enters a glittering court to compete for a prince’s hand, surrounded by beautiful rivals and impossible expectations. But almost immediately, the story begins to question who holds power, who is truly at risk, and what beauty is allowed to look like in a world obsessed with spectacle. This Ugly Duckling retelling, wrapped in a Bachelor-style tournament of brides, is indulgent and whimsical, but it is also deeply intentional in the way it reframes vulnerability, worth, and agency.

Book cover for The Swan's Daughter by Roshani Chokshi.

They’re terrified of you, which is far more useful than affection.

Roshani Chokshi, The Swan’s Daughter

I came into this novel with high expectations because The Gilded Wolves is one of my favorite books. While The Swan’s Daughter is far frothier in tone, it carries the same confidence in its worldbuilding. This is one of the most decadent settings I have read in a fairytale retelling. Sentient castles, library wyverns disguised as rabbits, and daydream trees create a lush, storybook atmosphere, but there is always something sharp beneath the surface. The satire also works especially well here. The competition is absurd, glamorous, and dangerous in equal measure, and the book never lets you forget that performance and survival are deeply intertwined.

One of the most interesting things this book does is quietly subvert the traditional damsel narrative. Demelza arrives at the tournament of brides as someone easily overlooked. She is physically unremarkable by the court’s standards, visibly out of place among competitors who embody polished, effortless beauty. From the outside, she appears vulnerable, even pitiable. In reality, it is Prince Arris who occupies the most precarious position. His life, his future, and his very humanity hinge on making the right choice. If he chooses poorly, the consequences are catastrophic. I loved how this inversion reframes the entire competition. Demelza may look like the one in need of saving, but Arris is the one trapped by expectation and consequence.

Love is dazzling. Can you imagine it? To be entrusted with someone’s heart…to be all the radiance in their world? To be the only shelter in which they know both safety and bliss?

Roshani Chokshi, The Swan’s Daughter

Beauty is also treated with a surprising intentionality in this novel. Demelza is not revealed to be secretly stunning, nor does the narrative rush to “fix” her appearance to make her worthy. Instead, her beauty is initially internal, invisible to a society trained to value spectacle above substance. Every other competitor is outwardly beautiful in ways the court knows how to reward. Yet by the end, it becomes clear that none of them can match what Demelza offers as a person. Her honesty, emotional steadiness, and refusal to perform a version of herself for approval give the story a quiet power that will stay with readers. The novel slowly becomes less interested in beauty as currency and more invested in beauty as character.

Arris, too, is written in ways that resist traditional fairytale masculinity. I was especially drawn to the attention paid to his routines, his clothing, and the care he takes in presentation. There is something almost traditionally feminine in how these moments are framed for him and not for Demelza, and yet the story never treats this as weakness or contradiction. His sensitivity, precision, and emotional awareness exist comfortably alongside his role as prince and romantic lead. Even within the confines of a heterosexual romance, the book allows softness and attentiveness to be strengths rather than liabilities, which felt both refreshing and intentional.

Power is a matter of perception. In the end, it’s what you believe that holds the most sway. All the rationale in the world might tell you you are walking headlong into danger. But if you believe yourself an exception, if you believe that fate walks you down a different road despite every evidence to the contrary, then it is perception alone that rules you. Nothing else.

Roshani Chokshi, The Swan’s Daughter

The weakest element for me was the romance. While I appreciate that Demelza and Arris don’t experience insta-love (an annoying pitfall of many YA romances for me!), their relationship never really evolves into something convincingly romantic. Their chemistry is muted, and there is no clear emotional turning point where their feelings shift from friendship to romantic love. At times, it even feels as though the narrative invites us to root for Arris to end up with someone else. Given how central love is positioned within the story, this lack of development is disappointing.

Several plot threads also feel underresolved, particularly those involving Demelza’s father and the spell she and her sisters were raised to decipher. Both arcs are introduced with significant weight and then quietly fade away, which undermines their earlier importance.

Still, I genuinely enjoyed The Swan’s Daughter. Its greatest strength lies in how it reimagines familiar tropes without stripping them of their magic. This is a story about being underestimated, about finding worth beyond performance, and about choosing who you are in a world determined to define you first.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review

And They Were Roommates by Page Powars

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And They Were Roommates by Page Powars is a YA romantic comedy set at an all-boys boarding school, wrapped in Valentine’s Day antics, secret love letters, and the heightened emotions of being 16 and figuring yourself out. I went into this one with high expectations, partly because I love most things associated with the meme the title originates from, and partly because of the trans representation at its center. And we get all of that! This book is charming and genuinely sweet, but it’s also uneven, overly silly at times, and emotionally thinner than I wanted it to be. I kept wishing it would go deeper and let the characters linger in some of the heavier, more real moments instead of constantly playing to the bit.

Book cover for And They Were Roommates by Page Powars.

I’d been drawn to those boys because I wanted to be a boy. Because I was a boy.

Page Powars, And They Were Roommates

One of the strongest aspects of the book is Charlie as a protagonist, particularly in how his internal anxieties are portrayed. Powars does a good job capturing the hypervigilance that can come with being trans in spaces that don’t always feel safe or fully welcoming. Charlie’s fear isn’t rooted in shame about who he is, but in the very real concern of being scrutinized, questioned, or denied the ability to exist comfortably as himself

Jasper, on the other hand, was where the romance really lost me. As a love interest, he often came across as more irritating than intriguing, and I struggled to understand what originally drew Charlie to him so strongly. The book hinges on their shared past at summer camp and frames their relationship as a meaningful second-chance romance, but when that first chance happened at 13, it’s difficult to buy the depth and permanence of that bond. I tend to be skeptical of second-chance romance in YA for this reason, and this book didn’t quite convince me otherwise. The emotional stakes felt inflated without enough concrete backstory to support them.

Love is never not scary. It’s a matter of whether you’re enjoying that fear.

Page Powars, And They Were Roommates

Tonally, this novel leans hard into whimsy. The Valentine Academy setting, the anonymous love letter delivery service, and the heightened drama all gave me strong K-drama, J-drama, and even manga vibes (I kept thinking of Hana-Kimi!). That aesthetic can be very fun, and at times it absolutely worked. I loved the classic all-boys boarding school atmosphere, but that sense of contained chaos taken together sometimes overwhelmed the emotional throughline. Too many subplots were introduced, and not enough of them received satisfying closure by the end.

The love-letter premise is a good example of this. Charlie and Jasper writing anonymous romantic letters for their classmates creates plenty of angst and comedic mishaps, but the plot never quite lands its point. I expected the story to resolve this either by empowering students to write their own letters or by fundamentally changing the relationship between the two campuses. Instead, the thread simply fizzles out, leaving me unsure what the point was, beyond fueling drama.

Overall, And They Were Roommates is sweet, sincere, and full of queer joy. Readers who love exaggerated rom-com energy, boarding school settings, and lighthearted YA romance may have a great time with it. For me, though, the characterization needed more grounding, and the romance never really earns its emotional payoff. Still, I’m glad this book exists, and I hope it finds the readers who will adore it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Roaring Brook Press / Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review

The Love Haters by Katherine Center

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The Love Haters by Katherine Center follows Katie Vaughn, a video producer staring down layoffs, who grabs a last-chance assignment filming Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer turned viral hero in Key West. The gig could save her career, but there’s a catch: the entire shoot takes place in and around the water, and Katie can’t swim. Worse, she’s spent years battling the mirror, counting calories, hiding her body, and shrinking herself to fit a world that demands smallness. So when she’s forced to don a bathing suit on a tropical beach with cameras rolling, every insecurity she’s tried to bury comes surging back to the surface. The story implies that love can heal self-loathing, but unfortunately, both unravel in the attempt, leaving neither fully convincing.

Book cover for The Love Haters by Katherine Center.

The funny thing about the internet is that it is basically a collective hallucination. If you don’t join in, it doesn’t exist.

Katherine Center, The Love Haters

What immediately struck me was how quickly this book plunges readers into the deep end of Katie’s body image struggles (without a trigger warning in sight!). From the very beginning of this novel, readers are immersed in calorie logs, obsessive self-scrutiny, and a fixation on size and appearance that dominates nearly every thought Katie has. It’s relentless and nearly made me put the book down. It could genuinely be triggering for readers sensitive to themes of body dysmorphia or disordered eating, so take care of yourselves!

It’s clear Center means to excavate the pain of existing in a body under siege—by culture, by the patriarchy, by self-loathing—but intent and impact diverge sharply. The narrative never quite interrogates the systems that made Katie feel the way she does about her body. Instead, it documents her obsession until it becomes the story itself. And while that might mirror the claustrophobia of living with disordered thinking, the lack of distance or reflection turns empathy into exhaustion. There’s no relief, only repetition. And for readers who understand this kind of thinking, it feels less like representation and more like being trapped inside a familiar cage.

If you don’t reject the harsh things people say to you, then I guess, at some point, that means you accept them.

Katherine Center, The Love Haters

When the novel relocates to Key West, the tone brightens but never fully transforms into the familiar, fizzy rhythm I expect from a Katherine Center beach read. Aunt Rue, with her unfiltered wisdom and larger-than-life energy, is the book’s saving grace. She’s a reminder of what Center can do when she writes women who are vivid, messy, and alive. Rue’s presence reminds readers that joy might still be possible even when self-acceptance feels far away. Honestly, she and the dog were the best part of the book.

Hutch, the supposed love interest, never evolves beyond his résumé: heroic, humble, vaguely haunted. His romance with Katie feels like a narrative obligation, built on proximity and projection rather than genuine chemistry. And when the story pivots toward the idea that Hutch helps Katie finally see her own beauty, I nearly lost it. Women do not need men to feel beautiful or worthy! What could have been a meditation on self-acceptance dissolves into a tired, outdated trope where love is mistaken for validation and vulnerability for dependence. Miss me with that noise!

Every time you have to be brave, you get to be a little braver next time. That’s what life is for.

Katherine Center, The Love Haters

Center’s prose has always leaned on optimism, a kind of curated hope that can make even pain feel purposeful, as if every heartbreak can lead somewhere lighter. At her best, that outlook turns her stories into gentle reminders that resilience can coexist with joy. But here, that instinct backfires. The tone wavers between lighthearted beach read and heavy-handed self-hatred without ever finding balance. The result is tonal whiplash: a story that wants to be both a balm and a confrontation but ends up being neither. Even the structure buckles under the weight of contradictions, from a fake-dating subplot that feels nonsensical to a drinking contest scene that borders on grotesque, and an ending that asks for more suspension of disbelief than emotional investment.

There are, admittedly, glimpses of Center’s craft beneath the wreckage. She captures the sensory immediacy of place with almost painterly precision: the burn of sunlight on bare shoulders, the damp quiet before a storm, the lazy rhythm of a coastal town half-asleep in its own heat. But aesthetic competence cannot rescue what the book refuses to confront: its own complicity in the very narrative it seems to critique. For a novel about a woman learning to take up space, The Love Haters spends an extraordinary amount of time shrinking her down again.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review

This Spells Love by Kate Robb

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What if one impulsive, margarita-fueled decision could wipe away your worst heartbreak—but at the cost of everything else? In This Spells Love, Kate Robb blends romantic comedy with a dash of magical realism to explore what happens when one woman’s attempt to forget her ex rewrites her entire reality. After a drunken spell with her best friend Dax, her sister, and her eccentric aunt, Gemma wakes up in a world where her ex never existed, her life is nearly unrecognizable, and the one person who’s always mattered most—Dax—no longer remembers her at all. Whimsical and heartfelt, this debut asks a compelling question: if you could undo the past, would you still choose the same future?

Book cover for This Spells Love by Kate Robb.

It’s like Hot Tub Time Machine without the hot tub.

Kate Robb, This Spells Love

There’s real charm in the setup, and the pacing is strong throughout. Robb’s prose is breezy and digestible, with writing that makes it easy to devour chapters without realizing how much time has passed. The magical realism element is understated, more a plot device than a full-on genre shift, which works well for readers who prefer grounded rom-coms. And at its core, the novel is about more than romantic love. It’s about learning to recognize your blind spots, appreciating the people who anchor you, and understanding that healing doesn’t come from rewriting the past. It comes from making peace with it.

But for all its strengths, This Spells Love stumbles where it matters most: character depth. Gemma, as a narrator, is often difficult to root for. Her self-absorption borders on grating, and while the story hinges on her personal growth, it’s hard to feel invested in that journey when she seems oblivious to the emotional needs of those around her. She treats her support system like background noise and rarely reflects on how her actions impact others until late in the book. While this is realistic in some ways, it doesn’t always make for compelling reading.

The side characters—particularly Gemma’s sister and aunt—feel one-dimensional. They appear when needed, serve their purpose, and then retreat until the plot calls for them again. Even Dax, who is arguably the emotional anchor of the novel, is frustratingly underdeveloped. Because the majority of their romance happens in an alternate reality where he’s essentially a different person, the emotional stakes never quite land. The book gestures at a best-friends-to-lovers arc, but it lacks the lived-in warmth and history that make those stories shine. There’s no satisfying build-up to the chemistry; we’re simply told it exists, and then expected to believe it transcends timelines.

The predictable path is boring. And you miss out on the chance to try some really incredible things.

Kate Robb, This Spells Love

That said, there’s something endearing about the concept itself. The idea that love can survive (thrive!) through a fractured reality is a powerful one. And while the execution is imperfect, the themes resonate. Gemma’s realization that Dax is her constant, the one person who feels like home no matter the version, lands with a quiet poignancy. It’s not quite the sweeping romance it could have been, but it’s earnest. And sometimes, that’s enough.

This Spells Love is a flawed but engaging debut. It may not deliver on all its witchy promises, and it might leave some readers wanting more from its characters and emotional arcs. Still, for an afternoon curled up with something light and slightly magical, it scratches the itch for cozy fall vibes. Just don’t expect potions, pentagrams, or a deeply fleshed-out love story. This one’s more about the lesson learned than the spell cast.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Press / Random House Publishing Group for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review

Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis

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Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis is a young adult thriller that plunges readers into a vibrant, fast-paced world of high-stakes heists and intricate betrayals. It features seventeen-year-old Rosalyn Quest, or Ross, who belongs to an infamous family of legendary thieves. On the very night Ross resolves to escape her family’s criminal legacy, her mother is kidnapped. To rescue her, Ross enters the prestigious Thieves’ Gambit, an international competition of perilous challenges, extravagant heists, and ruthless opponents. Victory promises a single wish to the winner—and Ross’s best chance to save her mom. But as the competition escalates and alliances form and fracture, Ross must decide who to trust, and how much she’s willing to risk to win.

Book cover for Thieves' Gambit by Kayvion Lewis.

I was stealing my own future back.

Kayvion Lewis, Thieves’ Gambit

Right from the start, Ross emerged as my favorite part of this book. She’s tough, resourceful, and relatable. Her evolution from someone who staunchly follows the family rule—“if they’re not a Quest, they can’t be trusted”—to a character who cautiously opens herself up to others, feels genuine and rewarding. I really felt for her as she slowly learned through interactions with her new friends that the family she’s so fiercely loyal to has actually isolated her from the type of life she’s always wanted. The struggle to reconcile who you are with who you want to be is something so relatable.

However, this novel does face some hurdles. With its familiar heist and competition elements, it occasionally fails to establish its own identity distinct from similar stories in the genre. Lewis tees up some thrilling challenges for the Gambit, and it’s fun to watch Ross and the other competitors work through them. But Six of Crows, The Inheritance Games, and even Ocean’s Eleven have been floating around for years. I love a good heist, but the predictability of a less lethal Hunger Games often left me craving something uniquely fresh or surprising with this story.

If you’re not making friends, you’re making enemies.

Kayvion Lewis, Thieves’ Gambit

Another aspect that didn’t entirely hit the mark was the romantic subplot involving Devroe. Though Devroe had brief moments of intriguing vulnerability, his relationship with Ross lacked depth and chemistry. It felt somewhat superficial and rushed, making it difficult to root for them. Perhaps that’s partially due to all the characters actively competing against each other in challenges that rely on them outwitting their opponents. Still, I needed more than a charm offensive from Devroe. That said, I did enjoy the other secondary characters; Kyung-soon and Mylo were two favorites. Lewis’s diversity in character backgrounds and cultures is commendable and by far one of the best things about this book.

Ultimately, Thieves’ Gambit is an enjoyable read ideal for fans of heist adventures and fierce female leads. Though the romance underwhelms and some narrative choices slightly dull its shine, the clever plot, exciting heists, and layered protagonist make it a worthwhile pick.

Thank you to NetGalley and Nancy Paulsen Books for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.