At 26, Agata, already an eager world-traveler, leaves her small hometown in Tuscany to spend a few months in China. Eschewing popular tourist destinations, her first stop is rural Yangshuo, where she stays in a local village, teaching English and learning Chinese at an international school. Next, she journeys to a Buddhist monastery in the Fujian province. She earns her keep by assisting with all of the meal preparations and spends her days learning from the monks and other monastery volunteers from different parts of the world. Agata then must abruptly change pace when she travels to New York City for work obligations. As she adjusts to the frenetic pace of the city, she meets Jack, a DJ about 20 years her senior, with whom she feels a strong but uncertain connection as they explore the city together; she fears their relationship will end after she returns home. When she receives another opportunity to work in New York, Agata accepts, hoping to reconnect with Jack and find the place where she wants to settle. Errante evocatively conveys Agata’s enthusiasm for the places she visits through her admiring attention to detail, both in her descriptions of her surroundings and in her interactions with the strangers she meets; she is appealingly open-minded and appreciative of each new experience. However, the reader doesn’t get a good sense of who Agata is before her journey, so it’s hard to see how much her experiences have changed her at the end. (She was already an avid, experienced traveler at the outset.) The revelations gleaned from her travels often sound clichéd: “China was not just a place to visit but a world to discover, a world that, perhaps, was too big to be understood in a single lifetime.” Finally, the third-person perspective holds the reader at arm’s length—a closer, more intimate portrait of Agata is needed to fully understand how she views the lands she travels through.

Chloe Fairway feels like things couldn’t get worse. At 31, she’s living with her parents in the London suburbs, working as an assistant rather than a screenwriter, and stuck in the dating trenches. But then an old colleague recommends a mysterious dating service called Perfect Partners. Chloe figures it can’t hurt to try, so she books an appointment and is set up with Rob Dempsey, a gorgeous man who seems ideal. He’s kind, courteous, and can quote Brideshead Revisited, her favorite book, from memory. But then she finds out the truth—Rob is a “state-of-the-art AI humanoid robot. An android. Physically, practically indistinguishable from a real person.” He’s been crafted to meet the exact specifications Chloe detailed in her 42-page questionnaire, the one where she said her ideal men were Fitzwilliam Darcy, Anthony Bridgerton, and Friedrich Bhaer, all men who are, notably, fictional. Chloe could never date a robot—that is, until she thinks about attending her college reunion in Oxford solo. Everyone else has an important career, like her old friend Sean Adler, now a big-time Hollywood director. Chloe resolves to bring Rob to her reunion and introduce him as her boyfriend, impressing all her Oxford friends (and, most importantly, Sean). Rob is the perfect partner, but as the weekend rolls on and she reconnects with people from her past, Chloe begins to wonder if perfection is all it’s cracked up to be. Cousens takes a truly bonkers premise and imbues it with the warmth and humor she’s known for in her romantic comedies. The idea of an AI boyfriend feels scarily real, but Cousens manages to keep things light even while examining what it means for humans to find deep connections with robots instead of each other. Rob is a character who elicits both sympathy and laughs, and the romantic plotline is surprising enough to keep things interesting.

Luminara is a world built on imagination. Each one of its people, the “Lumies,” has their own “Phanta,” a small, winged being that helps manifest their thoughts into reality. Young Ayla, however, is the exception. She was born without a Phanta, making her a target of ridicule by kids who claim she has no imagination. Her only recourse is a long shot: finding the legendary Phanta Tree, the place where Phantas are born. With her parents’ reluctant consent, Ayla heads into the forest. She encounters several otherworldly “guardians” (one with silvery, sapphire-blue fur) who take her to such fantastic sites as the River of Imagination. While she hopes to find her own Phanta at the fabled tree, Ayla herself may be a guide; a big change is coming for the Lumies, and this unique girl will use her foresight and whatever confidence she can muster to help them through it. Orlowski’s novella overflows with charm and emotion. Ayla unquestionably goes through a lot, but also learns inspiring lessons (being different is okay; acknowledging fear can bring out the courage to overcome it). The author doesn’t linger on the bullies’ cruelty, shifting focus instead to uplifting characters including Ayla’s empathetic parents, her gadget-tinkering great-grandfather, and her only friend, Elior, a boy who listens as often as he encourages. Characters flaunt their “imaginara,” inspiring dreamlike imagery like illuminated threads that form shapes. Ayla’s journey into the forest is the highlight: “Trees stretched in impossible ways, their branches looping like ribbons in the breeze… Floating lantern-fish bobbed lazily in the air, their bellies glowing with tiny constellations.” Most readers will be able to knock this story out in an afternoon—and find that it’s definitely one worth reading again.

Emma, depicted at the outset of the story as a polar bear cub, wakes one morning in her ice-cavern bedroom, her mother calling her to breakfast. Anticipating a feast of berries, seaweed, and fish, Emma sets out, following her nose up icy cliffs, down slippery slopes, across shimmering plains, and over jagged crevasses. Along the way, she encounters a bristly, tusked walrus intent on stealing her meal. They roll and tumble, but Emma wins out. She claims her delectable prize, which turns out to be… pancakes. Though skeptical of the human breakfast staple in polar-bear form, Emma as a blonde human girl finds them delicious. She and her brother polish off their meal and go to play some more. (“LEFT PAW, RIGHT PAW, LEFT PAW AGAIN, repeating her steps till she reached the end.”) Blough narrates Emma’s story via a straightforward, loosely rhymed text placed strategically amid the unfolding action and rendered bold and EXTRA-LARGE where emphasis demands. Mongodi, making sublime use of subdued, arctic colors, provides a two-page spread of digital illustrations that sparkle with a sense of place and personality. Capturing the essence of traditional acrylic and oil paintings, these images render bear-cub Emma a most delightful and expressive protagonist, transforming her imaginings into wondrous works of art. Young readers will thrill and tumble along to the denouement.

The third memoir from Van Dyke covers similar ground as the previous two; now he is approaching 100 instead of 90, but before that, not much has changed. (That’s the thing about the past.) What’s new is the angle: the hundred chapters are titled for their takeaway: from “Don’t Act Your Age” and “Make Your Own Rules” to “You Can’t Protect Your Survivors” (a sad vignette about the late Gene Hackman) and “Find Your Arlene.” Van Dyke’s 46-years-younger wife, Arlene, is the sine qua non of his life and this book: “Well over three-quarters of the memories in this book were foggy in my brain but crystal clear in hers,” due to many previous retellings. These recollections include stories of shoveling ice and coal in pre–World War II Danville, Illinois, 15-cent movies, being edged out of a spot on Ed Sullivan’s show by President Harry Truman’s daughter’s tepid opera singing, and recollections from the sets of Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, and many more. If the upbeat tone of his preceding books prompted some critical calls for more conflict, emotion, and introspection, those are answered here by stories with a darker tone. These include a phone call from Cary Grant on LSD, an anxious encounter with a possibly predatory elementary school teacher, a long-running on-set prank involving walnuts, and a 20-year toothache, as yet not fully resolved. “Remember Honestly” corrects a childhood anecdote told in the previous book with more candor about the extreme stinginess of Van Dyke’s father. “I was so intent on putting a smile on my life experiences that I nudged the little hint of darkness out of the story.” In addition to his wife, the supporting cast includes the author’s 73-year-old son, Barry, and his 41-year-old personal assistant, Jimmy, who uses they/them pronouns and has a second career as a WWE-style wrestler—quite a breath of fresh air. Among the most poignant chapters are “You Will Not Be Alone,” which recounts the 1987 death of Van Dyke’s first grandchild at the age of 13, and “Read While You Can,” in which we learn that advanced dry macular degeneration has ended his life as a reader. Not as a writer, though!