One Monday morning, the students of Toronto’s Ridgeview Alternative School (“an oasis of acceptance” for kids interested in the arts) arrive to discover their greenhouse blocked off with yellow crime scene tape. Few are upset that the body inside is English teacher Clifford “call me Cliff” Lowell—a rumored sexual predator, known for grooming underage girls and giving popular boys unfairly bad grades. Earlier in the semester, seniors and best friends Jordan Byrne and Nick Moretti entered Lowell’s class. The teacher acted very differently toward autistic Jordan before his transition; now, both boys’ low grades jeopardize their college acceptances and scholarships. New senior transfer Chloe Underwood, on the other hand, at first welcomes Cliff’s attentions and falls under his spell, a process described in explicit scenes of grooming and sexual abuse, but she quickly realizes how manipulative he is. What starts as a silly game among Jordan, Nick, and Chloe, who all present white, becomes an actual plan to commit murder. Lowell is such a horrendous human being that readers will easily root for his demise at the hands of these understandably frustrated teenagers. At times darkly humorous, this story offers meaningful representation of the powerless taking back control within a system that’s set against them. The authors include a fun thematic parallel as talented actor Chloe plays Lady Macbeth in a school production while Nick writes and performs the music, and Jordan works tech.

Meredith Metzger is a devoted social worker in Rockford, Illinois, a hardscrabble city that residents love and loathe in near-equal measure. In her profession, Meredith sees the worst the city has to offer, both in terms of individual decisions and systemic inequities that drive poverty and its associated hardships. But when the pressure becomes too much and leaning on her co-workers isn’t enough, Meredith starts drinking, eventually endangering her son. She puts her colleague Jamal Glover in the difficult position of having to give custody of Meredith’s young son, Mateo, to her ex-husband, Roberto Alvarez. Meredith must then continue to help families in the same position she’s in—a cycle of desperation and difficulty as she struggles to get sober. Narrated by a chorus of fellow social workers, the novel examines a variety of situations in which people may come in contact with the child protection system. But while attempting to explore the gray areas of society, the book seems more interested in reminding the reader how hard it is to be a social worker than in building empathy for all the characters. The tone evokes exhausted resignation or worldly jadedness, making it hard for the reader to engage deeply with struggles the book seems to frame as inevitable and unending. Combined with uneven pacing, including narrative breaks punctuated by documents and newspaper clippings, this is a novel that asks a lot of readers without providing enough of a payoff.

A narrator named Daniel (“You are Daniel-who-handles-it. Daniel-who-is-there. Daniel-who-doesn’t-need-anything-because-Daniel-is-fine”) recounts various moments in his life, starting from childhood and moving through multiple failed relationships and the tentative beginnings of one that he believes may heal him. Though brief, the book covers a good deal of emotional ground without flinching from what life inflicts. It begins with the narrator in a troubled marriage, remembering a key moment under a Toronto streetlight: “Two minutes of just being present in my own life.” He then recalls other important moments, from a childhood hockey game to his time playing in a band to co-founding a tech company, before focusing on the women in his life. At times joyful and heartbreaking, the journey will appeal to those who have experienced similar love and loss. Throughout, the narrator is often paralyzed by doubt, circling his choices as he tries to understand where things went wrong. As a result, Daniel’s musings sometimes read more like a therapy journal than a cohesive novella. Characters are introduced, only for the narrator to retreat from them, as if theirs are not his stories to tell: “It doesn’t belong to me alone and some of it belongs to people who never asked to be in this story.” The book’s sensitive handling of a character’s transgender journey is a great strength, revealing the loving heart of the protagonist. More moments like these might have helped deepen readers’ connection to Daniel’s journey. For many readers, though, the book will read more like extended self-criticism than a fully realized narrative; the theme of romantic relationships is so central to the work that other aspects feel diminished or unreal.

For many fans, the consensus “big three” rappers are J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake, distinct artists from different backgrounds and with a history of collaboration. And, more infamously, feuding: Beef entangling all three consumed much of 2024, culminating in Lamar’s savage Drake diss track, “Not Like Us,” which won him a Song of the Year Grammy and brought him to the Super Bowl halftime stage. But that spectacle is part of a complex, much longer story about hip-hop’s ongoing engagement with social-justice themes. McCool, a professor at West Chester University, and Hopkins, an arts journalist, begin their story with hip-hop landmarks like “The Message” and exploring how the genre’s commercial growth in the 1990s both bolstered and complicated conscious rap—N.W.A and Tupac Shakur, for instance, could at once deliver potent criticism of racist policing while perpetuating misogynistic stereotypes. Cole, a native of North Carolina, broke through in the 2010s by delivering raps that openly addressed socioeconomic challenges in Black communities; raised in Compton, California, Lamar touched on similar issues in more personal ways, while songs like “Alright” were embraced as empowerment anthems within the Black Lives Matter movement. McCool and Hopkins lean heavily on biographical background on the genre in general and the two MCs in particular and too often decline into platitudes. (“With their combined releases, Kendrick and Cole have reached unparalleled heights.”) The book is at its strongest when discussing the “Not Like Us” contretemps, which to them represents not just a beef but a pivotal cultural moment that divided hip-hop fandom. A stronger book might more directly address the stakes of that split.

Going with the idea that any household-name celebrity deserves a biography, this one gets the job done. Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, in 1948; in 1954, her father accepted a job at the University of Melbourne, taking the family with him. After Newton-John’s mother gave her an acoustic guitar, the teenager started performing at coffee shops, scored a TV appearance, moved to London in hopes of snagging a record contract, and did precisely that. Newton-John’s voice would ultimately win her four Grammys and a career-resuscitating starring role in 1978’s smash movie musical Grease, which both embalmed and spoofed her squeaky-clean image. By all accounts herein—Hild interviewed a good number of the singer’s friends, acquaintances, and collaborators—Newton-John was a human spigot of kindness, which may make her a saint, but it doesn’t make her especially interesting. If anyone ever said a negative word about his subject, Hild apparently hasn’t heard it. (Going by this book, the naughtiest thing Newton-John ever did was in her younger years, when she romanced a married man or two.) But Hild does well despite the lack of out-of-the-way drama in his subject’s life. While not a prose stylist, he dutifully chronicles Newton-John’s professional ups and downs: a record-label imbroglio, her tabloid-fodder divorce, her rampant charity work and environmental activism, and her recurring, ultimately losing, battle with breast cancer. (Newton-John died in 2022.) To his credit, Hild doesn’t try to manufacture luridness, although one wonders if he might have considered not taking everything his ostensibly egoless subject said at face value—e.g., “For Olivia…whether or not the album became a hit was not the point.” Are we so sure it wasn’t?