In the far future—after the waters have risen and then frozen—a smaller civilization (one with little understanding of the ancient technology entombed beneath its feet) has inherited an icier Earth. Olivia and her parents have just moved to the scenic town of June, built on a steep hillside above an icy expanse. They’ve come so that her father—a scholar of ancient tech—can take up a scientific residency at the centuries-old Wardenclyffe lighthouse that stands at the edge of town. Olivia is impressed by the town’s massive library, and also by its population of functioning androids (the ones in her old community stopped working long ago), but the best thing by far about June is Ava, the pretty girl in Olivia’s art class. The two quickly become best friends and explore the forbidden tunnels under their school. They soon find evidence of a mysterious Institute buried beneath the town, as well as indications that someone—perhaps the woman in the red coat who arrived in June on the same day as Olivia—has been sabotaging the local androids. What begins as a lark between friends soon turns into a high-stakes adventure replete with kidnappings, explosions, and the lost secrets of June. Hall’s prose, as narrated by Olivia, has a naive directness that, paired with the striking illustrations by Ollikainen, recalls the work of L. Frank Baum. “He’s wearing a nice-looking outfit,” Olivia notes of one decommissioned android she finds, “although despite its pristine condition it looks about a century or two out of date, like something you’d see in a history book.” The pacing is a bit slow, and readers will not find the urgent melodrama that characterizes much dystopian YA (though there is a bit of romance). For those nostalgic for an earlier era of young people’s literature, however, Hall’s yarn offers enormous delight.

Set in the American Midwest, Los Angeles, and Belize, the story follows Terri, a woman whose life has been shaped more by endurance than confidence, as she steps into a world that refuses to conform to her expectations. Drawn by love and circumstance, she travels to Belize with Reynold, a charismatic musician whose ambitions are as expansive as the landscape they traverse. From the moment Terri arrives, the sensory richness of the place—its heat, music, food, and spiritual traditions—begins to unsettle her sense of control. “The heavy air wraps around her, carrying strange, beautiful scents of sea salt and tropical flowers,” she observes early on, already aware that the rules she knows no longer apply. Terri’s marriage to Reynold strains under unspoken resentments, cultural misunderstandings, and power imbalances that surface gradually, often in quiet moments rather than dramatic confrontations. Reynold’s vision of music as salvation—referring to the musical note, “Mi will create music for the world to hear”—runs parallel to Terri’s own search for meaning, though the two are not always in harmony. As Terri encounters Garifuna, Maya, and African diasporic traditions, spiritual guides and rituals enter the narrative—not as spectacles, but as lived realities. One character warns her, “Life is fraught with challenges. Every problem is a sharp blade cutting the path between success and failure,” a line that encapsulates the book’s theme of growth through discomfort. Midway through the narrative, the stakes intensify as motherhood comes into focus. Terri’s identity as a mother—protective, fearful, and fiercely loving—drives the plot in the story’s second half, pushing her into spaces where faith, folklore, and intuition intersect. Music becomes both a map and a language, echoing through scenes of travel, ritual, and memory. Even moments of tenderness carry an undercurrent of unease, as when Terri reflects on belonging and realizes how easily devotion can slide into self-erasure.

The writing leans heavily on imagery and rhythm, often borrowing the cadences of songs and oral storytelling. Lines such as “Stars glitter and stretch across the heavens, scattered diamonds across black velvet” sit beside more grounded observations about marriage, illness, and emotional dependency. This tonal oscillation mirrors Terri’s internal conflict; she’s pulled between skepticism and belief, autonomy and surrender. Later reflections reveal a growing self-awareness as Terri comes to understand that “pain can become her greatest teacher,” not through abstraction but through lived consequence. As a work of magical realism with elements of spiritual fiction and women’s literary drama, the book resists easy categorization. Its supernatural aspects are never fully separated from psychology or culture; instead, they coexist, shaped by ancestry, music, and place. At times, the ambitious narrative—which incorporates Christian symbolism, Indigenous cosmology, and New Age spirituality—can feel dense, but this density is a strength, reflecting a worldview in which meaning is layered rather than singular. Ultimately, this is a story about listening—to music, to our ancestors, to one’s own buried instincts. Terri’s journey is about transformation through reckoning as she learns to name what she wants and what she has ignored.

Joseph “Breeze” Bye, a wheelchair-bound former professional baseball player, is on the cusp of finding major success in his second, post-accident career: painting. Breeze paints portraits of great pitchers—players who are as good as he was, before he was the victim of a hit-and-run. As a major exhibition of his work in New York City approaches, he gets a call from a former associate who confesses to being the person who ran him down. This admission kicks off the protagonist’s examination of his own life, told from a close first-person perspective in a long series of free associations; the narrative manages to maintain a tight focus while touching on a surprising variety of recollections. Breeze slowly unpacks his athletic career, his marriage, his extramarital affairs, his trajectory as an artist, his relationship with his daughter, and the circumstances surrounding his disability. The varied facets merge and dissipate with a flowing, casual logic that never leaves the reader behind. The entire story has a hazy, winding quality to it, which combines well with the complicated, messy events of Breeze’s life. Fechter paints his protagonist with deep sympathy and nuance, but also with unwavering honesty. Breeze’s narration follows his process of trying to make sense of past and present events, as well as his journey from self-pity to an understanding that his self-centeredness has limited his connection to the world and his relationships with those closest to him. At times, the multiple threads might threaten to overwhelm the reader, but Fechter always manages to tie everything back to Breeze’s quest for greater awareness.

Florence Cumings Swain is at the family summer retreat in York Harbor, Maine. Now in her late 60s, she is ready to part with the large house that holds so many memories. With her is her youngest and only remaining son, Thayer (aka Tax), who hands her a box of old letters written by her now-deceased sons Jack and Wells during the first World War. There is also a diary kept by Wells during his time on the front lines. Florence is not eager to relive the painful history of her traumatic losses—first, her husband, Bradley Cumings, went down with the Titanicas a terrified Florence watched from a lifeboat; next, Wells perished on the battlefield of Belleau Wood; finally, Jack died from a stroke when he was in his late 30s. Expecting to be alone for the week after Thayer’s departure, fortified with a glass of white wine, she reluctantly begins to read the letters. The ghostly presence of Bradley sits next to her whispering as she reads and reminisces (“I am here”). The next day, Jack’s widow and Florence’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Eva, arrive from New York, asking if Eva may spend the summer with her grandmother; Florence and Eva begin poring through the letters together. Bryant’s melancholy drama about profound loss and renewed forward-facing fortitude is a fictional portrait of the real Florence Cumings Swain. Florence narrates the story emotionally as she once again confronts each of the tragedies she has endured—Eva lightens the novel and reenergizes her grandmother with the buoyancy and hopefulness of youth. The letters and journal transport readers directly to the horrific battle in Belleau Wood, and the detailed and evocative prose, which carries a touch of mysticism, vividly captures the upper-class settings of both periods.

At 33, Amandine has never been on a real date. Since her parents died, she’s been living in her childhood home, constantly doomscrolling and unable to retain a job due to her undiagnosed neurodiversity. Thirty-year-old Connor is unemployed, living with his father, and still dealing with the emotional trauma from his mother’s abuse and abandonment. After weeks of texting, they finally meet at a local gastropub. However, Amandine is unsettled by the only other patron there, a greasy-ponytailed middle-aged man wearing a wrinkled tuxedo and slurping down a bowl of tomato soup. Besides a few rocky moments, the date goes very well—until Amandine and Connor are alone in the parking lot, phones dead, forced to walk several miles home. They get less than a mile down the road before Amandine’s heels and the arctic chill incapacitate them, and Connor negotiates with a passing car for a ride. Amandine reluctantly allows Connor to coax her into the car, only to realize too late that the driver is the Lone Diner from earlier. What follows is a harrowing tale of kidnapping and brutality, as Amandine and Connor battle to survive. Amor’s prose is unnerving, with plenty of grotesque imagery that will keep readers hooked and disturbed. Told from the perspectives of Amandine, Connor, and the Lone Diner, the book allows readers to experience both the horror of the victims and the warped mindset of the predator. Amandine’s descriptions of daily life as a neurodivergent person ring true, such as when she describes dealing with executive dysfunction: “On the really bad days, I can’t even dress myself, wash my hair, brush my teeth.” The unexpected ending may divide readers, but they’ll be riveted from beginning to end.