Meg’s return to Adirondacks Bible Camp in upstate New York comes with much excitement about reuniting with longtime friends Kayla and Nicole and seeing her crush, red-haired, blue-eyed Danny. But camp also comes with increasing frustration about the rigid rules and strict purity culture expectations set by both her parents and the camp leadership. Her work waiting tables is hard in many ways despite the perk of a room that’s nicer than the campers’ cabins. Though her job often places her in close proximity to Danny, she knows that she isn’t supposed to be thinking about romance. Still, she can’t seem to help it. As Kayla and Nicole follow their own paths, Meg, who has black hair and light, rosy skin, struggles with self-doubt and searches for answers to the complex questions she’s beginning to have about her faith and future. She finds refuge in her love for drawing and texting with Britnee, her friend from home who moved away. Meg’s experiences with religion, family, and self-definition are sympathetically told and well supported by the gentle illustrations and soothing color palette. Engaging flashbacks rendered in monochromatic blue panels add context and depth. This leisurely story creates plenty of space for readers who may be on journeys like Meg’s to ponder and reflect, without offering oversimplified answers. The supporting cast is racially diverse.

Twelve-year-old New Yorker Ria Bailey, who has a “not-in-the-picture-at-all British dad” and a Bengali Indian mom, is about to start middle school with her best friends, Ghanaian immigrant tech genius Miracle Owusu and athletic Irish and Mexican American activist Annie Hernandez. When Ria’s art historian mother, a vocal advocate for repatriating looted artefacts, is pushed to resign from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ria faces the prospect of leaving the only home she’s ever known. The plot thickens when a ruby resembling one stolen from the museum arrives at their apartment, along with a cryptic message. Worried about Ma’s possible involvement, Ria and her friends plot to return the ruby during their school’s annual museum sleepover. But their attempted reverse heist meets with unforeseen complications. They also encounter Zakir, a mysterious—and distractingly cute—boy. Before long, Ria and friends are racing through the city, dodging menacing strangers, meeting a tech billionaire, and unmasking a long-hidden conspiracy. A brisk pace and well-developed characters enliven this adventure that celebrates the diverse immigrant communities that keep New York thriving; a supporting cast of helpful uncles and aunties from different communities aids the girls in their adventures. DasGupta deftly weaves themes of cultural identity and history into a fun, contemporary storyline that explores the impact of colonization and capitalism on the Global South. Some suspension of disbelief is required, but the story builds to a satisfying finale.

Eleanor Newton wasn’t able to be with her grandmother three years ago, when she died alone in the hospital during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The loss lingers, especially because Grandma’s ghost appeared to Eleanor soon after her death, cryptically declaring “I’m early.” Trapped at home in lockdown and anticipating Grandma’s return, Eleanor recalls that “The world outside shrank. The world inside grew to fill the space that remained.” New neighbor Justin Fletcher, an 11-year-old from Greenwich who reads Black, helps white-presenting Eleanor break out of her shell. One day, while visiting a newly uncovered Roman mosaic of Orpheus and Eurydice beneath the London Bridge Tube station, Eleanor and Justin are alone when a wall gives way, water fills the tunnel, and they drown. They find themselves in a forested underworld, facing a forked path. Eleanor’s route ends at Eventide House, a seemingly idyllic boarding school that’s shrouded in mystery. Her efforts to uncover Eventide’s secrets only lead her deeper into the afterlife’s many-layered strangeness. While the story imagines one child’s encounter with death, it also powerfully captures the existential feeling of loss and unreality associated with the pandemic isolation. The dreamlike settings and Eleanor’s expressive narration lend the story a gentleness that makes its challenging premise memorable and emotionally manageable.

Set in 2014, the story begins in Marquette, Michigan, after a small meteor falls to Earth. When advertising exec Carole Veilleux—unknowingly infected by a tick days earlier—bites bakery owner Booker, she begins a chain reaction that spreads the strange contamination (the “mind-merge thing”) throughout Marquette and eventually all over the world. Billions of people become part of the hive mind: Booker’s preteen child, Layla, who wants to transition to a boy; autistic cop Lana Lannister; 61-year-old Jewish doctor Evelyn Schlapp, who’s having an affair with her rabbi; and more. Within weeks, the people of Marquette were “reindeer herders in Sápmi, Scandinavian furries with mixed fursonas. They were the Bajau Darat, forced out of the sea to live a sedentary life, they were Lego designers, Maasai, Kazakhs, Swiss bankers and snake milkers. They were David Bowie. That was really… cool.” Even hate-filled people like neo-Nazi thug William Willoughby find themselves seeing the world through more compassionate and accepting eyes. Suddenly, everyone knows everything about everyone else. Humankind becomes collectively more intelligent, more understanding. Months pass and humans make jaw-dropping scientific and societal advances. But what would happen if the hive mind suddenly disappeared and the world’s populace was forced to return to living with only their individual thoughts and limited knowledge? The speculation surrounding the planet’s organisms (humans, animals, plants, etc.) being part of a massive hive mind is intriguing, particularly as it deals with issues like racism, sexism, and systemic discrimination. The potential is there for some brass knuckles-to-the-skull revelations, but the payoff is decidedly underwhelming: “The best people could do was to try and make [the world] a tiny bit better.”

Professors Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Sterling have been soulmates since they met as children at boarding school—he an orphan, she the neglected child of indifferent academics. They grew up together and became historians together. But double standards plague even the zany magical universe they inhabit and a stray moment of platonic touching sets tongues wagging. With Amelia’s job always at risk in a sexist academic environment, she and Caleb decided to act like enemies so no one realizes the strength of their attachment. Pretending to hate each other is wearing on them, however, and the magical disruptions that accompany their “spats” increase when they’re assigned to visit a country house to catalog antique enchanted objects. Accompanied by a giggly secretary and a hulking security officer, Amelia and Caleb try to discover why artifacts keep disappearing and what precise power lies in the ordinary-looking spoon that keeps appearing in Amelia’s vicinity. As in Holton’s earlier novels set in a fantastical 19th-century Britain, the book is replete with Oscar Wilde- and Alexander Pope–style irony and goofball scenes with comic characters in a faux-gothic setting. This is also a satire of university culture, highlighting the emotional and professional labor forced on women in academia who are mocked for being both too competent to be likable and too feminine for true intellectual work. The dual points of view, Caleb’s consistent support for Amelia, and a secret society of exasperated older women all help counter some of the bitterness of that inequality. The couple’s abiding love and their fake fighting complicates the usual enemies-to-lovers narrative and might appeal to fans of Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry. There’s no explicit sex, but some passages are steamy enough to show that even professional thinkers do more than lecture.