THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR – Erin Somers

“The mountain that saw everything turned from green to rust, from rust to brown, from brown to green again.”

Erin Somers’s The Ten Year Affair (Simon & Schuster 2025) was on my radar simply because of my goal of reading more Booker eligible litfic. While I could see this being listed, I didn’t like it.  The novel is well written – Somers is extremely talented – and there are some parts that I really loved.  (Cora smelling her fingers to see if they smelled like cinnamon from Sam’s toothpick, for example.) But I didn’t care about any of the characters, and that just made reading this a chore.

Let me be clear, it’s not the adultery that’s the problem – the characters are simply all meh in this “is the grass greener” tale of two couples.  Cora meets Sam at a baby group, and she is immediately almost obsessively attracted to him. He refuses to cross that line, maintaining that he’d rather have her friendship, and they are “just friends” for years. But Cora has an active imagination and she creates an alternate reality where the affair is all-consuming.  

This domestic fiction gives us what is really happening and then what Cora imagines would be happening in the world with the affair. Halfway through the novel, the worlds shift – the affair becomes real after a drunken joint 40th birthday party for Sam and Cora’s husband, Eliot. The affair doesn’t end her alternate reality, but a new alternate emerges – one where she is happily married, and her and Eliot are planning for a third baby.

It’s easy to keep an imaginary affair secret. It’s not so easy when the affair is in real life. As expected, there’s a fallout. I, for one, was so happy when the affair began in earnest because I knew the fallout and the end of the book would soon be upon me.

I did not care about Cora, Eliot, Sam, and Jules even the slightest.

HOW TO COMMIT A POSTCOLONIAL MURDER – Nina McConigley


“Because you always seem to want to take what I give you and translate it into something else, something that fits your narrative, you can have it.”

“It is an acknowledged truth that to be a girl is to be extracted. Girls, we are taken.”

“And if you’re lost, if you have no idea what I’m talking about… If you’re wondering what the big deal is … It’s browness. It’s being the Other. It’s having to perform. It’s what happens when people are split, when countries are split. I have been performing forever. My own little dance. But I’m going to stop now. You can take it. I’ve been taking it my whole life.”

Nina McConigley’s debut novel, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder (Pantheon Books 2026 – huge thanks to the publisher for the gifted copy) is a tightly wired explosive device of a narrative.  It is an unflinching, in your face, “look at me when I am talking to you” story that side-eyes the reader while at the same time taking the reader’s hand – an unapologetic reassurance that is intentionally uncomfortable. Don’t let the size of the novel fool you – it’ll punch you in the face, and it will leave a mark.

I don’t typically post trigger warnings.  I understand why people do, but I typically don’t.  You may want to review them if this novel is on your radar; the story centers around the sexual molestation of two young girls by their uncle, and how they kill him.  (That’s not really a spoiler. I promise.)

Set in 1986 in Wyoming, and following Georgie and her sister, Agatha, named for their mother’s two favorite writers, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder has a nostalgic feel of childhood, which makes it hit harder. It’s the power and secrets of sisterhood and girlhood, the generational trauma of colonialism, and the “Otherness” of being brown in America that all combine to make this a powder keg.

This novel is not for everyone, but it’s a top read for me.  And an early contender for my Booker predictions.

CURSED DAUGHTERS – Oyinkan Braithwaite

“She was a mermaid – queen of song and sea, goddess of the gill-bearing vertebrates, mistress of the hearts of men.”

After a couple of “meh” BOTM reads (I’m trying to clear a backlist), I read one that reminded me why I keep the membership. Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters (Doubleday 2025) gave me absolutely everything I love in a novel. It’s rich in culture, strongly rooted in time and place, with a storytelling that recalls oral traditions that always get my attention. There’s generational trauma and a curse, strong women, magical realism, sharp writing, heart for days, and a dog that seems immortal. When I say I was hooked, I was hooked. Not to mention, Mami Wata is by far one of my favorite folklore characters the world over.

This is my first Braithwaite, but her first novel My Sister, the Serial Killer was longlisted for my beloved Booker Prize.  (It was before I committed to reading the entire longlist each year.) This novel is reportedly significantly different from that novel, but this follow-up novel seems to cement her as a serious literary talent that won’t be boxed in as any one type of writer. And I love to see it.

As for the novel itself, I don’t want to spoil it; it needs to spread out before you like a water stain from a slow leak.  But I will give a brief summary – Monife and Ebun are cousins who live with their mothers in the family home. They’ve grown up in the shadow of a curse like their mothers before them – “no man will call your house home. And if they try, they will not have peace.” One night, a heartbroken Monife walks into the water and drowns. (This is how the novel opens, so it’s not really a spoiler.) On the day they bury her, Ebun goes into labor – delivering a girl who is undeniably the spitting image of Monife. Rumors and whispers fly that the baby, named Enniyi, is Monife reincarnated. Eniiyi spends her life trying to cleave the ghost of her aunt from her while also trying to outrun the family curse.

Cursed Daughters is brilliant, well-written and extremely palatable with a pace and unfolding of a story that is about perfect. And that cover… now she is absolutely stunning.

Read this book.

CRUX – Gabriel Tallent

“Waiting was death, and total commitment his only chance.”

I don’t know what I expected with Gabriel Tallent’s Crux (Riverhead 2026), but it wasn’t what I got. The more I think about the novel, the more I have issues with it, so I’m going to get this out before I completely hate it. I said earlier it’s a bit My Girl meets Dawson’s Creek meets Demon Copperhead meets climbing, and it could work.  If someone else wrote it.

Quick summary: Tamma and Dan are best friends, like their mothers had been before they fell out. Dan is the “golden child” and the “only hope” of his parents. Tamma is crass, rough, and unlikely to rise above the white trash life she’d been born into. Dan’s parents tell him she will only hold him back. The two friends find escape in climbing – a frenzied obsession for Tamma and a mental health grounding exercise for Dan. As high school seniors, they are at a crossroads – college or climb for Dan, and domesticity or adventure for Tamma. They are at the crux of their young lives – the most difficult part of the climb.

Things I liked: The cover. The details with the climbing. The concept.

Things that didn’t work for me: How Tamma is written like a twelve-year-old boy. The dialogue. Dan’s long-winded epiphanies about his mother and himself. The relationship between Dan and Tamma. How Tallent writes women in general. Did I mention the dialogue?

I think the novel could have been stronger with two male leads because there is such an intensity in same sex friendships in high school.  The same concepts of golden child and white trash on the cusp of the moment when everything is going to change would still apply. And it would remove a lot of what I disliked about the novel. 

As for Tamma, she had the potential to be a great character with a great story. I want someone to pick her up, dust her off, and do her justice.  

LOST LAMBS – Madeline Cash

This is likely going to be an unpopular opinion based the positively gushing reviews all over, but I didn’t like Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2026) It was quite nearly a rare DNF for me. Perhaps I’m so hard on it because it bills itself on being the exact type of quirky family story I tend to enjoy, but quirk without heart doesn’t do it for me. And I couldn’t find the heart in this novel.

If you don’t want it spoiled, don’t keep reading.  That’s the only warning you’ll get.

It started out strong, I will give it that. But it falls flat, the timeline gets a touch jumbled, the ending is rushed, and the characters lose steam. And, as mentioned, there is little to no heart in the quirk.

There’s Harper, who reminded me a bit of an older and grittier Beverly Cleary’s Ramona. She’s smart and wicked, precocious and cutting. She’s always getting in trouble and ends up at a wilderness camp for troubled kids where she “becomes a woman.” Then there’s the middle daughter, Louise, who has found herself in a relationship with an online fundamentalist who is coaching her through bombing a beauty pageant at the church.  Abigail, the oldest, is gorgeous and young, rendering her perfect for the human trafficking ring her dad’s boss runs. Catherine, their mother, has decided that her had Bud should have an open marriage. Bud becomes suicidal until his supervisor encourages him to join the Lost Lambs support group, where he meets Miss. Winkle. In turn, he notices the cargo problem at work (which is the human trafficking) simply because he’s trying to be a good employee to get a bonus to take her on a trip.

Oh, and there is a priest with a questionable history and questionable current involvement with Bud’s boss and that masked group of friends who like young women.  (Don’t worry, it’s only trafficking young woman to drain their blood because therein lies immortality. Most survive.)

Then there’s the gnat problem. The church is overrun with gnats, and someone decided it would be funny and quirky to give the book a gnat problem. Every “nat” in the novel becomes “gnat” – at least until they fumigate the church – dognate instead of donate, gnatural instead of natural.  It’s not cute and charming. It’s not funny. It was annoying as shit for over half the novel.

I felt this novel simply tried too hard.  But as I said, most folks seem to love it.

I did, however, love the cover.

TOM’S CROSSING – Mark Z. Danielewski

“I am no more her then she is anymore me now.”

“The Illiad cannot contain what the horses have to say. It has neither the ear for their speech nor for their hearts.”

“You get what you deserve when you ride with cowards.”

“ ‘You could stick around and help me dig up Landry,’ Kalin said then. “ ‘Who?’”

“I dreamt once I had a pony, but what I rode was a myth.”

I could keep with the quotes, the ones that rip or bruise the skin, some sharp some dull, but all landing on their mark – the novel is over 1200 pages after all, it’s not wanting of quotable passages – but I’ll limit it to these. Suffice it to say, Mark Z. Danielewski’s Tom’s Crossing (Patheon Books 2025) is likely going to be my top read of 2026 and is undoubtedly in my top ten of the last decade. It is Lonesome Dove (Kalin is Cal and Tom is Gus) meets my favorite King novels, kissed with Holes, of all things – and what emerges is something epic and ambitious, a ghost story of a western that breathes life into ancient legends and local lore while never getting too comfortable in its own skin. It’s a smart, slow burn that builds anxiety and twists at the heart and guts of the reader with a skilled precision – ambitious in scope but never once slipping.

The novel is about the friendship between two boys, Tom and Kalin, and their bond with the two horses that don’t belong to them – Mouse and Navidad. When Tom is on his deathbed, Kalin promises to finish what they’d started – to free the two horses by taking them to the Crossing, a dangerous journey up the canyon walls that most would say is impassable and impossible. Tom’s younger sister, Landry, overhears the promise and, when the time comes, sets out on her trusty steed, Jojo, to join Kalin, who is being led by the ghost of her brother on his ghost horse, Ash.

What happens next is the stuff people sing songs about, make paintings about. Seriously, the novel is littered with the art born of Kalin and Landry’s adventure into the canyon, the multiple confrontations with the notorious and blood thirsty Porch family, a layered retelling such that the reader doesn’t know who is telling the story (I had my theories but received definitive proof around page 500) or how it’s going to end up. (Heroes don’t die, right?) It’s a story of a story. Chapter 22 is about an art show centered around those October 1982 events (I’ve seen criticism about that chapter, but it was a necessary breather of information, almost a recap of the proceeding hundreds of pages – that served to add its own layer.)

There were 3 brief scenes that gutted me.

Russel and Cavalry after Russel’s death. (There are actually about three parts where this comes up and my heart broke in all three.)

Tom forgetting Landry.

How Kalin meets his end. 

Just read this book.

Things of note

The curse.

The role of the Church and the history of the Church.

Politics and landgrabs.

The relationship between Sondra and Allison.

The intentional use of Calvary instead of Cavalry when discussing Egan’s horse.

Landry, adopted at age 6, being Samoan and African American.

Kalin’s father having killed a Black cop.

The murder of Tom and Landry’s father.

Kalin’s hat going from white to black.

Kalin’s two talents.

The pieces in the art show, including the thumb nail.

The Porch and Gatestone feud.

The animals.  All of them.

COLORED TELEVISION – Danzy Senna

I wanted to like Danzy Senna’s Colored Television (Riverhead Books 2024) more than I did. Perhaps I’ve unfairly held her work up to that of her husband’s (Percival Everett), but I felt the novel missed its mark. There’s some fantastic stuff here, particularly with the build up of Jane and pacing of the novel, but so much is underdeveloped and lacking development – which may be intentional as part of Jane’s own bias.

Both Jane and her artist husband, Lenny, are extremely unlikable. Jane is working on her second novel – she’s been working on it for a decade.  They’ve spent the past year staying at her friend’s house, housing sitting for Brett while he’s on set in Australia.  It’s easy to pretend his home and life is her’s. She drinks his wine, wears his wife’s clothes, and imagines a world where his successes are her’s.  But Brett is coming back and while she’s finally finished her novel, her agent and editor remain unimpressed.  So, Jane gets a little desperate in a now or never attempt to “make it.”

The writing is sharp – a scathing look at layered racism as experienced by the biracial Jane. Jane’s desperation and Senna’s writing gives the novel the taste of a thriller but ultimately doesn’t deliver.

Writers writing about writers is usually hit or miss for me.  This was a miss.

THE THIRD GILMORE GIRL – Kelly Bishop

Gilmore Girls is one of my comfort shows. I put it on as background noise when I’m working, reading, sleeping. It is soothing.  Kelly Bishop’s The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir (read by the author – Gallery Books 2024) had that same soft comfort to it; her oh so recognizable voice captivated me as she spoke about what is arguably the real life of a show girl.

It’s relatively hard to review someone’s life, or rather the life they’ve chosen to tell us. Did Bishop have a fascinating life? Absolutely.  Do I wish we went more than surface deep in talking about it? I do.  What she does carry throughout the entire text and carry well is her role as a woman, daughter, and wife in an industry where she wanted her independence and HER name. 

Memoirs are tricky – especially when you’re not spilling any “tea” or shining a light on any skeletons. Bishop doesn’t really spurn anyone (except maybe her no good first husband), and she speaks favorably about her castmates. She stands up for Amy when it comes to network discussions regarding both Gilmore Girls and Bunheads. It would seem if you’re in Bishop’s inner circle, you are in her circle forever.  While she tells us about her connections, she holds us arm’s length; we are not deserving of that inner circle.  While it makes the memoir seem incomplete, I appreciate it – Bishop’s life is her’s and she doesn’t owe us her feelings or past – we can read between the lines.  But one thing she doesn’t mince words on it is that fact that Kelly Bishop is a girl’s girl.  Always.

If you want to pick it up, I’d strongly recommend the audio book.

KATABASIS – R.F. Kuang

“Don’t worry, it can’t hurt them. It’s only a memory.”

The discourse around R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis (HarperCollins 2025) has been absolutely ridiculous; the book community is certainly not immune to the toxic nature bred and natured by online communities. So, I’ll begin with this – if you didn’t like this novel, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid or better than. If you did like this novel, it doesn’t mean you’re smart or a sheep. Period. The discourse is honestly why I delayed reading it.  Having now read it, my thoughts are much the same as they were with Babel; it’s not a five star read FOR ME.  I said the following about Babel, and it applies here as well:

“So why wasn’t it a five-star read? The storytelling itself.  It is at times redundant and repetitive, with a heavy focus on telling not showing.”

Much like Babel, there are some great things at work here, and I do think the storytelling is a bit better with this one, but it just didn’t wow me. I will say, however, the novel, particularly the first ¾, is hilarious. There’s a dryness to Alice that I loved. Don’t get me wrong, both her and Peter are insufferable academics, but when that sharp wit pops up, tapdancing between low and high brow, it got me grinning.

The criticism of the novel being too pretentious is a bit unfair. Yes, Kuang is smart, and yes, she wants her reader to know and yes, she is Alice. But she knows what she is and she wrote a story that embraces that wholly – it’s dark academia after all. Academics ARE pretentious.  And Kuang is not blind to how it comes across, she leans into it ON PURPOSE. And it works well – even more so here than in Babel. The best parts are the juxtaposition of scholar and kid who just wants to rot on the sofa in front of tele – been there, done that.

I’ve studied at Oxford. I have a MA in multicultural literature. I rubbed elbows with scholars and spent time in stacks. I get it. I do. While I lost my thesis director prior to defending,  she did not go to hell (Gay Wilentz was a wonderful scholar and person), and I did not have to go retrieve her. (But I can recall, with clarity, the extreme grief and panic that consumed me when she finally lost her battle with ALS.)  Perhaps that is why I enjoy Kuang’s dark academia – there’s something nostalgic about it, even if I never studied magic.  I’m sorry… magick.

It’s a quick read, really.  The end is meh, but I’d still recommend it.  Just distance yourself from the discourse and enjoy it for what it is.

SUNRISE ON THE REAPING – Suzanne Collins

I can’t read when I’m sick, and the first of year brought that wicked creeping crud along with it. And that’s where Libby comes in – during my feverish state, I listened to Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, narrated by Jefferson White. Now it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been in the Hunger Games, but I think this might be the best novel of that world.  Is it repetitive?  Yes. Does it recast scenes from Katniss’s games with Haymitch? Absolutely. But it works.  Because we all knew Haymitch was watching history repeat itself when he served as Katniss’s mentor.

I don’t much know what I can say about Sunrise that hasn’t already been said.  I can say, however, I’m glad Collins went back to this world. I think she’s grown as an author, and I think Haymitch deserved his story. What I will never understand, however, is how folks who grew up with this series, those who eagerly grabbed this prequel, will insist reading isn’t political.  How can you not recognize our current world reflected in the text? How could those who grew up wanting to be Katniss become the capital darlings?

As a reminder, reading IS political.  Read better. Be better.