Hachette Library – Starred Reviews
Starred Reviews
New and Upcoming Releases that Have Received Acclaim!
★A SEASON OF LIGHT
By: Julie Iromuanya
Kirkus-Starred Review
A Nigerian family living in Florida bears deep, abiding, and distressing scars from a long-ago but devastating civil war in their native land. The 2014 kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamic terrorists unhinges an already tightly wound Florida attorney named Fidelis Ewerike, a Nigerian émigré and father of two who, upon hearing of the kidnapping, decides to place his 16-year-old daughter, Amara, in her bedroom under lock and key. The mass kidnapping reawakens in Fidelis the traumas he sustained as a soldier and prisoner of war in the late-1960s Biafran War, during which his younger sister, Ugochi, went missing. Amara’s uncanny resemblance to Ugochi magnifies Fidelis’ mad zeal to protect her from faraway peril. (“He believed that if his sister…could be stolen, could disappear into thin air, then the same fate could befall his daughter. Never mind that this was America, not Nigeria.”) This bizarre, inexplicable act pitches each of the other Ewerike family members into their own traumas, starting with the infuriated, bewildered Amara, who gets no explanation from her father for her imprisonment, only lots of sweets and his own elaborately cooked, dubiously fashioned meals. “Pickles don’t belong in Mac and cheese,” she dolefully informs her mother, Adaobi, whose futile efforts to release Amara from captivity leave her desperately pursuing solace, even possible solutions, through her deep religious faith. Meanwhile, Amara’s 14-year-old brother, Chuk, is compelled by the tumult at home to stand alone in the face of physical and verbal abuse from other boys in the neighborhood. When a gang jumps him, Chuk is rescued by Maksym Kostyk, the 17-year-old son of an alcoholic local handyman (another emotionally damaged émigré), who offers to give him boxing lessons. Maksym meets Amara, and they find in each other’s solitude the foundations of a romance—and a mutual resolve to run away from their respective family crises. The interweaving nightmares and yearnings of these characters are evoked with empathy, tenderness, and intensely lyrical prose by Iromuanya, whose tale of abiding sorrow and its long-term consequences serves as a reminder that, as one of her characters observes, battles might end, but wars never do.
An affecting, observant rendering of the immigrant experience in contemporary America.
Algonquin Books: February 4, 2025; ISBN: 9781643755519, Hardcover
★NESTING
By: Roisín O’Donnell
Kirkus-Starred Review
In Dublin, a pregnant woman with two little girls flees a controlling, critical husband. O’Donnell’s striking debut opens with what looks from a distance like a happy family at the seashore. Close up, the water is too cold, the wind is too strong, and as tiny as they are, the girls have outgrown their wetsuits and their father is screaming at their mother, demanding to know what she’d done with the money he gave her to buy new ones. By the end of the first chapter, we want to get away from Ryan as badly as Ciara does, even if he’s handsome, loyal, a good provider, and hasn’t actually hit her…yet. That wetsuit money has been tucked away in a diaper bag in preparation for something Ciara hasn’t quite admitted to herself she’s going to do. And then, at last, it’s time. O’Donnell’s novel follows Ciara, Ella, and Sophie as they negotiate the harsh realities of sudden homelessness, father’s rights, and the Irish housing crisis. Ciara’s mother and sister live in England, she’s lost her pre-marriage friends, and she can pay for no more than one night’s accommodation with that roll of bills. With Ryan constantly hounding her by text, she eventually finds her way into emergency accommodations in a hotel with a dedicated floor for unhoused women and families. Here, she will make a friend and begin to figure out next steps—which are that much more complicated when a pregnancy test reveals the reason for her recent nausea and exhaustion. The mounting tension and suspense as Ciara struggles to stay free and safe make the pages fly. O’Donnell gives us a great character to root for and a portrait of her situation that is both terrifying and ultimately inspiring. An afterword confirms the impression that it’s based on research into real women’s experiences. A propulsive, nuanced, achingly real novel that will appeal to both Colleen Hoover fans and devotees of Irish fiction.
Algonquin Books: February 18, 2025; ISBN: 9781643755700, Hardcover
★GREENTEETH
By: Molly O’Neill
Library Journal – Starred Review
Jenny Greenteeth is a figure straight out of English folklore. She’s also the keeper of the lake next to the sleepy village of Chipping Appleby. At least, it was sleepy until the new parson held a fire-and-brimstone witch trial and chained a cunning woman to the bottom of Jenny’s lake. Jenny frees the witch, because she’s lonely, because the witch, Temperance, doesn’t fear her too much, and because she plans to fight the threatening power taking over Chipping Appleby. With the help of the witch and a rogue of a goblin, Jenny sets out on a quest to gather the last of England’s magical power to save her lake, Temperance’s village, and the soul of the country she has vowed to protect.
VERDICT: This delightfully magical historical fantasy combines creatures out of folklore (including the lake-dwelling monster Jenny) with a desperate quest, a sad tale of magic leaving the world, and a soul-quaking battle between quiet good and vast evil, all set in a beautiful story of sisterhood and found family among the most disparate of creatures. Readers who love the creatures, magic, and mythic settings of T. Kingfisher’s Thornhedge and Nicola Griffith’s Spear will find something similar and beautiful in O’Neill’s debut.
Orbit: February 25, 2025; ISBN: 9780316584241, Trade Paperback
★THE GIFT OF ANIMALS
By: Alison Hawthorne Deming
Library Journal – Starred Review
Poet and editor Deming (Science and Other Poems) has compiled a collection of 90 poems that rings alarm bells, reminding readers that the world is losing animals and their gifts at a horrifying rate. The poems are written by a wide range of contributors—some well-known, some relatively new; Indigenous, Latine, Black, Asian, and white; some writers and others whose work is based in oral traditions. With topics that range from praise to the future of animals” to companionship, the poets consider the grandeur of animal life, the grief of impending loss, and hope for future generations. Some of the animals that are in peril are seen as protectors; in “Tecolote,” Jose Hernandez Diaz expresses his thanks for owls, the “protector(s) of the moon and sky,” while, arguing against the idea that snakes are sinister and sly, Denise Levertov writes, “Come into animal presence. / No man is so guileless as / the serpent.” In nature, there are no hard lines, and Nickole Brown’s “A Prayer To Talk to Animals” sums this up beautifully, “Am I not an animal / too?”
VERDICT VERDICT A thought-provoking collection of poetic gems that will inspire and remind readers of the importance of connecting with the natural world.
Storey: April 1, 2025; ISBN: 9781635868562, Hardcover
★MILK STREET BACKROADS ITALY
By: Christopher Kimball, J. M. Hirsch
Library Journal – Starred Review
Milk Street’s latest effort is more than just another of their exceptionally instructive cookbooks, for which this multimedia platform company has become famous. Founder of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street and former executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country, Kimball endeavors to take cooks off the culinary beaten path and show them the real culinary heart and soul of Italy. After introducing the essential components of an Italian pantry, the cookbook breaks Italian cooking into chapters, beginning with salads and sides and ending with dolce (sweets). Many of the recipes are connected to an essay written by James Beard Award–winning food and travel writer Hirsch. For example, Hirsch’s thoughts on Italy’s best tomato focaccia inspire a recipe from the Milk Street Kitchen for focaccia pomodoro e olive (tomato-olive focaccia). A recounting of a visit to the lemon groves of Amalfi results in spaghetti al pesto di limone, fettuccine a limone e aglio, and torta al limone. In addition to Hirsch’s evocative, transportive essays, the lively headnotes to each recipe offer cooks another layer of insight to the dishes presented.
VERDICT An evocative introduction to the glories of Italian cuisine that is equally valuable to aspiring cooks and armchair travelers alike.
Voracious: April 15, 2025; ISBN: 9780316582063, Hardcover
★ THE WORLD OF NANCY KWAN
By: Nancy Kwan
Kwan’s resilient spirit shines throughout this memoir, written with Deborah Davis. Her journey to Hollywood fame and beyond is genuinely absorbing. At first she was serious about a career in ballet, but Kwan’s path quickly diverged toward acting as she earned famed roles in The World of Suzie Wong (1960) and Flower Drum Song (1961). Her honest depiction of Hollywood is filled with stories of celebrity figures and industry-related glamour. Still, she is also clear about its downsides, including individual obstacles that she faced, as well as the pervasive stereotyping of Asians on screen. Eventually, Kwan opted to explore new horizons in the States but also in Europe and Asia—as an actor, producer, director, and writer. She details the resulting rewards and challenges in her professional and private life. A skilled storyteller, her anecdotes are carefully chosen and well-told—each defining her vibrant essence and artistic and personal achievements. Deftly interwoven cultural and historical details give this narrative a rich context.
VERDICT Kwan’s beautifully written memoir offers thoughtful insights into the film industry and the era; it’s a must-read for film enthusiasts.
Legacy Lit: April 22 , 2025; ISBN: 9780306834271 Hardcover
★ AWAKENED
By: A.E. Osworth
Library Journal – Starred Review
Wilder is an anxious person, and they become even more so when they suddenly gain the ability to comprehend all languages. They’re bewildered when a coven of trans witches offers to teach them to cast spells; Wilder’s life experience has left them cautious and untrusting. As they slowly integrate into this magical found family and learn about the supernatural side of New York, the coven’s leader, Artemis, comes to suspect that Wilder is connected to a strange phenomenon affecting all technology. It’s soon revealed that an artificial intelligence, hungry for power (and maybe kinship) is loose in the world—and fixated on the witches. Are the AI’s sinister texts truly malicious or merely misunderstandings brought about by its lack of experience? As the witches debate whether to teach, destroy, or befriend it, their pasts rise up to harm them, and their futures remain obscured. There’s only today to find out what they’re truly capable of when they stand together.
VERDICT Osworth (We Are Watching Eliza Bright) offers a joyously queer urban fantasy about finding power, identity, and family at any age. Perfect for fans of Shaun Hamill’s The Dissonance or Annalee Newitz’s The Future of Another Timeline.
Grand Central Publishing: April 29, 2025; ISBN: 9781538757697, Hardcover
★KISS ME, MAYBE
By: Gabriella Gamez
Library Journal – Starred Review
After Texas librarian Angela Gutierrez inadvertently goes viral with an unintended thirst trap video, she decides to take her newfound fame and come out to the internet. Angela is in her late 20s, is on the asexual spectrum, and has never been kissed—and maybe she finally wants to be. Going from certified late bloomer to ticking off some milestones won’t be easy, so Angela concocts a social media scavenger hunt in the hopes of finding her perfect first kiss. What better way to start than to ask the gorgeous bartender at her favorite hangout spot and also her long-term unrequited crush, Krystal Ramirez, to help. Krystal has pined for the tall and oblivious Angela for years, and as she helps plan the quest, Krystal may be too determined to win the kiss for herself, even if she’s not sure she’d be able to fully give Angela the romantic love she craves.
VERDICT A fizzy and fun follow-up to Gamez’s debut, The Next Best Fling. Press into the hands of readers who are looking for more asexual rep in their romance reads and those who enjoyed Alison Cochrun’s Kiss Her Once for Me or Anita Kelly’s How You Get the Girl.
Forever: May 6 , 2025; ISBN: 9781538726655, Paperback
★ CAN’T GET ENOUGH
By: Kennedy Ryan
Library Journal – Starred Review
This third outing in Ryan’s bestselling “Skyland” series (after This Could Be Us) focuses on Hendrix Barry, the hardworking and glamorous friend of the women protagonists from the first two books. Hendrix finds herself falling for Maverick Bell, a billionaire businessman who has recently broken off his relationship with one of Hendrix’s colleagues. Neither of these 40-somethings is looking for a serious romantic relationship, but Hendrix and Maverick’s undeniable chemistry and the intense emotional connection they quickly forge are stronger than their will to remain apart. While navigating the thorny professional and personal ramifications of Maverick’s recent breakup, Hendrix is dealing with the realities of her mother’s worsening Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, Maverick has to contend with a grieving father and a daughter who just graduated from high school. In addition to the strong attraction they share, these two driven, talented professionals bring to each other a peace and restfulness that doesn’t exist in any other part of their lives. Amid personal and professional upheaval, they nurture each other and their nascent relationship in ways they would previously have found unimaginable.
VERDICT Sure to be popular and recommended for all fiction collections.
Forever: May 13 , 2025; ISBN: 9781538706855, Paperback
★ SO MANY STARS
By: Caro De Robertis
Kirkus – Starred Review
A chorus of queer voices elaborate on the “gender revolution” that changed their lives, past and present. Novelist De Robertis assembles insightful and educative life experiences from interviews in 2022-23 with 20 multicultural transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, genderfluid, butch, Two-Spirit, transfeminine, and transmasculine people. Each personal history is notable in its own scope and perspective, but collectively these voices representing elder queer generations of color become extraordinary. Generous anecdotes about what coming out queer or questioning gender was like three, four, or five decades ago form the crux of several stories. Reflections on early gender dysphoria appear in the opening section, where trailblazing activists Adela Vázquez recalls being a “fat, loud, queeny little kid” who identified as a girl and Brooklyn-born transmasculine punk musician KB Boyce relates seeing himself as a little boy and “didn’t feel gender, I just felt like I was me.” Elsewhere, participants share coming-of-adolescence stories and unflinching anecdotes touching on familial transphobia, “chosen family,” identity, and survival; they oscillate between bittersweet pain and defiant audacity, as in Black trans woman Ms Billie Cooper’s U.S. Navy enlistment, where astounded fellow servicemen “could see that I came from a different realm.” Iconic San Francisco drag artists Landa Lakes and septuagenarian Donna Personna share vivid anecdotes from childhoods revealing misunderstanding from family and peers and memorializing the resilience that made them whole. Each story—from trailblazing trans activists and advocates to pioneering community leaders to a trans Latine immigrant business owner to cultivators of queer culture—reflects on how the joys and pains of living authentic queer lives formed the people they have become. The lasting impressions each of them has made on society beautifully amplify the heartbeat of queer trans life. A colorful tapestry of potent, radiant, and relevant testimonials from uniquely queer people of color.
Algonquin Books: May 13 , 2025; ISBN: 9781643756875, Hardcover
★ EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD EXCEPT ME
By: Django Wexler
Library Journal – Starred Review
Dark Lord Davi takes things a bit more seriously in this follow-up to How To Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying because the rules have changed, or she has—or both. Suddenly, dying only resets Davi by one day, and everything and everyone around her becomes consequential. Now she’s trying to get both sides to a bargaining table, hoping to manipulate them so everybody lives. She learns that it’s never really been Dark Horde versus Kingdom, but Davi versus whoever is pulling all the strings. If there’s a chosen one, there must be a chooser, and he’s chosen war and annihilation. Davi doesn’t need to conquer the Kingdom after all. She just needs to kill the one who thinks he’s a god (and has the power to back it up). For the moment. Davi’s saga is still a wildly snark-filled romp of an adventure, but there are more consequences and a whole lot more heart in this conclusion.
VERDICT Readers who loved the first book, and anyone who adores an antihero with a heart of gold and a brain filled with terrible one-liners is going to swoon over Dark Lord Davi’s surprising but well-earned happy ending.
Orbit: May 27 , 2025; ISBN: 9780316392402, Paperback
★ THE LOST PEACE
By: Jay Winik
Library Journal – Starred Review
Historian Winik (1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History) presents a view of the coming U.S. Civil War from the view of elected officials and their efforts to avert the fracture of the country. Among the efforts to avoid the secession of the eight slave states, and inevitable bloodshed, was the Peace Conference held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. Seven states that had already seceded from the Union did not attend the conference. Several proposals were put forth, two from Unionist John J. Crittenden, a constitutional amendment protecting slavery, and a motion from Virginia to hold a peace conference with all parties. Although the Corwin Amendment (which sought to prevent successions by protecting the practice of enslavement in states where it existed) was passed, it was never ratified. Ultimately, no one was pleased with the results of the conference. Whatever attempts at avoiding war were muted as shortly afterward the events of Fort Sumter changed the direction of the republic.
VERDICT A relatively little-known account of prewar efforts to reach a consensus. This engaging volume has impeccable research and is recommended for anyone who enjoys U.S. history, notably the Civil War, and American politics.
Grand Central Publishing May 27, 2025; ISBN: 9781538735121, Hardcover
★ SHROUD
By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Bizarre ecologies, nonhuman intelligences, and the genius of everyday people—this is the quintessential Tchaikovsky (Service Model) novel. Aspects of his prior work reverberate through the prose, adding a welcome sense of familiarity to a narrative that skitters at the edges of horror. It is a survival story about two researchers lost on an alien moon in an untested exploratory vehicle. The air is toxic, gravity is grueling, and the atmosphere is so murky there is no light. Worse, it’s a world of constant screaming and chainsaw-like creatures. Armed only with their feeble lamps and a wealth of cleverness, Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne must trek across treacherous landscapes while learning how ill-suited their vessel is to the moon. They’re followed or stalked or aided by an ever-renewing pack of alien creatures whose intentions are constantly in flux. If they survive, they may be hailed as heroes by their employers—or branded as resource wasters only fit for shelving away in hibernation.
VERDICT This utterly engrossing novel melds the fascinatingly unexpected alien environments of Sue Burke’s Semiosis or Wendy Wagner’s An Oath of Dogs seamlessly with the joy for science embedded in Andy Weir’s The Martian.
Orbit: June 3 , 2025; ISBN: 9780316579025, Paperback
★ LAVENDER FOR ALL SEASONS
By: Paola Legarre
Sage Creations, Legarre’s Colorado farm, is the origin of her lavender story; as her yields and production grew, so did her knowledge and love for the plant. Her book covers the history, botany, chemistry, selection, and types of lavender plants available to gardeners. There is a helpful hardiness map, charts for use and bloom times, and instructions on how to strip and clean a yield. Legarre’s visual explanation of the varieties of lavender is captured with two beautifully photographed dried lavender color wheels, and designations throughout the book help to identify each plant’s hue. Since color, fragrance, and use are the primary factors in deciding what to plant, these details are included in the precise descriptions of each cultivar. Thorough instructions on planting, including tips on how to scale up, will be helpful to those seeking a larger yield. Recipes and crafts round out this holistic, year-round approach of growing and appreciating lavender.
VERDICT An invaluable tool for intermediate and advanced gardeners.
Timber Press: June 3 , 2025; ISBN: 9781643261867, Paperback
