<![CDATA[Jen Loves Books - Book Reviews]]>

<![CDATA[Jen Loves Books - Book Reviews]]>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:40:51 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Lynn Painter's FIRST AND FOREVER]]>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:46:12 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/lynn-painters-first-and-forever

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for the digital ARC of Lynn Painter's First and Forever. The book will be published on May 12!

While I haven’t read all of Lynn Painter’s books, her work has been reliably excellent for me. I primarily think of her as a YA romance author, but First and Forever is the second of her adult romances that I’ve read and enjoyed.

The characters here are the novel’s biggest strength: they’re quirky and sweet, and I love the way Painter weaves in some fabulous secondary characters. In First and Forever, Duffy Distefano begins the book as a target because of a very public, very negative interaction with the mascot of the Minneapolis Coyote football team. In a desperate attempt to quell the trolling, Duffy’s dad Tony sets up an interview for Duffy on the local tv station; unbeknownst to her, Connor Cunningham, the Coyotes’ tight end, joins her for the segment.

Their hilarious banter and obvious chemistry is a hit, which helps both Duffy and the Coyotes, and the PR team asks Connor to go out with Duffy again. He reluctantly agrees, and finds that their chemistry is even better than he’d thought. For Duffy, the prospect of dating someone famous isn’t appealing at all . . . but the joy this relationship brings her dad, who is in poor health and also grieving Duffy’s mom, inspires her own, more transparent fake dating proposition to Connor.

The prospect of just when and how Connor’s deception will arise hovers in the background throughout the book, and that relationship-built-on-a-lie is almost always a negative for me. Fortunately, Painter’s writing—the cleverness of the banter, the quirkiness of the characters—helped me to (mostly) set aside my qualms. First and Forever isn’t quite as strong as Painter’s other books for me, but I still recommend it.

]]><![CDATA[Adib Khorram's ONE WORD, SIX LETTERS]]>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:59:55 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/adib-khorrams-one-word-six-letters

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing for the digital ARC of Adib Khorram's One Word, Six Letters.

Adib Khorram’s One Word, Six Letters is inspired, he explains in his Author’s Note, by an actual event when—during an author talk at his school—someone yelled a homosexual slur, presumably aimed at Khorram, in the middle of the assembly.

In Khorram’s fictionalized version of events, the boy who yells the slur is Dayton. He shouted the word on a bet from a friend. He realized that it wasn’t a word he should say, but he also didn’t realize it was all that big a deal. So, Dayton is somewhat shocked that, in the aftermath, he loses the respect of his brother and his two best friends and becomes the target of whispers and stares at school.

Farshid is Dayton’s classmate and has always liked him fine. But now? Farshid feels that Dayton’s shout has set off rumors and whispers in the hallways, considerations of who might be gay. And Farshid is worried that the speculation may fall on him. He undertakes a regimen of boxing and weightlifting and extreme diet restriction to ensure that he looks the part of “being straight.”

Khorram’s narrative, alternating between the two boys’ points of view, developing each perspective with nuance and empathy. He makes no excuses for Dayton’s decision but does allow him to grow and learn, to seek new friends, to consider the suspicion with which he is now viewed. Farshid—who I found to be the much more sympathetic character from the beginning—is similarly complex, wrestling with his sexual identity and imagining the reactions he could face from his family and friends if he faces the truth he suspects he knows.

As in his other books, Adib Khorram excels at crafting a story meant for young adults but rewarding for any reader. One Word, Six Letters is a worthy read delving into issues we should all be considering: of casual cruelty, of empathy, of friendship, and of the ways that we can grow.

]]><![CDATA[Rebecca Serle's ONCE AND AGAIN]]>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:58:30 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/rebecca-serles-once-and-again

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Atria Books for the digital ARC of Rebecca Serle's Once and Again.

Rebecca Serle’s novels are always so lovely, featuring a central instance of magic around which the reality of the characters’ lives revolves. In her newest novel, Once and Again, the magic is a ticket that allows each new woman in the Novak family the chance to turn back time, to change their fate, just once.

For Lauren Novak, the ticket has always seemed to be both gift and burden. The chance to reverse an irreversible occurrence—as when Lauren’s mother undid the death of Lauren’s father when Lauren was fifteen—is miraculous. But it’s also a choice and, once made, it’s not available again, so knowing the right time to use the ticket and that, once used, it won’t be available again, is always on Lauren’s mind.

Lauren is married happily, to Leo, and has a strong relationship with her parents; with her grandmother, Sylvia; and particularly with her father, her kindred spirit. Her mother’s caution after having used the ticket, of knowing that she must live with anything that happens, has caused her to tread through life so carefully that she hardly lives it. Lauren’s father, on the other hand, lives life with joy, immersing himself in each day with disregard for risk or fear.

While Lauren’s husband is away on an extended work trip, she goes to stay with her parents, and finds that her former best friend and boyfriend Stone, who she has not seen for years, is staying nearby with his parents. As she is drawn back into the rhythms of her life before Leo, Lauren begins to think about the choices she has made and what they have meant for her.

While Once and Again didn’t quite reach the magical heights of her other novels for me, I could stop reading, eager to know what choices Lauren would make. I appreciated Serle’s decision to weave reflections from her mother and grandmother through Lauren’s story, revealing the different ways that they have navigated the knowledge of and the choices involved in possessing the silver ticket. I look forward to Serle’s next foray into magic.

]]><![CDATA[Tayari Jones's KIN]]>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 19:24:43 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/tayari-joness-kin

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Knopf for the digital ARC of Tayari Jones's Kin.

Tayari Jones’s Kin, a brilliant new novel set in the 1950s and 1960s, centers on Vernice and Annie. The two girls grow up together in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, in lives intertwined around one central absence—mothers—and one central presence—their friendship, more akin to a sisterhood.

As the girls mature, they wrestle with the ways that their mothers’ stories shape their own. Vernice, whose mother was murdered by her father, is haunted by what might have been: the mother who might have loved her, who might have shown the affection that her aunt Irene, who raised her, could never quite express. Annie—whose mother left her with her grandmother, another woman who provided the required care but was unable to offer the love for which Annie yearned—envies the clean break represented by Vernice’s mother’s death. In place of such a definitive loss, Annie becomes determined to find her mother and to, somehow, establish the relationship that she was denied.

Vernice’s path takes her to Spelman College, where she realizes that her intelligence is no match for the lessons of society. Vernice’s vision of herself—her sexuality, her appearance, her future—winds through a series of changes that seem to take her further and further from Honeysuckle.

Annie’s vow to find her mother leads to Memphis, along with an ex-boyfriend, his cousin (Annie’s current boyfriend), and the ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. (Yes, it’s complicated.) Annie’s tunnel vision makes everything revolve around that search for her mother and imperils her ability to establish her own path forward.

Told in alternating perspectives, Kin was impossible to put down. The friendship between Vernice and Annie’s is undoubtedly the strong center of the novel: the ways that these characters contrast and complement each other is absolutely beautiful. Jones’s writing is vibrant and so, so quotable. I found myself marking quotation after quotation because of its wisdom, a deep truth it revealed about Vernice or Annie, or just because it was beautiful. Her ability to bring to life her protagonists but also a rich cast of secondary characters is remarkable.

Ultimately, Kin made me feel the joy and pain and hope of these women, made me want the best for them, and made me love them even through their mistakes and their flaws. Kin is the second of Jones’s novels I’ve read—An American Marriage was also a five-star read for me—and it has convinced me to prioritize her backlist.

]]><![CDATA[Charleen Hurtubise's SAOIRSE]]>Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:01:46 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/charleen-hurtubises-saoirse

Thanks to #partner @celadonbooks for the ARC of Charleen Hurtubise's Saoirse. The book will be published on February 24!

I was so thrilled to read Charleen Hurtubise’s Saoirse (you can find the synopsis below), and I found that it more than lived up to my expectations. This book was an easy five-star read for me.

Hurtubise reveals Saoirse’s full story layer by layer, weaving between past and present to show both who she was and who she has become. Her current life, which centers on art and love for her partner and her two young daughters, is all that she hoped for, but there’s a constant sense of the threat that she fears lurking beneath this beauty. As a reader, I desperately wanted the new life, the existence she manifested as she clawed her way out of her old life, to last . . . but I feared that it couldn’t.

The writing here is gorgeous, unflinching in its portrayal of ugliness but equally vivid in communicating love and hope, and there’s a perfect balance of plot and character that meant I could hardly bear to stop reading. What a stunning novel.

Synopsis:

“For readers of Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive.

“In Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha)—a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape.

“When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.

“Saoirse is an evocative, suspenseful exploration of the intimate relationship between art and life and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of reinvention.”

]]><![CDATA[Nadia Davids's CAPE FEVER]]>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:02:39 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/nadia-davidss-cape-fever

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the digital ARC of Nadia Davids’s Cape Fever. The book is out tomorrow!

Nadia Davids’s Cape Fever is a claustrophobic descent into a world of manipulation, control, and surreality. Set in post-World War I in an unnamed colonial town, the novel begins in the midst of Soraya Matas’s interview to be a maid for Mrs. Hattingh, a reclusive widow whose life and home and, perhaps, her sanity have been crumbling. Soraya, desperate for a job and coached by her mother in how best to appear, is able to portray herself as meek and obedient and ignorant, unable to read and write.

She gets the job.

Mrs. Hattingh insists that Soraya leave her family home in the Muslim Quarter to live with Mrs. Hattingh, who has no other servants left. As the story progresses, the two women’s lives become more and more intertwined in their shared solitude. Eventually, Mrs. Hattingh insists that she should help Soraya write letters to her fiance, transcribing Soraya’s thoughts so that her relationship can withstand the couple’s separation. That weekly writing ritual, along with Soraya’s growing awareness of the spirits inhabiting the home, become more and more oppressive, creating barriers from Soraya’s connection to the rest of her life.

Oh, I loved this book. It made me deeply uncomfortable, and as I read, I felt my shoulders creep higher and higher, the tension nearly unbearable (in the best possible way). Davids excels at building an atmosphere that reflects the creep of the skewed power dynamics between the two women, the ways that Mrs. Hattingh is able to wiggle her way into every corner of Soraya’s life and identity.

]]><![CDATA[Marisa Kashino's BEST OFFER WINS]]>Mon, 24 Nov 2025 23:18:21 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/marisa-kashinos-best-offer-wins

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Celadon Books for the digital ARC of Marisa Kashino's Best Offer Wins.

Marisa Kashino’s Best Offer Wins is such a ride of a book. I didn’t really like any of the characters, and I had a hard time identifying with the things that they frantically pursue, but I couldn’t look away. The voice of protagonist and first-person narrator Margo Miyake is so compelling and so distinctive that I was drawn into the web of her over-the-top decisions and incredibly ridiculous rationalizations.

The premise is relatively simple (though the plot doesn’t let it stay simple!). Margo and her husband have been desperately house hunting for a year and a half. They (and Margo, in particular) are cramped in their tiny apartment. Their marriage is suffering, as are their plans to start a family since Margo refuses to bring a baby into what she considers to be insufficient living conditions.

Then, Margo hears word that the perfect house is going to be for sale, and she realizes that she may have a chance to get a bid in early, hopefully avoiding the frenzy of bidding and outbidding, which is a contest that they lose every time. She just wants to make sure that the house is everything it looks like on the internet.

So, she drops by. And then she invades the backyard as she fights for a view through the windows. And then one of the owners comes home. Chaos ensues.

Margo decides that the best way to grab this chance is to strike up a relationship with Curt and Jack so that they’ll *want* to give her an advance bid. Her machinations lead her to some ridiculousness that is too unhinged to ruin the fun by spoiling it here (and that’s only the first truly unhinged step she takes).

Best Offer Wins is uncomfortable and funny (in the darkest way possible) and so, so bingeable. What a reading experience. There isn’t really anybody to root for, but there are plenty of people to sit back and just watch as the inevitable crash comes closer and closer. You know something bad is going to happen, and you can’t stop it . . . so just go with it and enjoy the very swervy ride.

]]><![CDATA[Jean Meltzer's THE EIGHT HEARTBREAKS OF HANUKKAH]]>Fri, 17 Oct 2025 21:42:23 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/jean-meltzers-the-eight-heartbreaks-of-hanukkah

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Harlequin Books for the digital ARC of Jean Meltzer’s The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah.

Jean Meltzer’s The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah is a delight. I’ve enjoyed all of Meltzer’s books, but this second-chance, Hanukkah-centered romance may be my favorite since The Matzah Ball.

Evelyn Schwartz lives for her job as an on-the-rise television producer. The show that she’s sure will be her big break is a live-action televised musical of A Christmas Carol starring a temperamental but wildly talented star. Schwartz has dealt with divas before, so she’s determined to use her eight days of rehearsal to make sure everything is perfect.

Then she discovers that David, her ex-husband, is filling in as the studio doctor for the entirety of the rehearsal and the live show itself, and everything that seemed to be so under control falls apart.

And then, the ghosts start showing up.

Yes, they’re like the ghosts of A Christmas Carol, except they’re the “Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah” ghosts that take Evelyn on a tour through every heartbreak, from the dissolution of her parents’ marriage to her father’s death to her wedding, with David beside her for every one.

The novel alternates between Evelyn’s very high-strung point of view and David’s more solemn perspective, which sheds light on his view of their marriage and divorce, including the reason that he walked out while Evelyn was at work and never looked back.

Meltzer deals with topics both serious—content warnings for miscarriage—and silly—her star’s very specific candy demands. But what centers the story is the tender love between Evelyn and David and the lovely retelling of a classic story through a new lens. What a joy of a book.

]]><![CDATA[Stephanie Perkins's OVERDUE]]>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 21:50:11 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/stephanie-perkinss-overdue

Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Stephanie Perkins’s Overdue. The book is out now!

Stephanie Perkins has long been an auto-read author for me. Her YA romance novels are absolutely gorgeous, full of first love and longing and unique teen protagonists. So, when I saw that she was publishing her first romance book for adults, I requested the egalley immediately.

Overdue is the story of a librarian, Ingrid Dahl, who is eleven years into a long-term relationship with Cory, her first boyfriend. They’re happy enough. Until maybe they’re not? When Ingrid’s sister announces her engagement, Ingrid and Cory wonder why they haven’t felt the urge to get married. The answer they land on is that they’re not willing to commit until they have some experiences outside their relationship. They give each other a month to date around, which—they’re confident—will inspire them to come back together and move their relationship forward.

When they settle on their arrangement, Ingrid immediately has her first date in mind: Macon, a fellow librarian on whom (she’ll barely admit to herself) she’s long had a crush. Macon is her best friend, her “work husband,” a curmudgeon, a plant guy. And when she approaches him, he rejects her. Horribly.

Now riddled by doubts, Ingrid makes some desperate efforts to follow through on the plan, to varying success. When she and Cory meet up after a month, neither is ready to call it quits. So, the arrangement continues.

This is act one of a multi-act, slow-burn romance in which Ingrid figures out who she is and what she wants from life and from love. While there’s so much here to rave about—Ingrid’s journey, her lovely friendships, her efforts to be friends with Macon after that horrific rejection—I’m not sure the burn needed to be quite this slow, and I never felt the wholesale giddiness that I often feel with Perkins’s YA romances. Then again, perhaps that’s the way it should be since the type of love Ingrid is looking for isn’t that unreserved first love but, instead, a love that will last and that will be true to her adult self, not the teenager she was when she first met Cory. And watching her slowly bring Macon back into the center of their friendship and, eventually, more is a beautiful journey.

]]><![CDATA[Trung Le Nguyen's ANGELICA AND THE BEAR PRINCE]]>Mon, 06 Oct 2025 21:19:10 GMThttp://www.jenlovesbooks.com/book-reviews/trung-le-nguyens-angelica-and-the-bear-prince

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Random House for the digital ARC of Trung Le Nguyen’s Angelica and the Bear Prince. The book will be published tomorrow!

The Magic Fish, a graphic novel by Trung Le Nguyen, was one of my absolute favorite reads last year. The author’s new book, Angelica and the Bear Prince, has a similar rootedness in fairytales, though they’re less of a presence through the book as a whole.

The book centers on a high school student named Angelica who became over involved and experienced the near-inevitable burnout as a result. Now, she’s trying to ease back in to extracurriculars by working backstage at a local theater.

The theater’s mascot is a bear . . . and the bear has a social media account. Angelica has struck up a correspondence with said bear but doesn’t know who actually brings the mascot to life, though she is intrigued.

Woven through the story is the story of a Bear Prince with a secret of his own.

While I didn’t find Angelica and the Bear Prince to be quite as captivating as The Magic Fish, it’s a lovely story that will feel relatable to so many YA (and adult!) readers. Who among us hasn’t felt the need to take a step back from life, to recenter ourselves on what matters? And finding the right supporters along the way is key to actually feeling different.

The relationships here are beautifully developed, and Nguyen highlights the ways that Angelica interacts with her parents, her best friend, and—of course—the person behind the bear. The art is beautiful and tells the story expressively, with an emphasis on emotions. Nguyen is now an auto-read author for me!

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