Reviews

by Catalina Bonati 2.5/ 5 stars ★ ★ ⯪ ☆ ☆ The Story Eaters of Yamm by Kevin Hincker (to be published 17 June 2026) tells the story of Larry Palczewski, a struggling science fiction writer living at home with his mother. Larry becomes involved with Sky Company, a business urgently hiring science fiction writers to address imagined scenarios of alien invasion. He becomes the leader of the Alien Invasion Cohort, and their inanity provides humor for most of the story. At home, hi

by Catalina Bonati 2.75/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes (to be published June 9, 2026) is the story of Thea, who moves with her husband Kid to the prosperous all-Black town of East Cobb, Mississippi, where hauntings, called “groanings” pursue only the women of the burg. Similarly, Marah works as one of the town’s “carriers,” which is a woman who has been denoted to experience men’s burdens and to take them on as her own, relieving the men of traumas. Thus,

by Vidya Hariharan Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel Whereabouts (2018) explores a haunting sense of ‘homelessness.’ It was originally written by Lahiri in Italian and later translated by her own hand into English. Lahiri is a Bengali writer raised in the U.S.A. by Bengali immigrant parents, and in 2012 she relocated to Italy. Neither English nor Italian are her primary languages or mother tongue. However, she is at home in both languages. In this novel, homelessness is understood as a

by Catalina Bonati 4.5/5 stars ★★★★⯪ The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva (to be published April 2026) is a generational story of mother-and-daughterhood that starts with Carol in 1980 as she holds her first days-old child when a message is intercepted from Ross 128b, an exoplanet 11 light-years away in another galaxy. She raises her two children in the shadow of the Rossians and of the back-and-forth messages between Earth and Ross 128b. Her daughter, Rosanna, is so inspired

by Catalina Bonati 2.75/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Mother is Watching by Karma Brown (to be published March 2026) is a literary sci-fi horror novel which focuses on Mathilde, or Tilly, and her art conservation job. In the near future, she receives the opportunity to restore the last artwork of a deceased artist named Charlotte Leclerc who used human body and insect parts as part of her paintings. However, as she becomes pregnant and becomes part of the MotherWise organization, the paintin

by Catalina Bonati 3.75/ 5 stars ★★★⯪☆ We Call Them Witches by India Rose-Bower (to be published April 2026) is an apocalyptic folk horror tale centering around Sara, a young 17-year-old with a large family of three younger siblings, an older sibling and their wife, and a mother. They move around the country in search ground that is safe from witches, which seem to be primordial monsters taking the shape of the surrounding landscape who attack and dismember humans for consum