Change of Plans

 

Sarah Dessen is back, and yes, she still knows exactly how to break your heart gently.

Thank you to Simon Audio for the gifted early listen.

Sarah Dessen has been writing YA for over two decades, and Change of Plans, her first book in nearly seven years, proves  she hasn’t lost a step.

Finley has always been comfortable in someone else’s shadow, coasting along in the wake of her magnetic boyfriend Colin. Then a last-minute trip to a family vacation home she never knew existed changes everything. Colin breaks up with her over a video call. She throws her phone in a lake. And for the first time, Finley suddenly has no roadmap. 

As a former librarian who book-talked Dessen’s novels more times than I can count, this one hit me right in the nostalgia. All the hallmarks are here: a smart, strong main character, a sweet love interest, family drama, and that pitch-perfect voice that captures being on the edge of adulthood. It’s incredibly satisfying watching Finley step out of Colin’s shadow and into herself. 

The extended family that Finlay falls into including her aunts, cousins, and the found-family crew at the Egg adds warmth and charm. And Ben is top tier book boyfriend material department. 

My one quibble: the reason behind her mom’s long estrangement from her family felt a little thin. I wanted more depth to Finley and her mom’s dynamic. The emotional setup was there. It just needed a little more space to grow. 

Narrator Mirai absolutely nails the performance. She balances teenage excitement with an undercurrent of self-doubt. The heartbreak, the worry, the self-discovery all feels real. This is a great audiobook pick. 

A warm, feel-good coming-of-age story with found family at its heart. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Change of Plans publishes May 5.

If you liked this review, you might be interested in Superfan, another coming of age story. 

About the Author

Sarah Dessen is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels for teens, including The Truth About Forever, Just Listen, and This Lullaby. Her work has been published in over thirty countries and sold millions of copies worldwide. She is the recipient of the 2017 Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for outstanding contribution to young adult literature.

This Story Might Save Your Life

A popular podcaster disappears. Her best friend is the suspect. I couldn’t stop listening.

Benny and Joy are best friends and co-hosts of one of the most popular podcasts around. It’s a show built on survival stories. Then Joy disappears, and Benny is the prime suspect.

I loved everything about this one. Joy and Benny feel like real people, and their friendship is the heart of the story. The dual POV worked beautifully. You get both of them fully, and it makes the tension hit harder. The audiobook production is something special too. The sound effects aren’t overdone. They just give it this perfect podcast atmosphere that pulls you right in. And the bonus episode at the end is delightful, and exactly the right note to end on after some heavy subject matter.

Julia Whelan is, as always, flawless. Sean Patrick Hopkins brings Benny to life with humor and real emotion. Together they’re a perfect match.

Also worth noting, this podcast isn’t a true crime show, which honestly felt like a breath of fresh air.

This Story Might Save Your Life is a fantastic debut. Tiffany Crum is someone to watch. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

⚠️ Trigger warnings apply — check before you read.

Interested in another thriller featuring a podcaster? Check out my review of Tell Me What You Did. 

About the Author

Tiffany Crum is a writer from Southern California. After many years in Los Angeles, she now lives with her husband and two teenage sons in Atlanta, Georgia. This Story Might Save Your Life is her debut novel.

The Last Mandarin

 

I almost skipped this one. I was so wrong. 

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted early listen!

Louise Penny writing about AI and global terrorism wasn’t on my 2026 bingo card. Neither was enjoying every second of it.

I almost talked myself out of this one. A political thriller co-written by Louise Penny and journalist Melissa Fung? I was bracing for something slow and dense. Instead, I got a very propulsive listens I’ve had in months.

The Last Mandarin opens with a bang — security and fire alarms going off simultaneously all over the world, the signal traced back to China.  In the chaos, mother and daughter Vivien and Alice Li are called to the White House. Vivien is a Tiananmen Square dissident turned world-renowned human rights activist. Alice is a first-generation Chinese-American food blogger who has spent most of her life in her mother’s shadow. They can barely stand each other. Now they have to save the world together.

The globe-trotting pace kept me locked in: the Oval Office, the noodle shops of Hong Kong, the necropolis of the first emperor.  The blend of ancient Chinese history, from the Terracotta Warriors to a secret language invented by women,

woven into a modern AI techno-thriller was genuinely clever and fun. Is every plot point totally believable? No. But that’s not really the point. This is pure entertainment done well.

What I loved most was watching Alice grow into herself. She starts the story completely in Vivien’s shadow and ends it somewhere very different. The mother-daughter dynamic felt real even when everything around them was wild.

And narrator Eunice Wong is exceptional. Large cast, multiple languages, constant tension and she handled all of it. This is exactly the kind of audiobook that makes you wish your commute was longer. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out May 12th.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton. 

About the Authors

Louise Penny is the multi-award winning author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels, set in her home province of Québec, Canada. Her books, including State of Terror written with Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide, topped international bestseller lists, including the New York Times, and been translated into 32 languages. The recipient of both the Order of Canada and l’Ordre national du Québec, her country’s highest civilian honours, her Three Pines Foundation reaches out to those in crisis and offers financial and emotional support, with a special focus on literacy as well as dementia care. Her husband, Michael, died of dementia in 2016. She lives with her Golden Retrievers Muggins and Charlie in a village south of Montréal.

Mellissa Fung is a veteran journalist, bestselling author and filmmaker. In 2008, as a field correspondent covering Afghanistan for the CBC, she was taken hostage, an experience that led to her #1 bestselling book Under an Afghan Sky. Her story, and those of three Nigerian girls, were the subject of her first feature documentary, Captive, which premiered in 2021 and has been nominated for several major awards. Since leaving the network, Fung has focused on human rights reporting. Her work has been featured in the Globe and Mail, the Huffington Post, the Walrus and the Toronto Star, and on Al Jazeera, CNN, PBS and in other media. She has received numerous awards, including the Gracie Award, a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association award and the New York Festivals Gold and Silver Awards. Fung holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

5 Books to Break Your Reading Slump

Reading slumps are real, and sometimes the only cure is a book that grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go.

These five did exactly that for me. Different vibes, different genres, but every single one of them made me forget what time it was.

Whether you’re in the mood for a sweeping emotional thriller, a twisty legal mystery, or something atmospheric and dark, there’s a book on this list for you. 

All the Colors of the Dark — Chris Whitaker

1975, a small Missouri town, girls going missing, and a one-eyed boy named Patch who does something brave and pays a price for it for decades. This one is part serial killer thriller, part love story, part gut punch. It spans 25+ years and somehow gets more gripping as it goes. Warning: you will ugly cry.

The Violin Conspiracy — Brendan Slocumb

A Black violinist from rural North Carolina discovers the beat-up fiddle his grandmother gave him is actually a Stradivarius worth millions — and then someone steals it days before the most important competition of his life. It’s a mystery, it’s a coming-of-age story, and it’s a look at racism in classical music that will stick with you. The author is an actual violinist, and it shows.

Those Empty Eyes — Charlie Donlea

A teenager is found holding a shotgun at the scene of her family’s massacre. She didn’t do it — but the media dubs her “Empty Eyes” and decides she did. Ten years later, she’s changed her name and is working as a legal investigator when a new case starts connecting to her own unsolved past. Fast-paced and twisty, with an ending I genuinely did not see coming.

The Return of Ellie Black — Emiko Jean

A girl vanishes without a trace. Two years later, she’s found wandering out of the woods — alive, but refusing to talk. Detective Chelsey Calhoun is desperate to find out why, partly because she lost her own sister to violence years ago. Atmospheric, dark, and the twist will drop your jaw. Stephen King called it a “page-turning suspense novel.” He’s not wrong.

The Marsh King’s Daughter — Karen Dionne

Helena has a normal life — husband, kids, jam business. Then she hears on the news that the Marsh King has escaped from prison. Her father. The man who kidnapped her mother and raised Helena in a remote Michigan marsh, completely off the grid. Now she knows the police can’t catch him. But she can. This one is deeply unsettling in the best way.

Looking g for more recommendations? Check out 5 Fast Paced Thrillers You Can Read in a Weekend. 

Follow me on Instagram for book reviews and recommendations. 

 

Reality Bites

 

A scientist walks onto a reality dating show. No, this isn’t a joke. It’s her only shot at saving her lab.

Thank you Harper Perennial and NetGalley for the gifted ARC.

Reality Bites by Amy Mass is the romcom your beach bag is waiting for. 🐸

Grace Lambert is a serious scientist dedicated to saving an endangered frog species from extinction. Her entire family? A bunch of influencers. Her mom has an HGTV-style Instagram, her dad runs a yoga YouTube channel, and her brothers are all over TikTok and Twitch. Grace has never had social media a day in her life, and she’s perfectly fine with that.

Then her lab loses its funding and suddenly the cash prize on a reality dating show looks a lot more appealing.

So Grace shows up on set with zero idea what a reality show is and no interest in the other contestants. And absolutely no intention of falling for anyone. Especially not Andrew, the show’s attorney, who she immediately annoys and who immediately annoys her right back.

You can probably guess where this is going. And it’s a blast getting there. Reality Bites hits every romcom trope you love: fish out of water, nerdy girl who doesn’t realize she’s gorgeous, enemies to lovers, the third act breakup, the grand gesture, the HEA. It hits them well. The banter between Grace and Andrew is sharp and genuinely funny. But my favorite part was watching Grace’s family, the influencers she never quite understood, rally around her when she needed them most and use their skills to fight for her lab. That family dynamic gave the book a little extra heart.

This is a debut novel, and Amy Mass (a TV comedy writer who worked on Last Man Standing and The Goldbergs) clearly knows how to write funny. It shows. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out May 12. 

If you liked this review, you might enjoy my review of Fangirl Down. 

About the Author 

Amy Mass began her career in advertising in New York City. She moved to Los Angeles, where she wrote for hit television comedies, including Last Man Standing and The Goldbergs, for twelve years. During the pandemic, she moved to rural Georgia, where she writes romcom novels and films and lives with her family.

The Counting Game

 

The woods have taken girls before. When it happens again, the only witness is a boy. And he won’t talk. 

Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted audiobook. 

The Counting Game, Sinéad Nolan’s debut novel, is more psychological thriller than police procedural. If you go in knowing that, you’re going to love it.

Southwest Ireland, 1995. Saoirse Kellough goes missing from a forest that has swallowed girls before. The only witness is her little brother Jack and he’s not talking. The village whispers about hauntings. 

The Gardaí are desperate. So they bring in Freya Hemmings, a psychotherapist carrying her own grief, to gently coax the truth out of the traumatized nine-year-old who has sworn to protect the forest’s secrets.

What really worked for me were the characters. Jack is heartbreaking. Freya is complex and compelling. She’s the one who ultimately drives the investigation forward, not just the detectives. And the family dynamics are complicated. The oldest sibling Kate had to leave college to raise Jack and Saoirse after their mother’s death, and that trauma comes through on every page. This family was already carrying so much before the woods took Saoirse.

The atmosphere is thick and genuinely eerie. Nolan grew up in the forests of County Dublin, and it shows. These woods feel alive in all the wrong ways.

My one honest critique: the pacing. I’m more of an action-oriented reader, so slow-burn psychological thrillers require a little patience from me. This one asks for it. If you read Tana French and love lingering in a mystery, you’ll be completely in your element.

I did figure out the whodunit before the end, but I stayed invested anyway, which says something.

The audiobook narration from Alana Kerr Collins and Jessica Regan is excellent. Their dual narration gives Freya and Jack distinct voices and makes it easy to track the shifting perspectives. The emotional weight of this story lands differently when you can hear it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now. 

If you find this book intriguing, you might like Imposter.

About the Author

Sinéad Nolan grew up playing in the forests and on the beaches of leafy County Dublin, Ireland. She was a regular freelance feature writer for the Sunday World and the Irish Independent and has had short stories shortlisted for the Momaya Press Awards and the Francis McManus Awards for RTE Radio. Apart from writing, she works in private practice as a BACP Registered Counsellor seeing clients in central London.