The Forest Becomes Her

 

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This book made me want to walk outside and put my hands in the dirt.

The Forest Becomes Her by Julie Carrick Dalton follows three women in Concord, Massachusetts after a centuries-old forest gets clear-cut to make room for a development of eco-friendly homes. The irony is lost on the developers. One massive oak is left standing alone, and that tree is what pulls these three women into each other's lives.

Polly is a grieving teenager who scattered her mother's ashes at the old oak, a place the two of them loved. Stella is the real estate agent selling the new homes, lonely after losing her best friend, Polly's mom. Hazel is Stella's neighbor, trying to make sense of a devastating loss, finding her only comfort in the soil of her backyard. Together they set out to save the tree, and they find friendship, community, and a way through their grief.

I loved all three women, but Polly especially. She's smart, shy, observant, and kind. She's carrying two kinds of grief at once, for her mother and for the forest, and she starts out alone but slowly finds her voice and her people. Dalton's writing is poignant without ever tipping into saccharine. You feel the weight these women are carrying, but the book never tries to manipulate you into feeling it. The magical realism is woven in so gradually it never feels forced, and the idea of finding solace in nature shows up in ways I won't spoil here.

Atmospheric, engrossing, and full of heart. The right reader for this is anyone who loves found family, magical realism, women's fiction, or stories about our connection to the natural world. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Megan Beatie Communications and St. Martin's Press for the gifted ARC. The Forest Becomes Her is out July 14. Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might like Little Wild by Laura Evans.

About the Author

As a journalist, Julie Carrick Dalton has published more than a thousand articles in The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Orion Magazine, Electric Literature, and other publications. A former beekeeper and organic farmer, she is a frequent speaker on the topic of writing fiction in the age of climate crisis and is a member of the teaching faculty at Drexel University’s MFA Program. When she isn’t reading, writing, or teaching, you can probably find her skiing, swimming, kayaking, working in her garden, or trying to keep track of her four children and two dogs.

Follow Julie on Instagram and visit her website for news and information about her books.

Give Me Everything You've Got

 

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Every book has its reader. This one's reader just isn't me, and I want to tell you why.

Back in the 1930s, a librarian named S.R. Ranganathan wrote a set of guiding principles for library science. Two of them have stuck with me for 20 years: every reader their book, and every book its reader. The idea is simple. Every person can find books they love, and every book will find the people who love it.

That's my roundabout way of telling you I'm not the reader for Give Me Everything You've Got. And that's genuinely fine.

The premise: Ruby is a young filmmaker just starting to taste success when she's invited to spend the summer at the country house of Ellen, the feminist director she idolizes and who's promised to mentor her. The retreat sours fast. Ruby gets pulled into the mind games between Ellen and her magnetic daughter Lara, and the house itself starts to feel haunted by the sense that she isn't the first promising young woman brought there.

On paper that's gothic Rebecca territory, and I wanted to love it. I just didn't feel it. The characters stayed vague and hard to root for, the pace crawled, and the whole thing is written in long unbroken blocks with no quotation marks around the dialogue. If the goal was to read like one long stream of consciousness, the writing pulls it off. I found it tough to follow.

But not connecting with a book isn't the same as a book being bad. The prose is doing something deliberate, and there are readers who will fall hard for exactly that. If you love literary fiction that asks you to sink into a mood instead of a plot, this could be your summer obsession.

Thank you to Henry Holt for the gifted copy. Give Me Everything You've Got is out July 21. Grab a copy from Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

If you enjoy literary fiction, James Grady's coming of age novel American Sky might interest you.

About the Author

Imogen Crimp’s debut novel A Very Nice Girl was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize, selected for Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Book Club and chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times and Grazia. She lives in London.

Little Wild

 

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Literary fiction, but make it gothic, witchy, and gay.

I don't read literary fiction often, but Laura Evans’ debut Little Wild pulled me in anyway. The setting is 1937 Suffolk, England during a historic heat wave that won't break. There's a crumbling estate called Snare House, owned by the Winther family. Margaret lives with the family, but she's not part of the family. She narrates the whole story. She's sharp, watchful, and funny.  And she's hopelessly in love and obsessed with her best friend Joanie, even though she knows every one of Joanie's careless rich-girl flaws (big Daisy Buchanan energy).

Margaret has survived a lot. Her mother died young. Her father came back from the war hollowed out and neglectful. She was raised at the edge of the Winther family's world just enough to taste a life that was never really hers. She and Joanie make a plan to run off to London together as lovers. Then they're discovered, and everything breaks. Margaret is banished to a falling-down cabin in the woods with her father, grieving and alone. There in the woods, something old and strange starts waking up in her - a power that might have come from her mother.

What kept me turning pages was that I was never sure how much to trust Margaret. Was this grief and isolation bending her mind, or was she actually tapping into something real? She has this ethereal quality, and apparently her mother did too, and Evans never tidily answers it. 

The story touches on  love, friendship, grief, poverty, mental illness, and society's expectations and rolls of women. The writing is gorgeous without ever trying too hard. It’s immersive and  atmospheric, just flat-out good. 

I went back and forth between the ARC and the audiobook. Tamaryn Payne's narration is wonderful. She nails every character's tone and pours all of Margaret's longing straight into your ears.

If you love historical fiction, queer love stories, magical realism, gothic vibes, or a family drama, this blends all of it and somehow makes it sing. I could not stop rooting for Margaret.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted listen and Henry Holt for the gifted ARC. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out June 23. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

Different genre, same wound: both Little Wild and The Three Lives of Cate Kay are about how the great love of your youth reshapes who you turn into when it falls apart.

About the Author

Laura Evans was born in the north of England and grew up in the Midlands. She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge before coming in a roundabout way to journalism, where she became a magazine editor specializing in travel and nature. A lifelong city dweller who romanticizes the countryside, she spent several years in both London and Bristol before making her way to the medieval city of Norwich, where she lives with her family.

Visit Laura's website to keep up with news about Laura and her work. Follow Laura on Instagram.

Yesteryear

 

This was 100% a Bookstagram FOMO read for me. And I get the hype now.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I'd seen this one everywhere, so I finally caved and listened to the audiobook. Verdict: unhinged in the best way.

If you somehow missed it: Natalie is a tradwife influencer with millions of followers selling the homestead dream of raw milk, farm-fresh eggs, and homeschooled babies. Then she wakes up in 1855. No explanation. No electricity. No nannies hiding behind the curtain. Just the brutal version of the life she's been peddling online.

What worked for me was the writing. Sharp, sarcastic, satirical — Caro Claire Burke absolutely nails the tradwife performance. On camera Natalie is baking the bread, feeding the chickens, doing the homeschooling. Off camera? She married into serious money and there's a whole team running that "simple little homestead." The peek behind the curtain is brutal and very, very funny.

The 1855 sections are a different kind of brutal. Natalie is not handling it. Her 1855 family resents her for not being the wife and mother she's supposed to be, and they're pretty sure she's lost her mind.

What didn't fully land for me was the ending. I had questions. Specifically — why did people wait so long to get her help?? That's all I'll say because I know some of you haven't read it yet.

Rebecca Lowman narrates the audio and she's so good. Natalie is calculating and often deeply unlikable, and Lowman somehow keeps you invested in her the whole way through.

Anne Hathaway bought the rights and honestly? This could be a phenomenal movie. For a debut, Burke knocked it out of the park.

Liked it. Didn't love it. Would absolutely recommend it.

If you're drawn to stories about influencers whose perfect lives are built on lies, go read my review of Julie Chan Is Dead next,

About the Author

Caro Claire Burke received her Master’s in Fine Arts from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the co-host of Diabolical Lies, a politics and culture podcast. Yesteryear is her first novel.

For more news and information about Caro, visit her webiste.

The Great Houses of Pill Hill

 

The premise sounded irresistible. The execution? Not so much.

The Great Houses of Pill Hill had everything going for it on paper: an interior designer who builds miniature crime scene dioramas, a murder, and a house full of secrets. Cookie, the main character, even has two dogs, which honestly got her further with me than anything else in this book.

But here’s where it went sideways for me: the dioramas. The dioramas were whole reason I picked this up. They barely factor into the story. There’s a Lizzie Borden diorama scene that could have been genuinely thrilling, and then it just fizzles. The murder mystery gets buried under a tangle of subplots that pull focus in every direction. The characters felt flat. The dialogue is written without quotation marks (which made it nearly impossible to separate Cookie’s inner thoughts from actual conversation), and by the end I’d lost the thread completely. I don’t know if the no quotation marks was just an ARC thing or if it’s the author’s style. 

I wanted quirky and clever. Instead I got overwhelmed and a little bored.

If you love literary, character-driven fiction and aren’t too hung up on a tight plot, you might find more to love here than I did. But if you’re coming for the mystery and the miniatures, this one might leave you wanting. 

Thank you Soho Crime for the gifted ARC. The Great Houses of Pill Hill publishes May 5.

Celestial Lights

 

Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin isn’t the space novel you’re expecting. It’s not about the science. It’s not about the mission. It’s about a man who was always going to choose the stars over the people who needed him to stay.

Ollie is born the same moment the Challenger falls from the sky. Decades later, he’s one of the most respected astronauts of his time. When a billionaire offers him the chance to lead a ten-year mission to Europa, he says yes. Not dramatically. Not after a fight. Just… yes.

His wife Philly knows he’ll go. He knows he’ll go. But they go through the motions of a marriage that softly unravels without ever raising its voice.

This is a short book, under 250 pages, but it carries a lot. Cecile Pin writes with such economy and precision that every sentence does real work. Ollie isn’t particularly warm or likable, but I don’t think he’s meant to be. He’s ambitious, smart, emotionally distant. He’s the kind of person who’s probably great at being an astronaut and complicated at being a husband or father.

Is this sci-fi? Technically, but barely. If you’re looking for elaborate world-building and a deep dive into astrophysics, this isn’t it. If you want a literary character study with beautiful prose and a family drama that unfolds in sighs rather than slammed doors,   then pull up a chair.

I won’t pretend I figured out everything this book is trying to say. But it stayed with me in a low-key, thoughtful way. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Thank you Henry Holt and Co for the gifted finished copy. Out now. 

If you liked this, you might also enjoy my review of Atmosphere.

About the Author

Cecile Pin is a London-based writer. Wandering Souls, her first novel, was long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal, the Prix Femina Étranger, and was short-listed for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. She has won the Fragonard Prize for Foreign Literature, a Somerset Maugham Award, and a London Writers' Award. In 2025, she was selected as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe.

Saoirse

 

🎧 Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise is a character-driven novel that quickly pulls you in and doesn’t let go.

When we first meet Saoirse, her art career is about to shine on bright spotlight on her life.

But a decade ago she was Sarah, a frightened teenager desperate to escape danger and a childhood spent in trauma. In a split-second decision, she steals a passport and flees to Ireland. She reinvents herself with a new name and a carefully hidden past. For a while, it works. She builds a life. She finds love. She becomes an artist and a mother. 

But fear is a stubborn thing.

Eventually the walls of her new identity start to crack. The very success she’s worked so hard for threatens to expose the truth she’s been running from. And when the past refuses to stay buried, it’s not just her secret at risk — it’s the people she loves.

Hurtubise tells this story through a shifting timeline, moving between Sarah’s traumatic beginnings and the fragile present she’s built. The prose is atmospheric and emotional without ever tipping into melodrama. Ireland feels lush and grounding, almost like a character itself — a place of refuge, but never quite of safety.

At its heart, Saoirse is about identity, survival, and the cost of reinvention. It asks hard questions: Can you truly become someone new? Is freedom the same as escape? And how long can you live in the shadow of who you used to be?

The audiobook is beautifully done. Narrator Roisin Rankin delivers a nuanced, emotionally rich performance that brings both the raw vulnerability of teenage Sarah and the brittle composure of her adult self vividly to life. The setting, the tension, and the heartbreak is all on display. 

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted listen. Saoirse is out now.

About the Author

Charleen Hurtubise is a novelist, essayist, and artist. She is the author of The Polite Act of Drowning, published in Ireland and the UK in 2023. Saoirse is her US debut. She holds an M.Sc. from Trinity College Dublin and an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin, where she has facilitated creative writing seminars. The sixth sister in a family of nine, she spent much of her childhood in Michigan, her early adult years in Boston, and has now lived half of her life in Ireland, which is home. Though she lives in Dublin with her Irish family, the pull of Donegal never leaves and continues to influence her drawings and writings, including Saoirse.

The Tortoise’s Tale

 

The Tortoise’s Tale by Kendra Coulter completely charmed me.

Magic the music loving tortoise might be the most unexpectedly delightful narrator I’ve met in a long time. She’s very intelligent, charismatic, empathetic, and a little prone to existential spirals. Magic is deeply curious about the humans who wander in and out of her garden and her life.

From her sunny spot on a palatial estate, Magic watches a family change over decades and forms a beautiful lifelong bond with Lucy, the owner’s niece. Their friendship is the heart of the book and what stayed with me most.

I listened to the audiobook, and Mieko Gavia’s narration is phenomenal. She gives Magic a warm, wise voice that makes this story feel even more alive.

If you loved Remarkably Bright Creatures, or if you enjoy family sagas told from an outsider’s point of view, I think you’ll really appreciate this one. Big thank you to Simon & Schuster Audio for the complimentary audiobook. The Tortoise’s Tale is out now. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

QOTD: What’s your favorite book with an unusual narrator?

#thetortoisestale #kendracoulter

#audiobookreview #literaryfiction #familydrama #animalnarrator #cozyreads #readersofinstagram #bookrecomendation 

About the Author

Kendra Coulter earned her PhD at the University of Toronto and is a professor at Huron University College at Western University, where she leads the world’s first major in animal ethics and sustainability leadership. She is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics in England and the author of Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. The Tortoise’s Tale is her first novel.