A whimsical and ultimately touching story of love and the afterlife.
A grieving widow goes on a serious of otherworldly adventures in Croop’s debut novel.
Adalyn believes she’s finally found love with a man named Matthew when the Covid-19 pandemic strikes; after a brief illness, Matthew dies. Shortly afterward, Adalyn sits on a neighborhood park bench and complains to the Creator she’s always worshipped: “God, I love you, but how could you do this to me?” she asks. “How could you when you know I’ve suffered enough?” And surprisingly, she gets an answer: “God has His reasons.” The speaker is Lenny, an angel and former ghost whom Adalyn already knows. Through their conversations, Croop ably fleshes out an elaborate fantasy cosmology, loosely based on aspects of Christianity. Lenny recently broke up with Matthew’s guardian angel, Melanie, who’s applied to Heaven’s Rebirth Application Offices to be reborn as a mortal; he saw Adalyn grieving from heaven’s watchtower and decided to offer her comfort. He takes her by the hand and brings her to the “ghost train,” complete with a conductor, which will take her to heaven; there, she’s issued an one-day pass to look for Matthew and spend a bit more time with him. In the process, she gets involved with her guardian angel, Maurice, and his real-world adventures back on Earth. Over the course of this novel, Croop relates Adalyn’s adventures and inner thoughts with a good deal of warmth and approachability. The characters are thinly conceived but uniformly fun, and the plotline involving Maurice and the thugs who threaten his legacy makes for engaging reading. Along the way, the author sometimes turns religious concepts like heaven and angels into fodder for humor: “It was common knowledge that the ringing of a bell meant an angel got its wings….it was possible to simply buy wings in heaven. I suppose it all made sense since the cash register bell rang after every purchase.”
A whimsical and ultimately touching story of love and the afterlife.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-956074-72-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Global Summit House
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.
This is wizard Harry Dresden’s yearlong mourning period for Karrin Murphy, the woman he loved.
If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series, then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world, thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t), sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child, lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship, bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight, and, for the length of an entire book, thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy, the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner, friend, and, after a slow burn across many books, lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army, and Harry is doing his best to confront the monsters, dark magic, and anti-supernatural prejudice running wild amid the slowly rebuilding city. He’s also trying to save his half brother Thomas from two different death sentences, train a new apprentice, and juggle a relationship with Thomas’ half sister Lara, the dangerously seductive vampire Queen Mab is forcing him to marry. But he’s doing all this while nearly crushed by grief that threatens his judgment and disturbs his control over his magical powers. Butcher really makes you feel the dark, depressive state Harry exists in as well as the effect it’s having on his friends. Despite all that happens in it, this book is a pause as well as a setup for the series’ planned conclusion, an epic conflict with the eldritch creatures known as “the Outsiders.” It’s a tough, redemptive pause that could be a real drag, but thankfully, it’s not, because Butcher shows balance, too: Even as the crises pile up, so do the help and goodwill from unexpected sources.
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593199336
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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