A delightful love letter to great literature.
A bookstore owner discovers her shop has a unique and wonderous secret in Andersen’s novel.
Aspiring author Aurelia Lyndham has struggled with writer’s block since the deaths of her mother and Aunt Marigold, which occurred less than a year apart. To cope with these losses, she focuses on running On the Square Books, a bookshop she inherited from Marigold. The business has a specialized inventory—it only sells books written by authors born before 1900. It also holds an incredible surprise. After hearing voices coming from the shop late at night, Aurelia discovers that characters from the books on her Recommended Reads table have emerged from the pages to socialize. She befriends various figures from classic literature, including Count Vronsky from Anna Karenina and Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility. Aurelia is soon living a double life, running the bookshop by day and spending time with the literary characters at night. When Count Vronsky laments his tragic and unsettled fate, Aurelia discovers the inspiration she needs to write again. Her project piques the interest of book editor Oliver Pearce; as Aurelia and Oliver work on editing her novel, their friendship and collaboration leads to a deeper attraction, and Aurelia begins to wonder if she will find a happy ending in her own life. Andersen’s debut romance is a charming tale of a writer finding inspiration and a chance at true love via the characters in her favorite classic novels. Aurelia is an amiable protagonist who’s trying to rebuild her life after two devastating losses; her relationship with Oliver Pearce is well developed and cleverly mirrors the story she develops for Count Vronsky. Andersen is a talented storyteller with a knack for vivid descriptions. In one scene, a literary character reaches for a book, “Only—his hand went right through it, turning into a white mist with what looked like black dots running across it…or were they letters?” The novel is an appealing blend of fantasy and romance, rooted in a love of classic novels.
A delightful love letter to great literature.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2025
ISBN: 9798998747700
Page Count: 355
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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