So I guess I am just perpetually behind now? I have had to post a few reviews only on Goodreads because I have run out of time, so check that out, yeah? I got all but one this month, so… fingers crossed for June?

Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan
Feeders by Matt Serafini
Out of Air by Rachel Reiss
Circular Motion by Alex Foster
Wandering Wild by Lynette Noni

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Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
Published by DAW on May 20, 2025
Pages: 432
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

The history-bending speculative fiction from Adam Oyebanji, award-winning author of BRAKING DAY.

An impossible death: Detective Ethan Krol has been called to the scene of a baffling murder: a man and his son, who appear to have been drowned in sea-water. But the nearest ocean is a thousand miles away.

An improbable story: Hollie Rogers doesn’t want to ask too many questions of her new friend, Abi Eniola. Abi claims to be an ordinary woman from Nigeria, but her high-tech gadgets and extraordinary physical abilities suggest she’s not telling the whole truth.

An incredible quest: As Ethan’s investigation begins to point towards Abi, Hollie’s fears mount. For Abi is very much not who she seems. And it won’t be long before Ethan and Hollie find themselves playing a part in a story that spans cultures, continents… and centuries.

An extraordinary speculative thriller about the scars left by the Atlantic slave-trade, by a master of the genre.

Oooh this was a wild ride! It is brutal yet emotional, heartbreaking yet humorous, exciting yet still with well developed characters. Really, I don’t think I can find a complaint for Esperance! Without giving too much away (since much of the fun is because the reader is trying to figure out the situation right alongside the detectives), there’s a series of highly unsettling murders of innocent folks (this is not a spoiler- how can babies be anything but innocent, after all?) that are somehow connected, but so little is adding up.

We follow a detective, and an initially unknown entity (as in, we don’t know what her role is) and wait to see how their paths will converge. Both characters are flawed, yet both are also sympathetic (and Abi in particular is so witty, and her newfound pal will definitely crack you up). Add to it, it is absolutely impossible to not want to know whodunit, as well as the why. I also loved the historical part, and when it is all tied together, it’s just done so well. Especially because it makes you think, a lot, and is so next-level morally gray that Clarke Griffin is suing for copyright infringement.

Bottom Line: Exciting, dark, entertaining, heartfelt, and thought provoking to the core, I could not put Esperance down until I knew everything.

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Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan
Published by Pantheon on May 13, 2025
Pages: 320
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.” —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

Awake in the Floating City is a quiet novel, of a quiet apocalypse, if you will. As in, it isn’t a cataclysmic event, rather a slow flooding that is taking down one city at a time, whittling away coasts one by one. San Francisco happens to be among them, and it happens to be where main character Bo lives. Chooses to live, in fact, because she is lucky enough to have extended family who offer her safer accommodations and a way to get to them. But because Bo’s mother is missing, presumed drowned in the floods, Bo just cannot seem to take her relatives up on their generous offer.

So she takes on a new job, as she’s known around town as a good caregiver to the super-elderly (that is a thing in this time): caring for 130-year old Mia as she is increasingly losing the ability to live on her own. And this, truly, is where the meat of the story lies: in lives lived, and how we leave our mark on the world around us. As Bo attempts to create an artistic rendering of Mia’s life as a final birthday gift, she’s left to think about the passage of time, the transience of it all. It’s very beautiful, thought provoking, and somehow both celebratory and melancholy.

The art part was kind of lost on me- I am not a good visualizer, nor am I very versed in art- but I bet it would be phenomenally powerful onscreen. Or, for those better able to visualize, though the finished product definitely made me tear up! The overall story is light on plot but heavy with character development and relationships.

Bottom Line: Quiet, emotional, and lovely- and artsy if you’re into that.

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Feeders by Matt Serafini
Published by Gallery Books on May 20, 2025
Pages: 416
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

A would-be influencer's dreams of online fame spiral into nightmare territory when she encounters a mysterious and dangerous social media platform.

When a video depicting the brutal murder of a former classmate leaks online, Kylie Bennington’s curiosity gets the better of her, leading to the discovery of an off-the-grid social media app called MonoLife. As it turns out, she must adhere to certain cryptic and frightening rules in MonoLife's user agreement—for this is a platform that primarily rewards the worst in human behavior. Now Kylie’s going to find out just how far she’s willing to go on her unyielding rise to the top—even if that means coming face-to-face with the ruthless forces behind the app.

Well, this was a weird one! I think for most of the book, it was weird in a messed up but entertaining way, but the end was just…. weird in a confusing way? The gist is that our MC Kylie is a wannabe influencer who stumbles upon a weird app where she finds some success. But this app isn’t just looking pretty for the likes, this has far more sinister means of engagement. But Kylie is absolutely a psychopath and this doesn’t bother her. She’s also inexplicably obsessed with Katy Perry, which is her only discernable personality trait other than “terrible person”.  Anyway, it’s still pretty compelling and unputdownable, because even though it’s awful, you can absolutely appreciate the commentary on social media. Plus, I was really eager to figure out all the things about how this app got to be what it was.

But I felt like instead of answers, I got some kind of off-the-rails fever dream by the end? The story delved a bit into almost-paranormal territory, and lost some of its allure. That, and I didn’t really get my much-desired answers. I mean- don’t get me wrong, it did answer some things, but definitely not enough, considering how intrigued I was at the start.

Bottom Line:  Awesomely depraved start, lukewarm finish, but absolutely bonkers regardless.

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Out of Air by Rachel Reiss
Published by Wednesday Books on May 13, 2025
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

The deeper you go, the darker you fall.

Phoebe “Phibs” Ray is never more at home than when she’s underwater. On a dive six months ago, she and her four closest friends discovered a handful of ancient gold coins, rocketing them into social media fame. Now, their final summer together after high school, they’re taking one last trip to a distant Australian island to do what they love most – scuba dive.

While diving a local reef, Phibs discovers a spectacular underwater sea cave, rumored to be a lost cave with a buried treasure. But when Phibs and her best friend Gabe surface from the cave, they notice that they're undergoing strange changes. Oozing gashes that don’t heal. Haunting whispers in their heads... Something has latched onto them, lurking beneath their skin, transforming them from the inside out.

When treasure hunters arrive, desperate to find the location of the cave and hold Phibs’ group for ransom, she’ll do anything to keep her friends safe. In the process she learns that, of all the dreadful creatures of the sea, she might be the most terrifying of them all.

I am so drawn to stories that take place in and around water, and Out of Air was no different. While I have no experience with diving, I do understand so much of what our narrator Phoebe feels when she is in the water, in her element, really. I loved the “found family” aspect of the story, especially since Phoebe has experienced way too much loss in her young life. But one of her group (or maybe more, I am not spoiling!) is hiding some pretty big stuff.

The setting is superb- present day, an island off the coast of Australia, I don’t think it’s real (Google doesn’t seem to think so) but it seems fabulous. In flashbacks, we are transported to the group’s home turf of the Florida Keys, which is equally great. The atmosphere of the whole book was on point, both the sea vibes and the mysterious ones. I also enjoyed the potential romance between Phoebe and Gabe, as well as just the friendship dynamics.

The ending left me a little underwhelmed, though it was tied up, so I can live with it. It took a turn that I perhaps didn’t quite expect, but that is probably a personal preference. I also enjoyed the adventure/survival aspects of the story as well, especially when the stakes got really high.

Bottom Line: Overall, it was an exciting story with compelling characters, and one I’d recommend.

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Circular Motion by Alex Foster
Published by Grove Press on May 13, 2025
Pages: 368
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

A brilliantly imagined literary debut of love, despair, and two people’s search for belonging in a world literally spinning out of control

The acceleration of Earth’s spin begins gradually. At first, days are just a few seconds shorter than normal. Awareness of the mysterious phenomenon hasn’t reached Tanner, a young man preoccupied with dreams of escaping his tiny Alaskan hometown. One night, desperate to make his mark on the world, he runs away. He lands an unlikely job at CWC, the global operator of a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth at 30,000 feet, revolutionizing global transportation. Now goods and people can travel anywhere in little more than an hour—you can visit Paris for an evening or order sushi from Japan. But a wave of social unrest presents challenges for CWC just as Tanner settles into his new lifestyle and develops surprising feelings for one of his colleagues.

That unrest sweeps up Winnie. A high school outcast in an era of street protests, wild parties, and online savagery, Winnie falls in with a group of teen activists who blame CWC for the planet’s acceleration. As days on Earth quicken to twenty-three hours, then twenty, the sun rising and setting ever faster, causing violent storms and political meltdowns, Tanner and Winnie’s stories spiral closer together. They meet cynical executives toiling to forestall the crises they created and religious zealots for whom the apocalypse can’t come soon enough, lobbyists and lovers all coping in their own ways, and Victor Bickle—the self-aggrandizing TV scientist whose shameful secret will bind Tanner and Winnie’s fates . . . if they can uncover it before the Earth spins so fast that even gravity might lose its grip.

Three-hour days. Two-hour days . . .

A propulsive exploration of capitalism, technology, and our place within a system that dwarfs us, Circular Motion is one of the most ingenious debut novels of our time.

This was such a cool premise, even if I didn’t understand the science (if there is indeed a science) behind it. Travel is faster than ever, thanks to… well, again, science I don’t actually understand. I pride myself in escaping ever taking physics, and I stand by that decision. Anyway, imagine being able to travel anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes. Pretty great, right? Well, nothing is without its cost, and the cost of this is that Earth’s rotation is slowly but surely rapidly evolving and completely out of whack. Days go from just a few minutes shorter than we’re used to to barely being days at all.

We meet Tanner, just as the days are minutely shrinking. He’s from Isolation, Alaska, population several, and he is (understandably) over it. His dad is an extra special breed of ass, and while he doesn’t seem as eager to leave his mom and sister, he knows he has to go while he can. He finds himself working for one of the leading Fast Circular Travel™ companies, so we get to see some of the inside stuff at play. We also follow along with Winnie, who is relegated to living with an aunt and uncle, trying to figure out where she belongs in the world. I must admit, while I think Tanner is meant to be the main-main character, I definitely felt more connected with Winnie.

I loved the ideas in the story, loved the interconnections of the characters (and how I thought I knew things, but it turned out I did not- love when that happens!), and absolutely loved wondering what was going to become of Earth. I think it felt a little longer than necessary, and some bits probably could have been whittled down in the middle, but other than that, I really enjoyed the characters and the premise, and wasn’t even bothered much by not understanding the science behind the whole thing (and coming from me, that is pretty solid praise).

Bottom Line: Cool concept, physics be damned.

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Wandering Wild by Lynette Noni
Published by Blackstone Publishing on May 20, 2025
Pages: 304
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

She hates him. He needs her. Can they survive when all they have is each other?

Zander Rune was the darling of Hollywood until he fell from glory and was labelled a problematic bad boy. His public image needs fixing—fast—or he’ll lose the role of a lifetime, and all his dreams with it.

Charlie Hart is a regular teenage girl who despises everything Zander represents. But thanks to her scheming best friend and an ill-timed social media competition, Charlie finds herself pretending to be Zander’s biggest fan on a four-day reality TV adventure led by renowned survivalist Rykon Hawke.

When their trip goes horribly wrong, Charlie and Zander are left stranded in the wilderness. No Rykon, no film crew, no rescue. The only way they’ll survive is if they trust each other. But in order to do so, both will have to let go of the ghosts of their pasts, and just maybe find themselves—and one another—in the process.

Okay, this was such a fun survival romance! I have enjoyed the author’s fantasy books, but apparently she can do contemporary too, because this one was very entertaining! Now, maybe I am biased because I do love a survival story, but I did not want to put the book down. Both main characters (Zander and Charlie) were incredibly likable and relatable, even Zander who is a famous movie star.

Now, as you can imagine, some of the elements of the story may be a wee bit far-fetched, but since the characters acknowledge it, it feels more plausible- like okay, they get that this is bananas too, you know? That is to say, I was able to suspend any disbelief and enjoy the story. It is equal parts survival and action and character development and emotions. A great balance, really. And, a great balance of said emotions- I laughed, I cried, I gasped, I swooned. I also really loved the friendships that were portrayed in the book, too. It ended in a way that left me satisfied, and it was overall just a solid win!

Bottom Line: Survival makes the heart grow fonder?

Have you read any of these books? Plan to? Let us chat about them!