Looks like some bitch over-requested for March. It’s me, I’m some bitch, whoops. Anyway, these are all from March 3rd and 10th, so they’re all available now- and trust, you want at least a few, right?

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum
The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White
Burn the Water by Billy Ray
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall
Lies We Tell About the Stars by Susie Nadler
Westward Women by Alice Martin
Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo

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This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum
Published by Flatiron Books on March 10, 2026
Pages: 368
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.

The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny will stop at nothing to find them, even as the police zero in on him as their prime suspect.

Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other.

Oooh, another win incoming! I do not even know what to say about TSMSYL, because it is a mystery and I don’t want to spoil things, but I also want you to read it really badly. A conundrum, you see. Okay here’s the gist: Benny and Joy have been besties for over a decade, and they host a podcast together (the titular This Story Might Save Your Life), which is basically a comedic take on survival stories. I’d listen, tbh. Anyway, it’s become a hit, and Joy’s husband Xander has inked some kind of big deal for them, and they’re basically about to be famous-famous (they’re already pretty well known, but not to this level). But all that screeches to a halt when Joy and Xander go missing.

The story weaves between past (via Joy’s chapters of their in-process dual memoir) and present (via Benny’s narration). Joy recounts the beginning of their friendship, and the trials and tribulations they’ve experienced along the way. She tells us her own personal story, and how she got to where they are. Benny is desperate, and will go to just about any lengths to find Joy, who it is very clear that he loves (legit from like, the first chapters, this is not a spoiler). The story was absolutely gorgeous, I fell in love with these characters from the start. They are so well developed, so easy to root for, and I put in my notes at one point “if this doesn’t end well, we riot”. Friends, we have a new favorite alert, so just go read the thing.

Bottom Line: I already bought a copy because I want everyone I know to read it. (It’s a BOTM, if you are interested!)

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The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White
Published by Del Rey on March 10, 2026
Pages: 368
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

An obsession with a beautiful serial killer entangles a vampire hunter’s daughter in an immortal sapphic romance in this enthralling gothic fantasy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy Undying.

Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing—doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to studying vampires—up until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that plague Anneke every night.

Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest in forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch her mysterious serial killer. Because her father isn’t the only inexplicably dead body. There’s a trail of victims across Europe and Anneke is certain they’re all connected.

But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps some crucial evidence to infuriatingly coy letters addressed only to Anneke, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola. Devil. The obsession is mutual, and all the more dangerous for it.

The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the less sense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn’t a madman, after all. Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer . . . and much harder to destroy. Because as Anneke unearths more of Diavola’s tragic past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body.

A heart that beats for Anneke alone.

I quite liked The Fox and the Devil! It definitely gives mystery vibes, and I loved the setting (1890s Europe, where we got to meander around several different cities looking for murderers and/or devils). The atmosphere was certainly on point, and I thought Anneke was a solid character- not quite a favorite, but definitely strong enough to root for. I also really liked her circle of friends, who really ended up like found family. That, and her relationship with her mother, was probably the best part for me. I also did enjoy learning about Diavola and her history, too.

Anneke is basically a forensic detective, and she finds herself being consulted for a lot of really messed up crimes. She is also on the hunt for Diavola, who was present at the scene of her father’s murder and who haunts Anneke’s dreams still. This is how she ends up with her investigation squad, traveling around for clues. Sometimes the murders are committed by humans and the group can solve them, but often times they are not, and they are leads to finding Diavola and any other messy entities.

“We’re so terrible to each other already. Why do we need devils among us, too?”

I mean, right? While I liked the story, and even Anneke’s fascination (bordering on obsession, really) with Diavola, it did feel a bit draggy in the middle. Not enough to ruin the story or anything, just something worth noting. I will say, I liked how the story unfurled at the end, so that definitely increased my enjoyment.

Bottom Line: Excellent atmosphere and a great cast of characters, this was another solid delivery from Kiersten White.

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Burn the Water by Billy Ray
Published by Scholastic Press on March 3, 2026
Pages: 368
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

From award-winning screenwriter of The Hunger Games Billy Ray comes an immersive and breathtaking enemies-to-lovers epic romance about war, loyalty, and the power that love has to save... or destroy.

The year is 2425 and London is underwater.

Three hundred years ago, rising oceans drowned a vast majority of the English Isle. London is now a jungle of dead skyscrapers and submerged streets.

Fighting over the scraps of a world none can remember, two Houses -- the Crowns and the Rogues -- have been at war for three centuries.

Rafe is the Rogue army's fiercest captain. Jule is the Crown army's deadliest soldier. They are vicious and merciless, courageous and beloved by their Houses. They are sworn enemies.

And then they fall in love.

It's a death sentence. But their love is all-consuming. As Rafe and Jule try to keep each other alive in their war-torn world, they are forced to confront new, horrifying threats to their loved ones while the hatred between their Houses only grows.

When mysterious foreigners appear on their shores, the warring factions may destroy each other, unless their two most ruthless soldiers can become beacons of peace and possibility, showing their people a different way, and save them all.

From the award-winning screenwriter of The Hunger Games comes a visceral and breathless forbidden romance about sacrifice, the neverending cycle of violence, and fiery, all-powerful love.

In my head, every time I see the author’s name, I hum “Achy, Breaky Heart” because I am a child. Sorry to this man. Also, I think it is incredibly cool that sir was a writer on The Hunger Games movie. So it balances out, really.

Anyway, Burn the Water is a very entertaining book, and (unsurprisingly) would make a badass show. Not a movie, I think it would need the time to be really fleshed out. And, it would address my biggest (and really, only) issue with the book, which is the insta-love. We’ll get to that. My point is, there is a lot of action and the world-building is very cool, and I imagine it would translate wonderfully on screen. So add this to my endless list of “why can’t I please see this on my screen?” books, yeah?

So here’s the gist: Rafe and Jule are soldiers for two rival factions living in 2425 London. Water has taken over most of the world, and they have no idea if anything exists outside their immediate world. Their groups have been fighting for centuries, and show no signs of letting up. So that is all interesting, right? Now, the folks in London suddenly see something that appears to have come from outside, so you’d think they’d want to bury the hatchet and join forces, right? No, they legit only know fighting, so they keep fighting. This was honestly believable, because humans are messy. Plus, like I said, they’ve been warring for centuries, so peace isn’t exactly a concept that would jump out as an option, right?

Well. Jule and Rafe see each other and fall in insta-love. That is the part of the story I cannot wrap my head around. I mean- attraction, sure! Eventually love? Absolutely! But it happens wayy too fast. They lock eyes and are suddenly willing to lay down their swords for each other. (I am exaggerating, but not by much.) The thing is, they were both so devoted to their respective armies, leaders, even, that it seemed like it would take a bit longer for them to fall in love enough to betray their positions. Still, the story itself was entertaining, and I enjoyed it. The atmosphere was definitely on point, I enjoyed the side characters, and was engaged throughout.  The ending felt a bit rushed, but overall I was okay with it.

Bottom Line:  This would make an epic show, could someone get on that please? Maybe give the romance a little more time to percolate too, yeah? Thanks.

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Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall
Published by Tor Books on March 10, 2026
Pages: 464
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Gideon the Ninth meets Moby Dick in USA Today bestselling author Alexis Hall's science fiction debut, Hell's Heart!

Earth is a ruin, and the scattered remnants of humanity scavenge what they can from the stars under the watchful auspices of a grab-bag of collectives, corporations, and churches which are all that remains of what we once called society. Having long exhausted any conventional sources of energy, life in the solar system is now sustained by a volatile, hallucinogenic substance called spermaceti, which is harvested from the brains of vast cetacean-like Leviathans that swim the atmospheric currents of Jupiter.

Finding herself with no money and little to occupy her groundside, the narrator (“I”) takes a commission aboard the hunter-barque Pequod as it sets out in pursuit of precious spermaceti. Once aboard, however, she finds herself pulled inexorably into the orbit of the barque’s captain, a charismatic but fanatically driven woman who the narrator names only as “A”. As the Pequod plunges ever deeper into the turbulent, monster-haunted atmosphere of the gas giant, the narrator begins to lose herself in the eerie word of Leviathan-hunting and the captain’s increasingly insistent delusions; the only thing that might keep her grounded is the bond she develops with Q, a woman from the wreck of Old Earth whose skin is marked with holographic light and who remembers things otherwise lost.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

I cannot think of a sadder DNF, and I will tell you why: One, I love this cover so much. Like, so much. It’s one of my favorites of the year, for sure. And two, it sounded like it would be right up my alley- I love a space adventure, after all! But it did not really work for me, and I didn’t think I’d be doing it any favors by finishing just to finish, so. It actually started out really promising! We have a narrator (known as “I”) who is down on her luck and joins this adventure crew to hunt… Idk, space whales? Look, it doesn’t really matter. She meets Q, who seems interesting, and I was enjoying the memoir-style of the book.

But here’s the thing. It turns out that I didn’t actually care if they caught any space whales? Like that seemed like the whole plot of the book (I made it to about 27%) and wow I do not care if they catch whales. And I guess spot some kind of special whales for the captain. Like, that is the outcome, right? Either they find some, or they don’t. Plus, you know the narrator lives, she’s writing this memoir after the fact. Obviously some other characters could not make it, but I didn’t totally care about them either. They all felt pretty vapid (including I) and the crew of the ship didn’t have many defining characteristics to differentiate them, so I was zoning out on them, too.

Bottom Line: Life is too short for me to read 350 more pages of Space-Whaling.

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Lies We Tell About the Stars by Susie Nadler
Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers on March 3, 2026
Pages: 304
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

A gorgeous debut about friendship, grief, and new beginnings set in near-future San Francisco in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and on the cusp of the first human mission to Mars.

Celeste Muldoon is alone when the Big One finally hits, because, for the first time ever, her best friend stood her up after school. Nicky and Celeste share a birthday, matching tattoos, an obsession with the upcoming Mars mission, and pretty much everything else. So why did he ghost her on the day she needed him most?

As the quake’s death toll rises and days pass, Nicky and Celeste’s parents fear the worst. But Celeste doesn’t buy it. He couldn’t be dead. Nicky’d spent their senior year selling essays to rich kids and was about to get caught. He’d told Celeste about his plan to vanish, to reinvent himself and escape the disaster he’d created. The quake would be perfect cover.

But she can’t convince anyone that he could still be alive. Only Meo, a mysterious stranger who was somehow mixed up with Nicky, seems to believe, but Celeste has every reason to distrust him—even if her heart races whenever Meo shows up.

When Celeste finds Nicky’s notebook, it sends her and Meo on a quest across the broken city, up the coast through towns sheltering quake refugees, and eventually all the way to Florida, where the mission to Mars is about to lift off.

Okay, when the synopsis talked about “near future” and “space missions” and “the BIG earthquake”, I kind of thought this story was going to be a little more… survival adjacent? And it isn’t, which is fine! Only, if you thought that too, unthink it, because it doesn’t honestly have a lot to do with those things. Like, yes, Nicky went missing during the earthquake, and Celeste needs to work through her anxiety about said earthquake. And the whole space angle is just “stuff Celeste and Nicky both enjoy” and actually has not a ton to do with anything. This is not necessarily bad! Just something to be aware of.

The crux of the story is really Celeste coming of age, and her trying to figure out what her life will look like, both with and without Nicky. Celeste really doesn’t know who she is, and losing Nicky feels like a piece of herself, part of her identity even, is missing. She is desperate to make her family and friends (and Nicky’s family, too) believe that he is still out there, because she feels like he is, but they kind of feel like she’s just being dramatic and prolonging the grieving process. Obviously, she’s a kid, and she makes some pretty messy choices. She also has some questionable thought processes, but again, she’s a kid, and that growth is part of the story, which I found very lovely. There’s a romance, which for me was neither good or bad- just sort of there. Didn’t mind it, didn’t think it added a ton either. I did enjoy the overall themes of the story, and think a lot of young folks would relate to the concepts: loss, grief, not feeling heard, and having to discover yourself and what you want outside of the wishes of others.

Bottom Line:  A sweet story about loss and overcoming major catastrophe to find out who you really are deep down.

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Westward Women by Alice Martin
Published by St. Martin's Press on March 10, 2026
Pages: 304
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

It starts with an itch.
In homes across the country, women ages eighteen to thirty-five begin to slow down.
Tired. Blank. Restless.
Drawn to the Pacific Ocean like it’s calling them home. They abandon their lives—jobs, families, their very selves. And once they reach the West, they vanish forever.
At the center of the story are three young women caught in the pull of something unstoppable.
Aimee follows the trail of her missing best friend to a man called the Piper—known for leading infected women West.
Teenie, afflicted and unraveling, clings to a single memory as she looks out the window of the Piper’s van.
And Eve, a former journalist, is chasing the story that might just consume her.
Each on the edge of transformation. Drawn toward the unknown. In search of a way forward.

Westward Women is certainly an interesting and unique story! We follow several women who are living in an alt-1970s America in which many women have been inflicted with some kind of virus that makes them itch and head to the west coast. I have no idea how the author came up with such a thing, but consider me intrigued! The women also, as the infliction progresses, often lose sense of their memories, move at a sluggish pace, and sometimes engage in harmful and violent behaviors toward themselves and others. Some women also recover, but doctors don’t know how or why (and because it only affects women, they do not care, let’s be real).

Some of the women we follow definitely have the disease and know it and are headed west. Some are headed west for other reasons- to locate missing friends, to track down the next big news story about a rumored man who is busing women westward. You know this guy is no good from the start- what man is driving busloads of vulnerable women around the country out of the kindness of his own heart, not using his own name? So, that part felt a bit predictable at least. The rest of it was very compelling though! I loved how different the women were, how they came from all sorts of backgrounds, but ultimately ended up in similar situations. There’s definitely a lot of great commentary woven throughout this book, including some that is very relevant to our current timeline. And I was wholly invested on each of the women’s stories, and very curious to see what the outcome would be for each of them.

Bottom Line: A road-tip through 1970s America, and what it was like to be a woman- then, as well as now.

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Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo
Published by Tordotcom on March 10, 2026
Pages: 160
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Hache Pueyo returns after But Not Too Bold with her new novella Cabaret in Flames, where Interview with the Vampire meets Certain Dark Things in an alternate-Brazil where brutal flesh-hungering Guls stalk the night streets and manipulate the government from their glittering cabaret

Guls can be brutal. Few know this better than Ariadne, who lost half her body to their appetites, but their brutality is a predictable constant amid Brazil’s political chaos. Now, she treats them in the specialized clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov—the mentor who rescued her as a child, trained her in medicine, built her prostheses, and disappeared without a trace.

Ariadne’s routine is disturbed when Quaint knocks on her door: a charming, tattooed gul claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend. Quaint suspects foul play in Erik’s disappearance, and they soon discover Erik sought asylum at Cabaré, an infamous club in Rio de Janeiro frequented by the gul elite.

Together, Ariadne and Quaint will unravel the conspiracy behind their friend’s disappearance, navigate the labyrinthine world of Ariadne’s memories, and discover what Erik means to them—and what they are starting to mean to each other.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

I wasn’t even going to add Cabaret in Flames to this batch of reviews, but you know what? Once I started, I legit could not put it down, so it made its way here, yay! It’s more of a novella length, so I will keep it brief. I was sucked in from the start, in part because of the setting (Brazil is on my must-must visit list), and in part because of the atmosphere- it was on point from the first pages. But quickly, the whole thing sucked me in, especially the characters. Ariadne is a fabulous main character, and her story is equally compelling. I also adored Quaint. From the moment he came into the story, I knew he’d be a favorite. I was also incredibly intrigued by the lore of the guls. Honestly, my only qualm with this is (and guys, I never say this), I would have liked even more! It was excellent, from start to finish, and if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to deep dive down a rabbit hole of gul folklore.

Bottom Line: Characters, atmosphere, plot, world… it was all on point!

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