Book Review: Destination Funeral by Paige Harbison

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Destination Funeral
Author: Paige Harbison
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication date: July 21, 2026
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

A fresh take on Groundhog Day with a dash of Practical Magic meets the magical escapism of One Italian Summer in this heartfelt and hilarious novel following a friend group so damaged that only a funeral could bring them back together.

When Babe—the complicated, magnetic matriarch of their teenage summers—dies, four estranged friends return to sleepy Mercy Island, a storm-swept stretch of coastal Georgia, summoned by the reading of her will.

Didion arrives at the timeworn pink house to find the friends she never thought she’d see again—along with the tensions, attractions, and unfinished business that once bound them together and broke them apart.

What should be a brief weekend of small talk quickly unravels when they wake up and discover…it’s Saturday. Again. And again. And again.

Trapped in a time loop with no end and no instructions, they’re forced to confront the betrayals, breakups, and buried truths that shattered them all those years ago. Because maybe, just maybe, an endless weekend is exactly what they all need to save their own lives.

Sometimes a book about chosen family hits just right… and Destination Funeral does just that. In this story about friends, estrangement, resentment, and reconciliation, a time loop forces four former friends to face the issues that drove them apart while gathered for a funeral at the place where they spent their teen-aged summers.

When Babe dies, she leaves instructions for her funeral to be held at her sprawling beachside house on Mercy Island, Georgia. Her daughters Didion and Sammie arrive, having not seen or spoken to one another in years. Didion, the older sister, resents having to be the responsible one, watching helplessly as free-spirit Sammie makes one bad choice after another. Their long-time best friend Matt arrives with his four-year-old daughter, and rounding out the foursome of adults is Austin, Didion’s teen love and source of her greatest heartbreaks.

As they arrive that Friday, they learn that Babe has left the house to all four of them, on the condition that they spend the weekend there, without phones or laptops, until the funeral on Sunday. Reluctantly, they agree, spend a tension-filled Saturday coping with being in one another’s presence again after so long, and grit their teeth until they can get over with it and return to their regular lives. But when they wake up the next morning, they soon realize that it’s Saturday… again. And so their Groundhog Day time loop begins, with a seemingly endless stream of Saturdays to relive.

But why? And how? Has Babe somehow made this happen? And if so, what will it take to break out of the loop?

As the four are forced to spend time together, old wounds and secrets resurface… and as the day repeats and repeats, the ice between them begins to thaw. Didion is our point-of-view character, and she’s a fascinating person to watch the world with. Her complicated feelings toward Babe and Sammie stem back to her teens, and her role as the responsible person, the one who has to make sure everyone else is okay, has carried forward through her adult year as a driven, successful chef — who can never relax and think about what she herself needs. Even more complicated is her reunion with Austin, someone whom she once loved whole-heartedly and never got over — but also never truly understood. Now, in the time loop, Didion finally has days on end where she can do nothing but be present, forcing her to reflect, understand where she herself added to the messier moments, and the ways in which she let other people down too.

The storytelling focuses on the now — and the endless Saturdays — with “then” chapters mixed in to show the early years on the island, and how the sisters and their friends experienced life with Babe, including moments of utter bliss (Halloween in July!) as well as the loneliness of having a fun mother who couldn’t or wouldn’t actually take care of them.

The relationships are all beautifully drawn. It takes the full length of the book to learn key facts about Babe and understand some of her actions. Likewise, Didion’s realizations and reconnections with the others come gradually — we’re by her side as she slowly starts to unravel her more harmful thought patterns and understand why and how she’s allowed herself to shut out the people who once formed the center of her life. I loved seeing the way the time loop serves as a catalyst for the emotional healing that these four people so desperately need.

It’s not all dramatic and serious — Destination Funeral has lovely moments of humor and fun, and it’s a wonderful homage to the glory of a summer spent in the sunshine, playing on a beach, eating good food, and enjoying a slower way of life.

The author’s previous book, The Other Side of Now, was one of my surprise favorites from 2025, and I’m delighted that her newest book hits so many high marks for me as well. Destination Funeral is a beautifully told story about the importance of holding onto the special people in our lives — whether family or friends — even when it’s hard or outside stress gets in the way. It’s also a wonderful immersive experience for summer, and definitely deserves a place in any bookish beach bag!

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

29Jul2026

Audiobook Review: Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Romantic Hero
Author: Kirsty Greenwood
Narrator: Amy James-Kelly & Jared Zeus
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: June 16, 2026
Print length: 368 pages
Audio length: 8 hours 24 minutes
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Review copy via NetGalley; audiobook via Audible
Rating:

A heartbroken romance novelist is forced to address her writer’s block when the villainous cowboy character from her books shows up in the real world, desperately in need of his own Happily Ever After. . . from the bestselling author of GMA book club pick The Love of My Afterlife.

Gertie Bickerstaff writes happily-ever-afters for a living. . . . Or she did, until her own love life fell apart. Now her ex is thriving, her deadline is looming, and she can’t write a single word.

The last thing Gertie needs is more drama—like waking up to find a confused and rugged cowboy on her sofa. And not just any cowboy, but River Oakley, the villain from her unfinished novel. Somehow very real . . . and very shirtless.

River wants to go home. Gertie wants her life back. So they strike a deal: he’ll use his cunning ways to help her win back her ex, she’ll finish the novel, and, surely, he’ll return to whatever world he rode in from.

But as River Oakley proves to be so much more than just the bad guy, Gertie has to choose: the ending she thought she wanted . . . or the plot twist she never saw coming.

Another winning rom-com from the very talented Kirsty Greenwood! After loving The Love of My Afterlife (a GMA Book Club pick from 2024), I was more than ready to dive into her 2026 release, Romantic Hero.

The setup is delicious: Gertie is the bestselling author of the Bedlam Creek romance series, set in a small town in Texas (where London-based Gertie has never actually been). Gertie’s always felt so connected to her characters that it felt as if they were speaking to her… but as the deadline looms for the final book in the series (cue the long-awaited proposal scene!), they’ve gone silent. She suffers from horrendous writer’s block and can’t write a word.

Gertie’s long-term boyfriend, supposedly the love of her life, dumped her four weeks earlier (claiming that he’s been feeling “emotionally apathetic” and in need of a “break”, not a break-up), and she’s been an utter ball of misery ever since. When Gertie’s eccentric neighbor decides that what Gertie needs is help from the universe, she’s desperate enough to go along with a rooftop manifestation ceremony. To no avail, alas…

… or did it work after all? Because the next day, Gertie wakes to find a supremely gorgeous and very shirtless cowboy on her couch, who is utterly befuddled as to how he got there. The last thing he remembers is falling asleep under a tree out in the meadow of his ranch — and oh, his name is River Oakley. As in, the villain of Gertie’s series, the antagonist constantly thwarting her heroine’s quest to reclaim her family ranch and find true love. But how could he possibly be THAT River Oakley?

Still, there’s no denying that he exactly fits the description of the man Gertie has written about. Awkward! After much back and forth, they accept the unbelievable yet seemingly undeniable fact that he is the man from her books, and that he very much needs to get back to his own world. The two come up with a hypothesis: Gertie somehow summoned River during her manifestation ceremony, and he’s here to help her get her ex back, since reuniting with Henry was her secret plea to the universe.

And yet… as Gertie and River spend time together, they click in ways neither expected. Gertie is forced to admit that while the River in her books is a scoundrel, the flesh-and-blood (and very hot) version of him has hidden depths and sensitivity… and also comes to realize that Henry is not the ideal man she’d thought he was.

Romantic Hero is such a fun, entertaining read (and listen)! Gertie and River are both great characters, and their chemistry sparkles. The story is funny, with plenty of banter that’s both silly and sexy — and yet, there are emotional moments that hit as well, as Gertie is forced to come to terms with her sister’s death years earlier and to realize that she threw herself into the relationship with Henry rather than actually deal with her terrible grief.

The story moves in unexpected directions, as we learn just why and how River showed up and what this means for Gertie’s writing career. While it seems hopeless that Gertie and River — people from two totally separate worlds — could ever have a future together, the author manages to find a conclusion that both works from a story perspective and feels utterly satisfying.

Audiobook narrators Amy James-Kelly and Jared Zeus bring the characters to glorious life. His Texas drawl as River is delightful, and Amy James-Kelly handles the overall narration as well as Gertie’s voice with a lovely sense of animation.

Overall, the story itself as well as the audiobook listening experience are both highly recommended. What a great bit of happy summer reading!

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

26Jul2026

Book Review: Not With a Bang by Temi Oh

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Not With a Bang
Author: Temi Oh
Publisher: Saga Press
Publication date: July 14, 2026
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Station Eleven meets Leave the World Behind in this family drama at the end of the world about a crumbling household’s attempts to find their way back to each other amidst a cataclysmic event.

“Our father had imagined the end of the world so often that, for a while, he believed that he summoned it.”

The Minton family is in crisis. After losing his job, Marcus begins stockpiling cans, running evacuation drills and digging a doomsday bunker in the back garden. At the same time, his daughters are unravelling in their own ways – Chantale is being haunted by dreams of disaster, and Briar’s obsession with a missing classmate draws her deeper into the seductive world of a UFO cult. Meanwhile, no one is aware of the diagnosis their mother has been trying to keep hidden.

When, on the morning of the eldest daughter’s wedding, an extinction-level event tears the world apart, the Mintons must fight their way through a devastated city—back to safety, survival, and each other.

What is expected to be a once-in-a-lifetime, awe-inducing astronomical event — a planet, or possibly moon or asteroid, expected to pass by Earth so closely as to be visible — turns cataclysmic in Not With a Bang. And yet, despite the catastrophe that turns life on Earth into “before” and “after”, the story here is very much about a family — what brings them together and what tears them apart.

Marcus and Kim Minton have four daughters. Their oldest, Aaliyah, is about to be married at age 22. Briar, 17, and Tanice, 15, are both in high school, and their little sister Chantal is only 7. After losing his job as a police officer years earlier, Marcus has become an obsessed prepper, building a bunker in the backyard, stocking it with food and supplies to sustain his family for at least a year, and drilling the girls on emergency evacuations through middle-of-the-night alarms.

And yet, when the real thing comes along, none of the planning seems to matter. On the day of Aaliyah’s wedding, the family is scattered across London in various stages of getting ready. In the aftermath of destruction and chaos, alone and in groups, they must find their way back home, avoiding threats from their changed surroundings as well as from other people.

The book has an interesting storytelling approach. Chapters focus on relaying events through different family members’ experiences, and yet, Briar’s voice narrates throughout. As she explains in the opening chapter:

Almost everything I didn’t live through, I would learn later from witness reports and testimonies. I have examined everything in its entirety, more than once. Some things I can only imagine. Like my father’s expression the morning it happened.

We never forget that it’s Briar telling us the story, even as we move through third-person accounts focused on other people — so chapters may open with lines such as:

Tanice could tell it was about to happen before I did. She’d seen it more times than she cared to count.

And while Briar will share her insights during this chapter and others, the focus is on the person whose chapter it is; in this case, what Tanice did and felt and observed during these moments. We’re led to understand that all of this represents the family members’ memories, as shared with Briar at some future point.

The actual event (or the Event, as many refer to it) is terrifying and leaves utter ruin in its wake. Some pieces of society collapse immediately, while a few emergency services and official organizations seem to have been prepared in advance. The explanations related to what exactly has happened and what it represents come slowly over the course of the book; I didn’t feel that it all made sense, but I was willing to accept it for the sake of the overall story.

Not With a Bang is oddly compelling. From chapter to chapter and from character to character, I was always eager to see what might be next. A sense of danger looms over every scene. From Briar’s narration, we can rest assured that the family will survive somehow, even in the moments when this seems most questionable. After all, how could she be telling us what they all went through if she hadn’t had the opportunity in the “after” to find out?

This guarantee of the family’s safety does diminish the stakes to an extent, although that’s not to say that they come through the Event unscathed. Clearly, life will never be the same. Seeing how they all reach one another, and what they have to do to survive and overcome deadly obstacles, is what propels the reading experience forward and keeps the reader hooked until the end.

With a potential extinction-level event as the catalyst, you might expect more of a science fiction focus — but at its heart, Not With a Bang is the story of a family. Their struggles before, during, and after the Event form the narrative arc, but their interwoven dynamics — the hurts, resentments, and anger built up over all the preceding years — provide the central elements of the story. The parents’ fracturing marriage, the girls’ sense of abandonment as related to their mother’s earlier career choices, the selfish, misguided, or desperate actions of the older daughters — these are the pivot points as the narrative unfolds. The Event is the catalyst for the family members to confront their complicated relationships, come to certain realizations, and redefine themselves as they move forward.

Briar’s storyline is often frustrating, as she becomes entangled with an alien-worshipping cult who believe that the Event is a harbinger of the aliens’ arrival and turn to near-death experiences to try to make contact. While her involvement with the group starts as a way to discover the truth about a classmate’s disappearance, it becomes more complicated as she finds a sense of acceptance and belonging, and begins to question whether their beliefs could be real. She makes some truly terrible decisions, allowing the cult to pull her away from the relative safety of her family and their bunker, and puts herself in mortal danger in a way that doesn’t feel necessary.

Overall, I found Not With a Bang interesting and absorbing, but perhaps not entirely successful. Using a cataclysmic event to tell the story of a family is an inventive approach, and yet, I wished for just a bit more focus on the events themselves — digressions into the oldest daughter’s teen tennis career, for example, take up more space that seemed needed and pull focus from the family’s struggles to survive.

I’m glad to have read Not With a Bang, despite the elements that dragged the story down for me. The narrative style and voice is fresh and certainly different from other apocalyptic books that I’ve read. The story may not satisfy fans of hard science fiction, but readers looking for a character-focused story with a world-changing disaster as a catalyst will find plenty to appreciate and savor.

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

25Jul2026

Reading & viewing: Wrapping up the Heartstopper series

Posted in Book Reviews, Pop Culture by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

It’s the end of an era!

Specifically, the Heartstopper era… during which Alice Oseman’s webtoon-turned-graphic-novels entranced readers with a swoony love story about two sweet boys who find one another, overcome bullying and deal with mental health crises, find a glorious friend group, and find a way to stay together, even while hearing (constantly) that teen relationships don’t last.

Nick and Charlie first meet early in their high school years. Nick, age 14, is one of the few out gay boys at school, and has been bullied for it. Nick, 16, is (presumably) straight and a star rugby player. The two connect instantly as friends, but there’s something else simmering beneath the surface right from the start. As the story progresses, Nick has an awakening about his own sexuality, Charlie deals with a severe eating disorder, and both learn to embrace their identities, stand proud, and allow their love to flourish.

In the 6th and final volume, as we readers deal with reaching the end, so too do Charlie and Nick have to deal with an ending of sorts — not of their relationship, but of their school years together. Nick is in his final year of high school, with plans to attend university out of town. He feels lost and conflicted — who is he without Charlie? Charlie has grown from a scared boy into a determined young man. He’s still himself, but has developed over the years into someone who sees that he can help others in a way that he himself wasn’t helped, launching a campaign to stop bullying and to establish a school club for gay kids to gather and feel safe.

As they navigate the ups and downs of their final school year together, Nick and Charlie confront serious issues, individually and together, but never lose their amazing connection. They also remain deeply committed to their friend group, who as individuals all add fresh elements to the story and as a group show the beauty of having a supportive, loving community.

Heartstopper volume 6 provides a lovely, cheery, moving conclusion to a wonderful graphic novel series. I’ll miss these characters!

From 2022 to 2024, Netflix aired three seasons of a wonderful adaptation of Heartstopper, with spot-on casting and a production vibe that perfectly captures the feeling (and feelings) of the books. This month, a final wrap-up movie was release, Heartstopper Forever:

I loved the three seasons of the seasons, and approached the movie this week with eagerness and nervousness.

Overall, I was happy with it! The movie takes a more depressing turn than the book does, which may be why I felt it started dragging a bit in the middle. Also, while the series episodes give breathing room to the friend group, so that we we really have time to get to know all the characters and their story arcs, the movie has so much ground to cover with Nick and Charlie that the friends mainly serve as background or support, without substantial storylines of their own.

That said, I did love seeing Nick and Charlie again, especially seeing how far they’ve come and how they’ve grown and matured together as their relationship has deepened. I will admit that seeing these characters being very sexually active can be a bit startling, considering that we’ve been watching them grow up since age 14 or thereabouts! Still, they are absolutely lovely together, and it’s beautiful to see them sorting out how to support one another, how to deal with their separate challenges and crises, and how to manage to be whole people as individuals, beyond their identity as “Nick and Charlie”.

Heartstopper Forever is essential viewing for anyone who’s watched the previous three seasons. For anyone who hasn’t, start at season 1 — I’ll bet you won’t want to stop!

This week, Netflix also dropped a short (35-minutes) behind the scenes special, Heartstopper: Ending on a Hi.

What a heartwarming way to end the Heartstopper experience! It’s lovely to hear the cast, crew, and fans talk about what the show has meant to them. If you’ve watched the show and the movie, definitely check this out too!

Now that I’ve reached the end, I’m tempted to start all over again from the beginning — with both the books and the Netflix series. I think it would be amazing to go back and see the characters once again at the very start of their journeys, knowing how much they grow and change as their stories move forward.

Heartstopper has been a wonderful experience. I encourage everyone to check it out!

23Jul2026

Quick Take: Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words by John McWhorter

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words
Author: John McWhorter
Publisher: Avery
Publication date: April 1, 2025
Length: 240 pages
Genre: Non-fiction / linguistics
Source: Purchased
Rating:

With his trademark humor and flair, bestselling linguist John McWhorter busts the myths and shares the history of the most controversial language topic of our times: pronouns

The nature of language is to shift and evolve—but every so often, a new usage creates a whole lot of consternation. These days, pronouns are throwing curveballs, and it matters, because pronoun habits die hard. If you need a refresher from eighth-grade English: Pronouns are short, used endlessly, and serve to point and direct, to orient us as to what is meant about who. Him, not her. Me, not you. Pronouns get a heavy workout, and as such, they become part of our hardwiring. To mess with our pronouns is to mess with us.

But many of today’s hot-button controversies are nonsense. The singular they has been with us since the 1400s and appears in Shakespeare’s works. In fact, many of the supposedly iron-clad rules of grammar are up for debate (Billy and me went to the store is perfectly logical!), and with tasty trivia, unexpected twists, and the weird quirks of early and contemporary English, John McWhorter guides readers on a journey of how our whole collection of these little words emerged and has changed over time.

Pronoun Trouble is sure to delight word nerds everywhere! In this savory little linguistics book, author John McWhorter takes us through the history of I, you, we, he, she, they — and more! — investigating word origins and the twisty paths these pronouns have followed to get us to modern day usage.

Along the way, he proves wrong certain assumptions about usage, explains what is and isn’t logical, and how the use of singular “they” has evolved from non-specific to particular.

Does this sound like dry reading? It’s anything but.

The author makes linguistics entertaining, and even funny. For example, in a section devoted to the evolution and usage of “you guys” as a plural for you:

In cases like this, it is useful to consider that there is an alternate explanation.

I respectfully submit one: in you guys, guys no longer means guys.

Or another example of changing meanings:

For Chaucer and Shakespeare, going to referred to getting somewhere physically; both would have been thrown by someone sitting at a table and saying “I’m going to try to eat all of this in ten minutes”:” and then fressing down the food but not getting up to go anywhere.

On explaining why created pronouns don’t seem to catch on, he explores how nouns can shift and vary over time without a huge amount of resistance, because they are less foundational to daily speech, whereas:

Pronouns, in contrast, are at the very foundation of human expression at all times. Full words are the windshield wipers and the headlights — things you turn on now and then. He and she are the accelerator and the brake pedal — what you are working down below, all the time, without thinking.

Certain bits started to drag somewhat when the examples became a little too technical for my level of interest, but overall, I found this book clever, informative, and highly engaging. A terrific gift for the word lovers in your life!

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

22Jul2026

Book Review: We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1) by Richard Osman

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: We Solve Murders
Series: We Solve Murders, #1
Author: Richard Osman
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Publication date: September 17, 2024
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Mystery
Source: Library
Rating:

A brand new mystery. An iconic new detective duo. And a thrilling new murder to solve . . .

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts . . .

As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?

Solving murders. It’s a family business.

After devouring every book in the Thursday Murder Club series, how could I possibly resist checking out Richard Osman’s newest series starter?

We Solve Murders retains the sense of hijinks and emphasis on quirky characters that make the Thursday Murder Club books such incredible fun. Here, the main characters are Amy Wheeler, a tough-as-nails bodyguard who excels at protecting the people under her charge and hitting the people who threaten them, and Steve Wheeler, her widowed father-in-law who seems to want nothing more than a quiet life in his little British village — with the weekly pub quiz thrown in for excitement.

Amy’s current job is protecting Rosie D’Antonio, the world’s #2 bestselling mystery writer, a woman of indeterminate age with audacious style and more money than she knows what to do with. Rosie got on the bad side of a Russian oligarch by putting him in one of her books, and now her life is at risk, so she and Amy are tucked away on Rosie’s private island, where they should be safe.

Unfortunately, bizarre deaths seem to be occurring amongst the clients of Amy’s employer, and the pattern of these murders is uncomfortably close to Amy’s recent locations. As more threats loom, Amy and Rosie go on the run, and Amy convinces Steve to join them as they race around the globe, outwitting the bad guys and staying one step ahead of the seemingly endless parade of people trying to kill them.

As with Richard Osman’s other books, the characters themselves are even more entertaining than the heist/chase/murder/mystery plot elements. Amy and Steve’s dynamic is especially wonderful, and Rosie is a delicious mix of sassy and bawdy, always up for an adventure and not at all shy about her own success. A delightful cast of supporting characters rounds out the story — including an arrogant action hero actor, a charming airport security agent, Steve’s local mechanic friend, and many more.

The mystery in We Solve Murders is convoluted and a bit mad, and goes in all sorts of strange and unexpected directions. International flights on private jets, as seen through Steve’s experiences, are a hoot, and it’s quite fun to follow the trio from destination to destination in search of clues and safety.

We Solve Murders feels like a great start to a series, and I’m looking forward to seeing what hot water Amy, Steve, and Rosie find themselves in next.

Book #2, We Chase Shadows, will be released in September 2026 — and you can bet that I’ll be reading it just as soon as I can!

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

21Jul2026

Book Review: Habits of the Sea by Shea Ernshaw

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Habits of the Sea
Author: Shea Ernshaw
Publisher: Atria
Publication date: July 7, 2026
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Magical realism
Source: Review copy courtesy of Atria
Rating:

The second adult novel from New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw, in which a woman rediscovers the mythical island she stumbled upon as a child—and the man she once met who apparently hasn’t aged—and must choose between the life she’s built and a love that defies the laws of time and nature.

The night Clay Lockhart’s wife dies, a violent storm tears their home—and the eight hectares of land beneath it—away from the Scottish coast, sending it adrift into the Atlantic. Thirty years later, twelve-year-old Ellie Mills discovers the fabled floating island off the coast of Nova Scotia and finds Clay still living in the weatherworn farmhouse perched on its highest hill.

When the island vanishes overnight, Ellie is left questioning whether it ever existed at all. But decades later, the island resurfaces—and Ellie, now in her thirties, returns, determined to uncover the truth. What she finds is even stranger: Clay hasn’t aged a single day.

Faced with the impossible, Ellie learns that some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved—and that a life shaped by wonder may hold more promise than one bound by certainty.

With her signature atmospheric, lyrical prose, Shea Ernshaw offers us an original work of folklore with a masterful modern touch. A haunting tale, Habits of the Sea spans centuries and coastlines, journeys through time and memory, and redefines the very meaning of love itself.

Habits of the Sea is a lushly written, beautifully emotional story about a love powerful enough to cross the boundaries of time, and even more so, about what it means to choose love over and over again.

This lovely book opens with a devastating scene. On a stormy night in 1952, on an island in the
Outer Hebrides of Scotland, a grief-stricken man buries his wife and stillborn babies. By the next morning, the storm is gone — and so is the piece of land where his house and farm once stood. There’s no wreckage to be found; it’s as if the land itself has broken off and disappeared.

Over the years, the legend of Saltwell Island spreads — how Clay Lockhart’s grief was so intense that it split the ground apart. Fishermen and sailors would share the story of spotting:

… the newly formed island with its white house perched atop a stony outcropping, drifting out into the farthest reaches of the deep gray Atlantic.

Many years later, in 2007, 12-year-old Ellie Mills is living with her grandmother in a small coastal village in Nova Scotia when she hears a strange noise during a storm. Running outside, she sees what she assumes to be a shipwreck stuck against the rocks along their harbor, and without much thought, takes their small boat out to investigate. But it’s not a shipwreck — it’s an island, drifted up on the rocks. And there, Ellie encounters Clay Lockhart, a man who appears to be in his 30s. She spends just a few hours on the island, warming up after sailing through the rainstorm, but when she returns home, a full week has passed.

Ellie’s life is forever changed. No one believes her tale of a floating island, and she’s mocked by her friends and sent for psychiatric care by the adults who believe she’s created a fantasy as an explanation for a traumatic event. And over the years that follow, Ellie manages to convince herself that her journey to Saltwell Island wasn’t real.

But almost twenty years later, having left Nova Scotia and her troubled past behind, Ellie hears that the fabled island has been spotted by a passing cruise ship way off in the Atlantic. Needing to settle her own mind once and for all, she flies off to the last known location… and once again, finds Saltwell Island — and Clay Lockhart, who hasn’t aged a day.

The heart and soul of Habits of the Sea revolves around Ellie’s connection to Clay, and to the life and love they gradually discover together. The longer Ellie finds herself on Saltwell, the more she’s able to see how so much of her adult life was an attempt to shelter herself from risk, to protect herself from the possibility that perhaps she did once experience something extraordinary. To Clay, it’s only been a year since an odd little girl first washed up on his island; clearly, Saltwell Island has become separated not only from the land it was once attached to, but from time itself.

A thread of passion and purpose runs through every moment of Ellie’s time with Clay. Even before love develops, there’s a connection between them, and Ellie feels grounded in this strange place more than she’s every been anywhere else.

I sleep now each night as if I’ve never really slept a day before this. A restfulness that feels childlike, something from a storybook: She slept so deeply that even the wolves could not wake her. And when she finally rose with the sun she was restored to who she was always meant to be. It’s the kind of sleep that I won’t be able to describe once I’m back in the real world. There are no words for it. Unless you’ve felt it, unless you’ve been pulled into your dreams like sinking below a waterline.

Life on the island is simple and wonderful. Ellie and Clay tend the gardens, chickens, and sheep. They live peacefully, relying on the bounty of the sea and the island for sustenance. The island drifts where the sea takes it; there’s no navigation or power to control its voyaging. Some seas are calm, some full of danger. There are warmer days as they drift south and pull mangos from trees along the shores, and bitterly cold days where they rely on the cellar full of preserved foods to get by, until they drift again to someplace more nurturing of growing things once again.

As time passes, Ellie is faced with unbearable choices. She knows that time passes differently on the island — how long has she been gone from the “real” world? What does this mean for her grandmother and the almost-fiancé she left behind? If she can find a way to get back to a mainland somehow, should she? But how can she leave Clay and everything he’s come to mean to her? In a deeply visceral way, Ellie is forced to reckon with understanding who she is and where she truly belongs, and must grapple with a choice about sacrifice and destiny before committing to a future — because she knows that if she leaves the island, she’ll likely never have the chance to find it — and Clay — again.

Maybe we’re not meant to know what’s right or wrong. To know which path to choose. Which life. Maybe the no-knowing is the point. Because maybe we’re meant to be a little reckless.

Habits of the Sea has a Brigadoon-ish feel at times — Saltwell Island is a mystical, fairy tale-like place that magically appears for a brief time before disappearing off into the unknown. How can someone leave the place they feel truly alive, knowing they may be leaving it forever? I was reminded in certain ways of Outlander as well, where a character displaced from her own time must decide in which world she truly belongs.

The sense of building emotional entanglement is gorgeously written. We readers can feel how complicated Ellie’s inner life has become — the conflicted sense of loyalty, the desire, the questions about belonging, obligation, and fulfillment. The pull between Ellie and Clay feels real and true; their connection leaps off the page.

He breathes and the air seems to change — subtly, like a sudden drop in barometric pressure, atoms dividing, seconds splitting. The line between before and after unspools. Right from wrong. Him from me. It all feels perilous. And unnamable.

In the latter part of the book, the storyline seems to veer from magical realism — the unworldliness, a place out of time, almost like a visit to a faerie kingdom — toward speculative fiction, as the plot moves in a direction that surprised me, yet makes complete sense in the grand scheme of the overall narrative. Without going into detail, while I didn’t expect this, I ended up feeling that the book as a whole operates on a grand scale that absolutely brings every bit of the characters’ arcs to a point of perfect resolution.

Habits of the Sea is a book that will be haunting my thoughts and dreams for a long time to come. With gorgeous writing, a plot that wraps a reader in layers of a reality that’s magical yet intensely tangible, and characters who we come to care about deeply, this is a book filled with wonder and beauty. Once I started, I never wanted to look away.

Don’t miss this incredible reading experience.

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

14Jul2026

Book Review: The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Calamity Club
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Publication date: May 5, 2026
Length: 656 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.

Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?

The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer—an epic testament to resilience, friendship, and the fierce, funny women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious—the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

In Kathryn Stockett’s new — BIG — novel, it’s 1933 in Oxford, Mississippi, and even the wealthiest of families are seeing their homes and livelihoods slip away, while those who’ve never had much now have even less. Foreclosures and job losses are everywhere. The roads are lined with people who can’t pay their rents or taxes and have been forced out of their homes. In this setting, we meet remarkable characters who’ve had their own shares of misfortunes and yet remain determined to find a way through.

Meg is a very smart 11-year-old whose single mother went out to the store two years earlier and never returned. Since then, Meg has lived at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum for Girls (know simply as the Orphan), a dismal place filled with babies, toddlers, and big girls. Families looking to adopt are invited to attend View Days, where the little ones get snapped up instantly, but the big girls tend to find new homes only if they can prove useful. The Orphan is run by volunteer society ladies, headed by chairwoman Garnett Pittman, who rules the roost with an iron fist and who has an intense, particular dislike for Meg.

Meg is one of two point-of-view characters in The Calamity Club; the other is Birdie Calhoun, an unmarried 24-year-old from the Delta who comes to Oxford to beg her sister Frances — who married wealthy Rory Tartt without even inviting her family to the wedding — for the money needed to pay the back taxes on their mother and grandmother’s home. Frances lives in style at the grand Tartt mansion and tries hard to hide her poor background, and is none too pleased by Birdie’s arrival. However, as Birdie soon learns, even the Tartts are not immune to economic realities, and she soon finds herself with more than one family to save from utter ruin.

Meg and Birdie meet at the Orphan, where Frances volunteers and offers Birdie’s bookkeeping services in an effort to impress Garnett. Birdie is horrified to discover that Meg has been pulled out of school due to a perceived act of disrespect, and spends her days sitting in a moldy room with no distractions or social interactions. As the two spend time together, Birdie becomes determined to improve Meg’s living conditions, which becomes yet another uphill struggle as she also attempts to find money for her family and save Frances’s lovely, somewhat oblivious mother-in-law from losing everything she holds dear.

When Charlie — a woman with important connections to others in the story — shows up asking Birdie for help, she’s able to offer help herself around the Tartt household… and she also has a plan to pull all of them out of financial ruin. If you read any reviews or synopses of The Calamity Club, you’ll likely come across the details of this plan, but just in case…

SPOILERS AHEAD

Charlie’s plan is to open a “dime-a-dance” club at the Tartt estate, sure to attracting the hundreds of college boys arriving for a new school year in Oxford. Mrs. Tartt agrees to the plan, with nostalgia for the days when she and her late husband hosted glamorous dance parties on their back lawn. What Mrs. Tartt doesn’t realize (and what Birdie and Charlie struggle to hide from her) is that the dance club will be a front for a very different sort of club — one that’s likely to bring in much more money than dances ever could.

When you opened a brothel in a town with thirteen churches, surely it was natural to find peril in every move.

With Birdie handling the business end, Charlies brings in old acquaintances to offer the talent for the club, and with the help of a local woman who’s determined to attend medical school even when no one seems to want to admit female students, they’re up and running. Not without complications or very great risks, of course, but as the money starts piling up, there’s hope in sight for all of these women for the first time in years.

The Calamity Club, at well over 600 pages, is a big doorstopper of a book, which may lead potential readers to hesitate about picking it up. I’m so glad I didn’t! Despite the length, it never lags, although it takes a good long while — more than half the book! — to get to the “club” part of the plot. I hadn’t read any detailed synopses prior to starting the book, and had no idea what was coming, and for me, this was just perfect. I enjoyed watching the story unfold without expectations, and found something to savor in each new turn of the plot.

The Calamity Club deals with many serious and disturbing topics, including eugenics and the forced sterilization of those considered “feebleminded” — which, according to the morality movement of the time, included unmarried woman having babies out of wedlock. The author provides historical context in her notes at the end, a chilling reminder of just how awful a society that dictates standards of women’s behavior can be.

The treatment of the orphans is very disturbing as well, and while Meg perseveres with gritty determination, it’s easy to see how these discarded girls have no one on their side and very little chance of ever finding a safe landing spot. Add to this the bleak landscape of the Depression, and the world of The Calamity Club can seem intensely dire — and yet, this is a book with joy and laughter as well.

It was stuffy in here and hot and prostitutes kept getting in my way, but it was nice to have the company while I cooked everybody breakfast.

Birdie is a wonderful character, and her narration offers a smart, sharp take on the world around her and the people in it. She’s remarkably kind and supportive, with a deeply ingrained instinct to protect the people she cares for — even her spoiled sister, who seems mainly unworthy of such devotion. The assorted women of the “club” each have their own backstory and reasons for being where they are, and I loved Virginia (the aspiring doctor) and Mrs. Tartt, among others.

The Calamity Club pulled me in right from the start, and I really only have minor quibbles. First, there’s the character of Garnett Pittman, who as the villain of the piece, veers on a cartoonish sort of bad-guy status. She’s so evil that her actions lose the element of surprise — we expect that she’ll do the worst thing in any given situation.

My additional quibbles are plot-related. While the ending wraps up all storylines, a few threads are left dangling or allowed to drift off. I would have liked more certainty about certain characters’ probable futures. More significantly, I expected something much more dire to unfold before the end — some sort of cataclysmic event or disaster or tragedy — and that just doesn’t happen. As I said, there’s a conclusion that ties it all together, but the big climactic moment I was expecting, based on a sense of looming peril, didn’t actually arrive.

Overall though, I truly enjoyed The Calamity Club. The setup — the time and place and historical context — is so well conveyed that it’s immediately compelling. The characters grab hold and make a reader care; I felt invested in their lives and needed to keep turning the pages to see what was in store for each of them.

Don’t be put off by the page count! While reading The Calamity Club does take a time commitment, it’s easy to get involved and feel totally immersed. With writing that offers snappy dialogue, compelling situations, and a plot that zips along, the 600+ pages fly by. The Calamity Club is a must-read for summer 2026.

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

3Jul2026

For your reading pleasure: Summer’s One Must Read Book 2026 (courtesy of Carol @ Reading Ladies)

Posted in Blogging, Book Reviews, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I’m away on a mini-vacation and had planned to mostly be on a blogging break… but couldn’t resist popping back in to share a special summer treat.

Carol @ Reading Ladies Book Club organizes a wonderful collaboration post each year, bringing together a terrific mix of book bloggers to share their picks for essential summer reading.

I’d delighted to participate… and I’m delighted to reblog and share the post! Please do visit Carol’s original post, and check out all the contributors too.

So many great choices to add to our summer reading lists!

Summer’s One Must Read Book 2026 [Book Reviews] #Collaboration #MustReadBook #SummerReading #BookX #booksky #BookBlogger #booklist #readingrecommendations

2Jul2026

Audiobook Review: Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages by Jenny Colgan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages
Author: Jenny Colgan
Narrator: Eilidh Beaton
Publisher: Avon
Publication date: June 16, 2026
Print length: 352 pages
Audio length: 11 hours, 44 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased (audiobook); E-book ARC from the publisher/NetGalley
Rating:

EVERYONE IS SEARCHING FOR THEIR PERFECT HOUSE. BUT HOME IS REALLY WHERE THE HEART IS…

Janey Carter has a lot to be grateful for—a home by the sea in the Scottish isles, a job that she loves, two kids who have successfully launched, and a network of kind and supportive friends. But since her husband left, her confidence has taken a nosedive. And then, out of the blue, her thirty-year-old daughter Essie announces she’s moving back home. Janey loves Essie dearly, but she was never the easiest to live with, and Janie has been enjoying the empty nest life.

Yes, Essie Carter has just lost her job, can’t afford her rent in Edinburgh, and her boyfriend isn’t ready to commit. She hates to admit defeat and isn’t wild about moving back to the remote island community where she was raised. But maybe the sea air will clear her head?

No sooner is Essie back under her mother’s roof than an unusual opportunity pops up: the shabby and unloved Seaside Cottages next door come up for sale. Janey has some experience renovating the island’s famous stone fisherman’s cottages, Essie needs something to do, and they could both use a little Air B&B income to warm their pockets. Mother and daughter slowly bond over the shared challenge, which delivers some much-needed revelations for Essie, and offers Janey a surprise second chance at love as well.

If a house can be brought back to life, along with the community around it, then so can a heart …

Jenny Colgan’s books can be counted on to provide a lovely escape to a charming small town, humorous challenges as well as interesting relationship dynamics, and simply gorgeous landscapes — which may induce hallucinations of chucking it all and running away to a sweet little Scottish village on the northern coast!

In Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages, the heart of the story is a mother-daughter relationship that just as prickly now as when Essie was in her teens. Janey is a mid-50s audiologist who loves her job, loves her community, loves the tiny cottage she’s made her home, and loves her adult children… although a bit of distance is best. Essie, around 30, fled their small town of Carso as soon as she could, preferring a life in the business world, with posh social events and gorgeous clothes (and a gorgeous financier boyfriend) in Edinburgh. Essie has never gotten over her parents’ divorce, for which she mainly blames Janey… even though it was her father who cheated and ultimately left for another woman.

Janey loves Essie, but Essie treats her with scorn and can’t really be bothered answering most of her texts. But as the story opens, Essie learns that her banking firm is relocating to Switzerland and she’s being let go. Sure, she had a well-paying job in finance, but she didn’t see this coming and has no savings. With housing in Edinburgh either impossible to find or exorbitantly priced, she can’t afford to stay — so full of dread and misery, she heads back to Carso, to her mom’s tiny cottage, to regroup and (hopefully) get back to a job and “real life” in Edinburgh as soon as humanly possible.

Meanwhile, Janey is slowly coming out of her shell socially. She has very good friends and is well liked and appreciated within the community, but she hasn’t dared dip her toes back into the dating pool since the divorce. She feels old and unattractive, and the dating apps aren’t exactly enticing. When she encounters a very nice man at a pub quiz, she’s interested in someone for the first time, and thanks to a pregnant dog in distress (and a very ungainly batch of puppies), Janey has a strangely quirky reason to interact with this man. Who wouldn’t want to bond over pupppies?

While Janey is delightful, Essie is hard to warm to. She returns to Carso full of despair and feeling hopeless, which she expresses through disdain of the of the town and absolute nastiness toward her mother. She loosens up eventually, once she gets involved in assisting a local with rehabbing the cottages next door — finding purpose and a potential romance along the way — but meanwhile, she can be a total pill.

There’s not exactly a ton of plot in Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages, but that’s okay. The setting, the tone, the characters — these are the reasons we pick up Jenny Colgan novels, after all! I enjoyed seeing the interwoven relationships within the community, and very much enjoyed Janey and her day to day life, as well as the slow dawning of a new romance for her.

I struggled with the mother-daughter relationship, not that it might not be realistic, but just that Essie’s behavior makes her so unlikeable for much of the story. I recognize that she lashes out at her mother because of her own traumas, but it’s just unpleasant to have to see, and made me less interested in following her through the chapters about her adjustment and transformation. (Then again, demographic-wise, I’m much more aligned with Janey than Essie. Perhaps a reader in Essie’s age range might feel more sympathetic toward her?)

It’s interesting to see how the author weaves economic challenges into the story. People in Carso can’t find housing, because outsiders keep scooping up properties and converting them to vacation rentals for people from the cities, who swoop in, don’t shop at or patronize local businesses, and drive rents sky-high for the people who actually live there. Essie experiences the same in Edinburgh, where she’s constantly exposed to the have/have-not divide and lives in a state of envy over all the gorgeous flats she’ll never be able to afford. While the overarching story is very much centered on the lives of the characters, much of the plot is informed by the financial challenges they experience and the interest in property — for both locals and the wealthy investors who see money rather than people when they look at Carso.

A note on the audiobook: Eilidh Beaton is wonderful. She narrates many of Jenny Colgan’s books, and has a talent for voicing an array of characters, adding just the right humorous touches, and evoking the feel of the place and its people.

Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages is a sweet, light story about mothers and daughters, and about life in a changing community whose people are anxiously trying to hold onto the qualities that make their world so special. The storyline overall is gentle and entertaining. Don’t pick up this book expecting much in the way of action — but if you enjoy interesting characters, beautiful settings, and small town goings-on (and puppies!), this makes a lovely option for good escapist reading.

Note: Amazon and Goodreads indicate that this book is part of the Mure series. It’s not. There’s really no connection at all, other than a location that’s in the same general vicinity. This book does include characters from Close Knit and The Summer Skies, but only in passing — there’s no actual impact on the story here, so no need to read these novels in any particular order.

Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.