fantasy

I Am Not Jessica Chen, Ann Liang (Harper Collins 978-1-335-52312-9, $19.99, 320pp, hc) January 2025.

As Ann Liang’s latest novel opens, 17-year-old Jenna Chen is having the worst day ever. After striving and struggling for years at prestigious Havenwood Academy, yet never quite doing well enough to be one of the best, she has been denied acceptance to Harvard University. Sitting at a celebratory surprise dinner for her perfect cousin ...Read More

Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey (Orbit 978-0-316-50502-4, $18.99, 320pp, tp) March 2025.

Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey’s new supernatu­ral medieval fantasy, is a gorgeously written visit to 12th century England, a time of murderous lords, preoccupied kings and the life-and-death struggles of a small village called Cosham in the fiefdom of Pennick. This was the place and time of narrator Willem Turling, who died from illness at the ...Read More

The Legacy of Arniston House, T.L. Huchu (Tor 978-1-250-88309-4, $29.99, 400pp, hc) November 2024. Cover by Leo Nickolls.

When I sat down the week before Christ­mas to review The Legacy of Arniston House, the latest in T.L. Huchu’s Ed­inburgh Nights series, I had all four of his books stacked up beside my computer. I began reading the series just after Thanksgiving and quickly blew through the adventures of ...Read More

Zodiac Rising, Katie Zhao (Random House 978-0-593-64641-0, $19.99, 416pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Deb JJ Lee.

Author Katie Zhao opens her young adult fantasy thriller Zodiac Rising with a brief prologue ex­plaining the history behind 12 Chinese warriors, based on the zodiac calendar, who were sum­moned centuries ago in response to a royal plea to battle monsters known as Wrathlings. Their lineage brought peace to the land until ...Read More

Sorcery and Small Magics, Maiga Doocy (Orbit 978-0-316-57675-8, $19.99, 400pp, tp) October 2024.

When I settled in to read Maiga Doocy’s debut, Sorcery and Small Miracles, I expected an ‘‘en­emies to lovers’’ romance with magic between the unserious but sweet protagonist, Leovander ‘‘Leo’’ Loveage, and his classmate, the brooding, often surly, Sebastian Grimm. Both of them are students at the Fount, learning to be sorcerers for reasons that ...Read More

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, H.G. Par­ry (Redhook 978-0-316-38390-5, $19.99, 464pp, tp) October 2024. Cover by Lisa Marie Pompilio.

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry ostensibly opens in a secret col­lege magically located between Cambridge and Oxford (aka Camford, “the Cambridge-Oxford University of Magical Scholarship”). But the foreshadowing for a far larger story is set in the first pages, when protagonist Clover Hill ...Read More

The Lies We Conjure, Sarah Henning (Tor Teen 978-1-259-84106-3, $19.99, 400pp, hc) September 2024.

As The Lies We Conjure opens, sisters Ruby and Wren are finishing up a summer stint working at a local Renaissance Fair when they get an offer that impetuous Wren cannot pass up. A customer offers them each $2,000 to attend a family dinner at the local landmark mansion and pretend to be her grandchildren. ...Read More

Castle of the Cursed, Romina Garber (Wednesday Books 978-1-250-86389-8, $21.00, 304pp, hc) July 2024.

The cover of Romina Garber’s Castle of the Cursed includes the line “The House is Always Hungry,” and readers should consider that a fair comment on the story within. As soon as recently orphaned Estela arrives at what she has only recently learned is her family’s “ancestral Spanish castle,” the house plays a huge part ...Read More

The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble 978-1-250-33397-1, $29.88, 384pp, hc) July 2024.

Author Sarah Beth Durst notes in her Acknowl­edgements to The Spellshop that writing her novel was sparked by hot chocolate and raspberry jam and a desire for “a book that felt like a warm hug.” (I get that sentiment because boy howdy, 2024 has been some kind of tough for a lot of us.) Plenty of pastries ...Read More

Our Wicked Histories, Amy Goldsmith (Dela­corte Press 978-0-583-70395-3, $19.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024. Cover by Marcela Bolivar.

The heroine of Amy Goldsmith’s Our Wicked Histories is Meg, a scholarship student at an exclusive private art school. In the opening pages she is still reeling from an episode a few months earlier when, at a school dance, she made a stupid drunken mistake that obliterated her social life (she has ...Read More