This review is based on an ARC received from the publisher at the ALA Annual Conference.

When Violet begins studying at an elite British girls school, she quickly bonds with Robin. Robin’s not one of the popular girls exactly, but to Violet, she and her two friends Alex and Grace seem impossibly cool. The art teacher Annabel invites Violet to join the other three girls in her private lessons on great women of art and literature, particularly vengeful women, in a tradition that may reach back to the founder of the school, who was accused of witchcraft. Then the year takes a darker turn; Violet is sexually assaulted, and the body of a student who has been missing since the previous year is found. The girls turn first to magic to avenge those who have hurt them, and soon more than one person is dead. The disturbing tale of the “cruel and rotten bliss” of Violet and Robin’s friendship is perfect for fans of The Girls by Emma Cline and Marlena by Julie Buntin.

Overall: A

The Furies will be available Oct. 8

This review was originally written for and is reposted with permission from Shelf-Awareness.com.

The year is 1793 and Herbert Powyss, gentleman farmer and amateur botanist, has hit upon an idea for an experiment to establish him as a true scientist: for seven years, a volunteer will live in complete isolation in a set of apartments two stories below his manor. This man will be given the same food that Powyss is served, with books and writing material to record his experience. Upon the completion of the experiment, he will receive £50 a year for the rest of his life. The only person who answers Powyss's advertisement is John Warlow, a laborer with a wife and children to support.
From a passing reference in a historical source about an actual experiment of this kind, Alix Nathan (The Flight of Sarah Battle) has constructed a fable about power. Warlow is trapped in an experiment for which he was never well suited, being semi-literate and unable to express himself in the journal, but which only he was desperate enough to accept. The absurdity of expecting him to entertain himself with Robinson Crusoe and a chamber organ is emphasized by every passage written in his point of view, effectively conveyed in halting, stunted language. Meanwhile, Powyss struggles with his unusual position of responsibility for Warlow's wife and family. The imbalance between these two and the effect it has on both could have been a book on its own, but Nathan puts it into further context as the ideas of the Enlightenment and the revolution in France reach the servants at the manor. The result turns The Warlow Experiment into a study of a microcosm in which an imbalance of power has devastating effects on both the person above and below, but infinitely worse for the latter.
Discover: An engrossing morality tale about the devastating consequences of intellectual inquiry divorced from compassion.

This review was originally written for and is reproduced with permission from shelf-awareness.com. It ran in the 8/20/19 Shelf Awareness Readers issue.
Something went deeply wrong while Ella was working as a nanny for Lonnie and James. Debut novelist Madeline Stevens opens Devotion six months after Ella's employment ends, when James drunkenly appears at the small apartment she shares with a roommate. She wonders if he realizes how many of the books on the shelves were taken from his house. Starting from that prologue, a sense of menace grabs the reader. When the first chapter jumps back to Ella's hiring and how working for the wealthy couple will change her life of scraping for food and rent, it is clear that lives will ultimately be ruined.
Far from her family and without close friends, Ella becomes increasingly obsessed with Lonnie, who is about her own age and casually blurs the lines between a professional relationship and friendship. The deceptively casual way in which Ella recounts reading Lonnie's journal or taking her things builds the sense of foreboding. Maybe Ella wants to be Lonnie, or maybe she wants to be with her, but alongside the envy and desire lurk clues that she could just as easily destroy the glittering world into which she has been allowed. The horrific culmination is difficult to read, but nothing less would be appropriate for this dark, absorbing novel. Although the protagonists are in their 20s instead of their teen or tween years, this is one for fans of such friendship-gone-wrong stories as Marlena by Julie Buntin and The Girls by Emma Cline.
Discover: This first novel is a gripping literary thriller in which affection and resentment blend into a destructive obsession

This book is based on an advance readers copy received from the publisher.

The basic premise of The Nobody People is X-Men. It took me a good hundred and fifty pages into the book to realize that the title is a possible reference to the X-Men, but that that was the premise was clear from the start. There is a small but increasing part of the population with super powers. There is a school founded by one of these people for them. There is fear around the discovery of their existence and an effort to criminalize them.

We're introduced to the story as a young man with destructive abilities is radicalized into using them for terrorist attacks, and a freelance reporter finds out that his daughter is more than just oddly prescient. The founder of a school for Resonants, as they call themselves, believes that discovery is imminent and uses the reporter to "come out" to the world. Through multiple perspectives, most of them students/former students/faculty of the school, we follow the aftermath as Resonants fight for recognition and their civil rights.

One review that I read (in one of the professional journals, I believe - it's not included with the material in the ARC and those are the other places I'd have read reviews) said that the difference between this book and similar comic book themes is the intersectional way The Nobody People examines how Resonant status or not interacts with race, gender, and sexuality. I can't speak to whether or not that differentiates it from X-Men, since I only have experience with the movies (hello, Ian McKellen and James McAvoy) and for all I know the comics could be considering that thoroughly. I will say that The Nobody People succeeds admirably in that regard; while Resonance serves as a parallel to other minority statuses for which people have been persecuted, it doesn't replace them and it's clear that those with multiple lesser privileged identities are at greater risk.

This is a chilling new take on classic science fiction themes.

Overall: A

The Nobody People will be available September 3