Tag: Riverhead

Review: Seek Immediate Shelter

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Title: Seek Immediate Shelter: A Novel
Author: Vincent Yu
Pages: 304
Release: May 5, 2026

A short story collection (masquerading as a novel) with an incredible hook—a text alert about an incoming missile sends a community into a frenzy. This cataclysmic pressure valve opens and the delicate psyches of the residents we follow are laid bare. Yu plays with expectations in an amusing way, as you never know where in each story the missile alert will blare or how the character will react to it.

Each of the subtly interconnected stories has an emotional hook that sucks you in, exploring familiar themes of familial strife, parent-child discord, falling in love, falling out of love, despair, hope, addiction, and the cracks within us that can sometimes turn into fissures.

Each character’s portrait is tenderly rendered and moving, as Yu dives deep into their headspace under extraordinary circumstances. And while the collection never reaches the heights that such a stellar premise might promise, it still gels well and is a worthwhile read.

★★★½

My thanks to the public library for providing a free copy in exchange for nothing at all☺

Review: The End of Everything

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Title: The End of Everything
Author: M. John Harrison
Pages: 208
Release: October 13, 2026

Surreal. Ethereal. Eerie. Off-kilter. Awash in extreme, casual violence. Difficult to parse with little plot or story to cling to. At times, like if Jeff VanderMeer wrote My Favorite Martian. At others, so slipstream as to be ungraspable. Its strangeness is a feature, not a bug, and while initially intriguing, its opacity becomes overwhelming by the end. 

I can certainly see how this would benefit from another readthrough, which likely boosted it among Booker Prize judges – but I’ll leave the rereads to them. Once was enough for me.

★★¾

My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Ply

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Title: Ply: A Novel
Author: Hernan Diaz
Pages: 464
Release: September 29, 2026

Having not read his prior work, but being aware of his growing literary stature, I was pleasantly surprised by the accessibility of Diaz’s writing. His lyrical prose expertly conjures a dilapidated but vibrant, thrumming city that persists amidst its deterioration. Evocative descriptions include a river that “doesn’t run but oozes…like molten ore” or vacant warehouses reclaimed by roots that have “clawed their witchy fingers into the plaster…with an invisible slowness…in the gentlest of tantrums.” I loved these descriptions. I was equally drawn to the way he explores the main character’s background through flashbacks that add depth and texture to her character.

The second half of the novel abandons much of what I enjoyed about the first half, however. An abrupt pivot from first- to third-person narration feels gimmicky and doesn’t justify itself by the book’s end. That, paired with plot beats that require heavy exposition of quantum theory, really dragged things down. The more it leaned into this, the more I leaned away. I appreciate the time and effort Diaz put into untangling the book’s thornier quantum entanglements,* but the story is worse for it.

In all, Ply is most effective and affecting when it drills deep into its characters, and much less so when it gets tangled in convoluted quantum mechanics. That said, I really enjoyed Diaz’s writing and felt that the extended time I spent in this world was worthwhile.

★★★¼

*The acknowledgements section really shows how seriously Diaz took the research for the novel.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Lightbreakers

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Title: Lightbreakers
Author: Aja Gabel
Pages: 352
Release: November 4, 2025

Emotionally resonant and deeply felt, Lightbreakers plumbs the complex depths of love, loss, and grief through the eyes of three individuals caught in a tide of mourning and the “indestructible fiber” that can bind a family even when one strand is severed.

When Noah, a grieving quantum physicist, is recruited by an eccentric billionaire (are they ever not eccentric?), he gains access to a time machine that allows him to travel back to visit his 3-year-old daughter, just prior to her death. Gabel wisely avoids alternative timelines and branching paths, keeping the story grounded in the present and in the deep wounds that Noah and those in his orbit are working through.

I enjoyed my time spent with Lightbreakers and found Gabel’s prose quite lovely. Though heavy at times, it is never overwrought nor exceedingly bleak. I’m ill-equipped to vet any of the physics or quantum mechanics at play, but Gabel succeeds in making the science of time travel feel semi-plausible and always in service of the emotional heart of the novel.

★★★½

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.