Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

The (No Spoilers) Spoils of Poynton

The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James

April 18, 2026 by xoxoxoe Leave a Comment

The Spoils of Poynton … should have been a short story rather than a novel. One can (almost) see the whole plot in the first few chapters. The simple set-up is this – Mrs. Gereth has lovingly and carefully collected art and antiques her entire adult married life with her husband. After his death it is discovered that Mr. Gereth has bequeathed the whole kit and caboodle, along with the stately home she has lived in her entire married life, to their only son Owen, […]

No, but really, everything is connected

Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age by Ibram X. Kendi

April 17, 2026 by matt_thac Leave a Comment

Conspiracy theories hit differently depending on where you live in the world. The more outlandish ones; the moon landings were faked, we’re all being ruled by lizard people with orange fake tan; live in the West. In most of the Global South, conspiracy theories about government coups aren’t conspiracy theories, they’re just reality seen through a different lens. Ibram X Kendi’s Chain of Ideas feels a little reading about the Lizard People before you realise that, no, this IS how the far-right have come back […]

“Hell is a campus.”

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

April 17, 2026 by stegolily 2 Comments

What do you do when your graduate advisor dies, but you still need a letter of recommendation? Apparently, you travel to Hell to retrieve his soul and his recommendation along with it. Rivals Alice Law and Peter Murdoch are Cambridge graduate students studying Magick. When a spell gone awry kills their advisor, Professor Grimes, they decide they have no choice but to journey to the underworld to save their academic careers. What follows reads like an homage to Dante’s Inferno, if Dante had been a […]

“To The Lighthouse” for the Climate Change Generation

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

April 17, 2026 by Zirza 2 Comments

A young woman named Rowan washes up on the shore of an island. The island houses a seed vault. It used to house researchers, too, but they have all left; the island’s beaches are rapidly being swallowed up by the rising sea levels, and the only people left on the island are caretaker Dominic, who lives with his three children in the lighthouse. They find Rowan and take her in, nurse her back to health. It doesn’t take long, however, before they discover that she […]

I’m not tough enough for the Canadian oil sands

Ducks by Kate Beaton

April 16, 2026 by Dome'Loki 3 Comments

I first became aware of Kate Beaton through her charming picture book, The Princess and the Pony, released in 2015. My, at the time, young daughters loved the book about a tiny, warrior princess who wants a noble steed like the older warriors. Instead on her birthday she is gifted a pony that farts too much. Shortly after the publication of her graphic novel autobiography, Ducks, in 2022, it seemed everyone on the internet was declaring what a good book it was. However, I wasn’t really […]

Les Amis Des Chats

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

April 8, 2026 by finnyfinfinn 9 Comments

How could I resist that title and that gorgeous cover?!? I couldn’t. I didn’t even try. Cats and magic, only the best for les amis des chats. Agnes runs a charity shelter finding forever homes for the street cats of 1920’s Montreal. Unfortunately a sorcerous duel on her street blasted a hole in one of the shelter’s walls, necessitating a quick move before winter soon sets in. High rents and landlords who aren’t as interested in rescuing cats force Agnes towards the shop everyone is […]

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