New review for April 1, 2026: Sorry for Your Loss by Georgia McVeigh

~ Ekta Garg ~ Leave a comment

By Ekta R. Garg

April 1, 2026

Genre: Domestic thriller

Release date: March 31, 2026

Rated: Bypass it / 2 stars

A woman suffering from a recent loss joins a support group and meets someone who becomes her new object of desire. As she gets closer to him, she begins to realize that her obsession is becoming dangerous—for her. Author Georgia McVeigh offers a familiar plot with an unreliable narrator and a story that starts to go sideways in the ultimately lackluster novel Sorry for Your Loss.

In England Iris Jones is still trying to figure out how to manage her grief after the tragic death of her boyfriend, Freddie. She and Freddie worked together and had so much in common; they were a natural fit. Iris was convinced he was on the verge of proposing to her, so when a horrible accident took his life she felt as though her world was ending.

The one thing that has brought her back from the brink is the weekly grief support group she’s started attending. Even though some people seem to be there more for performative reasons than actual healing, Iris likes that she can talk about her relationship with Freddie whenever she wants and everyone has to listen to her. Iris has a captive audience week after week.

The day Jack walks into the group, though, is the day Iris believes she can move past Freddie. Ridiculously handsome and clearly wealthy, Jack has recently lost his wife to cancer. When he shares the date of his wife’s passing, Iris feels a jolt of electricity: Jack’s wife and Freddie died on the same day. Surely this is fate or the universe or some higher power signaling that Iris and Jack need to be together.

Iris knows Jack is still in the active grief stage, so she takes her time to get to know Jack and the two strike up a friendship. It’s clear he could be her ticket out of her miserable life—a life where Iris is the surviving daughter of a pair of twins in a family where her sister was their mother’s favorite. A life where her mother is an alcoholic and something of a hoarder and her father has since fled the family, found himself a new wife, and had two other children. A life where Freddie was sweet and such a good match for Iris, but Jack is so much better.

As they get closer, Iris is thrilled that Jack feels the same draw to her and thinks she’s hit paydirt. Until Jack starts acting wildly out of character. A recovering alcoholic himself, Jack starts drinking again and he’s definitely a mean drunk. He says and does things that shock Iris, and it isn’t long before she starts to wonder whether to believe the story that his first wife died from natural causes. Because if there’s one thing Iris knows, it’s how there are multiple versions of the truth that normal people just wouldn’t understand—except this time, she might be the one caught in the center of a lie. Like a fly in the middle of a spider’s web.

Author Georgia McVeigh’s debut hits all the right beats for a domestic thriller with an unreliable narrator, but Iris’s caginess as a protagonist feels like so many other books where the main character takes the lead on the storytelling. Astute readers of the genre will find it easy to guess the finer details of Iris and Freddie’s relationship, which sets up expectations for Iris’s relationship with Jack that are ultimately unmet. More than unmet, in fact, the relationship takes a jarring left turn that may pull some readers out of the story and leave them scratching their heads in confusion.

Once Iris and Jack establish their romance, the narration takes on a strangely frenetic quality that has more to do with Jack’s unpredictability as a character and much less to do with the actual plot moving forward. Like many other thrillers, McVeigh chooses to tell her story with Iris as the first-person narrator and the book suffers for it. A narrow POV means readers only have Iris’s thoughts and actions to analyze, which brings up too many questions that leave room for exiting the novel altogether. The book would probably have been much better off told in third person to keep readers guessing a little longer on the bigger plot pieces.

While the intention is clear in the narration of what this book is supposed to be, the execution needed much more work. Readers looking for grounded domestic thrillers may want to check out T.M. Logan or Louise Candlish instead. I recommend readers Bypass Sorry for Your Loss by Georgia McVeigh.

March 25, 2026 review: The Danger of Small Things by Caryl Lewis

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By Ekta R. Garg

March 25, 2026

Genre: YA dystopian climate fiction

Release date: March 24, 2026

Rated: Bordering on Borrowing it / 2.5 stars

A young woman forced to live in a government facility after society collapses learns that she and the others in the compound are being used as pawns. With her head full of memories of her family and her hands itching to pursue her art, she decides to take a chance to set off a revolution. Author Caryl Lewis returns with a book that closes itself off to readers by using the wrong narrative point of view in The Danger of Small Things.

In a future where climate change has irrevocably changed the world, Jess has been taken to a compound where she and other girls are forced to hand pollinate fruit trees for hours every single day. The younger girls work all year round to keep the trees alive; the older girls who have reached puberty are carted off to be paired with young men to have babies. Jess arrives in this place after being separated from her brother and mother, frightened for her brother’s safety and worried about where her mother might end up.

At the compound, Jess befriends Cass who sleeps in the bunk above hers. Day after day, Jess, Cass, and the other girls follow the same routines of getting dressed in the morning, partaking in the meager meal the government has allotted them, and then going to work. Every effort of everyone goes toward food cultivation and production. No one is allowed to enjoy any leisure activities, like reading or art.

Yet Jess had art, before. She sketched and painted, giving her small family artworks to marvel at. Now she still has brushes, but they’re used to make sure the apple trees and the peach trees and all the other trees are cared for so they will produce the fruit the government uses as trade goods. The girls’ efforts, declares compound head Father Renatus, keeps everyone alive and safe.

Jess suspects otherwise. When a chance encounter with a friendly guard yields illegal access to paint and proper paintbrushes, Jess uses them to show the girls what a different life might be like. Suddenly murmurs begin crossing the compound. No one knows who put up the painting, but everyone wants to know what the artist will do next—if they decide to do anything at all.

The act of expressing herself with her art again brings a part of Jess to life that she’d forgotten existed. With the handful of friends she can trust in her bunkhouse and the guard who has proven to be trustworthy, Jess knows it’s only a matter of time before they begin to fight back. The only question is when will the revolution begin.

Author Caryl Lewis states in her author’s note that her background as a beekeeper set her on the path to write this climate fiction novel. She sees it as her form of protest against those who are careless with the environment. While Lewis’s careful detailing of pollination and trees and natural resources are well on display, the rest of the book feels severely limited by the narrative choice to tell the story through Jess in first person.

Without access to anything more than Jess’s memories or descriptions of the day-to-day workings of the larger world at hand, readers may come away with the sense that Jess’s world feels controlled but not nearly as bad as it might actually get. Wide gaps exist in this supposedly totalitarian government’s mandates and their actual enforcement. Many story questions are raised with no acknowledgement.

For instance, it’s clear that young girls are being used as manual labor in their early years and as breeding machines when they reach maturity. How are boys being treated in this story world? What about children with disabilities? What about the adults who are able to work? If the government’s restrictions are forcing the girls to stay in this particular way of life, why don’t the Mothers and the ancillary staff at the compound keep a much closer eye on everyone? If the girls are performing all the manual labor all day, what are the Mothers and Father Renatus doing?

These questions and many, many more interrupt the reading process of what is, at times, a compelling character portrait. Some readers in the target audience may stick with the book all the way to the end, only to feel, quite possibly, that the climax was anticlimactic. Lewis’s facility with the language is clear and obvious, but Jess’s passivity in many places where other characters are clearly taking charge is somewhat of a letdown. Readers interested in climate fiction may want to consider picking this up; others may want to skip. I say The Danger of Small Things by Caryl Lewis Borders on Borrowing it.

Brand new review: When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller

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By Ekta R. Garg

March 18, 2026

Genre: Middle grade fiction

Release date: March 3, 2026

Rated: 2.5 stars / Bordering on Bypassing it

Three friends who have access to a special book that predicts the future grapple with the challenges of growing up. As they deal with confusing situations and changing friendships, they will have to figure out what’s important to hold on to and what they need to let go. Author Tae Keller’s prose is as beautiful as ever in a book that is at times confusing in its goals in When Tomorrow Burns.

Nomi, Vi, and Arthur are best friends—well, they used to be, until Arthur got all weird last year and stopped talking to Nomi and before Vi decided she no longer wanted to go by “Violet” and changed her wardrobe. Nomi loves her friends, but she can’t figure out what on earth is going on with them. She and Vi used to tell each other everything, but now Vi spends most of her time texting someone nonstop. Nomi doesn’t know anything else about it, and she misses her friend.

Vi wants to tell Nomi that she’s been chatting with Lucas, one of the most crushed-on boys in school, but she also likes having something to herself for a change. Lucas sees Vi as something special, and she doesn’t want to mess that up. And Nomi would never understand anyway. She’s too obsessed with the book of prophecies the three friends found years ago. Nomi is convinced it tells the future, and even though Vi can’t argue with Nomi’s logic she also wants to do more grown up things. Like talk to Lucas.

Arthur misses Nomi and Vi as best friends. The three of them used to do everything together. Then about a year ago, Arthur looked at Nomi and got a funny feeling inside. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about her ever since, but he doesn’t want to make things weird between them. Better to stop talking to her completely. It sucks, but it’s way less complicated than this squishy way he feels about her.

Then the wildfires around their home city of Seattle kick into high gear, and the friends are forced to change to life mostly indoors. Nomi is positive the fires are a sign from the prophecy book she and the others found years ago, and she knows it’s only a matter of time before the world collapses in total annihilation. She has to figure out how to stop it all, and the book is the only way to do it. If only that meant she didn’t have to see Arthur and try to ignore how sad she is about the end of their friendship.

Despite her better judgment, Vi gets on board with Nomi’s quest too but she keeps getting distracted by Lucas and his casual suggestion. Vi knows doing what he asks takes a lot of trust, and she’s flattered by Lucas’s trust in her but also scared by it. If only it didn’t take so much courage. But that’s what all three friends need these days, whole buckets of it, if they’re going to figure out how to save the world and their friendships all at the same time.

Author Tae Keller’s prose is an absolute delight, but the novel flounders in its main goal. Keller gives the friends their own alternating chapters, which allows readers to follow the kids, but she intersperses them with Greek chorus-style interludes from ancient trees. It’s not clear whether the book is meant to tell the story of the trees or the friends, whether it’s trying to make a comment on climate change or the difficulties of growing up in the current era. What is clear is that the book is trying to do too much.

In her author’s note, Keller says she wanted the book to reflect all the big life questions middle grade readers might face in these times. There’s no doubt the novel does that. However, without clarity in its teaching moments, the book feels like it’s covering too much.

The narration touches on the dangers of toxic masculinity and how harmful it is to young boys, but it doesn’t stay long enough on the subject. Keller also hints at the implied peer pressure young girls face as well as how the climate crisis and world events can weigh on young teens and affect their mental health. Yet none of these topics are examined to a great extent, which is a shame because all three of them on their own would have made compelling novels.

Fans of previous Tae Keller books may want to check this one out. Others new to her work should read her previous book, Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone, instead. I say When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller Borders on Bypassing it.