THE FICTIONFOX

Genre: Sci-fi Novella Published: Tor Books & Pan MacMillan International, May 2026 My Rating: 3/5 stars “You have a choice. You get to choose who you love. No matter what happens next, no one can take that away from you.” After a yearslong streak of feel-good queer novels, T.J. Klune is switching things up with his latest release; an apocalyptic novella in which we follow an elderly queer couple on a roadtrip across America, in the final days before the earth will be swallowe

Genre: Sci-fi Mystery Published: Soho Press, May 2026 My Rating: 3.5/5 stars Equal parts police procedural, sci-fi mystery and societal dystopia; there were plenty of colors in the palette that Andrew Dana Hugh could’ve chosen to paint the story of Absence with. Instead of choosing however, he blends these genres together in a way that worked surprisingly well for me. The mix is a little reminiscent of Jeff Vandermeer or Blake Crouch, but less bleak and alien than the former,

Genre: magical realism Published: W. W. Norton & Company (print) & RB Media (audio) My Rating: 4.5/5 stars "This state of pregnancy is not so different from what we’re doing here. We’re gestating a city, Yosoye. Soon we will birth greatness. Isn’t it all creation? Isn’t it all holy work?" There’s an interesting microtrend of “women walking into bodies of water” going on among spring 2026 releases. In March, we had Westward Women by Alice Martin, in which women were drawn towa

Genre: horror Published: University of Massachusetts Press, March 2026 My rating: 5/5 stars "No matter what it’s meant to grow, a lab works on principles of limitation and elimination, defined by what it excludes. Like the barn where I kept Solo. Like the house where I was kept. Isolation is a tool of analysis. It is not a state to maintain indefinitely." It’s been almost two months and a partial reread, and I still cannot find the words to do justice to the way I admired and

Translator : Daisy Gibbons (Ukrainian -> English) Genre: Speculative Fiction, Dystopian Published: Seven Stories Press, April 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars "The weathering away of every person is a weathering away inside everyone left behind. Any man’s death diminishes me." With echoes of The Road and Roadside Picnic , and clear resonance to recent history, The Weathering is a Ukrainian-set dystopian novel that feels timely and timeless at the same time. The Story: A young U

Genre: Contemporary Fiction Published: Soho Press, March 2025 My Rating: 1/5 stars "You look at him, puppy-eyed. At this man who looks like Leo, but isn’t Leo and want to say “my husband always kept pens in his pocket too. I miss you already.” I thought long and hard on how to rate this novel. What I eventually ended up with was the longest review I've ever written, and a rating of a single star. Although it has a bunch of redeeming qualities, which I will address below, I u

Genre: Science Fiction Published: William Morrow, January 2025 My Rating: 3/5 conflicted stars “We cannot escape our creators. I keep saying this. You can't erase that which made you. Even when they are gone, their spirit remains.” I’m not sure if I remember a the last time was that I felt thís conflicted about a book… my reading-journey was a rollercoaster that swerved from hate to love, and ultimately landed in a very mixed area. It took me a little while to detangle my

Genre: horror, haunted-house Published: Tin House Publishing, March 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars "What would Lele say? What would Lele do? She asked herself these questions all the time, her answers feeble and uncertain, never knowing if she was right. She’d made this ghost. It couldn’t tell her anything new." The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is an incredibly effective ghost-story with themes of grief, trauma and social isolation. It drew me in with its atmosphere, but truly snuc

Genre: Non-fiction, Disability, Self-help Published: Penguin Life, March 2025 My Rating: 1/5 stars This is Body Grief is a non-fiction book about disability and the titular concept, that I was truly excited about ever since its release. Once I got to it though, I found I could not have disliked it any more if I'd'tried... Unfortunate and deeply disappointed rant incoming. What I liked: What drew me to this book originally was the title. Body Grief as a concept is extremely va

During the past month, I’ve been on a bit of an eco-fiction-kick, picking up stories that deal with environmentalism, nature vs humanity, and growth and transformation in various ways. Today, I want to combine 3 recent releases- each with their own spin on this theme – and review them side-by-side. From young-adult horror to literary fiction with a speculative twist; modern eco-fiction has something for everyone. Despite the fact that I didn’t rate any of these books very hig

Genre: Poetry Published: Tin House, February 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars “Beloved, if I titled this poem My Mothers America, would it contain her mother? And how long before you know the urgency of this sentence is lost” Maybe the Body is a debut poetry collection by Filipino-American author Asa Drake, that centers themes of belonging, nature-vs-nurture and body, alongside undertones of political dissonance and predator-prey-dynamics in our everyday lives. I was positively sur

Genre: Science Fiction Published: Erewhon Books, February 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars “First there was the fear of being. Fear of being became fear of not-being. Those are the two original fears.” Consider this a PSA to all sci-fi-fans: mark February 28th on your calendars to go out and pick up this novel upon release. You won’t regret it! A.D. Sui blends a beautiful, meditative and philosophical science-fiction story with a closed-room-murder-mystery in space, and although tha

Genre: Eco-fiction, novella Published: Quercus Books by Riverrun, February 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars “Nature doesn’t give a fuck.” Eradication is an apt eco-novella with a strong undercurrent of grief and morality, both personal and with regard to the larger world around us. We follow Adi, a former jazz musician-turned-schoolteacher, as he accepts a curious “eco-conservation” job on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora. Here, armed with nothing but survival gear

Genre: literary horror, gothic, queer Published: Little Brown and Company, January 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars, first favourite of 2026 "Because no matter how far you run, she knew—no matter how hard you try to shed your old skin and become something else—the place you come from stays with you. It always calls you back." The second I finished Hemlock , I realized two things. First, this was going to be a marmite-book that I won’t be able to recommend to just any wide audience.

Genre: literary fiction Published: Henry Holt and Co, February 2026 My Rating: 2/5 stars Framed as a story within a story, Sarah Bruni has crafted a tale of motherhood and power disparity, that unfortunately didn’t click with me. We follow A., an unnamed translator, living alone in an unforgiving, late-capitalist metropolis. She is still recovering from a medical trauma that took her reproductive organs, and spends her days nannying for another woman’s boy and her nights out

Genre: Horror Published: Erewhon Books, January 2026 My Rating: 2/5 stars On a semi-objective level, Allison Mick’s eco-horror debut deserves about 3/5 stars, so that’s the rating I settled on for now. However, on a personal level, I had more of a 2-star experience with it. This is not a bad book, but it’s a type of horror that’s not for me. Unfortunately, I would’ve known to avoid this beforehand, had the marketing been a little different. More on this later in the review.

Genre: sci-fi, detective/murder-mystery Published: Grand Central Publishing & Brilliance Audio, January 2026 originally independently published by the author, November 2023 My Rating: 4.5/5 stars Small-town police-procedural meets cosmic sci-fi in this fantastic genre-bender that had me hooked from start to finish. If you're in the marked for something in the vein of True Detective , or Sleeping Giants meets a Blake Crouch -style mystery: consider this one to add to your TB

Genre: Literary Fiction Novella, Magical Realism, Post-apocalyptic. Published: New Directions (US)/ Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) , March 2024 My Rating: 1/5 stars "That was the future. This is now. The end of the world looks exactly the way you remember. Don’t try to picture the apocalypse. Everything is the same." I wanted to love this novella so bad. A magical realism story of an undead woman, tracking across a desolate landscape with a crow living inside her chest, explori

Genre: Science Fiction Published: Mariner Books, November 2025 My Rating: 2/5 stars “I knew that she was right. She would forget me. but perhaps I could make sure of it; even long after she was gone, the world would never forget her.” It took me a while to put my thoughts to paper, as this book gave me the biggest whiplash I’ve experienced in a long time. For the first half or so, it was on a five-star-course. I absolutely loved the ideas this book engaged with, and was hook

Genre: Cozy horror/fantasy Published: Titan Books, November 2025 My Rating: 5/5 stars "'It was a small kindness you did' they said. 'But you and I are both small creatures, are we not?' So the kindness feels larger.'" In the afterword, T. Kingfisher herself describes Snake-eater as “The platonic ideal of a Kingfisher horror novel”, and honestly, I have nothing to add... Neither to that description of the essence of this book, nor to the formula of cozy-horror that is synonym