Bookish Chatter | Book Chatter

The Spin
By Faith Gardner
Mirror House Press, June 2026, 326pp.

The Short of It:

Hysteria or something darker?

The Rest of It:

The Crawfords live in a beautiful suburban home in Los Angeles. Leo, a marketing executive, loves the life he has built with his beautiful, pregnant wife, Rose, and their older daughter, Melinda. Then, while on vacation, Rose goes missing. When she returns, she is different.

Once they get her home, Rose seems to settle back into the life she knows, but certain things begin triggering psychotic episodes that eventually land her in a mental institution. Leo cannot figure it out. How can his once beautiful, confident wife be completely checked out one minute, then manic enough to require hospitalization the next? Was it the pregnancy? Or was it something else?

The hysterical housewife of the 1950s was a very real thing. Women were deemed hysterical, and let’s face it, that still happens today. It does not matter if there is an underlying cause. People are not going to look for it. They are going to medicate her and send her to a hospital. This is exactly what happens to Rose.

As Leo and Melinda try to hold down the fort, Leo continues investigating the timeline of events and stumbles across something he was never supposed to find. When his own mother comes to help, having another person in the house brings certain details to light and points out things Leo has missed.

I really enjoyed this one. As the story ramped up to its conclusion, there were a few story threads I wanted to see fleshed out a little more. Overall, though, it was a page-turner that kept me guessing.

Recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Give Me Everything You’ve Got
By Imogen Crimp
Henry Holt & Co., July 2026, 304 pp.

The Short of It:

Mind games. Who will win?

The Rest of It:

Ruby, an up-and-coming filmmaker, finds herself in an enviable position. Ellen, her idol and mentor, invites her to her palatial country home for a bit of respite, and the opportunity to focus on the script she’s working on. It’s a beautiful, hot summer, and the idea of lounging by the pool with nothing but her writing to focus on is exactly what Ruby needs.

So she thinks.

Enter Lara, Ellen’s twenty-year-old wayward daughter, who glides around the property without a care in the world. Sent home from school and pressured by Ellen to get her life together, Lara is rebellious at best.

Ruby is instantly caught off guard. How will it work having another person in the house, someone wandering around aimlessly, drinking, smoking, and tempting Ruby to do the same?

Ruby quietly observes the interactions between Ellen and her daughter, and their tension immediately puts her on edge. But as soon as Ruby settles in, Ellen leaves on a business trip, leaving the two of them alone in the house.

What follows is a seductive story about temptation, desire, and need. Hopes and dreams? Possibly, but mostly, it’s about mind games of the push-and-pull variety. Ruby is lured in, only to be pushed away. The relationships in this story are complicated and twisted.

I found the story extremely readable, even though the dialogue is presented without punctuation and reads like a stream of consciousness.

Everyone has a motive for being in that house. It’s human nature to take what we can from a situation, but are we better off afterward? Was the experience enough to satisfy?

This story has a lot to say about art, power, friendship, and the definition of love.

Highly recommend.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…