​Masquerade by Mike Fu is a novel about a man, Meadow, who upon housesitting for his friend, Selma, finds a novel titled, The Masquerade, which begins to eerily parallel his life. Meadow travels to Shanghai to meet up with Selma on her recent art exhibit, returning back to New York City, only to be told that Selma has gone missing. Back in New York, Meadow had once had a month-long fling with a man, but was ghosted at an aquarium. As Meadow continues to house-sit weird things begin to happen: the mirror becomes a liquid, one of the men in the novel turns up to give similar advice, and he thinks he sees his doppelgänger so tries to chase him down in the streets. However, Selma has never been a reliable person, sometimes dipping in and out of places, and lying to seem favorable. When Meadow finds his fling under a different name as a performer for the theater, he is thrown off and decides to attend a show to confront him. Though when they do finally talk, the fling gives a competent reason as to why he ghosted Meadow. Though in the end, when Meadow sees a photo that questions the legitimacy of what the fling had said, much of the novel’s coincidences and odd happenings coalesce around Selma.
 
The novel inside a novel was a fun and inventive way to provide mystery and momentum to the novel. I also thought that the dynamic between Selma and Meadow felt real in the sense that it read one-way. I also liked the weird things that happened, but because the novel didn’t fully describe the reasons why, it was a little hard for me to see how they related in the end. Though, on the whole I enjoyed this novel.
 
Final Rating:3.5/5

​Bluets by Maggie Nelson is a nonfiction piece which explores the personal history and significance of blue as a color, life event, and feeling. Throughout the essay, Nelson addresses a “you”, which we learn was once a lover, but now no longer. We get moments discussing Nelson’s visits to her friend who was paralyzed by an accident, moments of sex, and her observances life around her. It also brushes against the history of blue as a color and its uses in literature and philosophy.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​Tenth of December by George Saunders is a collection of stories which broach science fiction. One of the more famous stories, ‘Escape from Spiderhead’, is about a group of convicts that are used as lab rats to test chemical concoctions that create intense love out of thin air, makes someone experience the worst feelings ever, and notice the beauty in mundane things. It was one of the better stories, as Saunders’s writing style can at times lead with its voice. Though, other stories I liked were, ‘Victory Lap’, about a kid who sees a man try to abduct his neighbor so throws a geode at the man’s head and eventually kills him, while the title story, ‘Tenth of December’, is about a kid who sees a man walking in ten-degree weather so tries to save him by bringing a coat across a partially frozen pond. The kid falls in, and while the man wanted to die in the cold, he saves the kid, and eventually the kid saves him. For most of the stories however, I don’t think I was the audience as the references and language tipped almost too much into sci-fi territory. Though, the few I mentioned, I did like.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Last Troubadour by David St. John is a collection of new and selected poems centered around the loss of friends and lovers with a strong tilt toward nature. I particularly enjoyed the poem ‘A Hard & Nobler Patience’ with the stanza, “& when her body was found she was so/Preserved by the icy currents/That even her eyelashes seemed to quiver/Beneath my breath”. Another poem I liked was ‘Stories’ in which the speaker recounts three stories that his lover had told him before she died. Overall, I liked the imagery and language of this collection.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​New Ohio Review Issue 34 is a collection of poetry, short stories, essays and reviews. I particularly enjoyed ‘visiting the Natural History Museum with my 97-Year-Old Dad’ by Michael Mark, ‘The Hair Cutting’ by Ockert Greeff, ‘In Our Nature’ by Sunni Brown Wilkinson, ‘My Body is a Cemetery’ by Eliza Sullivan, ‘Pantoum’ by Maria Martin, and ‘Kate Sessions Park’ by Bruce McKay. In ‘Kate Sessions Park’, McKay describes a girl, Fatima, who helps an intellectually disabled girl, Cici. When Fatima and the speaker bring Cici to a junior lifeguarding event, Cici pees herself, which causes Fatima to drive her to a beach 90 miles away, effectively getting her fired from helping Cici. It’s a raw story that works with the speaker’s sense of observations and intuitions.
 
Final Rating; 3.5/5

​The Florida Review 47.2 features a collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of which I enjoyed a few. I particularly liked ‘Antidote’ by Ben Kline, ‘Indulgences’ by Garrett Biggs, ‘Elegy with Snake Twisting my Blistered Tongue’ by Alejandro Lucero, ‘Suspended in Flight’ by Diane Gottlieb, ‘OWLS’ by Kathryn Campo Bowen, and ‘A Chest of Drawers’ by Jason Brown. I liked the flow of ‘OWLS’ in the way that the two men try to find their friend, Vanessa, after a night drinking where she wanted to have sex with one of the men. All the characters are studying law, with the speaker planning to write a novel but it never comes to fruition. In the end, they find Vanessa, as she is not lost, and is annoyed they went looking for her. I found this collection to be a generally solid read.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​Story Winter 1993 is a collection of short stories. Many of the story were decent, either dealing with grief, adultery, or loss of a child. Though, I particularly liked ‘The First Snow’ by Daniel Lyons, which is about a father whose family finds out he’s gay after cops catch him in the park, and his son, who is a high school senior, tries to understand and deal with the revelation of his father. The father, it seems then “over corrects” for him being gay by taking his son out shooting birds. Other stories I found interesting were ‘God’s Door’ by Sally Savic, and ‘Jacinta’ by Charles D’Ambrosio.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Greensboro Review Spring 2024 contains a few stories and poems that I found interesting. First was the story, ‘Trailer Park Gothic’ by Josh Bell, then ‘Mantis’ by Daniel S.C. Sutter, and finally the story, ‘Interiors’ by Leah Yacknin-Dawson. They all had intriguing and memorable characters and I particularly liked the sibling relationship in ‘Interiors’. I also enjoyed the poem ‘February: A Dictionary’ by Weijia Par with the lines “I know every inch of my body/is a danger to no one; I like history; my great-grandpa/survived all the wars for me.” A fine issue.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Company of Strangers by Jen Michalski is a collection of short stories about frayed relationships, queerness, and the ways in which love inhibit and enhance life. I particularly enjoyed ‘The Loneliest Creature on Earth’, ‘The Long Haul’, ‘The Company of Strangers’, ‘The Goodbye Party’, and Scheherazade’. I loved the way ‘Goodbye Party’ provides an outlet for Sam’s grief through the dogs that will be put down and how he contemplates how his wife’s passing will affect his son.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​South Dakota Review 58.1 is a collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Out of the pieces, I enjoyed ‘Nepenthes Northiana’ by Virgil Suárez, ‘When it Rains’ by Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Never Break Two Laws at Once’ by Adam Straus, and ‘Mascot Worship’ by William Musgrove. Particularly the story by Adam Straus was interesting in the way it handled desertion, anxiety, and dislike toward the military.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5