Marion’s sister is trapped in an abusive relationship when her boss at her advertising agency leaves her with $100,000 in cash and a request to deposit it at the bank for him. She first attempts to deposit it for him, but when finding out that his bank doesn’t accept deposits from non-account holders, decides to steal it and use it to help her sister escape instead. When staying at a bed and breakfast when her bus to see her sister breaks down, the owner attempts to kill her but she turns the knife on him, setting off a serial murder spree as she leans into her rage. The story unfolds in a dual POV timeline, following both Marion and a PI named Hannah who’s investigating a missing girl and intersects with her murder spree.

This was a compelling thriller, but I honestly don’t think that Hannah’s POV was necessary. It seemed to mostly be there to further build suspense — something cliffhanger-y would happen at the end of Marion’s chapter, and then the perspective would shift to Hannah. I was much more invested in Marion’s chapters than Hannah’s, but if you don’t want to read a novel entirely from the perspective of a serial killer, Hannah’s chapters may soften it a bit. I do question why you would want to read this book if you don’t want to read from the perspective of a female serial killer, though.

This is a feminist re-imagining of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, but I think you can still read and enjoy it even if you haven’t watched the original movie. Some of the twists may be less surprising for you if you are familiar with the original movie, but there’s still plenty to be surprising. I’m not particularly familiar with the movie, but I still found Marion enjoyable. Of course, it’s feminist in the same way that Gone Girl is feminist, so if you didn’t think that book/movie was feminist, you probably won’t think Marion is particularly feminist either.

Marion in this novel does not explicitly have dissociative identity disorder, but she’s definitely got something similar under the plural umbrella going on. She has her regular self, her murderous self (the titular Marion), and a very differentiated voice of her mother inside her head. Is it good DID representation? Not exactly, the person with DID is a serial killer, and the community has been vocal about not wanting to see more people with DID portrayed as serial killers when they are such a minority of the people with DID. It’s probably good that she wasn’t explicitly stated to have DID, but it wouldn’t be an inaccurate statement to say that it’s within the differential diagnosis for whatever she has going on. Honestly, though, if you’re specifically looking for good/healthy DID representation, you probably shouldn’t be reading thrillers.

Marion releases June 2 from St. Martin’s Press. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Leah Rowan for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Anne Boleyn is preparing to be executed while imprisoned in the Tower of London when she is visited by her former rival, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine gives her the tools to free herself using her magic, and gives her the opportunity to live and seek vengeance against her former husband. Later, most of Henry’s other wives also end up part of the vengeance plot.

This was one of those historical fiction novels that felt too modern. The messages about women and the agency they have or don’t have due to the patriarchy are certainly accurate, but most of the characters do not have dialogue that sounds like genuine figures from their time period, which disrupted my immersion into the novel. It’s a lot more like if the musical Six was a fantasy novel than a period drama with fantasy elements. Generally speaking, the men sounded relatively like products of their time but the women sounded contemporary. It’s possible that this was a purposeful stylistic choice that the author made, but I didn’t like it. If this is the sort of thing that doesn’t bother you, though, you may like it.

One of the most powerful parts of the novel was the relationship between the two POV characters, Catherine (in this novel called “Lina”, short for the Spanish version of her name, Catalina) and Anne. Their relationship evolves from hatred to grudging mutual respect to a true friendship. I did feel that the ending of the book somewhat cheapened that selling point of the novel, unfortunately, as well as somewhat undermining the overall message of the book about women teaming up to protect other women from men.

It was nice to read a fantasy novel that focused on all the female characters but was not primarily a romance, though. Interestingly, Anne of Kleves is portrayed as a lesbian in this alternate history. Some people may think this was just shoehorned into the story to make there be more queer characters, but I thought it added to the story well. The point of the novel as a whole seems to be that it’s telling an alternate “true” story of Henry’s wives that were overlooked by history. It’s a reasonable reason to have in this version for why the marriage between Anne and Henry was never consummated, but again, if you care a lot about historical accuracy it may irritate you.

My most significant history issue is the way in which Katherine Howard’s relationships are portrayed. Her relationship with Francis Dereham, who was 32 when she was 15, is portrayed as consensual and loving, despite the occasional sentences by the other main characters condemning men who pursue girls just after they started having their periods. There’s also no mention of Henry Mannox’s molestation of/”relationship with” Katherine. She had few POV chapters in this book and her history is not really talked about much, so I’m left wondering if it was truly necessary to have her as a POV character. She also has the only sex scene that’s described on-page (with her lover of a close age, not Dereham or Mannox), and it seems as if the narrative wants to portray her as promiscuous and flighty as her primary character traits. For a novel that is ostensibly supposed to be feminist, this seems to me to be a poor way to handle the character of a girl who was groomed by up to three older men (depending on whether you’re considering her relationship with Henry grooming, which you certainly could).

If you’re looking for a fairly lighthearted fantasy novel that feels like the fantasy version of Six (although with less acknowledgement of how Katherine Howard was groomed) you may enjoy this one. If you’re looking for something grounded in history or that reads like a period drama, you may want to pass it up.

Henry Tudor Must Die releases July 21 from Berkley Publishing Group. Thank you to NetGalley, Berkley and Jillian Laine for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Read the full review with representation information and trigger warnings on my blog.

Kori and Adria are the heiresses of a planet with no day/night cycle, divided between permanent day and permanent night. When Kori’s attempt to find a memory that will awaken sentience in her robot companion strands her in the middle of the Shadowlands, currently embroiled in a civil war due to Adria’s dethroning of her parents, their worlds collide and they find they have fewer reasons to be enemies than they have been taught.

I will admit that I was interested in this book because I’m a sucker for duality between the two main characters of a book. Shadow and Bone isn’t directly on the list of comp titles for Between Sun and Shadow, but there is plenty to love for fans of it. The author states that Leigh Bardugo was a huge inspiration for her when writing this book, and I can see the inspiration in the book. It’s not a blatant case of filing the serial numbers off of a fanfiction though. There’s some really detailed and interesting worldbuilding done, and I would recommend this book for people who like epic fantasy and space operas and can handle a bit of infodumping. Adria is a morally grey love interest, but still a very good person deep down, and if you like the “touch her and die” trope you’ll find plenty of that in this book. A lot of enemies-to-lovers romances or romances with morally grey characters just end up having uncomfortable degrees of romanticized abuse, which isn’t what happens in this book despite the captive romance element. Kori has more agency than a lot of main characters in captive romances, and there is actually a legitimate reason for her to be a captive in-narrative.

If you like the political intrigue elements of high fantasy, you’ll also find a lot to like in Between Sun and Shadow. I wasn’t completely shocked by some of the plot twists, but they were still well done. If you love books like the A Court of Thorns and Roses for found family reasons but don’t like the politics or the battle scenes, this is not the book for you. If you want detailed worldbuilding that you can lose yourself in, though, it’s definitely the book for you. I honestly could have seen it reasonably being a duology, but it wasn’t too slow-paced or long for me.

Kori’s quest to awaken her mech Aspect is also an important part of the story. They’re basically Kori’s only significant relationship outside of her mother and her doctor, and they’re adorable. I laughed at so many of their lines. The novel also has a science fantasy version of Cerberus as Adria’s guard dog, although I’d say it may be more of a reimagining of Hades and Persephone than strictly a retelling of it. There still is forbidden magical fruit, though, so that’s fun.

There is also a good bit of feminine rage in this novel, and it was satisfying seeing Adria allowed to express it, even though she is ultimately considered a good person. If you don’t like when characters who have murdered people are still considered good guys in the narrative, this book is probably not for you, but if you don’t mind that, enjoy the violence and gore.

Between Sun and Shadow releases May 5 from Peachtree Teen. Thank you to NetGalley, Peachtree Publishers and Laura Genn for the ARC. All opinions are my own.