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Romance in Unexpected Places
Remember, It’s Just in Your Head follows a university student navigating grief, anxiety, identity, guilt, and the difficult journey toward choosing to live after the suicide of his close friend. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I am someone who never really acknowledged the mental health of others around me when I was growing up. I realised as I grew older that it’s important to be conscious of everyone who is around you, because their presence can be very beneficial to recovery when you feel low.
Life can take a major turn without any warning, so Reuben personifies how unpredictable these scenarios can be.
Guilt comes because of reflection on decisions that have had consequences that could’ve been avoided. The struggle is that you can’t change the past, and that in itself is a feeling you have to overcome.
How did you balance the novel’s darker themes with its moments of humor, friendship, romance, and hope?
All our emotional responses are built upon interwoven experiences; ruminating on darker themes would make the story too morbid. Reuben as a character’s life still needed to progress even if he was faced with such profound, depressing challenges.
I made Reuben an intuitive character who explored himself as a person and worked out how to tackle his vulnerability by seeking support when he realised he needed it. Humour is a way of relieving stress and anxiety, connecting with people to find positives out of awkward or uncomfortable situations. The story explores this by expanding upon the various personalities you come across in day-to-day life.
Finding romance in unexpected places helps Reuben develop as a character; he learns about his sexuality by exposing himself to people who can relate to it themselves. Nathan is a fundamental character in that plot arc and shows that there are people out there who are going or have gone through similar experiences.
How did you approach writing Reuben’s memories of Ava without reducing her character to her death?
Reuben reflects on several occasions throughout the story when he is faced with objects or situations that give him nostalgia.
Ava has a relationship with him that has lasted many years, and this is depicted by how well they know each other. This is shown in how much they open up to each other and how they promise to be there for each other when they’re struggling. They share sanctuary spaces around town that Reuben feels connected to and comfortable escaping from the harsh community that he is exposed to.
Ava is represented both in life and in death by her Polaroid Camera and how she insists that Reuben takes pictures of “the good stuff.” She shows him how to find beauty in the ordinary and turn something plain into something special.
The story explores art in various forms to show how much someone can connect with their natural passion. Reuben knows by the end of the story that whether Ava is alive or dead is irrelevant to how influential she has been in supporting him mentally in his acceptance of himself.
What did you want readers to understand about queer love within a story that is also centered on grief?
That LGBT+ people are not alone when they’re nervous about coming out. That mental health is a journey that encompasses acceptance regardless of how long it takes.
Sexuality and gender are not something that should define you, in the same way that anxiety shouldn’t. Just be true to yourself and take your time with the hurdles that you come across.
If you love someone, you should make it count, whether they’re the same or opposite sex. Missing opportunities is not something you’d want to dwell on in the future or regret.
Grief is not something that you should have to endure all through life; it shouldn’t trap you. However, all things that are close to our heart take time to heal.
Make sure you value yourself and everything around you because life is never guaranteed to be stable. Make things as easy as possible for yourself to achieve the happiest well-being.
Reuben never chose to be gay, but he learns this from finding solace. Any reader who can relate to this needs to know that life is always about focusing on the “good stuff.”
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Amazon
Haunted by what might happen and burdened by his secret, Reuben is trying his hardest to cope. With him sharing sanctuary spaces with his close friend Ava around town, the two have places to relieve stress, where no one can find them.
When Ava’s own pain proves deeper than anyone knew, Reuben is left with grief, guilt, and the impossible question of whether he got caught up in his own spirals too much to notice. Remember, It’s Just In Your Head is a tender contemporary novel about friendship, loss, self-forgiveness, and making sure that anxiety isn’t something that defines you.
“Photography isn’t about capturing perfect moments. It’s about finding beauty in the ordinary, and turning something so plain into something special.”
Love, Humor, and Hope
The Little Book of Emmy is a heartwarming story of a tiny blind dog’s journey from danger and hardship to rescue, friendship, and a loving forever home. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
It’s a real story based on reality and our experience with Emmy. We thought she was an extraordinary personality and her story needed to be told.
How did you balance the difficult moments of rescue and loss with the book’s warmth and hope?
The balance really came from Emmy herself. She had every reason to be fearful or defeated, but that simply wasn’t who she was. She was joyful, trusting, curious, and incredibly resilient. I tried to let her spirit guide every creative decision in the book. Even when the story moves through rescue, uncertainty, and loss, Emmy’s personality keeps bringing us back to love, humor, and hope. In that sense, the balance wasn’t something I had to manufacture. It grew naturally out of who Emmy was.
What do you hope children understand about animals with disabilities after meeting Emmy?
I hope children understand that being different doesn’t mean being less. Emmy couldn’t see, but she still found her way through the world with curiosity, courage, and a lot of joy. She loved, played, trusted, and connected with people just like any other dog. I’d love for children to come away from her story feeling more compassion for animals with disabilities—and maybe for anyone who experiences the world a little differently.
How do you hope the book influences the way families think about rescue animals?
I hope the book helps families see rescue animals for who they can become, not just for what they’ve been through. Many of them arrive carrying fear, uncertainty, or physical challenges, but they also bring an incredible capacity for trust, affection, and joy. Emmy taught me that giving an animal a second chance can change both lives—the animal’s and the family’s. If her story encourages even one family to look at a rescue animal with a little more patience, compassion, and possibility, that would mean a great deal to me.
Author Links: Website
The Little Book of Emmy
The Little Book of Emmy by Ahavia Scheindlin and Lon Levin follows a tiny blind dog from the dusty streets of Celaya to a safe and loving home. Emmy’s journey includes danger, rescue, friendship, grief, and a second chance at companionship. The story covers a surprising amount of emotional ground while keeping its focus on the dogs and the ways they care for one another.
Emmy is an appealing main character because her blindness is presented as part of how she experiences the world. Her nose guides her, her courage keeps her moving, and her gentle confidence eventually helps the energetic Juanito settle into family life. April, the older golden retriever who first helps Emmy navigate her new home, brings tenderness to the middle of the book. Her death introduces loss in clear, simple language and gives families an opening to talk about why saying goodbye to an animal can hurt so much.
Lon Levin’s illustrations give the picture book much of its emotional pull. Warm golds, browns, and creams create a softly painted look, while expressive close-ups make Emmy’s fear, comfort, and sadness easy to read. The scenes in the pound feel shadowy and confined, and the pictures grow brighter as Emmy finds safety and friendship. Juanito’s caramel-colored fur and lively movements also contrast nicely with Emmy’s quieter presence. Several pages use generous white space and small groups of images, which lets young readers pause over important moments.
This is a compassionate rescue story with a strong sense of place and an unusual willingness to explore both love and grief. Dramatic sound effects such as “RUMBLE, CLANG, SCREEEEECH” add energy for reading aloud, while the repeated acts of kindness keep the story grounded. Younger children may appreciate having an adult beside them during the sadder passages. By the final sunset image, Emmy and Juanito’s shared silhouette feels earned, and the book leaves readers with a warm picture of companionship, resilience, and home.
Remember, It’s Just in Your Head
Remember, It’s Just in Your Head, by Ben Dylan, is a contemporary LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel about grief, identity, and the difficult work of choosing to live. University student Reuben Fletcher is already struggling with anxiety, suicidal thoughts, family pressure, and his hidden sexuality when his close friend Ava dies by suicide. Her death leaves him replaying every missed warning sign and unanswered call. From there, the story follows Reuben as he carries his guilt through lectures, orchestra rehearsals, friendships, and a campus culture that can be both cruel and unexpectedly supportive.
As mental health fiction, the novel is intensely direct about depression, disordered eating, panic, and bereavement. Reuben’s first-person narration keeps the reader close to his spiraling thoughts, especially when ordinary moments become loaded with fear or regret. The recurring images of rooftops, photographs, and chemical reactions give shape to emotions he can’t easily explain. Ava’s Polaroid camera becomes the book’s strongest symbol, connecting memory with her final request that Reuben keep looking for “the good stuff.”
The queer coming-of-age story develops alongside Reuben’s grief, particularly through his relationship with Nathan and his frightening experience of being publicly outed by Xan. Dylan captures the exhausting calculations that come with hiding, as well as the relief Reuben gradually finds in being known. The supporting cast gives the campus novel a generous emotional range. Ryan, Sophia, Taylor, and even Reuben’s abrasive classmate Nadia are carrying private pain of their own. Their stories reinforce the book’s central idea that kindness often begins when someone takes the time to look beneath another person’s performance.
The prose favors emotional clarity and repeated motifs, occasionally restating Reuben’s guilt and fear more often than the moment requires. That repetition also reflects a mind caught in rumination, making his eventual return to music feel genuinely earned. This is a grief and healing novel with a tender gay romance, a strong awareness of student mental health, and a sincere belief in human connection. Remember, It’s Just in Your Head offers an openhearted portrait of survival as something built slowly through friendship, creativity, accountability, and the decision to keep showing up.
Pages: 243 | ASIN : B0HCTPJ9YV
Life’s Like A Book…
Life’s Like A Book…, by Christina M. McKenzie, is a contemporary women’s fiction novel that blends romance, grief, friendship, family, and personal reinvention into the story of Kloey, a young woman whose carefully planned life has stopped feeling like her own. At the beginning, she’s ending a five-year relationship, finishing law school, dealing with the lingering effects of a serious medical condition, and questioning what she actually wants from adulthood. Then the sudden death of her best friend, Brandi, changes the direction of everything. What follows is less about finding one simple answer and more about Kloey learning how to participate in her own life again.
One of the strongest parts of this contemporary romance and women’s fiction story is the way grief remains present even when Kloey is doing ordinary, funny, messy, or impulsive things. Brandi’s death doesn’t disappear whenever romance enters the picture. Instead, Kloey carries her friend with her, quite literally for much of the novel, scattering Brandi’s ashes in meaningful places and eventually incorporating some into a memorial tattoo. That gives the book an unusual mixture of sadness, humor, sensuality, and everyday life. Kloey can be mourning one moment, flirting with Henry the next, worrying about work after that, and then thinking about food, her dog, or something completely mundane. It makes her feel like a person whose life keeps happening even when she isn’t emotionally prepared for it.
The romantic storyline with Henry fits naturally into Kloey’s larger journey because attraction forces her to confront insecurities that existed long before she met him. Her illness has changed her body, her former relationship damaged her confidence, and dating exposes both wounds pretty quickly. Henry’s response to her scars becomes an important early moment because he treats them as evidence of a life lived. Their connection develops alongside separations, career decisions, long-distance conversations, and Kloey’s fear of allowing another major change into her life. That makes the romance feel connected to the book’s broader questions about confidence, intimacy, independence, and whether feeling safe is always the same thing as feeling fulfilled.
By the end, Life’s Like A Book… has grown into a story about accepting that a life can contain several different versions of the same person. Kloey has lost Brandi and her grandmother, begun establishing herself as an attorney, reopened herself to Henry, and reached a point where career, home, and love may all require another leap. The final pages deliberately leave her at that crossroads, considering a different firm, the possibility of taking over her family’s Florida farm, and a future with Henry before finally deciding to listen to what she wants and beginning to type. For readers who enjoy contemporary women’s fiction, romantic fiction, stories about grief and healing, and character-driven novels about starting over, this is an intimate look at how one chapter of a life can close while the next one is still being written.
Pages: 150 | ASIN : B0DH7T452J
Sharing My Story
In Turning Fertile, you share your difficult journey through infertility and medical complications as you learned to listen to your body and ultimately became a mother. What made you decide to tell your infertility journey as a memoir?
I chose to write Turning Fertile as a memoir because infertility often happens in silence. During my own journey, I searched for stories that felt honest, vulnerable, and unfiltered — stories that didn’t just describe medical procedures, but the emotional weight behind them. I couldn’t find many.
I realized that if I wanted a book that spoke to the loneliness, the fear, the hope, and the small victories that shape this experience, I would have to write it myself.
Sharing my story became a way to reclaim my voice after years of feeling like my body was being spoken for by test results, scans, and protocols. I wanted women to see themselves in a narrative that doesn’t shy away from the difficult parts, but still finds strength and meaning in them.
How did you decide how much of the medical experience to share?
I included the medical details that shaped my emotional reality — not every number or chart, but the moments that changed how I understood my body.
Repeated IUIs, the unexpected IVF cycle, ovarian hyperstimulation, surgery, and the tubal pregnancy were not just medical events; they were turning points in my life. Each one carried fear, confusion, and hope, and leaving them out would have made the story incomplete.
My goal was to strike a balance: enough detail for readers to understand the physical intensity of infertility treatments, but not so much that the memoir felt like a medical textbook. I wanted readers to feel what I felt — the waiting rooms, the injections, the ultrasounds — without overwhelming them.
Who did you imagine speaking to in the “Dear Reader” passages?
Whenever I wrote “Dear Reader,” I imagined someone sitting across from me who was going through the same emotional storm — someone exhausted, scared, hopeful, and unsure of what tomorrow might bring.
I pictured a woman who had just received a difficult test result, or who was silently grieving a failed cycle, or who was trying to stay strong for her partner while feeling fragile inside.
Those passages were my way of reaching out and saying: You are not alone. I see you. I’ve been where you are.
They became the emotional heartbeat of the book — a conversation between two people who may never meet, but share a deeply human experience.
What do you hope partners, family members, and friends will learn from your experiences?
I hope they learn that infertility is not just a medical condition — it is an emotional landscape that affects every part of a person’s life.
Partners may see the procedures and medications, but they don’t always see the quiet moments of grief, the self‑doubt, or the fear of disappointing the people they love. Family members and friends may offer advice or encouragement, but sometimes what people need most is simply understanding and patience.
I hope my story helps loved ones recognize that support is not about fixing anything — it’s about showing up, listening without judgment, and respecting the emotional complexity of the journey.
If this memoir teaches anything, I hope it teaches compassion.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Amazon
Sonali carried hers like a locked diary. Then, one ordinary morning, her seven-year-old son lifted a violin to his chin, drew a single trembling note into the air — and something she had kept closed for years finally cracked open.
Turning Fertile is the story of the woman behind that note.
A girl whose ambition burned so brightly she stopped hearing her own body. A diagnosis that named years of quiet signs she’d ignored. And then the long, unmapped country of waiting — where time is no longer measured in days, but in heartbeats, held breaths, and prayers whispered in bathroom silence.
This is a book about hope that refuses to die. About the question every woman has asked in the quiet of a waiting room — why not me? — and the slow, hard-won discovery that the question itself is a form of love.
Written as an intimate conversation — Dear Reader, yes, you — it reaches straight to the woman sitting somewhere right now with her own version of that silence, and tells her the one thing she most needs to hear.
This book will not be gentle with the truth. But it will be gentle with you.
Evenings on the Edge of Death
Evenings on the Edge of Death is a deeply personal work of poeticized nonfiction about the long afterlife of family trauma, the erosion of memory, and the complicated work of loving people who have also caused pain. Theodore McDowell builds the book as a series of collages centered on his mother, father, sister, marriage, and finally the experience of saying goodbye. The form suits the subject beautifully. Memory rarely arrives as a clean narrative, and McDowell doesn’t force it into one. Instead, a beach, a baseball glove, a glass of whiskey, a rosary, a wheelchair, a field of wheat, or the sound of water can suddenly open a door to another time. The result feels less like being told the story of a life than being invited inside the way that life is actually remembered.
At the center of the book is a family wounded by an abusive father and by the silence that grows around abuse. McDowell returns to those wounds from different angles, especially through his relationships with his mother and his sister Rachel. The opening poem establishes the emotional vocabulary immediately, placing a father’s violence beside wheat fields, church bells, maternal tenderness, and a child’s bewildered questions about God. What gives these poems their staying power is McDowell’s willingness to let contradictory feelings occupy the same room. He can rage at his father and still search for the damaged man inside him. He can adore his mother while admitting resentment, exhaustion, and even the terrible wish for her suffering to end. He can grieve Rachel’s suicide while continuing to wrestle with guilt over not saving her. Forgiveness here isn’t a neat resolution. It’s an ongoing argument between memory, love, anger, faith, and the child who still wants an explanation.
The book widens considerably in the poems about marriage. Here, McDowell brings the same searching attention to intimacy, addiction, estrangement, reconciliation, aging, and the fear of losing the person who has witnessed your life. In one poem, a couple plants seeds while wondering whether they’ve truly fallen in love; in another, thirty-nine years of marriage are remembered through happiness, miscarriage, addiction, recovery, service, and the simple act of holding hands on a porch as death approaches. These poems show one of McDowell’s strongest gifts: he finds emotional weight in physical things. Hands, weather, flowers, rooms, rivers, photographs, and worn objects keep carrying the story when abstract language would be too easy. His recurring Christian imagery sits alongside Buddhist meditation, blues music, nature, and art, giving the book a spiritual restlessness that feels earned.
By the final section, death has become less a single event than the book’s constant horizon. McDowell writes about hospice, nursing homes, dementia, the indignities of the body, forgotten names, and the fear that a whole human life might vanish when nobody remains to remember it. Yet the book keeps moving toward preservation. Again and again, writing becomes an act of keeping faith with the dead, with the damaged self, and with moments of beauty that would otherwise be lost. The closing poems return to the book’s rivers, grief, childhood wounds, faith, and questions of identity, but the final movement is toward grace and self-creation. Evenings on the Edge of Death turns the fragments of a wounded life into something enduring: a fierce, tender testament to memory, love, and the grace of still becoming.
Pages: 171 | ASIN : B0CVJ4PR85
Turning Fertile: The hardest roads lead to the most extraordinary arrivals
Sonali Sheetal Appikonda’s Turning Fertile is an intimate memoir about infertility, marriage, and learning to listen to a body she once treated as an obstacle to ambition. The story begins with her seven-year-old son performing at a violin recital, then circles back to her teenage years, when irregular cycles, facial hair, PCOS, and thyroid problems first entered her life. From there, Appikonda traces a demanding path through repeated IUIs, an unplanned IVF cycle, ovarian hyperstimulation, surgery, an excruciating tubal pregnancy, and finally the birth of her son. Framing the memoir with the recital gives the journey a satisfying shape: the child onstage is both the ending readers already know and the reason the story can finally be told.
What makes the book memorable is its attention to the ordinary details surrounding medical ordeals. A pharmacist understands a failed attempt when the husband returns for sanitary pads. A nurse protects Appikonda’s privacy after an uncomfortable scan. A handmade picture bought on a cold evening becomes a symbol of the life she and her husband nearly forgot to enjoy. Her husband is especially important to the book, not as a faultless rescuer but as the person who cooks after surgery, sits through appointments, carries hope when she can’t, and grieves privately when he thinks no one is watching. Their marriage gives the memoir its emotional center, while the costs, invasive procedures, workplace pressures, and family questions show how thoroughly infertility can occupy a couple’s life.
Appikonda writes as though she’s speaking across a table to someone living through a similar experience. The recurring “Dear Reader” passages make that intention explicit, blending memoir with reassurance and plain-language explanations of fertility treatments. Concrete numbers, including twenty-one retrieved eggs, twelve IUI cycles, and four brief days of pregnancy, keep the physical and emotional stakes from becoming abstract. Her repeated images of doors, waiting rooms, seasons, stitches, and bodily “messages” give the book a meditative quality. Some phrases and reflections recur often enough to slow the narrative, and the medical explanations occasionally interrupt a tense scene, but that repetition also mimics the exhausting cycle of hoping, waiting, and beginning again. The glossary at the end reinforces the book’s role as a companion as much as a personal history.
The readers most likely to appreciate Turning Fertile are people navigating infertility, PCOS, assisted reproduction, pregnancy loss, or the strain these experiences can place on a relationship. Their partners and close family members may find it equally valuable because the book shows forms of grief and support that patients don’t always voice. It will also speak to readers drawn to candid accounts of Indian family life, career ambition, migration, medicine, and marriage. Appikonda’s successful pregnancy gives her story its conclusion, but the book’s deeper subject is the life that continues during the waiting: work, love, travel, disappointment, and the gradual recovery of a self larger than any diagnosis.
Pages: 142 | ASIN : B0HFCD2YSW
