Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | October 5, 2026
I didn't get a ton of reading done last month since I was out of the country for TIFF and the ensuing jetlag beat me like I owed it money. Still, there were a few highlights.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Weirdly never read this one before.
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 10:51 PM
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Camille Preaker is a reporter for a low-grade Chicago tabloid, and the last thing she wants to do is return to her tiny home town in Missouri to cover the case of one murdered preteen girl and the disappearance of another. Going back to Wind Gap means reuniting with her neurotic old-money mother and her strange half-sister, and confronting the myriad issues that have left Camille with a murderer's row of mental issues. Someone is a killer in Wind Gap, but who and why?
Gillian Flynn can lay claim to the title of the most influential crime writer of the 2010s. it's easy to understate the sheer impact that Gone Girl had on publishing, and you can hardly blame her for taking her time in writing the long-awaited follow-up novel. So, now was as good a time as any to read her debut, Sharp Objects, which I had somehow avoided for many years. The much-acclaimed TV adaptation with Amy Adams also entirely passed me by. I'm quite glad, because going into this novel blind was a real delight. Well, "delight" might be the wrong word because this is a relentlessly bleak book that is nonetheless incredibly gripping.
Sharp Objects is like a scab you cannot help but pick at, even though you know it will only cause you further pain. Flynn is unflinching in her depiction of both generational trauma and the degradation of women and girls that has become the stuff of #content for the masses. This is a Southern gothic tale with a noir-esque touch that is unrelenting in its portrayal of cruelty. Imagine if Flannery O'Connor hung out with Raymond Chandler and you're halfway there. Do not expect even a semblance of joy in this book, although there is plenty of pitch-black humour. The claustrophobia of small town life, where nothing changes and everyone knows everybody's business, is acutely conveyed, adding a new layer of horror to the stifling mood. It's tough to read but utterly propulsive too. Now I just need to watch the miniseries.
Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial by Janet Malcolm
Mazoltuv Borukhova, a young doctor and member of the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest Hills, Queens, was accused of hiring her cousin to kill her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, over a custody dispute involving their four-year-old daughter. Malakov was shot in public while walking with his child. Michelle denied responsibility for his death, and the murder trial brought to the spotlight a Greek tragedy of the modern day.
Janet Malcolm is the writer best known for declaring, "Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." She said that in The Journalist and the Murderer, a true crime account, so there is some irony in her returning to the much-maligned genre she holds in such contempt with Iphigenia in Forest Hills. She watched from the courtroom as Mazoltuv Borukhova struggled to make her defence stick against a wily prosecution. For Malcolm, the meat of the case wasn't the murder itself but the intricacies of a trial: the jury selection, the ways that evidence can be made malleable by a good lawyer, the biases of language, and so on. There are intriguing points made here, but Malcolm also has a habit of making sweeping generalizations based on her own observations. I'm just not sure that this case out of them all was the one to use as a grand platform for a mighty allegory comparable to Greek tragedy.
The Iphigenia of the title is Michelle, the daughter at the centre of the custody battle who is emotionally and spiritually torn to shreds by an uncaring system. There's something here, but in a book that's barely 170 pages, it's only hinted at in light gasps. Her conclusion is potent and I appreciate Malcolm's refusal to make melodrama or gawking tragedy porn from this story, but even her cold and calculating eye cannot penetrate some of the racist and religious biases that defined the case. This book needed to be so much more, and it required a writer willing to give it.
Rooting Interest by Cat Disabato
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831 Stories is a boutique romance publisher that offers short novels (usually under 250 pages) accompanied by various tie-in offerings and experiences, like in-person book clubs, merch, and so on. It's all very chic although I'm not entirely on board with the "we're not like other girls" tone of their marketing or the bland covers. I am, however, into their authors, and how could I say no to a sports romance involving the WNBA?
Jennifer Felix is a sports reporter who covers the NFL. She knows nothing about basketball, but she's the only woman in her office and they need someone to cover the Hollywood Lights, the city's WNBA team, and its star player, Natalie Czapski. After a rocky start, the pair grow close, the temperature goes up, and you know what happens next.
Ice hockey might be the big thing in sports romance right now, but let's give some love to the other pun-ready divisions. You get all the slam dunk jokes you desire in Rooting Interest, plus a couple of scorching sex scenes and a genuine love for women's basketball, which we can all agree is so much more fun than the MNBA. I was a tad confused as to why Cat Disabato made up an entire team but set her story in a world where all the other WNBA teams are real, like the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces. But as with a lot of 831's offerings, this narrative cried out for an extra hundred pages to let the characters breathe. I wanted more of this world and the ins-and-outs of both sports journalism and professional basketball. This is a proudly women- and queer-forward space, and that's only hinted at on the page. It's never a bad thing to want more, but with Rooting Interest, I felt that craving more out of dissatisfaction than anything else. This was simply too short.
