Chicago Review of Books

The romance/romantasy genre is in a boom time. Since 2020, the industry has more than doubled—it continued growth in 2025. The romance bookstore—a physical store that sells exclusivel...

In many ways, society at large can be characterized by its embrace of contradictions and the illusion of free will. We have grown to imbue each and every choice we make with the potential to be empowering, autonomous, and demonstrative of our inherent agency, despite the inescapable impact of larger societal frameworks. We simultaneously applaud body positivity in the age of ...

What is it to be obsessed? In clinical terms, an obsession is marked by “recurrent, persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are involuntary, intrusive and unwanted.” Obsessions can cause significant distress and anxiety. Even when an individual recognizes these obsessive thoughts as unreasonable, they often feel unable to control them. But the clinical definition has lost ...

Maggie, the character at the center of Claire Boyles’s debut novel, Appraisals, is sure of many things, and top among them is that she is a farmer. As someone who descends from at least three generations of farmers, I do not find her surety surprising. ...

Robin lived through trauma: the rages of her father, the coalescence of her mother, and the fall from grace of her brother Will (none of which Will–the former collegiate basketball star and recipient of their father’s praise–seems able to understand). When Robin picks up and moves to South Bend Indiana on a teaching fellowship, she doesn’t expect to hear from Will again after...