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Harper Lee's First Draft & More Close Reads
Wen-yi Lee, Ling Ma, Go Set a Watchman, and more ...
BookBrowse Highlights
Hello Readers!
This week, our First Impressions reviewers comment on Wen-yi Lee’s When They Burned the Butterfly, an elaborate and powerful work of historical fantasy following a teenage girl in 1970s Singapore.
In Editor’s Choice, we review Severance by Ling Ma, a strangely literary apocalypse novel that skewers modern office culture and speaks to our current moment. We also bring you a “beyond the book” essay on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and its sequel of sorts (which is really an earlier draft), the somewhat darker Go Set a Watchman. These pieces appear in our special Deep Reading issue, where reviewers offer close readings of significant books.
Plus, we have a beautiful selection of free books for members to request, and a new Wordplay!
Thanks for reading,
The BookBrowse Team
First Impressions
Each month, we share books with BookBrowse members to read and review. Here are their opinions on one recently released title.
When They Burned the Butterfly by Wen-yi Lee
“When They Burned the Butterfly is dark, lyrical, and full of feminine rage. Adeline, a sixteen-year-old who can summon fire, discovers after her mother's mysterious death that she's tied to a powerful all-female gang. What follows is a story of grief, rage, and survival in the gritty backstreets of 1970s Singapore…The characters aren't always likable—ruthless, messy, and consumed by grief—but that raw intensity is exactly what makes them so unforgettable. This book is brutal, emotional, and beautifully written. If you like historical fantasy with dark magic, complicated women, and a lot of heart, it's definitely worth picking up.” —Betty T. (Warner Robins, GA) |  |
“I was very thrilled when I finished this book. I thought it was well written and had outstanding worldbuilding…I will be recommending this to all my friends.” —Joshua P. (Muskegon, MI)
“I am looking forward to more from Wen-yi Lee. The story was very interesting and it really kept me wanting to know what happens next…The writing is very descriptive… smooth and not disjointed or hard to follow, which really made the book a pleasure to read.” —Brenda W. (Wilkes Barre, PA)
For Members
This Deep Reading backlist issue of The BookBrowse Review contains reviews and special "beyond the book" close-reading essays for 14 titles selected by our reviewers, including To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and Severance by Ling Ma. We also bring you Our Most Anticipated Books for 2026, previews of books publishing soon, book news from our community forum, and more. Not Yet a Member? Do you love to spend your reading hours immersed in captivating storytelling and intriguing ideas? |  |
Then a BookBrowse membership is for you! What you see on BookBrowse for free and in this newsletter is just a small part of what is available to members—for just $5.00/month! Join Today!
Members! This month's First Impressions and Book Club books are now available to request. Offer closes end of Saturday, November 8. Books are provided free of charge to BookBrowse members resident in the US with the understanding that they'll do their best to either write a short review or take part in an online discussion forum (depending on whether the book is assigned for First Impressions or the Book Club). Our basic membership guarantees you at least four books a year when you request each month. |  |
Free books are one of the many benefits of a BookBrowse membership. Join by this Saturday (for just $5.00 a month) to request and receive a book from this list. Don't wait!
Editor’s Choice
Severance by Ling Ma
Ling Ma's Severance feels both like a novel of a particular time and one that hasn't aged at all. It was published in 2018, while the main events of the book are understood to mostly take place around 2011, in a world where a pandemic infects humanity with a transformative virus. Ma's novel is uncannily prescient and continually relevant, not only because of its fictional pandemic that echoes our later real-life one, but because of how its portrayal of a sudden, literal, physical breakdown of society echoes our slow, ongoing one. In Severance, a virus called Shen Fever sweeps the globe. Infected humans become stuck in a loop, repeating familiar actions seemingly unconsciously before they die. |  |
In the meantime, the main character, Candace Chen, continues showing up for work at her job in New York, in the Bibles division of a publishing company, after all of her colleagues have succumbed to infection or left. … continued
Review by Elisabeth Cook
Beyond the Book
The Unmaking of Atticus Finch: Go Set a Watchman as First Draft
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, tells the story of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, a six-year-old girl growing up with her brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus Finch, an upstanding lawyer who takes on the defense of a young Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Go Set a Watchman (2015) ostensibly resumes the story twenty years later, when Jean Louise returns home from New York for a visit and discovers that her father, whom she has idolized all her life, is in fact a racist man. In fact, Go Set a Watchman predates To Kill a Mockingbird. |  |
Lee had first submitted it to Lippincott in 1957, where it was read by veteran editor Tay Hohoff: "the spark of the true writer flashed in every line," she later recalled. However, rather than accepting the manuscript as it was, she instead commissioned Lee to work on it and come back with a revised version. … continued
Article by Alicia Calvo Hernández
Wordplay
Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win a one-year membership to BookBrowse!
"A W E"
Click for the answer to the last Wordplay (A W G C), and a detailed breakdown of its meaning and history.
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