About the Book
Book: Karabos
Author: Lyndsey Lewellen
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: October 13, 2026
Enter a dangerous game of magic beetles, buried secrets, and shifting time.
Winslet Nubek knows bugs better than she knows people. The sixteen-year-old, homeschooled entomologist is determined to earn her place among the ancient and dangerous ranks of magical insect hunters. With her father’s failing mines pushing them toward bankruptcy, winning the Tournament of Scarabs becomes her only shot at securing her dream and saving her family from ruin. But when she touches a forbidden time scarab before the competition begins, she’s left with a mark she can’t explain and trips into the past she can’t control. Forced to hide her mistake, Winslet enters the tournament with a growing fear of being discovered. As her secrets grow, so do her slips through time.
Rafe Stormholt charts maps like other people write diaries, but his own future isn’t his to navigate. He needs the tournament prize to keep his grandfather’s company out of treacherous hands. After the preliminaries go awry, Rafe ends up on a team of academic misfits, including the bug girl he’s already judged as a liability. But when he’s dragged into the past alongside her, Rafe uncovers truths that shatter the faith his family has held for generations.
Bound by a time-slipping curse, Winslet and Rafe must navigate the tournament’s perilous trials while unraveling a conspiracy buried centuries deep. As enemies close in and the past begins to bleed into the present, they’ll have to decide what they’re really fighting for and what they’re willing to lose to win.
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If you are looking for a Young Adult Fantasy novel, you should check out Karabos by Lyndsey Lewllen.
I don’t usually think of beetles as the starting point for a fantasy adventure, but magical scarabs, a dangerous tournament, and unexpected trips into the past? That gets my attention. What draws me in even more, though, is that Winslet and Rafe have much more riding on this competition than bragging rights.
Sixteen-year-old Winslet Nubek knows her way around insects. People are another matter. She dreams of becoming a magical insect hunter, and winning the Tournament of Scarabs could help her prove herself while saving her family from bankruptcy. She already has enough to worry about when she touches a forbidden time scarab—only to find herself slipping into the past.
That’s quite a secret to carry into a competition where danger already comes with the territory. I can understand why Winslet wants to hide what happened, even as each trip through time makes that decision harder to maintain. Her situation brings up a familiar struggle: the more you have to lose, the harder it can become to admit you need help.
Rafe Stormholt has his own reasons for needing that prize. His grandfather’s company is at risk, and landing on a team of academic misfits hardly feels like a promising start. He’s especially doubtful about Winslet, whom he’s already written off as a liability. Of course, being pulled into the past alongside her gives him a whole new set of problems—and a reason to reconsider his assumptions.
Their uneasy partnership is a big part of the appeal for me. They both want to protect their families, but that doesn’t mean they trust each other or agree on how to move forward. There’s plenty of room for tension when two people need each other’s help but aren’t quite ready to admit it.
Then the past begins to reveal secrets that threaten everything Rafe’s family has believed for generations. This is where the mystery becomes especially intriguing. Getting through the tournament is one thing. Figuring out whom to trust when the truth challenges your own family’s history is something else entirely. And with enemies closing in, Winslet and Rafe don’t have the luxury of sorting it all out at their own pace.
I’m also drawn to the team of academic misfits. It’s easy to underestimate someone whose strengths don’t look like everyone else’s, and Winslet’s knowledge of insects gives that idea an interesting twist. In a tournament built around magical scarabs, the “bug girl” might be exactly the person you need beside you.
If you enjoy young adult fantasy with unusual magic, family secrets, and characters forced to work together under pressure, this premise offers plenty. The tournament provides the danger and excitement, but Winslet and Rafe’s reasons for entering give the story its heart. They begin with a prize they desperately need. What they uncover could change what they’re willing to sacrifice to claim it.
So if you are searching for a Young Adult Fantasy novel, you should check out Karabos by Lyndsey Lewllen.
I received a complimentary copy of this book, but this in no way influenced my review. All opinions are my own.
About the Author
Lyndsey Lewellen grew up on a healthy dose of comic books, punk music, and sci-fi. She infuses all three loves into novels written for young adults. Inside her “what if” worlds, her characters take risks, grow, and fight for what matters. When she’s not writing or whittling down her endless TBR, she designs novel covers and paints on shoes. She lives on a small Texas farm with her best friend/husband, five children, and what some might call a zoo of animals (especially after meeting the peacocks).
More from Lyndsey
“Oh boy!”
As far back as I can remember, TV shows and movies like Quantum Leap, Kate and Leopold, Back to the Future, and (my personal favorite) Groundhog Day have absolutely fascinated me. Why? Because all of them share my most beloved trope.
Time travel.
If a story contains time loops, paradoxes, slips, or butterfly effects, count me in! Maybe that’s because I’m intrigued with the structure of time. Sun up, sun down, rinse and repeat. Day by day, we live in a beautifully ordered timeline the Lord has placed us in. My favorite scripture in the Book of Acts exemplifies this truth. While speaking to the Athenians about God’s character, Paul says, “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27)
It’s a glorious and comforting reality that we are exactly where and when we need to be in order to have our best chance at reaching for Him.
However, through fiction, we can imagine what it would be like to step outside the bounds of time. By doing so, I believe, we can better understand our reality. Moving in and out of that well-oiled timeline would jar anyone. For me, it’s that jarring that sparks my curiosity. What would I do if I was moved into the wrong time? Assuming my actions could be catastrophic in the future, how well could I think on the spot and not accidentally cause myself to not be born at all? Perhaps it’s thinking well on the spot that interests me the most. Because isn’t that a fear many of us have? Watching others succeed in these dire situations can give us confidence that we can do the same.
Not only that, but to think of how God is outside of time causes me to look at Him in wonder. He can be fully trusted to tell us about the future because He already knows the end from the beginning. When I read time travel in a novel or craft it in my own stories, I appreciate the wondrous works God has done, is doing, and will do down the line. I am humbled by His skill. All I can do is give Him praise.
So, when I finished my debut series, The Chaos Grid duology, I knew I wanted to tackle a time travel novel of some sort. Sci-fi idea after sci-fi idea popped into my head, but none of them resonated with me enough to start drafting.
Until one day, while eating lunch at a drive-through restaurant, I was listening to an apologetics podcast and an idea struck.
The episode was about archaeology and whether we can trust the events in the Bible. Who was the pharaoh of the Exodus? Were the Hebrews really enslaved? Why didn’t the Egyptians directly record the ten plagues? What intriguing questions! That’s when my idea for a time travel story converged with an Egyptian fantasy. I would love to read a story where people in the future who were lied to by their ancestors traveled back to that time to find out what really went on. There they could discover ancient coverups and propaganda that shaped their skewed view of the past. So, I wrote it.
But being the fantasy and adventure lover I am, I had to throw in a magical scarab competition with The Mummy and Indiana Jones vibes. And, of course, what better era to set the future timeline of my novel than a fictional 1920s when Egyptomania ran rampant?
Thus, Karabos was born, a story of a magic scarab hunting girl who tries to save her family but accidentally drags her reluctant teammate into unstable trips to the past during a dangerous archaeology competition.
I am beyond excited for readers to go on this wild journey with Winslet and Rafe. My hope is that through their story you’ll come away looking at time, and our Creator who stands outside of it, with a renewed sense of wonder.
Blog Stops
The Lofty Pages, October 28
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, October 29 (Spotlight)
Wishful Endings, October 29
Texas Book-aholic, October 30
Simple Harvest Reads, October 31 (Author Interview)
Tell Tale Book Reviews, November 1
Artistic Nobody, November 2 (Author Interview)
For Him and My Family, November 3
Guild Master, November 4 (Author Interview)
Sydney Schmied Books, November 4
Happily Managing a Household of Boys, November 5
Fiction Book Lover, November 6 (Author Interview)
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, November 7
Paula’s Pad of Inspiration, November 8
The Bookish Ledger, November 9 (Author Interview)
Library Lady’s Kid Lit, November 10
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Lyndsey is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon gift card and a copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
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