ARC

The Pursued Review

Book: The Pursued
Author: Corey Mead
Publisher: Little A
Year: 2025
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “From 1977 to 1981, Ruth Finley, an ordinary wife and mother from Kansas, was tormented by an elusive maniac known as the Poet. The police, already on edge from BTK’s reign of terror, spent years searching for the stalker. Meanwhile, his cryptic letters in rhymed verse grew more disturbing and violent, spilling into deeds like stabbing and kidnapping.
In this propulsive nonfiction account, as Ruth is surveilled from all sides, her nightmare takes a chilling turn: The stalker is no stranger at all. It’s someone the police have been close to for years, someone nearer to home than Ruth dared to admit. The revelation recasts what seemed like a cruel twist of fate as something far more disturbing.”

Review : The Pursued is, at times, a dry yet compelling nonfiction read about a serial stalker I hadn’t previously heard of. While the writing and narrative are what one might expect from a true crime rendering – that is to say, dry – the actual incidents themselves and the deeply disturbing nature of the crime left me turning pages, unwilling to put the book down until the conclusion. I finished this book in about 72 hours, and despite the dry nature of it, The Pursued is certainly what I would call unputdownable. Mead has done a good job of creating doubt, of shedding just enough light on the narrative to keep you guessing and questioning right along with the police as they attempt to understand the Poet’s motivation.

The Pursued details several years in which a woman, Ruth Finley, is stalked, tormented, and even kidnapped by a man known only as “The Poet”. It’s a winding tale of uncertainty, fear, and doubt as the police surveil Ruth’s home, neighborhood, and work for years attempting to find the Poet and bring him to justice. The actual events of the case are so absurd and strange, at times there seems to even be suspicion that The Poet and BTK might be the same person. Mead has created a narrative in which the reader cannot possibly see the end result of the investigation until one has completely finished the book – and even then, I find there are still holes in the conclusion that don’t quite add up for me. It’s a strange case and I suspect an even stranger case to have written about. I think Mead did a good job of remaining objective throughout the retelling, something that would be easy to divorce oneself from, particularly if you already knew the conclusion at the outset of writing the book. I do wish there’d been a bit more humanity in the retelling, however, perhaps some interviews with people close to the story, something to assure me that we’re doing more than craning our necks to look at someone else’s dirty laundry for the sake of entertainment – but that’s all true crime, isn’t it?

*** Spoiler’s Ahead ***

I want to tell you, however, that I had trouble sleeping once I’d finished this book, and had I known what the outcome was going to be, I likely wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. It’s impossible to read this book in the way it was meant to be written and simultaneously know how the case concluded, but The Pursued desperately needs to come with content warnings. I won’t be giving the ending away by telling you these details, but I do want you to know that this information does contain some level of spoiler, so please be warned. If you choose to read this book, you must know that The Pursued discusses sexual assault of an adult, sexual assault of a minor, pedophilia, endangerment of a child, discussion of bodily fluids, kidnapping, physical assault, and mental illnesses. Anyone reading this book should go in knowing that the end is gruesome and horrific and sheds a light on outright evil. It’s not for the faint of heart and should be approached with extreme caution.

Advice : If you have a thick skin and a stomach of steel and you live for true crime and nothing really bothers you, then you will likely really enjoy this book. If you’re a softy, like me, or find real cruelty to be difficult to stomach or you have PTSD, I really highly suggest that you don’t read this book, or find some spoilers and decide for yourself if this will be a safe book for you.

Seasons of Glass & Iron Review

Book: Seasons of Glass & Iron
Author: Amal El-Mohtar
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Year: 2026
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass And Iron : Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from New York Times bestselling author Amal El-Mohtar.”

Review : Seasons of Glass & Iron is a lyrical, deadly, and captivating peek through the looking glass into worlds unknown; full of whimsy and wonder, joy and horror, it is a dream and a nightmare tangled in the same web, woven and unwoven, creating a gleaming portrayal of humanity and, at times, something a bit other than humanity. El-Mohtar has deftly curated a collection of perfectly layered stories, giving the reader just enough to whet their appetite before moving swiftly on to the next. As someone who prefers long-form, I cannot speak highly enough of how intentional this collection is, how smooth the transitions, and how seamless the tie-ins. El-Mohtar shares in the introduction that this book may not have much of a “coherent aesthetic argument”, rather, it’s a love letter to women. Regardless of whether the introduction is read or not, you cannot simply pick this book up and not come to the conclusion that the author has a profound love for womankind in all her forms.

Seasons of Iron & Glass is queer, sapphic, and beautifully pro-Palestine. It wiggles a little deeper under the skin with each story, like an ear worm attaching itself in your brain, hooking it’s little fingers into your heart and tugging at just the right moments. It is a profound work of love and loss and becoming and undoing and redoing all over again. There are gorgeous poems written to those surviving the genocide in Gaza, retellings of Welsh fairy tales, stunning creations of fantasy, and incredible stories of unbelievable creativity and artistry. When I read the final words, I cried.

I fear my words do a disservice to how artfully and skillfully crafted this collection is. El-Mohtar states that these works were written between the years of 2008 and 2023 and there are stories that I can easily align myself with, the energy and understanding of them being laid out on LiveJournal or Tumblr feels so visceral I can almost taste it. Yet, each story weaves a broader narrative that cannot be unseen – despite ranging broadly in time, in place, and in content. There are stories I desperately wish were part of a broader narrative, stories I crave to know more of, and still each story is carefully wrapped up in the end, perfectly beginning and ending in ways that, while imperfect, as short stories are, is truly perfect. At the end of the day, try as I may, I can hardly come up with the words to do this book justice, all I can simply say is read this book.

Advice : If you have any interest in Welsh folklore, in short stories, in fantasy, in reading tales of women, then this book is for you. If you want to read folklore that takes the narrative out of the hands of awful gods and puts it back firmly in the hands of the so often downtrodden and abused women in them, this book is for you. I genuinely believe everyone should read it. It’s perfection. Mark your calendars for March 2026, place an order ahead of time, you don’t want to miss this one.

Lady X Review

Book: Lady X
Author: Molly Fader
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Year: 2026
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Los Angeles, 2024
Margot Cooper’s life explodes after she discovers that her A-list actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media. Desperate to get away from the world – and the paparazzi – Margot flees to her childhood home, with her teenage daughter in tow.
But home isn’t the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she and her sister find damning evidence about a mysterious vigilante named Lady X, including a blurry newspaper photo from the 1970s of a woman who looks an awful lot like their mother. It turns out that Margot’s husband isn’t the only family member harboring secrets.
New York City, 1977
Ginger Daughtry is living her best life with her two beloved roommates, until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from the police, the young women take things into their own hands and find themselves igniting a movement that suddenly takes New York City by storm.
Soon what began as a little bit of revenge against terrible men – vandalism here and there, singed collectively as Lady X – starts to take on a life of its own. Their enigmatic reputation spirals beyond their control with copycat criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic Lady X. When a body is found fallen – or pushed – from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point.
But Lady X has vanished into thin air.”

Review : Lady X is not for everyone. Lady X is a novel full of thick, intoxicating, divine rage that fills your chest cavity, runs down your fingers, and sizzles off your skin as you recount the statistics of women who will be assaulted by men in their lifetimes; as you field yet another “you should smile”; as unwanted fingers run up your arms and legs to touch tattoos without consent; as you recall being asked, by a man, if you’re on your period. It’s the rage of thousands of years of patriarchy; the idea that feminism somehow has nothing to do with global atrocities, and being told that it’s worse somewhere else, so you should be grateful. Lady X is a heralding beacon in a bleak, dark, inky black night sky. It’s timely in a way that this subject will never not be timely without radical, dramatic, civilization altering change – it’s pointed, it’s aggressive, it’s feral, and yet it’s deeply soft, prodding the softness of your humanity and heart with fingers that gently turn your head and say “don’t look away”.

Lady X is a vigilante masterclass on how meekly our culture has shifted over the last fifty years, revealing the dark truth that while women have only had access to bank accounts and credit cards without their husband’s approval since 1974, the culture of men doing so much more than taking advantage of women has hardly changed in all that time. While the culture has certainly shifted, at least in part thanks to #metoo, the truth is that women still make a fraction of what men make in the workforce, are continuously being legislated against, often without exception for medical emergencies or anomalies, and still face the backroom absurdities and assaults that happened in the 70s. Only now, with a president who has openly spoken (and been found guilty of!!) about assaulting women; with younger generations of young men coming into the political field with open misogyny and a bloodlust for the voting rights and the bodily autonomy of women. Molly Fader has perfectly encapsulated the energy that sizzles and dances through every person who has ever been assaulted or harmed at the hands of men who have let their belief in male superiority take complete control. She’s written a novel that hits the button labeled “Rage” that sits in the very center of my chest and flung it right where it hurts. And it’s perfection.

Written between the perspective of Ginger Daughtry in 1977 and her daughter, Margot Cooper in 2024, Lady X jumps between narratives with ease, only ever leaving me frustrated at critical points in the story arc. The unfolding mystery of who Lady X is and what might have happened to her is a thread tying two generations of women together as they simultaneously navigate what it’s like to live in a world where men take and take and take. And before you get upset at how misandrist this sounds, Lady X is the perfect embodiment of the understanding that while not all men are the cause of assault, all women have been or know someone who has been assaulted by a man. Lady X became a folk hero, during a time when New York City was embroiled with the Son of Sam, labor shortages in the police force, and a rolling, city-wide blackout. Created perfectly to fit into our real world, Lady X could have easily come to fruition in real time in 1977, or 2024, or 2025. Lady X became a vigilante figure who gave entire groups of people, not just women, the sense that they could speak up, they could point the finger at their abusers, those who have continuously gotten away with cruelty, and that they could enact real change that might make the world a better, softer place for themselves and other marginalized folks.

Fader has created a world that feels so real, that speaks so pointedly to the time we’re living in and all that’s come before us to get us to where we are, that she goes so far as to write in a Lady X campaign that, fictionally, took place during Trump’s second inauguration. It was so pointed, so necessary, so perfectly, seamlessly correct for the time that I found myself weeping. This is not for everyone. It’s for those who have a belief that a better world could exist, those who dream of a matriarchy, of a third way forward, those who have been hurt and know people who are hurting, and those who wish, desperately, for there to be some small measure of justice in this world. Or, maybe not so small justice. Lady X is a guttural scream in the night, a shattering of that hard exterior shell that keeps you safe and looking the other way, it’s our survival instinct screaming, crying out that yes, this is how it changes.

Advice : I would be remiss not to mention content warnings before sending you to the bookshelves in May 2026. Lady X mentions sexual assault, rape, physical abuse, battery, police brutality, harassment, stalking, catcalling, solicitation of a minor, sexual exploitation, cheating, and vigilante violence. That being said, if you feel you can read the above list in a safe way, this book is an excellent read and perfect for anyone who would like to see the bad guys get what’s coming to them. I flew through this one and found it to be utterly unputdownable. I highly recommend pre-ordering it.

In Deadly Company Review

Book: In Deadly Company
Author: L.S. Stratton
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
Year: 2025
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “As the assistant to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Nicole Underwood has plenty of tasks on her to-do list – one of which is the blowout celebration for her nightmare, on-percenter boss, Xander Chambers. But when the party ends in chaos and murder and Nicole is one of the survivors, suspicion – from the investigators to the media – lands on her. Was she the reason for all the bloodshed?
A year after those deadly events, Nicole tries to set the public record straight by agreeing to consult on a feature film based on her story. However, while on set in Los Angeles, she’s sidelined by inappropriate casting and persistent, bizarre script changes – and haunted by persistent visions of her now-deceased boss. It seems clearing her name ins’t so simple when the question of guilt or innocence is…complicated.”

Review : In Deadly Company is an enjoyable, inventive, and easy to read thriller with a truly unique plot that doesn’t fall into the trap of the unreliable female protagonist trope so many thrillers seem to adore. It’s well written, quick moving, and leaves you guessing all the way until the end. While I did find the final reveal to be a bit obvious and contrived, it was still fun to get there in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed this read, found myself wanting to slow things down so it wouldn’t end quite so soon, and have been chewing it over since I finished it yesterday – all hallmarks of a good book.

The narration jumps a bit, and doesn’t hold fast to a set-in-stone pattern which I found to be unnecessary, but provided some texture and certainly helped give context to the way events played out. Between Nicole’s present day and her past, we watch the fateful events of her boss’s birthday party unravel, not only the alluded to murders (yes, plural), but the behind the scenes goings on in Nicole’s personal life that we are only granted glimpses of throughout the book. In the present, Nicole is watching and “consulting” on the movie retelling of the events of her boss, Xander Chambers’ birthday – she wields almost no say in how the story gets told, but she’s been hired by the production team and so she’s there, on set, watching the events play out once more despite very clearly having PTSD. In the past, we simultaneously watch the events play out in real time, catching little bits here and there that might reveal who ends up murdered and why, but never enough to fully catch on to the carnage that would eventually play out by the time the birthday weekend was over.

This review will be short and sweet, nearly anything else I have to say would include spoilers that might truly wreck the ending for you, so I’ll leave things where they are. I will say, however, that I wish the ending had taken a slightly different turn – without giving you the details, you’ll have to read those for yourself, the final twist at the end felt contrived and forced, giving the power of the novel a bit of a lackluster finish. It didn’t feel well thought out, but it did feel a bit messy. Things could have tied up in a nicer way, been a bit less all over the place, and not included one of the most obvious plot twists in history. Okay, that’s all. If I say more, I’ll spoil it for you!

Advice : This was such a fun read! If you’ve been disillusioned by thrillers written from a female perspective, I think you should really give this one a shot! Be warned, there are graphic descriptions of blood, gore, and death; the author describes PTSD flash backs; and there’s mention of the date rape drug as well as what happens when it’s used.

The Last Resort Review

Book: The Last Resort
Author: Erin Entrada Kelly
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Year: 2025
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Just before her Grandpa Clem’s funeral, twelve-year-old Lila makes a shocking discovery. He didn’t die of natural causes – he was murdered. Possibly by someone who wanted to control his inn…and its secret portal to the afterlife. Now, a girl who’s vowed to become “less dramatic” must uncover her grandpa’s killer AND stop the ghosts desperate to make it back to our world.”

Review : The Last Resort is a super fun and enjoyable mid-grade read (grades 3-7) about the power of friendship, family, and finding places where you can be yourself. Lila, a twelve year old whose so-called best friends have described as “too much” and “overly dramatic” and, worst of all, “immature”, is ready for summer vacation so she can work on being as calm as a rock, as cool as ice, and as mature as her two besties think they are as they all head toward seventh grade next year. Her friends have stopped hanging out with her and have begun to hang out without her, she doesn’t have much time to regain their friendships. So when a relative she’s never met, Grandpa Clem, passes away unexpectedly and her family decides to travel out of state for his funeral, Lila is distraught. With the backdrop of frenemies / bullies who find Lila to be too much, we delve into Grandpa Clem’s world of ghosts, crystals, and portals to the world beyond the veil – a less than perfect scenario for a pre-teen who’s trying to be a lot less.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was cute and fun and had some twists and turns that, while I saw coming, didn’t fully take shape until they’d arrived. It doesn’t talk down to the reader or assume the reader’s too young to understand new concepts and it presents unknowns and uncertainties in a way that makes it a true learning experience. I’m always pleased to find a middle grade read that doesn’t feel incredibly dumbed down for a kid to read and The Last Resort really held up. It did include some scary imagery, so I think this might be a proceed with caution book if you or your reader are a bit antsy when it comes to large spiders, the idea of death, or ghostly apparitions – but all in all I found it to be a safe and spooky walk on the paranormal side, perfect for fall! In the finished copy of the book, there will be ghostly illustrations who will come to life on the page via a QR code, which is such a fun addition to an already ghostly book, I think it’ll help bring the book to life in a way that’ll keep the reader thinking about it for a while.

While at Grandpa Clem’s inn, Lila meets a neighbor who’s her age, a boy named Teddy. It’s through Teddy’s friendship that Lila finds her place with someone who doesn’t view her as too much, who lets her be exactly who she is, and who doesn’t dismiss her as being an overly dramatic person. It’s an important lesson without being preachy, that bullies have no place in our lives, and that shrinking ourselves down to fit into the box of other people’s expectations makes us a shell of ourselves. In a world where even adults struggle with this concept, and even the concept of not being bullies to other adults, I found this messaging to be a refreshing change of pace from what we see day-to-day. Ultimately, Lila’s friendships are the cornerstone for this book, not the ghosts!

Finally, I gave this book 4 stars rather than 5 because I felt the ending was too abrupt and lacked the closure I wanted from it. It didn’t need to be drawn out or even significantly longer than it already is, but it would have benefitted from a little more than it received. I think the door was left open for further books down the road, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that this adult will absolutely be reading whatever Kelly comes up with next if she decides to continue this book into a series!

Advice : If you have enjoyed any iterations of Disney’s Haunted Mansion (including the ride), I think you’d enjoy The Last Resort! As advised above, if you or your reader have any squeamishness around spiders, near death experiences, dogs, crows, the threat of death, or ghosts, this might be one you approach cautiously. I think it’s the perfect amount of spooky and calm – a great way to dip the toes into a paranormal subject without diving in head first and scaring the bajeesus out of yourself.

Hollow Review

Book: Hollow
Author: Taylor Grothe
Publisher: Peachtree Teen
Year: 2025
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “After a meltdown in her school cafeteria prompts an unwanted autism diagnosis, Cassie Davis moves back to her hometown in upstate New York, where her mom hopes the familiarity will allow Cassie to feel normal again. Cassie’s never truly felt normal anywhere, but she does crave the ease she used to have with her old friends.
Problem is that her friends aren’t so eager to welcome her back into the fold. They extend an olive branch by inviting her on their backpacking trip to Hollow Ridge, in the upper reaches of the Adirondacks. But when a fight breaks out their first night, Cassie wakes to a barren campsite – her friends all gone.
With sever weather approaching and nearing sensory overload, Cassie is saved by a boy named Kaleb, who whisks her away to a compound of artists and outcasts he calls the Roost. As Kaleb tends to her injuries, Cassie begins to feel – for the first time in her life – that she can truly be herself. But as the days pass, strange happenings around the Roost make Cassie question her instincts. Noises in the trees grow louder, begging the question : Are the dangers in the forest, on the trail, or in the Roost itself?
In a world where autistic characters rarely get to be the hero of their own stories, Cassie Davis’ one-step-back, two-steps-forward journey to unmasking makes Hollow as much a love letter to neurodiversity as it is a haunting tale you’ll want to read with the lights on.”

Review : This is a strange review for me; I spent the majority of my time reading Hollow absolutely certain this would be a 5-star-review kind of book. It was impeccably written, impossible to put down, and left me with so many questions bouncing around in my mind – waiting, waiting, waiting for the big reveal that would tie things up and explain the nuances and mystery of the book. Sadly, within the last quarter of Hollow, the plot completely fell apart, the twists and turns Grothe had to take in order to explain the strangeness became overly complex, and left me with so few answers I am almost totally baffled as to why and how it ended the way it did. The sharp turn toward confusion is something I’ve been mulling over for two days since reaching the ending and I’m having a hard time coming to terms with this as a purposeful choice and not a mistake in storytelling.

It’s worth saying that Hollow is genuinely so well written for the majority of the story, it’s a dark and winding suspense-filled mystery of a book filled with nuance and palpable anxiety as we experience Cassie’s world both externally as her camping trip goes horribly awry, and internally as we bounce back and forth between flash backs to a bullying incident at her last school and her present internal world as she navigates a new autism diagnosis. Hollow as a whole is a beautiful metaphor for the neurodivergent experience of masking, or putting on a face for each set of specific circumstances one might find themselves in during a day-to-day existence. Cassie returns to her hometown after living in the city with her family, following a mental breakdown that lead to an autism and trichotillomania diagnosis. She’s lost touch with her friends and upon returning, in an effort to rekindle their friendship, she’s invited on their annual backpacking trip into the Adirondack Mountains. Everything seems fine, at least on the surface, until the first night of their trip leads to too much to drink, blacking out, and waking to find half of her friends have left the group behind. With an imminent storm approaching, Cassie leaves the campsite behind to find and rescue her friends before something terrible happens. It’s during her initial panic as she searches for the rest of her group that Cassie stumbles, spraining her ankle, and finds herself being rescued by a strange boy she’s never seen before – Kaleb. This is where things begin to take a strange turn.

Kaleb and his mother Stasha live in a remote part of the mountains in a small, off grid community called the Roost. It’s here that Cassie is allowed the space to rest and recover while the storm rages around them, taking a break from searching for her friends until the storm passes and they can get radio signal to the rangers down the mountain. Within the Roost are several families, most of whom have stumbled across the community and have chosen to stay, each living in a small home that seems to have been built by Kaleb’s parents. While staying at the Roost, Cassie discovers that there’s a secret language everyone speaks, some strange mixture of different dialects and languages from across the globe. The members of the Roost seem pleasant, though there’s never quite a sense of ease, as they continue to speak in a foreign language Cassie is unable to get a grasp of, and the books are all written in some unknown tongue she’s equally unfamiliar with. Kaleb continuously tells Cassie how unfair it is that her friends have left her on the mountain to fend for herself and says repeatedly that they’ll have to pay for what they’ve done, which gives a nice sinister backdrop for the scene Grothe has created. While in the Roost, Cassie begins to notice that there are carved wooden dolls…everywhere. They seem to surround the Roost, filling buildings with their haunting, carved faces, peering down from rafters, and generally giving an air of strangeness to the entire community. There are so many instances like this where Grothe is clearly making a point about neurodivergence, the way humans interact with a known dialect and jargon that doesn’t always reach the people who might stand on the fringes or feel as though they can never quite get a foothold in with those who so easily adapt. There’s a profound message of accessibility and acceptance within this storyline, but there’s also a lot left to be desired when it comes to unfolding the story outward into an ending that makes sense.

*Spoilers Ahead* As the book begins to really unravel at the end, so much comes to light about the Roost and the community of people who live there – really driving the point home that Cassie has simply never felt as though she belong, that in wearing a mask she’s as wooden as the dolls who surround the compound. The masks neurodivergent people are often forced to wear are ill fitting and a source of tremendous discomfort and I think Grothe does so well in addressing this concept with simultaneously creating a super creepy drama through which it might unfold. It’s how things come apart at the end that really left me struggling for answers; as Cassie finally starts to put the pieces of the Roost’s strangeness together, she realizes (too late) that Kaleb is actually her good childhood friend, Blake. Yet, in all the time she’s spent at the Roost – and this is another issue I find with the actual storytelling of the book, as the time she’s spent there seems to range from a week to several months with zero explanation beyond perhaps some kind of magic?? – she never once recognizes Kaleb as Blake, literally one of the friends on her camping trip. And not only that, somehow Kaleb / Blake is supposed to have created the entire Roost on his own, carved all the members of the community, and also kidnapped several hikers? Over the course of how long? The time frame, the inexplicable inability to recognize even Blake’s voice or mannerisms or scent (which she mentions multiple times), and the complete lack of explanation for all of the above lead the ending of the book to ultimately fall to pieces on top of a well written few hundred pages. I think there’s a singular moment early on where Cassie mentions briefly that she’s been diagnosed with face blindness, which I think might explain being unable to recognize Blake as Kaleb on it’s most base level, but it’s never mentioned again and without working a little harder to tie things together, it feels loose and confusing at best.

The unknown language spoken in the Roost and the unfamiliar written language in the books are never really explained, and while I can appreciate that the spoken language serves as an analogy for how Cassie feels disconnected from neuro-normative folks, the written language being something totally foreign to her feels like an aspect of the book that was written initially and then forgotten about when it came time to wrap things up. The ending of the book is unclear, deeply confusing, and left me with more questions than answers, which is an unsatisfying way to end a suspenseful, magical novel. I really do appreciate the parallels Grothe draws between those who stand on the fringes of the world and Cassie’s experience at the Roost, I love that Cassie was written to give neurodivergent individuals a place to be the hero, but I don’t know that it was completely successful when everything was all said and done. Cassie spends a lot of time back-and-forthing between staying in the Roost and leaving, even when her friends are dying around her, so much so that it felt as though the point was being made, mistakenly, over and over and over again. It felt like Grothe was hammering it home a little too hard, and in doing so neglected wrapping up crucial elements of the plot. I wanted to give this book 5 stars so badly! I wanted the ending to be better than it was, to make more sense than it did, and to give more of a feeling of completion than I was left with. Sadly, the ending spoiled most the book for me and I had to go with 3 stars. I think there’s room to figure things out and make it make more sense, but I also think it’s not super likely to happen at this stage and I’m sad for that and for Cassie’s story.

Advice : I think this book had a lot of potential – if you like crows, if you like something vaguely sinister, if you want to see a neurodivergent person be the hero, wow! You’ll definitely have something to dive into with Hollow. However, I want to recommend that you don’t get your hopes up for the puzzle pieces to fit together at the end – they don’t. This one might be best checked out from your local library first.

Undead and Unwed Review

Book: Undead and Unwed
Author: Sam Tschida
Publisher: Quirk Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Tiffenie may be three hundred years old, but she’s still a hot mess. The vampire is tragically single, works a dead-end job at a blood bank, and spends her nights marathoning Hallmark Channel moves with her cat.
When Tiffenie inherits a fixer-upper home in Valentine, Vermont, thanks to a case of mistaken (okay, stolen!) identity, she seizes the chance to get her life back on track. With her newly undead neighbor (it was an accident!) in tow, Tiffenie is determined to live out her holiday rom-com dreams in this picture-perfect town.
But between the mystery of her stolen identity, small-town drama, and the arrival of her insufferable vampire ex-boyfriend Vlad, getting her happily ever after with a smoking-hot Christmas tree farmer won’t be easy. Tiffenie must embark on a journey of self-acceptance – with the help of a few therapy sessions – for the first time in her immortal life.”

Review : Over the last few years of writing ARC reviews, I believe I’ve only given two other books a star rating lower than 2. I give a truly low review only when it feels absolutely necessary – sparingly, you might even say. While my reviews are always honest and truthful and they may be, at times, scathing, I’m always hesitant to give someone a low rating for something they’ve crafted. It feels deeply embarrassing to me that Undead and Unwed has garnered as high a review as 3.5 stars on GoodReads, which is really all I need to say when I tell you that I do not use or read GoodReads reviews. Having read over 100 advanced reader copies (sorry, only 90 of those have made it here), I can honestly tell you that I have never received an advanced copy as unfinished and unpolished as this book was. It’s not a surprise to find small errors in an advanced copy, some grammatical mistakes, misspellings, an unfinished sentence here or there – it is a surprise to find a book with so many glaring mistakes as Undead and Unwed, and to be completely frank, that’s not even what scored this book 1.5 stars for me. It’s just part of the chaos and nonsense of the entire experience.

This is the first time I’ve wanted to say this : I read Undead and Unwed so you don’t have to. Please. Take my word for it. You don’t have to put yourself through this. The most frustrating aspect of this entire journey through such an incredibly poorly written book and nearly unreadable premise is that I actually liked the initial idea behind the plot. It could have been so much better, it could have been something readable. Execution, however, has failed. We find Tiffenie, a 300 year old vampire, living and working in L.A. at a blood bank – okay, expected, at least to some degree. She’s depressed, doesn’t know how to stand up for herself, and has little will to live beyond caring for her cat, Cat. We learn fairly early on that for a vampire to continue to exist in the world in any kind of feasible manner, they need to take on someone else’s identity in order to rent an apartment or buy a car or work a job – you know, they need a social security number and a real life name. Tiffenie is currently living under the stolen / bought name Tiffany Amanda Blair, an identity she purchased via the “black market” (I’m using quotes here as there’s no real explanation for this and it’s glossed over, so one can really only assume). When she receives a letter in the mail informing her of an inheritance in her namesake’s hometown of Valentine, Vermont, she hops in a hearse (yes, really) and heads out of town. Of course, I’m glossing over a lot of the minutiae here, but this is how things unfold : girl assumes identity, girl receives inheritance meant for the person whose identity she assumed, girl moves to claim the inheritance. Meanwhile, Tiffenie has accidentally drained her neighbor within an inch of her life and is forced to turn her into a vampire and take her on the road to Vermont because…well, just because. There are so many instances where things happen in the book without a good reason, the reader is forced to go along with what’s happening just for funzies because Tschida said so and it makes for poor storytelling.

Evidently, it’s been just ten years since the real Tiffany has moved away from her hometown of Valentine, yet even though Valentine is a tiny, rural town and Tiffany lived there for her entire life as a child and adult, ten years is somehow enough for Tiffenie to show up as a totally different person under the assumed identity of Tiffany and pass for this other person with an entire backstory and history in the town. And no-one blinks an eye. This was the first (of many) glaring issues I took with Undead and Unwed, as an assumed identity does not mean you also look like the person whose identity you stole! We only get a small explanation by way of Tiffenie dying her hair blonde because Tiffany was also a blonde. Yes, you read that correctly. In all other accounts, everyone Tiffenie runs into, be they old flames, friends from high school, or people who knew her family, all really, truly believe that Tiffenie is actually Tiffany. It is as asinine as it sounds. Next, we encounter the trouble with Tiffenie’s bank account – namely, she was dirt poor in L.A., working a job for peanuts, somehow living alone, and yet when she moves to Vermont without a job, she has enough money to start paying thousand dollar fines for living in a condemned building. There’s no explanation for this change in circumstances beyond the inheritance of a condemned property. There hasn’t been some grand windfall, no change in her lifestyle, only that she’s gone from L.A. to Vermont.

If this isn’t enough, Tiffenie is written just as the synopsis describes, as a hot mess. She’s flaky, irresponsible, somehow and for some unknown and never fleshed-out reason, she’s obsessed with not drinking blood, and she has a shopping problem. I don’t love this characterization, but I can get on board with it if it’s how she’s written, unfortunately, Tschida goes back and forth between our modern-day Tiffenie and the Tiffenie of the past who had children, knew how to bake for her family, and lived a real life with big ideas and plans. It’s a stark contrast and the jumping back and forth between these two versions of the self is stilted, as though Tschida threw them in at random without any planning or thought. Further, the conversations are so choppy and robotic, they’re nearly impossible to read. When it comes to story writing, Tschida has landed so far from the mark it’s almost laughable. There are so many instances where someone’s speaking and the only response will be “Yes.” that it became impossible to read with any semblance of seriousness. At one point I actively questioned whether this book was even written or whether it was dictated based on the glaring errors staring back at me from the page. There were multiple instances throughout where the paragraph was re-written but the original was never taken out, so I was presented with multiple directions in which this ARC might go, unsure of which would eventually be chosen for the final copy, and one instance where an entire paragraph was broke up with bullet points. These kinds of errors are not commonplace in an advanced copy, they’re sloppy and lazy and do the author a tremendous disservice – in this instance, Tschida needed all the help she could get and her publishing house did her dirty.

Undead and Unwed is an unreadable mess. I can only hope that by the time it’s actually ready for print it will look dramatically different than it does in it’s advanced copy form, but from my experience this is rarely the case. I suspect this book will be slightly more readable, but I don’t believe it will have improved by much at that point. The concept of a Hallmark Channel-ish story where a vampire moves to Vermont and restores a property, finds a chosen family, and eventually love is actually such a cute idea and I’m actively upset that this book ended up being as poorly written as it was. It needs a significant amount of work, perhaps it would even be worth scrapping the whole thing and starting over, or maybe it would be better to never have started in the first place.

Advice : Don’t. Just, don’t. Don’t fall for the 3.5 GoodReads score. Don’t spend your money. If you really feel drawn to this book, request it at your local library and save your money for something else.

Boudicca’s Daughter Review

Book: Boudicca’s Daughter
Author: Elodie Harper
Publisher: Union Square & Co
Year: 2025
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Boudicca was an infamous warrior, queen of the British Iceni tribe, and mastermind of one of history’s greatest revolts. Her defeat in c. 60 CE by the conquering forces of the Roman Empire spelled ruin for her people, yet still Boudicca’s name was enough to strike fear into the hearts of her enemies.
But what of the woman who grew up in her shadow – her daughter Solina – who has her mother’s looks and cunning and her father’s druidic gifts, but a spirit all her own? Solina’s desperate bid for survival takes her from Britain’s battlefields and sacred marshlands to the glittering facades and treacherous politics of Nero’s Rome, where she must decide what it truly means to be Boudicca’s daughter.”

Review : Boudicca’s Daughter is an intense, 400+ page work of historical fiction that left me crying at times, enraged at others, and sent me down a google rabbit hole to find the truth. In all honesty, I’m not sure where I sit on the fence of historical fiction, and in all likelihood it’s probably closer to the “I’m not sure this is something we should do” side of things than not. In this instance, so little is known about Boudicca’s actual daughters – yes, plural – that the story could be filled in however Harper chose to see fit. It’s an interesting conundrum that a woman who held such a role in history, whose two daughters were deeded the rights to rule the Iceni tribe once their ruling father passed, made so little a mark as to have left two nameless daughters to the annals of time. I appreciate Harper’s work here in bringing these very real people back to life, even if created purely from imagination. We might suppose that some of what came to pass in this book could have been real, truthfully, Harper put in a great deal of work to get the historical facts correct; the rest, however, is mere speculation. While Harper suggests in her letter to the reader that humanity is largely the same even spanning across thousands of years, I suspect she’s written the characters we find here with more grace, humility, and kindness than might necessarily be warranted them.

Boudicca’s Daughter breaches the real world and enters into a historical fiction narrative complete with love, betrayal, and blood sacrifices that play out into the real world. I grew to love Solina, our protagonist, as we encountered her throughout four dramatic stages of her life. My biggest complaint about our time spent with Solina in the Iceni tribe is that so little of the book is spent in such a broad, wild place and so little time is truly spent on Boudicca’s actual assault on the British Empire. Much time passed during this first quarter of the book, yet the way it was written lead me to believe it was short-lived and perhaps even not so wide of a battle – history informs me that by the time the battles were over, nearly 100,000 people had been killed, British and Roman alike. Harper addresses the grey area that a war inevitably brings with it and asks the reader to critically think about who might bear the weight of the word guilty in a time when cultures are combining, the Roman Empire is conquering multiple people groups, and the masses are doing what they must do to survive. Where does the line get drawn and who holds the weight of responsibility for such a line? Can anyone be truly blameless in war or is everyone at equal rights to blame for the bloodshed? Harper weaves a thread of guilt and shame throughout the entirety of this novel, reminding us that the manner of human life is such that nuance is a necessity and survival is often the only option even in a world like Rome.

*Spoilers Ahead* We are drawn through time with Solina following the death of her mother, carrying the belief that she is truly the last remaining Iceni alive in the world; witnessing her ultimate defeat at the hands of a Roman General, Paulinus; watching her eventual enslavement to Poppaea Sabina, Nero’s wife; and finally her escape and eventual marriage to none other than Paulinus himself – her very captor. I struggle a bit to find the nuance between true devotional love and stockholm syndrome, but I do think Harper does the work necessary to convince the reader that Solina is truly in a headspace to care for the man who ultimately enslaved her, sold her to Nero, and murdered her entire bloodline. It’s hefty to put it all out there like that. This is ultimately why I find myself hemming and hawing on the fence of historical fiction, wondering if there’s truly a place for this genre when the pillage and mass murder of an entire people group at the hands of a brutal colonial empire is tamed to such a degree that we find ourselves in a love story between captor and captive. Does this do justice to the reality of the world? Or are we finding ourselves in an idealized version of history that makes people out to be much kinder, gentler, and more loving than the truth of history might reveal? It’s impossible to know, as we may only speculate upon the truth.

Boudicca’s Daughter held me captive for the entire 400+ pages, at no point did I find myself wanting to stop reading. I found myself roiling with rage over the injustices of the time, watching parallels between ancient Rome and our current world unfold, and simultaneously hoping for a happy ending in which captor and captive might live on forever. It’s well written and beautifully researched, weaving enough real history into the fiction that it feels as though it might as well be true, but again, we have to remember that it also, more than equally, is likely not. This is a struggle I seem to find impossible to ignore. At the end of the day, I enjoyed it for the entertainment value, but felt it could have possessed stronger anti-colonizer themes and less blurred lines between love and insufficient power. All told, it felt worth the week it took me to read it.

Advice : It’s worth mentioning that Boudicca’s Daughter talks extensively about blood, both in battle and in ritual, it discusses sexual assault, PTSD, captivity, forced castration, and suicide. I feel strongly that if you enjoy Outlander, you’ll enjoy this read.

The Book of Lost Hours Review

Book: The Book of Lost Hours
Author: Hayley Gelfuso
Publisher: Atria Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Nuremberg, 1938: Eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy is hidden by her father from approaching forces in a mysterious place called the time space, a library where all the memories of the past are stored inside of books. Trapped, she spends her adolescence walking through the memories of those who lived before. When she discovers that government spies are entering the time space to destroy volumes and maintain their preferred version of history, Lisavet sets about trying to salvage the past, creating her own book of lost memories.
Until one day in 1949, when she meets an American timekeeper named Ernest Duquesne, who offers her a chance at another life, setting in motion a series of events that puts her own existence – and that of the time space itself – in peril.
Boston, 1965: Amelia Duquesne is mourning the death of her uncle and guardian, Ernest, when she’s approached by Moira Donnelly, the head of the CIA’s highly secretive Temporal Reconnaissance Program. Moira tells her about the existence of the time space – accessed only by specially designed watches whose intricate mechanisms have been lost to history – and enlists her help in recovering a strange book her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia enters the time space, she discovers that her uncle may not have been the man she thought – and that the government may have another reason to bring her there.”

Review : Lisavet Levy lives in the Time Space. In the history of time, it seems that no one has ever simply lived in the Time Space – the place outside concrete reality where all memories live and are recorded, where souls who pass go to be placed into books, where our recollection of events are housed. And yet, for over a decade, Lisavet Levy lives within the Time Space. In a world where special watches and only a few select people may generate a doorway into such a sacred place, the governing bodies of countries all across the globe enter and tamper with the Time Space, effectively changing the way people view the world according, literally, to the victor. It’s within the Time Space that Lisavet Levy realizes government agents and soldiers are entering her temporal reality and burning memories, literally destroying the memories of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. In the real world, as a reader, The Book of Lost Hours speaks, at least in part, to the dangers of propaganda and misinformation campaigns. And while we may be in a world without a literal Time Space, nearly one hundred years in the future, the threat of mis (and dis) information looms large. Gelfuso touches on a topic that is near and dear to many of our hearts with her stunning book, reminding us of the importance of preserving the memories of those who perhaps did not fare as well as the victor may have, as we know that indeed, history is written by the victor.

While The Book of Lost Hours is a chilling look into how governing bodies (presidents, say) go about changing and challenging the agreed upon version of events, it is at it’s core a hauntingly beautiful love story that spans not just years and countries, but memories and timelines as well. Lisavet meets Ernest Duquesne in the Time Space and while they court each other in the memories of others, Lisavet begins to change Ernest’s mind about burning and changing the memories of those he’s sent into the Time Space to discard. **Spoilers Ahead** And though Lisavet, as a form of self preservation, must eventually erase all memory of herself and their love from Ernest’s mind, the seed she planted in his mind takes root. By the year 1965, there’s a full-blown revolution occurring within the CIA, even spanning across the globe; soldier’s preserving memories they’d been sent to destroy, thwarting the notion that memories and history must be warped to fit a specific turn of events. Through sheer bad luck and, perhaps, inevitability, Lisavet finds herself captured and under the control of the director of the CIA, Jack, a man who sees her merely as an asset and something to be used to further bolster the American agenda within a growing Cold War. It is outside the Time Space that Lisavet and Ernest meet once again, and again find themselves falling in love – though one of them remembers the past while the other doesn’t.

Jumping between the perspective of Lisavet and Amelia, Ernest’s niece, we piece Lisavet’s story together, from her time within the Time Space to her time spent in the real, concrete world. With several twists and turns that, while easy to spot, don’t detract from the storyline, we navigate a growing divide in the external world and a literal growing chasm in the Time Space, torn apart by Amelia’s mere presence in the world. With just a hint of string theory and quantum physics, The Book of Lost Hours presents a framework whereby we might imagine memories as a collectively agreed upon idea rather than a set in stone foundation of events that well and truly happened. It’s a lot to chew on and offers a unique perspective into the idea of time, memories, and consciousness – all while addressing the very real implications of disinformation. With parallels to our own world, it’s hard to miss the roadsigns. If we aren’t careful, we’ll wrap ourselves up so tightly in a web of lies we’ll never be able to find our way back to the truth again – if we haven’t already.

Advice : This book comes out tomorrow (8/12)!! I think you should grab it. If you enjoy Outlander, time travel of any kind, libraries, and a little bit of science fiction, I think you’ll really love this one. If you’re not interested in a love story, or don’t like books, well, this is probably not for you and what are you even doing on my blog in the first place?

Five Found Dead Review

Book: Five Found Dead
Author: Sulari Gentill
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Year: 2025
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris, hoping for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. Meredith also hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe’s muse awake and he’ll be inspired to write again. And he is; after their first eventing spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. Seems like this trip is just what the doctor ordered…
And then some. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin net door has become a crime scene, bathed in blood but with no body in sight. The pari soon find themselves caught up in an Agathy Cirstie-esque murder investigation. Without any help from the authorities and with the victim still not found, Joe and Meredith are asked to join a group of fellow passengers with law enforcement backgrounds to look into the mysterious disappearance of the man in Cabin 16G. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree that leaves five found dead – and one still missing. Now Joe and Meredith must fight once again to preserve their newfound future and to catch a cunning killer before they reach the end of the line.”

Review : It takes a certain level of gumption to write a new take on a famously done murder mystery, possibly none as more culturally known as Murder on the Orient Express, and while I enjoyed much of Five Found Dead, it simply did not live up to Agatha Christie’s famous work. Gentill, to her credit, does much work to lay a foundation wherein her novel would not simply be a retelling, but a fairly meta mystery involving an author, a couple podcasters, and a whole host of law enforcement attempting to sold a crime all while existing within a world in which Murder on the Orient Express might cloud ones perspective of such an incident. It is from this perspective that the entirety of the book ultimately begins to unravel – there are far too many characters, at least a few of whom we rarely interact with; far too much extraneous story-telling happening, some of which does seem to be an attempt at red herring; and far too many details to make this a succinct murder mystery, or really anything that might ever stand up to Christie’s work. And while I think it might be a bit unfair to compare Five Found Dead with Murder on the Orient Express, it’s also exactly what one asks to be done when writing a book about a murder (nay, murders) upon the very Orient Express Christie herself wrote about.

Joe Penvale, a famous murder mystery writer, has undergone an intense period of cancer treatment and upon finding himself in remission, has taken himself and his sister on the trip of a lifetime : a train ride on the famous Orient Express. Gentill managed to set a perfectly cozy scene aboard the train, and after reading her acknowledgments I can clearly understand why, for she herself endured medical treatments and a ride upon the Orient Express. Her understanding of what sets a cozy scene does feel perfectly in line with what I’d like in a murder mystery, even what I’d like within a locked door mystery, but beyond this scene setting, I found the gross majority of the book to be a conundrum. To begin, while Joe and Meredith are twin siblings with a shared family trauma, I found their relationship to be odd and uncomfortable at times. I’m not sure if they were mirrored after a family relationship Gentill has or if they were simply conjured out of thin air, but I did not find believability within their world in the least. If we can look past the strangeness of their written relationship, we find ourselves enmeshed within a world where Covid still has a grip – I was unable to determine during what time frame this story was set and we are given no clues beyond the fact that Covid is still creating new variants. Is there a new variant ravaging the world? Perhaps this was set a few years ago? Or even 2020? It’s unclear and the answer is never given. ***Any further reading will reveal SPOILERS AHEAD*** There is an entire subplot in which we find several passengers have tested positive for a new and deadly variant, a small detour I believe Christie would have used in her own writing, but nonetheless, without more details I found it to be added confusion in a story that is already more confusing than I necessarily agree with.

Upon awakening after their first night aboard the train, Joe and Meredith find that the man in the cabin next to theirs has been murdered or has at least gone missing. What follows is a strange and chaotic 24-48 hours whereby multiple passengers test positive for Covid, five people are murdered, and at we discover that at least seven of the passengers aboard are members of varying international police forces. We encounter so many needless characters that it quickly begins to feel superfluous and needlessly confusing – I suspect in part at least to mimic Christie’s work, but it simply doesn’t play out in a way that lends any ease to the reader. There are so many side trails and intentional red herrings that by the time we do finally unmask our criminal(s) it feels strange, tangled, and frustrating (which, to my mind, is the exact opposite of what you want from a murder mystery reveal). I will say, I was able to determine fairly easily who the man in the cabin next to the Penvale’s actually was, though this does not mean I was able to determine who the killer was. I warned you, here be spoilers. While I won’t reveal the exact nature of the crimes and perpetrators, I will tell you that in the end, it was anticlimactic and disappointing to find the truth. Not to mention, the final chapter reveals an entire podcast episode whereby Gentill undoes much of the convoluted work she’d laid out for us, creating further confusion and disappointment in the ending. I did not find myself pleased with the end result.

Gentill has managed to create a cozy atmosphere aboard the Orient Express, allowing the reader to feel, truly, as if they were on board themselves. Beyond that, however, I found the work to be needlessly convoluted and had to return to past pages to reread sections that didn’t make much sense. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The ending left much to be desired, the second ending even more so, and with a cast of characters limited to those aboard a train, I suspect many readers will be able to sniff out at least one of our criminal elements prior to the “big reveal”. To her credit, Gentill, unlike Christie, has given the reader enough breadcrumbs to figure things out on their own (for the most part) and, even if I didn’t agree with how it all turned out, I do enjoy that aspect of things. All in all, it was fine, I felt cozy, but it wasn’t deeply satisfying or even tremendously challenging. Take that how you will.

Advice : You may find this to be a worthwhile and perhaps even enjoyable read if you love the genre and consume anything you can within it. However, I suspect you will be comparing it to Christie’s works along the way and in that respect, you may not enjoy it at all. It’s 50/50 – maybe check it out from the library before committing to buying. Happy sleuthing!