Adult, ARC review, book review

Book of Night by Holly Black (ARC Review)

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own. Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos… Read More Book of Night by Holly Black (ARC Review)

Adult, ARC review, book review

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling (ARC Review)

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished… Read More The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling (ARC Review)

ARC review, book review, young adult

Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain (ARC Review)

A teen girl disappears from her small town deep in the bayou, where magic festers beneath the surface of the swamp like water rot, in this chilling debut supernatural thriller for fans of Natasha Preston, Karen McManus, and Rory Power. La Cachette, Louisiana, is the worst place to be if you have something to hide. This tiny town, where seventeen-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World–and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey’s best friend, disappeared six months earlier. Grey can’t believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something – her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave. When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou – a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town’s bloody history – Grey realizes that La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. Suddenly, she doesn’t know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent–and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart… Read More Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain (ARC Review)

Adult, book review

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (Review)

Taryn Cornick believes that the past–her sister’s violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge–is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring . . . but not all of the attention it brings her is good. A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents’ house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world… Read More The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (Review)

Adult, ARC review, book review

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Review)

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known… Read More Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Review)

Adult, book review, bullet point review, fiction, multiple reviews

October Daye Series by Seanan McGuire: Books 7-10 (Multiple Bullet Point Reviews)

I finished the 12th book in the October Daye series the other day…which means that I’m all caught up now! Ah! In case this is the first October Day themed post of mine that you’ve come across, I highly recommend that you read my full-length review for the first book and my mini-reviews for books… Read More October Daye Series by Seanan McGuire: Books 7-10 (Multiple Bullet Point Reviews)

backlist blast, weekly meme

Backlist Blast #27: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Happy Friday Junior, and Backlist Blast day, everyone! This Tuesday (January 22), Alan Bradley’s The Golden Tresses of the Dead (the 10th book in his Flavia de Luce series!) came out, and it reminded me that I still haven’t read the first book in the series! I’m really ashamed of this because a) I own a copy of… Read More Backlist Blast #27: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

TBR post

December 2018 TBR

Hello everyone! And welcome to my December TBR post! What are you most excited to read this month? So, those of you who have read my November TBR post will know that I fell behind on my reading in September because of some career changes and other stuff that was going on. Well, I didn’t… Read More December 2018 TBR

TBR post

November 2018 TBR

Hello everyone! And welcome to my November TBR post! What are you most excited to read in November? Before I get into what I shall be reading, I thought that I would let you guys know that that TBR post will be formatted a little bit like my October TBR post, in that the books… Read More November 2018 TBR