Gizmo's Reviews

#Review - The Enigma Challenge by S.C. Godfrey #Thriller

2026-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: August 11, 2026
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller

Zoe Wilder has the unflashy, solitary life of an academic, studying ciphers in literature at a California university. When her research takes her to a cryptology conference in Madrid, she’s not expecting to trigger the Enigma Challenge, a clandestine puzzle competition few dare to enter.

The Enigma Challenge is an infamous competition with impossibly high stakes: Lose, and your identity is wiped forever. It doesn’t take long for Zoe to realize that she’s in over her head. Enter Dane Seaver: the mysterious hacker who insists they team up. Dane knows the Enigma Challenge—its secrets, its players—and Zoe knows ciphers. For better or worse, they need each other.

Six days, five puzzles, three countries, and innumerable rivals. What’s more, the spark of attraction between them becomes harder to ignore, but distractions are dangerous. With twelve million dollars and multiple lives on the line, the Enigma Challenge is anyone’s game. Will Zoe and Dane come out unscathed against the other players—and each other?

Story Locale: Madrid; Barcelona; Paris; Edinburgh

S.C. Godfrey’s The Enigma Challenge is a high-speed thriller that treats codebreaking as both the engine of the plot and the metaphor for a bad relationship. This one is designed as an action vehicle with an open-door love story bolted on, and that hybrid is both its selling point and the source of the split verdict. Zoe Wilder, a thirty-year-old postdoc who studies literary ciphers at the fictional Bay Area university Chessmont, arrives in Madrid for the International Conference on Cryptology to present a paper and to end things with Eric, her boyfriend and her boss.

The conference is also the kickoff for the Enigma Challenge, a clandestine competition of five puzzles, a rumored multi-million-dollar purse ($12 million), and a penalty that makes ordinary defeat look mild: lose, and the organizers “delete” you—bank accounts, degrees, credit, identity, gone. Zoe solves the throwaway opening puzzle at the Ángel Caído in Retiro Park, the mass text goes out, and she is suddenly the target. She teams up with Dane Seaver, a previous two-time winner, hacker, academic bad boy, and the man Eric specifically told her to avoid.

Six days, five ciphers, a route that runs Madrid–Barcelona–Paris–Edinburgh and on into the Scottish Highlands and Inverness, and a growing list of rivals who will threaten, attack, and kill to stay in the game. Godfrey has been frank about the lineage. The spark was not The Da Vinci Code but Kit Williams’s 1979 picture-puzzle book Masquerade, which she loved as a child; the ciphers themselves were built with the help of Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh’s practical codebreaking guide, and Dunin reportedly solved the book’s puzzles on a Zoom call. That research shows.

Zoe walks readers through Caesar, pigpen, Playfair, columnar transposition, and the rest, and the novel is written so you can try the puzzles or simply watch her solve them. Real sites—the fallen angel in Retiro, the cloisters of Barcelona Cathedral, Arthur’s Seat—are used as clue locations rather than postcard backdrops, which is one of the book’s cleaner pleasures. Once the challenge starts, the pair barely stop moving. Zoe is smart and spunky; Dane is abs with a vulnerable heart; the villains are extremely villainous.

Godfrey has said the romance was written in service of the thriller, not the other way around, and that she did not hold back on either the sex scene or the violence. That matches the book’s self-description. The emotional through-line that actually works is Zoe’s exit from a toxic workplace relationship, and her inherited love of puzzles, shared with a late father. Dane functions more as a guide, bankroll, and romantic obstacle than as a fully independent mystery, at least until the late revelations the ending is built to protect. The last page is a deliberate cliffhanger. Godfrey has said the next book is not a direct sequel but another story in the same world, with related characters.

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#Review - Tempest by Victoria Aveyard #Fantasy

2026-10-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: The Lyrian Sea
Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: September 8, 2026
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Source: Publisher
Genre: Epic Fantasy

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before—as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after—as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern in the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn, and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, its full weight falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all.

But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor.

A storm is rising on the Lyrian. What will it leave in its wake?

Tempest, by Victoria Aveyard, is the first installment in a brand-new series called The Lyrian Sea. Tempest, the first half of the Lyrian Sea duology (sequel Tyrant due summer 2027), opens after the war is already lost: the pirate republic of the Lyrian Sea has been broken in six months, bodies hang from a harbor arch, and Catrine Rose walks past the displayed corpse of the last pirate lord on her way to the tavern she runs. The empire that once owned her now wants one more name. Bring them Valerian Kane, the captain who keeps slipping the noose, or hang.

The chapters alternate strictly between Before and After, with almost no other markers. Before is Lady Catrine Rose at nineteen or twenty, dragged across an ocean by a bankrupt, loathsome husband into colonies the Meridian navy cannot hold. After is the Widow Rose at thirty, coins sewn into her hems, a pistol in her pocket, working under the governor who hanged the world she once lived in. The pleasure of the structure is not mystery so much as contrast. A card game answers a card game. A cabin door answers a cabin door.

You watch a woman who cannot mend a shirt become a woman who counts cards while people talk, and that transformation is more satisfying than most of the set pieces. Cat is the reason the length mostly works. She is selfish, an excellent liar, and never asked to apologize for surviving. The relationship with Valerian is a ten-year situationship told out of order: flirtation and raid in one timeline, history and hatred in the other. Navy captain Jasper Fell, an orphan climbing a ladder rather than a pure rival, is often the more interesting man on the page.

The Lyrian Sea is openly built from the Golden Age of Piracy and the Bahamian pirate republic: elected captains, articles that are about not being property rather than about honor, sugar and indenture running the trade routes, a lion-flagged empire with a boy king three thousand miles away, a rival crown, and an island people whose harbors and temples were already there when the explorers arrived. Marketed as romantic fantasy, Tempest spends most of its roughly 460–500 pages as historical adventure on an invented map.

No magic system does the heavy lifting the way blood powers did in Red Queen. Arcayan faith, song towers, and Valerian’s “uncanny connection to the song of the sea” sit at the edge as belief and rumor until very late, when the fantasy arrives and reframes what the sequel is for. The romance is almost entirely fused. Held wrists, interrupted kisses, a decade of looking. Aveyard is explicit: the before is the dance, and the after is a couple who know each other and now hate each other. Anyone arriving for romantasy consummation will be reading a prologue.

The middle idles in travel and reconnaissance in both timelines. The ending is a cliffhanger, with an epilogue that shifts point of view. Nothing closes. That is a feature of a duology written, by the author’s account, as one book that split; it is also a tax on patience. Content is adult in the grim sense more than the spicy one: public executions, including drawing and quartering; coerced sex inside a marriage, mostly referred to rather than staged; naval combat; indenture; colonial erasure. There is very little on-page sex.

Read it if you want politics taken as seriously as the black flag, a slow burn told backward, and a heroine who will sell a sea to keep her neck. Skip it if you need a finished story, magic before the last stretch, or the relationship paid off in this volume. The last line is a gauntlet for Tyrant. Whether that feels like a promise or a deferral depends on how much of the wreckage you were willing to walk through to get there.

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#Review - The Vanished Sister by Sherry Thomas #Historical #Mystery

2026-10-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Lady Sherlock # 9
Format: 333 pages, Paperback

Release Date: September 29, 2026
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Historical, Mystery

In Victorian England, It’s been three years since Charlotte Holmes struck a decisive blow against Moriarty's operations in Britain, three years of relative calm and benign developments. In a buoyant mood, everyone gathers at Lord Ingram's seaside cottage in North Devon for what promises to be a perfect summer holiday. Until Mrs. Watson receives an invitation from Mrs. Carstairs, her long-estranged sister, to attend a house party nearby.

Mrs. Carstairs has married spectacularly well. She is the mistress of a great manor, a doyen of all domestic arts, and still an unforgettable beauty. Now she clamors for a reconciliation with her sister. Mrs. Watson does not trust Mrs. Carstairs's motives. Yet she cannot help but feel tremors of the old admiration for this once-beloved sister.

Then Mrs. Carstairs disappears without a trace. The next day a woman is discovered floating on the waves, her build and coloring matching those of Mrs. Carstairs. But her husband insists that the corpse fished out of the Bristol Channel cannot be his wife. So where is the real Mrs. Carstairs? Would she have purposely dragged Mrs. Watson into a murder investigation? Or was it Sherlock Holmes's involvement that she needed from the very beginning?

The Vanished Sister, by Sherry Thomas, is the Ninth installment in the author's Lady Sherlock series. Three years have passed since Charlotte Holmes dealt a serious blow to Moriarty’s operations in Britain. The interval has been unusually quiet. Charlotte, Mrs. Joanna Watson, Lord Ingram (Ash), and Penelope gather at his seaside cottage in North Devon for what looks like an ordinary summer holiday. Then Mrs. Watson receives an invitation from Justina Carstairs, her elder sister, whom she has not seen in years.

Justina has married twice and well. She is mistress of Noble House and High Burrow, a holiday estate near Ash’s cottage; a beauty and a model of domestic accomplishment; and the granddaughter of a country curate who calculated every step of her rise. She cut Joanna off so that Joanna’s past—as an actress, a courtesan, and a duke’s longtime mistress, later the wife of a middle-class doctor—would not stain that ascent. Now she wants a reconciliation, during a house party, with her son’s engagement in the balance.

Joanna does not trust the motive, but she goes anyway. Soon thereafter, Justina vanishes. The next day, a woman’s body is pulled from the Bristol Channel, similar in build and coloring. Everett Carstairs insists the corpse is not his wife. Charlotte and the others, including Inspector Treadle, are left with a missing-person case, a possible murder, other missing women who may or may not connect, and the question of whether Justina engineered Sherlock Holmes’s involvement from the start.

Moriarty remains a shadow rather than the engine of the plot. Joanna, to the women Justina now moves among, might as well be a parrot: even if she recited Cicero, she would still belong to an inferior species. Justina’s own cost is quieter and meaner—the loneliness of a woman not born to the manor, standing in front of senior servants and a web of bloodlines, afraid her children will be marked by a mother who was once “of no consequence whatsoever.”

The Carstairs marriage has love, but also deception, jealousy, and dangerous games. The investigation peels Justina off her pedestal and forces Mrs. Watson to revise the story she has told herself about which sister was the righteous one. Series readers who have wanted more of Joanna’s history get it here, and the emotional payoff is the reason to read the book. The mystery itself is busier than it needs to be. There is a large cast, several locales, class lines that matter to motive, and breadcrumbs that blur if you don't track them closely.

Charlotte’s methods are still clever, and the ensemble is the pleasure it has become over nine books, but the solution asks for patience more than it invites the reader to race her. The romance between Charlotte and Ash, as well as Olivia and Stephen, has progressed to the point where nothing should surprise you. Read the books in order. Taken on its own terms, it is an eloquent, slightly overplotted Victorian mystery whose best scenes are not the reveal but the cost of the life Justina built and the sister she discarded to keep it. One last comment: if you were waiting to find out if Penelope would know who her mother really is, then your wait, SPOILER, is finally over.

One

August 1890

On the coast of North Devon

What a perfect day, thought Mrs. Watson drowsily.

A breeze billowed the sails of the gaff-rigged sloop. To the starboard stretched the sunlit waters of the Bristol Channel, the silhouette of Wales faintly visible in the distance. On the other side reared the magnificent coastal bluffs of North Devon, carpeted in purple heathers.

They were sailing due west, but the green-lensed carriage specs Mrs. Watson sported-a fashionable gift from her dear Penelope-blunted the strongest rays of the afternoon sun. Across from her, Miss Charlotte Holmes examined the inside of their picnic hamper with the solemn concentration of an archeologist.

Mrs. Watson wanted to laugh-the dear girl would not find much. They'd sailed to Lynmouth this morning and, despite Miss Charlotte's preference for the newly constructed cable railcar, zigzagged up the steep path on foot to the clifftop hamlet of Lynton.

From there they'd explored the otherworldly Valley of Rocks, noted for its unusual rock towers, and walked past the abbey to Woody Bay before returning to the outskirts of Lynton for a picnic luncheon.

The picnic hamper, which had traveled up the cable railcar in the care of Mr. Mears, Mrs. Watson's butler, had seemed a veritable cornucopia. Yet it had proved barely sufficient for the appetites of six hungry ramblers in addition to Mr. Mears himself. Mrs. Watson, who usually watched what she ate, had indulged in two large servings of a glistening tart, topped with wild raspberries they themselves had harvested near Lord Ingram's seaside cottage.

"I thought there was nothing left of the food," said Miss Olivia Holmes from the bow of the vessel, where she sat next to Mr. Marbleton.

"It's all gone," replied Miss Charlotte. "I am but surveying the scene of the carnage. Does anyone want limeade, by the way? If we finish that, too, then we can claim total victory."

Penelope's bell-like laughter rang out. "Well, if you put it like that, then of course we must do all we can for total victory."

Mrs. Watson chortled as she sank more deeply into the pleasant woolliness that was the inevitable byproduct-at least at her age-of vigorous exercise followed by a great deal of delicious food.

She felt Penelope leaning forward and heard the splash of limeade falling into a cup. Lord Ingram, at the helm, asked whether they ought to sail faster so that they'd sit down to tea sooner. "No need," replied Miss Charlotte. "Let's not jostle Mrs. Watson."

Mrs. Watson meant to protest that she didn't mind a little jostling in exchange for greater speed. But the words, right on the tip of her tongue, disappeared into the ether. And it was so very agreeable, their current pace, bobbing just enough to let her feel the boat's progress.

Rather like how life had been in the past three years, ever since Miss Charlotte had outmaneuvered Moriarty: more or less smooth sailing for the two women responsible for the operations of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective.

In fact, with Moriarty in hiding, life had been good for everyone on the sloop.

Penelope, five years into her seven-year French medical education, remained fascinated by everything that could go wrong-and right-with the human body.

Lord Ingram had written a well-received archeological treatise on Celtic Britain and gone on a standing room-only lecture tour the previous year. His children thrived in spite of the absence of their mother. And at thirty-one, he was fitter and more striking than ever.

Miss Olivia thrilled Mrs. Watson by publishing not one but two novels featuring the great consulting detective. In addition, she'd written several short stories in which Sherlock Holmes flexed his deductive prowess, with the goal of making them available as a collection at a later date.

Mr. Stephen Marbleton, Miss Olivia's beau, had perhaps profited the most from Moriarty's retreat: After losing his entire operation in Britain, Moriarty had left the Marbletons, his sworn enemies, alone.

As a result, Mr. Marbleton no longer needed to be constantly on the move, as had been the pattern his whole life. This greater stability worked wonders for his courtship of Miss Olivia. Instead of always meeting each other in passing, he could now remain near her for an extended period of time.

"I will never not love the sea and I would like to live within view of it, if possible." Miss Olivia's words, despite the enthusiasm in her voice, sounded a little faint. "Not directly hanging on a cliff over the waves, as much as I love that house in Lynton-the one that you said used to have a private cable car-but a mile or so inland, with the sea in walking distance."

"My cousin has a place on the Sussex downs that might be perfect for you," said Lord Ingram, his words too a bit indistinct, for all that he stood only a little aft of Mrs. Watson.

"Really?" Miss Olivia's voice was becoming inaudible. "I like Sussex. It's sunnier than . . ."

Mrs. Watson rested her head on Penelope's shoulder. The dear girl only ever smelled of good Provençal soap, not like Mrs. Watson, who used to reek of attar of jasmine.

You can't live like this, Joanna. You can't waste so much money on perfume and other fripperies.

How odd. She actually agreed with Justina's chastisement. She had been too spendthrift and her purchases had been no proper essence, but badly diluted who knows what. But ah, the joy she'd felt applying those drops to her inner wrists, the contentment of feeling a veritable Salome at that silly, marvelous age . . .

". . . very nice dress. What do you think, Miss Charlotte?" came Penelope's voice.

"Oh, I agree. And that is probably a very beautiful woman, too."

"Too bad we can't see her face behind her binoculars," said Miss Olivia.

"I wonder if she's from that house on the bluffs." Mr. Marbleton added his voice to the discussion.

Mrs. Watson slowly opened her eyes. The sun still shone. A few puffy clouds now drifted across the vast blue sky. Lord Ingram's cottage, its terrace overhanging the bluffs, was visible a mile or so ahead. Were they that close to home then? How long had she slept?

She sat up straight and turned in the direction of everyone's gaze. Two great conical outcrops, the Hangman Cliffs, came into view. Great Hangman, at just over a thousand feet in elevation, was the highest sea cliff in all of England.

But the sloop had already sailed past Great and Little Hangman, and now cut across the waters before a secluded beach. At the very edge of the precipice that loomed over the beach stood a slender figure in a white dress. Her skirts danced in the breeze; the long ends of a green sash belt levitated sinuously.

A pair of binoculars hid her face. She could be looking at anyone on the sloop, yet Mrs. Watson felt herself under scrutiny.

She tensed. "Who's that?"

"The house across the bay from ours, the one you said you wanted to see up close? It's hidden from us right now because the land dips down," said Penelope cheerfully, "but it's right beyond these bluffs, a quarter mile due south. What is it called again, Ash?"

"High Burrow."

From the terrace of his cottage, one had a panoramic view of the Hangman Cliffs and the sheep-dotted moors beyond. On such an expanse of moorland, high above the little town of Combe Martin, perched a Gothic house that, at first glance, appeared incongruous with its surroundings.

Then again, such an edifice rather embodied the spirit of the age: Architectural vernaculars were ground together as if put through a vegetable mill and new owners transformed old dwellings with wild abandon.

"You think she's from that house?" Mrs. Watson asked, staring. Something about the woman was familiar. Too familiar. The figure. The air of authority. That head of shiny chestnut hair, not a strand out of place despite the air currents.

"Could be," answered Lord Ingram. "I've not met the family."

Abruptly, the woman turned around and walked away, disappearing rapidly. Mrs. Watson let out a breath, released her fingers from around the gunwale, and slowly turned around. "So who owns High Burrow?"

"The Carstairses of Lincolnshire," said Miss Charlotte, looking directly at Mrs. Watson. "Have you heard of them?"

Lord Ingram’s seaside cottage was a cottage in roughly the same sense that Chatsworth House was a house. He had bought it as a present for his former wife, who, as it turned out, had no use for it. For years it sat empty, seldom visited by either husband or wife, and certainly not the two together with their children. At one point it only had a single elderly caretaker who could barely keep up with the grounds, let alone cook and clean for visitors.

But things had changed since Lord Ingram's divorce. Or rather, since he took up with Miss Charlotte. Lord Ingram, thoughtful man that he was, quickly realized that while Miss Charlotte could visit him occasionally in disguise at Stern Hollow, his country seat, it was much more convenient for everyone if she didn't have to run the gauntlet of a large manor house that was both full of servants and surrounded by curious neighbors.

Subsequently, this long-neglected spot on the Devon coast became their love nest. It now boasted modern plumbing and a well-ventilated new kitchen, as well as new floors, new flues, new windows, and a new name. Mrs. Watson wasn't sure what the place had been called earlier, but Miss Charlotte had dubbed it Sans Souci-French for Without Worries-and Lord Ingram had had the name engraved upon a plaque and affixed it to the gate.

Mrs. Watson, prone to fretting, had felt unusually carefree at Sans Souci. But as the company reached the cottage at the end of their otherwise idyllic excursion, she was anything but happy and assured.

In fact, she made sure not to look toward High Burrow, now a looming presence in the distance.

Mrs. Watson had not needed to answer Miss Charlotte's question, for Miss Olivia had piped up at that moment, My goodness, that's the family Philana Newell will be marrying into! I knew that they had a place somewhere on the Devon coast, but I had no idea it was so close to Sans Souci.

For the past three years, though Miss Olivia spent a good bit of time with Mrs. Watson and Miss Charlotte, she officially resided with Mrs. Newell, distant cousin and great friend to the Holmes sisters. The world believed her to be Mrs. Newell's companion, though in truth she was more the latter's guest at her dower house in Derbyshire, not far from Lord Ingram's estate.

And so Mrs. Watson learned that Philana Newell, Mrs. Newell's granddaughter, had become engaged recently to none other than the Carstairses' younger son. Moreover, the Carstairses, who made use of their holiday house only sporadically, would presently be hosting the Newells at High Burrow to celebrate the engagement.

Miss Olivia deemed that the house party would not affect them and they'd continue with their own holiday as planned. But Mrs. Watson felt a tightening of her collar.

On the eve of this important social occasion for Justina, Mrs. Watson had blithely sailed by High Burrow, her grown-up daughter by her side, surrounded by their friends. Would Justina see that as merely the coincidence it had been, or would she extrapolate a wholesale insurrection on Mrs. Watson's part?

The tea that welcomed the ramblers back to Sans Souci was a substantial spread. As everyone else tucked into cakes and sandwiches, Mrs. Watson badly wanted to fortify her cup with a dram of whisky, or at least some brandy. But such a beverage would be difficult to explain on a warm day . . .

Penelope was already proposing a game of tennis. When the cottage was renovated, Lord Ingram had added a tennis court and his guests had made good use of it.

"I'm still surprised that you do, in fact, play tennis." Miss Olivia laughed as she addressed her sister. "You always wrote that 'Games of tennis were played' and I always imagined that someone was conscripted to play with Ash while you sat nearby with a Victoria sponge and a stack of books."

"You're not wrong about the Victoria sponge," answered Miss Charlotte while biting into a slice of Victoria sponge. "Ash knows how to dangle a carrot. He always promises a grand picnic, but only after games of tennis or long rambles for which we must start at dawn."

Miss Olivia tittered. "So you were the conscripted one."

They scattered amid peals of laughter-which were beginning to take on a fey and brittle tone in Mrs. Watson's ears-to change into tennis costumes. Mrs. Watson did so grimly and sat in her room for a quarter hour, her head in her hands, before she went down to join the company at the rear of the house.

Newly shorn grass, smelling of green sap and deep summer, fresh lines of chalk dust, laid down to mark the boundary of the court, young people in tennis whites stretching and limbering up-nothing but peace and unmarred contentment everywhere Mrs. Watson looked. Yet fear swirled in her heart.

"Where's Ash?" asked Penelope.

As if to answer her question, their host emerged from the house and headed straight for Mrs. Watson, a slight frown on his face. "Ma'am, Mrs. Carstairs from High Burrow is here to see you. Are you at home to her?"

Mrs. Watson did not remember what she said to Lord Ingram in turn. It didn’t even occur to her, until she was walking into the house, that he must already know, from a single look at Justina, that the two women were closely related.

Inside the drawing room, her caller, clad in a simple white dress cinched by a green sash-the same attire as the woman on the precipice-stood before the mantel. She looked up at a charcoal drawing of a Greek temple in ruins set against a stony mound that resembled nothing so much as a half-melted sugar loaf. Mt. Cynthus on the island of Delos, where Lord Ingram had recently carried out excavations on behalf of the French School of Athens.

Her silhouette was fashionably slender-how did she manage to maintain such a trim figure? But everything had its cost, did it not? Without a little padding on the body, a woman of their age was liable to be gaunt in the face.

Justina turned around. Yes, she had aged, and yes, her face was lean. That lack of youthful plumpness, however, only made her more deep-eyed and finely chiseled. Even the few strands of grey in her hair did not make her look old, only more distinguished.

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#Review - Slayer by Leia Stone #YA #Fantasy #Romance

2026-10-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Slayer # 1
Format: 320 pages, Paperback

Release Date: September 8, 2026
Publisher: Bloom Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Romance

An all-new young adult series from Leia Stone. Perfect for fans of Vampire Academy, Buffy, and House of Night, this twisty, slow-burn supernatural romance will keep you guessing until the very last page.

They told me turning eighteen meant freedom. They never said it might kill me.

All I wanted was cake, candles, and a fresh start after aging out of the group home I've been stuck in for six years.

What I got instead? A vampire crashing my party and trying to drain me dry.

Apparently, vampires are real, and I can sense them.

Right before I become dinner, a gorgeous, broody vampire hunter named Asher swoops in and saves me. He tells me I'm not just some orphan with a bad attitude… I'm a legacy. A born Vampire Hunter. And now I've got a full ride to Nightguard Academy, a secret school for hunters.

Training to kill the undead? Kinda savage.

Except there's one problem: I'm hiding a secret so dark it could get me staked before graduation. And in a school full of monsters, secrets don't stay buried for long.

Slayer is the first installment in author Leia Stone's Slayer series. It is a fast, nostalgic vampire-hunter academy romance aimed at readers who grew up on Buffy, Vampire Academy, and House of Night, and it largely delivers on that promise. Stella Adams turns eighteen and ages out of Washington’s foster system with a modest plan: keep the library job, start community college, become an ultrasound technician.

She was abandoned as a newborn and has spent years in group homes, so independence is supposed to be the whole story. Instead, vampires crash her birthday and try to drain her. She can sense them, and something about her blood makes her hard to kill. Asher Voss, a broody, green-eyed hunter, pulls her out of the attack and tells her she is not a random orphan. She is a legacy, descended from one of the founders of Veil Haven, the hidden city of vampire hunters.

A portal later, she has a full ride to Nightguard Academy and a lifetime of training to catch up on. The book moves quickly from the attack into the academy, training, and the rules of a city that already feels older than Stella’s arrival. Veil Haven is more than a dorm set. It has history, factions, and a sense that the reader is only seeing the edge of it. That matters, because the book is clearly planting threads for the sequel, Staked (January 2027), rather than closing every door.

Stella is the book’s strongest and most divisive element. Her caution is earned. A letter from her mother, who disappeared almost 20 years ago, warning her not to trust anyone, plus a childhood of temporary homes, makes her reluctance to bond with classmates and with Asher feel specific rather than generic “strong heroine” stubbornness. Found family is one of the better arcs: she has to learn that people might stay. The cost is that early Stella makes decisions that read as reckless once she knows vampires and hunters are real.

Asher is the classic protector love interest—handsome, closed off, carrying his own trauma—and the romance is a genuine slow burn with no on-page spice, which fits the 14–18 positioning. The tension is there; the payoff is mostly deferred. The weaknesses are the usual ones for a series opener. The ending is abrupt, with loose ends left on purpose, and some of the secrets Stella is hiding are teased more than explored. The academy beats—catching up in class, training sequences, a broody mentor-adjacent love interest—are familiar, and the book does not reinvent them so much as execute them cleanly.

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#Review - Winterveil by Ava Reid #YA #Dystopian #SYFY

2026-10-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Winterveil
Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: September 15, 2026

Publisher: HarperCollins
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Alt History, Dystopian

The Secret History meets Ready Player One in #1 bestselling author Ava Reid’s brand-new, thrilling alternate-future duology, where four teens are recruited into a century-long virtual Cold War until they discover the truth and decide to fight back.

The top students at Valeran Academy should be in jail. Instead, they were offered a way out: enroll and pledge themselves to the nation. In their alternate future where the Cold War still rages, America needs patriots—don’t call them spies.

In the halls of America’s most covert military academy, all that matters is who is number one. Four students rise to the top: Julian, the politician; Klaudia, the strategist; Nadiya, the soldier; and Giselle, the beauty queen with a secret that could change everything.

As they compete for the top ranking that would free them from their gilded cage, the four feel strangely drawn together. Underneath every rivalry lurks a desperate yearning, bringing the strongest of them down to their knees.

Too soon, they’re ripped from the safe walls of their school and recruited for a mysterious training mission that their elusive headmaster tells them is only a simulation. But the four teens quickly realize that they are merely pawns, designed to play off of each other in a dangerous game. Even their blossoming feelings will be used against them in this game of war.

To win, they will have to question everything: each other, themselves, even their very understanding of reality.

It was only supposed to be a game. But now lives and hearts are on the line. Are you brave enough to play?

Ava Reid's Winterveil is the first part of a two-part duology. The premise begins with: In a world where Gorbachev was assassinated and the Cold War dragged on, the eerie tension of the Cold War combines with futuristic concerns like AI, the metaverse, and the surveillance state. Part ripped-from-the-headlines and part history, the publisher frames it as The Secret History meets Ready Player One, or The Secret History meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

The point of divergence is the 1984 assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev on the steps of Downing Street. The thaw never arrives. By 2037, the Soviet Union still exists, proxy wars continue across continents, defense contractors (notably Auric) and neural technology lock the stalemate in place, and a “third Red Scare” atmosphere colors American institutions. Valeran Academy, hidden in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and founded in 1963 under Kennedy as a joint CIA/DOD project, has no application process.

It recruits precocious teenage offenders and commutes their sentences in exchange for training as strategists, cryptographers, hackers, and weapons specialists—the future pipeline for intelligence work. Official language insists “We are not training spies—we are training patriots.” Students compete on a public ranking board; top placement is the path out of the gilded cage. Curriculum blends classical strategy (including the Melian Dialogue: “The strong do what they will, and the weak endure what they must”) with neural interfaces and war simulations.

The four leads

Julian Joyce-Young III: Elected mayor of Boston at eighteen (on a dare, in some accounts), then impeached and arrested for bribery and embezzlement. Disowned by a powerful political-business dynasty. Charming orator placed on the Strategy and Statecraft track; his chapters carry much of the political and familial pressure.
Klaudia Shimonova: Leningrad-born, Upper West Side–raised, arrested at fifteen after forging her father’s trading credentials and turning them into roughly $10 million. Holds the academy’s rank-one spot for years. Treats social interaction as a game-theory problem; Reid’s strongest character to date—a girl who made herself cold because the alternative was her father’s hands.
Giselle Buckley: Small-town West Virginia pageant queen with a scientifically verified eidetic memory capable of projecting vivid visual memories into other minds. Arrested for credit-card theft. Her ability becomes central to the technology plot.
Nadiya Karam: Weapons and tactical prodigy, orphaned and raised inside the academy as the personal ward of headmaster Dr. Cornelius Iver. Third-generation Lebanese American; carries a dangerous family secret tied to the neural systems the school uses. Forms the book’s primary sapphic romance with Giselle.

Archival inserts—press clippings, redacted files, scrapped CIA language insisting “we are not training spies—we are training patriots”—do more world-building than exposition dumps. The school's competitive engine, which Reid links to her time in competitive Pokémon’s VGC format, produces the book’s best set piece: Thymos.exe, a student-built neural strategy game whose tournament final collides rankings, romance, and plot on one stage.

When the four are pulled into Traumstadt, a simulated East German town whose mission parameters keep being rewritten, the novel finally becomes the spy thriller it promised. Klaudia is the reason to read it. She is the sharpest character Reid has written: a girl who made herself cold because warmth was unsafe, and who remains legible even when she is calculating. The ensemble works best when the four are forced to choose cooperation over defection inside a game the state designed.

That prisoner’s-dilemma frame is the book’s real subject: institutions that recruit already-failed adolescents, call the exploitation a second chance, and then use their minds as infrastructure. The weaknesses are real. The first act spends too long on cafeteria politics and the ranking board before the plot arrives. Several adult antagonists—a tech billionaire, a handler who speaks in riddles—are broad enough to hate and too thin to fear.

Historical texture is suggestive rather than rigorous; the point of divergence is clear, but the half-century of altered Cold War that follows is sketched more than built. And the ending does not end. Leads are scattered, a major system (Project Dreamscape, a shared reality powered by neural impulses and anchored by an eidetic mind) is revealed and then left mid-crisis, and the book cuts out in a way that will satisfy readers who want a duology hook and frustrate anyone who wanted a complete novel. Content is upper YA in the mature sense: consensual and non-consensual sexual situations (not graphically explicit, but not coy about lead-up or aftermath), an attempted assault, parental abuse, a recounted sibling suicide, gun violence, and training that crosses into torture.

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#Review - Lost in the Dark by Debra Webb #Suspense #Thriller

2026-09-30T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 367 pages, Paperback
Release Date: June 9, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

The brutal murder of her sister draws a woman back to her hometown and all its dark secrets in a gripping novel of suspense by USA Today bestselling author Debra Webb.

Dr. CJ Patterson returns to her Alabama hometown when her estranged sister, Shelley, is found murdered in the woods. For CJ it means diving headfirst into a painful life she left behind.

CJ reluctantly partners with Detective Kevin Braddock, and the complicated romantic history they share is far from over. They soon zero in on Shelley’s abusive ex-boyfriend and a local crime boss who controls the struggling mill village’s illicit enterprises. But anyone is suspect in a town with so many secrets. Even Shelley died with a few of her own.

As the investigation continues, so do the murders. One by one they’re leading CJ into a past she desperately fled from. CJ knows her hometown all too well. And that her search for the truth, and for a killer, will only get darker.

Lost in the Dark is Debra Webb’s 2026 revised edition of her 2009 novel Everywhere She Turns. The story is a dark small-town investigative thriller with romantic-suspense elements. The official premise is straightforward: Dr. CJ Patterson, an emergency-medicine resident in Baltimore, returns to her struggling Alabama mill-village hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, after her estranged sister Shelley is found murdered in the woods. She is pulled back into a world of poverty, drugs, prostitution, and buried family secrets she fled years earlier.

CJ reluctantly works the case with Detective Kevin Braddock, a former romantic interest whose history with her is far from settled. Early suspects include Shelley’s abusive ex, Ricky Banks, and a local crime boss who treats the village as his personal fiefdom. Additional murders follow, each one dragging CJ deeper into the past she tried to escape. The story uses multiple points of view, with CJ’s as the primary lens. The setup is classic Webb territory: a protagonist forced to confront the place and people that shaped her, while a killer who seems to know her too well stays one step ahead.

Once the body count rises and the investigation tightens, the suspense and sense of danger increase and several twists appear. CJ is driven, professionally capable, and carrying a heavy load of grief and unresolved family trauma. She is not always likable. Grief, guilt, and the investigation explain some of her sharper edges, but her choices—especially the speed with which the old attraction to Braddock reignites—have been a sticking point for some readers. One detailed review noted that the physical reunion happens very soon after she sees her sister’s body in the morgue, which undercut the emotional weight of the opening for that reader.

Braddock functions as both professional partner and romantic counterpart. The supporting cast—family members, the crime boss’s circle, Shelley’s world—is populated by people who almost all have hidden agendas. Few characters are purely sympathetic, which fits the grim setting but can make the book feel emotionally chilly. The Alabama mill-village atmosphere—economic decline, illicit economies, the way everyone knows everyone else’s business—is convincingly drawn.

The investigation structure gives the story forward momentum once it hits its stride, and the later chapters deliver the rising danger and twists that thriller readers expect. A dark, readable hometown-murder thriller with a complicated heroine and a polarizing romance. Recommended for Webb fans and readers who like their suspense dirty and their secrets ugly; approach with the expectation of graphic violence and an early physical reunion between the leads.

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#Review - The Doll Squad by Hailey Edwards #Fantasy

2026-09-29T12:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Bureau of Curse Objects # 1
Format: 281 pages, Kindle Edition
Release Date: September 14, 2026
Publisher: Black Dog Books, LLC
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Danger in the line of duty is a given, but Officer Samantha Tiegs always figured her death would come in the form of a heart attack in her golden years after a lifetime of researching the age-old question— Can it be fried? Sadly, death has less delicious plans in store for her.

When she’s called to intercept a hijacking in progress, her world gets turned upside down. The thieves aren’t human, and whatever’s in the delivery truck they looted, they want it bad enough to kill for it. Except her death isn’t their end goal. It’s only the beginning of a twisted plan orchestrated by the person she loves most.

Everything she believed about her life, her family, was a lie. The truth is, she’s a pawn in a deadly game she can’t win alone. Enter the Bureau of Cursed Objects. The supernatural agency has a vested interest in her survival, and they make her an offer she can’t refuse.

Come work for them, and they’ll guarantee her safety, but her new partner is a man who poses the greatest threat to her yet. As long as she remains valuable, he’ll protect her from everyone. Including himself. But should her returns diminish, he won’t make any promises.

Warning: Contains one manga-obsessed heroine with an anime addiction, more fried food than a fairground on opening night, one hero with a reputation for killing his partners and a compulsion for labeling what he considers his, and a whole lot of family secrets, drama, and evil hiding where you least expect it.

The Doll Squad is the first book in Hailey Edwards’s new Bureau of Cursed Objects urban fantasy series. It follows Officer Samantha “Sam” Tiegs, a cop who expects to die of something mundane (preferably after a long life of fried-food research) and instead gets yanked into a hidden supernatural world when a hijacking turns out to be anything but human.

Edwards, known for found family, messy magic, banter, and high-stakes chaos across series like Black Hat Bureau, The Beginner’s Guide to Necromancy, and The Body Shop, is working in familiar territory: a snarky heroine, a dangerous male lead, family secrets, and an agency that collects cursed or dangerous items. Sam responds to a hijacking in progress with her brother Cole.

The thieves aren’t human, the cargo is something they will kill for, and her “death” is only the opening move in a plan tied to the person she loves most. Everything she thought she knew about her life and family is a lie. The Bureau of Cursed Objects—a supernatural agency with a vested interest in keeping her alive—makes her an offer: work for them, and they’ll protect her. Her new partner, however, has a reputation for killing partners and a possessive streak.

He’ll keep her safe as long as she’s valuable. After that, no promises. Sam is a classic Edwards heroine: competent, food-obsessed (fried food and fairground-level snacking get mentioned in the warning), manga-and-anime-addicted, and funny under pressure. The voice is first-person, fast, and conversational—easy to fly through. As book one of a brand-new series, a fair amount of page time goes to world-building and Sam’s crash course in the Bureau.

The possessive-partner dynamic and “he’ll protect you until you’re no longer useful” hook will delight some readers and annoy others depending on taste for that particular romance flavor. Because the book is very new, long-term series payoff (how the Bureau works, what the “Doll Squad” really means, how the family conspiracy unfolds) is still unknown.

Pick this up if you enjoy:

Urban fantasy with a cop-turned-agent heroine

Banter + danger + found-family seeds

Possessive / morally gray male leads

Light anime/manga flavor mixed with Southern-fried food humor

Skip or wait if you dislike possessive tropes, want a standalone, or prefer slower, more literary urban fantasy.

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#Review - Clean Slate by Brianna Labuskes #Mystery #Suspense

2026-09-28T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Olive Hunt # 1
Format: 312 pages, Kindle Edition

Release Date: August 4, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mystery, Suspense

A crime scene cleaner is on the trail of a serial killer in a breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by USA Today bestselling author Brianna Labuskes.

Death pays well for Olive Hunt, a crime scene cleaner who channels her childhood traumas into erasing the suffering of others. After nearly ten years, she’s seen it all. Nothing rattles her anymore.

Until now.

Two back-to-back suicides. A seedy motel. An upscale Atlanta hotel. No connection—except that Olive discovers the same strange item at each scene. Then a third body drops. Olive knows what the police refuse to see: These aren’t suicides. They’re murders staged to perfection.

Then the roses arrive. A vase of blood-red blooms on her doorstep. An anonymous note: Thank you.

She’s found him. A serial killer who’s been leaving breadcrumbs only she can see. A killer who’s been cleaning up his work—knowing she’ll clean up after him. A killer who wants her to follow.

And follow she must. No matter how terrifying the trail becomes.

Clean Slate is a sharp, grimly original psychological thriller that launches Brianna Labuskes’s Olive Hunt series with a protagonist you don’t usually get in crime fiction: a crime-scene cleaner who notices what cops miss because her job, her trauma, and her compulsions force her to look everywhere.. This story alternates between now and then, and between various characters, including Olive Hunt. Olive Hunt owns Clean Slate, an Atlanta business that erases the physical leftovers of violence: blood, brain matter, the smell of a life that ended badly.

After nearly a decade, she is professionally unflappable. Then two deaths land on her schedule in quick succession—one in a cheap motel, one in a luxury hotel—both labeled suicides. At each scene, she finds the same odd item hidden where only someone who actually cleans would look. A third body follows. Olive is sure these are staged murders. The police are slower to agree. Then roses appear on her doorstep with a note that says Thank you. The killer has been leaving breadcrumbs specifically for her.

He knows how she works. He wants her to follow. Olive is the reason the novel works. She was raised by a mother whose contamination OCD curdled into cruelty; her father was killed when she was seventeen, and her mother ended up institutionalized. Olive inherited the rituals—multiple showers, raw hands—and redirected them into a job that, from the outside, looks like the last thing someone with her history should do. Labuskes treats the OCD as texture and constraint, not a punchline or a superpower. The same hyper-focus that makes Olive good at her work also keeps her circling trauma she has never fully named.

She is also funny in a dry, practical way, loyal to the Peach Tree Community Center that once sheltered her, and unusually decent about the dead. Around her: detectives Donovan Mitchell and Cormac “Sully” Sullivan; found-family figures Anthony Last and his daughter Leah; the wealthy Suttons; and other voices from the community center’s past. The novel uses multiple points of view—Olive in first person in the present, others (notably Anthony and Darla) in third person across “then” timelines that slowly lock onto the present. That braid is doing real work: the past is not just backstory; it is the motive engine.

Pacing after the first act is generally tight. Olive does not play lone-wolf amateur sleuth in the most irritating sense: she takes what she finds to the police, then keeps looking anyway because the killer is talking to her. That balance will still annoy readers who hate civilian investigators. It will satisfy readers who want a heroine who is curious without being cartoonishly reckless every chapter. Under the cat-and-mouse plot is a class novel. Atlanta’s Peach Tree Community Center is the emotional and thematic hub: a place where the ultra-rich and the barely-getting-by once occupied the same rooms as kids and then diverged into incompatible ideas of what a life is worth.

Crime-scene cleaning is described with enough physical specificity to be unsettling and enough respect to avoid torture-porn tourism. This is clearly Book 1, with enough unresolved life around Olive that a sequel is welcome rather than a mandatory cliffhanger. Clean Slate is a strong series opener: not flawless, but distinctive. This book stands apart from the author's previous novels because the heroine’s job and psychology are the same instrument. If you want a police procedural with a cleaner in the background, look elsewhere. If you want a damaged, decent woman following a killer who has studied how she scrubs a room, this is the one.

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#Review - Burn the Kingdom Down by Addie Thorley #YA #Fantasy

2026-09-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 448 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: April 7, 2026
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Dark Fantasy

An action-packed enemies-to-lovers romantasy filled with a romance that will leave you breathless, betrayals that will rip your heart out, and a princess who will stop at nothing for revenge.

One year ago, Rowenna Harrack, the crown princess of Tashir, left her homeland in a wedding dress of chains—sent away to the enemy nation of Vanzador as a captive bride.

Now, Rowenna is dead. Brought home in a coffin after an alleged fall from a cliff.

Second-born princess, Indira, knows her sister's death was no accident. Desperate for truth and vengeance, Indira agrees to wed the prince so she can infiltrate Vanzador, find Rowenna's murderer, and burn their kingdom to the ground.

Indira's plan is simple, she will make nice until she can find out how to avenge her sister and free her country from the rival nation's stranglehold. But when Indira arrives, nothing is as terrible as Rowenna described. As Indira grows closer to her new husband, Prince Alaric, and uncovers more about Vanzador, the source of its powers, and what happened during Rowenna's final days, she’s no longer sure what—and who—to believe. Because everyone, even her sister, has secrets. Deadly ones. As allegiances shift and betrayals surface, Indira realizes the only person she can trust is herself. It’s time to step out of her sister’s shadow. Time to serve her own brand of justice.

Burn the Kingdom Down from Addie Thorley (author of An Affair of Poisons and the Night Spinner books) sits in that crowded space of enemies-to-lovers political fantasy, but it is less “chosen one with a sword” and more “grief-soaked murder mystery with plants, propaganda, and memory magic.” One year ago, crown princess Rowenna of Tashir was sent to the enemy mountain kingdom of Vanzador as a captive bride under a brutal treaty.

Tashir is an underground garden realm that grows bagrava, a sacred plant that keeps its soil fertile; Vanzador’s royal family can move earth itself and, in return for bagrava tribute and a Tashiri princess, raised a mountain wall against marauders. Rowenna comes home in a coffin after an alleged fall from a cliff. Second-born princess Indira, a master gardener who has always lived in her sister’s shadow, does not believe it was an accident.

When Vanzador demands a replacement bride, she has no choice but to accept her fate so that she can infiltrate the Fortress, find who killed Rowenna, and tear the kingdom down from the inside. Nothing she finds matches the monster-state her sister described. Prince Alaric is not the easy villain she expected. Everyone, including Rowenna, has secrets. The contrast between the two kingdoms is the book’s best idea. Tashir is soil, roots, and living magic; Vanzador is stone, cold, and a society that harvests memories as fuel.

“Memory tithes” are a genuinely interesting system: identity can be extracted, stored, distorted, or weaponized. That ties the mystery, the politics, and Indira’s grief together instead of sitting on top of the plot as decoration. Indira is not a stabby superheroine. She is loyal, angry, naive in places, and shaped by a sister she idolized too long. The book is as much about stepping out of that shadow as it is about revenge. Alaric works as a counterpart rather than a dark-romance checklist: tension comes from competing loyalties and withheld information more than constant banter.

When the romance lands, it is because it is earned slowly while they investigate together. Thorley also treats the “avenge my sister / infiltrate the enemy court” template as a mystery first. The structure is closer to a closed-house investigation than a war campaign. That will delight readers tired of endless set-piece battles and frustrate readers who want constant action. If you need a high-spice, high-action romantasy, this is not that.

The romance is slow-burn and secondary to grief and investigation for long stretches. Content includes violence, death, grief, some sexual content, attempted assault, and emotional abuse. The book keeps asking what memory is worth—and who we are when the stories we were raised on are lies. National myths, sisterly worship, and personal identity all get the same treatment: they can be cultivated or drained.

Indira’s arc from “burn it all” toward something more complicated is the emotional spine. Whether that landing feels earned is the main split among readers. Read this if you want YA romantasy with a plant-and-memory magic system, a murder mystery at the center, and a heroine who is more gardener-and-griever than warrior. Skip or sample first if you bounce off slow court-investigation middles or inconsistent trust-fall plotting.

NOTE: This book is currently on sale for a limited time. I don't get any money for posting this, but if you think you will enjoy the story, $1.99 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo is a good deal.

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#Review - The Girl in the Lake by Lauren Oliver #Mystery #Thriller

2026-09-23T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Department of Unexplained Phenomena #1

Format: 321 pages, Kindle Edition

Release Date: June 1, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

A young girl who claims to remember a past life draws a psychologist into a decades-old mystery in a haunting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver.

Kate Willis, consultant for the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, is tasked with interviewing six-year-old Henley Haskell about the girl’s alleged past-life recollections. The evaluation also marks a return for Kate to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and to troubling recollections of her own.

Here, twenty-four years ago, Kate’s friend Becca McGuire vanished from her bunk at a now-shuttered summer camp and was never seen again—presumably drowned in Lake Sauquamet. But the mystery of her disappearance is only deepening. Because Henley’s memories of her “other life” are ones that could only belong to Becca.

For Kate, Henley’s recurring, suffocating nightmares, and her disturbing illustrations of places she has never been, seem to spell out the unbelievable. Somewhere, somehow, the truth about what really happened to Becca is locked inside this little girl. As Henley’s uncanny memories surface, so do old secrets—each one drawing Kate inexorably back to that terrible long-ago summer by the lake.

The Girl in the Lake is Lauren Oliver’s adult-thriller debut and the first book in her Dept. of Unexplained Phenomenon series: a dual-timeline mystery that sits right on the fault line between skepticism and the uncanny. The story follows 40-year-old Kate Willis, a psychologist who consults for the University of Virginia’s real-life Division of Perceptual Studies. She is sent to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to interview six-year-old Henley Haskell, who talks about an “other life” with startling specificity.

The case pulls Kate back to the shuttered Camp Sauquamet and Lake Sauquamet, where her best friend, Becca McGuire, vanished at fourteen and was presumed drowned. Henley’s nightmares, drawings, and private details increasingly look like Becca’s. Kate’s job is to look for suggestion, family leakage, trauma, and fraud. The novel keeps asking whether Henley is a vessel, a child absorbing a story, or something messier than either explanation. Kate is a skeptic with a messy private life—work as armor, old drinking as another kind of burial, a return home that she has postponed for decades.

She's complicated rather than heroic, and the plot only works because she has to test her own beliefs. The “Then” chapters are Oliver’s real advantage. Her YA background shows in the camp material: the Cat Pack’s shifting alliances, the cruelty of girlhood, the Gray Lady legend, secrets used as currency. Becca is not a sainted missing girl. She is magnetic, unstable, loyal, and dangerous in the way fourteen-year-olds can be when they collect other people’s weaknesses. That makes the present-day investigation feel like unfinished adolescence rather than a cold-case procedural.

Atmosphere does a lot of the work. The Berkshires, the abandoned camp, Fair Isle, the lake, and the local ghost story give the book a damp, closed-in Gothic mood without abandoning a clinical present. Oliver researched children who report previous-life memories, and that grounding makes Henley’s details more unsettling than a straightforward haunting would. The best version of this book is not “reincarnation is real.”

It is a story about memory as something the mind edits in order to survive, about group guilt, and about whether a landscape can hold what people refuse to say. The supernatural is allowed to breathe; it doesn't have to win the argument. Pacing is my biggest complaint. The first half and middle lean on interviews, verification, and circling the same questions—how does Henley know this, who told her, what is Kate willing to admit? If you want a mystery that stays foggy all the way through, the landing may feel a shade too assembled.

Themes

Memory as construction, not archive
Secrets as power and as poison
Skepticism as protection
The exact moment play turns into culpability
Whether a ghost is a spirit or a conscience that will not stay sunk

Pick this up if you like Lisa Jewell / Megan Miranda / Jennifer McMahon territory, Yellowjackets-adjacent summer-camp rot, or thrillers that flirt with the paranormal without fully converting. Skip it if you want a lean, twist-every-chapter thriller or a hard-commit ghost novel. This is a character-driven slow burn that becomes a rescue/reckoning, then leaves a door slightly open for the series.

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#Review - The Nameless Land by Kate Elliott #Fantasy #Romance

2026-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: The Witch Roads # 2
Format: 416 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: November 4, 2025
Publisher: Tor Books
Source: Library
Genre: Fantasy, Romance

An epic tale of class, rank and power from one of the finest writers of epic fantasy.

Surprising betrayals, surprising alliances and surprising discoveries of heritage abound in this energetic sequel to The Witch Roads.

When the royal party finds themselves in a land they never believed they could access, it will take all of Prince Gevulin's (admittedly impressive) diplomatic skills to forge a coalition with an unlikely group of would-be allies.

Meanwhile, as Elen mourns her lost love, an unwelcome visit to the land of her birth brings back the traumatic memories of the childhood she shared with her sister.

And a surprise visit from an unwelcome family member threatens to derail the plans of multiple opposing factions.

Loyalty cannot be demanded, only won.

Kate Elliott's The Nameless Land is the second and final installment in the author's The Witch Road duology. It picks up immediately after the first book’s cliffhanger and delivers political intrigue, personal reckoning, and a harrowing journey into a land most of the Tranquil Empire pretends does not exist. This is not a standalone. Readers who haven't finished The Witch Roads will be lost in the relationships, secrets, and geopolitical tensions Elliott has already established. The two volumes function more like a single long novel split in half than two independent stories.

Deputy courier Elen, still reeling from loss and carrying a dangerous secret about her origins, is compelled to guide Prince Gevulin and his party across the Far Boundary Pall—the deadly, poisonous mist that has defined the world’s geography and politics since a cataclysmic event. The Pall is not merely an obstacle; it functions as an implacable environmental force that cannot be reasoned with or defeated, only survived. Their destination is the Nameless Land of Elen’s childhood, a place of trauma, enslavement, and memories she fled years earlier with her adopted sister.

Once there, the story expands into a web of crumbling clans, unexpected alliances, betrayals, and the prince’s ambitious (and frequently self-serving) diplomacy. Elen must navigate both external threats and the return of her own past while protecting her nephew Kem. The narrative remains tightly focused through Elen’s third-person perspective, with occasional journal entries that add texture without breaking the viewpoint. Elliott balances travel, court maneuvering, and personal confrontation rather than relying on large-scale battles.

Elen is world-weary, grieving, quietly competent, and fiercely protective. Her return to the land of her birth forces her to confront trauma she has spent years burying. Elliott handles this with restraint and psychological realism rather than melodrama. Elen’s growth feels earned; she does not suddenly become a different person, but she does claim more agency and connection than she allowed herself before. Prince Gevulin is the most surprising character arc. In the first book, he often came across as arrogant and unlikeable.

Here he remains a schemer, but Elliott layers in competence, vulnerability, and genuine (if self-interested) growth. Supporting characters—including Kem, various wardens, and new figures from the Nameless Land—receive enough development to feel like people rather than plot devices. Found family and hard-won respect emerge as quiet counterpoints to the court’s transactional relationships. A slow-burn romance exists, but it is deliberately secondary to Elen’s personal and political story.

Elliott keeps the focus on loyalty, survival, and identity rather than turning the book into a love story with fantasy trappings. The contrast between the highly structured, courtesy-veiled violence of the Tranquil Empire and the more overtly chaotic, physically brutal Nameless Land is one of the book’s sharpest achievements. Different societies have developed distinct (and imperfect) ways of living with the Pall; none is presented as a simple utopia or dystopia. Nonhuman cultures and the region’s buried history receive meaningful attention without drowning the narrative in lore dumps.

Strengths are consistent with Elliott’s best work: lived-in worldbuilding, morally complicated characters, and a refusal to flatten either empire or resistance into simple good-versus-evil. Weaknesses include the uneven early pacing, some lingering mysteries about the Pall and Elen’s heritage that feel deliberately unfinished, and an ending that resolves the central plot while leaving the door open for further stories. If you connected with Elen in The Witch Roads, this is a worthy, emotionally grounded conclusion. If you prefer tightly plotted standalones or nonstop action from page one, the slower start and duology structure may frustrate.

1A PATTERN, IF ONE CAN BUT READ IT

IN THE SUMMER Of Year Fourteen of the Magnolia Emperor, I, Luviara, theurgist and investigator, completed my assigned inventory of all Heart Temples in the empire, including any that may have been left out of the census. The study covered the entirety of the empire and took sixteen years to complete.

In conclusion, I suggest that many of the Heart Temples predate the empire by hundreds of years. It is impossible to calculate exact ages because of the difficultovy of dating reign lengths in the thousand-year Seven Golden Kingdoms era, and because of the paucity of evidence before the establishment of said era, when it seems there were widespread disruptions to the social order, a period which the poets indulgently refer to as “the Great Wars of the Sorcerer-Kings.”

At the request of the palace archivists, I have included in my original report an Official’s Handbook relating the customs, legalities, and historical anecdotes of the empire, appropriate to share with officials outside the temple who will benefit from its insights.

This addendum is meant only for the eyes of the Inner Chamber, who set me on this path.

As you know, my travels over the years have taken me to the Wandersea in the west, the Blasted Coast and the Storm Waters in the north, the Tranquil Sea and the impenetrable Stalking Forest to the south, as far along the eastern frontier as the Long Claws and the Dagger Spine, as well as a complete circumference of the borderlands surrounding the impassable Desolation. In all these places, I have explored major and minor heartland and provincial Heart Temples, as well as abandoned ruins, some of which are destroyed fortresses or collapsed dwellings, and some compounds which contain the remains of towers grouped in threes and occasionally referred to as “Spires.”

Especially in the provinces and on the frontiers, I discovered Heart Temples that are mentioned in passing in the temple census as if they are of little interest but which are of unusual character and unknown age and provenance. Not a few are exceedingly difficult to reach and thus half forgotten. Some have preserved ancient scrolls seen nowhere else, and not yet chewed up into the palace’s hungry maw. It is not clear when these most isolated Heart Temples were built, but they were certainly established long before the founding of the Tranquil Empire, as I have previously noted.

All this I dutifully recorded and sent to the Inner Chamber. After four months of waiting, and despite a respectful query, I have not yet received even the courtesy of an answer that acknowledges receipt of my extensive notes and findings after my many years of arduous journeying.

Thus, I repeat my preliminary conclusions here, in my winter report of Year Fourteen of the Magnolia Emperor.

That the Heart Temples and their worship predate the Tranquil Empire can no longer be disputed, that is, if the contrary was ever truly believed by anyone outside the palace. Certainly the local people of the intendancies understand the Heart Temples to be unimaginably ancient, the work of “old ones,” or “guardians,” or some other mysterious builders. Therefore, the claims that the empire built all the temples must be understood to be efforts by early palace archivists and historians wishing to embellish the accomplishments of the Lotus General and his heir, the Chrysanthemum Emperor. Whether they were ordered to make this claim, or managed to come up with it on their own, cannot, at this remove, be known one way or the other.

Yet the question of the Heart Temples’ origins raises another related question, that of the curious mystery of the so-called witch roads, which protect against the Pall. To be clear, all “witch roads” are considered part of the network of imperial roads, but not all of the imperial roads repel the Pall. The official history of the empire states that the first emperors built all of the imperial roads, some of which have the protective quality mentioned above and others of which were built to facilitate the swift movement of armies and supplies.

But is that true? Why would witch roads be built before the rising of the Pall, an event that no one predicted? In addition, those of the imperial roads confirmed by work orders and manifests to have been constructed during the early years of the empire show no correlation to the oldest Heart Temples, even if new temples were built in association with these new roads.

Yet every Halt encloses a Heart Temple. This correlation suggests that the Halts and the Heart Temples were built at the same time and meant to be sited together. Some will object that certain Heart Temples lie far from the witch roads. The oldest and most remote of these, without exception, contain a pure-water spring, although not every Heart Temple has a pure-water spring. I have, as yet, found no explanation for why some temples have pure-water springs while others do not.

The only places known to always have a pure-water spring are the aforementioned Spires, whose three-tower construction and purpose remain a mystery. Their origins are shrouded by age and lack of evidence beyond the unusual statues arrayed at their entrances like guards. Most but not all of these statues depict animal-headed people with human- or aivur-shaped bodies. Pre-imperial poets fancifully called these statues “the Shorn” and claim they are noble warriors standing guard for eternity to make sure the evil sorcerer-kings of yore never return.

Witch roads often pass within a half day or less march to Spires, but never pass right up beside them, nor do the roads ever enclose Spires as Halts enclose Heart Temples.

I believe there is a pattern, if one can but read it.

I have requested of the Inner Chamber that I be allowed funding, travel permits, and full access to surveyor maps in order to continue my investigation into any possible relationship between Spires, Heart Temples, and witch roads, and what they may reveal about pre-imperial times and if their existence has any relationship to the dreaded Pall which now afflicts the empire.

Having been denied twice, I ask for a third time. It is foolish to believe we know all we need to know.

From the journal of Theurgist Luviara, working under the sworn seal of the Inner Chamber of the Heart Temple

2DEADLY CURRENTS AND WINDS

Far Boundary Vigil stood on the southern shore of Far Boundary Pall, marking the northern limit of the Tranquil Empire and, people said, the end of the inhabitable world. At the top of the Vigil Tower, Elen and her nephew stood in a circular lookout chamber on the floor below the beacon that shone night and day.

Side by side, they stared north through one of the viewing windows. Like a vast sheet of low-lying fog, the Pall stretched north as far as the eye could see, and to the east and the west likewise, in the manner of a sea or a strait. That is, if that sea were a deadly mist that would kill on contact.

Kem sighed as he glanced back at the open door onto a stairwell. They were alone, for now. “I’d better go. I’m supposed to be caring for the horses.”

“What?” Elen said with a smile. “You didn’t get permission from Captain Simo to come up?”

He waggled his eyebrows, reminding her of all the escapades he and his great good friend Joef had gotten into as children. “I’m not supposed to be here but I had to sneak up and check on you. After everything you told me last night, I was worried about you. As for the prince…” He trailed off.

The haunt was gone. Her chest ached, missing him. Knowing his departure into the Pall was the only choice he could have made. And yet, in so short a time together, she had come to rely on seeing him every day, the easy grace of his presence near her.

Watching her, Kem frowned and was about to speak when a distant tangle of tense voices caught their attention and broke into Elem’s pensive thoughts.

“Yes, the prince,” she agreed drily. “It’s better if he doesn’t know you and I have spoken. Not yet, anyway. As unpleasant as he is, he’s no fool. He’ll guess I’ve told you everything. Go now, so His Exalted Highness doesn’t find you here.”

“Yes, that and the horses. Well, and figuring out what happened here at the Vigil. Why it’s abandoned. Where the garrison has gone!” With this pronouncement, Kem took a step away, a lanky youth of seventeen discovering his place in the world with increasing confidence.

Abruptly he turned back and hugged her fiercely. “I was so scared for you.”

“I love you, too, Kem,” she said with a laugh even as his words set her heart at ease. After Ao’s death two years ago and the haunt’s departure just last night, she had been so afraid of losing him, too, feared him turning his back on her forever. Yet here he stood.

He snorted as he released her. “I guess we’re stuck together for a while yet,” he said with the wry grin that gave him a mischievous gleam. After a last glance at the silent Pall, he went to the door. He paused there to give her another frowningly concerned look, then hurried out of sight down the stairs.

She considered following him, but where could she go? She was in deep trouble, that much was certain. She and Kem were trapped by the circumstances that had landed them here at Far Boundary Vigil, at the edge of the empire. But Elen had survived bad situations before. Her instincts told her not to run, not yet. Ride this out a little longer. She had to protect Kem from the prince’s wrath, that more than anything. But in addition, the mystery of the missing garrison and the unknown reason behind the prince’s reckless dash from the heartland to this distant outpost was a puzzle she wanted to solve. As soon as it proved possible, it would still be better to walk away from any business that entangled her with the palace. She was no one, a mere provincial deputy courier, a minor official in the massive bureaucracy ruled over by the Magnolia Emperor. Chaff to be ground into dust and discarded by the machinery of the Tranquil Empire.

Yet, after all, chaff was not all she was.

Unfortunately, the prince knew it.

She crossed the chamber and looked down onto the courtyard in time to see Kem slip out of the lower doorway, race down the ramp and over the pavement, and disappear into the stables, apparently unseen by any of the others.

The murmur of voices from below ceased. Hastily she went back to the chair placed in the middle of the chamber. She sat exactly where the prince had left her when Captain Simo had come up to tell him Luviara wished to speak to him on a matter of great urgency.

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#Review - The Sleepless by Jen Williams #YA #FANTASY #ROMANCE

2026-09-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Sleepless Duology # 1
Format: 336 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: September 30, 2025
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Romance

Godkiller meets Powerless in this epic gods-and-monsters romantic fantasy from British Fantasy Award-winning author Jen Williams.

Welcome to a world where gods and monsters roam the earth . . .

Elver is the guardian of the wild and dangerous monster forest. Saved from the brink of death by a god, her skin will poison anyone she touches.

Artair is on a mission - one that takes him face-to-face with Elver at her most ruthless. But her defenses are useless when she discovers he's the only human impervious to her deadly gift. For Artair isn't human: he's one of the Sleepless, cursed to share his body with an evil spirit.

Lucian inhabits their body while Artair sleeps, and he is hell-bent on manipulating Elver for his dark purposes. But Elver is harbouring secrets too, and she has her own reasons for feigning an alliance with these two souls.

Caught in the crossfire of gods, monsters, and a dangerous magic they can barely understand, it is only a matter of time before the paths the three of them choose to take will set alight the very foundations of their world.

With a love triangle like you’ve never seen it, incredible world-building, brilliant writing, and a dangerous quest, The Sleepless will have you spellbound.

The Sleepless is Jen Williams’ first YA novel and the opener of a gods-and-monsters duology: a distinctive, world-heavy fantasy with an unusual love triangle and stronger ideas than typical romantasy packaging suggests. Elver is a 17-year-old jih: an orphan once sacrificed to the Bloody Claw, then remade by the Queen of Serpents into a poison-skinned guardian of the Jih Forest and its monsters. She wants isolation. Artair is a Sleepless monk from the Golden Tower. When he sleeps, control of his body passes to Lucian, an amnesiac spirit the monastery treats as a dangerous Other.

After a mage serving the Bloody Claw kidnaps other Sleepless, Artair is forced to steal a keltraxia cub (a fox-like jih creature later named Fleet) as ransom. Elver is ordered to retrieve it. They form a reluctant alliance; Lucian has his own plans. The three travel together through temples, settlements, and divine politics shaped by a twelve-god system. The central relationship is a slow-burn triangle in which two of the three occupy the same body. Gods walk among people with distinct domains, followers, and costs. Magic feels specific rather than generic sparkle.

Williams makes the setting easy to track despite its density. Elver is sharp, resentful, and protective of her forest; Artair is the more open, “sunshine” counterpart constrained by his curse; Lucian is charismatic, unreliable, and increasingly sympathetic as his memories and motives surface. Their forced proximity and shifting trust drive both plot and theme. Themes land with more weight than many YA fantasies: invisible prisons (monastery cells, poisonous skin, divine bargains, lost identity), what “freedom” actually costs, belonging, and the morality of serving gods who treat people as tools.

The main plot of this volume reaches a partial resolution with late twists while clearly setting up book two (The Dreamless). Pacing occasionally sags under lore and travel. As a duology opener, it withholds full payoff. Read The Sleepless if you want inventive gods-and-monsters fantasy with a distinctive magic system, a grumpy-protector heroine, dual-identity tension, and a love triangle that is structurally unusual even when the emotional payoff is still building. It is less successful if you want high-heat romantasy or a fully standalone adventure. The sequel is the place where several lingering questions about Lucian, the gods, and the trio’s future are expected to land.

CHAPTER 1

Five years later

The dawn bells of the Golden Tower of the Perpetual Morning were loud enough to make the ears ring, loud enough to wake the dead. They had to be, since it was vitally important that every Sleepless currently inhabiting the monastery was absolutely, thoroughly awake.

And, all at once, Artair was.

He awoke as he always did, sitting upright in a chair in front of the small, barred window of his cell, with no memory of sitting there or even moving the chair. The other one had done that. The clay cup that Artair used to drink water and tea had been smashed, shards lying on the floor. From the damp patch on the plaster wall, he guessed the other one had thrown it in one of his wild moments of rage.

Grimacing at the familiar ache in his back—just once, he’d like for the other one to have spent the night in the narrow bed instead of pacing the room or sitting in the chair—Artair stood up, stretched, and washed his face in the basin of cold water. He’d been waking at dawn since he was a child, and he was used to the punishing schedule of the Golden Tower. Even so, he glanced longingly at the bed with its undisturbed blankets and pillow. Perhaps he could just lay down for a few moments, resting until Brother Benzin came to do the morning checks … But laying down and resting was forbidden to the Sleepless outside of authorized hours. There was always a chance, after all, that he would forget himself and start to doze, and then the other one would come forward. If that happened, there was no predicting what he might do.

Never very far away, a dark memory flickered in the back of his mind: the choking smell of smoke, the taste of burning flesh in the air … Artair splashed more cold water on his face to banish the thoughts.

‘The foundation of the tower is vigilance,’ he murmured.

There was a tiny mirror over the water basin, warped by the years and slightly discoloured in one corner. Artair looked into it, searching his face for signs of the Other, as he did most mornings. It seemed impossible that just moments ago someone else had been looking out of his brown eyes—that some other intelligence had moved his mouth and made it smile, or frown, or shout. His face remained familiar: long straight nose, sharp jawline, the narrow slash of a scar that cut through his right eyebrow—not the result of the other one’s violence, that, but an accident with the wooden staffs the novices trained with each afternoon. Brown eyes looked back at him, full of their usual uneasy combination of curiosity and determination. His dark hair was wild and tangled, as though the Other had spent the night tugging his hands through it, but that could be fixed with a comb and a brush. At least the Other hadn’t been pulling it out, as he had on other occasions.

‘Morning, Artair!’ Brother Benzin’s face appeared at the small aperture in the door. He was a gentle, florid man with a grey beard, the white robes of his order always marked with grass stains. When possible, Benzin preferred to be working in the gardens. ‘Are you with us?’

Artair presented himself in front of the door to recite that day’s line of poetry. Every day they were given a new one, so that the brothers and sisters of the monastery could be sure of who they were dealing with.

‘The silver fish flits where it will. The badger digs deep under the hill.’

‘Yes, yes, fine.’ There was a rattle at the door as Benzin unlocked it with the keys he kept on a ring at his belt. ‘A little simplistic for my tastes, but Sister Rosea has ordered in a new book of poems from a shop in Addersport and I’m afraid she’s quite taken with it.’ The door swung open, and Brother Benzin stood to one side. ‘Brace yourself for many more stirring uses of cat and bat, or, the Twelve save us, river and slither. Goodness, look at the state of your hair. I assume we had a rough night?’

Artair knew it wasn’t a real question. After all, how could he know what the Other got up to? But he felt his cheeks flush anyway.

‘Was there any noise from my cell?’

Brother Benzin shrugged, then patted Artair on the shoulder fondly. ‘There is noise from every cell every night, my young friend. Don’t let it play on your mind. After your morning meditations and exercises, I will want your help out in the orchards. Is that alright?’

When Benzin had left to continue his circuit of all the cells in the tower, Artair ducked back into his chamber, wet his comb, and spent some minutes trying to tame his hair. There was a shadow of stubble on his jaw, but not enough yet to go to Sister Rosea for a shave—sharp blades were expressly forbidden in the cells of the Sleepless. When he’d done all he could to make himself presentable, he paused to sweep up the remains of the broken cup, depositing the shards on the small wooden table in the corner of the room. It was only then that he saw that one of the sharp pieces of clay had been used to carve a message into the tabletop. The words were jagged and rough, as though the author had had only minutes to carve it and not an entire night.

LET ME OUT

‘Never,’ he said. He rubbed his fingers across the carved words, thinking: my hands did this. ‘I’ll never let you out.’

CHAPTER 2

Elver broke the green ice on the top of the pond with her bare foot, savouring the brittle crack as she sank in up to her ankles. There had been a cold snap overnight and in this deepest, darkest part of the Jih Forest rarely a day passed without something freezing. She waded in deeper, letting the frigid black water envelop her up to her chest. Since the Queen of Serpents had swapped out her blood for poison when she was a child, cold water did not particularly bother her. She was jih now, a monster spirit in the forest of monsters, and the natural world could offer up very little to cause her discomfort. In the middle of the pond, which was one of the smaller, hidden watery places of the forest, there was a ragged island made of reeds, and mud, and stunted weeping willows. She headed towards it slowly, not wanting to startle its residents, but they were even more attuned to the forest than she was. She’d made it less than halfway when a bristly head stuck up out of a thicket of reeds. Large eyes flashed with blue-green light, briefly illuminating the island.

‘Hey, it’s only me,’ Elver called softly. ‘Just come to see how the cubs are getting on. I’ve brought treats!’ She raised the bag she held in one hand, and the watching creature made a low whistling noise of satisfaction.

Seen only in silhouette, the keltraxia looked a little like oversized foxes, with their long snouts and bushy tails, but seen up close, their bodies were covered in tiny blue scales, except where they sprouted red and orange feathers. Their ears, covered in these feathers, looked like little bursts of flame, giving them the name by which humans knew them: fire-listeners. Elver thought the human name was stupid. The Queen of Serpents had told her the true names of all the jih spirits in the forest.

* * *

In the water around her, Elver could sense the movement of other things: frogs and fish and water snakes, but jih spirit creatures too, things with which she shared a kin-bond. Something with silver gossamer fins and eight red eyes brushed against her leg and was gone in an instant. Elver held the bag a little higher and continued.

The edge of the island was ringed with thick black mud, which Elver gamely stomped through until she was on what could charitably be called dry land. Just beyond the wall of reeds, mosses, and heather, she could see a large nest of mud and sticks, and standing over it, the keltraxia vixen. The creature opened her mouth, letting her tongue scent the air, and the long scarlet feathers on her ears flickered open like a bird taking flight.

‘You can smell these from the other side of the forest, I’m sure.’ Elver placed the bag on the ground by the nest and opened it up so the vixen could get her snout inside. Green Lady snails were only found in the far west of the forest, and knowing how much the keltraxia enjoyed them, Elver always made certain to collect a big bagful whenever she was near. While the vixen munched and snorted her way through the bag, Elver carefully peeked over the edge of the nest. Inside was one as yet unhatched egg, and three healthy-looking keltraxia cubs. Only recently hatched, they still had more feathers than scales, but their eyes were open and glowing with a softer version of the light their mother displayed. Elver reached a hand down to them. The nearest stuck his snout into her palm and licked it with a rough tongue.

‘They’re doing well.’ She looked again at the egg and felt a little of her good mood slip away. ‘Shouldn’t that have hatched by now?’

The vixen turned to regard her, the fiery feathers on her ears lowered.

Not that one, the keltraxia said in the voice only Elver could hear. She is still and cold, and did not have the strength to break the shell.

Elver nodded. She understood—not everything that lived in the wood thrived—but it seemed unfair. From the southern slopes of the forest, on the foothills that marked the beginning of the mountains, it was possible to see the roads that led to Addersport, and on them there passed a steady stream of human life: travellers, traders, wanderers. They came with carts and caravans, on single horses or on foot. There seemed to be no end of human life souring the world, yet this one little keltraxia cub had not had the chance to live.

We will eat it, the vixen continued. When the others are old enough to stomach it.

Elver grimaced. She rubbed her hands through her hair—bone white since the Queen of the Serpents had bitten her—and stepped away from the nest. The vixen came closer and briefly laid her head on top of Elver’s; a greeting between kin.

The snails are tasty, she said. Thank you, human-sister.

‘Not human any more,’ said Elver. ‘But you’re welcome, my friend.’

* * *

Elver made her own home by another source of water: the great Serpent Lake that nestled in the centre of the Jih Forest. She had found an abandoned hunter’s hut at the edge of the treeline, and over the years had transformed it into a place she could shelter. There was a bed of fur and feathers, donated by the kindly, lumbering forms of the kartesh, monsters with the stocky, furry bodies of bears and the avian faces of owls; there was a mirror, brought to her by a roch, a vast bird with four fiery wings. On a single shelf there was her beloved collection of books, stolen from travellers or found and brought to her by the other jih spirits of the forest—they knew that their sister had a fondness for the human habit of reading. From the lake, she caught fish, and washed herself, and drank, and every now and then she would find messages from the Queen of Serpents. On rare occasions, the god herself would appear, a huge golden shape coiling through the green water. Elver was not a mage—the Queen of Serpents had none—so she could not call the god to her or ask it for a boon, but as a jih spirit she was one of the Queen’s own, and consequently, the god liked to visit. Elver had the vague sense the god had taken a special interest in her since saving her from being sacrificed in Addersport. The idea made her uneasy, as though it were all part of some larger painting, of which she could see only a tiny corner. But she knew the Queen had brought her back from death while the people of Addersport had been all too eager to see a child thrown into the sea to save their own hides, and that was more than enough to earn Elver’s loyalty. She thought then, as she often did, of the red-haired mage who had sacrificed her to a hungry god. Humans were duplicitous, selfish and bloodthirsty. The jih were all the company she needed now.

It was an hour’s walk back to the Serpent Lake from the keltraxia nest. Elver moved through the forest like a creature that had been born there, slipping through the undergrowth silently, noting the signs and marks and songs of the birds and small animals. She paused at the edge of a stream as a platynus passed by, a vast monster whose reptilian head cleared the tallest treetops in the canopy. Elver could see only its enormous flank, muscles as big as tree trunks clenching and releasing under leathery purple and yellow skin.

When she arrived at the lake, she stripped off her clothes—scavenged or crafted by her own hand—and washed quickly in the water, cleaning the black mud off her feet. When she was dry and clothed again, she headed towards her ramshackle home, thinking to fetch her fishing spear and catch something for that night’s supper. If there were plenty of fish about, she could start putting some by for the long winter that was beginning to breathe its cold air on the back of her neck.

But as she was picking up the spear she caught the scent of something acrid and sour against her tongue.

Woodsmoke. A human fire started with a splash of something else—oil, perhaps. Elver turned and saw, on the far side of the lake, a point of buttery yellow light, and a thin line of black smoke that poked above the tops of the trees. There was a figure there, sitting by the campfire, its head down as it looked at something in its lap.

‘Intruder.’

Elver felt the poison in her blood churn. A filthy human, here, in this place that was her home.

She left the spear by the hut and instead retrieved her knife, which she pushed through her belt. Rather than following the edge of the lake around, she went back beyond the treeline, circling until she could see the human framed against the green water of the lake. It was a woman in her middle age, her limbs long and rangy, and she wore a wide-brimmed hat. There was a sword, still in its scabbard, lying on the sandy ground by her feet. The interloper’s hair was short, and from her vantage point Elver could see the bare skin on the back of her neck. All it would take was her cold, pale hand pressed to that section of skin, and the woman would quickly regret ever coming into the Jih Forest …

But that wasn’t enough.

Elver stepped out of the treeline, letting her feet crunch over the autumnal leaf litter, and watched with satisfaction as the human woman startled and turned, her eyes wide. She pictured what the woman was seeing: an alarmingly pale girl of seventeen years with a shock of white hair and yellow eyes, a line of blueish scars marking her neck and shoulder and arm—the places where the Queen of Serpents had bitten her. A monster-girl dressed in leather and bone and feather, with a knife in her hand. Of course, she wouldn’t know that the knife was the last thing she had to worry about.

‘Who are you?’ Curiously, the woman did not reach for her sword.

‘I am the guardian of this forest.’ Elver walked towards the woman boldly. It made her heart thunder in her chest, to be this close to a human. ‘And you aren’t welcome.’

The woman stood up slowly. On the ground behind her there was a well-used bedroll, and a battered tin cup filled with soup.

‘I’ve heard of you,’ the woman said. ‘The ghost of a girl is supposed to haunt this place. But you’re no spirit. Are you living out here by yourself? How are you alive?’

Elver laughed. ‘This is my home. Nothing here will harm me. But you? You’ve made a very serious mistake, human.’

‘Listen.’ The woman raised her hands slowly, palms facing out. ‘I’m just a traveller. Passing on through this place on my way somewhere else. There’s no need—’

‘You thought you could just pass through the forest of the jih?’ Elver grinned, and for the first time the woman looked truly unsettled. ‘Humans, you think that everything is a road for you to walk on. That everything deserves to be beneath your feet. A dung beetle has more sense than you.’

‘Now then.’ The woman scowled. ‘I’ll not have such attitude off a scrap of a thing like you. You’ve gone mad, living out here by yourself.’ Incredibly, she took a step forward, reaching out as though to bring Elver towards the fire. ‘You need some hot meals inside you, a bloody good bath, and then maybe you’ll know to speak to your elders with some respect.’

‘It’s you who needs to show some respect.’ Elver took the woman’s arm and pressed the flat of her hand against her skin. The woman jumped as though she’d been bitten, the hat falling off of her head with the force of it, and she gave a little shriek. Elver saw the shape of her own handprint on the woman’s arm, the skin already blistering, and then the woman folded to her knees, falling down next to her own campfire. Her eyes had rolled up to expose the whites.

‘I told you. Idiot human. Talking to me like I’m some lost child. The monster forest is my home.’

Elver knelt to feel for the interloper’s pulse. It was there, light and fast. When she took her hand away, there were two more livid marks on the woman’s skin in the shape of her fingertips. She wiped her hand on the back of her trousers. Touching humans made her feel dirty, but even worse was the painful curiosity it roused in her. What would it be like to touch a human safely? What did skin feel like when the person you touched didn’t recoil in pain and horror? The memory of that sensation had long been lost to her. You’re not human any more, she told herself fiercely. And you never will be.

‘You’re not dead,’ she told the unconscious woman. ‘Which is more than you deserve.’

It would be easy to end it, though. A longer touch from her poison skin should do it, or if she didn’t mind making a mess, her knife would do the job. Elver looked up to see another of the forest’s monster inhabitants peering at her from the treeline. Slowjorns were some of the more talkative of the jih spirits, and she knew this one well.

Greetings, forest guardian. One of your kind?

Elver felt heat prickle across the back of her neck, but she swallowed down the annoyance like a sharp stone.

‘No, not my kind at all. Since you’re here though, will you do me a favour?’

The slowjorn crept forward. Out of the shadows, it looked like a human-sized bipedal snail, its limbs tentatively picking their way across the ground. The bulbous shell on its back was formed of a great spiral.

Perhaps. The antennae on its head expanded curiously, questing towards the body on the ground.

‘Drag this idiot back towards the road. You don’t have to go near it, just get close enough that she’ll see where she has to go when she wakes up.’ Elver smiled, imagining the look on the woman’s face if she woke up during the journey and saw what had a sticky tendril around her ankle. And of course there were lots of dangers in the Jih Forest. She might not make it to the road at all. ‘Don’t worry too much about bumping her over brambles and puddles. She needs to learn not to ever come back here.’

When the slowjorn had gone, dragging the human behind it like a sack of bones, Elver picked over the traveller’s possessions. She drank the cold soup, savouring the taste of herbs and spices from outside the forest, and took a notebook with a few empty pages left from the fallen pack—there had been books in the orphanage, and they were one of the few things she truly missed. This one looked as though it had been used to keep track of the woman’s travels; there were notes on Addersport, a town called Tarflin she had never heard of, and a detailed section on a mage dedicated to the god Tisk. There wasn’t much else, but the sword was decent enough and had a sharp edge. Elver took it back with her to the other side of the lake.

CHAPTER 3

The monastery clung to the side of the mountain like a cluster of oyster mushrooms on a tree. From its walls it was possible to see the Jih Forest spreading away across the foothills below, a dense carpet of trees that at this time of the year burned yellow and orange and red—and beyond that there was the ever-shifting sparkle of the sea. Between the two lay Addersport, hidden by the rise and fall of the land, the only clues to its existence the trails of smoke that rose from its industrious buildings, and the steady arrival and departure of ships of all types. The monastery itself grew out from the central tower, where the Sleepless were housed during the night; buildings with green and blue tiled roofs crowded around it like children around a nursemaid. Behind its sea-facing walls, there was an interior garden so sheltered from the mountain weather that the monks and their charges grew most of the things they consumed there, from apples and cabbages to herbs and medicines.

Artair liked to look at the view as he made his way from the meditation hall to the garden, peering out of the many tiny windows that marked the corridor. If he ignored the bustle of activity that gave away the existence of Addersport, it was easy to pretend that the Golden Tower was all alone in the world; there was just the mountains, the forest, and sea, with no people to make things complicated. If the world was empty beyond the monastery, then it would be safe for him—for all the Sleepless—to leave the tower behind.

But it would never be safe. As long as the Other dwelt within him, he was dangerous. And thinking about the world beyond was dangerous too. Brother Elthem believed that such thoughts of freedom originated with the dark spirit, because what the dark spirits wanted, more than anything, was to get out into the wider world so they could cause chaos. The monks taught them to keep their minds and their bodies occupied—with meditation, physical training, and simple chores.

Vigilance, thought Artair.

Down in the orchard the apples were ready to drop, and Artair spent much of the day with some of the younger novices, picking the fruits and carting them away in crates to the monastery kitchens or the cold cellars dug into the raw rock of the mountain. In the afternoon, the monks gave them a couple of hours of leisure time, so they went to the natural spring at the edge of the gardens. Over thousands of years it had carved a small pool into the rock, fed by a bubbling waterfall. It was a good place to sit and talk with their bare feet dangling in the freezing water. To be Sleepless was to be constantly seeking ways to stay awake.

‘My parents say they will visit after the next harvest,’ said Reah. She had arrived at the monastery only six months ago. She looked down as she spoke, apparently examining the freckles on the backs of her hands. ‘Which isn’t so long now. But…’ Reah shifted on the grass, her posture awkward and stiff. ‘I can’t believe I’m not there with them, helping them with it. That I’m going to be stuck in this place…’

She didn’t say it, but Artair could hear the word in her silence anyway. Forever. Stuck in this place forever.

‘It’s harder for you,’ said Chessun, in a matter-of-fact tone. He was one of the older novices, a broad lad with sunny blond curls. ‘Most of us found out we were Sleepless when we were little. How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?’

Reah frowned at him. ‘Fourteen.’

Chessun shrugged. ‘There you are then. You were too used to having a normal life. Didn’t know you had a monster creeping around inside you. Now you’re wondering why you can’t just wander into town and buy a loaf of bread, or sleep in a room that doesn’t lock from the outside. It’s a rude wotsit. Awakening.’

‘It will get better,’ said Artair. He remembered being brought to the monastery five years ago, and the sense of dislocation that came with it. ‘You’ll get used to the place. The monks keep us busy. And we can go where we want in the gardens.’

‘At home, our farm was twenty acres,’ said Reah sulkily. ‘I could catch a cart to Addersport if I wanted to. I used to go and look at the markets. I’d save up my money to go.’

‘At least you don’t need money here,’ said Artair.

‘I didn’t even do anything bad, not really,’ Reah continued obliviously. ‘Nothing permanent, anyway. I can’t believe my parents would do this.’ Her voice wobbled and she looked away from the rest of them, keen to hide the expression on her face. ‘That they’d just leave me in this place. In a prison.’

‘You didn’t do it,’ said Artair.

‘What?’ Reah looked at him. Her eyes were too bright, only moments away from spilling tears.

‘Whatever it was that happened, it wasn’t you.’ Artair gave her a smile. Reah was only three years younger than him, but in that moment she looked painfully young. ‘The evil spirit inside you, the thing that comes out when you give into sleep. That’s what did those things, not you. We can’t control the spirit that waits inside us, but we do what we can to limit the damage it causes. By living here, in the Golden Tower, away from the world.’ He thought of the view from the monastery windows, that open sea that could lead to anywhere, and he felt a dull ache in his chest. But close on the heels of that thought was the memory of what had happened when the Other had first shown itself. Smoke and blood and ruin. ‘It’s safer for everyone this way.’

‘I know it wasn’t me,’ said Reah, although she didn’t sound certain. It was, Artair knew, one of the hardest lessons of the Golden Tower—that the Other was something separate, something evil, even though it lurked under your own skin. Even now, after five years in the monastery, Artair still carried the queasy guilt of what the Other had done.

Chessun chuckled. ‘You sound just like Brother Benzin, Artair. Come on, the sun is still out and I’m sticky with apple juice.’ He stood up in the freezing stream and waded out deeper into the water, soaking the bottoms of his rolled-up trousers. All the novices wore soft white trousers and yellow shirts, with a mustard-coloured half robe over the top. This last he pulled up over his head to make a rough hood. Artair laughed.

‘Thank you,’ Reah said quietly. ‘This place is just so … far away from everything.’

‘It’ll feel like home eventually,’ he said, wondering if he even knew what home meant any more. ‘Come on, before they find other work for us to do.’

* * *

The afternoon was passing pleasantly enough until Chessun decided that he wanted to climb to where the waterfall started, which meant shimmying up a number of slippery, moss-covered rocks. Artair had begun wading out towards him, trying to talk him out of it, when the big novice slipped, falling back into the spring with a sizeable splash. Some of the other novices gave out cries of alarm, and a few of the more skittish ones ran back across the gardens to fetch the monks. Artair, strong and lean after years of martial training and exercise, dragged his friend out of the water and onto the grassy bank. Chessun had grazed his temple on a rock and blood was running freely from the wound, turning his yellow robe scarlet at the shoulder.

‘Twelve save us Chessun, you idiot.’ Artair gave his friend a little shake, but the boy’s eyes rolled back into his head. Dread seized Artair. ‘No, don’t—don’t do that…’

Reah appeared next to him, her face so pale that the freckles stood out like spots of ink.

‘Is he alright?’

‘I don’t know. I think he’s passed out, and if he has … Reah, get back into the monastery, I’m not sure that—’

Chessun’s eyes snapped back into focus. For a split second, they looked to be a shade paler than they had been moments before, and the broad, kindly shape of his face was transformed into an expression of fury. In that instant, the Chessun that Artair had known for years vanished. He was leaning over a complete stranger.

‘Chessun, wait—’

Artair scrambled backwards, his bare feet sliding on the wet grass, but Chessun moved faster. He reached out with his big brawny hands and grasped Artair by the throat.

‘That’s not my name.’

Artair gasped for air. He was a few inches taller, and even with Chessun’s greater bulk he normally would have had no difficulty in throwing his friend off, but Chessun’s strength was coming from a different, darker place. The Other had taken over the moment the novice had lost consciousness.

‘I am outside!’ The being inhabiting Chessun looked around at the spring and the gardens in apparent wonder. ‘Finally. I can get out of this stinking, pish-ridden hole.’

With a grunt he stood up and threw Artair back into the freezing water. When Artair had scrambled back onto his feet, soaking wet, he saw that Chessun was heading for the Red Gate. The other novices had fled, and a number of Brothers and Sisters had appeared from the buildings, moving swiftly towards the rogue Sleepless. Artair heard them calling his friend, telling him to wake up, to come back to them, but he knew it wasn’t going to work. The spirits were at their strongest when they had just taken control—it normally took an entire night’s worth of sleep for the novice to be close enough to the surface to return.

Even so, he called his friend’s name, a rising flutter of panic in his chest.

‘Chessun! Come back!’

The Red Gate was one of the oldest structures in the monastery, dating from before the order of the Perpetual Morning had moved in. It was made of iron, the scarlet coating of paint that gave it its name now mostly flaked off, and it had a row of wicked points running along the top. It would be locked—the gates of the Golden Tower almost always were—and it stood a good ten feet in height. That wouldn’t discourage an evil spirit intent on escape, though.

Artair began to run.

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#Review - You Know Why by J.T. Ellison #Mystery #Thriller

2026-09-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 428 pages, Kindle Edition
Release Date: August 25, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

It’s the holidays, and photographer Brooklyn Locke is bound for Italy with her husband, Trey, and their two children. But when Trey vanishes from the airport, missing their connecting flight, their impromptu vacation—and life as she knows it—begins to unravel.

Desperate to find her husband, Brooklyn accepts help from a stranger on the same flight, Eden Barrow. But Eden soon makes a shocking claim. She is the sister of Trey’s first wife, and ten years ago he was the main suspect in her murder.

Struggling to comprehend these accusations, fate delivers one more a violent accident that leaves Brooklyn fighting for her life. With nowhere else to turn, Brooklyn leans on Eden for support. But each kindness feels too rehearsed, feeding her doubts about Eden’s motives and Trey’s true past.

Brooklyn has her own dark history she’d rather forget and confronts an unsettling possibility. Her life is not what it seems, and the truth is a trap—laid by someone waiting for the perfect time to strike.

You Know Why by J.T. Ellison is a domestic suspense psychological thriller that starts with a single, ordinary rupture and then keeps peeling until almost nothing about the family at the center of the story can be trusted. It is twisty, propulsive, and frequently stressful in the way a good airport-nightmare thriller should be. In its second half, it's also overstuffed. Main Characters include: Brooklyn Locke, Eden Barrow, Detective Theresa Lee, and Trey Locke.

The official setup is clean and immediately effective. Photographer Brooklyn Locke, her husband Trey, and their two children are heading to Italy for a last-minute holiday trip when Trey vanishes during a connection and misses the next flight. A stranger on the same itinerary, Eden Barrow, offers help—and then drops a bomb. She says she is the sister of Trey’s first wife, and that ten years earlier Trey was the prime suspect in that woman’s murder. A violent accident then leaves Brooklyn fighting for her life and increasingly dependent on the one person she has every reason not to trust. Brooklyn, of course, has secrets of her own.

Ellison opens a decade earlier, on a Christmas-night murder in Georgia that is staged against the most aggressively cozy holiday details imaginable: snow, a lighted tree, a pie in the oven, carols on a phone. That contrast is the book’s governing idea. The present-day plot then runs on dual (and sometimes more) points of view, short chapters, and a steady drip of withheld information. The reader often knows slightly more than Brooklyn does, which is both the engine of the suspense and the source of the book’s most common reader complaint: you will want to shake her.

The characters are built for suspicion rather than warmth. Brooklyn is a mother in freefall whose protectiveness of her children is the most emotionally grounded thing in the novel. Trey is the classic Ellison husband: charming, incomplete, and suddenly unreadable. Eden is the book’s most interesting creation—helpful in a way that feels rehearsed, grieving in a way that curdles into something possessive. Sisterhood is a recurring structural motif: Eden and the dead Chloe; Brooklyn and her twin, Margot. Ellison has said she is less interested in likability than in whether a character remains understandable and, at least sometimes, forgivable. That shows. Almost no one here is clean.

This book is about identity as a performance and marriage as a negotiated fiction. How much of a spouse do you actually know? How much of yourself have you edited out in order to keep a life intact? Holiday travel, airports, and the false intimacy of strangers in transit give those questions a physical setting. The novel also wants to be more than a “who did I marry?” story. It folds in a cold-case murder, shifting loyalties, and the aftereffects of trauma (including a traumatic brain injury that becomes both a plot device and a source of narrative unreliability). When those layers lock together, the book has the snap of a well-made trap. When they pile up, it starts to feel like three thrillers sharing one spine.

If you liked The Last Thing He Told Me, Gone Girl, or Ellison’s own It’s One of Us and A Very Bad Thing, this will likely hit the same nerve: marriage as a crime scene, identity as a moving target, a stranger who knows too much. Think of it as domestic noir with a travel-thriller chassis and a cold-case engine bolted on. It is not her leanest book, and it is not her most emotionally devastating. For long stretches, it is extremely hard to put down and ends on a mind-blowing finale.

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#Review - Immortal Rose by Alexandra Bracken #Fantasy #Romance

2026-09-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Immortal Rose # 1
Format: 496 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: August 18, 2026
Publisher: Avon
Source: Publisher
Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Members of the ancient House Rosebourne have a strange gift born of a fairy ancestor: the ability to infuse fragrance with magic capable of manipulating mind, body, and emotion.

When a shocking murder leaves the kingdom of Albion vulnerable to a coup, royal spymaster Hugh Thornton seeks the one person who can help: Viola Lockhart, the last living Rosebourne and secret heir to a fraught legacy.

Livid at the silver-eyed aristocrat who had her thrown in jail to force her compliance, Viola nevertheless comes to an agreement with him. In exchange for crafting Immortal Rose, the singular perfume capable of saving Albion, illegitimate Viola can seize the life—and fortune—that should have been hers.

As Hugh and Viola race to find the perfume’s lost fairy ingredient, hidden deep in Albion’s dark underbelly, neither can deny the scorching attraction building between them—especially as the attempts on Viola’s life grow increasingly brazen.

But a terrible truth lurks in the heart notes of their kingdom—and while every bargain has a cost, Immortal Rose may demand more than Hugh and Viola can ever pay.

Immortal Rose is the first installment in author Alexandra Bracken's Immortal Rose duology. Immortal Rose is Alexandra Bracken’s adult debut and a Regency-inspired romantasy built around perfume magic, class resentment, political conspiracy, and a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers pairing that actually earns its heat. The story alternates between Viola Lockwood and Hugh Thornton. In the kingdom of Albion, the last descendants of the fairies—the fairyborn—can work magic through scent.

Members of House Rosebourne inherited the rare gift of infusing perfume so that it can alter mind, body, and emotion. That gift is both coveted and criminalized, depending on who is using it. Viola Lockwood is the illegitimate last Rosebourne. She has spent years scraping by in the illegal Midnight Market, hiding a lineage that could either restore her fortune or send her back to Fairgate Prison.

After a shocking act of violence leaves the king poisoned and the realm ripe for a coup, royal spymaster Hugh Thornton has her arrested specifically so he can force a bargain: craft Immortal Rose, the one perfume that might save Albion, and she can claim the name, fortune, and life that were denied her. They go looking for a lost fairy ingredient in the city’s underbelly. Attraction arrives whether they want it or not. So do assassination attempts, secrets, and the kind of political rot that perfume cannot cover.

The magic system is the book’s best idea. Scent-as-power is not just window dressing. Bracken treats fragrance the way a good historical novelist treats etiquette or a good fantasy writer treats bloodlines: as status, contraband, intimacy, and weapon. Top notes, heart notes, and base notes become plot mechanics. The result is unusually tactile. You can almost smell the rooms. Viola is a stronger heroine than many current romantasy leads. She is not a bratty chosen one. She is practical, proud, already tired, and unwilling to be grateful for a gilded cage.

Hugh is the yearner: silver-eyed, morally compromised, professionally secretive, and increasingly undone by a woman he first treated as an asset. He falls first and harder. The banter and the careful noticing of each other are the book’s emotional engine. Also, I would pay attention to the secondary characters, especially in Hugh's house. They are all important, as are Oliver, Reedy, and Eleanor. Found-family side characters and the class critique give the story more bite than a pure ballroom romance.

The rich can buy fairy relics. The poor get jailed for making the same kind of magic. Viola’s anger about that hypocrisy is one of the book’s most adult notes. This is not a standalone, despite some early marketing that made it feel like one. It ends on a genuine cliffhanger—abrupt, high-stakes, jaw-dropping, and infuriating depending on your tolerance for unfinished duologies. Do not start this if you refuse incomplete series. Read it if you want slow-burn historical romantasy with a new magic hook, a competent heroine, a down-bad spymaster, and a world that smells expensive and dangerous at the same time. Wait for the second book if cliffhangers ruin you.

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#Review - Until She Dies by Kendra Elliot #Thriller #Suspense

2026-09-15T12:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Noelle Marshall # 3
Format: 328 pages, Kindle Edition
Release Date: September 8, 2026
Publisher: Montlake Publishing
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

Detective Noelle Marshall and FBI Agent Max Rhodes unearth bodies and secrets as they become targets of a serial killer in a chilling novel of suspense by a Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

When a search dog locates a mass burial ground in the Oregon forest, Detective Noelle Marshall is plunged into a hunt for a killer who’s hiding in plain sight. The key to her case lies in a decades-old secret: a lone survivor who escaped and is still out there, living in fear. The murderer is a phantom who left behind a collection of victims with nothing in common but their final resting place.

As pressure mounts to identify the bodies and find the killer, the investigation draws in FBI Agent Max Rhodes—Noelle’s partner in work and in life. They’ve hunted monsters before, but this one has spent years preparing for this moment, and he craves revenge. As the search narrows and the clock tightens, Noelle and Max must confront a predator who knows the terrain—and their weaknesses—better than they do.

Until She Dies is the third installment in author Kendra Elliot's Noelle Marshall series. It is a Pacific Northwest police procedural with romantic-suspense elements, a serial-killer investigation, and the emotional continuity that defines Elliot’s connected Oregon universe. Elliot is known for the Bone Secrets, Callahan & McLane, Mercy Kilpatrick, and Columbia River series. Noelle Marshall first appeared in the Columbia River books; fans asked for her own story, and this series delivers it while remaining set in the same Deschutes County world.

Secondary characters from earlier books (including Mercy Kilpatrick, Truman Daly, and Rowan Wolff) can appear, so longtime readers will feel the continuity even if each novel works as a case-driven thriller. A search dog uncovers a mass burial site in the Oregon forest. Detective Noelle Marshall of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office takes the lead. The victims share almost nothing except their graves. The investigation points toward a killer who has operated for years, hidden in plain sight, and a decades-old secret: one person escaped and has been living in fear ever since.

FBI Agent Max Rhodes—Noelle’s partner both professionally and personally—joins the case. Pressure mounts as bodies are identified and the killer’s pattern becomes clearer. This predator has spent years preparing, knows the terrain, and specifically targets the investigators. The hunt turns personal. Noelle Marshall remains the series’ emotional center. She is a competent detective still carrying the trauma of her politician husband’s murder years earlier (the subject of Her First Mistake) and the secrets she kept about that night.

By book three, she has built a life and a partnership with Max, but the new case tests both her professional judgment and the fragile trust she has constructed with the FBI and her own family. Max Rhodes functions as both investigative counterpart and romantic anchor. Elliot typically writes these pairings as grounded rather than overheated: two professionals who respect each other’s competence while the case forces them into greater vulnerability. Readers who follow the series will see the relationship evolve under pressure rather than reset.

Supporting characters like Ollie, Emma, and the Oregon law-enforcement community give the book its procedural texture. Elliot’s strength has always been making the team feel like people who have history with one another, not just plot devices. Investigations proceed through interviews, forensics, search-and-rescue work, and the slow identification of remains. Tension builds as facts accumulate and the sense grows that the killer is watching. You can start here, but you will miss emotional context around Noelle’s marriage, the earlier murder case, and how she and Max reached their current partnership.

The first two books—Her First Mistake (2025) and No One Knew (January 2026)—are the better entry points. The subject matter is dark: serial murder, hidden graves, a survivor living in prolonged fear, and investigators who become prey. Readers who want lighter romantic suspense or a guaranteed uplifting ending may find the tone heavier than expected. If you already like Noelle and Max, this installment continues their story while giving them a large, threatening case. If you are new to Elliot, start with Her First Mistake or one of the Mercy Kilpatrick/Columbia River books to see whether her blend of investigation, trauma, and relationship work clicks for you.

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#Review - The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter #Thriller #Suspense

2026-09-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: North Falls # 2
Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: August 11, 2026
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

Welcome to North Falls. A small town with big secrets…

1601 Iris Drive looks like any other house on the quiet, residential street. But rumors are rampant about the Vickery family and what goes on behind closed doors.

When gunshots ring out, Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister, ex-federal agent Jude Archer, discover a devastating crime scene. Allison Vickery has been murdered in her own kitchen, and her teenage daughter is bleeding upstairs, left for dead.

Everyone thinks they know what happened. But secrets are buried everywhere in this small town.

And it’s up to Emmy Clifton to uncover the truth…

The Secrets We Hide is the second installment in author Karin Slaughter's North Falls series. The Secrets We Hide is a dense, emotionally loaded small-town thriller that proves Karin Slaughter’s new North Falls series has staying power. It is not her leanest book, and it is not her most shocking, but it is one of her most character-driven recent novels: a story about what a community agrees not to see, and what two sisters still cannot say to each other. It is the second North Falls novel, following We Are All Guilty Here (2025).

The plot can be followed as a standalone, but the family history, especially the charged relationship between Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her long-absent sister Jude Archer, lands much harder if you have read book one. The story picks up only weeks later. Emmy is still raw from her father’s death in the line of duty and is burying her mother when gunshots pull her, Jude, and Emmy’s deputy son Cole off the funeral circuit and into a house on Iris Drive. What they find looks, at first, like the crime everyone in North Falls already expected.

Allison Vickery, a former detective turned private investigator, is dead in her kitchen. Her teenage daughter Mandy has been shot and left for dead upstairs. Upon entry, Jude is wounded by an unknown shooter. The Vickery household has been the subject of local rumor for years. The obvious suspect is the abusive husband Allison was trying to leave. Slaughter lets that assumption sit just long enough to make the town’s certainty feel like part of the crime.

From there the book becomes less a locked-room puzzle than a peeling of layers: money hidden in an attic, a shaky alibi, old police work that may have been buried on purpose, a drug pipeline, respected local families, and a decades-old murder trial that did not stay settled. The case is complicated. The relationship is better. Emmy is a newly minted sheriff trying to fill her father’s chair while grieving both parents, raising her adult son who is a Deputy, and running for election in a county that still treats the Cliftons as both royalty and public property.

Emmy is competent, loyal, and often overwhelmed by the angst she gets from her own people. Jude is the sharper instrument. A retired FBI profiler who fled North Falls forty years earlier (as the author covers), she brings federal coldness, professional arrogance, and a secret she still isn't ready to share with her sister. The combustible relationship between Emmy and Jude comes to a head as Emmy resents Jude’s disappearing act, and both circle the same house because neither can trust the other or work the case alone. Slaughter has always been good at damaged families.

Here the damage is specific and Southern in the way she does best: loyalty as a trap, gossip as infrastructure, motherhood as both vocation and cover. Slaughter still writes investigation as accumulation rather than fireworks. Clues arrive through interviews, grudges, half-remembered trials, and the social map of a town where half the county seems related. The opening is immediate and grim. The middle thickens. The last act snaps. Read this if you like crime fiction in which the detective work and the family reckoning are the same job. It will satisfy readers who come to Slaughter for damaged women, Southern claustrophobia, and the idea that the worst secrets are the ones a town has already decided not to discuss.

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#Review - Daughter of Mine by Megan Miranda #Thriller #Suspense

2026-09-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 368 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: April 9, 2024
Publisher: Scribner

Source: Library
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

Her father was the town detective. Her mother its most notorious criminal. Now the secrets of Mirror Lake are coming to the surface…and changing everything.

When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.

Daughter of Mine is Megan Miranda at her strongest: small-town claustrophobia, a family that has lived too long with convenient stories, and a landscape that finally refuses to keep those stories underwater. Hazel Sharp left Mirror Lake, North Carolina, almost a decade ago. She built a renovation business in Charlotte and tried to put distance between herself and the town that never quite accepted her. Then her stepfather, Detective Perry Holt—the local cop everyone trusted—dies and leaves her the lakeside house. Not her half-brothers Gage and Caden. Just her.

At the same time, a drought drops Mirror Lake's water level. A rusted car surfaces. Then another. And the old question that has followed Hazel since she was fourteen comes back with it: what really happened when her mother, Libby, vanished after draining accounts and walking out of the Holt house? The note Libby left—“Daughter of Mine”—has been Hazel’s private inheritance for years. The lake is about to make it public. Miranda structures the book in four parts—Father, Mother, Daughter, Sons—which is more than a gimmick. Each section shifts the emotional center of gravity as Hazel is forced to look at the same family from a different angle.

Mirror Lake is not a postcard small town. It is a closed system where “everyone knows” is both comfort and threat. Drought is the perfect engine: heat, receding water, things that were supposed to stay buried becoming visible. The house itself behaves like a character—lights, notes, crawl spaces, the sense that Perry is still giving instructions from the other side of the grave. The real subject is not a single corpse in a lake. It is loyalty among people who share a last name and a lot of silence. Gage and Caden are cops like their father. Childhood friend Jamie is now married into the family.

Neighbor and old flame Nico has his own reasons to stay quiet. Uncle Roy has layers. Hazel is the outsider who was raised inside the house and still doesn’t fully belong. Miranda is sharp about how a town that worships a dead detective will punish the daughter of the woman they decided was a thief. Hazel, as narrator, is not a super-sleuth. She renovates houses for a living and is suddenly asked to renovate the story of her own life. Her isolation feels earned. She wants the truth more than she wants peace, which is both her strength and the reason the book keeps tightening.

Daughter of Mine is not Miranda’s wildest book, but it may be one of her most controlled. The drought is a strong metaphor that never quite becomes a lecture. Hazel is a better protagonist than many thriller heroines because her stubbornness has a history. The town feels lived-in and slightly poisoned. The twists are plentiful; the best of them are about who people chose to protect, not just who they chose to bury. If you want a tightly coiled, humid, family-first mystery that treats the past as something that can still flood the present, this is a solid, often excellent entry in Miranda’s catalog—and a fair argument for the people who keep calling it one of her best.

CHAPTER 1

62 Days without Rain

Wednesday, May 15

5:30 p.m.

Precipitation: Zero

They raised the car from the lake on the same day as my father’s memorial, two unrelated but equally newsworthy events: Something lost. Something found.

My father had been gone for over three weeks, and in the days since, I’d found myself measuring time differently. A recalibration. A new reality.

I listened to the weather reports each morning on the radio in Charlotte—sixty-two days without rain—and thought, instead, Twenty-three days without him.

It seemed like half the town had come out for the celebration of life—crowding the deck of his favorite restaurant, raising a glass (or two, or three) to the portrait of Detective Perry Holt—while the other half was gathered around an inlet on the opposite side of Mirror Lake, watching as the salvage company hooked a crane to the car that had been spotted below the surface a few days earlier.

All I could think was: Of course this is happening now.

I’d always suspected that my father alone had held things together by sheer force of will—not only in our family but in the entire town. And without his careful gaze, his steady oversight, everything had shifted off-kilter.

Even for this, he had left us his guidance. A cremation instead of a burial. A party instead of a funeral. Food covered by the department. Drinks on him.

But the discovery of the car was big news in a small town, and no one had seemed sure what to do, with the outside world watching. It had made headlines all the way in Charlotte, even: the water level of Mirror Lake had dropped to the lowest it had been in decades, and a fisherman had practically run up on top of the sunken vehicle.

There was no evidence of a crash—no bent metal or crushed vegetation at the curve of road above the inlet—so the rumor spreading through the crowd was that the old rusted sedan must’ve been there for years, before the addition of the new guardrail. Apparently, a dive crew had been out to inspect the car the day it was found, but saw nothing inside.

And yet, it had the air of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on: a sign of things emerging, changing.

A warning, that things were beginning here too.

There was something in the air, keeping everyone on edge: a buzzing of insects in the muddy puddles beneath the deck; the setting sun glaring sharply off the surface of the water, so we had to squint just to look at one another; leaves, dry and brittle and churned up in the wind, falling to earth at the wrong time of year.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

There were supposed to be stories on the mic set up beside the bar, for anyone who felt moved to speak. We were supposed to find solace in the liquor, and the laughter—a release, an acceptance. Perry Holt was gone too soon, and it wasn’t fair, but my god, what a life he had lived.

So many people here attributed their lives to him. Whether he’d pulled them out of danger, or pushed them toward the help he knew they needed—today, we were supposed to remember it all. But now news of the car was splitting everyone’s attention and sense of responsibility and propriety.

For every comment of He was such a good man, a good leader, a good role model booming from the sound system, there was a quieter whisper carried in the crowd around me.

It’s coming up.

No license plate. No VIN.

Stolen and dumped, probably.

While the youngest Murphy girl—now a few years out of high school—told the story of how my father found her drifting in the middle of the lake as a kid, her tube cut loose from the dock, I heard the group to my side taking bets on what they’d find inside the trunk.

A body. Stolen goods. A gun.

I turned to stare, hoping to shame them into silence, but they were looking toward the entrance instead, where a group of uniformed officers had gathered in the doorway.

It didn’t help that a lot of the people here were presently or formerly connected to law enforcement, either by profession or family ties. Or that men and women in uniform kept rotating in, alternating between paying their respects and relaying updates to my brothers.

Both of whom had suddenly disappeared again.

I didn’t blame them.

I was pretty sure I’d find them on the long sliver of deck at the side of the building—the only reprieve from the crowd.

I saw Caden first, pacing back and forth, all frenetic energy. He paused periodically to hold his phone out over the water, trying to catch a signal. Any other day, he’d be out there himself. He’d been the very first on scene; the call about the car came in while he was working his normal shift on lake patrol.

Gage, meanwhile, remained perfectly still, arms resting on the wooden railing as he stared out at the water. From a distance, he looked so much like our father it stopped my heart: sharp nose, prominent jaw, dark cropped hair. Heavy slanted eyebrows that gave everything he said an air of gravity.

I slid up beside him, mirroring his posture. How many years had I mimicked him, idolized him, revered him as the hero of my youth? He let me follow him around far longer than most older brothers might, and I relished his praise: Hazel can climb that tree; and Hazel will jump from that bridge; and Hazel can beat you in a race.

All I’d had to do was show up, and prove him right. Now I tried to mirror not only his position but his emotions. Find the balance. Rise to the moment. Like our father, Gage was always the responsible one—and now he found himself in a new role not only in the department but in our family. Maybe that was the curse of being the oldest.

“Are we hiding out?” I asked, as Caden’s footsteps retreated down the deck.

Gage tilted his head to the side, squinting. “We’re hiding out.”

Then I could feel Caden’s footsteps getting closer again—a metronome, keeping time.

He stopped pacing behind us. “Mel’s trying to send pictures. They’re not coming through.” I could see the pent-up energy in his stance, though his expression remained calm, controlled. The things he could hide under his cherub-shaped face, even at twenty-seven, with the dimpled cheek, and his brown hair swooped to the side, like he was still on the cusp of adulthood.

“What’s going on out there?” I asked.

If anyone would be able to distinguish the facts from the rumors, it was my brothers—both of them had proudly followed our father onto the force. Though Gage would probably be the only one to tell me. Caden and I got along best when I remembered to bite my tongue, and he remembered to ignore me. Today, we were both mostly doing our part.

Gage was tall and lean-muscled, where Caden was more broad-shouldered and stocky. The only discernible features they shared were the color of their deep blue eyes and the low tenor of their voices. The Holt voice, my dad had called it, though his had turned more gravelly as he aged.

“Probably some insurance scam,” Gage said, dark eyebrows knitted together. “The guardrail was installed fifteen years ago. The car must’ve been there for a while.”

I knew that stretch of road, right before the narrow, single-lane bridge. “It’s easy to lose control there,” I said. I remembered the warning myself, from when I was learning to drive. My father’s echo: Careful. Slow it down, Hazel.

It had always been a dangerous bend, especially in the night.

The township of Mirror Lake didn’t believe in streetlights or painted center lines or regular pothole maintenance, it seemed. It did believe in respecting the natural geography that had existed before, which was why the roads forked sharply, banked unevenly, rose steeply. The side roads were generally only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Growing up here, we had learned to be both cautious and aggressive, to maneuver through tight spaces, to step on the gas before someone else did first.

So driving was a dangerous activity, especially for someone from out of town.

I imagined someone speeding around the bend, unfamiliar with the dark mountain curves, the dark mountain roads, tires losing traction—how quickly something could sink below the surface, unnoticed.

“There was no one inside the car, Hazel,” Gage answered. “They checked.”

“Could’ve escaped,” I said. I closed my eyes and saw it: someone clawing their way out of the vehicle as it sank. Their head finally emerging above water—that first, primal gasp.

“Yeah, well, no one called it in, if so. And the plates were removed. Seems more likely it was dumped there on purpose. It’s a convenient spot.” Gage was logical, pragmatic, levelheaded. All things that made him a good detective now. It was always so easy to believe him.

It made sense: here was a place no one would go looking.

Caden glanced up briefly from his phone. “I can’t believe it’s been there that long. I used to jump from that spot in high school.”

Gage rubbed the side of his chin. “Me too,” he said.

I shuddered. We had all jumped off the rocks at the edge of that curve, when the summer sun got too hot, and we were desperate for something to happen, despite the warnings from the adults. I could still feel the cold shock of that pocket of water, always in the shade no matter the time of day, the feetfirst plunge, and how the bottom seemed so endlessly far away.

How close had we come? How many of us had brushed up against a strip of metal and thought boulder or branch. How many of us had imagined something else instead?

“Jesus,” Caden said, holding his cell closer to his face. He stopped breathing for a moment, his only tell. And then his eyes narrowed. “Someone really needs to help with the crowd control over there.”

I tried to peer over his shoulder at the screen, but he was already on his way. He quickly rounded the corner back toward the guests.

Apparently by someone, he meant himself. I couldn’t believe he was leaving like this.

“Seriously?” I began. “Dad would—”

“Dad would be out there himself,” Gage cut in, squinting at the water, the surrounding mountains reflecting off the hazy surface. “And you know it.”

I did. Over the years, I’d watched our father leave the dinner table for a break-in; a birthday party for an overdose; a soccer game for a high-speed chase. He made no excuses or apologies. We all understood that his responsibilities stretched beyond the boundaries of our family.

“You should head home too, Hazel,” Gage said, turning back to face me. “This is only going to get worse. Everyone knows you’ve got a long trip back.”

Two hours, really. But Charlotte might as well have been a diffe-rent world from Mirror Lake. I was a different person out there, without the anchor of history.

“You sure?” I asked. “I feel like I should stay to help clean up….”

But Gage shook his head, releasing me. “Drive safe,” he said, like my father would do. “And, Hazel?” He looked at me with wide-open eyes, a wide-open expression. “Don’t be a stranger, okay? He wouldn’t want that.”

I forced a small smile, even as a wave of panic gripped me from nowhere. I felt, then, the finality of this moment; I wasn’t ready.

“You should be so lucky,” I said before turning away, eyes burning.

Even as I joked, I wondered what would next bring me back. Thanksgiving? My niece’s birthday in the summer, maybe, if Caden invited me? I felt untethered, ungrounded. All the emotions I’d fought to contain today suddenly fighting for the surface.

I kept my head down, weaving through the crowd, a study in evasion. Eyes forward, stride confident, hoping no one stopped me. It didn’t help matters that I was the only one in black amid a sea of khakis and floral. Or that I looked like I was dressed for a business meeting—tailored A-line dress, blazer, stacked heels—while the rest of the guests had arrived in what I could only call Lake Casual.

I grabbed the bag I’d stowed behind the counter and slipped into the restroom. I wanted to change before the drive home—I had plans to swing by our latest renovation project on the way, which was still an active construction site. I needed to focus on something else, to let my work consume me again.

The bathroom was down a dimly lit, wood-paneled hall, and my vision was still adjusting to the change as I pushed through the door and nearly collided with the person on the way out.

“Oh.” A hand on my shoulder, to brace herself. A whiff of coconut. A curtain of hair.

Even in the dark, I would know: Jamie.

She slowly removed her hand from the front of my shoulder, then ran it through the ends of her long, honey-colored hair, an old nervous habit. “Hazel,” she said, locking eyes with mine. Her voice was like something sharp and piercing, straight to the heart. Maybe it was because my guard was already down, or my nerves too exposed, or because I was already hovering so close to the edge. Her attention shifted to the bag in my hands. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah. Just changing first.” I gestured to my outfit. “No one told me the dress code.” Jamie wore a spring floral dress and beige sandals.

A twitch of her lip—an almost smile. A portal to another time, before her gaze slid away again. She stepped to the side, closer to the exit.

And then, because I didn’t know where to go from here: “Is Skyler around?” My six-year-old niece was always a welcome distraction.

“She’s outside with some of the department kids.” She cleared her throat. “Are you coming back this weekend?”

“For what?” I asked.

She frowned, peering at the door. “Caden said they’re cleaning out the house. I thought you knew.”

This was what happened when you were the only one who left home. I had to hear about things secondhand, default to my brothers’ preferences, concede to their decisions.

I shook my head, grief giving way to anger—a familiar and welcome slide. “When?” I asked, louder than necessary.

“Sunday.”

I did my best not to look surprised. Maybe Gage forgot to tell me in the chaos of the day.

Sometimes Jamie mentioned things in a way that sounded offhand but seemed almost intentional instead. As if she was still trying to bridge the gap between me and Caden.

Or maybe I was being too generous, blinded by nostalgia and the years of friendship that had once sustained us.

Back when we were in high school, Jamie used to say I had an A-plus asshole radar—warning her of the boys who would let us down; the teacher who would not give second chances; the classmates who would take particular pleasure in our missteps. But I felt my instincts went to something deeper than that, like I could see what was underneath—less action, more intention.

Unfortunately, it never rubbed off on Jamie, considering she married my brother Caden.

“Thanks,” I called as she opened the door. “I’ll be there.”

After changing, I thought about going out to find Gage, tell him I’d be back Sunday—but there was currently a straight shot to the exit, the sun was setting, and this celebration was quickly becoming something else.

I had started to get that subtle, creeping feeling—like the walls were closing in, and I needed to escape. A reminder of why I’d left in the first place.

Stay too long, and you became exactly what Mirror Lake decided you would be.

Out front, the department kids were playing a game of hide-and-seek in the trees. One of their mothers leaned against the wooden railing, keeping tabs on them, like mine had once done. I caught a flash of Skyler’s blond hair rushing past, and saw, instead, a group of us racing through these woods, a generation before.

I kept moving.

How quickly the past could grasp on to you here, and pull.

The dirt parking lot was overflowing, and several vehicles were combing the area, looking for free space. I raised a hand to the nearest car as I walked to my SUV, gestured I was heading out. I had gotten the last viable spot at the edge of the lot, half my car fully in the woods, tucked under the branches of a large oak.

The driver’s side window lowered as the bright blue car slowly pulled up behind mine.

“Hi,” he said. A familiar voice, a familiar face.

I froze, shoulders tensing.

Last I saw Nico Pritchard, he was driving away in a different car, and doing his best not to make eye contact.

I paused, one hand on my car door. “Hi,” I repeated.

“Sorry I’m late, I got held up,” he said. And then, when I didn’t respond: “Been a while, Hazel.”

Two years and two months, but who was counting?

“Yeah, guess it has,” I said, like I hadn’t just done the math. “Lucky timing on the parking spot, though.”

He drummed his long fingers on the steering wheel, as if debating his next words. “Seems like I keep just missing you,” he said.

I nodded. We’d been just missing each other for over two years, at holidays and family visits and birthday parties; I just wasn’t sure which of us was the more active player.

It was a feat, considering he was Gage’s oldest friend, and he still owned the house on the same inlet as my dad, bordering our property.

The pattern of evasion was broken only with the message he’d sent me the night my father had died: Hazel, I’m so sorry.

He’d been away on vacation when it happened. Even then we’d missed each other.

There was a time that Nico was anywhere Gage went, and was nearly as much a part of my childhood. Our fathers had been partners on the force—a different type of family, I supposed.

“Well,” I said, “good to finally run into you.”

It was, and it wasn’t.

For years growing up, I had been singularly focused on Nico Pritchard. Attuned to the careful way he did everything, from baiting a fishing line to saying my name. The way he pronounced each syllable carefully, not letting the second half get swallowed up, like everyone else. The innocent look of his wide brown eyes, like he was always trying to take everything in, quietly and carefully, to file away for later. The shape of his down-turned mouth, so that his sudden smile was both a surprise and a game changer.

My infatuation was obvious in a way that bordered on embarrassing. As we grew older, the fact that it had been reciprocated by him was not nearly as evident.

“Sorry it has to be under these circumstances,” he said. Even his words were carefully chosen. He’d managed to apologize twice in as many minutes.

“Me too,” I said. I opened my car door, before it was too late.

“Hazel, hold on,” he said.

I held on, hand tightening on the top of the door.

To my horror, Nico stepped out of his idling car: long, tailored pants; white button-down, tucked in; a silver watch that I knew had once belonged to his father; a flush along the top of his high cheekbones.

It didn’t matter how much time had passed, or how badly we’d left things the last time—whenever I saw him, I pictured him at fifteen on our swim platform; at seventeen, leaning against my bedroom door; at twenty-one, home from college, eyes slowly scanning the room, before landing on me.

“I wanted to call,” he continued, taking a step closer. “I’ve been meaning to. I just didn’t know—”

“Nico,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m sorry, but I really do need to go.”

I needed to leave before he did something terrible—like resting a hand on my shoulder; placing a thumb under my chin.

I slid into the driver’s seat, did my best at smiling. “If you can’t find Gage, he’s hiding out around the corner of the deck.”

I started the car and didn’t look back. I had learned long ago that this was the only way to truly leave.

Since Mirror Highway was a loop, there were technically two ways out of town. Going to the right would be faster, but turning left would take me by the scene of the salvaged car.

Sorry, Dad. It was human instinct. I wanted to see it too.

There was a slowdown before the curve, a line of cars steadily crawling forward, inch by inch. Most of the traffic seemed to be due to the line of emergency vehicles along the side of the road, and the fact that only one lane could move at a time. I could just make out a man in the distance, directing traffic past the site.

When I finally approached, I realized that it was Caden in the road, guiding us on. He was still in his khaki pants and light-blue polo. There was mud on the side of his pant leg, like he’d been pressed up against the car, checking inside. Curiosity, before crowd control.

I paused for a beat, like all the rest before me, taking in the scene beside the lake.

The guardrail had been removed and now lay curved and crooked against the trees.

The old vehicle rested at a slight angle on the side of the road, tires flattened, rubber disintegrating. I felt myself holding my breath, like I did whenever driving past a graveyard.

The car was coated in a layer of mud, like something alive, sliding off the surface, dripping onto the asphalt. I couldn’t tell the color underneath anymore, but the body was boxy and long, like something a grandparent would drive. The windows were either down or broken, and the inside was piled high with mud and grime. The trunk had been pried open, and it remained that way, like the mouth of an animal.

Goose bumps rose across my arms, the back of my neck. The car seemed like it had become something else under the surface. Something more visceral. A part of the landscape, swallowed up by it, pulsating with the place it had just been.

Caden’s face didn’t change as he waved me past.

But when I glanced in the rearview mirror, he had turned in my direction, watching me drive away.

My phone chimed once I had exited the town, on the weaving road toward the main highway that would bring me back to Charlotte. I thought it was probably Keira or Luke—my business partners and closest friends—checking in, updating me on the day’s progress. Making sure I was doing okay.

I peered down at the phone, and saw a message from my uncle: Did you leave?

I ignored it, but then my phone rang, the name ROY HOLT on the display. Since I’d left Mirror Lake, he’d rarely reached out. But in the years before, he’d sometimes step in for my father when work called him away.

I answered on speaker. “Hello?” I said. A question, more than a greeting.

At first his voice was choppy, as if he was still in a dead zone himself. “Hazel?” he said, like he’d just repeated himself. “Are you still here?”

“No, I’m on the road already. I have a project I have to check in on.”

If he was calling with a lecture, I wasn’t interested. Though he’d often seemed proud that I’d set off on my own—building a business, charting my own course—he’d always had a closer relationship with my brothers. Caden left already too, was what I wanted to say.

“I was hoping to catch you before you left.” A beat of silence, as he searched for what to say next. “I’m the executor of the estate, Hazel,” he said, voice low, as if he was trying to find someplace quiet to have this conversation.

It made sense, since he was the only lawyer in the family. He’d begun his career as a prosecutor—he and my dad used to tell stories of the old days, when the cases would pass directly from one Holt to the next. He’d since settled into family law, so of course my father would entrust this part to him. I braced myself for whatever he was about to say.

“Look,” he began, voice even lower. “There’s something in the will you should know about.”

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#Review - The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott #Fiction #Fantasy #Epic

2026-09-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: The Witch Road # 1
Format: 437 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: June 10, 2025
Publisher: Tor Books
Source: Library
Genre: Epic Fantasy

An epic tale of class, rank, and power from one of the finest writers of epic fantasy.

Status is hereditary, class is bestowed, trust must be earned.

When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen—once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall—is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination.

When she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered.

The journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide?

The Witch Roads is the latest epic novel by fan favorite, Kate Elliott.

The Witch Roads is the first installment in author Kate Elliott's The Witch Road duology. It is a walking novel: a deputy courier, a possessed prince, a rigid empire, and a fungal apocalypse that never quite becomes the whole story. Elen is a deputy courier in the Tranquil Empire, walking a monthly circuit of villages from Orledder Halt and watching the roads for Spore. Centuries earlier, the Pall tore through the land: a mist that carries Spore, which mutates and kills whatever it touches.

The imperial roads—older than the empire, called witch roads by people who know better than to ask too many questions—repel it. Status is hereditary. Class is bestowed. Trust is scarce. Elen is competent, sunny, and not what she appears. She was once a child slave, an “atoner” sent ahead of noble parties to die if the Pall rose. She escaped with her sister Aoving and Aoving’s child, Kem, now a seventeen-year-old approaching the empire’s deadline to declare a legal path or have one assigned.

Then a prince-warden named Gevulin arrives, blocked by a landslide and political sabotage, and Elen is the only person who can take his arrogant retinue over the hills. She warns him away from the haunted Spires. He does not listen. The man who comes out is not the same man who went in. Elen has to keep the party alive, keep the haunt’s possession secret, manage Kem’s sudden new status in the prince’s retinue, and stay ahead of a past that is already catching up. The haunt has a mission of its own.

Elen has a secret of her own. The empire has a history it does not admit. The journey is how all three start talking to each other. Elliott builds a stratified, mildly Sinicized imperial bureaucracy sitting on top of something much older: guardian statues, pre-imperial storms, roads that work because of buried things the official story will not name. Spore is body horror with policy attached. Outbreaks are not just monsters; they are events that force people to decide who gets saved.

Courier work becomes a way to see how an empire actually functions at the edge: tokens, etiquette, career declarations at seventeen, the difference between a Halt and the wild. Elen is a working adult heroine, not a chosen teenager, and the book is better for it. Her competence is not superpower competence; it is the competence of someone who has walked the same roads for years and knows which warnings nobles will ignore.

The relationship between Elen and the haunt-in-the-prince is the book’s slow burn, and it is more interesting than a conventional court romance because it is built on shared knowledge and unequal power. A large middle stretch is travel: walking, camping, managing servants, managing etiquette, managing the fact that the prince is no longer the prince. If you hate cliffhangers, wait and read both. If you like Elliott’s fat-fantasy mode—Crown of Stars, Crossroads, the later Sun Chronicles—you already know the contract.

Elliott’s themes are the ones she has been playing for decades: class, empire, found family, the cost of surviving systems that were never built for you. Here they are unusually concentrated. The book is not cozy, despite the walking. Childhood slavery, sexual exploitation in Elen’s past, spore mutation, and the casual contempt of aristocrats for the people who keep them alive are all on the page. The tone mixes bawdy humor with genuine dread, which is harder than it looks.

1ON ORDINARY LANES AND BEHIND UNPROTECTED WALLS

ONE HUNDRED AND thirty years after the Pall tore deadly rifts through the Tranquil Empire, it is still prudent to avoid walking abroad at night. Even people holding official tokens that permit them to travel on the safety of the imperial roads will halt before the sun sets. These tokens allow them to lodge at an imperial hostel protected by a split in the road. But many people—most people—have no choice but to walk about their lives on ordinary lanes and sleep behind unprotected walls.

The Shield of Peace and Prosperity so forcefully promised by the empire’s founders has, it turns out, only ever sheltered some, not all. This is exactly what the holy venerables of the Heart Temple predicted at the dawn of the empire, to no avail.

Three hundred years ago, these temple theurgists and custodians wrote uncompromising tracts condemning imperial ambition. They spoke out in village plazas and city markets. They warned against the consolidation of power into the hands of a single military clan.

In answer, the newly appointed imperial censors burned their pamphlets as treasonous. The imperial sentinels accused the venerables of sorcery and burned them as witches. The imperial engineers sealed their bones into the great roads that link together the growing empire and facilitate the swift movement of its armies.

After the rising of the Spore-laden Pall in the reign of the ill-fated Azalea Emperor, it was soon discovered that the imperial roads repelled the Pall and its deadly Spore. The imperial archivists sent out official dispatches proclaiming that it was the harmonious and honorable magic wielded by the reconstituted imperial theurgists, in cooperation with the imperial wardens, that protected the roads against the Pall’s malign influence.

Yet a tradition persists among the common people that the interred bones of the old venerables were infused with a holy power and it is the relics of those condemned as “witches” that have kept the roads safe. Even after all this time, the murdered venerables are said to still watch over the humble and the weak, the menial and the forgotten. Or so it is whispered, where the authorities cannot hear.

A passage censored from The Official’s Handbook of the Empire as compiled by Luviara, theurgist, working at the behest of the Inner Chamber of the Heart Temple

2THE DEPUTY COURIER

It was early autumn, warm enough in the late afternoon that Elen and her nephew had taken off their long jackets, rolled them up, and tied them atop their packs. They tramped through the rugged Moonrise Hills on a path she knew well because every month for the last ten years she had walked the same route. She was a circuit courier for the local intendant, delivering messages, decrees, news, personal letters, contracts, warrants, and a copy of the imperial gazette to highland villages and hamlets that could only be reached on foot or by griffin scout. Griffins were out of reach for a humble deputy courier, but Elen had two good feet and was grateful for them.

“What are you smiling about?” grumbled Kem with the graceless bad temper of a cranky adolescent. “I have a blister. You said these boots would be broken in by the end of the circuit. And I’m hungry. How soon will we get home?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” He shaded his eyes and peered toward the setting sun as it spread a golden glow along the ridgeline that marked the edge of the hills. A knob of rock rising from the ridge was the best-known landmark, easy to spot. “There’s the lookout! We can’t be more than three hours from home.”

She didn’t need to check her official’s pocket watch to judge the sky. Birds were gathering, flocking toward roosting spots. “It’ll be dark in an hour.”

“Twilight lasts a while beyond that. It wouldn’t be so far to home, just another hour or two past the lookout. The trail is wide and chalky, so it’s easy to see. It’s almost full moon, so there’ll be enough light.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

His voice got tighter and grouchier. “For one thing, Palls don’t rise during the week of the full moon.”

“A Pall is not what I’m worried about.”

“Joef told me there’s been no sighting of Spore in ten years, not anywhere near Orledder Halt or in this region of the hills.”

“All the more reason to assume it could happen at any time.”

“But—”

“How many nos do you need? I haven’t forgotten when you were two years old. I can say no all day and night long and not break a sweat.” She grinned.

“Ugh. Why are you always so cheerful?”

“It’s a passage spell.”

“A passage spell? I’ve never heard of that.” His tone blended skepticism and curiosity.

“The grumpier you are, the more cheerful I become. It passes your grumpy energy across to me and I transform it into bright flowers and sunny days.” She laughed at his eye-rolling.

“You’re awful,” he said as he fought not to smile. But then his shoulders sagged.

“What is it?” she asked, gently now.

“I know you got permission to bring me on the full circuit to give me a taste of courier duty. I know I have to make a decision. I know I have to Declare for something. But … half the month you walk your assigned circuit, and half the month you work in Map Hall at the Residence. Doesn’t it get to be a grind, every month leaving at the new moon and returning at the full moon, walking at the same pace on the same path, seeing the same people over and over every year?”

“Having shelter, food, and a worthy purpose is never a grind. It might seem tedious to you, but I’d rather have had fewer shocks in my early life and more uneventful days like we’ve been fortunate to have, living in the Halt.”

His right hand strayed to touch the faded green ribbon that tied back his long, glossy hair. The ribbon had been his mother’s. She, too, had had unusually beautiful hair of a dark reddish-gold quite unlike the black hair most common in the empire. Although, she’d been more vain of it than Kem ever was.

The sting of losing Aoving would never fade and never heal. Never ever, thought Elen fiercely. But they had escaped, and had many good years before the accident. That they’d had so many good years considering where they’d started was a miracle worth cherishing every single day she woke up missing her sister. And she had the keeping of this wonderful if sometimes grumpy child, a responsibility that mattered more than anything in the world.

“I tell you what, Captain No. You have to make up your own mind whether you want to Declare as a courier. Or whatever profession you are eligible for. But today, I can give you a little taste of the unexpected and the slightly risky. We’ll camp at Three Spires.”

He cast her a shocked look, then a second and a third, like his head was stuck on a chain of disbelief he kept pulling. She wanted to laugh but knew when to stop. The ribbon touch had been a sure sign he was getting heart-tired, so she’d follow his lead. But he was still a youth, eager to hear about the most frightfully appalling things.

“Joef says Three Spires is haunted by the shade of a wicked sorcerer-king who wielded a hideous power that leached the life right out of anything the sorcerer touched,” he said, sounding gleeful.

She chuckled. “Joef has a most amazing storehouse of tales and rumors.”

“His aunt is the intendant’s archivist.”

“And the local gossip, with a finger in every bowl of porridge. Nourishing, but to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s safe to shelter in the Spires overnight as long as we follow the rules. What are the rules?”

He reeled it off by rote, barely listening to himself. “‘Don’t get distracted or sloppy. No shortcuts. Stick to the routine. Stay calm.’ Isn’t that all just the same thing?”

“Is it?”

He sighed dramatically. He was brimful of sighs these days, the closer he got to the decision he’d have to make. “Declaration Week starts tomorrow! How do I decide? I can’t be a midwife like Mama, even though I know she wanted that for me. And I’m glad you had me come along on a full circuit. But I don’t want to be a courier. I’m sorry.”

“My blessed child, my hope for you is that you can be safe, not that you do what you think I want you to do. You like to work with your hands. You could apprentice to an artisan, like … I don’t know … old Seladwin would be a good person to learn from and work with. You’d never lack for customers. She needs someone to take over her shop since she has no heirs.”

“I’m not going to apprentice to the cobbler! I don’t want to make shoes all my life.”

“Well-made boots are a gift of human ingenuity and skill. Never forget it.”

He glanced at his boots, the first footgear he had ever possessed that hadn’t been handed down to him. A pair of new boots was a traditional gift for a youth as they Declared for a profession and thus the path and status they would follow throughout their life. “You told me so, didn’t you? That I should wear my old boots and break these in afterward. I really do have a blister.”

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#Review - Bring Her Home by David Bell #Thriller #Suspense

2026-09-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 434 pages, Paperback
Release Date: July 11, 2017
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

Just a year and a half after the tragic death of his wife, Bill Price’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Summer, and her best friend, Haley, disappear. Days later, the girls are found in a city park. Haley is dead at the scene, while Summer is left beaten beyond recognition and clinging to life.

As Bill holds vigil over Summer’s bandaged body, the only sound the unconscious girl can make is one cryptic and chilling word: No. And the more time Bill spends with Summer, the more he wonders what happened to her. Or if the injured girl in the hospital bed is really his daughter at all.

When troubling new questions about Summer’s life surface, Bill is not prepared for the aftershocks. He’ll soon discover that both the living and the dead have secrets. And that searching for the truth will tear open old wounds that pierce straight to the heart of his family...

David Bell’s Bring Her Home is a suburban domestic thriller set in Kentucky built on a father’s worst-case sequence: first a wife’s accidental death, then a teenage daughter who vanishes with her best friend, then two girls found beaten in a city park, one dead and one unrecognizable. It is not a police procedural so much as a grief novel wearing a mystery’s clothes. That is both its strength and its limitation. Bill Price is still raw from losing his wife eighteen months earlier when 15-year-old Summer and her friend Haley Rodgers disappear.

Days later, they are found in a park. Haley is dead. The surviving girl is so badly injured that identification is provisional, and the only word she can form is a chilling “No.” Bill keeps vigil, then starts asking questions that no parent wants answered: What was Summer doing that night? Who were the boys around her? How much of her life did he never see? The jacket’s central hook—whether the girl in the hospital bed is even his daughter—is not a late twist so much as the engine of the book.

Secrets keep arriving, and each one forces Bill into more desperate, sometimes reckless, behavior. Bell, a USA Today bestselling suspense writer and English professor, is good at the texture of ordinary panic. The hospital rooms, the well-meaning neighbors, the high-school gossip, the parents who immediately look for someone to blame: all of it feels lived-in. Bell also has a better ear for teenage girls than many writers in this lane.

Summer is not only a victim-shaped hole in the plot; the book is interested in how smart, secretive, and self-protective a 15-year-old can be, and in how adults rewrite that secrecy as either innocence or fault. The mystery itself is constructed as a pileup. Suspicion lands early on a cluster of boys and a squalid high-school “contest.” A third victim appears, suggesting a pattern. Family history—Bill’s marriage, his sister-in-law Paige, the way the household functioned after the wife’s death—keeps leaking into the present investigation.

The book is most effective when it stays with parental self-reproach—the questions not asked, the conversations postponed, the suburban assumption that you know the child in the next room. It is less effective when it asks those themes to support one more identity switch, one more confession, one more late reveal. Content-wise, this is a dark, violent story about assaulted teenage girls, a coma, a death, sexual coercion among minors, and a father coming unglued.

It is adult suspense, not YA, even though its victims are high-schoolers. Readers sensitive to violence against girls, parental grief, and the “who is this child really?” identity plot should know that those elements are the point, not background. If you like Lisa Jewell or early Harlan Coben in their domestic-nightmare mode, this will scratch the itch. If you want a lean, surprising crime novel, the middle stretch may try your patience.

Bring Her Home

Part I

Chapter One

Bill Price stepped into the whirling chaos of the emergency room.

To the left, he saw a woman holding a red-faced, crying baby. The child’s eyes were pools of tears, its mouth contorted into a wailing “O.” The mother made calming shushing noises, but the baby didn’t seem to hear them. Ahead of Bill, a teenage girl with a nose ring and a neck tattoo tried to calm a man holding a bloody rag against his shaven head. The man appeared agitated, waving his free hand around as though orating to a crowd.

Bill looked to his right. He saw a small crowd gathered but no one he recognized.

He felt overwhelmed. Alone.

A nurse sat behind the admitting desk. She held a metal clipboard and wore half-moon glasses perched on the end of her nose. The glasses aged her, made her look ten years older than she probably was.

Bill approached her, a knot of tension growing in his chest.

“Excuse me,” Bill said.

“Just a minute.” The woman turned and stood up, walking away from Bill and going through a door behind her.

“Hello?” Bill said, his voice low.

He tapped his finger on the Formica desk.

She’s here. Somewhere. She’s here.

Should I just go find her?

“Hey,” he said, his voice louder.

But the nurse didn’t return. And no one else came out of the room to help him.

It felt like one of those dreams, the kind he’d been having too often lately. In the dreams, he’d open his mouth to scream but could make no sound. And the very act of trying to force words out made his throat feel as if he’d swallowed broken glass.

Bill looked around, hoping to see a familiar face. He saw only misery. The people in the room—the bleeders and the criers and the scared—were all his companions in misery.

She is here. She too is one of them. . . .

The admitting nurse appeared again. She still carried the clipboard. She went out of her way not to make eye contact with Bill. She focused on the desktop, coming over and reaching for a piece of paper.

“Excuse me,” Bill said. “I’m here because—”

“One second, hon,” she said.

The nurse lifted the paper, studying it through her glasses. Her hair was streaked with gray, her pink smock decorated with a small mustard stain.

“My daughter—,” Bill said.

The woman raised her index finger in the air, requesting silence. She turned again, disappearing back behind the door through which she’d just emerged.

“Wait,” Bill said.

But she was gone.

Bill craned his neck, rising up on tiptoes to try to see into the room. He couldn’t.

“Hello?”

No response.

“Hey!” he said, his voice rising.

The nurse stuck her head out the door, her face creased with agitation. “Sir, we’re backed up now. I’ll be right there.”

“No, no.”

“Excuse me?”

“No!”

Echoing off the walls and the tiled floor, the single word cut through the room, bringing everyone to a halt. Bill sensed their anticipation, their fear, and, yes, their glee. They might get to witness a scene.

Some guy went apeshit in the ER. . . .

The nurse stood up. She looked angry as she walked toward him.

“My daughter is here,” Bill said. “Summer Price. Summer Price is my daughter.”

And then the nurse’s features softened. She understood.

She recognized the name. Everyone in the room probably did.

“Oh,” she said, removing her glasses. “I know who to call.”

A minute passed, maybe less, and then someone came through another door and into the emergency room, a familiar face above a coat and tie.

“Mr. Price?”

Bill felt the smallest measure of relief. “Detective Hawkins,” he said. “Where is she? Where’s Summer? Someone called. They said you were here—”

Hawkins wiggled his fingers, his hand in the air. “This way, okay? This way.”

Bill followed the detective as Hawkins stepped over to a plain brown door and turned the knob. It looked like a janitor’s closet, and Bill wondered why he was being led where mops and buckets were stored.

But then he saw it was a consultation room, one of those places where doctors took families to give them bad news. Bill had been in one of them before, almost a year and a half earlier. Nothing good ever happened in one of those rooms.

He stopped in his tracks even as Hawkins reached for him, trying to guide Bill along.

“Where is she?” Bill asked. “Just tell me something.”

“Inside, Bill. Please? We can talk in there.”

“Is she alive?” Bill felt anger laced with fear building in his chest, the heat and pressure at his core like lava waiting to burst forth. He gritted his teeth. “Just tell me the truth. On the phone they said she’s alive. Is Summer alive?”

Hawkins stared directly into Bill’s eyes. “She’s alive, Bill. Summer is alive.”

Bill closed his eyes, as though bracing for a blow. He felt a slight cooling in his body, a tiny sliver of relief. Okay, he thought. Alive. She’s alive.

“When can I see her?” he asked, opening his eyes.

“She’s alive, Bill,” Hawkins said. “But—we should talk inside.”

Chapter Two

Bill’s hands shook as he sat in the consultation room.

The space was small, confining. The papered walls were brown, earth tones, something meant to be soothing. The furniture felt stiff and unforgiving. Some well-meaning soul had placed a vase full of artificial flowers on the coffee table, an attempt to cheer the uncheerable. Bill stared at them, wishing his eyes were lasers that could destroy.

Hawkins sat down across from him. He looked to be in his early fifties, about ten years older than Bill. His salt-and-pepper hair was messy, as if he’d just come inside out of a stiff wind. He wore a sport coat and no tie, his graying chest hair reaching up from the open-neck shirt like spiders’ legs.

Bill tried to keep his voice steady, to not shout at or berate the public servant before him. “Tell me what’s going on, Detective. Tell me when I can see Summer. I want to see her.”

The room felt too familiar. Hell, it might have been the same one he sat in when Julia died. He feared he would be getting horrible news from Detective Hawkins.

“Summer is alive, but she’s critically injured. She’s been stabilized, and they’re moving her to Intensive Care. You can see her in a moment once they have her settled in up there.”

“What happened to her? How was she injured? Wait a minute—where the hell was she? She’s been gone for almost two days. Where? Tell me something.”

“They were found in Dunlap Park.” Hawkins spoke with a soothing Kentucky accent, his words rolling out like a gentle stream. Bill tried to reconcile the awful message with the sweet sound of the messenger. “Early this morning, we received an anonymous call at the station. Not a nine-one-one call—just the general line. The caller told the officer who answered that two girls could be found in Dunlap Park.”

“Dunlap Park?” Bill looked down and saw the flowers again. He lifted his head.

“Did Summer hang out there?” Hawkins asked.

“No,” Bill said before the question was even finished. “I told her to stay away from that park. You know what it’s like there.”

“I do.”

When Bill and Julia moved to town eight years earlier, brought there by Bill’s job, the park was a notorious gay cruising ground. A math teacher from Jakesville High, a meek man with a wife and two children, was arrested in a park restroom after soliciting a male undercover cop. Just a few years earlier, a Jakesville town councilman was caught there having sex with a county auditor, a woman who was not his wife.

“All I hear about these days are the drugs out there. Heroin even,” Bill said. “Right?”

“There have been some problems with that, yes. Also a homeless issue. People living in tents and other makeshift shelters. I’m not saying they are responsible for all of the crime, but it doesn’t help.”

“Some problems? No, I told Summer to never go there. Never.” Bill shifted forward in his uncomfortable chair, moving his body closer to the edge so that he almost slid onto the floor. He felt control slipping away as the angry part of him asserted itself, almost like another man who lived inside of him and jumped out in situations like the one in the hospital. “Who made this call? Do you know?”

“We don’t. It was a man, speaking with a deeper voice, possibly disguised. The call was too short to trace, and we don’t record the calls that come in on that line. But the tip proved to be accurate, so we’re going to do what we can to find out who called.”

“You haven’t told me what happened to her. What are her injuries? Hold it—are we talking about . . . Did somebody . . .”

“She’s being checked for everything, including sexual assault. There’s no obvious sign of sexual trauma, but some of her clothes were torn when she was found. We’re lucky it’s above freezing today, or exposure could have been an issue. She might have been out there for a number of hours.”

Bill folded his hands and lowered his head. He wanted to close his eyes and make the whole situation go away. And he understood he was one of a long line of people to sit in a room like this and wish more than anything they could be somewhere else.

“The problem right now is that Summer has been severely beaten. She has extensive wounds to her head and torso. And a lot of swelling. They need to do X-rays and CAT scans and all of that to see how bad it is inside. But her injuries are quite severe, and you need to brace yourself for the likelihood that she’ll need surgery and possibly extensive rehabilitation. Whoever did this wanted to hurt her, and they did. Very badly.”

“I just want to see her. I don’t want her lying somewhere alone while she goes through this. Can you do that for me, please?”

Hawkins said, “Of course. I just wanted you to understand where we stood before you saw her.”

“She’s my daughter,” Bill said. “I can handle anything that has to do with her.”

He hoped he could. He had to do it alone.

The two men stood up. Hawkins was larger than Bill, barrel-chested, but with a gentle manner that seemed in contrast with the probing intensity of his blue-gray eyes. Bill wondered if they assigned Hawkins to Summer’s case for a reason, if they believed that the detective’s soothing tones and intimidating size would somehow placate, or short of that, corral Bill and keep him calm.

Before Hawkins opened the door, Bill grabbed the detective’s arm. It felt like taking hold of a tree trunk.

“Wait a minute,” Bill said. “Them. You said they were found. You mean Summer and Haley. I didn’t think to ask, but how is Haley doing?”

Hawkins hesitated for the briefest of seconds. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Bill, but Haley was deceased at the scene. She’d been beaten more severely than Summer. Her injuries were too extensive for anyone to survive.”

The room tilted. Bill reached out and braced himself against the wall. Hawkins placed his rocklike hand on Bill’s shoulder, steadying him.

“Are you going to pass out?” he asked. “Do you want some water?”

Bill stood still for a moment. Images of the ever inseparable Haley and Summer flashed across his mind. The two skinny, blond girls running through a sprinkler on a summer day when they were ten. The two girls giggling over a silly movie when they were twelve. The two girls leaving his house together on Saturday afternoon . . .

“Her mother? She lives with her mother,” Bill asked.

“She’s been informed.” Hawkins’s voice conveyed the pain of that conversation, the necessary but awful duty he probably performed himself. “Would you like to sit down?”

He felt sick. Physically sick. His body seemed to have turned to ice.

But he shook his head. He needed to go on.

His daughter needed him. Desperately.

But before he left the room, he needed to do one thing. He took two steps to the coffee table, took hold of the offending vase, and hurled it against the wall—screaming as he did so—where it shattered into hundreds of fragments.

Bill’s breathing was fast, his heart thumping.

He really didn’t feel any better. He turned to Hawkins, who wore an impassive look on his face.

“I’m okay,” Bill said. “I want to see Summer. Now.”

Chapter Three

A doctor waited outside the door to Summer’s room.

She looked young, not much older than Summer to Bill’s eyes. She wore blue scrubs and a white lab coat. At some point in the day she’d put a pencil in her hair to hold it up in a messy bun.

“I’m Dr. Renee Davis,” she said, cutting to the chase. “Summer’s injuries are severe. She has two broken ribs, one of which punctured her lung, causing it to collapse. She also has a hairline fracture of the skull as well as a fracture of her eye socket. And a number of cuts and abrasions, some of which required stitches. She doesn’t need surgery right now, but we can’t rule that out. It’s too early to tell whether she’ll have any long-term damage from these injuries.”

An annoying beeping sound came from Dr. Davis’s pocket. She reached in and pressed a button, making it stop. But she didn’t say anything else. She looked at Bill as though she expected him to say something. He felt like an actor on a stage who didn’t know his lines.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Long-term damage. What does that mean?”

He looked from the doctor to the detective and back again, unsure who would provide the answer.

“It means we don’t know if her vision will be affected,” Davis said. “Or if there is any brain damage. We’re encouraged because there doesn’t appear to be any bleeding or swelling in the brain. But we’ll have to watch her closely for the next forty-eight hours.”

Brain damage. Vision loss.

The nightmare might never end. It might continue on and on for the rest of Summer’s life. The very essence of who she was could be shattered. Her laugh. Her intelligence. Her sarcastic humor.

But she was alive. Bill reminded himself of that.

Life. That mattered.

“I just want to see her,” he said. “Even if she’s not awake, I don’t want her to be alone.”

“Her injuries are quite severe,” Davis said. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Mr. Price, but we have to watch her very carefully. She’s gravely injured.”

“I heard that already.”

“Because of the swelling in her face, she looks . . .”

“Bad?” Bill said. “Is seeing that worse than not knowing where she was all weekend?”

“She’s not going to look like the girl who left your house two days ago,” Davis said.

Bill stepped past the doctor.

“Bill?” It was Detective Hawkins’s voice.

Bill stopped and looked at the two professionals.

Hawkins turned to Davis as though they both knew something, and then Hawkins said, “Her hands are bandaged. She had a number of injuries to them.”

“Are her hands permanently damaged?” Bill asked.

“It means she resisted, Bill,” Hawkins said, his voice tinged with a paternal pride he seemed to want Bill to experience as well. “They’re injuries consistent with someone who put up a very good fight.”

Bill knew the detective was trying to make him feel better, but the information came as no surprise. Bill already knew Summer would resist. He knew she’d fight. He’d fought with Summer enough since Julia died.

But even as a child, she’d fought. Resisting bedtimes. Resisting foods.

Stubbornly independent. Bill quickly learned one of parenting’s hardest lessons—you’re going to see yourself, warts and all, in your kid.

“I hope she kicked his nuts up into his throat,” Bill said.

The two of them just nodded, indicating agreement with the statement.

Bill said, “Doctor, the detective mentioned something about . . . checking for sexual assault. I was just . . . How long does that take to know?”

“Given her condition, we didn’t conduct a full examination. Much of it is invasive. . . . But we’ll hand everything over to the police.”

“She didn’t ever say anything, did she?” Bill asked. “Anything at all?”

Davis looked disappointed she couldn’t deliver better news to Bill. “No, she didn’t. But please let me know if you have any questions. We’ll all be keeping a close eye on her.”

“Thanks,” Bill said.

“When you come out, Bill, I’ll have some more questions for you,” Hawkins said. “I know you need to be in there now, but we have some more work to do out here.”

Bill took a deep breath, one that seemed to come from the center of his being, and pushed open the door to Summer’s room.

Chapter Four

The lights above were so bright.

Bill stood with his back to the door as it eased shut, staring at the indistinct lump beneath the covers on the bed.

A monitor beeped a steady rhythm. His daughter’s heartbeat. When Summer was a baby, Bill used to slip into the nursery and stand over the crib, just making sure her tiny heart continued to beat. She was so small then, so helpless, the life inside her seemed nearly impossible to sustain. A flickering candle in a strong wind.

Bill stepped over to the bed.

Her hands were wrapped in gauze. The blankets neatly tucked under her armpits.

Her face, though, the left side . . . Swollen like a balloon and badly bruised. Her eyes swollen as well. A gauze wrap of some kind covered the top of her head, obscuring most of Summer’s blond hair.

Bill knew he was biased—but she was a naturally beautiful girl. When she smiled, which wasn’t as often since Julia died, she lit up so much, she could probably be used as a power source. Just like her mother. Whenever Bill looked at Summer’s face, he saw Julia. Bill occasionally compared snapshots of Julia and Summer at the same age, and they were like twins. The bright blue of their eyes, the freckles that appeared when the weather turned warm.

Bill felt somewhat relieved to see there were no tubes down her throat or up her nose. She breathed on her own. An IV line dripped a clear fluid into the crook of her elbow.

Bill wanted to climb into the bed with her, to pull her close and keep her warm and safe. But he feared that placing any weight on or near her body would disturb her or cause her pain. He dragged a stool over to the side of the bed and sat down, and then placed his hand gently, ever so gently, on Summer’s left forearm, the only area of her body not covered by injuries or blankets or bandages.

He stroked the soft, downy hair, felt the smoothness of her skin. Like a baby still. She looked as vulnerable and weak as that tiny infant in her crib fifteen years ago. Her arm looked even smaller than he remembered, bony like a child’s.

“Oh, honey, what have they done to you?” he whispered. “Who did this to you?”

No response came. Summer’s lips looked parched and cracked. Painfully so. Bill checked for a pitcher of water, for a rag he could dab against her lips, but there was none. He wanted to do something. To act.

But there was nothing for him to do.

“Are you okay, Summer? I’m here. It’s Dad, and I’m going to be right here the whole time you get better.”

Bill irrationally hoped for something. A grunt. A moan. A movement. But nothing came.

He continued to stroke her arm. “I’m torn, honey. Part of me wishes your mom were here to help us through this. And part of me is glad she isn’t here to see you in this condition.”

Bill’s lower lip quivered, and he swallowed, biting back on the tears. He took several deep breaths and tried to make sense of how his life went from being so normal a few days earlier to utterly out of control and disastrous in the hospital. He looked back over the chain of events. Summer said she was going out with Haley on Saturday afternoon. Bill said yes because why wouldn’t he? The girls did everything together. Except for the accident of being born into different families, they might very well have been siblings. And then by late Saturday evening, the girls were nowhere to be found. No responses to calls or texts. No sign of either one of them.

And nothing until that morning when the police called, waking Bill out of a restless, paper-thin sleep to say Summer had been found and to get to the hospital as soon as possible.

Bill hated the helplessness he felt, the sense of being paralyzed and impotent in the face of his daughter’s injuries. In the face of what had been done to her. By someone.

Someone out there had committed this atrocity.

The door clicked open behind him. Bill didn’t turn or acknowledge whoever it was. He kept his eyes trained on Summer, the gentle rising and falling of her chest as she breathed. The horrible swelling in her face. He replayed the doctor’s words about long-term damage and wondered how anyone could recover from wounds like these. Would it be possible for her young body to heal?

And then what about the psychological scars? What if the tests they were doing for rape came back positive?

What if . . . ?

He refused to let every “what if” into his mind. One would lead to another, and then a tidal wave would roar through his brain.

“Bill?” The detective eased over and gently placed his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “I think you and I need to talk a little more.”

“Can’t we do it here?” Bill asked. “I don’t want to leave her.”

“I think it’s best if we talk in private,” Hawkins said, his homey whisper allowing no room for discussion. He knew what was best, and he intended to see it done. “A nurse is on her way in to check on Summer. We should get out of the way.”

“I want to stay close.”

“You can, bud. But let’s go find a private spot. The sooner you answer the questions I have, the better our chances of finding out who did this to Summer.”

Bill continued to stare at Summer. His only child. His baby. That vibrant, bright life.

“It won’t take long?” he asked.

“Not too long,” Hawkins said.

Bill bent down and kissed her arm. “I love you, Summer. I’ll be right back. It’s Dad.”

When he spoke those words, his daughter’s cracked lips twitched, and she made a very low, very slight groaning sound deep in her throat.

She’s in there, Bill thought. She’s in there, and she heard me.

Chapter Five

Hawkins led Bill out to a small leather couch in the hallway. Nurses and technicians streamed past them, and Bill couldn’t stop turning his head to look back at the door to Summer’s room. He wanted to know whether anyone was coming or going from there, whether there were any hints of an emergency or a deepening crisis.

“Is there someone you want to call?” Hawkins asked, his big hands resting on his knees. “Family or friends?”

“My sister’s coming today. She lives in Ohio.”

“Good. You don’t have other family in Jakesville, right?”

“You know neither Julia nor I was born here.”

Hawkins got down to business by changing the direction of the conversation. “I wanted to bring you up-to-date on the investigation.”

“I’ve been wondering about something,” Bill said. “Has this ever happened here? I can’t remember any crimes like this in Jakesville.”

Hawkins pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Not recently, no. Nothing like a kidnapping. You know what it’s like here, Bill. We don’t have crimes like this. It’s a safe community.” He brought out a small notebook. “Bill, we’re trying our best to piece together where those girls were and what they were doing on Saturday. You said you didn’t know where they were going when they left your house.”

“I assumed they were going to Haley’s house.”

“Right.” Hawkins didn’t say more, but Bill knew what he was thinking. What everyone would be thinking.

“Yeah, yeah. I didn’t ask. I’m the clueless dad. They’re both fifteen, Detective. They’re going to be driving soon. Some of their friends already drive. I can’t know everything they do. And, like you said, what could happen to them in Jakesville? It was daylight when they left.”

“Sure.” Hawkins nodded, his face encouraging and calm. His demeanor said, No judgment here. He cleared his throat. “The problem is only a couple of people saw them walking together that afternoon. Someone saw them heading down Anderson Road, right by your house and on the way to Haley’s. So they could have been going that way.” Hawkins frowned. “And then another witness claims to have seen Summer walking in the opposite direction on Anderson Road. Back toward your house.”

“What does that mean?”

“We don’t know.” He held his hands out, pleading for patience. “This witness was an eighty-eight-year-old man who was driving by. And he had his license taken away by his kids because his eyesight is so bad. He saw a girl walking there. She may not have been Summer. And according to Haley’s mother, they never came to her house. We’re assuming they disappeared somewhere during that walk, but since we don’t know exactly where they were going . . .”

“So someone just took them,” Bill said. “A maniac pulled over and grabbed them. That happens, doesn’t it?”

“It happens, yes,” Hawkins said. “But it’s rare. We’re not ruling anything out at this point.”

Bill closed his eyes. He told himself it was foolish to keep hoping for a break, but he couldn’t turn his mind off. It worked to make him believe, to dangle possibilities, if only as a means of keeping his spirits up and his will strong. Don’t forget, he told himself, you just got the biggest break of all. She’s here. She’s alive.

“That has to be it,” Bill said. “Someone just grabbed them, threw them in the back of a van or something.”

“I wanted to follow up on some of Summer’s other friends,” Hawkins said. “You told me that there were a few boys in her extended social circle. Maybe two or three of them.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Hawkins checked the notebook again, holding the pad at arm’s length so he could read the writing. “We’re talking about Clinton Fields, Todd Stone, and Brandon Cooke. Right?”

“Yeah, that’s them. I guess. You have to understand that Julia knew more about Summer’s friends than I did. She talked to Summer more, you know? Mother and daughter stuff.”

“So how was your relationship with Summer? You said on Saturday that things could be tense between the two of you, but you never really told me why. Have you thought about that more?”

Bill lifted his hands, then let them fall back into his lap. He knew he seemed exasperated. He couldn’t hide it. “Look, she’s a teenage girl. I’m her middle-aged dad. I just didn’t always know if I was teaching her the things she needed to be taught. You know how teenagers are.”

“My kids are grown now, so it’s been a while. Enlighten me.”

“Okay, they’re a little contemptuous of their parents. Summer seemed that way with me.” Bill hoped that was the end, but the detective seemed to expect more. “We had tensions between us. Normal stuff, I guess. Shit, try being a man raising a woman. Her mother died a year and a half ago. It was just—” Something caught in his throat, and he paused, taking a deep breath. “It was Julia’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. Would have been her birthday. Still is, I guess. But . . .”

“It’s been hard for Summer,” Hawkins said, prompting Bill. “Losing her mother.”

“Yeah. It’s hard enough just being a teenager. Ever since Julia died, Summer’s been more rebellious, more mouthy. Standoffish to me. I thought we’d get closer because Julia died, and in some ways we have. We’ve cried together. Reminisced. But Summer is really hurting, I know that. She’s like me. When she hurts, she gets angry. Defensive. And she’s had a wall up since her mom died.”

A nurse walked past, her pace quicker than anyone else’s, and Bill turned his head to follow her. But she passed Summer’s room, her white shoes squeaking against the tile floor.

“I understand. A young girl needs and wants her mother.” Hawkins’s voice pulled Bill back. “You never really answered the question of whether Summer was sexually active.”

Bill turned all the way around, his eyes fixing on the detective, his teeth grinding together again at the back of his mouth. “I did answer that.”

Hawkins sounded more assertive, more determined. Some of the Kentucky charm dropped from his voice. “You actually said you didn’t want to talk about it. But now I think it’s imperative that we know everything there is to know about Summer.”

“She’s fifteen. She’s not sexually active. Why are you asking me this?”

Hawkins kept his blue-gray eyes trained on Bill, the scrutiny slicing in like sleet. “We have to understand every aspect of Summer’s life if we’re going to figure out who did this to her.” He pointed theatrically at the door of Summer’s room, conjuring the picture of the battered girl into Bill’s mind. “We’re looking into everything in this town. Her online communications. Her friends and teachers at school. Local sex offenders. You’re our best resource about Summer.”

Bill felt unnerved by where Hawkins was going. The conversation was causing a small pain to grow in the pit of his stomach. “Is there something I need to know?”

“Was she sexually active?” Hawkins asked. “Did she spend a lot of time with these boys from school? Or any boys that you know of?”

“Sure, they were friends.” Bill chewed on a piece of loose skin near his thumbnail. “They’ve been to the house. Hell, Summer’s known some of them since they were in grade school, so I’ve seen those kids the whole time they were growing up.” Bill shifted in his seat, trying to articulate his thoughts about the boys Hawkins had mentioned. “They seemed like pretty normal kids. I know what boys want from girls. I know how pretty Summer and Haley both are. I thought I’d be dealing with this a little later. And I always thought I’d be dealing with it with Julia’s help. Not on my own.”

“And that’s it about them?”

“She went to a dance with the Stone kid, but she told me they were just friends. Hanging out, I think she said. He and Summer went to junior high together. The other one, Cooke? Isn’t he on the cross-country team at school?”

“He’s a good runner, yes. He might go to states this year as a sophomore.”

“And so the other one is Clinton Fields, right?” Bill asked. “Yeah, he’s in their extended social circle. Kind of a jerky kid.”

“Why do you say that?” Hawkins asked.

“I don’t know. He’s arrogant, snotty. Sure, he’s polite to my face when he comes around, and he’s a smart kid, a good student. But there’s a hint of aggression and disrespect beneath everything he says. I can imagine him walking out the door and badmouthing me. High schools are full of those kinds of guys.”

“Was he dating Summer?” Hawkins asked.

“They’d all been spending time together the past few months. They were always with a group of kids, but I guess that’s how they date now. Groups of kids.”

“Is that it?”

“Is there something else I need to know about any of them?” Bill asked. “Did I miss something?”

“Remember, I’m investigating. Everything is on the table. And everyone.”

“Where were they when Summer and Haley disappeared?”

“We’re checking their alibis. We’re checking everyone’s alibis. They’re kids. They weren’t punching a clock at work or anything like that, but they say they were at the Fields house, playing video games. The parents weren’t there.”

Bill felt a jagged pressure growing behind his right eye, a pulsing sensation that made him squirm in his seat. “Just arrest them,” he said. “Bring them in and get them to talk.”

“It doesn’t work quite that way, Bill.”

“Do you think I care about their fucking civil liberties? You shouldn’t either. Not when my daughter is in a coma and another girl is dead.”

“Has Summer been in more trouble lately?” Hawkins asked. “Anything? You said the two of you weren’t getting along, that it’s been tough since your wife died.”

Bill thought back over the past year and a half, the series of ups and downs, arguments, and strained silences between Summer and him. “I told you already. It’s been hard on her. And she’s been pushing my buttons a little. Missing some curfews, not answering my texts when she’s out, that kind of thing.”

“I wanted to ask you about—”

“Wait,” Bill said. “That Fields kid. Wasn’t he into something a couple of years ago?”

An alarm started ringing overhead. An insistent beeping that probed at the headache growing behind Bill’s right eye.

Two nurses rushed by, and Bill watched them.

They dashed into Summer’s room.

“Jesus,” Bill said. “No.”

He followed in their wake and was cut off by Dr. Davis, who went in ahead of him. When Bill entered the room, he heard one phrase that stuck in his mind like a driven nail.

Her oxygen level’s dropping.

Chapter Six

Bill watched the medical team swarm around Summer.

They called out terms and numbers Bill didn’t understand. It was like hearing another language.

Her voice calm and steady, Dr. Davis said, “We’re going to have to put in a chest tube.”

Bill stepped forward as Dr. Davis pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. They snapped into place against her wrists. She reached toward a silver tray and lifted a shining scalpel, something that looked sharp enough to cut through a tree trunk.

“You have to go, Mr. Price,” Davis said.

A nurse started removing Summer’s gown, exposing her breast. Another nurse used alcohol to sterilize the skin where the doctor intended to cut. Bill didn’t like the way they manhandled her, strangers treating her body as if it were a piece of meat.

Someone stepped in front of him, a pudgy young man in scrubs, his thinning hair a stringy mess. “Why don’t you just step outside, sir?”

“I want to stay.”

“You can’t be in here, sir.”

The man placed his hand on Bill’s chest and applied gentle but firm pressure, moving him backward and toward the door. Bill went along, but he said, “You can’t be in there either. I don’t want some strange man—”

But he was out the door and into the hallway, and the man in the scrubs disappeared inside the room again. Bill took a step forward, intending to go back in, but he stopped himself.

The doctor was right. He didn’t want to see that.

When Summer was little and receiving a new vaccine every other month, it was Julia who went with her. Julia held her hand and told her to look the other way. Bill either didn’t make trips to the doctor, or he stayed in the waiting room reading out-of-date magazines while Julia took their daughter back.

He saw that shining, brutally sharp scalpel in his mind again. A device made to puncture and slice and penetrate. He’d watched enough TV shows to know they’d be slipping a rubber tube through the incision. The images nauseated him.

He stepped back from the door and turned around.

Detective Hawkins waited just outside the door. He placed one of his ham-hock hands on Bill’s shoulder and made a gesture with his head, indicating that Bill should return to his seat on the couch where they had been talking. Bill happily obliged. It felt good to sit, and the nausea subsided once he was on the couch.

Hawkins wandered off for a moment and came back with a paper cup full of water. “Drink this,” he said.

Bill swallowed the cool water and smacked his lips. “Thank you.”

“You’re sure there’s no one you want to call?” Hawkins asked. “What about your neighbor? Mr. Fleetwood?”

“Adam.”

“Right. You’re good friends with him. Do you want to call him to come sit with you?”

“I’ll talk to him soon. He might be working.” Bill used a shaking hand to reach into his pants pocket. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen. A text. “My sister. Paige. She’s coming. Tomorrow, I think.”

Bill struggled to type a response, his hands shaking like a ninety-year-old man’s. He marveled at the way Summer and Haley composed texts at lightning speed, almost like machines trained to do so.

“How about work? Do you need to check in there?”

“I’m an IT guy at a small college,” Bill said. “They can live without me for a while. They’ll probably miss me the most when I can’t go to Trivia Tuesday at the Tenth Inning.”

Hawkins stared at him blankly.

“The sports bar. A group of us from work plays trivia there.”

“Right, I hear you,” Hawkins said. He looked at the closed door to Summer’s room and then back at Bill. The detective’s hands rested on his hips, the skin of his thick ring finger swallowing the gold band.

“What about that stuff you were asking me?” Bill asked, his voice shaky. “Summer’s behavior. I’m confused by all of this right now. I don’t know what to think.”

“I understand completely,” Hawkins said. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”

“That Fields kid, Clinton,” Bill said. “There was something about him, something that happened a year or two ago. What was it?”

Hawkins took a moment before he answered. “He got in a fight at school with another kid.”

Bill waited for more. “That’s it? I thought there was more—” Then it came back to Bill. The story made the local news for a couple of days. Everybody with kids at the high school heard about it and talked about it. “Oh, I remember. Not just a fight, Detective.” Bill felt sweat forming at his hairline, a sticky, cloying liquid. “He hurt that kid. Put him in the hospital, right?”

“He did, Bill. Clinton Fields got in a fight at the bus stop almost two years ago, when he was fourteen. Broke the other boy’s jaw.”

“Oh, no.” Bill’s hand went to his face involuntarily to rub his own jawline. “He’s a thug—that’s what you’re telling me. A true menace. And you don’t want to arrest him yet?”

“Did Summer ever mention him being violent? Or threatening violence?”

“No. But what does that matter? You’ve got to talk to him. Arrest him.”

“I will, Bill. We’re well aware of all of this. In fact, I’m on my way to check into it more right now.”

“Will you tell me what you find?”

“Of course. Will you call me if you need anything? And let me know how Summer is.” He started to walk away and stopped, his big body showing surprising grace. “I had a collapsed lung once. When I was in college. I collided with another guy during a basketball game. That was enough to do it. I had to have the whole chest-tube thing in to relieve the pressure. The worst part was in the beginning. They said I’d feel a little discomfort, and then they put that tube in.” Hawkins winced, and the exaggerated face looked comical on the big man. “But then I could breathe again.”

Bill didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Thanks.”

“My point is, a collapsed lung isn’t as scary as it looks.”

“That’s one thing that isn’t, I guess,” Bill said.

Chapter Seven

Bill jumped off the couch when Dr. Davis came out of Summer’s room.

She looked slightly winded, like a jogger after a good, solid run. She told Bill that everything had gone according to plan. “We reinflated the lung, and her oxygen levels are returning to normal. We’ll continue to keep an eye on everything else. Our goal here is to make sure she’s stable. When she is, we’ll transfer her to our rehab wing.”

“I’m going to go back in and sit with her.”

“Give them a few minutes to get everything cleaned up.”

Bill imagined a room swimming in his daughter’s blood, the stained scalpel tossed on the floor amid soiled bandages. They needed to put her gown back on the proper way, to cover Summer up so everyone in the world wouldn’t just walk in and see her breast exposed. His daughter had been handed over to strangers for the past two days. First when she was kidnapped and beaten and who knew what else. And again in the hospital where her body had been probed and prodded and sliced.

And people, kids, maybe strangers, were commenting on her on the Internet. Judging her . . .

“I can contact the hospital social worker if you’d like,” Davis said. “Or the chaplain. I imagine people will want to come by and see Summer. Friends from school. Family. It might get complicated.”

“No, thanks,” Bill said. “I’m good.”

Davis considered him for a moment, then said, “The nurses will let you know when you can go back in.”

Bill returned to the couch and waited. The headache that had started forming when he was speaking with Hawkins seemed to have eased. He heard back from Paige. She told him, via text, that she intended to come directly to the hospital when she reached Jakesville the next day.

He hadn’t seen his younger sister in six months. They spoke on the phone from time to time, but mostly they communicated through texts and Facebook messages. They shared an irreverent sense of humor, and each tried to top the other by sending the most bizarre news stories or links to weird Web sites. On more than one occasion, Bill ended up chuckling to himself at work or at home over one of Paige’s messages.

Bill found himself looking forward to her arrival. He and Paige grew close the summer before he left for college when they spent a week driving around the country seeing R.E.M. in concert five times. Bill had never said it out loud, but he wished they’d grown closer sooner instead of right before he moved away. He always seemed to figure things out when it was too late. It was like a curse.

Someone said his name just then, and he looked up.

“There he is.”

Bill saw two figures approaching him from down the hallway. It took a moment, but then he saw who one of them was. Candy Rodgers, Haley’s mom. An older man with steel gray hair walked by her side. He wore a polo shirt and khaki pants with a cell phone clipped to the belt.

Bill stood up. Candy came directly toward Bill, her arms open for a hug. She wore black pants and a pink shirt, and a gold bracelet jangled from her wrist as she and Bill embraced. He caught a whiff of something floral, a shampoo or perfume.

“I’m so sorry, Candy.”

“I’m sorry too.”

They held each other longer than Bill was expecting. He’d never hugged Candy Rodgers before, didn’t even know her very well. He did know Haley’s parents were divorced—apparently a nasty split—and her father lived out west and had little contact with the family. Bill wondered if the man with Candy was a relative or a new love interest.

“This is our pastor,” Candy said, nodding at the man in the khaki pants. “Caleb Blankenship.”

The minister, who looked to be about sixty, gave Bill a firm handshake and a sympathetic look. Candy dabbed at her eyes with a balled-up tissue. She looked older than Bill remembered, but that may have been because she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her unnaturally blond hair hung limp and loose around her shoulders.

“I don’t know what to say, Candy,” Bill said. “I’m just so sorry about Haley. My God. She was such a wonderful, beautiful young girl.”

“I asked where you were, where Summer was, and they told us. I couldn’t leave the hospital without coming up here and seeing her.” She gestured widely, her hand holding a crumpled tissue. “The police have been asking a lot of questions, of course, and Caleb was kind enough to come with me while I . . . It turns out I couldn’t really make an identification. I mean, Haley, her body . . . It’s in bad shape.” Her voice sounded on the edge of breaking, but she held it together, impressing Bill with her poise. “We’re going to the funeral home next.”

“Oh, my God,” Bill said. “I can’t imagine.”

“How is Summer?” Candy asked. “They didn’t say much to us except that she was critically injured.”

Bill tried to explain what he knew of Summer’s condition. He managed to talk about the collapsed lung, but the rest of the words jumbled in his brain, and he found himself verbally flailing until Candy placed her hand on his elbow.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s all too complicated.”

Bill felt calmed by seeing Candy’s familiar face. He had little in common with Haley’s family and didn’t really travel in the same circles they did, with the exception of attending the same events at the school and picking up and dropping the girls off at each other’s houses. If it hadn’t been for the kids’ friendship—which started when they were in the first grade and never stopped—he wouldn’t know much about Candy at all. But Candy’s was the first familiar, friendly face he’d seen all morning, and he found the tension in his chest, the grinding of his back molars against each other, easing in her presence.

“Do you know anything about this, Candy?” Bill asked. “Do you know what the girls were doing or how they ended up out in that park? Or who might have tipped off the police?”

“I don’t know anything,” Candy said. “The police don’t sound like they know very much either. Nobody does. They said you thought they were coming to our house, but they never showed up. I was home. I would have seen them. Haley told me she was going to your house.”

“We have a lot of unanswered questions now,” Caleb, the pastor, said.

Bill gave him a quick look. “The police are hinting at all kinds of things.”

“Let’s not delve into these complicated matters in a time of grief,” Caleb said. “Candy has to go—”

“Candy, do you know something about these boys? Do you think they’re involved? Detective Hawkins was asking me about them.”

“It’s okay, Caleb,” she said. Her lip quivered for a long moment, and she lifted her hand to her chest while she suppressed a deep sob. Collected again, she turned to Bill. “The police have been asking me about everything, but I don’t know what I can tell them. Haley’s sex life.” She shivered. “All kinds of things. I mean, I’m no dummy. I know what kids do. But I can’t imagine who would do this.” She made a vague gesture in the direction of Summer’s room.

“I don’t know anything either,” Bill said, studying Candy’s face. He wanted her to say something, anything, to convince him none of it was real. Candy was a mother. She must know more than he did. “He was asking me about Clinton Fields and those other kids. Remember he beat that kid up a couple of years ago? Beat him up bad—”

But then Bill remembered himself. The woman standing before him had just lost her daughter. Lost. Gone forever. He dialed back on his own zealousness. He knew Candy was experiencing the same things he was experiencing. But multiplied to an infinite degree.

“I’m sorry, Candy,” he said. “I shouldn’t be pushing about these things. Haley was a wonderful girl. She and Summer . . . They were such good friends. My God . . . since first grade. All those trips to the mall, the sleepovers. Girl Scouts . . .”

“They were great friends, yes.”

“Maybe . . .” He didn’t know if completing the thought would bring any comfort to anyone. But Candy gave him an expectant look, so he finished by saying, “Well, at least they weren’t alone. They were together when this happened.”

Candy considered the statement for a moment, her face distant, her eyes red with grief. “That is a good thought.”

A young nurse with long red hair tied in a ponytail emerged from Summer’s room and approached Bill. She told him that he could go back in and sit with his daughter whenever he wanted, that she was resting comfortably and breathing normally.

“I should get back inside there,” Bill said. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

“Of course.” She looked at Caleb. “I think I have to be the one to call Rich.” Bill knew Rich was Haley’s father. Candy’s voice held steady. “He’s going to be shocked. I don’t know what other word to use.”

Bill looked to the pastor for help and, finding none, said, “Can you tell Rich . . . tell him how sorry I am? I don’t know what else to say right now.”

But Candy’s eyes drifted past Bill in the direction of Summer’s room. Bill looked back, expecting to see something, but there was nothing going on. Nothing he could see.

“What is it?” he asked.

“We were wondering about something,” Candy said, looking over at Caleb.

“We were wondering if we could step inside and pray for Summer,” Caleb said.

“I don’t . . .”

Candy reached out and took Bill’s hand. Her skin felt hot, almost feverish. “I know you haven’t been attending a church, not since Julia died.” She looked over at Caleb as though seeking encouragement. “We thought maybe prayers would help right now as Summer heals.”

Bill looked down to where their hands were joined, felt the pressure she exerted against his skin. It seemed like a form of pleading, a way of begging Bill to let them into Summer’s room. And while he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the religious display, he also couldn’t say no to a mother who had just lost her daughter in such a horrible way.

“Okay,” Bill said. “Sure.”

Candy squeezed even harder. “Good. I think you’ll see God can do a lot of good in Summer’s life. It’s never too late for that to happen.”

Chapter Eight

The three of them entered Summer’s room. Bill made sure he went in first, and he checked her left side where the chest tube had been inserted. The tube remained in place, its rubber length snaking out from under her hospital gown and reaching a portable machine by the side of the bed. Summer’s gown was mostly back in place over her chest, so Bill waved Candy and the pastor forward.

Candy gasped when she saw Summer. Bill remembered Candy’s comment from moments before about not being able to identify Haley’s body due to the damage inflicted. He shuddered.

The pastor moved to the left side of the bed, his face solemn, and Candy moved next to him. Bill moved to the other side—across Summer’s body and opposite them—and watched as they both bowed their heads and closed their eyes.

Bill and Julia had been married in the Catholic Church. They’d both attended their whole lives, and when Summer was born, they raised her in the church as well. Baptism, First Communion, Sunday school. They did it all. He could summon the feel of the heavy wooden pews, the sickeningly sweet aroma of incense. Bill never would have described himself as a man of great faith or a true believer, but he liked the structure the church provided in his life, the sense that there were boundaries and end lines and a promise of order amid the chaos.

Candy leaned close. “Oh, Summer, you sweet girl. I’m so sorry, baby.”

Summer’s lips moved. One side of her mouth turned down in an agitated frown.

“It’s okay, Summer. I know you’re in there.”

She made the face again, even more agitated. Candy smiled without showing her teeth.

“Father above,” Caleb said. “We come to you today . . .”

Bill kept his eyes open, watching his daughter. When Julia died suddenly and unexpectedly, Bill couldn’t summon any desire to set foot inside a church again. Something streamed out of him that day, like dry ground sucking down a puddle of water. He bristled at the cruelty of some unseen being who ruled the universe and randomly struck down his wife at such a young age. But Julia’s death also led to an intense questioning of himself. Bill couldn’t see a path forward—not through any church, at least—that would allow him to forgive himself for not being there when Julia died. Instead, he lived with the image of Julia falling off the ladder to the kitchen floor—alone, scared, and in pain—as she suffered her fatal injury. And Bill wasn’t even the first to find her. Summer came home from school and found her dead mother on the cold linoleum like a beached fish.

“We ask this all in the name of Jesus, who saves us. Amen.”

“Amen,” Candy said.

A silence settled over the room, the gentle hisses and beeps of the machines the only noises as both of them looked at Bill. He ignored their appraisal and kept his mouth shut, refusing to join in the amen chorus.

Candy looked wounded by Bill’s silence, and he wished he’d gone along, wished he’d done whatever he could for the grieving woman in the room. She stepped forward and bent down, placing her hand on Summer’s arm and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“We’re praying for you, Summer. We’re all behind you, honey.”

A moment passed, and rather than making the frowning face, Summer’s lips parted and smacked together a few times. Bill moved closer, watching, fearing that something was wrong, but the girl continued to work her lips that way for about ten seconds as though trying to form a word. An ‘M’ sound or an ‘O.’ When that effort failed, she simply emitted a very low and brief groan. And then silence.

Candy smiled, her body still bent toward the bed. “We know you’re in there,” she said. “We hear you.”

“She did that earlier when I was talking to her,” Bill said, fully aware that the movement of Summer’s lips as Candy spoke outpaced anything she had done at the sound of Bill’s voice. But maybe she felt better, more energetic, with a reinflated lung.

The same red-haired nurse slipped through the door, her shoes making no sound, as though she walked on air. “We might want to limit our visits,” she said. “Immediate family only and not too long.”

“We were just going,” Caleb said, offering the calming, pastoral smile.

“We’ll come back and see you, Summer,” Candy said.

And again the same movement of Summer’s lips, although briefer and with less energy.

When the three of them were out in the hall, Bill kept his distance as Candy started to lean in for a hug.

“I felt something in there, Bill,” she said. “I felt . . . I don’t know.”

“What did you mean by saying it’s not too late for God to come into Summer’s life?” he asked.

Candy didn’t answer, so Caleb said, “It’s been an extremely long morning for everyone.” He placed his hand on the small of Candy’s back and tried to gently guide her away from Bill and the entrance to Summer’s room.

“Are you saying if Summer went to church on a regular basis, this wouldn’t have happened to her?” Bill asked, stopping them. “Both of our daughters were out there. They both were hurt.”

Candy moved away from Caleb’s touch and faced Bill. Her eyes were filled with tears, and Bill saw deep lines etched at the corners of her mouth. “You know as well as I do that Haley worshipped Summer. She did everything Summer did. The clothes, the hair, the music. Summer was the leader, the dominant one.”

“Summer is strong-willed,” Bill said. “That’s a good quality.”

“I remember the time they stole that tube of lipstick from Walgreens. Haley came home, and she told me, ‘Mom, Summer pushed me into doing it.’”

“You’re talking about the lipstick they stole when they were twelve?”

“And the missed curfews lately. The back talk. That’s not my daughter. Summer strolls into my house and talks to me like I’m her peer, like we’re both adults. She’s fifteen going on thirty-five.”

“She’s mature,” Bill said. “She’s an only child.”

“Haley was just so . . . good-natured.” Candy’s face crumpled with grief. “Who do you think followed who . . . whatever they were doing?”

Bill wanted to say more, but he didn’t as Caleb led Candy away.

When Bill turned around, the red-haired nurse stood in his way. She held a small bottle, something Bill didn’t recognize. She seemed to want to say something to him but didn’t. He couldn’t identify the source of the expectant look on her face.

“Were we talking too loud?” Bill asked. He realized his hands were clenched into fists in the aftermath of his exchange with Candy, and it required a conscious effort to relax them. His heart thumped, and he knew if he’d been at home, he would have thrown something in frustration.

“No,” the nurse said. “Not at all. I just wanted to tell you I’m going in to take care of something with Summer. Something quick.”

“She’s okay?”

“There’s no problem.” The nurse again looked like she wanted to say more. Her eyes almost appeared mischievous, like she possessed a secret. “Why don’t you come in and I’ll show you?”

Bill followed her through the door and watched as she gently moved the covers down Summer’s body. Bill held his hand out. “Wait. What is this?”

“It’s okay,” she said, and continued on. The covers now down, she took great care lifting Summer’s gown. Bill felt like he shouldn’t be looking, but the nurse nodded to Summer’s stomach.

First he saw the bruise. About the size of an orange, or someone’s fist, it sat just above her belly button. And his daughter looked even thinner than he remembered. Had she been losing weight? Dieting? Or just getting taller and losing her baby fat?

Then he saw what the nurse must have wanted him to notice.

“What’s that?” he asked, although he knew. A half-inch-wide hoop was stuck into the soft flesh, the skin around the post red and tender. “Who did that to her?”

“Somebody who didn’t know to sterilize first,” the nurse said. “We’re pumping her full of antibiotics through the IV, but I thought I’d give it a cleaning as well.”

“She didn’t have that—” But Bill stopped himself. How did he know what she’d done to her body? He hadn’t seen his daughter naked since she was three. And the piercing fit with her recent defiant, rebellious attitude. She probably would have loved to see the look on Bill’s face when he discovered it.

He also remembered Hawkins’s questions about her sex life, the things people were saying about her on social media. She was fifteen, living on the border between girl and woman.

“I guess I don’t know much of anything,” Bill said, somewhat defeated.

The nurse nodded as she worked, applying a solution to a piece of gauze. She carefully wiped the red skin around the piercing, her thin fingers as gentle and steady as a surgeon’s.

“I figure I just did Summer a favor,” she said while she worked. “When she wakes up, you’ll be so happy to see her, you won’t care about a little thing like a piercing she got without your permission. It’s not a big deal to have one. Some of us got them in college.” She chuckled softly.

Bill sensed that he was being manipulated, that just like Hawkins saying the collapsed lung wasn’t as bad as it seemed, the nurse was not so subtly reminding him of his priorities.

He didn’t need to be reminded, even though the sight of the piercing made his skin crawl. Not knowing how much Summer could hear or understand, he moved to the head of the bed and leaned down close.

“I don’t care about the piercing,” he said. “All I care about is your getting better.”

Summer started moving her lips, again like she wanted to form a word. Bill looked to the nurse, who shrugged lightly, the bottle of alcohol and the swab still in her hand.

“Do you want to say something, Summer? It’s Dad.”

And the puckering grew more rapid, accompanied by a low clucking sound in her mouth, the intensity of the movement increasing. Her head twitched once, to the left and then back to the right.

“Did you want to say something to me?” Bill asked. “Do you want something from me?”

Bill leaned in even closer. And he heard the word she seemed to be saying.

“No. No. No. No. No. No.”

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#Review - A Theory of Dreaming by Ava Reid #YA #Historical #Fantasy

2026-09-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: A Theory of Drowning # 2
Format: 416 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: July 29, 2025
Publisher: HarperCollins
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Historical, Fantasy

Return to the immersive, lush, and dreamlike world of the instantly bestselling dark academia fantasy A Study in Drowning as the aftermath of their first discovery pulls Effy and Preston on a final adventure and brings their haunting love story to its end in this stunning sequel and final book in the duology.

All stories come to an end.

Effy learned that when she defeated the Fairy King. Even though she may never know exactly what happened at Hiraeth, she is free of her nightmares and is able to pen a thesis with Preston on the beloved national fairy tale Angharad. She has finally earned a spot at the literature college, making her the first woman in history to enroll.

But some dreams are dangerous, especially when they come true. The entire university—and soon the entire nation—is waiting for her to fail. With the Fairy King defeated and Myrddin’s legacy exposed, Effy can no longer escape into fantasy. Who is she without her stories?

With Effy under threat, Preston is surprised to discover a rage simmering inside him, ringing in his ears like bells. He begins to dream of a palace under the sea, a world where he is king—visions that start to follow him even in waking.

As the war between Llyr and Argant explodes, Effy and Preston find themselves caught in the crossfire: Effy losing her dreams and Preston losing himself in his.

Are dreams ever truly just dreams?

A Theory of Dreaming is the sequel to A Study in Drowning by author Ava Reid. The first book was a gothic mystery with a crumbling manor, a contested authorship, and a fairy-tale monster at its center. This one is about what happens after the monster is gone: when the national myth starts to crack, the university turns hostile, the war with Argant tightens its grip, and two young people who survived something uncanny have to live in ordinary daylight.

Effy Sayre is now the first woman admitted to the University of Llyr’s literature college. Together with Preston Héloury, the Argantian student who became her partner in scholarship and in love, she has already exposed the secret behind Angharad, the nation’s beloved fairy tale: that it was written not by the revered Sleeper Emrys Myrddin, but by his wife. That revelation, treated as near-sedition in a country at war, follows them back to Caer-Isel. The university wants them to fail.

The press wants a scandal. Llyr wants its Sleepers—those preserved national authors whose bodies and writings are supposed to sustain morale—left untouched. The premise is strong. Reid is still writing about stories as infrastructure: who gets credited, whose work is used to justify a war, which voices are allowed into the canon. The Sleepers and their museum give the book a vivid political-mythic architecture. Preston’s new dreams of an undersea palace, where he is king and the dead can still be spoken to, turn the first book’s question inside out.

Effy once could not tell dream from reality. Now Preston cannot stop choosing the dream. The novel’s best idea is that escapism is not only a wounded girl’s private refuge. It can also be a young man’s temptation toward power, control, and a prettier version of grief. Dual point of view helps. Book one belonged more to Effy; this one gives Preston a fuller interior life, including the xenophobia he faces as an Argantian in Llyr and the rage beneath his usual restraint. Their romance is tender without being easy.

Love here is less a rescue than a fragile practice: two people trying to stay present for each other while institutions, war, and their own minds pull them apart. Large stretches are about depression, self-doubt, academic cruelty, medication, and the grinding hostility of being the wrong kind of person in a nationalist university. Those pages can feel true and also repetitive. Readers who came for the first book’s mystery-and-manor engine may find this one slower, heavier, and less enchanted.

The novel connects literary fraud to wartime propaganda, misogyny in the academy to the erasure of women from the national story, and personal trauma to the stories a country tells itself in order to keep fighting. That is a lot for a YA fantasy to carry, and the book is more successful as mood and argument than as tightly engineered plot. The dream-palace material is beautiful and sometimes under-explained. The academic mystery around additional texts and authorship is compelling when it is allowed to move.

The war plot arrives as pressure more than as a fully dramatized conflict, then resolves quickly once the novel decides it is time to close. A Theory of Dreaming is a lyrical, uneven, often moving conclusion to a duology about the danger of beautiful stories. It will reward readers who wanted more of Effy and Preston as people, more of Llyr as a nation built on canon and war, and more of Reid’s drowning-in-language style. It will frustrate readers who wanted another tightly coiled gothic mystery. As a sequel, it is not better than A Study in Drowning.

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#Review - Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter #Thriller #Suspense

2026-09-03T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Andrea Oliver # 1
Format: 468 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: August 21, 2018
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?

Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?

But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . .

Karin Slaughter's Pieces of Her is the first installment in the author's Andrea Oliver series. Pieces of Her is a mother-daughter thriller that starts with a mall diner massacre and then splits into two timelines. A 31-year-old woman who thinks she knows her quiet, respectable mother discovers that the woman who raised her is someone else entirely. It became a Netflix series in 2022, starring Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote; the book and the show diverge in structure, especially in the ending.

Andrea “Andy” Oliver is back in Belle Isle, Georgia, living over her mother’s garage after a failed stretch in New York. Laura Oliver is a speech pathologist, a breast-cancer survivor, and the kind of small-town pillar who seems to have no secrets. They are celebrating Andy’s birthday at the Rise-n-Dine when a gunman opens fire. What happens next is captured on video and goes viral: Laura does not freeze. She moves with lethal competence, and the man who came to kill ends up dead by her hand. Hero one minute, suspect the next.

Laura checks herself out of the hospital, tells Andy to leave town with a set of cryptic instructions, and refuses to explain herself. Andy is forced onto the road with money, fake IDs, and the growing certainty that the mother she loved was a construction. The novel then alternates between Andy’s present-day flight and 1986, when a gifted young pianist named Jane Queller is pulled into the orbit of a radical group calling itself the Army of the Changing World. That past involves a powerful family business, QuellCorp; a charismatic and abusive leader; and violence that was never fully buried.

Andy’s job is to collect the pieces before the past collects her. Andy begins as Slaughter’s familiar type of stalled adult child: anxious, indecisive, living in the shadow of impressive parents (her father, Gordon, is a lawyer). The diner incident and the subsequent chase force her into a competence she didn't know she had. Laura/Jane is the book’s real engine—the woman who built a safe life out of wreckage and will do almost anything to keep it. Supporting figures from both eras (the cult, the family, the people who helped Jane disappear) arrive as Andy follows the trail. The dual timeline is the novel’s organizing principle.

Present-day Andy is on the run, researching, hiding money, losing her phone, and trying to stay ahead of both police attention and people from Laura’s old life. The 1980s chapters show how Jane became Laura: privilege, rage at her father’s world, radicalization, and the cost of getting out. Themes include identity as something assembled rather than inherited, the exploitation of the mentally ill in for-profit care systems, male violence and control, and what a parent is willing to erase to protect a child.

Slaughter is very good at the opening shock and at the slow reveal that the person you live with is a stranger. The mother-daughter bond—love mixed with betrayal and withheld history—gives the chase an emotional charge that pure cat-and-mouse thrillers often lack. The 1980s material has real texture: cult dynamics, family tyranny, and the specific historical backdrop of deinstitutionalization and private mental-health contracting. The Netflix series keeps the diner incident and the mother-as-stranger hook but changes witness-protection mechanics, who is hunting whom, how active Laura is in the present, and the resolution.

If you have only seen the show, the novel is a different—and in several ways more complete—experience. A sequel, Girl, Forgotten, follows Andy later. In the end, Pieces of Her is a story about a family secret that explodes into a cross-country thriller. It is propulsive, often brutal, and sincerely interested in how a woman rebuilds a self after surviving both a monstrous family and a monstrous cause. It is also baggy in places and unsubtle about its villains. Start here if you want a mother-daughter puzzle with a body count and a past that will not stay packed away. Skip it if you need lean plotting or dislike dual-timeline construction. The title is accurate. What Andy finds are pieces. Putting them together is the book’s real violence.

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#Review - Haven't Killed in Years by Amy K. Green #Thriller #Suspense

2026-09-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: November 18, 2025
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

In this fascinating and propulsive thriller, a serial killer’s daughter, who is determined to live a normal life, gets wrapped up in a murder investigation that makes her question whether she can ever fully move on from her past.

Marin Haggerty, daughter of a world-renowned serial killer, spent her early childhood training to follow in her father’s bloody footsteps, before she developed her own sense of right and wrong. After his arrest, she’s put in witness protection and happy to take on a new identity, that of harmless office worker Gwen Tanner. Even if keeping everyone at a distance is a little boring, at least she—and society—is safe.

But when someone starts sending body parts to her house, the message is clear: I know who you are. To keep her identity secret, Gwen has to take on the highly inconvenient (but kind of exhilarating?) role of hunting down the killer herself, a journey that will take her from the twisted world of true crime fandom to drug-fueled house parties to an unlikely person from her past. She’ll learn she is capable of deep, human connections after all . . . and that she’s not the only one with secrets to hide. But is finally opening herself up going to help her catch the killer, or will it put her and others in even more danger?

Haven’t Killed in Years is Amy K. Green’s second thriller, after The Prized Girl (2020)—and it is best read as a character study wearing serial-killer clothes: darkly funny, morally gray, and more interested in what inherited violence does to a personality than in body-count spectacle. The hook is immediate. Gwen Tanner is an almost-too-ordinary Boston-area office worker approaching thirty: a bland job, a one-bedroom apartment, pottery she makes and then destroys, and no close attachments by design. She was born Marin Haggerty.

At nine, her father, Abel Haggerty, was convicted on eight counts of first-degree murder, and her mother, Reanne, went to prison for aiding and abetting. Marin was given a new name and a new life. On the day Reanne is released, a severed arm arrives on Gwen’s doorstep with a note that says, essentially, Hi, Marin. Someone knows who she is, and they are not being subtle about it. That premise is not unprecedented—the children of famous killers are a durable subgenre—but Green’s execution is what sells it. Gwen does not call the police.

She relocates the evidence and starts investigating herself, because anonymity is the only architecture her life has. The investigation pulls her into true-crime tourism, prison-adjacent obsessives, childhood survivors, and a circle of new almost-friends who are also, inconveniently, suspects. The book’s running joke, and its real engine, is that Gwen was desensitized to murder as a child and still talks about it with the same sardonic shrug she applies to office small talk.

Green has said she wanted readers to laugh even while the subject matter includes severed limbs and serial-killer worship; that tone is the book’s signature. Gwen is the whole show. She is messy, defensive, self-aware without being redeemed, and funny in a way that is closer to Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter than to the usual “traumatized but plucky” thriller heroine. She knows her indifference to violence is wrong. She is not proud of it. She hides it the way other people hide a drinking problem.

That combination—moral vacancy plus social competence plus dry wit—makes her easy to follow and hard to trust, which is exactly the right register for a narrator who grew up watching her father kill and then spent twenty years pretending to be furniture. The supporting cast is built as a suspect board that doubles as a social life Gwen never meant to have.

Recurring names in coverage include Porter, a pottery-studio coworker and true-crime enthusiast; Dominic, who runs an Abel Haggerty murder tour and has somehow gotten visiting access to her father; Elyse Abbington, the child who survived the family massacre that finally brought Abel down; plus mother, father, an old detective, an attorney who helped bury Marin’s identity, and a rotating set of murder-curious hangers-on. The relationships are the novel’s secret second plot.

Gwen keeps people at a distance for their safety and hers; the book keeps asking whether opening a door is how you catch a killer or how you become one again. Green is also poking at true-crime culture without delivering a sermon. Serial killers as celebrities, murder tours as date-night entertainment, fans who treat atrocity like fandom lore—Gwen has to walk through that world while being the artifact it is consuming. When the satire works, it is sharp. When it piles on, it starts to feel like the book is collecting types.

Structurally, this is a present-day investigation braided with childhood flashbacks. The flashbacks matter. They are not just “here is how Dad was bad.” They establish that Marin was not a passive witness in the way a conventional victim-narrative would prefer, and they complicate the nature-versus-nurture question the title is already winking at. The present-day plot moves in set pieces: packages, aliases, undercover tour-going, prison approaches, comedies of error that keep flipping who looks guilty.

Green has acknowledged the middle went through major revision; you can still feel the seams of a book that wants both a twisty whodunit and a psychological excavation and a satire of fandom. Around the halfway mark a second plot line drops that many readers describe as a genuine floor-dropper. Whether that bombast feels earned or overcooked depends on your tolerance for thriller engineering. Under the arms-in-boxes plotting, the novel is about identity as a survival skill.

Gwen Tanner is a performance that lasted two decades. The question is not only who is sending the parts? It is how much of Marin is still in there, and whether she ever stopped being her father’s project. Green keeps circling inherited violence, the ethics of disappearing, the difference between not killing and being good, and the lonely competence of someone who learned early that closeness is a liability. There is also an unexpectedly tender strain. Gwen’s isolation is strategic, but it is also grief.

The pottery she destroys is a neat metaphor that would be too on-the-nose if the voice were earnest; because the voice is snide, the image works. Read this if you like thrillers that live in the morally gray zone, narrators who would rather joke than process, and mysteries where the detective is also the exhibit. It will land especially well if Dexter, true-crime-fandom satires, or “the family of the monster” stories are already on your shelf. Skip it if you need a likable heroine, a tight suspect list, or horror that actually horrifies rather than wisecracks past the gore.

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#Review - You'll Be Sorry by Lisa Gardner #Suspense #Thriller

2026-09-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Standalone
Format: 357 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: August 4, 2026
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

For Raquel and Theo Collins, it appeared to be love at first sight. Raquel, a renowned interior designer, and Theo, a brash financial wizard met and married in a matter of months, only to confront a terrible tragedy. Now, unbearably aware of the distance between them, they’ve come to a remote town in New Hampshire to begin anew.

Perched on a ledge with stunning views, the Dixon’s family lodge was once a crown jewel of the mountains. Until late one August night, when both parents and their four children vanished, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints, and a mystery that has endured for thirty years. Now, its latest occupants, the Collinses, are arriving, and the former grand lodge is once more stirring to life.

For Amanda Grady, following in her father’s footsteps as the recently appointed Shereford police chief, it’s good to see a fresh start for the derelict Dixon place. However, not everyone is happy about a new family in the old home, and its hidden past may have returned with a vengeance.

When a stray dog leads to the discovery of a skeleton on the property, Raquel and Theo face a daunting choice of what to believe, who to trust, and how to survive. Because in the tiny village of Shereford, the time has come. The local residents, the new neighbors, and the fledgling police chief must work together to unravel the terrifying events that happened one night thirty years ago, or …

You’ll be sorry.

You’ll Be Sorry is Lisa Gardner’s first standalone thriller in years. It is a small-town cold-case novel with a strained marriage at its center: newlyweds move into a mountain lodge that never recovered from a family’s disappearance three decades earlier. The setup is immediately effective. Raquel Collins, an interior designer, and Theo Collins, a financial operator, married quickly, then suffered a private tragedy that left them distant.

They buy the long-empty Dixon lodge in the tiny New Hampshire village of Shereford, hoping renovation and isolation will reset their lives. The house sits on a ledge with dramatic White Mountains views. Thirty years earlier, on a late August night, the Dixon parents and their four children vanished, leaving a trail of bloody footprints and an unsolved mystery that still defines the town. New police chief Amanda Grady—following in her father’s footsteps—is glad to see the derelict place occupied.

Not everyone else is. When a stray dog leads to a skeleton on the property, the past stops being local folklore and becomes an active threat. Raquel, Theo, Grady, and the village have to decide whom to trust. Gardner works with three main contemporary viewpoints plus the shadow of the vanished Dixons. Raquel is the most fully drawn: grief-stricken, professionally capable, and less transparent than she first appears. Theo is brasher and harder to read; the marriage itself functions as a source of suspense rather than mere backdrop.

Amanda Grady is the outsider-insider cop trying to prove herself in a town that already thinks it knows every secret. The stray dog (and at least one other canine) earns the title of scene-stealer. Shereford is the real co-lead. It is insular, scenic, and thick with gossip, old grudges, and local lore. The novel braids present-day investigation with the 1990s disappearance. Chapters are relatively short. Tension comes from withheld information: the couple’s secrets, the town’s secrets, and whether the new occupants have disturbed something that wanted to stay buried.

Themes include grief after loss, the stories spouses tell each other, how a community protects its own version of events, and the cost of reopening a wound everyone claims to have closed. You’ll Be Sorry is Gardner working in domestic-suspense and closed-community mode rather than FBI-profiler or missing-persons-series mode. It is atmospheric, twisty, and sincerely interested in how people live with unfinished horror. It is also messier than her tightest books: ambitious layering sometimes becomes congestion, and the ending will satisfy some readers while leaving others feeling the strings were yanked. If you want a remote New England lodge, a vanished family, a marriage full of omissions, and a town that knows less than it pretends, this delivers. If you want a ruthlessly efficient plot with no extra folklore or canine side business, it may frustrate.

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#Review - All the Pretty Girls by J.T. Ellison #Mystery #Suspense

2026-08-31T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Taylor Jackson # 1
Format: Paperback
Release Date: May 5, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Publisher
Genre: Mystery, Suspense

In a thrilling series from New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison, a serial killer is targeting young women across the South, and each new kill comes with a grisly clue pointing to the next victim.

When a young woman is found dead just outside of Nashville, strangled and handless, homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson is quick to the scene. So is FBI Special Agent John Baldwin, whose presence suggests that the murder is not the work of a random opportunist. A love poem left nearby alludes to something more sinister: This is the work of the “Southern Strangler,” a serial killer terrorizing women from Louisiana to Virginia.

It’s the kind of case Jackson thrives on. At thirty-five, Metro Nashville’s youngest lieutenant is still an idealist, hell-bent on protecting the city she calls home. And she’s determined to avoid the broken, lonely path she’s seen other cops take. But while she and Baldwin share more than a working relationship, she’s not ready to go public.

With victims across multiple states, Jackson and Baldwin race to find a pattern before the killer strikes again. But then a shocking connection between the Strangler and a local reporter brings them closer to the truth behind the killer’s identity—one that could unveil a family’s darkest secrets.

J.T. Ellison's All the Pretty Girls is the first installment in the author's Taylor Jackson series. This is a revised edition of a book that was published in 2007. There are two main characters: Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson and FBI Special Agent and Profiler John Baldwin. The story is a Nashville-set police procedural that mixes serial-killer hunt, media ambition, and romantic tension. It launched Ellison as a reliable writer of Southern crime fiction and still reads like a confident first outing—gritty, geographically specific, and built around a heroine who rejects the life she was born into.

The premise is classic genre architecture. A young woman is found strangled and missing a hand just outside Nashville. The signature—previous victim’s severed hand left at the next scene, plus fragments of Romantic poetry (Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge)—marks the work of the Southern Strangler, a killer operating across state lines from Louisiana to Virginia. Metro Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, 35 and the department’s youngest lieutenant, catches the local body. FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin arrives because the case is already multi-jurisdictional. They are also lovers, though Taylor is not ready to make that public.

Running alongside the Strangler investigation are a serial rapist known as the Rain Man, an ambitious local TV reporter named Whitney Connolly who thinks she has an exclusive that will get her out of Nashville, and Whitney’s twin sister Quinn, a Belle Meade socialite. The two cases and the Connolly family secrets eventually converge. Ellison has described the killer as initially “reluctant,” a figure whose original motives become warped—an attempt to give the villain more psychology than pure sadism.

Taylor Jackson is the book’s strongest asset. Raised in wealthy Belle Meade, she walked away from debutante expectations to become a cop. She is idealistic, stubborn, still recovering from a serious neck injury that nearly killed her, and determined not to become the isolated, burned-out detective she has seen around her. Baldwin functions as both professional partner and romantic interest; their relationship is present but not the engine of the plot. Medical examiner Samantha Owens, Taylor’s childhood friend, appears as a supporting presence who would later get her own spin-off series.

Whitney Connolly is more vividly drawn than many reporter characters in this genre—hungry, reckless, and closer to the story than she realizes. Thematic concerns include hidden family lies, the collision of old Nashville money and working-class law enforcement, and the way private damage produces public violence. The poetry left at scenes is both a calling card and a window into the killer’s self-mythology. The title itself nods to the nursery rhyme and a Grimm tale Ellison has cited as early inspiration.

All the Pretty Girls is a capable, atmospheric series starter rather than a reinvention of the serial-killer procedural. It does what it sets out to do: introduce a distinctive Nashville detective, establish her world and relationships, and deliver a grisly, multi-state chase with enough twists to keep most thriller readers turning pages. It is not the most original book in the genre, and the extra plot threads sometimes dilute the main hunt. For readers who want a strong female lead, Southern setting, and unapologetic darkness, it remains a worthwhile entry point.

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#Review - Into the Fire by Allison Brennan #Mystery #Thriller

2026-08-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

Series: Angelhart Investigations # 0.5
Format: 159 pages, Kindle Edition

Release Date: May 28, 2024
Publisher: MIRA
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Margo Angelhart was recently certified as a private investigator, but she isn’t convinced that it’s her calling. All of her cases have been minor, mostly for family and haven’t paid the bills. She’s more than happy to keep bartending and figure out her post-military career later. That is, until prosecutor Andy Flannigan walks into her bar and offers her a case she can’t turn down…

Nineteen-year-old Sergio Diaz has confessed to murder—except Andy doesn’t buy it. With his own job on the line, Andy asks Margo to work the case discreetly. The more she digs, the more she’s convinced an innocent kid is going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now she just needs to figure out why he’d confess. Can Margo prove Sergio’s innocence and help Andy find the real killer before anyone else dies?

Into the Fire, by author Allison Brennan, is a 125-page novella that introduces readers to Margo Angelhart and the Angelhart family. A story that takes place years before You'll Never Find Me. This novella serves as a strong origin piece for protagonist Margo Angelhart, establishing her background, skills, self-doubt, and growing confidence while delivering a compact, satisfying mystery.

Margo Angelhart is a recently certified private investigator who is not yet fully committed to the career. After serving in the Army (including time as military police), she has returned to her hometown in Arizona. She bartends to pay the bills while handling only minor PI cases—mostly for family—and remains uncertain about her post-military path. She comes from a large, high-achieving extended family of investigators, which adds pressure and a sense that she doesn't quite measure up.

The story kicks off when prosecutor Andy Flannigan, a regular at the bar and a friend, approaches her discreetly. Nineteen-year-old Sergio Diaz has confessed to a convenience-store robbery and murder, but Andy does not believe the confession is genuine. With his own position at risk if he appears to undermine the case, he asks Margo to investigate quietly. As she digs in, she becomes convinced an innocent young man is heading to prison and must uncover both the truth and Sergio’s reasons for confessing—before more people get hurt.

Even in novella length, the mystery holds interest. Margo’s investigation unfolds methodically—talking to people who know Sergio, examining evidence like gunshot residue and video, and following leads—with a procedural feel that many readers appreciate. Her military background informs her instincts and approach without turning her into an over-the-top action hero. Margo starts unsure of herself and her place relative to her successful family. Working this case forces her to trust her judgment, think creatively, and commit more fully to the PI path.

Supporting characters, including Andy and members of Margo’s family, feel lived-in and add warmth and realism. Family dynamics and loyalty themes run through the story without overwhelming the central mystery. Sergio’s situation (including motivations tied to protecting loved ones) gives the case emotional stakes beyond pure puzzle-solving. My one main complaint remains the unknown about Margo's father, and what really happened between this novella and the first installment in the series. I really want the author to address that angle sooner rather than later.

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