 5 stars
KA strikes again—with her best recently published series! Mabel and Hutch's story had it all. Mabel is our latest protagonist to enter the sleepy—yet murderous—town of Misted Pines in the wooded Pacific Northwest. She's reinvented herself after tragedy, and she's ready to heal in peace with her refurbished furniture work, her quiet rural rental, and her isolated lifestyle. All that changes when she lays eyes on Hutch singing in the local bar. She locks eyes on Hutch. He clocks her. Sparks, immediate. And they have a night of passion. The next morning, however... Mabel's life flips. It starts with a hastily written "thanks" note from Hutch—making it clear their night was one-night only—that ruins her afterglow. It continues when there's a hateful biblical pamphlet on her front porch, complete with a handwritten note about loose-moraled women sleeping out of wedlock. Oh, did we mention Mabel lives on property adjacent to a weird religious compound?? Yeah. Stuff's about to go down now, because those religious guys have Mabel on their radar. And despite not wanting to enter Mabel's life for his own reasons, former SEAL Hutch has a few opinions about this situation. Cue the lights, camera, action!! As one of Kristen Ashley's lucky early reviewers, I get the privilege of reading all of her works early. I like a select few of them, I love many more, and a handful of them reach that Top Tier, forever-obsessed category. (We all have different tropes, tastes, etc. so it's a good sign of her variety that there are ups and downs.) So trust me when I say this as a seasoned KA fan: the Misted Pines series is one of her absolute best. The town, the setting, the aura, the character dynamics... this one has IT, that extra factor to it. It's fantastic. I highly recommend new KA readers start with this series. You can start with this one, The Girl From Nowhere, if you want—but it's more fun if you start with Delphine and Cade in The Girl in the Mist. Can't wait for the next Misted Pines !! Thank you to the author for my early copy in exchange for an honest review.
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 4.5 stars
Finally! Wolf gets his happy ending; a story. When I say we've been WAITING for this update since the Frozen Fate trilogy wrapped last year... Wolfson Strakh has been through hell—literally. He grew up in the Arctic Circle, tortured and tormented by a demon in human form. Alongside his brothers, he grew warped under conditions that very few people could survive. But survive he did. Until he didn't, and he plunged into the icy waters below. His story didn't end then. He then spent time with another twisted demon, enduring more pain and making an unthinkable devil's bargain to survive once more. So when Wolf finally sees the sun, he deserves his happy ending. Rise of Ink and Smoke is that happy ending. That happy ending comes from an unexpected—yet very Wolf—place. A runaway, blue-haired bride, running with dirty skirts and shotgun through the Sitka, Alaska, streets in pursuit of her stepbrother. It's something out of a twisted fairytale. (And Wolf loves those most of all.) Dove and Jag are stepsiblings who have also survived against all expectations—even each other. And now that they've entered Wolf's orbit, the trio have a journey ahead of them... Y'all. Rise of Ink and Smoke was a trip in the best possible way. Sweeter than I expected it to be—yes, "sweet" is NEVER a word I thought I'd associate with the Frozen Fate universe, but here we are—and healing in a way we all needed it to be. Wolf's journey toward healing was non-traditional. How could it be anything but? His problems and past were so singular that I was concerned about this novel and how any romance for Wolf would adequately treat him with care, healing, and also retain that Pam Godwin-level of angsty drama and pain that we've come to expect. This nailed it, folks. It handled Wolf's romance arc perfectly. Dove and Jag's addition to the Strakh family knot was perfect. Dove was fiery yet soft, able to provide space for Wolf's journey while also enduring one of her own. Jag's hardened, bloodthirsty form of protection-as-love was very much in line with the Strakh men of the previous trilogy, but this time done in a computer hacker font that was very fun to read. If I had to pick a negative—which I don't, but sometimes it's worth pointing to the bits we didn't love the most--I would have to admit that this story was almost too soft and too quickly fixed for the Frozen Fate universe. Maybe I'm the problem there, honestly, because while this story healed a lot of pieces for the characters it did make me feel like we we closing up the wounds too quickly for all three of our tortured leads. I eventually just let it go out of sheer happiness that they were finding their happy, but after the long-drawn, realistically paced arc of Frankie's story I thought this was one quite fast. (As fast as 700+ pages can feel, anyway!) Definitely pick this one up ASAP if you're read the Frozen Fate trilogy. It's the perfect ending to our characters, and witnessing Frankie & Co's happy ending in practice was also perfection. Thank you to the author for my copy in exchange for an honest review.  4.5 stars
Y'all sometimes the only happy you need is a new Kristen Ashley release. This latest installment in the Manors and Mysteries series—yes, you heard me, English manors and a compelling mystery!—was no exception. Vivienne Dupree is an author on a mission: she's come to England to write her next novel. It's based loosely on the enduring mystery of her WWII veteran great-grandfather and his doomed love affair with a British member of the upper class, and Vivi's received exclusive access to the manor house where it all happened. One of the manor's current residents is Vivi's pen-pal, Prudence (Prue) Talyn, who struck up a friendship with Vivi as they collaborated on the material and research for Vivi's writing project. Vivi's excited to spend time with her friend, meet Prue's family, and get to the bottom of her mystery. But something stands in the way of her success: Battle Talyn, the Duke of Burleigh. Battle doesn't want his family's secrets dragged through the public eye in the form of a lurid romance novel. But he hasn't encountered Vivi's American stubborn will. As the two "battle" their moral lines, they discover a dangerous chemistry that compels them both. Add in some classic KA shenanigans such as some family antics, some dramatic friends, and a love story that spans every page (and decade).... Yeah. This was a good time. Perfect in Every Way was just like its title. It hit the spot, and it was that—near-perfect in every way. (I say "near" perfect because... I must admit... I love a drama. I love a romantic angst. And Battle and Vivi?? They were a little too wholesome and emotionally stable for me. Yes, I know that reflects poorly on me. Oops.) Battle and Vivi's love affair was the core of this story. Their heart, sense of family, and immediate chemistry worked for me on many levels. I enjoyed seeing them dance together and find their happily ever after. Ugh, nobody writes an HEA like Kristen Ashley. Don't miss this one! It's a great entry point into the KA universe and a great standalone story. Thank you to the author for my copy in exchange for an honest review.  3 stars
Well that was…. Something. Definitely not my favorite Sager, but that’s okay. We can’t love them all. Concept: ★★★★ Characters: ★★ Villain(s)/Reveal(s): ★★ (for me! I know a lot of other readers would give this a solid five star) Enjoyment: ★★ 1/2 The Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora Hope was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. With that Lizzie Borden-style murder setup, The Only One Left takes off in typical Sager fashion. We've got a female main character with some secrets: home caregiver Kit McDeere, who's been on forced work leave due to a tragic and unseemly accident with her last patient. She's somewhat unlikeable, somewhat opaque in motive, and out of options. We've got a setting filled with creeps: the Hope's End manor, complete with crumbling cliffside ruins and some seriously skeevy staff. We've got the big hook: elderly Lenora Hope is finally ready to tell her story, and Kit McDeere is her semi-willing audience. It's turtles all the way down from there, folks, with some serious twists and turns along the way for even the most hardened mystery reader. The Only One Left is one of the only—pun intended—Sager novels that I hadn't read during its publication year. What can I say, the concept didn't grip me even with that compelling cover design. I think that apathy toward reading it was a harbinger for what was to come for my reading experience. I just... didn't connect with this story at all. From the concept to the main character, all the way down to the series of spectacularly Sager twists and turns in the conclusion—it just wasn't a hit for me. (I know this is a "me" issue, as the other reviews for this one are fabulous.) This was... fine. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was set in modern times—it took place in the early 1980s—and possibly had more action? or at least, more things going on? This story was SO limited in setting, characters, and setup that I found myself bored for most of the reading experience. Which was wild, given how bonkers it got there toward the end. I do enjoy limited scenario books... so I truly don't know what was happening here with this one. Oh well. Can't love them all! If you too didn't love this one, please do still try other Riley Sager. My favorite, The Last Time I Lied, is SUCH a good time.  5 stars
My second 5 star read from Heaberlin. Welcome to the Amy's Favorites pile. Night Will Find You is one of those novels that I love best—a multi-genre baby. A heavy dose of mystery/thriller, a dash of speculative intrigue, a dollop of romantic tension, a spin of literary fiction style. A lil' bit o' everything, you know? Vivvy Bouchet is an astrophysicist looking for signs of life in the night sky. She's grounded in science, loaded with reality—but she has a poorly kept secret. Vivvy can also see things she's never been able to explain. From visions to feelings to ghosts impressions, Vivvy has always existed in the contradictory push/pull of science vs. the unexplained. A boy that she saved grew up into a Texan cop, and he knows about her gift. When the girls are missing or their killers can't be found, he asks Vivvy to help. Vivvy can't say no; it's complicated. But now, her gifts and relative anonymity are about to go up in smoke—the latest case she's pulled in to unofficially help with is a famous case of a missing little girl that captured the Texas public and remained unsolved. Jesse Sharp, the dangerous-edged detective in charge, doesn't want Vivvy's help. Vivvy doesn't want Jesse Sharp—he sees things too clearly, and he's pointed right at Vivvy. Neither Jesse nor Vivvy are going to get their way, as the case unfolds around them both like a death trap. Vivvy's convinced the girl is alive, and now it's time to prove it. Jesse thinks Vivvy is full of B.S., but he's out of options. Time to roll the tape... When I say I DEVOURED this book, I mean it. I read it in almost one, uninterrupted sitting at the very end of a lackluster reading year where nothing—and I mean NOTHING—held my attention in book form. I was in the slump to end all slumps, and nothing was shaking it. Heaberlin's novel caught me, and I'm thrilled to say it kept me, too. I loved it from the top down. The writing is gorgeous. The characters are compelling and believably messy. The plot itself is complex, like Heaberlin's other novel I've read (We Are All the Same in the Dark). The Texas setting is richly contextualized for this non-Southern reader. I truly don't have anything negative to say, besides a very small caveat (see below). Don't miss this one, it's well worth the read. Small caveat to this review: There are some complicated elements here that exist outside of the story’s ecosystem—the Elon Musk and DeGrasse Tyson references, in particular, are aging badly since its pub date in 2023—but outside of the real world retroactive gate-crashing, this is a novel I would consider near perfect in every way.  5 stars
Obsessed with this intricate, odd little sapphic fable. Come for the spiders, stay for the unique elements... From the marketing blurb: The Shape of Water meets Mexican Gothic in this sapphic monster romance novella wrapped in gothic fantasy trappings... Combining old-school fairytale storytelling with a very intriguing spider motif and a surprisingly sweet/PG romance, But Not Too Bold was basically the perfect little horror novella for me this month. I'm such a sucker for loving things I've never encountered before. It's the newness factor, the "oh I can't quite predict where we're going with this", the utter delight at being surprised in any capacity. The more you read, the less you get this high—unless you continue to ride the waves of the multiple genre/novella/emerging novels landscape. But Not Too Bold is one of those new little babies, and I'm thrilled to report it's worth your time if you're like me and looking for something fresh and fun to devour in one sitting. Some people might not call this a positive thing, but I also loved that this novella felt like a highly structured fairytale—almost like an episodic play?—with its various acts and vignette-like approach to the narrative. I think this element made the relatively simple plot much stronger, and it added to the story's overall sense of timelessness. And also, let's discuss the monster in the room--this novel has a VERY strong spider motif to it, and let's just say I was thrilled to see that in practice and done in a surprisingly unique way. I'll also keep this note vague here... because short novellas are very hard to discuss without spoiling part of the magic... but there's a highly romantic component to this story that honestly made me realize that there's a large demographic of romance/fluffy readers out there who would love this tale if it was described to them. This is a sweet story? And I think there's a group of non-horror readers who would love this one.  4.5 stars
The pandemic. Discrimination against Asians. Hungry ghosts. A string of murders. And the death of a sibling. Bat Eater pulls no punches and is happy to do it. It wants you to witness. Full disclosure: I would never have picked up this horror novel if not for the Evernight subscription box. I usually avoid sibling death in all things as it's one of the worst realities I can imagine for myself and, frankly, I don't want to read about it in any context. But this book came to me via a subscription box, and so I felt I needed to give it a go. It would only be polite, right? When I tell you I was hooked by the first few chapters—wow. This author really captured my attention with just a few extremely well-constructed scenes. And then we were off to the races, this book and I, and I finished it in one day. Cora Zeng's entire life changes on one fateful day in the first few weeks of the 2020 COVID pandemic in New York City. Her and her sister traveled far looking for toilet paper—remember the TP panic??—and they finally found some in China Town. They're in the subway waiting alone for the train when the unthinkable happens. A white man in disguise pushes Cora's sister onto the tracks. She's dead. In the aftermath of the unthinkable, Cora weathers the pandemic with poor grace. She's in heavy grief, she's dealing with some severe mental health struggles in the OCD and germophobic vein, and she's almost completely alone and afraid. Oh, and jobless and broke. So she picks a job that makes no sense for her set of personal issues, but a job is a job in this pandemic landscape: she becomes a crime scene cleaner. Cora notices a disturbing pattern: she's cleaning up an inordinate amount of Asian women's gruesome deaths. All of them horrifically involving bats. Bat eater = the derogatory slur toward Asian people that spread around during the pandemic due to the false and bigoted concept that the COVID virus came from bats>Asian people eat bats>Asian people are the source/problem of the pandemic. Between the horrifying deaths, Cora's grief, and the newly emerging sense that some sort of violent ghost is following her—despite her lack of belief in ghosts—Cora's left with no way out but through. She'll get to the bottom of these mysteries before the mysteries come for her. Oof. Bat Eater was gripping... but also heavy. It needed to be, given its heavy topics and the larger conversations that the author wanted to highlight in regard to anti-Asian discrimination, how hate crimes against Asians rose during the pandemic, and how the lingering traumas of that time are still with us as a culture. So much of our media doesn't address or acknowledge the pandemic. Don't you think that's strange? Maybe you don't—maybe you, like me and everyone else, don't like to think about that time period of fear and mass hysteria that dominated our lives for years and really set us back, globally, on a massive scale. We became more animal versions of ourselves, we isolated more than just our bodies, we unlearned our niceties, we stripped our generations of valuable skills and removed a lot of their social protections. It makes so much sense why a horror novel should include the pandemic—what was the pandemic, if not our own global horror story? To combine the pandemic horror + Chinese hungry ghost storyline + a grief narrative was a deftly done, heavyweight punch. Hats off to Kylie Lee Baker for making a novel that is hard to read but very well done. I recommend it to all who can handle the subject matters mentioned.  4 stars
I really, really enjoyed this one. Bit of an abrupt ending, but honestly that can be mostly forgiven because of the excellent creeping tension. I've had Dead Water on my radar for quite some time. When it came out, I saw quite a few mutuals online who hyped it up—the title, the cover, the description—and I was so excited. It sounded gothic adjacent, paranormal in a way I always love, and just plain atmospheric. But then the reviews trickled in, and I let them sway me. (Don't let them do that! Learn from me, another random reviewer trying to sway you! Lol.) People said this was boring, too long, not exciting, not horror enough, not interesting enough, not "enough" enough. I'm kind of at the point in my reading lifecycle where those kinds of negative reviews are almost like a siren call to me now. Usually, in my experience this means that a genre purist has found a book to be multi/hybrid genre and boyyy do they not like that. As a multi-genre person myself, I usually go OOooooo, alright, it's time for me. Dead Water is one of those multi-genre feeling stories. A little bit literary, a little bit gothic, a little bit horror, a little bit small-town isolated community diary, and a little bit fable. If you like book journeys where the point of the thing is to get a bone-deep sense of an entire community, this is the novel for you. The multiple POVs, the unflinching depictions of a large handful of flawed characters, their issues and wants and hates convalescing into one tangle with the backdrop of a creeping horror.... Yeah. That's the stuff. This literary-dominant atmospheric neo-Gothic northern island story is delicious if you're in it for the unfolding experience.  4 stars
I'm convinced Kristen Ashley has found a way to lace her words with addictive something or other's. There's no other explanation for the speed I read these books or the raw joy I get from them every. single. time. I love them all. And it's that time of year again--strap in with me and hear about this latest installment in the River Rain series! Finding the One is the 7th book in the River Rain series, which starts with After the Climb. If you care about order and starting from the top, I recommend you check out that first one! But, if you're a heathen like me who likes to jump into the middle of the fray, feel free to start right here with me at book 7. (I've read the last few River Rains, it's true, but I started with book 5 and I'm doing just fine 😉) Blake Sharp is a woman trying to move on from her past. Raised under the thumb of her mean socialite mother and in the limelight of the wealthy, Blake spent most of her life trying to be her mother and then, recently, trying to change that fact and find her own way. It's been a rough journey. And it wasn't helped by her dramatic--and mean spirited--shunning of her fiance at their altar in reaction to his cheating. Her overnight social media viral fame from that incident also didn't help. So, suffice to say, Blake's been THROUGH IT. And she's convinced that soft things, good things, romantic things, are not for her. Her previous mean-girl, messy-rich persona doesn't help. But then there's Alisdair "Dair" Wallace, her childhood friend-slash-occasional nemesis. Dair's been in Blake's orbit since they were in single digits. He's Scottish, he's a former rugby sports star, and he's always seen Blake for more than what she presents. In traditional Kristen Ashley style, Dair's the kind of man who's going to move in on that action plan because there's no time like the present. Add in a heavy dash of KA's drama and flair, and we're in for a gooooood time. I feel like a broken record when I write these Kristen Ashley reviews, but it's worth repeating each time: I just love her stories. I love them all, even when they're not for me and/or not the same level as other ones. I'm pleased to report that Finding the One is, predictably, just as good as my other KAs. In fact, it had some unique, mature romance themes to it that I really appreciated! To call out one element of this River Rain series in particular--I love this blended family of blood relatives, friends, and found family. They might be richer than God (and with that aristocratic lifestyle to match) but wow do they love and support each other in a way that I just adore every time. Come for the feels, stay for the feels. And pick up another KA the minute to you finish this one because it'll give you that bug like they all do...  3.5 stars
Divorce yourself from the idea that this author is the same one who wrote If We Were Villains—the writing feels like her, but that constant comparison is going to make you dislike this slim novella. I enjoyed this micro slice-of-life into 5 interesting peoples’ lives and their weird crossed paths. Extremely well written, wry, and emotionally complex while maintaining a distanced third person POV in a way that I always personally appreciate. It was with less enjoyment that I came to terms with the fact that we’re still, for some reason, culturally stuck on the mycelium horror landscape that has been so thoroughly covered by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, T Kingfisher, and others. I am tired of that concept and wish it was done with more nuance / new elements. Already anticipating the next from ML Rio. (But please, let’s retire the fungus for a bit.) |
Amy Imogene ReadsJust someone looking for her own door into Wonderland. Categories
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All reviews posted are my own and do not reflect the opinions of any other individual or entity. When applicable, reviewed titles sent to me by the publisher are noted at the bottom of each review.
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