Kyle's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 04 Apr 2025 16:27:36 -0700 60 Kyle's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Impossible Fortress 30893019 The Impossible Fortress will make you remember what it feels like to love someone—or something—for the first time.

Billy Marvin’s first love was his computer.

Then he met Mary Zelinsky.

Do you remember your first love?

It’s May 1987. Fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin of Wetbridge, New Jersey, is a nerd, but a decidedly happy nerd. Afternoons are spent with his buddies, watching copious amounts of television, gorging on Pop-Tarts, debating who would win in a brawl (Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. or T.J. Hooker?), and programming video games on his Commodore 64 late into the night. Then Playboy magazine publishes photos of their idol, Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, Billy meets expert computer programmer Mary Zelinsky, and everything changes.
]]> 320 Jason Rekulak 1501144421 Kyle 0 to-read 3.81 2017 The Impossible Fortress
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Of Monsters and Mainframes 216881365 Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.

Demeter just wants to do her shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.

To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.

The queer love child of pulp horror and ​classic ​sci-fi, Of Monsters and ​Mainframes ​is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.]]> 416 Barbara Truelove 196472113X Kyle 0 to-read 1.00 Of Monsters and Mainframes
author: Barbara Truelove
name: Kyle
average rating: 1.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Clown in a Cornfield (Clown in a Cornfield, #1)]]> 49046268
Quinn and her father moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs to find a fresh start. But ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.

Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.]]> 346 Adam Cesare 0062854593 Kyle 0 currently-reading, horror, ya 3.73 2020 Clown in a Cornfield (Clown in a Cornfield, #1)
author: Adam Cesare
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: currently-reading, horror, ya
review:

]]> The Beauty, Vol. 1 27753928
In the world of The Beauty, physical perfection is only one sexual encounter away. The vast majority of the population has taken advantage of it, but Detectives Vaughn and Foster will soon discover it comes at a terrible cost. Now, they'll have to find their way past corrupt poiticians, vengeful federal agents, and a terrifying mercenary out to collect the price on their heads.

Collects the first six issues of the critically acclaimed, Pilot Season winning series by writer/artist JEREMY HAUN (Constantine, Batwoman) and co-writer JASON A. HURLEY.

...a high concept that is, frankly, genius... - multiversitycomics.com
This is absolutely a book to check out. - all-comic.com
...one of the strongest introductions to a series in a long time... comicbookresources.com"]]> 164 Jeremy Haun 1632155508 Kyle 0 to-read 3.72 2016 The Beauty, Vol. 1
author: Jeremy Haun
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> It's Not the End of the World 217593457 From the acclaimed author of Yes, Daddy; It's Not the End of the World is a terrifying climate thriller, a vicious takedown of the uber-wealthy, and a queer family saga that isn't afraid to punch back.

It's 2044 and life is bleak for many Americans, but not for Mason Daunt. Safe in his Los Angeles mansion, Mason can remain blissfully unaware of the relentless wildfires engulfing California, the proliferation of violent right-wing militias, and the rampant authoritarianism destroying American society. He's so rich, in fact, that he and his partner Yunho Kim are throwing a 100-person, $100,000 baby shower to celebrate their newborn-on-the-way. When a potentially apocalyptic event hits Los Angeles on the day of their celebration, though, the wealthy gay couple refuses to cancel their party. Surely it's not the end of the world? But as Mason runs a few last-minute errands, a staggering twist thrusts him into the mounting chaos, and threatens the lives of everyone he holds dear.

Shot through with biting wit, brutal gore, primal sex, and unexpected catharsis, It's Not the End of the World is a nerve-shredding roller coaster of a novel that will leave readers shocked, heartbroken, and inspired to question their most firmly held convictions. What happens when our current battles with climate change, capitalism, and white supremacy are pushed to their breaking points? And how can we find hope?]]> 384 Jonathan Parks-Ramage 163973614X Kyle 0 to-read 4.09 2025 It's Not the End of the World
author: Jonathan Parks-Ramage
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devil All the Time 11976361 The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.� There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.]]> 261 Donald Ray Pollock 1846555418 Kyle 2 literature-fiction And I just can’t do it.

DNF]]> 4.01 2011 The Devil All the Time
author: Donald Ray Pollock
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2020/09/08
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: literature-fiction
review:
I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried...
And I just can’t do it.

DNF
]]> The Witch 25130532 A terrifying short story from Shirley Jackson, the master of the macabre tale.Shirley Jackson's chilling tales of creeping unease and random cruelty have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. When her story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail. It became known as one of the greatest short stories ever written. Have you read her yet?'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt'An amazing writer ... if you haven't read any of her short stories ... you have missed out on something marvellous' Neil Gaiman'Her stories are stunning, timeless - as relevant and terrifying now as when they were first published ... 'The Lottery' is so much an icon in the history of the American short story that one could argue it has moved from the canon of American twentieth-century fiction directly into the American psyche, our collective unconscious' A. M. Homes Shirley Jackson was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.]]> 11 Shirley Jackson Kyle 0 to-read 3.60 1949 The Witch
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gifted & Talented 211004124 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.

Where there’s a will, there’s a war.

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.

Or at least, so they like to think.

Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You're welcome! If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.

Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.

Eilidh, once the world's most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth—by confirming she'd been his favorite all along.

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins—but which Wren will come out on top?]]> 512 Olivie Blake 1250883407 Kyle 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Gifted & Talented
author: Olivie Blake
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Pairing 199352366
Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It's in the past.

All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.]]> 432 Casey McQuiston 1250864054 Kyle 0 lgbtqia, to-read, sidelined Pigs are flying and they’re building snowmen in Hell.
I’m actually interested in reading this.
Shocker!
I’ll give Casey McQuiston another shot.
]]> 3.86 2024 The Pairing
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: lgbtqia, to-read, sidelined
review:
Alright, fine, okay, you got me�
Pigs are flying and they’re building snowmen in Hell.
I’m actually interested in reading this.
Shocker!
I’ll give Casey McQuiston another shot.

]]> <![CDATA[The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)]]> 52483192 An Alternative Cover Edition can be found here

A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 396 T.J. Klune 1250217318 Kyle 5 4.47 2020 The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: favorites, lgbtqia, sf-fantasy
review:

]]> Audition 7280651 191 Ryū Murakami 039333841X Kyle 0 to-read 3.43 1997 Audition
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Monkey (Skeleton Crew, #3)]]> 43456399
The Monkey (Stephen King) In Stephen King's story of the same name, The Monkey is an enigmatic toy that brings doom every time it claps its cymbals together. It serves as one of King's notable short story monsters and appears on many covers of Skeleton Crew.]]> 52 Stephen King Kyle 2 horror 3.51 1980 The Monkey (Skeleton Crew, #3)
author: Stephen King
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1980
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: horror
review:

]]> Separate Rooms 217482296
He travels through Europe where past and present overlap, years merge and faces emerge - and where reminders of the life he and Thomas shared are on every corner. Leo's memories become clearer with every road he takes, much as he wishes he could simply forget. While alive, and wanting to preserve the passion of their relationship, Leo had forced Thomas to live separately: in separate rooms, separate towns, with separate lives. But now, face to face with true solitude, Leo must finally reckon with the impossible striving of memory to recreate life and, ultimately, cross an ocean to find the strength to go on.

André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name meets Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: Separate Rooms is a singular and unforgettable meditation on almost-ideal love, told in three musical movements, by a fiery and unforgettable literary talent.]]> 256 Pier Vittorio Tondelli 1638932085 Kyle 0 to-read 3.48 1989 Separate Rooms
author: Pier Vittorio Tondelli
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 217313011
In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

By an “endlessly inventive� (Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor� (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new.]]> 432 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820710 Kyle 0 to-read 4.41 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hot Wax 224103430 The new novel from the bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift—a vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills� wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.]]> 400 M.L. Rio 1668070022 Kyle 0 to-read 3.94 2025 Hot Wax
author: M.L. Rio
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Half Wild (The Half Bad Trilogy)]]> 25716575
"An enthralling fantasy in the Harry Potter tradition."� Time magazine on Half Bad

Kept in a cage for two years by the Council of Fairborn Witches, Nathan was trained to kill his father, the most violent and feared of the Blood Witches. Now Nathan has escaped, and he dreams of a quiet life of freedom with Annalise, the girl he loves—but Annalise is a prisoner, wasting away in a deathlike sleep. Nathan’s friend, Gabriel, is missing, likely dead, and although Nathan has found his unique magical Gift, he can’t control it. The Council's Hunters are on his trail, so he is always on the run. Nathan's only hope of survival is to join with new allies and old enemies in an alliance to bring down the Council, and they want Nathan's help: they, too, want Nathan to be a killer. Maybe that is the only way out. Maybe that is just who he is now�

Set in modern-day Europe, the second book in the Half Bad trilogy is more than a story about witches. It's a heart-poundingly visceral look at survival and exploitation, the nature of good and evil, and the risks we take for love.

Now streaming on Netflix as The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself .]]> 412 Sally Green 0147511933 Kyle 3 lgbtqia, sf-fantasy, ya 3.98 2015 Half Wild (The Half Bad Trilogy)
author: Sally Green
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2016/09/13
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: lgbtqia, sf-fantasy, ya
review:

]]> None of This Is True 199797783 This edition contains a bonus chapter.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 400 Lisa Jewell 1982179015 Kyle 0 to-read 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Orphanage by the Lake (The Orphanage by the Lake, #1)]]> 221206051 A MISSING GIRL. AN ORPHANAGE FILLED WITH SECRETS.

Hazel wants a new life.

She's thirty years old, single, and her private investigation business is months away from folding.

Her luck takes a turn when Madeline Hemsley, a mysterious socialite, pays Hazel a visit with an offer too enticing to resist. An orphan girl has disappeared from a children's home—The Orphanage By The Lake, as the locals call it—and Madeline wants Hazel to find her.

At first glance, it appears to be a standard runaway case, but as Hazel plunges into the investigation, she finds signs of something unexplained blood stains, cryptic symbols, sinister figures shadowing her every move. The more she digs, the more she realizes that The Orphanage By The Lake holds terrifying secrets, and even worse�

…so does Madeline.

Fans of Freida McFadden's The Housemaid, Charlie Donlea's The Girl Who Was Taken, and Karin Slaughter's Pretty Girls will love this twisty, suspenseful thill-ride.]]> 336 Daniel G. Miller 146424636X Kyle 0 to-read 3.84 2024 The Orphanage by the Lake (The Orphanage by the Lake, #1)
author: Daniel G. Miller
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> At Dark, I Become Loathsome 210401293 From Eric LaRocca—Bram Stoker Award–nominated and Splatterpunk Award–winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke—comes At Dark, I Become Loathsome, a grim yet gentle, horrifying yet hopeful, intense tale of death, trauma, and love.

“If you’re reading this, you’ve likely thought that the world would be a better place without you.�

A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought the same—and worse—in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for him—it’s for those he can help. Ashley has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life.

Struggling to overcome his own endless grief, one night Ashley finds connection with Jinx—a potential candidate for Ashley’s next ritual—who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. Thus begins a relationship that traps the two men in an ever-tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.

Only through pain can we find healing. Only through death can we find new life.]]> 240 Eric LaRocca Kyle 0 to-read 3.45 2025 At Dark, I Become Loathsome
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (Hercule Poirot, #23)]]> 6473205
Even the great detective Hercule Poirot harbored a deep and abiding fear of the dentist, so it was with some trepidation that he arrived at the celebrated Dr. Morley’s surgery for a dental examination. But what neither of them knew was that only hours later Poirot would be back to examine the dentist, found dead in his own surgery.

Turning to the other patients for answers, Poirot finds other, darker, questions.…]]> 224 Agatha Christie Kyle 3 mystery-thriller 4.03 1940 One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (Hercule Poirot, #23)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1940
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: mystery-thriller
review:
A little too convoluted, but a decent mystery overall.
]]> <![CDATA[Never Flinch (Holly Gibney, #4)]]> 221633230 From master storyteller Stephen King comes an extraordinary new novel with intertwining storylines—one about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker—featuring the beloved Holly Gibney and a dynamic new cast of characters.

When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty� in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,� Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realizes that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.

Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard—a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and his belief in his own righteousness.

Featuring a riveting cast of characters both old and new, including world-famous gospel singer Sista Bessie and an unforgettable villain addicted to murder, these twinned narratives converge in a chilling and spectacular conclusion—a feat of storytelling only Stephen King could pull off.

Thrilling, wildly fun, and outrageously engrossing, Never Flinch is one of King’s richest and most propulsive novels.]]> 448 Stephen King 1668089335 Kyle 0 to-read 3.60 2025 Never Flinch (Holly Gibney, #4)
author: Stephen King
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Katabasis 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 Kyle 0 to-read 4.24 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1)]]> 211003690 An epic fantasy of vampires, werewolves and sorcerers, Lightfall is the debut novel of Ed Crocker, for fans of Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire and Richard Swan’s The Justice of Kings.

No humans here. Just immortals: their politics, their feuds—and their long buried secrets.

For centuries, vampires freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night. The survivors fled to the last vampire city of First Light, where the rules are simple. If you’re poor, you drink weak blood. If you’re nobility, you get the good stuff. And you can never, ever leave.

Palace maid Sam has had enough of these rules, and she’s definitely had enough of cleaning the bedpans of the lords who enforce them. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and she finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords. Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.

There’s just one problem. What began as a murder investigation has uncovered a vast conspiracy by the ruling elite, and now Sam must find the truth before she becomes another victim. If she can avoid getting murdered, she might just live forever.]]> 384 Ed Crocker 1250287731 Kyle 0 to-read 3.55 2025 Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1)
author: Ed Crocker
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Man Made of Smoke 217387838 The latest gripping serial killer thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Alex North.

Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child—narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?

With his signature shock and suspense, Alex North brings us The Man Made of Smoke. In turn emotional, introspective, and utterly terrifying, this is a story of fathers and sons, shadows and secrets, and the fight we all face to escape the trauma of the past.]]> 320 Alex North 1250757894 Kyle 0 to-read 4.26 2025 The Man Made of Smoke
author: Alex North
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Book Will Bury Me 213570821 From the bestselling author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour comes a chilling, compulsive story of five amateur sleuths, whose hunt for an elusive killer catapults them into danger as the world watches.

It's the most famous crime in modern history. But only she knows the true story.

After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. In this morbid internet underground, Jane finds friendship, purpose, and even glory...

So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them. But the case turns out to be stranger than anyone expected. Details don't add up, the police are cagey, and there seems to be more media hype and internet theorizing than actual evidence. When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only begs more questions. Something's not adding up, and they begin to suspect their killer may be smarter and more prolific than any they've faced before. Placing themselves in the center of the story starts to feel more and more like walking into a trap...

Told one year after the astounding events that concluded the case and left the world reeling, when Jane has finally decided to break her silence about what really happened, she tells the true story of the Delphine Massacres. And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true crime fans...


]]> 480 Ashley Winstead 1728270006 Kyle 0 to-read 3.76 2025 This Book Will Bury Me
author: Ashley Winstead
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Emperor of Gladness 219848315 Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing � formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness � are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.]]> 416 Ocean Vuong 059383187X Kyle 0 to-read 4.36 2025 The Emperor of Gladness
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Of Monsters and Mainframes 216540053 Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.

Demeter just wants to do her shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.

To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.

The queer love child of pulp horror and ​classic ​sci-fi, Of Monsters and ​Mainframes ​is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.]]> 407 Barbara Truelove 1964721156 Kyle 0 to-read 4.51 Of Monsters and Mainframes
author: Barbara Truelove
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Friends 217163697 #1New York Timesbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Kyle 0 to-read 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How to Survive a Horror Story 219542927 Seven authors enter the manor

Can they survive the story within?

When legendary horror author Mortimer Queen passes, a group of writers find themselves invited to his last will and testament reading expecting a piece of his massive fortune. Each have their own unique connection to the literary icon, some known, some soon to be discovered, and they've been waiting for their chance to step into the author's shoes for some time.

Instead, they arrive at his grand manor and are invited to play a game. The rules are simple, solve the riddle and progress to the next room. If they don't, the manor will take one of them for itself.

You see, the Queen estate was built on the bones of Mortimer's family, and like any true horror story, the house is still very, very hungry.

With the clever, locked-room thrills of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone with the ghostly horror of The Fall of the House of Usher, How to Survive a Horror Story is a bright, biting, thrill-ride that begs us to contemplate how the best horror stories come to be.]]> 368 Mallory Arnold 1464227403 Kyle 0 to-read 3.75 2025 How to Survive a Horror Story
author: Mallory Arnold
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Red, White & Royal Blue 41150487
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?]]> 448 Casey McQuiston 1250316774 Kyle 1 To NetGalley, the publisher, and the author: thank you to the moon and back for providing me with this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, don’t hate me for this, because my review is certainly in the minority when it comes to this book; I simply couldn’t make up my mind: one star? Two stars? Three stars? Oftentimes, I was annoyed by it� the biased politics� more than that, perpetually frustrated about all the lovey-dovey stuff and incessant faire l'amour (it was damn excessive!!). Then again, there were moments that really struck me deep, and Lord knows I’m an emotional reader. One key scene towards the end made me tear up a bit, and it’s not often that happens. So, kudos for that. I know this book is going to be a big hit for many people, and I’m fully prepared to defend my unpopular opinion from here on out.

Let me say this: it was very clear from the beginning how this story was going to end. It wasn’t surprising... like, at all! But, the joy should be in the journey no matter the outcome, right? Well... no. It was written nicely at times (but mostly it’s a very tumblr/fanfic/glib mess). There were many moments of inspired, descriptive passages and pretty prose, sure, but... It’s a shame that you had to trudge through the too-frequent, unrealistically crude, sarcastic banter to get to it, though, so...

Almost every side character is a person of color, and there’s lots of lgbtq representation, which should feel great, but instead comes off as incredibly forced (which sucks)� like a diversity checklist. The inclusion of multiple POC I perceived as only to be used as a statement, which feels wrong somehow. I dig that here the First Family is biracial, but again, it didn’t feel organic (couldn’t it just be, “This is us. This is who we are� and leave it at that? Instead of it trying to hammer home social commentary?). It’s totally all contrived political correctness. The rep is important: we have multiple LGBTQIA+ characters caricatures, that came off as disingenuous stereotypes. But mostly, for the entirety of the novel, I couldn’t connect with the MCs. They didn’t feel real enough: too smug, snarky, narcissistic, and the romance was all-consuming (and I hate that)... Give me diversity and representation, but let it make sense! Let it be real!!!

A hell of a lot happens in the first 10% of the book (it felt like it was crammed in, or one giant prologue that’s multiple chapters long): White House to London, back to USA, then London again, a wedding and three public events� I didn’t know how it was going to be dragged out for the remaining 90%. I wish more time was actually focused on a few of Alex and Henry’s outings earlier on, because they came and went so fast I got whiplash: the trip to the stables was over in a blink, the talk show (I think it was?) was probably a paragraph or two before it jumped abruptly into a charity event. There was SO MUCH room for elaboration... these were missed opportunities for interesting depth progression, and could’ve saved on so much unnecessarily long-winded ramblings later on. After about a third of the way through, the books starts to evolve into something different� more sincere, if you will. It’s a welcome shift. The first 30-odd percent seems like an infinitely different story/tone.

(Side note: the whole ‘young adults debate Star Wars� schtick is SO overdone).

Speaking of Young Adult, I know this is technically billed as NA (all the main characters are in their early twenties), but it is tagged overwhelmingly as YA here on ŷ. It is MUCH closer to Adult than anything, even though there is a huge identity crisis happening in this novel: sometimes it screams YA, and then other times characters are talking about anal sex with 18 f-bombs in three sentences. Fair warning for anyone sensitive to it: there is extremely frequent crude/crass language, and lots of graphic sexual material � one of the more... intimate scenes plays out for like, several pages (too long, in my opinion). We get like, a dozen (I am not exaggerating!) different sex scenes. Now, I’m no prude (and wholly sex positive), but that’s just TOO-F*CKING-MANY! Like, chill out and put it back in your pants, McQuiston. Something with this much fanfiction-y smut getting tagged as YA is beyond me...

I also can’t believe I’m saying this, but there was just waaaay too much banter for my liking. It was all “sharp� millennial humor all the goddamn time. I craved moments of actual sarcasm-less depth and seriousness, and was frequently disappointed most of the way through, which was often, because this book is OVERLONG! I was constantly checking my progress, because the story just dragsssss and I wanted it to pick up the pace.

So, yeah, I feel let down from a great height. That is all.]]> 4.06 2019 Red, White & Royal Blue
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 1
read at: 2019/04/17
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: netgalley, lgbtqia, worst-of-the-worst
review:
Original review:
To NetGalley, the publisher, and the author: thank you to the moon and back for providing me with this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, don’t hate me for this, because my review is certainly in the minority when it comes to this book; I simply couldn’t make up my mind: one star? Two stars? Three stars? Oftentimes, I was annoyed by it� the biased politics� more than that, perpetually frustrated about all the lovey-dovey stuff and incessant faire l'amour (it was damn excessive!!). Then again, there were moments that really struck me deep, and Lord knows I’m an emotional reader. One key scene towards the end made me tear up a bit, and it’s not often that happens. So, kudos for that. I know this book is going to be a big hit for many people, and I’m fully prepared to defend my unpopular opinion from here on out.

Let me say this: it was very clear from the beginning how this story was going to end. It wasn’t surprising... like, at all! But, the joy should be in the journey no matter the outcome, right? Well... no. It was written nicely at times (but mostly it’s a very tumblr/fanfic/glib mess). There were many moments of inspired, descriptive passages and pretty prose, sure, but... It’s a shame that you had to trudge through the too-frequent, unrealistically crude, sarcastic banter to get to it, though, so...

Almost every side character is a person of color, and there’s lots of lgbtq representation, which should feel great, but instead comes off as incredibly forced (which sucks)� like a diversity checklist. The inclusion of multiple POC I perceived as only to be used as a statement, which feels wrong somehow. I dig that here the First Family is biracial, but again, it didn’t feel organic (couldn’t it just be, “This is us. This is who we are� and leave it at that? Instead of it trying to hammer home social commentary?). It’s totally all contrived political correctness. The rep is important: we have multiple LGBTQIA+ characters caricatures, that came off as disingenuous stereotypes. But mostly, for the entirety of the novel, I couldn’t connect with the MCs. They didn’t feel real enough: too smug, snarky, narcissistic, and the romance was all-consuming (and I hate that)... Give me diversity and representation, but let it make sense! Let it be real!!!

A hell of a lot happens in the first 10% of the book (it felt like it was crammed in, or one giant prologue that’s multiple chapters long): White House to London, back to USA, then London again, a wedding and three public events� I didn’t know how it was going to be dragged out for the remaining 90%. I wish more time was actually focused on a few of Alex and Henry’s outings earlier on, because they came and went so fast I got whiplash: the trip to the stables was over in a blink, the talk show (I think it was?) was probably a paragraph or two before it jumped abruptly into a charity event. There was SO MUCH room for elaboration... these were missed opportunities for interesting depth progression, and could’ve saved on so much unnecessarily long-winded ramblings later on. After about a third of the way through, the books starts to evolve into something different� more sincere, if you will. It’s a welcome shift. The first 30-odd percent seems like an infinitely different story/tone.

(Side note: the whole ‘young adults debate Star Wars� schtick is SO overdone).

Speaking of Young Adult, I know this is technically billed as NA (all the main characters are in their early twenties), but it is tagged overwhelmingly as YA here on ŷ. It is MUCH closer to Adult than anything, even though there is a huge identity crisis happening in this novel: sometimes it screams YA, and then other times characters are talking about anal sex with 18 f-bombs in three sentences. Fair warning for anyone sensitive to it: there is extremely frequent crude/crass language, and lots of graphic sexual material � one of the more... intimate scenes plays out for like, several pages (too long, in my opinion). We get like, a dozen (I am not exaggerating!) different sex scenes. Now, I’m no prude (and wholly sex positive), but that’s just TOO-F*CKING-MANY! Like, chill out and put it back in your pants, McQuiston. Something with this much fanfiction-y smut getting tagged as YA is beyond me...

I also can’t believe I’m saying this, but there was just waaaay too much banter for my liking. It was all “sharp� millennial humor all the goddamn time. I craved moments of actual sarcasm-less depth and seriousness, and was frequently disappointed most of the way through, which was often, because this book is OVERLONG! I was constantly checking my progress, because the story just dragsssss and I wanted it to pick up the pace.

So, yeah, I feel let down from a great height. That is all.
]]> Atmosphere 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Kyle 0 to-read 4.44 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Listeners 56988057
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats� secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.]]> 400 Maggie Stiefvater 0593655508 Kyle 0 to-read 4.04 2025 The Listeners
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> When the Wolf Comes Home 211004893
As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they're up against, but she's about to learn there's more to these surreal and grisly events than she could've ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.]]> 304 Nat Cassidy 125035434X Kyle 0 to-read 4.57 2025 When the Wolf Comes Home
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 Kyle 0 to-read 4.29 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Darkly 208430757
As Dia and her fellow interns delve into the heart of Darkly, they discover hidden symbols, buried clues, and a web of intrigue. Who are these other teens, and what secrets do they keep? Why were any of them really chosen? The answers lie within the twisted labyrinth of Darkly.]]> 399 Marisha Pessl 0593706552 Kyle 0 3.71 2024 Darkly
author: Marisha Pessl
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: currently-reading, mystery-thriller, ya
review:

]]> Coup de Grâce 204642427 A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.

Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station.

Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight.

The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn’t been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone.

A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.]]> 139 Sofia Ajram 1803369620 Kyle 0 to-read 3.10 2024 Coup de Grâce
author: Sofia Ajram
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Letters to the Purple Satin Killer]]> 192631777 340 Joshua Chaplinsky 1960988093 Kyle 0 to-read 3.97 2024 Letters to the Purple Satin Killer
author: Joshua Chaplinsky
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Believe in Mister Bones 210630860
The recipient: Daniel Addams, one half of the Texas small press known as Fiendish Books, co-run with his wife Eileen.

Despite being closed for submissions, curiosity gets the best of him and he takes a look at the anonymous author’s bizarre manuscript—only to find himself obsessed with the titular Mister Bones, a mysterious entity rumored to steal your bones as you sleep, one by one, until he's replaced your entire skeleton with an unknown substance.

But is Mister Bones real, and has Daniel unintentionally summoned him?

Or, as Eileen suspects, has he finally cracked from stress and lost his mind?

From the writer of WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING and ABNORMAL STATISTICS comes Max Booth III’s I BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES, a harrowing exploration of indie horror publishing, internet curses, and the universal terror of the human skeleton.]]> 392 Max Booth III 1954899181 Kyle 0 to-read 4.27 2024 I Believe in Mister Bones
author: Max Booth III
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> From the Belly 210671256
As their relationship grows, a series of accidents, injuries and deaths quickly befall the ship and its crew. Isaiah is plagued by strangely prophetic dreams, even as the crew continues their endless quest for whale oil under the command of an increasingly unhinged captain.

As events spiral further out of control, the mysterious man confesses what Isaiah has begun to the crew of The Merciful has fallen into a cycle of punishment for their greed and destruction. Isaiah must confront the sea's vengeance made flesh, and choose between this new, strange love and the fate of the ship itself.]]> 284 Emmett Nahil 1959790099 Kyle 0 to-read 4.08 2024 From the Belly
author: Emmett Nahil
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Let Me Out 101134451
When Pastor Holley's wife, Kelly, is found murdered, FBI agent Garrett takes on the case with local New Jersey Sheriff Mullen. Together they start drumming up a convenient satanic-flavored scapegoat to cover up their own crimes of murder and experimentation. That scapegoat comes in the form of four Mitch, Terri, Lupe, and Jackson. The punks, the queers, and the outcasts. Soon the group becomes the prime suspects of Kelly's murder. Now on the run from Garrett and Mullen, the group finds themselves in the midst of a deal with the devil themself.]]> 200 Emmett Nahil 1637152361 Kyle 0 to-read 3.80 2023 Let Me Out
author: Emmett Nahil
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol. 1]]> 85166107 180 Mokumokuren 1975360540 Kyle 0 to-read 4.35 2022 The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol. 1
author: Mokumokuren
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dark Heir (Dark Rise, #2) 199531867 496 C.S. Pacat 0062946188 Kyle 0 to-read 4.54 2023 Dark Heir (Dark Rise, #2)
author: C.S. Pacat
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bel-Ami 780581 416 Guy de Maupassant 0140443150 Kyle 0 to-read 3.85 1885 Bel-Ami
author: Guy de Maupassant
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1885
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sneaky Lass (The Silver Locket, #1)]]> 61069246
Flying no colors and desperate for crew, Sneaky Lass is a damaged brig in no position to look too closely at any volunteers, no matter how ill-suited to sea life they may be.

After a series of decisions Jane can’t turn back from, she commits one final act of desperation; she dons stolen boots, shorn hair, and the name Dixon Ables to take up with the crew of Sneaky Lass. Now she finds herself in a position where she must keep up her boyish disguise or be thrown into the briny deep.

Concrete plans to leave the ship at the next port turn fluid as Jane becomes enamored by the mystery of the ropes, the lullaby of waves against the hull, and the wind in the sails.

That the crewmen are far from the salty rogues she expected doesn't help her resolve. Among the filthy men, the roar of cannons, the critical eye of a whip-wielding quartermaster, and beneath the weight of her own lies, Jane finds something she long believed a fantasy—Family.

Even the frequent gaze of the fine and fair-minded captain isn't enough to send her towards shore� yet. She doesn't want to sacrifice everything until she is sure he knows her secret, or perhaps his attentions are something else, something more.
The problem is her new life belongs to the man called Dixon, not the woman called Jane.

The longer she stays aboard Sneaky Lass, the closer she grows to losing everything she's come to value; new friends, the only home she's ever known, her life.
Deceptions are difficult on land, but in the close quarters of a pirate ship, they can be deadly.]]> 280 Kennedy Sutton 1958453005 Kyle 0 to-read 4.50 2022 The Sneaky Lass (The Silver Locket, #1)
author: Kennedy Sutton
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Thirteenth Hour (The Cruel Gods, #1)]]> 58796055 When the saints fail, the sinners step up.

Cruel gods rule the steam-powered city of Chime, demanding worship and tribute from their mortal subjects. Kayl lost her faith in them long ago, and now seeks to protect vulnerable and downtrodden mortals from their gods� whims. But when Kayl discovers powers that she didn’t know she had—and destroys a mortal’s soul by accident—she becomes Chime’s most wanted.

Quen’s job was to pursue sinners, until the visions started. Haunted by foreboding images of his beloved city’s destruction, Quen hunts soul-sucking creatures made of aether who prey on its citizens—and Kayl is his number one target.

To ensure Chime’s future, Kayl and Quen must discover the truth of Kayl’s divine abilities before the gods take matters into their own hands.

For a city that bows to cruel gods, it’ll take godless heathens to save it.

The Thirteenth Hour is the first book in The Cruel Gods series—a gaslamp fantasy featuring magical portals, gothic cosmic deities, quaint Britishisms, and steampunk vibes. This is an adult book containing strong language and mature themes that some readers may find disturbing. For a full list of content warnings, visit Trudie Skies's website.]]> 535 Trudie Skies 1399900676 Kyle 0 to-read 4.14 2021 The Thirteenth Hour (The Cruel Gods, #1)
author: Trudie Skies
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and U.S. Government Teamed Up to Win World War II]]> 60277155 The never-before-told true story of how mobster Charles “Lucky� Luciano—the U.S. Mafia boss who put the “organized� into organized crime—was recruited by U.S. Naval Intelligence to turn the tide of WWII.

In 1942, a rational fear was mounting that New York Harbor was vulnerable to sabotage. If the waterfront was infested with German and Italian agents then the U.S. Navy needed a recourse just as insidious to secure it.

Naval intelligence officer, Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden had the solution: recruit as his own spies, members of La Cosa Nostra. Pier to pier, no one terrified the longshoremen, stevedores, shopkeepers, and boat captains along the harbor better than the Mafia gangs of New York, who controlled the docks in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Haffenden was prepared to make a deal with the devil–the man who put “organized� into organized crime. Even from his cell in Dannemora State Prison, former Public Enemy #1, Charles “Lucky� Luciano still had tremendous power. Luciano was willing to wield it for Haffenden. But he wanted something in return—Luciano’s contacts in Italy to track the Nazis� movements.

Operation Underworld is a tale of espionage and crime like no other, the unbelievable, first-ever account of the Allied war effort’s clandestine coalition between the Mafia and the U.S. Government to protect New York, vanquish the Nazis by taking the fight to the enemy in the 1943 U.S. invasion of Sicily. It was an ingenious strategy carried out by some of history’s most infamous, improbable, and unsung heroes on both sides of the law. It was a Faustian bargain that brought homefront enemies together but, as journalist and crime historian Matthew Black reveals, one that ultimately succeeded in helping the Allies win World War II.]]> 336 Matthew Black 0806542152 Kyle 0 to-read 3.80 2022 Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and U.S. Government Teamed Up to Win World War II
author: Matthew Black
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Middle of the Night 199026522 In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?

The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.

The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.]]> 367 Riley Sager 0593472373 Kyle 0 3.66 2024 Middle of the Night
author: Riley Sager
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: mystery-thriller, to-read, sidelined
review:

]]> The Future Was Color 195931090 A dazzling novel about making art, desire, and the inextricable link between the personal and the political set against the decadence of post-war Los Angeles, for readers of Garth Greenwell and Eve Babitz

George is a Hungarian immigrant working as a studio hack writing monster movies in 1950s Los Angeles. He must navigate the McCarthy era studio system filled with possible Communists and spies; the life of closeted men along Sunset Boulevard; the inability of the era to disassemble love from persecution and guilt. But when a famous actress named Madeleine offers George a “writing residency� at her estate in Malibu to work on the political writing he cares most deeply about, his world changes dramatically. Soon it’s drinks by the pool every night, pleasure in every direction, and Madeleine carrying him like an ornament into a class of postwar L.A. society ordinarily hidden from men like him.

What this lifestyle hides behind, aside from the monsters on the screen, are the monsters dwelling closer to home: this endless bacchanalia covers a gnawing hole shelled wide by the horror of the war they’d thought they left behind. Beneath his newfound relationships lie the pernicious forces of the American political project. And what George can never escape: his past as György, the queer Jew who fled Budapest before the war, landing in New York all alone a decade prior. In New York as in California, the people he loves aren’t what they seem—and neither is his adopted country, one pretending to have transcended bigotry, authoritarianism, and violence. It is a novel as well as a historical document, upending our perceptions of just how personal the political can be.

Spanning from sun-drenched Los Angeles, to hidden corners of working-class New York, to a virtuosic climax in the Las Vegas desert, The Future Was Color is an immaculately written exploration of making art and reinventing the self, post-war American decadence, and the psychosis that lingers in a world that’s seen the bomb.]]> 224 Patrick Nathan 1640096248 Kyle 0 to-read 3.62 2024 The Future Was Color
author: Patrick Nathan
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In Tongues 195790706 A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery.

It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites� dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him―and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.

A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.

Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.]]> 288 Thomas Grattan 0374608180 Kyle 0 to-read 3.94 2024 In Tongues
author: Thomas Grattan
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Faust 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Kyle 4 3.90 1808 Faust
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: literature-fiction, sf-fantasy
review:

]]> The Luminous Dead 40696751 The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation� of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head.

But how come she can't shake the feeling she’s being followed?]]> 415 Caitlin Starling 0062846906 Kyle 0 to-read 3.61 2019 The Luminous Dead
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Murder at the End of the World]]> 216967150
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within one hundred and seven hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it...]]> 354 Stuart Turton 1728254655 Kyle 0 to-read 3.80 2024 The Last Murder at the End of the World
author: Stuart Turton
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> At Bertram's Hotel 41813214
The hotel is full of suspects who have potential motives—and convenient alibis. While the local inspector is preoccupied with a series of recent robberies, only Miss Marple, with her shrewd observations and keen understanding of human nature, can sort out the puzzling sequence of events and zero in on the killer.]]> 224 Agatha Christie 0008255857 Kyle 2 mystery-thriller That may very well be my least favorite Agatha Christie I’ve thus since read.]]> 3.50 1965 At Bertram's Hotel
author: Agatha Christie
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1965
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/04
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves: mystery-thriller
review:
᳾�
That may very well be my least favorite Agatha Christie I’ve thus since read.
]]> Kill for Me, Kill for You 176451879
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?

Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who “is the real deal� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.]]> 340 Steve Cavanagh 1668049341 Kyle 1 mystery-thriller
Very mixed feelings on this one
(Edging closer and closer to anger by the minute).

A lot of ridiculous twists,
and an ending that wasn’t satisfying.

Did anyone else find this book steeped in misogyny?
The female characters were written so freaking poorly.
Either unhinged, or panicky, or traumatized, or paranoid, or hysterical.
Like [spoilers removed]�
Make it make sense.]]> 4.14 2023 Kill for Me, Kill for You
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: mystery-thriller
review:
Actual rating: 1.5 (rounded down)

Very mixed feelings on this one
(Edging closer and closer to anger by the minute).

A lot of ridiculous twists,
and an ending that wasn’t satisfying.

Did anyone else find this book steeped in misogyny?
The female characters were written so freaking poorly.
Either unhinged, or panicky, or traumatized, or paranoid, or hysterical.
Like [spoilers removed]�
Make it make sense.
]]> All the Water in the World 211003759 In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most � love and work, community and knowledge � will survive.]]> 304 Eiren Caffall 1250353521 Kyle 0 to-read 3.58 2025 All the Water in the World
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Return of Ellie Black 199798460
It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.

Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State.

But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.

The debut thriller from New York Times bestselling author Emiko Jean, The Return of Ellie Black is both a feminist tour de force about the embers of hope that burn in the aftermath of tragedy and a twisty page-turner that will shock and surprise you right up until the final page.]]> 299 Emiko Jean 1668023938 Kyle 0 to-read 3.97 2024 The Return of Ellie Black
author: Emiko Jean
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)]]> 169485073 This highly anticipated follow-up to The Will of the Many—one of 2023’s most lauded and bestselling fantasy novels—follows Vis as he grapples with a dangerous secret that could change the course of history across alternate dimensions.


OMNE TRIUM PERFECTUM.

The Hierarchy still call me Vis Telimus. Still hail me as Catenicus. They still, as one, believe they know who I am.

But with all that has happened—with what I fear is coming—I am not sure it matters anymore.

I am no longer one. I won the Iudicium, and lost everything—and now, impossibly, the ancient device beyond the Labyrinth has replicated me across three separate worlds. A different version of myself in each of Obiteum, Luceum, and Res. Three different bodies, three different lives. I have to hide; fight; play politics. I have to train; trust; lie. I have to kill; heal; prove myself again, and again, and again.

I am loved, and hated, and entirely alone.

Above all, though, I need to find answers before it’s too late. To understand the nature of what has happened to me, and why.

I need to find a way to stop the coming Cataclysm, because if all I have learned is true, I may be the only one who can.]]> James Islington Kyle 0 to-read
I’m happy for an official release date, but I’m already 36�
I could be dead by then!]]> 4.65 2025 The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)
author: James Islington
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:
MAY 2025?!?!?

I’m happy for an official release date, but I’m already 36�
I could be dead by then!
]]> Swamplandia! 11252905 Buddenbrooks set in the Florida Everglades—and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as the "World of Darkness."

Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve-year-old, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamplandia!’s legendary headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the "Underworld," a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.]]> 400 Karen Russell 0307276686 Kyle 0 to-read 3.28 2011 Swamplandia!
author: Karen Russell
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hole 31213272 A bestseller in Korea, a psychological thriller about loneliness and the dark truths we try to bury.

In this tense, gripping novel by a rising star of Korean literature, Ogi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Ogi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Ogi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

Evoking Herman Koch’s The Dinner and Stephen King’s Misery, award-winning author Hye-young Pyun’s The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Ogi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.
]]> 198 Hye-Young Pyun 1628727802 Kyle 0 to-read 3.35 2016 The Hole
author: Hye-Young Pyun
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Parents Weekend 217387739 From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.]]> 320 Alex Finlay 1250360722 Kyle 0 to-read 3.66 2025 Parents Weekend
author: Alex Finlay
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Night in the Lonesome October]]> 62005
In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff � gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.

Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.

And now the dread night approaches � so let the Game begin.]]> 280 Roger Zelazny 0380771411 Kyle 0 to-read 4.16 1993 A Night in the Lonesome October
author: Roger Zelazny
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> From the Dust Returned 9634
They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois -- and they are not like other midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids.

Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the farflung branches of this odd and remarkable family. In the past-midnight stillness can be detected the soft fluttering of Uncle Einars wings. From her realm of sleep, Cecy, the fairest and most special daughter, can feel the approach of many a welcome being -- shapeshifter, telepath, somnambulist, vampire -- as she flies high in the consciousness of bird and bat.

But in the midst of eager anticipation, a sense of doom pervades. For the world is changing. And death, no stranger, will always shadow this most singular family: Father, arisen from the Earth; Mother, who never sleeps but dreams; A Thousand Times Great Grandmére; Grandfather, who keeps the wildness of youth between his ears.

And the boy who, more than anyone, carries the burden of time on his shoulders: Timothy, the sad and different foundling son who must share it all, remember, and tell...and who, alone out of all of them, must one day age and wither and die.

By turns lyrical, wistful, poignant, and chilling, From the Dust Returned is the long-awaited new novel by the peerless Ray Bradbury -- a book that will surely be numbered among his most enduring masterworks.]]> 206 Ray Bradbury 0743429982 Kyle 0 to-read 3.78 2001 From the Dust Returned
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)]]> 338691
But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets...]]> 293 Louise Penny 0312948557 Kyle 0 3.86 2005 Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)
author: Louise Penny
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read, top-priority-to-read-adult
review:

]]> Victorian Psycho 213395480 From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Kyle 0 to-read 3.63 2025 Victorian Psycho
author: Virginia Feito
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Boyfriend 208503244 She's looking for the perfect man. He's looking for the perfect victim.

Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.

Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.

Then the brutal murder of a young woman―the latest in a string of deaths across the coast―confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.

Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim...

A dark story about obsession and the things we’ll do for love, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden proves that crimes of passion are often the bloodiest…]]> 368 Freida McFadden 1464231680 Kyle 0 3.88 2024 The Boyfriend
author: Freida McFadden
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: mystery-thriller, to-read, sidelined
review:

]]> Conclave 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris Kyle 5 Subtly thrilling.
Quietly suspenseful.
Absolutely mesmerizing.
]]> 4.01 2016 Conclave
author: Robert Harris
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: literature-fiction, mystery-thriller
review:
Thoroughly engrossing.
Subtly thrilling.
Quietly suspenseful.
Absolutely mesmerizing.

]]> Act of Oblivion 60141403
'From what is it they flee?'

He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, “They killed the King.�

1660 England. General Edward Whalley and his son-in law Colonel William Goffe board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I—a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control.

But now, ten years after Charles� beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the fifty-nine men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat.

In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors to justice and he will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture—dead or alive. . . .

Robert Harris’s first historical novel set predominantly in America, Act of Oblivion is a novel with an urgent narrative, remarkable characters, and an epic true story to tell of religion, vengeance, and power—and the costs to those who wield it.]]> 463 Robert Harris 006324800X Kyle 0 to-read 3.98 2022 Act of Oblivion
author: Robert Harris
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> An Officer and a Spy 18007532
Paris in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of twenty-thousand. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that “proved� Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus’s guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself.

Bringing to life the scandal that mesmerized the world at the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Harris tells a tale of uncanny timeliness––a witch hunt, secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, the fate of a whistle-blower--richly dramatized with the singular storytelling mastery that has marked all of his internationally best-selling novels.]]> 429 Robert Harris 0385349580 Kyle 0 to-read 4.18 2013 An Officer and a Spy
author: Robert Harris
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Imperium (Cicero, #1) 243601 imperium—supreme power in the state.

Of all the great figures of the Roman world, none was more fascinating or charismatic than Cicero. And Tiro—the inventor of shorthand and author of numerous books, including a celebrated biography of his master (which was lost in the Dark Ages)—was always by his side.

Compellingly written in Tiro's voice, Imperium is the re-creation of his vanished masterpiece, recounting in vivid detail the story of Cicero's quest for glory, competing with some of the most powerful and intimidating figures of his—or any other—age: Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, and the many other powerful Romans who changed history.

Robert Harris, the world's master of innovative historical fiction, lures us into a violent, treacherous world of Roman politics at once exotically different from and yet startlingly similar to our own—a world of Senate intrigue and electoral corruption, special prosecutors and political adventurism—to describe how one clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable man fought to reach the top.]]> 305 Robert Harris 074326603X Kyle 0 to-read 4.12 2006 Imperium (Cicero, #1)
author: Robert Harris
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blood Ties (Kongeriket, #2) 213243951 384 Jo Nesbø 0593803612 Kyle 0 to-read 3.85 2024 Blood Ties (Kongeriket, #2)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Repeat Room 205673381 Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers

In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.

The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.

Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball’s absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.]]> 256 Jesse Ball 1646221400 Kyle 0 to-read 3.13 2024 The Repeat Room
author: Jesse Ball
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Magic's Pawn (The Last Herald-Mage, #1)]]> 28759
Though Vanyel has been born with near-legendary abilities to work both Herald and Mage magic, he wants no part of such things. Nor does he seek a warrior's path, wishing instead to become a Bard. Yet such talent as his if left untrained may prove a menace not only to Vanyel but to others as well. So he is sent to be fostered with his aunt, Savil, one of the famed Herald-Mages of Valdemar.

But, strong-willed and self-centered, Vanyel is a challenge which even Savil can not master alone. For soon he will become the focus of frightening forces, lending his raw magic to a spell that unleashes terrifying wyr-hunters on the land. And by the time Savil seeks the assistance of a Shin'a'in Adept, Vanyel's wild talent may have already grown beyond anyone's ability to contain, placing Vanyel, Savil, and Valdemar itself in desperate peril...]]> 349 Mercedes Lackey 0886773520 Kyle 0 to-read 4.20 1989 Magic's Pawn (The Last Herald-Mage, #1)
author: Mercedes Lackey
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dhalgren 85867
Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. Into this disaster zone comes a young man—poet, lover, and adventurer—known only as the Kid.

Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.]]> 801 Samuel R. Delany 0375706682 Kyle 0 to-read 3.78 1975 Dhalgren
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Games Gods Play (The Crucible, #1)]]> 197363933
I have never been favored by the gods. Far from it, thanks to Zeus.

Living as a cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves, I just keep my head down and hope the capricious beings who rule from Olympus won’t notice me. Not an easy feat, given San Francisco is Zeus� patron city, but I make do. I survive. Until the night I tangle with a different god.

The worst god. Hades.

For the first time ever, the ruthless, mercurial King of the Underworld has entered the Crucible—the deadly contest the gods hold to determine a new ruler to sit on the throne of Olympus. But instead of fighting their own battles, the gods name mortals to compete in their stead.

So why in the Underworld did Hades choose me—a sarcastic nobody with a curse on her shoulders—as his champion? And why does my heart trip every time he says I’m his?

I don’t know if I’m a pawn, bait, or something else entirely to this dangerously tempting god. How can I, when he has more secrets than stars in the sky?

Because Hades is playing by his own rules…and Death will win at any cost.]]> 509 Abigail Owen 1649376561 Kyle 0 to-read 4.10 2024 The Games Gods Play (The Crucible, #1)
author: Abigail Owen
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Shadow Glass 58661569
In the wake of Bob’s death, Jack returns to his decaying childhood home, where he is confronted with the impossible � the puppet heroes from The Shadow Glass are alive, and they need his help. Tipped into a desperate quest to save the world from the more nefarious of his father’s creations, Jack teams up with an excitable fanboy and a spiky studio exec to navigate the labyrinth of his father’s legacy and ignite a Shadow Glass resurgence that could, finally, do Bob proud.]]> 397 Josh Winning Kyle 0 to-read 4.09 2022 The Shadow Glass
author: Josh Winning
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Kyle 0 to-read 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Small Rain 200502180 306 Garth Greenwell 1509874690 Kyle 0 to-read 4.29 2024 Small Rain
author: Garth Greenwell
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> You Are Fatally Invited 213243937 An exclusive thriller writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered in this twisty locked room mystery.

When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an ax to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem.

Confess the crimes, survive the tropes.

Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether.

One by one, you’ll lose your turn.

With a storm cutting off the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.

Until only one of us remains�]]> 371 Ande Pliego 059387157X Kyle 0 to-read 3.60 2025 You Are Fatally Invited
author: Ande Pliego
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Those Empty Eyes 194477884
Alex Armstrong has changed everything about herself—her name, her appearance, her backstory. She’s no longer the terrified teenager a rapt audience saw on television, emerging in handcuffs from the quiet suburban home the night her family was massacred. That girl, Alexandra Quinlan, nicknamed Empty Eyes by the media, was accused of the killings, fought to clear her name, and later took the stand during her highly publicized defamation lawsuit that captured the attention of the nation.

It’s been ten years since, and Alex hasn’t stopped searching for answers about the night her family was killed, even as she continues to hide her real identity from true crime fanatics and grasping reporters still desperate to locate her. As a legal investigator, she works tirelessly to secure justice for others, too. People like Matthew Claymore, who’s under suspicion in the disappearance of his girlfriend, a student journalist named Laura McAllister.

Laura was about to break a major story about rape and cover-ups on her college campus. Alex believes Matthew is innocent, and unearths stunning revelations about the university’s faculty, fraternity members, and powerful parents willing to do anything to protect their children. Most shocking of all—as Alex digs into Laura’s disappearance, she realizes there are connections to the murder of her own family. For as different as the crimes may seem, they each hinge on one sinister no one is quite who they seem to be . . .]]> 432 Charlie Donlea 1496744977 Kyle 0 to-read 4.08 2023 Those Empty Eyes
author: Charlie Donlea
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Party 205837684 A loving mother. A notorious murderer. They both have reasons to hide their secrets in a novel of escalating shock and suspense by New York Times bestselling author A. R. Torre.

Perla Wultz lives with her husband, Grant, and their precious daughter, Sophie, in a gated Pasadena community. Affluent, sociable, and accomplished, Perla plays the part of loving wife and mother to perfection. It seems an ideal life, if not for a decades-old crime that has become Perla’s dark and consuming secret obsession.

Twenty-three years ago, Leewood Folcrum confessed to murdering two young girls during a birthday party. Though he’s been condemned to a life sentence, his crime is not forgotten. Not by Perla, nor by an inquisitive doctoral student interviewing Folcrum for his dissertation. He’s getting the killer to open up—about his motives, his confession, and the truth of what really happened on that horrible night.

As the past and the present entwine, the deceptions behind the infamous murder begin to surface. But who’s deceiving who now? And why? And as an ingeniously twisted plan is set in motion, who will be the next to die?]]> 349 A.R. Torre 1662519583 Kyle 0 to-read 4.08 2024 The Last Party
author: A.R. Torre
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2)]]> 56322958 It's the following Thursday.

Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.

As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn't that be a bonus?

But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians.

Can the Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?]]> 423 Richard Osman 0241425433 Kyle 4 mystery-thriller I need The Thursday Murder Club,
Just as much as I need a daily Xanax.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, Ron�
You keep me going.

Many thanks to Rebecca and Rowan for taking this journey with me. It was my first ever Buddy Read, and it did not disappoint with those two ]]> 4.30 2021 The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2)
author: Richard Osman
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: mystery-thriller
review:
These books are my therapy.
I need The Thursday Murder Club,
Just as much as I need a daily Xanax.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, Ron�
You keep me going.

Many thanks to Rebecca and Rowan for taking this journey with me. It was my first ever Buddy Read, and it did not disappoint with those two
]]> All the Birds, Singing 22521772
Jake Whyte has retreated to a remote farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds, with only her collie and a flock of sheep as companions. But something—or someone—has begun picking off her sheep one by one. There are foxes in the woods, a strange man wandering the island, and rumors of a mysterious beast prowling at night. And there is Jake’s relentless past—one she tried to escape thousands of miles away and years ago, concealed in stubborn silence and isolation and the scars that stripe her back. With exceptional artistry, All the Birds, Singing plumbs a life of fierce struggle and survival, sounding depths of unexpected beauty and hard-won redemption.]]> 240 Evie Wyld 0345802500 Kyle 2 mystery-thriller
The thing about this particular book was, although I found it thrilling, with menace boiling under the surface of every page, I could NOT get behind the continous violence against animals. Even if it was accidental, there was just way too much. I mean, I should've expected it from a book detailing a sheep farmer, but literally every chapter (and almost every page) there was an animal dying, or being slaughtered or murdered. It got to a point where a potentially four-star book became something to shake my head at because of all the unnecessary animal abuse.

As a case study, Jake is profoundly interesting (even if the story about how she got her scars isn't revealed until the last 20 or so pages). That also bugged me, the way that revelation was handled. It had lost most of its edge by the time I came to it. She is an intriguing creature, though, to say the least, with a tragic backstory [spoilers removed].

The plot, too, was structured in a way that made it feel as though I was reading two different, disparate stories. On the one hand, we have present-day Jake going about her business on a secluded sheep farm in England (?), and on the other is the Jake of the past, going slowly backwards and forwards from her time in Australia to where she is now. It didn't really work for me. The author should've structured it better, one way or the other, but I guess it kept Jake's past a mystery for the duration.

In the end, there was much to like with this novel. It was written well, keeping the suspense always at the outer rim; a constant feeling of unease and dread, but the overly excessive brutality involving animals eventually took its toll and overshadowed all the good. ]]> 3.70 2013 All the Birds, Singing
author: Evie Wyld
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2016/06/17
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: mystery-thriller
review:
Actual rating: 2.5

The thing about this particular book was, although I found it thrilling, with menace boiling under the surface of every page, I could NOT get behind the continous violence against animals. Even if it was accidental, there was just way too much. I mean, I should've expected it from a book detailing a sheep farmer, but literally every chapter (and almost every page) there was an animal dying, or being slaughtered or murdered. It got to a point where a potentially four-star book became something to shake my head at because of all the unnecessary animal abuse.

As a case study, Jake is profoundly interesting (even if the story about how she got her scars isn't revealed until the last 20 or so pages). That also bugged me, the way that revelation was handled. It had lost most of its edge by the time I came to it. She is an intriguing creature, though, to say the least, with a tragic backstory [spoilers removed].

The plot, too, was structured in a way that made it feel as though I was reading two different, disparate stories. On the one hand, we have present-day Jake going about her business on a secluded sheep farm in England (?), and on the other is the Jake of the past, going slowly backwards and forwards from her time in Australia to where she is now. It didn't really work for me. The author should've structured it better, one way or the other, but I guess it kept Jake's past a mystery for the duration.

In the end, there was much to like with this novel. It was written well, keeping the suspense always at the outer rim; a constant feeling of unease and dread, but the overly excessive brutality involving animals eventually took its toll and overshadowed all the good.
]]> Graveyard Shift 203578770 Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.]]> 144 M.L. Rio 1250356792 Kyle 4 3.5 (rounded up)

To be more clear, it’s due (in full) to the ending.
I was left wanting more.
I don’t usually say that.
I don’t enjoy feeling “want.�
But it’s there, and it needs to be acknowledged.

For the most part, this book really hit close to home.
Insomnia, for one.
You don’t know that level of deep, mind-shattering fear until you can’t catch sleep.
Sleeplessness is frightening, folks.
You cannot trust your own mind, and I’ve lost it more times than I can count.
Thankfully, I have a somewhat shaky remedy that nets me a few hours.
(But 3 is better than none, so�)

Moving on! Another similarity to this 30-something bozo’s life: cigarettes.
I mean, a group of disparate smokers gather in a graveyard at midnight.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: smoking is this niche, social unifier.
I’ve been a longtime smoker (going on 18 years now), and the amount of people I would have never met if I hadn’t been puffing those cancer sticks�
It astounds me; The way it brings people together. And from all walks of life!
Each of these individual characters were great!
I saw myself in all of them, oddly enough.
Like Edie, I studied journalism.
Like Tamar, I work(ed) the circulation desk at a library.
Like Hannah, I get weird when people start liking me.
Like Tuck, I am lonely and have a hard time asking for help.
And like Theo, I’m a habitual womanizer…lol, just kidding! The only thing habitual about me is putting my retainer in at night for the last 20 years.

Either way, and for so few pages to work with, M.L. Rio managed to develop these characters pretty well. I liked each and every one of them, flaws and all.

The atmosphere was done well. I like a moody setting, and a graveyard at night, with some mysterious going-on’s, was right up my dark, leaf-strewn alley. Every character had a part to play in decoding the central mystery, and I thought that was groovy. It made the story flow really nicely.

My sister and I attended an author talk the other night in NYC, where Ms. Rio discussed this novella (among other things). And, honestly, listening to her chat made me applaud her even more than when IWWV debuted. I stand by my statements that she remains an insta-buy author for me. Her work just fucking gets me, ya know? I’m a Millennial, but I’ll still say this: it’s my vibe. She’s my vibe. That playlist at the end was *chef’s kiss* (Interpol, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Garbage� like, curate the soundtrack to my fucking life, please!). Friends, I could’ve listened to her for hours� I hope there aren’t several more years before her next published piece. I’ll try and be patient, but I’m already 36, and I could be dead by then. So, like, no rush or anything, but, please, I NEED MORE, ML!

I’m going to end it here, because it’s 3AM, and my dog keeps waking up, looking over his shoulder at me in bed, his eyes saying, “You’re still up, Dad?� I should probably attempt to lie down and let him spoon me to sleep…]]> 3.19 2024 Graveyard Shift
author: M.L. Rio
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: mystery-thriller, lgbtqia, horror
review:
Now, this rating may be subject to change (for worse), but as it stands �
3.5 (rounded up)

To be more clear, it’s due (in full) to the ending.
I was left wanting more.
I don’t usually say that.
I don’t enjoy feeling “want.�
But it’s there, and it needs to be acknowledged.

For the most part, this book really hit close to home.
Insomnia, for one.
You don’t know that level of deep, mind-shattering fear until you can’t catch sleep.
Sleeplessness is frightening, folks.
You cannot trust your own mind, and I’ve lost it more times than I can count.
Thankfully, I have a somewhat shaky remedy that nets me a few hours.
(But 3 is better than none, so�)

Moving on! Another similarity to this 30-something bozo’s life: cigarettes.
I mean, a group of disparate smokers gather in a graveyard at midnight.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: smoking is this niche, social unifier.
I’ve been a longtime smoker (going on 18 years now), and the amount of people I would have never met if I hadn’t been puffing those cancer sticks�
It astounds me; The way it brings people together. And from all walks of life!
Each of these individual characters were great!
I saw myself in all of them, oddly enough.
Like Edie, I studied journalism.
Like Tamar, I work(ed) the circulation desk at a library.
Like Hannah, I get weird when people start liking me.
Like Tuck, I am lonely and have a hard time asking for help.
And like Theo, I’m a habitual womanizer…lol, just kidding! The only thing habitual about me is putting my retainer in at night for the last 20 years.

Either way, and for so few pages to work with, M.L. Rio managed to develop these characters pretty well. I liked each and every one of them, flaws and all.

The atmosphere was done well. I like a moody setting, and a graveyard at night, with some mysterious going-on’s, was right up my dark, leaf-strewn alley. Every character had a part to play in decoding the central mystery, and I thought that was groovy. It made the story flow really nicely.

My sister and I attended an author talk the other night in NYC, where Ms. Rio discussed this novella (among other things). And, honestly, listening to her chat made me applaud her even more than when IWWV debuted. I stand by my statements that she remains an insta-buy author for me. Her work just fucking gets me, ya know? I’m a Millennial, but I’ll still say this: it’s my vibe. She’s my vibe. That playlist at the end was *chef’s kiss* (Interpol, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Garbage� like, curate the soundtrack to my fucking life, please!). Friends, I could’ve listened to her for hours� I hope there aren’t several more years before her next published piece. I’ll try and be patient, but I’m already 36, and I could be dead by then. So, like, no rush or anything, but, please, I NEED MORE, ML!

I’m going to end it here, because it’s 3AM, and my dog keeps waking up, looking over his shoulder at me in bed, his eyes saying, “You’re still up, Dad?� I should probably attempt to lie down and let him spoon me to sleep�
]]> Borough Features 209565039 272 Erica Ciccarone Kyle 0 to-read 3.91 Borough Features
author: Erica Ciccarone
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mistborn: The Final Empire (The Mistborn Saga, #1)]]> 60784489 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, the first book in the wildly successful Mistborn trilogy, now in trade paperback.
For a thousand years, ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years, the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years, the Lord Ruler reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when all hope was lost, the scarred, heartbroken half-Skaa Kelsier found in himself the powers of a Mistborn.
A brilliant thief and natural leader, Kelsier recruits the underworld's smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, who each share one of his many powers and relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream: not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers that she’s never dreamed of.


Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson

The Cosmere

The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (Novella)
Oathbringer
Dawnshard (Novella)
Rhythm of War

The Mistborn trilogy
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages

Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series
Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
Bands of Mourning
The Lost Metal

Collection
Arcanum Unbounded

Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker

The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
The Scrivener's Bones
The Knights of Crystallia
The Shattered Lens
The Dark Talent
Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians

The Rithmatist series
 The Rithmatist

Other books by Brandon Sanderson

The Reckoners
Steelheart
Firefight
Calamity]]> 534 Brandon Sanderson 1250868289 Kyle 0 to-read 4.55 2006 Mistborn: The Final Empire (The Mistborn Saga, #1)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Opal (The Raven Cycle, #4.5) 38464776 45 Maggie Stiefvater 1338306642 Kyle 3 sf-fantasy, ya, lgbtqia OKAY.

Merged review:

Well, that was an okay story. But just OKAY.]]> 4.11 2018 Opal (The Raven Cycle, #4.5)
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2018/05/12
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: sf-fantasy, ya, lgbtqia
review:
Well, that was an okay story. But just OKAY.

Merged review:

Well, that was an okay story. But just OKAY.
]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Reading Minds: How to Understand and Influence Others Without Them Noticing]]> 52279225 The internationally bestselling guide to "mind-reading" by influencing those around you via non-verbal communication, from human psychology expert Henrik Fexeus.

How would you like to know what the people around you are thinking? Do you want to network like a pro, persuade your boss to give you that promotion, and finally become the life of every party? Now, with Henrik Fexeus's expertise, you can.

The Art of Reading Minds teaches you everything you need to know in order to become an expert at mind-reading. Using psychology-based skills such as non-verbal communication, reading body language, and using psychological influence, Fexeus explains how readers can find out what another person thinks and feels� and consequently control that person’s thoughts and beliefs. Short, snappy chapters cover subjects such as contradictory signs and what they mean, how people flirt without even knowing it, benevolent methods of suggestion and undetectable influence, how to plant and trigger emotional states, and how to perform impressive mind-reading party tricks. Fexeus gives readers practical (and often fun) examples of how to effectively mind-read others and use this information, benevolently, both in personal and professional settings.

]]> 248 Henrik Fexeus 125023641X Kyle 4 netgalley, nonfiction A thousand thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s press for the chance to read this, in exchange for an honest review.

Okay... admittedly, I generally pride myself on being perceptive, a good conversationalist, and intent listener, but this book showed me ways in which I could achieve more. And that’s really what it’s here to do: to help you communicate well (or better!).

I actually find body language and non-verbal communication fascinating, so I ate up every word the author, Henrik Fexeus, wrote. The power of words: what we say, how we say it, who were saying it to... everything is a variable, and everything can be used to “read� someone. I read a book a while ago called Lexicon by Max Barry, which took more of a Science Fiction approach to a parallel concept: that you could use words in a certain way to influence someone. I mean, I’ll admit that I’ve done it before (never for nefarious or immoral reasons!), but testing different tones of voice, or experimenting with higher/lower energies (mimicking whoever you’re speaking with), to see if my conversation partner matches it, and it works! I can steer a conversation in a certain direction by triggering a particular word or phrases. So, yes, I was invested in Mr. Fexeus� book from the get-go.

I just found it really cool and insightful, on the whole.]]> 3.55 2007 The Art of Reading Minds: How to Understand and Influence Others Without Them Noticing
author: Henrik Fexeus
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/29
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: netgalley, nonfiction
review:
A thousand thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s press for the chance to read this, in exchange for an honest review.

Okay... admittedly, I generally pride myself on being perceptive, a good conversationalist, and intent listener, but this book showed me ways in which I could achieve more. And that’s really what it’s here to do: to help you communicate well (or better!).

I actually find body language and non-verbal communication fascinating, so I ate up every word the author, Henrik Fexeus, wrote. The power of words: what we say, how we say it, who were saying it to... everything is a variable, and everything can be used to “read� someone. I read a book a while ago called Lexicon by Max Barry, which took more of a Science Fiction approach to a parallel concept: that you could use words in a certain way to influence someone. I mean, I’ll admit that I’ve done it before (never for nefarious or immoral reasons!), but testing different tones of voice, or experimenting with higher/lower energies (mimicking whoever you’re speaking with), to see if my conversation partner matches it, and it works! I can steer a conversation in a certain direction by triggering a particular word or phrases. So, yes, I was invested in Mr. Fexeus� book from the get-go.

I just found it really cool and insightful, on the whole.
]]> If We Were Villains 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X Kyle 4
Early on, the groundwork is laid for this mystery to unfold: We have our narrator and MC, present-day Oliver Marks (year 2007), who's in prison, but he's getting released after ten years for a crime that is not entirely clear (but obviously a violent one if he was put away for so long). The detective that worked on the case wants to know the truth after all these years, because he knows Oliver has been lying about certain things and is presumably innocent. So, they come to a decision that Oliver will tell this (now retired) detective everything, as long as he and the "others" are basically immune from further prosecution. As Oliver recounts his story, we're swept back in time to 1997, where we're introduced to the seven "players", all studying Shakespearean theater at an exclusive conservatory for the arts in Illinois.

*I don't know if I made any of it sound very exciting so far, and that's because it isn't/wasn't. At least, not at first... Ms. Rio is a debut author. This being her first novel, well, it shows (but only a wee little bit). The exposition that chokes the first quarter of the novel is quickly set aside, and the last half of the novel is where Rio really finds her groove. There is a lot to get used to, however, as far as the Shakespeare quotes go. Be prepared to read at least one or two lines (oftentimes more) a page from the Bard. It's an interesting concept, having the "players" frequently slip into dialogues from Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Pericles, but to anyone simply picking this book up, who has no interest or much knowledge of Shakespearean literature/theater, it becomes quite tedious. Thankfully, I managed to look past said tedium, and find that each slipped-in Shakespearean phrase offered valuable context to what was happening in the story. Essentially, this book is a mystery, but more-so than that, it's a coming-of-age tragedy. There's plenty of themes revolving around friendship and deceit, unrequited and unquestioned love, betrayal and loyalty... You see, each of the characters we're introduced to takes on their roles to such an extent, that's it's hard to discern where they as a person stand, and where their characters do.

I didn't expect much from this book (although, I secretly wanted to when I ordered it). Any book labeled as bearing resemblance to The Secret History (my favorite novel of all time) usually grabs my attention right away, and this one was no different. How closely it resembled TSH is another thing in and of itself, for the similarities are pretty glaringly obvious if you've read IWWV and are familiar with Donna Tartt's work. I won't list all the ways, because that might spoil it for some, but the characters in each book go to an exclusive school, form an elitist/tight-knit group where they speak and live and breathe only their little clique, study a robust subject (the "Classics" and Greek in TSH and Shakespearean theater in IWWV), both groups have a... problem that needs taking care of, and spiral from there-on-out into mental degradation over what they've done, both time periods are the 90's, one character recounts the story leading up to and after the 'incident'....

Now, the two novels are similar in ways that are undeniable, sure, but I must admit that they feel like entirely separate entities all their own. The characters in The Secret History are much more fleshed-out and complex than those found here in If We Were Villains. Ms. Rio's characters never seem to go beyond feeling just like, well, characters in a story. For 75% of the book, I really had no deep interest in any of the six seven of them. Whereas I found each individual in TSH profoundly captivating. Again, if comparing the two books, TSH would be the equivalent to something on HBO or Showtime (it's darker, grittier, unforgiving, but also more poignant), whereas If We Were Villains would most likely be found on the CW or Freeform (the station formerly known as ABC Family).

Ms. Rio's writing, as I mentioned earlier, steadily grows stronger as the story progresses, which certainly helps strengthen the motivating forces behind the characters that I at first didn't find wholly convincing. It shouldn't have taken so long to get me into that position of acceptance, but whatever. Nearing the conclusion, I had it (the mystery) all pretty much figured out (as will most readers). It's, again, a fairly cut-and-dry whodunnit... but the WHYdunnit is what really matters, and that is what I found most riveting. There is a certain SOMETHING prevalent throughout the novel. "It" was teased significantly over the book's length, but I didn't necessarily think "it" (and I won't say what IT is) would have any impact on the climax. Well, I was wrong.

•I was pleasantly surprised (and I love when a book can do that, because I'm not easily surprised).

•Then I was heartbroken, because this is, of course, a tragedy as Oliver reminds us.

�....But LO AND BEHOLD, the very end, another *SURPRISE*... that put me over the edge. I loved it! A bit implausible, and with so many questions attached, but an altogether satisfying conclusion

I cannot wait to see what M.L. Rio does next!
My review may sound critical, but after this surprising debut, she’s now an insta-buy author for me.]]> 4.11 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/20
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: favorites, mystery-thriller, lgbtqia
review:
As another reviewer expressed, this was well on its way to being a (admittedly, slightly above average) three-star read. That is, until the very end of the novel shifted the rating up to a thoroughly surprising four-stars. I won't say why that is, obviously, but it was certainly unexpected, and a fitting, satisfying conclusion to what started out as a fairly by-the-numbers thriller/whodunnit.

Early on, the groundwork is laid for this mystery to unfold: We have our narrator and MC, present-day Oliver Marks (year 2007), who's in prison, but he's getting released after ten years for a crime that is not entirely clear (but obviously a violent one if he was put away for so long). The detective that worked on the case wants to know the truth after all these years, because he knows Oliver has been lying about certain things and is presumably innocent. So, they come to a decision that Oliver will tell this (now retired) detective everything, as long as he and the "others" are basically immune from further prosecution. As Oliver recounts his story, we're swept back in time to 1997, where we're introduced to the seven "players", all studying Shakespearean theater at an exclusive conservatory for the arts in Illinois.

*I don't know if I made any of it sound very exciting so far, and that's because it isn't/wasn't. At least, not at first... Ms. Rio is a debut author. This being her first novel, well, it shows (but only a wee little bit). The exposition that chokes the first quarter of the novel is quickly set aside, and the last half of the novel is where Rio really finds her groove. There is a lot to get used to, however, as far as the Shakespeare quotes go. Be prepared to read at least one or two lines (oftentimes more) a page from the Bard. It's an interesting concept, having the "players" frequently slip into dialogues from Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Pericles, but to anyone simply picking this book up, who has no interest or much knowledge of Shakespearean literature/theater, it becomes quite tedious. Thankfully, I managed to look past said tedium, and find that each slipped-in Shakespearean phrase offered valuable context to what was happening in the story. Essentially, this book is a mystery, but more-so than that, it's a coming-of-age tragedy. There's plenty of themes revolving around friendship and deceit, unrequited and unquestioned love, betrayal and loyalty... You see, each of the characters we're introduced to takes on their roles to such an extent, that's it's hard to discern where they as a person stand, and where their characters do.

I didn't expect much from this book (although, I secretly wanted to when I ordered it). Any book labeled as bearing resemblance to The Secret History (my favorite novel of all time) usually grabs my attention right away, and this one was no different. How closely it resembled TSH is another thing in and of itself, for the similarities are pretty glaringly obvious if you've read IWWV and are familiar with Donna Tartt's work. I won't list all the ways, because that might spoil it for some, but the characters in each book go to an exclusive school, form an elitist/tight-knit group where they speak and live and breathe only their little clique, study a robust subject (the "Classics" and Greek in TSH and Shakespearean theater in IWWV), both groups have a... problem that needs taking care of, and spiral from there-on-out into mental degradation over what they've done, both time periods are the 90's, one character recounts the story leading up to and after the 'incident'....

Now, the two novels are similar in ways that are undeniable, sure, but I must admit that they feel like entirely separate entities all their own. The characters in The Secret History are much more fleshed-out and complex than those found here in If We Were Villains. Ms. Rio's characters never seem to go beyond feeling just like, well, characters in a story. For 75% of the book, I really had no deep interest in any of the six seven of them. Whereas I found each individual in TSH profoundly captivating. Again, if comparing the two books, TSH would be the equivalent to something on HBO or Showtime (it's darker, grittier, unforgiving, but also more poignant), whereas If We Were Villains would most likely be found on the CW or Freeform (the station formerly known as ABC Family).

Ms. Rio's writing, as I mentioned earlier, steadily grows stronger as the story progresses, which certainly helps strengthen the motivating forces behind the characters that I at first didn't find wholly convincing. It shouldn't have taken so long to get me into that position of acceptance, but whatever. Nearing the conclusion, I had it (the mystery) all pretty much figured out (as will most readers). It's, again, a fairly cut-and-dry whodunnit... but the WHYdunnit is what really matters, and that is what I found most riveting. There is a certain SOMETHING prevalent throughout the novel. "It" was teased significantly over the book's length, but I didn't necessarily think "it" (and I won't say what IT is) would have any impact on the climax. Well, I was wrong.

•I was pleasantly surprised (and I love when a book can do that, because I'm not easily surprised).

•Then I was heartbroken, because this is, of course, a tragedy as Oliver reminds us.

�....But LO AND BEHOLD, the very end, another *SURPRISE*... that put me over the edge. I loved it! A bit implausible, and with so many questions attached, but an altogether satisfying conclusion

I cannot wait to see what M.L. Rio does next!
My review may sound critical, but after this surprising debut, she’s now an insta-buy author for me.
]]> The Orchard 45015116 480 David Hopen 0062974769 Kyle 0 3.80 2020 The Orchard
author: David Hopen
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read, top-priority-to-read-adult, netgalley
review:

]]> Monsters 13493376 their high school during a mysterious, deadly epidemic.]]> Tom Leveen Kyle 0 to-read 3.60 2013 Monsters
author: Tom Leveen
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devils 212276037 Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters, and the mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.]]> 560 Joe Abercrombie 125088005X Kyle 0 4.45 2025 The Devils
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read, top-priority-to-read-adult
review:

]]> Heavenbreaker 133938782
Bravery isn't what you do. It's what you endure.

The duke of the powerful House Hauteclare is the first to die. With my dagger in his back.

He didn’t see it coming. Didn’t anticipate the bastard daughter who was supposed to die with her mother—on his order. He should have left us with the rest of the Station’s starving, commoner rubbish.

Now there’s nothing left. Just icy-white rage and a need to make House Hauteclare pay. Every damn one of them.

Even if it means riding Heavenbreaker—one of the few enormous machines left over from the War—and jousting against the fiercest nobles in the system.

Each win means another one of my enemies dies. And here, in the cold terror of space, the machine and I move as one, intent on destroying each adversary—even if it’s someone I care about. Even if it’s someone I’m falling for.

Only I’m not alone. Not anymore.

Because there’s something in the machine with me. Something horrifying. Something�more.

And it won’t be stopped.]]> 448 Sara Wolf 1649375700 Kyle 0 to-read 3.66 2024 Heavenbreaker
author: Sara Wolf
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Sunny Place for Shady People]]> 203956643 A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “one of Latin America’s most exciting authors� (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)

On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women.

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.

Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”]]> 257 Mariana Enríquez 0593733258 Kyle 0 to-read 3.81 2024 A Sunny Place for Shady People
author: Mariana Enríquez
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Kyle 5 mystery-thriller, favorites
Boys and girls, feys and theys�

I can’t believe my rating either.
It’s been a hot fucking minute since I was this thrilled by a thriller.
I guess endearing cons, clever heists, and cat-and-mouse suspense are my kink.
Not gonna question it further.
This was a good one, folks.
]]> 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: mystery-thriller, favorites
review:
Actual rating: 4.5 (rounded up)

Boys and girls, feys and theys�

I can’t believe my rating either.
It’s been a hot fucking minute since I was this thrilled by a thriller.
I guess endearing cons, clever heists, and cat-and-mouse suspense are my kink.
Not gonna question it further.
This was a good one, folks.

]]> Blue Coyote Motel (Coyote #1) 16119032 Blue Coyote Motel is a suspense love story which begins in the barrios of Southern California and spans the globe in such diverse locations as Provence, South America, and the Himalayas. The beautiful Latina, Maria, and her husband, Jeffrey, a scientist fired from a prestigious laboratory, struggle to build a new life in a remote Southern California desert areas as owners of the motel.
Along with the anti-aging hormone, Jeffrey invents a "feel-good" wonder drug to help Maria with her depression. As Jeffrey becomes insane he begins to experiment with the wonder drug. Six wayward travelers, including an alcoholic priest, a couple who own gold mines in Brazil, a depressed widow, a struggling salesman, and a Native American pediatrician find themselves spending the night at the small motel. The next morning they wake up feeling better than ever. Has Jeffrey's miracle drug delivered? Or is the nightmare of addiction only beginning?
Blue Coyote Motel presents an engaging look at the human frailties present in all of us.]]> 297 Dianne Harman 0615717454 Kyle 1 3.72 2012 Blue Coyote Motel (Coyote #1)
author: Dianne Harman
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at: 2014/08/08
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: mystery-thriller, worst-of-the-worst
review:
I just...no. There are no words.
]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Kyle 0 to-read 3.35 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ruthless Gods (Something Dark and Holy, #2)]]> 40126121 Darkness never works alone...

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who--and what--he’s become.

As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. They’re pieces on a board, being orchestrated by someone� or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet—those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer.]]> 544 Emily A. Duncan 1250195713 Kyle 4 Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this advanced copy, in exchange for an honest review.

Godsdamn... that was something!
A bit expected, but thrilling nonetheless.

To just get the negative criticism out the way: There was a somewhat more redundancy to the language this time around. You can only read “dark� and “blood� and “monster� so many times before growing weary of hearing it page after page after page. But I get it. My other complaint is something I let slide in the first book, but here, it was a little ridiculous. And it’s simply this: I hated every time Nadya forgave Mal. Their romantic relationship still confuses me, and I am to the point where my dislike of it is 80/20 (it’s toxic). Whenever a character in literature says something along the lines of, “You hurt me, but this pull I feel for you is too strong. I hate you, but I love you.� And then they usually end up kissing aggressively... I will never understand it. Maybe because I’ve never felt that way before, but regardless, I find it infinitely annoying, and it just so happens to occur about a dozen times in this series between Nadya and Malachiasz. Betray > Forgive > Kiss. Rinse and repeat.

A few things: I have to applaud the authoress for her slow-burn building of the romantic relationships. I prefer it when they’re not so completely obvious. One was oh so very vaguely alluded to in Wicked Saints, but I was never really sure. And the fact that the LGBT inclusivity was amped up to 100 here in book 2 is surprising, but an altogether welcome surprise.

This book ups the dark and bloody content tenfold! It seemed as though every page a character was bleeding and/or stabbing something/someone. There’s a particular section that was especially grotesque and disturbing. It was very reminiscent of a gothic Hellraiser. For those passages alone, this book should be tagged as horror (and I do love that genre!).

If I were to say what I liked most about this book, it would definitely have to be how often I was constantly left guessing: Who to trust? What to believe? Was that a lie, or the truth? � There are no easy answers. Nothing is black and white, just shades of blood-spattered gray. The story deepened significantly, making the reading experience that much richer. Each of the three main characters (Nadya, Serefin, Mal) had/have the potential to be the one(s) whose journey is the correct (or, the most close to “right�) path, but their circumstances were always shifting and changing dramatically... and that’s exciting! The narrative for sure keeps you on your toes, and I totally dig that level of creeping suspense. Even most of the side characters (old and new) had their own side-plots/backstories elaborated on, and each were pretty intriguing.

I seriously regret getting to read this a year early, because I now have to wait TWO YEARS for book 3!!!!!

Merged review:

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this advanced copy, in exchange for an honest review.

Godsdamn... that was something!
A bit expected, but thrilling nonetheless.

To just get the negative criticism out the way: There was a somewhat more redundancy to the language this time around. You can only read “dark� and “blood� and “monster� so many times before growing weary of hearing it page after page after page. But I get it. My other complaint is something I let slide in the first book, but here, it was a little ridiculous. And it’s simply this: I hated every time Nadya forgave Mal. Their romantic relationship still confuses me, and I am to the point where my dislike of it is 80/20 (it’s toxic). Whenever a character in literature says something along the lines of, “You hurt me, but this pull I feel for you is too strong. I hate you, but I love you.� And then they usually end up kissing aggressively... I will never understand it. Maybe because I’ve never felt that way before, but regardless, I find it infinitely annoying, and it just so happens to occur about a dozen times in this series between Nadya and Malachiasz. Betray > Forgive > Kiss. Rinse and repeat.

A few things: I have to applaud the authoress for her slow-burn building of the romantic relationships. I prefer it when they’re not so completely obvious. One was oh so very vaguely alluded to in Wicked Saints, but I was never really sure. And the fact that the LGBT inclusivity was amped up to 100 here in book 2 is surprising, but an altogether welcome surprise.

This book ups the dark and bloody content tenfold! It seemed as though every page a character was bleeding and/or stabbing something/someone. There’s a particular section that was especially grotesque and disturbing. It was very reminiscent of a gothic Hellraiser. For those passages alone, this book should be tagged as horror (and I do love that genre!).

If I were to say what I liked most about this book, it would definitely have to be how often I was constantly left guessing: Who to trust? What to believe? Was that a lie, or the truth? � There are no easy answers. Nothing is black and white, just shades of blood-spattered gray. The story deepened significantly, making the reading experience that much richer. Each of the three main characters (Nadya, Serefin, Mal) had/have the potential to be the one(s) whose journey is the correct (or, the most close to “right�) path, but their circumstances were always shifting and changing dramatically... and that’s exciting! The narrative for sure keeps you on your toes, and I totally dig that level of creeping suspense. Even most of the side characters (old and new) had their own side-plots/backstories elaborated on, and each were pretty intriguing.

I seriously regret getting to read this a year early, because I now have to wait TWO YEARS for book 3!!!!!]]> 3.76 2020 Ruthless Gods (Something Dark and Holy, #2)
author: Emily A. Duncan
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/13
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: netgalley, sf-fantasy, ya, lgbtqia
review:
Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this advanced copy, in exchange for an honest review.

Godsdamn... that was something!
A bit expected, but thrilling nonetheless.

To just get the negative criticism out the way: There was a somewhat more redundancy to the language this time around. You can only read “dark� and “blood� and “monster� so many times before growing weary of hearing it page after page after page. But I get it. My other complaint is something I let slide in the first book, but here, it was a little ridiculous. And it’s simply this: I hated every time Nadya forgave Mal. Their romantic relationship still confuses me, and I am to the point where my dislike of it is 80/20 (it’s toxic). Whenever a character in literature says something along the lines of, “You hurt me, but this pull I feel for you is too strong. I hate you, but I love you.� And then they usually end up kissing aggressively... I will never understand it. Maybe because I’ve never felt that way before, but regardless, I find it infinitely annoying, and it just so happens to occur about a dozen times in this series between Nadya and Malachiasz. Betray > Forgive > Kiss. Rinse and repeat.

A few things: I have to applaud the authoress for her slow-burn building of the romantic relationships. I prefer it when they’re not so completely obvious. One was oh so very vaguely alluded to in Wicked Saints, but I was never really sure. And the fact that the LGBT inclusivity was amped up to 100 here in book 2 is surprising, but an altogether welcome surprise.

This book ups the dark and bloody content tenfold! It seemed as though every page a character was bleeding and/or stabbing something/someone. There’s a particular section that was especially grotesque and disturbing. It was very reminiscent of a gothic Hellraiser. For those passages alone, this book should be tagged as horror (and I do love that genre!).

If I were to say what I liked most about this book, it would definitely have to be how often I was constantly left guessing: Who to trust? What to believe? Was that a lie, or the truth? � There are no easy answers. Nothing is black and white, just shades of blood-spattered gray. The story deepened significantly, making the reading experience that much richer. Each of the three main characters (Nadya, Serefin, Mal) had/have the potential to be the one(s) whose journey is the correct (or, the most close to “right�) path, but their circumstances were always shifting and changing dramatically... and that’s exciting! The narrative for sure keeps you on your toes, and I totally dig that level of creeping suspense. Even most of the side characters (old and new) had their own side-plots/backstories elaborated on, and each were pretty intriguing.

I seriously regret getting to read this a year early, because I now have to wait TWO YEARS for book 3!!!!!

Merged review:

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this advanced copy, in exchange for an honest review.

Godsdamn... that was something!
A bit expected, but thrilling nonetheless.

To just get the negative criticism out the way: There was a somewhat more redundancy to the language this time around. You can only read “dark� and “blood� and “monster� so many times before growing weary of hearing it page after page after page. But I get it. My other complaint is something I let slide in the first book, but here, it was a little ridiculous. And it’s simply this: I hated every time Nadya forgave Mal. Their romantic relationship still confuses me, and I am to the point where my dislike of it is 80/20 (it’s toxic). Whenever a character in literature says something along the lines of, “You hurt me, but this pull I feel for you is too strong. I hate you, but I love you.� And then they usually end up kissing aggressively... I will never understand it. Maybe because I’ve never felt that way before, but regardless, I find it infinitely annoying, and it just so happens to occur about a dozen times in this series between Nadya and Malachiasz. Betray > Forgive > Kiss. Rinse and repeat.

A few things: I have to applaud the authoress for her slow-burn building of the romantic relationships. I prefer it when they’re not so completely obvious. One was oh so very vaguely alluded to in Wicked Saints, but I was never really sure. And the fact that the LGBT inclusivity was amped up to 100 here in book 2 is surprising, but an altogether welcome surprise.

This book ups the dark and bloody content tenfold! It seemed as though every page a character was bleeding and/or stabbing something/someone. There’s a particular section that was especially grotesque and disturbing. It was very reminiscent of a gothic Hellraiser. For those passages alone, this book should be tagged as horror (and I do love that genre!).

If I were to say what I liked most about this book, it would definitely have to be how often I was constantly left guessing: Who to trust? What to believe? Was that a lie, or the truth? � There are no easy answers. Nothing is black and white, just shades of blood-spattered gray. The story deepened significantly, making the reading experience that much richer. Each of the three main characters (Nadya, Serefin, Mal) had/have the potential to be the one(s) whose journey is the correct (or, the most close to “right�) path, but their circumstances were always shifting and changing dramatically... and that’s exciting! The narrative for sure keeps you on your toes, and I totally dig that level of creeping suspense. Even most of the side characters (old and new) had their own side-plots/backstories elaborated on, and each were pretty intriguing.

I seriously regret getting to read this a year early, because I now have to wait TWO YEARS for book 3!!!!!
]]> <![CDATA[The Impossible Contract (The Chronicles of Ghadid, #2)]]> 44579331 Second in K. A. Doore's high fantasy adventure series the Chronicles of Ghadid, a determined assassin travels to the heart of the Empire in pursuit of a powerful mark, for fans of Robin Hobb, Sarah J. Maas, and S. A. Chakraborty

Thana has a huge reputation to live up to as daughter of the Serpent, who rules over Ghadid’s secret clan of assassins. Opportunity to prove herself arrives when Thana accepts her first contract on Heru, a dangerous foreign diplomat with the ability to bind a person’s soul under his control.

She may be in over her head, especially when Heru is targeted by a rival sorcerer who sends hordes of the undead to attack them both. When Heru flees, Thana has no choice than to pursue him across the sands to the Empire that intends to capture Ghadid inside its iron grip.

A stranger in a strange city, Thana’s only ally is Mo, a healer who may be too noble for her own good. Meanwhile, otherworldly and political dangers lurk around every corner, and even more sinister plans are uncovered which could lead to worldwide devastation. Can Thana rise to the challenge—even if it means facing off against an ancient evil?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

]]> 364 K.A. Doore 0765398583 Kyle 0 to-read, netgalley 4.33 2019 The Impossible Contract (The Chronicles of Ghadid, #2)
author: K.A. Doore
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read, netgalley
review:

]]> None of This Is True 62334530 Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Kyle 0 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: mystery-thriller, to-read, sidelined
review:

]]> The Majesties 50169905 In this riveting tale about the secrets and betrayals that can accompany exorbitant wealth, two sisters from a Chinese-Indonesian family grapple with the past after one of them poisons their entire family.

Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, eminent, and sometimes deceitful family, they’ve relied on each other for support and confidence. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella’s poisoning of their whole clan.

As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking and brutal act. Was it their aunt’s mysterious death at sea? Estella’s unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? Can Gwendolyn, at last, confront the carefully buried mysteries in their family’s past and the truth about who she and her sister really are?

Traveling from the luxurious world of the rich and powerful in Indonesia to the most spectacular shows at Paris Fashion Week, from the sunny coasts of California to the melting pot of Melbourne’s university scene, The Majesties is a haunting and deeply evocative novel about the dark secrets that can build a family empire—and also bring it crashing down.]]> 271 Tiffany Tsao 1982115521 Kyle 0 netgalley, to-read 3.40 2018 The Majesties
author: Tiffany Tsao
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: netgalley, to-read
review:

]]>