TL;DR Review: A detective thriller that feels instantly familiar but isn’t afraid to go in bold, unique directions with setting and character. Synopsis: A noir story, set in an alternate New York City. After years of being a cop, and now a private investigator, there’s little that surprises Cole Blackstone. But when someone working for […]
Fiction
Review: And He Shall Appear by Kate Van Der Borgh
And He Shall Appear is very much a spec-fic character and psychology study, with few and unexpected answers, beautiful if at times self-indulgent prose (which fits perfectly in context) and very lyrical narration carried out by an unreliable and (very cleverly) unnamed narrator.
Review: I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
Summary: A standalone darkly humorous thriller set in modern America’s age of anxiety, by New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin. Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC. But […]
Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Synopsis The instant USA Today bestseller by Chuck Tingle about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead. “Brilliantly bloody, wildly fun, and extremely scary, Bury Your Gays brings a sledgehammer down on tired tropes and makes a masterpiece of their guts.”―Rachel Harrison, national bestselling author of Black Sheep Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood […]
Review: A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman
Right place, right time, right review Synopsis RIGHT PLACE. RIGHT TIME. WRONG MAN. Jamie Tulloch is a successful exec at a top tech company, a long way from the tough upbringing that drove him to rise so far and so quickly. But he has a secret… since the age of 23, he’s had a helping […]
Review: Under Her Care by Lucinda Berry
Synopsis From the bestselling author of The Perfect Child comes a shocking thriller about the disturbing complexities of a mother’s love and the deadly consequences of unravelling family secrets. On a humid summer day in Alabama, a mayor’s wife turns up brutally murdered under a railroad bridge. Standing next to her body is fourteen-year-old Mason Hill, the […]
Review: Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio
Synopsis The 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 […]
Review: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Synopsis While we live, the enemy shall fear us. Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda […]
Review: Asunder by Kerstin Hall
Synopsis:We choose our own gods here.Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a […]
Review: This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Synopsis From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus […]
Review: Honeycomb by S.B. Caves
Honeycomb had me HOOKED. Wow. It took me by surprise so many times and I couldn’t put it down, I thought I knew what was going on but there were still moments that really caught me out.
This is a great high-concept thriller with a central plot that utterly hooked me. The idea of putting six people together in a locked house and giving them an experimental drug is such a great concept and S.B. Caves pulls it off so so well.
Review: Pluralities by Avi Silver
Synopsis “Wait—rewind. I was still a girl back then, before the universes converged.” Guided by premonitions and a fateful car ride, a burned-out retail worker stumbles into the grand exit from womanhood. Meanwhile, in a galaxy not so far away, an alien prince goes rogue with his sentient spaceship, seeking purpose in the great glimmering […]