Review: Our Dream Home - Jessica Huntley - February 2026 You know those books you pick up on a quiet evening, maybe with a cup of tea in hand, and before you know it the tea has gone stone cold and you've missed your bedtime by two hours? "Our Dream Home" by Jessica Huntley is absolutely one of those books, and I am not even a little bit sorry about the lost sleep. At the heart of this story is Fiona, and I have to say from the very first chapter, I felt her. She is stuck in one of those ruts that creeps up on you slowly, the kind where your husband has somehow become more of a "world's greatest dad" performer than your actual partner, and your teenagers look at you like you're a mildly irritating piece of furniture. What makes Fiona's situation cut even deeper is the shadow of her past , having survived breast cancer and chosen a mastectomy for the sake of her family, she now finds herself quietly wondering whether any of it was even worth it. Th...

Review: Break to You - Neal Shusterman , Debra Young, Michelle Knowlden - July 2024 There are books you finish and quietly set aside, and then there are books that stay lodged somewhere in your chest long after the final page. This is one of the latter. At its heart, this is an intense yet tender story of two teens, trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love, no matter the consequences. And honestly? It wrecked me in the best possible way. Adriana is simply trying to survive. Seven months at the Compass juvenile detention center - her plan is to keep her head down, do her time, get out. Her journal is her lifeline, the one place where her feelings can spill out without consequence. Until they aren't private anymore. Someone has read her words. And written back. That someone is Jon, a boy living on the other side of the gender-divided facility, and from that first stolen exchange, something quietly electric begins to build between t...

Review: The Family Secret - Caleb Crowe - February 2026 You know that feeling when you settle into your favourite reading chair, wrap yourself in a blanket, and just know that the book in your hands is going to completely consume you for the next few hours? That was exactly my experience with The Family Secret by Caleb Crowe, and honestly, it was just what this bookworm needed. I'll be upfront with you all I had been deep in a reading slump. You know the kind. Where you pick up three books, read five pages of each, and then just end up scrolling your phone instead. When that happens to me, I either reach for something light and breezy or I go completely the other way and dive headfirst into something dark and gripping. I chose the latter, and The Family Secret delivered in every possible way. Our protagonist Charlotte is facing the kind of news nobody ever wants to receive a serious illness diagnosis with the odds stacked firmly against her. As if that weren't enoug...

Review: Murder at the Royal Ruby - #Obsession Collection - Nita Prose - July 2023 Work has been an absolute whirlwind this past week ,the kind of busy that has me staying later than I'd like and trudging through the door with barely enough energy to string a sentence together. As much as I hate to admit it, my reading had been waning a few evenings in a row, and for a bookworm, there really is no worse feeling. So, in true book lover fashion, I did what any of us would do, I scratched that reading itch with a short, satisfying quick read that had been quietly waiting for me on my Kindle. Sometimes a book just knows when it's time to be picked up! Now, most of you will know Nita Prose from her beloved series featuring Molly the Maid, but this little gem takes us somewhere entirely different behind the velvet curtains and into the dazzling, cutthroat world of theatre. We are introduced to a young, passionate wannabe actress who has been paying her dues, grinding away and waitin...

Review: Break My Rules - Book #2 Oxford Legacy Series - Roxy Sloane - December 2024 If you've been following along here on the blog, you'll know that I absolutely loved the first book in Roxy Sloane's series, so it's fair to say I was more than a little eager to curl up and dive straight into Book #2, Break My Rules. And oh my goodness, did it deliver from the very first page! The book opens on a complete OMG moment , the kind that makes you sit up straight and forget your cup of tea is going cold beside you. Tessa discovers that St Clair has the same tattoo her sister described as part of the attack that drove her to suicide. Now, if you read Book #1, you'll remember that no body was ever found, and trust me when I say that little detail becomes very, very important as this story unfolds. What I loved most about this book is how Roxy Sloane handles the emotional fallout of that discovery. Tessa tells St Clair about the tattoo, and suddenly both of them are comple...

VBT# Review - The Other Mother - Book #2 The Peasedle Woods Killer Series - Heidi Field - November 2025 Oh, come and settle in with me for a moment, grab yourself a warm drink and get comfortable, because today's tour stop has me with plenty to say! When the lovely folks at Zooloos Book Tours knocked on The Phantom Paragrapher's door with Heidi Fields' The Other Mother, I cleared my reading chair, pulled the blanket over my knees, and dove straight in. And what a tangled, twisty web awaited me. Right from the opening pages, the premise alone had me hooked like a fish on a line. Suzannah is pregnant with her third child. Her first is in prison. Her second is dead. If that tagline doesn't make you sit bolt upright and demand answers, then I honestly don't know what will. It's the kind of setup that lodges itself in your brain at two in the morning and refuses to leave quietly. Suzannah herself is a fascinatingly complex creation. She is deeply flawed, morally mu...

Review: Lumberjanes: Volume Three - Various Contributors - February 2026 Oh friends, gather round because I have the most wonderful thing to share with you today, and I am barely containing my excitement as I type this! When the postie knocked on my door with a review copy from the absolute legends over at Boom Studios, I may have done a little happy dance in my hallway. Boom Studios honestly publishes some of the most joyful, imaginative, and downright brilliant comics and graphic novels out there, and being trusted with one of their titles for review genuinely made my day. But here's the thing  this wasn't just any title. This was Lumberjanes. My Lumberjanes. I fell in love with April, Jo, Mal, Molly, and Ripley over ten years ago when this gorgeous series first burst onto the scene, and that love has never once wavered. They feel like old friends at this point, the kind you'd want sitting round your kitchen table with a mug of tea and a warm biscuit. Book Three collect...

Review: She's Going to Pay - Alexandra Ivy - October 2025 There are books you pick up expecting a pleasant evening, and books that take your evening hostage. She's Going to Pay by Alexandra Ivy is firmly the latter. I sat down with this one on a quiet weeknight with a cup of tea and the best of intentions and I was still reading at gone midnight, absolutely unwilling to leave Jesse Hudson's world behind until I knew how it all ended. It's that kind of book. Jesse Hudson didn't leave Canton, Missouri, so much as she escaped it. As a teenager she watched her stepmother and stepsister disappear under a cloud of suspicion, her father become a murder suspect, and then he vanishwed too  leaving her to wait, and wait, before finally walking away altogether. Years of bartending jobs and keeping moving followed. When she finally returns, it's meant to be quick and clean: sell her father's old bar, close the chapter, and leave for good. But Canton has other idea...