Review: Little Ghost's Summerween - Maggie Edkins Willis - April 2026  Little Ghost has attended his very first birthday party and decides he wants one of his own. His friend Anya gives him the most beautifully simple advice: the party should celebrate what Little Ghost loves most. And of course, what Little Ghost loves most is Halloween - bats, black cats, candy corn, pumpkins, the whole gloriously spooky lot. The small snag? It's the middle of summer. What unfolds is a genuinely delightful little story about identity, creativity, and the joy of refusing to be boxed in by expectations. Maggie Edkins Willis has a wonderful instinct for the interior logic of childhood like of course you can have Halloween in summer. Why wouldn't you? The solution Little Ghost lands on (a "Summerween" party) is exactly the kind of lateral thinking that picture books do best: it validates kids who feel like they don't quite fit the calendar of normal celebrations. The illustr...

Review: The Birthday - Book #1 Detective Natalie Ward - Carol Wyer - September 2018 You know those books you pick up when you're in that very specific mood for a thriller that gets your heart racing? That was me with The Birthday. I've been absolutely devouring thrillers lately, and when I saw this premise a five-year-old disappearing from a birthday party and the investigation that unfolds years later -I knew I had to read it. Carol Wyer does a solid job building the tension here. The idea that these little girls all attended the same party and then, one by one, terrible things happen to them? Absolutely chilling. As a reader, you can't help but keep turning pages, desperate to figure out who's behind these horrific crimes. Detective Natalie Ward is a compelling lead ,I appreciated that she's a mother herself, which adds this extra layer of emotional weight to the investigation. You really feel her determination to bring these children home. Here's where I hav...