Review: The Death Row Club - V.A Vazquez - July 2026 Imagine waking up one day to discover that your mum or dad is a serial killer. Then imagine trying to get through the press, the whispers and the stares, all while starting your life over. It's a heavy thought, isn't it? In The Death Row Club, V.A. Vasquez shows us that these characters don't have to face it alone. They have each other, in a secret, invite-only group made up of the children of serial killers from all walks of life. For them, it's the one place in the world where they can take off the mask and be their whole selves. Nobody has to hide, explain or apologise, because everyone in the room understands. I'll admit that's the part that tugged at my heartstrings the most. Belonging is a very human need, even in the strangest of circumstances. But as we all know, a safe space never stays quiet for long. Word of the group has got out, and there are people who want to punish these children for the sins...

    Review: Librarian Tales - William Ottens - September 2020 Some books arrive in your life at exactly the right moment. Librarian Tales by William Ottens was a birthday present, and it was the perfect one for a self-proclaimed bookworm and bibliophile like me. This book was written for librarians, by a librarian. It's part memoir, part behind-the-desk confessional, and it doesn't shy away from any side of the job. There's the fun, the ugly, and the endless parade of weird and wacky things we see and get asked. If you've ever worked a library desk, you'll be nodding along, laughing, and occasionally wincing in recognition. And if you haven't, it's a wonderful peek behind the curtain at what librarians really get up to (spoiler: it's a lot more than stamping books). It spoke to me because books and readers' advisory are my true passion. I was that librarian. I had the Dewey Decimal system memorised. I remembered what each customer read so I could h...

Review: Nightshade - Vanessa Edwards - July 2026 Nightshade by Vanessa Edwards begins with a heartbreak. Years ago, Mary fell head over heels for a man who treated her like she was the whole world. Then, just like that, he broke her heart by choosing someone else. That someone was Alice, who is now his wife. Fast forward to the present and Ed has Mary back in his life. She makes him feel wanted, and he's planning to divorce Alice and marry the woman he should have picked all those years ago. Alice, however, has other ideas. A divorce would leave her penniless, and that simply won't do for the lifestyle she's grown so fond of. So she gathers up a little "nightshade" (of course she does!) and poisons her husband. Alice is quite certain she's got away with it. But she's forgotten someone. Enter Lina, the nanny, who has seen more than Alice ever realised. When Alice tries to fire her, Lina has her ammunition ready, and things get deliciously tense from ther...

        Synopsis: Forever Relentless - Book #3 Fourth and Forever Series  - Eve L. Mitchell - September 2026 This is the darkest entry in the series so far, and I mean that as a warning as much as a promise. Noah Matthews is the one they call in when the Alabama Lions need control, not mercy -the enforcer, not the golden boy. He is not a soft landing. They call him the enforcer. The one the team unleashes when control matters more than mercy. I noticed him the second I set foot on campus. That one. Never that one. I should have listened. I didn't come to Wrighton to admire the golden boys. I came to drag their secrets into the light for what they did to my brother. I forged a new name, a new past and slipped inside their world. Except Noah Matthews saw through it all. He knows exactly who I am. What I'm hunting. One word from him would cost me everything. And he knows it. He should have turned me in. That he hasn't is so much worse. He just watches. Crowds ...

Review: Dead Girls - Girls Just Wanna Get Even - Beck Kubrick - September 2026 I'll be honest, I picked this one up expecting a fun, gory romp through slasher tropes, and while I absolutely got that, I wasn't prepared for how much this graphic novel would sneak up on me emotionally. Dead Girls is exactly what it promises on the tin  a love letter to slasher films but it's the friendship at its center that really got under my skin. Clossdale is the kind of small town that horror fans will recognize instantly: pretty on the surface, rotten underneath, and apparently cursed with an alarming body count of teenage girls. When a fifth victim turns up, suspicion immediately falls on Ash, the daughter of a notorious serial killer. There's something so viscerally unfair about watching Ash carry the weight of her mother's crimes, and I found myself rooting for her from page one  not because she's a perfect heroine, but because she's angry, and she has every right to ...

Review: A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up - Elizabeth Agyemang - September 2026 I'll admit it I picked this one up expecting a fun, low-stakes gaming story. What I got instead was a graphic novel that quietly snuck up on me and left me a little misty-eyed on my couch, coffee gone cold beside me. A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up follows Lexie, a sixth grader who had big plans for this school year: new clubs, the ideal lunch table, and after-school gaming sessions with her best friends. Instead, she's dealing with shifting friendships and the very real, very heavy grief of losing her grandfather. If you've ever watched a kid try to hold it together while everything around them changes at once, you'll recognize that ache immediately. Here's where the story does something special. Lexie finds a journal hidden among her grandfather's belongings .  full of cryptic notes and cheat codes for an unfinished video game he'd been building called Warrior...