Review: Pretty Little Lies - Jessica Huntley - December 2025 There's something deeply satisfying about discovering an author who consistently delivers, and Jessica Huntley has become exactly that for me. After falling head over heels for Room 21, I jumped at the chance to join  Zooloos Book Tours for her latest release, Pretty Little Lies. The cover alone had me hooked elegant yet unsettling but it's what lay beneath that truly captivated me. Pretty Little Lies centers on Amelia and Noah, an engaged couple whose seemingly perfect relationship begins to fracture. As Noah grows distant, Amelia's suspicions of infidelity take root. But her personal crisis quickly spirals into something far more sinister when threatening text messages invade her phone, escalating to deliberate attacks on her freelance beauty business. Someone isn't just trying to hurt Amelia they want to destroy her entire life. What made this thriller particularly gripping was the dual mystery...

Review: Got You - Erik Therme - October 2025 There's something unsettling about family dynamics we can't quite fix, and Erik Therme captures this perfectly in Got You. When I picked up this psychological thriller for the 3Ps Virtual Book Tour with Zooloos Book Tours, I wasn't prepared for how personally it would resonate. Leah has never been close to her younger half-sister Amanda , a reality that hit close to home for me as I am not close to my half-brother . Amanda's life is a chaotic tangle of poor decisions and toxic relationships, and Leah has learned to expect late-night crisis calls. But when Amanda phones frantically demanding a ride to Belmont, insisting her son is in danger, Leah is confused. Amanda doesn't have any children. Before Leah can unravel the truth, Amanda runs into traffic and is killed. What follows is a masterfully crafted descent into paranoia and grief that had me questioning everything alongside Leah. The coroner's report reveals ha...

Review: Super Pancake and the Terrible Toast - Megan Wagner Lloyd and Illustrated by Abhi Alwar - November 2025 There's something wonderfully absurd about a pancake superhero, and Megan Wagner Lloyd's Super Pancake and The Terrible Toast leans into that absurdity with pure joy. Thanks to RandomHouse Kids Graphics for sending this ARC my way , it was exactly the kind of light-hearted escape I needed. This  installment finds our syrupy hero, Peggy Pancake, juggling the classic superhero dilemma: saving the world while maintaining personal relationships. After her previous adventure babysitting mini muffins and battling a Mini Mega Laser of Doom, Peggy now faces an even more challenging nemesis - The Terrible Toast, who's brewing up a mind control scheme beneath the Syrup Sea. But what really struck me about this graphic novel is how it balances the high-stakes action with genuine emotional weight. Peggy's strained relationship with her brother Patrick feels real, even in...

Review: Alchemy of Secrets - Stephanuie Garber - October 2025 After falling head over heels for Stephanie Garber's Once Upon a Broken Heart series and Caraval, I've learned something important about reading order: sometimes it matters more than you'd think. While I adored Caraval, I made the mistake of meeting Jacks first in the Broken Heart series. When I later encountered his portrayal in Caraval books two and three, I just couldn't reconcile them , I'd already fallen for the version of him I knew, and seeing a different side felt impossible to accept. So when I picked up Alchemy of Secrets, I'll admit my expectations were cautiously optimistic. I thought it would be a solid, perhaps average read. Reader, I was spectacularly wrong. From the first chapter , a gripping twenty pages that had me cursing my lunch break's inevitable end. I was completely hooked. Stephanie Garber has crafted something truly special here, weaving together mythology, folklore, a...

Review: Captive Films - Book #2.1 - Jillian Dodd - March 2015 When I needed a palate cleanser between heavier reads, I reached for Captive Films 2.1 by Jillian Dodd, and it delivered exactly what I was craving—a fast-paced, drama-filled escape that I devoured in one sitting. This installment picks up right where the previous book left off, and let me tell you, Knox is making some spectacularly bad decisions. After jumping to conclusions about Ariela (classic Knox), he decides the mature response is to grab his brother and friends for a wild night in Las Vegas to drown his sorrows. Meanwhile, poor Ariela is desperately trying to reach him to explain, but he won't answer his phone. Typical guy move, right? I found myself yelling at the pages, wanting to shake some sense into him. Of course, what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas—especially when you're connected to Captive Films. Photos from their debauchery hit the papers, and suddenly everyone is scrambling. Keatyn a...

Review: Beyond Broken Pencils - Julie C. Gilbert - August 2018 I was twelve years old when Dylan and Eric walked into Columbine High School and changed everything. The date April 20, 1999 became seared into my generation's consciousness. For my thirteenth birthday, my aunty gave me a book that would profoundly shape how I understood that tragedy: Rachel's Tears, the diary of Rachel Scott, one of the students killed that day. Rachel had written about sensing she wouldn't have a future, words that haunt me still. As someone who endured bullying throughout my school years, I understood something complicated and uncomfortable: I could see how the bullied might snap, how they might overpower those who made their lives unbearable. When you're a teenager, trapped in what feels like an endless cycle of torment, life can seem genuinely hopeless. Coming from a country where guns aren't readily available, I've found myself drawn to true crime, particularly school shooting...

Review: The Princess and the Prick - Fairytales for Feminists - Walburga Appleseed - October 2020 When The Princess and the Prick by Walburga Appleseed arrived as a birthday gift, I practically squealed with delight. Having devoured Divine Dicks and Mortal Pricks, I knew I was in for a treat, and this feminist humour book for adults did not disappoint. From the very first page, Appleseed takes a wrecking ball to the fairy tales we grew up with, exposing the deeply problematic gender dynamics lurking beneath their sugary surfaces. The opening story sets the tone perfectly: a prince asking if he may kiss Sleeping Beauty, not waiting for an answer because she's unconscious, and kissing her anyway. It's simultaneously hilarious and horrifying , a masterclass in how consent violations were normalized in stories we fed to children for generations.  Each page feels like a gut-punch of recognition as you realize just how much casual sexism was baked into these "innocent" c...

Review: The Blue Hour - Paula Hawkins - October 2024 There's something deeply unsettling about isolation - the kind that comes with living on an island cut off from the mainland for half of every day. Paula Hawkins understands this instinctively, and in The Blue Hour, she's crafted a novel that exists in contradictions, much like the tidal island of Eris itself. This book was a weird one for me. It moved with the patience of a slow tide, each page deliberate and atmospheric, yet somehow I found myself racing through it. Perhaps it's because Hawkins creates such exquisite tension that even stillness feels urgent. The narrative operates in that liminal space between contemporary fiction and historical mystery . Grace lives on Eris now, solitary and content among the tides, but the island is haunted by the ghost of Vanessa, the famous artist who once called it home, and by her husband who vanished twenty years ago under mysterious circumstances. The premise is deceptively si...