VBT# We Will Find You - Ian Blackwood - August 2026 I read this one curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because I genuinely could not put it down long enough to reheat it. There's something about a good con-artist thriller that feels like being let in on a secret, and Ian Blackwood hands you that secret slowly, deliciously, one uncomfortable truth at a time. The setup is deceptively simple: three women, one man, and a lie so well constructed it takes years to unravel. Serena is swept off her feet by Tod  yacht, diamond ring, all the trimmings of a fairy tale proposal. As a reader, you know from the title alone that something's off.  That fall comes when Serena shows a photo of her fiancé to her friend Chloe, a gym owner with a past she's never quite spoken about. The colour drains from Chloe's face, and just like that, the floor drops out from under the story. Tod is Tam. The ring is fake. The yacht was never his. Every soft, romantic detai...

Review: Hana - Book #1.5 Delirium Series - Lauren Oliver - December 2011 I have a confession to make. This book had been sitting on my Kindle since January 2012, quietly waiting, until now. Sometimes a story finds you exactly when it's meant to, and picking up Hana after all these years felt less like reading a novella and more like stepping back through a door I didn't know I'd left open. Reading it transported me straight back to 2010–2012, that golden era when dystopian YA ruled every bookshelf and every teenage heart. It also brought back a memory I treasure, organising a Zoom call with Lauren Oliver herself for a teen reading finale at Tauranga Libraries, right here in little ol' New Zealand. Talk about full circle. Hana gives us the summer before the cure, told from the other side of the friendship at the heart of Delirium. While Lena is pulling away from the noise and risk of the underground world, Hana is doing the opposite  chasing every last taste of freed...

Review: Lumberjanes - Book #5 - Various Contributors - June 2026 There's a particular kind of comfort in opening a Lumberjanes book  it's the comic equivalent of walking into your childhood bedroom and finding everything exactly where you left it, except somehow even more delightful than you remembered. Volume 5 (collecting issues #49–60) is no exception, and honestly, it might be one of my favorite helpings of camp chaos yet. April, Jo, Mal, Molly, and Ripley are back, and as always, the world refuses to let them have a normal week. Between navigating underground labyrinths, getting swept up in a board game with actual magical stakes, and accidentally waking up an ancient Greek goddess (you know, typical Tuesday stuff), this volume packs in enough adventure for three ordinary book series. And yet nothing ever feels rushed or overstuffed ,  it all unfolds with that easy, breathless energy the series has perfected, where the absurd and the heartfelt sit side by side without m...

Review: The Boarding School Experiment - Book #1 Experiment Series - Emily Evans - September 2012 There's a particular kind of joy in curling up with a new Emily Evans book, and I'll admit I went into this one already grinning before I'd even cracked the spine. Emily is one of those authors whose name on a cover is basically a promise.  I know I'm in for something fun, fast, and full of heart and pair that with a boarding school setting, my absolute weakness as a reader, and this felt like it was written just for me. The premise had me hooked immediately. There are three steps to taking revenge on the most popular, hottest guy in your senior class: stealth, planning, and execution. Poor Elena manages precisely none of them, and instead of getting her satisfying payback, she ends up shipped off to a government-run boarding school out in the wilds of Alaska. And because the universe has a sense of humour, Thane Trallwyn  her sworn enemy and the very target of her failed...

Review: The Roommate Subtest - Elia Winters - September 2026 I'll be honest with you, dear reader: there was a moment, somewhere in the middle of this book, where I set it down on the arm of the couch and genuinely considered not picking it back up. That's not a great sign for a review, I know. But stick with me, because something pulled me back in, and I think it's worth talking about why. The Roommate Subtext gives us Maggie St. Claire, a freelance journalist who's perfectly content admiring her roommate Blake from a respectable distance,  hot, nerdy, surrounded by an absurd jungle of houseplants he clearly loves more than is reasonable. It's cozy. It's domestic. It's the kind of set-up that makes you want to put the kettle on. Then Maggie lands an assignment to expose an anonymous online kinkster called The Scarlet Pimpernel, and suddenly sitting across the breakfast table from sweet, wholesome Blake gets a lot more complicated. Because Blake, botanist ...

Review: The Last Eight Hours - S.C Shannon - September 2026 There's something deliciously unsettling about a book that opens with blood already spilled and a mind already blank, and The Last Eight Hours wastes no time pulling you into that unease. I curled up with this one expecting a straightforward thriller, and instead got tangled in a web I'm still thinking about days later  the kind of read that makes you want to text a friend at midnight just to say "you HAVE to read this." We meet Tessa in the worst possible moment of her life: sore, disoriented, and standing over the bodies of her husband and his business partner. She can't remember the last eight hours. She doesn't know if she did this. Honestly, neither do we, and that shared confusion is what makes the opening so gripping , we're figuring it out right alongside her. From there, we read as Tessa returns home to Cascade Bay, falling into a whirlwind romance with the charming Grayson, and meet...

Review: Faith Still Moves Mountains - Harris Faulkner - November 2022 I’ll admit that I’ve been a little slack this year when it comes to reading non-fiction. One of my reading goals was to mix things up a little and include more non-fiction on my TBR, and while I have managed to read a handful, it definitely hasn’t happened as often as I intended. So when Faith Still Moves Mountains by Harris Faulkner arrived as one of my birthday books through a Birthday Bookstagram group I’m part of, I was intrigued to see what this collection of faith-based stories would have to offer. And honestly, this was a lovely reminder of why sometimes it’s good to step outside our usual reading comfort zones. Faith Still Moves Mountains is a collection of powerful stories and testimonies that explore moments when people have experienced God’s presence, guidance and miracles in their lives. At its heart is the message that even in a world that can sometimes feel incredibly dark, uncertain and overwhelming, t...

Review: A Merry Royal Layover - Teri Wilson - October 2021 There are some books that feel like curling up on the couch with a hot chocolate, a Christmas movie playing in the background, and absolutely no intention of taking life too seriously. A Merry Royal Layover by Terri Wilson is exactly that kind of book. It’s cute, festive, romantic and completely unapologetic about leaning into all the things we love about holiday rom-coms. As soon as I started reading this novella, I was getting major Love Actually vibes. In fact, there are so many little references and nods to the movie that I couldn't help but smile, especially the infamous Christmas lobster claws. If you know, you know! I love it when an author manages to weave in those little pop-culture moments without making them feel forced, and this book absolutely delivered on that front. But Love Actually isn't the only movie that came to mind. I was also getting strong The Prince and Me vibes, which just happens to be another...

Review: Thornbird - E. Kennedy - June 2026 I had high hopes for Thornbird by E. Kennedy because, honestly, the premise sounded like it had been written specifically for me. A serial killer father? A mother who was one of his victims? A daughter who changes her name and creates a whole new identity to escape the shadow of his crimes? Come on  that is basically catnip for a thriller reader! Ten years after infamous serial killer Gabriel Thorn was caught, Ryan Shipley returns to Starling, Tennessee, determined to keep her head down and her true identity hidden. Nobody can know who she really is or the connection she has to the notorious killer. But when fresh eyes begin digging into the old case, the secrets Ryan has worked so hard to bury start clawing their way back to the surface. Cryptic texts, unsettling coincidences and a chilling note all suggest that someone knows more than they should. And as questions surrounding Gabriel Thorn's crimes begin resurfacing, Ryan finds herself r...