Review: Her Last Cry - Book #2 Detective Hollie Turner Series - Paul J Teague - January 2024 You know that feeling when you're in a reading slump so deep you're considering taking up knitting instead? That was me before diving into this series. Romance after romance had left me feeling like I was chewing literary cardboard, until Book #5 reminded me why I fell in love with mysteries in the first place. Naturally, I had to go back to the beginning—and honestly? I wasn't prepared for the emotional gut punch waiting for me. This isn't your cozy mystery where the biggest drama is who stole the church bake sale funds. We're thrust into the aftermath of Sister Sophia Brennan's murder, a crime that unravels the dark secrets of an unwed mothers' home. The story follows Hollie and her sidekick Jeannine as they dig into a conspiracy involving five young women whose babies were illegally adopted out—their lives forever altered by a system that claimed to do "God...

Review: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls - Grady Hendrix - January 2025 Set against the haunting backdrop of a 1970s unwed mothers home in St. Augustine, Florida, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is Grady Hendrix at his most chilling—and most heartbreaking. Combining the author’s signature horror-tinged storytelling with a devastating slice of social history, this novel struck an especially personal chord with me. Like the girls in this story, my own mother had her child taken from her as a teenager under the guise of “what’s best,” a story so many women in that era know too well. We follow 15-year-old Fern, frightened, pregnant, and utterly alone as she enters the rigid confines of the Wellwood Home. Girls like Fern are labelled “loose” and “troubled,” stripped of their autonomy and made to follow a life path dictated by shame and control. But what begins as a bleak narrative of conformity slowly morphs into something powerful, strange—and even a little magical. When a mysterious Mobile Libra...