Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau’s debut adult novel, The French Honeymoon, arrives as a deliberately claustrophobic thriller that transforms the romantic ideal of Parisian newlywed bliss into something far more sinister. The novel opens with Taylor Quinn alone in a Parisian hotel suite, clutching stolen cash but missing both her suitcase and her husband – an immediately compelling […]
Elin Hilderbrand’s latest offering, The Five-Star Weekend, promises the perfect girls’ getaway but delivers something far more complex—a tangled web of secrets, betrayals, and the messy realities that lurk beneath Instagram-worthy moments. What begins as food blogger Hollis Shaw’s attempt to gather her best friends from each life phase quickly transforms into a weekend where […]
Kate McKean opens “Write Through It” with a declaration that stops you dead in your tracks: “Writing is horrible. Most writers hate the act of doing it, and yet, so many will tell you that their dream is to publish a book.” Right there, in those first two sentences, she’s done something remarkable—she’s told the […]
Amy Mason Doan’s The California Dreamers is a luminous meditation on the complexities of unconventional family life, wrapped in the sun-drenched nostalgia of 1980s California surf culture. This latest offering from the author of Lady Sunshine, Summer Hours, and The Summer List demonstrates Doan’s remarkable ability to weave together intimate family drama with broader questions […]
Grady Hendrix has built his reputation on transforming familiar settings into landscapes of terror, and in “The Blanks,” he delivers perhaps his most unsettling work yet. This haunting short story, part of Amazon’s “The Shivers” collection, strips away the veneer of an idyllic summer community to reveal the horrifying compromises people make to maintain their […]
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar stands as one of the most unflinching portrayals of mental illness in American literature. Through the eyes of nineteen-year-old Esther Greenwood, Plath crafts a narrative that transforms the abstract concept of depression into something viscerally real and terrifyingly accessible. The novel’s central metaphor—the bell jar itself—captures the claustrophobic nature of […]
The Last Case by Sean DeLauder Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Print Length: 182 pages Amazon Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas An out-of-the-box murder mystery with some seriously intriguing twists The Last Case is an unconventional but wholly satisfying specimen of the murder mystery form. Set in a coastal town in New England during the early […]
Eleanor Pilcher’s debut novel “That’s What She Said” arrives with the sort of sharp wit and unabashed honesty that feels both refreshing and necessary in contemporary women’s fiction. The story follows demisexual Beth and her sexually confident best friend Serena as they embark on what they dub a “sexual odyssey” – a journey that begins […]
Kiley Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age, opens with a phone call that disrupts everything—a rock through a window, a frantic request, and twenty-five-year-old Emira Tucker reluctantly agreeing to take her employer’s toddler to the grocery store at nearly midnight. What should be a simple favor transforms into a viral nightmare when a security […]
Meredith Hambrock’s sophomore novel She’s a Lamb! is a masterclass in psychological horror disguised as dark comedy, following the catastrophic unraveling of Jessamyn St. Germain, a twenty-six-year-old aspiring musical theater star whose desperate pursuit of stardom leads to devastating consequences. Set against the backdrop of a Vancouver regional theater’s production of The Sound of Music, […]