Password-protected posts contain heavy spoilers and are there to prevent accidental spoiling. They can each individually be accessed with the password "SPOILME(#of the post)". That means if the post is numbered #0000, the password is SPOILME0000 - SPOILME all in caps, no space in between.
Enter at your own risk. And have fun!
In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their lives…
Ben Richards is out of work and out of luck. His eighteen-month-old daughter is sick, and neither Ben nor his wife can afford to take her to a doctor. For a man from the poor side of town with no cash and no hope, there’s only one thing to do: become a contestant on one of the Network’s Games, shows where you can win more money than you’ve ever dreamed of—or die trying. Now Ben’s going prime-time on the Network’s highest-rated viewer participation show. And he’s about to become a prey for the masses…
“In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their lives. . . .”
“He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride–if responsibility robs him of his manhood.”
“…like words repeated until they are reduced to nonsense. Say your name over two hundred times and discover you are no one.”
My Thoughts
It’s so funny that my previous reviews were for a 5-star King book, singing his praises as a writer, and now I’m only giving 3 stars to another King book! It wasn’t a bad story, and in fact, I love the premise, but the execution left me a little disappointed. It may also be unfair because I grew up watching a lot of Schwarzenegger movies and The Running Man was one of my favorites, and although I knew the movie didn’t follow the book closely at all, I was hoping for the same thrill, and I don’t feel like I got it.
This book is also horribly dated, having been written in 1982, and a lot of King’s imagined ideas for what 2025 would look like falls comically short. Not his fault, and probably not an issue when it first came out, but it does take away a little from my enjoyment of reading this book for the first time in this day and age. I’m expecting the new movie coming out to be updated from when the old movie was released, and in a way, I wish there would be an updated version of this book too, but I recognize this is a me problem and not the book problem.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
NO MORE THAN A DARK PENCIL LINE ON A BLANK PAGE. A HORIZON LINE, MAYBE, BUT ALSO A SLOT FOR BLACKNESS TO POUR THROUGH . . .
A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn’t survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a “geographic cure,” a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else.
“Edgar does anything make you happy?”
“I used to sketch.”
“Take it up again. You need hedges . . .
hedges against the night.”
Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth’s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.
The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural–Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
“If I kept saying it; if I kept reaching out. My accident really taught me just one thing: the only way to go on is to go on. To say ‘I can do this’ even when you know you can’t.”
“A person’s memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It’s you.”
“The only religions I don’t like are the ones that insist their God is bigger than your God.”
“Stay hungry. It worked for Michelangelo, it worked for Picasso, and it works for a hundred thousand artists who do it not for love (although that might play a part) but in order to put food on the table. If you want to translate the world, you need to use your appetites. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. There’s no creation without talent, I give you that, but talent is cheap. Talent goes begging. Hunger is the piston of art.”
The Narrator(s)
John Slattery. I was completely immersed and I enjoyed it very much!
My Thoughts
This is also a reread. I don’t remember anything about it except that I loved it, because although I rated it 5 stars when I first read it, I didn’t leave a review. Having read it again this time, I can totally see why I loved it the first time, and why I’m quite sure I’ll still love it when I read it again in the future.
It is such an all encompassing book for me; it evokes so many emotions, makes me feel so much, all the ups and downs. It grabbed my attention from the beginning, even though it started slow and almost felt like an easy vacation read, and then it got really intense and I couldn’t put it down. I fell in love with all the characters, but that’s no surprise because King’s characters are always so well-written.
I loved Edgar’s and Wireman’s bromance, the way they trusted each other and related to each other even from the beginning. I love the way we see Edgar’s progress from the start of the story; his struggles, his recovery, his thought processes… I love how I fell for Ilse and other people in Edgar’s life, simply through the way Edgar thinks about them. How can I not love King’s books when he gives me everything? The story is always exciting, the characters are always interesting, and all the different types of emotions are always spilling out of me! Ugh, so good!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Carrie may be picked on by her classmates but she has a gift. She can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. This is her power and her problem.
To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie — the first step towards social acceptance by her high school colleagues. Until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of terror and destruction that no one will ever forget.
“People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”
“High school isn’t a very important place. When you’re going you think it’s a big deal, but when it’s over nobody really thinks it was great unless they’re beered up.”
“Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.”
“This is the girl they keep calling a monster. I want you to keep that firmly in mind. The girl who could be satisfied with a hamburger and a dime root beer after her only school dance so her momma wouldn’t be worried . . .”
The Narrator(s)
Sissy Spacek, and Margaret Atwood. I can’t think of better narrators for this book. Love them!
My Thoughts
This is a reread, and although it isn’t one of my favorite Stephen King books, I find that I like it more this time around and appreciate it for the story it is. Carrie is such a fascinating character; she’s not really the bad guy here and yet, she caused hundreds of deaths and a whole town’s destruction. Stephen King has always been the master of writing about regular people who are monsters, and it’s interesting when you realize he’s been doing this since the beginning.
Carrie isn’t the monster here, she’s just a scared little girl pushed to the brink of what she could handle emotionally. Her mother, her school bullies, they are the true monsters. I also read this right after reading Frankenstein and I thought it was interesting with the whole “who’s the real monster” theme. There are some real parallels here that I’m not sure I would’ve realized if I hadn’t read them back to back, especially with some of what I said in my Frankenstein review about bad parenting. I also mentioned about how it was great that Frankenstein was focused more on the father as the parent, while here, we see the mother being the focus of bad parenting.
Maybe I liked this book more this time around precisely because I read Frankenstein right before, but honestly, I find myself noticing a lot more this time too about the rest of the characters in the story, the way they behave, their thoughts processes, and I’m amazed once again by Stephen King’s character study. This is why I love his books.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
‘Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart …’
Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley’s chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron’s villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world’s most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.
Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with ‘A Fragment’ by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre: A Tale’.
It was my online bookclub’s BOTM, and it’s one of my favorite classic horror stories.
The Quotes
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
My Thoughts
It’s one of my favorite classic horror books but it’s been a while since I read it. Rereading it again now, there are a lot of details I’ve forgotten, but the question of who the real monster is still truly intrigues me. I love how it’s an exploration of human nature, even though one of the MCs is not really human. I love that there is a spotlight on fathers and their roles as parents. We often see mothers being scrutinized for their parenting, but here it’s the “father” who’s the only person responsible for the parenting.
I love that this book is such food for thought about the human condition and what it means to be human, the need for love and belonging regardless of your origins. It’s heartbreaking to see what can happen when people don’t get the love and care they desperately need. I also think that despite being categorized as creature horror, it’s also very much social horror and very relevant to the human condition today.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The USA Today bestselling author of The Worst Best Man is back with another hilarious rom-com about two strangers who get trapped in a lie and have to fake date their way out of it…
Just weeks away from ditching DC for greener pastures, Solange Pereira is roped into helping her wedding planner cousin on a random couple’s big day. It’s an easy gig… until she stumbles upon a situation that convinces her the pair isn’t meant to be. What’s a true-blue romantic to do? Crash the wedding, of course. And ensure the unsuspecting groom doesn’t make the biggest mistake of his life.
Dean Chapman had his future all mapped out. He was about to check off “start a family” and on track to “make partner” when his modern day marriage of convenience went up in smoke. Then he learns he might not land an assignment that could be his ticket to a promotion unless he has a significant other and, in a moment of panic, Dean claims to be in love with the woman who crashed his wedding. Oops.
Now Dean has a whole new item on his to-do list: beg Solange to be his pretend girlfriend. Solange feels a tiny bit bad about ruining Dean’s wedding, so she agrees to play along. Yet as they fake-date their way around town, what started as a performance for Dean’s colleagues turns into a connection that neither he nor Solange can deny. Their entire romance is a sham… there’s no way these polar opposites could fall in love for real, right?
For the Reading Challenge(s): N/A
The Reason
I desperately needed some romance after reading so many dark and heavy books.
The Quotes
“You know, I think the more something’s important to us, the more we feel we’ll lose if it doesn’t work out. So we convince ourselves not to want the thing.”
“One thing’s clear: Not being in a relationship is better than being in a bad one. Because one bad relationship can change your life forever.”
“Like maybe I don’t deserve you but I want to try to earn a place in your heart.”
“Sometimes we feel things we know aren’t rational, but we still feel them.”
My Thoughts
I picked up this book because I had been reading a lot of horror and hard-hitting books lately and I needed a nice, light-hearted romance. There were a lot of cliches, tropes, and hijinks, but all in good fun and mostly delivered well. I enjoyed the chemistry between the two MCs, and I love the relationships they have with the other supporting characters as well. I think the family aspect of the book is one of my favorite things about it, though I normally don’t like family being too involved in personal stuff. It feels like there was a nice balance between nosiness and respect for privacy with the relationships here. There was some graphic sex on the page which I wasn’t expecting but I thought was done pretty tastefully, considering. It was a really quick read and I enjoyed it very much!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.
The Reason
There was so much hype I couldn’t ignore it!
The Quotes
“Cats are assholes. I get it. But do you know why people like cats, despite their asshole-ness? It’s because they don’t fucking talk.”
“If we get to the point where we don’t help each other anymore, that’s when we stop being human.”
“New achievement! You’ve killed an armed mob with your bare fucking hands! Holy crap, dude. That’s kinda fucked up. Reward: You’ve received a Bronze Weapon Box!”
“You’re not going to break me,” I said. “You might hurt me, or kill me, but you’re not going to break me.”
The Narrator(s)
Jeff Hays. For all the books in the series. I have insufficient words to describe how incredible his narration is. I am spoiled by his narration!
My Thoughts
I decided to do one post for the whole series because I’m so far behind with my reviews and I’m too lazy to do one for each book, so I’ll just put them altogether here in this post.
Book 1 – Dungeon Crawler Carl This is a reread; I first read this (and the second book in the series) in November last year and loved it, but I wasn’t able to finish the series at the time so now I have to reread to refresh my memory. I had a lot of other books on my TBR and wasn’t initially planning to pick this series back up now, but life has been kicking my ass and I felt like I needed a story that was fun and easy to read but also thrilling and exciting at the same time to keep my interest throughout everything else happening in my life.
This book is such perfect balance of being light-hearted while still dealing with some heavy issues. I love Carl and Donut as a team; they have the cutest relationship and the best chemistry as a duo. It makes me wonder about the kind of relationship I would have with my cats if they turned sentient! Now that I’m back in the DCC world, I intend to complete the series this time and I’m so ready to start the next books!
Book 2 – Carl’s Doomsday Scenario Continuing the saga of Carl and Donut but now we also have Mongo! I love that they picked their Classes in this book that allow them to get all the perks and upgrades. The side quests are interesting as hell, I am also waiting to see where this goes when they reach the lower levels! I loved the ending of the book and I loved the epilogue even more! It was hilarious! It was incredible! It was amazing! It was (insert all your favorite adjectives here)! I’m sure I’ll be back with another glowing review after I finish the next book!
Book 3 – The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook This is the third book in the series and I think it might be my favorite one so far! One of the reasons the first book pulled me in is because of the humor and how easy it is to read, but it should be acknowledged that there are some very disturbing themes in the book and a lot of emotional trauma as well. This book delves deeper into some difficult topics that are handled so beautifully and serves to show us the growth and development of the characters. I love them more now than ever. I love that although there is more focus on character development, there is no detraction from the excitement of the Dungeon Crawl and the missions, quests, and scrapes that Carl, Donut, and their friends get into.
Book 4 – The Gate of the Feral Gods Fourth book in and I am still caught off-guard by how this story manages to surprise me! I love that we are getting to know more of the other characters better now. As we get deeper into the levels and more Crawlers die, we naturally get fewer characters left, of course, and we see some of them over the course of the books as well. It’s weird how Carl creates community and found family without getting too sappy about it, but in a way that makes my heart swell even more. They show love and care through actions rather than cheesy words (although there’s nothing wrong with that!).
There are several characters whose motives I’m still unsure about though, and I guess we’ll find out as we go. I also love how much more openly defiant Carl has gotten, and how he uses his ratings and popularity as leverage. I can’t help it, guys. I wanted to take a break to read other books, but I already started the next book!
Book 5 – The Butcher’s Masquerade Fifth book in and still going strong! Book 5 gets better and also more traumatic at the same time. I laughed out loud so many times while reading, and probably teared up an equal amount of times. The relationships are the best thing about this book, but there’s also the plot and the humor, and oh, everything! The fact of the premise really allows Dinniman to go crazy with the cast and plot but it also highlights just how f’d up the events in the books are if they happened in real life. There are things set up in previous books that come to fruition in this book, but there are also a lot more that have not come to pass, and I’m sort of scared of what’s going to happen because the story does not go easy!
Book 6 – The Eye of the Bedlam Bride Book 6 and it’s still so good and hilarious, and completely outlandish in a good way! Where do I begin? The fact that we are now on Book 6 and there’s still so much I can say about it because it never gets boring, there’s always something new, and I only fall more and more in love with the characters.
The fact that this freaking book can make me laugh out loud in one paragraph only to make me cry like a baby in the next, to the point that my husband sitting beside me stared at me worriedly and wondered if I was having a neurological event. The fact that the traumatic events that happen in this book is handled so sensitively and seriously, and at the same time so irreverently and humorously, and still makes me relate to the human condition and everything it means to be human for these characters.
I am excitedly anticipating reading Book 7, but also dreading it because once I finish it, I’ll have to wait a while for the next books and I know I’ll miss Carl and Donut. I’m going to read some other books before starting Book 7, but I’m pretty sure I can’t put it off too long!
Book 7 – This Inevitable Ruin This is Book 7 in the DCC series, and the last one to date until the next one, which is expected to be released in May 2026. I don’t know how I can wait that long without going crazy. I don’t often do well with long-running series because I forget details, or get bored with the same story and characters, especially if the author tends to be formulaic. But every single book in this series has only gotten better and better, and just when you think it can’t get better, it gets better!
This book plays with my emotions; making me cry, making me laugh, making me feel awed at the plots, missions, side quests, power plays… making me disgusted because some really disgusting things happen, making me scared and on edge with suspense, making me feel so much! I thought I was already so deeply in love with these characters, but I find myself falling more and more in love with them with every book.
I cannot praise this series enough, but I also feel like I should maybe tone it down because it might raise expectations sky high and I don’t want anyone to be disappointed. It is that good though, for me at least, and now that I’ve finished the latest book and have to wait for the next one, I have no idea what to do with myself!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars. I love the whole series and each book only gets better and better!
Have you read this series? Would you read this series? Did you like it or do you think you would like it?
Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters, and the mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it’s a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.
For the Reading Challenge(s): N/A
The Reason
A bookclub friend recommended it and I had enjoyed the author’s The First Law trilogy.
The Quotes
“Happy endings are just stories that aren’t finished yet.”
“You need to stop clinging to the notion that there is only one right path. You’ll waste half your time panicking you’re not on it, and the rest backtracking to find it.”
“Show me a man who regrets nothing and I’ll show you a man who’s achieved nothing.”
The Narrator(s)
Steven Pacey. I loved him when listening to The First Law books and I love him for this one too!
My Thoughts
Abercrombie’s books usually start out really well for me. I read The First Law trilogy and really enjoyed his writing style and humor. This book is no different. I especially love how interesting and imperfect his characters are. They are all broken in their own ways, but I always feel like there’s hope for them and I want to see it play out in the story. Unfortunately, I feel like this book didn’t hit the mark for me. All the feels I initially felt, with a band of people forced together for some sort of mission, the way they worked together, getting to know each other, their chemistry…
I wanted some sort of resolution for them as a group, but after everything they went through together, the ending was so disappointing. To be fair, this is supposed to be the first book in a series so there’s the possibility that things might get better for them in subsequent books. However, I remembered how disappointed I was with the The First Law trilogy after having such high hopes for the story, and I feel like it’s not worth it to go through this whole journey if this is going to be more of the same.
As a reader, the journey is often more important than the destination for me, but somehow in this case, a lot of the journey felt meaningless when we got to the end of the book. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the two different stories, but this first book by itself reminded me of how I felt reading the whole The First Law trilogy, and I just feel like the journey isn’t worth the destination.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm—that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict.
Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.
As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.
For the Reading Challenge(s): N/A
The Reason
It was the BOTM for my in-person bookclub.
The Quotes
“Well, I do what I say. Which is why I don’t say much.”
“Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them.”
“Hell, like prison, is worse when you don’t feel you earned it.”
“The injuries of spring are forgotten in the summer, but remembered in the winter.”
The Narrator(s)
Steve West. He was mostly fine, but I really didn’t like his voice for the girl!
My Thoughts
I’m writing this review a long time after reading the book, and for some reason I can’t find my notes so I’m going off a very spotty memory. I remember this being a dark story about a showdown between good and evil, and I remember enjoying most of it. The only issue is that I was rushing to finish it for my bookclub, and there were several parts of the story that included dreams and hallucinations and it was sometimes confusing for me when I didn’t realize what was happening.
In general, I liked the characters, especially the priest. I found the girl annoying (I’m sorry I forgot the names and I don’t have my notes!) but I’m not sure if that’s because I really dislike her character or because I dislike the narrator’s voice for her. I honestly feel that I would’ve probably enjoyed this book a lot more if I was reading it on print and not rushing it like I did. Perhaps one day I’ll revisit the story again.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm’s Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic
Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn’t allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother’s beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.
After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.
Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.
I love fairy tale retellings and I’ve loved many of the author’s books!
The Quotes
“The problem with being rich is that you simply have no idea how expensive it is to be poor.”
“Hester was no hero, but there was nothing in her that would allow her to turn away from a person who had been dropped on her doorstep. Even if that person had brought Doom along with her.”
“I had a terrible feeling when I saw her. You know how people talk about love at first sight? This was like… fear at first sight.”
The Narrator(s)
Eliza Foss and Jennifer Pickens. They were great, I enjoyed the narration immensely!
My Thoughts
I’ve loved several of Kingfisher’s books and I love fairytale retellings in general. I wasn’t familiar with the original story this retelling was based on (Goose Girl) but the description of the book caught my interest. I believe the book first came to my attention back in May during Mother’s Day season, and there were a few books that featured mothers. The mother in question in this book is not a good person; she is an evil sorceress and the MC, her daughter Cordelia, is helpless against her.
I read this in between Dungeon Crawler Carl books, and since I was coming out of my DCC stupor, I expected to take some time to get into this book, but the moment I started reading it, I was completely sucked in and I couldn’t put it down. I was surprised by how hard this book hits and how intense everything was. I loved the characters, and I love how each of them stood out to me in their own ways; Hester, Penelope, Alice, Imogen. A book that vilifies the MC’s mother, but showcases the strength, resilience, and nurturing qualities of the many other female characters. There is so much I love about this book and it reinforces why Kingfisher is one of my favorite authors!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Welcome to the Monthly Wrap Up hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction to share our monthly wrap-up posts that summarizes our month in books, our favorite books of the month, what we did on our blogs, and anything noteworthy we want to share.
November 2025 Wrap Up
I actually didn’t realize it was a new month already! I mean, I realized it was December but I completely forgot what that means and that I had stuff to get done. I missed the deadline for a couple of books I was supposed to finish in November as well because I wasn’t connecting the fact that time was actually passing. I’m still playing catch up!
Adding to that, my husband recently changed webhosts for our websites, which caused issues with my blog that was a pain to fix, and there might be some I haven’t even realized yet! I think one of the biggest issue is the broken links on my page that I didn’t even realize until recently, because I haven’t been present on the blog! Please forgive me if you came across any issues on my blog, or come across any more issues. I’m still fixing stuff and catching up on things from being unwell last month.
I’ll say one thing; one of the things I’d been catching up on is crocheting Christmas gifts in time for Christmas. And while I feel the pressure of trying to finish as soon as I can, I also get to listen to a lot of audiobooks while crocheting, so that’s a win!
My November 2025 TBR Intentions
I did pretty good with 6 out of 9, I think! I truly intended to read the other 3 as well, but I lost track of the time with due dates and deadlines. Oh well.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Christine by Stephen King
Nightmares & Dreamscapes by Stephen King
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Falling by T.J. Newman
Books Read in November 2025
Field Notes on Love by Jennifer E. Smith
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Christine by Stephen King
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Falling by T.J. Newman
Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi
Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi
Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi
Constituent Service by John Scalzi
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Notable Books This Month
I have to say the John Scalzi books were my favorites this month! I’d heard a lot about John Scalzi but haven’t read any of his works. These titles just happened to be available on Audible Plus, and they were short and I was curious and now I feel like I want to read more John Scalzi!
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer was also really good. I made the mistake of listening to it to sleep when I had about two hours more to go on the audiobook. Things got real at that point and I was so worked up and upset I couldn’t sleep.
Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia was another surprise. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did and I was very pleasantly surprised!
There were a lot of other great books as well, of course, with some of my favorite authors like Stephen King and T. Kingfisher, but none of them were surprises because I knew they’d be good, so they’re not noteworthy compared to these other ones this month.
December 2025 TBR Intentions
I’m going to take it easy this December with reading obligations. I do have a couple of books I’d like to read before the end of the year, and also a couple of BOTMs for bookclubs, but otherwise I’ll read whatever I please! I’m leaning towards easy, light-hearted romance, possibly even Christmas-themed!
Emma by Jane Austen
Stoner by John Williams
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
How was your month in November? What were your most memorable bookish moments? I hope you have a wonderful December with lots of great books!
