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Stephen King’s most gripping and unforgettable novel, Bag of Bones, is a story of grief and a lost love’s enduring bonds, of a new love haunted by the secrets of the past, of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire.
Set in the Maine territory King has made mythic, Bag of Bones recounts the plight of 40-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan, who is unable to stop grieving even four years after the sudden death of his wife, Jo, and who can no longer bear to face the blank screen of his word processor.
Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, Mike finally returns to Sara Laughs, the Noonans’ isolated summer home.
He finds his beloved Yankee town familiar on its surface, but much changed underneath — held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, who twists the very fabric of the community to his purpose: to take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother. As Mike is drawn into their struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here — and what do they want of Mike Noonan?
As vivid and enthralling as King’s most enduring works, Bag of Bones resonates with what Amy Tan calls ‘the witty and obsessive voice of King’s powerful imagination.’ It’s no secret that King is our most mesmerizing storyteller. In Bag of Bones — described by Gloria Naylor as ‘a love story about the dark places within us all’ — he proves to be one of our most moving.
For my Stephen King challenge. This one is a reread.
The Quotes
“I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.”
“I see things, that’s all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”
“Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.”
“Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.”
The Narrator(s)
Stephen King, the author himself. What a treat!
My Thoughts
I read this book a while ago and rated it four stars but it didn’t stand out to me at the time. As I was rereading it, I remember parts of it and why I enjoyed it the first time. My favorite part about Stephen King’s books is the way he approaches the supernatural and talks about it like it’s not something fictional or unbelievable, but just a part of the many mysteries of our world.
One of my favorite characters that we never even really meet is Jo, the MC’s late wife. She dies in the beginning of the book and we only get to know her through Mike Noonan’s memories and ghostly encounters, but she comes across so strong and passionate. I also really like Kyra. The almost-romance in the story is a bit of a turn-off for me but I understand this was written a while ago (still!).
It’s kind of why I included the quote, “Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.”
I actually became a fan of the author through his more recent books (so it’s the inverse of the above quote but the sentiment applies) and am now reading his backlist for the sake of The Stephen King Constant Reader Challenge. His older books are still good but there are definitely questionable themes in them. I like that he’s self aware enough to call himself out on some of those things now that he’s older though!
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?
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples.
At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.
Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.
But Merrin’s death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .
I needed a book for the prompt above and I’d been thinking about trying Joe Hill again.
The Quotes
“The best way to get even with anyone is to put them in the rearview mirror on your way to something better.”
“It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.”
“There’s only room for one hero in this story-and everyone knows the devil doesn’t get to be the good guy.”
“Him and God are supposed to be at war with each other. But if God hates sin and Satan punishes the sinners, aren’t they working the same side of the street? Aren’t the judge and the executioner on the same team?”
The Narrator(s)
Fred Berman. I have no issues with the narration.
My Thoughts
I loved the concept and the story itself, but for some reason I just don’t like the author’s writing style. I found the book difficult to get into and the writing felt clunky, obvious, and disjointed to me. It’s difficult to get immersed into the book and forget I’m reading; I’m constantly aware of the story and standing outside of it.
The first book I read by the author was Heart-Shaped Box and I rated it two stars. I read it almost 20 years ago so I don’t remember why I didn’t like it but I thought I would give him another chance, because after all, I wasn’t a huge fan of Stephen King either back then like I am now. I do intend to reread Heart-Shaped Box again though because apparently it’s his best one. I’d like to give it one more try before deciding if he’s not for me.
I must say again that I do enjoy his stories themselves; I also loved the adaptation of NOS4A2 although I didn’t read the book, but maybe I just don’t enjoy his writing style. Hopefully I’ll prove myself wrong when I try him 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?
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into – Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls – nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that this stranger is his wife.
One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.
Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner named Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person’s date of death, including her own.
It was already on my TBR and I was looking for a book that fit the above prompt, and this book turned up in my Goodreads recommendations!
The Quotes
“Your biggest enemy is always the person you see in the mirror.”
“People are grief vampires. They just want to suck on your sorrow, feed on your fear, and feast on your failures. It makes them feel better about themselves.”
“Some people love a good party; personally, I prefer a good book.”
“Accepting that things change and learning to navigate wrong turns is the secret to a happy life.”
The Narrator(s)
Bel Powley. Henry Rowley. Richard Armitage. It was a great cast and I enjoyed all of the narration.
My Thoughts
I’m not sure where to start with this book. I had very high hopes for it because it has been reviewed so highly and it started so well. It really devolved at the end, however, to the point where I wondered if I had been reading a completely different story and missed important details or imagined the whole first half of the book.
I get the concept of the unreliable narrator and that mystery fiction tend to hide the true story from us, but the way this story is presented and told is just sloppy, inconsistent, and undeveloped. The characters blatantly gaslight the reader in the weirdest ways and it makes me wonder what exactly are we reading on the page? Are we reading the character’s internal thoughts on the page? Are we reading their diaries? Are they writing down false information to mislead us? Who exactly is their audience? Because it doesn’t make sense for them to say the things they say throughout the whole book when we finally get to the reveals.
It’s just plot hole after plot hole after plot hole, and I have no idea what the story is trying to achieve. I don’t get it and I’m very disappointed.
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?
In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.
Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Reuben Iglesias, the diminutive and gracious vice president, quickly gets sideways of the kidnappers, who have no interest in him whatsoever. Meanwhile, a Swiss Red Cross negotiator named Joachim Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.
With the omniscience of magic realism, Ann Patchett flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in doing so reveals a profound, shared humanity. Her voice is suitably lyrical, melodic, full of warmth and compassion.
It’s a reread, and the BOTM for my in-person bookclub.
The Quotes
“It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.”
“Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don’t you think? It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world’s greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.”
“For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.”
“If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.”
The Narrator(s)
Anna Fields. It was good, I find that the best narrators are the ones who make me forget I’m listening to an audiobook and just get me immersed in the story.
My Thoughts
I read this book for the first time many years ago and it has stuck with me. I didn’t remember a single detail about the story itself but I have always remembered how it made me feel. This time around I thought I was prepared for the feels, but honestly, I might have expected it but I was still not prepared for it.
A lot of the details of the story surprised me this time around, and there were parts where I wondered at how realistic a scenario like this could be. I did have to turn on my suspension of belief, but after that, focusing on the story and the characters, it was just beautiful writing. The way the author writes about the passion for music, the way passion for something brings people together, the ways people find connection with each other. I fell in love with all of it.
Reading it again objectively, I can see the flaws in the story and there are definitely parts that I don’t like and felt were unnecessary. However, it’s so easy to get lost in the story and the writing, and you can’t help but want to know more about the characters. It’s still a wonderful journey the second time around.
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?
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel.
The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet
I’d been wanting to read this for a while but never got around to it. I saw that it fit one of the prompts for the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge, so I decided to finally read it.
The Quotes
“Today we queried, questioned, and inquired. Promise me that come tomorrow, we will not stop asking why.”
“The Council is wrong. Yet, observe that none of us will risk telling it so, for fear of the consequences.”
“Any one of us could have come up with such a sentence. We are, when it comes right down to it, all of us: mere monkeys at typewriters.”
My Thoughts
This book surprised me; I thought it was middle-grade, and it sort of is suitable for younger readers, but it was deeper and darker than I expected. I thought it was going to be a fun and light-hearted take on the idea of letters falling off the alphabet and only being able to use the letters that were left, but it turned out to be quite a serious exploration on the absurdity of going along with ridiculous ideas because people are too afraid to fight back. The result of losing your “voice”, losing the ability to communicate clearly, because of those missing letters, is such a strong metaphor for being censored and silenced by the powers that be. It’s very well-written and such a powerful story, especially for impressionable young readers, and I wish I had read this book a long time ago!
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 Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Books on My Spring 2026 to-Read List
Some of these books have been on my TBR for years! I’ve featured a couple of them on several TBR lists over the last few years and it’s just embarrassing at this point, but I feel like I’m going to keep featuring them and purposely embarrass myself until I read them, as a motivation for me to finally read them! Hopefully it works? 😅
Top Ten Books on My Spring 2026 TBR
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich – I’ve become a fan of the author ever since I read The Sentence and I’ve been wanting to read more of her books. This one has been on my TBR since it came out in 2024 but I haven’t gotten around to it for some reason. I’ve borrowed it multiple times from the library but kept returning it unread. I ended up purchasing the audiobook so I could listen at my convenience but I haven’t started it yet. Hopefully sometime soon!
In The Woods by Tana French – I came across it while researching Irish authors for last week’s Top Ten Tuesday and I’m very excited about it because it really sounds like the kind of book I’d love, and if so, there are a whole bunch of other books by the author I’d probably read too!
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett – This would be a reread, but I didn’t finish the series the first time I read it, and my intention is to reread to finish the whole series.
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood – This would aso be a reread. I read this book years ago and loved it, but it’s been a while and I think I’ll get a lot more out of it this time around.
Educated by Tara Westover – This book was overhyped at one point which made me hesitant to read it, but it’s been a while and people are still consistently talking about how good it is. So I’ll give it a try.
Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell – This is relatively new on my TBR but it sounds so good and I love a good monster romance!
The Glass Château by Stephen P. Kiernan – I have loved all of the author’s books and I have featured him and his books many times on my blog. I’ve also featured this book on many of my TBR lists but just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. This is the one book I hope I will have read by the time the next TBR list feature comes around!
Between Us by Mhairi McFarlane – I don’t understand the holdup for me reading this book either. It’s been on my TBR a long time and I just need to get to it.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – This would be another reread. I loved this book when I read it so many years ago and I’ve just been craving the vibes. I’ve also been meaning to read other books from the author, but somehow just never did.
The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James that first appeared in serial format in Collier’s Weekly magazine (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898 it appeared in The Two Magics, a book published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London.
A very young woman’s first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate… An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.
I’ve been curious about this book for a while. It was available from my library and was relatively short, so I thought why not.
The Quotes
“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.”
“To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation.”
“An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred.”
The Narrator(s)
Simon Vance, and Vanessa Benjamin. Simon Vance does the prologue, and the rest of the story is predominantly narrated by Vanessa Benjamin. She was wonderful.
My Thoughts
I finished this book in one sitting because it was relatively short and it kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going on and what was going to happen. The story was very confusing, very ambiguous, you don’t get many questions answered, and in fact, the deeper in you go, the more questions you have that don’t get answered. But somehow it worked for me.
To be clear, I think I love the effect of this book more than I actually love the story, but I also think that’s by design. The phrase “the turn of the screw” meaning to add insult to injury, and/or to make something already bad even worse, I feel like James is playing with us. Getting us invested in the story, making us curious, bringing us on a journey, and then leading us to a non-destination that is absolutely dissatisfying and curse-worthy.
You end the book with more questions, in disbelief, wondering if that was it and why the hell you spend the last few hours reading the book at all. You question everything you read in the book, wondering what you missed, wondering what it meant, wondering if any of it was real or true or the ramblings of a madwoman. Well, at least I did. I am both pissed off I read the book and marveling at the brilliance of it, so as I said, I’m not as taken by the story as I am by what it’s doing to me. I feel like I’ve been punked and I kind of like it.
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?
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
One of my in-person bookclub members praised this book very highly, and it became our December BOTM.
The Quotes
“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
“A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.”
“In the University library he wandered through the stacks, among the thousands of books, inhaling the musty odor of leather, cloth, and drying page as if it were an exotic incense.”
The Narrator(s)
Robin Field. It was great, I was very much immersed in Stoner’s world and I thought the narration was perfect.
My Thoughts
I was surprised by how invested I got into Stoner’s life. He’s an ordinary person, not special at all, and he doesn’t do anything special either. He was the most passive person but there were occasional times when he fought hard, and then nothing again, it’s interesting and perhaps true to life. The book follows him throughout his life and we see him through all his ups and downs. There were times you think he might achieve great things or do something extraordinary, times when you hurt for him and celebrate with him, times when you wish you could reach into the book and shake him and tell him to make better choices. There was a lot to think about and I think the writing is absolutely beautiful.
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?
‘I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.’
Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.
I wanted to try more of Austen’s works! And it was a buddy read.
The Quotes
“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.”
“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”
“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.”
“There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.”
“Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.”
The Narrator(s)
Wanda McCaddon. I enjoyed the narration.
My Thoughts
Emma is my third Austen book, and I think while I can enjoy Austen’s books, I could also just take them or leave them. They are good, to be fair, and very reflective of the era they were written in, the social expectations, culture, and prejudices. I’d say Austen is quite progressive for her time, and I can enjoy her books as historical and cultural studies, but I can’t enjoy them as romances because it’s hard to accept the ways gender norms and cultural expectations were viewed at the time.
I do love Emma for what it was though. I didn’t find many of the characters in this book likeable, but I do find them interesting and funny, and somewhat relatable. I quite enjoyed the read and got really invested in the drama in a very gossip-y, low-stakes way. I think Austen’s books in general are very well-written and easy to read. It is a little difficult sometimes to ignore the classism, misogyny, issues with age difference, etc. but unfortunately, it’s accurate to the times and culture it was written in, and I try to take that into account and not judge the story based on that. These issues are probably the reason why I could take or leave Austen’s works though.
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.
December 2025 Wrap Up
Happy 2026, everyone!!
I had a busy, but good, December and I feel very happy and hopeful for the new year. I do feel like I’m constantly playing catch-up with my blog posts and book reviews though, and I am truly sorry for neglecting my blog and all of you who have been very patient with me.
My intention is to catch up with all my reviews for December, and I really want to participate in the Top Ten Tuesdays and Sunday Posts more regularly this year. I also really love the End of Year Book Surveys and booktag memes, and I’ll try to do them throughout this rest of this month.
I’m making new year resolutions for better time management and I’m going to do better in 2026!
My December 2025 TBR Intentions
I was trying to take it easy in December so I only had four books on my TBR intentions, and I cannot believe that I completely forgot to read one of them! I forgot I had it on my list! Oh well, I’ll read it this year. 😅
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
Notable Books This Month
The Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal were really good! I didn’t expect them to be alternate history because the title made me think sci-fi, not history, but it made a whole lot of sense and I really like the stories that she told with each of the individual books.
Stoner was also another standout, and it’s interesting that it is because the MC is such an ordinary, unremarkable character, who’s just wanting to live a simple life. I love that we follow him throughout his life and see him through his ups and downs; the challenges that he faces, the good times he enjoys, his occasional bursts of brilliance, his passion about certain issues and then his passivity on other issues. It’s just such great writing.
January 2026 TBR Intentions
Other than BOTM obligations for January, I’m also wanting to get to some of the books on my TBR that I didn’t manage to get to last year.
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
The Women Are Not Fine by Hope Reese
The Glass Château by Stephen P. Kiernan
The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
The Will of the Many by James Islington
The Strength of the Few by James Islington
How was your month in December? How was your year in 2025? What were your most memorable bookish moments? I hope you have a wonderful 2026 with lots of great books!
