Dear Readers, November was a productive month. I read 8 books this month out of the 10 on my TBR. I worked a decent amount of overtime this month and am quite pleased with the results. The 8 books I read and completed for the month, I gave 2 five stars, 5 four stars, and 1 three stars. The genres I read this month were horror, middle grade, young adult, science fiction, and nonfiction.  Along with reading books, I got to go to a book event/book signing for Amor Towles. This was a big one for me. He is my top literary fiction/historical fiction author. I have read all his books and have my favorites, The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, signed. He was awarded the 2025 Nashville Public Library Literary Award. I hit a personal milestone of 100,000 views on WordPress and decided to fully commit to a more professional site. I also joined TikTok last month and have been having a blast and getting so many book recommendations. Say, “hi” if you see me.  

Five Star Reviews:

Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley is the horror slasher that I needed in my life. This book is smart with biting social commentary on the wellness craze. The writing is better than it needs to be (this is the second time I have said this about McAuley’s writing, and it is true). The novel is a slasher, but at its heart, it is a pretty gripping whodunit mystery. The descriptions were just enough to play like movies in my mind. The kills were inventive, with each one ramping up the intensity. The story is about a woman dealing with the trauma after the death of her fiancé on vacation, only to be haunted by a masked killer on a yoga retreat. The story would be depressing in another writer’s hand, but McAuley writes such life and humor into his characters. This story made me gasp, cringe, and laugh out loud. Breathe In, Bleed Out was published on September 2, 2025, by Poisoned Pen Press.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean is a nonfiction account of the 1986 library fire at the Los Angeles Central Library. But the book is more than that, as we get the history of the Los Angeles library system, the history of the libraries’ architecture, the history of book burning, and we get how the current day Los Angeles library works. The fire and the investigation into whether it was arson or not are the hook of the story. But what Orlean does masterfully is make me care. I got so involved in the case and the library’s history. The book jumps around from the past to the present. We will get some chapters on the fire interspersed with chapters on the history of the central library. The fire was tragic, with over how many items burned and were water damaged when putting the fire out. The Library Book was first published on October 16, 2018, by Simon and Schuster.

Four Star Reviews:

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison is a haunted… I mean possessed house horror. This is a horror of demons, both literally and figuratively. The novel is a bit of an homage to The Amityville Horror, which was heavily debated as to whether it was real or not. This story follows Clio as she has just found out her estranged mother has died. Clio’s mother wrote a book describing how the house she got after her divorce was possessed by a demon. Clio was only 7 then and doesn’t remember the house. She is shocked to find out her mother never sold it. She thinks it will be fun to refurbish it. Once in the house, memories come to the surface and old demons rise. Was her mother crazy or not? The book asks that question: Is it real or not? The story is told in the present with Clio in her 20s. The true horror is a bit of a slow burn, but the book is good at setting up the creep factor early. I could feel my spine tingling in some parts. Play Nice by Rachel Harrison was first published on September 9, 2025, by Berkley.

Coach by Jason Reynolds is the 5th and final book in the middle grade Track series. Coach is a book about Coach Brody, the current coach of the defenders in the 2020s. The four books leading up to Coach have been about Coach Brody mentoring the young middle graders of the team. This book is set in the past, the 1980s, where Otis Body is a middle grader on the defenders’ track team with his dad as the assistant coach. Brody is a dreamer looking to the future, where he dreams of being an Olympian. Carl Lewis is his idol as a runner of the 100 meters. Brody also idolizes his father, who was a runner too, but a car accident changed his trajectory. Coach is a story about taking big leaps and finding your purpose in life. One plot point is finding out Carl Lewis also does the long jump, which inspires Otis to try it and take the leap. Coach by Jason Reynolds was first published on October 14, 2025, by Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing.

Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman is a young adult horror inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This book is freaky. It has some big scares for a young adult novel. The themes are peer pressure and that drugs are bad. I feel like this novel is a reaction to the opioid crisis, because the drugs make you void of emotion and not really care what is going on. The drugs get rid of the pain and make you addicted. The basic plot is in a small town, a drug called Spore is taking over, Kyra is a say no to drugs girl, due to trauma with her mother when she was young. All of Kyra’s friends do the drug and want her to do it as well. But the drug has bad side effects that make the people taking the drug turn into something else. I feel this book mashes up The Faculty and Disturbing Behavior, two horror movies from the 90s. There is some great body horror that works very well with Chapman’s description that really gets under your skin. The opening scene is horrific and very effective. Shiny Happy People will be published on November 11, 2025, by Delacorte Press.

God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines is Land of the Lost meets Star Trek. It is a science fiction fantasy adventure. The simple plot is that Billy and his family go on a rafting adventure and do not return; the family is missing. Then, four years later, he is found in Thailand as he tells wondrous stories of living with dinosaurs, cavemen, and aliens. Billy has never diverted from his story and his need to go back and rescue his family. Billy, now an adult under a changed name, has found a way back. The plot of the story and the world building of the story are great. The first 50% feels more like a fantasy, and the back 50% is more Star Trek with adventure. The novel gets off to a rapid pace with Billy and his family’s first adventure, told through newspaper articles. Billy, now Noah, as an adult, gets back to the land way faster than I thought, maybe 30 pages in. Then the novel slows down as the characters explore the land. The writing was good, there’s a lot of setup, which took too much time in my opinion. Readers are rewarded in the back half with all the setup. God’s Junk Drawer was published on November 11, 2025, by Blackstone Publishing.

MindWorks: An Uncanny Compendium of Short Fiction by Neal Shusterman is an anthology with clever and quirky stories. MindWorks is the title, and the anthology gives an insight into how Neal Shusterman’s mind works. The stories mostly feature teenagers, with the narratives balancing between middle-grade and young adult genres. Some of the stories feature inanimate items becoming real. The stories’ subjects include gun violence, abandonment, loneliness, isolation, fear, and the environment. Shusterman has a way of approaching topics in humorous and slightly off-kilter ways of viewing the world. Despite the humor and quirkiness of the approach, the stories do not talk down to the reader and deal with real subject matter in a fun way. Shusterman is the creative mind behind the Scythe series and has two new short stories in that world. Other stories include a talking dolphin running for president, a teddy bear turning into a real bear, a cooked turkey becoming real, a haunted Christmas tree, and two kids jokingly selling a bag of wind, which happened to be real. MindWorks by Neal Shusterman was published on November 18, 2025. This review is a soft four stars. The publisher did not give me the whole anthology.

Three Stars Reviews:

Widow’s Point: The Complete Haunting by Richard Chizmar and W.H. Chizmar is a found footage horror about a haunted lighthouse in Nova Scotia, Canada. The horror is an atmospheric ghost story captured on camera and voice recordings. There are two separate hauntings, one of which took place in 2017 with a solo ghost hunter. The second takes place in 2025, with a Mr. Beast-like YouTube star bringing friends and ghost hunters with state-of-the-art equipment. The book is broken into two parts: the 2017 timeline and the 2025 timeline. The 2025 team listens to the 2017 haunting while at the same lighthouse. The 2017 haunting was the original Widow’s Point novella. Widow’s Point has had quite a journey, as it started as a short story in an anthology on haunted places. Then it was turned into a novella and finally expanded into a novel. I liked the novella a lot; it had a great pace and some general scares. Then the expansion with more people and multiple cameras is so boring. The pace slows down to a crawl. Widow’s Point: The Complete Haunting was published on September 30, 2025, by Gallery Books.