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May 2, 2026:

Yes, I’ve had this ARC sitting around since the book was first published, but I never picked it up until now, since the movie clips are all over the internet.

My experience reading this included a soundtrack of my partner, who is Extremely Online, asking “Have you made it to [part] yet, question?”

I definitely had not.

The biggest strength and biggest weakness here are the same: this author is very into the science. Exactly how and why everything works, and would it satisfy some theoretical subreddit seems to be important to him, so he puts all of those details in. I appreciate and even kind of like that (sometimes). At the same time, oh boy it makes this book much longer than it needed to be. Not only that, but it hangs a neon sign on anything Weir wasn’t interested enough in to go into scientific detail about.

Meeting and learning to communicate with Rocky was the best part by far. I wouldn’t even mind losing the save-the-world stakes if we just spent the last 400 pages on that. However, the author is clearly not super passionate about linguistics. I had to choose to suspend my disbelief for the sake of not spending 400 pages on the intricacies of discovering language. Sigh. Maybe someday.

You've seen the clips. It’s an exciting hard sci-fi with a sweet core of friendship.

April 14, 2026:

A space voyager corresponds with their government-assigned penpal, as centuries of Earth time elapse because of relativity & time dilation. Their companions' letters eventually peter out, but allegedly this penpal has remained the same individual.

It's extremely romantic, but isn't a romance. For such a small novella it feels huge.

The beauty comes from the incredible timescale, really feeling the FOMO (is there a more elegant word for it?) from the astronaut, and experiencing the world through the tiniest sliver of a window at a time. The dawning horror as they realize. The heartache. It's exquisite.

This was so much grander and prettier and more painful than I ever expected. I loved it soooo much and I cried a little.

April 3, 2026:

Some tech idiot invents Tinder for corpses, where living people can order an Emotional Support Cadaver to their home, and the investment banker in charge of funding him worries he might be the only person in the world who thinks that's weird.

About half of this book is what I expected: the dark comedy of dudebros trying to explain that it’s not necrophilia, the vapid way dominant culture will twist anything to justify the latest trend, the equally vapid way they’ll turn against the latest trend when doubt settles in.

This book leans too much into the Gen Z generational divide for my comfort; I thought we weren’t doing that shit anymore. But to be fair, it did make for some humorous moments when some young person spouts some truly inane psychobabble that washes over a baffled rich old guy who immediately gives them another million dollars. A fine punchline.

The rest of the book is somewhat meandering, as the investment guy navigates his ex-wife starting a new family, falling in love with the techbro’s ex, a step-sibling incest subplot(???), an online cancellation (ugh), creating an anti-corpse coalition and all its political and monetary intricacies, an online un-cancellation… just a lot I didn’t think I was in for.

I’m not sure who this was for. Are young people supposed to laugh at their own caricature? Are curmudgeons who don’t have an instagram being pandered to? It just sort of seems like a lot happened but not a lot changed.

March 27, 2026:

You may be a sarcastic, foul-mouthed master thief in a fantasy story, but The Guild™ will kill you in the worst possible way if you don't pay off your debt... by doing this One Big Mission.

This author is known for his absolutely brutal horror, so don't expect a fluffy fantasy, despite all its humor and a charming animal sidekick. What better to pair with your main character who has a high in-universe Luck stat than a blind cat?

It's mostly standard, in terms of quality, in my opinion. Fights with various fantasy creatures (goblins, giants, krakens), assassins and thievery, fantasy racism, swear words with a lot of Ys in the middle, and a roguish unreliable narrator. Nothing stood out as super memorable or glaringly bad.

This was pretty alright, but since I listened to the audiobook, all the unfamiliar names were a challenge. The narrator's voice fit the character perfectly, though

March 24, 2026:

Imaginary friends were never meant to make it to adulthood. Luckily, you can hire the world's saddest man to take yours out-- he's the only one who can see them besides you.

The absurd premise lets this book get away with some truly horrible imagery. On one side, the rules for imaginary friends and their deaths are dreadful enough... but at the center of this story is a little girl whose imaginary friend (a youtube prankster) is steadily becoming more and more menacing and it's sooo uncomfortable.

The cartoon world this book conjures up is superb and leaves tons of room for imagination because the story itself is so small.

March 8, 2026:

A very long graphic novel about a young girl who, running from her family troubles, becomes trapped with a pair of feral, bewildered wildmen in their underground lair.

Every character in this story is deeply unwell. Maladaptive parent/child relationships are the least of it, except really if you think about it, they're the all of it.

March 5, 2026:

A handful of abandoned robots emancipate themselves from their human overlords and open a noodle shop, navigating both the law that refuses them rights and trauma from The War.

The word "cozy" has either lost a lot of meaning or wasn't clear to me to begin with, but if this isn't it, it's close. It's sweet and hopeful but not naive. It addresses the darkness in its premise.

You'll have no shortage of social parallels to identify with: analogues to immigrant status, to gender, to disability, to labor unions, to body autonomy, to survivorhood, to the examining of one's own privileges even while experiencing oppression & discrimination.

I can't tell if everyone's actually sick of "found family" now, or if that's just the cool contrarian opinion, but again either this is it or it's close. Lovable characters building a community around a small business, it's just like that coffeeshop book everyone likes.

February 28, 2026:

Oop, forgot to snap a picture.

So, yeah. A portable latrine technician discovers that the missing people from county fairs in the surrounding area are linked to portals inside evil portapotties. It's absurd cause there's poop in there.

I don't even know why I wanted to read this, to be honest. Major whiplash compared to The Redemption Of Morgan Bright and based on the title and cover art, I should have known that.

It's mystery style, with the main character on the hunt for his missing elderly mother though the dimensional toilet portals to a dark carnival of guts and gore. This book takes itself a bit too seriously for that sentence.

February 20, 2026:

This goofy high fantasy romance (fauxmantasy??) offers local himbo Sir Cameron, caught up in the prophecy that his death will finally defeat the Mad Sorcerer. Thing is, Sir Cameron is a coward so he offers himself as the Mad Sorcerer's hostage, ensuring their mutual survival. Horny doofus moves in with loner genius. Cue the hijinks.

Turns out a book character who spams "I seduce the _____" like a DnD player wielding a bard is still extremely funny when handled this well. The awkward sitcom-like situations had me cracking up. It's giving Roommates AU but I guess there's no A, only U.

There are times where it gets more serious as well, so don't get too cozy. And the ending had me astonished. Well done.

February 16, 2026:

A small town experiences a mass casualty and decides to leave the bodies where they lay as a grim memorial, hiring a closeted gay teenager and the father he cannot hope to understand to stand guard. You have three guesses to figure out why the body of an attractive young woman disappears from the scene (& who did it). Meanwhile, the suspects are being held extrajudiciously at some malicious torture-pervert's mansion.

So, that's a lot. I feel like I read this with a shroud over my mind because I found some of it hard to understand. Chiefly, the perpetrators of the tragedy do not have faces and I do not know what that represents. The town council is powerful to the point of putting me in a haze of unreality; for a setup so recognizably contemporary, there's no trace of the trappings of modernity (phones? forensics? rule of law??).

This is pretty extreme in its unsparing use of gross sex crimes, and overall the tone is dreary. In fact it begins with an author's note that this book can not and should not be enjoyed, and I'd say I just about succeeded in what the author intended. Maybe more books should start out with instructions haha

This is clearly the first of a series (Burnt Sparrow #1), but I don't think I'll be reading the rest of them. Just not that interested.

February 10, 2026:

A handful of shifty characters on the run all end up in the same unusual place: a ~free~ motel run by creepy twins who declare that they have until midnight to solve a murder or face hideous dimensional horror death.

The complex web of characters, who knows what, who's keeping secrets from whom, and how they lie their way out of getting caught up keeps the momentum simmering pleasantly. Meanwhile, the plot does its best to melt your brain with surprises, time loops, and déjà vu.

I had a pretty good time reading this, but not nearly as much fun as No Road Home. It was, however, more adventuresome and kept me guessing the whole time. The scary guy is satisfactorily unsettling and the mystery is pretty unique.

February 1, 2026:

A second-rate documentary crew jumps at the chance to record a rare ceremony performed by a reclusive, nearly uncontacted, tribe in the far Arctic. It doesn't go well for anybody.

I don't know how to feel about this one. Having an all-indigenous cast (including the doc crew, or at least 2 of the four, I forget) would point to a more pro-native slant, but the book is less anthropologically curious than I would have liked. And, spoiler-covered elephant in the room: the reliance on ritual human sacrifice & cannibalism, when those are harmful stereotypes levied against tribes that didn't practice them, is a... questionable choice. Maybe not indefensible, but questionable.

Gore lovers will relish the detailed descriptions of the act of consuming raw flesh (animal and otherwise), and the insane slasher style death scenes (which come with illustrations(?)!). Meanwhile, as an environmental dread lover, there wasn't enough danger from the cold, in my opinion. Which is crazy because it's all over this thing.

Also there are randomly words substituted for similar words, most memorably using "sapphic" when I'm pretty sure they meant "yonic." This is either a mistake on the author's part or a 5-D chess move characterization of the POV narrator, who can say?

This story still held surprises for me even after I thought I had clocked exactly where it was going. The very exciting extended chase scene was my favorite. They explain the unusual title kinda, but I still don't know what it means.

In all, it blends climate justice with native identity in a way I see a lot online and not a lot in horror novels.

January 27, 2026:

So, if your only problem with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was that it wasn't toxic yuri, that's pretty specific but congratulations!

A strong core of time-honored centuries of unbridled vampire hedonism, peppered with sexual abuse, coiled around a modern young lesbian stumbling through her new circumstances.

I really preferred the historical bits at first, but by the time the storylines caught up with each other, I was blazing through so fast I didn't have time to pick a favorite.

I don't know if this is a compliment or a criticism, but I simply cannot fathom the vampire metaphor here because it's too many disparate things. It would be easy to map it onto sexuality, but this book is way too complex for that. My explanation would just be a copy of the actual text itself.

January 14, 2026:

In the near future, a woman escaping a manipulative relationship shows up in a remote desert town to find that it's basically the plot of Animal Crossing. Fully unplugged, she finds herself becoming a part of a community. Also the roadrunner god starts harassing her romantically.

I can't believe it either, but the Ghost Husband narrative is not the important part here (it doesn't even start til about halfway). No, the key is the healing power of community and the reward of working for oneself rather than a paycheck.

The characters are easy to love: the main character has the major symptom of whatever mental illness / neurodivergence / trauma response you have, dear reader; her dog, of course a loyal animal sidekick; the sassy grandma next door, your spirit guide to the desert; the openminded priest, your mileage may vary; the chaotic radio DJ. Everyone's instantly way too nice but this is fantasy, baby! Roll with it. Bask in it, actually.

This feels like a love letter to the setting: the desert itself is practically a character. A friend of mine longs to return to this area, and I'm starting to wonder if that's a universal experience for desert-dwellers.

January 1, 2026:

A regular family is shocked to find that their regular couch has been replaced overnight.

It's an inescapably absurd premise, but understandably sinister: they can't seem to get rid of the new sofa and cannot find a replacement for the old one. Tensions in the home rise for no apparent reason. What is anyone expected to do in such a mundane yet surreal situation?

I thought it was mostly just fine. It kept me engaged for an afternoon and I didn't notice anything glaringly wrong with it. The best part was the guy who works literally everywhere.

December 28, 2025:

Sneaking in a rare nonfiction at the end here. The author speaks about his life-- with the important context that he has fused wrist bones and cannot rotate his hands-- in parallel with descriptions of classic horror movies, their monsters, and how the genre, as well as society at large, treats disabilities & the people who have them.

I have decided that memoirs are not my thing, but this remains an approachable read by drip-feeding you each narrative thread a paragraph at a time. In a single page you'll progress one noteworthy day in his childhood, one scene in a movie, one conversation with a love interest, one landmark protest.

This format makes it unique. It doesn't have the in-depth technical analysis or advocacy calls-to-action that would push it closer to an essay; it's a factual account of events that happened, feelings that were felt, movies that were made. But the Kuleshov Effect (or whatever its text equivalent is) is a powerful tool, letting the reader intuit what the hypothetical essay would have spelled out. The unflinching use of harsh and/or outdated language shocks the reader out of a polite, clinical mindset and into the author's frustration.