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Review: Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as its new owner to find the pawnshop ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice – through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning and through a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own – and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.

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Review: Done and Dusted by Lyla Sage

She’s off-limits, but he’s never been good at following the rules.

For the first time in her life, Clementine “Emmy” Ryder has no idea what she’s doing. She’s accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favorite riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape.

Luke Brooks is Meadowlark’s most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy’s older brother’s best friend, Luke spent most of his childhood antagonizing her. It’s been years since he’s seen her, but when she walks into his bar and back into his life, he can’t take his eyes off her. Despite his better judgment, he wants to do a whole lot more than just look at her.

Emmy’s got too much on her mind to think about romance. And Luke knows he should stay away from his best friend’s younger sister. But what if Luke is just what Emmy needs to get her spark back? Or will they both go up in flames?

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Review: I Am Not Jessica Chen

After getting rejected by every single Ivy League she applied to and falling short of all her Asian immigrant parents’ expectations, seventeen-year-old Jenna Chen makes a wish to become her smarter, infinitely more successful Harvard-bound cousin, Jessica Chen—only for her wish to come true. Literally.

Now trapped inside Jessica’s body, with access to Jessica’s most private journals and secrets, Jenna soon discovers that being the top student at the elite, highly competitive Havenwood Private Academy isn’t quite what she imagined. Worse, as everyone—including her own parents—start having trouble remembering who Jenna Chen is, or if she ever even existed, Jenna must decide if playing the role of the perfect daughter and student is worth losing her true self forever.

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Review: The Rival by Emma Lord

At long last, Sadie has vanquished her lifelong academic rival — her irritatingly charming, whip smart next door neighbor, Seb — by getting the coveted, only spot to her dream college. Or at least, so she thinks. When Seb is unexpectedly pulled off the waitlist and admitted, Sadie has to compete with him all over again, this time to get a spot on the school’s famous zine. Now not only is she dealing with the mayhem of the lovable, chaotic family she hid her writing talents from, as well as her own self doubt, but she has to come to terms with some less-than-resentful feelings for Seb that are popping up along the way.

But the longer they compete, the more Sadie and Seb notice flaws in the school’s system that are much bigger than any competition between them. Somehow the two of them have to band together even as they’re trying to crush each other, only to discover they may have met their match in more ways than one.

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Mini Reviews: Winterween 2025 Wrap Up

Something I look forward to every January is the Winterween Readathon hosted by Gabby (gabbyreads on YouTube and @_myfictionalworld) and this year’s readathon just wrapped up.

The readathon ran from the 10th – 16th and it was so much fun! As I’ve done with both Winterween and Summerween in the past, I thought that since the readathon is now over, it would be nice to go over the prompts and what I read for each prompt in addition to sharing some mini reviews!

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Review: No Place Left to Hide by Megan Lally

To Brooke, image is everything. She works hard to maintain perfect grades, perfect looks, a perfect life—especially after “the incident” that threatened it all. Getting into her dream university puts her that much closer to a fresh start. How can she say no to celebrating with all her classmates?

Hanging out with her crush by the bonfire is the perfect end to the night. Except it isn’t the end. An old truck starts aggressively tailing Brooke and her best friend on the isolated road toward home. Someone thinks they know the truth about “the incident,” and they won’t stop until it’s all out in the open. This terrifying drive is about to bring out Brooke’s worst fears…if she survives it.

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ARC Review: Everything is Poison by Joy McCullough

A Blood Water Paint-style historical YA in prose and verse from New York Times bestselling author Joy McCullough. For as long as she can remember, Carmela Tofana has desperately wanted one  to be an important part of La Tofana Apothecary, her mother’s apothecary in the Campo Marzio neighborhood of Rome. When she finally turns sixteen, she’s allowed into the workroom of the shop, where her mother and two other women make some of the most effective remedies in all of Rome. They also dispense a healthy amount of good, non-medical advice to their clients. But the workroom of La Tofana is no simple place, and for every sweet-smelling flower extract to be prepared, there’s another potion where the main ingredient is blood or something even less pleasant. And then there’s Aqua Tofana, the apothecary’s remedy of last resort and one of several secrets Carmela never bargained for in all her years of wishing to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Everything Is Poison is a story of a deadly secret hiding in plain sight and of the women who risk everything to provide care for those most in need.

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Review: Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio

Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.

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Review: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.

The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men. 

The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.  

The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. 

But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. 

She does not know this yet. But she will.

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Review: The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee

From Gillian Flynn Books, a lyrical YA horror by debut author Wen-yi Lee that’s perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting, Stephen King’s IT, and The Haunting of Hill House.

Art student Isadora Chang swore never to return to Slater. Growing up, Isa never felt at ease in the repressive former mining town, even before she realized she was bisexual—but after the deaths of two of her childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too, even though it meant leaving behind everything she knew, including her last surviving friend Mason.

When Isa’s abusive father kicks the bucket, she agrees to come back just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason, son of the local medium, turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: their friends were murdered by a supernatural entity, and he needs Isa to help stop the evil—before it takes anyone else.

When Isa begins to hear strange songs on the wind, and eerie artwork fills her sketchbook that she can’t recall drawing, she’s forced to stop running and confront her past. Because something is waiting in the shadows of Slater’s valleys, something that feeds on the pain and heartbreak of its children. Whatever it is, it knows Isa’s back… and it won’t let her escape twice.

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