Book Reviews

Book Review: WE FELL APART by E. Lockhart

| Jessica Crawford

We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart is a 320 page novel published in 2025 by Delacorte Press. It may be read as a standalone, but it takes place in the same world as We Were Liars and Family of Liars, and references events from those books.

Genre:

Young Adult, Contemporary Fiction

Synopsis:

The invitation arrives out of the blue.

In it, Matilda discovers a father she’s never met. Kingsley Cello is a visionary, a reclusive artist. And when he asks her to spend the summer at his seaside home, Hidden Beach, Matilda expects to find a part of herself she’s never fully understood.

Instead, she finds Meer, her long-lost, openhearted brother; Brock, a former child star battling demons; and brooding, wild Tatum, who just wants her to leave their crumbling sanctuary.

With Kingsley nowhere to be seen, Matilda must delve into the twisted heart of Hidden Beach to uncover the answers she’s desperately craving. But secrets run thicker than blood, and blood runs like seawater.

And everyone here is lying.

Opening Line:

It was a bad place to fall in love.

My Thoughts:

We Were Liars is one of my all-time favorite books! It’s a powerful, heart-wrenching story told in a unique manner, and it left me in a total book hangover after finishing it. It tells the story of a family with great privilege, but also the responsibility to never admit that anything is less than perfect, even if that means lying.

I will prove myself strong when they think I am sick. I will prove myself brave when they think I am weak.

Family of Liars is a prequel that wasn’t as much of a homerun for me, because although it offered a lot of the same of what we got from its predecessor, it therefore felt sort of unneeded. It was once again well written, but just didn’t really offer anything new. I rated that one 3 stars, as opposed to the 5 glittering stars I showered onto the first book.

They hadn’t come to see how I was feeling. They had come to tell me to stop feeling that way.

Now, We Fell Apart comes in at a solid 4 stars for me–not as mind-blowing to me as We Were Liars, but neither did it come across as gratuitous. I enjoyed accompanying Matilda on her journey to Hidden Beach looking for connection. The themes of Kingsley Cello’s artwork and the inclusion of The Chronicles of Narnia references were hits with me (my own dearly departed sister once named a pet after Puddleglum!) And though some dark family secrets are always bound to be unearthed from the sandy beaches in these stories, I find them so eminently readable. These particular characters won’t leave much of an impression on me, but it was just a pleasure being along for the ride as Matilda learned about this strange pocket world while trying to puzzle out the mystery of her father, all while learning what it means to decide if someone is worth committing yourself to, whether that’s in a familial, platonic, or romantic sense.

And for the record, the print book itself is quite pretty!

A to reiterate: you can easily jump into this book without reading the others, but just know there will be huge spoilers.

Book Review: THE WORKS OF VERMIN by Hiron Ennes

| Jessica Crawford

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes is a 432 page standalone novel published by Tor Books in 2025.

Genre:

Fantasy

Blurb

He was sent to kill a pest. Instead, he found a monster.

Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, a metropolis carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty.

In this complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple goal: keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he’ll take on any job, no matter how vile.

As an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny creatures that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is different: a centipede the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice.

Guy doesn’t have a choice.

Opening Line

Tiliard, known as the Deathbed of Tulips, straddles the river gorge like a half-submerged stump.

My Thoughts

The past is only ever populated by strangers, Guy had told her once, referencing some pompous corpse or another.

Holy moly, this book! A great story that was a taxing process to tunnel my way through.

This author’s previous novel, Leech, is an absolute favorite of mine. There are things I really like about this one here, but boy were there challenges, too. Mostly I just had a very difficult time picturing the things the author describes (e.g. do they live in the roots or on the roots, and if the stump is half-submerged then aren’t the roots underwater?) Primarily it was the setting itself that I struggled to get a handle on, but the details of the toxins and perfumes and everything were just a lot. Many times I found myself rereading lines to make sure I was actually understanding what they were trying to say.

Somewhere around two-thirds into the book I had a major “Aha!” moment, but I hesitate to call this a twist or a big reveal because I honestly can’t say for sure if it was something that was already supposed to have been clear and I just failed to pick up on it.

BUT, all that being said, it’s a fantastic (if extremely complex) world the author has built here, and the story was very good. The characters were pretty wonderful (the undercity exterminator willing to do anything to keep his little sister from a life of working off debt, the perfumer who makes the perception-altering and subtly mind-controlling scents worn by the Grand Marshal Revenant, all those contaminated by the toxin used to literally reshape the city and its people during the last coup–all splendid!) I would call this grimdark fantasy and not horror, although there are most definitely body horror elements. There’s LGBTQIA+ representation, and some truly great lines amidst the pulchritudinous prose.

He is the best Grand Marshal the city has ever seen. He is exactly as a Grand Marshal should be: dashing, competent, tough, ruthless or bloodless depending on necessity. He expresses the tenets of Revivalism in the sculpture of his own body, in his elegant and irresistible strategies. Bullets seem to pass right by him. Poison seems not to sicken him. He is so successful, so well-suited for life, that when in his fifth year of office he writes a solemn note and ingests enough tranquilizer to kill a team of horses, he only wakes up the next morning slightly better rested than usual.

My overall experience with this book was definitely a good one, but my troubles wrapping my head around the particulars drops it to 4.25 stars for me.

Book Review: THE WHITE OCTOPUS HOTEL by Alexandra Bell

| Jessica Crawford

The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell is a 369 page standalone novel with a publish date of 10/28/25 by Del Rey

Genre:

Fantasy/Magical Realism

Subgenres:

Historical Fiction, Romance

Blurb:

Journey to a magical hotel in the Swiss Alps, where two lost souls living in different centuries meet and discover that behind its many doors, they may just find a second chance.

‘Have you travelled a long way?’ she asked carefully. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘Well, yes,” he said slowly. ‘Yes, you could say that. But it was worth the wait.’

London, 2015

When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her London office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her.

His name is Max Everly – curiously, the same name as Eve’s favourite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she can’t shake the feeling that she’s held his hand before . . . but where, and when?

The White Octopus Hotel, 1935

Decades earlier, high in the snowy Swiss Alps, Eve and a young Max Everly wander the winding halls of the grand belle epoque White Octopus Hotel, lost in time.

Each of them has been through the trenches – Eve in a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War – but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away . . . if only they have the courage to step through the door.

Opening Line:

Eve didn’t want to turn around because then she would see it.

My Thoughts

What a special story this was about regret and finding a steady hand to hold yours in the dark! It’s got:

✓ A magical hotel
✓ Time travel
✓ Scavenger hunt/puzzles
✓ Working through grief

Eve Shaw is haunted (quite literally) by a tragic event from her childhood, and she would do anything to change what happened. When she finds herself transported back in time to a magnificent hotel known to house various magical objects, she might just get that chance.

I will say that I think this book took too long setting up before starting the meat of the story. Even without reading the synopsis, the story has the reader expecting Eve to travel to the White Octopus Hotel and to the past, but this doesn’t actually happen until around 40% into the book. Up until that point I thought the book was just fine, but that’s when it got good–and then, as I read on, it wound up being something rather extraordinary!

We have Eve, an artwork appraiser at an auction house in 2016 whose octopus tattoo moves itself around her body at will, and who finds herself participating in a scavenger hunt at the White Octopus Hotel in 1935 for the chance to win a magical object that could allow her to rewrite her past.

And then we have Max Everly, music composer and junior officer in World War I who is sent to the hotel in the Swiss Alps in 1918 to convalesce as a POW.

These two meet multiple times throughout history (but it’s always only the first time for one of them!) The bond between them acts as a light in each of their lives, and “after all, a single candle could make all the difference in the dark”. Eve eventually is forced to reckon with the knowledge that changing her own story will have consequences that ripple through time. Either way, someone she cares for is going to have to get hurt.

I really loved the specifics of the different magical aspects in this story. Was I left with some questions, for logistics? Sure. But the helpful tentacles, the creepy yet sympathetic Eavesdropper, the war horse returning lost objects in the steam baths–delightful!

Personally, I don’t usually appreciate comps because so often they set me up for disappointment, but for readers who look for that kind of information I will say that this book had me at different times feeling hints of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Warm Hands of Ghosts vibes.

In all I found this to be an exciting, touching, and hopeful magical love story with an overall theme of making peace with the past. I plan to check out more of this author’s work for sure.

Now, if I may share a couple of quibbles, which obviously were not egregious enough to drop my rating from 5 splendid stars. The writing itself was not bad by any means, but it was just a bit basic. And this last bit could be considered a tad spoilery, so please avoid if that bothers you, but it was odd to me that Eve, despite already having a crush on Max before meeting him, did not form any romantic feelings for him when she knew him in his thirties and he pledged to help her with whatever she needed, but then fell in love with him while he was a traumatized teenager in the midst of a mental health crisis. This seemed a bit ick to me.

THANK YOU SO MUCH to Del Rey and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review!

Goodreads

Book Review: WE LIVE HERE NOW by Sarah Pinborough

| Jessica Crawford

We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinboroguh is 291 page standalone novel published by Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar in 2025.

Genre:

Horror

Blurb:

After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking—and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong. Old boards creak at night; fires extinguish; and books fall from the shelves—all of it stemming from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room.

But these things happen only when Emily is alone, so are they happening at all? She is still medically fragile. Her post-sepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she cannot fully trust her senses. Freddie does not notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start. She, however, starts to believe the house is haunted by someone who had been murdered in it even though she can find no evidence of a wrongful death. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But just as the house has secrets so do Emily and her husband.

Opening Line:

The raven watches the stone house on the crossroads through the long year.

My Thoughts:

This horror novel skews more thriller than the spooky kind I usually prefer, but once I got into it I tore through it in one day!

It’s got short chapters from two POVs–most from the wife but some from the husband, both in first person present tense. Is it a tad silly at times? Sure (oh, these four specific books fell off the shelf in the study inside the house? Must have been the “breeze”!) Was the “post-sepsis syndrome” question overused? Kinda. By the end, does it offer full explanations as to why things are the way they are with the house? No. But it was definitely interesting and I was hooked while I followed along on Emily and Freddie’s journey. And the ending was just right!

Of note: if you require an irreproachable, fully good character to root for in your stories, this book might not be your cup of tea. Also, if you’re marriage is currently struggling, maybe don’t pick this one up just now. But otherwise, I recommend this as a great choice for spooky season reading.

Goodreads

Book Review: THE BOG WIFE by Kay Chronister

| Jessica Crawford

The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister is a 336 page standalone novel published by Counterpoint in 2024.

Genre/Subgenres:

Gothic, Contemporary Magical Realism, Mystery

Blurb:

In this atmospheric Appalachian gothic, the Haddesley siblings of West Virginia must unearth long-buried secrets to carve out a future when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured

Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.

Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.

Brimming with aching loss and the universal struggle between honoring family commitments and the drive to strike out on one’s own, The Bog Wife is a haunting invocation of the arcane power of the habits and habitats that bound us.

Opening Line:

On winter nights, they burned heavy bundles of dried peat in the hearth and inhaled the scent of sacred ground burning while their father paced the length of the room, reciting the history of the Haddesley compact.

My Thoughts:

Anything that lives and does not live alone makes compacts.

This book is not horror, per se, but it’s still a great fit for spooky season! Described as “Appalachian Gothic”, it’s basically a family drama/saga about a group of adult siblings who struggle to know what to do when the compact between their family and the bog on their land doesn’t play out the way their father always instructed them it would when he died (to borrow words from another Goodreads review I got a real kick out of, the promised swamp tart is a no-show!) Have they failed as custodians of the bog? Did they perform the rituals wrong? Is the whole thing just totally insane…or a lie passed down through the generations?

We see this story unfold while following each of the Haddesley siblings: Eda, who has dedicated her life to making sure her family maintains the compact through ritual; Charlie, the eldest son who was always a disappointment as the one set to inherit the family legacy as patriarch; Wenna, the one who tried to escape it all and lived in the “real world” for ten years before returning for her father’s burial; Percy, the custodian of the bog; and Nora, who just wants the whole family to get along and to feel accepted as one part of the whole. Then there is the matter of their mother, the last bog wife, who disappeared over a decade ago…

The occult parts of the story were really interesting, and the tension was ratcheted up by discord among the siblings and their plight to understand what went wrong and how to fix it. I do have to admit that I felt let down by the last 50 pages–the resolution just had a very different feel from the rest of the book, which was a 5 star read for me. So altogether I’d probably call it 4.75 stars.

Goodreads

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Book Review: THE HOUNDING by Xenobe Purvis

| Jessica Crawford

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis is a 240 page debut novel published in 2025 by Henry Holt and Co.

Genre:

Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Blurb

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbed to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.

The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it.

As relevant today as any time before, The Hounding celebrates the wild breaks from convention we’re all sometimes pulled toward, and wonders if, in a world like this one, it isn’t safer to be a dog than an unusual young girl.

Opening Line:

The girls, the infernal heat, the fresh-dead body.

My Thoughts:

“Wherever we go, however we behave, there’ll always be something to drive us inside. That’s where people want us to be.”

The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs. — For once I think the comp offered by the publisher is an apt one and not just marketing nonsense.

The atmosphere in this book is set perfectly, with the people of Little Nettlebed set on edge by the hot baking sun and the drought negatively impacting livelihoods. The five Mansfield sisters are unconventional, and a delusionally arrogant neighbor becomes obsessed with putting them in their place. Mob mentality takes over the villagers, even affecting those who try their hardest to resist.

I think the themes of this story are explored wonderfully. I also think the characterization is well done, it’s just that the manner of storytelling doesn’t allow the reader to delve too deeply into any single character. Third person POVs shift among five different villagers throughout the book, and we get a good sense of each of them. But the story revolves around their interactions with and feelings about the Mansfield sisters, whose own POVs we do not get directly. I thought this was the perfect way to tell their story.

He searched within his soul and saw a terrible truth: that he’d rather they were dogs than damaged girls…He’d rather they were free than confined…

I included this book in my spooky season reading not because it’s horror (it’s not) or brings autumn feels to life on the page (nope), but for the witch hunt vibes, and in this it did not disappoint!

Disclaimer: Maine Coon cat Freya does not approve of any hounding whatsoever

Goodreads

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Book Review: WHAT STALKS THE DEEP by T. Kingfisher

| Jessica Crawford

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher is a 179 page novella, the third in the Sworn Soldier series, published by Tor Nightfire in 2025.

Genre

Horror

The Blurb

The next installment in the New York Times bestselling Sworn Soldier series, featuring Alex Easton investigating the dark, mysterious depths of a coal mine in America.

Alex Easton does not want to visit America.

They particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.

But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin—who went missing in that very mine—well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do…

Opening Line

So this is America.

My Thoughts

“That is horrifying and I want to go home,” I said, although I pronounced it, “Ah, I see.”

Another absolutely delightful entry in the Sworn Soldier series!

As usual, Alex Easton finds themself enmeshed in the investigation of truly creepy happenings. This time, they’ve traveled to America at the request for help from their old friend, Denton. The doctor’s cousin has gone missing while exploring an old abandoned mine, where he wrote about hearing strange sounds and seeing the ominous glow of a red light deep underground, a light that winked out when he tried to approach it to investigate. Can Alex, Angus, Denton, and a couple of fresh faces find out what happened to the missing man before yet another nightmarish being finds them?

This third novella in the series is still creepy, hilarious, heartwarming in equal measure. You don’t necessarily have to read them in order to enjoy them, but this installment does reference things that happened in the first book, including spoilers. The Big Bad in this one relates to something relatively obscure I had been thinking about recently, which only further cements for me the conviction that Kingfisher writes these books specifically for me. I love them so much!

“Most of your muscles have to have your bones to anchor them and push against. Imagine…oh…trying to punch someone with your tongue…”

There was a pause while we gave this particularly vivid mental image the credit it deserved. I opened my mouth to mention a young lady of my acquaintance in Paris, but caught a glimpse of Denton’s expression and closed it again.

Goodreads

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Book Review: WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME by Nat Cassidy

| Jessica Crawford

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy is a 304 page novel published in 2025 by Tor Nightfire.

Genre:

Horror, Paranormal

Blurb:

One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.

As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they’re up against, but she’s about to learn there’s more to these surreal and grisly events than she could’ve ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.

Opening Line:

Daddy is roaring.

My Thoughts:

What a wild ride!

Nat Cassidy’s horror pulls no punches, so make sure to read the content warnings at the beginning of the book, but honestly I thought they made it sound way worse than it actually was. His writing is as entertaining and humorous as it is gory (…well, maybe not quite – it’s pretty gory!) This time around, it’s also really touching.

Jess finds herself in charge of a terrified young boy on the run from his father, and neither might be quite what they seem (if you prefer stories rooted firmly in reality without any speculative/fantastical elements, look elsewhere). This is a road trip adventure that will keep readers on the edge of their seats while also pulling on their heart strings. A theme of this book is the old FDR quote about the only thing to fear being fear itself. I was riveted, amused, and loving the journey…

BUT THEN.

This was a 5 star read for me right up until a resolution I was deeply unhappy with. I suppose it was an ending that made a good deal of sense, but certainly it could have gone another way.

Despite how upset I was with how the author chose to conclude this book, it’s still true that I loved the experience of reading it overall, and so 5 stars it is–but just know I am currently not speaking to Nat Cassidy (but will continue reading anything he writes)!

P.S. As an 80s kid myself, I can confirm Who Framed Roger Rabbit was terrifying

Goodreads

Book Review: WHAT WE CAN KNOW by Ian McEwan

| Jessica Crawford

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan is a 320 page novel published by Knopf in 2025.

Genre:

Literary Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Synopsis:

2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.

2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.

Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.

Opening Line:

On 20 May 2119 I took the overnight ferry from Port Marlborough and arrived in the late afternoon at the small quay near Maentwrog-under-Sea that serves the Bodleian Snowdonia Library.

My Thoughts:

This is a story in two parts.

The part readers are presented with first takes place one hundred years in the future (which is chronologically after the second part). A university history professor is researching a “lost” poem from 2014 (I think; thereabouts, at least). The poet wrote it for his wife, recited it at a dinner party for her birthday, and then gifted her the only copy of it in writing. It was never published, but became famous by word of mouth and by dint of the air of mystery created by its absence, and the rumors created thereby. Going through all the primary records from the time period before the cataclysmic climate crisis has the historian reading all of the emails and text messages of the poet and everyone in his circle. He also reads the journals of the poet’s wife, Vivien. He believes he has come to know this woman as intimately as a close friend. But then the second part of the story is a sort of memoir of Vivien’s, and it goes to show just how limited one’s understanding of another person can really be when going only by the material evidence left in their wake.

Honestly, the first half of book was pretty rough. I was enjoying the story and the narrative conceit, but the style it was written in was a bit of a challenge to get through. It was pretty dry at times, with long blocks of text of information that had my eyes glazing over. Several times during this part of the story I found my mind had wandered and I was just skimming the words – sometimes I bothered to go back and reread what I missed, sometimes I didn’t.

But the payoff of the second half, and what it does to the first, was worth it. Seeing Vivien’s truth juxtaposed to the interpretation of an academic a century later was a nice touch.

Note: You may want to skip this one if you have a loved one with dementia! Also if you require likeable characters (the first part had these, the second did not other than the one with Alzheimers, and that is a ROUGH storyline)