reviews

Book Review: THE SHIP OF DEATH by Kyle Winkler

| Jessica Crawford

The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler is a 256 page standalone novel published by Avon in 2026.

Genre

Horror

Description

The dice roll. Darkness answers.

House of Leaves meets Jumanji in this brilliantly original and twisted novel composed entirely of found documents, following an unwitting couple ensnared by a sinister tabletop role-playing game

Cole and Lorraine playtest board games for some extra cash as they save up to buy a home. But after a series of bizarre coincidences, and signing a strange NDA, the couple finds on their porch a mysterious indie developer’s tabletop role-playing game called The Ship of Death. The game relies heavily on the players’ imaginations, and takes up an ever-growing amount of space: in their kitchen, and in their minds. As its true sinister nature becomes clearer, and its forces capture more in its web, the boundary between the game and reality begins to dissolve. . . and the pair are instructed to possess a stranger’s soul.

Told entirely through game reports, emails, game forum posts, personal journals, and police reports, reading The Ship of Death feels like a dangerous dice roll. It’s a sleep-stealing, possession-inducing work of intense, intelligent found cosmic horror that announces Kyle Winkler as a spectacular voice in the genre.

My Thoughts

The description of this book sounded like it would be right up my alley.

Cole and his wife Lorraine are playtesting a new tabletop roleplaying game called The Ship of Death. The mere scope of the game has them super excited at first, but then the lines between the real world and the one in the game start to blur. The result is cosmic horror. The players meet shady characters that seem to have leapt straight out of their imagined story, and find themselves compelled to carry out horrifying actions from their roleplaying in real life. The entire story is told with a mixed media format—emails, journal entries, forum posts, etc.

So why wasn’t this a home run for me? I like weird books, but this wasn’t my kind of weird, I guess. There are so many things from the game world that have you repeating, “Huh? What does that even mean?” (e.g. The Saltation of Banal Objects, The Curation of Auguries from Flesh, Sustenance and Religio-Social Habitudes, etc). And this is intentional, it adds to the creepy factor and has the characters questioning everything. But it just didn’t hit for me.

I feel like I haven’t said much that wasn’t already in the book description, but the only other information would be unnecessarily going into too much detail of the story. 256 pages presented in mixed media format is actually a fairly short book. It’s a quick read that is mysterious, tense, and dark. As far as characters, I liked the psychic Cole consults, but it’s difficult with all of the others because even if they are essentially good people, they are no longer in control of reality and do some not very good things.

Again, all of this is a great idea in theory, but in execution left this reader a bit underwhelmed. But your mileage may vary!

Book Review: THE WEDDING PEOPLE by Alison Espach

| Jessica Crawford

The Wedding People by Alison Espach is a 384 page standalone novel published in 2024 by Henry Holt and Co.

Genre:

Contemporary Fiction

Opening Line:

The hotel looks exactly as Phoebe hoped.

My Thoughts:

“I suppose I didn’t realize that’s what it would feel like getting older.”

“…it is all about moving on. Saying goodbye to whoever you thought you were, whoever you thought you would be.”

I LOVED this book that is equal parts cathartic and laugh out loud funny.

Phoebe’s life has imploded over the past several years. One final straw in the midst of a deep clinical depression sends her to The Cornwall (a fancy historic hotel in Newport, Rhode Island she had always hoped to visit one day) in a green silk dress, equipped with no luggage but instead a plan to end her life.

But she decides that’s how some people are (she decides that she likes deciding things now that she is forty and alone, that’s how some people are). Some people don’t ask for what they need. Some people are like religious children that way, mistaking suffering for goodness.

In the meantime, Lila has booked the hotel for her wedding week, and it was supposed to only have guests for the wedding staying. Phoebe’s reservation was a clerical error. The two women meet on the elevator and Lila asks Phoebe what she’s doing there. Unemcumbered by any concerns about what may or may not be socially appropriate, experiencing a sense of freedom by the thought that she will not live past the night, Phoebe tells the truth. She is there to kill herself. Lila, who has spent years and one million dollars planning the perfect wedding, is horrified. This could totally ruin everything!

In her bid to talk Phoebe out of her decision, Lila is more her true self around her new acquaintance, not putting on an act of the perfect bride like she is for everyone else. Phoebe, thinking it won’t matter for long, continues to feel able to speak and act in a brutally honest, direct manner. This itself opens up to her a new way she could choose to be moving forward. Coming across the wedding people like this actually helps her realize that there is another option besides taking her own life, a different way to approach living.

Over the course of a week the two women help each other face hard truths and find a way forward, which was really heartwarming. As someone who has struggled with depression, I loved reading about Phoebe moving through it and coming out on the other side stronger with a little help from authentic human connection. I laughed, I cried! This is a strong contender for my favorite book of the year.

There is a metaphor with a Newport diner that has been demolished by hurricanes and rebuilt several times:

Phoebe imagines that rebuilding after each devastation must be a real chore, especially for a place like Flo’s, which has knickknacks covering every inch of the walls. To rebuild each time with the same level of bursting, idiosyncratic personality–how do you do that?…How do you act like this singular and quirky existence is entirely natural and will never be destroyed again?

All the feels! ❤️❤️❤️

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Book Review: CLEAR by Carys Davies

| Jessica Crawford

Clear by Carys Davies is a 208 page novel published by Scribner in 2024.

Genre:

Historical Fiction

Opening Line:

He wished he could swim-the swimming belt felt flimsy and it had been no comfort to be told not to worry, the men couldn’t swim either.

Synopsis:

A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to “clear” the last remaining inhabitant, who has no intention of leaving—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.

Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar’s world, they learn to communicate and, as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection.

Unfolding in the 1840s in the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular, beautiful, deeply surprising novel explores the differences and connections between us, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can survive despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, sensitive and spellbinding, Clear is a profound and pleasurable read.

My Thoughts:

This book reminded me quite a bit of Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall. Lyrical prose, literary style, reflective writing about a language and a way of life on isolated islands going extinct, the deterioration helped along by outsiders taking advantage. But also like that other book, the overall story didn’t do enough for me. It was nice, but didn’t take me on a journey; I didn’t feel at the end like I had experienced much of anything besides atmosphere. And then the resolution was bit hard to swallow, considering the time period. 3.25 stars.

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