Category: Reviews

The story follows Pat as he and his family are forced to move out of their house into the extended family’s summer home after their grandma burned their own house down. While there, his brother gets possessed by a spirit that does not immediately realize that he’s dead and he must find a way to put the spirit to rest before the possession kills his brother.

The story was really cute. It’s very much intended for a younger audience with frequent references to stuff like Doctor Who and Eurovision, which places the story very squarely in the UK1 and I always like seeing that. It is, however, definitely a book that takes place in an older time and some of the references haven’t necessarily aged well.

The focus of the story is Pat and he really does feel like a teenager, with his concern for his brother being paired with choices that feel like they would make sense to someone his age. It’s nice seeing books where teenagers act more like teenagers than short adults, and are prone to that combination of turning to their parents when they are lost while not wanting to actually tell their parents what the problem is and expecting them to intuit it without having to voice that concern. I really liked those moments.

Overall, it was cute and it’s a nice quick read. If it sounds interesting to you, check it out!

1. Ireland specifically? There were a lot of very specific references, but I didn’t pay that much attention… [↩]

I need a break from fiction, so I’ve gone back to one of my old standbys. Crime documentary. I have seen a few documentaries about Theranos, and followed the story loosely while it was happening1 and I do love a story about Silicon Valley nonsense.

Theranos was supposed to be a revolutionary product for healthcare: A machine that could test your blood faster and in a less cumbersome way than sending it into a lab. It was a lab that you could have in your house and allow you to check at your leisure if you are at risk for any diseases. It was, of course, a dumpster fire of a project with ethical issues2 and technical ones that were kept hidden via a veil of secrecy and terrible business and development practices.

Have I mentioned that I’ve been in tech for over a decade? I have lived parts of this.

It’s structured with a different perspective in each chapter telling the full story of the project from inception to eventual collapse. It’s interesting to see how the different perspectives from different parts of the company come together to paint the picture of something that I can 100% believe happened as told in the account. It’s a horror novel where the villain is the idea that this device could go out into the world and ruin lives where the heroes are the ones who eventually risked and were rewarded with legal threats and private investigators following them looking for any missteps that they could use against them for whistleblowing.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It was exactly the break I needed and I loved having this perspective on what happened. If you love this kind of thing too, or just need an interesting nonfiction, it’s a lot of fun.

1. Though I have no idea what happened with the trial. That was supposed to happen in 2020 and… [↩]
2. Which, well, it was both Silicon Valley AND healthcare in one go [↩]

In an effort to better understand horror as a genre that is distinct from supernatural and urban fantasy1, I’ve been trying to find more horror novels and this one came in one of those lists of recommendations!

The story follows Iris Hollow, the youngest of three sisters. As children they vanished for a month and returned without ever finding out what happened. Her two sisters left home early, leaving Iris behind though they still kept in touch. So when her two sisters, Vivi and Grey, are supposed to be back in town and Grey never shows, they are worried and have to . As the mystery of where their sister went unfolds, Vivi and Iris start to learn just what happened to them all those years ago.

I thought this was a story with a lot of interesting concepts. The touches of supernatural elements that each of the sisters had and how it manifested differently based on how they decided to use it was fantastic. I like that the mystery of what happened to them was not a driving factor of their lives until there was motivation for it and that they all seemed to have… maybe not normal lives, but lives that made sense outside of their disappearance.

It’s also the second book in a row I’ve read that hinges on the concept of cuckoos which… I don’t know how I feel about that.

Overall, I liked it! I wasn’t that creeped out or scared or anything like that, but the story was interesting and the concepts and the way they were explored were a lot of fun.

1. And to better understand why people think some of my stuff is firmly in the horror category [↩]

I read Every Heart a Doorway a while back and this book showed up in my recommended books. And then it took a year for me to get off the holds list at the library to actually check it out!

The story follows three perspectives, though I’m going to only focus on Roger and Dodger, two people who do not know that they are science experiments created to hold a large amount of power. They are twins separated at birth and find each other by communicating by a form of telepathy. As they grow older, they encounter one another, cause harm to their relationship, and then vanish from the other’s presence over and over again until they find that they have the power to destroy the world when they are together. Not only that, but because they are experiments, their maker now wants them destroyed in favour of another pair that is easier to control.

I ignore the third perspective, that of the mad scientist/alchemist named James Reed, because I felt like that was the weakest point for me. Where I understood what Roger and Dodger were doing and why they were acting the way they were, I had no idea what was going on with the motivations of Reed. There was a fairy tale that he was trying to make happen, but the fairy tale was an allegory but it wasn’t. There was a heavy fantasy element to it, but nothing happening with the other two perspectives had that fantastical fairy tale element to it that it lost me. It was too dissonant and felt like it was a completely different story.

But I did enjoy watching Roger and Dodger as they had a terrible time trying to get on the same page and they acted almost entirely based on their own incomplete contexts of the situation. Their inability to communicate properly didn’t feel forced for the plot or malicious, just the actions of people who don’t know better. And I always like that.

And I like the ideas behind it. This idea that two children are separated and then come together to realize that they can destroy the world together is great. That someone created them to see what they can do and when they get too powerful and incontrollable that they must be eliminated is great.1 I just… didn’t like anything to do with Reed.

Overall, I did like more than I disliked. It was a fun story with a lot of interesting ideas and execution. And if you like alchemy, this might be a great fit for you.

1. Not exactly what happened, but how I could interpret it. [↩]

I’m continuing my journey to learning more about personal finance and a friend of mine recommended that I check this one out! The author is fairly well known in personal finance circles apparently1 so I figured it was worth checking out!

It’s good foundational stuff. The first half of the book has a lot of basic information about how stocks and bonds work, as well as the mechanics of how investing could work and how to set your goals.

Unfortunately, I am Canadian, so a lot of the more specific advice is not as useful for me. The tone comes across as very finance bro-y as well with a dash of FIRE movement, which is not my thing. He’s also very into Vanguard investments. Like, to the point where I think he has a share in the company for how much he emphasizes that everyone should use them and only them ever.

Overall, though, it’s not a bad starting point. I learned a lot about the basics of investing, and certainly enough that I could get started with something. Just… not Vanguard.

1. Very early in this journey [↩]

After some issues with the preorder, I have finally gotten my hands on it! I need to stop trying to preorder things, given how strangely things keep going whenever I try to do that. It’s been a fun year of trying it, at least.

Lost in the Never Woods follows Wendy, a young woman about to head off to the next stage in her life and leave behind the unresolved parts of her childhood. Her brothers went missing when she was young and so did she, but she was the only one who returned. With no memory of what happened, the past continues to haunt her as local children start disappearing. Worse, Peter Pan, the boy from the stories her mother told her as a child, has come to ask for her help.

I do have a soft spot for Peter Pan stories1 and this one did not disappoint. Having this one set in modern day and centering around Wendy’s trauma more than the fictional world of Neverland made it feel a bit more grounded, and made Peter feel a lot more magical by contrast. In doing this, it does create a contrast to how other people have done it before, and I rather enjoyed the experience of having the story focused almost entirely on the experience of Wendy over that of Peter.

It does use the same villain as other ones do, though, which makes me think I was missing something when I read the original back in the day.

It’s not too romance-y, which is nice for me. There’s certainly elements of it in there, but it doesn’t ultimately overtake the story that I came for. And I will note that it’s likely a lot more prominent for the audience that might be looking for it, but, well, it’s me.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book! It’s a lot of fun and a different look at the story from any of the others I’ve read before. If you’re looking for a new take on Peter Pan, definitely check it out.

1. Ahem. [↩]

Apparently, I preordered this! Which is confusing because it’s paperback. I’m not really sure why I got it, but it was a pleasant surprise for the week while I was between books!

Dark and Deepest Red follows two storylines. In modern day, Rosella has remade a pair of red shoes that her grandparents once attempted to destroy and they have attached themselves to her feet, causing her to dance and seek out the help of Emil, a childhood friend who she’s grown distant from. In the distant past, Lala is trying to assimilate into the city of Stratsbourg, where women have been coming down with a dancing sickness that keeps them dancing until they fall down dead.

This is another one of those books that really benefited from being a bedtime book because I don’t think I was feeling it at all. The two storylines feel disjointed from one another, and I’m not sure how they were intended to play off of one another. The dancing sickness exists in both places, but that seems to be the only thing connecting the two.

On top of that, the story is very much about discrimination more than it is about the dancing sickness and the thing I was reading for felt like it was more of a background element. Though I don’t usually need an explanation, I don’t think I ever figured out either what was causing the sickness or how it was solved, and over the course of the book I found myself more and more annoyed that we weren’t focusing on it. Other people seem to really like it, though, so it is likely more that this is not my kind of book.

Another random library book! I’m enjoying picking up these random books that I’ve never heard of and this was another fun one. And quick! I think it’s a novella, and apparently it’s part of a larger universe of books. I’m not sure, but you can absolutely read this one without knowing anything about whatever other books take place in this universe.

Haunting of Tram Car 015 is a buddy cop mystery. Set in a magical Cairo in the early 1900s during the suffragette movement, there is a tram car that has had some supernatural activity. Agents Hamed and Onsi quickly encounter the spirit in the car and determine that they need to exorcise it from the car, but there’s more to how the spirit got there than it initially appears.

It’s been a while since I read a mystery story that felt like you could actually solve it. Even with being put in a universe where I was just learning the rules and the time period, I never found myself lost. There were a good number of twists and turns, many of them driven by learning a new thing about the universe, and the background plot of the suffragette movement that ties in at the end made the story feel more real despite the fantastical elements.

I’d definitely recommend checking it out. The story is quickly paced and a quick read that is absolutely worth your time.