Category: Book Reviews

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What price are you willing to pay? Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It explores ambition, class, and compromise on a college campus

Mandy Webster

What starts as a college novel about an overworked RA quickly builds into something darker, messier, and far more interesting. In Come and Get It, Kiley Reid (Such a Fun Age) pulls readers into the fluorescent-lit hallways of a University of Arkansas dorm where ambition, identity, and power quietly grind against one another until the friction threatens to ignite.

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The book centers on Millie Cousins, a 24-year-old “super senior” RA with big goals and a razor-sharp budget spreadsheet. She dreams of homeownership, financial stability, and a long-term campus job—ideally in housing, a world she knows inside and out. Millie genuinely enjoys dorm life, even the rituals of roommate drama and bulletin boards. But despite her clear-eyed focus, she’s mired in the emotional labor of Belgrade Dormitory, where she splits duties with another RA and is expected to monitor the mental health and behavior of dozens of residents—all for just $250 a month.

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What secrets lie behind the Midnight Door? Katrina Monroe’s haunting tale of sisterhood and trauma

Mandy Webster

What if the scariest thing isn’t what waits behind a mysterious door, but what happens when you never speak of it again? Katrina Monroe’s Through the Midnight Door is a genre-bending novel that slips between the psychological and the supernatural, the traumatic and the magical, all while anchoring itself in the emotionally raw terrain of sisterhood. It’s eerie and unsettling in the best way—but also heartbreakingly intimate.

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Years after the Finch sisters dared to unlock the doors in a seemingly impossible abandoned house in their dying hometown, the youngest, Claire, is found dead inside it. Her death pulls Meg and Esther—both estranged and damaged in different ways—back into each other’s lives. They’re not just grieving a sister; they’re unraveling what really happened that summer and what they never told each other.

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Why you shouldn’t sleep on Jessica Johns’ Bad Cree: A chilling debut about family, grief, and survival

Mandy Webster

What begins with a severed crow’s head and a haunting dream evolves into something far more layered in Bad Cree, Jessica Johns’ eerie and powerful debut. This genre-blending novel offers readers a gripping supernatural mystery while also digging deep into themes of grief, intergenerational trauma, and the quiet, often unseen strength of women supporting one another through pain.

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When Mackenzie wakes to find a crow’s head in her hands—only to have it vanish—she can no longer ignore the disturbing dreams that have been plaguing her. As her waking world becomes increasingly infected by her nightmares, she leaves Vancouver for her hometown in Alberta to reconnect with the family she left behind. At first, she fears the worst: her mother and sister are furious with her for skipping her sister Sabrina’s funeral. The stage is set for major emotional fallout—but instead of fracturing further, the women in Mackenzie’s family do something more surprising: they show up for each other.

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What if your dreams could incriminate you? A review of The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

Mandy Webster

Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is one of the most urgent and unputdownable novels I’ve read in years. I devoured it in a single day, heart pounding and mind racing, both captivated by its story and shaken by how plausible it all feels. Set in a chillingly believable future where artificial intelligence and corporate surveillance have penetrated even our subconscious minds, the book offers a harrowing exploration of power, privacy, and resistance—especially for women.

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When Sara returns home from an overseas trip, she’s abruptly detained by the Risk Assessment Administration and told that, based on an algorithm analyzing her dreams, she is likely to commit a violent crime against her husband. She’s placed in a detention center with other “dreamers,” all women, all accused not of what they’ve done, but of what they might do. With every misstep—real or perceived—their stay is extended, and their ability to prove their innocence slips further out of reach.

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I’ll Be Waiting is so creepy, I had to stop reading it at night!

Mandy Webster

Kelley Armstrong’s latest horror novel isn’t just chilling—it’s emotionally haunting in a way that lingers long after the lights are out. Most of my reading happens right before I go to bed, but I’ll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong made that nearly impossible. Every chapter brims with tension so expertly crafted that I found myself burrowing into my comforter at night to hide every part of myself from whatever might lurk in the shadows. But beyond the scares—and there are plenty—it’s also a story about grief, illness, and the unexpected twists in a life already marked by limited time.

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We meet Nicola Laughton in her thirties, a woman who was never supposed to live that long. Diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) as a child, she beat the odds thanks to medical advances. She even allowed herself to fall in love. Anton was her future—the person who taught her to hope for more than just survival. The two were married for only a couple of years before a car crash left Nicola widowed. Anton’s final words to his wife—“I’ll be waiting for you”—became both a deeply personal haunting and a viral social media curiosity.

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Midlife, magic, & saying “Screw it”: Why Magical Midlife Madness is the book every woman needs to read

Mandy Webster

What if your midlife crisis turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you? In Magical Midlife Madness, bestselling indie author K.F. Breene hands the reins of power to a 40-year-old woman who’s finally had enough—and the result is a hilarious, empowering, and refreshingly real fantasy adventure.

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Jacinta, who prefers Jess (or Jessie, depending on who’s talking), doesn’t crumble when her husband of 20 years announces he’s leaving her. In fact, she breathes a sigh of relief—and I cheered right along with her. Their relationship, more habit than love, was the kind that too many women stay in because it feels “easier.” But not Jess. She sees the exit as a second chance, and with her son off to college, she packs up and heads to a strange old house in a quiet Sierra foothills town that has tugged at her memory since childhood.

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Last Woman Standing: This feminist revenge thriller will make you feel seen—and maybe a little dangerous

Mandy Webster

There’s a specific kind of fury that comes from realizing you’ve spent years swallowing your own rage to make room for a man’s ego. Dana Diaz, Amy Gentry’s protagonist in Last Woman Standing, is a stand-up comic trying to make it in a world where men still hold the mic—and the power. She’s talented, hungry, and has learned how to laugh off a thousand microaggressions just to survive. But when something happens to her—something she’s not even sure counts as assault because there was no physical contact—she doesn’t laugh it off. Not this time. Not after meeting Amanda Dorn.

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The setup of Last Woman Standing is irresistible: a revenge pact between two women who agree to go after each other’s harassers, à la Strangers on a Train. But instead of a train, they meet at a comedy show. Instead of cold, calculated revenge, what unfolds is messy, complicated, and disturbingly real.

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A Certain Hunger is about a cannibalistic food critic—why can’t I stop reading?

Mandy Webster

I don’t usually go in for gore, but Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger had me riveted, repulsed, and unexpectedly charmed. When a novel begins with the protagonist describing how she murdered a man on Fire Island with an ice pick, you know you’re in for something different. But what A Certain Hunger delivers is not just a grisly tale of cannibalism—it’s also a sharp, biting satire, a love letter to food writing, and a deep dive into the mind of a woman who is both mesmerizing and monstrous.

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Dorothy Daniels is a food critic with impeccable taste, a robust sex life, and absolutely no moral compass. Oh—and she’s a cannibal. Somehow, that last detail isn’t mentioned on the book jacket, but I feel like it should be. Readers who shy away from graphic violence (and I count myself among them) might want to know what they’re signing up for. That said, I found myself devouring this book with the same uneasy compulsion as watching Game of Thrones—cringing through the most grotesque parts, occasionally looking away, but always coming back for more.

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The vampire will set you free: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn is the feminist horror novel we’ve been starving for

Mandy Webster

What if the monster you feared most didn’t destroy you—but helped you come back to life? Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone is a lush, gripping gothic horror that reimagines the classic vampire tale as a meditation on the pain and power of being a woman in a world that demands your self-erasure. Set against the smog-choked backdrop of the industrial revolution, it’s a story of hunger—emotional, physical, and existential—and what it means to finally stop starving yourself.

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At the center of the novel is Lenore, a woman ten years into a crumbling marriage to a powerful steel magnate. Her entire identity has been shaped around being a “good wife,” which, in her case, means tending to her husband’s ego while ignoring her own needs—even as the physical toll of that denial becomes too loud to ignore. She’s in pain but refuses to put herself first. She’s exhausted but doesn’t know how to stop performing. In many ways, Hungerstone is the story of what happens when a woman finally admits that her life is hurting her.

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Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen is dark, funny, and seriously messed up—in the best possible way

Mandy Webster

What do you get when you cross a lonely heart, a true crime podcast, and a vigilante sociopath with a fondness for elaborate meet-cutes? Julie Mae Cohen’s Bad Men is a delightfully deranged feminist thriller that manages to be equal parts clever, unsettling, and charming—yes, charming—in spite of (or maybe because of) its body count.

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Saffy isn’t your average heroine. She’s a serial killer heiress with a strict moral code, targeting men who harm women. She’s meticulous, disciplined, and has no time for romance. Until she meets Jonathan Desrosiers, a true crime podcaster known for solving the very kinds of violent crimes Saffy doles out her own brand of justice against. The irony isn’t lost on her—or on the reader. Saffy is used to watching men from the shadows before she makes her move, but when it comes to Jonathan, she orchestrates a complicated and hilarious meet-cute that’s as risky as it is romantic.

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