Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Midnight, at the War by Devi S. Laskar: A piercing look at journalism, grief, and the stories we choose not to tell

Mandy Webster

The most unsettling part of Midnight, at the War by Devi S. Laskar isn’t the violence—it’s everything that gets ignored in its wake. Releasing April 14, 2026, this literary novel follows foreign correspondent Rita Das as she chases the biggest story of her career in a war-torn Middle East, all while quietly unraveling under the weight of grief, guilt, and a life she refuses to apologize for.

Get your copy of Midnight, at the War from my independent online bookstore today!

Rita is not an easy protagonist to pin down, and that’s precisely what makes her compelling. She is fiercely independent, deeply ambitious, and committed to living life on her own terms—even when those choices isolate her from nearly everyone around her. The double standard is impossible to ignore: if Rita were a man, her career-first mindset and emotional detachment would be praised. Instead, she’s judged at every turn, with only her late mother—a doctor who lived similarly on her own terms—offering any real understanding. That absence lingers, because grief is one of the novel’s most persistent undercurrents.

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Writers on Writing

What dystopian stories teach us about who controls history: An exploration of cultural narrative in Ruins

Mandy Webster

While reading Ruins, the latest novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, I found myself thinking less about the far-future world it imagines and more about the stories civilizations tell about themselves — and why those stories so often begin to unravel the moment someone steps outside their borders. Set in a distant future where American civilization is long gone and no written records survive, Ruins follows an archaeologist who begins to question the official histories preserved by Leadership. In this world, what is accepted as truth has been shaped over thousands of years of retelling, and stability depends on the population’s belief in those narratives.

Civilizations survive through stories — but whose stories get left out? Inspired by Lily Brooks-Dalton’s Ruins, this post explores rules, exceptions, and the hidden structures of society.

It wasn’t just the mystery at the heart of the novel that stayed with me, but the way it mirrors a recurring pattern in literature: civilizations rely on shared stories to create order. Without these stories, cooperation becomes fragile, meaning begins to fray, and identity itself can feel uncertain. But stories, by necessity, simplify. They smooth contradictions, minimize uncertainty, and quietly remove perspectives that do not fit the larger arc. And what disappears is often invisible to those living comfortably within the story.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill: A strange, fungal dystopia about what marriage takes

Mandy Webster

If you’re expecting a straightforward horror novel, Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill will catch you off guard—and that disorientation feels entirely intentional. Set in a near-future enclave cut off from a ruined outside world, the novel follows Nicole, a young woman raised in isolation and taught to fear both the world beyond her window and the fungal growths that cover her own body. When she’s married off to a man she barely knows and relocated to his decaying mansion on the edge of town, her life doesn’t expand—it contracts. What unfolds from there is less a traditional plot and more a slow, unsettling unspooling of identity, control, and buried desire.

Get your copy of Wife Shaped Bodies from my independent online bookstore today!

Let’s get this out of the way: this book is weird. Not in a gimmicky, shock-value way, but in a deeply immersive, almost disorienting sense. Cranehill builds a world shaped by plague and patriarchal control, where fungi have merged with human bodies to the point that many women are more mushroom than flesh. The men, somehow spared the worst of the infection, have constructed an insular society that positions them as protectors—though what they’re really protecting is their own authority.

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Essays

Journalism: It’s not about “both sides”—it’s about what’s actually true

Mandy Webster

When one person says it’s raining and another insists it’s not, a journalist’s job isn’t to quote them both and call it a day. The job is to go outside, look up, and report what’s actually happening. That basic principle—verification over balance—feels increasingly absent from modern journalism, especially at the local level.

Line drawing of a man standing in an open field looking up at the sky
A young man scans a cloudless sky, caught between what he’s told and what he can plainly see—reminding us that truth isn’t found in competing claims, but in the courage to look for ourselves.

I’ve seen this play out firsthand in the ongoing political arguments over property taxes here in Illinois. Republicans often argue that high property taxes are the governor’s fault. Democrats push back, saying the governor has no control over property taxes at all. And what does much of the local media do? Instead of investigating the claim and explaining how property taxes actually work, they hand each side a microphone and let the audience “decide.” But that’s not journalism. That’s outsourcing the truth.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

These Familiar Walls by C.J. Dotson: A haunted house story where the real danger isn’t the ghost

Mandy Webster

The scariest part of These Familiar Walls by C.J. Dotson isn’t what lurks in the shadows—it’s the uneasy realization that the person at the center of the story might be just as unsettling. Set across two timelines, the novel begins in 1998, when a lonely preteen named Amber forms a troubling bond with a new boy in town—one whose fascination with fire and lack of remorse immediately set him apart. That relationship is brief but deeply consequential. More than two decades later, in 2020, the past comes crashing back when that same boy—now a man—returns, leaving Amber’s parents dead before meeting his own violent end inside her childhood home.

Get your copy of These Familiar Walls from my independent online bookstore today!

What follows is a familiar but effective setup: Amber inherits the house and moves in with her husband and children, hoping to rebuild some sense of normalcy. Instead, she finds herself unraveling. Strange occurrences blur the line between psychological stress and something more sinister—whispers in the dark, reflections that won’t cooperate, and trancelike episodes that suggest the house is holding onto far more than memories.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch: When sleepless strangers become unlikely allies

Mandy Webster

In The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch, releasing April 7, 2026, four strangers find themselves drawn together during the quietest hours of the night, gathering at an all-night diner in New York City to talk through the worries that keep them awake. What begins as a series of late-night conversations gradually turns into a fragile friendship—until one of them disappears, turning their insomnia-fueled support group into an amateur investigation.

Get your copy of The Insomniacs from my independent online bookstore today!

The setup is appealing right away. Sybil, a recently empty-nested mom; Zeke, a professional baseball player sidelined by injury; Julian, a reserved retiree trying to repair his relationship with his daughter; and Betty, the guarded diner waitress who serves their endless coffee, couldn’t be more different from one another. Yet insomnia—and the strange intimacy of late-night conversations—creates the space for them to open up in ways they can’t with the people already in their lives.

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Ask the Author

Ask the Author: Are easter eggs in novels just foreshadowing?

Mandy Webster

If you spend enough time on bookish social media, you’ll eventually see someone point out an “easter egg” in a novel—and there’s a good chance they’re actually talking about something else entirely. This is the topic of today’s Ask the Author.

Dear Mandy,

Question: Are easter eggs in a novel just foreshadowing?

Not every hidden detail in a story is an “easter egg.” Some are clues, some are foreshadowing—and some are just there for readers who like looking a little closer. In today’s Ask the Author, I unpack the difference– and how the internet sometimes gets literary terms hilariously wrong.

Answer: Lately I’ve noticed a lot of readers on social media using the term easter egg when what they really mean is foreshadowing. The two are not the same thing, even though they both involve details hidden in a story.

Foreshadowing is a storytelling technique. It’s when an author plants clues early in the narrative that hint at something that will happen later. A seemingly harmless line of dialogue, an object that appears briefly in chapter two, a character’s odd reaction to something—these details quietly prepare the reader for future events. When the twist or revelation finally arrives, the earlier hints suddenly make sense. Good foreshadowing makes a story feel inevitable rather than random.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Harmless Women by Rebecca Sharpe: A twisty thriller with a rebellious Thelma & Louise vibe

Mandy Webster

What happens when a professional con artist finishes a job—only to walk straight into a murder scene that turns everything upside down? Harmless Women by Rebecca Sharpe, releasing April 7, 2026, is a fast-paced thriller built around a clever premise. Avalon Dale is a skilled grifter who targets wealthy victims, sedates them, drains their bank accounts, and alters their appearance so they can’t easily prove who they are when they wake up. Her latest victim is Primrose Meath, a wealthy workaholic whose chaotic personal life makes her seem like an ideal target.

Get your copy of Harmless Women from my independent online bookstore today!

By the time the story really kicks into gear, Avalon has already completed most of the job. She returns to Prim’s house to tie up loose ends and instead finds Prim’s cheating husband dead. The situation quickly spirals when a witness reports seeing a suspicious bald woman at the house, suggesting Prim may have been kidnapped. As the investigation unfolds, however, the police begin to suspect that Prim may have been involved in the scheme all along.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Counting Game by Sinéad Nolan: A haunting debut where myth and fear blur in the Irish woods

Mandy Webster

Two children walk into the woods, and only one returns. From that chilling premise, The Counting Game by Sinéad Nolan unfolds into an atmospheric psychological mystery that lingers long after the final page. Releasing April 7, 2026, this debut crime novel turns a rural Irish legend into something far more unsettling: a story where the real danger might be human—or something else entirely.

Get your copy of The Counting Game from my independent online bookstore today!

Set in southwest Ireland in 1995, the novel opens with the disappearance of thirteen-year-old Saoirse Kellough. She vanished while playing the so-called “Counting Game” in the forest with her younger brother, Jack. The rules are simple: go into the woods, count to ten, and stay hidden. The problem is that only Jack comes out. Worse still, he refuses to speak about what happened.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Love by the Book by Jessica George: A heartwarming story about friendship, growth, and unexpected connections

Mandy Webster

I’ll admit, when I first opened Love by the Book by Jessica George on my tablet, I paused. “Ew, a romance novel—why did I sign up for that?” I thought. Not that there’s anything wrong with romance, but it isn’t usually my cup of tea. I read the summary again and saw that it was about friendship—better, but still, what? Long story short, I was hesitant going in. But by the end, I was so glad I had given it a chance. There is so much more to this story than what the cover summary hints at, and once I got into it, I was fully invested.

Get your copy of Love By the Book from my independent online bookstore today!

The novel follows Remy and Simone, two women at very different points in their lives. Remy, fresh off the success of her debut novel, finds herself suddenly adrift as her closest friends move away, start families, or return to toxic relationships. Her creative spark is gone, and with it, her sense of belonging. Simone, meanwhile, has long relied on her independence, enjoying her well-paying side gig and a close relationship with her family. But when a hidden aspect of her life comes to light, she faces isolation for the first time. When these two women collide in a bookstore, neither is expecting the connection that follows—but both may find the friendship they didn’t know they were missing.

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