Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

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

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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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

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

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.

Get your copy of Bad Cree from my independent online bookstore today!

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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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

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

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.

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

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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Memoir

I dreamed I rode my horse

English: Eye of horse.
English: Eye of horse. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night, I dreamed I was riding my old horse, Ruby, who’s been gone now for at least a decade. She’s a flighty old nag even in my dreams. Ruby had this annoying habit of flopping her head backward constantly, which always left me with the fear of being head-butted as I rode her. Once her son, Stormy, was old enough, I usually chose to ride him instead when I had the option.

In my dream, I was riding Ruby along a country road, and she kept throwing her head back at me as she always did. Up ahead, several other horses milled about on either side of the road. They perked their ears up as we drew closer, and Ruby grew increasingly agitated. Unfamiliar horses always made her nervous. I too grew anxious, clamping my fists around the reins in an effort to maneuver her past the other horses without incident. Continue reading “I dreamed I rode my horse”