J M Shaw’s The Convergence, the second book in the Callum Walker series, opens with a man who has saved a world and wants nothing more to do with it. Callum Walker, a human warlock, has retreated to Rutherford following the Winter War, seeking in anonymity the peace that victory had not brought him. Trouble, unfortunately, seems to find him. Soon, a missing community of elves, a desperate queen, and a sinister force sweeping through the magical realm threaten his fragile solitude. Shaw’s second Callum Walker novel is an ambitious fantasy adventure about the tiring business of being everyone’s reluctant savior.
Jennifer Anne Gordon’s Perfect Wives, Perfect Lies contains an uncomfortable understanding about loneliness: sometimes pretending to have a better life feels easier than living the one you have. Rebecca “Becca” Gauthier, a forty-one-year-old social worker, is grieving the loss of her son, Gabe, and the end of her marriage. Her escape is Mommy Wine Time, a private Facebook group of women whose expensive habits and carefully arranged meals seem to have immunized them from the normal misery of life. Becca knows a lot of it is ludicrous. She sees. She can’t help it. Gordon turns this innocuous obsession into a dark, razor-sharp study of grief and the dangerous pleasure of becoming someone else.
Unveiled opens with a woman whose ordinary life revolves around a hole in her memory. Cath Lab manager Tessa Brooks is a wife and mother whose apparent stability is shattered by increasingly vivid flashbacks of an accident she can’t quite remember. Then, out of the blue, a man from her past, Dominic Reynolds, appears, and what Tessa thought she had safely buried starts to raise its ugly head. The premise allows the novel to leap between domestic drama, romance, medical fiction, and psychological suspense without immediately giving away which of Tessa’s fears are real. Fundamentally, it poses a tough question: if memory has been your shield against the past, is remembering always positive?
Book: Golem for Broke Genre: Magical Midlife Urban Fantasy Author: Deborah Wilde Rating: 4.5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
Deborah Wilde’s Golem for Broke has a wonderfully wicked proposition: what if perimenopause came with not only hot flashes and brain fog but also magic? Tovah Silver is a fixer in her forties for Mad Queens Inc., in a Vancouver where magic skills, supernatural red tape, and everyday life all happily coexist. Her powers manifest as hot flashes, which is a silly idea until you find yourself in a situation where a well-timed wave of heat is just what you need. Wilde takes the joke without diminishing Tovah, using an unconventional heroine to explore power, aging, friendship, and the experience of being underestimated. The result is urban fantasy with lots of magical trouble, but much of its personality comes from women who refuse to quietly disappear into middle age.
Hot Flashes Turn Hotter
Tovah introduces herself immediately, with a narrative voice that’s sarcastic, self-deprecating, and seemingly incapable of wasting a good joke. The first line, “No woman woke up with a song in her heart and the words ‘What a great day for a mammogram!’ on her lips,” tells you exactly what kind of book this will be. Wilde continually contrasts the mundane with the magical, letting mammograms and wet boots, work frustrations, and the indignities of aging exist in the same universe as golems and magical crimes. Even when Tovah is in genuinely uncomfortable circumstances, her observations are still sharply comic. That humor makes her less a carefully constructed fantasy heroine and more a woman determined to meet absurdity with greater absurdity.
But the perimenopausal magic joke has a more serious idea behind it. Tovah points out that the powers of the Mad Queens are often treated as if they are symptoms of conditions the women are already suffering from, which she dryly calls “lady troubles.” Wilde turns that dismissal into a nice metaphor for how the experiences of middle-aged women can be trivialized or overlooked. Tovah herself notes the link between physical transformation and identity, writing that perimenopause can alter “how you experienced the world, the fucks you had left to give.” It’s funny, deliberately blunt language, but there is surprisingly perceptive thought behind it.
Long Live the Crazy Queens
Tovah is important, but what’s more important is the friendship at the core of Mad Queens Inc. Nisha, Margot, Su-Jin, and Tovah all have their own personalities and skills, but the way they work together makes the group feel lived in rather than cobbled together to give the protagonist a supporting cast. They tease, argue, eat, solve problems pragmatically, and instinctively care for each other in their conversations. Tovah at one point describes the feeling of being with the right people as if she “could finally do anything as long as I had the right team by my side.” This captures the emotional architecture of the novel without Wilde needing to sentimentalize the friendships.
The Mad Queens also flesh out the title and larger concept of the book. Their powers show up later than society expects. This is unusual in a magical culture where powers tend to manifest much earlier in life; middle age is not a last-ditch effort to reclaim youth for Wilde, but rather these women come to their new circumstances with experience, professional skills, complex histories, and hard-won confidence. Even their office reflects that mix of age and reinvention, described through “history, stubborn survival, and organized chaos.” In that sense, Golem for Broke does not view middle age as an epilogue but as another possible beginning.
Wilde’s Vancouver is fun because magic hasn’t replaced bureaucracy or social hierarchy: it has only made them more complicated. The wealthy use golems, the police investigate magical crimes, protective wards are security, and supernatural powers are governed by laws and restrictions. Tovah’s work thus occupies a fascinating middle ground between formal authority and those who need problems solved outside of the usual channels. She defends Mad Queens Inc. as a business that serves members of the magical community whom official institutions might otherwise overlook. So the supernatural world appears woven into the fabric of everyday civic life rather than behind a curtain that is wholly other.
The golems are especially good worldbuilding elements because Wilde gives rules for their creation and composition. Tovah sees differences in the way they’re built, moved, in the clay, and in the inside. The people who make them know things, not some vague, unlimited power. The book also plays with familiar golem lore rather than simply reproducing it. Tovah dismisses the simple version of the legend by saying she could tattoo “emet” on a potato, and it still wouldn’t do her laundry. It’s a good example of Wilde using humor to deliver exposition without making the reader feel trapped in a supernatural instruction manual.
Queens Who Need to Prove Something
The prose is quick, fueled by Tovah’s commentary and Wilde’s love of banter. The characters also spar verbally almost as readily as they do with the magical problems, and the exchanges often reveal personality while keeping the story buoyant. Serious fantasy fans might think the jokes are relentless, but clearly Golem for Broke is not trying to be restrained. Its humor is part of its worldview, especially its refusal to treat older women as tragic, invisible, or humorless characters. Tovah can be vulnerable without losing the edge that makes her such a compelling narrator.
Beneath the golems, magical regulations, mysteries, and wisecracks is a story about who gets to be taken seriously and what happens when people refuse to play their allotted roles. Wilde grants middle-aged women the powers, friendships, messy lives, appetites, and adventures traditionally saved for younger protagonists in fantasy. Critically, before the heroines get to be formidable, the novel doesn’t make them become younger versions of themselves. Golem for Broke finds its magic in exactly the stage of life others might underestimate. These Mad Queens aren’t waiting to take back their crowns; they’ve already decided they belong on their heads.
Book: DeathCon: A Zombie Story Genre: Supernatural Zombie Horror Author: Nzondi Rating: 4.5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
Nzondi’s DeathCon gives a quick twist to the familiar zombie story: its protagonist, Cozimel “Cozy” Coleman, is a necromancer for whom raising the dead is less an unspeakable horror than a job. Cozy and her friends run the Scream Teens, bringing back the dead so families can work out the practicalities of unfinished business. “We raised zombies so mourners could say goodbye one last time,” Cozy says, as if she were describing a normal service industry. This normalizing of necromancy sets up one of the most striking ideas in the novel: death can be scary, but in Cozy’s world it can also be commercial and emotional and bizarrely routine. Nzondi uses this unusual premise and blends zombie horror, supernatural fantasy, comedy, friendship, and adventure.
When Horror Is Not Pretend
That premise is all the more playful given the setting, as most of the early action takes place on board the Sea Queen during DeathCon 2025, a horror-themed cruise with costumes, music, performances, and people eager to be frightened. The same problem confronts Cozy and the reader: how to distinguish entertainment from danger as strange incidents start intruding upon the festivities. After witnessing a woman acting alarmingly, Cozy begins to wonder whether the ship has just hired her “to scare people.” Given the setting, with zombie nuns, werewolves, grim reapers, and other costumed characters, the confusion is totally believable. So Nzondi turns the very setting of the convention into a source of suspense.
That tension works particularly well because DeathCon isn’t simply relying on darkness to generate horror. The characters are surrounded by bright lights, loud music, flamboyant costumes, dancing, jokes, and references to pop culture, all against an increasingly uneasy atmosphere. Even the bar called Lipstick Zombies looks like a horror carnival with costumed patrons and zombie-themed staff. The contrast makes it easy to dismiss anything unusual as part of the spectacle, creating a natural build-up of unease. In the novel, uncertainty gradually leaks into a world where everyone is expecting scary things to be fake.
Cozy Coleman Raises the Ante
The novel’s best asset is Cozy herself, and her first-person narration gives DeathCon a loud, irreverent personality. She’s impulsive, funny, combative, compassionate, and self-aware enough to know she’s reckless, though she doesn’t always rein it in. Her introduction captures that combination perfectly: “Some girls talked too much, some stole boyfriends, but my vice was raising the dead.” The joke does more than set the tone; it shows how deeply Cozy considers the extraordinary ordinary. Even the explanatory sections are lively, driven by her colloquial narration, pop-culture references, jokes, and sudden observations.
But there is also an emotional counterpoint to Cozy’s bravado. Her humor and attitude coexist with moments of vulnerability, while her interactions with those around her show the importance of real human connection. Her friendships, in particular, give the story warmth without taking away from its irreverent energy. Cozy is also compassionate, unafraid to help others without expecting acclaim. These moments keep her from being just another wise-cracking supernatural heroine.
The worldbuilding is just as distinctive, as Nzondi deliberately subverts the traditional zombie mythos. Cozy rejects the cinematic notion of zombies smashing their way out of coffins and hunting living people outright, saying that “zombies weren’t savage killers.” Instead, the novel lays out rules for necromancy, protective circles, rituals, substances, spiritual forces, and the obligations of temporarily bringing the dead into contact with the living. These explanations provide an internal logic for its supernatural world, rather than treating magic as a solution without limits. The result is a version of the undead that feels familiar enough to recognize but different enough to remain interesting.
The mythology is also placed next to a very modern universe of social media, music, movies, video games, celebrity culture, and gadgets. References to African, Egyptian, Hawaiian, and other cultures and spirituality help build the supernatural framework. Cozy casually talks about everything from horror movies to cell phones. The combination fits a protagonist who herself lives in several overlapping worlds: ancient practices and modern adolescence, extraordinary experiences and ordinary insecurities, and death rituals and commercial entertainment. The novel therefore avoids depicting necromancy as something that exists only in a mysterious past. Instead, Nzondi invites readers to consider what happens when an ancient supernatural practice becomes a recognizable modern service.
Blood, Banter, Beating Heart
Stylistically, DeathCon favors speed over restraint. Conversations ricochet between jokes and moments of unease, and Cozy’s interior narration ensures scenes rarely stay solemn for long. Those who like energetic narrators will probably enjoy the immediacy, but if you like understated horror, you may find the slang and pop-culture references heavy. But the excess is largely appropriate for the environment because DeathCon itself is intentionally extravagant. Cozy talks to the world at the same volume she lives in it.
But beneath all that noise, the novel keeps coming back to broader questions of connection, identity, responsibility, and the uneasy boundary between life and death. Its more interesting concern is therefore not just the existence of the undead, but how people respond to a world in which death does not necessarily mark the end of human interaction. Cozy is a particularly effective protagonist because her unusual profession exists alongside recognizably ordinary emotions and relationships. Nzondi crams these concerns into an unapologetically energetic mix of zombie horror, supernatural fantasy, humor, and adventure. DeathCon has plenty of blood in its veins, but what breathes life into the story is the discernible heart beating underneath.
Book: :05 Seconds to Die Genre: Crime Thriller Author: Bob Brill Rating: 5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
In :05 Seconds to Die (2025)—A crime novel by Bob Brill, former reporter and private investigator Casey Order meets actress Ginger Queen, then is pulled into a criminal plot concerning the 2028 Summer Games. The novel has 25 chapters and moves rapidly from a meeting in Hollywood to a much wider world involving organized crime, law enforcement, technology, and international links. The premise is deliberately inflated: Ginger warns Casey that powerful criminal networks might be teaming up and using ‘high-tech gadgetry to steal from the summer games.’
A Detective Who Knows He’s In Trouble
Much of the personality of the novel comes from Casey’s voice as narrator. He knows the situation is dangerous, but Brill keeps letting humor break the tension. Faced with the enormity of the crime he intends, Casey lets himself dream of becoming famous enough to take over from Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street before admitting, ‘Maybe, just maybe, I might end up dead. Might make me a legend.’ The mixture of fear and bravado sets the scene for the slightly overblown world the novel wants to inhabit.
Humor also comes through in smaller exchanges. Casey’s assistant, Trixie, is comfortable enough to say ‘You look like shit’ when his behavior gets noticeably odd. Such dialog prevents the characters from becoming mere plot devices in a crime story. Casey may be up against dangerous folks, but his normal relationships provide comic moments of normalcy in between the threats.
A Private Eye Walks Into Cyberspace
Brill pits a quaint, personal-eye persona against a decidedly modern technological menace. Casey talks like someone who has read a lot of detective fiction and has watched a lot of old movies, but the crime he is investigating involves digital systems, hacking, burner phones, and the vulnerabilities of cashless transactions. The scheme also covers common purchases, tickets, sellers, financial data, and digital money. That contrast between Casey’s throwback persona and the technological scale of the danger gives the novel an unusual flavor.
It also refuses to remain geographically small. What appears to be out of Casey’s professional sphere of expertise is in fact a case that involves many criminal organizations and official agencies. Even Casey realizes the disproportion of himself to what he has stumbled upon: ‘This was something bigger than my little world. ‘ Brill exploits that imbalance to keep the suspense alive because Casey is never presented as an invulnerable mastermind who can solve everything himself.
The novel’s style is playfully knowing. Film references, cultural observations, jokes, food, travel details, and Casey’s running commentary—all sit alongside serious danger. ‘No, old boy, I’ve got a leading role in this one,’ he tells a postman once, when he is laughed at for his conspicuous clothes. That sentence almost sums up Casey’s whole personality: he behaves as if he knows he’s in an adventure.
This will especially appeal to readers who like their crime fiction without the gloominess. The stakes are pretty high, but Brill still leaves room for banter and character quirks. And Ginger is not just presented as a glamorous actress. Her financial struggles and reduced professional circumstances complicate Casey’s original picture of her.
Five Hours Well Spent
:05 Seconds to Die is therefore less concerned with austere realism and more interested in momentum, personality, danger, and entertainment. Its core threat is technologically contemporary, but its storytelling often evokes a more traditional private-eye adventure, replete with wisecracks and a narrator willing to admit to the absurdity surrounding him. That blend gives the novel its identity.
I give :05 Seconds to Die 5 out of 5 stars. Brill deserves that rating for taking a big criminal premise and filtering it through a narrator with an unmistakable voice. It’s a story that keeps itself lively with a mix of technology, organized crime, humor, international movement, and old-school detective swagger, without requiring the reader to take every moment deadly seriously.
Finding Color, a travel memoir, is the first book in the five-part Back in a Year series, based on Candace MacPhie’s memories, journals, photographs, and emails home. Beginning with MacPhie struggling to rebuild her life after her mother’s demise, the memoir follows her as travel opens up possibilities beyond the routine she has fallen into. The memoir takes the reader from Canada to Greece, England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, and beyond, but the focus remains on the person who is doing the traveling. MacPhie herself makes the distinction clear: ‘If you are looking for a travel guide for city information, this is not it.’
Grief Too Travels
Finding Color is based on grief, emotionally. At the start of the memoir, MacPhie describes how her mother’s care had consumed a large part of her life, and the loss of her mother left her uncertain about what was left. A simple admission, ‘I don’t know what I like to do or who I am if I’m not looking after others,’ gives the travel that follows a deeper purpose. It is not just a story of wanting to see more countries. It starts when a person starts imagining what it would be like to live an independent life.
Crucially, MacPhie doesn’t make that process sound graceful. She tries to do things at home, like Tai Chi, toile painting, and dragon boat racing, but they don’t fill the void. Her description of that time is typically unvarnished: ‘This last year of “finding myself” has sucked, big time.’ That sentence also captures the voice of the memoir. There are serious emotions, but they are rarely dressed up to sound profound.
A Messy Sort of Adventure
The travel writing works because MacPhie allows herself to be ridiculous. She gets lost, drinks, has a hard time in new situations, stresses over relationships, overthinks things, and sometimes is uncomfortable in her own company. In Dublin, for example, she admits, ‘This is a prime example of how traveling alone can suck.’ These moments prevent the memoir from being an idealized tale of backpacking, where every problem magically leads to wisdom.
There is also a strong late 1990s vibe throughout the book. The source material itself helps create that feeling because while MacPhie uses her emails home as anchors, her journals, photographs, and memory provide what lies behind those carefully presented messages. Elsewhere, helping a new acquaintance set up her first Hotmail account, so familiar now, quietly reminds the reader of how different travel and communication were in those days.
MacPhie is also acute about the curious connection between independence and loneliness. She craves freedom, but she doesn’t say that being single is automatically freeing. At one point she confesses that nothing to occupy her is her ‘personal red-hot danger zone’ because it leads her toward overthinking and homesickness. The honesty of such observations makes her growth more credible, for confidence comes in fits and starts.
The title thus becomes significant beyond the literal colors of unknown places. Grief has made the world seem duller before, even MacPhie’s clothes and surroundings. Later, tiny decisions become echoes of a changing relationship with herself. When buying a raincoat, for example, she chooses canary yellow instead of dark purple, a small detail among many that suggests a person becoming more willing to inhabit her own life.
Journey Worth Partaking In
That’s why Finding Color works: MacPhie avoids the trap of perfect hindsight. The narrator can observe the insecurities and contradictions of the young woman living the story while still permitting that younger self to be impulsive, funny, lonely, hopeful, and sometimes frustrating. The memoir that emerges is less like someone showing off a completed transformation and more like someone reconstructing how change really happened.
I’m rating Finding Color 4.5 out of 5 stars. The blend of grief, humor, travel, relationships, and self-questioning gives the memoir emotional heft, without ever becoming somber. Most of all, MacPhie understands that simply going somewhere new doesn’t necessarily make you a new person. What’s satisfying about the book is watching someone start to find out who she might become.
Book: Corporate Coach Approach Genre: Career Development Guide Author: Nicole Fronek Rating: 4.5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
Corporate Coach Approach: A Systematic Guide to Career Development is a career development book with a practical approach by Nicole Fronek, a corporate coach, published by Painted Gate Publishing. In ten chapters, Fronek touches on personal branding, resumes, workplace communication, stakeholder engagement, meetings, presentations, corporate environments, and performance reviews. She brings outside research into the discussion, along with her professional experiences, and she concludes each major topic with a list of best practices. It is intentionally written for both those who want to read it cover-to-cover and those who want to go straight to the most relevant topic.
Lessons Learned From Experience
What gives the book its personality is Fronek’s willingness to use her career as evidence. She doesn’t pretend to be someone who started in corporate life knowing the rules. For example, in the chapter on resumes, she recalls applying to many jobs and finding that hiring managers could not clearly understand what she did or how her experience related to the positions she wanted. Her final advice, then, is to communicate accomplishments accurately, and it is not abstract but born of experience.
This same quality enhances her discussion of personal branding. Fronek differentiates reputation from a willfully constructed professional identity, arguing that workplace interactions are always sending cues to other people about what they can expect from us. One of her most insightful observations is that ‘Every engagement is an opportunity’ to reinforce how others see you. But she’s not suggesting you create a contrived professional image. In fact, one of her tips is that branding has to be authentic.
Work Is Too Often About the Little Things
Much of the Corporate Coach Approach is about activities so routine we may hardly notice them: writing emails, preparing resumes, attending meetings, speaking to colleagues, and giving presentations. The chapter on business writing by Fronek is particularly helpful, for she advocates clarity, not ornamentation. Her advice to ‘Write economically as if each word had a monetary value’ sums up the chapter rather nicely. She also advises writers to avoid complexity for clarity and to read their work aloud when editing.
Her philosophy for approaching meetings and presentations is the same practical one. She understands the changing relationship professionals have with meetings as their responsibilities grow, from wanting ‘a seat at the table’ to being far more discerning about whether a meeting is worth the time it takes. Technology is also dealt with in a balanced way. Fronek views AI as a useful tool to help refine material and analyze information but stresses the important distinction that ‘while AI may help to solve a problem, it should not be seen as the solution in full.’ Spontaneous reaction and human judgment still play a key role in effective communication.
There’s a bracing unsentimentality to Fronek’s take on corporate life. This is not a book that promises that hard work will automatically lead to promotion or security. She acknowledges reorganizations, mergers, budget cuts, favoritism, challenging professional relationships, and the uncomfortable truth that an employee can sometimes ‘become a number’ regardless of their past contributions. What follows is pragmatic advice: develop skills, maintain professional relationships, understand the business, and keep enough physical and mental capacity to respond when circumstances suddenly change.
That realism is also where the book sometimes welcomes dissent. Some suggestions are so specific that readers may feel they do not apply to their work environment, personality, or career. But Fronek herself repeatedly emphasizes individuality, encouraging readers to establish their own standards and aspirations, since professional goals are unique. The book therefore works best not as a compendium of commandments, but as the advice of a seasoned professional that you weigh against your circumstances.
Careers Are Built, Not Finished
The overall impression is of a book less concerned with shortcuts than its highly practical format might initially suggest. Fronek characterizes self-awareness as a continuous process and cautions against rushing or taking on more than one can handle. You cannot force career development into being. Experience changes what people want, what they are able to do, and occasionally where they want to go next.
I would give Corporate Coach Approach 4.5 stars out of 5. Its greatest strength is the combination of practical advice with the experience that has created it: Fronek doesn’t just tell readers what to do; she shows again and again why she came to believe it. The best-practice lists also make the book easy to revisit long after the initial reading. Most importantly, behind all the recommendations about resumes, meetings, communication, visibility, and performance is a more lasting idea: professional growth is progressive and never totally finished.
Zachary Hagen’s Aisha’s Secret is about a girl who lived life on the edge and all of a sudden came across a very different kind of life. But even if circumstances change, it does not mean all of you change overnight. Magic doesn’t fix everything. This is a heady mix of fantasy, romance, palace intrigue, and djinn mythology. A story about the curious space between getting what you want and knowing what to do with it. This combination is what makes the novel so powerful. One wants to imagine escape, but what comes after is much more complex.
The Cost of Getting What You Want
Hagen identifies Aisha by her identity: Oiled Hand. Her cleverness and her instinct for self-preservation don’t seem like handy character traits to make her particularly appealing. And that’s why she has to live with a lot of insecurity. Then a djinn, Qadira, enters her life, offering her three wishes and opening doors that Aisha could never have imagined. Magic has its boundaries. ‘I can’t raise the dead. That’s rewriting history,’ Qadira says. She can’t change a person’s heart or mind forever. These rules mean that magic is not a simple answer to any problem and add emotional depth to the story. Aisha has the power to change her life, but she also has to live with the consequences of her decisions.
What I most loved about Aisha was that her circumstances changed much faster than she did. But she can’t just throw away the instincts that helped her survive, even if she might walk into a world of privilege. Her past still affects her thinking and her perception of other people. There’s always a tension between who she shows the world and who she’s learned to keep in check. Hagen, too, grieves in his own very personal way. Aisha fills her mother’s memory with clothes, perfume, sewing materials, and other small things that connect to her. At one point, she says, ‘My mother was extremely proud of this dress.’ The dress is much more than something she happens to be wearing. It reminds her of who she lost, of the life she abandoned.
Qadira’s one of the most energetic characters in the book. She adds humor and character to the story, especially when things get complicated in Aisha’s life, but she isn’t there to resolve everything for her. There is love between them, but also argument, frustration, and real concern. Qadira tells Aisha that magic entails responsibility. The truth is, the more power Aisha has, the more she has to consider what she does with it. And that’s one of the things that keeps the fantasy grounded in something that feels recognizably human.
And the same is true of the romance. Aisha’s relationship is not just a reward for all she’s been through. Love demands of her what survival never really asked of her: that she be honest and vulnerable. This is especially true because Aisha has been hiding pieces of herself for so long. So the notion of being truly known becomes a big part of the romance. It is not just two people falling in love. It’s about whether they can take each other without the masks. Well put in the promise of Aladdin’s desire ‘to know you and know you fully.’
Fantasy With High Emotional Stakes
The story takes Aisha from a world of survival to a world of privilege and responsibility. The palace setting also allows the story to examine the social and political elements of Aisha’s new reality. Some of the emotional and political developments happen rapidly, and I found myself wishing the story would have lasted a bit longer before moving on from something. But that momentum is part of the reason the novel is so easy to read on.
What Aisha’s Secret ultimately does with its most important questions has little to do with magic. Magic can change your situation, but it can’t take away your grief, or make you feel like you belong, or make the consequences of your choices go away. Hagen combines the pleasures of fairy-tale fantasy and romance with a more serious identity question: What do you have to become to live the life you dreamed about when you finally get it? And that’s what makes the story so emotionally powerful. If you like fantasy with romance, humor, magic, secrets, and a heroine whose new life isn’t quite what she thought it would be, Aisha’s Secret has lots to recommend it.
Book: To Be a Fae Queen Genre: Romantasy Author: Tricia Copeland Rating: 5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
In To Be a Fae Queen, Tricia Copeland puts a young woman under the weight of a crown and asks a more interesting question than whether she can wear it: what happens when power comes before certainty? Titania knows she has a kingdom depending on her, but she is far less confident than her subjects might imagine. ‘How am I to rule a nation, an anxious girl?’—a novel with immediate emotional honesty. What follows is a fantasy as much a product of Titania’s internal struggle as it is of the world she has been called on to lead.
A Heroine Learns to Stand Tall
Copeland makes Titania convincing because she can be strong and uncertain at the same time. She is able to say, ‘I am the best archer in the land,’ with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what she can do, but that confidence does not automatically extend to the responsibilities placed before her. That difference is recognizably human. It suggests that excelling at something in no way equates to feeling prepared for whatever comes next.
Her vulnerability is particularly touching in the quieter passages. Titania’s collection of crystals ‘makes me feel connected to them,’ revealing a private relationship with loss that supports her public identity. In moments like these, she becomes more than a figure traversing a fantasy landscape. Copeland provides her with a life of the mind where memory has a physical presence, and this imparts an intimate dimension to Titania’s development.
A Faerie World of Its Own Reason
The novel’s world is convincing when its magic has consequences. The faerie rings are essential for the realm to function, and the threat to ‘sun, rain, and winds to clear our air’ makes their importance feel urgent. Copeland does not treat the supernatural as decoration but weaves it into the conditions under which her characters live.
Titania also has a pleasing uncertainty about the stories she has grown up believing. Things she once considered ‘myth, rumor, folklore’ now have a different resonance. There’s a muted tension between belief and what could actually be true. The addition of Upper Earth and Lower Earth adds depth to the setting, suggesting a universe that is far beyond what Titania first understands.
Titania’s character is all about movement. When she says, ‘Doing something will be better than nothing,’ she reveals her instinct to respond rather than retreat. It is a flawed form of courage, but perhaps a more persuasive one for just that reason. She may not always have the right answer, but she will find a way to act.
She also has a more reflective understanding of leadership than one might expect from the simple possession of a title. Titania believes elections ‘will increase diversity and help bring all ideas to the council,’ demonstrating a desire to make authority responsive rather than merely inherited. The idea provides a modern undercurrent to the novel without detracting from its fantastical setting. The ruling is starting to sound less like sitting on a throne and more like taking responsibility for the voices beyond it, for Titania.
Fantasy Meets the Personal
Copeland’s first-person narration keeps the reader close to Titania’s consciousness, an effect that is particularly effective when the outside world begins to press upon her private fears. The fantasy provides the scale, but Titania gives the emotional heart. Her thoughts are centered on the question of whether she can live up to the expectations of her position, so the story’s larger concerns feel personal, not remote.
What makes To Be a Fae Queen stand out, ultimately, is its interest in the person behind the title. Titania’s courage is her action in the face of fear, not the absence of fear. Copeland has provided her with space to question herself and constructed a heroine whose journey is less the fulfillment of a prophecy and more the arduous, recognizable process of becoming the equal of the life one has been given.
Book: Chewed Up by the Jungle Genre: Romantic Adventure Thriller Author: Ann Charles Rating: 5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
The third book in the Dig Site Mystery Series, Chewed Up by the Jungle, by Ann Charles, takes us back to the Maya jungle with archeologist Angélica García and photojournalist Quint Parker. Their work at an archeological site combines Charles’s love of Maya history with a story woven with danger, humor, romance, and the possibility of the supernatural. What makes the novel so fascinating is how well these different threads weave together. There’s enough mystery to keep us guessing with the story and enough warmth in the characters and their interactions to make the journey just as important as the destination.
Charles also provides the novel a visceral sense of place. Quint’s first description of the jungle as ‘angry’ suggests generations of human intrusion and scarring. Angélica immediately punctures the description when he compares humans to ‘chiggers’ and ‘leeches.’ This exchange establishes something important about the novel: even when Charles creates an atmosphere of threat, she allows her characters to respond with humor.
The Jungle as Context and Beyond
The jungle is slowly absorbed into the reading experience. Charles fills it with sounds, movement, heat, insects, and hidden spaces so that the characters are never entirely apart from their environment. Her use of auditory imagery, describing the jungle as ‘loud with chirps and chatters and whistles,’ makes the setting feel alive rather than static. There is an undercurrent of uncertainty pervading the archeological expedition, for the characters can never be quite sure of what may be lurking just beyond the edge of vision.
The archeological context is integrated into the narrative just as well. Through Angélica’s work, Charles is able to introduce the reader to Maya architecture, glyphs, mythology, and ancient traditions and archeological practices without the novel reading like a history lesson. The characters and their work also connect the technical details of LIDAR technology and the study of ancient structures. This adds a dimension to the adventure and also reflects Angélica’s real interest in the past.
Characters Give Heart
This interest in the past is for Angélica. She has a professional relationship with archaeology but also a personal one, particularly with her mother’s work and theories. ‘For Angélica, the thought that there were civilizations that prospered so long ago was a comfort,’ writes Charles thoughtfully. The concept goes beyond archeology’s excavation and discovery; for Angélica, learning how people lived in the past also becomes a way of reflecting on life in the present.
The added warmth of her relationship with Quint is also a source of comfort. They say they like to tease in casual conversation rather than let the excitement happening around them shut them off. Quint’s interest in Maya culture is important because it shows his desire to understand something that is important to Angelica. So their relationship is more than a romantic thread; it’s another way that Charles shows character.
One of the most attractive things about the novel is perhaps its humor, which arises naturally from the characters. Finally, when Quint and Daisy joke about Angélica’s obsession with archeology, Daisy gives the condition its wonderfully simple name: ‘It’s called archeology.’ It’s a clever exchange, but it also shows how the characters see Angélica and how comfortable they are with each other. Charles mines humor from character, not laying it in for laughs.
That humor is especially effective when the story veers into more unsettling territory. The supernatural element is unsettling, but Charles still makes room for skepticism and wit. Quint is less certain of what he has experienced but still considers rational explanations. This balance keeps the paranormal engaging without overwhelming the archeological and human aspects of the story.
A Story of the Past
A further one of the more subtle strengths of Chewed Up by the Jungle is its curiosity and respect for Maya civilization. Charles’s research appears in the specifics of the archeological sites, the language, the beliefs, and the relationship between the ancient Maya and their environment. The glossary also provides readers with an opportunity to learn about unfamiliar terms, such as ‘aguada,’ ‘cenote,’ and ‘Chakmo’ol,’ without interrupting the narrative.
But the past never loses its people. Angélica reflects on the lives of people from centuries ago, reminding us that history is, ultimately, a tapestry of shared human experience. That perspective gives the archeological material an emotional dimension and helps explain why the past matters so much to her.
A Fun Trip
Chewed Up by the Jungle succeeds because it knows what kind of story it wants to be. It’s an archeological mystery, but it’s also about the people who are chasing it. There’s a feeling of peril, but it doesn’t sacrifice humor. It brings in the supernatural but allows for some doubt. These work because Charles keeps character and setting at the center of the story.
The result is a novel that is easy to enter. Charles herself describes it as a mixture of ‘quick wit and mystery, sweat and adventure, wonder and Maya mythology’ with ‘laughter and romance,’ and this description does quite well encapsulate the book’s generous spirit.
Its most impressive aspect is how it makes the archeological work, the relationships, and the setting feel like natural parts of the same story. Chewed Up by the Jungle is surely a satisfying addition to the Dig Site Mystery Series for readers who like their mysteries with a strong sense of place and characters who are just as much fun to spend time with as the mystery itself.
Book: The Ascension Genre: Mythic Urban Fantasy Author: J M Shaw Rating: 5/5 Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah
J M Shaw’s debut novel in the Callum Walker series, The Ascension, is a modern fantasy with an impressive scope of imagination and a focus on moral character. Callum Walker is the hero; he is a young man living quietly in Duncaster but with an extraordinary inheritance that makes him different from the ordinary world in which he abides. Shaw works to establish this duality: Callum is deliberately inconspicuous, but he has skills that make it increasingly difficult to remain anonymous. The imaginative tension of the novel is this contrast between his pedestrian life and the secret world that gradually opens before him.
A Well-Built Fantastical World
Shaw’s portrayal of Callum works particularly well since his powers don’t make him invulnerable. He is explicitly described as ‘not immune to fear,’ and he imperfectly masters his powers, so his encounters with the supernatural are a matter of nerve as well as of capability. His character is shaped not just by what he can do but by how he responds to challenges. Shaw embodies this principle in Callum’s statement: ‘It’s what we do despite it that defines us,’ a formulation that neatly captures the novel’s interest in courage as choice rather than temperament.
The speculative architecture is one of the novel’s most considerable strengths. Shaw creates a secret magical world called the Veil that exists alongside modern-day Duncaster, a world where the supernatural exists beyond ordinary human perception. The Veil is called ‘a world only accessible to those with magic,’ but Callum’s knowledge of mythology gives him the vocabulary to recognize beings that others dismiss as mere fantasy. The relationship between folklore and lived reality lends the novel a pleasing intertextual quality, for the mythical is not just invented but purposefully linked to traditions of storytelling and belief. Shaw also provides an internal discipline for magic, with words of power and specific types of knowledge; the use of magic can have physical consequences. The result is a fantasy system that is governed, not randomly deployed.
Shaw’s handling of the supernatural is especially lively, with monsters having unique physical and narrative existences. The novel places its fantastic creatures within a larger mythological vocabulary, allowing Callum’s study of mythology and folklore to become an important part of his understanding of the world around him. This is one of the novel’s more striking literary devices: mythology is knowledge, not decoration. Shaw thus creates a context in which old stories gain new imaginative vitality while retaining their connection with the modern world. It results in fantasy that is accessible but with a clear base in folklore.
The Ascension is very concerned with power and its uses under its supernatural premise. Shaw makes an important distinction between having power and using it responsibly, especially in Callum’s understanding of what it means to possess extraordinary abilities. This prevents the novel’s conflict from becoming a morally weightless spectacle. Shaw’s emphasis on conscience gives the fantasy an ethical dimension more compelling than any simple opposition between strength and weakness. In this novel, power becomes important in itself because its exercise requires judgment.
Trust and Human Connection
Callum’s emotional life adds another layer of substance to the novel. His isolation and fear drive his desire to stay out of the spotlight, not just a quirk, and Shaw allows this solitude to shape his relationships with others. His interactions with those around him gradually reveal how little company Callum allows himself. These details make his solitude more than a character trait; it becomes a central emotional condition. Thus, Shaw’s fantasy has an intimate countercurrent, asking what it means to live with extraordinary difference and to yearn for ordinary connection.
For this reason, The Ascension earns a 5/5 from me. Its strengths are cumulative: Shaw blends a vividly imagined supernatural world with grounded characterization and an evident concern for conscience. More significantly, the novel does not need its protagonist to stop being vulnerable to be compelling; Callum’s uncertainty serves to characterize him. ‘Everyone feels fear,’ he says, ‘but character is what you do when you feel that fear.’ This is a particularly effective distillation of the novel’s governing philosophy. Shaw’s achievement is to make fantasy serve character rather than oppose it; she produces a novel that is easy to read and morally aware, where the issue is not what power can do but what a person will do with it.
What would transpire were the Sun to vanish, d’you know? Think you and they and I would be after? What might occur if the Moon hoed own row?
Time determines all the seasons that go. Were the Sun now ceased, would Moon come this near? What would transpire were the Sun to vanish, d’you know?
Change is constant; that the Sun sees below. And the Moon, it’s said, results in strange fear. What might occur if the Moon hoed own row?
Planets move around the Sun, they lay low; And around which force the Sun goes is now clear. What would transpire were the Sun to vanish, d’you know?
Prayers offered to the Moon make life glow; D’you think there is something this Moon does bear? What might occur if the Moon hoed own row?
Moon that’s featured on the night sky doesn’t grow, But results in motions of the seas here. What would transpire were the Sun to vanish, d’you know? What might occur if the Moon hoed own row?
