Isaiah Roby's Blog: MI Book Reviews, page 26

The Ride of Her Life

“From the author of Love at First Set, a new irresistible enemies-to-lovers, grumpy/sunshine queer romcom for fans of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, about a wedding-obsessed city girl who inherits a horse farm from her estranged late aunt, and clashes with the cocky, unfairly hot farrier who thinks she’s going to run the barn into the ground.

Molly has always loved weddings, ever since she was a little girl, and for nearly as long she’s dreamed of starting her own wedding planning company. But t...

The Invocations

Solid witchy YA about three teen girls, all with their own connections to witchcraft, who get drawn into a series of murders of women who also have magical involvements.

From the author of New York Times bestseller House of Hollow comes a darkly seductive witchy thriller where, though both men and demons lurk in shadows, girls refuse to go quietly into the night.

Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to bear—that her sister was murdered by a serial killer and the...

My Darling Dreadful Thing

“In a world where the dead can wake and walk among us, what is truly real?

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the only good thing in Roos’ life, which is filled with sordid backroom séances organized by her mother. That is, until wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop attends one of these séances and asks Roos to come live with her at the crumbling estate she inherited upon the death of her husband. The manor is unsettling, but ...

Briardark

Intriguing stark but disappointing ending.

Survival and cosmic horror collide in this new series, perfect for fans of LOST and House of Leaves.
For Dr. Siena Dupont and her ambitious team, the Alpenglow glacier expedition is a career-defining opportunity. But thirty miles into the desolate Deadswitch Wilderness, they discover a missing hiker dangling from a tree, and their satellite phone fails to call out.
Then the body vanishes without a trace.
The disappearance isn’t the only chilling anomal...

Someone You Can Build A Nest In

This started out weird but charming, and ended up just weird.

Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a b...

The Cavern

Solid cave(dive)ing horror that makes some interesting, if not always successful, choices in its narration.
In retrospect, a lot of these choices felt like they came from how this book is kind of written like it is a movie. Not entirely, but it certaintly fits.

When a sink hole opens up near the Australian outback town of Pintalba, it uncovers a pristine cave system. Sam joins an expedition to explore the subterranean passages as paramedic support, hoping to remain unneeded at base camp. But,...

Voyage of the Damned

I really enjoyed this fantasy murder mystery romp.
A lot of choices about the book were a bit puzzling, though, and I can see how they would annoy other people.

For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor’s ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess’s Mountain.
Aboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.
Except one: G...

Court of Wanderers

“Remy Pendergast and his royal vampire companions return to face an enemy that is terrifyingly close to home in Rin Chupeco’s queer, bloody Gothic epic fantasy series for fans of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree and the adult animated series Castlevania.

Remy Pendergast, the vampire hunter, and his unexpected companions, Lord Zidan Malekh and Lady Xiaodan Song, are on the road through the kingdom of Aluria again after a hard-won first battle against the formidable Night Empres...

Light from Uncommon Stars

God this was amazing. What a wonderful ending, I almost cried.

An adventure set in California’s San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel ...

Ghost Station

I adore SciFi horror, and already loved Dead Silence by SA Barnes as well, so I was thrilled for Ghost Station – and it did not disappoint.

A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.
Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.
Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murd...