reading Archives

Dream Hotel, The

“Under the right circumstances, anything can be made into something sinister.” Author: Laila Lalami Sara gets pulled away from her husband and twin infants at LAX, presumably for a routine risk assessment. She is exhausted, angry, irritated. She isn’t at her best. Bad goes to worse when the Risk Assessment Administration decides that her irascibility and their algorithm, which tracks everything from a person’s actions to the content of their dreams, denotes her as a safety risk. She’ll have to go to Madison, a women’s retention center, where she will be monitored for twenty-one days or until the algorithm determines that [...]

Frances Carden2025-09-08T18:37:34-07:00September 8th, 2025|Tags: book review, dream hotel, dystopian, read, reading|

Silent Key

Ghosts and Submarines and Secrets Author: Laurel Hightower He died screaming. His mangled, crushed body still held together enough to show that his last moments were both terrifying and agonizing. No one knows who – or what – killed him. The only clue is the nearly unrecognizable corpse, surrounded by a glut of salt water. Cam is still grieving Tony, her dead husband, but her feelings waver between sadness and hatred. The investigation around his death revealed a long-time mistress, and whatever Tony was involved in, whatever he made angry, is now after Cam and her five-year-old daughter, Samantha. With nowhere [...]

Frances Carden2025-09-07T11:51:00-07:00September 7th, 2025|Tags: book review, ghost, ghosts, horror, read, reading|

Deep, The

"To hurt is to love, right?” Author: Nick Cutter Humanity is on the verge of extinction. There is a new, inexplicable plague sweeping the globe – a plague that causes you to forget. It starts simply. You forget your keys somewhere, or where you parked your car, or where you last left that ChapStick. But then it escalates. You forget significant memories, family, friends. Eventually, you even forget how to breathe, how to function. In a last-ditch effort to save the world, a group of socially inept scientists have plumbed the depths of the Mariana Trench, harvesting an unknown gelatinous substance [...]

Frances Carden2025-09-02T16:29:06-07:00September 2nd, 2025|Tags: book review, horror, read, reading|