Thank you to TBR & Beyond Tours for the early review copy of the book! Check out the whole tour here!

About the Book

Jessa has been raised to be the “perfect girl.” She is unfailingly polite, never rocks the boat, and always follows the rules―no matter what. Her friends love to give her a hard time for being such a goody two-shoes, but Jessa likes it this way. She knows what’s expected of her, and she’s
sleepover at Jessa’s creepy, old house, things go south before the pizza gets cold.

Her friends are at each other’s throats, unexpected guests keep showing up (some more welcome than others), and it’s not just her brother serving up jump scares. A killer looking for the perfect girl has targeted Jessa, and she’ll have to reject everything she’s been taught if she wants to keep herself―and her friends―alive until sunrise.

My Review:

This is a fun, quirky, and fast read that is spooky without ever being super scary. It got my heart racing a little, but safely cut to black before anything too terrible happened. When I signed up to do this review, I signed up to include my favorite quotes. It turns out all of my favorite quotes either make zero sense out of context or are spoilers, but here are some that seem to not give too much away:

Like it could possibly be worse than a dungeon. “No,” she says again. “It’s a dollhouse.”
Want to know why Tiny says that and where they are when she does? You have to read the book! But, suffice it to say, it’s definitely creepy and definitely not where anyone, especially a group of high school girls, wants to end up.

“Fine by me. I’d rather be a b**** than your perfect girl.”
I always love when the title of a book comes back to bite the author and the characters.

“Sounds like Betty does her own haunting.”
The main character is pretty sure her house is haunted, and she wants to keep the ghost, Betty, happy. Betty is a character and a trope and she’s wonderful. I’m so glad she was included in this story.

My gaze catches on a white blur rising from the mud. I pull myself forward and grab it, sharp and cold, like a tooth tearing up through the soil.
Yes, it’s exactly as creepy as it sounds.

Perfect Girl is a creepy locked room mystery/ghost story/high school romance/escaped kidnapper/mentally ill antagonist story that pulls together some of the best tropes in the genre in a tight, fast book.

4/5 Stars.

• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200982280
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Girl-Tracy-Banghart/dp/125090286X
• Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/perfect-girl-tracy-banghart/1144294397
• IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/perfect-girl-tracy-banghart/20776344

Tracy Banghart grew up in rural Maryland and spent her summers on a remote island in northern Ontario. All of that isolation and lovely scenery gave her the time to read voraciously and the inspiration to write her own stories. Always a bit of a nomad, Tracy now travels the world Army-wife style with her husband, children, and rescue pups. She wrote Grace and Fury while living in Hawaii.

Website: https://www.tracybanghart.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/tracythewriter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracythewriter/

Thank you to TBR & Beyond Tours for the Review Copy! Access the complete tour here!

About the Book:

Before he can be reborn, Zan has spent 499 years bound in a 500-year curse to process souls forthe monstrousFerryman―and if he fails he dies.

In Portland, Bastian is grieving. He survived a car accident that took his mother and impulse-purchased a crumbling bookstore with the life insurance money.

But in sleep, death’s mark keeps dragging Bastian into Zan’s office. It shouldn’t be a problem tolog his soul and forget he ever existed. But when Zan follows Bastian through his memories ofgrief and hope, Zan realizes that he is not ready for Bastian to die.

The boys borrow time hiding in the memories of the dead while the Ferryman hunts them, andZan must decide if he’s willing to give up his chance at life to save Bastian―and Bastian mustdecide if he’s willing to keep living if it means losing Zan.

Content Warning: accidental death, grief, survivor’s guilt

MY REVIEW:

As someone who has recently come to appreciate books that are mythology retellings/mythology adjacent, this book hit all the right notes for me. It’s a story set in the modern world with modern problems – and a little bit of mystery. Bastian and Zan are people separated by the thin veil between life and death, and fighting to find themselves (and each other) in the middle.

I loved the was Zan’s part of the story was told, especially – the way he walked through the memories of the dead trying to find bits and pieces of life to continue to live to make it through his sentence, while still doing his job. The Ferryman is dark and sinister, and Zan’s struggle with living with himself and the choice he makes every time someone enters his office is well developed.

Bastian and his friends are trying to figure out how to survive the unthinkable. There has to be a little suspension of disbelief in some of the circumstances, but if the reader is willing to go along with the premise – that Bastian is a broken person who only finds life when he comes face to face with his own impending death and the boy that delivers the message – this is an entertaining read.

The ending, unlike many books, is an honest, heart-wrenching look at life, love, loss, and sacrfice. This is one worth reading!

3.5 Stars.

Book Links:

Goodreads Amazon Barnes & Noble IndieBound

Michelle Kulwicki grew up in the Pacific Northwest overturning every rock and stick in anunending quest to find portals to worlds far more exciting than her own. After moving to themountainless Midwest, she earned her bachelors and master’s degrees in music performance,and spent years in the symphony andmusical theater pit circuit. She’s now a mom by day,musician by night, and writer in all the spaces in between—a life that is somewhat lacking inportals, but is still full of magic.Her short fiction has been both Locus Recommended and Hugo nominated, and her first fulllength novel, At the End of the River Styx, is available now.

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About the Book:

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Dearest Darkest comes a sapphic fantasy adventure about a teen witch who must complete her magical training by breaking a powerful family’s curse. But her own affliction—to never find true love—gets in the way when she falls for the girl she’s trying to save.

Magic is in Delilah Bea’s blood. Her absentee father is the world’s most famous cursebreaker, while all the women in her family are fated to never find true love. So when Delilah graduates her magical training and must complete her Calling, she has the perfect task in mind—to break the Bea family curse.

But Delilah’s Calling is hijacked by Kieran Pelumbra, a member of the wealthiest and most powerful family in the country, and breaking his curse suddenly becomes her official assignment. Every generation, a pair of Pelumbra twins are doomed, with one twin draining the other of their life and magic. Each day, Kieran grows weaker while Briar gets closer to…something monstrous.

As Delilah and the twins set out on their quest, they quickly realize that breaking the Pelumbra curse isn’t going to be simple. For one, the Pelumbra family doesn’t actually want their curse broken—and they’ve sent hunters after them to ensure they fail. Secondly…it’s Briar. There’s just something about her that gets under Delilah’s skin and makes her want to kiss the perpetually grumpy look off her face. But with time running out for the twins and Delilah’s own curse getting in the way, they may not stand a chance of finding their Happily Ever After.

Content Warning: gore and violence, child abuse (off-page), parental abandonment, PTSD

My Review:
This book is a wild, fun, ride, full of queer love stories, magic, mayhem, and an honest look at the power of found family versus blood relatives. I wasn’t 100% sure what I was getting into when I picked up my ARC of Practical Rules for Curses Witches, but I quickly knew two things: I loved Delilah Bea, and this book wasn’t going to be what I expected. My presuposition that Delilah and Kieran would be the ones to fall in love was quickly eliminated, and I was excited to see what happened next.

For a book where one of the curses is definitely related specifically to falling (and staying) in love, I really found the love stories to be important, but weirdly not central to the story. Sure, there was a reason Delilah was trying to break the Bea family curse, but the real story wasn’t about romantic love as much as it was about finding your people – finding the ones that make you believe in love and believe in yourself again. And to that end, this book is a charming tale!

I loved all the secondary characters, and was pleasantly surprised when a couple of them turned out to be even more crucial to the story than I had originally thought. For someone who thinks they can guess books pretty easily, this one constantly had me surprised in the best possible ways.

4.5/5 stars

Where to Buy/Get More Information
Goodreads Amazon Barnes & Noble IndieBound

About the Author:

Kayla Cottingham (she/they) is a YA author and librarian. Her first book, My Dearest Darkest, was a New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Kayla lives in Boston where she loves to go hiking in the woods, play RPGs, and snuggle on the couch with her ridiculously large black cat, Squid.

Author Links:

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

A teen girl’s attempt to make amends with her former friend group takes a sinister turn during a weekend getaway at an ancestral Irish estate in this atmospheric, literary horror from the author of Those We Drown.

There’s something in the lake at Wren Hall.

At least, that’s what the locals say. Not that Meg cares much about the rumors. When she’s asked to spend Halloween weekend at the Ireland retreat of the wealthy Wren twins, she recognizes the invitation for exactly what it is: her last, and only, chance to save her spot at Greyscott’s, the exclusive British art school she attended on scholarship until last summer. Clever, beautiful, and talented, the twins are the pride of Greyscott’s, and kindhearted Lottie Wren was once Meg’s closest friend. But not anymore.

None of Meg’s old friend group have talked to her since she left school—and they especially don’t talk about the incident that resulted in her suspension. Now, Meg is willing to do whatever it takes to earn their forgiveness.

But Wren Hall turns out to be far from the idyllic country manor Meg was expecting. The house is damp and drafty, the mirrors are all covered, and the weed-choked lake is at the center of legends that haunt the property to this day—a tainted legacy the estate seems unable to shake. The truth is, people aren’t the only ones who keep secrets. Places can keep them too—and Wren Hall is drowning in them. When the past bleeds into the present and ancient sins rise to the surface, Meg must ask herself how well she really knows her one-time best friends…or whether any of them will survive the weekend.

Book Links
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201103468
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0593703952
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/our-wicked-histories-amy-goldsmith/1144298264
IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/our-wicked-histories-amy-goldsmith/20811920

My Thoughts:

My literal only regret about this book is that I read it on a hot summer’s day and not a creepy fall day, complete with tea and rain. That would have made it just about perfect. Our Wicked Histories is my kind of creepy – always on the edge of being REALLY dark without being REALLY dark. As someone with an overly-vivid imagination, I can take creepy to a whole different level if I’m not careful. And the atmospheric and richly-detailed world of Wren Hall totally had me feeling the creepy vibes.

Seb and Lottie are perfect creepy, maybe too creepy twins. Emma is there, sulking around the grounds and making you wonder about her story. Meg is the perfect narrator – just curious enough to be dangerous, but smart enough to try and make sense of the world she’s experiencing. The rest of the cast of characters are not caricatures.

My only big complaint was that there are a lot of flashbacks, and I would have preferred more of the story to happen in real time. Some were needed for context, but I could have done with fewer of them!

At the end of the story, I was left wondering what was real, what was supernatural, what was just a messed up obsession, and more, which I think makes for a great and creepy book. Is Wren Hall haunted? Do the grounds house a banshee? So many questions without perfect endings. If you’re looking for a creepy book to usher in your fall reading, pick up Our Wicked Histories!

About the Author:

Amy Goldsmith grew up on the south coast of England, obsessed with obscure 70s horror movies and antiquarian ghost stories. She studied Psychology at the University of Sussex and, after gaining her Postgraduate Certificate in Education, moved to inner London to teach. Now, she lives back on the south coast where she still teaches English and spends her weekends trawling antiques shops for haunted mirrors. She is the author of Those We Drown, Our Wicked Histories and Predatory Natures.

Author Links:
Website: https://www.amygoldsmith.co.uk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amygoldsmith_writes
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22019824

About the Book:

The Inheritance Games meets Ocean’s 11 in this thrilling YA adventure about a teenager determined to pull off the perfect heist in the midst of her father’s wedding.

Seventeen-year-old Olivia Owens isn’t thrilled that her dad’s getting remarried…again. She’s especially not thrilled that he cheated on her mom, kicked them out of their Rhode Island home, and cut Olivia out of her rightful inheritance.

But this former heiress has a plan for revenge. While hundreds of guests gather on the grounds of the gorgeous estate where she grew up, everyone will be thinking romance—not robbery. She’ll play the part of dutiful daughter, but in reality she’ll be redistributing millions from her father’s online accounts. She only needs the handwritten pass code he keeps in the estate’s safe.

With the help of an eclectic crew of high school students and one former teacher, Olivia has plotted her mid-nuptial heist down to the second. But she didn’t plan for an obnoxiously nosy wedding guest, an interfering ex-boyfriend intent on winning her back, greedy European cousins with their own agenda, or a vengeful second wife. When everything seems like it’s going wrong, Olivia has to keep her eyes on what really matters: getting rich. And when she’s done, “something borrowed” will be the understatement of the year.

My Review

Olivia is a girl with a score to settle. After being amongst the elite of the world’s wealthiest, she finds herself barely scraping by – her father’s affair to blame. So, she does what any bored 17 year old with a score to settle does – she enlists her own crew of Ocean’s 11-style misfits to pull off the heist of the century at her father’s latest wedding.

Heiress Takes All is a quick, fun, whimsical romp that takes place, more or less, over a few short hours. As Olivia and her team try their best to not get caught, get what they want, and get out, each person learns a little more about themselves and about how they fit in Olivia’s world.

I enjoyed this book, even though I found it fantastical at times. I loved the suspension of disbelief, and the idea that a disgruntled daughter could lay claim to a family fortune from a less that great dad. As the obstacles stacked up against Olivia and her team, I did have to remind myself that I am not the target audience, though, and the parts that I found a little silly are probably exactly what will lure in a teen reader to this fun, fast story.

Overall, 3.75/5 stars for me!

Where to get the book:

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/180164877
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Heiress-Takes-All-Emily-Wibberley/dp/0316566756
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heiress-takes-all-emily-wibberley/1144153523
IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/heiress-takes-all-emily-wibberley/20663748

About the Authors
Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka met and fell in love in high school. Austin went on to graduate from Harvard, while Emily graduated from Princeton. Together, they are the authors of several novels about romance for teens and adults. Now married, they live in Los Angeles, where they continue to take daily inspiration from their own love story.

Website: https://www.emilyandaustinwrite.com/

Emily’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wibbs_ink/

Austin’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austins_b/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10788120

About the Book

All that stands between ten-year-old Beatrice and an amazing life are five wishes…and she’s got a plan to make them all come true! A magical and heartfelt adventure about grief, hope, and the power of human connection.

Beatrice Corwell has a crooked haircut, eight well-trained cats, and a she’s turning herself into a Tin Man. Once her heart is made of metal, she’ll no longer miss her beloved dead grandma, her absent dad, or her recently moved-away best friend.

While Beatrice awaits her transformation, she keeps vigil with a special doll and a handful of wishes she’s determined to make come true. With her encyclopedic knowledge, there must be a way to grant her heart’s deepest desires.

When an unusual boy named Caleb moves to town and mentions his granny’s interest in magic, Beatrice decides to enlist their help. She quickly learns, however, that spells don’t always go as planned, and witches can’t be trusted.

With the arrival of an unexpected visitor and a series of otherworldly messages, Beatrice’s plans begin to falter. Will her heart turn into metal? Will any of her wishes come true?

The Wonderful Wishes of B. is the story of a smart, quirky girl learning what she wants and what she needs—and how, sometimes, the wishes we hold dearest are granted in the most unexpected ways.

5 Reasons to Read The Wonderful Wishes of B. this summer

I’m a sucker for a sweet, maybe a little magic, middle grade book. Especially one that includes cats. Lots and lots of cats. So, here are the top 5 reasons you should pick up this sweet book this summer:

• Beatrice is an absolute delight of a character. She is funny and smart, and sweet and scared all at the same time. Her sixth sense about rescuing cats means she has a literal solar-system of cats around her at all times!
• There is a little (or more than a little) magic! From wishing wells to birthday candles to the mysterious Granny Witch, this story has just enough magic to be captivating, but still feels firmly set in reality.
• Beatrice names everything superb names; nothing is simple, from how she refers to her best friend to what she calls school, and it all adds to the narrative for the story.
• Dancing cats. Do I need to say more? There are dancing cats.
• At it’s heart, this is a story about family, community, and what makes us matter to people. It’s a story about dealing with grief as a child, as well as the mistakes we make when we’re desperate for something, whether it’s a sister or a new friend.

Get the Book

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198688452
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0593565142
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wonderful-wishes-of-b-katherin-nolte/1144040381
IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-wonderful-wishes-of-b-katherin-nolte/20583135

About the Author

Katherin Nolte received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of publications and won multiple awards, but it was a late-night ER visit with her four children that inspired her to write Back to the Bright Before. An Ohio native, she currently lives with her family in Iowa.

Website | Goodreads

I have been associated with community theaters literally as long as I have been in theater. I was a part of the community theater scene in Albion long before it was officially named, branded, and a thing. We met in the middle school cafetorium and produced fun shows. My first show with the community theater was The Philadelphia Story at Chain-O-Lakes State Park.

Community theater is in my blood.

When I moved to Bloomington and decided not to pursue theater as a degree (which is another blog post), I immediately found the local theater group to find “my people.” Community theater people, in my opinion, are what is right about a lot of communities. And, in Monroe County Civic Theater, I’ve found people I love that work so hard to make good art for our community.

At the same time, I often feel like community theater is dismissed as somehow less than, both by other theater groups, and by the community. There is this perception that community theater is somehow less, when the reality is – it’s so much more. Yes, it might not always have fancy sets (although MCCTs current show has a great set), the costumes might be hodgepodge (but we have excellent costume designers that work actual magic with basically no budget), and the tech might not be quite Broadway-quality (but I will fight anyone for our current tech team as they are phenomenal). The actors are top notch, the shows are carefully selected, and the work is done both behind the scenes and on the stage.

But finding audiences is still hard. Why? I wish I knew. I wish I could force people to give MCCT a chance. Maybe they had a bad experience in the past. Maybe they have a pre-conceived idea what community theater is like. Maybe they think it’s something they have to tolerate instead of celebrate. I don’t know, but I wish I did.

Right now, MCCT is getting ready for the second (and last) weekend of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. The cast is one of the best I’ve seen assembled. We are in a real theater using a real set with real costumes and real lights. It is a complete theater experience.

And yet.

We are finding it hard to fill up the house. We are finding it hard to be people in the seats. We are finding it hard to make sure people see this show and the hard work that has happened for the last several weeks is celebrated. And honestly, it breaks my heart a little (or a lot) for this cast and crew. They deserve to be performing to full houses. They deserve to hear the laughter and pull at the heart strings and know that this thing that they do FOR FREE BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT is worth the sacrifice of their time, their energy, and everything else.

So, if you’re a Bloomington-local (or local-ish), what can you do?

• Celebrate your community theater.
• Say thank you to the local actors, artisans, craftspeople and tech lovers who make shows happen.
• Get involved by supporting your theater with donations.
• Share social media posts and emails.

And maybe, most importantly? Get tickets to the show. Show up in the audience. Laugh, have fun, and enjoy yourself. (You can get tickets to Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at mcct.yapsody.com.)

But broken crayons don’t color the same, do they?
Their edges are smudged sometimes;
They don’t quite stay inside the lines;
They don’t quite fit where they used to.

At their core they’re still wax and dried color,
Melted and combined to create something beautiful.
They are still a conduit to magic and imagination
As they transform a blank page into a masterpiece.

I cannot help but wonder if broken hearts work the same way?
Do broken hearts still color the world with beauty?
Are they worth rescuing when the world is ready to throw them away?
Do they beat with enough life to make it through another day?

A broken heart is a changed heart,
Altered by the hardest parts of the day,
Changed by the darkness that broke them and the
Misfit band-aids that try to heal them.

At their core, they are muscle and blood,
tinted by memories of life and love and hope and regret.
They are able to be squeezed and bruised and chipped
And yet they continue to beat and give life and hope.

Broken crayons still color, despite their pieces.
Broken hearts still beat, despite their shattered bits.
Both are shattered, both are a mosaic of beauty and
loss and redemption and love.

The words have echoed in my head for weeks now, replaying over and over again.

They miss a version of me, but not me.
They miss what I threw out into the world as my reality, but not who I really was.
They miss the role I played, the path I trudged, the screen I put up.
They miss the version of me that was part of the good, safe, right narrative of how things should be, not the messy reality of life.

They never saw who I really was – they never saw through the complicated lies I told myself to be able to make it through some days. They never asked if I was happy; they just assumed I was because that is what they wanted to believe. They never questioned my silence, my bad days, the way I would smile and change the subject when something hit too close to home. Shrugged shoulders conveyed all was well instead of how much talking about the things I really wanted to say hurt.

Here’s the dirty little secret, though, I miss who I thought so many people were, too.

As much as I don’t feel like I was known, I am realizing I knew people just the same. I built up images of people that have come up short. They stopped reaching out, if they ever tried at all. They haven’t been there during these long, dark, lonely, isolating, heartbreaking days. They aren’t there to talk to when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sob. They aren’t there when all I want is to share my really good day.

Maybe we never really knew each other.

And maybe taht’s the saddest part of it all.

No one tells you how much you’ll miss
Being able to just collapse into someone’s arms
When an average day turns stressful
And you just don’t want to be by yourself

No one tells you how you’ll second guess
Doing the things you love
Because you don’t want to do them
By yourself. Again.

No one tells you how quiet your life will be
But your over-active brain will fill the quiet
With restless thoughts about when and where
And heartbreaking reflections about why and how

No one tells you you’ll be done with all the chores
By 11:15 on a Saturday morning
Facing the remainder of a too-quiet day
As you start to count down until bedtime again

No one tells you that vacations aren’t as much fun
Planning trips you want to take
Without someone to make memories with
Feels more like defeat than victory

No one tells you that even when you know
Even when you’re confident
That the decision you made would separate
And divide everything into two