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Showing posts from May, 2026

BOOK REVIEW: The Final Six by Akinari Asakura

Shogo Hatano has beaten thousands of applicants to become one of six final candidates in the running for a graduate position at Japan's most exclusive tech company. But Spiralinks will only make an offer to one of them, decided by a group vote in their last interview ... As deliberations begin at the glossy high-rise office in Tokyo, Hatano finds six envelopes addressed to them all. Each contains a shocking revelation about one candidate: six secrets so terrible that they could ruin more than just careers. They could destroy lives. With the clock ticking, Hatano must figure out who planted the damning evidence and convince the others that he deserves the job of all their dreams. --- --- ---  We meet the final six at their last formal interview, where they’re invited to one final round - a group task, or conversation, to be held in a months time where they may all receive a job offer that could completely change their lives.  We meet the crew in a natural way, getting to know t...

BOOK REVIEW: Puck by Samantha Allen

Meet Puck: the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind  Homewreckers , a dating show that puts troubled couples through hell—with a little help from their exes. Used to being the one pulling the strings, it shocks Puck when their life undergoes a plot twist of its own and their college roommate Mia announces her engagement to her ex’s best friend, Damon. Having only recently broken up with longtime-boyfriend Zander, and never having had much in common with Damon (who lovesick Lena has always pined after), Mia’s news leaves her friend group reeling—and Puck’s mind whirling. When they arrive for a week of wedding festivities at an upscale resort in the Appalachian forest, Puck immediately sees that Mia’s marriage will lead to misery, and takes it upon themself to save their friends by rearranging the couples—without anyone finding out. But as Puck comes up against a type-A maid of honor hell-bent on making this wedding happen, it becomes clear that they will have to deliver the ...

BOOK REVIEW: A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home by Jason Arnopp

  If you want a very strange little book to read, this is for you. It's written as a short series of letters, written right to you, turning up at the new lovely house you've just moved into with your partner. The person who lived there before wants to warn you, to tell them about how the thing that inhabits that beautiful house started haunting them, how they managed to get away - but they're not sure if you will, honestly.  In just fifty pages, it sets a perfectly creepy, tense atmosphere, drawing in the classic essence of a ghost story with unique storytelling and a never-ending sense of dread and fear. It's a simple, short no-nonsense ghost story that is a brilliant way to spend twenty minutes of reading and then a few hours of checking dark corners.  "Dear friend, This is no chain letter, hoax or prank. It is a sincere warning about your home and the entity which dwells within. Your home has been haunted for quite some time. I am sorry that I could not personal...

BOOK REVIEW: Our Deadly Summer by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

Laura and Dee haven’t spoken since the day they buried a body together. It was supposed to be the best summer of their lives. A break from university, from parents, from wasting their time on Irish boys with farmer’s tans. They’d imagined flirting with Ryan Phillippe on a New York rooftop. Instead, with summer jobs waitressing at a country club on Long Island, pickings are slim. Mikey is a bully. Marco is off limits. Jose is angry. Mr Haight is a sleaze. Josh is too keen. And Other Josh… he’s something else entirely. It’s a miracle only one of them ends up dead. Dee is pretty sure she didn’t mean to kill him. Laura, to her credit, never asked. Not until she sends an email, out of the blue, more than twenty years later. It’s finally time to mend the biggest heartbreak of that summer; Laura wants her best friend back.   Have you ever said you’d help your best friend bury a body? Yeah, me too. But what happens afterwards.  Our Deadly Summer is a love letter to friendship and sist...