Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews

A funny, sad, and uplifting memoir of chasing dreams, getting lost, and finding yourself in LA

Can you come of age in middle age? While that typically might be the domain of young adults, Jenny Noa makes it her own in this heartfelt and humorous memoir of loving and letting go in Los Angeles.

While she has been hoping—and honestly, expecting—to make it big in Los Angeles as an actor, it never quite worked out that way. Instead, Noa spent much of her time caring for a terminally ill husband, getting sacked from her job and searching for another, and struggling to understand why the acting roles she had envisioned for herself since childhood still seem so far away. Where had the years of auditions, acting classes, day jobs, and small stage performances gotten her?

In a series of wide-ranging essays and “Bit Parts” that bookend her time in Los Angeles, Noa bares her heart, her soul, her mental health diagnosis, and her unfailing sense of comedy in Bad Dreams: Notes on Life and Los Angeles by a Would-Be Has Been.

Early life lessons at home and school rewarded being quiet and not needing anything to the point where grown up Noa isn’t sure she knows how to speak up for herself, although she does a heroic job speaking up for her husband during his illness. Navigating young widowhood and Hollywood is grueling, and yet Jenny presses on, until she doesn’t.

Unpacking years of trying to be as small and invisible as possible while also desperately hoping to be seen and valued for being special, Noa’s accounting of life in Los Angeles includes honest reckonings of her growing-up years and how their influence has boomeranged through her life.

She is also candid in the way her husband Mark showed her how special she was to him, and her struggles to adjust to being a “newlywid.” Noa’s writing is uniquely aligned with creative life in Los Angeles, too: what does special even look like when there are thousands of others chasing the same role?

With age comes wisdom, they say, and Noa could fill the backyard of the rented home she lovingly describes with all she has learned. Hers is more than a memoir; Bad Dreams is a lifeline for those arriving at that same crossroads. What happens when it appears the life you planned for yourself isn’t panning out, and why? Noa’s conversational writing style is charming and disarming, which makes her essays hit hard and stick with you, yet she never leaves the reader there. She always offers a hand up at the end.

The tight focus of some of these pieces keeps the reader at arms length at times, but the “Bit Parts” are a nice chaser after some of the heavier essays. Noa is nothing if not tender, sincere, and genuinely funny. Her story of searching for creative accomplishment and inner calm in Los Angeles will leave you rooting for her success in her next chapter (and a sequel, I hope).

Thank you for reading Amy Brozio-Andrews’s book review of Bad Dreams by Jenny Noa! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Warren Maxwell

Hilarious, warmhearted, bite-sized stories of a cult softball team from West Virginia

“There can’t be too many people in this world who had more fun than we did tonight. And we got slaughtered in two softball games.”

Since 1998, a Bad News Bears-inspired softball team has been tearing up the fields of Morgantown, West Virginia. They’ve built a reputation around losing far more games than they win and having more fun than the winners—or anybody else for that matter. Dressed in “county orange” and white uniforms—as in “When I appeared before the judge, I was in my county orange”—Chico’s Bail Bonds have made a tradition out of playing chaotic, occasionally drunk softball, celebrating wins and losses alike at the 123 Pleasant Street bar, recounting the stories together, and then creating literary records of the events.

These records are mashups of familiar yet disparate genres. There’s a dash of the tall tale, the frenzied sports announcer, and the romantic writer who can memorialize the most insignificant moments, lift up failure, laugh at it, and love it. Sometimes Orange Is Almost Gold gathers hundreds of post-game write ups, stretching from 1998 to 2025, along with photos across the decades, stats, and pop out highlights of team members past and present.

“Anybody who has seen Porterfield in a pair of shorts will know that he has only two muscles in his legs. He pulled both of them.'”

I’ve never read a book quite like this one. It has charm, wit, adventure, and a strange anthropologic intrigue. It is a record of a unique kind of community, one that centers around sports yet values friendship and joy above anything as commonplace and shallow as winning. Even without any first-hand knowledge of Chico’s Bail Bonds or the many players who’ve filled its ranks, it’s difficult not to get swept up in the mythology of this rambunctious team.

Whether describing a disastrous loss (“Chico’s were dominated, humiliated, spit on, cummed on, and overmatched against a young and rejuvenated, hard charging Mega Corp, losing 19-1 in game 1 and 18-3 in game 2, goddamn!”) or memorializing team members who’ve passed away, there’s a special beauty to this book that comes from a sheer of-the-moment authenticity.

As is abundantly clear from the photographs included, nothing is hidden in this story of a multi-decade running softball institution. Here we see men of all ages playing amateur softball, cheering one another on, drinking, getting hurt, mostly losing, and absolutely loving it.

“Weak bats, tired legs, and empty souls. Chico’s Bail Bonds, the world’s most lovable softball team, shit the bed in the most lackluster of early season performances ever.”

The book’s layout, an explosive array of photos of all shapes and sizes clustered on pages alongside ever-expanding paragraph-long game summaries, grabs the eye and invites readers to bounce from story to story without necessarily following the linear chronology. Although years are organized together and each game is given at least a few sentences of description, the book exudes a rules-be-damned attitude that emphasizes fun over any specific method for reading.

At the end of the day, this book is a record, an archive of all the games and all the stories (excluding the Lost Years of 2003-2006 that may or may not have fallen victim to faulty storage), all the Chico’s inspired memorabilia and outrageous outfits, and all the “bonds” that were formed over twenty seven years. In that respect, it far surpasses its intended purpose—this is a hyper-local book that inspires, that makes you wish you were on that softball team.

Sometimes Orange is Almost Gold tells decades of comedic, full-hearted post-game stories about an unforgettable amateur softball squad.

Thank you for reading Warren Maxwell’s book review of Sometimes Orange Is Almost Gold by Jim Antonini and Suzanne Reynolds! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Erin Britton

An explosive sci-fi thriller where magic and technology collide with devastating consequences

A Stellar Spy mixes espionage tension with the intrigue of near-future galactic exploration and the wonder of magic in this compelling tale of double agents, vengeful mages, and corrupt politicians.

A Navasi mage has attacked the Rose Palais, seat of the Rulani government, marking it with a cerulean blue shimmer that exposes the planet’s vulnerability. “I stare at the brilliance as it slices through the night, an illuminated sigil telling me everything’s changed.” Tessa Daevana—ex-wife of Premier Finn Daevana and mother of his two children, Morgana and Sage—rushes to the scene.

Tessa’s desperation to find out what has happened is certainly due to concern about her family, but it’s also due to duty. She’s the Planetary Security Counselor and is responsible for the safety of the regime and its figurehead. Despite this, Tessa has no desire to be swept up in the thirst for vengeance that is sure to consume Rula. “Save me from the bloodlust, the hawkishness, the need to punch back ten times harder.”

Of course, Tessa has to keep the reason for her reticence secret from those around her—she’s a sleeper agent for Elitha, a rival planet, “home to a host of unchipped Navasi, who have been taught to control their powers.” Every aspect of her cover has been planned to perfection, even her drab home. “Like every other facet of my life, it’s curated to portray a certain lifestyle, a certain milquetoast vegetable of a person.” And it’s worked well so far.

However, the attack on the Rose Palais prompts Finn to consider implementing Operation Paradoxum, a “way to destroy the magic of unchipped Navasi on the planet.” It’s supposed to be a doomsday plan to prevent planetary collapse, not a means of revenge against a lone attacker, and it has the potential to spread to other planets and effect chipped Navasi too, including Tessa.

The situation places her in an impossible position. “I stand on a precipice, under which roils a river of magma.” Tessa knows she needs to protect the Navasi throughout the Human Consortium, but she also still loves Finn and wants to safeguard their children. Which way will she leap from the precipice?

Maya Darjani has crafted a universe in the not-so-distant future that is both delightfully fantastical and recognizably human. A great deal of thought has clearly gone into the backstory of the Human Consortium, which was formed “after humanity escaped the gravitational well of Gaia and stumbled its way to interplanetary civilization.”

Such details establish the background to the story well and ensure that a certain sense of realism and logical technological progression is maintained throughout. The worldbuilding in terms of the individual planets is also richly detailed and convincing. For instance, “Rula’s a planet of ash and regolith, of granite and basalt. Indestructible like polymer, but as volatile as lava.” This makes it easy to imagine the environments that the characters face.

Darjani also ensures that the unusual combination of chimerical magic and technological innovation seems organic and flows throughout the story. While both are woven into the fabric of life on Rula, magic is strictly controlled—save for the escapades of the occasional would-be assassin—whereas technology is abundant. Amusingly, the latter even facilitates multilevel marketing: “Buy one, get the second half off on NanoImprove smoothies!”

On a more serious note, despite being the subject of far less suspicion than magic, Darjani stresses that technology can be equally dangerous. From the REALM machine—the gateway to a highly advanced virtual reality environment—found in every home hosting meetings between spies and their handlers to Operation Paradoxum comprising “a technological virus with an activated biological component,” there is peril lurking everywhere.

And then there’s all the espionage and counterespionage. A Stellar Spy is just as much a spy thriller as it is a sci-fi novel, and Darjani provides plenty of detail about the spycraft of the future. From clandestine meetings to dead drops to covert listening devices, all the key aspects of the spy genre are present, albeit in more advanced forms. There are also a few tongue-in-check nods to the classics: “Covert Ops 101, always keep blackmail material, even if you plan on never using it.”

As for the main spy, Tessa is certainly good at what she does, although she doesn’t like it. She ditched her handler and got out of the game years ago, assimilating into her fate life on Rula as best she can, but her conscience pulls her back in following the attack on the Rose Palais. “I have to make a choice. Protect my family, or prevent a war crime.” This sense of conflict permeates the story, adding to the tension.

Darjani provides real insight into Tessa’s thoughts, motivations, and doubts, establishing her as a conflicted and rather surly character who wants to do what is right and save as many people as possible. And despite all the lies and fake background details, she really does care about Finn and love her children. Such emotions exacerbate the difficulty of her situation.

Like all good spy novels, there are double agents and double crosses aplenty in A Stellar Spy, making it difficult to know who to trust and where things might be heading for Tessa. What’s more, the magic-filled action scenes are exciting and the exposition is well handled. A Stellar Spy is a stellar choice for your next read.

Thank you for reading Erin Britton’s book review of A Stellar Spy by Maya Darjani! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

This satirical workplace guidebook is a laugh-out-loud group therapy session that offers technical and emotional support by decoding corporate-speak.

Whether you’re sitting down to start a specific chapter or flipping through IT Dictionary randomly as you wait for a software update, this book is an absolute blast. Author Adam Korga hilariously explains the dizzying industry terms you’ve heard in feedback from Finance, Legal, and Human Resources representatives.

This is a book to corrupt any semblance of workplace sanctity and protect your sanity as a result. The author has come up with some pretty genius phrases to describe the sheer stupidity of corporate-speak—delightfully eviscerating modern workplace norms with terms that feel impossible not to adopt into your lexicon, whether you work in IT or not.

Korga’s guide to decoding buzzwords comes with a link to an exceptional, drinking-game-worthy, buzzword bingo-board website to inject fun into your work life. This game has real trend potential and would be fun and quite thrilling for trusted work companions to secretly compete in.

Paired with the advice that “If you hear four of these [buzzwords] in a single meeting, your project is already doomed—but the slide deck will look amazing,” it’s clear that this book is not for the LinkedIn rise and grind, growth mindset crew, but for the people working with and under them, doing the actual work. IT Dictionary translates nonsensical workplace productivity fantasies and tells you how to work around them. “Rename ‘bugs’ to ‘user feedback incidents’… Color everything green by default; don’t show raw numbers. Use emojis instead; call any flat line a ‘plateau before the next phase of growth.'”

IT Dictionary is a genuine guide that offers the reader valuable “battle-tested” insights, tips on phrasing your Slack replies, and tactical responses to prioritize your wellbeing in a way that will make it seem like you care about maximizing your employer’s profit. The diplomatic language table converting what you want to say (“One team member left already… The founders are fighting”) to what you should write in the pitch deck (“Lean, focused founding team… Passionate, committed leadership”) is invaluable.

If you’ve ever spent an entire weekend eating pretzels while bent over a PowerPoint presentation, only for someone higher-up to come over to your desk on Monday morning and say they realized (over Michelin star meals and cocktails at a private beach with friends this weekend) that this brand new, big angle would work better and can we please rush to update the pitch deck in light of this, you’ll appreciate IT Dictionary‘s satirical game packaging for the “Expansion Pack – Executive Disruption Edition” which features “The New Stakeholder Who Knows Everything, Surprise CEO Drop-In, [and] Mandatory Reprioritization with Zero Context.”

So many of the translation tables in this book would be funny to share in group chats, in a lasting “I need to screenshot that for future use” way, and in an immediate “use the office printer and laminator to get this pinned up on my open-plan cubicle wall” way. IT Dictionary is worth reading for the sense of camaraderie alone. Feeling seen and heard by a book eviscerating buzzwords is something that can be so special, so personal, and yet so universal.

I’ve worked with Public Relations agencies and social media teams who would have loved using Korga’s terms to describe their clients—beauty brands and bank executives alike. You could create team-building exercises around this book, helping your staff bond by creating insider jokes to let off steam and feel understood during the worst moments of their workday. If you have IT guys available to you whenever your laptop starts “doing that weird thing again,” you might want to buy them this book. I’m being so serious; you go on your merry way once the IT ticket is resolved, but they’ll need this emotional release to gain the strength to survive until your next call.

As a millennial who has worked at global Public Relations agencies, tech startups, and international nonprofits where “the Founder’s word is both supreme law and fluid reality,” this book was actual laugh-out-loud funny to me. When I read some of the jokes to my dad (whose early career was spent training tech support staff), my mom (who has her IT team’s personal numbers saved in her phone) and my younger brother (whose accounting career has so far been spent at tech startups for whom LinkedIn “corpo-speak” is the Bible), they found it just as entertaining as I did.

IT Dictionary may be written for tech support teams, but anyone who has ever made extensive calls to IT or lost hours of their life making urgent edits to a pitch deck on presentation day will find value in laughing about this unfortunate universal experience.

If you loved and miss British broadcast satire W1A or NBC’s corporate comedy American Auto, this book is for you. If you’re sick of investor pitches, optimization, and over-valued C-suite input, this book is for you. It’s for all who need to be warned (and all who learned the hard way) that in the corporate world, a rockstar developer is really just a “Poor soul expected to do backend, frontend, UX, infra, IT ops—and support tickets in between sprints.”

IT Dictionary directly addresses the soul-crushing minutiae within an enraging experience that most workers of the modern world know intimately. No one has created a way for us to decompress (that isn’t ranting to your coworkers or partner) from this corporate chokehold until Adam Korga, until right now.

This would be a hilarious gift to congratulate someone on their first job in software development or IT support. It’s something they’ll smile politely and thank you for upon receiving it, but cling to like a lifeline of real-talk advice and sanity in a sea of frantic requests after a few weeks on the job.

Readers who, like me, have been praying for the downfall of generative AI will enjoy this book’s honest exploration of the topic (Part V covers AI’s increasingly inescapable positioning in consumer tech and our workplaces). Author Adam Korga provides a rare honest view from someone in the industry, acknowledging the greed-powered willful blindness that executives engage in in favor of a computer that cannot yet but will hopefully-someday replace their human employees who inconveniently require time off for bathroom breaks and sleep. This chapter includes admitting the truth of LLMs hallucinating information and being hilariously worse at its job than a human could ever be.

With his highly entertaining, sharp humor, Adam Korga critiques bureaucracy, stakeholder control, the hell of HR’s tactically-worded performance reviews, corporate-enforced remote work protocols that slow down your computer and make you doubt the quality of your home wifi (which works perfectly on every other device), and the many hours of your precious life lost to fulfilling your millionaire founder’s whims. IT Dictionary is a gift to all who have suffered through corporate systems and a guide to making it through your workday without truly going insane.

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of IT Dictionary by Adam Korga! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

A deeply spiritual story of two men on different paths meeting at a crossroads

A man running from his past and a man hitchhiking toward his future intersect in rural Kentucky in The Great Meadows, leading to the discovery of a decades-old mystery.

Levi Motley returns to his native state of Kentucky, barreling down a highway in his pickup, hungover and heading toward his next destination because “who doesn’t want the feeling of motion fueled by the aphrodisiac of hope?”

When he sees a hitchhiker with a sign reading “Gethsemani,” something inside tells him to turn around. His new passenger is Moussa Diab, a young man hitching a ride to the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani to discern God’s purpose for his life.

Captivated by Moussa’s impressive certainty that his journey is a quest, Levi drops him off at the monastery—unaware that the next time he sees him, Moussa will be dead.

Levi rolls into Bardstown, Kentucky to meet his college friend, Dominick, a reporter at the local paper. With the promise of freelance work, Levi chooses to rent a house and find a whale of a story for his new editor. He ranges around town, reporting on local festivals and personalities, when a police call takes him and Dom to a river bend close to the monastery. This is where Levi discovers the dead man is Moussa.

When a mysterious investigator named Regina Sandoval shows up on his doorstep, asking Levi questions about his connection to Moussa, the novel kicks into high gear. Levi is a likable Lothario whose scruffy good looks get him into some trouble, but his nebulous connection to Moussa leads his journalistic instincts to investigate the investigator: after all, Moussa’s death has been solved, with a man admitting to killing him. But something does not smell right, and Levi decides to help Moussa’s mother by finding out what really happened to Moussa in the beautiful countryside of Kentucky that locals call “The Great Meadows.”

Walsh spins a deep mystery in this novel, one that takes its time unraveling. Levi must negotiate a raft of barriers: from the suspicious Sandoval whose end game is unclear, to the wealthy and connected Westcott family whose patriarch, Conrad Westcott, is the founder of the Westcott Bourbon Company. As Levi pokes his nose around town, he finds disturbing clues about why Moussa came to the abbey and why anyone would want him dead. Along the way, he also wrestles with the ghosts of his past, including an older brother, Declan, housed at the Manchester Federal Correctional Institution nearby.

Levi slowly learns that he is not only uncovering Moussa’s quest, but his own. Will this rolling stone finally let go of the guilt he runs from and allow a little moss to grow?

The answer is skillfully tied to not only Moussa, but also to a family secret from World War Two that only time will reveal. The story and the mystery are a slow burn, but the people and personalities Levi meets in town make this a delightful read with punchy dialogue and clever quips.

Walsh writes with authenticity and obvious love for the “great meadows” and natural beauty of the Bluegrass State, with his precisely drawn characters embodying both the best and worst of a community steeped in its past. The spirituality of the story resonates throughout as Levi accepts that in finding out what happened to Moussa—no matter how sad—he will also find out what happened to him from their brief, consequential encounter along that highway.

“The sadness comes from finding out that nothing turns out exactly as you had hoped it would be, and the gratitude comes from knowing it was worth the ride all the same.”

The Great Meadows is a moving philosophical tale with the veneer of a small town murder mystery. Lyrical and gritty in turns, it’ll leave you feeling hopeful for a return of its Odysseus-like protagonist who is just trying to find home—for good this time.

Thank you for reading Peggy Kurkowski’s book review of The Great Meadows by Christopher Walsh! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Kathy L. Brown

This can’t-miss sequel puts the reader through a wormhole to a realm filled with intrigue, adventure, and action.

In A Sense for Memory: Part One the reader cheers on the exploits of a tough Rej-Jir soldier/cop, Commander Qwatajawa, as she investigates the theft of a mysterious and powerful artifact, as well as a ninja of sorts who fights a strange entity deep within a bioengineered planet.

A Sense for Memory: Part Two doubles down on its engaging protagonists, introducing two rock stars of the joint. These soldiers think the story is about them, but Commander Qwatajawa, her loyal squad, and her friend, illusionist Xa-Kol, must put a stop to their audacious plan.

In a prologue, we meet Supreme Commander Nazatl, a Rej-Jir, and Supreme Commander Soropo-Omb, a Zurxok. They soon show they have the “right stuff” as their undercover mission to steal the spaceship A Sense for Memory and its illegally developed wormhole technology goes off with style. But the reader learns that serious political shenanigans are going on behind the scenes. Have the national heroes gone rogue? Or worse, been subverted by a powerful alien intelligence?

Commander Qwatajawa, the head cop of an isolated beach village, experiences unique combat situations and acquires special knowledge in Part One that her superiors believe might be useful on an apprehension and recovery mission. She and her team are dispatched to investigate the spaceship’s theft and follow Nazatl and Soropo-Omb, somehow convincing them to stand down and start following orders again.

It’s a tricky situation, and Qwatajawa’s investigation soon confirms that an old nemesis may be behind it all. And the artifact she thought destroyed has somehow come back into play. When Qwatajawa and company locate A Sense for Memory, it all seems easy. A little too easy. Nasty surprises await.

While Qwatajawa and her squad are dispatched to recover the stolen ship and prohibited tech, Xa-Kol, the Zurxok protagonist of Part One, is summoned to investigate a mystery at the training academy she left fifty years ago. A monster she defeated and killed as a cadet is suddenly and inexplicably causing problems and even calling out for her.

The two novellas of A Sense for Memory Part One are woven together into a more complex story in Part Two: more characters and more character development; bigger, more cinematic settings; and greater challenges as characters struggle to overcome problems. Experiencing these storylines come together and knit into a satisfying whole is to enjoy exciting space opera at its finest.

Part Two introduces and expands on several characters, such as the hotshots Nazatl and Soropo-Omb and Qwatajawa’s team members. All are magnificently differentiated and portrayed through personal opinions, actions, and speech patterns. And the original characters continue to delight.

Like the first book, readers learn about the world through scenes, rich in revealing dialogue and exciting action sequences. The novel uses summary passages sparingly and appropriately.

The nature of duty, particularly in a military chain of command, is front and center among the issues and themes of the book. Nazatl’s “monster” invites a closer look at relationships among the subjugated and the powerful, as do all the behind-the-scenes political machinations among the governmental entities in the story. With the title of the book the name of a spaceship that is powered by forbidden technology, the reader can’t help but think about the complex interplay between science doing all that it can, but maybe not what it should. And who decides these things?

The book features many illustrations, which help the reader imagine the characters, setting, and important items even more clearly than their verbal description. And it is rich in dazzling technology befitting an advanced alien science fiction setting, for example, the armor “…which comprised segmented black plates. Each plate bore an intricate, layered structure, dispersing kinetic energy with ease, while embedded nanofibers ensured that any heat-based attack would dissipate…”

Part Two brings the reader up to speed on Part One events, both in a summary at the beginning of the book and within the story text. While you could follow the narrative without reading Part One first, it’d be most fulfilling taking in the series in order.

A Sense for Memory: Part Two kicks up the action several notches for Commander Qwatajawa and Xa-Kol. It’s a blast to see them interact with more formidable opponents. I sense some mutual respect in the rivalry with the errant Nazatl and Soropo-Omb and look forward to what’s next of this dynamic series.

Thank you for reading Kathy L. Brown’s book review of A Sense for Memory: Part Two by R.H. Stevens! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

A powerful story of survival about a woman who escaped but still has to hide

The name Kathryn Caraway is a pseudonym. The author had to do it that way; her stalker, like most, was never truly held accountable. This book is not a who-dun-it. It’s a testimony. A warning. A gut-wrenching portrait of how easily women are targeted, disbelieved, and left unprotected.

But Kathryn’s story isn’t about him. This book doesn’t give the monster center stage. Todd is present, of course; his manipulation, charm, persistence, and escalating violence drive the plot. But the lens never shifts away from Kathryn’s experience. She refuses to sensationalize his behavior. Instead, she shows the slow erosion of safety, autonomy, and trust through her own eyes, her own thoughts, her own fear. Kathryn isn’t making him more human; she’s here to remind you that she is. And she’s done hiding in the dark while society looks the other way.

Kathryn lets us into the daily reality of being stalked: the obsessive hyper-vigilance, the isolation, the exhaustion of documenting everything only to be dismissed anyway. “Being stalked is like being a rabbit caught in a trap. Waiting. Always waiting.”

She’s not exaggerating. She’s speaking from experience, one backed by devastating statistics she includes in the Foreword, reminding us that most victims never see justice.

And yet, she keeps going. She logs every incident. She testifies in court. She fights for a system that was never built to protect her. And still, she is the one forced to live under an alias.

I felt so angry reading this. Not because the book is frustrating—it isn’t; it’s magnificently written—but because Kathryn had to endure all of it. Because women like her are still blamed. Because the patriarchy still shrugs when a woman says she feels unsafe or calls her hysterical or asks, “Well, why didn’t you leave?” As if she didn’t try. As if she didn’t scream. As if her silence wasn’t survival.

Kathryn’s storytelling is as structured as it is emotionally raw. Her recollection of events is precise and purposeful, yet deeply personal. She admits to the shame she felt, the self-doubt, the fear of what her loved ones would think if they knew everything. She owns her moments of hesitation, the instinct to protect others from the truth, and the heartbreak of realizing that even when you do everything right, justice may never come.

The specificity of emotion, the physiological response to trauma, and the intellectual clarity she brings to her experience give this book its power. “He is a predator, but you won’t know this the first time you meet him,” she writes. “He looks normal.”

And that is the most chilling—and familiar—part.

If this is where true crime is going, toward centering victims—elevating their voices, and exposing systems instead of glamorizing predators—I am absolutely here for it. I want stories like this. I want women like Kathryn telling us exactly how it felt, exactly what happened, and exactly how hard it was to survive it.

Unfollow Me doesn’t just document what happened. It calls out every person and institution that allowed it. Kathryn Caraway doesn’t just survive. She speaks. And in doing so, she forces the world to listen.

Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt’s book review of Unfollow Me by Kathryn Caraway! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Samantha Hui

Hopeful, introspective, and lyrical—a work of literary realism tinged with the grit of recovery

Wethersfield Road is a story about confronting the darkness within, facing addiction head-on, and learning what it means to love. Its author, Anna Binder Reardon, draws on her background in therapy to infuse the story with emotional insight and authenticity; she’s made a world that feels lived-in and characters whose struggles cut close to the bone. Themes of autonomy, self-confidence, and love as action anchor this moving tale.

“As she gazed out the bay window at the barely dark sky and inhaled that first, immaculate hit, a rare city-sky shooting star leaped across the horizon—as if the Universe, the house, and the Texas sky were conspiring against her indifference, insisting that Hope lived here too.”

Amelia Glickman has borderline personality disorder, suffers from bulimia, and is addicted to self-destruction in every form. But Amelia Glickman is also a musical theater-loving equestrian, who loves her dog Delilah, and longs to live a life worth living.

Wethersfield Road follows Amelia, a young woman in her early twenties, as she tries to rebuild her life after the implosion and final violence of a toxic relationship. In an attempt to run from her past, she moves to a new home on Wethersfield Road. But she keeps running right back into herself.

As her self-destructive behaviors escalate and begin to endanger the very things she loves, Amelia is forced to reckon with herself. The journey through rehabilitation that follows is neither linear nor easy, but it brings her closer to sobriety, self-respect, and a deeper understanding of love as something chosen, built, and sustained rather than stumbled upon.

“The bottom line is I’ve got a lot to figure out, but this place is making me fall in love with humans again. And I’m human, aren’t I?”

Told in the third person, the novel maintains a measured distance from Amelia, allowing readers to observe her life without being fully immersed in her perspective. What gives the book so much depth are the inclusions of Amelia’s journal entries that begin when she enters rehab. These intimate interludes are some of the book’s most powerful moments, revealing Amelia’s private longings, self-criticism, and flashes of romanticism. They remind us of how she is still just a young woman at 22 years old, searching for security though instinctually drawn to the rush of chaos. The interplay between the broader third-person narrative and the raw, confessional tone of the journals deepens our understanding of Amelia’s contradictions: her emotional intelligence shadowed by her self-protective cynicism, her capacity for love buried beneath self-defense mechanisms.

“There was no way to apologize to a horse. Amelia couldn’t simply sit down with Hope over coffee and own up to where she’d been wrong and say how sorry she was. The only way she had to clear the air was through her actions.”

Reardon depicts the realities of addiction and recovery with precision. She captures the cyclical nature of self-destructive behavior, the push and pull between wanting to change and cling to what’s familiar. Reardon’s background in therapy shows in the nuanced, believable portrayals of counselors and recovery spaces, as well as in the book’s underlying belief that healing is possible. The relationship between Amelia and her horse, Hope, is written with special tenderness; it becomes a metaphor for trust, responsibility, and the slow work of repair. There’s also a quiet beauty in the novel’s sensory moments, in the feel of a Texas evening sky, the grounding presence of animals, and the strange, stubborn hope that can surface even in despair.

“You’re a life force powerful enough to spring up through the concrete and grow towards the sun.”

Wethersfield Road is a meaningful exploration of what it means to save yourself. It asks its readers to reconsider love as deliberate, sustained action rather than whirlwind endeavors for dopamine. It’s a strong debut with real emotional honesty and a protagonist whose flaws are heartbreakingly human. A book for anyone who has ever had to rebuild, one brick at a time, while learning to live in their own skin.

Thank you for reading Samantha Hui’s book review of Wethersfield Road by Anna Binder Reardon! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Lauren Hayataka

Tour vans, Xeroxed demos, and a front-row seat to a vanishing scene

Dean Brownrout’s No Big Deal: Chasing the Indie Music Dream in the Last Days of the Record Business spans two decades of music industry upheaval, from the rise of punk to the messy birth of digital distribution. Told with dry wit and sharp recall, it’s a memoir that understands the music business is rarely fair but always fascinating.

This isn’t a story about one big break. It’s a story about near-misses, scrappy venues, fumbled deals, and what it’s like to be the guy behind the guy behind the guy who eventually wins a Grammy. Brownrout worked with everyone from Slayer and Megadeth to the Goo Goo Dolls and Anthrax, and while the spotlight often moves on without him, No Big Deal shows he never stopped noticing who else was in the room.

The stories are layered with a precise sense of place and timing—a teenage Metallica fan tossing homemade fanzines into the crowd long before the band had a label. A white stretch limo rolling up to a Slayer show in Brooklyn, where Brownrout cringed in the backseat—only to watch the crowd erupt when they realized Brian Slagel was inside.

Or the time he tour-managed Discharge, a van full of mohawked punks, slipping them across the Canadian border by flashing his briefcase and clean-cut grin. He makes you feel like you’re flipping through someone’s backstage laminate—smudged, worn, and always just enough to get you through the door.

But this isn’t just about the artists. Brownrout sketches the entire ecosystem: agents hungry for talent, managers who bulldozed their way into power, startup execs who promised half a million in stock options—then vanished. There’s a revolving door of characters, each one memorable, some a little unhinged, all of them deeply human.

Like the agent who refused to be interrupted on Thursday evenings—his standing date with Magnum, P.I. took precedence over everything.

What sets No Big Deal apart is that Brownrout doesn’t just recount the scene—he intimately understands it. He tracks the rise of thrash metal, the collapse of vinyl, and the early glimmers of the internet age with the insight of someone who read every trade mag, every fanzine, every spine of a poorly Xeroxed demo. He understands how success looked different in that era—when a few well-placed reviews or a college radio buzz could launch a tour, even without mainstream airplay.

It’s Brownrout’s attention to cultural memory. He doesn’t just name venues—he situates them. The Continental, once an S&M club guarded by German shepherds, becomes a landmark of Buffalo’s new wave scene. The Chelsea flea markets—where he spotted Seymour Stein rifling through collectibles at dawn—double as the backdrop to his side hustle selling cereal boxes and Charlie’s Angels lunchboxes. And Bandito, a Mexican dive bar where Diana Ross might drop in and someone’s roommate once booked Slayer, captures the strange collisions that made downtown New York feel electric. He doesn’t just recount a show—he explains what it meant to the neighborhood, the scene, the sound. He captures the texture of a disappearing world with the precision of someone who knows how easily it slips away.

Brownrout doesn’t simplify the past or turn it into a tidy narrative. After the venues close and the scenes fade, he follows the people who shaped them: the agents who quietly disappeared, the musicians who never broke out of van tours and dive bars, and the rare few whose names carry weight. He tracks not just the hits, but the unfinished stories—the side hustles, the friendships, the obsession with preserving ephemera that eventually led him to a Chelsea antique stall. It’s all part of the same impulse: saving what matters before it disappears.

No Big Deal isn’t just about the music—it’s about what lingers after the amps cool down: the flyers that faded, the credits that rolled on, the people who shaped it all from the wings. Brownrout isn’t trying to sell a comeback story. He’s offering something rarer: a clear-eyed tribute to the people, places, and instincts that shaped a generation. No Big Deal doesn’t shout to be remembered—it endures because it remembers for us.

Thank you for reading Lauren Hayataka’s book review of No Big Deal by Dean Brownrout! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

Cold cases aren’t just stories—they’re unfinished nightmares. TRACKRS unravels the long, frustrating hunt for a predator who thought he’d never be found.

Michael A. Jacobs pens a masterclass of the true crime genre with TRACKRS—a book that will pull you so deep into the case that you’ll start questioning your career choices. I think I may have just found a new true crime favorite to pair with Ann Rule.

TRACKRS chronicles the brutal crimes of Gerald Parker, the so-called “Bedroom Basher,” a monster who terrorized Orange County in the late 1970s and early 80s, slipping through the cracks of law enforcement for far too long. What makes this story particularly gripping is how close Parker came to getting away with it all—how forensic failures, bureaucratic red tape, and sheer bad luck allowed him to remain a phantom for decades.

What I appreciated about Jacobs’ approach here is that he never loses sight of the victims. Sandra. Debra. Kimberly. Debora. Marolyn. Chantal. Their names, their lives, their stories—he ensures they aren’t forgotten in the retelling. It’s a stark contrast to the justice system, which at times seemed to treat them as case numbers rather than people who deserved better. The moment that the pieces come together—when the weight of years of investigative work finally lands—is deeply satisfying but a simultaneous reminder of how many similar cases still sit unsolved, waiting for their TRACKRS moment.

This isn’t just a recounting of horrific crimes—it’s a painstakingly detailed, boots-on-the-ground examination of cold case investigations, police politics, forensic advancements, and the sheer perseverance it takes to bring a serial killer to justice.

With no initial suspect, no coordinated investigation, and a frustrating lack of urgency from law enforcement, Jacobs walks us through the grind of piecing together a fragmented puzzle that had sat unsolved for far too long.

The narrative is immersive to the point of making you feel like you’re sitting in an interrogation room or rifling through decades-old case files. Jacobs doesn’t just tell us what happened—he shows us, with pages of verbatim witness statements, interview transcripts, and courtroom proceedings. I could almost feel the stiffness of a police station chair and smell the old paper in those files, the stale coffee going cold in the styrofoam.

By the end, I was nearly convinced I could launch my own investigation into a cold case, simply based on how methodical and thorough Jacobs was in explaining the process. (Spoiler: I absolutely cannot. But the illusion was strong.)

One of the book’s strongest points is its attention to forensic advancements. The mid-90s is shockingly recent when you realize that DNA tracking was still in its infancy back then. Jacobs lays out the painstaking process of creating a DNA database, the uphill battle detectives faced to get labs to prioritize testing, and the grim reality that many violent criminals were still freely walking the streets simply because the technology to catch them didn’t exist yet. It’s both fascinating and infuriating to see how long it took for cases like these to gain any momentum.

A fair warning—this book does not shy away from the brutality of these murders. Maybe I’m getting a bit more squeamish with age or maybe the descriptions were just that intense, but there were moments I had to pause. Jacobs doesn’t exploit the violence for shock value, but he doesn’t gloss over it either. If you like your true crime on the forensic-heavy, investigative side rather than the sensationalist side, you’ll appreciate the approach. But for those with weaker stomachs, consider yourselves warned—this one gets graphic.

And then there’s Gerald Parker himself—a name that should haunt true crime history books more than it does. The deeper Jacobs goes into Parker’s psyche, the more horrifying the picture becomes. Whether he was mentally ill or simply pure evil (I’m voting the latter), Parker was a predator of the worst kind—lurking in the shadows, manipulating the system, and evading suspicion while brutally murdering five women, an unborn child, and savagely attacking five others. Following the case from its dead-end beginnings to his eventual capture is a ride filled with equal parts frustration, heartbreak, and sheer exhilaration when justice finally starts to take shape.

TRACKRS is one of the best true crime books I’ve read in a long time. It’s a slow burn in the best possible way—dense with detail, gripping in its execution, and as much a story about the evolution of forensic science as it is about solving a string of cold cases. If you like fact-driven and unapologetically real true crime, you’re going to love this one.

Just maybe don’t read it alone at night. And please…lock your windows.

Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt’s book review of TRACKRS by Michael A. Jacobs! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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