Book #109 of 2026: This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum Overall a fairly generic Gone Girl knockoff, in which a guy shows up at his best friend’s house to record the podcast that they host together, only to find that she and her husband are each missing amid signs of a struggle. …
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Book #108 of 2026: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #2) [Note: this is an updated version of my review from 2020.] This is the second volume of its series by internal chronology, but I maintain that these stories are best approached in publication order instead. …
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Book #107 of 2026: The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum Seventeen-year-old Hollis is a troubled kid, getting into fights at school, suppressing a certain suicidal ideation, and resigning himself to the fact that he’s going to be stuck in his dying blue-collar small town forever. That makes him the perfect victim for the …
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Book #106 of 2026: Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian (The Strata Wars #1) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.] This collaborative foray into the urban fantasy genre leaves a lot to be desired, and reading between the lines of the co-writers’ public statements, it sounds like the …
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Book #104 of 2026: The Rock Rats by Ben Bova (The Asteroid Wars #2) Author Ben Bova’s Grand Tour stories of outer space exploration continue to be hit-or-miss for me, and this title unfortunately isn’t one of the better ones. There’s the core of a neat idea here, involving the small community that’s grown up …
Book #103 of 2026: Doctor Who: White Darkness by David A. McIntee (Virgin New Adventures #15) Largely a back-to-basics reset for the series, bringing the Seventh Doctor and his companions Ace and Bernice to Haiti in 1915, amid the unrest that ultimately led to an American invasion and occupation of the island country. While not …
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Book #102 of 2026: Magician’s Gambit by David Eddings (The Belgariad #3) I continue to struggle with how generic this 80s fantasy series seems to me, like The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Prydain with the more interesting worldbuilding, character, and plot details sanded down. It’s very much a product of its …
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Book #101 of 2026: Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins (The Underland Chronicles #5) This series has had its ups and downs, but it concludes on a high note that ties everything together rather gracefully. Following the cliffhanger from the last volume, the story resumes with the humans and their allies in …
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Book #100 of 2026: The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach A golem is a creature out of Jewish mythology, said to be carved from clay and brought to life with the proper incantations to defend its maker’s community during times of strife. This 2023 volume places one in a modern madcap satire, although I’d …
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Book #99 of 2026: The Midnight Train by Matt Haig (The Midnight World #2) I don’t like the beginning of this story nearly as much as author Matt Haig’s previous novel The Midnight Library — to which it is eventually revealed to be a spinoff sequel — but it grows into itself once it develops …
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