Book #97 of 2026: Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven I was expecting this story about a family with their own sixties sitcom to read like Taylor Jenkins Reid, but I don’t think author Jennifer Niven does nearly as good a job at channeling the historical era. I also don’t care for how she populates …
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Book #88 of 2026: Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman I have any number of issues with this story, but let me start with the most basic and subjective, which is that I simply don’t like it. This is essentially splatterpunk — the transgressive celebration of gore for its own sake …
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Movie #25 of 2026: Mallrats (1995) Kevin Smith’s second picture wasn’t especially good upon release, and hasn’t aged all that well either. It’s a slacker comedy about two guys whose girlfriends dump them, who then spend the day at the local mall and subsequently win them back. In the sidekick Brodie’s case there’s at least …
Book #77 of 2026: The Astral Library by Kate Quinn I struggled a lot with this heroine early on, finding her woe-is-me, not-like-other-girls attitude incredibly childish and off-putting. She’s also the sort of character who bemoans her supposedly plain looks while ignoring how the romantic interest is practically throwing himself at her feet in worship. …
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Book #71 of 2026: Return to Mars by Ben Bova A largely pointless rehash of a sequel. I really enjoyed Ben Bova’s novel Mars in his loose Grand Tour saga of early space exploration, but there’s little that this second visit to the red planet accomplishes that wasn’t done better in the first. You also …
Movie #22 of 2026: Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) Original creator James Cameron left the Terminator franchise after its second installment, which is also when the quality level significantly dropped. Theoretically, then, his triumphant return in this sixth picture — in which he serves as one of two producers and one of five men with ‘story …
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Book #67 of 2026: The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao In the abstract, this magical realist novel seems like it should have been right up my alley. Its premise of a wondrous train built on daydreams that whisks away people feeling hopeless in life isn’t so radically different from stories I’ve enjoyed like The …
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Book #55 of 2026: The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala (The Dead of Summer #1) I really enjoyed author Ryan La Sala’s previous YA queer horror title Beholder, but this newer release is unfortunately a misfire for me. Although the first chapter sketches some interesting character dynamics — our teenage hero has a …
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Book #44 of 2026: The First Bright Thing by J. R. Dawson This novel has a lot of heart and a couple interesting ideas that unfortunately just don’t cohere together for me. The tone often feels like it was written with a middle-grade audience in mind, but it touches on some pretty heavy topics and …
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Book #37 of 2026: Doctor Who: The Pit by Neil Penswick (Virgin New Adventures #12) This Doctor Who novel is so bad that it had me looking back over previous stories I’ve rated as three-out-of-five stars, wondering if I’d been too harsh on them. It’s both overstuffed and incredibly disjointed, offering not so much a …
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