ARC Review: Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood


Title: Within These Wicked Walls

Author: Lauren Blackwood

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Genre: Fantasy/Horror

Content/Trigger Warnings: For a list of potential content and trigger warnings, check out this book’s page on BookTriggerWarnings.com

Rating: ★★★★

Book Links: Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::
Goodreads

Goodreads Synopsis

What the heart desires, the house destroys…

Andromeda is a debtera—an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. When a handsome young heir named Magnus Rochester reaches out to hire her, Andromeda quickly realizes this is a job like no other, with horrifying manifestations at every turn, and that Magnus is hiding far more than she has been trained for. Death is the most likely outcome if she stays, but leaving Magnus to live out his curse alone isn’t an option. Evil may roam the castle’s halls, but so does a burning desire.

Kiersten White meets Tomi Adeyemi in this Ethiopian-inspired debut fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre.

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ARC Review: These Deadly Games by Diana Urban


Title: These Deadly Games

Author: Diana Urban

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Genre: Thriller

Content/Trigger Warnings: Mention of anorexia, abuse, alcoholism, murder, death, kidnapping, child harm

Rating: ★★★★

Book Links: Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::
Goodreads


Goodreads Synopsis

Let’s play a game.

You have 24 hours to win. If you break my rules, she dies. If you call the police, she dies. If you tell your parents or anyone else, she dies.

Are you ready?

When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a video of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper’s game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call.

But then Crystal realizes each task is meant to hurt—and kill—her friends, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past, and wants them to pay for what they did…

As Crystal makes the impossible choices between her friends and her sister, she must uncover the truth and find a way to outplay the kidnapper… before it’s too late.

Author of All Your Twisted Secrets, Diana Urban’s explosive sophomore novel, These Deadly Games, will keep you riveted until the final twist is revealed.

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ARC Review: The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

Title: The Paradox Hotel

Author: Rob Hart

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Genre: Science Fiction

Content/Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, grief, gun violence, absent parents

Rating: ★★★★

Book Links: Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::
Goodreads

Goodreads Synopsis

An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake.

January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.

Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.

Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.

None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.

On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.

January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.

There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.

But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.

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ARC Review: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

Title: These Violent Delights

Author: Chloe Gong

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Genre: Fantasy

Content/Trigger Warnings: For a list of potential content and trigger warnings, check out this book’s page on BookTriggerWarnings.com

Rating: ★★★★★

Book Links:
Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::
Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov are the heirs to two rival gangs in 1926 Shanghai who must work together, despite their difficult past, to save their city.

Favorite Quote

“Memories were beastly little creatures, after all – they rose with the faintest whiff of nourishment.”

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ARC Review: The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna

Title: The Gilded Ones

Author: Namina Forna

Genre: Fantasy

Source: e-ARC (Netgalley)

Content/Trigger Warnings: For a list of content and trigger warnings, please check out BookTriggerWarnings.com

Rating: ★★★★★

Book Links:
Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

After her blood runs gold during a purity ceremony, Deka is labelled as an “impure demon” and sent to training camp where she will be taught to kill for the country that made her an outcast.

Favorite Quote

“We all have a choice right now. Are we girls or are we demons? Are we going to die or are we going to survive?”

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ARC Review: The Dare by Lesley Kara

Title: The Dare

Author: Lesley Kara

Genre: Thriller

Source: e-ARC (Netgalley)

Content/Trigger Warnings: High risk pregnancy, gaslighting, revenge, death

Rating: ★★★★

Book Links:

Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::
Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

Lizzie was the only one with her best friend, Alice, when she was tragically hit by a train when they were thirteen and now her past is coming back to haunt her.

Favorite Quote

“You may wonder why I let her take the lead. Why I surrendered all sense of self on the altar of her desires. I wonder it myself sometimes, but I never had a choice. Not really.”

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ARC Review: Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko

Title: Redemptor

Author: Jordan Ifueko

Genre: Fantasy

Source: e-ARC (Netgalley)

Content/Trigger Warnings: For a list of content and trigger warnings, please check out BookTriggerWarnings.com

Rating: ★★★★★

Book Links:

Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::
Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

After the events of Raybearer, Tarisai finds herself trying to solve all of Aritsar’s numerous problems before her trip to literal hell.

Favorite Quote

“Do not confuse guilt with conviction. Guilt is self-centered and leads only to destructive obsession. But conviction brings balance – a sense of purpose beyond oneself.”

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ARC Review: The Project by Courtney Summers

Title: The Project

Author: Courtney Summers

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Source: e-ARC (Netgalley)

Content/Trigger Warnings: Physical abuse, emotional abuse, cults

Rating: ★★★★

Book Links:

Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

Lo Denham’s sister disappeared into The Unity Project when she was a young girl and, years later, Lo takes it upon herself to save her sister from them.

Favorite Quote

“Having a sister, mom says, is a place only the two of them will share, made of secrets they never have to say aloud – but if they did, it would be in a language only the two of them could speak. Having a sister is a promise no one but the two of you can make – and no one but the two of you can break.”

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ARC Review: White Fox by Sara Faring

Title: White Fox

Author: Sara Faring

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Source: e-ARC (Netgalley)

Content/Trigger Warnings: Talks of suicide, emotional abuse, alcohol, alcoholism, death

Rating: ★★★★

Book Links:

Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

Ten years after their famous mother mysteriously went missing in the woods outside their island home, Manon and Tai are lured back with the promise of a script that supposedly holds clues to what happened all those years ago.

Favorite Quote

“I guess grief is like that: the banshee patiently waiting in the many-halled house of your mind, so quiet in certain moments, until you turn a corner and see how it takes up rooms and rooms, cracking their floors and windows with its volume, its weight.”

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ARC Review: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Title: Black Sun

Author: Rebecca Roanhorse

Genre: Adult Fantasy

Source: e-ARC (Netgalley)

Content/Trigger Warnings: To see a list of possible content and trigger warnings for this book, visit its page on BookTriggerWarnings.com

Rating: ★★★★★

Book Links:

Bookshop::TBD::B&N::Amazon::Goodreads

One Sentence Synopsis

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is approaching and four fates will collide under the dark sky of a total eclipse.

Favorite Quote

“I am the only storm that matters now, and there is no shelter from what I bring.”


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