Lydia Schoch

July 29, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Beach Reads

A glass bottle that has a piece of paper sealed inside of it. The bottle is sitting in the sand at the beach and you can see the water coming in behind it. No idea what message is scrawled on the paper, though! I’ve been participating in Top Ten Tuesday for years now, but I’m still a little confused by the concept of a beach read. Being at the beach is no different than being in a library, coffee shop, waiting room, train car, or at home when it comes to what I read.

My state of mind matters far more. If I’m nervously waiting for an update about someone who in the hospital, for example, I’m probably going to need something lighthearted to read that doesn’t require too much analysis. If I’m bored and craving a challenge, I might pick up one of the classics or something from the literary fiction genre that is nuanced and subtle.

I am trying to remain in the spirit of this week’s theme, though, and so I’ll share some fun seafood and marine-themed cozy mysteries as my answers as they’re the sorts of books I could read in almost any situation.

1. Sunny Side Up (Li Johnson Murder Mysteries #1) by Daniel Stallings

2. Dressed to Keel (A Darcy Cavanaugh Mystery #1) by Candy Calvert

3. Murder at the Lighthouse (Exham on Sea Mysteries #1) by Frances Evesham

4. Town in a Lobster Stew (A Candy Holliday Mystery, #2) by B.B. Haywood

5. Beach Blanket Barbie (Zoe Donovan Mystery #6)by Kathi Daley

6. A Shell of a Problem (Sanibel Island Mysteries, #1) by Jennifer L. Schiff

7. The Cruise Ship Lost My Daughter by Morgan Mayer

8. Lowcountry Boil (A Liz Talbot Mystery, #1) by Susan M. Boyer

9. Live and Let Chai (Seaside Café Mystery, #1) by Bree Baker

10. Clammed Up (A Maine Clambake Mystery, #1) by Barbara Ross

(Don’t they have great titles?)

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Tagged as Top Ten Tuesday

July 24, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Occurrence at Boyd Boone’s House

Title: The Occurrence at Boyd Boone’s House (The Demon Cleanser, #0.5)

Author: Nadi Abdi

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: June 11, 2025

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 38 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

The magician may go to prison, but beefing with a superpower is forever!!! Set months before the events in Power of the People and a couple years after the arrest and conviction of Demon Commander Boyd Boone, Lillas and her demon-hunting Triumvirate are called to Boone’s house to investigate tales of strange noises and sightings of people inside. Police have also called in help from the local magician family, the Drays. Whatever Boone was into may have been unbelievable, but it wasn’t impossible.

Demon hunters, demon knights, vampires, and vampire-hunting magicians have gathered here today to make sure nothing goes wrong. But with a mix like that, how could anything go right? This is the tale of how Lillas was banned from Boyd’s house after going off on her own, then turning on her own with a power no one knew she had. In her defense, she didn’t know what she was doing. Also in her defense, Boyd was doing a lot of things he had no business doing. Note, the conviction. They may have found where (some of) the bodies were buried, but murder wasn’t the only thing going on in here.

Lillas is a powerful human, made to hunt demons and those to consort with them. Boyd was one of her most powerful opps, and one of those who consorts with demons. He wasn’t home, but the monster still was. Like his ghost was hanging around. Note: he was still very much alive. (Not her idea.) They did tell her not to snoop. But she was the daughter of a detective. What were her other options? All of that to say, what happened that day may not have been foreseen, but could have been avoided had they listened when she said, “I don’t wanna go to that man’s house!” but slightly more explicitly. Peer pressure. Not even once!

Review:

Normal is a relative term.

Some of the most memorable scenes were the ones that focused on how interpersonal politics affected everything from how magic was used to how information was collected. That is to say, who one knew in this world and how strong their relationships were with each other was often just as or even more important than what anyone’s special powers were. This is something that can range from helpful to frustrating in real life, but no matter how it affected the characters it added a layer of reality to their struggles that I don’t see enough of in the fantasy genre. It struck me as much closer to the truth of what our world would be like if we really did have magical beings running around.

I had trouble keeping track of all of the characters because of how quickly they were introduced. As interested as I was in the storyline itself, this did make reading it more challenging it than I wished it could have been. If the plot had focused on fewer people and saved the rest of them to be introduced in book one of the series, I would have happily given it a higher rating as there were so many other things I enjoyed about these adventures.

The world building was complex and fascinating. Sometimes only a sentence or two was used to describe something, but those brief moments gave me the impression that they were barely skimming the surface of what this series had to offer. I had enough information to understand what was going on while still knowing there was plenty of ground to cover if I were to dive deeper in this universe. It’s hard to strike that balance in a short story, so kudos to the author for pulling it off!

The Occurrence at Boyd Boone’s House was action-packed.

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: TV Shows I’ve Binge-Watched

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Drawing of a large screen tv and a remote floating in the air beside it. I generally do not binge-watch shows due to my spouse’s preference for programs that involve war, pandemics, alternate history (and not the cheerful sort that imagines a better world), various sorts of apocalypses, fascist governments, etc.

Many of these shows have great storytelling…but they are also heavy. Characters die or get hurt regularly, so after one episode I’m ready to turn off the TV and go do something peaceful.

Here are a few shows that I have been able to binge-watch in the past in large part because they are either sitcoms or have enough humour in them to balance out any scary or sad scenes in them. I’m trying very hard not to repeat any answers here that I shared in a recent WWBC post about shows we’re currently watching:

Black-ish

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

How I Met Your Mother

Kim’s Convenience

Ted Lasso

The links above will take you to their respective Wikipedia articles. While I don’t have very niche tastes, I didn’t want to make assumptions about which shows my readers might or might not already be familiar with.

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Tagged as Binge-Watching, Television, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

July 22, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set in Orphanages

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Black and white photo of a vintage classroom where each wooden desk sits two pupils. The room is empty and feels a little desolate. I have a couple of relatives who were adopted as a sibling group after living in an orphanage in the 1940s or 1950s, but it would be quite rare for that to happen these days as most children in the foster system are now either being looked after through kinship care or traditional foster care.

The interesting thing about orphanages to me is how long they’ve stuck around in pop culture after being phased out in North America decades ago with rare exceptions. (Yes, I know they still exist in other parts of the world…but even there I believe the trend is often moving towards placing kids with relatives or foster families).

Here are some books I’ve read and enjoyed that were set in orphanages.

1. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #1) by Ransom Riggs

3. The Cider House Rules by John Irving

4. The BFG by Roald Dahl

5. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

6. The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman

7. Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade

8. Baby Alicia Is Dying by Lurlene McDaniel

9. Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #2) by Ransom Riggs

Have you noticed this literary trend as well?

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Tagged as Top Ten Tuesday

July 17, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Child of the Sea

Title: Child of the Sea

Author: Elvira Dahl

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 15, 2022

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary

Length: 53 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

I’d had the dream for as long as I could remember: I’m standing on the edge of the jetty, under a steel gray sky, looking out over the inlet. Watching the waves crash against the shallow reef out in the bay. There’s a large, submerged rock in that spot, and in my dream, someone is standing out there, waist-deep in the water. A dark silhouette perfectly still among the waves. I know it’s watching me. It’s been watching me since I was a kid.” When Vendela arrives at her seaside childhood home to look after it while her mother’s away, she realizes that something’s not right – with the place, with her mom, even with herself. She makes a series of chilling discoveries that make her question everything. What do the recurring nightmares mean? Where has her mother gone? And who is the creature from the bay that’s haunted Vendela all her life? Child of the Sea is a dark fantasy/mystery story inspired by tales from nordic folklore.

Content Warning: Excema, drowning, and a brief reference to a possible rape. I will not go into detail about these topics in my review.

Review:

The ocean is full of mysteries.

I try to prioritize reviewing books that match the seasons, but that’s a little more difficult in the middle of summer given how much less common it is for the speculative fiction I typically read to be set on a warm, sunny day when the world often feels cheerful. There are exceptions, of course, and I was pleased to discover that this was one of them. While it isn’t set during summer, the beach is one of the most summer-friendly settings and the sound of crashing waves is something that makes just about any scene better in my opinion. The setting continued to surprise me as I kept reading, eager to find out exactly what it was about Vendela’s visit to her childhood home that was so unnerving for her.

It would have been helpful to have more context clues about which Nordic myth was being referenced in this tale. While I have a theory about which one it might have been, not knowing for sure was distracting and a little disappointing given how important this information was for understanding the cliffhanger ending that otherwise didn’t quite make sense for me as a reader. As much as i wanted to select a higher rating, this issue prevented me from doing so.

While there were definitely horror elements in the storyline, this was not at all gory or gross. Instead, it built up suspense and dread as Vendela discovered layer upon layer of things that weren’t quite right about her mother’s habits, life, and normally messy seaside cottage. This is the sort of horror I am drawn to because of how many parallels I can make between it and real life, say, when one visits a place they once knew intimately that has changed so much it feels slightly wrong even if you can’t necessarily put your finger on why you’re feeling that emotion at first. Maybe it’s too quiet, for example, or there are other details about it that are slightly but also jarringly different from previous memories of it.

Child of the Sea was intriguing.

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: My Favourite Summer Quotes From Books

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A straw hat with a black ribbon wrapped around it is sitting on top of some wheat in a field. The wheat is golden brown and looks ready to harvest. I have no idea why the hat was left there. I’ve done a lot of quote posts for various blog hops over the years, so I’m going to make it a little more challenging for myself this week by narrowing it down to quotes about summer.

1. “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

2. “Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”
― Roman Payne

3. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

4. “All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

5. “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

6. “some winters
will never melt

some summers
will never freeze

and some things will only
… live in poems.”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

7. “I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

8. “The sidewalks were haunted by dust
ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up,
swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on
the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol-
lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a
volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every-
where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable
dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spon-
taneous combustion at three in the morning.

Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for
element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no
sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep
over valleys of ﬁsh and sand held baking under its serene
vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were
brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high-
tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat
above the unslept houses.
The cicadas sang louder and yet louder.
The sun did not rise, it overﬂowed.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

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Tagged as Quotes, Summer, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

July 15, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Honourifics in the Title

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A blue envelope lying with its flap up. It’s ready to receive the card or letter that will go on there. Thank you to Joanne @ Portobello Book Blog for submitting this theme! Here are ten books with honourifics in the title. I chose as many ones that I’ve read as possible, but I had to branch out a little to other options as well.

1. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #1) by Ransom Riggs

2. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

3. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

4. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, #1) by Robin Sloan

5. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

6. The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World’s Most Beloved Neighbor by Amy Hollingsworth

7. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

8. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan Henry

9. Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen

10. Miss Rhythm by Ruth Brown

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July 10, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Merlin

Title: The Merlin

Author: Benjamin Parsons

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: January 9, 2023

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Historical

Length: 58 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Down-to-earth falconer Rowland is determined to marry his childhood sweetheart Rowena, just when her life is turned upside down by bereavement, illness and debt. A strange old jeweller forges the perfect engagement ring for the proposal, but Rowland refuses to pay the unusual price the jeweller demands. From that moment on, Rowland is drawn further and further into the realm of the supernatural, as everything he loves slips away from him. Part of the collection The Green Man and Other Stories.

Content Warning: Life-threatening illness and death. I will not discuss these themes in my review.

Review:

Everything has a price.

The most memorable scenes for me were the ones that took place when the jeweller was creating the special ring and then negotiating the price of it with Rowland. This happened early on in the storyline, so I feel comfortable talking about it in more depth here. There were so many magical moments in those scenes that made me perk up and wonder where the plot might evolve from there. It was also interesting to see some of the protagonist’s personality quirks emerge during the course of that day as this was an excellent opportunity to show what he was like when he felt negative emotions like boredom or frustration. Wondering what the jeweller was up to also piqued my interest as the effort he put into creating the ring didn’t quite match what the protagonist or I knew about how jewelry is made.

I would have liked to see more character development for Rowland. Normally, I’d expect the protagonist in a tale like this one to have some glaring personality flaw that overshadowed his or her common sense at least on occasion, but this wasn’t what happened. Yes, Rowland could be a little too stubborn at times, but he had a good heart and was genuinely trying to do the right thing not only for himself but also for everyone around him even if his choices didn’t always create the desired effects. The ending didn’t quite sit right with me because of how much I liked Rowland. If there was a lesson to be learned here, I struggled to know what it might be as those scenes felt more like something that would occur in real life than in the fantasy genre.

One of the things I appreciate the most about Mr. Parson’s stories is how willing he is to take risks and bend the rules of the genres he chooses. This means that I’m never quite sure what to expect when I return to his work, whether that’s related to plot twists or which characters might get to live happily ever after among many other subjects. It makes the reading process exciting and is why I keep reviewing him here. He really knows how to keep his audience guessing.

This tale is part of a collection that does not need to be read in any particular order.

The Merlin was thought provoking.

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Tagged as 2020s, Benjamin Parsons, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Historical, Novella, Paranormal, Romance, Self-Published

July 9, 2025 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Fictional Worlds I’d Love to Visit

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A shooting star falling in front of the Milky Way just after dusk. The land below is treeless and rather flat, so the sky is the star of this show. The sky moves from being dark blue to light blue to showing just a sliver of light from the sun that’s just set over the horizon as you move your eyes from the top of the scene to the bottom of it. I believe we had this topic for a previous WWBC post, and my answers are probably going to be pretty similar this time around.

The Star Trek universe is somewhere I’d love to live because of how many current social problems are rarely if ever an issue there due to the existence of replicators, advanced medical treatments, and other cool technological and social advancements.

I’ve love to visit the woods between worlds from The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Little Lydia was annoyed that we only got to see a couple of the worlds that could be visited through that in-between place. There were so many other ponds to explore.

Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot duology has another peaceful setting I’d love to explore. I could be quite happy living in harmony with nature if I picked the right community to visit there. Their methods of ensuring that work got done appealed to me, too, because of how customizable it was and how forgiving it was for people who are disabled or more talented at some skills than at others. You do just about anything useful for a community: growing food crops, washing dishes, providing medical care, fixing bicycles or other machines, caring for children or adults who needed it, teaching kids how to read, etc. There weren’t any judgements about who did what. It was all appreciated which is quite refreshing when compared to how certain types of work are over or undervalued in modern society in my experience.

How about all of you?

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Tagged as Bookish Stuff, Fictional Places, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

July 8, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’d Like to Re-Read

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog for submitting this theme.

A deciduous tree - possibly a maple tree - that’s growing next to a pond. This photo was taken at twilight or just after sunrise when part of the sky is dark but there is light at the horizon. The pond water is perfectly still and so you can see a perfect reflection of the tree in the water. Here are some books I hope to reread someday: