Tag Archives: Self-Published

April 21, 2022 · 1:00 am

Unexpected Results: A Review of Untethered

Untethered by Nick Stephenson book cover. Image on cover show outer space. The top half of the stars are in a blue cluster and the bottom half are in a red cluster. Title: Untethered

Author: Nick Stephenson

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 24, 2021

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 20 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 2 Stars

Blurb:

When a scientist discovers the secret to teleportation, he struggles to figure out what to do with it.

This short story is a love letter, of sorts, to what is commonly referred to as “The Golden Age” of science fiction – the heady days of the 1930s – 1960s where spaceflight had only just become more than a dream and the possibilities seemed endless. I hope you enjoy my take on it.

Review:

Content Warning: Deaths of lab animals.

Inventing can be tricky business.

Teleportation is one of those topics that used to be covered regularly in the science fiction genre but is rare enough to find these days that I always perk up when I read a blurb that references it. Some of the most memorable scenes were the ones that described how the protagonist and his assistant discovered how to transport living creatures across long distances in the blink of an eye. Their original theories about how to do it were solid, but it certainly took them a great deal of time to translate theories into something safe, effective, and profitable. I smiled as I read about the joy they shared when all of their hard work paid off. That scene was somehow by far the most relatable of them all even though teleportation isn’t actually possible in our world yet.

As intrigued as I was by the premise of this short story, were some massive plot holes in it. One of them involved the development of the teleportation machine the main character spent so much time talking about, and the other involved the twist ending. It struck me as odd for such an intelligent and passionate protagonist to gloss over how he expanded a small prototype into something that could be safely used on adult human beings. While I can’t say much about the ending for spoiler reasons, it also contained inconsistencies that seemed quite out of character for a protagonist who had devoted his life to scientific research. I really wish these portions of the storyline had been explained in greater detail as I desperately wanted to give this a higher rating!

Science hasn’t always been used for wholesome purposes, especially when the original creators of a device, drug, or other work are no longer fully in control of who does and doesn’t have access to it. My favourite moment happened when the narrator realized some of the more sinister applications for his invention long after he lost the ability to have a say in how it was used. His reaction to that moment was a tiny slice of the resolution, but it made all of the portions of it I cannot discuss in my review even more poignant. One of the reasons why I enjoy science fiction so much has to do with how it can coax an audience to think about serious, real-world issues like these that we might otherwise not think about, and on that note the author’s message certainly thrived.

Untethered was a wild ride.

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April 14, 2022 · 1:00 am

A Review of Tales from Monarch Bay: First Memories

Tales from Monarch Bay - First Memories by J.M. Acosta book cover. Image on cover shows a frozen river of some sort that’s either covered in snow or a large flock of birds. Title: Tales from Monarch Bay – First Memories

Author: J.M. Acosta

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 12, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, (mild) Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 55 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

All it took for Rien was to touch his old Rio player and a sudden rush of memories from High School came flooding back. To when he first moved to Monarch Bay and met The Keeper. When he had to stop the faceless man and save the world from an ancient threat. But are these really memories he wants to relive?

Review:

Content Warning: Vomiting and a little blood.  I will not discuss them in my review.

Everything in life has its own rhythm if you pay enough attention to it.

One of the biggest strengths of this novella in my opinion had to do with the way it explored old, half-forgotten memories. I think that just about all of us have had the experience of discovering such a memory after being exposed to something that reminds of us of the past. I was fascinated by how the narrator reacted to everything his mind dredged up, whether they were of happy times or terrible ones. It can be quite a jarring experience, and that aspect of it was captured just as nicely as the many other emotions the narrator felt as he relived that portion of his teenage years.

I had trouble keeping track of the plot and the world building. Some of their most important moments were described so rapidly and in such little detail that I wasn’t always sure what was happening. This was a technique that made sense in the beginning when Rien first discovered the MP3 player and had no idea what it was capable of doing, but I wasn’t quite sure why it was used later on once the stakes were higher. As much as I would have loved to give this a higher rating, I simply couldn’t do it due to these issues.

Beaches are such liminal spaces that it made perfect sense for so much of this tale to happen on and near them. It was interesting to take note of all of the connections the author made between the existence of ordinary beaches in our world and the otherworldly places they described that were every bit as transitory and filled with uncertainty. What made this portion of the storyline even better was how it was even more deeply explored in the ending, but that’s all I can say about that topic. If you want to learn more, you’ll simply have to go read it for yourself.

Tales from Monarch Bay – First Memories was a thought-provoking read.

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April 7, 2022 · 12:00 am

Stop That Infernal Racket! A Review of Drummer Boy

Drummer Boy by Nakia Cook book cover. Image on cover shows a series of five different types of drums lined up next to each other. Title: Drummer Boy

Author: Nakia Cook

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 27, 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Folklore, Contemporary

Length: 12 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Something besides the drum kit in the attic is creating a disturbance in the house, and it’s driving Nadia and Adam to wit’s end in this rhythmically haunting tale.

Review:

Content Warning: Car accident. I will not discuss it in my review.

Is there anything more irritating than living with a musician who thinks they need to practice all of the time?

I appreciated the simplicity of this tale. Yes, there were the requisite number of plot twists, but the narrator always stuck close to the original dilemma about living with someone who couldn’t stand the sound of drums being played. The storyline chugged along beautifully as it was, so I was glad to see the author give her characters so many opportunities to be their true selves. That was exactly the right decision to make in my opinion!

There was a minor plot hole involving the drums and why they existed in that particular house that I wished had been explained. As much as I want to go into detail about that issue, I’ll need to tread carefully here in order to avoid spoilers. Let’s simply say that I wondered why the characters had chosen such an unusual fate for them when I could think of several other practical solutions for it that seemed more likely than the one that was eventually revealed. This was the only thing holding me back from giving a five-star rating as everything else about it was well written.

This was my first time reading one of Ms. Cook’s stories, and it was a wonderful introduction to her imagination and writing style. She seemed to be the sort of writer who shared enough details for the reader to understand what is happening and then trusted us to fill in everything else for ourselves. For example, the physical appearances of the characters were barely mentioned at all, but their personalities shone through brightly. This pattern was repeated in other areas, too, like the ending that you’re all simply going to need to read for yourselves. I enjoyed coming up with my own explanations for everything she left unsaid and will keep an eye out for more of her work in the future.

Drummer Boy was a particularly good read for musicians or anyone who has ever lived with one.

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March 31, 2022 · 1:00 am

Visions in the Fog: A Review of Terror at Deventhier Bay

Terror at Deventhier Bay by Eloise Molano book cover. Image on cover shows an old wooden ship sailing on a calm sea at night. The full moon is peeking out behind the clouds behind them. Title: Terror at Deventhier Bay

Author: Eloise Molano

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: July 24, 2021

Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Historical

Length: 26 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

In a remote region of the north, in a huge bay was the town of Deventhier, the characteristic of this place was precisely the origin of the formation of a thick summer fog that was somewhat mysterious that was found in these partly cold waters that condition the Deventhier weather.
And it is precisely in the bay of this town where its locals talked about old stories of shipwrecks, inclement winter, terrifying fog, accidents of fishing boats and many stories of the dead and ghosts.
In one of these stories, a local named Manfred recounted the events that happened to an acquaintance named Albert on his trip on the ship named Zarpador, commanded by Captain Horace and with several well-known sailors among others, was Sigmur, Jhon and Hendrik.
On one of their fishing trips they had a fatal accident with a small boat caused by intense fog and heavy rains that did not give the sailors vision.
Due to the weather they could not rescue anyone from the small boat but in the following hours some strange phenomena and appearances began to happen on the boat, which drove its occupants to madness and increased the risk around the constant fog and cold. and the rain that lashed them.
Join me as I follow this story full of suspense, terror and dramatic testimonies from the people who suffered all these events.

Review:

Small towns are the perfect place for shocking news to spread.

The horror genre encompasses many different themes and styles. This isn’t something that so much as glances in the direction of anything gory or gross. Instead, it relies on secondhand information and the outer limits of the human imagination to made its audience shudder. That just so happens to be one of my favourite types of horror, and I’m pleased every time I find another author who writes this sort of stuff. Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that tried as many different ways as they could to scare me using these tools and preciousF few others.

This short story had a huge cast of characters that I struggled to keep track of. As much as I liked getting to know the characters, it would have been easier to remember who was who if the cast was smaller given how few pages the author had to work with when introducing everyone and explaining how they were connected to the haunting. Having fewer characters would have also left more space for the scary parts of the storyline, too, which I thought passed by too quickly given how much of the blurb was devoted to them.

With that being said, I did enjoy the conversational tone of this tale. It had been passed around to so many members of the community by the time the main character shared it that it had that wonderfully tattered feeling that sometimes happens when a story is passed through so many different points of view. That is to say, it came out in dribs and drabs instead of being as fresh and sharp as it might have been if those moments were described to the readers from the first person perspective. This was an excellent choice given the subject matter, and it made me curious to see what Ms. Molano might write next.

Terror at Deventhier Bay should be read by anyone who is looking for something spooky on a rainy or foggy night.

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March 17, 2022 · 1:00 am

Fixing Everything: A Review of Solaria

Title: Solaria Solaria by Thomas Volz 

Author: Thomas Volz

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: June 7, 2020

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 42 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

After encouraging his savant daughter to build a theoretical time machine, Eduardo Solmar scrambles to complete the project after Elishia mysteriously vanishes. His tampering with time reveals more about his future and the dangers of ripping the fabric of the space-time continuum.

Review:

Content Warning: Murder and grief.

If you’ve ever wished you could change the course of events of one single day, this might be right up your alley.

The character development was handled nicely, especially considering the fact that this was a short story and the author had limited time to show how memorable his characters were. I’m always thrilled to find authors who can pull that off with this form of writing. It isn’t easy, but it’s so rewarding when it does happen. Eduardo and Elishia both had unexpected layers to their personalities that were slowly revealed throughout their journey to build and use a time machine. I enjoyed getting to know them and would be thrilled to see a sequel if one is ever written.

While this was the sort of short story that works best if the twists in it are revealed quickly, it would have been helpful to have a little more world building along the way. I could easily picture Eduardo and his daughter Elishia because of how much effort was put into describing their physical appearances as well as their personalities. If only I could say the same thing about the setting! There was space here to dive into that topic, and I would have gone with a full five-star rating if the author had done so. Everything else about this tale was exciting and interesting.

With that being said, the ending was fantastic. It caught me off-guard at first, but I soon put all of the pieces together. I actually enjoyed feeling that mild sense of confusion while it lasted because of how nicely foreshadowed it ended up being and how well it suited the arc of the plot once I thought about it for a few moments. This was the sort of conclusion that the science fiction genre was meant for, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with it.

Solaria made me yearn for warm, summer days and for seeing if science fiction’s theories about time travel will someday turn out to be anything like what actual time travel might be like.

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February 17, 2022 · 1:00 am

Big Dreams to Achieve: A Review of Oli the Old Owl

Oli the Old Owl by Lee Keene book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of a young boy standing in a forest behind two houses. He’s looking at an owl that’s sitting in a tree whose leaves are gone. It’s winter and snow covers the ground. Title: Oli the Old Owl

Author: Lee Keene

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 29, 2021

Genres: Children’s, Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 10 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A story of loneliness and fantasy.

Imagination transmogrifying into Reality!

A secret memory that only the little boy will know!

A quaint memory that will stay with the little Sanford.

The Winter of 1998.

December.

Manchester, Tennessee.

7-year old Sanford ambles about….

An active imagination that takes him far and wide!

Questions for which physically, he will probably never get answers to……probably.

Could Sanford encounter a woeful creature with thoughts and abilities to share?

His imagination leads him amongst the bucolic grounds of Coffee County…..

Stories of the Old Owl, who woefully wasted his life, while wishing and thinking.

This Old Owl named Oli.

Oli hides high amongst the trees.

His fears have bedeviled him, and crushed his vim and vigor.

Oli wanted something that very few will achieve, but refused to change.

His insecurity enwreathed him mentally, and would not leave him!

How long can Oli hide?

If Sanford and Oli were to meet, what thoughts might transmogrify?

Review:

Winter is the perfect time to reflect on the past.

I admired the author’s willingness to experiment with children’s fiction. Just about every other book I’ve ever seen that was written for this age groups was a picture book, but this one contained no pictures at all other than the one illustrating the cover. It was also fascinating to meet a character who had not achieved the goal he set so many years before. Stories written for this age groups usually show characters succeeding at whatever they put their minds to do even if they have to fail a few times in the process. These were only two of the ways in which the author purposefully broke the rules, and I found his choices intriguing and refreshing. There is definitely something to be said for modelling emotionally healthy ways to fail to such a young audience.

There wasn’t a great deal of plot development or conflict in this tale. Sanford and Oli spent a great deal of time talking about their feelings and comparing Sanford’s plans for his life with Oli’s disappointment at how things had turned out in his own life. As much as I appreciated seeing male characters talk about their feelings so openly and freely, I did find myself feeling restless with how slowly everything was turning out. It would have been helpful if these two characters had faced an obstacle either together or separately that reinforced their earlier conversations. When combined with the lack of pictures, the slow pace would make me reluctant to read this to young children who haven’t recently dealt with a failure of some kind.

The fantasy elements of the plot were subtle and gentle. They made it all feel like a fable at times, although it didn’t actually seem to be based on any pre-existing fables or legends so far as I could tell. This pattern repeated itself with the handful of Christmas references that were thrown into the storyline but never expounded upon. While this wasn’t a Christmas story per se, it also reminded me of the many different types of tales that are told during and about that season. There is definitely something to be said for leaving so much room up for interpretation as this was something I could see myself recommending to people who don’t celebrate Christmas or generally read the fantasy genre. The little hints of those elements were enough to appeal to those of us who enjoy reading about such topics  but not so much as to dissuade other audiences from giving it a try in my opinion.

Oli the Old Owl was a thought-provoking read.

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December 22, 2021 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Reluctant Familiar’s Guide to Christmas Tree Defence 

Book cover for The Reluctant Familiar’s Guide to Christmas Tree Defence by Bethany Hoeflich. Image on cover is a photoshopped picture of a cat wearing a Santa hat and sitting next to a Christmas treeTitle: The Reluctant Familiar’s Guide to Christmas Tree Defence

Author: Bethany Hoeflich

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 20, 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 19 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

After a traumatizing pumpkin spice candle accident, Mr. Fluffykins is looking forward to a quiet night curled up under his Christmas tree.

Unfortunately, life has other plans . . .

Review:

What could be better than a cat spending time with his beloved Christmas tree?

The world building was excellent. At one point I paused and tried to figure out if this was part of a series because of how intricately everything was explained to the reader during the fast-paced and exciting plot. While I didn’t find evidence of other books set in this world, I was delighted by how much effort the author put into layering everything together. She couldn’t have done a better job of placing her characters in a setting that was filled with tantalizing details about how it worked that were all filtered through the discerning mind of a cat who loved his humans but was only occasionally interested in the minutia of their magical abilities.

I adored this book’s sense of humour. It was slightly irreverent at times in exactly the way anyone might expect to find from a feline narrator who had strong opinions about how the world should work. I couldn’t stop chuckling as I read it, especially once Mr. Fluffykins was left at home to his own devices and realized his evening wasn’t going to be the restful one he’d been hoping for. His reaction to that scene was as perfectly cat-like as it was just plain hilarious.

Mr. Fluffykins was a relatable and amusing protagonist who I began rooting for immediately. The worse his predicament became, the more I hoped  he’d figure out a way to resolve his conflict peacefully and get back to the catnap he’d been looking forward to all day. Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that made perfect sense in his mind as they were unfolding but that I knew his humans were going to be completely confused about once they returned home. The author did a wonderful job of showing how the same event can be interpreted so differently depending on which point of view one takes. This is even more true during the holidays when many folks are busier than usual!

The Reluctant Familiar’s Guide to Christmas Tree Defence was utterly delightful from the first scene to the final one.

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November 25, 2021 · 1:00 am

No Space of Regret: A Review of A Covid Christmas Carol

Book cover for A Covid Christmas Carol by Evan Sykes. image on cover shows a Christmas tree wearing a mask and some googly eyes. Title: A Covid Christmas Carol

Author: Evan Sykes

Publisher: Junco Books (Self-Published)

Publication Date: December 19, 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Holiday, Paranormal, Retelling, Contemporary

Length: 88 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

 

The 2020 Holiday Season might have been cancelled by this year’s super-villain, Covid-19, but fear not! Good cheer is at hand in this hilarious, satirical retelling of one of the season’s most loved stories: A Covid Christmas Carol.

Mr. Anatole Gasper and Dickens’ Scrooge have a lot in common: Both their business partners are dead; both are curmudgeonly, solitary and mean; and both get their wake-up call in a series of wild, haunted dreams on Christmas Eve. For Gasper—as the year is 2020—these dreams include a huge, orange, Covid-spreading turkey that tweets, a doddering phantom riding a decrepit blue donkey without direction, and Santa, of course, whose red-nosed reindeers for once shed an unwelcome light over the festivities.

There’s nothing more heartening than seeing a dyed-in-the-wool grouch change into a merry, old soul, and Gasper’s ghostly dreams promise to do just that.

So, while this Holiday Season might be like no other, spend an hour in the company of this modern Scrooge and let the festive cheer flow!

Review:

Content Warning: Heart attack and Covid-19.

Don’t let the cover of this book fool you. This is just as much a Thanksgiving tale as it is a Christmas one, and the lessons in it can be applied to many other winter holidays as well!

I appreciated the author’s light touch on the social messages he included in this tale. Mr. Dickens writing style worked well for the nineteenth century, but the modern approach to gently nudging readers in certain directions in this retelling was perfect for the twenty-first century. Mr. Sykes’ decision to write it this way was an excellent one. While this wasn’t my only reason for choosing a five-star rating, it certainly influenced it heavily.

It’s rare for me to come across speculative fiction stories that occur during Thanksgiving, so I was excited to read this one. Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that showed what Thanksgiving was like for Gasper when he was a child. They went a long way in explaining how and why he’d become such a greedy and socially isolated man as an adult. I simultaneously wanted to hug the person he was as a child and encourage his adult self to seek professional help for his often dysfunctional behaviour. The mixture of emotions he stirred up in me made me want to learn more about him, too. He was a complex and interesting character for sure.

I loved the way the author included Covid-19 in the storyline as well. While I can’t go into much detail about that without giving away spoilers, it felt perfectly natural. The foreshadowing for it was subtle and well done. It had a timeless feeling to it as well. This could have been set at nearly any time during the pandemic due to how carefully it was written, and I think it will also age nicely over the next few years at bare minimum, too.

The writing style was descriptive but never flowery. It gave me the exact right amount of details about the characters and settings. I could picture all of them clearly in my mind, but the formation of them never interrupted the fast-paced storyline. Once again, the author’s homage to Mr. Dickens style was undeniable, and his attempt to modernize such a familiar old tale couldn’t have been done any better. I was quite impressed by all of the work Mr. Sykes put into this and will be keeping an eye out for more of his stories in the future.

A Covid Christmas Carol was a thought-provoking read that is as relevant today as it was in 2020. I will end this review with a quote from both the original Christmas Carol as well as this retelling of it: “no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity missed.”

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November 18, 2021 · 1:00 am

Too Old for Santa: A Review of Christmas Presence

Book cover for Christmas Presence by Tony Bertauski. Image on cover is a closeup of a man who has a white beard and moustache and is wearing a wool hat.Title: Christmas Presence

Author: Tony Bertauski

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 31, 2019

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult, Holiday

Length: 25 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Worst Christmas ever.

Christmas was about traditions. Currently, Zay and her mom had about five traditions, things like gingerbread cookies and tree decorating. Not going to work.

Zay has to stay home. On Christmas. Alone.

Mom said her boss felt real bad about the whole thing so he was sending a nanny. It just keeps getting worse. She’s fourteen years old. She doesn’t need a nanny. But then the nanny shows up. She’s not really a she. Or a he.

More of an it.

The nanny shows her that it’s not really magic that makes Christmas special. It’s the adventure. And when it’s all over, she’ll never forget.

The best Christmas ever.

Review:

Teenagers don’t believe in magic, right?

Fourteen is a tough age. Zay was too old to truly get into many of the Christmas traditions she enjoyed as a little kid, but she was also a bit too young to understand why some adults get so excited to keep them going. Mr. Bertauski did a wonderful job of capturing this confusing stage of life and how it can affect not only the teenagers going through it but also everyone around them as well. I had compassion for Zay as she decided how to respond to her mother’s love of the Christmas holidays.

This short story was marketed as an introduction to a new series about retelling of classic holiday legends. Even though it was the first instalment of this series so far as I could tell, I still struggled to understand what was going on at times. There was never quite enough information about the nanny who showed up to entertain Zay or why he was so different from what she was expecting. While I did understand some parts of this universe, other portions were never quite clear to me.  I would have happily gone with a much higher rating if these things had either been explained in greater detail or if the blurb had been clear that this wasn’t necessarily something that was supposed to be a standalone read.

I was a huge fan of the author’s reinterpretation of Santa Claus as an individual as well as a mythical figure. This was where the science fiction elements of the storyline shone the brightest. They made me perk up and wonder how everything worked, especially once Santa began to reveal a little bit more about himself. There was so much creativity in these passages. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for what the author comes up with next based on how much effort he put into rethinking this classic character.

Christmas Presence was a lighthearted read that I’d recommend to anyone who is either currently a teenager or who has a teenaged loved one in their life.

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November 11, 2021 · 1:00 am

A Review of the Last Photograph of John Buckley

The Last Photograph of John Buckley by T.J. Brown book cover. Image on cover shows a man’s bandaged face as he’s lying down. Only his eyes are visible. Title: The Last Photograph of John Buckley

Author: T.J. Brown

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 10, 2016

Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Historical

Length: 34 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

When a photographic retoucher is commissioned to fix the abnormalities on a Great War portrait, he finds his own past and that of the subject beginning to connect. Are his personal nightmares returning, or is it something more? A short ghost story in the M.R. James tradition, The Last Photograph of John Buckley is a dark tale of past crimes and unfinished business.

Review:

Content Warning: Trauma, mental illness (including mentions of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), murder, and vivid descriptions of the horrors of war. I will be briefly mentioning trauma and mental illness in my review.

Is pushing through the pain a smart idea?

Mr. Brown had a poetic writing style that rapidly pulled me into the storyline. Sometimes I felt as though I were standing beside the main character and discovering new clues with him instead of reading about his experiences. The author included so many small details that made his characters and the eras they lived in come alive in my imagination. This was my first experience with his work. It made me yearn to explore the rest of his oeuvre in good time.

The character development was strong and believable. Even though the protagonist’s name wasn’t revealed until much later on in the storyline, I quickly got to know him for who he truly was as well as who he had been before the traumatic events of World War II reshaped his mind and personality for the worse.  It was exciting to learn so much about someone without having access to such an ordinary piece of information about him. I totally understood why the author wrote it this way and thought it fit the protagonist’s exceedingly cautious and frightened nature perfectly.

Speaking of trauma, this tale had a lot to say on that topic. It was also filled with strong opinions about how the limited understanding of mental health concerns during the first and second World Wars affected not only the soldiers who fought in them but also everyone from their closest loved ones to members of their communities who experienced the echoes of those old wounds without necessarily knowing why they existed. While I cannot go into detail about this without sharing spoilers, it was especially poignant for me as someone who comes from an extended family that included people whose mental health was permanently damaged by these wars. As much attention has already been paid to the war is hell trope, this tale managed to find a fresh way to explore it that never once backed down from all of the terrible ways in which traumatic memories of the battlefield can harm a community for multiple generations.

Don’t be scared off by the horror tag if you’re not generally into that genre. There were a couple of short scary scenes in this book, but it was never gory or gross. Instead, the narrator quietly crafted a thoughtful work about grief, trauma, and the after-effects of war that was as poignant as it was honest. Anyone who is closely acquainted with this sort of tale may be able to spot the plot twists coming in advance, but it always came across to me as something that was intended to mindfully explore each moment in the protagonist’s life rather than shock the audience with a twist we weren’t supposed to see coming. It was something that I liked as a veteran reader in this genre but that also seemed like it  could easily appeal to audiences who don’t have a lot of experience with the horror genre in general.

The Last Photograph of John Buckley was one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. I can’t recommend it enthusiastically enough!

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