Tag Archives: Self-Published

August 8, 2024 · 1:00 am

For the Sake of Knowledge: A Review of Grim Future

Book cover for Grim Future by Nick S. Nicholas. Image on cover shows the silhoutte of an adult human standing on a hill after dark. They can see part of the sky illuminated either by yellow and purple northern lights or by the last vestiges of sunlight as dusk ends and night begins. Or maybe it’s caused by both! It is too dark in this scene to show the age, sex, or race of this person other than their adult stature. So imagine yourself there if you wish. Title: Grim Future

Author: Nick S Nicholas

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: June 24, 2024

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 31 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Grim Future is a short story with the feel of an Indiana Jones meets the Mummy vs Space Invaders! Alec Kennedy, his love interest Rhonda Williams, and their expedition team’s leader Nathan Gray embark on an adventure to Egypt, hoping to discover an artifact that elevates them and their university sponsors into the international archeological spotlight. What they find will change the world in a way they never expected…

Content Warning: Murder, Sexism (I will discuss the latter briefly in my review)

Review:

Tombs are a window to the past. What sort of past that might be is an entirely different question altogether.

The character development was handled nicely. Alec’s self-absorption and difficulty with noticing subtle changes in his social environment quietly influenced every decision he made, and I was curious to see how he’d react to this expedition given that he was working in a group and would have to share the glory if anything of note was discovered. This was a pattern that repeated itself with other characters, too, whose flaws only made them more interesting to me because of how important they were to future plot twists. While I can’t say that I particularly liked most of the characters here, that is not a bad thing by any means. Honestly, unlikeable people can be the best options for certain types of storylines, and this is one of them.

While I could make an educated guess about what they were seeking, I do wish the ending had been longer and included more details about the antagonists’ motivations for behaving the way they did. The beginning and middle portions were so well written that I was surprised to see things suddenly be wrapped up the way that they were. There was a lot of space here for exposition, and I would have happily given a much higher rating if even if a paragraph or two of it had been added to explain what their precise goals were.

With that being said, I loved the way Mr. Nicholas turned certain science fiction tropes about female characters and what their roles should be in this genre on their head. I was a little concerned about where this was headed at first based on Alec’s one-dimensional approach to interacting with his love interest,  but I’m glad I kept reading anyway. Just because things appear to be one way in the opening scene does not at all mean they will still feel the same way in the final one. Keep that in mind as you read if your initial reaction is the same as mine was.

Grim Future was a wild ride.

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August 1, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of Among Mirages

Book cover for Among Mirages: A Short Story by Billie Dean Shoemate III. Image on cover shows a drawing of a ship mast and a tattered sailed against a blackish-purple sky. It is past dusk and night has almost completely fallen, so precious little else can be seen in this image. Title: Among Mirages

Author: Billie Dean Shoemate III

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 8, 2020

Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary, Historical

Length: 33 pages

Source: I receive a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

The crew of the ship tell preposterous stories. Stories of dry land, of other ships that sail the ocean. Of vast cities populated by people. Odd visions. Blasphemies that would get a person tossed into the ocean. Still . . . those on the crew talk in hushed tones. Something about the ocean is haunted, and it has something to do with this ship in particular.

Billie Dean Shoemate III puts a new twist on an age-old story. The story of a ship that, when the reader figures it out, has been terrifying sailors for centuries. ‘Among Mirages’ will breathe new life into a tale that has always been told by seafaring people . . . and always will be.

Content Warning: Religion (an amalgamation of various types of Christianity).

Review:

Certainty isn’t everything.

I loved Martin, the doubtful narrator of this piece. Honestly, I would have had the exact same questions about where the ship came from and why they kept seeing things their captain insisted did not exist if I were in his shoes. The tension between observable facts and religious certainties in this universe was handled beautifully. Regardless of your thoughts on religion in general, there is a lot of food for thought here for anyone who has ever found an inconsistency in their own belief structure and puzzled over it.

This was inspired by a popular nautical legend that I wish had been shared in more detail in the last few scenes. I ended up looking it up online as I was only vaguely familiar with the stories associated with it and did not know in advance that this was going to be the theme. The storytelling would have been tighter in my opinion if a few sentences explaining this legend had been included for the sake of other readers like me, but I do look forward to hearing dissenting opinions from people who were similarly unaware of this legend and did not have my same experience here. Writing reviews is subjective, after all. What didn’t quite work for me might be perfect for someone else!

The twist at the end was excellent. I enjoyed going back and taking note of clues that were shared earlier on in the timeline I hadn’t exactly known how to fit together earlier, especially when it came to the purpose of this ship. It’s difficult to go into much detail without sharing spoilers, although I appreciated the way the author talked around the subject until it was time for the big reveal…much as I am attempting to do now! This isn’t an easy thing to accomplish, but it sure makes for an entertaining reading experience when it’s done as smoothly as it was here.

Among Mirages made me wish for a sequel.

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July 25, 2024 · 1:00 am

The Other Side of the Coin: A Review of A Fairy Tale Murder

Book cover for “A Fairy Tale Murder” by Dulcinea Norton-Smith. Image on cover is a close-up photo of assorted jelly beans. Their colours include black, orange, yellow, purple, green, light green, and red. Title: A Fairy Tale Murder

Author: Dulcinea Norton-Smith

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: May 11, 2011

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Retelling

Length: 14 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Kids are always good and witches are always bad right? Wrong you idiot! Step inside A Fairy Tale Murder and discover the grisly truth.

Content Warning: Child neglect and abandonment. I will not go into any detail about this in my review.

Review:

So much depends on how you define the phrase happily ever after.

I strongly recommend going into this without reading any spoilers about it ahead of time. This is one of those cases when the plot twists work best, at least in my opinion, if the reader hasn’t been tipped off about them in advance and is hopefully surprised by everything they are about to read. What I can say is that I enjoyed looking at a famous fairy tale from a new perspective. Character development wasn’t something that most of those stories spent a lot of time thinking about, so there is a lot of room to explain why certain characters from them behaved the way they did and how their choices could be interpreted in many different ways if you finally have all of the information instead of only some of it. Kudos to the author for using this approach to breathe fresh life into something so well known.

As much as I liked the premise, I struggled with the plot holes. There were multiple instances of characters either not communicating with each other or not thinking through the rational consequences of their actions. It was understandable when the kids did it as they were traumatized and their brains were still developing, but seeing adults do the same thing so often was hard to figure out. If only a few more scenes had been included to help explain why the characters consistently made decisions that that they should have thought twice about. I so desperately wanted to give this one a higher rating!

Dympna was such an interesting protagonist. It made me smile to read about the details of her life that might have been exaggerated just a little in order to make this feel more magical. Then again, maybe everything happened exactly as she recounted and she was simply someone who broke all sorts of rules about what life in the Middle Ages was like! There is definitely something to be said for leaving such things up to the reader’s imagination and not giving us strict input about how we should interpret them.

A Fairy Tale Murder was a creative look at an old classic. Now I must end this review before I accidentally give any clues as to which one I’m talking about! 

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July 18, 2024 · 1:00 am

Supernatural Business: A Review of Iago Wick and the Vampire Queen

Book cover for Iago Wick and the Vampire Queen (Lovelace & Wick #1.5) by Jennifer Rainey. Image on cover shows a black and white drawing of a woman wearing a late 1800’s style dress and a large, floppy hat. There is a small ruffle of fabric around her neck as the dress covers up every bit of her torso and arms and much of her neck, too. This drawing is surrounded by a drawing of a Victorian-style floral frame that has been drawn on top of a red, wallpaper-like surface. Title: Iago Wick and the Vampire Queen (Lovelace & Wick #1.5) by Jennifer Rainey

Author: Jennifer Rainey

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 30, 2017

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical, LGBTQ

Length: 79 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

As a demon, Iago Wick has made quite a career out of conjuring mischief and mayhem in the name of Hell, but this time, perhaps he’s gone a bit too far.

After deliberately foiling the plans of a spoiled vampire—all in the name of fun, really!—Iago discovers that the vampire in question is no ordinary bloodsucker. She’s the newly-appointed matriarch of one of the oldest vampire families in America, and she’s very angry.

Soon, Iago is caught in a war with the vampires and their cyborg servants. Will he settle his score with the clan of bloodsuckers or will Iago find himself at the mercy of the Vampire Queen? What precisely is the matter with those strange cybernetic servants, anyway? And most importantly, will Iago ever get the smell of garlic out of his clothes?

“Iago Wick and the Vampire Queen” is a 17,000-word short story prequel to The Lovelace & Wick Series.

Content Warning: Murder and kidnapping. I will not mention these topics in my review.

Review:

Supernatural business is nothing to mess around with.

I enjoyed the quiet and unassuming small town setting. Honestly, the residents of Marlowe probably wouldn’t have believed what was going on behind closed doors in their sleepy community even if one of the main characters had decided to reveal their true identities to everyone. Peaceful places are a good option for hiding in plain sight, and I liked the way the author showed the many ways in which awful deeds can done right under the noses of people who think they know all of the local gossip already.

This novella had a dry sense of humor that I struggled to connect with due to the terrible things that were simultaneously happening to so many of the human characters. I’d read about either one of these things on their own, but the combination of them simply didn’t work for me as a reader. It felt a little too flippant to move between an edgy joke and another description of the ways in which vampires harm the humans around them. This is a subjective piece of criticism, of course, and I’m sure there are a lot of readers out there who love this sort of dark writing style. I’m simply not one of them, and I found myself wishing I could stick to the more lighthearted elements of the plot and skip over the rest.

With that being said, Iago’s personality was such an interesting one. There was a strong, sharp sense of danger surrounding him due to the fact that he’s (obviously) a demon and therefore not exactly the most wholesome fellow around. He had his own moral code that often didn’t match up to what a human might consider a reasonable or kind thing to do, but I did admire the way he stuck to it no matter who or what might have tempted him to break the rules of hell just once.

Iago Wick and the Vampire Queen was a playful read.

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July 11, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of Tapping at Twilight

Title: Tapping at Twilight Book cover for Tapping at Twilight by Kassandra Alvarado. Image on cover is a close-up photograph of an old-fashioned wooden door that has an iron hinge and knocker. Both the hinge and the knocker are rusting, and the wood on the door is cracking with age.

Author: Kassandra Alvarado

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date:  February 26, 2013

Genres: Paranormal, Historical

Length: 7 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A quiet London evening is disturbed by quiet rapping at the door, who or what could it be?

Review:

Visitors aren’t welcomed here.

Ms. Alvarado had a descriptive writing style that pulled me into the storyline before I even finished the first sentence. Seriously, it was that fast!  I adored her use of alliteration and the vivid manner in which she described even the most ordinary details of the setting. There is nothing like settling into such crisp writing while allowing it to carry you away to a faraway time and place. She is clearly a talented writer, and I hope to read more of her work soon.

With that being said, I did find myself wishing for much stronger plot development as I read this. I had so many unanswered questions by the time I finished the seventh and final page of it. By no means did I expect everything to be resolved, but it was disappointing for me as a reader to experience a rapid buildup of tension and intrigue only to be left hanging at the end about what was going on with all of the rapping at the door. As much as I wanted to give this one a higher rating, the sudden and unsatisfying ending dampened my enjoyment of a tale that was otherwise delightful.

The protagonist’s character development was well done, though. Mister Westerfield was a sympathetic man who had been denied his greatest wish in his youth by his disapproving parents. Now that he was old and settled in life, he finally had the opportunity to make some of his own decisions about how to pass the time. It’s not as common as it ought to be for narrators who are senior citizens to be the centre of attention, so I relished getting to know this character and imagining what adventures might still await him in life.

Tapping at Twilight had an old-fashioned feel to it that suited the subject matter nicely.

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July 4, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod

Book cover for The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod by Bill Russo. Image on cover shows a few dead trees in a flooded area that could be a swamp or the overflow area for a river. The sky above the trees is blue with a few puffy white clouds in them, and you can see a forest of healthy trees in the distance. The water looks like it has been recently disturbed as it is not perfectly still.Title: The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod

Author: Bill Russo

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 9, 2017

Genres: Horror, Contemporary

Length: 26 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

This is not a Halloween story though you might find monsters in it, depending on what your definition of a monster is. Rather, it is the tale of two young men in search of an eerie pond they read about in a book – a strange lake said to be filled with man-eating catfish. Against the counsel of a wily old Cape Codder who claims there’s no truth to the story, they venture into the wild, uninhabited area in hopes of collecting specimens to sell to a museum in Maine. You could go to that Museum (It really does exist) and see if there are any collections of Killer Catfish on display – or if you find it more convenient, you may read the story!

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

Review:

If you know better, will you do better?

There wasn’t a lot of time for character development in such a short piece, but Mr. Russo definitely made the best of what he had. I especially enjoyed getting to know Anse, a slightly crusty old man who worked at a tackle shop and often gave tourists advice on the best fishing spots in the area. He was a little gruff at first glance, but he had excellent reasons for coming across this way that I’ll leave up to other readers to decipher for themselves. Honestly, I probably would have behaved the same way if I were in this character’s shoes. He didn’t exactly live in the safest part of the world, after all, and dealing with constant streams of visitors who weren’t always keen to listen to reason only made things worse.

I liked Anse’s explanation for why Rico and Angelo, the visitors, decided to brush aside his warning and go fishing at Kaycee Pond despite its scary reputation. Not everyone in the world has common sense or is willing to consider other points of view. Sometimes this only leads to minor inconveniences, but occasionally it can be wildly dangerous to ignore the advice of people who have many years of experience on a specific subject like, say, catfish that are much larger and smarter than they should be.

The ending was perfectly frighting. While I can’t go into much detail about what happened in it without giving away spoilers, I can say that it added new layers of meaning not only to everything Anse already knew about that area but also to why nobody lived near that pond anymore and why everyone else in the area was also terrified of getting too close to the water. This was one of those cases when basic details about what happened were more than enough to tickle my imagination and make me feel very glad that fishing isn’t one of my hobbies.

The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod made me shudder.

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June 27, 2024 · 1:00 am

Going Home Again: A Review of Forgotten Homeland

Book cover for Forgotten Homeland - An Exmoor Ghost Story (A Lorne Turner Novella) by Joe Talon. Image on cover shows someone walking alongside an old stone cottage on a foggy day. They are so bundled up in their coat you can’t tell their sex, race, age, or anything else about them other than the fact that they seem to be roughly adult-sized (or a very tall preteen). The fog is so thick that you can see only the faintest outline of what might be a tree in the distance. Everything you can see has been washed out by fog and looks kind of grey. There are three birds flying overhead the person who is walking. Title: Forgotten Homeland – An Exmoor Ghost Story (A Lorne Turner Novella)

Author: Joe Talon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 17, 2021

Genres: Mystery, Paranormal

Length: 58 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Lorne Turner, a broken soldier, arrives home for the first time in twenty years to an empty, lonely farmhouse on Exmoor.

The coming days reveal the despair of a farm drowning in debt. The coming nights reveal something far worse.

Lorne doesn’t know if the noises, the crack, crack, crack, are the wind ravaging the moor, memories savaging his mind or the ghosts tearing the veil, begging for help.

This is a short novella which is an introduction to the Lorne Turner Mysteries. The whispering of Exmoor’s dead need justice.

Content Warning: A character who has war-related PTSD (including flashbacks to battle scenes) and who occasionally drinks too much alcohol; a (probably?) accidental death; a  character whose leg was badly broken in an accident.  I will briefly mention them in my review.

Review:

A quiet, peaceful countryside life in the family farmhouse sure sounds nice…but that’s not at all what’s going on here.

Lorne’s character development was handled beautifully. I’m lenient about how much of this I expect in shorter works given the very limited amount of space they have to work with, but no such grace was necessary here. Mr. Talon excelled at packing dozens of facts about Lorne’s personality, tragic backstory, and personal development into nearly every single scene in this novella. He couldn’t have done a better job at making this character come alive in my imagination, and I wasn’t about to stop reading until I knew how this would end.

One of the cool things about the paranormal storyline was how intertwined it was with everything else that was going on: serious financial difficulties, a missing girl, the protagonist’s struggles with post traumatic stress disorder, unresolved grief, and so much more. This gave the ghostly elements of the plot an even stronger reason to be included as it wasn’t immediately clear how much of them were genuinely happening versus whether any of them might have been influenced or even accidentally misinterpreted by Lorne’s already fragile state of mind. He was so preoccupied by his horrendous memories of the war and the physical and emotional pain he still carried from his injuries there that he didn’t always know what was happening around him, after all. This is something I’d especially recommend to readers who may not typically be into ghost stories but who are open to trying an excellent example of what this genre can be like.

I also appreciated the fact that not every conflict was wrapped up neatly. While I did feel a sense of closure about some of the short term conflicts, there is still ample room here to dig deeply into everything that can’t be fixed in a few dozen pages. Some problems need much longer periods of time to be addressed, and I’m glad that nothing that required such extensive work was brushed under the rug. What an exciting way to begin a new series.

Forgotten Homeland – An Exmoor Ghost Story was utterly perfect.

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June 20, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of An English Heaven

Book cover for An English Heaven by Julie Bozza. Image on cover shows a closeup shot of some beautiful little pink flowers. Their petals are long, thin, and drooping a little. Title: An English Heaven

Author: Julie Bozza

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 15, 2017

Genres: Historical, Paranormal, LGBTQ+

Length: 12 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

A muddy trench in France during the Great War wasn’t the most auspicious place for Tom and Michael to reach an understanding of their own natures. A small, individual tragedy unfolds … But then Tom discovers a place beyond, where he and other men like him are blessed with all that life denied them.

Content Warning: Murder.

Review:

Healing comes in many forms.

This is one of those cases when it honestly doesn’t matter how much a reader knows in advance what is going to happen to the protagonist, so feel free to read the blurb or skip it as you prefer. What truly mattered in my opinion was how Tom reacted to the news that he did not survive World War I and will never again return to those muddy, dangerous trenches to fight another day. That is something I will not be digging into deeply in my review in order to avoid giving away any important spoilers, but it certainly gave me a lot of food for thought as I read this short and charming tale. Everyone reacts to unexpected news differently, and you can tell a lot about someone by what they say in the moments after the truth is revealed.

One of the things I adored about this tale was how it approached the idea of healing. Tom, the main character, was not only dealing with the trauma of war and his recent death, he’d also spent his entire young life hiding his sexual orientation. That, too, was a trauma he carried with him into the afterlife even though keeping such things hidden really was the only option for young queer men in the 1910s.

Obviously, there isn’t a lot of space for world building in only twelve pages, but I was impressed with how much Ms. Bozza was able to include. Tom was finally free to make his own decisions about what his existence might look like after death, and I was curious to see which one he might choose as all of them had their own merits. This would have made a great series, but it also worked really nicely as a quick dip into a world so full of possibility. A small taste of what might happen next was all I needed to imagine many possible endings for this character that would have fit his personality nicely.

An English Heaven was heartwarming and the perfect read for Pride Month!

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June 13, 2024 · 1:00 am

Speaking the Truth: A Review of Foo Foo

Book cover for Foo Foo by Patrick Riot. Image on cover is a drawing of a someone wearing a hat shaped like a bunny’s head. The hat is white and has two long rabbit years, once of which is partially bent over. The insides of the ears are red. The person in this image does not have a face. Perhaps they are a mannequin? Title: Foo Foo

Author: Patrick Riot

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 29, 2011

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Retelling

Length: 39 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

The mice of the Squeak Republic have been attacked by rabbits! Can Milton keep his neighbors from going insane in the face of an overwhelming, shadowy fear?
Foo Foo is a young-adult parable that lives in the friction zone between group-think and individuality, war and peace, terror and freedom. Milton, a rather ordinary but rational field mouse, clashes with his neighbors as they succumb to their irrational fears. As a recognition of true patriotism, as long as Edward Snowden remains free, so shall this book.

Review:

Content Warning: fascism and mob violence. I will not discuss these topics in my review.

Fables are for everyone.

Bunny Foo Foo was something I spent a lot of time thinking about as a child. Why would a fluffy little rabbit irritate field mice? What did the field mice have to say to each other about those experiences after their tormentor had hopped away? While I don’t want to give away spoilers in this review, I was intrigued by the idea of exploring this little world more deeply and looking at one possible way things could have turned out. A story can share part of the truth while ignoring the rest of it, and any number of facts in and of themselves might not be as clear-cut or as easy to understand if separated from everything else that is known about a situation.

I loved the way Mr. Riot blended together a retelling of that classic poem with a sharp warning about the dangers of black-and-white thinking, authoritarianism, and fascism. This tale contained multiple layers of meaning that fed into each other more and more often as the final scene grew nearer. Each possible interpretation stands on its own for readers who may want to focus on one aspect of it at a time or who maybe aren’t quite old enough to catch all of the references at the moment. That is not an easy feat to accomplish by any means, so I must commend the author for making it look so effortless and creating something that can teach a reader something new when they return to it a few years from now.

What a perfect ending. Did I want to keep reading about what happened next? Of course, but I was also satisfied by how things were wrapped up and thought the foreshadowing, especially from the first few scenes, paid off nicely by the final sentence. There is definitely something to be said for leaving one’s audience wishing for just one more chapter. Based on how much I enjoyed this short story, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what the author comes up with next.

Foo Foo was thought provoking.

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June 6, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of A Creak in the Night

Book cover for A Creak In The Night by by BL Maxwell. image on the cover shows a ghostly white mist floating through the dusty hall of an old house. The floors are made of pretty little tiles and there is a skylight in the ceiling. The mist looks like it is beginning to coagulate into a ghostly-shape, but it is still pretty formless and ethereal at the moment. Title: A Creak in the Night (Valley Ghosts Series)

Author: B.L. Maxwell

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 29, 2024

Genres: Paranormal, LGBTQ, Romance, Contemporary

Length: 41 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Dean surprises Jimbo with a weekend way to the exotic location of—Virginia. Since the two of them got married Dean has become more curious about the paranormal, while Jimbo prefers to distance himself from it. As soon as they arrive at the hotel Jimbo knows something isn’t quite right, and one ride in the elevator confirms it. What was supposed to be a romantic vacation soon turns into a ghost hunting mission, but this time Jimbo and Dean are on their own without the rest of the Running Scared Paranormal Research guys. Dean is thrilled, but Jimbo knows, it’s never as simple as a creaky elevator.

Review:

Content Warning: Characters getting stuck in an elevator.

It’s hard to find time for romance when ghosts are getting into mischief.

One of the interesting things about this short story was that I was never quite sure where it fit into the rest of this series. It gave me the impression that it was written a decent amount of time after the first book as it discussed some characters and events without going into them in great detail. On the other hand, this also felt a little too lighthearted to have taken place in the most serious phases of a series when tensions are running high. I enjoyed my attempt to figure out where this should be placed and didn’t mind one bit that it was never made clear. To the best of my knowledge, this was written to be an easy introduction to these characters and the exciting sorts of adventures they have while trying to clear disruptive spirits from all sorts of different buildings. There is definitely something to be said for releasing such a tale!

The communication between Dean and Jimbo was inconsistent. In some scenes, they wordlessly anticipated what each other needed before being asked, but there was also a moment when Dean purposefully withheld an important piece of information about this romantic trip from Jimbo. Obviously, there are times in just about any relationship when one might not communicate as clearly as they should for a wide variety of reasons, but I was still surprised by this oversight and didn’t think it fit in very well with what I’d learned about Dean’s meticulous and safety-conscious personality thus far.

I thought the paranormal storyline was handled nicely, especially given how short this piece was. Not every haunting needs a drawn-out  conclusion, so keeping things moving was a good choice for both the plot and the characters. It whetted my appetite for more and reminded me that, just like in life, it’s best not to assume in advance how easy or difficult something will be. Worrying doesn’t do any good, and just because one haunting was a tough case doesn’t mean that the next spirit will behave the same way.

A Creak in the Night was intriguing and made me curious to check out the rest of the Valley Ghosts adventures.

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