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Text of the page (random words):
couldn t refuse and owen wanted to stick with aiming towards his dream of opening his own tattoo shop all of owen s friends seem to be moving forward with their lives whilst he feels stuck but when his best friend invites everyone on an alaskan cruise and jacob is going to be there owen panics it is clear that both of them still have feelings for each other but what do they really want for the future it s so exciting to find t4t romance novels and this one has a fun premise with the cruise offering a slightly different backdrop for the second chance romance and the focus being on them still loving each other but needing to work out how that can fit into their lives owen has a lot going on as a character and it was nice to get such depth to him bringing plenty of emotion to the story and i liked how the side characters also got plenty going on for them my favourite element of the book was how the banter between all of the characters including between owen and jacob was written as i love good banter in a romance novel there were also a lot of detail in the narrative whether about owen s arthritis or just little things like the feel of a hoodie and that brought a lot to the book too overall this book was a great trans queer romance novel that had a lot of things to enjoy and a satisfyingly not magic ending that focuses on the characters having potential but not everything on a plate i devoured it in basically one sitting tagged book review books ship happens the house that eats the dead by max doty july 29 2026 april 3 2026 fiendfullyreading the house that eats the dead is a horror novel about a family who move into a dream home only to find it has a special hunger claire feels like her family have made it when they move into a big house in the suburbs her two children love it and and her lawyer husband tom feels like it is the chance for him to move up the career ladder as they unpack they notice that things start to disappear the house is hungry and it can be fed can claire and anyone else who suspects the house s secret resist the temptation to make use of its powers this is the kind of straightforward horror book that does what it says in the title some haunted house books have more twists when it comes to the house itself but this one doesn t the house eats the dead it isn t a scary book but any horror elements come more from people and what they would do with that concept than the house itself which never feels malevolent just doing what it does the twists and turns of characters plots are fairly predictable too but that doesn t mean that they don t work for a fun read that hits the expected plot moments i can imagine this book working well adapted into a film and the house s eating would probably be more horrifying onscreen than it can be when reading it the main frustration with this book is that other than claire and her sister to some extent there isn t much backstory for anyone including the house it feels like a bit like a horror story for people who don t like the amount of backstory that characters get from writers like stephen king if you find that there s too much information and not enough plot the blurb i read compared this book to grady hendrix but i think that in hendrix s best works including how to sell a haunted house there is both emotional depth to the characters and more to the concept than the title the concept at the heart of this book and the realities that claire faces are dark and interesting especially the idea that all of the serial killers and creeps want the house but it could ve gone deeper even without making it a darker kind of horror i feel like this book is probably ideal for people taking their first steps into the horror genre or who don t like things that are too scary or disgusting i think it does feel similar to rachel harrison s books so it fits into that kind of fun horror with a supernatural concept and looking at what regular people do with that however for people who read a lot of horror it can feel a bit one note not really delving enough into the house itself tagged book review books horror the house that eats the dead indie game works by nathan p gibson july 19 2026 july 18 2026 fiendfullyreading indie game works is a book exploring fifty recent indie games and the stories behind their creation each game s entry features stills and concept art interviews with creators and discussions of influences and how the game came to be created the focus is on how these games are made in terms of their art styles and worldbuilding meaning that it offers a great insight into the variety of ways that people conceive of game plots art styles and mechanics if like me you play games but often stick to those you know this book is both expansive showing some of the potential out there to play and dangerous adding to your wishlist of games you d like to play for people who are perhaps more familiar with many of the games included it offers potential for looking under the hood of these games as well as creative inspiration for people wondering if their idea is a game i ve run game design workshops before and i think this book would be a great one to have on hand when people are in the early stages of thinking about game creation as shows a variety of art styles and directorial decisions that help shape indie games into their own specific experiences whether you like to play games make games or just learn about the creative process indie game works is the sort of book you can dip in and out of looking for ideas or just wanting to take in the beautiful art of the games inside it thanks to thames hudson for the review copy tagged book review books indie game works taipei story by r f kuang july 18 2026 fiendfullyreading taipei story is a literary fiction novel about a yale student who goes to taiwan for a summer long intensive language programme lily chen goes to taipei hoping for a connection to the language she wishes she knew better but when she gets there she realises how much hard work everything is going to be her classes are difficult she struggles with her roommate and others on her programme and she s not having the revelations she hoped for then her grandfather in china dies and she is forced to think more about her family and her relationship to people and to learning chinese this book is quite different to the other books i ve read by kuang as those babel katabasis and yellowface all have quite a lot of plot whereas taipei story is a literary version of someone s study abroad blog so is much more focused on the details of lily s day to day life than much actually happening i think if you re a fan of that kind of literary fiction broadly similar to sally rooney then taipei story will work well for you but if you re not it might be more hit or miss for me i liked all the detail about food and what lily was and wasn t getting used to as that felt like it was building up a picture of what she was actually focused on but i did find the book slow and difficult to get into as i was waiting to see if anything was going to happen once her grandfather dies there s more about lily s family and their past but i expected this element to go deeper than it did and the short chapter near the end that focuses on her grandfather felt a bit forced as it didn t quite fit with the rest of the novel the book has a lot of ideas around culture language and colonialism but i don t think how they were presented through lily s perspective always worked for example i think it means that the book can never properly engage with the mentions of genocide that come up by the end of the book lily is still disconnected from the other characters to the extent that we as the readers know very little about any of the other characters and it doesn t really feel like even lily gets much change or character development overall this is a book that combines some deep ideas with a superficial narrative that for me was just a bit too predictable and similar to other literary fiction in this kind of lost protagonist coming of age genre i really enjoyed katabasis because it was so fun and i think taipei story is just quite different to that after reading it i saw that kuang had similar experiences to lily with studying abroad and it did perhaps feel more like someone s nonfiction account of travel and struggling with cultural change than a novel so i can see why the blurb i read compared it to patricia lockwood as someone who is more of a literary fiction person than a fantasy person by a long way i have to admit that i prefer babel and katabasis tagged book review books taipei story the sea hides its dead by megan bontrager july 14 2026 june 20 2026 fiendfullyreading the sea hides its dead is a horror novel about a academic expedition to try and find an underwater cult of leviathan caroline is a grad student who is the only person who believes in edward beck an academic obsessed with a strange quasi religious cult there s little proof of when beck who is also her lover says he needs her to come along on an expedition into the sea caves where the cult may have dwelt it seems like the chance she needs however once the group gets to the caves they become trapped there forced to undertake trials relating to their greatest sins i was drawn to this book thanks to the title and the sea horror idea and whilst it isn t really a sea horror book like i was expecting i did find it a fun horror adventure the plot is very much as you d expect with the group descending and then facing various dramatic things happening there s a big focus on caroline realising that beck doesn t really care about her and her focusing on her friendship with mallory a relationship she previously undervalued at times it feels like caroline gets all this emotional depth at the expense of the other characters who are mostly just stand ins for certain concepts or tropes i also found the morality at times a bit black and white with the good characters always having sins that are completely justified in the narrative the ending reinforces this with a sudden happy ending that didn t quite carry the weight of its negative aspects to me it felt like a cross between a stuck in a cave horror like the descent and the academia power belief side of katabasis the horror of the leviathan wasn t really there for most of it so it felt less about that side and more about the human side of things personally i think that the title perhaps isn t the best for the book as the book really didn t feel much about the sea at all which i was expecting if you go into this expecting horror about power and trying to find a cult whilst trapped in a changing cave system i think you ll have a decent time tagged book review books horror splasher by billie host july 2 2026 june 7 2026 fiendfullyreading splasher is a horror book set within a university swim team as people start dying in and out of the pool spencer is back at the university where a fellow member of the swim team died ten years ago now the assistant swim coach for the team when two students are found dead in the pool on his first day the whole team are thrown off but it doesn t stop there i loved the concept of this book combining a slasher with such a specific setting as a university swim team my sister is into competitive swimming so i appreciated all of the detail behind the swim team rather than it being a cursory theming though i can see that some people might find there is a lot of swimming content in the book the narrative itself is pretty simple and the reveals are barely reveals but i still found it pretty fun to come along for the ride the narrative perspective swaps between a few characters which doesn t always work i think it would have been better without one of the perspectives who was antagonistic as it felt like revealed too much but i liked how it meant you got some depth to more of the characters through their perspectives the book was marketed i believe as adult horror but i think it is most similar to point horror books and fits more into that kind of genre or at least into point horror nostalgia for adults it reminds me a lot of why i used to love the nightmare hall books as a teenager taking a specific element of university life and doing horror around that however despite being set in 2006 mostly and for occasional flashbacks in 1996 it is updated from point horror as there s actual queer characters which i appreciated it s not a particularly tense or scary slasher and it has quite a slow pace so it is best for something fun and a bit silly with friday the 13th vibes tagged book review books horror splasher the red sacrament by sara hinkley june 24 2026 march 15 2026 fiendfullyreading the red sacrament is a vampire novel about a group of vampires and what happens when some strangers upset the balance between them and their leader arnault is head of a clan of vampires who perform at the théâtre saint siméon in paris during a turbulent time in parisian history the vampires feed off the audience members and their concerns centre around who gets which parts until a visit from a witch and then two newcomer vampires arriving in paris change everything arnault is drawn to victor one of these newcomers and dreams of the witch but his preoccupations threaten the world he has built this is a book that is very much described as a vampire novel first and foremost though it also has an interest in politics that feels very in keeping with the broader gothic genre the writing style is lush and really brings to life its nineteenth century paris and the contradictions held within it and within the lives of the vampire clan the actual narrative has a slow pace with a lot of focus on visual detail and the world of paris it is a book for people looking for that kind of atmosphere a slow historical vampire novel that is playing with ideas more than plot the characters except arnault are not really explored in depth because you get everything through his perspective and i can see how for some people this might be frustrating as a lot of the other vampires blur into one another this is also a novel that is in conversation with interview with the vampire quite clearly as well as political and social ideas having read the book and seen the film but not having watched the tv series yet i found it interesting to see which elements i noticed as feeling explicitly in discussion with iwtv and how effective i found this ultimately it does make it easy to say that if you like the theatre of vampires element of interview with the vampire and wished for something that explored the dynamics of that alongside the background of political upheaval then that s what you re getting with the red sacrament personally i appreciate a lot of what hinkley does in the book particularly in terms of the writing style and creating a very fitting atmosphere through it it has an otherworldly vibe filled with dreams and shiny visions that betray rot undern...