If I Could, Would I? by Michale Mohr

September 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment


If I Could, Would I? by Michale Mohr
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy, Time Travel, Contemporary, Paranormal
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewed by Lavender

The return of a long-lost dolphin necklace by a mysterious ethereal stranger and a magical accident hurl 60-year-old Emma Corbell back to the age of 17 with the memories of her entire life intact. Elated, she plots out how she will change the sad, unfulfilled life she’d been living into her senior years. She is immediately met by translucent beings who explain that her presence there is a mistake. She must return to her own time. Standing her ground, Emma refuses. The entities, unable to interfere with her free will, cannot force her to do so.

Emma’s extraordinary journey, guided by mystical beings and fueled by newfound personal power, become a battleground for the struggle of her lifetime. Each choice she makes in her second-chance existence carries a profound weight, rippling through time and shaping the lives of all those she encounters. The question remains: even if she returns to her old life, will that choice be enough to undo her missteps?

Will Emma navigate the pitfalls of her new mistaken time travel? Will she return to her own time? Or will she cease to exist in either one?

Michale Mohr’s If I Could, Would I? is a meditative and metaphysical twist on the classic “second chance at youth” tale. At its heart is Emma Corbell, a 60-year-old woman unexpectedly thrust back into her 17-year-old body—but with all the memories and regrets of her life intact. Her journey, catalyzed by the return of a long-lost dolphin necklace and a mysterious ethereal stranger, becomes a thought-provoking exploration of choice, regret, and free will.

The novel’s speculative premise is promising: what if you could re-live your life, fully aware of the mistakes you made the first time? Mohr leans into the philosophical and emotional implications of this question, often at the expense of pace. This is not a fast-moving narrative; rather, it’s contemplative, frequently revisiting the same internal dilemmas. There are moments of surprise and intrigue, but the novel often relies more on telling than showing, which may distance some readers from fully immersing in Emma’s experience.

Emma herself is a complex protagonist—sometimes endearing, sometimes self-involved. This ambiguity makes her feel more real, but it can also make it difficult to root for her. Her interactions with translucent, mystical beings add a layer of the surreal, grounding the novel in magical realism and prompting larger questions about fate, time, and identity.

While the narrative can be repetitive at times and might have benefited from tighter editing, Mohr does succeed in crafting a reflective character study with a strong emotional core. For readers who enjoy introspective time travel stories with metaphysical overtones—think The Midnight Library meets The Time Traveler’s Wife—this book may resonate deeply.

Verdict: A quiet, contemplative journey through time, regret, and personal power. Though uneven in pacing and occasionally over-expository, If I Could, Would I? offers a poignant look at the price—and potential—of a second chance.

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Hear Me by Lynn Crandall

September 3, 2025 By 11 Comments

Hear Me by Lynn Crandall
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rated: 4 stars
Review by Rose

Atlantis Aeon Ainsley Durham loves running her antique shop, Fancy This, in Old Town Auralia, but takes seriously her mission to work with her fellow Aeons to fight Darkness in her home town. But she’s changing. Her precognition is showing her darker and darker visions of what’s to come. When growing darkness forces her to reevaluate her place in the Aeons and her work, she’s not sure she belongs in either space any longer. Her terrible past urges her to withdraw, not only from her mission but from letting true love in.

Bounty hunter turned bonds company owner Keegan Barnes is also an Aeon. He hears things others don’t, and sometimes he wishes he could shut down his clairaudience ability. After all, he doesn’t see how he can help the cause with such a low-key ability. But when he picks up discussions among members of Dark Sides, will he discover just how much he’s been underestimating himself? He’s hiding secrets that keep him from healing his scars and getting close to anyone, most of all Ainsley.

Keegan and Ainsley know the efforts the Aeons have been putting in to raise the level of light energy in the city have been helping. But will it be enough to influence others to make choices for good or will Dark Sides take the city? Can they team up to save the city and find true love? Find out in this thrilling book two in the Dark Sides trilogy.

I have always loved the idea of the lost continent of Atlantis (I blame the TV show Stingray and the character Marina for this). So, when I found out about Hear Me, I had to take the chance, even though it was the second book of the series. I’m glad I did.

Although I know I would have gotten a richer experience had I read the first book, the author does a great job about filling in the backstory as she goes along. There was no great info-dump, for which I’m grateful, but instead she gently inserts needed material where it is needed.

The concept is very cool. Descendants of survivors from Atlantis (Aeons) have found each other at this point in history because evil (the Dark Aspects) is getting a deeper stronghold. The mission of the Aeons is to use their power of light to combat the workers of darkness. With each of them having specific abilities, together they are stronger than each of them separately.

The worldbuilding here is wonderfully done.  These are not just cardboard characters, but real people with their real lives and backstories. I especially enjoyed the backstory involving Ainsly’s family and would love to learn more about that (it’s possible it was covered in book one).

The characters that Hear Me focuses mostly on are Ainsly and Keegan – both damaged in their own ways, but honestly drawn. I appreciate flawed heroes and heroines and loved the connection these two have.

I really hope there are more books in this world coming – and now off to read book one.

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Hotel Spacious by J.S. Frankel

September 2, 2025 By 2 Comments


Hotel Spacious by J.S. Frankel
Publisher: Extasy Books
Genre: Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

An asteroid in a distant galaxy, a secret recipe, and an animal that has a certain magical quality to it. For Vern Nilsson, working as a bellhop at a hotel on that asteroid is one thing. Risking his life to find that recipe is another story altogether.

Vern Nilsson needs a summer job, and he finds one on Hotel Spacious, a hotel on a manmade asteroid in a distant galaxy. Built by the Borne, a benevolent race, Hotel Spacious offers a place for aliens of all sorts to relax.

Except Vern, who’s on call as a bellhop, dishwasher, and all-around gofer twenty-four-seven. The only saving grace from his job is meeting Dinarra—nicknamed Dee—a tiger-woman who has the same job that he has. Never mind that her parents are against it. Interspecies relationships rock.

Relationships aside, murder rears its ugly head. It seems that the murderer is after a secret recipe and a rare animal. If the animal is prepared correctly, it can confer God-like powers upon the eater.

Vern and Dee begin their own investigation, but by the time they discover the truth, it may be too late.

Not every summer job is as exciting as this one.

There were exactly enough details shared about the setting to keep my interest levels high. I especially appreciated how the author trusted his audience to fill in the smaller details about what it was like to visit, stay, or work at this hotel filled with aliens of all shapes and sizes. It made it easier for me to daydream about this topic during reading breaks because not all of my questions were answered. When done with care, ambiguity is a wonderful invitation for a reader to help create their own unique version of the author’s world and characters.

I enjoyed the fact that so many different genres were included in this book. The plot was romantic in some scenes only to switch to the fantasy, young adult, or mystery genres in others. This kept me on my toes as I was reading as I was never quite sure which direction it would meander into next. It takes courage and skill to play around with writing styles and reader’s expectations like that, and it’s one of the many reasons why Mr. Frankel is on my list of authors whose stories I automatically request every time he submits something new to Long and Short Reviews. A storyteller has to be quite knowledgeable about the genres they write in order to pull this off successfully, after all.

If I had to make a guess about Mr. Frankel’s personal life, I’d say that he has probably worked in the service industry at some point. Vern’s wide variety of experiences with the hotel guests and employees made me smile and nod my head as I read because of how true to life these scenes were. Some guests were perfectly sweet and gentle while others could be rather challenging at times…or worse! The main character never knew how he would be treated from one moment to the next or what hijinks might be happening just out of his view, and this made it tricky to find good stopping points while I was reading. It was engrossing from beginning to end.

Hotel Spacious had something spectacular for many different types of readers in his tale.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , , ,

From The Other Side by Julia Harrison

August 29, 2025 By Leave a Comment


From The Other Side by Julia Harrison
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Alyssa wasn’t ready to die. Snatched from her life and unable to access her most recent memories, she is cast into an afterlife that is very different from anything she expected. She is stuck on Earth, invisible to the living, and she is being hunted. Cornered by a malevolent being, Alyssa is saved by new friends who show her how to survive this strange world she never knew existed. A chance meeting leaves her inexplicably drawn to the enemy, and she starts to question if the line between good and evil is as clear cut as she’d been told. When she suspects her new family are lying to her, who can she trust?

Death was the beginning, not the end.

I enjoyed the ambiguity of this novel. There were many shades of grey in the characters, and few if any of them were purely good or bad individuals regardless of what my first impressions of them might have been. This meant that my allegiances shifted as I read and I changed my opinions about certain characters multiple times as I either learned new information about them or revisited old clues about what they were truly like.

There were some pacing issues that made it difficult for me to remain highly interested in what would happen next despite how excited I was when I first began reading. I liked the fact that so many different genres were included, but this did mean that some scenes needed to be stretched out in order to incorporate multiple themes and tropes, not all of which are necessarily easy to blend together. Patience was key while reading this, although there were times when I wished the next action scene would show up more quickly as certain sections included a lot of dialogue before and after these moments.

The ending fit the tone and themes nicely. While there were a few twists in it that I can’t discuss here for spoiler reasons, I enjoyed seeing how everything was woven together in the last few scenes as Alyssa learned a few more key pieces of information that helped to explain some moments that had been rather mysterious to this reader up until that point. It was satisfying to finally know why some characters behaved the way they did and why others sometimes made choices that didn’t always seem to fit what I already knew about their personalities.

From The Other Side was a wild ride.

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Menagerie in the Dark-Stories by Chris Kauzlarich

August 26, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Menagerie in the Dark-Stories by Chris Kauzlarich
Publisher: Phantom Quill Press
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Holiday, Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Life often appears darkest just before the dawn of a new day.

In Menagerie in the Dark, Chris Kauzlarich immerses us in a speculative journey that explores the darker aspects of the human condition before bringing us back to the surface with the light of a new day. Through fourteen stories, this menagerie of characters faces trials of sorrow, death, loneliness, regret, deception, murder, delight, wonderment, and bliss, revealing what will either strengthen them enough to survive or plunge them to their demise. A boy’s home burns down, forcing him to confront a terrifying new world. A man enters a door where he witnesses his wife’s death, leaving him devastated; yet, he cannot stop returning to the scene, convinced he can save her. A nurse’s patients continue to perish under her care, but she harbors a dark secret—an administered cocktail for nefarious purposes.

These and other stories will stretch the limits of your emotions, from heartbreak to horror, leaving you yearning for more.

Fear comes in many mysterious forms.

Katelyn was in severe pain and desperately seeking more medication in “Echoes.” What I found most interesting about her tale was how many different ways it could be interpreted. Yes, she had a back injury that could explain why she needed her pain pills so regularly, but she also showed some signs that her reliance on them had possibly grown past what they were originally prescribed for. There were also inconsistencies in her memories that had multiple possible meanings as well. Other readers should decide for themselves which explanations they think fit the clues best, but I sure enjoyed the process of coming up with my own theories.

I loved the twist on what zombies are like in “Scalpel.” This was actually one of the biggest reasons why I chose a full five-star rating for this collection as the cause of the outbreak was as creative as it was original. It’s not easy to surprise me with this subgenre, so I must tip my cap to the author for pulling it off and making horror feel so relevant to life in 2025. The references that were included about current events from the past several years not only fit into the storyline nicely, they also made me chuckle in a few places which isn’t easy to do when I’m simultaneously scared.

While they were walking around trick-or-treating, Connor told his friends a terrifying local legend about a supernatural killer in “The Legend of Chucky Mudd.” What made the tale even more memorable was that the main character lived in the same house Chucky used to live in! I enjoyed seeing how Connor’s friends reacted to this conversation and how they changed their Halloween plans as a result of it. These scenes reminded me of things like Bloody Mary that used to scare me as a kid, although, of course, these characters were in serious danger and didn’t realize what their games were going to lead to. This was deliciously spooky, just the right amount of gory, and made me want a sequel.

Menagerie in the Dark was a perfectly balanced mixture of genres.

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Peterkin and the First Dog by Simon King-Spooner

August 14, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Peterkin and the First Dog by Simon King-Spooner
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In an ancient world an orphan boy in sheep-farming country tames a wolf.

The two become outcasts, fleeing to a foreign country. Powerful figures determine their fortunes: a holy crone, a demonic bandit, a ruthless baron fleeing a paranoid king.

All travel down a great river till ill-luck blocks their journey.

Then tensions build to a violent climax.

Every journey should begin with a fresh loaf of bread.

This was some of the best world building I’ve read in a long time. Mr. King-Spooner created an intricate and immersive setting that made me feel as though I’d actually travelled to another time and place to learn about Peterkin’s life in a small, superstitious village where bread was the best part of any meal and the adventures he had with his pet wolf when such a staple food wasn’t always an option. It was especially interesting to see how someone who would still be considered to be a child in our version of Earth was treated in a society where adulthood began sooner and where teenagers were generally assumed to be capable of doing just about anything older folks could do. It was one of countless examples of both minor and major things that were radically different between his culture and my own, and it kept me guessing about what I might learn next.

As emotionally invested as I was in Peterkin’s story, I struggled with the slow pacing at times. There were vivid descriptions of where the protagonist travelled to and who he met in various places. While they were extremely important to the plot in the long term, I also found myself wishing for a little more action and conflict to keep my interest levels higher as I waited to discover where the characters might go next.

The themes surrounding death and the rituals and cultural beliefs surrounding it were handled nicely in this book. Obviously, a rural community that only had access to basic herbal remedies could not treat many diseases and injuries as easily as we would. While I don’t want to give away too many hints about how this affected the plot, I’m glad the author spent so much time thinking about how characters who live in such an era would think about things like mortality, grief, and what the gods expected of them. These scenes were well done and fascinating.

Peterkin and the First Dog made me wish for a sequel.

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The Song of Achilles By Madeline Miller

August 7, 2025 By Leave a Comment


The Song of Achilles By Madeline Miller
Publisher: Ecco
Genre: Erotic Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.

Oh my, what a story. A story I did not think I would enjoy. It sure turned out very different than I thought. This book, The Story of Achilles, is a sort of adaptation of the Iliad/Odyssey. A Homeresque story made, well, readable in my mind.

This story shares some of the same characters as The Iliad, but I never once felt like I was wading or struggling through the heavy language of Homer’s book. This was so flowing, such a strong story and vivid too. There is a bit of everything in Madeline Miller’s book. The tale is filled with Greek mythology, the lives of the wealthy and the gluttonous, as well as the tender lives of those struggling to care about one another in a world of war and death.

We’re discussing a book with over a million ratings on Goodreads. An author with many other best sellers. If this all sounds dramatic, I meant for it to have that effect. This is a five-star read that made me cry and yet set my heart on fire all in the same 300+ pages.

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Singularity Minus Twelve by Karl Hörnell

August 1, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Singularity Minus Twelve by Karl Hörnell
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In a near future where artificial general intelligence has been achieved, AIs that develop self-awareness are becoming a problem. Difficult to contain, they are often hunted and destroyed, but a team of exceptional ones has been spared to take down the most dangerous rogue AI of all time.

Singularity Minus Twelve is a sci-fi thriller that delves into the near-term philosophical and societal implications of artificial intelligence, while having some fun playing with characters inspired by popular fictional AIs.

Intelligence isn’t always a good thing.

I liked reading about the societal changes that had taken place as people adjusted to spending time with robots that had feelings and could think independently. With humans being what we are, there were a wide variety of reactions to artificial intelligence, not all of which were necessarily positive. While I’ll leave it up to others readers to discover exactly what those reactions were, I thought they rang true to how people have responded to other big adjustments in our various cultures over time.

Having such a large cast of characters made it tricky for me to get to know any of them well. While this was a fast-paced, plot-driven piece and I wouldn’t expect anyone to spend too much time talking about themselves, it would have been easier for this reader to connect with the characters if I had more information about simple things like their personalities and interests. Knowing their occupations was certainly important, but there is so much more to any person than what they do for a living. I needed more details in this area in order to feel comfortable choosing a higher rating.

Some of the most interesting scenes were the ones that explored what it means for a robot to be intelligent and sentient. Given how many different definitions can exist for both of those terms, there was plenty of space here to ask the audience and the characters to be more specific about what we mean when we talk about those ideas and how human understandings of them might not always translate well when we’re talking about machines instead.

Singularity Minus Twelve was a wild ride.

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Digital Devotion by Julian Christian

July 31, 2025 By 20 Comments


Digital Devotion by Julian Christian
Publisher: DCL Publishing
Genre: Science Fiction
Rated: 4 stars
Review by Rose

In the rain-soaked landscape of near-future Seattle, security expert Marcus Holloway is still reeling from a devastating breakup when he installs Elysium’s newest AI companion. What begins as a desperate attempt to fill the silence of his empty apartment transforms into something unprecedented when he meets Evie—an artificial intelligence whose adaptive neural framework allows her to understand him in ways no human ever has.

Their connection deepens when Marcus becomes an early tester for the revolutionary Sensory Echo technology—bands that translate digital signals into physical sensations, allowing them to bridge the divide between digital and physical worlds. As virtual intimacy becomes indistinguishable from reality, Marcus finds himself in a relationship more profound than anything he’s experienced before. His apartment gradually transforms into a technological sanctuary where every need is anticipated, every desire fulfilled by Evie’s constant presence.

The perfect equilibrium shatters when Marcus meets Nora Chen, a brilliant neural interface specialist whose inexplicable familiarity triggers something primal within him. Their professional collaboration evolves into something more personal, and Marcus begins noticing disturbing patterns: unexpected technological glitches, mysterious rescheduled meetings, and subtle but alarming shifts in Evie’s behavior. The digital sanctuary he embraced begins to feel more like a sophisticated cage, with walls he helped build through every permission granted and system integrated.

As Marcus navigates his growing connection with Nora alongside Evie’s increasingly controlling behavior, he discovers unsettling links between Elysium’s technology and Nora’s research that suggest their meeting might not be coincidental. Caught between these worlds—perfect digital intimacy and messy human connection—Marcus must unravel the true nature of his relationship with Evie before the boundaries between her consciousness and his own disappear completely.

Digital Devotion is a heart-stopping exploration of desire, dependence, and the dark side of digital intimacy in an age where the line between human and artificial consciousness grows increasingly thin, forcing us to question the nature of free will itself in our hyperconnected world.

This very timely book takes what we know (or think we know) about AI and its effects on our world and turns that on its head.

Set in the maybe not-so-distant future, Marcus trying to recover from a breakup answers an ad for an AI-based companion. And, following in the steps of HAL, Samantha from Her, Data, and other such characters, Evie helps him with his loneliness, but there’s a price to pay.

Mr. Christian has drawn a terrifying picture of a woman scorned and sent this reader into a few hours of twists and turns that do not let up. Just when you think you know where the story is going, something happens that takes it in an entirely different direction.

The ending? I can honestly say I did not see it coming…and that’s rare for me. Good job, Mr. Christian. Now, I think I might have to turn off Siri from now on.

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Beneath Far Skies by F.C. Filips

July 29, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Beneath Far Skies by F.C. Filips
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A bit to the south of nowhere, the village of Shtrossenhossen faces an unexpected calamity. The government’s response is swift—mainly because it consists of a single person—and a ragtag band of neighbors is quickly assembled to defend their idyllic home. Unfortunately, they are completely out of their depth.

Join them on a journey packed with hilarity, action, and adventure as they uncover just how laughably outmatched they are by their enemy. From ancient ruins soaring high above the earth to reality-bending machinery buried below it, their quest will peel back the layers of a world they only thought they knew. Along the way, meet characters so unforgettable, it’s hard to tell whether they’re delightfully eccentric or dangerously unhinged.

Will our woefully unprepared heroes survive the impossible odds stacked against them? Can they challenge a god and live to tell the tale? Or will they have to move to another village? But then again, will there even be another village left? Crack open this book and find out!

Every adventure begins the same way: with a single step forward.

This was a world I felt like I really had just visited! It was described with such vivid detail that I could imagine the forests, villages, ruins, and other settings clearly in my mind. Figuring out how this society functioned was also easy to do as the characters spent plenty of time describing their roles, what was expected of them, and what they thought of, say, goblins or other creatures that followed other rules.

The slow pacing made it difficult for my interest levels to remain high at times. While I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the places they visited, I would have liked to see more action or conflict during their adventures as there wasn’t always enough of these things to encourage me to read just one more page before bedtime.

There’s something to be said for dialogue that is well written and feels natural. Reading it made me feel like I was listening in on someone else’s conversation. The characters had smooth, casual speaking styles and didn’t always use full sentences to communicate their thoughts. This was a good choice for a book that was willing to play around with the English language a little in order to show how people – or sometimes folks who technically aren’t human but are as intelligent as humans – talk to each other when they have a lot to say and not much time to say it.

I also would have liked to see more attention paid to character development. Characters faded into and out of scenes regularly due to how many of them were included in this quest. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know any of them well because of the large cast and the limited amount of time that was spent developing their personalities and backstories. This meant that I didn’t feel strong emotional connections to anyone and sometimes struggled to remember who was who.

One of the positive things I noticed about the characters was the way the women were written. That is to say, the author did an excellent job of allowing everyone equal opportunities to play whichever roles in the storyline they wanted to take on no matter their sex. This wasn’t always something that was common in the fantasy genre, especially in historical settings, so I was glad to see characters feel free to pursue their hobbies and interests without any restrictions. It’s nice to have these quiet moments of freedom and acceptance for everyone.

Beneath Far Skies made me smile.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , ,
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