Balancing the Woofs by Tara Choate

August 5, 2026 By Leave a Comment


Balancing the Woofs by Tara Choate
A Canine Accounting Caper #3
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Irene Lisner feels like her life is finally on track. Her sister Angie has moved hundreds of miles away. Her mother, Jennifer, appears to have followed Angie, so is rarely around. Goose, the new dog, is fun, and energetic, and the two are about to start agility training. Her MS symptoms look to be easing up. Work feels smooth, with no big cases on the horizon. She even has a boyfriend. It’s all too good to be true.
When she is assigned to help another department with a standard audit—the a non-standard review sends things into a downward spiral.

An unmarked plane crashes in the desert. A creature escapes from its burning wreckage, a byproduct of experiments in biological and chemical warfare—a cat.

As the multi-eyed feline mutant known as Kiki roams the Mojave Desert, terrorizing the crumbling town of Calpacia at its border, some seek to capture her. Gun-for-hire Salvadore Shaw, disgraced former Soviet Petrov and his group of mercenaries, and a professor and his chimpanzee assistant commence a vicious race to intercept Kiki’s rampage.

Who will survive the savagery of the Mojave Cat? Not many, if any.

Change is the only constant thing about life.

Irene’s relationship with her body is of my favorite aspects of this series. Like many other invisible illnesses, multiple sclerosis can grow worse or better with time. Seeing how the protagonist dealt with her symptoms and the uncertainty of how she’d feel a few days, weeks, or months in the future made everything else about her life feel more urgent. This isn’t a topic I see covered enough in fiction, so I was once again thrilled to find in this universe.

I did find myself wishing that Irene’s new dog, Goose, was given more time to shine. The previous books in this highlighted her relationship with a different pet of hers, and I was hoping for more canine-inspired conflict and humor than I found here. My fingers are crossed that any sequels in the works will include this as I’ve truly come to appreciate Irene as a character.

The ending was immensely satisfying, especially as it related to the many personal problems Irene was struggling with while she worked on this case. I liked the way she began to reorganize her life to better suit her limitations and am so curious to see how this works out for her in the future. While I don’t know if Ms. Choate has any personal experience with chronic illness and would certainly never ask her to divulge such personal information, I was impressed with how true to life these scenes felt to me as someone who has a disability. Everything from measuring out energy carefully on bad days to figuring out how to make sustainable changes for the sake of one’s health was beautifully described here, and I must tip my cap to the author for revealing a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes for some folks.

Balancing the Woofs was a gentle and heartwarming read.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

So Passes the Night by Cassidy McKay

August 3, 2026 By Leave a Comment


So Passes the Night by Cassidy McKay
Publisher: Changeling Press
Genre: Erotic Romance, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

One wild night, two sexy seamen and a voluptuous woman — three broken souls seeking completion.

First Mate Cade Talbot disobeyed a direct order, sacrificing himself to save his best friend. Since then, Captain Grant Rowen rules his ship with an iron fist, demanding strict compliance from all aboard.

Coffers are low, and when a lone woman requests passage to St. Thomas, Captain Rowen accepts her payment. But the stormy sea crossing holds more than just nature’s surprises.

Aurora Journade reveals that she not only speaks to spirits, she makes love to them –and she doesn’t follow orders. With Aurora’s help, Cade has one last chance to reach out to his captain. Not even death can keep them from seeking passion’s redemption.

Healing comes in many different forms.

The setting was as unique as it was well-suited for this erotic tale. I wasn’t initially sure if it was supposed to be set in contemporary or historic times, so figuring that out was part of the fun of reading it. Other readers should discover for themselves exactly when this was set, of course, but do keep an eye out for clues along the way as they do influence how everything played out. It was also interesting to see how the characters dealt with such a violent storm when help could be so far away due to the technology of the time.

I would have liked to see more plot development in this piece, especially as it related to Grant’s relationships with Cade as well as with the mysterious woman who asked to board his ship on a stormy night. The bonds between them were incredibly important later on in the storyline, so it was a little disappointing for me as a reader to not have as much information about them as I would have preferred by that point.

The slightly ambiguous ending suited these characters well. While the most important conflicts were wrapped up, there was still plenty of space for readers to speculate about what might happen next and fill in the gaps about the things the narrator didn’t spell out directly. Yes, it would have been nice to have more resolution about them, but it also left room for a sequel if the author decides to write one!

So Passes the Night was a sexy romp.

Filed Under: Erotic Romance, Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

TV Review: Widow’s Bay (Season 1)

August 3, 2026 By Leave a Comment


Widow’s Bay (Season 1) created by Katie Dippold
Directors: Hiro Murai, Ti West, Sam Donovan, and Andrew DeYoung
Starring: Matthew Rhys, Kate O’Flynn, Kevin Carroll, and Dale Dickey
Publisher: Apple TV
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Horror, Paranormal, Historical, Contemporary
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A New England mayor trying to boost tourism on his island must navigate strange events suggesting it might be cursed.

It may be a small town, but it’s anything but sleepy.

The plot twists in this show were fantastic, and I was surprised by them on more than one occasion. What made them even better was how much effort the creator put into not only giving the audience fantastic clues but also making plenty of space for alternative interpretations of them as well. This meant that even when I was wrong about where the plot was headed, I still felt satisfied by my attempts to predict the ending of season one as my theories were perfectly reasonably at the time.

Horror and mystery are even more enticing to me when mixed together, and I loved digging into the history of Widow’s Bay as secrets were slowly revealed and a few explanations as to why this small community had such terrible luck were put forward by various characters. The paranormal themes only made everything scarier and more thrilling, and I’m hoping that these types of scenes are given even more screen time in the future as they provided ample opportunities not only for frights but also for some memorable character and plot development as well.

Speaking of small towns, I thought this was an honest portrayal of both what it’s like to live in a rural community as well as what it feels like to move to one and interact with people who have all known each other for their entire lives and may not always be that interested in getting to know outsiders. The tensions between various groups of people including newcomers, lifelong residents who wanted to see their community grow, and those who strongly preferred for things to remain the same forever were well written, fair, and sometimes downright hilarious. Honestly, I could understand everyone’s perspectives even if I didn’t necessarily agree with all of them, and I thought this added some nice conflict as well early on when the paranormal antagonists weren’t as active yet.

This first season of Widow’s Bay has me eagerly anticipating what might happen next. What a wild ride!

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings, Movie Review, Television Show Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Kiki by Tommy B. Smith

July 31, 2026 By Leave a Comment


Kiki by Tommy B. Smith
Publisher: Black Diamond
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Action/Adventure, Historical
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

An unmarked plane crashes in the desert. A creature escapes from its burning wreckage, a byproduct of experiments in biological and chemical warfare—a cat.

As the multi-eyed feline mutant known as Kiki roams the Mojave Desert, terrorizing the crumbling town of Calpacia at its border, some seek to capture her. Gun-for-hire Salvadore Shaw, disgraced former Soviet Petrov and his group of mercenaries, and a professor and his chimpanzee assistant commence a vicious race to intercept Kiki’s rampage.

Who will survive the savagery of the Mojave Cat? Not many, if any.

Never underestimate your opponent.

A kitten is just about the last animal I’d imagine could pose a threat to mercenaries, so the premise of this tale appealed to me immediately. Mr. Smith has a creative imagination, and I enjoyed seeing how much he stretched it in order to come up with scenarios in which full grown adults could be terrorized by such a creature despite all of their weapons and history of engaging in dangerous activities as they lived outside the scope of mainstream society.

As intrigued as I was by the first chapter or two, the storyline wasn’t able to sustain that buildup of tension for me later on. Characters made decisions that didn’t always quite make sense given their backgrounds, and the plot began to feel a little too dramatic for my tastes as Kiki began testing the boundaries of their abilities and attempting to satiate their deep hunger. This is something I’m saying as someone who enjoys wild animal horror in general and was expecting to be a huge fan of this adventure in particular.

The final scene set this up nicely for a sequel if the author ever decides to write one. While I don’t know if that will actually occur, it’s always nice as a reader to see such possibilities on the horizon, especially in cases like this one where not every conflict was thoroughly resolved and there are plenty of ways to return to the setting to see what could happen in the future.

Kiki made me shudder.

Filed Under: Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Move Fast and Break Things by T. C. Weber

July 27, 2026 By Leave a Comment


Move Fast and Break Things by T. C. Weber
Publisher: Freedom Thorn Press
Genre: Horror, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Luis García is a suburban family man whose life is turned upside down when immigration officers bash down his door and arrest him, along with his wife and kids. They are taken to a detention camp, separated, and subjected to harsh and unsanitary conditions. But Luis’s nightmare is just beginning. He and his fellow prisoners are targets for an organ harvesting scheme. And Luis is chosen for an experimental brain procedure that could drive him to madness.

Nothing in life is guaranteed.

Luis was a gentle and quiet man who assumed the best of everyone around him. He was honestly just about the last person I’d ever expect to find in such a scary story, and that made his experience all the more attention grabbing. What I found most interesting about him was how his trusting approach to the world affected everything he did, from small things like his use to technology to huge decisions he needed to make in the last few scenes.

It would have been helpful to have stronger plot development, especially as it pertained to the experimental brain procedure. There were times when my credulity was strained during the passages that explained what the doctors were doing to Luis and how his body reacted to those procedures. This is something I’m saying a reader who loved the premise overall and would have happily given it a higher rating if those scenes were given more time to shine.

The ending was as horrifying as it was memorable, and I mean that in the best possible way. I liked seeing how the author incorporated real-world events, including the development of AI, into his storytelling while stretching the possibilities out to root this firmly in the horror genre. Those last few sentences in particular are going to live on in my imagination for a long time as I explore all of the possible directions the plot could have gone from there.

Move Fast and Break Things was a wild ride.

Filed Under: Horror, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

TV Review: The Quilters

July 27, 2026 By Leave a Comment

Title: The Quilters
Director: Jenifer McShane
Producer: Jenifer McShane
Starring: Joe Satterfield
Publisher: Netflix
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 5 Stars (10 on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

In this award-winning short documentary, men in a Missouri maximum-security prison design and sew beautiful, personalized quilts for foster children.

Rehabilitation begins with empathy.

I adored the sensitive and kind framing of this documentary, especially given the fact that many of the men who sew these quilts have been incarcerated for decades or even for the rest of their lies for what were in a few cases hinted to be terrible crimes. It’s not always easy for filmmakers or audiences to see the humanity in people with these kinds of violent pasts, so I appreciated the fact that as little time as possible was spent exploring what, exactly, they did to end up in a level 5 facility. Those details, while obviously important in other contexts, were not relevant to work these inmates were doing for children living in foster care or with disabilities like autism.

As someone who knows little about sewing, I was fascinated by the many detailed steps it requires in order to sew a quilt, weighted vest, or weighted blanket. For example, I didn’t know that cloth needs to be ironed and stretched out before being sewn together or what happens if those steps aren’t done properly. The inmates were trained carefully on their craft, and the items they produced were incredible. It was especially interesting to see how every inch of an item was inspected methodically before being shipped out to the children who were waiting for their gifts.

Regret and forgiveness were two of the deeper themes of this documentary that played out quietly in the background. A few of the men featured will probably never leave the maximum-security prison in Missouri where they have already lived for decades, so hearing their thoughts on the many years they’ve had to consider their life choices was especially poignant. I don’t want to share too many spoilers about what they’ve learned along the way, but I will say that they have had a lot of time to work through their feelings and I liked the way they expressed them.

The Quilters was a beautiful and heartwarming look at how dramatically people can change for the better when given the chance.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings, Movie Review, Television Show, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Academy of Unusual Skills by Matt Baker

July 24, 2026 By Leave a Comment


The Academy of Unusual Skills by Matt Baker
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Welcome to The Academy of Unusual Skills, the only school where balancing a broom on your face, flipping an oven mitt, and turning a towel into a chicken can land you on the honor roll.

Part comedy book, part hands-on training manual, The Academy of Unusual Skills teaches readers more than 100 strange, silly, oddly impressive tricks using everyday objects. From coin snatching and card throwing to hat tricks, snack-based stunts, minor miracles, science illusions, juggling, balancing, and other strangely cool life skills. This book is your official guide to becoming unusually impressive.

Written by professional comedian, stunt performer, and three-time Guinness World Record holder Matt Baker, this book combines step-by-step instructions, hilarious faux-academic nonsense, and over 350 illustrations. Each skill is designed to build coordination, confidence, creativity, and showmanship, or at the very least, give you something weird to do at parties.

Whether you’re a curious kid, a bored adult, a future variety performer, a teacher looking for fun activities, or someone who simply believes life should contain more silliness, The Academy of Unusual Skills is your ticket to a world where useless is useful, silly is serious, and being bad at boring is practically required.

Classes are now in session.

Being called weird is a compliment at this academy.

There were such a wide variety of tricks included here that I suspect there will be something for everyone. Some of them looked like they’d require a good deal of practice given how many different steps were required to make them work, while other ones could probably be mastered in a single afternoon or even sooner than that. I appreciated that and thought it made this a better read.

Some of the entries made me a little nervous due to the risk of injury associated with them. For example, throwing food up into the air and then attempting to catch it with one’s mouth can be incredibly fun, but it can also be a choking hazard when the edible item in question is the same size and shape as a person’s windpipe. As much as I loved the concept of a school for learning unusual things in general, I do wish there had been a few safety warnings included before those ideas as this is a topic that could easily appeal to kids or young teens who might not yet have the life experience to realize the dangers of certain actions.

Mr. Baker has a playful sense of humor that works well with the themes of this book. I especially enjoyed the sections that sent readers off for breaks that were included in a few different spots. For spoiler reasons, I won’t share the exact natures of these pauses as they’re best left as surprises, but they showcased his creativity and made me chuckle as I took note of which tricks I might want to learn in the future.

The Academy of Unusual Skills was an amusing book for adults who want to learn a few party tricks.

Filed Under: Non-Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Awareness: Listening Deeply-A Journey into Presence, Perception, and the Sacred Language of Life by Tiberius Ryuu

July 21, 2026 By Leave a Comment


Awareness: Listening Deeply-A Journey into Presence, Perception, and the Sacred Language of Life by Tiberius Ryuu
Path of Becoming #2
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

What if awareness is not something to be achieved — but remembered?
In a world that rewards distraction and constant motion, Awareness: Listening Deeply invites us to return to stillness, to reawaken the art of attention, and to rediscover the quiet wisdom already living within us.

This book is the second in The Path of Becoming series — a sacred journey designed to help readers restore connection to themselves, to others, and to the living world. While it builds upon the principles of Acceptance, it also stands fully on its own as a guide to presence, perception, and intuitive understanding.

Through gentle teachings, reflective essays, and simple daily practices, Awareness explores:

The Practice of Stillness — how quiet allows truth to surface.

Listening to the Body — learning to trust somatic wisdom as guidance.

Emotional Literacy — transforming feelings into understanding through awareness.

The Language of Symbols and Synchronicity — recognizing life’s sacred communication.

Awareness in Relationship — seeing others as mirrors for our own growth.

Grounding and Centering — staying rooted amid life’s constant change.

Living with Attentiveness — making awareness a daily devotion.

Each chapter concludes with a reflection — a single phrase or meditation that captures the heart of its teaching — and practical exercises to help integrate awareness into ordinary life.

At its core, this book is about learning to listen. To listen not only with the ears but with the body, the heart, and the soul. To notice the subtle threads connecting all things. To discover that awareness is not a skill to master, but a relationship to nurture — one that deepens each time we pause, breathe, and choose presence.

Whether you are beginning your healing journey or walking an established spiritual path, Awareness: Listening Deeply offers a quiet companion for the inward traveler. It will guide you toward a grounded, embodied understanding of yourself and the world — where attention becomes devotion, and every moment becomes sacred.

The truth will always be revealed eventually.

I deeply appreciated the focus that was placed on listening to one’s body and caring for it physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This is something that can be especially difficult for some people who have endured any type of trauma or abuse that lead them to pull away from what was happening to their physical form in the past, so what seemed like a simple technique at first glance could be more complicated to put into practice in one’s daily life.

Once again, I did find myself wishing that the author had gone into deeper detail about how to use the techniques in his book to not only develop greater awareness but to continue this pattern over a long period of time. Techniques ranging from body scan meditations to paying close attention to the sensory experience of eating a simple meal were mentioned, but few of them were explained more thoroughly. My hope is that later instalments in the series will share practical tips for how to make this change as I’m quite interested in Mr. Ryuu’s perspective of the world in general and think he has some fascinating ideas about how to gradually but permanently change one’s life for the better.

Some of the most meaningful passages in my opinion were the ones that gave examples of how to remain aware and continue to live in the moment while going through one’s ordinary daily routine. Figuring how to do this while also working, volunteering, caring for relatives, looking after their own health and well being, and doing the million and other tasks the average adult often needs to do on a typical day is where lofty ideals are put to the test. The self-help genre works best when it approaches problems from the perspective of the average person if you ask me!

This is the second instalment in a series that I’d recommend reading in order. Healing takes time and effort, and the first book shares some important coping techniques that I believe one should be familiar with before moving onto step two.

Awareness – Listening Deeply-A Journey into Presence, Perception, and the Sacred Language of Life deserves to be savored slowly. It was filled with wisdom and hope for readers who are struggling with many different types of trauma.

Filed Under: Non-Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Tawny by Chas Carner

July 15, 2026 By Leave a Comment


Tawny by Chas Carner
Publisher: Scholastic and Macmillan
Genre: Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Historical
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Trey and Troy Landry are 12-year-old twin brothers growing up on a New Hampshire farm. Even though Troy is the impulsive trouble maker, and Trey the more dutiful and introverted one, they share an incredibly close bond.

One day Troy is accidentally killed by hunters poaching deer on the farm. Trey is devastated and channels his grief into caring for an injured deer, which he names “Tawny.”

As their friendship deepens, however, Trey finds it harder and harder to release Tawny back into the wild.

What he learns in the process of letting go—about loss, love, and the healing power of nature has even more relevance for youth today than when this critically acclaimed novel was first published.

Grief has many faces.

Mr. Carter had a smooth and descriptive writing style that was a joy to read. I especially liked the passages in this novella that talked about the rhythms of life on a farm and how one season of the year would gradually give way to the next. As someone who had spent his entire life on that same property, Trey was so accustomed to what every month felt like that he didn’t quite seem to realize how special they were, but his descriptions of his childhood were still beautiful and showed me so much about his personality and the empathic and patient man he would become in a few short years as a result of his rural childhood.

It was the passages dealing with Trey’s grief over the death of his twin brother that ultimately convinced me to choose a five-star rating. Many stories that deal with death and loss focus on how it feels immediately or, at most, several months later, but healing can require a much longer period of time than that and sometimes involves old pain returning in quiet moments when the outside world might assume someone is doing much better now than they actually are. I loved the scenes later on that explored how Trey dealt with these feelings while also going about his usual routine of school, chores, and looking after Tawny as she healed from her injury.

The many cultural difference between the 1950s and modern times also piqued my interest. For example, Trey and Troy were taught how to drive at age eight and, a few years later, were doing potentially dangerous chores on the farm like helping cows to deliver their calves or shooting guns. Many children in the Western Hemisphere today would not allowed to participate in these activities, so it was fascinating to see how much more freedom and autonomy people that age had a few generations ago.

Tawny was heartfelt and bittersweet. It made me want to read more from this author!

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

The Junkyard by Bryan Reilly

July 14, 2026 By Leave a Comment


The Junkyard by Bryan Reilly
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Action/Adventure, Contemporary
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Ninja is a pit bull who would rather die than hurt another dog. When she purposefully loses in the fighting ring of a cruel junkyard owner, Mr. Fergusen, she is punished and left for dead at the edge of a nearby forest. A tribe of stray junkyard dogs finds her and gives her a new name, Maytag. They nurse her back to health and welcome her into their secret home inside the northern junkyard’s mountains of wrecked cars, appliances, tires, and trains. For the first time, Maytag feels love and is incredibly relieved to be free of Mr. Fergusen’s fighting ring.

But her relief is short-lived.

Saab, the aggressive Rottweiler of the southern junkyard, plans to conquer the north with the help of Canis, a vengeful forest wolf. If the junkyard becomes a warzone, Mr. Fergusen will surely take Dodge’s strays to the put-down place. When Saab’s plan is set in motion, Maytag must decide if her new friends are worth fighting for.

A better life is possible.

What a creative and unique tale! I’ve never seen middle grade fiction cover this topic, and I enjoyed exploring Mr. Reilly’s take on what it might be like to not only be a dog in general but to be a dog who has recently escaped the fighting ring in particular. His explanations of the suffering these animals went through were vivid, but he made sure to include some happier moments as well to balance things out.

The world building was well done, especially the descriptions of the hiding places in the junkyard that the owner of this place was unaware of. In the first scene, I wondered how any animal could survive in such a violent and hostile place and why the strays decided to stick so close by to the barn where fighting dogs tried to survive in-between matches. Other readers should discover the answers to these questions for themselves, but they certainly added a lot of tension to the plot until the main character began to discover the answers.

Honestly, it was the ending that convinced me to give this one a full five-star rating. It wrapped everything up beautifully while still remaining true to the sometimes harsh world these characters lived in. There were messages included throughout this novella, but especially in the last few scenes, about compassion, hope, loyalty, and surviving difficult times that were never preachy but instead invited the audience to think critically as the characters faced situations where the odds were heavily stacked against them.

The Junkyard was heartwarming and original.

Filed Under: Reviews, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , ,
Next Page »