Author: Aida C

Book Reviews Fiction

Nostalgy By Miguel Wandenbergh: A Quiet, Melancholic Journey Through Memory and Regret

NOSTALGY is a quiet, introspective literary novel about emptiness, memory, and the dangerous pull of the past. It follows Alejandro, a successful Spanish executive living in Los Angeles whose life looks polished from the outside but feels hollow from within. Burned out by work, detached from love, and increasingly trapped inside his own thoughts, he returns to Spain hoping that old places, old friendships, and old versions of himself might give him back whatever he has lost.

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Action Adventure Book Reviews Fantasy

Trapped by Bella Olson: A Glitter-Bomb Escape Room With Heart

If you’ve ever wished a middle grade adventure could feel like an escape room designed by a kid with unlimited glitter, snacks, and zero respect for “normal,” Trapped is exactly that ride. It follows Ava—an inventive, sporty, claustrophobic eleven-year-old—who stumbles into the facility of Dr. Heynis and gets pulled into a maze of riddles, traps, and utterly unhinged surprises. What starts as a “get out alive” challenge quickly becomes a loud, funny, surprisingly warm story about fear, friendship, and the kind of bravery that shows up even when you’re shaking.

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Book Reviews Drama Fantasy

Wooden Dolls Game by Ivonne Hoyos – A Haunting Tale of Sisters, Time, and Consequences

Wooden Dolls Game is a dark, emotional family drama with a speculative twist. Instead of grand sci-fi mechanics, it gives us something more intimate: a girl who can rewind time and a family that keeps breaking in different ways no matter how many times she tries to fix it.

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Articles Fantasy Romance

Why Everyone Is Reading Romantasy Right Now (and Honestly, It Makes Sense)

If your reading life lately has involved dragons, deadly trials, magical schools, brooding love interests, and a lot of…

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Book Reviews Horror

The Chosen Tenant: Metaphors, Medication, and the Horror of Being Functional

The Chosen Tenant takes a deliciously unnerving “what if” and refuses to let you look away: what if the way your brain processes language—especially under medication—could physically rewrite reality? It’s a story that starts in the familiar grind of deadlines and executive dysfunction, then slides into speculative horror with a very specific flavor: the kind that feels like it could happen to you if you answered one more email while running on fumes. And once the book reveals what the house really is—an archive that literalizes idioms and stores them behind labeled doors—it becomes clear you’re not just reading a haunted-house story. You’re reading a systems story.

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Book Reviews Poetry

Peering Into Infinity: Mirrors of Love & Grief By Steven Lewis — Grief, Unarmored

Peering Into Infinity: Mirrors of Love & Grief is a poetry collection that stares straight at the kind of loss most of us circle around in euphemisms. Steven Lewis writes in the wake of his grandson Rory’s death, and the book becomes a record of what grief does to time, language, faith, memory, and the body itself. These poems don’t try to “resolve” mourning into something tidy or inspirational. Instead, they track the daily weather of it—shock, numbness, rage, tenderness, flashes of humor, and the occasional, startling moment of lightness that doesn’t erase the dark, but sits beside it.

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Book Reviews Historical Fiction

The Legacy of Prairie Winds by Glenda K Clare – Prairie Winds, Iron Roots

This is a generational prairie saga that cares less about plot twists and more about the slow, grinding truth of making a life where the land doesn’t promise mercy. If you enjoy historical family epics—where endurance is the main character and “home” is something you build with your hands—this will likely land for you.

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Book Reviews Fantasy Fiction

The Weight of Dreams by Nicole Sorrell — Myth, Elephants, and the Making of a Legend

The Weight of Dreams is a mythic coming-of-age epic told in a voice that feels both intimate and ceremonial. Etana begins as a girl in Muk’etiland, trapped inside a village system that demands silence, obedience, and a brutal rite of “womanhood.” When that system breaks her family, she does the unthinkable—she runs. What follows is part survival tale, part court-and-war saga, and part spiritual history: Etana’s life expands from a single hut to the “land of gold,” and her name becomes something people whisper like prayer.

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Book Reviews Non-Fiction

Ending America’s Gun-Violence Epidemic By Tom Tyner Book Review

Some books try to persuade you with emotion. This one persuades you with structure. Ending America’s Gun-Violence Epidemic approaches gun violence as a public-health crisis first, and a political issue second. Tyner’s goal is clear: show why the United States is an outlier among comparable countries, explain the main drivers behind that reality, and lay out a set of policies and community-based strategies that could reduce deaths. It’s written like a practical guide—heavy on data, direct in tone, and intent on moving the conversation from “why is this happening?” to “what would actually work?”

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Book Reviews Memoir

Stillness and Survival by Jacob Anthony Rose – A Memoir That Doesn’t Look Away

When I went through Stillness and Survival: A Life Between Trauma, Glitter, and the Echo of My Own Voice, I kept coming back to one feeling: this is someone finally telling the truth about their life, without softening the edges. Jacob Anthony Rose (also known as drag performer Sheena Rose) writes about growing up unwanted, unsafe, and constantly on alert, then slowly learning how to stay, heal, and be loved. It’s a heavy, trigger-filled memoir—child abuse, queerphobia, mental illness—but it’s written with survivors in mind, not for shock value.

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