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Tom Clancy Of Space. Except Hadfield Has *Been* There. One of the things that struck me most about this book were the several sequences that were so technically detailed and explaining the almost microsecond by microsecond events that were taking place that it honestly felt like Clancy's infamous pages upon pages of the first nanoseconds of a thermonuclear detonation in The Sum Of All Fears... except Hadfield's passages here were nowhere near as long, despite being very similarly exacting and detailed.

Outside of these passages, what we get here is a seeming conclusion to an alt-history trilogy based in and around the time of the Apollo missions, here specifically the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

Using his experiences as everything from a fighter test pilot to NASA pilot to NASA liaison at the Roscosmos HQ to being Commander of the International Space Stati...

Another Solid Sarah Morgan Christmas Tale. The sun rises in the East. The grass is green. Some politician in your country is being an idiot. Some celebrity said something stupid. Baby animals doing cute things in short videos. The clock showing the same numbers twice every day. The tide comes in and goes away. Ohio State Football being severely overrated. Some things you can just count on, day after day, year after year. They just seem like they're *always* going to be there, longer than the pyramids of Egypt.

Sarah Morgan writing a 300 ish page Christmas no...

All Too Real. I've been reading Bleeker's books since her debut, WRECKAGE, many years ago now. I even finally got a chance to meet her IRL at Walt Disney World last year when we both randomly happened to be there. (For what its worth, I'm there frequently, living just 2.5 hrs away. In fact, the reason I'm writing this review less than 24 hrs before this book comes out rather than last week is because I was at Disney yet again late last week.) All of Bleeker's books have been great, and this one is no exception. Several have hit close to home, either because of her Southern roots showing through or just because we're similar in age and thus have seen a lot of the same events from similar generational views or for some other random reason.

This one is no different there. Something that despite knowing each other for several years now and despite how public I am about my admiration of one of my grandfathers in particular, I'm not *as* public about is that I actually lost three of the four grandparents I knew in my life - my natural maternal grandmother and grandfather and my maternal step grandfather - to dementia long before we lost their actual bodies. Yes, that includes the WW...

Excellent Debut. This is one of those books I randomly picked up as an Amazon First Read... and then only read it over a year after its initial publication when I was getting ready to read its sequel as an Advance Review Copy.

Y'all... I missed out. This book is truly quite excellent, with a solid plot revolving around a broken woman from a small town having to go back to said t...

In The Running For Best Book Of 2025. I've read some strong books this year, even a couple this month alone. This is easily right up there in contention for the best of the best. But it could very well be a "me" thing, to a degree.

You see, while this book is all about the roughly 450 mile Camino de Santiago in Spain (and specifically its traditional "French Way"), it also has the vibes of the stories of a far longer trail I am much more familiar with and somewhat connected to - the nearly 2200 mile long Appalachian Trail that begins in the mountains I grew up in the foothills of in northern Georgia outside Atlanta and ends in the wilds of Maine. Many years ago (enough to constitute a few decades ago), I too intended to strike out on my own to conquer that particular trail, as it represented the ultimate challenge to me at the time. Life happened and instead of spending the latter half of my 18th year hiking, I was already deep into my collegiate career and indeed that very summer taking steps that would allow me to come into my own and find myself within the college ecosyst...

Solid Slow Burn Romance. This is one of those romances where both people come into it with some pretty hefty emotional baggage - that each is very cognizant of their own and knows they need to work on, thus providing most of the actual drama here. Those looking for external drama/ suspense will only find the barest touch, deep in the text, and thus this may not be the book for you if that is something you *must* have.

For those looking for a more laid back "I've gone through hell and need to heal myself, but this person is extremely interesting" type romance, this is much closer to that kind of feel, and I thin...

Rare / Possibly Unique Twist Ending Elevates Great Tale To Exceptional. The very subtitle Joffe Books chose to put on this book of "a brand new totally addictive psychological thriller with a shocking final twist" gives away that there is one here, so I feel zero remorse for mentioning that in the title of this review. If you as the reader of my review feel that it is a spoiler even as generic as it is worded... well, that is on you. :)

As to the actual tale here, it really is exactly what Joffe's marketing people claim: very addictive. This is a story with a seemingly normal ish character with a particular job and a fun quirk gets an ominous threat to return to her home town... where things go from bad to worse. There are reasons she left... and she didn't even have any clue what was actually going on here.

Blending elements of the classic The ...

Perfect Blend Of Travel And Psychological Thriller. Quite simply, this book is amazing. It stumbles out of the gate perhaps a step or two first establishing Ava - and this could well have been a *me* problem here - but once we get to Greece (where the vast majority of the book takes place), it really opens up and becomes exactly what I said in the title here: a perfect blend of travel and psychological thriller.

The Greek island setting is used superbly and makes you wish you could be there... and the vivid descriptions make you think you are. (Which is a...

A Mullet Of Christmas Romance Not Even Until The Middle, Then Hockey Romance In The Back. In total, this book absolutely works. Now, it won't be for the "clean" / "sweet" crowd - if the fucking cussing in Chapter 2 doesn't throw you out, the habanero spice not much later will. But for those who don't mind a dude that cusses like a ... well, an athlete... and who *want* the spice... hey, this may be exactly what you're after as a whole book.

Now, there are reasons I titled this book a "mullet" and I mention that it works "as a whole book". And those reasons all center around the fact that it feels almost like a merger between a 140 ish page Christmas novella and a 180 ish page Hockey short novel, with enough of a m...

Intriguing 'What If'? Particularly with the author's note at the end, where Ackerman notes that her motivation for this book was to try to resolve the mystery behind Mrs. Stanford's death, this book feels most like a phenomenal book most of y'all have never heard of - The Last At-Bat Of Shoeless Joe by Granville Wyche Burgess. The key difference being that Ackerman admits she created a character to blame the death on, while Burgess actively dug into the scandal and claims to have unearthed new real-world evidence that definitively exonerates Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Black Sox scandal.

This noted, for what this book actually is, it will absolutely put you back into Mrs. Stanford's ...