September 2026 Book Reviews, A Special Surprise, And A Look Forward
September was a blur, really. I opened the month at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando, ran (walked, to be more precise) my first 5K in over a decade, and crossed the 80 lb weight loss mark from the beginning of the year... while reading another 20 books, including my 750th review on my current NetGalley profile, and my 1,250th NetGalley review across both of my profiles there. Just a routine "rinse and repeat" kind of month, at least once we got back from HHN.
And now, on to the book reviews...
The Book Reviews
Book Review: Jaws by Peter Benchley
The Granddaddy Of Them All. With A Lot Of Surprises For Those Only Familiar With The Movie. More than The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico. More than Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorpe (the book Die Hard is based on). More than For Love Of The Game by Michael Shaara. More than The Postman by David Brin. More than Meg by Steve Alten (a derivative work in more ways than the obvi
Book Review: Killed By A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall
Question Everything. Including This Book. This is a book about transportation engineering written by an engineer and professor... who late in the book reveals himself as rather anti-car (though it becomes more and more clear the further you get into the text, before Marshall effectively outright says it), including some
Book Review: Possessions by Carey Morewedge
Mullet Of A Book. Got your attention with that review title, eh? Here's what I mean by it: The first part of this book, where Morewedge is explaining the actual psychological research of attachment to posses
Book Review: One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick
Thoughtful and Reflective. I'm writing this review over 20 yrs since the original publication of this book in 2005, over 19 yrs since I first picked it up in February 2007, and 18 ish years since I read it in paperback in 2008 as one of the 53 books I read that year - the first time in my life I
Book Review: Failure Point By Rebecca Hodge
Solid Paced Thriller With Heart. This is one of those thrillers that starts out rather explosively, pulls back, th
Book Review: Promise Me Never By Liv Constantine
Solid Thriller Ripped From The Headlines. This is one of those "in the moment" thrillers that is eventually
Book Review: The Wish List Trip By Kerry Lonsdale And Orly Konig
Powerful Tale Of Friendship. Like so many romances, this is one of those tales where had the people involved simply took a step back and discussed the original events so much sooner than they eventual
Book Review: Shifta By Miles Joyner
Strong Continuation With Even Darker Real World Stakes. This is one of those tales that feels like it could be all *too* real, set in a "near future" that is effectively the actual present and building
Book Review: The Big Bad Book Of Kaiju Edited By Jonathan Maberry And Henry Herz
Something For Damn Near Everyone. Some *REALLY* Good - Some *REALLY* Bad. This is a collection of 20 short stories and 4 poems from a global variety of authors, at least a few of which I'd read before and a few more I'd at least heard of.
Fortunately/ unfortunately, most of the *really* bad stories are the *first* ones we encounter going straight through the text, meaning that at least once you get through those stories, the rest of the book really picks up.
Mostly the really bad are preachy politics that would get a single star deduction from me if they were standalone stories - these include Lee Murray's Hum, Ann Walsh's
Book Review: Corpse Creek By Vincent Ralph
Interesting Use Of Grief As Horror. This is one of those books that seems unexpectedly terrifying in that you wouldn't necessarily ex
Book Review: Fear Farm By Vincent Ralph
Solid Return To Slasher Style Horror. After the more psychological/ supernatural horror of Book 3 in this series, Corpse Cree
Book Review: Hydra By Michael Mcbride
Action Packed, Inventive, And Horrifying. This tale combines arguably even *more* insane pacing than the most frenetic action Matthew Reilly or Jeremy Robinson have *ever* been able to pull off (which
Book Review: Little Blue Dot By Katherine Dunn
Solid And Comprehensive (Ish) History Of GPS And Current Issues As Of Mid-2020s. This was the next book I read on my morning walks after Killed By A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall and which I'm following with The Grid by Gretchen Bakke... so clearly, I still (inadvertantly?) have a theme going with
Book Review: Heart Of Glass By Jennifer Hillier
Solid Complex Thriller. As someone whose wife at least at one point watched a fair amount of reality TV, I've been aware of the "celebrities" in that realm and the culture around them far more than I ever wanted to be, and Hi
Book Review: Its Only Love By Kay Bratt
Solid Vacation From Main Tale. This is one of those tales similar to say the Malibu Sands episodes of Saved By The Bell, or perhaps even the episodes of JAG where Mark Harmon sh
Book Review: Right For Me By Cindy Dorminy
Solid Romance... For The Right Reader. This is one of those romances novels that is going to piss a lot of people off for a lot of different reasons... and yet for the right reader is a pretty damn solid tale.
The biggest dichotomy: It has way too much praying and Christ
Book Review: The World Beneath Our Feet By Frank Ashwood
Traveling The World To Look Into Dirt. This is one of those books that will be *very* appealing to some... and others (most?) will walk right on by, just as they do literally every day with the s
Book Review: Wicked Wanted Widows By Kimberly Belle Cate Holahan And Vanessa Lillie
Still Fun Yet Very Different From Earlier Books. This was a pretty decent departure from the previous books in that while still technically a mystery, it has a *lot* less 80
Book Review: Can Religion Save Democracy By Matthew Kaemingk And Shadi Hamid
Valuable Discourse. Kaemingk and Hamid never set out to declare any absolute that any religion - Christianity, Islam, State/ Reason/ Logic/ Science, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other - can definitively make democracy better. Instead, the main thrust of the argument here is that by more openly discussing all religions andInstead, Hazrat chooses to infuse her personal politics into the story in several areas from the historical (including discussions of Shakespeare, the Bronte Sisters, Whitman, and the "correct" (according to her view) interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which gets a rather large amount of vitriol dedicated specifically to what she views as recent Supreme Court errors here) to the modern (praising a pregnant "man" emoji while proclaiming that precision matters... except when it comes to biological sex, apparently, while also going on an anti-AI diatribe a bit later). Now, these are certainly areas where if you agree with Hazrat's politics, you're going to appreciate these sections a lot more than someone who doesn't. But here's the problem: By including them *at all*, Hazrat calls into question every bit of the rest of her discussion here and even her professionalism and scholarship generally. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant. Causing such damage to what should be an instructive and informative book for everyone, no matter their views, is the massive flaw of this book - where it "misses the mark" and the source of the star deduction.
Book Review: The Crisis Of Biblical Authority By John H Walton
Interesting Academic Dissection Seemingly More Geared Towards Academics And Clerics Than General Audiences. This is one of those academic books where the author is quite clearly writing more towards fellow academics and/ or clerics with only a side glance toward the more educ
Book Review: The Grid By Gretchen Bakke
Dated Yet Reasonable-Ish Primer. This is one of those books about a hyper technical subject that was written by a not-technical-at-all author... and it shows. One where the fact that *Bill Gates* o
A Special Halloween Surprise!
This month I was asked by the author to giveaway one of the books listed above - specifically, Hydra by Michael McBride, the (utterly terrifying) third book of his Creature Files series. So for the first time ever, I'm doing a giveaway in this post, but I'll make it very simple: The first person to send me an email at this link requesting it, gets it. I'll then remove the link from the page as soon as I send it out so that no one else can request it. Easy, right? And don't worry - that link is nothing more than a very basic mailto (email) link with a specific subject attached. I'm not collecting any data, you're not signing up for anything, it really is just sending an email via whatever email client you use. It goes to the same email I list on the Contact page on this site. Simple and clean, and the first person to use it gets a free book just for reading this far and wanting it. :)
And Now, A Look Forward (By Release Date)
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September 2026
- In This Life Or Another by Melissa Payne
- Target Down by Ryan Steck
- Crush Depth by Ryan M. Patrick
- Falling For Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey
- I'll Be Watching You by Allison Brennan
- The Wonder Of One by Suzanne Redfearn
- So It Grows by Andie Burke
- Your GLP-1 Game Plan by Heidi Skolnik
- Watch Her Run by Jennifer Moorhead
- The Lies by Gregg Dunnett
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October 2026
- The Christmas Yes List by Melissa Ferguson
- When You Tell by Steena Holmes
- The Chosen Guest by Laura Drake
- Why We Asky Why by Tania Lombrozo
- Break The Ice by Kristen Bailey
- Have Yourself A Merry Little Meltdown by Sheila Roberts
- Please Enjoy Your Stay by Tara Goedjen
- The Bookshop by Andrew Pettegree
- Undersea War by Elizabeth Braw
- Appetite On Pause by Tierra Duncan
- Losing Alice by B.R. Spangler
- The Best Christmas Ever by Sarah Morgan
- Tyrant Lizard Queen by Riley Black
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November 2026
- Bulletproof Angel by CJ Perry and Blake Northcott
- Set Your Life On Fire by Maddie Dawson
- Take My Word For It by Levar Burton
- The Cold Read by Tara Laskowski
- Until The Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould
- When They Find Me by Carter Wilson
- The Riddle Maker by Bruce Borgos
- Four-Letter Nation by Steven H. Jaffe
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December 2026
- The Blue Hours by Stephanie Kryzwonos
- Meet Me At Midnight by Sophie Sullivan
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January 2027
- Age Of Security by Ruben Andersson
- An Expert Witness by Sue Black
- Take Back The Night by Heather Gudenkauf, Kaira Rouda, and Kimberly Belle
- One Last Warning by Allison Brennan
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February 2027
- She Gets It From Me by Emily Bleeker
- Sub War by Bruce Jones
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March 2027
- The Infectious Mind by Matilda Gosling
- When The Stars Answer by Harper Ross
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June 2027
- Big Cult Energy by Jack Friday