Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Mysteries & Detective Stories

June ’26 Wrap-Up

Posted 06/30/2026 by Charli in Wrap Up / 0 Comments

I finally got back into reading this month after almost a year of not reading. I didn’t review all the books on this list, but I did review several of them. Here’s what I read in June 2026: So there it is – all 13 books I read during the month of June 2026! Clown in a Cornfield, Together We Rot, We Did Nothing Wrong, 1 Peter, 52-Week Prayer Practice for Women, The Courage to Change, Sweet Nightmare, and The Joy of an Uncluttered Life were NetGalley reads. Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives and Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo were just to finish the released books in the series. ‘Salem’s Lot, Hell House, and The Exorcist were part of my Summerween/Scariest Books Ever Written list. What did you read this month?

We Did Nothing Wrong by Hannah..

Posted 06/09/2026 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

We Did Nothing Wrong is another of the books in my infamous NetGalley backlog that I needed to get read and reviewed. This one was another audiobook find from my local library, which gave me a better opportunity to get it read and reviewed. I actually read along with the eARC while listening to the audiobook for this one. I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t enthralled with this book. It wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t great. It was just… a book. I didn’t connect with the characters and honestly, part of that could have been the fact that our main character is referred to as Lia one moment and Delia the next. There’s also the issue of constantly switching between Lia’s parents being referred to as Mom and Dad and Pamela and Eric. The disconnect was jarring at times – with people who should have known to call her Lia calling […]

Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo..

Posted 06/04/2026 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

As I said in my review for Clown in a Cornfield, I found it much easier to listen to this book than I did to read it. So when I went to start Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, I went straight for the audiobook. Fortunately, my local public library carries this series, so I was able to snag this one as an audiobook as well. First, I want to shout out to Jesse Vilinsky. She does an amazing job of narrating this series. I mean, AMAZING. The voices she’s created for each of the characters is now ubiquitous with those characters in my mind. I cannot imagine one of them speaking in any other voice. When I first started Frendo Lives, I hadn’t imagined that we’d be combining PTSD with Internet Conspiracy Theories, but here we are, and it is amazing. I should have known that this would be part of […]

Four Found Dead by Natalie D. ..

Posted 01/10/2025 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Four Found Dead was one of those books that took me a while to read – mostly because it was a case of “right book, wrong time”. I tried several times to read this book and just couldn’t stay interested. Last night, I decided I’d give it one more try before giving up and I’m glad I did. I started it at 10PM and finished at 3:45AM the next morning. Once I was able to properly get into the book, I could not put the book down. I had to know what was going to happen next. While we didn’t get to know all of the characters well, I have to say that my favorites were Naomi, Hudson, and Jo. However, I would like to have gotten Jo’s name a bit earlier in the book than we did, but it is what it is. And I would like to say […]

If You Can Hear This by Faith ..

Posted 06/21/2024 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

In my quest to work through my NetGalley queue, I started reading If You Can Hear This by Faith Gardner. I have another book by Ms. Gardner in my NetGalley queue as well, so I was hoping that I would enjoy this book. I did – immensely. What do you get when you mix a group of misfit kids who make up an audio/visual club, a missing teacher, and an apathetic town? You get If You Can Hear This. And believe me, this is a book you won’t want to miss. Our main characters – Posey, Sal, Jeremiah, Athena, Yash, and Lexy make up the Wild Pines High School AV Club. They each have their own unique perspectives on life and what’s happening. Posey is a girl who came to Wild Pines from San Francisco. She’s the new kid – she’s weird, quite a bit on the bossy side, and […]