Review: Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves

Posted on February 4, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Travis is Death in the modern world. He wears jeans and a T-shirt and lives in a small, grey town. His job is to offer people comfort in their final hours of life. He’s stoic, gentle, and a little naive, despite everything he knows. He’s young and handsome, despite who he is. Each death he witnesses is meaningful to him; he listens, never judges, and most importantly, never tries to change anyone’s fate. He knows that every life must eventually end to maintain the balance of the universe and he respects the cycle.

Then he meets Dalia, a midwife, and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, who live across the hall. As Dalia and Layla come to embrace Travis, it becomes more difficult to maintain the detachment that’s allowed him to function for so long. Their time together teaches him what’s truly important in life—and what might be irrevocably lost in death.

Written with radiant warmth, wisdom, and compassion, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt is a timeless story about appreciating life, accepting its end, and finding our place in the universe—especially when it feels most impossible—that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost or worried at time’s passing.

Review:

When I saw the title of the debut novel by Ben Reeves, I knew I had to read it. I did not need to know the synopsis or read a sample to know that it was a novel for me. The title is a quote from Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, and the context is that life is tough and filled with ugliness and pain but once this life is over, once death comes, everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. This could not be a better title for this book.

The novel is narrated by Travis, who is also Death. He is not a jokey death though. He does not have black hood and scythe, but he is someone who comes to spend your last moments with you, to hear your last story, make you a cup of tea, or hold your hand one last time. The gentleness and empathy that he shows to the people whom he comes to collect, trying to console those who are scared, trying to listen to those who have just one more story to tell or one more regret to name, makes him someone that you like, even though he is helping people move from this life to the next. Travis is a pretty quiet guy. He lives on his own, restores photographs, and does not want to be bothersome to anyone who is not going to die. When he gets close to Dalia, the single mother across the hall in his apartment building, and her two young girls, you want to hope that he is finding some happiness and balance in his life, a life that up until this moment is solitary, filled with grief from the moments and stories that he respectfully holds onto after they move on. Ben Reeves does a masterful job of making Travis come to life on the page without him saying much or doing much. There are scenes where he does not say a single word but his presence is always there, and it is interesting to think that a character can be written in such a way that he can be in a room during the entire scene, and do nothing, but you never forget that he is there. The clarity that he represents Death is never forgotten, even when the scenes are not about him at all.

There is a heaviness and a quiet calm to Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt that really makes every single moment just as beautiful and heart wrenching as the last. The novel is a perfect testament to how those moments between life and death are a transformation, and this is okay. Reeves has written a novel that is a respectful and compassionate ode to these final moments between life and death. None of the deaths are really fantastical, there are no skydiving victims or police shootouts, so it also makes many of the deaths relatable. The people here in their last moments are normal people, living with normal struggles. This is also a reminder that sometimes life is tough but we are all together and we should lean on each other to get through the tough times when we need to. So it goes. 

I received this ebook as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  

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Review: Last Tango in Cyberspace by Steven Kotler

Posted on January 31, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler crafts a near-future thriller about the evolution of empathy.

Hard to say when the human species fractured exactly. Harder to say when this new talent arrived. But Lion Zorn is the first of his kind–an empathy tracker, an emotional soothsayer, with a felt sense for the future of the we. In simpler terms, he can spot cultural shifts and trends before they happen.

It’s a useful skill for a certain kind of company.

Arctic Pharmaceuticals is that kind of company. But when a routine em-tracking job leads to the discovery of a gruesome murder, Lion finds himself neck-deep in a world of eco-assassins, soul hackers and consciousness terrorists. But what the man really needs is a nap.

A unique blend of cutting-edge technology and traditional cyberpunk, Last Tango in Cyberspace explores hot topics like psychology, neuroscience, technology, as well as ecological and animal rights issues. The world created in Last Tango is based very closely on our world about five years from now, and all technology in the book either exists in labs or is rumored to exist. With its electrifying sentences, subtle humor, and an intriguing main character, readers are sure to find something that resonates with them in this groundbreaking cyberpunk science fiction thriller.

Review:

Two days ago, while I was finishing up the last few pages of Last Tango in Cyberspace by Steven Kotler, Literary Hub published an essay by Naomi S. Baron titled “No Matter How Much Great Literature We Feed Into AI, It Cannot Feel”.

No Matter How Much Great Literature We Feed Into AI, It Cannot Feel

In the article, Baron proposes that many readers of books, particularly fiction, develop more empathy toward everything around them (which is also a personal thing that can be developed with work and not automatically depending on the reader) and since AI cannot express any sort of emotional depth, the literature that uses AI (including any use of synopsis of a great work of literature) cannot express what feelings a story might stir in the reader. I can read the highlights of Frankenstein compiled by AI, can know the entire synopsis from beginning to end and not understand the feelings that the words on the page evokes in the reader. AI strips emotion from all reading and writing. 

This has an interesting tie-in with Last Tango In Cyberspace because the main character, Judah “Lion” Zorn is an “em-tracker”. His brain has been neuro-wired and trained to understand culture and the trends that are happening and yet to happen. He cannot exactly predict the future, but he has a better understanding of how people are working and what anyone’s next move might be. He is offered a job by Arctic, a major technology corporation, to investigate what happened to Robert Walker, a big game hunter who’s head has been found taxidermized and mounted to the wall of his den. The journey that Judah goes through to find out what happened to Walker and why Arctic has so much interest in this killing feels a great deal like one of the recent Thomas Pynchon detective novels. Kotler has written a pulpy mystery story with a science fiction (but more science fact) slant, fueled by drugs, sex, and a heavy dose of Frank Herbert’s Dune. There is so much Dune influence as well as the constant back and forth between Judah and his friend Lorenzo that sometimes is nothing more than lines from the movie Apocalypse Now. Last Tango in Cyberspace ends up being a science-based detective novel mashed with tons of pop culture references (including Rainer Marie Rilke, William James, Banksy, the origins of Rastafarianism, Joan Didion, and of course Infinite Jest), and even a few history lessons thrown in for good measure. It seems like this would make Last Tango in Cyberspace an unfocused mess, but the truth is that it becomes a net that is meshed together and holds the clues to the mystery. 

The idea of the de-evolution of empathy does come up a great deal in Last Tango In Cyberspace considering Judah is an “em-tracker”, someone who has honed in his empathy to be able to read people and situations before they fully develop. In this world, this skill has become rare enough to where he is hired at high prices for jobs. One of the things he explains toward the end is that empathy is not something you develop to help yourself. It is developed to help a whole community, to learn to work with others, and to build a better and more caring world. This idealistic feeling in Last Tango in Cyberspace is also one that is fairly relevant today as most people have completely stopped trying to understand people with different beliefs and opinions. Our communities are divided when we should be developing communities that are beneficial to every type of person instead of using individual feelings to tear them apart. I feel like this novel brings up many interesting questions and explores some interesting ideas, and I know I will be thinking about this book for a long time. This is by far the best book I read this month.

Personally I love the questions that have been raised by Last Tango in Cyberspace and Naomi S. Baron’s essay because these are things I enjoy thinking about. I agree that a great deal of my empathy and emotional depth has come from reading a large amount and variety of books. Not every book I read is for me. I am not always the target demographic, but I will say that reading gives me a better grasp on other cultures, histories, religions, sexual genders, sexual orientations, and the problems that arise in the world that might never affect me personally. Just because I am not the target demographic for a story, it does not mean I should ignore it. Instead I should try to learn something from it. When I read a novel that is not for me but for the transgender teen that is struggling with their true identity or for the person of color who is fighting racism and microaggressions in their workplace or for people who have a thousand other issues that do not affect my life as a late 40s cis white male, I can recognize this, still enjoy the novel, and learn something. Reading books that are not for me helps me grow as a respectful human who accepts and appreciates the people in the community who are not like me. However, reading also glaringly shines a light on so many people who live with hatred in their hearts. Right now people are showing how much they actually lack empathy toward marginalized groups. These hateful people are guided by feelings and fears and are convinced they are the only ones who are valid. Every day I meet hateful people or see hateful comments on social media. The first question I want to ask anyone who is being ugly to another person online is, “How many books did you read last year?” I firmly believe that reading literature changes most people for the better, and this is why the divide is growing between those who want to build communities and those who want to only look out for themselves. There is a decline in the average person reading a single book, and with AI development and emotional depth getting more and more shallow, more people are losing their empathy.      

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Review: Moderation by Elaine Castillo

Posted on January 28, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—​bringing Castillo’s trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love.

Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going places: she’s getting a promotion. Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction.

Despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family’s problems with money and mobility. She doesn’t have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the Bay Area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. But when she meets William Cheung, Playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now Chief Product Officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she’ll learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.

Review:

The beginning of Moderation starts with Girlie Delmundo working as a person moderating social media posts, flagging and removing posts and videos that violate terms and agreements. She specialized in videos about sexual abuse, child assault, and other terrible things done to women and children without their consent. People do not stay at this job very long, but she has been doing it for over ten years and is good at it. With this comes a numbing to the things outside of work, particularly interpersonal and romantic relationships. The first section shows how Girlie lives her life, financially taking care of her mother, her cousins, and herself, lifting heavy weights (no cardio though), buying vintage watches and bags on the internet, and being a great character built on the traumas that she is suppressing. 

The book changes when Girlie meets William and gets a promotion of become a moderator in a VR world that is a historic theme park, built digitally with high quality models. The VR job is a big promotion but also does not seem as interesting as the social media moderator would be. This position comes with her starting to see the corporate psychologist who uses VR scenes to get her to open up about her life and her feelings. As soon as this promotion happens, most of the middle half of the novel is about work, her relationship with her boss, William, and opening up as a person. Her workout and family routines are not even mentioned anymore. When I go to therapy, I have a habit of when I no longer want to talk about myself and the things in my life that I am trying to fix, I start talking about work. Work is an easy thing topic of discussion because most people can relate to the office, the politics of any job, and whether or not people can be trusted as friends or only as coworkers. Talking about work is safe, easy, and pretty boring. Moderation feels like this is what happens; Girlie no longer wants to talk about herself so she focuses on work instead. This feels like a deflection and is a shame because Girlie Delmundo and her family in Las Vegas is a much more interesting than Girlie Delmundo at work. 

Maurice de Coligny, one of the principal characters of the merger between the VR company she works for and a French amusement park company, L’Olifant, gives a speech about halfway through the novel. He says,

“In 1989, my father came up with an idée” De Coligny began, surveying the audience in the Grand Ballroom. “What if you could build a theme park that didn’t have one single ride?”

He held up his right index finger. “What if, instead of the commercialism and cheap thrills of other, more famous theme parks, you could imagine a different way to connect with visitors–a different way to connect with ourselves, and our history?” p. 176

This feels like what Elaine Castillo is trying to do with Moderation. She does show us an amusement park but then does not want to use any of these things for cheap thrills. The Goldie in the beginning is fascinating, with her interesting quirks and culture that can be explored but instead Castillo writes a novel about her figuring out how to connect with people (or one particular person). In the meantime she becomes a different and better person. She become more connected to her history and what she has been through previous to becoming Goldie Delmundo, and she is more willing to make bold choices for different outcomes for the future. Goldie is living the idea laid out by de Coligny in his speech, but as a reader who is watching her do this, I want her to ride more rides. I like Goldie and I enjoy the writing by Elaine Castillo, but I do feel like both the character and the writer’s choices are not as interesting as they could have been.

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Review: Dollface by Lindy Ryan

Posted on January 24, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Barbie meets Scream with a 90s nostalgia twist in this horror romp from Bless Your Heart author Lindy Ryan.

Horror author Jill has just moved to suburban New Jersey, hoping to fit in with the new PTA moms and maybe not weird everyone out with her Final Girl coffee mug. You know. Make some real friends.

But then a plastic face-masked serial killer begins slashing their way through town, one overly made-up mom at a time. The police are incredulous. The moms are indignant. And Jill is slowly wrapped into a killer’s murderous spree, until she might just be the last woman standing.

A delightfully murderous novel that is equal parts scathing and salacious, Dollface will win you over with its gossip and gore, one body at a time.

Review:

The plot summary of Dollface sounds like the setup to a great horror novel. Two sisters are home when their mother kills herself, and they make a pact to always take care of each other. Jill becomes a horror writer and Kitty becomes an internet influencer. When Jill’s husband moves the family from the west coast to the east coast, the sisters are split up, and Jill has to figure out how to navigate her new life, which includes Darla, the neighbor who brings a welcome basket, wants to become her friend, and insists that Jill becomes involved in the local PTA. Jill meets the other PTA members and immediately after, they start to be killed or severely injured, and it is only a matter of time before Jill feels like she might be next. For as interesting as this novel could have been, the writing, the character development, and the telling of the story makes this a novel that could be the biggest disappointment of the year.

The way the story unfolds is so bland and mediocre that I could not wait to be finished reading it. The beginning starts interesting but before too long, there is no emotional development, no character depth and really not a single interesting quality in any of the characters. The only thing that Jill can rely on to help her navigate the other members of the PTA getting stabbed and maimed is that she is a horror author, proven by wearing horror t-shirts all of the time and wondering if they are inappropriate. Much of the writing is bland, uninspired, and extremely repetitive, so bad that it could be turned into a drinking game. Each time it is mentioned that Jill is “a horror author”, she has “a darling husband”, that the house they move into is “creaky-not-creepy”, her son likes “kaiju” (not any specific one like Godzilla or King Kong or Clifford the Big Red Dog, just “kaiju”), and Darla is her “new sweet neighbor”, we have to take a shot. Of course we also would not get very far into the novel at all. The weirder aspect of this is that lack of emotional depth in any character throughout this novel. Jill does not have much real visceral response to the crimes happening around her. She cares much more about solving the murders since she is, you know, a horror author. She does not express much about her feelings of danger or fear about the things going on around her, about how all of the new people that she is meeting are suddenly ending up victims to violence. Even by the time she does fear for her own life, it does not feel too urgent, she takes no steps to protect herself or her family, but is more like, “Well. I guess I’m next.” Her husband is supposed to be military, but there is not any mention of a gun in the house or any weapons to protect her or her son when her husband is away with his government work. The connection that she does have with her husband is one of the better aspects of the novel. I love when main characters have strong relationships with their partners (and even better still when they trust their partners enough to ask them for help with the problems), but after a few scenes of them having the most uninteresting lovemaking scenes I have ever read, I started to think that Jill is not connected to her life at all, that there is no passion in anything, even when she is having sex. This lack of real thrill in her life and the flatness of her as a character is consistent throughout. Probably the most irritating aspect of Dollface is the subplot of Jill trying to find the next horror novel that she is supposed to write. Characters struggling to write the next bestseller is the most lazy, boring plot someone can dream up. Nobody cares, and nobody is interested. Jill also mentions many many times that she is a “horror author” yet she has only written one novel (a bestseller of course), and she is having issues with coming up with anything for a sequel. This thread of trying to brainstorm a new horror novel is not only uninspired and generic but is also abandoned about halfway through because quite honestly it goes nowhere.

The repetition of phrases, the lack of emotional depth in the characters, and the generic plot movement makes me think that if I were to read a novel that was heavily written or edited with Chat GPT or another AI program, it would feel like this. I will never accuse anyone of using an AI program to write their novels, and to be fair I have not read any of Lindy Ryan’s other books to see if this writing is consistent with her previous works. This is not what I am saying. I am saying that I have read enough books to get a feeling that if I were handed AI generated fiction, it would likely have many of the same characteristics as this writing. 

Dollface is like a poorly remodeled house that still has good bones. A story about anxiety of moving to a place where nobody knows you, meeting an overbearing and potentially dangerous neighbor in a brand new house, surrounded with nobody you can trust, and a killer on the loose sounds like a great story. Many of the broad strokes of the story are interesting, and I would love to read this again with better characters, more creativity, and characters that actually feel tension and danger in the situation. 


I received Dollface as an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias

Posted on January 22, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

He has a mouth in his gut. An obnoxious, toothy, foul-mouthed, pig of a mouth. Luckily, his girlfriend doesn’t seem to mind. Marie, the one-legged stripper and cyber-prostitute love of his life is very accepting of it. And then a little too accepting. What would you do if your girlfriend cheated on you with the voracious yapper under your belly button? If you live in Gutmouth’s world-a bleak city where gruesome, spontaneous mutations are no big deal, klepto-roaches take anything not tied-down, drugs turn pain into pleasure, consumers are tortured for growing food, and your best friend is a misogynistic rat-man-you might do something crazy. And what if you got caught?

Review:

By the time Gabino Iglesias became the well-known author of great novels like The Devil Takes You Home and House of Bone and Rain (and became one my favorite book reviewers), he has already published a half dozen novels and novellas. His very first novella from 2013 was published by Eraserhead Press as part of their New Bizarro Author Series. Many great authors have published their first book through this discovery series, and Gabino Iglesias’s first novella, Gutmouth, might be one of the best. The story is about David “Gutmouth” Dedmon, an employee of the single corporation that rules everything, MegaCorp, and someone who is living a normal life until a mouth with a nine inch tongue, a British accent, and a wicked sense of humor named Phillipe grows out of David’s stomach. When Gutmouth starts dating a one-legged, three-breasted prostitute, Marie, he feels like his life is going pretty good, despite the annoyance of Phillipe, or at least tolerable. But then he feels like Maire is being unfaithful and the best thing to do about that is to kill her in a way that will not get him caught. 

What makes Gutmouth more interesting and entertaining than it should be is the skill of Iglesias’s writing. Each sentence paints a perfect scene, and there is not a single word that is not used to it’s full potential. Like the writing of Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, or even Bruce Wagner, each sentence in Gutmouth is richly texture and meaning to the point where any of them could be the launching point of an entirely new story. A person could use this novella as a writing exercise book, opening a random page, picking a sentence, and making their own story from that sentence. Very few authors write like this, and fortunately Iglesias is one of them bringing those types of skills into a novella about a one-legged hooker getting killed by her lover with a mouth growing out of his stomach. It is no wonder that he has continued to grow and become a Shirley Jackson and Brom Stoker award-winning success.


With this being a bizarro novella, there is no scene that does not have something weird, absurd, or deviant at its core. Bizzaro fiction thrives on the idea that everything is possible, so the things that happen in Iglesias’s novella range from the silly, like the kleptomaniac roaches in Gutmouth’s apartment that will steal your things if you do not tie them down, to the grotesque, like the business below his apartment being the Genital Mutilation and Erotic Maiming Center, and the drug that turns peoples pain into orgasmic pleasure. This really displays the two sides of bizarro fiction, and it is ultimately shows what brought the genre down. These two aspects, the silly and the perverse, slowly steered away from the silly and more toward the disgusting and that is how extreme horror really evolved out of the genre. The silly aspect of bizarro evolved too, but more in the weird erotica, like the Chuck Tingle stories (before he published more mainstream horror novels for Tor Nightfire) and all of the weird erotica on Amazon Unlimited with humans having sex featuring dinosaurs, cryptids, aliens, doorknobs, snowmen, and whatever else a person can have sex with. There are still some bizarro presses and some presses that are ran by people who’s foundation is in bizarro, so the ideas of the genre are not completely dead, but it is not nearly as prevalent and relevant as it was in the first two decades of the 2000s. Reading bizarro novels and novellas have almost become a niche thing, and they are still really fun to find and to read. Some bizarro books and authors are required reading for any horror or weird fiction fan. Bizarro as a genre has an interesting and short but rich history with tons of short books to enjoy. Gutmouth is definitely one of them.

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Review: The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Posted on January 17, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric’s been in Dr. Randle’s care for two years — since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands.

But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by “the first Eric Sanderson,” a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him.

The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.

Review:

The Raw Shark Texts is my favorite type of novel, one that people have really strong feelings about. I would always rather read a novel with an average Goodreads score of 3, with half of the reviews being one star and half of the reviews being five stars, than read a book with an average score of 3 stars with all of the reviews being three stars. These polarizing books usually end up becoming some of my absolute favorites. There are enough poor, one star reviews of The Raw Shark Texts that I knew I would probably like it. This is not a typical book, a typical structure, or a novel that gives all of the answers. 

Each of the four parts of the novel are distinctive from the last. The first part is a man, Eric Sanderson, waking up and not having any memory. He spends his time trying to get his bearings of who he is and his memory. He is getting letters, but he does not open any of them, just throws them into a kitchen cabinet and ignores them. The second part is about the shark that starts to stalk him, attracted to him because is attracted to his words, his language, his life, and the history that he does not completely remember. He starts to open the letters from the previous version of Eric Sanderson, and there are a few things that help him remember who he used to be, but most of the letters are about how to protect himself. Part three is about trying to find help with getting rid of this stalking shark because he is not going to live in peace as long as a shark is stalking him in his periphery, a road adventure leading to new characters that might help him or get him killed, and part four is pretty much a rewrite of the climatic scenes in the original Jaws, the small group of people going on a shark hunt. There are also many elements that make this feel like a loose retelling of The Wizard of Oz, with Sanderson convinced that if he finds the Wizard, Dr. Fidorous, he will have all of the answers to help defeat the text shark and get him home. And of course there is the mysterious girl who shows up in the middle of the adventure to guide him to Dr. Fidorous and a love who had died in an accident, Clio, the two girls possibly being the same person. There are many aspects to this novel that mosaic together the entire story, and in the end, in the last few pages, there is another light bulb that is turned on that will make you rethink everything that you have read. 

I enjoyed The Raw Shark Texts and found many of the puzzles, directions, misdirections, and creativity impressive and entertaining. Many people talk about this book in the same conversation as House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, but The Raw Shark Texts is nowhere near as dense and opaque, a much more accessible version of this type of novel. There are some things that are purposefully left up to question and interpretation. Considering The Raw Shark Texts is also a pun of the Rorschach Tests, a psychological test where inkblots are shown to a person and they are to give their interpretation of what they see, it makes complete sense that The Raw Shark Texts is open to the reader’s interpretation of what they see. This is a strange novel, with a weird, incredibly creative plot, but it is also one of those books that if someone is new to reading abstract and challenging literature, it would be the first novel that I recommend because it is also very easy to read and enjoy. I do also recommend a physical version of this novel, because how else are you going to get the text shark flip book animation? This also proves my theory that I should always read books with polarizing views because I tend to really enjoy them.

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Review: I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner

Posted on January 15, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

An epic novel that brings together a motley crew of characters, including porn stars in love, celebrity chore-whores, plotting dermatologists, masseurs, and shrinks, among many others cast in the debauchery of Hollywood.

I’m Losing You follows the rich and famous and the down and out as their lives intersect in a series of coincidences. A masterfully told story of decadence that examines the psychological complexities of Hollywood reality and fantasy, soaring far beyond the reaches of Robert Stone’s Children of Light and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust.

Review:

There are two groups in America that are endlessly fascinating due to the depth of secrecy, depravity, and lack of moral compass they possess. The first is people in the government. The second is people in the entertainment industry. It can be argued that we pay closer attention to actors, directors, producers, and everyone connected to making film and TV more than government officials because we enjoy the art that people in Hollywood produce, and sometimes we develop an emotional attachment to TV shows and movies. Because of this we hope in the depths of our heart that the people who make us feel attached to a movie or television program are good people. (We also want this feeling about Hollywood people because we already know our fascination with the government officials is because there is no hope for them. They are all awful people, but we follow them because of the other emotions they invoke, sometimes good, but mostly bad.) Another difference between Hollywood and Washington is that there still seems to be an achievable dream about making a career in entertainment, TV shows, making movies, rubbing elbows with famous people, and being part of the industry. The reverse of this is true in the government. Common citizens have been locked out of the government, and there is no sense of having a career in politics because there is no positive side to the dream. The corruption in Hollywood and Washington has always existed and will always bring stories that are bizarre, unbelievable, and sometimes infuriating.

Bruce Wagner knows this. He has written many books about Hollywood and the system of film and television making. He also writes about how many of those behind the entertainment are terrible people. Terrible people in Hollywood have always existed, and as the times change, so do the depravities. Some very disturbing things are done between characters in this novel, and these things are not new to the entertainment industry. The more you read the history of Hollywood and the famous people (the Big Stars) or the rich people that keep the industry moving, you learn that there is something corrupted about a group of famous and rich people living together, almost like they have to outdo each other with their disgusting acts.

This is the backdrop of his novel I’m Losing You. He takes a set of stories from a group of characters associated with making movies and television, particularly producers, and wads their lives up into a huge tangled knot. There are many characters that are threaded throughout, including producers, assistants, a director of softcore pornography wanting to make a name for himself, writers trying to get their scripts noticed, drug pushing doctors, psychiatrists, and old TV stars that are shocked when people recognize them. The knot is huge, and the strings go in so many different directions, sometimes directions that you do not expect. At the center of this knot is the truth that in Wagner’s Hollywood, nobody gets what they expect or what they desire. Instead they settle for what they are given. And the worse you treat others, the worse your fate. I’m Losing You is filled with disappointment. Most of the novel’s characters start with optimism, but not a single one of them gets what they expect.  

Wagner’s writing reminds me of another writer who writes about Los Angeles, James Ellroy. Ellroy writes about the corrupt Los Angeles police. Wagner writes about the corrupt entertainment industry. I find the stories about Hollywood and Film and TV production more fascinating than the police, but I also know that Ellroy’s depiction of Los Angeles police is just as interesting as Wagner’s Hollywood. I’m Losing You is written in a similar style as an Ellroy novel, and it is sometimes difficult because there are so many characters and threads that are just one big knot, and the writing is stylized on top of it, sometimes with puns and metaphors, and sometimes with scenes that grow more and more abstract. I like the challenge of reading Bruce Wagner’s (and Ellroy’s) novels. After all of the ugliness that propels the people and the stories from page to page, Wagner does a good job in showing growth for many (not all but many) of the characters, and this to me makes I’m Losing You worth the effort. 

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Review: Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart

Posted on January 11, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A space shuttle flight crew discovers that the Earth they’ve returned to is not the home they left behind in this emotional, mind-bending thriller from the creator of the hit Netflix series Manifest and the bestselling author of The Warehouse.

“If The Martian and The Twilight Zone had a baby, it would be Detour—a thriller that messes with your head as you scramble to piece together what’s really going on.”—Steve Netter, Best Thriller Books

Ryan Crane wasn’t looking for trouble—just a cup of coffee. But when this cop spots a gunman emerging from an unmarked van, he leaps into action and unknowingly saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations, from an assassination attempt.

As thanks for Ryan’s quick thinking, Ward offers him the chance of a lifetime: to join a group of lucky civilians chosen to accompany three veteran astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

A devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, yet with the encouragement of his loving wife—and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son—he crews up and ventures into a new frontier.

But as the ship is circling Titan, it is rocked by an unexplained series of explosions. The crew works together to get back on course, and they return to Earth as heroes.

When the fanfare dies down, Ryan and his fellow astronauts notice that things are different. Some changes are good, such as lavish upgrades to their homes, but others are more disconcerting. Before the group can connect, mysterious figures start tailing them, and their communications are scrambled.

Separated and suspicious, the crew must uncover the truth and decide how far they’re willing to go to return to their normal lives. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins.

Review:

Detour starts with the world falling apart and humanity trying to find a new place we can go that is inhabitable. The research says that Titan, the largest moon on Saturn, might be the best option. The first exploration is to drop a satellite and take pictures. The mission is manned with three well-seasoned and trained astronauts and three civilians, a researcher, the winner of a lottery to go into space, and a police officer who happened to be in the right place at the right time to save billionaire John Ward, the person also financing the trip. The trip takes two years, and when they return to Earth after the journey, they learn that things are different, radically different.

This is the first in a series of novels, and Detour is more about setting up the rest of the books than telling a complete story. The original idea was conceived by the creator of the television show Manifest and in the notes afterward, he says the original idea for Detour was a television series. The book reads like this; each chapter is an episode of a TV show, and it is all building to something bigger. A majority of the novel is the setup to them going to space, the training, the interpersonal conflicts, and the journey out to Titan and back. Only the last third is the story of the crew returning to Earth to see things are noticeably different. This definitely feels like a TV show, and if I were to watching it, I would probably enjoy it, maybe even recommend it to my friends, because it is an interesting concept and fun execution. The characters are varied enough to be engaging and keep my attention, and even though the science fiction is not so deep to not be appealing to a wide audience, the story does make sense. As a television series, it works pretty well, but as a novel, it is just okay. There is not a conclusion to the story, at least to a point where it will be okay if the second book does not get published. With novels, there has to be some satisfaction that the strings are tied together, even if loosely. What we get with Detour is a novel that is nothing but an introduction and a cliffhanger. This does not really work as well in books as it does on television. This is unfortunate because I would read the second book if I knew it was available. I like the story. I like the characters and their development, and I was engaged the entire way through. The writing is simple and appealing to a wide variety of readers, but there is something very unsatisfying about a novel that does not really have an end as much as a cliffhanger for the next book, especially in a series that has not been established as one that will continue. I would suggest reading it after a few books are published, especially if you are in a reading rut, because this is a fun and easy story to enjoy.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

Posted on January 7, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.

Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.

Review:

Winifred Notty is the new governess for the Pound children, Andrew who is nine-years-old and his older sister Drusilla. They are to be taught their lessons, told stories, tucked into bed, and shown how to be children who are seen and not heard. The problem is that Mr. and Mrs. Pound do not know that they hired someone who plans to kill the whole family by Christmas morning. There are so many things that I enjoy about this book, and at a little under 200 pages, Victorian Psycho is a perfect story that really brings us to the Victorian era where the manor is cold and the people are colder. 

Victorian Psycho echoes the other great novel about a sociopath killer, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Both of the main characters, Miss Notty and Patrick Bateman feel invisible in a society that has more money than intelligence. Both characters say things under their breath and do things without raising suspicion, mostly because everyone they encounter is too busy with their own hopes of prestige and influence. So they are able to push the boundaries of the sick and the depraved imagination, and nobody really knows what is happening because they are too blinded by the their own life and how they are perceived by others. The difference between Bateman and Notty is that Notty has the other hired help in the house on her level, watching her, and seeing her doing the odd things that Notty thinks she is getting away with, and knowing she is dangerous. Living in Ensor House, the other house staff is watching her all of the time, so people know what she is doing and are frightened of her, but they do not have the authority to stop her. They have to watch her in horror. Bateman spends most of his story alone with his thoughts and his actions, killing people in his apartment and not getting caught, whereas Notty always has someone in the house with her, whether it be the children she is supposed to be teaching or the help who keep Ensor House running. 

Despite the atrociousness Winifred Notty, I enjoy her as a character. I like her depravity, her sheer unhappiness, and her disgust for society around her. And I like seeing society around her portrayed in a way that she is justified in her disgust. One of the best examples is when some houseguests mention needing to go home because there is a chimney sweep stuck in their chimney. The true history of chimney sweeps in Victorian times is horrible. They were young, scrawny boys because the chimneys were so small, some of them were as young as four and six years old. They climbed up the narrow chimneys, and they got stuck often. One of the things homeowners did when the young sweeps got stuck was light a fire in the hearth (also the origins the expression “light a fire under someone’s ass”). Many tried to scramble further up the chimney, got even more stuck and died. Sometimes the chimneys would have to be taken completely apart to get the dead kid out. The novel mentions this in passing, but it is because they finally made laws where chimney sweeps had to be at least twelve, so they got stuck more often, and this was seen as a terrible idea for the industry. The Victorian age was not nice to children, and those without money who grew up working all of their lives, who actually survived to adulthood had an understandable bitterness toward society. It is no wonder that Miss Winifred Notty ended up the way that she is, and the depiction of her and society that made her in Victorian Psycho is pitch perfect. 

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Review: Killer on the Road/The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones

Posted on January 4, 2026 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A must-have collector’s item for horror fans, comprised of two novellas, The Babysitter Lives and Killer on the Road, from the new master of horror Stephen Graham Jones.

The Babysitter Lives

When high school senior Charlotte agrees to babysit the Wilbanks twins, she plans to put the six-year-olds to bed early and spend a quiet night studying: the SATs are tomorrow, and checking the Native American/Alaskan Native box on all the forms won’t help if she chokes on test day. But tomorrow is also Halloween, and the twins are eager to show off their costumes.

Charlotte’s last babysitting gig almost ended in tragedy when her young charge sleepwalked unnoticed into the middle of the street, only to be found unharmed by Charlotte’s mother. Charlotte vows to be extra careful this time. But the house is filled with mysterious noises and secrets that only the twins understand, echoes of horrors that Charlotte gradually realizes took place in the house eleven years ago. Soon Charlotte has to admit that every babysitter’s worst nightmare has come true: they’re not alone in the house.

Killer on the Road

Eighteen-year-old Harper has decided to run away from home after she has another blow-out argument with her mother. However, her two best friends, little sister, and ex-boyfriend all stop her from hitchhiking her way up Route 80 in Wyoming by joining her on an intervention disguised as a road trip. What they don’t realize is that Harper has been marked by a very unique serial killer who’s been trolling the highway for the past three years, and now the killer is after all of them in this fast-paced and deadly chase novel that will have your heart racing well above the speed limit as the interstate becomes a graveyard.

Review:

Saga Press has started printed new double books, where you finish one story, flip it over, and start the other story. The first in their series is two novellas by Stephen Graham Jones, Killer on the Road and The Baby Sitter Lives. Both stories come with an element of a supernatural being stalking the main character, and both stories suffer from the same problems.

The Killer on the Road: The story takes place on Route 90 in Wyoming, where Harper is trying to hitch a ride to get away from her mother after a fight. Before too long, Harper is spotted by friends and an ex-boyfriend, and shortly after, her younger sister has found them and is tagging along. Also along this stretch of Route 90 is Bucketmouth, a shapeshifting killer who is having fun going from one body to the next while travelling crisscross across the country with no real intentions besides killing and having a good time doing it. He is currently travelling on Route 90 as well, and before too long, he and Harper are in a deadly game of cat and mouse. This game also involves semi-trucks travelling at breakneck speeds and becoming just as big of hazards to Harper and her friends as Bucketmouth. The beginning and the end of this novella are interesting to some degree, but the pages and pages of cat and mouse between Bucketmouth and Harper involving trucks, gas stations, and rest stops just seem to drag on and on, and sometimes the clarity of what is happening gets lost in the writing. Many times I find myself rereading parts and trying to figure out what is really happening in a story where the pages should be moving fast to keep the pace and the action exhilarating. 

The Babysitter Lives: Charlotte is babysitting the Wilbanks twins, hoping that they go to bed early enough for her to study for her SAT exam in the morning. When the twins show her that the house is funny and she can enter secret spaces that will make her show up in another section of the house (the laundry room transports her to a beanbag upstairs), she is quickly swept into the horrors that are also hiding in the secret spaces of the house. An entity, trapped there, is trying to get Charlotte’s body so that they can escape. I liked this a little more than The Killer on the Road, but there are moments when the story does not make any sense and instead of helping the reader figure it out quicker, Stephen Graham Jones continues forward, going toward the next scene without really any explanation or return to understand what might have happened.

Both stories have strong female main characters, and they could have been better reads if there was more editing for clarity, not for content. The stories are good and have interesting premises, but most of it gets lost in the convoluted way it is written. Stephen Graham Jones admits that he worked on finishing both of these novellas fast, and it fells like there were times when he thought, “This will get cleaned up later,” but it does not happen. I have read several of his novels, and there are some that I like better than others, but it feels like these two novellas are the worst written of any of the stories of his that I have read. It makes both stories hard and frustrating to read, and by the end I was glad to be done with them both. I will continue to read his books, but I would recommend any of his other books as a first read before recommending these two novellas. I will not be revisiting either of these stories anytime soon.

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