About Lenn

I write about my personal thoughts, experiences, and bookish fixations.

Book Review: The Last House On Needless Street by Catriona Ward

Posted on 08/05/2023 by Lenn

Title: The Last House On Needless Street

Author: Catriona Ward

Publication Date: September 16, 2021

Number of Pages: 363

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Viper

Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Synopsis:

‘I haven’t read anything this exciting since Gone Girl’ – STEPHEN KING

‘Books like this don’t come around too often’ – JOANNE HARRIS

This is the story of a murderer. A stolen child. Revenge. This is the story of Ted, who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia in an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet some of them are lies.

You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, something lies buried. But it’s not what you think…
Continue reading →

Book Review: My Mother’s Eyes by Jeremy Ray

Posted on 08/04/2023 by Lenn

Title: My Mother’s Eyes

Author: Jeremy Ray

Publication Date: December 17, 2021

Number of Pages: 39

Format: E-book

Publisher: Ray Publishing

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Synopsis:

“You’re wrong, Jordie. You’ll see. Draw me just one more time.”

No one knows if his mother will come out of her coma, so fourteen-year-old Jordie memorializes her in the only way he knows how: by drawing her. His older brother doesn’t approve of these sketches, but Jordie’s determined to capture the person she used to be.

Unfortunately, Jordie must draw her from memory because his mom didn’t keep pictures, and her body in the hospital no longer looks like her. But the images of her are quickly fading, and if he doesn’t get a drawing right soon, the mother he remembers may slip away forever. No matter how close Jordie gets to completing a drawing, his mom’s most vital feature always evades him.

Will Jordie capture his mother’s eyes? Or are they and his mother gone forever?
Continue reading →

Book Review: Magnum Opus by Caitlin Marceau

Posted on 08/03/2023 by Lenn

Title: Magnum Opus

Author: Caitlin Marceau

Publication Date: August 30, 2022

Number of Pages: 63

Format: E-book

Publisher: Timber Ghost Press

Genre: Horror, Supernatural

Synopsis:

Charlotte Curran is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure her newest book is a best seller… even if that means murdering her best friend.

Nobody suspects her of killing renowned author Kim Lavoie, but when Charlotte starts seeing Kim everywhere she turns, she quickly realizes it’s more than just her guilty conscience haunting her. With each passing day, Kim’s judging gaze grows more difficult to escape.

Magnum Opus is a dark look at the price of fame and the legacy we leave behind. Continue reading →

Book Review: Am I Beautiful? by Jon Athan

Posted on 08/02/2023 by Lenn

Title: Am I Beautiful?

Author: Jon Athan

Publication Date: February 15, 2021

Number of Pages: 298

Format: E-book

Publisher: Independent

Genre: Horror, Splatterpunk

Synopsis:

Adam Miller, a successful marketing manager at a travel agency, visits Tokyo, Japan on business. During his trip, he has a one-night stand with a young Japanese woman, Miki Someya. But Miki latches onto him. She follows him— stalks him —through the streets of Tokyo, professing her love and begging for his. Adam manages to avoid her, but he loses control of himself when she confronts him and threatens to follow him home to tell his wife about their affair. In a fit of drunken rage, Adam attacks her. He beats her black and blue, then he carves a smile on her face with a pair of shears.

Afraid and ashamed, he flees the country and escapes prosecution. But years later, when children start vanishing in his city and the only suspect is a woman with a scarred face, he suspects his past has followed him home… Inspired by a classic urban legend, Jon Athan, the author of Lovesick and Maneater , brings you a disturbing new vision of sadistic romance. This novel contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised. Continue reading →

Book Review: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach

Posted on 08/01/2023 by Lenn

Title: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

Author: Mark Lukach

Publication Date: May 2, 2017

Number of Pages: 320

Format: Audiobook

Publisher: Harper Wave

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Mental Illness

Synopsis:

A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love.

Mark and Giulia’s life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended.

A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach’s is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife’s mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers’ faith in the power of love. Continue reading →

Stuff I’ve Been Reading Lately #35

Posted on 07/13/2023 by Lenn

BOOKS READ:

Mommy Dearest by Willow Rose
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
I’m Not Sam by Jack Ketchum
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach
Am I Beautiful? by Jon Athan
Magnum Opus by Caitlin Marceau
My Mother’s Eyes by Jeremy Ray
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
Nibble, Nibble, Crunch by Willow Rose
The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by Liza Rodman

BOOKS BOUGHT:

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Trickery by Roald Dahl
Deception by Roald Dahl
Lust by Roald Dahl
Cruelty by Roald Dahl
War by Roald Dahl
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin
The Chocolate Lover’s Wedding by Carole Matthews
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Half Sister by Sadie Jones
The Staycation by Cressida McLaughlin
Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors
The Other Mrs. Miller by Allison Dickson
The Rising by Mira Grant

BOOKS RECEIVED:

The Outsider by Albert Camus
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Two Wrongs Make a Right by Chloe Leise
Madness by Roald Dahl
Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

Continue reading →

Puerto Galera, Philippines

Posted on 07/06/2023 by Lenn

This is a long overdue post, but here it is anyways. Our Puerto Galera trip was just a weekend trip with friends, but we enjoyed so much. I don’t have a lot of photos from that trip because it was honestly a chill vacation and I just wanted to enjoy the place. Our stay there wasn’t the most sunny of days, but to me, the gloomy weather was perfect for strolling along the beach, reading, and getting a good dip in the ocean. It was honestly the well-deserved break from the city that I needed. Continue reading →

Book Review: I’m Not Sam by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee

Posted on 06/07/2023 by Lenn

Title: I’m Not Sam

Author: Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee

Publication Date: January 1, 2012

Number of Pages: 127

Format: E-book

Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications

Genre: Horror, Psychological Thriller

Synopsis:

Now I’m way beyond confusion.

Now I’m scared.

I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans.

And now I’m shivering too.

In some fundamental way she’s changed… Continue reading →

Book Review: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Posted on 06/06/2023 by Lenn

Title: Dark Matter

Author: Blake Crouch

Publication Date: July 26, 2016

Number of Pages: 352

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Sci-Fi

Synopsis:

A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human–a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of. Continue reading →

Book Review: Mommy Dearest by Willow Rose

Posted on 06/05/2023 by Lenn

Title: Mommy Dearest

Author: Willow Rose

Publication Date: July 12, 2017

Number of Pages: 118

Format: E-book

Publisher: Amazon

Genre: Thriller

Synopsis:

Do you really know your mother-in-law? A Spine-chilling Horror novella from the Queen of Scream
We all know a relationship with your mother-in-law can be quite tricky from time to time. We jokingly call them things like Monster-in-law. However, sometimes, there is actual truth to that joke, isn’t there? Some of them do act like true monsters, don’t they?

When Crystal meets her future mother-in-law for the first time, she is excited. She knows it might be a challenge to have her live with them for an entire month, but still. It’s an old woman we’re talking about here. How much trouble can she cause?

Mommy Dearest is a short story thriller from the Amazon #1 Best Selling author Willow Rose. It will NOT improve your relationship with your mother-in-law. Continue reading →

Lenn of Spades ♠

Author Archives: Lenn

About Lenn