Manga Review: Fragments of Horror by Junji Ito

Wow, this is easily a 5-star read for me and is now probably my most favorite Junji Ito by far! Fragments of Horror consists 10 short stories with different themes.

This isn’t my first Junji Ito so you can say that I’m somewhat used to his out-of-this-world ideas when it comes to his works, but I still get that “what the fu–” reactions everytime I come across something so bizzare like that of Tomio: Red Turtleneck and Blackbird–my favorites–in this collection. It was freaking insane and creepy that I love it; it kind of reminds me of love potion horror stories. Continue reading

Book Review: Lam-ang (Alamat, #1) by Herbert de Leon

This book caught my attention the very first time I learned about it—one of the reasons is that my lolo is from Isabela which makes him Ilocano and Lam-ang is based on the Ilocano epic Biag ni Lam-ang.

Also, I feel like this is the perfect book to kickstart my reading year because I love fantasy and mythology and I’ve been meaning to get back into this genre after hyperfixating on thriller and horror in the past two years! And, not only that, but I also adore the “Chosen One” trope in fantasy, so you can definitely say that this book ticked off all of the things I am looking for in a fantasy book. Continue reading

Book Review: XXX by Rayne Havok

55068805This had been sitting on my TBR since 2022-ish and I finally decided to read it for Winterween 2025! For those of you who aren’t familiar with Winterween, it’s a readathon hosted by Gabbyreads on Youtube, so feel free to check her out for more details because another readathon similar to this will happen in the summertime as well!

Anyway, I’ve read another book from this author a couple of years back called Mukbang Princess and actually really liked it. It was a short but immensely weird book but the ending was so unexpected that I had to rate it 4 stars. So I’m really looking forward to read more of this author’s works.
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Book Review: A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon

image“𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒂𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆—𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒚 𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒕, 𝒂𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒕. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒔 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒓 𝒐𝒏 𝒎𝒚 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒕, 𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏’𝒕 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒑𝒖𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚.”

My first book of 2025 is this short but whimsical fantasy novel that will definitely pull at your heartstrings and awaken the girl inside you. I love how empowering this book is! Also, I just can’t get over that stunning cover that I might grab a physical copy too! Continue reading

Book Review: My Mother’s Eyes by Jeremy Ray

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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?
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Book Review: Magnum Opus by Caitlin Marceau

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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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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