A Librarian on Elm Street

 I loved this premise. A group of online personalities are invited by a Kylie Jenner-esque Instagram influencer to spend a month living together in a secluded old Romanian monastery. The building has been updated with all the modern fixing including webcams to broadcast their every waking minute to their subscribers. They are all promised riches and fame by the end of the month with all of the exposure and increased audience....if they all remain alive that long. Only part of the monastery has been renovated...and rumors abound concerning the mysterious deaths of the nuns who used to live there and dark shapes seen out of the corner of your eye....and this strange word "Strigoi." The set up immediately pulled me in. The balancing of the technology involved with the updated part of the monastery and internet influencer culture with a remote Romanian monastery secluded in the mountains was great. The characters were interesting and developed well over the course of the story. T...

 A police detective goes to meet her estranged brother and his fiancee at a Swiss ski resort to celebrate their engagement. But, when one coverts an old abandoned sanatorium into a place of leisure, one shouldn't be surprised when the sins of yesterday refuse to stay buried. Especially when new bodies begin to appear that will also require burying....if there's anyone left alive to do the burying, that is.  I have to say, this book really surprised me. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be when I picked it up to begin with. There's an old rule in murder-mystery stories, whoever is  the least suspected suspect is the murderer. I am happy to say that the author subverted that rule here. Through clever writing, good plot, and organically-flowing character and story development; I was kept entertained and constantly guessing wrongly all the way to the big reveal.  That being said, I must say that the best part of this story for me was the setting. Staging a locked-...

 A young girl on her way to her first year of college makes a fateful decision to house-sit for a professor over the summer to earn money she desperately needs to be able to afford school...and her life will never be the same again.  This is Not a Ghost Story has a very interesting and compelling plot, I definitely have to say that the story itself drew me in and kept me moving forward to find out what happened next.  My only difficulties with the book are two and are as follows: 1: Rushed story set up. The first couple chapters of the book feel rushed like the author was trying to get to the main narrative quickly. By the end of the book, I wonder if this was actually a creative decision to glide over some potential tells for later twists, but it made it difficult to invest in the main character or find her believably relatable. Which brings us to  2: Voice feels off. The main character is supposed to be 17/18ish on her way to her freshman year of college. The voice...