“Verena’s Whistle” is an urban fantasy adventure that is steeped heavily in Slavic folklore. We follow our main character, Verena, who finds out very quickly that her families dwindling magical talents are needed in order to close a portal that has allowed monsters from another place and time to enter our world. Verena’s family has always known that they are the last line of magical defense should this very thing happen, so there really isn’t much of a secret there. But Verena’s particular talent manifestation comes as a surprise, especially as their magical strength has been dwindling over the centuries. But while the synopsis claims there are secrets and Verena must decide if she’s capable of leading, you’d never know that by reading the book.

“Thrill Switch” is equal parts “Ready Player One” and “Silence of the Lambs” with a sprinkling of “Altered Carbon” for good measure. You have detective Ada Byron who has become an expert on Jazlin Switch, a notorious serial killer who managed to murder people in the real world by destroying their avatar in the virtual space known as the Holos. Ada has dedicated her life to studying Switch and becoming a cop all because Switch killed her father seven years ago. Now there’s a new killer out there copying Switch’s style, but are they really? Ada has to face her fears and stop more people from dying, but in order to do that she needs to team up with Holo “native” and FBI agent, Joon, and venture back into the Holos, a place she hasn’t been to since her father died. Worse yet, she may need Switch’s help in order to unravel the conspiracy this new killer is at the center of. Hawkin does an excellent job blending a virtual MMO style world with a real, vaguely dystopian Las Vegas in order to craft a violent and thrilling (heh) cat and mouse murder mystery. This was a fast-paced futuristic crime and mystery story, but was light on the procedural investigation aspect, so take that as you will.

I’m keeping this review short because there’s really not much to say beyond: I highly recommend all the Murderbot Diaries books. Read them, read them now. And 2. For these bots not being “alive” they sure do have a lot of feelings and I love that for them! The way they hate feeling things and get absolutely panicked whenever someone says the “relationship” word in any context I absolutely live for.

“The Urban Boys” follows five friends in high school who, after one night in a preserve their families have forbidden them from going into, are gifted with heightened senses in order to protect a luminous supernatural race, and by proxy, all of mankind. But for such high stakes, the boys thankfully can save mankind by simply protecting their idyllic town from the evil-doers that have taken over a neighboring town. Stuck in a conflict that has been simmering for twenty years, it’s up to these five friends to keep strong, and save their town when no one else is capable of doing so. This is a story that attempts to cover a lot, especially with such a large cast of characters, and it’s a book I think is far better suited for middle-grade book lovers. If you go into it with that mindset, I think you’ll enjoy the “Urban Boys” a great deal.

I’m going to keep this review as brief as humanly possible, not because I don’t have thoughts on the final book in the Looking Glass Wars, but because this book is impossible to talk about if you haven’t read the first two books (and really, why are you reading reviews for this if you haven’t read the other two books?). But in “ArchEnemy” Alyss finds herself ruling over a queendom still suffering from a lack of imagination as the effects of book two are still being felt. There are factions of dissent Alyss never knew existed in Wonderland, and her enemies are still out there, waiting, and closing in… This book is almost non-stop action, which is what I expected given how things ended in the last book and what needed to happen this time around. But I also thought, given this was the final book in the series, that a lot of character work would be done as well and, unfortunately, there wasn’t.