I don’t typically read horror novels. Not because I scare easily, the opposite actually. I never get as creeped out reading as I would watching something, so I’m probably the worst person to judge if a book is actually scary. “Demon’s Prize” is meant to be scary at times, and there definitely is some creepy imagery, but since I’m not sure what most people find terrifying when I have a hard time defining that for myself, I’m not going to spend much time talking about the scare factor. Needless to say, The Alpha Wolf series is a paranormal, urban fantasy that fits nicely for New Adult readers. The book follows four friends—who are werewolves—as they embark on trying to make their dreams come true with their band. Along the way, they meet Brent, an alpha werewolf with secrets of his own that the young pack desperately tries to unravel no matter how much Brent pushes them away. The story follows the four werewolves and Angela—a werewolf hybrid—as Brent intervenes when Angela is nearly taken by a demon. Following that incident, the young werewolves are determined to save Brent at all costs, even though one of their pack really doesn’t want to. So, yeah, you can see exactly why some people may find this creepy or scary, so consider yourself warned.

I’m not a big fan of omniscient POV’s generally speaking. Of the works I’ve read that attempt a true omniscient 3rd person, I’ve never felt like I’ve gotten a good sense of the characters, and the jumps between what one character knows or is doing can be hit or miss, at best. But “Heart of Jet” may change all of that for me! The story follows two Manhattan socialites, I want to say in the very early 1900’s, as they embark on a journey to Scotland where their recently deceased relative has tasked them with easing the tormented soul of their family’s old estate on the Scottish moors. Shedd’s lyrical omniscient style of narration perfectly captured the setting of the era, as well as set the tone for the haunting love story that followed.

Anyone who is a fan of text based role play video games will geek out over “Lycopolis”. The story is about seven people who all play together in an online world created by a young man with a sinister ulterior motive. But when the demon they summon in game doesn’t stay there, the characters begin to adopt their online personas in the real world in order to fight a force they have difficulty believing in. The paranormal aspect of the story is fun and unique in and of itself, as the book switches a bit between what’s happening in the online realm and the real world, but I enjoyed the flawed characters, and the greyness around Seth, and Edwin most. I love sympathetic villains! I love heroes with dark pasts! Basically, I like characters who you can identify with, so no matter if they are doing good or bad things, you get where they are coming from and ache alongside them.

“The EF76 Strain” is a short zombie story, I hesitate to call it a book because, at under 60 pages, it’s more like a novella, but a bit on the short side for that, too. The story is told through a series of loosely connected events based on the “infected” people and their struggle to save themselves, or the people they care most about. It all starts with good intentions, a doctor trying to cure world hunger with a simple pill that has drastic side effects. Ergo: zombies. Except the people we see who have taken this pill and are affected, are not the people who should have taken it. They are people in a Florida suburb, not a starving 3rd world country. So why are they infected? Not sure. But they are. And now, we get to read their, often times, gory demise.

“From the Ash” is not your average post-apocalyptic dystopian book. This isn’t a series about a young woman going on a quest to fix her broken and charred world, she’s not on a mission to put the world back to the way it was before the bombs dropped. No, all Phoenix wants to do is go home. She desperately is trying to get across the barren wasteland that most of the United States has been left in to get back to Maine, where she clings to the hope that those she loves are there waiting for her. Phoenix has no idea if her father or boyfriend are alive, but the idea of them NOT being there and waiting is beyond her comprehension. At its core, “From the Ash” is the journey of a young woman running away from her depression, blindly believing that something better HAS to be on the other end of that tunnel, because if not, then what would be the point of even trying to go on? I love the subtly of that feeling Phoenix has, from someone who has suffered from anxiety and depression, I can relate to that feeling. That irrational hope that you cling to because, if you didn’t, the idea of just getting out of bed in the morning would be pointless. But that’d be a really, really depressing book to focus purely on, so Heron wonderfully bundles that within a physically strong and capable woman, and gives her a task that shows the reader her struggles packaged in an apocalyptic world—that is far more believable then most books out there—and that’s wonderful!