“Voided” has a super strong start: a skilled space fighter pilot is plucked from incarceration with the promise of freedom if she can complete a mining run that will help turn the tide of a war that their side is badly losing. In a nutshell, that’s what this book is about, or, what it starts out being about. The longer Nena works on this massive space ship, the more other elements come into play: the rights of sentient AI constructs, mysteries around what the commanders of this fleet are actually trying to accomplish, and a harrowing bargain with an ancient race that feels rather Faustian the more the reader learns.  All of those subplots get interwoven into a fast-paced military space odyssey that makes the world feel rich and full. “Voided” would absolutely scratch whatever itch a lover of hard science fiction could have. But, personally, all the plots that “Voided” attempts to address just needed more time to marinate for me.

I love a good family mystery that spans generations. Throw in the creepy, small-town vibes where everyone knows each other and keeps mum on the darker aspects of this small town locked in time, and you already have the makings of a very spooky, and atmospheric thriller. But then add some ghosts and unsolved murders on top of that? Perfection. Or, mostly perfection. In “The Sun Down Motel” the story goes between a flashback and flashforward narrative between Carly (the present) and Vivian (the past) to uncover the spooky goings on of Fell, New York, and the Sun Down Motel as a whole. Both Viv and Carly have fairly tragic lives, but the one thing Carly clings too after the loss of her mother, is finding out what happened to her aunt who disappeared in 1982. While, Vivian, desperate to find herself after her parents’ divorce, lands in Fell where she immediately gets sucked into the mystery of several murdered women, and the run-down motel she works at connection to all the dead girls.

While I have a hard time classifying “Sadie” as the thriller it’s listed as, it’s such a heart wrenching and beautifully told mystery that I’m going to mostly ignore the lack of “thriller” aspects. Sadie is a young woman on a crusade to find her sister’s killer, and perhaps heal a teeny tiny bit from her own horrific abuse (trigger warning for child sexual assault and pedophilia). Sadie has been through the worst life has to offer, but she lives for Mattie, her younger sister. Sadie develops the fierce maternal instincts she wishes she had in return from her own mother, who was absent at best due to her alcohol and drug addiction. So, when Mattie is brutally taken from Sadie, she believes there is nothing left of her; her heart, her soul, her LIFE, have been torn out and the only option she sees is to find the person responsible and give them a bit of an “eye for an eye” style justice. Sadie knows, when she starts out on this quest that, if she succeeds, she’ll never be the same, that the hunt for the truth and justice and retribution will change her forever. But she also knows success isn’t guaranteed. And while it took me a bit to appreciate the podcast style duel POV, I absolutely adored the way Sadie’s trauma and grief were presented (and yes, I know that sounds weird).

This book took me a lot longer to get through than the other two. Maybe because of the bible-like pages where this book was just so much longer than the others, or maybe it was because of the pacing this time around… Regardless, here we are, in the third book of the series, the final one of this particular story arc before we switch to a new POV with Nesta. And honestly, after “A Court of Wings and Ruin”, I’m very ready for another POV. Well, I want Nesta’s POV. I don’t necessarily care for any more of spooky Elain, either. Perhaps it’s this time in my life where the way Nesta processes her grief and trauma sings to me much more clearly than Feyre’s, but I am so hype for more of my mean girl Nesta after so much of Feyre using/needing her friends and allies to run a distraction for her so she can do something useful.

This dystopian, post-apocalyptic version of Portland takes an interesting look at the soul and necromancers. In this world, the United States has split into individual city districts, each with their own governing body and with none really seeming to get along. How we got here isn’t really explained, but it’s hinted that it was a nuclear disaster of some sort as the world is plagued by mutants lurking outside of the city’s protective walls. With so much death so readily available, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to harness the soul’s energy before the raven’s (think of them as reapers) have a chance to move that soul and their energy into the afterlife. Enter Nyle: a raven drawn to Portland’s dead problem. An overabundance of fate, or coincidence, brings Nyle immediately to Cait, a necromancer who doesn’t know what she is—she’s not a mutant or genetically modified and yet is plagued by the dead—but she is exactly the person Nyle needs to free the dead from Portland. Much like the trapped souls in Portland, an overabundance of luck plagues “Grave Cold”.