#Review - Winterveil by Ava Reid #YA #Dystopian #SYFY

Series: Winterveil
Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: September 15, 2026

Publisher: HarperCollins
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Alt History, Dystopian

The Secret History meets Ready Player One in #1 bestselling author Ava Reid’s brand-new, thrilling alternate-future duology, where four teens are recruited into a century-long virtual Cold War until they discover the truth and decide to fight back.

The top students at Valeran Academy should be in jail. Instead, they were offered a way out: enroll and pledge themselves to the nation. In their alternate future where the Cold War still rages, America needs patriots—don’t call them spies.

In the halls of America’s most covert military academy, all that matters is who is number one. Four students rise to the top: Julian, the politician; Klaudia, the strategist; Nadiya, the soldier; and Giselle, the beauty queen with a secret that could change everything.

As they compete for the top ranking that would free them from their gilded cage, the four feel strangely drawn together. Underneath every rivalry lurks a desperate yearning, bringing the strongest of them down to their knees.

Too soon, they’re ripped from the safe walls of their school and recruited for a mysterious training mission that their elusive headmaster tells them is only a simulation. But the four teens quickly realize that they are merely pawns, designed to play off of each other in a dangerous game. Even their blossoming feelings will be used against them in this game of war.

To win, they will have to question everything: each other, themselves, even their very understanding of reality.

It was only supposed to be a game. But now lives and hearts are on the line. Are you brave enough to play?

Ava Reid's Winterveil is the first part of a two-part duology. The premise begins with: In a world where Gorbachev was assassinated and the Cold War dragged on, the eerie tension of the Cold War combines with futuristic concerns like AI, the metaverse, and the surveillance state. Part ripped-from-the-headlines and part history, the publisher frames it as The Secret History meets Ready Player One, or The Secret History meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. 

The point of divergence is the 1984 assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev on the steps of Downing Street. The thaw never arrives. By 2037, the Soviet Union still exists, proxy wars continue across continents, defense contractors (notably Auric) and neural technology lock the stalemate in place, and a “third Red Scare” atmosphere colors American institutions. Valeran Academy, hidden in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and founded in 1963 under Kennedy as a joint CIA/DOD project, has no application process. 

It recruits precocious teenage offenders and commutes their sentences in exchange for training as strategists, cryptographers, hackers, and weapons specialists—the future pipeline for intelligence work. Official language insists “We are not training spies—we are training patriots.” Students compete on a public ranking board; top placement is the path out of the gilded cage. Curriculum blends classical strategy (including the Melian Dialogue: “The strong do what they will, and the weak endure what they must”) with neural interfaces and war simulations.

The four leads

• Julian Joyce-Young III: Elected mayor of Boston at eighteen (on a dare, in some accounts), then impeached and arrested for bribery and embezzlement. Disowned by a powerful political-business dynasty. Charming orator placed on the Strategy and Statecraft track; his chapters carry much of the political and familial pressure.
• Klaudia Shimonova: Leningrad-born, Upper West Side–raised, arrested at fifteen after forging her father’s trading credentials and turning them into roughly $10 million. Holds the academy’s rank-one spot for years. Treats social interaction as a game-theory problem; Reid’s strongest character to date—a girl who made herself cold because the alternative was her father’s hands.
• Giselle Buckley: Small-town West Virginia pageant queen with a scientifically verified eidetic memory capable of projecting vivid visual memories into other minds. Arrested for credit-card theft. Her ability becomes central to the technology plot.
• Nadiya Karam: Weapons and tactical prodigy, orphaned and raised inside the academy as the personal ward of headmaster Dr. Cornelius Iver. Third-generation Lebanese American; carries a dangerous family secret tied to the neural systems the school uses. Forms the book’s primary sapphic romance with Giselle.

Archival inserts—press clippings, redacted files, scrapped CIA language insisting “we are not training spies—we are training patriots”—do more world-building than exposition dumps. The school's competitive engine, which Reid links to her time in competitive Pokémon’s VGC format, produces the book’s best set piece: Thymos.exe, a student-built neural strategy game whose tournament final collides rankings, romance, and plot on one stage. 

When the four are pulled into Traumstadt, a simulated East German town whose mission parameters keep being rewritten, the novel finally becomes the spy thriller it promised. Klaudia is the reason to read it. She is the sharpest character Reid has written: a girl who made herself cold because warmth was unsafe, and who remains legible even when she is calculating. The ensemble works best when the four are forced to choose cooperation over defection inside a game the state designed. 

That prisoner’s-dilemma frame is the book’s real subject: institutions that recruit already-failed adolescents, call the exploitation a second chance, and then use their minds as infrastructure. The weaknesses are real. The first act spends too long on cafeteria politics and the ranking board before the plot arrives. Several adult antagonists—a tech billionaire, a handler who speaks in riddles—are broad enough to hate and too thin to fear. 

Historical texture is suggestive rather than rigorous; the point of divergence is clear, but the half-century of altered Cold War that follows is sketched more than built. And the ending does not end. Leads are scattered, a major system (Project Dreamscape, a shared reality powered by neural impulses and anchored by an eidetic mind) is revealed and then left mid-crisis, and the book cuts out in a way that will satisfy readers who want a duology hook and frustrate anyone who wanted a complete novel. Content is upper YA in the mature sense: consensual and non-consensual sexual situations (not graphically explicit, but not coy about lead-up or aftermath), an attempted assault, parental abuse, a recounted sibling suicide, gun violence, and training that crosses into torture.

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#Review - Lost in the Dark by Debra Webb #Suspense #Thriller

Series: Standalone 
Format: 367 pages, Paperback
Release Date: June 9, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

The brutal murder of her sister draws a woman back to her hometown and all its dark secrets in a gripping novel of suspense by USA Today bestselling author Debra Webb.

Dr. CJ Patterson returns to her Alabama hometown when her estranged sister, Shelley, is found murdered in the woods. For CJ it means diving headfirst into a painful life she left behind.

CJ reluctantly partners with Detective Kevin Braddock, and the complicated romantic history they share is far from over. They soon zero in on Shelley’s abusive ex-boyfriend and a local crime boss who controls the struggling mill village’s illicit enterprises. But anyone is suspect in a town with so many secrets. Even Shelley died with a few of her own.

As the investigation continues, so do the murders. One by one they’re leading CJ into a past she desperately fled from. CJ knows her hometown all too well. And that her search for the truth, and for a killer, will only get darker.

Lost in the Dark is Debra Webb’s 2026 revised edition of her 2009 novel Everywhere She Turns. The story is a dark small-town investigative thriller with romantic-suspense elements. The official premise is straightforward: Dr. CJ Patterson, an emergency-medicine resident in Baltimore, returns to her struggling Alabama mill-village hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, after her estranged sister Shelley is found murdered in the woods. She is pulled back into a world of poverty, drugs, prostitution, and buried family secrets she fled years earlier. 

CJ reluctantly works the case with Detective Kevin Braddock, a former romantic interest whose history with her is far from settled. Early suspects include Shelley’s abusive ex, Ricky Banks, and a local crime boss who treats the village as his personal fiefdom. Additional murders follow, each one dragging CJ deeper into the past she tried to escape. The story uses multiple points of view, with CJ’s as the primary lens. The setup is classic Webb territory: a protagonist forced to confront the place and people that shaped her, while a killer who seems to know her too well stays one step ahead. 

Once the body count rises and the investigation tightens, the suspense and sense of danger increase and several twists appear. CJ is driven, professionally capable, and carrying a heavy load of grief and unresolved family trauma. She is not always likable. Grief, guilt, and the investigation explain some of her sharper edges, but her choices—especially the speed with which the old attraction to Braddock reignites—have been a sticking point for some readers. One detailed review noted that the physical reunion happens very soon after she sees her sister’s body in the morgue, which undercut the emotional weight of the opening for that reader. 

Braddock functions as both professional partner and romantic counterpart. The supporting cast—family members, the crime boss’s circle, Shelley’s world—is populated by people who almost all have hidden agendas. Few characters are purely sympathetic, which fits the grim setting but can make the book feel emotionally chilly. The Alabama mill-village atmosphere—economic decline, illicit economies, the way everyone knows everyone else’s business—is convincingly drawn. 

The investigation structure gives the story forward momentum once it hits its stride, and the later chapters deliver the rising danger and twists that thriller readers expect. A dark, readable hometown-murder thriller with a complicated heroine and a polarizing romance. Recommended for Webb fans and readers who like their suspense dirty and their secrets ugly; approach with the expectation of graphic violence and an early physical reunion between the leads.

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#Review - The Doll Squad by Hailey Edwards #Fantasy

Series: Bureau of Curse Objects # 1
Format: 281 pages, Kindle Edition
Release Date: September 14, 2026
Publisher: Black Dog Books, LLC
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Danger in the line of duty is a given, but Officer Samantha Tiegs always figured her death would come in the form of a heart attack in her golden years after a lifetime of researching the age-old question— Can it be fried? Sadly, death has less delicious plans in store for her.

When she’s called to intercept a hijacking in progress, her world gets turned upside down. The thieves aren’t human, and whatever’s in the delivery truck they looted, they want it bad enough to kill for it. Except her death isn’t their end goal. It’s only the beginning of a twisted plan orchestrated by the person she loves most.

Everything she believed about her life, her family, was a lie. The truth is, she’s a pawn in a deadly game she can’t win alone. Enter the Bureau of Cursed Objects. The supernatural agency has a vested interest in her survival, and they make her an offer she can’t refuse.

Come work for them, and they’ll guarantee her safety, but her new partner is a man who poses the greatest threat to her yet. As long as she remains valuable, he’ll protect her from everyone. Including himself. But should her returns diminish, he won’t make any promises.

Warning: Contains one manga-obsessed heroine with an anime addiction, more fried food than a fairground on opening night, one hero with a reputation for killing his partners and a compulsion for labeling what he considers his, and a whole lot of family secrets, drama, and evil hiding where you least expect it.

The Doll Squad is the first book in Hailey Edwards’s new Bureau of Cursed Objects urban fantasy series. It follows Officer Samantha “Sam” Tiegs, a cop who expects to die of something mundane (preferably after a long life of fried-food research) and instead gets yanked into a hidden supernatural world when a hijacking turns out to be anything but human. 

Edwards, known for found family, messy magic, banter, and high-stakes chaos across series like Black Hat Bureau, The Beginner’s Guide to Necromancy, and The Body Shop, is working in familiar territory: a snarky heroine, a dangerous male lead, family secrets, and an agency that collects cursed or dangerous items. Sam responds to a hijacking in progress with her brother Cole. 

The thieves aren’t human, the cargo is something they will kill for, and her “death” is only the opening move in a plan tied to the person she loves most. Everything she thought she knew about her life and family is a lie. The Bureau of Cursed Objects—a supernatural agency with a vested interest in keeping her alive—makes her an offer: work for them, and they’ll protect her. Her new partner, however, has a reputation for killing partners and a possessive streak. 

He’ll keep her safe as long as she’s valuable. After that, no promises. Sam is a classic Edwards heroine: competent, food-obsessed (fried food and fairground-level snacking get mentioned in the warning), manga-and-anime-addicted, and funny under pressure. The voice is first-person, fast, and conversational—easy to fly through. As book one of a brand-new series, a fair amount of page time goes to world-building and Sam’s crash course in the Bureau. 

The possessive-partner dynamic and “he’ll protect you until you’re no longer useful” hook will delight some readers and annoy others depending on taste for that particular romance flavor. Because the book is very new, long-term series payoff (how the Bureau works, what the “Doll Squad” really means, how the family conspiracy unfolds) is still unknown. 

Pick this up if you enjoy:

Urban fantasy with a cop-turned-agent heroine

Banter + danger + found-family seeds

Possessive / morally gray male leads

Light anime/manga flavor mixed with Southern-fried food humor

Skip or wait if you dislike possessive tropes, want a standalone, or prefer slower, more literary urban fantasy.

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#Review - Clean Slate by Brianna Labuskes #Mystery #Suspense

Series: Olive Hunt # 1
Format: 312 pages, Kindle Edition

Release Date: August 4, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mystery, Suspense

A crime scene cleaner is on the trail of a serial killer in a breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by USA Today bestselling author Brianna Labuskes.

Death pays well for Olive Hunt, a crime scene cleaner who channels her childhood traumas into erasing the suffering of others. After nearly ten years, she’s seen it all. Nothing rattles her anymore.

Until now.

Two back-to-back suicides. A seedy motel. An upscale Atlanta hotel. No connection—except that Olive discovers the same strange item at each scene. Then a third body drops. Olive knows what the police refuse to see: These aren’t suicides. They’re murders staged to perfection.

Then the roses arrive. A vase of blood-red blooms on her doorstep. An anonymous note: Thank you.

She’s found him. A serial killer who’s been leaving breadcrumbs only she can see. A killer who’s been cleaning up his work—knowing she’ll clean up after him. A killer who wants her to follow.

And follow she must. No matter how terrifying the trail becomes.

Clean Slate is a sharp, grimly original psychological thriller that launches Brianna Labuskes’s Olive Hunt series with a protagonist you don’t usually get in crime fiction: a crime-scene cleaner who notices what cops miss because her job, her trauma, and her compulsions force her to look everywhere.. This story alternates between now and then, and between various characters, including Olive Hunt. Olive Hunt owns Clean Slate, an Atlanta business that erases the physical leftovers of violence: blood, brain matter, the smell of a life that ended badly. 

After nearly a decade, she is professionally unflappable. Then two deaths land on her schedule in quick succession—one in a cheap motel, one in a luxury hotel—both labeled suicides. At each scene, she finds the same odd item hidden where only someone who actually cleans would look. A third body follows. Olive is sure these are staged murders. The police are slower to agree. Then roses appear on her doorstep with a note that says Thank you. The killer has been leaving breadcrumbs specifically for her. 

He knows how she works. He wants her to follow. Olive is the reason the novel works. She was raised by a mother whose contamination OCD curdled into cruelty; her father was killed when she was seventeen, and her mother ended up institutionalized. Olive inherited the rituals—multiple showers, raw hands—and redirected them into a job that, from the outside, looks like the last thing someone with her history should do. Labuskes treats the OCD as texture and constraint, not a punchline or a superpower. The same hyper-focus that makes Olive good at her work also keeps her circling trauma she has never fully named. 

She is also funny in a dry, practical way, loyal to the Peach Tree Community Center that once sheltered her, and unusually decent about the dead. Around her: detectives Donovan Mitchell and Cormac “Sully” Sullivan; found-family figures Anthony Last and his daughter Leah; the wealthy Suttons; and other voices from the community center’s past. The novel uses multiple points of view—Olive in first person in the present, others (notably Anthony and Darla) in third person across “then” timelines that slowly lock onto the present. That braid is doing real work: the past is not just backstory; it is the motive engine. 

Pacing after the first act is generally tight. Olive does not play lone-wolf amateur sleuth in the most irritating sense: she takes what she finds to the police, then keeps looking anyway because the killer is talking to her. That balance will still annoy readers who hate civilian investigators. It will satisfy readers who want a heroine who is curious without being cartoonishly reckless every chapter. Under the cat-and-mouse plot is a class novel. Atlanta’s Peach Tree Community Center is the emotional and thematic hub: a place where the ultra-rich and the barely-getting-by once occupied the same rooms as kids and then diverged into incompatible ideas of what a life is worth. 

Crime-scene cleaning is described with enough physical specificity to be unsettling and enough respect to avoid torture-porn tourism. This is clearly Book 1, with enough unresolved life around Olive that a sequel is welcome rather than a mandatory cliffhanger. Clean Slate is a strong series opener: not flawless, but distinctive. This book stands apart from the author's previous novels because the heroine’s job and psychology are the same instrument. If you want a police procedural with a cleaner in the background, look elsewhere. If you want a damaged, decent woman following a killer who has studied how she scrubs a room, this is the one.

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#Review - Burn the Kingdom Down by Addie Thorley #YA #Fantasy

Series: Standalone
Format: 448 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: April 7, 2026 
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA, Dark Fantasy

An action-packed enemies-to-lovers romantasy filled with a romance that will leave you breathless, betrayals that will rip your heart out, and a princess who will stop at nothing for revenge.

One year ago, Rowenna Harrack, the crown princess of Tashir, left her homeland in a wedding dress of chains—sent away to the enemy nation of Vanzador as a captive bride.

Now, Rowenna is dead. Brought home in a coffin after an alleged fall from a cliff.

Second-born princess, Indira, knows her sister's death was no accident. Desperate for truth and vengeance, Indira agrees to wed the prince so she can infiltrate Vanzador, find Rowenna's murderer, and burn their kingdom to the ground.

Indira's plan is simple, she will make nice until she can find out how to avenge her sister and free her country from the rival nation's stranglehold. But when Indira arrives, nothing is as terrible as Rowenna described. As Indira grows closer to her new husband, Prince Alaric, and uncovers more about Vanzador, the source of its powers, and what happened during Rowenna's final days, she’s no longer sure what—and who—to believe. Because everyone, even her sister, has secrets. Deadly ones. As allegiances shift and betrayals surface, Indira realizes the only person she can trust is herself. It’s time to step out of her sister’s shadow. Time to serve her own brand of justice.

Burn the Kingdom Down from Addie Thorley (author of An Affair of Poisons and the Night Spinner books) sits in that crowded space of enemies-to-lovers political fantasy, but it is less “chosen one with a sword” and more “grief-soaked murder mystery with plants, propaganda, and memory magic.” One year ago, crown princess Rowenna of Tashir was sent to the enemy mountain kingdom of Vanzador as a captive bride under a brutal treaty. 

Tashir is an underground garden realm that grows bagrava, a sacred plant that keeps its soil fertile; Vanzador’s royal family can move earth itself and, in return for bagrava tribute and a Tashiri princess, raised a mountain wall against marauders. Rowenna comes home in a coffin after an alleged fall from a cliff. Second-born princess Indira, a master gardener who has always lived in her sister’s shadow, does not believe it was an accident. 

When Vanzador demands a replacement bride, she has no choice but to accept her fate so that she can infiltrate the Fortress, find who killed Rowenna, and tear the kingdom down from the inside. Nothing she finds matches the monster-state her sister described. Prince Alaric is not the easy villain she expected. Everyone, including Rowenna, has secrets. The contrast between the two kingdoms is the book’s best idea. Tashir is soil, roots, and living magic; Vanzador is stone, cold, and a society that harvests memories as fuel. 

“Memory tithes” are a genuinely interesting system: identity can be extracted, stored, distorted, or weaponized. That ties the mystery, the politics, and Indira’s grief together instead of sitting on top of the plot as decoration. Indira is not a stabby superheroine. She is loyal, angry, naive in places, and shaped by a sister she idolized too long. The book is as much about stepping out of that shadow as it is about revenge. Alaric works as a counterpart rather than a dark-romance checklist: tension comes from competing loyalties and withheld information more than constant banter. 

When the romance lands, it is because it is earned slowly while they investigate together. Thorley also treats the “avenge my sister / infiltrate the enemy court” template as a mystery first. The structure is closer to a closed-house investigation than a war campaign. That will delight readers tired of endless set-piece battles and frustrate readers who want constant action. If you need a high-spice, high-action romantasy, this is not that. 

The romance is slow-burn and secondary to grief and investigation for long stretches. Content includes violence, death, grief, some sexual content, attempted assault, and emotional abuse. The book keeps asking what memory is worth—and who we are when the stories we were raised on are lies. National myths, sisterly worship, and personal identity all get the same treatment: they can be cultivated or drained. 

Indira’s arc from “burn it all” toward something more complicated is the emotional spine. Whether that landing feels earned is the main split among readers. Read this if you want YA romantasy with a plant-and-memory magic system, a murder mystery at the center, and a heroine who is more gardener-and-griever than warrior. Skip or sample first if you bounce off slow court-investigation middles or inconsistent trust-fall plotting.

NOTE: This book is currently on sale for a limited time. I don't get any money for posting this, but if you think you will enjoy the story, $1.99 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo is a good deal. 

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#Review - The Girl in the Lake by Lauren Oliver #Mystery #Thriller

Series: Department of Unexplained Phenomena #1 

Format: 321 pages, Kindle Edition

Release Date: June 1, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

A young girl who claims to remember a past life draws a psychologist into a decades-old mystery in a haunting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver.

Kate Willis, consultant for the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, is tasked with interviewing six-year-old Henley Haskell about the girl’s alleged past-life recollections. The evaluation also marks a return for Kate to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and to troubling recollections of her own.

Here, twenty-four years ago, Kate’s friend Becca McGuire vanished from her bunk at a now-shuttered summer camp and was never seen again—presumably drowned in Lake Sauquamet. But the mystery of her disappearance is only deepening. Because Henley’s memories of her “other life” are ones that could only belong to Becca.

For Kate, Henley’s recurring, suffocating nightmares, and her disturbing illustrations of places she has never been, seem to spell out the unbelievable. Somewhere, somehow, the truth about what really happened to Becca is locked inside this little girl. As Henley’s uncanny memories surface, so do old secrets—each one drawing Kate inexorably back to that terrible long-ago summer by the lake.

The Girl in the Lake is Lauren Oliver’s adult-thriller debut and the first book in her Dept. of Unexplained Phenomenon series: a dual-timeline mystery that sits right on the fault line between skepticism and the uncanny. The story follows 40-year-old Kate Willis, a psychologist who consults for the University of Virginia’s real-life Division of Perceptual Studies. She is sent to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to interview six-year-old Henley Haskell, who talks about an “other life” with startling specificity. 

The case pulls Kate back to the shuttered Camp Sauquamet and Lake Sauquamet, where her best friend, Becca McGuire, vanished at fourteen and was presumed drowned. Henley’s nightmares, drawings, and private details increasingly look like Becca’s. Kate’s job is to look for suggestion, family leakage, trauma, and fraud. The novel keeps asking whether Henley is a vessel, a child absorbing a story, or something messier than either explanation. Kate is a skeptic with a messy private life—work as armor, old drinking as another kind of burial, a return home that she has postponed for decades. 

She's complicated rather than heroic, and the plot only works because she has to test her own beliefs. The “Then” chapters are Oliver’s real advantage. Her YA background shows in the camp material: the Cat Pack’s shifting alliances, the cruelty of girlhood, the Gray Lady legend, secrets used as currency. Becca is not a sainted missing girl. She is magnetic, unstable, loyal, and dangerous in the way fourteen-year-olds can be when they collect other people’s weaknesses. That makes the present-day investigation feel like unfinished adolescence rather than a cold-case procedural. 

Atmosphere does a lot of the work. The Berkshires, the abandoned camp, Fair Isle, the lake, and the local ghost story give the book a damp, closed-in Gothic mood without abandoning a clinical present. Oliver researched children who report previous-life memories, and that grounding makes Henley’s details more unsettling than a straightforward haunting would. The best version of this book is not “reincarnation is real.” 

It is a story about memory as something the mind edits in order to survive, about group guilt, and about whether a landscape can hold what people refuse to say. The supernatural is allowed to breathe; it doesn't have to win the argument. Pacing is my biggest complaint. The first half and middle lean on interviews, verification, and circling the same questions—how does Henley know this, who told her, what is Kate willing to admit? If you want a mystery that stays foggy all the way through, the landing may feel a shade too assembled. 

Themes

• Memory as construction, not archive
• Secrets as power and as poison
• Skepticism as protection
• The exact moment play turns into culpability
• Whether a ghost is a spirit or a conscience that will not stay sunk

Pick this up if you like Lisa Jewell / Megan Miranda / Jennifer McMahon territory, Yellowjackets-adjacent summer-camp rot, or thrillers that flirt with the paranormal without fully converting. Skip it if you want a lean, twist-every-chapter thriller or a hard-commit ghost novel. This is a character-driven slow burn that becomes a rescue/reckoning, then leaves a door slightly open for the series. 

 

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