Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler – This book wants to be so many things, and in the end, it is none of them. It simultaneously feels ripped-from-the-headlines topical and dated as hell. On one hand it’s clearly riffing on the geopolitical situation of the present, but it’s also very USA-vs-Russia such that it feels like it was ripped straight out of the Cold War. Also, I’m not really sure what the plot was; I feel like what the blurb said would happen didn’t happen at all.

John Dies at the End by Jason Pargin (originally published under the name David Wong) – I don’t think this book aged very well. Not in the sense that it’s horribly offensive to modern sensibilities or anything, but just in the sense that I feel like this book couldn’t have been written in any time period besides the 2000’s. It’s got this very stoner bro sense of humor. It comes from the literary tradition of Dude, Where’s My Car? and the American Pie series (I’ve specifically seen it compared to The Hangover, but John Dies actually predates those movies). I will also say it hasn’t been the most well marketed over the years – in particular, that one cover it had for a while of the hand opening to the back of the book really made it come across as much more mature of a read than it actually was. It wasn’t terrible, and I get why it has its cult following, but I don’t see future generations embracing this one.

If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy – This is a Disney licensed retelling of their version of Cinderella as an adult romcom, and my question is “who is this for?” Disney Adults, obviously, but even then I don’t know who would want a low-spice romcom themed around a kids movie, since let’s be honest, the primary audience for romance novels is here for tropes and spice. I don’t think the problem is Julie Murphy, but I have questions about the setup for the Meant To Be series concept. If they ever come out with a Princess and the Frog one I’ll read it though.

The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood and Boyfriends by Jamie D’Amato – This is cute, but very very New Adult. I feel like I would like this more if I were about six years younger than I am. The main couple was cute, but it was kind of cloyingly cute. I feel like this would appeal to fans of Heartstopper.

The Sea Eternal by Emery Robin – A good second half to the duology that started with The Stars Undying. Not much to say about it, this series is god.

Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann – Better than any of the Greek myth retellings actually set in ancient Greece. Reminded me a lot of Steinbeck’s East of Eden, but with the Book of Genesis elements replaced with classical myths.

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao – Your enjoyment of this book is entirely dependent on how much you’re willing to forgive MMC Terren for his awful behavior after you find out about his tragic backstory. I was not willing to forgive him. I mean, he frequently kills servants for minor slights, he’s the ancient Chinese equivalent of rude to waiters, I’m surprised how many people are fawning over him. I’ve also heard a lot of discourse saying that despite being marketed as a romantasy, it isn’t a romantasy, and I’m going to play devil’s advocate, I think this is still a romantasy, because the primary relationship is a romantic one. It has beautiful prose, but the story itself is not up to the same level.

The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O’Keefe – Another good outing from O’Keefe. It’s a standalone, so it doesn’t swing for the fences like Velocity Weapon and its sequels do, but it’s a solid little sapphic romance set in space. Definitely better than Hell’s Heart, which was aiming for something similar.

Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore – Spends way too much time on Milo’s uninteresting lives and glosses over more potentially interesting lives in a few paragraphs. The romance was unconvincing. Not surprised this author is a one hit wonder. It seemed like he was out of his depths writing more complex topics. For what it’s worth, I liked the ending.

Godfall by Van Jensen – Not terrible, but I’m not convinced this writer is quite ready for the big leagues yet. The story and prose were very pedestrian and it doesn’t leave much of an impression. I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie adaptation they were touting on the cover flap falls through, especially if Ron Howard gets distracted by some other project.

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle – Also not bad, but I feel like Tingle’s a little out of his depth here. I think it’s his only trad published work not predominantly about queer horror (the lead character Vera is a bisexual woman, but it’s not as important to the plot as Misha’s queerness was to Bury Your Gays), and it feels like his heart wasn’t quite in it as much as it was in Bury Your Gays.

The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield – Like Where The Axe Is Buried, this also really wishes it were still the Cold War, but at least this one makes sense since it’s actually set during the Cold War. If the premise of a mystery set during the Apollo program era space flight with that good old us-vs-them Cold War aesthetic, you’ll like this.

Voidverse by Damien Ober – This reminds me a little of Godfall in that it’s another writer coming from another medium writing a sci-fi book, but I at least think Van Jensen could become a solid writer with more practice, while to Damien Ober I say don’t quit your day job. I never want to hear the words “sink” or “void” again. The all-black book itself is pretty cool though.

Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston – Less special than The Dead Romantics which I read back in January, but still a very solid outing. It gets done what it needs to get done without making me annoyed. It reminds me a little of For the Love of the Bard and Once More With Feeling, but it’s better than both of them.

The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt – I see what it was going for, I just don’t think it came together very well. This is going to sound like a weird complaint, and also kind of mean, but I wonder if Wehunt is a little too old to be writing about this super online fandom. He’s in his 70’s, and I feel like this doesn’t come naturally to him since he didn’t grow up with these online fandoms the way someone thirty or forty years younger than him would. Even taking aside the online fandoms aspect, this book felt a little disjointed. The writing was appropriately suspenseful, but some of the character actions felt unrealistic. The ending also sucked. Kiersten White’s Mister Magic is very similar, down to both having Wikipedia summaries of their spooky stories, but I thought Mister Magic was a lot better, I recommend that book first.

The Cautious Traveler’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks – Reminds me a lot of the previous book, but where October had some high highs and low lows, Wastelands was as flat and boring as the Wastelands title would suggest. It felt like nothing happened at all during this book, and this was despite having, like, eight main characters. It’s a little similar to The Elsewhere Express that I read in April, I like that one better.

I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200 by Robert Brockway – Probably would be the best thing I read this month if it weren’t for Olympus, Texas. Was a good balance of quirky and charming, satirical and heartfelt. One of the few times that a super high concept book has actually been good. Sometimes high concept books really rest on their laurels and expect said premise to carry the whole book, like Reincarnation Blues for instance. Not this one. I really liked the growing friendship between quirky child Kay and hardened hitman Ivan.

Escape! by Stephen Fishbach – Fishbach has been on Survivor twice, and that really shows in Escape!, which is both a love letter and a skewering of reality TV competition shows. The weak point of this book was the characters, Kent was a boring caricature of a man in midlife crisis mode and Beck was always treated as right by the narrative. Miriam would have been a more interesting main character, although she does lead a few chapters near the end of the book (also, don’t know why Kent’s and Miriam’s chapters were in third person and Beck’s were in first). But Fishbach, with his firsthand experience, knows how to craft a compelling season of reality TV, and it’s as compulsively readable as those shows are compulsively watchable.

Wanderers by Chuck Wending – “Read a Chuck Wendig novel,” they said. “You’ll like it,” they said. 800 pages later, I hate Wanderers and I think I hate Chuck Wendig too. Now, I’ve never read Stephen King’s The Stand, and frankly I have no interest in ever reading it, although that’s at least partially because I’m not a devotee of King’s, also the premise sounds like a book I would skip even from an author I liked more. Wanderers is The Stand, but stupider and already dated. Like, The Stand was written in the late ’70’s, imagine if the President in that book was clearly just Nixon. Wanderers is steeped in late 2010’s politics, particularly the 2016 election, where the sitting president is an obvious Hillary Clinton analogue and populist beloved by the bad guys Ed Creel is just Trump. Even now, in 2026, when Trump is still in the White House, this feels terribly dated and it’s going to get even worse with time. I also have doubts on the premise – I don’t think society would collapse if 500 people suddenly started sleepwalking. My high school graduating class was 500 people. That’s not that many people in the grand scheme of things. I’m pretty sure more than 500 Americans die every single day and society continues to function. That’s not even getting into the awful characters and the awful plot. Shana might just be the most obnoxious heroine I’ve read all month. She’s everything that Wendig thinks is cool wrapped up in a snarky teenage skin. As tempting as it is to accuse Wendig of “men-writing-women” when it comes to Shana, I think the problem is moreso “adults-writing-teenagers”, because of course, we were cool when we were teens, were we not? The only characters I kind of liked was Marcy, and all the other characters seemed to hate her, and fading rock star Pete Corley, mostly because he kind of gave off Billy Mack from Love Actually vibes. I’m not touching the sequel Wayward with a fifty foot pole (mostly because I’m pretty sure they’re going to kill Marcy in that book).

A House Between Earth and the Moon by Rebecca Schern – This was not a good book to read immediately after Wanderers. This is just a doompost in a book. This one is also a political polemic like Wanderers, but at least I think Wanderers was trying to tell a story. This book is just a collection of things happening that feel vaguely like commentary on current events, like the worst episode of Black Mirror. There are so many characters and none of them stand out to me. It also tries to tackle so many issues in a single book – climate change, surveillance tech, space exploration funded by billionaires, teenage sexual assault, it reminded me a lot of a sci-fi flavored version of teen dramas like Degrassi where every character is just a vessel for a hot button issue. For that matter, the Mary Agnes subplot, the aforementioned teenage sexual assault plotline, is completely unneeded, I don’t know why, aside from perhaps her crippling depression and driving need to preach about every social issue, Schern needed to squeeze in a shitty Laurie Halse Anderson novel into her climate change doompost. It’s really tempting to declare this my worst of 2026 already, I just can’t decide whether this or Slow Gods is worse. Slow Gods I think was an incoherent mess of a book and was almost like it was written to anger me, specifically, but House is more irresponsible because it’s preying on people with anxiety. Schern should be ashamed of herself.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu – Better than the last two by a country mile, but The Dark Forest is very much a middle book in this trilogy. The Three-Body Problem was better, and I imagine Death’s End will also be better.