Lizzie Shelley hunts monsters for a living and was even on a reality show about monster-hunting. But what people don’t know is that she’s really looking for her long-lost sister, who is a monster of a different kind. They were raised by a grandmother who ran an institute for people with troubled minds, and what happened there when the girls were 13 changed all their lives forever. Now Lizzie suspects that her sister, who has been missing for years, may be pretending to be local-legend monsters in various places to lure young women to go missing themselves.

More fun than the typical thriller, this one. The pacing was good, and the narrative moves back and forth between Lizzie’s present search and the past leading up to the traumatic events of the sisters’ childhoods. There are more than one twist that I didn’t quite see coming, and that’s always a plus.

A boy and a talking horse make an escape from their separate enslavements and make their way North to Narnia, picking up another talking horse and young human along the way.

I was obsessed with this Narnia story when I was a kid and wanted a talking horse for a friend so very badly. This time around wasn’t quite as magical, but that’s okay; the sentimental value is still there for me, although Adult Me gets nauseated by Aslan every time he shows up on the page.

Howard and his little sister come home from school one day to find a Goon filling up their kitchen. He’s waiting for their father, who owes he’s boss, Archer, 2000 words. And it only gets weirder from there.

At this point I think I need to call it quits on Jones. I loved Howl’s Moving Castle, but everything else of hers I’ve read has fallen flat for me, this one included. None of these characters are interesting enough for me to care about their situation, and the plot falls on the wrong side of silly, so it’s more exasperating than funny/interesting/clever. I struggled to finish it, really.