Ya’ll @notlizlemon wasn’t exaggerating. This was an… experience.

This book absolutely hijacked my brain. I wasn’t reading it so much as interrogating it. Every chapter had me stopping the audiobook, rewinding, flipping back through pages, rereading footnotes, and questioning whether I was being manipulated by the narrator… or the editors… or both. 😭

It’s an alternate history dystopian told as the autobiography of a deceased psychologist, complete with editorial commentary from the publishing press. That format is absolutely genius because you’re never allowed to settle into one version of the truth. Every time I thought I had my footing, the book quietly pulled the rug out from under me.

The wildest part is that I kept forgetting this was fiction. Miriam and the Yuriatin Press commentary had me so fully invested that I started treating everything like I was reading an actual historical document. Then the book/audio would turn around and address me directly and I would physically lean back, bug-eyed, like “EXCUSE ME?? YOU KNOW I’M HERE??” The fourth wall was no more.

What starts as a reflective memoir slowly transforms into a deeply unsettling exploration of memory, trauma, institutional power, propaganda, and the terrifying ways “for the greater good” can become justification for unimaginable cruelty. The horror isn’t loud. It’s watching reasonable ideas evolve, one tiny step at a time, into something monstrous.

This isn’t an action-packed dystopian. It’s quiet, philosophical, and demands your attention. It trusts you to wrestle with uncertainty instead of handing you easy answers. I closed this book with more questions than I started with, and somehow that feels exactly right.

And that ending… absolutely not. I was expecting emotional devastation. I was NOT expecting existential dread mixed with psychological horror that left me questioning every narrator, every editor, every institution, and probably my own grocery list.

If you love unreliable narrators, morally gray characters, psychological horror, and dystopias that feel disturbingly plausible, PLEASE pick this up.

My brain has officially been put through the Watercolor Quiet. Get your hands on this one to find out what I mean 🫣🫪

I have to start off this review by saying that I am—and have always been—a voracious reader. I was read to nightly as a child, and I continue that tradition in my own family. You would think I would love this book! HOWEVER:

Bit of an odd vibe going on here. I don’t really know who the target audience is. If you already read to your child(ren), this is just repetitive and unnecessarily long. If you don’t read to your child(ren), I guess it could motivate you to start, but the author frames reading-aloud as important almost at the expense of all other things, and seems obsessed with using academic achievement as a metric for success. It feels like maybe it’s targeted at upper-middle-class parents who work outside the home (don’t get me started on the author saying that the time spent doing work on a computer doesn’t count as screen time, lol) who want to assuage their guilt over missing family time and want to feel morally superior because they read to their kids?? So much of this authors framing boils down to “actually your kid is smarter and better and knows more vocabulary than those other kids who don’t get read to” and it’s really weird.

Maybe I’m just not the audience for this, but what a disappointment.

(Side note to say I am not making any judgement on families where both parents work outside the home. That’s how I was raised for most of my life, and I know that it can be a necessity.)

Another masculinity-in-crisis/angry-young-man novel, peppered with far too many crime genre tropes for me to take seriously. White's prose is fine, but dialect and intentionally off-kilter imagery can only get you so far. I know White is Irish, but he's definitely targeting an Irvine Welsh vibe and I have to admit I much prefer James Kelman. Which is to say that, yes it's bloody and brutal and uncomfortable, and that yes it's punchily written and captures a voice largely unrepresented in the literary landscape, but it's also to say that it lacks the kind of formal sparkle, thematic sleight of hand, or ideological ingenuity that would elevate the text into a truly special piece of literature.

I was quite struck by the novel's last line, Tony's last thought before he lifts his hands from the steering wheel of his life: 'Once more, someone else could decide.' This was not a good striking, it was a 'Does Djamel White think he wrote an entirely different book?' kind of striking. Tony (the protagonist) decides quite a lot of things for himself, and neither the plot nor form of the novel bother to craft him as a passive person predestined for tragedy. On the other hand, to give some grace, this could be White showing us Tony as thinking his actions have been out of his hands the whole time. It could be an impactful final refusal to take responsibility. But, again, that sort of dramatic irony and rift between first person narrator and reader hasn't really been executed at all.

A heavy shadow was cast over my reading experience of this, and its name was Flesh. Last year's booker winner used a subtractive prose style to evoke the emotive heft of reticent masculinity in an innovative way. In Flesh you're struck by the gaps between and by how little feeling there is, in All Them Dogs you have shoot outs and melodrama and hard-man banter ripped from ITV crime dramas, alongside the occasional florid and jarring interludes about how Flute is so beautiful.

As for this of all things being on the booker longlist... I guess someone on that panel is a huge fan of trope-filled dark queer mafia romances. My money's on Mary Beard.

Hum is set in a world wrecked by climate change and capitalism, a place where greenery belongs only to the rich and advertisements hum at you from every direction. Children grow up with an AI attached to their bodies, and genuine emotional connection feels like something the world quietly misplaced along the way.

For most of the book, I found it absolutely phenomenal. It’s deeply thought‑provoking and nudges the reader into seeing the world from a new angle. The way Phillips takes current research - the links between excessive screen time, constant task‑switching, and the erosion of working memory and attention - and turns it up to its highest possible setting is remarkable. It creates an atmosphere that’s eerie in the most unsettling way, because the future she depicts doesn’t feel distant or fantastical. It feels like a shadow cast by the direction we’re already moving. The story also lingers on what happens when systems punish people for doing what they must to survive, even though those same systems created the conditions that force their choices.

The ending is meant to be ambiguous, but it didn’t land that way for me, and it’s what ultimately took my rating from 5 down to 4.5 The message behind the book is powerful, yet the ending felt like it stepped away from that power at the last moment.

All this said, please go read the book. You won’t be the same when you’re done.

It’s hard to talk about When the Wolf Comes Home without just yelling “READ IT” and shoving it into people’s hands. It’s that good. And not just “oh wow this is a fun, spooky read” good, it’s emotionally bruising, deeply unsettling, unexpectedly moving, and somehow also a love letter to old-school horror paperbacks and 80s thrillers.

This is one of those stories where the less you know going in, the better. What starts as a tense, mysterious moment, our main character Jess coming home from a brutal shift to find a little boy hiding in her bushes, quickly spirals into something far more dangerous, strange, and heartbreaking than you can imagine. From there, it becomes a breakneck, emotionally loaded, horror-laced chase novel with layers upon layers beneath the surface. Cassidy takes familiar tropes like the runaway kid, the dangerous dad, and the woman on the run then flips them all inside out in the most unexpected ways.

There’s a ton of horror here, sure (some of it stomach-dropping), but what really did it for me was the emotional weight. This isn’t just a story meant to scare you (though I think it will do that) it’s also about fear itself, how it evolves as we age, what we carry from childhood, and how we cope with what we’ve survived. Jess is such a layered protagonist. She's vulnerable but funny, fierce, deeply human and watching her unravel and push forward at the same time is mesmerizing. And the kid at the centre of the story? Somehow terrifying and heartbreaking all at once. I truly didn’t know whether I wanted to hug him or run away screaming.

Cassidy’s writing is on another level. The pacing is relentless in the best way. You’re constantly tense, constantly waiting for the next beat to drop, but it never sacrifices character or emotional payoff for cheap scares. He manages to pull off huge genre swings without it ever feeling chaotic. The ending completely gutted me in the way where you sit there in stunned silence, like your soul just got cracked open a little. I don’t say that lightly. It was the kind of reading experience that sticks with you, burrows in deep, and leaves you thinking long after you’ve finished.

Cassidy has already proven himself with Mary and Nestlings, but When the Wolf Comes Home is something else entirely. It’s brutal, bizarre, raw, and cathartic. It’s horror with a soul. Cassidy is abdsolutly cementing himself as a must-read horror author. This is perfect for those who are a fan of horror that dares to be tender, weird, and devastating all at once.

Also, just as a quick note, don’t skip the afterword. Cassidy always writes incredible author notes, and this one gives you such an incredible glimpse into the personal history and emotional depth behind the story. It adds so much meaning to what you’ve just read. If you're listening to the audiobook, Cassidy himself pops in for the afterword (which made it feel even more personal).

This was exactly what I was looking for: a mystery thriller that I could just buckle in to and enjoy the ride. It made for an excellent audiobook with a full cast narration, and I do think that’s the route to go with this one; I’m not sure I would have liked an eyeball read as much. It managed to surprise me which I always like in a mystery! Pretty Dead Things is not a thematically rich story with profound characters, but it is a decently good time. Perfect for when you need a popcorn thriller palate cleanser to listen to while driving or working on a hobby. “Brain off” in a good way.