BookAnon.com

July 2026 opened with elation and ended with devastation for me. Along the way, I did in fact manage to read 14 books... and cross the 100 books on the year mark.

Starting out the month at Walt Disney World for the America 250 celebrations was a trip. Both Magic Kingdom and Epcot really showed out, and I had a great viewing spot for each. Epcot in particular had easily the loudest sustained firework blast I've ever heard for its finale, and getting back to Pop Century after via the Skyliner took almost the same amount of time as it took me to actually drive all the way home to Jax from the park the next day.

Shortly thereafter, I announced I was (largely) pulling out of social media, and now that some of the bigger reasons I was hanging around are over, I'll be pulling back even more.

And then the end of the month. On the last weekend of the month, my cat got very sick... and never really recovered. By Wenesday, July 29, it was becoming obvious that we needed a vet's opinion, and we scheduled the appointment for Friday, July 31. Even getting into the exam room, I knew it was time when this cat, who absolutely HATED everything to do with the vet and would routinely bolt at the first available opportunity every prior time we had ever taken him... didn't. He wasn't pleased, and he let that be known via hissing and growling (as usual), but when he didn't even attempt to leave his carrier... I knew. The doc confirmed it a few minutes later, and at 5:45p on July 31, with my wife and I both petting him, Bucky died. Even 8 days later, that is still hard to write. And that is why this update has been delayed for a week, even as I have been reading and in fact have a few reviews to write tomorrow.

And now, on to the book reviews...

Literally Calls For Bread Lines And Gas Lines. Read It Anyway. This is a book that absolutely has its own view of economics and attempts to gaslight the reader that this is the "majority" view of economics in the same way that climate alarmists trot out the "97% of scientists" bullshit. As I said in the title, Owens actively advocates for "queue based" distribution rather than "surge pricing" - what she calls "gouging" - in both normal and extreme circumstances...
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THIS. IS. ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hot DAMN I wish more romance novels had this kind of intense love on the page. Yes, there are Interstellar vibes at times - and they only make the romance that much more intense. This is true to the period in oh so many ways....
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Solid Enough Vigilante Thriller Absolutely *DRIPPING* Misandry. If you like girl power thrillers where every man who doesn't kowtow to the female leads' every whim is characterized as at *best* someone to be ignored and not considered at all - with most considered to be outright predatory - well, Winstead has crafted a tale here that will be absolutely up your alley....
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Solid Social History. If you're looking for a technological based history about the various innovations that made and shaped nightlife over the centuries... yeah, this isn't that. Including more recent developments like specific DJ tech and world famous party locations. But if you're looking for a more social-based history about how nightlife evolved through various ar...

Gatekeepers are a useful tool in fiction. They provide conflict and often offer the protagonist alternative ways to figure out how to reach their goals. I think about Ghostbusters when I think about Gatekeepers unless I’m thinking about that cool roller coaster at the Cedar Point gates.

In real life, though, gatekeepers are often self-proclaimed people who have decided that the rest of the world must follow their own moral code that they’ve developed from their own personal life experiences and interpretation of social and political events around them.

Oh, how I tire of the horror writer community and the gatekeeping that goes on. Perhaps things were better before we all got online, when we didn’t really know each other and our personal beliefs or our lives or our habits. We knew nothing of each other, and maybe that was a good way to be.

As someone who grew up typing novels on a manual typewriter, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the world. I was super resistant to personal computers; I thought we’d all get radiation poisoning and die, so I didn’t have a computer until 1987 when my husband bought me one to help me with my writing. I was very late getting a cell phone; I didn’t get one until 2008, because I don’t answer the phone anyway; why would I carry it around with me?

But like most of you, I’m now addicted to having a computer in my pocket, and I love being able to correct my writing with spell check and move around entire paragraphs without having to retype pages perfectly with permanent liquid paper stains on my fingers.

Technology keeps changing, oh-so-rapidly these days. We went from screaming about having to pump our own gas to screaming about self-checkouts. Back in the day, film studios were upset at the invention of home television sets, musicians were upset about electric guitars and synthesizers, filmmakers were upset about YouTube, visual artists were upset about photography, photographers were upset about Photoshop, and now writers are screaming about AI.

When YouTube was first invented, I read tarot cards on it daily, weekly, and nearly got shut down twice because a) I was showing cards and cards are copyright-protected (even the backs of the cards) and b) another time they saw a Luke Skywalker figure on my shelf in the background, and I was nearly shut down again for copyright. And yet, look at YouTube now. People read tarot cards all over the place; they show off their Star Wars toys, and they “react” to other people’s videos or to movies. The game completely changed along the way, as did copyright and a bunch of other stuff. No one cares anymore.

Meanwhile, the invisible oligarchs who control everyone are having a field day. Everyone is falling into their traps.

The real enemy isn’t your buddy who is using AI to make a book cover; the enemy is the Powers-That-Be who thrive on dividing everyone, especially in the United States. Look at how divided everyone in the US got over politics over the past ten years, and it’s now trickled to other countries. No more, are you a fellow human? Nope, it’s who did you vote for? Well, then you must be a hateful asshole. ...

From a guy who grew up in the Southern Baptist Convention and now swears like a drunken sailor, yet also actively reads books across a wider breadth of both genres and topics than nearly anyone

TL;DR: Labels are important, should be accurate, and should NOT detailed immediately before the story begins in eReader editions of books. “Clean” is not problematic, nor is “spicy”. “Christian” should in fact be “Christ-like”.

First up, let’s dispense with one thing: Like I said in the subtitle, I swear like a fucking drunk sailor - but as a “software engineering professional” by day, I come by it honestly. I’m not going to use it in every sentence, but I’m also not going to censor my thoughts here. I understand if you choose to leave, but I think I have a perspective you may likely miss entirely if you do. Your call, and I respect it. :) Also, this article was inspired by a discussion I saw between Bowen Greenwood and Andrew Gillsmith on Twitter/ X that also reached into Substack.

I grew up, again as I noted in the subtitle, in the Southern Baptist Church. My parents had actually gotten married at an Independent Baptist Church (that I would later be a member of myself in my early 20s), and my earliest memories of “church” were at a local Church of God before we moved to the SBC church I grew up in from roughly Kindergarten through when I left it for the Independent Baptist church I mentioned a moment ago.

The SBC church for a while had a church library, and that was actually one of the main libraries I used in that era. I was reading Josh McDowell’s Under Siege and Truth Slayers at the same time that I was reading Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books, and that would largely be the story of my reading for about 15 ish yrs. Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness/ Piercing the Darkness nearly alongside Joseph Masucci’s Code: Alpha (featuring one of the most brutal killings I ever read in fiction for *years*). Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse alongside Shanti Feldhan’s The Veritas Conflict. Bill Myers’ Eli alongside Dale Brown’s Battle Born. Tim Lehay and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series (the first three I read within 48 hrs of getting them one Christmas) alongside Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Aloysious Pendergast series.

Michael Crichton’s Timeline leading to Randall Ingermanson’s City of God trilogy (by way of first reading Ingermanson and John Olson’s Oxygen/ Fifth Man series) leading to Jeremy Robinson’s The Didymus Contingency.

I’ve also read romance ranging from “they barely hold hands” to “I’ve never seen porn this explicit!”. (On the subject of porn, briefly: Pastors, do not decry porn, particularly in your Sunday morning sermons, in a way that would make inquisitive pubescents (boys or girls) look it up. That was actually my introduction to it, circa 11-12yo or so. My then-pastor, who would go on years later to become a President of the Georgia Baptist Convention and even then at least acted like he was reasonably well connected within national SBC politics, literally mentioned one Sunday that “it is bad enough that we have videos of babies being born, but now we have videos of the conception too!” As a smart and inquisitive young teen - this was in the same era I was reading everything I detailed two paragraphs ago and right as the Internet was first becoming a thing - well, I had to know what he was talking about and see it for myself. That pastor died many years ago now, and I don’t think he ever even gave that line a second thought. But I remember it *to this day*, 30 ish years later.)

Also on profanity generally, my experience is to quote Eminem: “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records
Well I do. So fuck him and fuck you too.”
In other words, you do you and be real to yourself, and people will find you who are more inclined with your own position on the matter. Personally, I stride the line on the topic. I’m not going to sit here and say “God thinks” any particular thing, even if some translation of the Bible claims it. Simply put, I don’t know what God thinks here, and I don’t think we *can* know with enough specificity to guide individual actions - or judge them. My mother in law is someone that never even uses any “Christian approved substitutes” for cuss words. My dad, a former deacon in the church I grew up in, would pretty well slap my mouth off my face if I used certain words in the presence of either of my parents. Even to this da...

A few days ago, Bowen Greenwood had an interesting discussion on genres - and specifically on the "Christian Fiction" genre - on Substack, itself influenced by a post from Gaius Konstantine on Twitter/X and a discussion thereon with both myself and Blake Carpenter. It was interesting, but it needed a response... except I couldn't find my angle. I knew roughly where I was going, but the overall structure was simply lacking. Very formless, even though I knew essentially where I was going.

Then, in another discussion with Spotlight On Indie today, I finally came up with a metaphor that really allows me to focus my thoughts here, so let's see if I can do this justice.

Essentially, finding a book is a lot like fishing. If you're going out looking to catch anything at all, you need to go spend a lot of time in areas where there are as many fish as possible. If you have more limited time or a more specific desire for a specific type of fish, you need to look more precisely at either smaller bodies of water (less overall time fishing) and/ or wherever that specific fish may live. (Marlin aren't exactly known for living in the lakes I grew up fishing on the outskirts of Atlanta, but neither are catfish known to be in the surface waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean... at least as far as I know.)

So for finding a book in general, there are a few different strategies. Sites like Goodreads, particularly with its direct Amazon connection, are going to have some of the largest catalogs of books on any site out there. Goodreads, as an overall book site, also has the largest number of overall users - and is literally orders - yes, plural - of magnitude bigger than its next largest competitor (roughly 125 million users to The Story Graph's roughly 3 million). Basically, it is the Pacific Ocean. If it exists at all, you're likely going to find some version of it there.....

For this blog tour, we're looking at an excellent and exciting conclusion to a series readers thought for nearly a decade had already concluded. For this blog tour, we're looking at Everything We Found by Kerry Lonsdale.

First, the review I posted to the book sites (BookBub.com BookHype.com / Goodreads.com / TheStoryGraph.com), and YouTube:

Unexpected And Excellent Conclusion To A Series Thought To Have Already Concluded. Years ago now, in the period when I began ramping up my reading but before I had actually created my book blog, BookAnon dot com, I read Lonsdale's excellent Everything trilogy. The mystery, the romance, everything about this trilogy... I never realized it had been her very *first* three books, as they were, well, everywhere back then - at least in my own circles. I became a fan, and I've had the honor of working very nearly every book since this trilogy as an Advance Reader Copy, including this one.

But y'all, a decade of *my* reading is a *LOT* of books - over 1,800 and counting, to be at least in the ballpark. So I for one was very glad that this was written as a "standalone" with ...

Unremarkable Man Doing Remarkable Things. I began reading this book in the days after Neill's death not knowing I would be reading it through my cat's final days and finishing the book on the day we finally got confirmation that it was the right thing to do and had to end his suffering. Which, sitting to write this review roughly 36 hrs after that particular event, makes this review a bit more interesting - at least to me and so far as writing it goes.

There is actually an interesting parallel here, in that for all we the general public think we know of Sam Neill, this book doesn't really dive too deeply into that. If you're looking for a deep dive on his experiences in his most well known movies - Hunt for Red October, the Jurassic movies, etc - or even some of his lesser known ones - Wimbeldon? - you're not really going to find that here.

What you will find, instead, is a deeply personal and mostly more holistic look at a very private man who lived a very public life, writing knowing that he has recently been given what will most likely be a terminal diagnosis. Th...

Australian Gothic With Interesting Storytelling Mechanism. The questions mentioned in the description of the book (as it exists now almost two weeks after publication) serve as a way of doing a version of dual-timeline... without actually doing dual-timeline. As someone who reads literally hundreds of books every year for the past decade now, finding books that do something atypical and yet do it very well is always a joy.

The overall story here is also quite strong in its own right, and one far too many of us can relate to ...

Solid Story Of Legacy And Family Marred By Prominent Hyper Leftist Politics. As far as the tale as a whole here goes, this is one of those tales that is actually at least somewhat like The Great Gatsby: The beginning is a bunch of *utter* shit, but once you get beyond it into the actual meat of the story, it actually opens up into a rather spectacular tale... that in this case returns to at least some of the utter shit deeper in, but at least at this later point it is more "shit flavored" than straight "eating shit".

The base story - of a single mom PI investigating the threats to an indie band and the fallout thereof (without going to spoilery) - is truly great. There's a lot of strong and interesting characters here, and the more meta level discussion of legacy, fame, family, and even death is truly well done.

Which is why the inclusion and prominence of such hyper leftist politics is such a shame, because it will lead to many readers either never picking this book up, actively defenestrating it if they do, or at bare minimum DNFing it and likely leaving a lower starred review than even this one - and every bit of this is absolutely a self inflicted own goal that truly wasn't necessary.

Specifically, as is my style in my reviews, these are the reasons stars were lost:

Hyper femi...

Solid Coming Of Age Story In Different Eras And Promising New Series. This is one of the more interesting books I've read in quite some time mostly because of how Bromke uses so many different elements in atypical mashups to create such a compelling tale. There's elements of everything from Stephen King's Carrie to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with a bit of Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers and even S.E. Hinton's Outsiders to boot... or this could be my hyper-connective Autistic brain making connections that *no one* else will s...

Bailey's Spicy RomCom + Sarah Morgan's Women's Fiction. If you love Bailey's usual spicy romcom... this is yet another of those, and you largely know what you're getting here if you're already a fan. Where this one gets a bit more interesting is that it *also* features an almost Sarah Morgan type women's fiction tale of several different women, each with their own issues, coming together and growing through those issues, in this case over a week long vacation to Ibiza. Bailey handles the combination quite well, showing both ...