For the cover alone, I‘ve been saving this used bookstore find for reading on actual Halloween! Unfortunately, the cover is the best part of this very 90s horror novel. With gore, absolutely cringingly awful sex scenes & wooden characters who so nonchalantly accept the supernatural & never really discuss anything, this is a slog to get through. Never delivering any real chills or thrills, I guess I‘ll be using this as a decoration moving forward!

This one is so much fun!! Across SVMS, students are randomly paired off for two week “marriages” to learn to budget, compromise on important decisions, prepare a healthy meal & keep an egg baby alive. The pairings make this fun: Elizabeth/Bruce Patman, Jessica/Rick Hunter, Lila/Todd, Ellen/Winston Egbert, etc. Rick‘s teasing covers his genuine feelings for Jessica & it‘s clear she feels the same way! Even Bruce goes all in for his new family!

This fourth installment of the #EdinburghNightsSeries reminds me the most of the first one! It‘s an entertaining blend of action, mystery, intrigue & heartbreak! Ropa‘s working with the English magician, planning a new life away from Scotland. But Edinburgh isn‘t ready to let the ghost talker go. Ropa learns more about her family & past, but more questions—& trouble— arises. This ends on a real cliffhanger & I can‘t wait for book 5!! Great audio!

This book opens with Elizabeth‘s frustration over a missing turquoise sweater that she can‘t find in Jessica‘s disaster of a room. But when all the Unicorns except for Jessica fall victim to the Sweet Valley Swiper (a missing coat, silver earrings, Lila‘s Watchman), it‘s Liz & Amy to the rescue, resurrecting the SVK Super Snoopers to catch the case & catch the thief red-handed! I always love when a twin-switch helps save the day!

Oooo! This #ThreeListThursday was a tough one! I‘m not sure that any of my real favorites made the list, but I still had a hard time narrowing this down to three!
Other than the Sweet Valley High Thrillers, my childhood was filled with exchanging Mary Higgins Clark books with my grandmother and though this isn‘t my favorite of hers, I have read it a few times. And I love both Case Histories and Big Little Lies!
Thanks @dabbe for organizing #TLT!

A great #SpookySeason read! This mystery, told through two perspectives— the ghost of a woman in her forties & the twenty year old who takes over the lease on the furnished apartment— makes for a fun read! Cordelia & Ruby work together to solve the murder of the guy living across the hallway in “their”Boston apartment building. With struggles to communicate & plenty of lingering questions, this feels fresh & leaves you eager for the sequel!

It‘s the “first” (okay, not the actual first!) boy/girl dance at SVMS. Lila‘s awful new neighbor, Veronica Brooks keeps bragging about her old school & has her competitive sights set on none other than Todd! And when Jessica ditches Aaron for Bruce, Liz consoles Aaron—& winds up kissing him! But for a #SweetValleyValentinesDay, Ellen hosts another boy/girl party where all the mixed-up couples can be set to rights! Make-up kisses & a food fight!

This is my original book club‘s choice for the month and I enjoyed this quick listen! It‘s a very fun one that had me laughing out loud and taking the extra long way home to keep listening! Multiple perspectives center around a community center on the verge of closing. At 70, Daphne plans on embracing life more fully while Abe, an actor with a shoplifting habit yearns to reconnect with his estranged daughter. Teenage dad Ziggy needs a better life.

Patty Gilbert, a relatively new girl to #SweetValley, loves ballet dancing more than anything. She even ignored Kerry Glenn‘s friendly overtures because Kerry is her only real competition in their advanced class. But when Mme Baril notices something different about Patty, she is scared to go to the doctor & even more scared after her diagnosis that may mean the end of her dancing days! Meanwhile, Jessica schemes to get their class on television!

Thanks for the tag, @JenlovesJT47 and thanks for organizing this fun #WonderousWednesday, @Eggs
🎃Sweet candy
🎃Buy costume
🎃Ghost
🎃Owls
🎃Mummy
🎃Party
🎃Hocus Pocus
🎃Drink Witches Brew
🎃Carve pumpkin
🎃 Haunted House

Just in time for the #SpookySeason, my favorite author has a collection of new short stories (and an updated version of his slim monograph about the 1972 film HORROR EXPRESS which is part history/breakdown of the movie and part autobiographical regarding Connolly‘s own nostalgia surrounding it). I loved adding on more tales about the Caxton library and the ghostly & monster-y stories are perfect for this time of year! As usual, I love his writing!

In this fifth #SweetValleyChristmas for the twins, it‘s Christmas Eve & the twins stay behind to exchange gifts to each other while everyone else goes to the airport for Alice‘s parents. Liz wrote a special story & a framed photo while Jess planned ahead & bought tickets for a concert & the bus to LA. Their disappointment leads to an epic fight & special harlequin dolls lead to an epic adventure in a fantasy land to bring them together again! ⬇️

This was my book club‘s pick for the month— a solid piece of historical fiction set in Maine just over a decade past the Revolutionary War. Based on the life of midwife Martha Ballard, Martha makes for a strong heroine in a time when respect for a woman is hard won and rare. She gets involved in a murder investigation while seeking justice for a friend, with flashes into her own past. Her husband‘s perfection, however, is the larger mystery! 🤣

When an art gallery/charm school opens in #SweetValley, Elizabeth‘s immediately suspicious of the owners & its employee when simple answers don‘t line up. While Jessica & the Unicorns are excited for charm school, Elizabeth convinces Amy & Maria to sign up so they can prove the Beaumonts are frauds, at least & crooks at worst. Liz gets embarrassed a few times but in the end, only Jessica helps her catch them red-handed! A fun & silly mystery!

Well this marks my first #audiobook that I‘ve ever listened to where the main character shares my first name! Distracting at times, it was also kind of fun! This police procedural set in a MN town starts with the disappearance of Tori‘s identical twin. On the 20th anniversary of that night, another woman vanishes in the same way! But now, Tori‘s an FBI agent. A bit predictable in some ways, but well-plotted, I am looking forward to the sequel!

Lila prepares to throw the Founder‘s Fling to celebrate Unicorn Club (the mayor even attends!) with souvenir tees & wants a purple hot air balloon to add the perfect finishing touch. But after her credit card is declined, the chauffeur‘s fired, George says no to the balloon & she overhears him saying he lost a fortune, Lila concludes she‘s poor. She asks Melissa to be her “poverty advisor”— it‘s all ridiculous & a dog manages to warm Jessica‘s ❤️!

I‘ve been looking forward to this one since I first heard about it! I really enjoy Chizmar‘s writing & this standalone set in 1983 Appalachia has plenty of time period nostalgia, & a creeping tension as three college friends work together on a school project on roadside memorials. When creepy things start happening, it quickly becomes impossible to know who to trust. It opens a little slowly, but the ending certainly keeps the pages flying fast!

Sarah Thomas & Sophia Rizzo feature here when their single parents have a meet-cute in the principal‘s office after Sarah & Sophia get into a paint fight over a library mural! At first, their parents dating makes them crueler than ever to each other until they start working together to break them up until they become friends for real. Jessica‘s side story of a rumor that famous baseball player, “Quakefield” Wakefield is related to them is great!

Yikes!! This was the scariest, tensest listen that I‘ve encountered in a while. I‘d heard the hype, but still found this to be an electrifying debut with such immediacy that it‘s hard to stop listening for any reason! The book opens with a mother of two young children startling awake at the sound of a person in their house in the middle of the night. The tension & horror begins there… and between this fresh horror, we learn the family‘s backstory.

The SOAR! (Science Offers Awesome Rewards!) program comes to #SweetValley with an aptitude test allowing a select group of students to spend 2 weeks in an interactive immersion class. No one is more surprised than Jessica when she tests in & though she‘s horrified to be with the nerds, she can‘t help but be interested in the subject matter, field trips & being in class with Elizabeth. Janet‘s jealous because her latest crush is in SOAR too!

Thanks, @JenlovesJT47 for the tag for the #ThreeListThursday! It was tough to narrow this one down to three since the top 100 has so many good movies on it, but Jaws is my favorite movie and Strangers on a Train and ET both are ones that I love, too! Thanks, @dabbe for organizing the #TLT— and glad Jaws was available to be selected finally! 🤣

I‘ve enjoyed several of St. James‘ earlier books so I was excited to dive into this one! I appreciated the 1995 setting & really liked the pop culture references though some of the MI geography seemed a little confusing. This ghost story fails to deliver real chills but opens with newlyweds driving to their honeymoon, waylaid by an unexpected encounter with a stranger on the side of the road changes their lives forever! A bit predictable but fun!

When the twins stumble over a foreign exchange program, they want to sign up. But without speaking another language, they apply to be a host family. After a call, Jessica gets everyone excited about Giovanni Screta. Lila brags about her experience with Italian boys but at the airport, Giovanna, a sophisticated tween from Florence joins them. Though her English isn‘t as great as her fashion sense, her messiness & flirting cause bigger problems!

1. Oh, this is so hard!! My favorite citrus is lemon, berry is strawberry, melon is watermelon but I also just love pineapple! 🤣

2. I think my most recent five star read with a meal memorably shared is Anna Johnston‘s THE BORROWED LIFE OF FREDERICK FIFE

Thanks for the tag @JenlovesJT47 and for organizing @TheSpineView !

I came to this award-winning debut with high expectations—& the promising beginning, while not frightening but intriguing with 4 renowned horror authors (with comparisons to real-life authors) spending Halloween night in a haunted house for an interview makes a great set up. Each author harbors their own secrets & leaving the house is only the beginning. The drawn out climax & unlikable characters eventually made me stop caring who‘d live or die!

This has always been one of my favorites! Great-Aunt Helen inherits the Lakeview Inn & decides to fix up the building that‘s been abandoned for 70 years. The Wakefield kids along with cousins Robin & Stacey & Joe Howell spend a #SweetValleySummer helping out—& pranking each other though insufferable Elizabeth keeps being too logical for their ghosty tricks… until the pranks take on a life of their own! Spooky but fun, I just love this ghost story!

I really enjoyed Audrain‘s debut novel, so I had some high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, despite the fast pacing, the unlikable characters & unsatisfying ending left me wanting. I‘m sure this could lead to lively discussion but the four different women‘s perspectives here certainly don‘t make neighborhood life appealing! Whitney‘s rage, Blair‘s creepy nosiness, Rebecca‘s extreme secrecy & Mara‘s pent-up emotion all were hard to connect with!

The Hairnet gets a student teacher who brings fresh fun to the pioneer unit— in class they pan for gold, make cosmetics from berries & best of all, spend a class field trip over the weekend to a pioneer style farm the college runs. The boys make a bet that they can follow the farm rules without modern comforts better than the girls with speech making stakes. Jessica sneaks in a portable CD player & the boys have a TV! A silly & fun one for sure!

Thanks, @JenlovesJT47 for the tag for this #ThreeListThursday! I must have a thing for the end of the alphabet because I had the hardest time narrowing down this list! But I love Witness For The Prosecution (thanks, Agatha Christie!) and I love the acting here! My ankle twinges just thinking about how my friend and I tried to perfect Verbal‘s limp in The Usual Suspects and The Uninvited is the first scary movie I ever watched— with my grandmother!

Thanks, @kspenmoll for the tag! Some tough choices here!
And thank you @Eggs for organizing this #WondrousWednesday!

What are your picks, @JenlovesJT47 ?

This debut novel quickly becomes impossible to put down! Mother horror has become a recent sub-genre & though this reminded me of a few other books, I still stayed up to finish in one sitting! With her husband deployed, Flora gives birth alone & though her dad & stepmother stay for a short time initially, Flora‘s isolation & sleep deprivation starts weighing on her, bringing back episodes from her own childhood, body horror & an uncanny visitor.

Siblings Andy & Melissa McCormick play starring roles here. The Hairnet‘s social studies class assigns partners to work on family interviews. Jessica gets Lila & Elizabeth‘s assigned to Melissa. When Melissa‘s mom suddenly succumbs to a heart condition, senior SVH basketball star Andy is determined not to let CPS split them up since they haven‘t heard from their musician father in years. The lies mount up, but as usual St. Elizabeth saves the day!

This sequel to SHUTTER opens up six months later, with Rita being called back into her job taking forensic photos for the Albuquerque police. With the same matter of fact brutality, supernatural influence & with a dark secondary perspective, this sequel weighs heavier than the first book. I wouldn‘t start here & I‘m glad about the hints for Rita‘s well-being in a third installment. The audio is well-performed & I‘m looking forward to the next one!

Despite his disastrous (& expensive!) first date with Jill Hale, Steven clearly still has it bad for her. When Janet Howell brags about how much in love Jill is with her brother instead, Jessica makes a bet to prove that within a week, Steven is totally over Jill. With high stakes, Jessica forces Elizabeth to help with her matchmaking (especially since if they lose the bet, it‘s Liz‘s new camera that gets handed over!). A fun scheme-filled story!

After finishing Mara‘s recent #BOTM pick, I wanted to check out more from Mara, so I started listening to her debut! With multiple timelines & perspectives, there were a few transitional moments where I wished I was physically reading it. But it immediately reeled me in when Sylvie, just before returning from maternity leave and woken in the night, thinks she sees a body floating in the pond next door! The neighbor‘s story emerges all with twists!

Great Aunt Helen visits #SweetValley & surprises the Wakefield kids with $100 to spend. Jessica teaches Lila a lesson generosity & treats her friends to join her on her shopping spree, spending all her money on treats & trinkets with nothing much for herself. Liz adds the money to her new camera fund & a hardcover Amanda Howard book, sparking her to find her own mystery to solve while Steven wastes his on impressing his crush with a fancy date!

This overview of horror from the 17th century to the present with a focus on America is a well-researched & cited read. I hoped for something a bit more like Grady Hendrix‘s (with several mentions, but not for this nonfiction) PAPERBACKS FROM HELL that blends entertainment with additions to my TBR. This focuses on the most popular bits of horror (containing spoilers!) & could do with some more compacted structure rather than 8 lengthy chapters!

All of Sweet Valley is Coco Crazy for this new Franglais singer & her hit singles! Brooke Dennis is as big of a fan as anyone else—even volunteering to write a Sixers article about the singer… but her voice seems oddly familiar… Meanwhile, her mom, stepdad & new baby half-sister are staying at the Sweet Valley Plaza after Brooke hasn‘t seen them in a year! But they can‘t have public fun because her mom‘s new job requires her family to stay secret!

Thanks to #SweetValley, I‘m a sucker for twin stories! This #KindleUnlimited title revolves around fraternal twins May & June—& their mother who passed 3 years earlier. June‘s been missing for a year & while mourning in her room, 20 year old May learns that their mother went missing at 19–on the same date that June disappeared! She starts her own investigation, uncovering family secrets along the way. Strains plausibility but remains entertaining!

It‘s another #SweetValleyChristmas & though the Wakefields have plans for a skiing trip with both sets of grandparents, Jessica & Mandy Miller enter a recipe contest for the Pineapple People & win a trip to Hawaii! Liz would rather ski, & Jessica insults Lila by inviting Mary Wallace instead since Lila‘s already been. Mr. Fowler comes to the rescue & joins them & pays for Lila, Ellen & Janet—along with his new girlfriend, Bambi. Lila hates her!

I‘ve read & enjoyed McCreight‘s earlier novels. I‘m always a sucker for a disappearance story, so I made this my August #BOTM pick! But despite some multimedia & mother/daughter perspectives, I never warmed to either (or really any!) character. The plot‘s twist didn‘t pack the punch I hoped for & I don‘t think it will stick long in my memory as I never felt eager to pick it up any time I set it down. I didn‘t hate it but I didn‘t like it either!

Alice & Ned plan a week in Mexico—& their kids are delighted to be trusted alone. Naturally, they plan a party & are horrified when the night before their parents leave, May shows up to babysit! With a whistle & strict rules, even Saint Elizabeth is pushed to her limits. To get May out of the house, Steven pretends to run away & gives May fake directions to pick him up (the 1991 pub date obvious here!). A food fight ensues, but it all works out!

For this part of the #ThreeListThursday / #TLT organized by @dabbe these are my three top picks! But, I must say, I was shocked Jaws didn‘t make this part of the list!!! That‘s my favorite movie of all, really! So I guess Monstro from Pinocchio will have to do! 🤣

Thanks for the tag, @JenlovesJT47 !

I expected something a little spookier and a bit less fantastical than what this one ended up being, but the strong audio performance helped suck me into this hard to categorize listen. The titular town, with its regulated population of exactly 200, lives (& dies) by their regulations, ordinances and dark traditions. Osira has long considered her family lucky but the 45 year old widow‘s luck runs out as this begins. A discussion starter for sure!

Mr. Bowman ends the school slump by letting the 6th grade make their own movie! The runny-nosed Leslie Forsythe secretly wants to act but Lila & Jessica battle it out for the lead role in their horror/comedy/romance about a sentient slime grown by accident. But when Jessica learns she will have to kiss both Randy Mason & Winston Egbert (as the slime!) she‘s happy to let Leslie lock lips with those nerds instead! She gets revenge on Lila, too! Fun!

After Leeds‘s debut novel, I was curious to dive into this. Set across Wisconsin, this spooky & tense listen is gripping, tense, full of action, blood & even tears. Sheltered Sophie rebels against her strict Catholic parents in small ways—an illicit fiction novel checked out & a yearning for the twin brother they sent away. But when a terrifying pandemic erupts, it gives Sophie the chance to see the wider world & find out what & who matter to her.

It turns out Winston Egbert is a gymnast! With SVMS hosting an upcoming cheerleading competition, Winston decides it‘s the perfect time to join the squad to the absolute horror of the Unicorns (they started the Boosters after all!). Determined to stop him, petitions fly around the school, then some hazing but Winston‘s crush on Grace Oliver makes him quit until the girls beg for him to return for the competition! Meanwhile Todd shows his jealousy!

Yikes!! This is definitely the scariest, tensest & most stomachache-inducing/ ankle-tingling (so you‘re ready to run!) book so far for the #SpookySeasonReading! The whole idea of an intruder living in your home undetected is terrifying to me, & this book plays well into that. Well-plotted & impossible to put down, this one had me guessing, gasping & cringing! I loved it & am looking forward to catching up on the author‘s back catalog for sure!

Elizabeth wins yet another essay contest— a national one on individuality. The day after the principal announces her win, they learn teachers can nominate candidates as a Model Student. Jessica immediately starts campaigning for her twin. Pamela McDonald‘s constant flattery starts getting to Elizabeth‘s head & she starts going overboard in bossiness & generally being impossible! Even Todd gets annoyed with her attitude! Detention snaps her back!

I‘m usually more forgiving of audiobooks but I listened to just under half of this one before ultimately deciding to ditch it. It‘s my third #DNF of the year and I don‘t regret switching to something else at all. I don‘t know why one blurb called this “wildly hilarious” but I never even cracked a smile. I found it to be shockingly dull and I just couldn‘t care less about any of the Reed family. Not even the Montreal setting could spice this up!