Saturday, 31 October 2026

Overworld by Will Wright


Eldric Altmoore is usually unflappable. A butler must be prepared for anything, after all, and Eldric has decades of service under his belt.

But after a near-death experience, Eldric is swept away into a new world, one on the brink of collapse, and tasked with saving a little girl from the hordes of monsters on her tail. Oh, and he only has ten days to do it.

In a world of ever-changing rules, bloodthirsty villains, and magic like he's never seen, Eldric will have to keep a level head and take on his messiest job yet: saving the world.

Friday, 30 October 2026

Hide and Seek by Erin Ampersand


Meghan has learned that protecting her kids also means making sure they're ready to stand on their own when needed. That's always been part of her parenting philosophy, but applying it to letting a six-year-old get up close and personal with vicious monsters? Questionable! Certainly not easy.

Meghan doesn’t have a choice. She’s got to be an expert apocalypse parent while also stabilizing her area, finding a way to handle with the mysterious new Titans, and dealing with the other nasty twists her alien tormentors have planned.

It's more than she bargained for, but she’s not giving up!

Thursday, 29 October 2026

Wednesday, 28 October 2026

Making Friends by Erin Ampersand


Meghan can't afford to take a break.

She's gotten food and shelter for her family. Her oldest is turning into a wizard, her middle boy is some kind of self-healing monkey, and her youngest is accumulating a small army of pets. That's a bit much to roll with, but when monsters are appearing on the lawn, it's probably for the best.

What worries her is the mysterious―and dangerous―“Challenge” she knows is fast approaching, and she's got to get her kids and community ready to face it. Some neighbors are ready and willing to pitch in, but others? They might end up being a bigger problem than the alien monsters.

Monday, 26 October 2026

Time to Play by Erin Ampersand


Picture this: You’re home with your three kids, racing to get soccer uniforms washed ahead of practice when the power shuts off. Your cell phone goes dead. And a voice coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once booms:

Congratulations! Your planet has been selected!

And just like that, Earth becomes the newest unwilling participant in a high-stakes intergalactic game show competition. What that means becomes terrifyingly clear as monsters drop onto the front lawn, an interface appears in your field of vision, and you—and your nine- and six-year-old sons and three-year-old daughter—are each offered a choice of supernatural abilities.

Part of you wants to laugh. Your husband’s away on business, coming home late tonight. Well, he was. But you clamp down on your rising panic. It doesn’t matter how much harder it will be. You’re a mom. Your kids need you; it’s up to you to keep them safe. You can do this.

Then, in quick succession, you discover: 1) your toddler has unilaterally decided her supernatural power should be for her beloved turtle stuffie to come alive. 2) every person on Earth will have to fight, no matter their age. You're going to have to teach your kids to stand on their own—and yourself to let them.

Sunday, 25 October 2026

Weekly recap Oct 25 2026

Happy Sunday, all! Welcome to the weekly recap. 


This week, I reviewed

Swim, Little Otter - fabulous celebration of nature and bravery

Great Moments in Hurling - a guide to the highs and lows of Ireland's national sport

Girl of Darkness - mystery set in snowy Sweden

The Season of Light and Darkness - mystery set in the dystopian future


This week, I read

Time to Play and Making Friends - first two in a LitRPG quadrology


Coming up 

Very short things because I'm behind again, and a test of a new feature!

Saturday, 24 October 2026

The Season of Light and Darkness by Jillian Cantor


In the months since a dictator was elected president, the United States has been turned upside down. Dissenters are deemed terrorists, including sixteen-year-old Ellie Jacobs’s family.

To escape persecution, the four of them—Ellie, her younger brother Scott, and their parents—decide to freeze themselves cryogenically for ten years in her father’s lab. In ten years, things will be better. They have to be.

But the government discovers the lab after only three years and thaws Ellie early. She awakens, completely alone, to a nightmare of a strange new world and is told the rest of her family didn’t survive. Suddenly, she must abandon everything she knows to go to through “ReAdmittance” and become “Initiated.” Ellie is terrified…until her boyfriend, Ryan, now a nineteen-year-old Initiated soldier, shows up and tells her everything will be fine, that she should trust the good people around her.

But Ellie isn’t sure if she can still trust Ryan.

What Ellie doesn’t know is that Scott never went through with the freeze. He ran away and has joined a band of teenage resistance fighters living in the mountains. No longer her “younger” brother, he’s now sixteen just like her. When Scott learns Ellie has been thawed early, he decides he must risk everything to save her before the brainwashing begins.

Together with other brave rebel teens, Ellie and Scott must navigate this terrible new world to find their way back to each other, before they lose everything—including who they are.

Friday, 23 October 2026

Girl of Darkness by Kristina Dowling


19-year-old Eira Martell is determined to leave her past behind. There’s only one person who understands her: her grandmother. But her grandmother has been missing since Eira was ten, when she suddenly vanished right in front of Eira’s eyes at a pagan stone circle. But strange things are happening again. Someone posts Eira her grandmother’s necklace anonymously, a handsome scarred stranger is following her and the shadow world she has tried so hard to leave behind is stirring once again. Eira is thrown into a treacherous world of ancient magic, grimoires and secret societies.

Thursday, 22 October 2026

Wednesday, 21 October 2026

Great Moments in Hurling


BREATHTAKING PHOTOS CAPTURING MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN HURLING

Considered by many to be the fastest field sport in the world, hurling is skilful, exhilarating and has been part of Irish life for millennia.
Ray McManus and his team of Sportsfile photographers have been close to the action for decades, and their photos, both on and off the pitch from the 1950s right up to the present day, capture the bravura performances, the moments of elation and despair, the blood sweat and tears of a game that sometimes seems more like a battle than a sport.

Including personal stories from photographers, hurlers and managers, this book celebrates the legendary players, the matches and the clashes of one of the world’s most exciting sports.

Monday, 19 October 2026

Sunday, 18 October 2026

Weekly recap - Oct 18 2026

Happy Sunday, all! Welcome to the weekly recap. 


This week, I reviewed

A Children's Atlas of Ireland - absolutely gorgeous, buy it right now

O'Brien Picture books roundup - absolutely fab, buy them right now

Strangebrew Apothecary - perfectly Western, buy it right now

As you Wish - magical Judy Blume, buy it right now


This week, I read

Two books that didn't suit me. Seems to be the season!

Girl of Darkness - smooth as butter translation of Swedish fantasy


Coming up 

That LitRPG week is still looming!

Saturday, 17 October 2026

As you Wish by Nashae Jones


Birdie has big plans for eighth grade. This is the year that she gets a boyfriend, and since she and her best friend, Deve, do everything together, it makes sense that Deve will get a girlfriend. This is the kind of math Birdie doesn’t find intimidating—it’s Eighth Grade 101. (Birdie + Boyfriend) + (Deve + Girlfriend) = Normal Eighth Grade Experience. And normal is something Birdie craves, especially with a mom as overprotective as hers.

She doesn’t expect Deve to be so against her plan, or for their fight to blow up in her face. So when the West African god Anansi appears to her, claiming to be able to make everything right again, Birdie pushes past her skepticism and makes a wish for the whole mess to go away. But with a trickster god, your wish is bound to come true in a way you never imagined.

Before long, Birdie regrets her rash words…especially when she realizes what’s really going on with her and Deve. With her reality upended, can Birdie figure out how to undo her wish?

Friday, 16 October 2026

Strangebrew Apothecary by Rustin Lovewell


When Ellastaria Strange joins a ragtag crew of con artists and serpent-oil salesmen, she’s just trying to escape the slow death of poverty, not sell fake cure-alls in dinky rural villages. Yet Ella harbors a dangerous secret. Unlike her crooked co-workers, she's the real thing; an apothecary with supernatural abilities, hiding from a world fearful of such powers, covertly helping people when she can.

Ella’s life of deceit takes a terrifying turn when her team swindles the wrong town and Ella accidentally reveals her true nature to fanatics with no tolerance for the supernatural. On the run from obsessed vigilantes, Ella and her crew find refuge with a beer brewer who wants nothing to do with crooks or occultists, and his starry-eyed sister who wants in on all of it.

For any hope of a future, the scrappy misfits must band together, embrace what makes them outcasts, and trust in each other’s talents—no matter how strange.

Thursday, 15 October 2026

Wednesday, 14 October 2026

O'Brien Picture Books Roundup

As always, O'Brien are releasing some fabulous picture books for this Christmas! I couldn't separate them, so I've popped them all together here - I hope you enjoy!

Monday, 12 October 2026

A Children's Atlas of Ireland by Jennifer Farley


Do you know what Ireland’s tiniest mammal is? Or where to find an enormous fin whale? Climb mountains full of eagles and insects, and see toads and kingfishers in our lakes and rivers.
Have you heard of the Hag who turns people to stone? Or the fierce pirate Gráinne? Spot Irish werewolves and the phantom island of Hy-Brasil, mysterious standing stones and fairy forts.
What is a flying boat? Would you ever eat a slippery eel or seaweed pudding? Ride the railway or a canal boat across the country to learn about incredible inventions, huge castles and deep, dark caves and tunnels.

From high mountains to haunted houses, bog bodies to big battles, discover Ireland as you’ve never seen it before.

Sunday, 11 October 2026

Weekly recap Oct 11 2026

Happy Sunday, all! Welcome to the weekly recap. 


This week, I reviewed

Bog Bodies - terrifying and just in time for Halloween

The Best Christmas Ever - sweet and relaxing, just in time for Christmas

The Judy Story Library - a nostalgic return #BacktotheBookshelves

All I Want is to Not Be Alone - a clever look at the real horror of zombies


This week, I read

Bog Bodies, as above

Strangebrew Apothecary - vaguely Western found family

As you Wish - Ananzi tries to come out on top

The Call - completely terrifying Irish story


I was travelling the world this week, apparently. I also DNF'd one that wasn't working for me. It's not a proper mystery if the author is actively hiding things from the reader!


Coming up 

Picture books, post apoc, a weird kind of mystery and a LitRPG week!

Saturday, 10 October 2026

All I Want is to Not be Alone by Daniel R Fierst


To Timothy Baker, survival isn’t luck—it’s logic: prepare for the worst, anticipate every danger, and above all else stay alive. It’s worked for two months as he’s fortified himself in his childhood home. But when a routine supply run collapses into chaos, and the undead close in, Timothy is forced to abandon his barricaded sanctuary.

His only hope? Heading north, toward whispers of safety in the frozen wilds of Canada.

The journey is anything but safe. Timothy's road from his suburban home to the heart of zombie-ravaged cities is plagued by danger—both external and within. As he documents his descent into isolation through intimate journal entries, half-shattered memories, and fleeting digital connections, Timothy must reconcile the walls he’s built around himself with the growing ache for connection.

With winter tightening its icy grip and humanity slipping further from his grasp, Timothy faces the ultimate test of survival: Can he adapt to the unexpected? And more importantly—can he make it through without someone by his side?

All I Want Is To Not Be Alone is a haunting tale of resilience and humanity’s deepest fear: not the undead, but being truly alone.

Friday, 9 October 2026

Back to the Bookshelf: The Judy Picture Story Library


The world of girls' comics was bigger than you might imagine. The Picture Story Library was a series of books that had all the drama, fun, mystery and adventure of a weekly comic strip crammed into one small 62 page digest. They were a monthly treat to go along with your weekly issues. The stories were complete so no waiting around for the next issue to find out what would happen to the characters.

Thursday, 8 October 2026

Wednesday, 7 October 2026

The Best Christmas Ever by Sarah Morgan


As the snowstorm of the century bears down on New England, reclusive author Mabel Miller is preparing to spend yet another Christmas alone with her cats. While everyone else is making merry, she’ll be avoiding the whole painful holiday. No decorations. No tree. No traces of Christmas. That is, until the weather intervenes and sends not one but two cars spinning into the stone wall surrounding her isolated cottage. Now she has a house full of strangers when the last thing she wanted was company for Christmas.

Yet Mabel’s unexpected guests—a family with two young children expecting Santa to drop gifts down the chimney, and two work colleagues who clearly have a history—are determined to make the best of the situation. As her attempts to protect her privacy are thwarted by the two little ones who are charmingly oblivious to her boundaries, soon Mabel is making cocoa and cookies for the first time in years, and allowing them into her library, a place that contains so many of her secrets.

Mabel has her reasons for keeping her truths so deeply hidden. But this Christmas, if Mabel is brave enough to share, she might finally be able to rewrite the past and find a festive happy-ever-after - for her new friends, but also herself.

Monday, 5 October 2026

Bog Bodies by Kevin Moran



The boys have got a sinking feeling …

A school trip to the remote island of Inis Fola might be Jack, Jerry and Yash’s idea of fun, but it sounds like hell on earth to Conan. And once the Doomsday Club boys arrive at Camp Eclipse, things get even worse: there’s girls and posh kids from another school to deal with. But then haunting blue lights are seen across the bog and people start to disappear.

Evil is stirring in the dark. Could the stories of a thousand-year-old demon buried beneath the bog be true?

Maybe bringing the summonstone to a cursed island wasn't the brightest idea they've ever had …

Sunday, 4 October 2026

Weekly recap Oct 3 2026

Happy Sunday, all! Welcome to the weekly recap. 


This week, I reviewed

Gracie - historical MG with a touching story

The Discworld Bestiary - The most physically beautiful book I've seen this year

Sunderworld  Vol 1 and Vol 2 - hidden stories under LA


This week, I read

Nothing, because I had a cold and didn't get anything finished...I'm halfway through three different things though!


Coming up 

Very short books because I'm behind!



Saturday, 3 October 2026

The Unfortunate Responsibilities of Leopold Berry by Random Riggs


Leopold, Emmet, and Isabel will begin to unravel the mystery of the ring and what, exactly, has been going on with Leopold's family and their connection to Sunderworld.

Salty about the way Sunder has treated him and sceptical that his mother really meant for him to have the mysterious ring, Leopold secretly wishes he could walk away from Sunder. What he really wants is to finish high school and start living a normal life with his newfound courage. But now the magical world that wanted nothing to do with him won’t leave him alone.

The Department, fascinated by the ring, is hounding him to come back. And Isabel and Emmet want Leopold to help them unravel the ring's many mysteries. When the ring activates during a terrifying Noxum attack, enabling Leopold to perform another magical act of heroism, he knows he can't turn his back on Sunder. Wherever he goes, the magic seems to follow. The answers to all his questions lie in the Lyceum’s well-protected archives, in his mother's letters, and perhaps in the unlikeliest, most unmagical of people: Leopold’s father.

Friday, 2 October 2026

The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs


Seventeen-year-old Leopold Berry is seeing weird things around Los Angeles. A man who pops a tooth into a parking meter. A glowing trapdoor in a parking lot. A half-mechanical raccoon with its tail on fire that just won’t leave him alone. Every hallucinatory moment seems plucked from a cheesy 1990s fantasy TV show called Max's Adventures in Sunderworld—and that’s because they are.

Not a good sign.

In the blurry weeks after his mother’s death, a young Leopold discovered VHS tapes of its one and only season in a box headed for the trash—and soon became obsessed. Losing himself in Sunder was the best way to avoid two things: grieving his mother and being a chronic disappointment to his overbearing father. But when the strange visions return—at the worst possible time on the worst possible day—Leopold turns to his best friend Emmet for help. Together they discover that Sunder is much more than just an old TV show, and that Los Angeles is far stranger than they ever imagined. And soon, he’ll realize that not only is Sunderworld real, but it’s in grave danger.

Certain he’s finally been chosen for greatness, Leopold risks everything to claim his destiny, save the world of his childhood dreams, and prove once and for all that he’s not the disappointment his father believes him to be. But when everything goes terribly, horribly, excruciatingly wrong, Leopold’s disappointments prove to be more extraordinary than he ever could have imagined.

How do you battle darkness when no one believes in you—not even yourself?

Welcome to Sunderworld.

Thursday, 1 October 2026