My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

I remember telling my mother about my favorite story from this collection “The Caterpillar,” a story about the wife of a quadruple amputee, where I simply retold the story to her over the phone, inadvertently bringing her to tears. This is easily my favorite short story collection and has propelled Edogawa Rampo from an author that I knew very little about, despite my love of the mystery genre, to be my favorite author.

My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Nearly Normal Family is a very unique mystery novel told in a three-part structure—each part told from the perspective of each character of a family of three after the daughter becomes a murder suspect. Told through an unfiltered lens, the family dynamics exhibited in this story are very relatable to any parent or teenager and question the role of “love.” What is the glue that holds families together? The author, M. T. Edvardsson, gives an alternative answer to that question—lies.

My Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I was first introduced to Stephen King earlier this year when I read one of his best books, Misery, which instantly made me a fan. I went on to read more of King’s work—On Writing, The Mist, and Mr. Mercedes, all of which I would highly recommend. I enjoyed reading the first two-thirds of The Outsider, but the last third was like a lukewarm burger that had been sitting for hours in a bucket of grease—disappointingly mediocre and hard to finish.