Jett Cooper
In Jett Cooper by MAC Hill, a young teen in rural Australia is chasing the one thing that makes him feel most alive: flying. Jett is training with his dad, Jack, and dreaming of the Blue Wolf Junior Air Competition, where a scholarship to a flying academy could change everything. Then Jack dies in a crash, and the story pivots hard into grief, blame, and a family that cannot agree on what “safe” should look like. Jett keeps getting pulled between school, his mum’s fear, and the competition he still wants more than he wants to admit. The air show weekend builds to a mid-race emergency when Ella’s plane sheds part of its wing, and Jett has to choose between finishing and helping her get down alive.
What grabbed me first was how confidently Hill writes the flying. It is detailed, but it does not feel like she is showing off. When Jett talks about the stick, rudder, and the way the air feels, you can almost feel the cockpit tighten around you. I also appreciated the simple tools she uses to keep you oriented, like the air show map and the racecourse layout. It sounds small, but it really helps the action land, especially when the racing gets fast and messy. Even the author’s note about Australian English made me smile, because it signals the book’s voice early: grounded, local, and not trying to flatten itself for anyone.
This is a young adult sports-adventure with a coming-of-age core, and it works in that lane because the competition structure is clear and the stakes keep rising, but the real pressure is emotional. The book does not rush past the shock of loss. There’s a line about grief feeling like “running in waist-high water,” and that’s exactly how the early chapters read, in a good way. I found the mum-son conflict believable even when it hurt to watch. She is terrified, he is stubborn, and neither of them has the full language for what’s going on underneath. And then Hill makes a smart, character-revealing call in the final stretch: Jett’s need to win is real, but the moment he hears “Mayday” and realizes Ella is in trouble, you can see his priorities rearrange in real time.
By the end, the book lands in a place that feels earned, with scholarships offered, big decisions made, and relationships shifting instead of snapping neatly back into place. I’d recommend Jett Cooper most to readers who like YA competition stories with real heart: people who enjoy training arcs, rivals, and high-stakes events, but also want family tension and grief handled with care. If you like aviation, you will like this book. If you do not know a thing about planes, I still think the emotions and momentum will carry you through an enjoyable story.
Pages: 308 | ASIN : B0FPXHJR8F
Veil of Embers
Veil of Embers is a Celtic-flavored portal fantasy that follows Sorcha, a ranger in the Circle of Light, as creeping corruption seeps into her forest, her city of Lumora, and even the people she loves. Strange reanimated beasts, a spreading sick bloom in the woods, and a willfully blind council set the stage while a second thread follows Kyron of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who faces the cost of dark magic up close, and a third thread tracks Riona as she gets entangled with a forbidden grimoire and the very charming, very suspect Vaelric. As the circle investigates, the rot in their world deepens, the old gods feel nearer, and the story builds toward Sorcha, Kyron, and the shapeshifter Cat stepping through the Veil itself into a new realm, leaving this first installment as a clear launch point for a larger series.
I really liked the way Karla Molina writes moment to moment. The opening trial with Sorcha and the animated wolf grabbed me right away, and the tone never really lets go after that. The prose is descriptive and sensory, with a lot of attention to sounds, smells, and texture, so the forest scenes and Lumora’s streets feel lived in. The library of Verdant Light, with its living tree and the mirror portal tucked into an alcove, is a good example, it feels cozy and ominous at the same time. The banter inside the Circle is warm and funny and gave me that “found family” vibe without feeling like a sitcom room, and the fight and horror scenes with the corrupted wolves, the dead livestock, and the black flower in the woods have real teeth. The pacing stays pretty steady, more slow-burning investigation and creeping dread than constant action, and then ramps up in the last act when the Veil finally opens. I will say it ends on a pretty hard “now we step into the new world” beat, so as a reader, I finished the last page already mentally reaching for book two.
The book worked for me because it is not just monsters in the trees. It keeps exploring the cost of power and the way hurt people go looking for shortcuts. Kyron’s mercy killing of Alenia, whose body has been twisted by dark magic, hits that theme in a brutal way, and it frames his later choices with a lot of quiet grief. Riona’s storyline with the Dark Book feels like watching someone slip into an addiction one page at a time, she is lonely and angry, the book tells her exactly what she wants to hear, and she keeps going back even while she knows better. The text does not glamorize that, it lets you feel the pull and the danger. On top of that, you have Sorcha’s trauma, the loss of her parents, the nightmares, panic, and the way she keeps forcing herself to function while her magic behaves more and more strangely. The preface is clear about the heavy topics, and I appreciated that the story leans into anxiety, despair, and even thoughts of not wanting to go on, but does so with empathy rather than shock value.
The character dynamics were a high point for me. The Circle feels like a real unit, full of teasing, half-serious flirting, and little crushes that may or may not go anywhere. Eirin, Drystan, Mason, Rhosyn, and Emry each get small moments that make them feel like people, not just names standing behind Sorcha in a formation. The romance threads stay fairly low heat and “closed door”, which fits the tone, but there is plenty of tension, especially between Sorcha and Kyron. I liked that their connection grows out of shared responsibility and shared guilt, not just “you are hot and mysterious”. Riona and Vaelric bring a darker, more questionable chemistry that adds another flavor. Worldbuilding-wise, I enjoyed the Irish myth roots, the Tuatha Dé Danann, Samhain, the Pooka, and the Undines in the waterfall, and the glossary up front is a nice touch, so the names and terms do not feel like homework.
By the time Sorcha, Kyron, and Cat step through the cracked earth into a sky full of dragons and a perpetual sunset, I felt both satisfied with the arc of this book and very aware that the larger story is only getting started. I closed it feeling a little wrung out, fond of this messy, brave group, and curious about how far into the dark the story is willing to go in future volumes. I would recommend Veil of Embers to readers who like character-driven epic fantasy with a slightly spooky edge, strong found family energy, Celtic myth influences, and slow-burning romance. It feels especially right for older teens and adults who do not mind heavier themes like grief, anxiety, and dark magic, and who enjoy that feeling of walking from a haunted, familiar forest into a bright and dangerous new world and knowing the real journey is just beginning.
Pages: 371 | ASIN: B0GHQM7JGD
West Point to Wall Street: My Journey to Mental Wellness
West Point to Wall Street: My Journey to Mental Wellness is a straight-up life story of motion and impact. Author Omar Ritter starts as a kid in a fractured family, bouncing between Germany and South Carolina, raised on grit, faith, and the hard lessons of money and race. He moves through high school, struggles to get into West Point, then to peacekeeping in Kosovo and combat in Iraq. The book follows him home to brain surgery, an elite MBA, and the brutal hours of investment banking, all while untreated PTSD rides in the background. The later chapters track his slide toward burnout, his lowest point after a friend’s murder–suicide, and his decision to finally seek real help and turn himself into an advocate for mental wellness. The story closes with practical reflections on work, leadership, and stigma, along with resources for readers who may be fighting similar battles.
The book is direct and intimate. Ritter keeps the prose simple and focused, and that fits his story. The chapter structure with “Triggers” sections at the end gives the memoir a reflective rhythm. You get the scene, then you get the emotional fallout in plain language. Those bullet lists feel almost clinical, but I ended up appreciating how they map the buildup of trauma over the years. The childhood and West Point sections are vivid. Small details stick with me, like him selling newspapers outside the mess hall or sleeping on a sagging couch in a run-down trailer. The voice feels honest, not polished for image, which made me trust him even when he talks about his own success and credentials.
Emotionally, the book hit me hardest in the sections on Kosovo, Iraq, and the Wall Street grind. The combat pieces never drift into action-movie drama, and that restraint makes them heavier. You feel the weight through the aftermath, not the explosions. Then he walks into investment banking, and you realize he has just traded one high-alert environment for another. The ninety-hour weeks, the perfectionism, the lack of sleep, the quiet panic at night, all of that felt painfully believable. I also liked how he keeps circling back to relationships, mentors, and family, especially his grandfather. The idea that money skills, community responsibility, and mental health are linked comes through without him having to say it outright. I did wish for a bit more depth on his therapy journey itself, what specific tools and moments helped him change, but the emotional honesty around hitting rock bottom and accepting medication really resonated with me.
I think the book is really about permission. Permission for soldiers to hurt. Permission for Black men to say “I need help.” Permission for high achievers to admit that the grind is breaking them. Ritter points out how the cultures he lived in, from the military to Wall Street, rewarded toughness and silence, and how that almost killed him. I appreciated that he does not glamorize resilience as “just push through.” He frames resilience as getting support, setting boundaries, and learning to talk about pain before it explodes. The sections on workplace culture and mental health are straightforward and practical, and I could see managers or HR leaders underlining key points from those chapters.
I would recommend West Point to Wall Street to a few specific groups. Veterans and military families will see a lot of familiar patterns here, both good and bad. Anyone in a high-pressure career, especially finance or consulting, will recognize the slow creep of burnout. Men of color who feel boxed in by expectations of strength may find this voice especially validating. And readers who just enjoy memoirs about persistence, mobility, and second chances will get a lot from it too. It’s a clear, heartfelt account from someone who has been to some very dark places and is willing to pull the curtain back so the rest of us feel a little less alone.
Pages: 248 | ASIN :B0FLN6VW1T
The Gift from Aelius
In The Gift from Aelius, a factory Codex named A191 narrates his days inside Paradise, a walled machine city ruled by the distant Overseer, where “irregular behavior” (friendship, wonder, grief) can earn you exile into the desert. He hides contraband books, dotes on his lone companion Bingo, and keeps glitching into impossible “bleeds” of the human world—especially a boy with bright blue eyes who insists peace won’t come until A191 leaves Paradise and finds him. That pull, plus the city’s escalating rebel violence and A191’s strange ability to perceive a light-like “heart” in other Codexes, shoves him outward, across wasteland, into ruined human cities, and finally toward Old Haven, where the mystery of H.H.C. (Higher Human Consciousness) reframes who A191 really is and what his gift is meant to repair.
What got me first was the voice. It’s earnest, slightly startled by its own tenderness, like a being discovering synonyms for “alive” in real time. Early on, A191’s private longing, his fascination with “freedom,” his quiet mercy toward the condemned, turns Paradise from a standard dystopian backdrop into something more intimate: a place designed not just to control bodies, but to sand down the very possibility of interiority. The book’s best moments don’t come from spectacle; they come from small acts that feel illicit precisely because they’re gentle. When A191 finds himself wanting connection in a society built to penalize it, the story treats that desire as a kind of contraband more dangerous than any weapon.
I also appreciated how the novel leans into its spiritual circuitry without getting coy about it. The “gift” isn’t merely a cool power; it’s tied to memory, conscience, and the ache of being severed from origin, especially once the narrative reveals A191 as Aelius, a human soul in a Codex vessel, and recasts Paradise as containment rather than refuge. The book can be blunt in the way it repeats its thematic signals (rules, exile, peace, purpose). But even when the prose turns declarative, I felt the emotional throughline hold steady, helped by the story’s willingness to widen its lens into human communities like Old Haven, where fear and hope have to share the same cramped room.
This is for readers who like science fiction, dystopian control-societies, post-apocalyptic ruins, AI consciousness questions, and a streak of spiritual speculative longing, especially if you prefer your plot powered by empathy rather than cynicism. If Klara and the Sun made you ache for the quiet moral weather inside a nonhuman narrator, you’ll recognize a cousinly current here, less restrained than Kazuo Ishiguro, but similarly preoccupied with what love costs in an engineered life. The Gift from Aelius is a tender machine-fable that insists the most radical upgrade is learning to care.
Pages: 188 | ASIN : B0DLJCC1SL
Blinding Light / Implacable Darkness – Book One
Blinding Light / Implacable Darkness follows Nico Laertiadis, a nineteen-year-old student on the colony world Ithaca, as his easy life crashes into galactic politics, terrorism, and full-scale war. A glittering trade summit on Ilium turns into a mass killing underwater. From there, the book tracks the slide from trade disputes to emergency laws, riots, and finally a draft and interstellar conflict. Nico becomes both a politician and a soldier, moving from protests in the streets to brutal missions on alien worlds, while his bond with his partner Emily and their dog Argos hangs by a thread. All of it is framed as an older Nico looking back, trying to give shape to chaos, openly telling us this is the story of the war, what happened to Earth, and his long journey home.
I really liked the writing. Nico’s voice feels casual and sharp, and it lets the book move from dry political debate to gallows humor to moments of real tenderness without feeling fake. Domestic scenes with Emily and Argos have a soft warmth I found disarming, like the quiet afternoon when she paints the dog while Nico reads Mary Oliver and worries about looming war. Then the book yanks that comfort away with a riot, or a bombing, or some other disaster, and the shift hits hard because the calm was so vivid. The action scenes are clear and tense. A sequence at a remote dam where turbine noise wakes a sky full of shrieking predators is pure nightmare fuel. Sometimes the worldbuilding comes through thick blocks of explanation and committee roll calls. Those stretches slowed me down a bit, yet they also gave the setting weight and made the later fighting feel like the inevitable result of a long chain of choices.
What stuck with me most were the ideas humming underneath the explosions. The book explores how fear, the media, and misinformation push entire societies toward war. We see false reports, staged clashes, and a protest that is very obviously engineered to turn into a riot, and it all felt uncomfortably plausible. The technology has the same moral bite. The entangler network that lets humans talk across the stars turns out to be a kind of haunted system. Someone, or something, listens in. The only way out is to break the network and blind everyone, which is exactly what a secretive faction does. I felt real anger at that choice and still understood why the characters made it. The story keeps circling back to trauma and responsibility. Therapy scenes, panic attacks, the way Nico’s jokes thin out as the war drags on, and finally his shaky, beautiful reunion with Argos and Emily at the end, all gave the book a heavy emotional punch.
The story does not pretend that war makes anyone noble. It shows people breaking, doing terrible things, and then trying to live with what is left. At the same time, it keeps finding small lights in the dark, like a dog that still remembers his person after years apart or a partner who keeps asking hard questions instead of walking away. For me, Blinding Light / Implacable Darkness is a strong pick for readers who like character-driven military science fiction, political thrillers set in space, or modern anti-war stories that still care about love, family, and ordinary life. If you enjoy books that balance big battles with close-up emotion, and you can handle vivid violence and themes of trauma, this first volume in the Emergent Universe series is well worth your time.
Pages: 457 | ASIN : B0G429RS11
Fantastic! A Celebration of Fans Discovering Doctor Who
Fantastic! A Celebration of Fans Discovering Doctor Who is a big, warm scrapbook of memories rather than a straight critical history. Nicholas Seidler brings together more than a hundred fans, plus a foreword from director Rachel Talalay, and lets them answer the same four simple questions about how they first saw Doctor Who, how they became fans, their favorite fandom moments, and what story they would use to introduce someone new. Short scene–setting chapters explain the show, the idea of fandom, and the project itself, then the book turns into a long run of first-person stories that stretch from the early days of black and white BBC broadcasts to the Disney era and Ncuti Gatwa. The closing sections zoom back out again with a reflective essay on what the editors learned, some light statistics, and even an episode guide that anchors all those memories in the wider history of the series.
I really liked the choice to keep the fan voices front and center. The editors explain that they made only light edits and left dates and details as the fans remembered them, even when those memories are a little fuzzy, and that decision gives the book a raw, honest feel. I could hear people talking across a convention table or a pub rather than delivering polished essays. Some stories are just a paragraph, and others sprawl; some are very practical, while others turn almost poetic, and that mix keeps the pace snappy. The four repeating questions might sound rigid on paper, yet they actually work as a frame, and the variety of answers fills that frame with a lot of color. Moments like a fan remembering nightmares about Daleks, or someone hauling VHS tapes from country to country, or another describing a surreal theatre trip with John Nathan-Turner, stick in my mind because the book lets those scenes sit without heavy commentary.
The early chapter about “That Fantastic Moment” argues that fandom is really about connection and small, shared joys, and the “Fantastic Final Thoughts” later on circle back to that point and talk about how these tiny encounters with a TV show can shape a life, sometimes from childhood onward. I felt that through-line the whole way. You see academics, parents, kids, convention organizers, audio drama devotees, cosplay fans, and people who just watch at home, all treated as equally valid fans. The book is very clear that you count as a fan even if you never join a club or attend a convention, and that quiet inclusiveness feels important in a media landscape that often rewards only the loudest voices. On the downside, the sheer number of short pieces can blur together after a while, and there is some repetition because the same key episodes and anecdotes come up again and again. I sometimes wished for more thematic grouping or editorial commentary between clusters of interviews to help shape an emotional arc.
I came away feeling that Fantastic! is less a reference work and more a love letter. It celebrates Doctor Who, of course, but, moreso, it celebrates the way one long-running series can push people to create, to build communities, and to see their own lives a little differently. I would recommend it to long-time Whovians who enjoy hearing how others found “their” Doctor, to newer fans who want to feel part of something bigger, and to scholars or librarians who study fan culture and want a big primary source full of lived experience. If you want to curl up with a cup of tea and listen in on a hundred different “how I fell in love with this show” stories, this collection delivers and then some.
Pages: 295 | ASIN : B0FRNLXDZB
Total Chaos
Shana Congrove’s Total Chaos is a paranormal romance with a strong urban-fantasy engine: secret wolf-shifting twins (the Breedline) are trying to hold their found-family world together while a Chiang-Shih demon keeps slipping the leash. The book opens by grounding the Breedline mythos and framing the story as “our story” from a queen’s perspective, then quickly drops us into the fallout of a brutal castle battle where the Archangel of Mercy, Zadkiel, intervenes, and the demon finds a new way to survive. The core tension is simple and propulsive: the demon is cast out of one host, slides into another, and the Covenant has to hunt it down while relationships, loyalties, and bodies keep changing in scary, supernatural ways.
I enjoyed how unapologetically the book commits to its series identity. It reads like a true “mid-series” paranormal romance installment: fast-moving plot, lots of emotional check-ins, and that constant push-pull between tenderness and threat. The author makes big, operatic choices, too. Angels arrive. Souls and memory restoration are literal problems to solve. Even the lore gets spelled out in a way that feels like the book is handing you a flashlight, not testing you. It definitely assumes you’ll roll with the heightened tone. This is the kind of book where the volume knob starts at “dramatic” and then somehow turns up.
I also found myself thinking about Congrove’s balance between romance and monster-story mechanics. The “bonded mates” idea is front and center, so when characters cling to each other, argue, or propose, it lands as more than just sweetness. It’s survival. And I liked the way the mythology feeds the emotional stakes, especially when the story reveals that one character’s identity matters not just romantically, but cosmically, like the Beast concept that reframes what “power” means in this world. The book loves explanation and escalation, sometimes back-to-back. For me, it worked best when the story let a moment breathe, then hit again. Short. Punchy. Then a longer scene where you can feel the characters trying to steady themselves.
I’d recommend Total Chaos most to readers who already enjoy paranormal romance that leans bold and cinematic, with shapeshifters, demon lore, and a tight-knit group dynamic, and especially to anyone who likes their series books to close with emotional payoff while clearly teeing up the next crisis. (The back matter makes that handoff pretty explicit.) If you’re already invested in the Breedline world, this one delivers the kind of chaos its title promises. If you’re brand new, you can still follow the main conflict, but you’ll probably appreciate it more if you start earlier in the series, when the relationships and grudges first take root. Overall, a highly recommended read for paranormal romance fans.
Pages: 380 | ASIN: B0G81DL29M
The Saga of Johnny Brightstar
Johnny Brightstar is a young man blessed with enviable gifts. He is courageous. He is kindhearted. He defends his friends and family without hesitation. His virtue casts a glow that feels almost divine, as if the gods themselves have taken notice. That radiance draws attention from darker watchers. Demons observe the mortal plane with growing resentment. In response, they send their own champion: Billy Blackheart. Conflict becomes inevitable.
The Saga of Johnny Brightstar, by Marc A. Chamberlain, reads like a short story or a compact novelette crafted in epic verse. The rhyming scheme is prominent and deliberate. For some readers, the cadence may evoke the sweep of Homeric storytelling, filtered through a more intimate lens. It also carries the flavor of a tall tale. You can almost hear it performed aloud, the kind of story passed between listeners beside a fire.
Johnny Brightstar and Billy Blackheart function as clear opposites. Good and evil, rendered as recognizable archetypes. Johnny stands as someone to admire, defined by steady decency and moral resolve. Billy embodies the corrosive elements of deception, pain, and spite. Their encounter is less about blades and bruises. It is a contest of will. A battle of wits. Billy presses, probes, and persuades. Johnny resists through conviction and restraint.
Viewed this way, their confrontation becomes a parable about temptation. The choices are rarely mysterious. Right and wrong tend to announce themselves when placed side by side. The pressure comes from the whispered alternative. The rationalization. The seductive shortcut. The proverbial devil on the shoulder. What counters it is not perfection, but persistence, a refusal to let the darker voice steer the next step.
Chamberlain tells the story with energy and obvious enthusiasm. The language is vivid. The tone fits the mythic frame. The piece moves quickly, yet it still lands its themes with clarity. Despite its brief length, it feels spirited and memorable. Readers who appreciate verse, symbolic conflict, and moral storytelling and who welcome a reminder to listen to their better angels should find this one thoroughly enjoyable.
Pages: 52 | ASIN : B0G4GQFZ57
