Blog Archives
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Silver Book Award
Celebrating the brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.
Award Recipients
Dying to Meet the Newcomer by Judith Fournie Helms
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Lab Rat (Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms Book IV)
In Lab Rat, author Sara A. Noë drops readers into Cato’s head the way the story drops Cato into captivity: abruptly, violently, with the taste of metal already in my mouth. He wakes bound inside a closed truck bed, is delivered to the underground Agency of Ghost Control, and gets reclassified as “Subject A7,” a “half-breed” anomaly whose powers can be forced on like switches. The book’s early movement is a gauntlet, chemical “Detox,” electrical testing, and surgically implanted ports, before Cato lands in Project Alpha’s cages beside other young prisoners (Ash, Jay, RC, Finn, Reese) and the feral, feared A6, while a larger prophecy thread hums in the background: seven and eight, roles and fates, pieces being placed whether anyone consents or not.
My first reaction was physical. Not “oh wow” physical, more like clenching-my-teeth, shoulders-up-by-my-ears physical. The prose leans into sensation with a kind of unblinking stamina: the “Detox” sequence reads like a ritual of dehumanization dressed up as procedure, and I kept noticing how often Cato’s dignity is treated as an inconvenience to be managed. When the story escalates to the port implantation, drills, the cold ring, the doctor who refuses the comfort-lie of “you won’t feel a thing,” I found myself admiring the author’s nerve even as I wanted to look away. It’s body-horror with a bureaucratic clipboard hovering nearby, which somehow makes it worse.
Alpha isn’t just a scary room; it’s a system that tries to “unname” people, sanding them down to numbers and compliance. That idea, identity as contraband, is what gave the brutality a point beyond shock. And then there’s Ash: her quiet endurance, the way the others speak around her pain because naming it out loud would re-open the wound, and the night-raid scene that is written to disgust rather than to titillate. The book’s tenderness arrives in odd places, like a stolen conversation with the holographic system ECANI, or Cato insisting on names instead of serials, and those small mercies felt hard-won.
Lab Rat is for readers of dark fantasy, paranormal fantasy, dystopian science-fantasy, and YA-adjacent captivity/escape thrillers, especially anyone who wants a morally ugly villain structure and a stubborn ember of found-family refusing to go out. The premise gave me flashes of The Institute by Stephen King, kids turned into “subjects,” cruelty rationalized as research, but Noë twists it through ghost physiology, Divinities, and prophecy math until it feels like its own bruised mythology. Lab Rat explores the cost of being remade by force and how a name, spoken, claimed, and defended, can be a kind of escape.
Pages: 460 | ASIN : B0G4SXMQ6C
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Silver Book Award
Celebrating the brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.
Award Recipients
Hug whispers Between Worlds by William Klenk
Cover Up by John Wendell Adams
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Alex in the Annex
Alex in the Annex follows a group of eighth graders who stumble upon a sealed wing of their school and end up awakening powers they never expected to have. The story blends mystery, friendship, and a creeping sense of danger as Alex discovers he can move objects with his mind, Rachelle learns she can conjure fire, and their friends develop powers of their own. The annex becomes a kind of crucible where abilities grow, relationships shift, and the kids have to decide who they trust and who they want to be. The book starts as a simple adventure and slowly builds into something bigger, stranger, and more emotional than the characters ever imagined.
I found myself slipping easily into Alex’s head. The writing has a straightforward, conversational style that made the whole tale feel familiar, almost nostalgic, like hearing someone tell you a story during lunch at school. Author Jeremy Scholz writes about middle school feelings with a kind of earnest charm. The crushes, the awkward moments, the fierce loyalty to friends, the shaky confidence, all of it hits in a way that’s both sweet and sometimes a little painful. The scenes in the annex are some of my favorites because they carry that mix of fear and excitement that comes with doing something you know you probably shouldn’t be doing. The powers feel fun, but they also feel messy, which matches well with the characters.
There were moments when the dialogue made me smile because it felt so true to how teens when adults aren’t around. And then there were moments when the emotional beats surprised me. Watching Rachelle’s confidence flare up right alongside her fire, or seeing Alex wrestle with how he feels about both Rachelle and Charlotte, gave the story this little ache that snuck up on me. I didn’t expect the book to lean as much into the idea of belonging, but that thread runs through everything. The annex isn’t just a spooky, locked hallway. It’s the place where these friends start figuring out who they actually are.
By the end, I felt oddly proud of them, which is not something I normally say about fictional characters. The story’s heart is big. It’s messy. It’s sometimes chaotic. But it feels honest, and I appreciated that more than I expected. I kept thinking about the author’s note, too, where Scholz talks about escaping into stories and finally finding the space to write the ones he’s carried for so long. You can feel that love for imagination in the way the book unfolds.
I’d recommend Alex in the Annex to readers who enjoy heartfelt supernatural adventures, especially younger teens or anyone who remembers that strange middle school mix of bravery and fear. It’s a quick, warm story that plays with superpowers but really leans into friendship and identity. If you like books where ordinary kids discover something extraordinary and have to figure out what that means for their real lives, this is a good one to pick up.
Pages: 306 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0FSLKL3MH
