Blog Archives
The Play: Harry’s Story
The Play: Harry’s Story by Brian Montgomery follows Harry Groves from a brutal childhood in a violent, neglectful home through years of bullying at school and then into the creation of “The Play”, a grassroots musical project that turns his pain, and the pain of his friends, into something hopeful and loud. The book moves from Harry’s life with his little sister Sara, through her death at the hands of their parents, into foster care, healing, and eventually a youth-led performance movement that tackles bullying, racism, homophobia, transphobia and mental health head on, both on stage and in real life. It starts in a damp social housing unit and ends on the road with a touring show and an epilogue that stresses survival, persistence, and responsibility to the next generation.
Reading it, I felt like I was being dragged into a storm right alongside Harry. The early chapters are very emotional. The scenes of abuse at home and the cruelty at school are not softened. They feel raw and, at times, hard to look at. I found myself angry at the adults who look away, and at the same time very protective of Harry and Sara. The moment when Sara dies, and Harry learns what happened in that small office at school, left my stomach in knots. The writing there is simple, direct, and emotional, and that choice makes it land even more. Later, when Harry begins to write “for Sara” and then turns that grief into a musical project, I felt a real lift. The book does not pretend that art magically fixes everything. It shows a long, messy grind full of small wins and big setbacks, which made Harry’s eventual success feel earned rather than easy.
I also connected with the way the book treats the wider cast and the bigger ideas. The bullying in this story is not one-note. It covers racism, religious abuse, queerphobia, class, disability, and online cruelty, and it lets those kids have voices, songs, and arcs instead of keeping them as background. Chapters like “Bullies Not Welcome Here,” “Redemption”, and “The Reformed Trio” shift the lens and allow room for change and accountability, even for characters like Mathew Jones and Liam Harris, who start as almost pure villains. That choice won me over. It shows how harm comes from systems and pain, not only from “bad kids”. I liked the mix of prose, bits of lyrics, and the behind-the-scenes feel of building a show. Sometimes the narration tells me what to feel instead of trusting the scene, but the honesty behind it comes through so strongly that I was willing to go with it.
By the time I reached the epilogue, with Harry looking back on the funding fights, the rejections, and the moment he turns down a big film deal to protect the “heart” of The Play, I felt proud of him. The project has grown into something bigger than one boy’s story. It becomes a touring movement that belongs to every young person who steps on stage or sits in the audience and finally feels seen. That final note of “still standing” feels earned.
I would recommend The Play: Harry’s Story to teens and adults who want a frank and heartfelt story about abuse, bullying, grief, and recovery, and who can handle some very heavy scenes along the way. It’s a good fit for youth workers, teachers, and parents who want to understand what some kids are living through, and for young readers who feel invisible or silenced and need to see that their stories matter and can be turned into something powerful and public. If you are ready for a story that hurts, then reaches for hope and community and the power of performance, this book is worth your time.
Pages: 328 | ISBN: 1764489438
The Lighted
The Lighted by Eugénie Giasson is a contemporary magical-realism / feel-good fantasy novel about seven handmade lamps that scatter across the world after a suitcase mix-up, then quietly change the lives of the people who end up with them. The lamps are meant to “bring forth the truth” because lies “only survive in darkness,” and that idea becomes the book’s heartbeat as we follow one family in particular: Angie and Johnathan, their daughter Willow, and the circle of friends and found-family that grows around them. What starts as a tender domestic story slowly opens into a bigger one about honesty, healing, and the kinds of secrets that can sit in a house for years before the light hits them.
The writing is direct, often simple, and it leans hard into everyday comforts: meals, small routines, gentle details of home. That can be really charming, especially when the book is letting you breathe with the characters instead of rushing to the next “plot point.” I also noticed how Giasson keeps returning to the sensory idea of light, not in a showy way, but as a steady thread that helps the book feel cohesive.
This is a story that wants hope to win, even when it walks through grief first. Angie’s wish, “for once, to know the truth,” becomes almost like a quiet spell that gets passed down to Willow. And Willow’s relationship to truth isn’t abstract or philosophical. It’s physical. When she lies, she gets a headache. Later, the book ties truth to memory and trauma in a way that genuinely landed for me: Willow presses her dad for stories, relives moments as he speaks, and eventually “sees” what really happened to her mother. That reveal is blunt and heartbreaking, especially because the family has lived for so long with the official story that Angie “fell.” The final detail, a pen engraved “With love to David,” is the kind of small object clue this genre loves, because it turns an ordinary keepsake into a spotlight.
What I ended up appreciating most is that the magic here isn’t about fireworks. It’s about nudges. A child named “healer” becomes part of a recovery that looks impossible on paper, and the book treats it with an earnestness that feels almost old-fashioned in a good way. Later, the story expands into a “foundation” idea, built around people working together to help others, which gives the novel a broader, community-minded finish instead of keeping everything inside one household. If you like magical-realism-leaning stories where everyday life is the stage and the magic is the gentle push, this sits in the same neighborhood as Practical Magic or The Night Circus, though Giasson’s style is more plainspoken and homespun than lyrical.
I’d recommend The Lighted most to readers who want a heartfelt, easy-to-follow story with a moral center, and who don’t mind a narrative that wears its sincerity right on its sleeve. If you enjoy found-family dynamics, “small miracle” moments, and plots where truth is treated like something that can heal as much as it can hurt, you’ll have a good time here.
Pages: 174 | ASIN : B0FJ8ZJQMF
Abducted
Abigail Ashby is sixteen, chronically grounded, and tired of being treated like an annex of her sheriff father, until the night she sneaks out to be there for her best friend, Harris Barnett, whose parents vanished and whose dad returned claiming an alien abduction. One reckless, emotionally tangled evening later, Abigail and Harris are pulled into something brutally literal: a living ship called The Beast’s Burden, built on an organism that has to “recharge” in Earth’s atmosphere, with a sadist named Phaust steering the cruelty. What follows is part survival-run, part rescue mission, part coming-of-age under fluorescent terror, Abigail clawing for agency while the people she loves become both ballast and blade.
I didn’t expect the opening to feel so teen-soap, with the sharp social pain, the humiliations, the almost-kiss interrupted at precisely the wrong moment, and then for the book to pivot and simply drop the floor out from under it. The contrast is the point: it’s not just “small town” versus “space,” it’s the way adolescent feelings already behave like an alien environment. When the sci-fi horror arrives, it doesn’t replace the emotional stakes; it weaponizes them. Even the recurring idea of instincts you’re trained to bury becomes a practical matter, not a motivational poster but something you either exhume in time, or you don’t.
My strongest reaction was how physical the danger feels. Slick membranes, crackling amethyst energy, the sense that the ship itself is an organism with moods. The action often reads like panic with choreography: fast, messy, but strangely lucid. And I appreciated that the book doesn’t let bravery stay clean. Abigail’s competence isn’t a glow-up montage; it’s bought with hard choices and aftertaste, including a recurring question of what “hero” means when survival requires spilling a lot of not-your-blood. The adult plotline running alongside, Donovan Barnett’s history aboard the ship, and the grim science of what was done to him and his wife, adds a darker undertow that kept me reading.
If you like YA science fiction, alien abduction, action-adventure thriller, and romance that refuses to be tidy, this is aimed squarely at you, especially if you enjoy stories where a heroine’s self-trust is as important as her weapon. In vibe, it reminded me of The 5th Wave-era tension (ordinary teen life interrupted by invasive, uncanny war), but with a meaner streak of body-horror and a more intimate fixation on loyalty as a survival skill.
Pages: 312 | ASIN : B0GJQTDBBG
The World’s Scariest Haunted Lighthouses, Vanishings, and Murders
The book delivers a sweeping tour through some of the world’s eeriest lighthouses, pulling together ghost stories, tragic histories, strange vanishings, and unsettling folklore into one long chain of atmospheric tales. Each chapter focuses on a different lighthouse and mixes documented events, local legends, and paranormal claims. From the child spirits said to roam the St. Augustine Lighthouse to the grim disappearance of the Flannan Isles keepers to the piano-driven madness on Seguin Island, the book moves quickly from story to story, tying them all together with a clear fascination for the lonely, haunted nature of lighthouse life.
I was pulled in by the sheer variety of stories. Some chapters felt almost tender in their sadness, especially the tales involving children and grieving families. Others hit me harder, with their accounts of shipwrecks, murders, and unexplained deaths. The author uses simple, steady language to walk through each event, and I appreciated how easy it was to sink into the scenes. I actually enjoyed how the stories flowed one after another. The steady pace kept me immersed, almost like sitting by a campfire and hearing ghost stories, which gave the book an exciting, continuous energy.
I also liked how the book has a sense of empathy. The author never treats the tragedies lightly. Even in the more sensational chapters, there’s a clear respect for the people who lived and died in these remote places. It gave weight to the paranormal claims, even when the supernatural elements may have felt a bit embellished. Some moments had me smiling because the stories leaned into classic ghost-story theatrics. Other moments actually gave me a chill. The mix worked for me. The book doesn’t try to convince the reader of the paranormal. It simply invites you to experience the atmosphere, and that made the whole thing feel warmer, more human, and honestly more fun.
I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy ghost lore, maritime history, or just a good eerie tale told with heart. It’s a storyteller’s collection, and it works best when read that way. Anyone who loves abandoned places, lonely coastlines, and mysteries that refuse to be solved will find something here to enjoy.
Pages: 94 | ASIN : B0GCTPPW1G
Bringing His Story to Life
Yasuke: Dead Man Walking follows two men shaped by power and survival as destiny draws them toward a collision that will change history. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration came unexpectedly one day while I was scrolling the internet. I came across an image of a Black man dressed in full samurai armor, standing beside an Asian woman and their mixed-race child. I stopped immediately and asked myself, “Who is this?” That question led me down a research rabbit hole that changed everything.
I discovered his name was Yasuke, and I became completely intrigued. How could a Black man wear samurai armor in feudal Japan? As I dug deeper into his history, I uncovered this incredible connection to one of my secret obsessions—Asian culture and feudal Japan specifically. The more I researched, the more I realized there were significant gaps in Yasuke’s documented history. Entire periods of his life remain a mystery. I felt a responsibility to honor what we do know while using fictional prose to fill in those missing pieces and bring his full story to life. That’s how Yasuke: Dead Man Walking was born.
Why did you choose to frame the novel around both Yasuke and Oda Nobunaga instead of centering on one figure alone?
Framing the story around both Yasuke and Oda Nobunaga was absolutely critical to the type of narrative I wanted to tell. At its core, Yasuke’s story is a “fish out of water” tale, but I also wanted to explore this fascinating “odd couple” dynamic between two men from completely different worlds. After all, it was Lord Nobunaga who elevated Yasuke to the unprecedented position of samurai within his military ranks—there’s no telling Yasuke’s story without telling Nobunaga’s.
Interestingly, I chose to open the novel with the first three chapters dedicated entirely to Lord Nobunaga. At first, I questioned that decision—it felt bold, maybe even risky—but ultimately, I realized it was necessary. I needed to establish the world of feudal Japan, educate readers on the political landscape and cultural dynamics of that era, and introduce Nobunaga as a young man destined to inherit his father’s lordship and transform Japan forever.
In my mind, there was no way to authentically portray feudal Japan—its economy, its people, its brutal beauty—without giving Nobunaga the rich backstory he deserved. By the time he reached the peak of his power, the Oda clan’s dominance was undeniable, and readers needed to understand how he got there. When Yasuke finally appears in Chapter 6, both characters have been so thoroughly developed that their meeting feels genuine and weighted with significance. Even though their true working relationship doesn’t develop until many chapters later, that foundation made their bond feel earned and authentic.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The central theme, as I mentioned, is the “fish out of water” journey. You take Yasuke—a man enslaved from the Sudan—and place him in feudal Japan, where he knows nothing: not the land, the people, the religion, the commerce, the politics, the warfare tactics, or even the language. It’s the ultimate setup for a hero’s journey, and it fit beautifully within the three-act structure I used to craft his arc.
But beyond that, I was deeply interested in exploring the “odd couple” dynamic between Yasuke and Lord Nobunaga. Here are two men who don’t even speak the same language, yet they share core qualities: natural-born leadership, a desire to inspire strength in those around them, and an unshakable presence that commands respect. Watching that relationship develop—slowly, authentically, through mutual respect rather than words—felt natural and right. It became one of the most rewarding aspects of writing this novel.
I also wanted to explore themes of identity, belonging, and what it means to find your place in a world that sees you as fundamentally “other.” Yasuke’s journey isn’t just about survival—it’s about transformation and legacy.
Will there be a follow-up to this story? If so, what aspects will the next installment cover?
Absolutely. There’s already a graphic novel that picks up exactly where Yasuke: Dead Man Walking ends. It’s called Yasuke: Resurrection, and it takes the story in a direction I don’t think anyone expects—into full fantasy territory.
Resurrection is a “what if” story that extends Yasuke’s journey beyond death itself, exploring his legacy through a fantastical lens. It pays homage to incredible works like Afro Samurai and classic Japanese and Chinese tales where samurai and warriors battle deities, demons, and otherworldly forces. This allowed me to flex my creative muscles in a completely different way—moving from grounded historical fiction into epic fantasy while still maintaining the authenticity and emotional core of Yasuke’s character.
The graphic novel format was perfect for this evolution. Visual storytelling brought a new dimension to the mythology I was building, allowing readers to experience Yasuke’s world in vivid, dynamic ways that prose alone couldn’t capture.
And to answer your question fully: even beyond the duology—the novel and graphic novel—there will be many more comics to come. The ending of Resurrection contains subtle hints about what’s next, and I’m excited to continue expanding Yasuke’s universe across multiple stories and timelines.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Instagram
From the slave markets of India to the battlefields of feudal Japan, Yasuke: Dead Man Walking tells the extraordinary historical fiction story of history’s first African samurai. Torn from his family and sold into bondage, Majok endures unimaginable hardships until fate delivers him to Oda Nobunaga, the most powerful warlord in 16th-century Japan. Through courage, honor, and an unbreakable spirit, he transforms from nameless slave Majok to legendary warrior Yasuke, earning the respect of emperors and the hatred of those who refuse to see beyond the color of his skin. But when betrayal strikes at the heart of the empire, Yasuke must face his greatest enemy in a final battle that will determine not only his own fate but also the future of Japan itself. A gripping tale of transformation, brotherhood, and the timeless truth that a man’s worth is measured not by his origins, but by his choices.
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.
