Val Muller

The premise of this novel intrigued me, which is why I agreed to review it in exchange for a review e-copy. In this novel, Nathan, an employee of a mental institution, spends most of his time pining for the love of Leyna, a coworker. Through the first half of the novel, he spends a lot […]

As much as I like horror, I’ve never read King’s The Dark Tower series, so I thought it was time to start. The series begins with The Gunslinger, a book that takes place in a nightmarish-post-apocalypticish-wild-Westish setting in which a gunslinger named Roland is following a mysterious figure known only as the man in black—with […]

In celebration of Halloween, my favorite holiday, I decided to dedicate the month of October to reviewing horror books and books with a spooky bent. That said, I realized one month just isn’t long enough. So I’ve extended my reviews into the month of September, too. So get ready for nine weeks of horror reviews! […]

This is the second book in a trilogy, and I read this book about a year after I read the first one. I remember having liked the first one, but I didn’t go back and review the plot. That said, it took me until about page 30 to remember everything that had happened. Then it […]

This is the first book in a series, a middle-grade fantasy novel following the life of Tal, a boy who wakes to find his whole world changed. His father is missing and presumed dead, his mother is gravely sick, and his two siblings depend on him. But with his father missing, his family is in […]

I chose to read this book after hearing some of my students talk about its unique point of view. This historical fiction novel shows readers the Holocaust from the point of view of a child who doesn’t fully understand it. We might consider the narrator and protagonist to be “special” or “slow.” He operates on […]

I heard great things about this book, and it’s as good as people say. Though it’s over 400 pages, it’s a fast read. It’s told in first-person point of view using present tense, which is usually something I dislike, but it worked well here. At first, the premise of the book was a little hard […]

Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac This is a middle-grade novel about a boy named Baron whose Native American roots have left him fascinated with bears. The story is told through Baron’s journal as he goes on a camping trip with his class. The trip quickly turns into a nightmare as elements of the Native American bear […]

This book follows an archeologist from Long Island as she travels to Scotland to investigate a recently-discovered Viking ship buried beneath the earth. She feels a strange compulsion toward the ship and its artifacts and soon discovers that the ship contains living residents—1200-year-old residents—who have been preserved to continue the epic battle of good versus […]