ARC Book Review: For Ever More (Never Ever After #2) by Sue Lynn Tan

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Rating: ★★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy + Romance
Length: 368 pages
Author: Sue Lynn Tan
Publisher: Little Brown Books
Release Date: October 27th, 2026
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

The breathtaking sequel to the New York Times bestselling Never Ever After, this epic fantasy finds Yining on the run and fighting to save her family and her kingdom.

After the explosive events of Never Ever After, Yining flees the Iron Mountains with her unlikely allies, seeking the truth about her newfound powers amid the secrets surrounding her ancestral home. But with a traitorous queen ruling the Three Kingdoms from a stolen throne, nowhere is truly safe, and Yining must decide whom to trust to keep her family—and her heart—from harm.

Thank you Colored Pages Book Tours, The Novl and Sue Lynn Tan for a gifted copy.

BEAUTIFUL DUOLOGY.

I just love reading Sue Lynn Tan books. They are lyrical and whimsical and feel like a fairy tale. I loved being back in this world and seeing the continuation of Yining’s story. I felt like she stayed true to who she was and tuned out the noise to help those she loved and the kingdoms around her in need.

The romance grew on me. I can be a little picky about love triangles yet as the book went on, I got it. I thought the way it went was as it should be and I loved the conversations that came about from it all. I’d be very curious (and hopeful) to see a spin-off sequel with a certain someone!! I’d totally speak more to the romance but I don’t want to give hints away about who Yining ends up with. Don’t worry, it’s got some swoon and many lines I just had to highlight!!

I loved seeing more of the kingdoms and seeing the other players in the game. SLT really takes Cinderella and expands upon it 10 fold. Everything is deeper and the action and politicking keep you on your toes. There’s new creatures, a land being poisoned and some dragons too.

Double bonus points to this book being a young adult book and is genuinely written for a young adult audience!!

Everything came together like I hoped for and I thought wrapped well too. It’s a beautiful story and now I’m sad I have to wait for SLT’s next release!!

Overall audience notes:

  • YA Fantasy + Romance
  • Language: none
  • Romance: kisses
  • Violence: moderate
  • Content warnings: loss of life

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Book Review: The Enigma Challenge by S.C. Godfrey

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Rating: ★★★.5
Audience: Mystery + Romance
Length: 336 pages
Author: S.C. Godfrey
Publisher: Dorman Books
Release Date: August 11th, 2026
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

An action-packed novel following an unlikely duo as they race across Europe in a dangerously high-stakes competition worth millions

You have solved the kickoff puzzle. There will be five additional puzzles to solve. Players have five minutes to confirm PIN after locating the final solution. The Enigma Challenge begins now.

Zoe Wilder has the unflashy, solitary life of an academic, studying ciphers in literature at a California university. When her research takes her to a cryptology conference in Madrid, she’s not expecting to trigger the Enigma Challenge, a clandestine puzzle competition few dare to enter.

The Enigma Challenge is an infamous competition with impossibly high stakes: Lose, and your identity is wiped forever. It doesn’t take long for Zoe to realize that she’s in over her head. Enter Dane Seaver: the mysterious hacker who insists they team up. Dane knows the Enigma Challenge—its secrets, its players—and Zoe knows ciphers. For better or worse, they need each other.

Six days, five puzzles, three countries, and innumerable rivals. What’s more, the spark of attraction between them becomes harder to ignore, but distractions are dangerous. With twelve million dollars and multiple lives on the line, the Enigma Challenge is anyone’s game. Will Zoe and Dane come out unscathed against the other players—and each other?

KIND OF A MIXED BAG.

This was pretty hyped by some friends so of course I had to get my hands on it. It definitely fits the National Treasure but with more romance vibes and that was good.

What I struggled with was the insta-love. This is only from Zoe’s POV and it comes across decently strong from the get go. I wish there would have been a longer slow burn (especially because it looks like there’s going to be a sequel????). Or I think this could have been crafted in one book, just a bit differently. And the villain was a hit on some scenes and a miss on others.

The puzzles were fun and the pacing is very fast. It’s a quick audiobook to fly through and I did like the narrator. Dane’s a good character, I would have loved his POV too. And I liked the friends a lot. The little found family-ness was a trope I liked seeing.

Zoe was a damsel in distress a few too many times and one particular scene towards the end bugged me because of it (no more details because spoilers). I wanted her strength to come through more.

I do think I’ll read the sequel (if we get one?).

Overall audience notes:

  • Romantic Mystery
  • Language: mild
  • Romance: 2-3ish open door
  • Violence: high
  • Content warnings: physical altercations, attempted murder

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Book Review: Please Don’t Go (The Midnight Strike #1) by E. Salvador

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Rating: ★★
Audience: New Adult Sports Romance
Length: 591 pages
Author: E. Salvador
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: August 12th, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

He felt like he was drowning.

She was about to drown.

Josefine Resendiz, is struggling to figure out her life. Between her complicated relationship with grief and not having a single clue how to feel what she can’t understand, she’s sinking and isn’t sure how to float back up to the surface.

Daniel Garcia, shortstop, a budding ray of sunshine, and potential first round pick for the MLB Draft, has life figured out. At least, that’s what everyone assumes. On the surface, he’s the embodiment of happiness and life. But beneath it all, guilt and grief have been consuming him since his brother passed away. Unsure how to deal with his feelings, he bottles them up and masks the pain of haunting reminders behind a mask of smiles.

That’s until he stumbles upon Josefine on Christmas Day. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be there but neither was she, at least not for long. The night evolves into something neither one of them expected and when morning comes, she’s nowhere to be found.

He can’t stop thinking about her. She wants to forget him. But fate seems to have plans for them.

Once the semester begins they find out they have a class together, and avoiding Daniel becomes hard when they’re paired to be hiking buddies. Much to Josefine’s chagrin, she likes him more than she cares to admit. And Daniel is struggling to keep everything he’s bottled up around her.

Hesitantly and unknowingly, they’re opening up old wounds they wanted to keep closed. Feeling grounded around each other. And unintentionally falling in love.

PROGRESSIVELY CHECKED OUT.

I thought this started strong and was in for an emotional romance. I also love a good sports romance so the check list was working for me. I liked the black cat x golden retriever nature of this relationship and the deeper moments that started to unfold between them. I can say there were some quiet, tender things I loved. But unfortunately, too many I didn’t.

For one, the love scenes were incredibly cringy to me. I did not like the word choices and could not flip the pages past enough to move past them. Add in the fact that in the second half alone a big chunk was dedicated to them, I lost focus and wondered if this is how this book became 600 pages.

There was some petty drama with exes that seemed overblown to the bigger underlying issues the leads were trying to tackle. I rolled my eyes one too many times. And this became repetitive alongside many other things.

I don’t have plans to continue this series.

Overall audience notes:

  • New adult sports romance
  • Language: strong
  • Romance: 5+ open door
  • Violence: moderate+
  • Content warnings: suicide (ideation and mentions of attempts), grief and depression, loss of loved ones

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Book Review: The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories by Alix E. Harrow

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Rating: ★★★
Audience: Short Stories Collection
Length: 304 pages
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release Date: October 20th, 2026
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

From the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Everlasting and Starling House comes a new fantastical collection of stories about tricksters and ghosts, magics ordinary and spectacular. Alix E. Harrow spins tales never-told and seen just outside the periphery of reality–in the tradition of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, and Carmen Maria Machado, these hauntingly resonant and defiant stories leap from the page and dance in and out of a history that never was (but could have been) and into a future startingly like our own.

Before I was a liar I was a historian, which is a kind of storyteller who doesn’t make any money and likes footnotes.

These are stories about the past as it wasn’t quite, but might have been, from ancient battlefields all the way up through roadside attractions off I-70. They’re about the people caught in the mean jaws of history: the women and workers, the soldiers and mothers, everyone shoved into the margins of the world.

But these aren’t singular tragedies―these are the stories of the ones that got away. The ones who defected and dissented, who broke the rules, who ran and tossed a match behind them. SLANTWISE HISTORIES AND OTHER STORIES collects the best known short fiction of Alix. E. Harrow, including the Hugo-award winning “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” and for the first time in print, Amazon original titles “The Six Deaths of the Saint” and “The Knight and the Butcherbird”. Updated to reflect the author’s preferred editions, Slantwise Histories also includes “The Long Way Up”, “Roadside Attraction”, “Mr. Death”, “The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly”, “The Sycamore and the Sybil”, “Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, “The Whisper in the Weld”, “Dustbaby”, and four all-new short stories.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted audiobook.

GO FOR THE EYEBALL READ.

I had no issue with the narrators. They read this book wonderfully. My issue with doing the audiobook is that everything starts to run together. There were a LOT of short stories. And I tend to listen to one audiobook in a day and this combo made things worse. If you go for the audio definitely space it out more.

There were some stories in here that were good, one that made me absolutely bust out laughing, and others I was very bored with and skipped through. The entire vibe of the book is perfect for a spooky season read though. Many different topics, themes, and conversations throughout.

I still really enjoy Harrow’s writing and I will continue to look forward to her next book.

Overall audience notes:

  • Short story collection
  • Language: some
  • Violence: high
  • Content warnings: child death, loss of life, misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault

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