Are you ready to go on a harrowing adventure with four intrepid siblings, ride the whole enemies-to-frenemies-to-besties roller coaster with two young witches battling a zombie-rific curse, find solace in a talking stuffed animal elephant named Noah as you survive a terrifying entrapment with an evil man, and encounter ghosts in the eyes of your closest friends? Check out November's Bite-Size Book Reviews, featuring incredible books by M.L. Little, Ash Van Otterloo, Jo Cassidy, and Katie Alender!
The Book of Secrets
Food Group: Upper MG
Flavor: Fantasy, Christian
Key Ingredients: Sibling love, strong, emotive writing, intriguing characters, powerful faith analogies, amazing Christ-figure
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Cattywampus
Food Group: Middle Grade
Flavor: Contemporary fantasy
Key Ingredients: Zombie fun, enemies-to-frenemies-to-besties, Elphie/Galinda vibes, fascinating folksy setting, an animated outhouse named Puppet, and intersex awareness
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Taste Test: You can check out Cattywampus on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or read my full review on Goodreads!
Chef's Note: One of my favorite Roaring 20s debuts!
Good Girls Stay Quiet
Food Group: Young Adult
Flavors: Suspense, Psychological thriller, contemporary
Key Ingredients: Edge-of-your-seat suspense, gripping characters, a hilarious stuffed animal elephant named Noah, and an unpredictable narrator
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Allergy Warning: Domestic violence and abuse
Taste Test: You can check out Good Girls Stay Quiet on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or read my full review on Goodreads!
Chef's Note: This is the first Monster Ivy Publishing book I read, and -- from the cover to the story -- it convinced me what a quality publisher they are!
Bad Girls Don't Die trilogy
Food Group: Young Adult
Flavors: Paranormal, mystery, thriller
Key Ingredients: Addictive, suspenseful writing, wonderfully varied relationships (sister, bestie, boyfriend, frenemy), seriously creepy ghosts, and three distinctly unique story lines
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Taste Test: You can check out the Bad Girls Don't Die trilogy on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or Goodreads!
Chef's Note: This is one of my all-time favorite trilogies as well as one of my favorite sequences of scary stories!
Why "Bite-Size" Book Reviews?
These "bite-size" book reviews are a fun way for me to promote authors and provide short, tasty reviews for readers, but they're also a way for me to raise awareness for a debilitating digestive disease called gastroparesis.
People with gastroparesis have paralyzed stomachs. Severe cases (like myself) can only eat a few bites of food at a time, so we have to make those bites count! I hope these "bite-size" book reviews help feed your mind's appetite in the same way. You can learn more about gastroparesis by reading my blog post on Gastroparesis Awareness Month.
Kristiana Sfirlea is the author of the spookily hilarious MG fantasy novel, Legend of the Storm Sneezer. Her flash fiction, featuring clueless zombies, undercover werewolves, and grumpy ghosts, has been published by Havok, and her second MG novel, pitched as Five Nights at Freddy’s meets Inception for kids, is contracted and in the works. Kristiana dreams of the day she can run her own mobile bookstore. Or haunted house attraction. Or a haunted bookmobile! (And this is precisely why writers should never become Uber drivers.) She loves Jesus, her family, and imaginary life with her characters.