Plunge by Joe Hill, illustrated by Stuart Immonen, is a horror graphic novel about a recovery project gone very, very wrong. The project should have been relatively easy, but what the team is about to discover more than just the shipwreck and research.

When Captain Carpenter and his crew are sent on a mission to recover a ship that had gone down years ago, they think that the biggest risk they need to avoid is underwater missiles sent from the Russians. Tensions are already a bit high as they are forced to bring along the VP of Special Projects, David Lacome, and the Captain isn’t exactly hitting it off with him.

When they arrive at their destination, some of the crew heads to land in order to camp for the night. But when the Marine Biologist, Moriah Lamb, heads away from the campfire to pee, she stumbles across a body. It seems as though the man has killed himself, but there are a few things that strike the crew as odd. Just one item being that Moriah says that he spoke to her.

But while she tries to brush it off as her mind playing tricks, the crew is about to learn that they needed to fear much more than Russian missiles.

I am so glad that I went into this one pretty dark! I had no idea where this story was going and I was so shocked to learn more as the story unfolded.

I fell for all of the characters immediately. I wanted them all to become fast friends, get to the wreck, get what they needed, and get out. But of course, this is a horror graphic novel… so things didn’t follow my happy little timeline. I loved Clark the most.

The storyline written by Joe Hill paired with the artwork from Stuart Immonen and the coloring from Dave Stewart was incredible.

To say this tale is creepy is a massive understatement. Some of these vivid scenes had my skin crawling, while others made me grimace involuntarily. There were also many scenes that had me feeling a bit claustrophobic; whether that was in a cave, in any of the underwater scenes, or locked in room on this ship… Eek!

My Favorite Passage
So many stars. The worst thing about civilization is it took the stars away from us.

My Final Thoughts
The storyline itself is intense and terrifying, but it’s also filled with wonderful characters and brotherly love. Pair that with the killer illustrations and muted color palette with only a few colors, and you’ve got a hit for me!

Plunge is the best horror graphic novel that I have read in a very long time. I highly recommend checking this one out!

The Haunting of Clandestine House by Celina Myers is a story that begins hopeful but then very quickly takes a turn… Will the main character have her happy ever after, or will she fall prey to the house?

I first learned about Celina through TikTok. I absolutely love her videos and when I found out that she writes books, I had to buy one. I am so happy that I snagged this one to start!

When the main character, Hannah Watts, put in a bid for a house on the Internet even though the listing didn’t have any pictures, she was at her breaking point and wanted to take a gamble. She had just been laid off of work, she was single, and she really didn’t have anything tying her to her town. Finding the listing for the house online seemed too good to be true. When she found out that she won the bid, she took off immediately, antsy to start this new chapter in her life!

Upon arriving in town, she started getting the vibe that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…

When she first pulls up to the house, she’s blown away. For the price that she paid she was expecting it to be inhabitable but that wasn’t the case at all.

The house was gorgeous! In fact, the last person to buy the house actually updated a lot of it to try to run a bed-and-breakfast. However, Hannah thought it was due to financial troubles.

Everything starts off hopeful and exciting, as Hannah cleans the house and prepares to get started with her dream of writing. But then one day, she sees a man cross behind her through a mirror, but when she turns around, no one is there. Soon, she starts finding some weird things and learning more about the house. She’s determined to make this work, but she doesn’t like what she is learning.

Will she be able to make the house a home, or will the house swallow her up?

Oh my gosh, there’s something extremely creepy to me about mirrors. Of course as I’m writing this there’s a mirror literally right in front of me and you bet I’m looking straight at the floor rather than risking seeing something in the mirror.

The copy that I had had quite a few typos and editing errors, and a lot of formatting issues. Like in all the italics, the letter d didn’t come through properly.

But even so, this was such a fun, and spooky read. The plot immediately had me interested and I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next!

My Favorite Passages
She saved every penny in anticipation of eventually following her dreams, but with each year, life sped up and bills had to be paid.

“Hun, every little town has a house like Clandestine House.”

My Final Thoughts
I absolutely loved that this story was so calm and upbeat at the start, almost like I was reading a Hallmark romance! But then when things start taking a turn, it gets really creepy.

If you enjoy tales about haunted houses, this is a must read for you.

Fanged Dandelion by Eric LaRocca is a collection of poems that will yank violently on your heartstrings, but still flow smoothly like a perfectly choreographed dance.

In the introduction, the reader will learn that Eric wrote many of the poems during the COVID-19 lockdown, and that mood certainly shines through here and there.

Forward by Sara Tantlinger
What a beautiful forward! I loved that Sara dove into the history of the word dandelion and played on that throughout.

Introduction by Eric LaRocca
Such a heartfelt and brutally honest introduction. I love that Eric was comfortable opening up and giving readers a bit of personal backstory and then to explain how he was feeling when writing these poems. Intrusive thoughts are definitely something I wish we could all talk about more openly without fear of judgement, so props to Eric for discussing this topic here as well! I didn’t know what these types of thoughts were, and that not everyone has them, until very recently. That absolutely blew my mind.

This was such a great collection for me to start with. I read poetry back in school and I would just get so frustrated with it. I think I have a mental block that’s holding me back. I tend to take poetry too literally and it make me overthink it. I get upset when I don’t think I understand or think there’s another meaning than just the obvious but I can’t quite grasp it. I’d love to work on this so I can open up my reading range a bit more. It’s my own fanged dandelion that pops up to tell me I’m not intelligent enough to read poetry.

My favorite poems from the collection included Venom In Bløøm, His Grinning Spine, Lovesick Arms, A Mother Is A Kind Of God, Handle With Care, Night Tide, If It Bleeds (Interlude), and Crawlspace (Epilogue).

Here are some of my notes about these poems-

Venom In Bløøm –
This one hit home for me. Of course I can’t say exactly what this poem means to the author, but for me it really reminded me of how my husband has unintentionally helped me through a lot of my bad days with depression and anxiety without even really being aware that he’s sucking out the venom.

His Grinning Spine –
Woah, the more I read this one, the more dark it seems!

Lovesick Arms –
How heartbreaking!

A Mother Is A Kind Of God –
Phew, I loved this one. While longer than the others, this one really had me deep in the world this one had set up. It was tragic but also beautiful as it was full of motherly love.

Handle With Care –
A gut punch of a poem.

Night Tide –
Intrusive thoughts.

Thimble –
Another heartbreaking one! Religion is a tough one for me simply based on how rigid their beliefs are and how close minded it makes them.

If It Bleeds (Interlude) –
Oh no! This one makes me want to know more! Should it be taken literally? Is it emotion-based? Something else?

Crawlspace (Epilogue) –
Spooky! About another personality or about depression?

My Final Thoughts
I will definitely be returning to this one again very soon. I need to read more poetry in general and I’m so grateful for being given the opportunity to start with this collection!

The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson is a brutal tale about a town that has fallen into chaos due to a science experiment gone very, very wrong.

This is a story that you will want to make sure to read well after you’ve eaten…

TW: Child abuse, child murder, dog death, descriptive gore.

When this story begins, we get a transcription that at first seems like it’s just from a conspiracy theorist nut. He’s talking about a town where a murder suicide has been reported. But was the case really that simple?

From there, we jump to the town mentioned in that news clip where we learn that two high school kids, Lucy and Bucket, are dealing with brutal bullying because they are from other countries. Through the bullying, they have formed a deep friendship to help get them through school and onto whatever comes next. However, it’s not long before the first situation occurs where we see that something is wrong in this town.

As our main character, Lucy, copes with the aftermath, she tries to chalk what she saw up to the trauma of witnessing the event. To get her mind off of it, her and Bucket hang out, visit a record store, and talk about a party that’s coming up.

On the night of the party, Lucy doesn’t think she wants to go but she decides to join them last minute. Of course, this party can’t just happen like a normal party. It’s taking place in underground caves… And as I’m sure many readers would assume, things don’t go as planned. I mean, come on… A bunch of high schoolers with drugs and booze headed underground to light fires when the ground around them is very dangerous? Sounds like a brilliant idea.

When Lucy took her first step on the ladder headed down into the ground, I got a sudden chill like I was the one about to descend. Maybe it was the thought of her being in an underground cave, or maybe it was the darkness that the author included in these scenes, but my goodness was I claustrophobic for the duration of this setting! And that only got much worse during one very specific scene with some graffiti. If you’ve read this already, I’m sure you know exactly what scene I mean.

I do have to say that I really loved Lucy. Her childhood trauma was heartbreaking and I wanted everything to work out for her so badly. I loved that she was best friends with a guy from her class, Bucket. How open they were with one another reminded me of my relationship with my high school best friend!

But speaking of high school, there was a lot this story focused on high school related shenanigans; teenage angst, parties, drugs, sex, bullying, etc. The usual teenage junk.

For me personally, I just don’t have the best relationship with my high school memories and that has been a problem for me recently as I work through stuff in therapy. So some scenes that were very teenage angst filled took me out of the story as I just wanted to get on with things. That is not in any way a knock on Jeremy’s writing! He nailed the high school persona for sure. I think I just picked this up at a rough time and that it usually wouldn’t have bothered me during a normal reading session.

That being said, I absolutely loved the chaos that was going on. I never knew what to expect because there were so many twists and turns! The brutality was insane. The author certainly didn’t shy away from using description for any of the gore filled scenes! It was very vivid, so if you’re a bit squeamish, just tread carefully there! I, of course, loved it (as awful as that always sounds!).

The overall plot kept me hooked! While it was pretty bizarre at times as it centered around science and technology, the explanations of what was happening didn’t go overboard to bog the story down.

One last thing I’ll say before moving on to my favorite passages is that I LOVED the ending.

My Favorite Passages
It was a moonless night, and the stars swam in thick drifts across the sky. Lucy looked straight up and breathed deep and wished that something would take hold of her and pull her straight out into space.
Lucy wondered where she might be at that exact moment if she hadn’t spent so much time trying to be the right version of herself for those around her.

There was the world behind them, and the world ahead of them, and all of it wanted them dead.

She figured people were born with a certain amount of mileage their hearts and minds could withstand, and she was running hers down at top speed.

My Final Thoughts
Like I said above, I really think that I picked this up at a bad time. However, I’m looking forward to reading this again at a later date already!

If you enjoy tales centered around high school students where every second is tense and there is violence at every turn, then I highly recommend this one to you! It was absolutely brutal!

"Slowly I became possessed by the absurd conviction that everything was possible, and it seems to me that even those deserted streets and that hostile wind smelled of hope."

I picked up this book on a busy afternoon, so I was very sidetracked when I began reading. Even so, I could tell that I was going to love this book. When I finally sat down and gave it my full attention, I was hooked!

I loved every second of this book. It was written so well! I was thrilled to see how often I was sticking a post-it note to the pages to remember to go back and write up my favorite lines. I really enjoyed the storyline and how everything came together in the end. There were quite a few times where I started feeling anxious for the characters and had to keep reading to make sure things were going to turn out okay. And one part...

***Semi-spoilers***
I did NOT see coming at all. When I hit this place, I had to re-read the sentence to make sure I was keeping the character names straight. Phew!

Favorite Lines/Passages:
"I had never heard of the title or the author, but I didn't care. The decision had been taken. I pulled the volume down with great care and leafed through the pages, letting them flutter. Once liberated from its prison on the shelf, the book shed a cloud of golden dust. Pleased with my choice, I tucked it under my arm and retraced my steps through the labyrinth with a smile on my lips. Perhaps the bewitching atmosphere of the place had got the better of me, but I felt sure that The Shadow of the Wind had been waiting for me there for years, probably since before I was born."

"...I barricaded myself in my room to read the first few lines. Before I knew what was happening, I had fallen right into it."

"Page after page I let the spell of the story and its world take me over, until the breath of dawn touched my window and my tired eyes slid over the last page."

"That afternoon of mist and drizzle, Clara Barcelo stole my heart, my breath, and my sleep."

"One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep."

"People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough."

"Things have always been like this, here and everywhere else. The trouble is, there are some low moments, and when those strike close to home, everything looks blacker."

"Slowly I became possessed by the absurd conviction that everything was possible, and it seems to me that even those deserted streets and that hostile wind smelled of hope."

"I believe nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even though we don't understand it."

"Waiting is the rust of the soul."

"Making money isn't hard in itself...What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to."

"She wore an ivory-white dress and held the world in her eyes. I barely remember the priest's words or the faces of the guests, full of hope, who filled the church on that March morning. All that remains in my memory is the touch of her lips and, when I half opened my eyes, the secret oath I carried with me on my skin and would remember all the days of my life."

Favorite lines:
#1) When Sasquatch has Deadpools entire head in his hand, Deadpool says, "If you don't let go, I'm gonna lick your hand."

#2) "I mean, just once wouldn't you like to sit down at a Denny's and plan an assignation over a french slam breakfast?"