If you're looking for a single sitting thriller that you just can't put down- look no further! This book follows an uprising against a fascist USA (sound familiar) in which the stakes are high and not everyone will survive.

Melody is a party child, born into a family operating under the Judicial branch of the government. These children are expected to stay within these "parties" but Melody switches to Legislative and everything goes to hell.

When illegal documents are found and Melody is a made a fugitive people who knew her begin to go missing. Angry and the loss of their friend and seeking revenge, a man uses Melody's image to incite the citizens into rebellion.

Engaging and written by an autho that is not afraid to pull punches- The Next Witness is worth a read. I really enjoyed this one!

Please note that I was gifted a copy of this book by the author 

 Where He Can't Find You is a YA horror novel from Darcy Coates focused on a small, strange town plagued by a serial killer who may or may not be hiding in plain sight.

But whether or not that killer is human... well, most try not to think to hard about that.

Our story focuses on a group of teen friends with our central character being Abby. Abby is incredibly devoted to her younger sister and holding what is left of her family together the best she can. Her mother isn't entirely sane and her father was killed by our serial killer, The Stitcher.

When her little sister is taken Abby and her friends Riya, Connor, and Rhys are determined to break all of their carefully crafted survival rules to bring her home. But nothing is ever easy and time is running out.

This book was... very middle of the road for me.

I struggled to find any sort of connection to the characters (though, I loved Connor from the get go) so it started off a bit rocky for me. And then once things picked up I kept having so many questions:

How does this serial killer have these supernatural powers?
Is it human?
WHY is it doing what it does?

You see, in this town technology fails and absolutely no one seems to be able to leave. And that is my biggest complaint here- we never fully understand this being's power. There is SO much going on and it's reach is so extensive in a way that honestly didn't make a lot of sense to me. Really, it just felt like some of these powers were to make it easier to move the story along vs. being actually important to the character of the stitcher.

Still, I did enjoy this book enough to give it three stars. The group (once given development) are a devoted group of monster hunters who have their own fears that we see played into through the Stitcher. Connor was my favorite, but damn if Rhys wasn't devoted to Abby. Riya is the logical thinker of the group and grounds them. Abby is brave as all hell and willing to die for her sister. They're a good group of kids (even if they kept forgetting about Connor ugh).

There is also a LOT of body horror and gore in this book (a lot for YA!) and the tension of this book is often quite high.

I just wish this book felt better fleshed out and the Stitcher lore made more sense.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an ARC! 

 Jillian West books make me happy because they always provide found family warm fuzzies. This book is no different! However- this was by far the most scattered JW I've read yet and dare I say- the smut was not smutting and most of that was due to dialogue:

"I need your thick length raking my walls."

There was a lot of slightly awkward, shouldn't-have-been-dialogue dialogue that just didn't work on my end. Like, sometimes it took me right out.

But the upside is that again- this does provide warm fuzzies. They will (and have) killed for our FMC. There are tentacles. Etc. We just really needed this book to be less scattered and that dialogue cleaned up! 

Author falsely accused author Ingrid Seymour of plagiarism on tik tok and then blocked me when I suggested he apologize for it.