Have you ever picked up a fantasy novel expecting a chosen kid and ended up rooting for a stocky, balding, middle-aged cop instead? That’s what The Light of Arunzi did to me. It’s the debut novel in Katelyn Peterson’s The Magois Chronicles from Convergence Point Press, set in modern-day Toronto, where tactical police work and aristocratic magic share a city and do not get along. A hostage negotiation leads straight into a 3:00 AM knock at Greg’s door. From there, it turns into a story about who protects the helpless, and what that costs the protector. There are lion cubs, magical foals, and noble houses with long memories. But the heart of this book is a sergeant with a very bad habit of putting himself last. I have thoughts. Let’s get into it.
Tag Archives: Books
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of September11, 2026 at #JustReadingNook
Book Review: Legacy of Blood by Jessica Barberi
Footprints by Simon Meredith weaves two timelines—1928 and 1986—into a genuinely spooky supernatural mystery, anchored by a wonderfully original hook: living paint as a conduit for fear and memory. With a richly unsettling setting and memorable characters, this is a creative, gripping read for horror and mystery fans alike.
Spotlight: Timothy Robare
Robare writes across genres the way some people collect passport stamps. He has a gritty, humor-laced action series. A more traditional good-versus-evil fantasy. A character-driven novella. And poetry, which he calls his “main squeeze.” That range alone makes him worth a closer look. But it’s the story behind the range, how a kid who couldn’t hear or speak for years of his childhood ended up building an entire literary life out of words, that makes him worth sitting with.
Book Review: Footprints by Simon Meredith
Footprints by Simon Meredith weaves two timelines—1928 and 1986—into a genuinely spooky supernatural mystery, anchored by a wonderfully original hook: living paint as a conduit for fear and memory. With a richly unsettling setting and memorable characters, this is a creative, gripping read for horror and mystery fans alike.
Book Review: The Light of Arunzi by Katelyn Peterson
A darker, more adult cousin of Harry Potter, The Light of Arunzi blends high-magic fantasy with contemporary urban fiction and a multilayered plot with thematic depth and excellent character work.
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of September11, 2026 at #JustReadingNook
Book Review: The Curses We Keep by Dakota J. Miller
In The Curses We Keep by Dakota J. Miller, a family fleeing witchcraft accusations finds no refuge in the Charleston wilderness, where a wendigo, a grieving specter, and a town hunting for scapegoats close in on their daughter, Cassandra. A devastating time-loop reveals that her own attempt to save her family may cause the tragedy instead, and the novel’s immersive prose and inventive structure earn it a 5-star rating as a standout entry in dark historical horror.
Book Feature: Whistler by Ann Patchett
I have a rule about Ann Patchett books. I don’t read them on a deadline, and I definitely don’t start them at 11 p.m. thinking I’ll “just read a chapter.” That rule exists because I have broken it every single time, and paid for it with a night of no sleep and a heart that feels gently, lovingly wrung out like a dish towel. So when Whistler landed on my radar, I knew exactly what I was signing up for. Patchett has been my favorite living novelist since Bel Canto, and I’ve followed her from opera houses to Michigan cherry orchards to that porch in Tom Lake like a devoted, slightly obsessive pen pal. Whistler did not break my rule so much as confirm why the rule needs to exist.
Spotlight: C.J. Simone
‘ll be honest, when an author’s bio says “mafia thriller series,” I usually brace myself for a certain kind of book. Slicked-back hair, romanticized violence, a body count standing in for a plot. CJ Simone, author of suspense and dark psychological fiction and the mind behind the Children of the Mob series, isn’t writing that book, and the more I dug into her, the clearer it became that her real subject was never the mob at all. It’s the kids who grew up inside it, and what surviving that does to a person’s mind. Worth noting too, the mafia series is only one piece of what she does. Her catalog also includes The Gallos, a standalone psychological thriller about a girl invited into her wealthy neighbors’ home only to be framed for their abusive father’s murder, Pip and Estella, a gothic historical retelling of Dickens’s Great Expectations told in dual points of view, following two orphans, one raised humble and one raised wealthy but lonely, whose bond gets used as a weapon in someone else’s vengeful plan, and an upcoming gothic thriller, all of it united under what she calls dark psychological fiction meant to offer both thrills and something to actually sit with. That’s the spotlight I want to run today, not a review of one book, but a look at why this particular author keeps circling back to the same dark, family-shaped well.