books read in 2026
Camp Damascus
Chuck Tingle
As someone who had experienced religious trauma, I wish I liked this book more than I did.
It's nice to see an autistic author write an autistic main character, it makes for a very authentic voice. The ending was cliche, but satisfying in our fraught political climate.
It took me forever to get through the book, even though it's not long. It just didn't grip me. Winter Garden
Kristin Hannah
This is technically a 3.75 rating; I like Kristin Hannah's historical fiction.
I enjoyed the story within a story concept, it was interesting and well executed.
Since I have aging parents, the first few chapters of the book made me weep.
The characters were complicated; this worked in the context of the story but I don't think I'd be as forgiving of someone like Anya IRL. Her background was obviously tragic but taking 40 years to open up to her children after treating them coldly throughout their childhood, yikes. Way to create generational trauma. I Told You So
Mayci Neeley
I don't rate memoirs with a numerical scale because it's their life story.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was a favourite trash show of me and my husband because religious cults are one of my special interests. (Yes, the LDS Church qualifies as a cult. Even if you disagree with me, it's a "high control religion".) We've since tapped out because of Taylor Frankie Paul, but that's a different can of worms.
Anyway.
Mayci used to be a blogger before TikTok because the Mormon church tells their congregations to do two things: keep a record of your life and spread the good word. This is why a lot of early bloggers and family vloggers were Mormon. Mayci wrote about her life, actions, consequences, and all of that jazz. She combined her public facing blog and her personal diary and welp, that's the basis of "I Told You So", her memoir. And yes, the writing is a mess because of that.
I feel like the parts where adult Mayci added context were edited with some help from Chat GPT because a lifelong athlete in Utah, where education is secondary to your Mrs. Degree, isn't going to know how to correctly use an em-dash. Athletes get special treatment, especially the talented ones. That shows crystal clear in her memoir, as she got to skirt the BYU honour code with her pregnancy by un-enrolling and taking online classes whilst pregnant. She re-enrolled in on campus courses after she delivered. She was also not benched when her GPA was under a 2. That, personally, blew my mind. At least where I live, they pretended to have standards for their athletes with the "no pass, no play" rule.
The book starts out with a teenaged Mayci in her Senior year of high school. She meets a guy that she gives the moniker "Dick" to and they date through her first year of college. Dick is well, yeah, it fits. He's a rapist and abusive. You learn later in the book that he's also a coward and he hid from an older Mayci when he saw her at a restaurant which I mean, that tracks. Abusive men are all little bitches. Mayci doesn't cope well with the awful relationship and turns to blackout drinking. Kind of a zero to a hundred for a Mormon, but I have empathy for her teenage self. She was living a nightmare trapped in a church and family who would just point fingers at her and call her a slut, so how else would a kid cope? She's a rich brat but I mean, no one deserves abuse. No one.
The other big relationship in her life is Arik, the father of her son. Her family warn her that he's no good, almost to an absurd degree by stalking his online accounts and confronting Mayci with them. Where were y'all when Dick was terrorizing your daughter? I digress. Arik was a youthful fuckboy who was apparently a lot of fun to date. Would he have straightened his life out if he had the chance to age and mature? We'll never know. He was texting a furious Mayci while driving down the highway and hit a semi. He was killed because the force of the collision ejected him from his car. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
All things considered, Mayci is pretty damn kind in her narrative when it comes to Arik. Her rage at finding out that he had multiple young women pregnant was a fair reaction. It's not her fault that he was having that conversation with her whilst driving down the highway. He made a poor choice and paid with his life.
Arik's parents call her his soulmate at his funeral, which is some goddamned emotional manipulation if I've ever heard it. I'm glad they're civil to her for sake of the child but damn, no she wasn't! You don't date and impregnant multiple people if you have a soulmate. Be so for real.
I feel neither colder or warmer toward Mayci after reading her memoir because it showcased what I already sussed out from watching her on TV: she's a typical judgmental, entitled, wealthy religious person with mean Youth Group leader vibes. But if her candor inspires young Mormon women to speak up when they're in abusive situations then well, that receives zero snark from me! Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman
This series is kind of taking the world by storm right now. It's reached audiences who aren't like, total nerds. As someone who played World of Warcraft for far too long that loves an apocalyptic setting, I had to admit I was getting curious. Initially, I had wrote it off as schlock like Ready Player One or The Big Bang Theory. If the series has reached beyond its original targeted audience, Matt Dinniman had to be doing something right...
B-b-b-boss battle! It's H vs. Dungeon Crawler Carl! Did her original line of thought have merit, or was this series going to be the best thing since lime in Diet Coke?
Guys. This book is a whole lot of things, but it ain't execrable.
Book 1 introduces us to our protagonist, Carl, and our deuteragonist Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. Yes, our deuteragonist is a cat; a fluffy, tortoiseshell Persian pedigreed cat that had belonged to his ex-girlfriend, Bea. The only reason those two survived the "transformation" was that Donut leapt out the window that he had cracked open so he could smoke a cigarette. Donut heard Gravy Boat, an unaltered male cat caterwauling, and couldn't resist his siren song. Carl hastily rushed out of his apartment to try to catch her.
So hastily, he ran outside in the Seattle winter wearing his red heart print boxer shorts, a leather jacket, and Bea's too-small pink Crocs on his feet. When his nosy neighbour leans her head out of her window to ask Carl about the racket, all the buildings collapse upon themselves and her decapitated head rolls to his feet.
Yikes.
From this point, the system AI sends an announcement to all of the survivours (less than 1% of the populace) that Earth had been taken over by the Borant Corporation and that if they could survive 18 levels of the World Dungeon, you would become defacto ruler of the Earth. You were given a choice: enter the Dungeon or remain on Earth with no additional help from the Syndicate. Oh, and the Dungeon Crawl is televised, so you better entertain the masses. Carl's Doomsday Scenario
Matt Dinniman
Floor 3 is where the connected "story floors" begin. 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 are referred to as "The Scolopendra Lair" and were a realm that was attacked by a gigantic centipede that killed or transformed 90% of the society living there. The attack affected people differently, which plays out throughout the series beginning here.
Carl and Donut choose their classes, which is Important(TM). He leans into his bomber skills, and Donut into her charisma. We meet the doppelganger Katia, who becomes the 3rd crawler in their party.
Carl also becomes the unwitting co-star of a televised drama called "Vengeance of the Daughter" to save Donut's life. Mordecai is pissed (in more than one way).
Oh, and Carl gets hold of a bomb that can annihilate everyone, surely that'll work itself out? The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
Matt Dinniman
This is probably my least favourite entry of the DCC series. There are things that I heartily enjoyed, such as the crawlers coming together to solve the level with as few deaths as possible, but I did not like the Iron Tangle itself. I get what he was going for to make it as convoluted and confusing as possible, but the scale of everything felt off. Scale is difficult to convey, so eh. (Example: look at Star Wars and how almost all media ties into to the Skywalker family, making that gigantic sandbox look very small.)
But we get to see Donut, drunk off her cat ass on Dirty Shirley's, and meet Prepotente!
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, which has long reaching repercussions throughout the series, comes into play after Carl wins it in roulette. He cannot share its existence with anyone and it comes off as an unremarkable tome to hide its real value. He spends a lot of time pretending to poop.
Loita replaces Zev as their PR Manager because Zev has been placed into "re-education". The Gate of the Feral Gods
Matt Dinniman
The Butcher's Masquerade
Matt Dinniman
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Matt Dinniman
This Inevitable Ruin
Matt Dinniman
All The Other Mothers Hate Me
Sarah Harman
Let's be real: I hate Florence too.
Framing an innocent man based off of heresy because you don't properly parent your autistic son? The ending didn't make up for that. And no, it was not giving "fierce mama bear" when all she does is leave the kid alone to get drunk and fuck around because her adolescence was so rudely interrupted by his birth.
Entertaining read, though! Definitely an "everybody sucks" kind of book. I didn't find the twist all that twisty. The House of My Mother
Shari Franke
I don't rate memoirs with a numerical scale because it's their life story.
I'm sure y'all are like oi, enough with the Mormons already!
I feel like she was this close to realizing the role that religion played in her multiple abusive situations, but I hope she can unpack that as she ages. Best of luck to Shari and her siblings on their healing journey. Unspeakable
Jessica Willis
I don't rate memoirs with a numerical scale because it's their life story.
This memoir was actually extremely well written and absolutely heartbreaking. Jessica laid her whole soul bare and I hope it was carthartic for her after being silenced for all her childhood. Yesteryear
Caro Claire Burke
I was expecting this to be a rare 5 star read for me but it didn't quite reach the hype. For once, I didn't see the twist coming, which I applaud Burke for. If you love-hate following the curated tradwives that this book draws inspiration from, this is for you. Girl Dinner
Olivie Blake
This book was fucking fun and I needed it. Interesting read on the "roles" we're supposed to play as women. Sometimes you just want to go ape shit, and I support these women's wrongs.
Chuck Tingle
As someone who had experienced religious trauma, I wish I liked this book more than I did.
It's nice to see an autistic author write an autistic main character, it makes for a very authentic voice. The ending was cliche, but satisfying in our fraught political climate.
It took me forever to get through the book, even though it's not long. It just didn't grip me. Winter Garden
Kristin Hannah
This is technically a 3.75 rating; I like Kristin Hannah's historical fiction.
I enjoyed the story within a story concept, it was interesting and well executed.
Since I have aging parents, the first few chapters of the book made me weep.
The characters were complicated; this worked in the context of the story but I don't think I'd be as forgiving of someone like Anya IRL. Her background was obviously tragic but taking 40 years to open up to her children after treating them coldly throughout their childhood, yikes. Way to create generational trauma. I Told You So
Mayci Neeley
I don't rate memoirs with a numerical scale because it's their life story.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was a favourite trash show of me and my husband because religious cults are one of my special interests. (Yes, the LDS Church qualifies as a cult. Even if you disagree with me, it's a "high control religion".) We've since tapped out because of Taylor Frankie Paul, but that's a different can of worms.
Anyway.
Mayci used to be a blogger before TikTok because the Mormon church tells their congregations to do two things: keep a record of your life and spread the good word. This is why a lot of early bloggers and family vloggers were Mormon. Mayci wrote about her life, actions, consequences, and all of that jazz. She combined her public facing blog and her personal diary and welp, that's the basis of "I Told You So", her memoir. And yes, the writing is a mess because of that.
I feel like the parts where adult Mayci added context were edited with some help from Chat GPT because a lifelong athlete in Utah, where education is secondary to your Mrs. Degree, isn't going to know how to correctly use an em-dash. Athletes get special treatment, especially the talented ones. That shows crystal clear in her memoir, as she got to skirt the BYU honour code with her pregnancy by un-enrolling and taking online classes whilst pregnant. She re-enrolled in on campus courses after she delivered. She was also not benched when her GPA was under a 2. That, personally, blew my mind. At least where I live, they pretended to have standards for their athletes with the "no pass, no play" rule.
The book starts out with a teenaged Mayci in her Senior year of high school. She meets a guy that she gives the moniker "Dick" to and they date through her first year of college. Dick is well, yeah, it fits. He's a rapist and abusive. You learn later in the book that he's also a coward and he hid from an older Mayci when he saw her at a restaurant which I mean, that tracks. Abusive men are all little bitches. Mayci doesn't cope well with the awful relationship and turns to blackout drinking. Kind of a zero to a hundred for a Mormon, but I have empathy for her teenage self. She was living a nightmare trapped in a church and family who would just point fingers at her and call her a slut, so how else would a kid cope? She's a rich brat but I mean, no one deserves abuse. No one.
The other big relationship in her life is Arik, the father of her son. Her family warn her that he's no good, almost to an absurd degree by stalking his online accounts and confronting Mayci with them. Where were y'all when Dick was terrorizing your daughter? I digress. Arik was a youthful fuckboy who was apparently a lot of fun to date. Would he have straightened his life out if he had the chance to age and mature? We'll never know. He was texting a furious Mayci while driving down the highway and hit a semi. He was killed because the force of the collision ejected him from his car. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
All things considered, Mayci is pretty damn kind in her narrative when it comes to Arik. Her rage at finding out that he had multiple young women pregnant was a fair reaction. It's not her fault that he was having that conversation with her whilst driving down the highway. He made a poor choice and paid with his life.
Arik's parents call her his soulmate at his funeral, which is some goddamned emotional manipulation if I've ever heard it. I'm glad they're civil to her for sake of the child but damn, no she wasn't! You don't date and impregnant multiple people if you have a soulmate. Be so for real.
I feel neither colder or warmer toward Mayci after reading her memoir because it showcased what I already sussed out from watching her on TV: she's a typical judgmental, entitled, wealthy religious person with mean Youth Group leader vibes. But if her candor inspires young Mormon women to speak up when they're in abusive situations then well, that receives zero snark from me! Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman
This series is kind of taking the world by storm right now. It's reached audiences who aren't like, total nerds. As someone who played World of Warcraft for far too long that loves an apocalyptic setting, I had to admit I was getting curious. Initially, I had wrote it off as schlock like Ready Player One or The Big Bang Theory. If the series has reached beyond its original targeted audience, Matt Dinniman had to be doing something right...
B-b-b-boss battle! It's H vs. Dungeon Crawler Carl! Did her original line of thought have merit, or was this series going to be the best thing since lime in Diet Coke?
Guys. This book is a whole lot of things, but it ain't execrable.
Book 1 introduces us to our protagonist, Carl, and our deuteragonist Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. Yes, our deuteragonist is a cat; a fluffy, tortoiseshell Persian pedigreed cat that had belonged to his ex-girlfriend, Bea. The only reason those two survived the "transformation" was that Donut leapt out the window that he had cracked open so he could smoke a cigarette. Donut heard Gravy Boat, an unaltered male cat caterwauling, and couldn't resist his siren song. Carl hastily rushed out of his apartment to try to catch her.
So hastily, he ran outside in the Seattle winter wearing his red heart print boxer shorts, a leather jacket, and Bea's too-small pink Crocs on his feet. When his nosy neighbour leans her head out of her window to ask Carl about the racket, all the buildings collapse upon themselves and her decapitated head rolls to his feet.
Yikes.
From this point, the system AI sends an announcement to all of the survivours (less than 1% of the populace) that Earth had been taken over by the Borant Corporation and that if they could survive 18 levels of the World Dungeon, you would become defacto ruler of the Earth. You were given a choice: enter the Dungeon or remain on Earth with no additional help from the Syndicate. Oh, and the Dungeon Crawl is televised, so you better entertain the masses. Carl's Doomsday Scenario
Matt Dinniman
Floor 3 is where the connected "story floors" begin. 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 are referred to as "The Scolopendra Lair" and were a realm that was attacked by a gigantic centipede that killed or transformed 90% of the society living there. The attack affected people differently, which plays out throughout the series beginning here.
Carl and Donut choose their classes, which is Important(TM). He leans into his bomber skills, and Donut into her charisma. We meet the doppelganger Katia, who becomes the 3rd crawler in their party.
Carl also becomes the unwitting co-star of a televised drama called "Vengeance of the Daughter" to save Donut's life. Mordecai is pissed (in more than one way).
Oh, and Carl gets hold of a bomb that can annihilate everyone, surely that'll work itself out? The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
Matt Dinniman
This is probably my least favourite entry of the DCC series. There are things that I heartily enjoyed, such as the crawlers coming together to solve the level with as few deaths as possible, but I did not like the Iron Tangle itself. I get what he was going for to make it as convoluted and confusing as possible, but the scale of everything felt off. Scale is difficult to convey, so eh. (Example: look at Star Wars and how almost all media ties into to the Skywalker family, making that gigantic sandbox look very small.)
But we get to see Donut, drunk off her cat ass on Dirty Shirley's, and meet Prepotente!
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, which has long reaching repercussions throughout the series, comes into play after Carl wins it in roulette. He cannot share its existence with anyone and it comes off as an unremarkable tome to hide its real value. He spends a lot of time pretending to poop.
Loita replaces Zev as their PR Manager because Zev has been placed into "re-education". The Gate of the Feral Gods
Matt Dinniman
The Butcher's Masquerade
Matt Dinniman
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Matt Dinniman
This Inevitable Ruin
Matt Dinniman
All The Other Mothers Hate Me
Sarah Harman
Let's be real: I hate Florence too.
Framing an innocent man based off of heresy because you don't properly parent your autistic son? The ending didn't make up for that. And no, it was not giving "fierce mama bear" when all she does is leave the kid alone to get drunk and fuck around because her adolescence was so rudely interrupted by his birth.
Entertaining read, though! Definitely an "everybody sucks" kind of book. I didn't find the twist all that twisty. The House of My Mother
Shari Franke
I don't rate memoirs with a numerical scale because it's their life story.
I'm sure y'all are like oi, enough with the Mormons already!
I feel like she was this close to realizing the role that religion played in her multiple abusive situations, but I hope she can unpack that as she ages. Best of luck to Shari and her siblings on their healing journey. Unspeakable
Jessica Willis
I don't rate memoirs with a numerical scale because it's their life story.
This memoir was actually extremely well written and absolutely heartbreaking. Jessica laid her whole soul bare and I hope it was carthartic for her after being silenced for all her childhood. Yesteryear
Caro Claire Burke
I was expecting this to be a rare 5 star read for me but it didn't quite reach the hype. For once, I didn't see the twist coming, which I applaud Burke for. If you love-hate following the curated tradwives that this book draws inspiration from, this is for you. Girl Dinner
Olivie Blake
This book was fucking fun and I needed it. Interesting read on the "roles" we're supposed to play as women. Sometimes you just want to go ape shit, and I support these women's wrongs.