11 Books I Read in 2025, Part 1

The first half of my literary diet for this year

Dear Reader,

If you’re looking for strong recommendations from this section, seek them elsewhere. This six-month period has been a major disappointment for me in terms of the novels I’ve read. Towards the end of the list some things do pick up, but if I were to give a title to this period of my reading, it would be “Missed Potential.” The books I did enjoy come in the forms of poetry, anthologized short stories, massive tomes of historical fiction, and things that have been available for free on the internet for nearly a decade, republished in order to generate some capital. Apologies, but that’s just how things go sometimes.

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

There was a huge risk inherent in writing this novel that I’m not sure the average reader will appreciate. The way that the narrative jumps back and forth between the present day and the events of the past could, in the hands of a worse writer, kill all the tension and suspense that Tremblay had so carefully built up through his well-written prose. I don’t think a first- or second-time writer would be able to pull off the pacing necessary to make this premise work no matter how virtuosic. Each little flashback reveals just enough information about the shooting of the eponymous horror movie to keep the reader going, and each passage about the narrator dealing with the mundanities of newfound fame blinds us of the juicy details for just long enough to keep it from feeling boring. There are a whole lot of elements that I feel the author borrowed well from the popular story behind Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and the themes of unresolved trauma that the surface level of the film also plays with come through as well. That all being said, I think the ending undercuts a lot of the very human elements that had been built up throughout the rest of the narrative. I get that the narrator has gone through some sort of metamorphosis from “being” to “idea,” which softens the blow that a worse novel would have outright ruined the story with, but I wasn’t feeling it. As is, this entire project feels like it would have been better suited for a Blair Witch-style movie/mockumentary considering how many elements are already tied to the film industry. Some of the magic behind those found footage films would be lost knowing they come from an adaptation, so that’s out of the picture as well. The story is solid, but not sticking the landing really blew it for me. I’ve heard a few reviewers of other Tremblay novels express a similar sentiment, and I don’t intend to continue reading his work to verify whether this is the case.

Escape from Happydale by Jack Quaid

Every petal of promise that this novel seems to exhibit has a subsequent thorn hiding right underneath. On the one hand, it’s admirable to give a backstory to one’s pseudonym in order to plausibly sell readers on the idea that the novel did come from the golden age of paperback/dimestore horror. On the other hand, the way the book holds that era of horror in high esteem due to the author’s nostalgia in a way one wouldn’t if they were living during its heyday, ruining the effect. I enjoy the way that the “slasher” is recategorized as a sort of in-between monster that takes elements from a revenant and a ghost, but I hate that the author feels compelled by the Brandon Sanderson-ites to explain every little detail behind the system of un-reality instead of trusting the audience to accept certain elements as past of the story. I like all the horror elements, but I don’t like that it isn’t all that scary at its core. It was fine for pulpy garbage, but I can’t imagine that I’ll return to finish the rest of the series.

Burn by Peter Heller

I had read a handful of synopses of other novels by this author and thought they were interesting, so I downloaded the one offered by my library’s online audiobook service Libby and otherwise went into this blind. I was a little disappointed by the lack of “action” in the first half of the book: the scenario of two hunters out in the woods with the loss of total contact with an outside world that has suddenly become hostile to them sets certain expectations. It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d been snookered into reading something much more deep than the adventure novel I felt I’d been getting into. There are readers out there who are unable to separate the protagonist of the novel from the opinions of the author, and that could cause some issues down the line for him, but I think it’s pretty clear that the unresolved trauma of the one protagonist was indeed traumatic. I almost got fooled, but the way the girl’s own unwillingness to face the reality of the situation mirrors the protagonist’s tipped me off that this wasn’t borderline justification for statutory rape. There are a few other nitpicky gripes I had that strained my suspension of disbelief: mainly, that rural New Englanders would have their own fully-stocked survival bunker and no gas generator to run and charge their phones off. I understand why the pair’s battery life ought to be a point of tension to ramp up the stakes of the whole situation, but it really stretched my suspension of disbelief that they couldn’t find a way to keep them charged, among other things. This was a passable adventure story but I don’t think I’d read another by this author unless I was promised a little more action.

Blind Voices by Tom Reamy

It’s a real shame this novel went unfinished. I enjoyed it in its current state, but there were some problems that would have been hammered out in the editing process. For example, the protagonist is introduced to us in a way that would lead one to expect the story to have an ensemble cast, but the main narrative is more about one of the girls. Other characters drop in and out of relevance to the point where one needs to flip back and forth to remember exactly who they are. Perhaps at one time this was meant to be a larger story with more moving parts, which would have worked better, but is stuck in its current form as one plot line and some ephemera. The blurbs on the back of this book promised that it would scratch the same itch I have for Ray Bradbury novels, and it delivers, but only just. Twice, the mood shifts to incredible violence, once of a sexual nature, and both times it gave incredible whiplash. I’d like to delve further into this author’s work, though, and see how his short stories are. There’s so much promise in the novel and I anticipate that works he’d sent to publication himself have that polish that this lacks.