This week’s reading lineup feels wildly unhinged in the best possible way because somehow these books jump between toxic rich people, body horror, emotional romance, sprawling fantasy politics, and existential dread without missing a beat.

Honestly? Incredible week for complicated characters, questionable decisions, and books that make you stare at the wall afterward.

🩸 The Dorians

Read or skip: READ
Rating: 4 stars | Gore: 4/5

This book is glamorous, disturbing, excessive, and deeply uncomfortable… which means it absolutely understood the assignment.

Inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, this story takes obsession with beauty, wealth, and immortality and pushes it into full modern horror territory. Everyone here feels morally rotted in a way that becomes impossible to look away from.

And fair warning: this book earns that gore rating.

The body horror and graphic content throughout are intense, visceral, and sometimes genuinely nauseating, but it never feels shocking just for the sake of being shocking. Everything ties back into the larger themes surrounding vanity, excess, identity, and the desperation to preserve youth at all costs.

What really worked for me though was the atmosphere. There’s this constant feeling of decay underneath all the luxury and beauty. Even during the quieter moments, the book feels tense and wrong in a way that keeps building as things spiral further and further out of control.

The characters are objectively terrible people, but fascinating terrible people. The kind where you keep reading because you desperately need to see how badly everything implodes.

My only reason this wasn’t a higher rating is that a few sections in the middle dragged slightly for me pacing-wise before the final stretch fully locked me back in. I also went into this expecting much heavier horror elements throughout the entire story. While the atmosphere is dark and unsettling from the beginning, the more intense body horror doesn’t really appear until the final 20% or so.

Final thought: A decadent, grotesque modern horror filled with vanity, excess, body horror, and beautifully toxic people making catastrophic decisions.

💌 Soon By You

Read or skip: READ IMMEDIATELY
Rating: 4.75 stars | Spice: 3/5

This book completely snuck up on me emotionally.

I expected a cute romance. What I got was a deeply tender story about grief, timing, loneliness, vulnerability, and learning how to let yourself be fully seen by another person again.

And wow did this one hit.

The chemistry between the main characters feels effortless from the beginning, but what really sold me was how emotionally grounded their connection feels. Their relationship develops through small moments, honest conversations, awkward vulnerability, and genuine comfort with one another instead of relying solely on tension or drama.

Which made all the emotional moments land even harder.

This is one of those romances where both characters feel fully human outside of the relationship itself. They’re messy, hurting, hopeful, and trying to figure out what they actually want from life while carrying baggage they don’t always know how to talk about.

The romance absolutely delivers, but the emotional intimacy is what made this such a standout read for me.

Also? The pacing was dangerously bingeable. I kept telling myself I’d stop after one more chapter and suddenly half the book was gone.

The only reason this wasn’t a full 5 stars is that there were one or two smaller conflicts that resolved a little faster than I personally wanted emotionally.

But overall? This was so close to perfection for me.

Final thought: A heartfelt, emotionally intimate romance about grief, healing, timing, and finding connection when you least expect it.

🚢 The Shippers

Read or skip: Skip
Rating: 3 stars | Spice: 1/5

I really wanted to love this more than I did.

The setup is honestly so fun: after Jojo’s estranged best friend Cooper crashes her wedding and convinces her not to go through with it, she becomes determined to “fix” her serial dumper tendencies by winning over Finn, the guy who gave her her first kiss, during her sister’s cruise ship wedding.

And on paper? This should have completely worked for me.

The romcom energy is chaotic and entertaining, the cruise ship setting is fun, and I genuinely liked the friendship dynamic between Jojo and Cooper. Their history together felt believable in that very specific “we grew up together and know exactly how to annoy each other” kind of way.

Jojo herself is messy in a way I actually appreciated. She’s awkward, impulsive, emotionally reactive, and constantly getting in her own way. She felt much more flawed and realistic than the super polished romcom heroines you sometimes get in this genre.

But ultimately… I just never emotionally connected in the way I wanted to.

For a story that relies so heavily on the relationship dynamics, I kept waiting for the emotional intimacy to really hit harder than it did. I wanted more tension, more vulnerability, more emotional depth between the characters. Even the romantic buildup itself felt flatter than I expected.

And honestly? Even with this being a low/no-spice romance, I still needed stronger chemistry. Not necessarily physical scenes, but more emotional and romantic pull between the characters themselves. I wanted to feel the longing and emotional connection more deeply, and it never fully landed for me.

I also didn’t care much about the subplot involving Jojo’s dad, which slowed the pacing down even more for me in certain sections.

That said, I still think this could absolutely work for readers who enjoy lighter, chaotic romcoms with messy heroines, friends-to-lovers dynamics, and more comfort-read energy overall.

Final thought: A cute and chaotic romcom with strong best-friend energy and lovable messiness, but the emotional connection and romantic chemistry ultimately felt too underdeveloped for me personally.

⚔️ Mortedant’s Peril

Read or skip: READ
Rating: 4.5 stars

This book felt specifically engineered for me.

I live for fantasy worlds that feel weird, layered, ancient, and slightly overwhelming in the best possible way. Ancient gods. Competing factions. Strange lore. Dense histories. Tiny little worldbuilding details that make a setting feel genuinely alive instead of just existing as backdrop.

And yes… powerful goats.

R.J. Barker is ridiculously good at worldbuilding. This world feels massive and complicated, but never in a way that feels inaccessible. Every corner of the story feels like there’s history behind it.

But honestly? One of my favorite things about this book is that despite all the fantasy chaos, the true villain is still bureaucracy. No matter how magical a world becomes, someone is still trapped dealing with paperwork.

The story follows Irody Hasp, a Mortendant who can read the final thoughts of the dead. After being framed for murder, he gets pulled into a desperate investigation while also trying not to get himself killed in the process.

I loved Irody almost immediately, but the real standout for me was the group dynamic surrounding him. Mirial and Whisper especially were incredible, and together they have that messy, sharp-edged found family energy I will fall for every single time.

This book also reminded me of some of my favorite parts of The Tainted Cup, Empire of the Wolf, and Lies of Locke Lamora while still fully feeling like its own thing. There’s mystery, investigative momentum, political tension, humor, and constant movement without ever losing sight of the characters.

And that’s what impressed me most: the balance.

The worldbuilding is huge, but the characters never get buried beneath it. For a first book in a fantasy series, that’s honestly really impressive.

Also worth mentioning: the audiobook is fantastic. I switched between physical reading and audio for this one and highly recommend both.

Final thought: A strange, layered fantasy mystery packed with ancient gods, murder investigations, found family chaos, fascinating worldbuilding, and enough weird little details to completely pull you in.

🕯️ Murder at Hotel Orient

Read or skip: READ
Rating: 3.5 stars

This book was such a fun surprise because I went in expecting something closer to Murder on the Orient Express and instead got a very dramatic, slightly chaotic noir thriller set inside a mysterious old hotel in Vienna.

And honestly? I kind of loved the vibe.

The atmosphere was easily my favorite part. The Hotel Orient has this faded glamour to it with strange rules, unreliable electricity, secretive guests, and this constant feeling that literally everyone is hiding something. The hotel almost feels alive in its own weird way.

The entire story has strong old Hollywood noir energy layered into a modern murder mystery, which made it feel really distinct from a lot of thrillers I’ve read lately.

Sterling was also a really interesting main character to follow. She’s observant, morally grey, clearly carrying baggage, and not written like a typical detective character at all. I liked slowly uncovering more about her while the murders and conspiracies around the hotel escalated.

The story itself is packed with twists, secret identities, suspicious characters, espionage, murder investigations, and multiple overlapping plotlines. Every time I thought I understood what was happening, the book introduced another layer.

That said, I do think the middle section got a little tangled under the weight of everything it was trying to juggle. There are a lot of characters, a lot of moving pieces, and not every subplot worked equally well for me. At times the constant hidden identities and dramatic reveals started feeling a little more theatrical than believable.

But overall? I still had a genuinely entertaining time with it.

I also think the cheekier tone helped the book stand out. There’s a lot of innuendo and exaggerated noir-style drama here that won’t work for everyone, but I thought it made the story feel fun instead of taking itself too seriously.

Final thought: A twisty noir-inspired murder mystery filled with glamorous atmosphere, morally grey characters, hidden identities, and a hotel where absolutely nobody can be trusted.

Overall, this ended up being such a strong release week for me. Some of these books completely consumed my life, some surprised me in really good ways, and some just didn’t emotionally connect for me as much as I wanted them to.

But collectively? This lineup delivered chaotic energy, morally questionable decisions, emotional damage, murder investigations, suspiciously glamorous people, and at least one book that made me ignore my bedtime entirely.

Let me know which of these are on your radar because I need to know who else is about to emotionally spiral with me.