You know that moment in a YA thriller when someone discovers a secret, and you think, obviously, tell someone!

Adorable. We’re so confident when it’s someone else’s fictional problem. Right!?😅

This week, the secret belongs to you.

Would you delete the evidence?

Here’s your scenario:

Someone at your school is about to take the blame for something they didn’t do. They could lose their scholarship. Their future. Maybe their freedom.

But you have proof.

One file. One conversation. One piece of evidence that could clear their name.

There’s just one tiny, catastrophic complication: it also exposes someone you love.

Maybe your best friend lied about where they were that night. Maybe your sibling was involved. Maybe your own messages reveal that you knew more than you admitted.

Then your phone lights up.

Please delete it. You don’t understand what will happen if this gets out.

You look at the file again.

Suddenly, that little trash-can icon feels very powerful.

What’s your next move?

🔎 A. Protect the truth.
Someone innocent shouldn’t pay for someone else’s choices. You’re handing over the evidence—even if the fallout follows you home.

🫣 B. Protect your people.
You know them. You love them. There has to be more to the story. You hesitate, wondering whether loyalty is becoming an excuse.

⏳ C. Find another way.
You won’t delete it, but you’re not ready to reveal it either. You want the full story first. Unfortunately, someone else’s future is already on the clock.

😱 D. Panic first.
You set down your phone, pace the room, and briefly consider becoming someone who has never encountered technology. An understandable opening move. A questionable long-term strategy.

The part that makes this thriller-worthy?

You don’t know whether that message is a warning, a threat, or someone begging you to protect them from the consequences of their own choices.

And being loyal doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing the right thing.

Neither does being certain you know the truth.

That’s what makes deleted messages, digital secrets, and morally messy mysteries so compelling: the evidence might be clear, but the decision rarely is. You can root for a character and still want to confiscate their phone before they make everything worse.

📚 A Book Worth Sharing

This week’s book:

Salt Water Blood by Manuia Heinrich

An Indigenous teen who hears the sea's prophetic thoughts must rely on the gift she's always feared to save her brother, and her island home, in this “gripping Polynesian mystery laced with Indigenous cultural knowledge, for fans of Angeline Boulley and Ari Tison” (SLJ, starred review).

Eighteen-year-old Moe hears the sea’s prophetic thoughts—not just hears them…she feels them. That’s how she experienced her father’s death before he did and how she felt her mother’s relief when she abandoned Moe and her younger brother, Tao, months after.

So when the sea warns Moe that Tao will drown, she’s determined to get in fate’s way and secures them passage off their island home. But those plans are ruined when Tao’s girlfriend goes missing and Tao is found where she was last seen, with blood on his hands—and no memory of what happened.

Moe will do anything she can to clear her brother’s name, even if it means swallowing her pride and teaming up with her annoyingly clever school rival, Temanea. And even if it means relying on the sea’s prophecies. Because her dreaded gift may be the only way to save her brother—and uncover the truth behind the sickness poisoning her community.

Why I’m sharing it:

I loved the lore and mystery and couldn’t put it down. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐!

Read my full review and get the book:

Your turn: Would you delete the evidence?

Would you protect the truth, protect your people, or panic first?

Hit reply with A, B, C, or D—and tell me what might change your answer.

Does it matter who you’re protecting? How serious their secret is? Whether the person taking the blame is someone you even like?

No spoilers needed. Just your best attempt at surviving a situation we would all prefer to experience in paperback.

Happy reading—and may your biggest phone emergency be a low battery.

Kim

Book Reviewer | Young Adult Author | Ask the Girl

P.S. Next week, we’ll be asking, “Would you switch identities with someone?” Because someone else’s life may be so much better than your own, right!?!

Hello Book friends and nerds!

I’ve been watching the new Carrie series on Amazon Prime, and I have to say, I think I like this version better than the original 1976 movie.

Now, before anyone comes after me, I love the movie starring Sissy Spacek and directed by Brian De Palma. And of course, there’s Stephen King’s original 1974 novel.

But what I appreciate about this new adaptation is how much more developed the characters feel.

They’re not simply good or evil. They’re complicated. They have reasons for doing what they do, even when those reasons don’t excuse their behavior.

Take the popular blonde bully, for example. In the original movie, she’s your typical mean girl. She’s cruel because, well, she’s mean.

In the new series, we get a better understanding of where that cruelty comes from. We see why she’s so angry and hateful. It doesn’t make her behavior acceptable, but it makes her feel more like an actual person.

And I appreciate that.

The same goes for Carrie’s mother, Margaret White.

Margaret has always been a terrifying character, especially because of her religious beliefs and the way she treats Carrie. But this version gives us more insight into why she believes what she does.

I also appreciate the changes to her backstory, particularly that this version doesn’t rely on rape to explain her relationship with sex and religion.

Instead, there’s more emphasis on how Margaret views the outside world as dangerous and sinful, while their home is supposed to be a sanctuary of purity.

The addition of a father figure also adds something different to the story.

And I especially like that Carrie confronts her mother about never telling her about menstruation. It’s a moment that deserves attention because Carrie’s lack of knowledge about her own body is one of the most disturbing parts of her upbringing.

But there’s another scene that really got to me.

The School Active Shooter Drill

This is where I think the new adaptation does something particularly interesting.

Carrie has grown up completely sheltered. No television, no internet, and very little understanding of what happens outside her home. In fact, she’s never been to school, and the government or the city knew of her existence until her father died in a construction accident. They find Carrie and her mother in a closet, frightened and praying.

So when her school conducts an active shooter drill, she has absolutely no idea what’s going on.

And this isn’t a simple announcement over the intercom.

The school has someone pretending to be a shooter, carrying a gun and moving from classroom to classroom.

The other students know the routine. They’ve done it before. They stay quiet and wait for it to be over.

But Carrie?

She’s terrified.

And I don’t blame her one bit.

Can you imagine being completely unaware of school shootings and suddenly finding yourself in a classroom where someone is walking around pretending to shoot students?

What really caught my attention, though, was Margaret’s response.

She goes to the principal and complains about the drill.

And while Margaret certainly has some questionable beliefs, I found myself agreeing with her on this one.

Why are we putting children through something that could traumatize them? Why have we accepted that kids need to practice hiding from someone with a gun?

Why are we teaching children to conform to the threat of school shooters instead of doing more to stop the shooters?

I agree with Margaret here.

I think our gun laws need to change. It’s ridiculous that school shootings have become such a concern that children have to prepare for them as part of their education, along with fire and tornado drills.

And the fact that the other students treat the drill as routine makes Carrie’s reaction even more disturbing.

She’s the sheltered one—the girl who knows almost nothing about the outside world.

Yet in that moment, her terror feels like the most reasonable reaction in the room.

That scene really stuck with me.

Why I’m Enjoying This Version More

So far, what I appreciate about this adaptation is that it takes a familiar story and brings in issues kids and schools are dealing with today.

Bullying, religion, isolation, school safety, and the way adults’ beliefs and decisions affect children.

The original Carrie is already a powerful story about cruelty and what happens when someone is pushed too far.

But this version seems more interested in examining why people behave the way they do, including the people we’re supposed to dislike.

And that’s something I enjoy in storytelling.

Give me a villain with a believable reason for being awful. Give me characters who make me question their choices, even when I don’t agree with them.

I don’t need everyone to be likable.

I just want them to feel human.

Which brings me to this week’s book.

On the Bookshelf: Six Must Die by Victoria Wlosok

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Apparently, I’ve been in the mood for stories about people with secrets and questionable motives, because my latest read was Six Must Die by Victoria Wlosok.

And if you’ve ever thought an escape room sounded like a fun group activity, this book might make you reconsider.

A year ago, an escape room fire killed Matt Cesari and left Steffi Zamekova with missing memories of what happened that night.

She also lost her friends and the life she knew.

Now, on the anniversary of the tragedy, Steffi receives a mysterious invitation to another escape room.

Because apparently surviving one disastrous escape room isn’t enough.

She reunites with her former friends, hoping to find answers about Matt’s death.

But everyone has secrets, and it quickly becomes obvious that this isn’t going to be an ordinary game.

What I really enjoyed about this book were the unreliable narratives and the twists and turns.

I love a mystery where I’m constantly questioning what the characters are telling me. Who’s lying? Who’s leaving something out? And can I trust anything I’m being told?

That’s what kept me reading.

However, I did have a few issues.

Some of the twists felt forced, almost as if certain information was deliberately being kept from the reader just to make the mystery work.

And while I enjoyed the ending, I also found parts of it predictable.

It wasn’t a complete surprise, although there were still a few things I didn’t see coming.

So, for me, Six Must Die earns four stars.

It’s an entertaining YA thriller with plenty of secrets, suspicious characters, and twists to keep you guessing, even if some don’t work quite as well as others.

And as much as I enjoy mysteries, I think I’ll stick to escape rooms where everyone gets to leave alive.

Click below to read my full review and get the book!

One More Thought...

Between Carrie and Six Must Die, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much a character’s history affects the way we see them.

I don’t necessarily want to forgive a character for doing something terrible.

But I do want to understand what brought them to that point.

And sometimes, knowing why someone behaves badly makes a story even more unsettling.

I’m curious: Do you prefer villains who are simply evil, or villains whose behavior has a believable explanation?

Hit reply and let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Until next time, happy reading!

Kim

The Brave Bookshelf • Young Adult Author • Ask The Girl

Thrillers love a villain.

The suspicious classmate.

The creepy neighbor.

The person everyone whispers about.

The one character who walks into the room and immediately makes you think:

Yep. Definitely them.

And then, somewhere around chapter twenty-seven, the author ruins everything by asking:

What if you’re wrong?

Honestly, rude.

So today’s question is:

Would you protect the villain?

Here’s the setup:

Something terrible has happened at school.

Everyone thinks they know who did it.

There were arguments.

Threatening messages.

A witness who swears they saw something.

Even the police seem convinced.

And the person everyone blames?

They’re not exactly helping themselves.

They’re secretive.

Angry.

They’ve lied before.

They have every reason to hate the victim.

Case closed.

Right?

Then one afternoon, they find you alone.

And they say:

“I didn’t do it.”

You tell them everyone says otherwise.

They hand you something.

A photo.

A message.

A piece of evidence no one else has seen.

And suddenly...

The story doesn’t quite fit anymore.

Then they say:

“You’re the only person who can help me.”

Wonderful.

You have officially entered the plot.

So… what do you do?

A) Help them because the evidence changes everything.

B) Walk away. If everyone thinks they’re guilty, there’s probably a reason.

C) Take the evidence to someone you trust before making any decisions.

D) Secretly investigate because apparently you’ve decided sleep is optional.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, you have a good heart.

Possibly too good.

Because “I’m innocent, please help me” has launched approximately nine million terrible fictional decisions.

If you picked B, understandable.

Self-preservation is an underrated thriller skill.

Unfortunately, you’re probably going to discover three chapters later that you abandoned the only innocent person in town.

If you picked C, look at you making sensible choices!

Save the evidence.

Tell someone.

Do not meet a suspected murderer alone in an abandoned warehouse.

Growth.

If you picked D, congratulations.

You are now the amateur detective.

Please charge your phone and wear shoes you can run in.

Why This Setup Works So Well

One of my favorite things about thrillers is when the story makes me question who the villain actually is.

Because sometimes the obvious villain isn’t guilty.

Sometimes the “good” character has been lying.

Sometimes everyone has decided who someone is long before they know the whole story.

And sometimes the truth is much messier:

Maybe this person did something terrible.

Just not the terrible thing.

That’s where unreliable narrators, revenge stories, and morally gray characters get so interesting.

A strong thriller can make you suspicious of someone...

Then sympathetic toward them...

Then suspicious again...

Then suddenly you’re staring at the ceiling at midnight wondering why you trusted anyone.

Exactly how I like my mysteries.

Writer Aha: Let the Reader Get It Wrong ✍️

For thriller writers, one great way to create a twist is to let your readers build the wrong story from completely accurate information.

Maybe the suspected villain:

lied about where they were.

Hated the victim.

Deleted a message.

Had blood on their clothes.

Every clue can be true.

But the conclusion can still be wrong.

That’s much more satisfying than simply hiding everything from the reader.

The fun comes from letting us think:

Obviously, they did it.

And then showing us how quickly assumptions can become “facts.”

A good villain twist isn’t just:

Surprise! Wrong person!

It’s:

The clues were there. You just interpreted them the wrong way.

That’s the kind of reveal that makes me want to flip backward through the book and check everything again.

The Brave Conversation 💛

This setup also opens up a bigger question:

What happens when everyone has already decided who someone is?

The troublemaker.

The weird kid.

The bully.

The liar.

The angry girl.

Once someone gets a label, everything they do can start looking like proof.

But people are complicated.

Trauma doesn’t automatically make someone dangerous.

Being angry doesn’t automatically make someone guilty.

And having made bad choices before doesn’t mean someone made this one.

Books give us a safe way to explore that gray area.

Can someone hurt people and still deserve help?

Can someone be both victim and villain?

When does understanding someone become excusing them?

And what happens when justice is based more on reputation than evidence?

Those are exactly the kinds of messy questions thrillers are so good at asking.

Brave Bookshelf Watch: Halloween Edition 🎃📚

Speaking of things that are a little spooky, strange, and wonderfully bookish...

I’ve also been putting together a new video/podcast episode:

10 Spooky, Silly & Strange Books for Your Kid’s Halloween Bookshelf

I wanted to share some fun books families can add to their shelves for Halloween and spooky season.

Some are silly.

Some are creepy.

Some involve witches, strange creatures, chickens traveling through time...

Because apparently Halloween books can contain anything, and I fully support that.

Here’s what I’m featuring:

🐔 Time-Traveling Chickens: Bawk to the Future by Kaz Windness

🐔 Time-Traveling Chickens: Nugget and Tenders’s Eggcellent Adventure by Kaz Windness

🕸️ The Nest by Kenneth Oppel, illustrated by Susan Kao

🧠 Create Your Craniacs Quest with...: Escape from the Chrome Dome by R.L. Stine, illustrated by Joe Simko

🎃 Halloween Baby! by Karen Katz

👀 I Want Every Thing by Sophy Henn

🦇 Bitsy Bat Snow Star by Kaz Windness

✨ The Tiny Thing by Ellen Tarlow, illustrated by Laren Stringer

🔎 Have You Seen Axel? by Adam Jay Epstein and Ruth Chan

🚀I Need Space by Molly Harris, illustrated by Jon Corby

I love putting together lists like this because Halloween reading doesn’t always have to mean full-on scary.

Sometimes kids want creepy.

Sometimes they want funny.

Sometimes they want interactive.

And sometimes they apparently want time-traveling chickens.

There is room on the bookshelf for all of it. To get any of these books click on the link below to my video post:

https://www.kimbartosch.com/publish/post/221508513

Watch/listen to the full episode here:

And if you’ve read any of these with your kids, students, or library group, I’d love to know which one was the favorite.

Now I Want to Hear From You

Back to our suspected villain...

Would you help someone if everyone else thought they were guilty?

A) Yes — if the evidence gave me reason to doubt.

B) Absolutely not. I have seen how thrillers end.

C) I’d help, but I’d tell someone what was happening first.

D) I’d investigate secretly because I have apparently learned nothing from this newsletter series.

Hit reply and tell me.

And bonus question:

What book villain turned out to be completely different from what you expected?

No spoilers if you can help it.

Some of us have very ambitious TBR piles.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may have to decide whether we’d delete the evidence that could save someone... if saving them meant exposing someone we love. Nothing complicated there.

Halloween reading doesn’t always have to mean ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. Sometimes it means witches, mysterious creatures, interactive adventures, adorable bats, and yes... chickens traveling through time.

Because apparently Halloween books can contain just about anything, and I fully support that!

In this episode of The Brave Bookshelf with Kim Bartosch, I’m sharing 10 fun and wonderfully unusual children’s books that families can enjoy during Halloween and throughout the spooky season.

Some are creepy. Some are silly. Some are sweet. And others are just delightfully strange.

Whether you’re looking for a not-too-scary bedtime story, a fun read-aloud, an interactive adventure, or something completely unexpected, there’s a little something for every young reader.

📚 The 10 Books Featured in This Episode

1. 🐔 Time-Traveling Chickens: Bawk to the Future by Kaz Windness

2. 🐔 Time-Traveling Chickens: Nugget and Tenders’s Eggcellent Adventure by Kaz Windness

3. 🕸️ The Nest by Kenneth Oppel, illustrated by Susan Kao

4. 🧠 Create Your Craniacs Quest with...: Escape from the Chrome Dome by R.L. Stine, illustrated by Joe Simko

5. 🎃 Halloween Baby! by Karen Katz

6. 👀 I Want Every Thing by Sophy Henn

7. 🦇 Bitsy Bat Snow Star by Kaz Windness

8. ✨ The Tiny Thing by Ellen Tarlow, illustrated by Laren Stringer

9. 🔎 Have You Seen Axel? by Adam Jay Epstein and Ruth Chan

10. 🚀 I Need Space by Molly Harris, illustrated by Jon Corby

👻 A Little Something for Every Reader

One of my favorite things about putting together book lists is finding stories that celebrate all kinds of readers.

Some kids love a good scare. Others prefer something funny or quirky. Some want a mystery, while others enjoy books filled with imagination and surprises.

And some just want time-traveling chickens. Who am I to argue?

The wonderful thing about Halloween reading is that there’s room for all of it. You don’t have to love scary stories to enjoy spooky season.

So grab your favorite blanket, maybe a piece of Halloween candy (or three), and join me as we explore 10 books that deserve a spot on your family’s bookshelf.

💬 Let’s talk books!

What are your family’s favorite Halloween or not-so-spooky reads? Do your kids prefer creepy stories, funny adventures, or something wonderfully weird?

I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments!

Happy reading, and have a wonderfully spooky season!

— Kim Bartosch

The Brave Bookshelf | Children’s Books, Reading Adventures & Stories Worth Sharing

Dear Brave Reader,

I have a question for you.

If you believed the Menendez brothers’ accounts of the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of their father, would you still find them guilty of murder?

I’ve been thinking about this since watching Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

And I have some thoughts.

The brothers admitted to killing their parents. That isn’t in dispute. But what has stayed with me is the question of why.

Their defense argued that years of abuse and fear led them to believe their lives were in danger. The prosecution painted a very different picture: two privileged young men who murdered their parents for their inheritance.

And then there was all that spending after the murders.

For the prosecution, that supported the argument that greed was the motive.

But I saw it differently.

What if spending that money wasn’t about greed? What if it was about freedom?

I kept wondering whether buying expensive things was their way of saying one final fuck you to a father they described as controlling and abusive.

I wondered whether money had been another weapon in that household. Another way to demand obedience. Another way to remind them who held all the power.

That’s my interpretation, not something I can prove. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And their mother?

That part made me angry, too.

The brothers alleged that she knew about the abuse and failed to protect them. If that’s true, I find it heartbreaking and infuriating. A parent is supposed to be the person you can turn to when someone hurts you.

What happens when that person looks the other way?

Of course, I don’t know everything that happened behind closed doors. None of us watching a dramatized television series can claim that we do. And the distinction between understanding someone’s actions and legally justifying them matters.

Still, I keep returning to one uncomfortable question.

How much should a history of abuse change the way we judge someone who commits a terrible act?

I don’t have a tidy answer. But I do think it’s a conversation worth having.

📚 From My Brave Bookshelf: A Lake with No Bottom by H. D. Hunter

Speaking of painful histories and the truths people would rather bury, I recently finished A Lake with No Bottom by H. D. Hunter, and this one gave me a satisfyingly thrilling read.

The story follows Sidney Cromwell, who moves from Atlanta to rural Forsyth County, Georgia. All he wants is to fit in at his new high school.

But after nearly drowning in Lake Lanier, he begins experiencing terrifying visions and encounters with spirits connected to Oscarville, a Black community whose history lies beneath the man-made lake.

And those spirits have unfinished business.

One of the things I enjoyed most was Sidney and his new friend, Amy Jade. I found both characters endearing.

And the anxiety surrounding being the new kid at school?

Been there. Done that.

I know how uncomfortable it can feel trying to find your place somewhere unfamiliar, especially when all you want is to belong. I thought H. D. Hunter did a wonderful job capturing that feeling.

I also loved the folklore surrounding Lake Lanier.

There’s something about a haunted lake, mysterious deaths, buried history, and spirits demanding to be heard that immediately gets my attention.

Add in the gothic elements Hunter weaves throughout the story, and I was sold.

But what makes the premise especially disturbing is the human element.

Sidney is trying to uncover a history that people around him would rather ignore. And the more that history is denied, the angrier the spirits become.

The supernatural horror is frightening, but so is the idea of an entire community refusing to acknowledge the suffering that came before it.

For me, the mix of folklore, gothic atmosphere, history, and characters I genuinely cared about made this a satisfying thriller.

If you enjoy supernatural stories with a historical backbone and a little gothic darkness, this one might be worth adding to your bookshelf.

This book is a part of a book tour with Toppling Stacks Tours.

Check out my full review and get the book:

Before You Go…

I’m curious about where you stand on the Menendez brothers.

If you were sitting on that jury and believed the abuse they described, would you have voted guilty or not guilty?

And can you understand why someone might commit an act of violence without believing that act was justified?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, even if they differ from mine.

Until next time, keep reading bravely.

Kim Bartosch

The Brave Bookshelf Dispatch • Young Adult Author • Bookilicious

P.S. Do you like watching true crime or retellings of true crime murders? I must admit it’s been my guilty pleasure lately. 😅😅

The one with boarded-up windows, an overgrown yard, and a front porch that looks like it might collapse if you sneeze too hard.

Nobody lives there. At least, that’s what everyone says.

Some claim a family disappeared without a trace. Others swear they’ve seen lights flickering in the upstairs windows.

And, of course, there’s always someone who knows someone who went inside and was never quite the same afterward.

You know the house I’m talking about.

So this week’s question is:

Would You Enter the Abandoned House?

Now imagine you’re standing outside it with your friends on a chilly October night.

One of them pulls out a crisp $100 bill.

“I dare you to go inside. Five minutes. That’s all.”

You laugh. Because obviously, you’re not stupid.

Then someone mentions that the house might hold the answer to a mystery you’ve been trying to solve.

Suddenly, five minutes doesn’t sound so bad.

So, what would YOU do?

🚪 A. Take the $100. Five minutes is nothing. Right?

🏃 B. Absolutely not. You’ve read enough thrillers to know how this ends.

🔦 C. Forget the money. If there are answers inside, you’re going in.

👀 D. Convince your friend to go first. That’s what friends are for.

Hit reply with A, B, C, or D. I want to know who’s surviving this YA thriller and who’s becoming the cautionary tale in chapter one.

Personally, I think the smartest character is the one who stays on the sidewalk. But where’s the fun in reading about that?

📚 What I’m Reading: Best in Murder by Lauren Carr

What’s the book about?

The trouble begins at the Mid-Atlantic Classic Kennel Club Invitational—Best in Show, held at the Spencer Inn. A priceless platinum-and-diamond collar disappears, turning an elegant event into the setting for a high-profile theft. Then two women connected to the show are murdered, and the investigation takes a much darker turn. Suddenly, far more is at stake than an expensive accessory or a coveted ribbon.

Mac Faraday and his German Shepherd, Gnarly, enter a world filled with valuable dogs, fiercely competitive owners, and egos that could probably use their own obedience classes. A missing Irish Wolfhound adds another layer to the mystery, while friction between Spencer PD and the county sheriff’s office complicates matters further.

My Rating: ⭐4.8/5

Best in Murder surprised me in the best way. Mac’s wit, Gnarly and Storm’s involvement, and the dog-show setting made this my favorite installment so far. It gave me an investigation I had fun following and a cast I genuinely liked. If you enjoy your mysteries with humor, memorable sleuths, and plenty of canine mischief, this one belongs on your reading list. Just don’t expect the dogs to observe resort etiquette.

🐾 Want the full scoop?

Read my complete review and get the book, Canine Chaos and a Mystery Worth Sniffing Out, for more of my thoughts on Best in Murder.

Until next time, stay curious, trust your instincts, and maybe don’t follow strange noises into abandoned houses.

Happy reading!

Kim

P.S. Be honest. Would you enter that house for $100? Or would it take the possibility of uncovering a secret to get you through the door?

Hi Bookish Friends! 🎃📚

Halloween has changed.

And maybe I notice it more because I grew up in the ’80s.

When I was around ten or eleven — maybe even younger — I remember heading out into the neighborhood with my friends to trick-or-treat.

No parents walking ten feet behind us.

No location sharing.

No group texts asking where we were.

No phones at all.

We just… went.

House to house.

Street to street.

Probably farther than we had any business going.

And somehow, at the end of the night, we made our way home with pillowcases full of candy and absolutely no photographic evidence of where we had been.

Which, looking back now?

Feels a little wild.

Halloween Then vs. Halloween Now 🎃

The Halloween I remember from the ’80s felt much more kid-driven.

You met up with friends.

You wandered.

You decided which streets had the best candy.

You dared each other to walk up to the creepy house.

You stayed out until someone’s porch light went off or somebody finally said, “We should probably go home.”

Today, Halloween can feel much more organized.

Parents are more likely to walk with younger kids.

Some families choose trunk-or-treat events, community celebrations, or designated neighborhoods.

Phones make it easier to keep track of everyone.

And Halloween itself feels bigger.

There are elaborate yard displays.

Entire stores devoted to Halloween.

Movie tie-ins.

Licensed costumes.

Matching family costumes.

Halloween décor that starts appearing when it still feels like summer.

I’m not saying one version is better.

But it definitely feels different.

And for a thriller writer?

That difference is fascinating.

In my research, I found even more thriller-worthy material hiding in Halloween memories from the ’80s.

PopSugar.com brought up the Tylenol scare, and I don’t know if anyone else remembers this, but it changed the way a lot of parents looked at Halloween candy.

There were stories about tampered medicine, razor blades hidden in candy, and other scary rumors about people putting dangerous things into treats meant for kids.

I remember coming home from trick-or-treating and immediately dumping all my candy onto the floor so my mom could inspect every single piece.

If the wrapper looked torn, crinkled, opened, or even slightly suspicious?

Into the trash it went.

And honestly, from a thriller-writer perspective, there is so much you could do with that idea.

Maybe someone really is poisoning the Halloween candy.

Maybe a predator is targeting one neighborhood.

Or maybe someone is experimenting with a strange formula that turns unsuspecting trick-or-treaters into zombies.

See?

One childhood Halloween memory and suddenly we have three new thriller plots.

Why the ’80s Were Perfect for Kid-Led Thrillers

Think about it.

No cell phones.

No GPS.

No texting a parent.

No security cameras on every other porch.

No instant internet search when something weird happens.

If you were twelve years old and saw something suspicious?

You had to figure it out yourself.

Want to know who owns the creepy house?

Bike to the library.

Need to call your parents?

Find a landline.

Think someone is following you?

Good luck checking their social media.

That lack of instant communication gives writers so much room to create tension.

And the kids had freedom.

At least where I grew up, we were outside.

Unsupervised.

Riding bikes.

Exploring woods.

Cutting through yards.

Knocking on doors.

Going places our parents probably assumed were much closer than they actually were.

That is basically a thriller setup waiting to happen.

Why So Many Horror Stories Keep Going Back to the ’80s 📺

I don’t think it’s an accident that so many horror and mystery stories keep returning to this era.

Stranger Things may be the most obvious example.

Kids on bikes.

Walkie-talkies.

Parents who don’t know where they are half the time.

A mystery the kids have to solve themselves because the adults either don’t believe them or don’t understand what’s happening.

Then there’s Paper Girls, which begins on Halloween morning in 1988.

Four girls are out delivering newspapers before dawn.

By themselves.

Already, you have a premise that would be much harder to create the same way today.

A few other stories that use the ’80s particularly well:

• My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Set in the late ’80s, with teen friendship, horror, possession, and all the wonderfully strange cultural details of the era.

• The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson

A coming-of-age story set in the 1980s involving kids, ghost stories, urban legends, and the mysteries adults don’t always explain.

• Summer of 84 a film by RKSS on Apple TV

A group of teenage boys begin to suspect that someone in their neighborhood may be a serial killer. Naturally, they investigate.

Because apparently the official hobby of fictional ’80s kids was:

“Adults aren’t doing anything, so I guess we’ll solve it.”

And then there’s Totally Killer, which sends its teen protagonist back to 1987 and plays with all the differences between being a teenager then and now.

Not all of these are technically middle grade or YA books, but they tap into the same storytelling advantage:

Kids had space to get into trouble.

A lot of space.

Writer Aha: Take Away the Phone 📵

One reason the ’80s are so appealing to thriller writers is simple:

You don’t have to explain why the character didn’t just call someone.

That is a real problem when writing modern suspense.

You put your character in danger and immediately have to ask:

Does she have her phone?

Does she have service?

Why doesn’t she call 911?

Can someone track her location?

Did the security camera catch it?

Did anyone screenshot the message?

Technology gives characters more tools.

Which means writers have to work harder to take those tools away.

Set the same story in 1985?

Your character gets on her bike and rides into the woods.

Nobody knows where she is.

Done.

Terrifying.

Convenient.

Thank you, 1985.

And Halloween Makes It Even Better 👻

Halloween adds another layer.

Everyone is wearing costumes.

People are outside after dark.

Strangers are walking up to houses.

Masks are normal.

Someone screaming might be joking.

That person standing at the end of the street?

Probably another trick-or-treater.

Probably.

And if a kid came home in the ’80s and said:

“I think someone followed us tonight,”

there wasn’t necessarily a doorbell camera waiting to settle the question.

That uncertainty is thriller gold.

The Brave Conversation 💛

But there’s another side to all this nostalgia.

More freedom also meant kids sometimes had to handle things themselves.

Today we talk much more openly about supervision, bullying, stranger safety, mental health, consent, and when kids should ask adults for help.

That’s a good thing.

So I don’t think the interesting question is:

Were the ’80s better?

I think it’s:

What did kids gain from that independence — and what risks came with it?

Maybe that’s why the era still feels so powerful in fiction.

Kids had enough freedom to get into trouble.

And not enough technology to get out of it easily.

For a thriller writer?

That’s almost irresistible.

What I’m Reading 📚

This week, I’m sharing Night of Madness by Ryan Douglass.

About the book:

Horror fan Mara enters a contest hosted by legendary producer Jack Stanley, hoping to win $100,000 by spending the night on the set of his cult slasher Asylum. But what starts as a dream for horror lovers turns deadly fast. Trapped with four other contestants, Mara must fight to survive until morning—and face just how ruthless she’s willing to become.

What pulled me in:

Ryan Douglass delivers again! I loved Mara’s badass spirit and the unique personalities of her brother and best friend. The fast-moving plot kept me hooked, while the vivid gore and terrifying spider things had me checking under my bed. After loving The Taking of Jake Livingston, I was thrilled that Night of Madness brought more unforgettable scares.

Five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ for this creepy, action-packed read!

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the book and my honest review.

You can read my full review here and get the book:

Now I Want to Hear From You

If you grew up in the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s:

How old were you when you started trick-or-treating without your parents?

And do you think you’d let a kid that age do the same thing today?

Hit reply and tell me.

I’m especially curious to know how far everyone wandered.

Because I have a feeling our parents thought we were three streets away when we were actually halfway across town.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Thriller writers: if your plot gets stuck because everyone has a smartphone, you can always move the story to 1987. Problem solved.

Every school has that kid.

The one who doesn’t talk much.

The one who notices everything.

The one everyone labels before they ever really get to know them.

Quiet.
Weird.
Dramatic.
Too intense.
Probably imagining things.

Which is exactly why, in a YA thriller, that person is usually the one I’m watching.

Because while everyone else is busy laughing?

They’re paying attention.

So today’s question is:

Would you believe the quiet kid?

Here’s the setup:

There’s a student at your school who mostly keeps to themselves.

They sit in the back of class.

They eat lunch alone.

They barely talk unless a teacher calls on them.

Most people don’t know much about them.

Then one afternoon, they stop you in the hallway.

They look terrified.

And they say:

“Something bad is going to happen tomorrow.”

You ask what they mean.

They won’t explain.

They just tell you not to come to school.

You mention it to your friends.

They laugh.

Someone says the kid is always weird.

Someone else says they just want attention.

A teacher tells you not to feed into rumors.

Then that night, you get a message.

It’s from the quiet kid.

Just one sentence:

“I tried to warn them before, too.”

So… what do you do?

A) Believe them and stay home.

B) Go to school, but keep your eyes open.

C) Tell a trusted adult and push until someone takes it seriously.

D) Message the quiet kid back and ask them to tell you everything they know.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, understandable.

Will everyone think you overreacted?

Probably.

Will you care if something actually happens?

Absolutely not.

If you picked B, bold choice.

You are officially the main character now.

Please wear sensible shoes.

If you picked C, excellent.

You may be the only person in this story making responsible decisions.

Which, unfortunately, means nobody will listen until chapter twelve.

If you picked D, strong detective energy.

But please do not meet them alone behind an abandoned building at midnight.

We have discussed this.

Why This Setup Works So Well

I love stories where the person everyone dismisses turns out to be the one who saw the truth first.

Because the tension isn’t only:

Are they right?

It’s also:

Why doesn’t anyone believe them?

That gives a thriller two different kinds of danger.

There’s the threat itself.

And then there’s the isolation of knowing something is wrong while everyone around you insists it isn’t.

That second part can be just as frightening.

Because what happens when being quiet makes people overlook you?

What happens when being different makes people doubt you?

What happens when a kid has been labeled “dramatic” so many times that even the truth sounds like another story?

That’s where the emotional stakes get really interesting.

Writer Aha: Make the Warning Easy to Ignore ✍️

If you’re writing a thriller, one way to create tension is to give your characters a warning that sounds just believable enough to worry about — but just strange enough for everyone else to dismiss.

Maybe the quiet kid says:

“Don’t take the bus tomorrow.”

Or:

“Someone is going to disappear.”

Or:

“I saw your name on the list.”

The warning itself creates curiosity.

But the real tension comes from how everyone reacts.

Who believes them?

Who laughs?

Who gets defensive?

Who seems a little too interested in shutting the conversation down?

That last person?

I’m watching them.

A good thriller warning doesn’t always give the reader answers.

Sometimes it creates better questions.

The Brave Conversation 💛

This kind of story also gives us a way to talk about something bigger.

Kids and teens don’t all communicate the same way.

Some talk constantly.

Some need time.

Some are anxious.

Some are shy.

Some are neurodivergent.

Some have learned that speaking up gets them laughed at, ignored, or punished.

And sometimes the person saying the least is noticing far more than anyone realizes.

That’s one reason I love books that let us step into someone else’s perspective.

A story can make us stop and ask:

Who are we overlooking?

Who have we already decided not to believe?

And what would make us listen before something goes wrong?

Sometimes being heard can make all the difference.

What I’m Reading 📚✨

This week, I’m reading The Southern Sorority of Superstitious Witches by Katie Ortiz as part of a book tour with Toppling Stacks Tours.

About the book:

In Katie Ortiz’s The Southern Sorority of Superstitious Witches, three women enter an experimental university program in 1870s Alabama. Facing brutal harassment, they form a coven disguised as a sorority, using Southern folk magic to fight back—and uncover a darker threat determined to drive them out.

What pulled me in:

This book hooked me from page one! I love Lucille’s spunk, Catherine’s sweetness, and the blend of Southern folklore and witchcraft. Watching these women cast spells against their tormentors is satisfying. I wish the magic started sooner, but halfway through, I’m giving this spooky-season read 4.6 stars!

You can read my full review here:

Thank you to Toppling Stacks Tours, the author, and the publisher for including me on the tour.

Now I Want to Hear From You

What would make you believe someone everyone else ignores?

Would it be:

A) How scared they looked

B) A specific detail they shouldn’t know

C) Evidence that backs up their story

D) Just a gut feeling that they’re telling the truth

Reply and tell me.

Because in a thriller?

The quiet kid usually knows something.

The question is whether anyone listens before it’s too late.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d enter the abandoned house. Which is clearly a terrible idea. So naturally, we’re going there.

I have a confession.

If someone adds me to a giant group chat without warning, my first instinct is not:

“Oh good! New friends!”

It is:

“Why am I here, and how quickly can I mute this?”

Because group chats are chaos.

Twenty-seven notifications while you’re brushing your teeth.

Inside jokes you missed.

Someone responding only with a skull emoji.

And at least one person who somehow knows everything before everyone else.

Now put all of that inside a YA thriller?

Absolutely not.

So today’s question is:

Would you join the server?

Here’s the setup:

A friend from school sends you an invite to a private gaming server.

At first, it seems fun.

Everyone from school is there.

People are gaming together after class.

There are channels for memes, homework help, music, gossip, and whatever game everyone is currently obsessed with.

Some people use their real names.

Others have usernames you don’t recognize.

There’s even a private channel called:

#off-the-record

Which should already concern us.

But you join anyway.

Because apparently we have learned nothing from previous newsletters.

At first, it’s funny.

Someone posts a terrible cafeteria photo.

Someone else shares a meme about your math teacher.

Then a new account joins.

No profile picture.

No recognizable username.

No one seems to know who invited them.

And they start posting things.

Not jokes.

Secrets.

A screenshot of a private conversation.

A photo taken through someone’s bedroom window.

A rumor about a student that only three people were supposed to know.

Then someone asks:

Who are you?

The account replies:

You know me.

A few seconds later, you get a private message.

It contains a photo of you.

Taken yesterday.

You never posted it anywhere.

Then another message appears:

Don’t leave the server.

So… what do you do?

A) Stay in the server and watch everything because now you need to know who’s behind the account.

B) Screenshot everything, save the username, and leave immediately.

C) Message your friends privately and start comparing what everyone knows.

D) Pretend nothing is wrong while quietly changing every password you have ever created.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, I understand the curiosity.

I also need you to understand that “I’ll just watch” is exactly what people say before becoming extremely important to the plot.

If you picked B, excellent.

Evidence first. Exit second.

You may actually make it to the final chapter.

If you picked C, strong detective energy.

But choose those friends carefully.

Because if someone inside the server is leaking secrets…

Well.

That narrows things down in a very uncomfortable way.

If you picked D, relatable.

There is nothing like discovering a stranger has your photo to suddenly inspire excellent password hygiene.

Why This Setup Works So Well

A creepy server or group chat works beautifully in a thriller because you never really know who is in the room.

In person, you can see everyone.

Online?

A username could belong to your best friend.

Your enemy.

Someone pretending to be a student.

Someone who has been watching quietly for months.

And that gives thriller writers all kinds of ways to create tension.

A deleted message.

A private channel.

A screenshot with one name cropped out.

Someone leaving the server right after a secret drops.

A voice appearing in chat that no one recognizes.

Or my personal nightmare:

Someone typing…

Stopping…

Typing again…

Then disappearing without sending anything.

No thank you.

The Creepiest Part? It Feels Normal

That’s what makes online thrillers work for me.

The scary thing isn’t always some mysterious dark-web hacker sitting in a basement.

Sometimes it’s just the place everyone already hangs out.

The server where you game.

The chat where your friends joke around.

The account you’ve followed for months.

The person who always seems nice.

Then one small thing changes.

A message feels wrong.

A photo appears that shouldn’t exist.

Someone knows something they shouldn’t know.

And suddenly a familiar space feels completely different.

That’s where the thriller starts.

Writer Aha: Let the Digital Space Become the Locked Room ✍️

Classic mysteries love locked rooms.

Everyone is trapped together.

Someone is lying.

No one knows who to trust.

A private server can work the same way.

Only instead of asking:

Who was physically in the room?

The writer gets to ask:

Who had access?

That opens up so many possibilities.

Maybe someone has two accounts.

Maybe a moderator is deleting evidence.

Maybe screenshots are being altered.

Maybe the person everyone suspects isn’t even online when the messages appear.

Maybe someone outside the friend group has been watching everything.

For thriller writers, the trick is to make the technology create the mystery — not solve it too easily.

Give your characters information.

Then make them question whether they can trust it.

What I’m Reading 📚

Today, I’m sharing “Where the Light Shines In” by Jenny Mattern.

The story follows thirteen-year-old Gloria, who has been adopted into a loving family but still feels like part of her own story is missing.

She and her dad love solving crossword puzzles together, but Gloria starts to see her own life the same way — too many blank spaces and not enough clues.

For years, she has searched strangers’ faces, wondering if one of them might belong to her birth mother.

Then she finds someone who looks exactly like her.

The problem?

The woman is in an obituary.

That discovery sends Gloria on a secret mission to figure out who this woman was and whether she might be connected to her own past.

At first, getting answers feels like exactly what Gloria needs.

But the more she searches, the more lies she tells — and the closer she gets to her biological family, the farther she begins to feel from the parents who have loved and raised her.

This is an emotional story about identity, adoption, family, grief, belonging, and the complicated need to understand where we come from.

You can read my full review here:

The Brave Conversation 💛

Online friendships can be real friendships.

Gaming with someone every night can create genuine connection.

Group chats can become support systems.

Private servers can give people a place to belong.

But those spaces can also create pressure.

Who gets included?

Who gets kicked out?

Who controls the chat?

What happens when someone shares something private?

And what do you do when staying silent feels safer than speaking up?

That’s where books can help start the conversation.

Not:

“Technology is bad.”

But:

How do we use it without letting it use us?

How do we know who to trust?

When should we save evidence?

When should we leave?

When should we tell someone?

And how do we protect other people’s privacy when one screenshot can suddenly become everyone’s business?

So now I need to know:

Would you stay, screenshot everything, or leave?

Reply with A, B, C, or D and tell me your group-chat survival plan.

No essay required.

Unless you have strong feelings about mysterious usernames, secret channels, or people who say:

“Don’t worry, this server is private.”

Because that sentence alone sounds like chapter one of a thriller.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d believe the quiet kid when they tell you something terrible is about to happen.

Hi Bookish Friends! 📚🪓

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about women, murder, and the stories we tell about both.

Part of that came from watching Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.

What fascinated me wasn’t just the infamous axe-murder case.

It was the way the series connected Lizzie Borden’s story with Aileen Wuornos — two women separated by nearly a century, very different circumstances, and very different crimes, but whose names both became tangled up with the idea of the “female monster.”

And that sent my thriller-writer brain down a rabbit hole.

Because when a woman commits extreme violence, we seem to ask a different question:

What made her become this way?

Lizzie Borden and the Crime That Wouldn’t Die 🪓

Even if you don’t know the details of the case, you probably know the rhyme:

The real story is much more complicated.

In August 1892, Lizzie’s father, Andrew Borden, and her stepmother, Abby, were brutally killed inside their Fall River, Massachusetts, home.

Lizzie was eventually charged with both murders.

The case became a sensation.

Part of the fascination was the violence of the crime itself.

Part of it was Lizzie.

She came from a respectable, financially comfortable New England family. She attended church. She did not fit the image many people at the time had of someone capable of committing such a vicious crime.

There were also tensions inside the Borden household.

Andrew was wealthy but famously frugal. Lizzie and her sister Emma reportedly wanted a lifestyle more in keeping with some of Fall River’s wealthier families.

Money and property caused friction as well. Andrew transferred property to a relative on Abby’s side of the family, and that apparently contributed to tension between the daughters, their father, and their stepmother.

But whether money had anything to do with the murders remains a theory.

And then came the trial.

Lizzie was acquitted in 1893.

The jury was entirely male — women in Massachusetts were not serving on juries at the time — and historians have long discussed how nineteenth-century ideas about femininity may have influenced perceptions of her.

Could a respectable woman really commit this kind of violence?

But that wasn’t the only problem for prosecutors.

The case also involved weak forensic methods by modern standards, disputed evidence, conflicting testimony, and important evidence that was excluded from trial.

So more than 130 years later, we still have the question:

Did Lizzie Borden do it?

And that unanswered question may be exactly why we’re still talking about her.

Then There’s Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos’s story is very different.

Wuornos was a sex worker who killed several men in Florida between 1989 and 1990.

She said at various times that she had acted in self-defense after being attacked or sexually assaulted by customers. Prosecutors disputed her accounts, and she was convicted of murder and eventually executed in 2002.

Her life before the murders was filled with instability, abuse, abandonment, homelessness, and violence.

That history does not erase what she did.

But it does raise an uncomfortable question that crime stories often ask:

How much does a person’s environment matter when we try to understand violence?

Understanding something isn’t the same thing as excusing it.

And I think that distinction is where some of the most interesting thriller and horror stories live.

Why Are We So Fascinated by Female Rage?

There’s been a lot more discussion lately around what people call female-rage fiction.

It isn’t really new.

Women have been writing angry, frightened, violent, rebellious women for a very long time.

But contemporary YA, horror, and thrillers seem increasingly willing to let girls and women be furious.

Not politely angry.

Not adorably sarcastic.

Furious.

At men who hurt them.

At systems that failed them.

At families that silenced them.

At expectations about what a “good girl” is supposed to tolerate.

And sometimes, in fiction, that anger becomes monstrous.

Which is where things get interesting.

Because the monster isn’t always the girl with blood on her hands.

Sometimes the story asks us to look at everything that happened before she picked up the weapon.

5 Books for Readers Who Like Female-Rage Stories 🔥📚

1. Wake the Wild Creatures by Nova Ren Suma
A natural fit for this conversation, especially if you like stories about girls, anger, danger, and the wild places society would rather keep contained.

2. The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
One of the YA books I immediately think of when talking about female rage, violence, justice, and what happens when someone stops trusting the system to protect people.

3. The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson
A YA horror novel inspired by Carrie that tackles racism, cruelty, bullying, and what happens when years of humiliation finally explode.

4. The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
Girls are sent away because society fears their supposed power. The result is brutal, unsettling, and full of questions about misogyny, survival, and the ways women are encouraged to turn against one another.

5. The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland
Witches, murdered women, female friendship, revenge, and girls realizing that something much larger is happening around them. Dark, angry, and wonderfully creepy.

What I like about books like these is that they don’t necessarily ask us to approve of everything their characters do.

They ask us to look closer.

Some notable books you may want to consider are “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden. These hit female rage but also many other issues of trauma, abuse, gaslighting, women’s rights, and political tension.

The Brave Conversation 💛

That may be the conversation I find most interesting.

When we read about a violent woman, do we judge her differently than we judge a violent man?

How much do we want an explanation?

Does learning about trauma change how we understand someone without changing how we feel about what they did?

And why are readers so drawn right now to stories about women who stop being nice?

Those are messy questions.

Which probably explains why I like them.

Thriller writers live for messy questions.

What I’m Reading: The Antique Picker’s Daughter 📚

Last week, I finished reading The Antique Picker’s Daughter by Melanie Dugan.

I give this one 3.5 stars mainly because I think the main character Frankie, was so detached from what was happening to her, and I wanted more emotion and distress. Regardless, it did keep me hooked to the end.

This one does go into some difficult territory, including trafficking, young people who run away, vulnerability, and the dangers facing people who can disappear without enough of the world noticing.

Abandoned first by her father, and then by her mother, Frankie has been left in the care of her deeply religious grandmother. When her grandmother’s religious convictions tip into delusion, Frankie decides to run away.

Life on the street in Toronto is hard, and with winter coming, it gets tougher. This is when Frankie first meets Francis, a man old enough to be her father. He starts training her in “the game,” as she comes to call it; buying, stealing, and reselling “inventory” at inflated prices. Through winter, spring, and early summer, the two become a team, traveling around small towns and villages in southern Ontario.

As Frankie discovers, life on the road holds dangers she can’t anticipate, and her precarious world tips into disaster when Francis abandons her in an unfamiliar town. Betrayed, alone, and deserted, Frankie realizes she’s in a dangerous situation — will she be able to find her way out on her own?

What interests me about this story is the idea of the people we overlook.

Who notices when someone disappears?

Who goes looking?

And what happens when the person everyone dismisses is connected to something much bigger?

I’ll have more to say in my full review. Check it out and get the book:

You can read it here:

Content notes: trafficking, runaways, physical abuse, sexual exploitation, and rough language.

Now I Want to Hear From You

Do female-rage stories appeal to you?

And when you read about a woman who does something terrible, what interests you more:

What she did… or what happened before she did it?

Hit reply and tell me.

I have a feeling this one might start an interesting conversation.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. I’m also curious: Lizzie Borden — guilty, innocent, or permanently filed under “we are never going to know”?

There are some things I simply do not answer after dark.

A knock at the door.

A strange noise in the basement.

A text that only says, “Are you awake?”

And definitely a phone call from an unknown number.

Because nothing good starts with an unknown caller at midnight.

Nothing.

Not a prize.

Not a friendly reminder.

Not someone politely asking if you’ve considered your car’s extended warranty.

In a YA thriller, that phone call means one thing:

Your life is about to get complicated.

So today’s question is:

Would you answer the unknown caller?

Here’s the setup:

It’s late.

You’re in bed.

The house is quiet.

Your phone lights up.

UNKNOWN CALLER

You stare at it.

You should ignore it.

You know you should ignore it.

But then it rings again.

And again.

And again.

Finally, you answer.

For one second, there’s only breathing on the other end.

Then a voice says:

“I know where your sister is.”

Your whole body freezes.

Because your sister has been missing for three days.

The police think she ran away.

Your parents are falling apart.

Your friends keep texting things like, “I’m sure she’s okay,” which is meant to help but does not help at all.

Then the caller says:

“If you want to see her again, don’t tell anyone.”

So… what do you do?

A) Keep talking and try to get as much information as possible.

B) Hang up and block the number because absolutely not.

C) Record the call and tell someone immediately.

D) Pretend to stay calm while texting your best friend, “I NEED HELP,” in all caps.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, I get it.

You want answers.

You want your sister back.

You are also now emotionally attached to a very suspicious phone call, which is exactly what the villain wanted.

If you picked B, strong boundary.

Possibly smart.

Possibly the reason the caller leaves an even creepier voicemail.

If you picked C, yes.

Record. Save. Tell someone. Back up the file. Do not go wandering into an abandoned building alone because the mystery voice said so.

If you picked D, relatable.

Not the full plan, but relatable.

Sometimes panic needs a group chat before it becomes strategy.

What I’m Reading 📚📞

This week, I’m sharing Demonology for OverAchievers by Lily Anderson:

What would you be willing to do to earn a full-ride scholarship? Study harder? Join another club? Volunteer for one more extracurricular activity? How about summoning a demon?

Merritt Maldonado has spent her high school career doing everything she possibly can to stand out. She has joined clubs, taken on activities, worked hard, and built the kind of résumé that should make her an obvious choice for a prestigious full-ride scholarship.

There’s just one problem: Linus Lexington.

No matter what Merritt does, Linus seems to be right there competing with her. With the scholarship on the line and Merritt desperate to finally get an advantage, she makes what is probably the worst extracurricular decision imaginable—she strikes a bargain with a demon.

As you might expect, things do not go according to plan.

When the other scholarship applicants begin dying, Merritt realizes that her demonic deal has consequences she never anticipated. Then she discovers that Linus has somehow gotten mixed up with the same demon. Suddenly, the two rivals are forced to work together to figure out how to escape their bargain before even more people die.

This was entertaining and would be a fun read to pick up for Halloween. This was also part of a book tour sponsored by Toppling Stacks Tours.

You can find the book and read my full review here:

Why I Love This Kind of Setup

Unknown caller stories work because they put the main character in an impossible spot.

The voice on the phone may be lying.

Or telling the truth.

Or using one painful detail to pull you into a trap.

And when the missing person is your sister?

That changes everything.

Because now it’s not just a mystery.

It’s family.

It’s guilt.

It’s fear.

It’s every fight you ever had and everything you wish you had said differently.

Sister stories hit hard because sisters can be complicated.

You can love someone and be furious with them.

Protect them and resent them.

Miss them and still remember why they drove you absolutely bananas.

That’s what makes the stakes feel personal.

The Brave Conversation

This kind of story opens up a bigger conversation about fear, trust, family, and asking for help.

Because in real life, secrets can isolate people.

Fear can make someone freeze.

And a person in trouble may think they have to handle everything alone.

Books let us talk about that from a safer distance.

They let us ask:

Who would you call first?

What makes someone trustworthy?

When does keeping a secret become dangerous?

And why do we sometimes wait too long to ask for help?

So now I need to know:

Would you answer, block it, or record the call?

Reply with A, B, C, or D and tell me your unknown-caller survival plan.

No essay required.

Unless you have strong feelings about creepy voicemails, missing sisters, or people who whisper dramatically into phones.

In that case, I absolutely want to hear them.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d join the group chat. Because the scariest room at school might be on your phone.

They’re often some of the funniest, sweetest, strangest, and most eye-opening books I read.

One of my favorite things about middle grade is how many firsts the characters are experiencing.

The first crush. The first best friend. The first bully. The first big move. The first day of middle school. The first time a friendship changes. The first truly scary experience. The first time you start realizing that adults might not have absolutely everything figured out.

Okay, that last one might be the beginning of the end. 😂

There’s so much wonder at this age because the characters are still discovering who they are and how the world works. Even when middle grade stories tackle difficult subjects, there’s often still a wonderful sense of curiosity, humor, friendship, family, and possibility.

I’ve tried writing middle grade myself, and let me tell you: that voice is much harder to write than it looks.

You have to make your characters sound young without making them sound childish. You have to respect your readers and never talk down to them. Middle graders are smart, funny, observant, and extremely good at realizing when an adult is trying way too hard to sound like a kid.

So I’m still working on that particular writing muscle.

In my latest video/podcast, I’m diving into a massive middle grade book roundup featuring books and series that Simon & Schuster and their imprints have sent me. I haven’t read every title yet, but I’ve read some of the books and series represented here, and there are plenty that immediately caught my attention.

📚 Books Featured in My Middle Grade Roundup

Want to check out any of the books I mentioned? I’ve linked the titles below directly to their official Simon & Schuster pages, where you can learn more and find purchasing options.

• The Sherlock Society: Art Attack by James Ponti

• Socks & Secret Quests, Book #1 of The Wandering Shop, by Triona Murphy, illustrated by James Firnhaber

• The Intergalactics by Erik Jon Slangerup

• Adventure in the City of Stories, companion to Cousins in the Time of Magic, by Emma Otheguy, illustrated by Poly Bernatene

Venus Washington Series

• Venus Washington and the Lasagna Drama by Maisha Oso, illustrated by Courtney Lovett

• Venus Washington and the Birthday Blowout by Maisha Oso, illustrated by Courtney Lovett

• Venus Washington, Eye Spy by Maisha Oso, illustrated by Courtney Lovett

You can also find all three together in the Venus Washington Paperback Collected Set.

• R.A.P.T.O.R.: Mission Manta Ray by Philip Kavvadias

• Hardy Boys Clue Book Fall Mysteries 3-in-1: The Bad Luck Skate; The Pirate Ghost; The Great Pumpkin Smash by Franklin W. Dixon, illustrated by Matt David and Santy Gutierrez

• Muslim Mavericks: Mo Farah, the Boy Who Ran to Be Free by Dr. Seema Yasmin, illustrated by Noha Habaieb

• The Christmas Wish by Lee Heart, part of the Spotlight Sprinkles series

📚 Many of these books were generously sent to me by Simon & Schuster and their imprints for consideration. I haven’t read every title featured in this roundup yet, but I’ve read several books from these authors and series and wanted to share these new and upcoming releases with fellow middle-grade readers, parents, teachers, and librarians.

Come See Me at Funky Ferndale!

I’ll be at the Funky Ferndale Art Fair in Ferndale, Michigan, on September 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

I’ll be doing a special BOGO sale at my table. Buy one of my books or a signed book by one of my fellow SCBWI authors or illustrators, and you can choose one of these middle grade books to take home for free.

And if you’re a teacher or school media specialist, please stop by and say hello!

Any middle grade books I have left will be given away FREE to teachers and school media specialists who visit my table.

I would much rather see these books sitting in a classroom, school library, or kid’s backpack than continuing to build the increasingly dangerous literary skyscraper currently taking over my house.

So please share this with your teacher friends, librarians, school media specialists, parents, and fellow middle-grade book lovers.

And tell me: What middle-grade book made you fall in love with middle-grade fiction?

Happy reading!

—Kim

I love the idea of a sleepover.

Snacks.
Movies.
Pajamas.
Gossip whispered after midnight.
Someone’s parent yelling, “Keep it down!” from another room.

Very cozy.

Very nostalgic.

Very fun.

Unless, of course, you are in a YA thriller.

Then the sleepover is not about snacks.

It is about secrets.

And someone always suggests playing a game that should have stayed in whatever creepy corner of the internet it came from.

Or someone wants to sneak into that creepy house or building down the road.

So today’s question is:

Would you go to the sleepover?

Here’s the setup:

Your friend invites you over for a sleepover.

Nothing fancy.

Just movies, junk food, face masks, maybe some harmless gossip about school.

At first, everything feels normal.

Someone burns the popcorn.
Someone spills soda on the rug.
Someone insists they are not scared of horror movies, then watches half the movie through their fingers.

A normal night.

Then someone pulls out their phone.

“There’s this game everyone’s playing,” she says.

No one remembers downloading the app.

No one remembers making an account.

But somehow, the app knows everyone’s names.

The game is simple.

Tell the truth.

Or take the dare.

At first, the questions are silly.

Who do you like?
What’s your most embarrassing moment?
Who would you never sit with at lunch?

Then the questions turn sharper.

Who lied today?

Who stole something?

Who knows what really happened last Friday?

The room goes quiet.

Then the app sends one more message:

No one leaves until everyone plays.

So… what do you do?

A) Play the game because it’s probably just messing with everyone.

B) Fake being asleep and hope no one notices.

C) Call for a ride immediately because absolutely not.

D) Pretend to play while taking screenshots like the tiny detective you are.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, I am worried.

You are fun, brave, and possibly the reason the second half of the book happens.

If you picked B, relatable.

Not heroic, maybe, but sometimes survival looks like pulling a blanket over your head and refusing to make eye contact with evil technology.

If you picked C, excellent choice.

Will everyone call you dramatic? Probably.

Will you be alive for breakfast? Also probably.

If you picked D, strong thriller instincts.

Screenshots, suspicion, and snacks. That is a survival plan I can support.

What I’m Reading 📚🧟‍♂️

This week, I’m sharing Zombie Zoo: Adventures in Tub by Melanie Abed, the first book in the Felix & Ninja series.

And honestly?

You had me at bioluminescent green goo turning orphans into wood-eating zombies.

This YA mystery (Toppling Stacks Tours says it’s YA, but to me I would say it’s middle-grade) sounds creepy, funny, weird in the best way, and packed with the kind of kid-powered investigation I love. Thirteen-year-old Felix is a naturalist who would much rather stay in his tree fort with his field journal, observing the world from a safe distance.

Relatable.

But when a strange plague starts spreading through the wooden island town of Spinachi, Felix can’t just hide and take notes anymore.

Someone caused this.

Someone is still out there.

And now Felix has to team up with Ninja, a shadow-dwelling orphan who trusts pretty much no one.

I love that pairing already.

Felix uses science, observation, and data.

Ninja uses instinct, stealth, and spycraft.

Together, they have to figure out who released the plague, find a cure, and survive a town where buildings are collapsing, loyalties are cracking, and the zombies are literally eating the place.

No pressure.

Just a normal day involving goo, sabotage, and possible doom.

This one sounds great for readers who like spooky mysteries, STEM clues, oddball friendships, and stories where being different might be exactly what saves everyone.

You can read my full review here:

Why I Love This Kind of Setup

Sleepover stories work because they trap characters in a place that should feel safe.

A friend’s house.

A bedroom floor covered in blankets.

A kitchen full of snacks.

A group of people who are supposed to have your back.

But then one little thing shifts.

A game gets too personal.

A secret comes out.

Someone laughs at the wrong moment.

Someone stops laughing completely.

And suddenly, the safest room in the house feels like a locked box.

That’s what makes friendship thrillers so good.

The danger is not always outside the window.

Sometimes it is sitting beside you, holding a phone, smiling like nothing is wrong.

The Brave Conversation

This kind of story opens up a conversation about friendship, anxiety, peer pressure, privacy, and the fear of being left out.

Because saying no sounds easy when you are not the one in the room.

But when everyone is staring?

When the group is laughing?

When you worry that refusing to play will make you the next target?

That choice gets harder.

Books let us talk about those moments from a safer distance.

They let us ask:

What does real friendship look like?

When does teasing go too far?

Why do people stay in situations that make them uncomfortable?

And how do we know when it is time to leave?

So now I need to know:

Would you play, fake being asleep, or call for a ride?

Reply with A, B, C, or D and tell me your sleepover survival plan.

No essay required.

Unless you have strong opinions about truth-or-dare games, suspicious apps, or people who say, “It’ll be fun.”

In that case, I absolutely want to hear them.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d answer the unknown caller. Nothing good starts with a phone call after midnight.

I want to believe I would not take life advice from a suspicious AI chatbot.

I really do.

I would ask sensible questions.

I would check the source.

I would remind myself that no app, bot, or glowing little text box should know more about my life than my own family.

And yet…

If a chatbot gave me one weirdly helpful answer?

Then another?

Then somehow knew exactly what I needed to hear while I was standing in my kitchen, drinking cold coffee, trying to remember if I moved the laundry?

I might keep asking questions.

Just one more.

For research.

Which, as we know, is how the trouble starts.

So today’s question is:

Would you trust the AI chatbot?

Here’s the setup:

A new chatbot app starts making the rounds at school.

At first, everyone treats it like a joke.

Ask it who has a crush on you.

Ask it what grade you’ll get on your math test.

Ask it what your teacher really thinks when the class “forgets” homework.

Harmless, right?

Then the answers get weird.

Not scary at first.

Just… accurate.

It reminds someone to bring an inhaler before gym class.

It tells another student not to take the shortcut behind the auditorium.

It warns someone to delete a post before it ruins their friendship.

Then you try it.

You ask something small:

Should I trust my best friend?

The bot pauses.

Three dots blink.

Then it answers:

No. And you already know why.

Your stomach drops.

Because the bot is wrong.

It has to be wrong.

Right?

Then another message appears:

Ask her what she did last Friday.

So… what do you do?

A) Keep asking questions because now you need answers.

B) Delete the app immediately and pretend you never saw it.

C) Screenshot everything and test the bot with questions only you know.

D) Ask your best friend directly and try not to sound like you’re taking advice from a creepy robot.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, I understand you.

I worry for you.

But I understand you.

Curiosity is powerful. Unfortunately, in a thriller, curiosity also likes to open locked doors, click strange links, and invite chaos to sit down for coffee.

If you picked B, smart.

You may not solve the mystery, but you also may not become part of the bot’s five-step plan.

If you picked C, excellent detective energy.

Screenshots first. Panic second. Trust nothing with a cute logo.

If you picked D, brave.

Messy, but brave.

Also, please record the conversation in case your best friend says something like, “I can explain,” because that phrase has never helped anyone in a thriller.

What I’m Reading 📚

This week, I’m reading Sisters Alone by Shifa Saltagi Safadi, and I’m giving it 5 stars.

This one is the kind of story that grabs your heart and then traps it in a blizzard.

It follows two sisters, Rama and Leena, who are left alone at their rural home when their father has to travel for work.

Then a sudden blizzard hits.

No power.
No food.
No shelter.
No easy way out.

Just two sisters, one storm, and all the grief, guilt, anger, and fear they’ve been carrying.

Rama is fierce and full of fire, battling intrusive thoughts while trying to keep everything together.

Leena is quiet and numb, still blaming herself for their mother’s death.

And when the storm tears through their house, the sisters have no one to rely on but each other.

I love stories about sisterhood, survival, and the hard, complicated ways people love each other when they’re scared.

Especially when the danger outside forces the truth inside to come out.

You can read my full review here: [INSERT REVIEW LINK]

Content notes: death of a parent, hospitalization, medical content, hypothermia, grief, anxiety, and panic attack.

Rep: Syrian-American, Muslim, Anxiety

Read my full review and get the book 👇

The Kill App Connection with AI Chatbot Scenerio

This is one of the reasons I love writing tech thrillers.

Technology does not have to look scary to be scary.

Sometimes the most dangerous thing is not a monster in the woods.

It is a notification.

A message.

An app that says, “I can help.”

In The Kill App, Rae joins an anonymous support app because she needs somewhere to put all the fear, anger, and survival mode she’s been carrying.

At first, the app feels like a safe place.

Then names from the app start turning up dead.

And Rae realizes the app is not just listening.

It is choosing.

That’s the question that keeps pulling me back to tech thrillers:

When does help become control?

And how do you know when something that feels safe has started watching you too closely?

The Brave Conversation

This kind of story opens up a bigger conversation about trust, privacy, friendship, and how much advice we should take from technology.

Because teens are growing up with tools that can answer questions fast.

Homework questions.

Friendship questions.

Mental health questions.

Questions they may be afraid to ask out loud.

That does not make technology evil.

But it does mean we need to talk about it.

Who do we trust with our secrets?

When should we ask a person instead of a program?

Can advice be useful and still be unsafe?

And what do we do when a tool makes us doubt someone we love?

So now I need to know:

Would you keep asking questions if the answers were actually useful?

Reply with A, B, C, or D and tell me your chatbot survival plan.

No essay required.

Unless you have strong feelings about AI, creepy apps, or friends who suddenly act weird after Friday.

In that case, I absolutely want to know.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d go to the sleepover. Snacks, secrets, and one game nobody should play.

Hi friends,

This week, I fell into another internet rabbit hole.

Which, honestly, is starting to feel less like a bad habit and more like research.

The topic?

D4vd.

Or more specifically, the murder-trial chatter I somehow just found out about online.

Please forgive me. I am old, as my teen son likes to remind me, and apparently always three trends, two memes, and one suspicious YouTube video behind.

I haven’t even listened to his music yet.

I know.

My teenager is probably somewhere shaking his head in disappointment.

But what caught my attention wasn’t just the online story people are discussing now. It was how D4vd became famous in the first place.

Because that part?

That feels like a whole new world compared to when I was growing up.

So grab your coffee, tea, or emotional support bookmark.

It’s time for another Brave Bookshelf Dispatch.

📁 THE BRAVE BOOKSHELF CASE FILE

Case: When the internet turns an everyday person into someone everyone knows.

Back when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, becoming famous felt almost impossible unless someone else opened the door.

You needed a record label.
A producer.
An agent.
A manager.
A person in a suit who decided whether you were worth the risk.

There were gatekeepers everywhere.

And most regular people never got close enough to knock.

Now?

Someone can make music from home, post online, build a following through YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, gaming spaces, streaming platforms, or whatever app my son will have to explain to me next week…

And suddenly they’re not just a kid making something in their room.

That is exactly what happened to David Burke. Burke began composing music in 2021 for his Fortnite gameplay montages. He first achieved commercial success with his 2022 singles "Romantic Homicide" and "Here with Me", both of which earned multiple platinum certifications and were recorded in his sister’s bedroom closet.

Now D4vd is a name.

A brand.

A person strangers feel like they know.

That is amazing.

And also completely terrifying.

Because the internet can give someone a career before they’ve even had time to figure out who they are.

One day you’re making music, videos, edits, jokes, art, or posts from your bedroom.

The next day, people are watching.

Commenting.
Judging.
Digging.
Shipping.
Accusing.
Defending.
Turning your life into content.

And as a thriller writer, my brain immediately goes:

What happens when fame finds you too fast?

💻 KIM VS. THE INTERNET

This week’s question:

Can the internet make someone famous before they’re ready to be known?

Because that’s the part I keep thinking about.

So why did I choose D4vd for this example? Well, here is a little bit about him. D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, is one of those artists who shows how much fame has changed. As mentioned earlier, instead of coming up through the old-school route of record labels, producers, and industry gatekeepers, he built attention online first. He started creating music while also being connected to gaming and online platforms, and his songs gained traction through places like TikTok, YouTube, and streaming apps.

What pulled me into the D4vd story was his recent arrest and the disturbing online discussion surrounding reports of a dismembered body of a 14-year-old girl found in a Tesla connected to him, along with allegations involving having sex with this minor and claims about a possible murder motive tied to exposure before his tour and reissue of Withered.

I’m still catching up on the details — again, please forgive me, I am old, as my teen son likes to remind me — so I don’t want to treat internet claims like proven fact. You can Google “D4vd,” and you’ll get all the details I may have missed.

I’m not going to pretend I know everything about the D4vd situation. I just stumbled into the conversation, blinked, and thought:

Wait.

How did we get here?

But I do know this:

The way people become famous has changed.

A lot.

And that change is fascinating from a story point of view.

Because the internet doesn’t just create fans.

It creates detectives.

Some helpful.
Some not so helpful.
Some who should maybe drink water and step away from the comment section.

Online fame can turn strangers into investigators, critics, defenders, conspiracy builders, and people who believe they have a right to every private detail of someone’s life.

That is a lot of pressure.

Especially for young artists.

Especially for teens watching it happen and thinking fame looks easy.

Because from the outside, it can look like magic.

Post the song.
Go viral.
Get followers.
Get streams.
Get noticed.
Escape your regular life.

But thrillers know better.

Thrillers ask:

What does fame cost?
Who is watching?
Who is lying?
What gets hidden when everyone is looking at the wrong thing?
And what would you do to keep your fame and fortune?

That last one gives me chills. Because we know what D4vd was allegedly willing to do. Murder.

Not cute little spooky-season chills.

More like “maybe I should clear my search history and go fold laundry” chills.

📚 BOOKS THAT START THE CONVERSATION

This would make such a good thriller.

Not the real story exactly.

Because lawsuits exist.

And I enjoy not being sued.

But the idea of it?

Oh, absolutely.

Imagine a teen musician who becomes famous by accident.

He starts posting songs online because he needs music for his own videos. Maybe gaming clips. Maybe short films. Maybe he just wants to make something that belongs to him.

Then one song goes viral.

At first, it’s exciting.

Followers.
Interviews.
Fans.
Messages from people who say his music saved them.
A label that suddenly wants him.
A manager who says, “Trust me.”

But then something terrible happens.

A murder.

A missing fan.

A friend who knew him before he became famous.

And suddenly the internet does what the internet does.

It starts building its own version of the truth.

Clips get taken out of context.
Lyrics become “evidence.”
Old posts get pulled apart.
Fans turn on each other.
Someone starts posting anonymous messages that sound like clues.

And the main character has to figure out what really happened before the online story becomes the only story anyone believes.

Tell me that is not a thriller.

Actually, don’t tell me.

I’m already suspicious of everyone in this imaginary book.

🔪 THRILLER THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

Here’s the version my brain started writing without permission:

A teen boy becomes famous after one song goes viral from his bedroom.

He thinks music is his way out.

Out of his small town.
Out of family stress.
Out of being invisible.

Then one of his biggest fans disappears after a concert.

The police ask questions.

The internet asks louder ones.

Everyone starts dissecting his lyrics, convinced he confessed to something in a song he wrote months before anything happened.

But the real clue isn’t in the song.

It’s in an old gaming video.

A reflection in the screen.
A voice in the background.
A username no one noticed.
A person who was there before the fame, before the fans, before the world started watching.

And the scariest part?

The killer knows the internet is easier to manipulate than the police.

See?

This is why I cannot casually learn about anything.

My brain immediately turns it into a body count.

📚 WHAT I’M READING RIGHT NOW

This week, I’m reading a middle-grade novel, “Wish You Well” by Jamie Sumner, and I’m giving this one 5 stars.

It’s emotional.

It’s heartbreaking.

And these characters?

They have completely grabbed me by the heart and said, “You’re coming with us.”

The story follows Violet Marino, who does not want sympathy. She does not want people fussing over her. She does not want new friends.

She wants to play soccer and deal with the whole slowly-going-blind thing on her own terms.

Which I love.

Because Violet is feisty in the best way.

She’s hurting, but she is not fragile.
She is scared, but she is not helpless.
She has walls up, but you can feel why they’re there.

Then she meets Wyatt, who is charming, dangerous in the “this kid has terrible ideas” kind of way, and living with a newly transplanted heart.

And Noor?

Sharp as a blade.

Armed with excellent snacks she can’t eat because of chemo.

These three kids should not work together.

Which, of course, means they absolutely do.

When a wish-granting foundation keeps calling, Wyatt comes up with a plan: team up and game the system. One wish is fine. But three sick kids on three epic adventures?

That’s history-making.

At first, it sounds like a scam.

Then it starts to feel like friendship.

And that’s where the book gets you.

Because when you finally let people in, you also give them the power to hurt you.

Or leave.

Or matter.

A lot.

💛 The brave conversation: This book opens up questions about illness, friendship, independence, fear, and what it means to be seen as a person instead of a diagnosis.

📖 The hook: Three kids with big diagnoses and bigger personalities team up to scam a wish-granting foundation, and somehow it becomes an emotional joy ride.

👀 Who might connect with it: Middle grade readers, reluctant readers, teachers, librarians, parents, and anyone who loves stories about messy friendships, brave kids, and characters with huge hearts and even bigger attitudes.

🗣️ Question to ask after reading: When you’re going through something hard, is it easier to push people away or let them help?

This one is making my heart hurt in the best way.

Which is rude.

But also exactly what I want from a book. Check out my full review and get the book!

https://open.substack.com/pub/kimbartosch/p/a-heartbreaking-story-about-letting?r=5a6umq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

🎤 NEW ON THE BRAVE BOOKSHELF

In case you missed it, here’s what’s new:

📚 Latest Review: https://open.substack.com/pub/kimbartosch/p/a-twisted-psychological-thriller?r=5a6umq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

✍️ Coming Soon: More book reviews, brave conversations, spooky thoughts, and probably more proof that I cannot hear one strange internet story without turning it into a thriller.

You can catch up here:

The Brave Bookshelf with Kim Bartosch

Books, writing, and conversations that make us braver. I’m Kim Bartosch, author of "Ask the Girl" and founder of The Brave Bookshelf, where I explore children’s and YA books that tackle real-life topics with honesty and heart and, of course, thrills!

📅 AUTHOR EVENTS & BOOKISH NEWS

Here’s what’s coming up:

📍 Funky Ferndale Art Fair — September 26, 2026 10:00 am - 3:30 pm

I will be in Ferndale, Michigan, signing and selling my book “Ask the Girl” with my fellow SCBWI.org Michigan authors, and I would love for you to stop by and say hello! You can also discover and explore local art, food, and entertainment!

And behind the scenes, I’m currently working on:

🔪 The Kill App revisions
👻 More spooky bookish content
🎶 Trying not to turn viral music fame into a murder mystery
📚 Reading books that emotionally attack me and then expecting me to function like a normal person

Bold of them.

💬 YOUR TURN

Reply and tell me:

Would you read a thriller about a teen musician who goes viral and gets pulled into a murder mystery?

You can reply with just one word:

Yes, No, or Obviously.

Bonus points if you tell me what clue should crack the case:

A song lyric?
An old video?
A deleted comment?
A fan account?
A hidden username?
A recording no one was supposed to hear?

I’m nosy, but in a bookish way.

Until next time,

Kim

Author | Book Reviewer | Host of The Brave Bookshelf

P.S. I still haven’t listened to D4vd’s music yet, so yes, I am officially behind. My teen son is right. Please keep me in your thoughts during this difficult time.

There are few things more dangerous in a YA thriller than a screenshot.

Not a haunted basement.

Not a locked door.

Not even a mysterious app with a moody black icon.

A screenshot.

Because once one person sends it, suddenly everyone has it.

The group chat has it.

The friend who says, “I won’t show anyone” has it.

The person who absolutely should not have it has it.

And now everyone is asking the same question:

“Did you see this?”

So today’s question is:

Would you share the screenshot?

Here’s the setup:

You’re sitting at lunch when your phone buzzes.

Someone sent you a screenshot.

At first, you think it’s just gossip.

Messy? Yes.
Dramatic? Absolutely.
Possibly fake? Also yes.

The screenshot shows a private message from someone at school.

It could ruin their reputation.

It could expose something true.

It could also be edited, taken out of context, or completely made up.

You don’t know.

But everyone else is already sending it around.

One person says, “Forward it to me.”

Another says, “Everyone deserves to know.”

Someone else says, “If you don’t share it, you’re protecting them.”

Then the person in the screenshot texts you:

Please don’t believe everything you see.

So… what do you do?

A) Forward it because everyone else already has it.

B) Delete it and refuse to be part of the drama.

C) Ask where it came from before you believe anything.

D) Screenshot the screenshot because now you’re investigating the investigation.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, I am gently taking your phone away.

You may not have started the drama, but you are now feeding it snacks and giving it a ride home.

If you picked B, strong choice.

You have boundaries. You have peace. You may also miss three plot twists, but at least your conscience is clean.

If you picked C, excellent.

Questions save lives in thrillers. So does slowing down before helping a rumor grow legs.

If you picked D, chaotic detective energy.

Do I approve? Not fully.

Do I understand? Very much.

What I’m Reading 📚

This week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on two books:

Divine Oaths by Elizabeth Agyemang

Divine Oaths is a new adult dark romantasy that follows Sianna Adu, whose life changes after a devastating family tragedy leaves her with the ability to touch objects and glimpse the past and future. I really liked Sianna’s grit, independence, and determination to survive, and I especially enjoyed how her ability felt more like a burden than a gift.

The mystery surrounding Westfield University, its secret societies, and the curse at the heart of the story kept me interested, and the supporting characters added a lot to Sianna’s journey.

My biggest issue was the marketing. The “romantasy” label and lush fantasy-style cover made me expect elves, fairies, dragons, or a more fully magical world. Instead, this felt much closer to paranormal romance mixed with dark academia.

Not a bad read—just not quite the book I thought I was picking up. Click on my review below to learn more and get the book for yourself!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review link: https://www.kimbartosch/p/a-dark-academia-mystery-that-wasnt

The Dog Heist by Dani Jansen

The Dog Heist by Dani Jansen completely surprised me. I went in expecting a familiar rescue-the-dog story, but I quickly became invested in Caleb, Valery, and Lyra. Caleb is dealing with his parents’ separation, a move, missing his dog, and ADHD, while Valery is struggling with a best friend who suddenly seems to have no time for her. When the two realize their neighbor’s dog, Lyra, is being neglected and a hurricane is approaching, they decide to rescue her themselves.

Their risky plan brings real suspense, but the heart of the story is the unlikely friendship that grows between them. I loved how the book tackles family changes, loneliness, neurodiversity, friendship, and animal welfare without ever feeling heavy-handed. It is heartfelt, tense, funny, and easy to recommend. Teachers, parents, librarians, and young animal lovers should absolutely add this one to their shelves. Five enthusiastic stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ from me—and Akira, my dog, approves too!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Be sure to read my full top 5 reasons to read the book! Link below.

Review link: https://www.kimbartosch/p/a-rescue-mission-with-a-whole-lot

Would you share a screenshot? Hmm?

This screenshot question has me thinking about how often stories begin with one tiny thing that gets passed from person to person.

A message.

A rumor.

A photo.

A secret.

One little piece of information can change everything, especially when people react before they know the whole story.

That’s where things get messy.

And, of course, that’s where a good thriller rubs its hands together and says, “Perfect.”

So, can you? The Unspoken Rules of Screenshots

I wondered what the laws and regulations are for screenshots. I know you shouldn’t screenshot personal items, such as medical records. But what is the etiquette, and are we passing this along to teens and tweens? (Or children, because some 8-year-olds have fancier phones than I do…lol 😅)

So I ran across a great article on TheTeenMagazine.com, Can I Screenshot This? The Unspoken Rules of What Can and Can’t Be Shared by Maya Steever, published Aug. 4, 2026.

There really aren’t too many regulations regarding screenshots except for two. The first is copyright laws protecting photographers, artists, illustrators, or any other creator’s work. The second is a law meant to protect people from the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images, often called revenge porn, when someone distributes private photos of a person or a current or former partner without permission. This kind of cybercrime becomes even more serious when children are involved, which sadly happens far too often.

This leads me to the etiquette of screenshots that aren’t breaking the above-mentioned laws. Most say it’s a great way to capture data, a website, or information to use later. Or to capture a criminal post made online to give to the police, but as Steever mentions, most found it embarrassing when their conversations were screenshotted for others to see and felt it was a violation of their trust.

The scary part is how ordinary it all feels.

A screenshot looks simple.

A quick forward.

A tiny tap.

A “Did you see this?” moment.

But once something spreads, it can be almost impossible to pull back.

And if it turns out to be fake?

Or private?

Or meant to hurt someone?

That one tap can do a lot of damage.

Why I Love This Kind of Setup

Screenshot stories work because they make everyone part of the mystery.

Not just the person who sent it.

Not just the person in it.

Everyone who sees it has to make a choice.

Forward it.

Delete it.

Question it.

Ignore it.

Use it.

Protect someone.

Expose someone.

Believe it.

Doubt it.

And in a thriller, the screenshot is never just a screenshot.

It’s evidence.

Or bait.

Or a trap.

Or the first clue that someone is controlling the story before the main character even knows there’s a story to solve.

That’s what makes it so creepy.

The danger doesn’t always come from a masked killer in the woods.

Sometimes it comes from a phone lighting up at lunch.

The Brave Conversation

This kind of story opens up a conversation about rumors, privacy, consent, and how fast people can be hurt online.

Because “don’t spread gossip” sounds simple.

But what happens when everyone else is sharing it?

What happens when staying quiet makes people think you’re taking a side?

What happens when the screenshot might be true, but sharing it still feels wrong?

And what happens when it is not true at all?

Books give us a way to talk about these choices without pointing fingers at one person or one situation.

They let us ask:

When should we pause?

When should we question what we see?

When should we protect someone’s privacy, even if the whole school wants the story?

So now I need to know:

Would you share it, delete it, or ask questions first?

Reply with A, B, C, or D and tell me your screenshot survival plan.

No essay required.

Unless you have very strong feelings about group chats, messy rumors, or people who say, “I’m only sending it to you.”

In that case, I absolutely want to know.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d trust the AI chatbot. Which sounds helpful until it starts giving advice about people it should not know.

Books, brave conversations, author news, and one internet thing I’m probably overthinking.

Hi friends,

This week, the internet sent me into the desert.

Not literally.

Although after my Sedona trip, I would not complain.

But I’ve been thinking about the water crisis in the Southwest, the Colorado River debates, and how people in power can argue for so long that the people in the middle are left standing there with an empty cup.

Which, honestly, sounds less like politics and more like the opening chapter of a dystopian thriller.

So grab your coffee, tea, or emotional support bookmark.

Maybe also a glass of water.

It’s time for another Brave Bookshelf Dispatch.

📁 THE BRAVE BOOKSHELF CASE FILE

Case: When everyone is fighting over water, who gets left thirsty?

The Colorado River has been at the center of a long, complicated debate between states, farmers, cities, lawmakers, tribes, environmental groups, and communities that all depend on the same shrinking supply of water.

And when water gets scarce, people get angry.

Very angry.

Not “someone ate the last piece of cake” angry.

More like “our farms, homes, jobs, history, and future are tied to this river” angry.

Which makes sense.

Water is not optional.

You can argue over budgets.
You can argue over roads.
You can argue over who gets the good parking spot.

But water?

That is survival.

And what keeps bothering me is how often these debates turn into people standing on opposite sides, shouting about who is right, while the people in the middle are the ones suffering.

Families.
Farm workers.
Small towns.
Tribal communities.
Kids growing up in places where adults keep promising solutions that never seem to arrive.

That’s the part that makes my author brain pause.

Because in every good thriller, the scariest thing is not always the villain.

Sometimes it’s the system.

The rules.
The loopholes.
The delays.
The people protecting their own interests while everyone else waits for help.

And when the resource everyone needs is water?

That story gets scary fast.

💻 KIM VS. THE INTERNET

This week’s question:

What happens when people are too angry to negotiate?

Because that’s what this made me think about.

Negotiation is not fun.

No one writes a dramatic movie trailer voiceover that says:

“In a world… where people sit down calmly and compromise.”

Although, honestly, that might be the fantasy novel we need right now.

But when people refuse to negotiate, the people with the least power usually suffer first.

The people who cannot hire lawyers.
The people who cannot move.
The people whose voices are easy to ignore.
The people who need the adults in charge to stop fighting long enough to fix the actual problem.

And this is where I think books can help.

Because stories let us ask:

What does justice look like when everyone needs the same thing?
Who gets protected when resources run low?
Who decides whose home matters?
And how do people learn to work together when they have every reason not to trust each other?

Those questions belong in real life.

But they also belong in thrillers.

In dystopian books.
In fantasy novels.
In stories where a river dries up and suddenly all the secrets buried in the canyon start showing.

Which brings me to Antelope Canyon.

Because apparently my brain cannot see a beautiful natural wonder without asking:

“Okay, but what if it was haunted, magical, cursed, or hiding something ancient?”

This is why I can’t have normal vacations.

📚 BOOKS THAT START THE CONVERSATION

Water stories are powerful because water is emotional.

It can heal.
It can destroy.
It can divide people.
It can bring them home.

And in fantasy, water can become even more interesting.

Imagine a world inspired by Antelope Canyon, where the canyon walls hold old magic and the river once carried messages between realms.

But now the water is disappearing.

Not because of drought alone.

Because someone is holding it back.

A kingdom upstream says they are protecting their people.
A kingdom downstream says they are being slowly murdered.
The leaders refuse to meet.
The priests blame a curse.
The rich buy private wells.
The poor wait in line with empty jars.

And in the middle?

A teen girl who can hear the canyon whisper when the wind moves through the stone.

At first, everyone thinks she’s imagining it.

Because of course they do.

No one ever believes the girl hearing voices in a canyon until the ancient door opens and something with teeth crawls out.

Fantasy rule.

Probably.

🔮 STORY IDEA OF THE WEEK

Here’s the Antelope Canyon fantasy idea my brain started building:

A teen girl lives in a desert city where water is controlled by two rival kingdoms.

One kingdom owns the source.
The other owns the canyon.
Neither trusts the other.

For years, they’ve argued over old treaties, broken promises, and who deserves more water.

Meanwhile, the people in the middle are suffering.

Then the girl discovers that Antelope Canyon is not just a canyon.

It is a sleeping creature.

Or a doorway.

Or maybe both, because why choose?

The carved sandstone walls are actually the bones of an ancient water dragon, and every time the river is blocked, the dragon wakes a little more.

The leaders think they are fighting over water.

But the canyon knows the truth:

The river was never theirs to own.

And if they do not learn to share it, the desert will take everything back.

Tell me that would not be a fantasy novel.

Actually, don’t tell me.

I’m already attached.

📚 WHAT I’M READING

This week on The Brave Bookshelf, I’m talking about:

MirrorWoven by Bori Cser

You are cordially invited to the Dragon Masquerade…

And honestly, that line alone had me reaching for my fanciest imaginary cloak.

This one fits so well with my whole water-rights, desert fantasy, Antelope Canyon rabbit hole because it has everything my fantasy-loving brain wants:

👑 A runaway princess
🪞 A magically hidden identity
🎭 A masquerade
🐉 Dragons
🌊 A faraway lagoon-city
💔 Grief, secrets, court politics, and one very dangerous rule about true love’s kiss

Del has two rules:

Stay away from royalty.
Don’t fall in love.

Which, in fantasy terms, means she is absolutely going to end up near royalty and in emotional trouble.

Del is secretly a runaway princess who flees after her sister dies at the hand of her boyfriend. With a mirrorwoven face hiding who she really is, she disappears to the opaline lagoon-city of Salato, hoping to leave her past and her responsibilities behind.

But then she becomes court bard to the newly widowed First of Salato.

Because apparently keeping your head down is impossible when you’re in a fantasy novel.

What I love about this setup is how much it ties into the bigger conversation from this Dispatch:

What happens when people in power refuse to deal with the damage they’ve caused?

Del runs from a kingdom that wants her to become its new heir. Clara is trying to survive court life while people circle around her power. Nasca sounds brilliant, dangerous, and exactly like the kind of character who walks into a room and makes everyone nervous.

So yes, there’s magic.

But there’s also politics.
Grief.
Responsibility.
Secrets.
Power.
And people trying to survive systems they did not fully choose.

That’s what makes fantasy so good.

It can give us dragon masquerades and magical faces, but underneath all the sparkle, it’s still asking very human questions:

Who gets to lead?
Who gets protected?
Who gets used?
And what happens when hiding keeps you safe… but also keeps you alone?

📖 The hook: A runaway princess with a magical disguise becomes court bard in a lagoon-city, where love could expose her true identity.

💛 The brave conversation: This book opens up questions about grief, identity, duty, trust, power, and what it costs to keep yourself hidden.

👀 Who might connect with it: Fantasy readers, romantasy fans, teens who love court politics, readers who like secret identities, and anyone who hears “Dragon Masquerade” and immediately says, “Yes, please.”

🗣️ Question to ask after reading: If hiding who you are keeps you safe, when does it start becoming its own kind of prison?

You can read my full thoughts here:

And yes, between this book’s lagoon-city, court secrets, and my Antelope Canyon fantasy idea, my brain is now convinced water magic and political drama belong together.

My TBR pile is concerned.

I am not.

🎤 NEW ON THE BRAVE BOOKSHELF

In case you missed it, here’s what’s new:

📚 Latest Review:

✍️ Coming Soon: More book reviews, brave conversations, spooky thoughts, and probably more proof that every news story can become a thriller if you overthink it hard enough.

You can catch up here:

👉 The Brave Bookshelf

📅 AUTHOR EVENTS & BOOKISH NEWS

Here’s what’s coming up:

And behind the scenes, I’m currently working on:

🔪 The Kill App revisions
👻 More spooky bookish content
🌵 A possible desert fantasy involving Antelope Canyon
💧 Trying not to turn every water-rights debate into a book plot

Mixed results.

📌 A FEW RESOURCES TO CHECK OUT

Since this topic is complicated and given the debate over the Colorado River, here are a few places worth reading if you want to know more about this water crisis:

👉 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — Colorado River Basin updates: https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/
👉 The Colorado River Compact: https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g1000/pdfiles/crcompct.pdf
👉 Colorado water agency: https://cwcb.colorado.gov/
👉 California water agency: https://water.ca.gov/
👉 Arizona water agency: https://new.azwater.gov/
👉 Nevada water agency: https://water.nv.gov/
👉 Utah water agency: https://water.utah.gov/

👉 Wyoming water resources: https://seo.wyo.gov/water
👉 New Mexico water resources: https://www.ose.state.nm.us/

👉 Colorado River reporting (AP News): https://apnews.com/hub/colorado-river
👉 Colorado River reporting (High Country News): https://www.hcn.org/topics/colorado-river
👉 Colorado River reporting (NYT topic page): https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/colorado-river

👉 Tribal water rights resources (Native American Rights Fund): https://www.narf.org/topics/water-rights/
👉 Colorado River Indian Tribes: https://www.crit-nsn.gov/

Water rights are messy, and I am not a lawyer, hydrologist, or river wizard.

Sadly.

But I do think this is one of those issues where the story matters because real people are living with the consequences.

💬 YOUR TURN

Reply and tell me:

Should I write the Antelope Canyon fantasy novel?

You can reply with just one word:

Yes, No, or Obviously.

Bonus points if you tell me what should be hidden in the canyon:

A dragon?
A doorway?
A curse?
A lost city?
A ghost?
A river spirit with a very bad attitude?

I’m nosy, but in a bookish way.

Until next time,

Kim

Author | Book Reviewer | Host of The Brave Bookshelf

P.S. This is why I love traveling. I go somewhere beautiful, learn one weird fact or think about one serious issue, and suddenly my brain says, “Great. But what if there was a monster?”

I know what I’m supposed to say.

If you find an old diary hidden inside a wall, you should probably leave it alone.

Call someone.

Take a photo.

Back away slowly.

Maybe don’t read the private thoughts of a person who clearly went through a lot of trouble to hide them inside the actual house.

That would be the mature choice.

The safe choice.

The choice made by someone who does not want to become chapter four of a gothic mystery.

Unfortunately, I am nosy.

If I found an old diary hidden in a wall, I would absolutely open it.

I would tell myself I was only checking the first page.

Then I would read the second page.

Then I would make tea.

Then suddenly it would be 2 a.m., the house would creak, and I’d be whispering, “Wait… why does this sound like my family?”

So today’s question is:

Would you open the old diary?

Here’s the setup:

You’re helping clean out an old family house.

The kind of house with too many closets.

Too many framed photos of relatives who look like they know things.

Too many floorboards that complain when you step on them.

You’re moving an old bookshelf when something slips from a crack in the wall.

A diary.

Small. Dusty. Tied with a faded ribbon.

Obviously suspicious.

The first few pages are harmless.

Weather.
School.
A strange neighbor.
Someone crying at night.

Then the entries get darker.

Someone was watching the house.

Someone disappeared.

Someone in the family lied.

And then you reach the last entry.

It describes something that sounds exactly like what happened to your family.

Same date.

Same room.

Same name.

Then, from somewhere upstairs, you hear a door close.

So… what do you do?

A) Keep reading because the diary clearly wants to be read.

B) Put it back in the wall and pretend you found nothing.

C) Take pictures of every page, then start researching names and dates.

D) Call a family member and ask, “So… anything weird happen in this house?” like a totally normal person.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, you are brave, curious, and likely cursed.

I respect it.

I do not recommend it.

If you picked B, you may be the smartest person here.

Will the diary leave you alone? Probably not.

But at least you tried.

If you picked C, excellent mystery instincts.

Pictures first. Research second. Panic third. Preferably with snacks.

If you picked D, bold choice.

Family members love being asked vague, terrifying questions about old houses with no warning.

I’m sure that will go well.

Why I Love This Kind of Setup

Old diaries are dangerous in stories because they feel personal.

A diary isn’t just evidence.

It’s a voice.

Someone wrote those words because they couldn’t say them out loud.

Maybe they were scared.

Maybe no one believed them.

Maybe they knew the truth would hurt too many people.

Or maybe they were leaving a warning for whoever came next.

That’s why I love gothic mysteries and family-secret stories.

The house becomes part of the mystery.

The walls know things.

The rooms remember.

The people who came before you are not as gone as everyone wants to believe.

And once you start reading, you can’t unknow what you found.

The Ask the Girl Connection

This is one reason I love ghost stories and old secrets.

In Ask the Girl, the past is not finished.

A girl died long ago.

A family is still living with the damage.

And Lila has to face something terrifying: what if the truth has been waiting for someone to finally ask the right questions?

That’s the part of mysteries that always gets me.

The ghost is scary.

The hidden diary is scary.

The strange noise upstairs is very much not helping.

But the real fear is this:

What if your family story isn’t the whole story?

What if someone was erased from it?

What if the truth has been sitting inside the walls all along?

You can read more about Ask the Girl here:

On a different note…let me move on to a story idea for my next book. 😁

Story Spark: The Red Monster of Sedona 🐪🌵

A few weeks ago, I took a ghost tour in Sedona, Arizona, and heard a folktale that has not left my brain alone since.

Which, as a writer, usually means:
“Oh no. This might become a book.”

The story was about a terrifying red monster people claimed was roaming the deserts around Sedona, Arizona, in the late 1800s.

But the twist?

It may not have been a monster at all.

From what I remember, the “red monster” was actually a camel left behind from the U.S. Army Camel Corps experiment in 1857. The military had brought camels to the Southwest to see if they could be useful, but the plan didn’t work out. When they tried to gather the camels back up, one escaped.

And because camels are not native to Arizona, no one knew what they were looking at.

Imagine seeing a huge, strange creature moving through the red rocks, covered in red dust, with rope and bones tangled around it.

Of course people thought it was a monster.

I mean… I would have.

This folktale immediately made me think: what if this became a middle-grade mystery?

A group of kids hear the legend of the Red Monster.
Everyone says it’s just an old story.
Then they find something hidden in a wall, a diary, or an old trunk that suggests the monster may have been real.
And maybe the real mystery isn’t the camel.

Maybe it’s what people were willing to hide.

I still need to fact-check the full story, especially the names, dates, exact location, and who eventually found or shot the camel. But I love the idea of taking a strange piece of Arizona folklore and turning it into a spooky, funny, dusty middle-grade adventure.

Because sometimes monsters are not monsters.

Sometimes they are misunderstood creatures.

Sometimes they are history covered in red sand.

And sometimes they are exactly the kind of weird story that makes a writer say:

“Well… now I need to know more.”

Would you read a middle grade mystery inspired by this legend?

Or better question:

If you saw a giant red “monster” in the desert, would you investigate it… or run the other way?

I know what the smart answer is.

I also know I’d probably follow it with a notebook and snacks, of course, plenty of water cuz it’s a desert out there!

The Brave Conversation

These kind of stories gives us a way to talk about family secrets, grief, truth, and the stories people pass down.

Every family has stories.

Some are funny.

Some are sweet.

Some get told every holiday until everyone can recite them by heart.

And some stories are avoided.

Changed.

Softened.

Buried.

Books let us ask hard questions from a safe distance.

Who gets to tell the family story?

What happens when someone is left out of it?

When does protecting people from the truth become another kind of hurt?

And what do we do when the past asks to be heard?

So now I need to know:

Would you keep reading the diary?

Would you read about the Red Monster of Sedona?

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d share the screenshot. One rumor, one phone, and one very messy choice.

Books, brave conversations, author news, and one internet thing I’m probably overthinking.

Hi friends,

I recently went to Sedona, Arizona, and yes…

I went on a ghost tour.

Because apparently I cannot go on vacation like a normal person.

Some people go hiking.
Some people book spa days.
Some people look at red rocks and say, “Wow, nature is beautiful.”

I look at red rocks and say, “Okay, but where are the ghosts?”

So grab your coffee, tea, or emotional support bookmark.

It’s time for another Brave Bookshelf Dispatch.

📁 THE BRAVE BOOKSHELF CASE FILE

Case: When the ghost tour gives you fewer ghosts but more alien babies.

I’ll be honest.

The ghost tour was… okay.

Not terrible.

Not “I demand a refund and a séance” bad.

But I did wish they had actually taken us to more haunted locations instead of doing the whole:

“Five miles away, in the canyon to the east, something terrifying happened.”

Which is fine.

But also, I did not put on comfortable shoes to hear about ghosts who apparently could not be bothered to show up.

Still, the stories were wild.

We heard about Sedona vortexes/vortices, strange energy, spiritual experiences, and then somehow ended up hearing about a group of women called The Hybrid Children Community.

According to the ghost tour guide and the article I found, these women claim they have given birth to alien-human hybrid children who live on alien spaceships or another planet.

And all I could think was:

Excuse me.

That is not a side note.

That is a whole sci-fi thriller-horror novel, waving both arms in the desert.

💻 KIM VS. THE INTERNET

This week’s internet rabbit hole:

Alien hybrid children.

According to an article from DailyMail.com, (yes, I did some research :) this group of women believes they have had children with aliens, and that those children live somewhere beyond Earth.

Now listen.

I am not here to make fun of anyone’s beliefs.

But as a thriller writer?

My brain immediately opened a fresh notebook.

Because this has everything:

🌵 A desert setting
🌌 Alien claims
🌀 Sedona vortexes/vortices
👀 A group no one fully understands
👶 Children who may or may not exist
🚐 Tourists looking for ghosts and finding something much weirder
🔪 One woman who starts asking too many questions

And suddenly, my “fun vacation ghost tour” turned into:

What if the women are telling the truth?

Or worse…

What if they are not?

Because both versions are creepy.

If they are telling the truth, then we have aliens, hidden children, strange pregnancies, secret visits, and maybe a government agency quietly pretending not to know anything.

If they are not telling the truth, then we have a cult, manipulation, grief, delusion, missing people, and a community built around a shared story that may be covering something much darker.

Either way?

I’m listening.

With snacks.

From a safe distance.

📚 BOOKS THAT START THE CONVERSATION

This is why I love ghost tours.

Even when they are not perfect.

Even when the ghosts are allegedly five miles away and apparently unavailable for comment.

Ghost tours are story machines.

They take history, rumor, fear, grief, weird local legends, and that one guide with excellent dramatic pauses, and they hand writers a whole basket of “what if?”

What if the haunted hotel room is not haunted by a dead person, but by something that was never human?

What if the vortex is not spiritual energy, but a doorway?

What if a tourist joins a ghost tour and realizes the guide is leaving out the most important part of the story?

What if a group of women claiming to have alien children are not lying?

What if one of those children comes back?

See?

This is why I can’t be trusted with a vacation.

Some people bring home souvenirs.

I bring home possible murder plots.

🔪 THRILLER THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

Here’s the book idea my brain immediately started building:

A YA thriller set in Sedona.

A teen girl goes on vacation with her mom after a messy year. Maybe grief. Maybe divorce. Maybe she just needs a break from school, friends, and her phone.

They take a ghost tour because her mom thinks it will be “fun.”

It is not fun.

It is weird.

The guide keeps mentioning vortices.
A woman on the tour disappears.
The teen finds a strange symbol carved near one of the red rock trails.
Then she hears about a secret community of women who believe aliens took their children.

At first, she thinks it is ridiculous.

Then she starts seeing the same children in her dreams.

Then one of them says her name.

And suddenly the question is not:

Are the aliens real?

It is:

Why do they want her?

Tell me that is not a book.

Actually, don’t tell me.

I’m sensitive.

👻 WHAT SEDONA REMINDED ME ABOUT STORY IDEAS

This trip reminded me that inspiration does not always show up the way you expect.

I went looking for ghosts.

I got vortexes/vortices, alien children, red rocks, desert weirdness, and a ghost tour that made me say, “Okay, but can we physically go to the haunted place next time?”

And honestly?

That is kind of perfect.

Because stories are like that too.

You start with one idea.

A haunted hotel.
A strange town.
A local legend.
A woman with an impossible story.

Then something else taps you on the shoulder and says:

“What if this is actually about aliens?”

Rude.

But effective.

📚 BOOKS THAT START THE CONVERSATION

I just finished reading The Secret to Belonging by Megan E. Freeman, a YA contemporary novel in verse, and wow.

This one broke my heart in the best possible way.

It also fits strangely well with my whole Sedona/Hybrid Children Community rabbit hole, because underneath the weird alien claims and sci-fi thriller thoughts, there’s a very human question:

Where do you belong when the people who are supposed to hold onto you let go?

In this book, the main character is trying to find her place while her family is caught in the pain and chaos of helping a sibling struggling with drug addiction.

And I felt that.

Deeply.

I have a sibling who has struggled with mental illness and drug addiction, so this story hit close to home. It captures that lonely, helpless feeling of watching parents pour everything into the child who is spiraling, while the child trying to do everything “right” quietly disappears in the background.

That is such a hard thing to admit.

But this book says it beautifully.

It’s written in second person, which makes the loneliness feel even more personal. You’re not just reading about this character’s hurt — you feel like you’re standing inside it with her.

This was a 5-star read for me.

I also think it would be perfect for reluctant readers because the verse format makes it approachable, but there is so much depth here. The symbolism, emotional details, and second-person point of view would make this a fantastic book for English class discussions, especially for talking about how verse can carry story, character, and emotion with so few words.

Basically, this is one of those books that looks quiet on the outside…

And then knocks the wind out of you.

Get the book and read my full review here:

🎤 NEW ON THE BRAVE BOOKSHELF

In case you missed it, here’s what’s new:

📚 Latest Book Spotlight:

🎧 Latest Podcast/Video Episode:

✍️ Coming Soon: More book reviews, brave conversations, spooky thoughts, and probably more proof that I should not be left unsupervised on ghost tours.

You can catch up here:

👉 The Brave Bookshelf

📅 AUTHOR EVENTS & BOOKISH NEWS

Here’s what’s coming up:

📍 Funky Ferndale Art Fair— September 26, 2026
I’ll be at this art fair from 10 am to 3:30 pm with my fellow SCBWI.org Michigan authors, selling and signing my book Ask the Girl. Please stop by and say “Hi!” as well as enjoy all the fine art and food in the lovely town of Ferndale, Michigan. Hope to see you there! Click on the link above for more details.

And behind the scenes, I’m currently working on:

🔪 The Kill App revisions
👻 More spooky bookish content
🌵 Possibly turning Sedona into a sci-fi horror thriller in my head
📚 A TBR pile that did not take a vacation, apparently

Very rude of it.

💬 YOUR TURN

Reply and tell me:

Should I write the Sedona alien-hybrid thriller?

You can reply with just one word:

Yes, No, or Obviously.

Bonus points if you tell me what you’d want in the story:

Ghosts?
Aliens?
A cult?
A missing tourist?
A creepy vortex?
A teen girl who absolutely should have stayed at the hotel pool?

I’m nosy, but in a bookish way.

Until next time,

Kim

Author | Book Reviewer | Host of The Brave Bookshelf

P.S. This is why I love ghost tours. Even the okay ones hand me story ideas like, “Here, take this unsettling desert legend and make it worse.” And honestly? I respect that.

I would love to believe I’m too smart to play a creepy viral challenge.

I’m an adult.

I write thrillers.

I have seen enough movies to know that when someone says, “It’s just a game,” it is almost never just a game.

And yet…

If everyone online were talking about a challenge that promised instant attention, secret clues, and maybe a little harmless drama?

I might peek.

Not join.

Just peek.

Which, in YA thriller language, means I have already made my first mistake.

So today’s question is:

Would you play the viral challenge?

Here’s the setup:

There’s a new challenge going around.

At first, it seems harmless.

Post a photo.
Answer a question.
Tag three friends.
Share one embarrassing truth.

People at school are obsessed.

The popular kids are doing it.
The quiet kids are watching it.
The teachers are pretending they don’t know about it, which means they definitely know about it.

Then the dares start changing.

They get more personal.

More public.

More cruel.

One dare asks someone to reveal a secret.

Another tells someone to show up somewhere alone.

Then one student refuses to play.

The next morning, everyone sees a video of them crying in the hallway.

No one knows who posted it.

No one knows who runs the challenge.

Then your phone buzzes.

Your dare is ready.

So… what do you do?

A) Play the first round because it’s probably harmless.

B) Watch from the sidelines and refuse to post anything.

C) Screenshot the dare and try to figure out who’s behind it.

D) Tell everyone you’re above it, then secretly check the hashtag every ten minutes.

Kim’s Very Scientific Thriller Verdict

If you picked A, I’m worried about you.

You are fun at parties, yes.

But you are also the person in chapter two saying, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

And then the worst happens.

If you picked B, smart.

You may be bored, but you are alive. Sometimes survival looks like staying out of the group chat and eating popcorn from a safe distance.

If you picked C, excellent thriller instincts.

Screenshots are your friend. So is suspicion. So is asking, “Why does this anonymous account know everyone’s business?”

If you picked D, relatable.

Not safe. Not wise. But very relatable.

Some of us don’t want drama.

We just want to know about the drama.

There is a difference.

Mostly.

What I’m Reading

This week, I went on vacation and finished reading Dreamweaving by O.O. Sangoyomi, and it had me thinking about how fast teen drama can spread when everyone has a phone, a camera, and a front-row seat. But in Dreamweaving, it can also spread in dreams. Of course, this is a fantasy dark academia novel, so phones and electronic devices are not as important when you can do magic, right?

I liked this one and gave it 4.5 / 5 stars. If you’d like to know more about my thoughts on this book and grab yourself a copy, check out my review:

But unlike Dreamweaving, we don’t have magic. Our magic is in our technology. We often seek acceptance on social media and, in some cases, through viral challenges.

Because viral challenges can look silly at first.

A dance.
A dare.
A joke.
A trend everyone wants to be part of.

But the scary part isn’t always the challenge itself.

Sometimes it’s the pressure.

The fear of being left out.
The fear of being exposed.
The fear of saying no when everyone else is watching.

And that is exactly the kind of pressure YA thrillers love to poke with a very sharp stick.

Why I Love This Kind of Setup

Viral challenge stories are creepy because they turn attention into danger.

In a haunted house, at least you know the house is suspicious.

With a viral trend, the threat can look fun.

It has music.
Filters.
Comments.
Likes.
People laughing like nothing bad could ever happen.

Until someone gets hurt.

Until a secret comes out.

Until the challenge asks for something no one should have to give.

That’s what pulls me into these stories.

They ask the question:

How far would someone go to be seen?

And what happens when being seen turns into being trapped?

The Brave Conversation

This kind of story opens up a bigger conversation about peer pressure, online safety, humiliation, consent, and how hard it can be for teens to step away when everyone else is watching.

Because saying “just don’t play” sounds easy.

But in school?

Online?

In a friend group?

It can feel much messier.

What if everyone else is doing it?

What if saying no makes you the next target?

What if the dare seems funny until it crosses a line?

That’s why I love books that deal with these messy, scary, very human choices.

They let us ask:

Where is the line between fun and unsafe?

When does a joke stop being a joke?

And who gets hurt when everyone else is chasing attention?

So now I need to know:

What’s your personal line between fun and “absolutely not”?

Reply and tell me what would make you walk away from a viral challenge.

Would you play?

Would you watch?

Would you screenshot everything like the tiny detective you were meant to be?

No essay required.

Unless you have strong opinions about dares, hashtags, or people who say, “Come on, don’t be boring.”

In that case, I would very much like to hear them.

Warmly,
Kim

P.S. Next time, we may be talking about whether you’d open the old diary hidden in the wall. Which is obviously a terrible idea. So naturally, we’re going to discuss it.