Welcome back to After the Walk, where Link and I return from our Sunday morning stroll, and I attempt to organize my thoughts about everything I've been reading.

This week took me through horror, fantasy, romance, thrillers, and one very chaotic dungeon.

It Came From Neverland

Peter Pan was one of my favorite movies growing up, which is exactly why this book worked so well for me.

Cynthia Pelayo takes a story most of us know by heart and asks a deeply unsettling question: What if we got it wrong?

What if Peter Pan isn't the hero? What if he's the monster?

This isn't simply a fairy tale retelling. It's historical horror wrapped around childhood nostalgia and slowly transformed into something terrifying.

What impressed me most was how effectively Pelayo weaponizes familiarity. Before Peter Pan even appears on the page, you're already afraid of him. Every mention of Neverland feels wrong in a way that's difficult to articulate but impossible to ignore.

The result feels less like fantasy and more like a childhood nightmare you've somehow forgotten until now.

Headlights

I picked this up because of the cover, but I kept reading because I physically could not put it down.

Headlights begins as a dark, atmospheric serial killer thriller. A broken detective. A frozen landscape. A disturbing murder investigation.

Then the book mutates.

Every time I thought I understood what kind of story I was reading, CJ Leede pulled the rug out from under me. What starts as crime horror gradually becomes stranger, darker, and far more unsettling than I ever expected.

The body horror is intense. The imagery is unforgettable. There are scenes I genuinely wish I could remove from my memory.

And yet somehow there is also an oddly beautiful emotional core underneath all of it. I still don't know exactly how to describe this book. I only know I'm not going to stop thinking about it anytime soon.

Obstetrix

Some premises immediately grab your attention.

An OB-GYN who survives a highly publicized abortion trial is kidnapped by a religious compound and forced to provide medical care to the women living there.

I mean...how do you not pick that up?

The tension here is excellent. Once Liz arrives at the compound, the story becomes incredibly difficult to put down. The pacing moves quickly, the danger feels immediate, and the constant uncertainty kept me turning pages.

What ultimately held this back for me was emotional depth.

The situations Liz experiences are traumatic enough that I wanted a deeper exploration of her psychological state. The story raises fascinating questions about reproductive healthcare, bodily autonomy, and religious extremism, but often stops just short of fully exploring them.

Still, as a fast-paced thriller, it absolutely succeeds.

The Great Outdoors

This was exactly the palate cleanser I needed.

After being dumped for being "too high maintenance," Sadie signs up for a twelve-day wilderness trek to prove she can survive outside her comfort zone.

As someone who enjoys indoor plumbing and a cozy pillow, I found this deeply relatable.

What I appreciated most was that the story never asks Sadie to become someone else. Her growth comes from learning that she doesn't need complete control over every aspect of her life.

The romance between Sadie and Thorn develops naturally, the mountain setting is gorgeous, and the entire book feels like summer.

Did it make me want to go hiking? Absolutely not.

Did it make me want more books like this? Absolutely.

Good at Being Alive

This was the biggest surprise of the week. I expected fake dating and a travel romance. And while I definetly got those things, what I didn't expect was such a thoughtful exploration of grief.

One of the things this book does particularly well is acknowledge that grief isn't always straightforward. Sometimes the people we lose were complicated. Sometimes our relationships with them were messy. Sometimes love and resentment exist side by side.

Theo and Bex are fantastic together, but what stayed with me most was the emotional honesty underneath the romance.

This ended up being much deeper than its premise initially suggests.

The Shrouded Queen

This is one of the easiest almost-five-star books I've read recently.

The Egyptian-inspired mythology, political intrigue, hidden identities, divine powers, and shifting loyalties all worked incredibly well for me.

And then there was Samira. I LOVED her.

Every chapter from her perspective pulled me further into the story. Her growth, her secrets, and the impossible position she finds herself in made her one of my favorite fantasy protagonists I've encountered this year.

Unfortunately, the other POV had the exact opposite effect. I found Amunet frustrating, selfish, and nearly impossible to root for. Every time the narrative shifted away from Samira, I found myself impatiently waiting to return to the storyline I actually cared about.

It's a testament to how strong the rest of the novel is that I still enjoyed it so much despite that disconnect. Because make no mistake: I will absolutely be reading the sequel.

The Butcher's Masquerade

At this point, Dungeon Crawler Carl has become something much bigger than a survival story.

Early in the series, Carl was trying to survive the dungeon. Now the dungeon is trying to survive Carl.

The Butcher's Masquerade feels like a turning point. The politics become more complicated. The moral questions become murkier. The consequences become more personal.

What struck me most was how much this series continues to ask readers to think about power.

Who has it? Who deserves it? Also, I am increasingly concerned about future emotional damage.

Nasty Little Secrets

This was one of those books that reminded me why I love mysteries.

A missing sister. A decades-old murder conviction. A family that has never fully recovered from either.

The dual timelines worked beautifully here, gradually revealing information without ever feeling repetitive. Every answer created new questions, and every revelation added another layer to the mystery.

I guessed one of the twists early, but I absolutely did not guess the other.

For a debut novel, this is incredibly confident work, and I'm already looking forward to seeing what Gabbie Hanks writes next.

Final Thoughts

The books that resonated most with me this week were all asking variations of the same question: Who are we when the life we expected disappears?

• A woman confronting the horrors of her childhood.

• A detective uncovering truths he was never meant to find.

• A hiker discovering she doesn't need to control everything.

• A grieving woman learning how to move forward.

• A maid becoming something far greater than anyone expected.

• A crawler becoming a revolutionary.

Different genres. Different worlds. Same question.

📚 Full ratings, reviews, and reading updates can always be found here on Bindery and over on Goodreads.