Book Review: 14 Nights in February
14 Nights in February
Authors:
KH Johnakin
Ben Farthing
Published: January 25, 2026
Kindle: 206 pages
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: February 24- March 24, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 2 stars
Book Description:
14 chapters. 14 nights. 1 terrifying love story.
Years ago, a ghost hunt shattered Elizabeth’s life and took away the man she loved.
Now, she’s put her past behind her.
But then her old partner calls to ask a favor. His brother, Fitz, is insistent on documenting the strange activity at the Route 14 Motel. Elizabeth reluctantly agrees to help him.
The motel has a reputation: Each February, one room becomes active per night…
Fourteen rooms. Fourteen nights.
All leading to Valentine’s Day.
The hauntings are very real—restless spirits trapped in unfinished stories. Elizabeth and Fitz decide to help each ghost move on, one room at a time.
But a murderer’s ghost still stalks the motel—dangerous, powerful, and furious that someone is freeing his victims.
Amid cursed hotel rooms, vengeful ex-lovers, and rooms with only one bed, Elizabeth and Fitz will have to decide how much they’re willing to risk for love.
14 Nights in February is a horror/romcom designed to be read one chapter per day, from February 1st through Valentine’s Day—written by two authors living their own real-life love story, Ben Farthing and KH Johnakin.
Jessica’s Review:
14 Nights in February had an appealing premise and it is also an ‘advent’ book: Read a chapter a day from February 1- February 14th in time for Valentine’s Day. I enjoyed Farthing’s advent book for Halloween, The 31st Trick or Treater, so I was looking forward to this one. I wanted to see how a horror advent book for Valentine’s was going to go. We have fourteen chapters with a haunted hotel room and ghost in each: It sounds great! Knowing the co-author KH Johnakin is also his wife, I was thinking we were in for some horror and maybe some romance added in. After all, you are supposed to read it for Valentine’s Day.
I did not get it started until after Valentine’s Day, and was hoping to read a chapter a day as the authors intended, but time-wise I was not able to. The story also just did not work for me: I wasn’t intrigued. I did finish it but maybe should have just DNF’d it. For me the best part was the epilogue.
I think it might have just been the wring time for me to read the book and might at some point in the future give it another try. Just not anytime soon.
Audiobook Review: Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino
Best Offer Wins
Author: Marisa Kashino
Narrator: Cia Court
Published: November 25, 2025
Audiobook: 8 hours 38 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: March 29- April 2, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success—and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams?
Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).
A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged—but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.
Dark, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.
Jessica’s Review:
What a debut novel! Margo Miyake has a plan: The perfect marriage, the perfect house, and the perfect baby. Margo is quite the unhinged character! She lives in a cramped apartment with her husband Ian and finds out about a dream house in THE dream neighborhood in DC. They have been house hunting for 18 months and have lost 11 bidding wars. It’s already an extremely tough market, but being in DC makes it even more brutal. Realtors, watch out for Margo!
Best Offer Wins gives us an example of what this housing market can bring and how far one woman will go to get the house of her dreams once she sets her mind on having THIS house.
Margo is unlikeable in the way she approaches everything, determined at all costs to get this house. And the lengths she finds herself going… As a listener I was pulled in and wondered how far she will go to achieve her dream home. So many times I found myself saying, “All this for a house??!?!” I hope I never become as desperate as Margo when the time comes that I can afford a home to call my own. Just when you think Margo has reached the furthest she can go, she takes another step! Best Offer Wins is a shorter novel, about 8.5 hours on audio and the equivalent of around 280 pages for a physical novel, but it goes full steam the entire time!
The narrator Cia Court did a great job with her portrayal of Margo. For a debut, I am excited to see what Kashino brings us next!
Bound and determined to get this dream home, will Margo achieve her goal? You will have to read/ listen to this one to find out! And may the best offer win!
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Audiobook Review: The Good Samaritan by John Marrs
The Good Samaritan
Author: John Marrs
Narrators:
Elizabeth Knowelden
Charlotte Cole
Matthew Lloyd Davies
Tim Campbell
Published: December 1, 2017
Audiobook: 11 hours 36 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: February 6-13, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
She’s a friendly voice on the phone. But can you trust her?
The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die.
Laura hasn’t had it she’s survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn’t love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it.
But now someone’s on to her—Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger. Who was this man, and why did they choose to die together?
The sinister truth is within Ryan’s grasp, but he has no idea of the desperate lengths Laura will go to…
Because the best thing about being a Good Samaritan is that you can get away with murder.
Jessica’s Review:
The Good Samaritan. The title leaves you to believe we are in for a story about a ‘good’ main character, but Laura is just the opposite: She is the villain that you love to hate! I actually listened to this one after finishing Dead in the Water but wish I had listened to Samaritan first.
The Good Samaritan is a dark and twisted novel that plays a cat and mouse game with the two main characters: Laura and Ryan. Laura is a volunteer for End of the Line, which is a suicide hotline. She is a master manipulator who abuses her position to get what she wants: People dying. We also have Ryan who lost his pregnant wife to suicide. He is trying to find answers and Laura is seemingly responsible.
Like always with Marrs’ novels, we have quick chapters that keep a reader/listener coming back for more. I really had no idea what was going to happen at the end. And when you are finished reading The Good Samaritan go ahead and read Dead in the Water for more in this world.
The narrators did a great job with the narrations and one narrator is back for Dead in the Water.
Needless to say, there is a trigger warning for suicide and suicide attempts.
What will John Marrs bring us next?
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK