August 2026 Wrap Up

August was a month of really high highs and really disappointing lows. Plus, my reading took a direction I didn’t expect. Here’s my August 2026 wrap up.

Chasing the Boogeyman

Synopsis:

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI, are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman—and he’s playing games with them. For a once peaceful community trapped in the depths of paranoia and suspicion, it feels like a nightmare that will never end.

Recent college graduate Richard Chizmar returns to his hometown just as a curfew is enacted and a neighborhood watch is formed. Amid preparing for his wedding and embarking on a writing career, he soon finds himself thrust into a real-life horror story. Inspired by the terrifying events, Richard writes a personal account of the serial killer’s reign of terror, unaware that these events will continue to haunt him for years to come.

My Rating: 5/5

My Full Review: https://wildwoodreads.com/2026/08/12/chasing-the-boogeyman-review/

Becoming the Boogeyman

Synopsis:

Back in the summer of 1988, a young Richard Chizmar was catapulted into the center of a living nightmare as the serial killer Joshua Gallagher—dubbed by the media as “The Boogeyman”—stalked his tranquil Maryland town. A lot has changed in the intervening years.

These days, Chizmar enjoys a certain level of celebrity being the only person that an incarcerated Josh Gallagher will speak to. Chizmar likes to believe that he’s doing the world a public service by visiting Gallagher in prison, as there are plenty of other nameless victims out there who Gallagher might finally admit to killing. But Chizmar eventually finds there’s a price to be paid for dancing with the devil, when a masked figure with all the hallmarks of Gallagher’s reign of terror from thirty years ago now leaves a horrifying calling card in front of Chizmar’s home, and it’s clear there’s a new player on the board in the ongoing game that the Boogeyman controls…

My Rating: 4/5

My Full Review: https://wildwoodreads.com/2026/08/17/becoming-the-boogeyman-review/

House of Flame and Shadow

Synopsis:

Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard. Stranded in a strange new world, she’s going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that’s no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.

Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he’s in the Asteri’s dungeons again. He’s desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri’s leash, his hands are quite literally tied.

My Rating: 5/5

My Full Review: Coming Soon

What in the World

Synopsis:

For a long time, no one pulling the strings in the comedy world thought that a woman over fifty from rural Tennessee could make it in the industry. But Leanne Morgan has defied the odds.

In her charming southern accent, Morgan brings readers inside her quest to find her voice after. Along the way, we learn how she grew up as a butcher’s daughter, landed a husband with health insurance, honed her stand-up technique selling jewelry at house parties, embraced the glories of aging, and surrendered to the comfort of wearing big flesh-toned panties.

My Rating: 4/5

My Full Review: This was a fun read. It was witty and inspiring and exactly what I was looking for.

DNF

The Unknown

Synopsis:

In 1926, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont. Now, one hundred years later, it’s happening again.

Actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon. She’s even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot.

Because New Avalon isn’t your ordinary island. A century ago, it was a commune for spiritual mediums—until they all vanished in 1926. The only trace of them was five dresses hanging from the branches of an old oak tree. Some locals say they simply left. Others think they were murdered. But the prevailing opinion, thanks to a diary left behind by one of the vanished, a young woman named Daisy Rue, is that a séance gone wrong conjured something supernatural that took them all one by one.

Not long after arriving, Marin and her castmates, begin to realize all is not right with New Avalon. They hear strange noises in the night and notice mysterious symbols left behind by the island’s previous occupants. And after a sudden health emergency leaves Marin and the others stranded on the island, the disappearances begin again.

Is it the work of someone trying to derail the movie? Or is the island’s alleged supernatural past catching up with the present? Marin turns to Daisy’s diary, hoping it holds the key to figuring out what really happened to the women of New Avalon.

This one frustrates me because it was one of my most anticipated books of the year.

DNF Diaries: https://wildwoodreads.com/2026/08/21/dnf-diaries-the-unknown/

So that’s my August 2026 wrap up. It took a few unexpected turns but I’m happy with how my reading month turned out. What did you read this month?