Chupeco, Rin. We’re Not Safe Here. Sourcebooks Fire, 2025.978-1728255965. $12.99. 352 p. Grades 8-12.

The small town of Wispy Falls is quiet, peaceful, and safe—or so the residents believe. Most work for the powerful Penumbra Institution, send their kids to school, and avoid the woods, where people have a habit of disappearing. Everyone knows the woods aren’t safe. Creatures live there. Cryptids, they call them. And then there’s the Backward Lady, who always seems to appear just before someone vanishes. Internet vlogger Storymancer and their devoted follower JellyBeanFish begin an investigation that peels back the layers of illusion around Wispy Falls. Is this town really the last place left on Earth? What’s behind the disappearances, the rituals, and the eerie bloodmoons? The answers may lie in a web of secrets no one was meant to uncover.

THOUGHTS: We’re Not Safe Here is a chaotic, creepy thrill ride set in a dystopian future where big pharma controls more than just medicine—it shapes reality itself. Told entirely through digital media forms like emails, video transcripts, and message board posts, this novel is uniquely immersive and deeply unsettling. A perfect pick for fans of experimental horror, sci-fi dystopia, and stories that blur the line between reality and conspiracy. 

Science Fiction
Mystery (Horror)

The town of Wispy Falls is supposed to be idyllic. It is self-sufficient, but isolated. Surrounded by dense woods after some unnamed disaster, they’re not really sure if there are other towns out there. No worries, however. Residents have only a 30-hour workweek allowing plenty of time to post to Reddit-like message boards, or upload videos to something like Instagram or TikTok. Storymancer is an “influencer” posting interesting videos of himself exploring interesting places around Wispy Falls. He has a small following when he sets out to find his missing brother. In fact, many of the townspeople have gone missing recently and none are ever found, until now. Someone took video that shows what appears to be a dead body in the woods and Storymancer has decided it’s time to get to the bottom of these mysteries. He connects with another poster, JellyBeanFish, who has inside access to some of the workings of Penumbra, the shadowy corporation that runs the town and seems to be researching the populations of cryptids, monster-like creatures that live in the woods. Storymancer and JellyBeanFish work together to figure out which posters have real information and which ones are really loony conspiracy theorists.

THOUGHTS: The story is told through reproductions of posts to message boards and vivid descriptions of shaky cell phone videos. This keeps the plot moving fast and while not all of our questions are answered, the mystery comes to a satisfying conclusion. Readers who like to dabble in YouTube rabbit holes or do escape rooms for fun will feel like they’re part of the action along with the online detectives.

Science Fiction
Mystery (Horror)