While rafting, Billy, Beau and their father suddenly fall into another world of dinosaurs, Neanderthals, robots and aliens. Somehow Billy makes it back to Earth, becomes a scientist and spends the next 20 years trying to get back to the strange world to rescue his sister Beau. When he does, he inadvertently takes along five grad students, and finds the valley has changed from the land he once knew. A novel Michael Crichton would have been proud to write, this non stop novel is a page turner with a clever plot, interesting characters, and complex but understandable scientific information. I was sorry to see it end, and although I have questions, they can wait.
The title however is horrible, and doesn’t fit this novel at all, even though a junk drawer analogy is briefly mentioned. There is nothing about God and religion thankfully in this book, and the title belittles the whole. It’s a turnoff to reading the book.

This book was very well done. Definitely inspired by <i>Land of the Lost</i> and similar shows, but there's a consistent story that holds together for the whole novel. Some cool action scenes, several viewpoint characters (from different eras) and the 'drawer' itself is a mysterious setting that we eventually find out the truth behind.

Absolutely loved this book. This is what I dreamed of when I was a kid! Or was afraid of it... or both.
I grew up reasding Jules Verne, watching every movie that was inspired by Journey to the Centre of the Earth, dreaming of time travel, and stargazing for the fast moving spots on the sky hoping they were starships. This book is all of it and something totally different.
I was enchanted for the first chapter and enjoyed every single moment (except the destiny of one of them I really liked). Emotional and imaginative SciFi adventure, full of twist and pop culture references!

I finished it couple of days ago and can't stop thinking of it. The end was epic! Can't wait to have my physical copy of the book.

Thank you publisher for letting me read this awesome book! Not in a long time have I enjoyed a story like this so much. Super exciting with people you fall in love with. You can't stop reading it, or even wait to turn the page. i especially enjoyed the suspense of different animals and which would eat you or ignore you. This author rocks and can't wait to read another of his books.

I didn’t realize how long this book was when I started it but it still only took me a couple of days to finish it! It was engrossing from the start, with a fascinating (and cinematic) story. It also had some of the most unguessable twists for characters that I’ve come across in quite some time — no spoilers here so I’ll just say that my jaw dropped several times.

Highly recommended!

In God’s Junk Drawer, my newest review book from NetGalley, a professor named Noah goes on field trip with his graduate students and then accidently takes some of them to a mysterious valley that he’s been trying to get back to. The valley is full of dinosaurs, mysterious statues, a robot butler, cavemen, and much more. Will Noah find what he came for? Will the students get back home? God’s Junk Drawer is a very wild ride!

God’s Junk Drawer is a crazy book that is told from multiple perspectives and has some flashbacks too. It can easily go from “oh the characters are walking along talking” to “oh my god run for it” quickly. Peter Clines put a lot of action, adventure, mystery, suspense, and even some horror into this book. There isn’t a lot of humor, some minor bits, though the title might make you think its a humorous book. Its not super dark for sure; its definitely within the realm of action/adventure like say Lost or its inspiration Land of the Lost.

Peter Clines does a great job making you care about each of the characters. We get to understand what they are thinking and how they feel about each other and their current situation. I loved them all and rooted for them. It was devasting when…well…never mind. Thats a spoiler. Oh and also when…oh never mind.

God’s Junk Drawer is very well written. I was on the edge of my seat. It has an excellent ending too. I felt really satisfied with the entire book. I also feel like I need to read more Peter Clines books. He’s just a great writer. I love this book!

If you’re looking for action, adventure, dinosaurs, and a mysterious valley that doesn’t completely make sense until you find out…oh hey you better read the book! You won’t want to miss God’s Junk Drawer. And hey Hollywood, please make this into a movie or a series. Something. It would be fantastic. Anyway, read this book!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a digital copy of this book for review. God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines comes out on November 11th, 2025.

If you want a modern and unusual take on a lost world story this is for you.
This has the typical scifi mystery element that I always enjoy from Peter Clines, though this one has a very different feel to it than the other books of his I've read.
I'd probably rate this at about 4.5 stars, sometimes it felt like it followed too many characters but you don't really get to know any of them well, but overall the story was still good.
Somewhere part way through I decided I needed a re-watch of Land of the Lost (1974 TV). I don't want to say too much because I don't want to have spoilers, but if you've never seen or heard of the show you might not get a lot of references. I'm sure there are still a lot of other references that I didn't get but it didn't effect the enjoyment of this book.

This book is a fun treat for any sci-fi fan, or for those who grew up watching old-timey TV shows about an all-American family stranded on an alien planet. :)

The premise is simple: a boy, his teen sister, and their dad go missing. Five years later, the boy is found - alone. He tells of a strange land with dinosaurs, a robot butler, a shapeshifting alien, and more. He is mocked by the entire world...

At its heart, this novel is a mystery, a who-done-it, a twisted tale full of surprises, told from several points of view. I saw some of those twists coming, but a few took me by surprise, which doesn't happen often.

If you're a fellow long-time fan of Peter Clines, you'll appreciate the tiny Easter eggs and references here and there throughout the text. :)

I want to call out the dialogue, because it was truly exceptional. We've all encountered terrible dialogue in books, and average dialogue is, well, average and thus unremarkable. But great dialogue... You don't see that often, and imho, that's where Clines truly shines. I literally laughed out loud quite a few times when I read his characters' interactions.

The sole flaw (and a small one at that) is the not-quite-consistent worldbuilding. A character from the 26th century perfectly speaks (and understands) colloquial English, save for some military jargon. And young grad students make (and understand) some rather retro pop-culture references that I (a 39-year-old Millennial) had to google. Keep in mind that most college students today have never even watched The Matrix. (Tragic, I know!) But that's literally the only downside to the entire novel, and the rest is absolutely top-notch and more than makes up for it. :) (Hell, most readers probably wouldn't even notice.)

I give this novel 5 stars - it was one helluva ride. :)

(I'd like to thank NetGalley for providing me the ARC in exchange for an honest review.)

Peter Clines has crafted a modern, updated homage to "Land of the Lost" and arguably his most sophisticated and immersive novel to date. Full of imaginative sci-fi and science of all sorts, if the story doesn't grab you from the beginning, you may be in the wrong universe. Though there's a lot here, from the massive world and characters from various eras, to the ever changing attempts at understanding the science and rationale behind the land the protagonists find themselves in; yet it never feels forced and keeps you engaged throughout it all. Full of surprises, from which characters end up being the main ones to what's really going on, this was an absolutely fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read throughout.

Thank you so much to Peter Clines and Blackstone Publishing for the ARC copy of this book, because I LOVED it! There is so much good stuff going on in this book, I flew through it. There is sci-fi, mystery, twists and turns, great characters, very surprising ending and just everything you want from a great book. I love sci-fi twisty books though, so I may be partial. So the basic story is that a boy and his family disappear. Only the boy returns and is telling people of his crazy adventures (that involve robots from the future and dinosaurs). Naturally, everyone assumes it is a trauma response to his losing his family. He starts to live under a different name and BAM...so starts a new adventure with new people....and that's as far as I am gonna go. You HAVE to read it. I'll be honest, when I first read the summary, I wasn't so sure I would get into this one. I think that helped me like it even more was that I assumed it would be a bit goofy 😁. I'm so glad I gave this one a chance. It will be on my mind for awhile!!

A surprisingly fun read!
A professor, Noah, is determined to return to the impossible world he was once trapped in as a child. He finds his way back, only to accidentally bring a group of his grad students with him.
I was impressed by how impossible this valley was. Dinosaurs and long-lost artifacts from all centuries are just finding their home in this place.
The progression of the story was at times slow, but the latter half made up for it. Once things started falling into place for the group, I was hooked and needed to know more.

I see where people see the influences of certain shows and movies, but I think Peter Clines did it well enough to stand out. The characters were mixed for me, and I think I only really enjoyed two of them. I was also questioning them at times because they were doing silly things despite being intelligent grad students.

Overall, this was a fun mix of sci-fi and weird lit.

Peter Clines creates another interesting world for us. As always, there is enough background on the characters to get you invested in them, but if you've read any of his other books you know just because you like a character doesn't mean you get to keep them. No spoilers here, just a reminder. It's a bittersweet ending, in my opinion, but fitting in so many ways.

"God's Junk Drawer" by Peter Clines is the most enjoyable book I have read in some time. A group of grad students are accidently transported to a lost world along with their professor and hiking guide. But for the professor, this was actually a return to this lost world, a valley filled with a mixture of the prehistoric and the futuristic. And while the professor thinks he understands "the valley", he has only the barest understanding of what and where he and his students have rediscovered.

From the very beginning through the last page, the story kept me completely engrossed. As a kid who grew up in the late 1970's and early 80's, I could not help but compare the novel to Sid and Marty Krofft's "Land of the Lost" series. And while it shares a handful of similarities to the television series, it was just as enjoyable and unpredictable to me now as that show was to me as a kid. The writing was cinematic, the mystery engrossing, and the multiple viewpoints kept everything flowing at a breakneck pace. I couldn't read the story fast enough and was disappointed every time I had to stop.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the access to the eARC for "God's Junk Drawer".

I received a complimentary copy of this book for review. All
Opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley.

This was great. If you liked dinosaurs and cavemen and land before time type vibes as a kid, this is going to be for you. The book is long but never felt like it dragged. You never knew what was going to happen next or what the discoveries were going to be. The ending was just what I wanted from this story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the eARC!

I loved this book IMMENSELY!! Clines is a FANTASTIC writer. I loved the mystery, I loved the setting, I loved the characters. I loved how the book continually blew my mind, even in the rare case where I guessed the twist (or thought I did). There were a couple of revelations in the story where I literally had to lay the book down for a minute to reorient myself and absorb the information. And the ending!!!
Clines has a fan for life now - I have already started purchasing his backlist because I need to experience his other worlds. I really hope he'll visit the world of this book again (the author's notes suggested it)!
Highly recommend, even if science fiction isn't your usual genre.

fun, mindbending and unique sci-fi/fantasy book with a lot of awesome elements scattered throughout. I would definitely recommend this one. 5 stars. tysm for the arc

If you’ve read Peter Clines before you know it can get weird, like Lovecraft levels of weird. And while God’s Junk Drawer is a puzzle type mystery set in a world seeming to be be Lost in Time it is at its heart the story of a group of people trying to figure out how to get out of the strange Land of the Lost type place they have ended up in.

The story is told through multiple PoVs with some snippets of Billy’s time in the Valley when he was a young boy. Billy went on a rafting trip with his Dad and Sister and they ended up in the valley almost forty years ago. He got out, leaving his sister behind and has spent his entire life trying to figure out how to get back in and save her. He finally has it calculated and is ready to jump when it all goes wrong and he ends up dragging some random students and a guide back into the valley with him. One problem, everything he thought he remembered and knew to get them back out seems to be wrong and there is now no guarantee that Billy now known as Noah can get them back out unless they figure out what the Valley really is.

“I spent seven years getting laughed at. My entire teen years, I was either on television or in a magazine being mocked for thinking I saw dinosaurs, or I was . . .”
She waited, then prodded. “Or you were what ?”
His stride got heavier. “Or I was back in some kind of hospital being treated for my delusions. That’s what telling people who I really was got me. Seven years of being a punchline or a patient…”

Billy’s time in the Valley as a kid was a wonderous thing and while yes it was horrifying in some ways due to the dinosaurs and other things that can kill you it was colored by the protection his dad and sister provided. Looking back on it again after his return as an adult leads him to believe that it is possible it wasn’t exactly how he remembers and Noah (formerly Billy) is struggling with how things are so different from the valley he left.

I enjoyed getting to see the Valley for the first time through the eyes of the terrified college students that accidentally ended up on this journey. Sam was well aware of the Valley and Billy’s time there since he was obsessed with it the way only a twelve year old could obsess. That said it is one thing to read about a place filled with Dinosaurs and lost to time but it is another altogether to be there and see it first hand. With a few other students and the camping guide also stuck, they are in a fight with time to find safety and start to figure out what needs to happen to get back home.

I really enjoyed this story and the way details were doled out. It kept the mystery high and the danger around ever corner. In a land of dinosaurs and Neanderthals not everyone is going to survive. This was full of action, danger, huge emotional swings and I enjoyed it all. Once the story made it to the Valley I was in a rush to read through and figure out with the cast what the heck the Valley was and how to survive in it and eventually get out of it.

I loved the setting, the clues and the cast. It was just a fantastic ride for me. As someone in their 40s, I well remember the Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings and grew up imagining the land at the center of the earth so this was almost nostalgic for me in some many ways. That said there were great surprises and a satisfying conclusion that worked well for me and gave me some hope of seeing some other novels tied into this world later.

Noah still looked stunned. Josh looked worried. Parker looked . . . well, she looked like she was waiting for someone to pause in their lecture so she could ask a question.

I am so mad at myself because what do you mean I had one of my top sci-fi/fantasy books of 2025 just sitting on my kindle for the last couple of months?!?

God’s Junk Drawer is like Land of the Lost’s mature older brother. Dinosaurs, Neanderthals, aliens, graduate students… all lost in time and space. It had so many elements that shouldn’t work but Peter Clines wove it all together masterfully.

For fans of:
- dinosaurs
- science-y discussions made understandable for the reader
- time travel (?)
- multiple POVs with flashbacks
- final twists that make you teary-eyed and satisfied

Thank you to NetGalley, Blackstone Publishing, and Peter Clines for an e-ARC in exchange for my thoughts.

Past, present, and future all jumbled together? Dinosaurs and robots? Yes, please! This was a really fun story that kept the promises that the description made. It definitely made me think of Land of the Lost and had some great twists and turns. Peter Clines always delivers wonderful stories and this one may be my personal favorite so far.

Note: ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mix Alice in Wonderland with Jurassic Park. Add a dash of every science fiction sub genre but especially time travel. Voila, you have God's Junk Drawer!

Twelve-year-old Billy is found in Thailand after being missing for five years from Maine. He has wild tales of the missing years including encounters with dinosaurs, human like robots, and sundials. Thirty-three years later he is now Noah Barnes and in charge of a group of university students on a school sky gazing camping trip. He has other plans and tries to ditch the students. But his lab assistant, four students, and a travel guide who isn’t who he claims to be accidentally make the trip with him.

This new novel has everything I look for in a genre mashup. It has action, adventure, science that I vaguely remember from college, a bit of romance, a mystery, and a compelling quest plot. I loved it and had to fight myself to put in down late each evening. At 560 pages, it can definitely not be read in one sitting. But the pages fly by as you join the ragtag gang trying to find answers in a world gone mad.

The author has stated that this book is a reimagine of an old television show called Land of the Lost. I haven’t seen that show so I can’t comment on that though fans of the show will enjoy Easter eggs throughout the novel.

Even without seeing the tv show, I loved God's Junk Drawer. It is the perfect escape from real life. 5 stars and a favorite!

Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing me with an advanced review copy.