strange and random happenstance

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: June 21st, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Casey Fletcher started drinking the day her husband drowned in Lake Greene. But her grief has become so all encompassing that it's destroying her life. For awhile she had her drinking under control and then she didn't. Passing out cold in the play she was staring in on Broadway and having to be dragged offstage while unconscious by her costars was literally her career vanishing down the bottle. Her mother swooped in and banished Casey to the Lake House in Vermont. The house where Casey spent the last happy moments of her life before it all went to hell. Now her mother and her cousin call daily to check in. Her acting skills are put to the test by declaring she's not drinking because of course she is. Her neighbor Eli is supplying her with the booze her mother had hoped to deny her. The lake is as deserted as it always is this late in the year. There are only five houses on Lake Greene. The Fitzgeralds have already left for the season, Eli is always there, and handyman Boone is working on the A-Frame next door. Which leaves the glass house directly across from Casey. And the inhabitants of that house are about to throw a wrench in Casey's plan to drink herself into oblivion. Casey sees someone drowning out on the lake and rushes into action and saves her new neighbor Katherine Royce. Like Katherine knows who Casey is, Casey knows who Katherine is, the supermodel turned philanthropist who's married to tech guru Tom Royce. The girl who had the billboard in Time Square that captivated the world and Casey. They are the owners of the glass house. That night Tom and Katherine come across the lake to thank Casey and since Eli is already over they take the party outside and Eli gets to telling ghost stories around a fire. The evening is cut short when Katherine passes out. She and her husband return home but Casey is worried about Katherine and gets out her husband's binoculars. Watching the Royces becomes her new obsession. One that might prove deadly when Katherine disappears.

The House Across the Lake marks a turning point for Riley Sager. In his previous books that have hauntings or other paranormal phenomenon he meticulously pulls back the curtain to prove that it was humans all along, just an old man under a mask solved thanks to Scooby and the gang. Here he does not. And I love it. I was a little sad when the Camp Nightingale disappearances was a revenge well plotted. As for the mysteries at the Bartholomew being at the feet of the elite, well, couldn't I have had just a hint of the real horrors of Rosemary's Baby? As for Baneberry Hall and House of Horrors, it was sadly human horrors. The genius in making the paranormal real in this specific book is that Riley Sager is doing a spot on pastiche to the Gillian Flynn genre that was so lovingly and accurately skewered by Kristen Bell's The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. There's a predictability to this genre that relies on copious amounts of alcohol and unreliable narrators and Riley Sager does a good job leaning into these tropes with Carrie Fisher, I mean Casey Fletcher, as his protagonist. Husbands, neighbors, everyone is a suspect when her neighbor disappears. Yet what is really happening goes back to a ghost story that Eli told around Casey's fire pit. It's a moment that is almost a blink and you'll miss it moment. There are so many other elements at play in that scene that what Eli has to say gets lost in the kerfuffle. In fact, I was so busy putting together the other parts of the jigsaw I lost sight of the bigger picture so that it was a nice surprise to realize the kind of book I thought I was reading wasn't what I was reading at all. As a reader it's really wonderful when your expectations are proved wrong. When a book turns out not to be what you expected, but better. While Riley Sager is a must buy author for me after this twist I can't wait to see what he writes next.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alcoholic, Carrie Fisher, Disappearance, Ghosts, Gillian Flynn, Kristen Bell, Lake Greene, Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake, The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window

The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye by Nancy Springer
Published by: Philomel Books
Publication Date: May 4th, 2010
Format: Kindle, 177 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Enola has another disappearance to solve, that of Lady Blanchefleur del Campo. She is the wife of a wealthy foreign nobleman, Duque Luis Orlando del Campo. The beloved Duquessa was with her ladies-in-waiting, ironically right near 221B Baker Street, when she disappeared into thin air. There was a woman who approached her at the entrance to the Baker Street Underground stop, but what happened next no one knows. Did the woman lure the lady down onto the busy platform? Was she dragged along the tracks to be dealt with? She had no reason to run away but then why is there no ransom? Enola is approached in her disguise as Miss Ivy Mshle, now Mrs. John Jacobson, Dr. Ragostin's assistant, she gave herself a promotion. The husband says he is desperate and would have called on the great Sherlock Holmes but he is out of town. Curious on so many levels Enola goes to meet the ladies-in-waiting and see the life the Lady Blanchefleur del Campo was living. If there is such a thing as a slave to fashion, the missing Duquessa is the embodiment of that phrase. She has spent her entire life in a constricting spooned corset, even sleeping in it. She has had several confinements but has always lost the children, not a surprise to Enola as the poor woman has the same measurements she did as when she was a child. But Enola has a theory.... The ladies-in-waiting lovingly describe their mistress's clothes when she disappeared and Enola wonders, what if she was taken not for who she was but how she looked and what she was wearing? As Enola herself knows from her first day in London, there are unscrupulous people who will do anything to earn a little money. She quickly flees to check out her hunch which is easy enough to prove, and also to avoid her brother who has arrived on the scene, but what won't be as easy is what Sherlock has in store for her. The problem with installing her ex-landlady, Mrs. Tupper, with Florence Nightingale is that now Sherlock has a place he knows she will return to. But just cutting out Mrs. Tupper wouldn't be right so Enola will have to risk being found out. Which happens in short order, not because Sherlock recognized Enola, but because her faithful pooch did. That's where he was when the Duque searched for him, down at Ferndell getting an accomplice to out Enola! But at least Sherlock views his sister in a different light after all her adventures. He's not going to throw her to the wolves, or as the case here would be, to Mycroft. No, instead he will ask her for her help with something that their mother sent him and in return they will search for the Duquessa together. And she guesses Mycroft can come along for the ride. Maybe they will reach an entente?

The "problem" with this book is the title, The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye. Oddly enough someone, somewhere, seems to have realized this and in the short story Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons which was released as a teaser for the first Enola Holmes book in over a decade it is referred to as The Case of the Disappearing Duchess. Some time later down the internet rabbit hole and it appears that perhaps this was done on British and Australian reissues when the Netflix movie came out. Be that as it may, someone at least realized the title of this book is just one big spoiler. Not that this really takes anything away from the book, it's just that you read the title and you think, oh, her mom's dead. Which is indeed the case. Which is also a good end to the series, or as it now stands, an end to the first arc of the series. Because Enola might have lost her mother but by opening up she realizes that she does have two brothers and if they could just really see her perhaps she doesn't have to spend her whole life alone like her name prophesied. And for me, the way the siblings come together through an interesting case and a long night shows that Enola can be accepted for who she is. What's more, I loved that Mycroft's every assumption was so far off base that he had more than a little egg on his face. While tying up the Holmes family drama Nancy Springer continues to handle topics of women's rights and what is done to them in the name of societal expectations. Lady Blanchefleur del Campo has suffered so severely at the hands of fashion that she literally cannot bear her own weight because her spine is too weak from a waist training corset. What I find interesting is that more recently there has been a push to say that corsets aren't the evil we once viewed them. That only those rare few cinched them tight enough to cause damage to internal organs leading to health issues such as the inability to bear children and constantly fainting. I have worn a corset and I didn't have any deleterious effects. But I wore one for only a few days and reading this book I thought back to one of my friends who in grade school had a scoliosis brace. To have to wear something everyday would be hard, but to do so AND try to use it to "improve" your figure? I don't think any right minded person would ever come to the conclusion that corsets are a good thing. But then again, people have always been choosing fashion over health.... Perhaps that's why there are those trying to rewrite the true history of corsets?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 221B Baker Street, Alone, Corsets, Disappearance, Enola Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Nancy Springer, Netflix, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, The Case of the Disappearing Duchess, The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye

In The Woods by Tana French
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: May 17th, 2007
Format: Paperback, 429 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Knocknaree, 1984. A new housing development outside Dublin that strives to be something more. It will be something more shortly as it becomes the scene of a baffling crime. Three kids were playing in the woods that abutted the development. One night they never came home. Only one of the kids, Adam, was found. He has no idea what happened to his two friends. He was found clutching and clawing at a tree with his shirt torn and his shoes full of blood not his own. He couldn't stay in Knocknaree. He couldn't take the endless questions he could never answer. He left to go to boarding school, changed his name, adopted a new accent, and never looked back. Over twenty years later Adam, now going by the name Rob Ryan, is a rising star of Dublin's Murder Squad with his partner Cassie Maddox. They get things done at work and are rumored to get things done in private too. But the past is about to come back to haunt Rob as they are assigned to the murder of a twelve year old girl in Knocknaree. Cassie is one of a few who know's Rob's history and wonders if perhaps they shouldn't take the case because it might compromise the investigation. Rob bulldozes over Cassie's objections but he has some trepidation as he steps back into the woods and looks at the body of Katy Devlin, laid out on a sacrificial stone that is part of an archaeological dig that is about to be shut down because of a proposed motorway. Could Katy's death be related to the disappearances all those years ago? A clue at the crime scene does link them. And what of Katy's family? A wounded older sister, a non-communicative twin, a cipher of a mother, and a father with many enemies as he tries to stop the motorway. Or could her death have to do with the archaeological dig? One thing is clear, the answers won't be easy, and for Rob, they might be hard to accept. He's starting to piece together more of what happened in the past, but will he ever get any closure of his own? At least he can bring closure to the Devlins.

In The Woods was heralded as a new kind of mystery when it was released. It broke the mold and swept all the awards. The thing is, I don't see it. Instead of just having Rob be an unreliable narrator he's an asshole narrator who also happens to be unreliable. This is supposedly groundbreaking? Sometimes I just scratch my head in bafflement. Does no one remember Agatha Christie's Endless Night? Michael Rogers is a total dick first person narrator who is also completely unreliable because he's not just a dick he's a murderer. While Rob isn't a killer maybe it would have made him more interesting if he was? I just don't get how time and time again people who are reviewing or lauding books come across like they are doing so in a bubble. Yes, a book should be take on it's own merits but if you are trying to say that it's doing something that's never been done before, please just look to the precedence and see if this is actually the case. Because this was so not the case here. What annoyed me most about Rob is that he would listen to no one, take no advice, would do stupid things, and his own stupidity led to a killer walking free AND he broke Cassie's heart. Most of that I could forgive because he's a total feckin' eejit, but Cassie!?! I mean really, what was this book supposed to prove? That even if we think we're over the past it can still hurt us? That damage in our youth will continue to damage us if we don't face up to it? When I first picked up this book when I was out shopping with one of my friends she commented on how she really couldn't get into this book. I can see why. But at the same time I am grateful for this book, as strange as that may seem, because I adored the second book in this series, The Likeness. So, if I had to wade through the muck and despair and denial that is Rob Ryan's life to get to sublimity that is Cassie Maddox in The Likeness, I think it was worth it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Asshole Narrator, Awards, Cassie Maddox, Disappearance, Dublin, Dublin Murder Squad, Endless Night, In the Woods, Knocknaree, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Rob Ryan, The Likeness, Unreliable Narrator

Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: October, 3rd 2019
Format: Kindle, 352 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Ten years and three kids ago Edgar Stephens proposed to Emma Holmes. They were are the start of their lives together. Emma had loved Edgar so fiercely while Edgar was blinded by the dazzle that was his fiance Ruby, the daughter of his best friend, the famous magician Max Mephisto. Since their last case together in 1953 they all went in different directions; Edgar and Emma to wedded bliss, Ruby to television stardom, and Max to Hollywood where even he settled down and had a few more kids with a starlet. They are reunited in Brighton for the funeral of Diablo. Who would have thought the irascible old performer would last this long? But the funeral brings them all together to catch up. Only none of their lives are as perfect as they seem. Emma in particular is dissatisfied with her lot. Her husband is now chief of police whereas she's chief of nappies. They should never have had a third kid. Sure Edgar was happy to finally have a son, but Emma was finally thinking that she would be out from under the yoke of domesticity and could get back to work. She was once the amazing Emma Holmes, always cracking the case. Now Edgar is always talking about the young girl who has replaced her on the force, Meg. Damn Meg, damn nappies, damn them all. When a young girl goes missing from Emma's old school Roedean, she wants in on the case. She HAS to be in on the case. It's the only thing that will make her feel human again. With the help of her friend, local journalist Sam, the two of them start to uncover clues that this girl's disappearance is just one of many. Clues they decide to withhold from the police who are more concerned with a film star the missing girl was obsessed with. But Emma makes serious errors in judgement. Again and again. She has been out of the game too long and her desire to prove her worth clashes with her judgement and it places everyone in danger. But worst is that she has endangered her own daughter. Will they be able to save her daughter as the police have to deal with the violence of the Mods and the Rockers on the beaches or will it be too late?

I don't want to be all cliched and say this series has lost it's magic, because at this point I haven't read The Midnight Hour so it might redeem itself, but I have never read a series that went from sublime to shit so quickly. The time jump could be blamed, but I don't really think that's the source of the problems. It's just that everything about the book is wrong. Instead of letting the mystery be the driving force it's on the back burner until the last minute with a solution that I saw from the start and the cringeworthy cliche of child in danger and oodles of violence towards women. And as for the characters? Can we talk about a more morose and miserable lot? What happened to these people I knew and loved? Yes, ten years can change a lot, but it's more like Elly Griffiths lost her connection to the characters... Rivalry among the women? Emma who is now a stay at home mom is jealous of the new female cop Meg just because that used to be her? Emma could have welcomed Meg with open arms as the next generation, the woman to carry on her legacy, but no, that wouldn't be in fitting with this series new grim aesthetic. And as for Meg not liking Emma without even meeting her? Please. And that's not even my biggest issue! Was the point of this whole book to explode the myth of happily ever after with Emma and Edgar's marriage being so steeped in dissatisfaction? I mean, couldn't that at least have been a source of joy? A source of at least some version of contentment for at least one of them? I just wanted to yell at everyone and say that this wasn't them, following which I would channel Cher and tell them to snap out of it. What's most annoying though is if you look hard enough the elements were here, we could have had Max doing some Maxim de Winter shit at his big county house now that he's lord of the manor, we could have had Ruby doing a British Bewitched, instead, everyone is bemoaning and bitching about EVERYTHING. Which makes me bemoan and bitch about what happened to my favorite new series. Seriously, what happened? Where is the magic!?!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bewitched, Brighton, Cher, Disappearance, Edgar Stephens, Elly Griffiths, Emma Holmes, Hollywood, Magic Men, Max Mephisto, Maxim de Winter, Moonstruck, Murder Most Foul, Now You See Them, The Midnight Hour

Catt Out of the Bag by Clifford Witting
Published by: Galileo Publishing
Publication Date: 1939
Format: Kindle, 280 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

John Rutherford and his wife Molly aren't spending the holidays as he had hoped. Instead of being happily ensconced at their home they are the house guests of the de Fraynes. Because one doesn't turn down an invitation from Mrs. de Frayne as many times as they have without paying penance. And their penance is the holiday season as Mrs. de Frayne's puppets. They are to do what she wants when she wants it. Caroling, shopping, entertaining small children while dressed as Santa Claus, all these enforced activities fill John and Molly's time. But it's the caroling that will have a lasting impact. Mrs. de Frayne has their route through town mapped out to the minute. The group will sing at appointed locations while two of their number, Mr. Vavasour and Miss Gordon, each take a side of the street going door to door asking for donations to the cottage hospital. As the cuckolded Charles de Frayne says to John, he would gladly give whatever they would make on their rounds to stay out of the cold, but that would not be acceptable to his wife. At least he's in the dog house and is to stay home from the regimented event. As the night drags on Mr. Vavasour mysteriously disappears. At first the carolers make nothing of it. He must have gotten held up and will meet them either further along their route or back at the house. Neither happens. They assume he's gone home until his wife who was taken poorly and stayed home calls up asking if he was with them still. The next day John is still perplexed by Vavasour's disappearance and a newly arrived house guest suggests that they play detective. Going around to the Vavasour's house Mrs. Vavasour is nervous and makes up an elaborate story that her husband left town on business late last night and that they should just drop their inquiries. This only intrigues John more, and as luck would have it Molly's uncle is the famous Inspector Harry Charlton. Maybe Harry'd be able to get to the bottom of the Vavasour case? With John as his inside man of course.

As I enter December and the holiday season I always have my eyes peeled for a classic Christmas murder mystery. Catt Out of the Bag literally fell into my lab because one of my Goodreads friends had read it and gushed about it so much that I realized that if it was half as good as what they said it would be perfect for reading under the Christmas tree with the Netflix fire crackling away on my TV. I prefer the birchwood edition if you need to know. I finished the book on Christmas with a sigh of contentment. And here's the wonderful thing, the story is interesting with enough humorous characters and bizarre reveals about the life of the murder victim that figuring out the killer in advance doesn't detract from the story. Because I did figure out the killer in advance of the reveal. In fact I figured out who the killer was before they even killed. I'm not saying that to brag or anything, I just went, oh, that's the killer and then almost three-hundred pages later my hunch paid off. While I haven't read any other books in Clifford Witting's Inspector Harry Charlton series, seeing as I hadn't even heard of Clifford Witting before I picked up this book, I like that he obviously has fun in playing with the conventional murder mystery tropes. And he's not beyond a good joke. Seriously, when you get the meaning behind the title you will laugh. I also like that while this is in the Inspector Harry Charlton series we get a different POV with his nephew-in-law, John Rutherford, playing Watson to Charlton's Holmes, and doing a damn good job at aping Conan Doyle's style with a wink and a nod I might add. This is like a Christmassy The Hounds of the Baskervilles if you just looked to how the narrative is structured for the reader, because there are no evil fake botanists running around moors here. There is instead a bigamist. And I have to say, a very active bigamist. Really, I don't get bigamy. It seems like so much work to keep one household afloat and to have to do it at least twice? That man needed a nap and the killer obliged with a rather long one.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Caroling, Catt Out of the Bag, Christmas, Clifford Witting, Disappearance, Goodreads, Inspector Harry Charlton, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Netflix, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: July 3rd, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 370 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Emma finally got the chance to go to the rich bitch summer camp. Yes, her summer plans were upended, but her friends would be so jealous when she returned after six weeks in the wild. Of course her parents forgot to tell her she was going until an hour before they had to leave and they arrive at Camp Nightingale late. All the other cabins with girls her age are full so Emma is put in Dogwood with three older girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison. It will always be those three girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison, in that order. Because something happened during the two weeks Emma was there that would change her future and the future of the camp. After a roaring bonfire on the forth of July Vivian, Natalie, and Allison leave Dogwood and are never seen again. Fifteen years later Emma is having her first solo art exhibition. She paints large canvases where the forest seems palpably real. Vines and leaves and branches twist and turn in sinuous ways. Though only one other person knows the secret hidden in her paintings. Each and every painting has Vivian, Natalie, and Allison in them. They are forever lost in the forest primeval in perfect white dresses. At the opening a figure from Emma's past buys one of her paintings. Francesca Harris-White, but please call her Franny, is older, but Emma instantly recognizes the founder of Camp Nightingale. The camp has remained closed all these years but she intends to reopen it and wants Emma to teach painting to the girls. They will no longer be the rich bitch camp but campers chosen on merit to enjoy the luxury that generations of girls got to enjoy before that fateful summer. Emma is at first shocked by the proposition. She never thought she'd return to Camp Nightingale and Dogwood, but Franny has assembled an interesting collection of people who were there the year the camp closed. So while Emma might be courting insanity in returning, this is also her one chance to actually find out what happened to her three friends. Her one chance to find closure. Even if it kills her.

I have always had a bit of an obsession with summer camps because I never went to one. OK, I lied, I went to a Jewish summer day camp for two weeks in a park near my house that is now known for gay cruising. Also I was raised Catholic. So there's that conundrum. But I was obsessed for those two weeks with the crafts side of camp, the tie-dying, the candle making, the colored sand in jars, the friendship bracelets, I adored all of it. The closest I ever got to going to a real camp was an overnight Girl Scouts trip to what had to have been a summer camp at some time in it's past. There were long wooden bunk houses, bug invested latrines, and an open air dining hall, all laid out in an oval and very down-at-heel. The best part was when we got to explore. At the back of camp in the woods there were these amazing rocks and we just sat on them and looked out over the lowland. Sadly we never got to go back to the rocks and the trip ended how most of my encounters with nature end, covered in bug bites, overheated, sunburnt, and totally sleep deprived. I almost passed out in church too, remember Catholic, because I had lost a lot of blood due to my constantly having nose bleeds and our troop leader thinking it would be a good idea to eat breakfast after mass. Needless to say, how I was as a child meant that summer camp, a real summer camp, was never going to be an option for me. Which is how I became obsessed with them. It's not that I even wanted to go, it's just the whole mystique, the whole microcosm created at the camps that made me want to live vicariously through other experiences. Which is why I'm drawn to ghost stories and horrific tales set at camps. They combine my darkest thoughts about them with my need to be a part of them. Because of this The Last Time I Lied was my jam. Not only do we get the teen experience of camp but also the experience of returning as an adult. It's everything I could have wanted and more, because oh, when I started picking up on Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes, well, at first I was wondering if I was imagining it, then I didn't care because it was too awesome, but then I was validated in the end. A satisfying feeling just enveloped me when I finished the book. It's a rare feeling to be sure.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Camp Nightingale, Catholic, Crafts, Disappearance, Dogwood, Girl Scouts, Gothic, Jewish, Missing Girls, Painter, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Riley Sager, Summer Camp, The Last Time I Lied

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: April 4th, 2019
Format: Kindle, 336 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Her whole life Alice has heard stories of Silvertjärn. But she isn't like everyone else in Sweden, obsessed with the town where in 1959 the residents disappeared overnight; leaving behind a newborn in the nurse's office of the school and a woman stoned to death in the town square. She has a personal connection. Her grandmother was from Silvertjärn. The day the residents disappeared Alice's grandmother lost her family. Alice has poured over the letter's her Aunt Aina sent her grandmother again and again. The people of Silvertjärn are real to her in a way that she wants to share with the world. Which is why she is trying to make a documentary about the lost village. She has assembled a small crew to go in for a few days in April and get enough footage so that they can lure in investors and then go back in in August and film the documentary, during the time of year when the disappearance happened sixty years earlier. Her crew consists of Max, the backer, Emmy, her ex-best friend, Emmy's boyfriend Robert, and Tone. Only Max and Alice know Tone's secret, she is the daughter of the baby found in 1959. So for two of the crew this is a coming home of sorts. It's unnerving stepping into the town and seeing it for the very first time. Pictures don't exist of the village anywhere so it comes as a shock to see how normal yet eerie it is. They set up camp and go over their plan of attack. Some places of interest are the school, the church, the railway station, and Alice's grandmother's house. Therefore the next morning Alice and Tone set off to investigate the school. Alice has spent a lot of time reading online about the best ways to enter old buildings in the safest manner possible. Therefore it's disheartening when Tone's ankle becomes badly injured on the stairs. She claims she heard something below them. Emmy and Robert also say that they heard noises on their walkie talkies. Could there be someone else here? What really happened to the villagers who were under the thrall of a charismatic preacher? As unsettling incidents start to pile up and one of their own goes missing, the question has to be asked, will any of them make it out of this remote location alive or are they the newest victims of Silvertjärn?

I think The Lost Village is a case in which I should have really paid attention to the blurb. But it was recommended to me by someone whose taste I trust so I kind of didn't notice the whole "The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar." Of course I'd say it's more Jonestown meets Midsommar... but I really should have had a red flag go up at the mention of Midsommar. Let me make this crystal clear, I HATED Midsommar. It is the worst film I have ever seen in my entire life. Keep in mind at one point I was considering a Communication Arts degree but ended up with a BS in Art and a second in Theatre so I've seen a heck of a lot of movies and experimental films and performance pieces that nearly broke me. Yes, I did have a panic attack during a documentary about logging, but I would watch that documentary again if I could somehow expunge the pretentious piece of shit that was Midsommar from my memory. It wanted to be something big and meaningful but was nothing but dreck. So take it as read that I am affirming that this book is like Midsommar and therefore was never going to be the book for me. But ironically this wasn't what I hated most about the book. Yeah, that's actually a surprising statement to see written out given my hated of Midsommar. This book is just badly written. I don't know if this is because the book was lost in translation or the text was actually this clunky to begin with but Camilla Sten is horrible at describing, well, anything, from locations that have not aged as badly as they should have, to people. She often contradicts herself too. Tone goes from being hulking to petite. Everyone has a thin mouth like a dash. Seriously!?! Everyone!?! Oh, and don't get me started on how obvious that ending was. It was so obvious that there was no jeopardy or peril. Things that were supposed to be spooky weren't in the least. The only thing she got infinitesimally right was what it feels like for a friendship to fall apart. The "shock and rage and sadness" that hits you when you see that friend again. But what little inroads she made with that insight she destroyed by making her mentally ill characters nothing more than cliched tropes. I thought there was going to be some perception, instead it was more of the same shit. So that's what I came away with. Shit.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Camilla Sten, Descriptions, Disappearance, Documentary, Friendship, Going Gothic, Jonestown, Mental Illness, Midsommar, Movies, Silvertjärn, Stoning, Sweden, The Blair Witch Project, The Lost Village, Translation

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: July 3rd, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 370 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Emma finally got the chance to go to the rich bitch summer camp. Yes, her summer plans were upended, but her friends would be so jealous when she returned after six weeks in the wild. Of course her parents forgot to tell her she was going until an hour before they had to leave and they arrive at Camp Nightingale late. All the other cabins with girls her age are full so Emma is put in Dogwood with three older girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison. It will always be those three girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison, in that order. Because something happened during the two weeks Emma was there that would change her future and the future of the camp. After a roaring bonfire on the forth of July Vivian, Natalie, and Allison leave Dogwood and are never seen again. Fifteen years later Emma is having her first solo art exhibition. She paints large canvases where the forest seems palpably real. Vines and leaves and branches twist and turn in sinuous ways. Though only one other person knows the secret hidden in her paintings. Each and every painting has Vivian, Natalie, and Allison in them. They are forever lost in the forest primeval in perfect white dresses. At the opening a figure from Emma's past buys one of her paintings. Francesca Harris-White, but please call her Franny, is older, but Emma instantly recognizes the founder of Camp Nightingale. The camp has remained closed all these years but she intends to reopen it and wants Emma to teach painting to the girls. They will no longer be the rich bitch camp but campers chosen on merit to enjoy the luxury that generations of girls got to enjoy before that fateful summer. Emma is at first shocked by the proposition. She never thought she'd return to Camp Nightingale and Dogwood, but Franny has assembled an interesting collection of people who were there the year the camp closed. So while Emma might be courting insanity in returning, this is also her one chance to actually find out what happened to her three friends. Her one chance to find closure. Even if it kills her.

I have always had a bit of an obsession with summer camps because I never went to one. OK, I lied, I went to a Jewish summer day camp for two weeks in a park near my house that is now known for gay cruising. Also I was raised Catholic. So there's that conundrum. But I was obsessed for those two weeks with the crafts side of camp, the tie-dying, the candle making, the colored sand in jars, the friendship bracelets, I adored all of it. The closest I ever got to going to a real camp was an overnight Girl Scouts trip to what had to have been a summer camp at some time in it's past. There were long wooden bunk houses, bug invested latrines, and an open air dining hall, all laid out in an oval and very down-at-heel. The best part was when we got to explore. At the back of camp in the woods there were these amazing rocks and we just sat on them and looked out over the lowland. Sadly we never got to go back to the rocks and the trip ended how most of my encounters with nature end, covered in bug bites, overheated, sunburnt, and totally sleep deprived. I almost passed out in church too, remember Catholic, because I had lost a lot of blood due to my constantly having nose bleeds and our troop leader thinking it would be a good idea to eat breakfast after mass. Needless to say, how I was as a child meant that summer camp, a real summer camp, was never going to be an option for me. Which is how I became obsessed with them. It's not that I even wanted to go, it's just the whole mystique, the whole microcosm created at the camps that made me want to live vicariously through other experiences. Which is why I'm drawn to ghost stories and horrific tales set at camps. They combine my darkest thoughts about them with my need to be a part of them. Because of this The Last Time I Lied was my jam. Not only do we get the teen experience of camp but also the experience of returning as an adult. It's everything I could have wanted and more, because oh, when I started picking up on Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes, well, at first I was wondering if I was imagining it, then I didn't care because it was too awesome, but then I was validated in the end. A satisfying feeling just enveloped me when I finished the book. It's a rare feeling to be sure.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Camp Nightingale, Catholic, Crafts, Disappearance, Dogwood, Girl Scouts, Going Gothic, Jewish, Missing Girls, Painter, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Riley Sager, Summer Camp, The Last Time I Lied

Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs
Published by: Ace
Publication Date: March 16th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

It started with a song. A song Leah was humming under her breath. A song she couldn't remember and yet couldn't forget. And then the pack was alerted by the FBI to the disappearance of an entire community that was living off the grid in Northern California. They named themselves "Wild Sign" and happened to be squatting on land owned by the Marrok's pack. Land that has a connection to Leah. It was in that very area when mourning Charles's mother that Bran first found Leah and made her his mate. Therefore they will be the ones to look into "Wild Sign." It is decided that Charles, Anna, and another werewolf, Tag, will go and investigate. Thanks to some supernatural locals that Tag knew they hear how that entire area was avoided by their kind. There are runes carved into the trees. Warning signs. Signs the community should have heeded once Charles and Anna make the discovery that the community was made up of witches. Which makes their complete disappearance even more disconcerting. These people weren't defenseless. These people were powerful. Any idea that they just got up one day and left is soon dismissed. The items they left behind, powerful magical objects, would not have been abandoned. This was no longer a rescue mission. The inhabitants of "Wild Sign" were dead. Now it was time to find out what exactly happened to them so their deaths could be avenged. Anna is the first to fall under the oppressive force within the forest. It starts out with a song and soon strips her of her present and traps her in the past. A past more horrible than most people have to deal with. But this evil knows what it's doing. It knows what it wants. And Charles, Anna, and Tag don't have the first clue. But Leah does.

Patricia Briggs is my ride or die. I adore her series. But I'm not blindly following her praising everything she's written, as an artist myself that's not constructive or conducive to getting better so if I wouldn't want to be treated as such and I will never treat another in that way. So there's occasionally a book by Patty that doesn't reach the heights of the others. I find this most common in her Alpha and Omega series. There's no middle ground here. Unlike the steady terrain of Mercy Thompson I either adore or dislike the Alpha and Omega books. It's the two ends of the spectrum, love or hate, and of all Patty's books, I've loved some of Anna and Charles's adventures more than any other books out there. I mean, Burn Bright!?! Damn! But this, right here, this is the price. A book I don't like. And yes, at times I did hate it, but oddly enough this time it's to do with me. In fact my dislike of Dead Heat might be down to me too... I just can't deal with those creepy little children that are dressed like western themed pageant kids, pink rhinestones and all, riding their horses. Shudder. So yes, it might all be me. I know it is this time. My problems with Wild Sign are all to do with the suffering I've had to deal with this past year. In fact I had to forewarn one of my friends who is a fellow Patty devotee before I posted my rating of Wild Sign because I thought she'd go into shock. Because I was a little shocked myself. But she got it. She understood that in the past year I'd lost my mother and I'd lost my home and because of this there's just some things I can't handle. My mother spent years in a skilled nursing home because of her Parkinson's, and seeing as I don't want to spoil anything for you, just know that my experiences because of this made me unable to handle certain plot points. Like seriously unable to. I almost felt like I needed a trigger warning and I'm usually not that kind of person. I know one day I will enjoy this book, it has so many wonderful reveals we devoted fans have waited years for, I gasped at some of them, but for the moment, this book just isn't for me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alpha and Omega, Anna Cornick, Burn Bright, Charles Cornick, Dead Heat, DEATH, Disappearance, FBI, Loss, Mercy Thompson, Northern California, Nursing Home, Patricia Briggs, Reveals, Tag, Trigger Warning, Wild Sign

Sarah Phelps does it again! And no, this isn't a good thing. She's taken amazing source material and altered it to fit her own narrative, and this makes the series not work. What's more it pisses me off. But I can't be entirely mad at this series for one reason, it made me read Tana French's second "Dublin Murder Squad" book, The Likeness, and I adored it. The backstory to this is that prior to the series starting I wanted to read the first book in the series, In the Woods, and was left unimpressed with a hatred of Rob. He's not an unreliable narrator, he's just an ass, OK people? I thought the series was only based on the first book so having finished Rob's story and started the show and after just watching the opening credits I realized, no, it's the first two books. So I stopped watching the series and picked up The Likeness. Fast forward, I've devoured the book and am ready to pick up the series again. Given that these books happen in order for a reason I thought the first half of the season would be Rob's story and the second half would be Cassie's. But no. Sarah Phelps doesn't work like that, Sarah Phelps thinks she's better than the books. Instead they were happening simultaneously, so when Cassie is undercover and should be dealing with the implosion of her and Rob and her abortion and how that mirrors the woman she's impersonating, she's just dealing with finding out she's pregnant, oh and scum because she cheated on her boyfriend in this version. No! This doesn't work. There is supposed to be cause and effect not whatever this is. And again, this is a stellar cast, everyone was so well cast, I can see them as the characters as Tana French wrote them, not as Sarah Phelps did. Can I request a do over with the same cast but a different writer?     

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adam, Adaptation, And the Emmy Goes To, Cassie Maddox, Casting, Disappearance, Dublin Murder Squad, Dublin Murders, In the Woods, Murder, Rob Reilly, Rob Ryan, Sarah Phelps, Tana French, The Likeness

Agatha and the Truth of Murder
Starring: Stacha Hicks, Joshua Silver, Ruth Bradley, Michael McElhatton, Liam McMahon, Clare McMahon, Pippa Haywood, Brian McCardie, Amelia Dell, Richard Doubleday, Derek Halligan, Samantha Spiro, Blake Harrison, Tim McInnerny, Bebe Cave, Dean Andrews, Seamus O'Hara, and Ralph Ineson
Release Date: December 23rd, 2018
Rating: ★★★
To Watch

Agatha Christie has asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for help. She needs to know how one pushes through writer's block. She doesn't want her career to be over just when it's starting. His oblique advice is to design a golf course. Though Agatha does attempt this it's not very successful given the real reason she's blocked; her husband Archie wants a divorce because he wants to marry his mistress. Who just happens to be a golfer. The perfect antidote to her problem arrives on her doorstep in the form of Mabel Rogers. Six years previously the love of Mabel's life, Florence Nightingale Shore, was brutally attacked on a train and succumbed to her injuries days later with Mabel by her side. Mabel has spent the last six years devoting her life to solving the murder of Florence and has come to Christie believing she can help. At first Agatha is disinterested, but then realizes that this might be just the thing to fix her writer's block. They decide to lure the suspects to a country house with the incentive that they might get a share in a large inheritance. Agatha will be "Mary Westmacott" a representative of the law firm sent to validate the claimants legitimacy and suitability, with many questions needing answering, in order to figure out who might be a murderer. Mabel will act as an all-round servant, able to root through the guests possessions when they are otherwise engaged. The suspects are a young nurse, whom Florence censured, Florence's cousin, whom inherited Florence's not inconsiderable estate, a solider, a boxer, and a mother whom Florence was intending to visit before her untimely death. Agatha and Mabel have set it up just like one of Christie's novels, get all the suspects together and find out who the guilty party is. The only problem is their ruse results in the death of one of their suspects. So now they have a second murder to solve as their time runs short. There's only so long they can hold their suspects and the outside world has gone mad with Christie's disappearance! They must catch the culprits AND get Agatha out of the news with her timely reappearance as soon as possible.    

Agatha and the Truth of Murder is based on the clever conceit of taking two real life mysteries and having the investigation of one being the reason for the other. The first mystery is the murder of Florence Nightingale Shore in 1920, which this film postulates Agatha Christie as solving during her 1926 disappearance. It's complete fabrication, they don't even stick too closely to the actual facts, especially where suspects are concerned, but for it's entertainment value it's a fun diversion in the style of Christie's own work. Though what faults it has could have been easily fixed. The movie's problems, like the mysteries, number two. Firstly there needed to be a better understanding of exactly who Florence Nightingale Shore was. She was an amazing woman, a war hero, a nurse as formidable as her godmother and namesake. Yet we only see a glimpse of her at the beginning of the film when she's attacked and then learn secondhand through her friend Mabel Rogers about the crime and only a little about the woman she loved. How can we care about Florence's murder if the character isn't grounded? This wouldn't have taken much to solve, just a little more exposition instead of passing over her to get to Agatha as fast as they could. And that speed is the second problem, the pacing is all off in this film. The narrative is rushed. I defy anyone to actually know whose country house the investigation is taking place in and how all the suspects are connected to Florence Nightingale Shore before the revelation of the killer who you can't see coming and then the final denouement! The filmmakers were too intent on getting everyone closeted away from the world, cloistered in that big house just like Agatha Christie would do in one of her own books that they forgot that as an author she always made her books accessible. If you paid close enough attention you could solve it. Everything made sense. Here it's just a jumble whirling around you like an out of control ride at an amusement park. That's not to say it isn't fun, it just isn't as satisfying an experience as it could have been if a little more care had gone into making it. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Agatha and the Truth of Murder, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Disappearance, Florence Nightingale, Florence Nightingale Shore, Mabel Rogers, Mary Westmacott, Murder, Roaring Back to Reading, True Crime

When people think of authors from the 1920s I don't think many people think of Agatha Christie because she was prolific for such a long time, her final book being published posthumously in 1976 a few months after her death. Hercule Poirot might be inseparable from the the Art Deco trappings of the 1920s but Christie herself has become timeless. Yet her first book featuring the Belgian detective, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and she went on to publish ten more books during this decade. From an early age it was clear Christie was a voracious reader and budding writer. Her mother, due to some whim, decided that Agatha wasn't to learn to read or write until she was eight. Agatha taught herself at age four. By age ten she had written her first poem, "The Cowslip," which is so beautiful and elegant it's hard to imagine a girl of only ten writing it. By age eleven her father died and she viewed it as the end of her childhood. What came next was marriage and war. Two things that would forever change her.

On Christmas Eve, 1914 she married Archie Christie while he was home on leave. To do her patriotic duty she worked first as a nurse and then as a dispenser, which is where she learned all about medicine, and more importantly, about poisons. No one could ever fault her writing for getting these details wrong due to her experience. During the war in 1916 she wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, being inspired by her work in the dispensary and the Belgian refugees she encountered in the hospital. But before she would see it published the war would end and she would have a child. The twenties also brought about the death of her mother and her divorce, which lead to her own mysterious disappearance in 1926 that was never explained and had the country in an uproar. Whether the public thought it a publicity stunt or not, one thing was clear, they needed Agatha Christie and her books. Lucky for them she wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections in total that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Agatha Christie, Art Deco, Belgian, Bible, Christmas Eve, Detective, Disappearance, Nurse, Poirot, Poison, Reading, Refugee, Roaring Back to Reading, Shakespeare, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Writing, WWI