strange and random happenstance

Leech by Hiron Ennes
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: September 27th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Before the inhabitants of the chateau can send word to Inultus and the Institute that the Baron's doctor has died a new doctor has arrived, unexpectedly stepping down from the train in Verdira. The mystery though isn't how the Institute knew to send a new doctor the mystery is how the previous doctor died. The Institute's body is one, spread out all over the world. Their knowledge is shared, their knowledge is sole, therefore to not know something that happened to one of their own is truly a mystery. And they do not know how the doctor died at the chateau in the far north. They should have remembered the cause of death not just the death. The new doctor arrives and immediately starts to investigate. Trying to fill in the gaps in their memory. What could have killed this host? And there it is. The answer, waiting in their corpse for discovery; a competitor. Another parasite trying to take root. A parasite capable of killing. Because the Institute keeps their secrets to themselves the residents of the chateau do not realize they are dealing with someone who has walked their corridors for years. The Baron's son Didier, Didier's pregnant wife Helene, excluding their twins all believe that the doctor is a new entity and therefore are spending needless time introducing them to how life works at the chateau. While the doctor views this all as an inconvenience. The competition must be found, examined, studied, and then eliminated. Luckily dinner is the only time when the household assembles and no one has ever made it to dessert under the Baron's gimlet glare therefore there is plenty of time for hunting the parasite. But where could the previous body have encountered it? In a flash it comes to them, the mine. The chateau gets it's money from a wheatrock mine and there was a collapse. Something in the dark. They must return to the mine. They get the houseboy Émile to help, risking the wintry weather to find their enemy. But what if that is exactly what the enemy wants? What if returning to the mine brings the parasite back to the chateau? What if it is all happening again and there's no stopping another death and another? The Institute has bodies to spare, but does the Baron's doctor?

To have a gestalt entity be your narrator is a ballsy move. But Hiron Ennes makes it work because they have such a strong authorial voice. I often found myself questioning if someone capable of such confident worldbuilding was truly a first time author and then, when the book completely fell apart at the end, I found myself no longer asking that question. The problem is this book is dealing with big issues from bodily autonomy to class warfare to climate change on a more intimate scale. Yes we see the macro, but only filtered through the eyes of one part of the whole. And it's the continual narrowing of the vision which in the end is Leech's downfall. When the gestalt entity loses connection to the greater whole at first it's interesting. How can someone used to being something more thrive? The answer is they can't. Of course what's really happening is that the original personality is coming through. The parasitic infection is losing it's hold. And the original personality coming through is where everything falls apart. That and the fact that there really is no ending. But more on that later. Once the original personality is back in control there's a disconnect. You have forged such a connection to the gestalt entity that even though you are revolted by everything they stand for you're also somehow rooting for them. And the hints and flashes of the original personality coming through actually doesn't connect you to that character but seems to be used more to understand the world they are living in and how this entity got a foothold. The original personality should be who we are rooting for, but instead they are flat and lifeless. And that's why the last quarter of this book is such a disappointment. This world and the characters that people it are so interesting and unnerving. You feel restless and ill at ease reading Leech but at the same time you don't want to leave the Swiss Chateaux with all it's Gothic goodness and Frankensteinian vibes. But Hiron Ennes's "burn it all down" vibe that takes over the last quarter of the book while logical in the Mary Shelley sense just feels rushed. And our two protagonists riding a train off into the sunset? It somehow discounts all that came before. What is the message? That escaping from trauma is a victory even if your continued survival is questionable? And while that might be true in life this is fiction. There could have been more solidity and less ambiguity and it's only subpar Gothic literature that doesn't understand this imperative.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Chateau, Dystopian, Émile, Frankenstein, Gestalt, Going Gothic, Gothic, Hiron Ennes, Inultus, Leech, Mary Shelley, Mine, Narrator, Parasite, Switzerland, The Baron, The Institute, Verdira, Wheatrock, Winter

Our Last Echoes by Kate Alice Marshall
Published by: Viking Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: March 16th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Bitter Rock, a small island off the coast of Alaska, is known for two things, it's unique birds and the fact that large numbers of people have disappeared from it. Sometimes all at once. Sailors, GI's, and in 1973 the entire village of Landontown. All thirty-one inhabitants. But anyone stupid enough to build on Belaya Skala, Bitter Rock's headland, should have known better than to take up residence on that blighted bit of rock. The founder of Landontown's widow didn't know what to do with this island she owned and decided to form the Landon Avian Research Center, LARC for short, that studies the island's unique birds, the red-throated tern. Sophie has lied her way into an internship at the LARC because it was there that her mother was working when she disappeared in 2003. This is recent news to Sophie because she always thought her mother died when she was three which resulted in her going into care. But ever since Abbey Ryder called and asked about her mother's disappearance, not death, she knew she had to return to the place her mother was last seen. Turns out Sophie's whole life has been a lie and those nightmares about drowning might be more real than she ever thought, because the moment she arrives on Bitter Rock she feels as if she's not just been here before, but has lived here. She knows the land, she knows the people, and there are some people her brain is screaming at her to avoid. Why would she react so viscerally to William Hardcastle? He just runs the LARC with Dr. Kapor, who approved Sophie's internship. She never knew him before, did she? And then Abby shows up. She comes out of the mist, the same mist that Dr. Kapor's son Liam could have sworn he saw Sophie walking into. But the locals are weird about the mist. Sophie, Abby, and Liam decide to ban together to solve the mystery of Bitter Rock. Sophie has never had friends before, no one else to rely on, so it's strange having people to help. People who won't look at her like she's crazy, people who don't freak out that her reflection doesn't quite match, people who see there's something in the mist and are willing to find out what it is, people who will help her until the bitter end.

Kate Alice Marshall's Rules For Vanishing felt uninspired, disjointed, and unoriginal to me. So why would I read the "sequel" you ask? I could say that it was because the teaser at the end of Rules For Vanishing felt more inspired than the rest of the book, which would be true, but really it was just because it was there. I can never seem to leave well enough alone and end up in situations that I completely put myself in. And yet I would say, for half this book, it really was something special and then it fell apart and my interest went with it. Because Kate Alice Marshall fell into all the traps she laid for herself in Rules For Vanishing. This book became nothing more than a mashup of other stories better told. Here was some more Annihilation, here was some Labyrinth, here was a whole hell of a lot of Stranger Things, and then there's Twin Peaks. I admit that the Twin Peaks comparisons are probably heavily responsible for getting me to pick up Out Last Echoes. I've been an addict since day one when I was probably too young to watch but my parents didn't really believe in censorship, and they also really wanted to watch it themselves, so they let little eleven year old me watch with them. I don't know how many times I've watched the original series since then, but every time I introduced a friend to the series I'd rewatch the whole show with them. I also wrote a paper on the show for my forestry class, which involved me rewatching the whole show again but this time taking notes. And my obsessive preparations leading up to it's return? Yeah, you could say I'm a fan in the true fanatic sense. I wasn't sure how this book would tap into the Twin Peaks vibe. Could it be location, could it be thematic, or could it go all out like Psych did with their episode "Dual Spires?" Turns out it was with doppelgangers, black oil, and music always being in the air. So yeah, I can see why Our Last Echoes is mentioned as being "like" Twin Peaks. But I would also strongly argue against this assessment as well because Twin Peaks has a very fixed and well defined mythology and meticulous worldbuilding. I have now read two books by Kate Alice Marshall set within the same universe and I have no idea what her mythology or worldbuilding is about. So there are what, seven worlds with some Gods and they want to gain access to our world again? This is vague and well confusing and what!?! I mean really what!?! I've read some eight-hundred pages of her work and that is all I've got. Will I pick up the inevitable next book? Probably, I'm a masochist. But seriously, just some cohesive worldbuilding would go a long way to saving this series.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Abby Ryder, Alaska, Annihilation, Doppelgangers, Dual Spires, Fog, Going Gothic, Kate Alice Marshall, Labyrinth, Mythology, Our Last Echoes, Psych, Rules For Vanishing, Stranger Things, Twin Peaks, Worldbuilding

Slade House by David Mitchell
Published by: Random House
Publication Date: October 27th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 238 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

There is a door. It's small and unassuming. Most people never see it because most of the time it isn't there. But every nine years on the last Saturday of October it's there for the chosen one. Near The Fox and Hounds Pub, Slade Alley is easy to miss. If you don't look carefully you could end up going out the other side wondering how you could have missed the entrance. But through that small door is a beautiful garden leading up to a house. A house that is far too nice for the working class neighborhood the alley is a part of. But then again, you'd never find the house in that neighborhood. It's in a little bubble all it's own, an orison. In 1979 Nathan Bishop is the chosen one. His mother, a pianist, has been asked to perform at Slade House for Lady Norah Grayer. Lady Grayer asked that Nathan be brought along. He spends the day in the garden playing with a boy his age, Jonah. But as they chase each other around the house things begin to shift and change. Nathan is worried that the Valium he snuck from his mother was bad. But it's not the Valium, it's the house. It has lured him in and Norah and Jonah won't let go. Nathan Bishop and his mother are never seen again. Nine years later in 1988 Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds is looking into the disappearance of Nathan Bishop and his mother because new evidence has surfaced. On the day they disappeared they asked directions from a Fred Pink. Immediately after stepping out of Slade Alley Fred Pink was hit by a car and has spent the intervening years in a coma. When he was catching up on the news that he missed he recognized the Bishops and immediately went to the police. Gordon Edmonds finds Slade House and the beautiful widow Chloe Chetwynd. She uses her feminine wiles to seduce Gordon Edmonds. He is never seen again. In 1997 a group of paranormal investigators made up of college students, one of whom is Fred Pink's nephew, goes missing never to be seen again. In 2006 the sister of one of the missing college student interviews Fred Pink. She to disappears. Like dominoes, each disappearance leads to another and another, stretching back and forward until someone is able to pop the bubble.

Years ago I bought Slade House giddy for a good haunted house story not knowing that it tied heavily into David Mitchell's other book, The Bone Clocks. But then again, all his books tie in. Yet I still thought I should probably do my homework and read The Bone Clocks first. So I put off reading Slade House, and I put off reading it. Then two things happened around the same time, a friend of mine said this book could easily be read as a standalone and I found a copy of The Bone Clocks on the sales table at Barnes and Noble. Thanks for sending me mixed messages universe! So I was basically back at square one. Looking for a good spooky read leading up to Halloween I said fuck it and picked up Slade House and I really wish that I had waited. Typical me would have read The Bone Clocks first. Typical me would have been right. This feels almost like it's the CliffsNotes version of the meticulous worldbuilding that Mitchell has done. There is a literal infodump in the forth chapter that while yes, it makes everything clear, feels too shoehorned in. This information about apertures and orisons and lacunas and psychovoltage feel like they belong to another story. And really, they do. And that is this book's fatal flaw. Yes, you may be given everything you need to know, but it feels shallow. The ending is a literal Deus ex machina where a character from his other books who is from the other feuding immortal faction shows up and puts an end to Norah and Jonah. How is that fair to the readers of this book? It feels not just like Mitchell is cheating the readers of a satisfying ending but is also admonishing them for not doing their homework. I should have known this wasn't likely a book for me because of the comparisons the The Turn of the Screw. My main problem with that story is there is no jeopardy. You know the governess survives. The same could be said here. There is no driving force because every narrator dies so your investment in the characters will never pay off so you quickly learn to disassociate from all of them. And this isn't even going into my issues about how Mitchell handles each decade and the derogatory language he uses. Sure, it's era appropriate, but much like everything to do with this book I could have done without.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: CliffsNotes, David Mitchell, Deus Ex Machina, Disappearances, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Haunted House, Immortality, Infodump, Orison, Slade House, Souls, The Bone Clocks, The Turn of the Screw, Worldbuilding

Devil House by John Darnielle
Published by: MCD
Publication Date: January 25th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Every town has an urban legend. A mystery or a murder that has captivated the minds of the locals and passed into lore. Gage Chandler just happened to turn his town's tale into a bestseller. A local teacher violently killed two of her students during an attempted burglary and was caught while taking their dismembered bodies to the beach in an attempt to dump them in the ocean. The White Witch of Morro Bay made a name for Gage and he has been looking for his followup project ever since. And then he hear's about "The Devil House." The house is in Milpitas, California, which is why no one has heard about it. The town became infamous for a grisly crime that happened in 1981 that ended up serving as inspiration for the movie River's Edge. The locals did not like the national attention. So when another murder happened with satanic overtones they hushed it up. "The Devil House" just happens to be up for sale. So not only could Gage write his next bestseller about the case he could write it at the scene of the crime. This PR stunt alone could generate huge sales. So Gage moves into "The Devil House." The home has been through many changes between when it was first built and it's infamy. But during the crime it was an abandoned store that sold pornography with booths in the back to watch videos. The "Monster Adult X" sign was still on the roof of the building when some teens moved in and decided to redecorate it as their clubhouse. The teens got very territorial and when the owner one day showed up with a potential buyer the interlopers were brutally murdered with a sword. But as expected Gage finds the locals aren't at all receptive to his arrival in their town. They don't want to talk about the murder, and they really don't want to talk about Derrick and Seth, the two kids who are the most likely culprits. Because that's another aspect of this case that is curious, no one was ever caught and charged with the murders. So Gage does what he does best. He immerses himself in the crime. He buys crime scene pictures off eBay and takes the interior of the house back to what it looked like when the murders happened. He becomes so entrenched that he can't be sure if he's writing a book now or living it.

As most reviewers with any sense have pointed out, this book is a bait and switch. The cover, the hype, everything about this book screams horror, and yet what it is isn't really clear even after you read it, but one thing is clear, it's not horror. Devil House is perhaps the sloppiest manuscript I have ever read. I am not even going to deign to call it a book because it needed several more passes to make it even legible and omit severe chronological issues, such as the constantly shifting date of the two murders at "The Devil House." The writing is beyond amateurish. In fact I take back manuscript and shall call this word salad. And seriously, don't get me started on the fake ye olde english that pops up in the "Song of Gorbonian" section. It's some of the worst writing I've ever read. This word salad has the pretensions to greatness, and instead comes off as a preposterous waste of time. As for the second person narration? Well, firstly, second person narration should be used sparingly, not for hundreds of pages, but what's more is that it isn't really second person narration, it's first person masquerading as second person wherein it's really the author talking to the murderess. I mean, what the fuck man? Really!?! You want to go there? You think you're Joe Goldberg? Joe Goldberg knows literature and he'd kill you for the crimes against it you've committed. But what's the worst sin in this book is everything is purposefully obfuscated and elliptical and talks around the subject in some attempt to make a statement on what is truth, what is really going on here, and in the end, it doesn't matter. Because, huge spoiler here, Gage Chandler has made it all up. There were no teenagers, there was no Satanic Panic, it's all BS in an attempt to what, write a book? To reclaim fame? To claw his way out of the insanity he'd driven himself to? Seriously, the ending negates the whole book, the whole story of "The Devil House." I mean, the whole "book" is so badly written and self-aware there was no way it could have clawed it's way back out of the grave it had dug to make me actually like it. But I was impressed that it made me hate it even more.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: California, Devil House, Gage Chandler, Going Gothic, Horror, Joe Goldberg, John Darnielle, Murder, River's Edge, Satanic Panic, Second Person Narration, The Devil House, The White Witch of Morro Bay, You

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Published by: Custom House
Publication Date: May 27th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

The death of Cora Seaborne's abusive husband means she can finally cast aside the shackles of the life she was forced into. She can indulge her desire to be the next Mary Anning. Taking her household, which consists of her companion Martha and her disturbed son Francis, to Colchester, she spends her days mucking about the countryside wearing men's boots and unflattering clothing looking for ammonites. Once she even tangled with a man trying to rescue a sheep from the muck. But soon Colchester is abuzz with rumors of the Essex Serpent. It's hunting the estuaries and killing children and pets. Cora doesn't believe in something so fanciful, but she does wonder, could a creature from long ago have survived in an out of the way place to be discovered in the present day? Might she find a living fossil? Science doesn't deny it is possible and her hero, Mary Anning, often hoped to make such a discovery. Cora longs to have her name next to such a find in a museum and therefore jumps at the opportunity that fate hands her. Through mutual friends she is introduced to the Ransomes who live in Aldwinter. As fate would have it the Reverend Will Ransome is the man she helped to rescue the sheep. Despite such an inauspicious beginning the two become fast friends. Cora is fascinated by a pew in his church which is carved to represent the serpent, while Will is incensed by his parishioners obsession with folk tales and threatens to destroy the pew. Will and Cora argue over everything, from religion to science, it is a meeting of true minds. Everyone comments on their closeness, Cora even moves to Aldwinter. Yet Will's wife Stella doesn't seem to mind, and Martha, well Martha has more important things to worry about. But then there's an incident at the school. Cora begs her friend, Doctor Luke Garrett, to come down and investigate the medical reason behind the hysteria. This causes a breach between Cora and Will. A breach that will be healed and ruptured on one fateful night. So while they might not survive, the question remains, does the serpent?

Yes, I fully admit to picking up The Essex Serpent due to Tom Hiddleston. Will Ransome is a role Hiddles was born to play in my mind. But I picked up the book a second time mainly because of that adaptation. Yes, The Essex Serpent was also picked for my book club, but I wanted to wade back into the world of Cora and Will, a world that the adaptation made seem so shallow and hostile. To have wasted such talent on taking a multidimensional book and making it so one-dimensional just infuriates me. Yes, the book is rather light on plot but The Essex Serpent is beautifully and lushly written and has so much substance. It fits more into the style of Gothic literature and romance from the 19th century than what we necessarily think of as Gothic now. The book is all about duality as epitomized by the word "cleave," to cling and to separate all at once. The serpent is both a supernatural entity and a rather large fish. Stella is both dying and luminous. The world runs on both religion and science. Cora and Will's romance is both everything and nothing. Two states of being happening simultaneously. This recurs over and over again, reality versus fallacy. And at one point, the hysteria of Aldwinter with regards to the serpent reaches such a fever pitch that the young schoolgirls act out in a way that would best be described as Salem in 1692. And the fact that the doctor swings in and brings up ergot poisoning made my dorky history heart soar! Because it could very well be hysteria OR ergot OR none of the above. The Essex Serpent is about the mysteries that science hasn't yet explained but even when they eventually are they are still magnificent. Look to the Fata Morgana that Will and Cora saw. They literally saw a ship with red sails sailing across the sky but it is just an optical illusion. Did knowing what it was make it any less amazing? No it didn't. But we go back to the duality of superstition and science, there are those that will meet wonder and invention with hostility and those who will welcome it with open arms. That is why Will is such an interesting character, while he will embrace an illusion in the sky and turn his flock from superstition he still won't embrace medical science. He is the essence of duality. A mystery that resides in us all and will keep me coming back to this book time and time again.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Aldwinter, Cora Seaborne, Fata Morgana, Going Gothic, Gothic Literature, Living Fossil, Mary Anning, Reverend Will Ransome, Sarah Perry, Science, Superstition, The Essex Serpent, Tom Hiddleston

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: May 3rd, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Beatriz lost everything with the death of her father. Branded a traitor he was executed and she and her mother moved in with relatives who treated them worse than slaves. When Beatriz catches the eye of Don Rodolfo Solórzano she jumps at the chance of a new beginning and a home of her own. He's well off and has a position of power in the new Provisional Government and is wealthy enough to support two residences, a house in the city and his family pulque plantation in the county. Her mother's dislike of him can be overcome in time, and as for the rumors of what happened to his first wife? She thinks little of it, which might be just what her new husband wants, someone desperate enough to not ask questions. His job keeps him in town while Beatriz will primarily reside at the Hacienda San Isidro, an arrangement that suits him perfectly. Of course Beatriz had pictured San Isidro as her husband romanticized it in stories of his childhood. She did not expect the rundown house with the verdant growth gone to rot. She also didn't expect to be dumped there. Surely a newly wedded man would want to spend time with his wife? But she is soon left alone in a hostile environment. Her sister-in-law Juana wants nothing to do with her or the house and the staff keep themselves apart. Beatriz got what she thought she wanted and is more alone than she's ever been. If she can restore San Isidro, bring the house and the gardens back to life, she can lure her mother to live with her and perhaps then she will feel less alone. But the house doesn't want this. She hears voices and sees things that cannot possibly be real. She looks to Juana for confirmation but gets none. Yet why does Juana only enter the house when she has to and only during daylight? Beatriz has nowhere to turn but the church. Padre Andrés is a newly ordained priest and he is the only one who will listen to Beatriz. He grew up at San Isidro and as soon as he returns he can tell that something is horribly wrong. This isn't the home he knew and Beatriz is right, there's danger here. Thankfully Andrés is willing to help the young bride, but as they battle San Isidro they have to battle their growing attraction and victory is not assured. Not in the least.

This book was lauded as Rebecca meets Mexican Gothic. Now I, for one, will admit that PR for a book has to always go for the biggest names, the one haunted house book with true name recognition to compare to the haunted house book they're trying to get you to pick up. It's all designed to grab our attention, and I totally fall for it. Every. Single. Time. You liked this? Well you'll love this, it's the same but better! No, it never is. Except once in a great while. Whenever I see a book compared to my beloved Rebecca I read the book and wonder if the author or the PR department had actually ever read Du Maurier's classic. And as for the Mexican Gothic comparison, after that book became a surprise hit every Gothic book coming out had to somehow be "like" it. Here's the thing though, Mexican Gothic wasn't that good, whereas this book is. Oh my, they really delivered on the "same but better." I should find those PR people and apologize for how I've always trashed them for their cunning deceptions. It's their job after all... I've even been known to do it! The reason The Hacienda beats Mexican Gothic hands down is Isabel Cañas didn't complicate this story with mushrooms and what have you. She went for the standard tropes of the Gothic genre, dead first wife, hostile family, lonely outsider newlywed, recalcitrant servants, haunted house, conflicted priest, forbidden romance, and wrote these tropes to the highest standard. There isn't much original here, but it is so well crafted, so well drawn out, that you will love it completely. The story of Beatriz is propulsive. How will she survive? I kept turning the pages late into the night. I could see it all before me and yet somehow it maintained my interest. The Hacienda has all the goodness of a true Gothic haunted house story paired with what it means to belong and want a home. And that's where it set itself above the tropes, that's where it was unique, in Beatriz's desire for a place of her own. Her family had been cast out and degraded and she took the first opportunity she had to break free. Yes, it was a dangerous decision in the end, but who wouldn't risk it all to find their place in the world? To finally feel safe? I know I would, wouldn't you?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Place to Call Home, Daphne Du Maurier, Family, Forbidden Romance, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Gothic, Haunted House, Isabel Cañas, Mexican Gothic, Mexico, PR, Priests, Pulque Plantation, Rebecca, The Hacienda, Tropes

Some people might think that Gothic books are seasonal, only to be read around Halloween. Those people would be wrong. Yes, fall is a wonderful time to read spooky tales, but how about the depths of winter? When the wind blows and the landscape is bleak and tree branches gently scratch at your window. Or spring, when the snow begins to melt and new life starts to shoot up out of the dirt, what else could be unearthed? Then there's summer. I love escaping the heat to a moonlit moor or a deserted castle. Plus summer I've always associated with horror and slasher films and they are a close cousin to the Gothic. In other words, any time of the year is perfect for a good Gothic read, so why not now? That's why I'm Going Gothic right now, I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Castles, Fall, Going Gothic, Gothic, Halloween, Horror, Moors, Seasonal Reading, Slasher, Snow, Spring, Summer, Winter

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Published by: Tor.com
Publication Date: September 9th, 2019
Format: Kindle, 479 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Gideon wants nothing to do with the Ninth. The house is nothing more than a creepy death cult guarding a locked tomb that is quickly dying out. She wants off the planet and out of the life she's begrudgingly lived. But her countless escape plans have never worked and this newest one is no different, even if it's the closest she's ever come. She is once again stopped by her nemesis, Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Harrowhark is the scion of the Ninth. A wickedly powerful necromancer who has been puppeteering her parents corpses for years in an effort to make it look like the Ninth is still a functional house and not on it's last legs. This appearance is more important than ever as the Emperor has called all nine houses to his abandoned palace, Canaan House, to compete for the honor to become Lyctors, eternals who serve at his side. The problem is that each house has to have a cavalier, a warrior, indefatigable and unbeatable, who protects the necromancer. The only real contender for Harrowhark's cavalier is Gideon. The problem is Gideon wasn't trained for this role and more importantly she'd rather see Harrowhark dead than be the one having to save her. So Harrowhark makes a deal. They go to Canaan House, they put on the show of a lifetime, Harrowhark wins and becomes a Lyctor and Gideon gets to ride off into the sunset. Gideon doesn't like this plan. Gideon doesn't think it will work. Gideon doesn't have a choice. When they arrive at Canaan House Gideon is quickly abandoned by Harrowhark who plays up the mystique of the the Ninth House by being wreathed in shrouds and totally unavailable to Gideon. Gideon sees quite quickly that the reputation of the Ninth makes all the other houses wary of her, and yet, slowly she starts to befriend them. That's when they start dying. This Lyctor test was set up in a way that makes the suspicious houses unable to win, but amply able to die. Will Gideon even live to cash in on Harrowhark's promise or will she die screaming in agony on a distant planet? At least she won't die near the benighted locked tomb...

Me and much lauded books rarely get along. My tastes are rarely the tastes of the masses. And yet again and again I feel drawn to read them. That's how I picked up Gideon the Ninth. Though I was circumspect in that I knew it might not be for me and therefore got it from my local library. I mean, lesbian necromancers in space sounds awesome, but there was that voice saying, but is it for you? Turns out it was. But not without the reservations continuing for quite awhile. After my first night of reading I actually reached out to my friends asking them "has anyone read Gideon the Ninth? I am a die hard must finish a book and have literally only given up on one in the last decade...but this isn't catching my interest at all..." Theories ranged from it being the victim of hype to it just being very polarizing. But I refused to give up and this book is literally why I don't give up on books, aside from that one a few years back which I try not to think of. Gideon the Ninth literally took a third of the way through the book to click and when it did it became magnificent. This became the Gothic space thriller of my dreams! Teams of two pitted against each other in order to find keys to literally unlock secrets in the biggest most haunted space palace you could imagine. There were elements of The Haunting of Hill House and The Hunger Games and Rose Red! I literally was dumbfounded that the book I had bemoaned became this epic read. One of my friends was shocked it went from a possible DNF to four stars in the span of a week. I was even encouraging him to keep going because he would be surprised by what it became. Therefore I use this book as a reminder, whatever you use to cull your TBR Pile, a hundred page rule, a quarter rule, whatever, it wouldn't have worked here. Never judge a book until you read that last line, it might end up one of your favorite reads.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cavalier, Gideon Nav, Gideon the Ninth, Going Gothic, Gothic, Harrowhark, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Haunted House, Necromancer, Rose Red, Space Opera, Tamsyn Muir, TBR, The Haunting of Hill House, The Hunger Games

Lakewood by Megan Giddings
Published by: Amistad
Publication Date: March 24th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 288 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lena doesn't know what to do. Her grandmother was barely keeping things together before her passing. Now that she's gone Lena has to be the head of the family. Her mother has been ill for years. $80,000 worth of tests proved that she's sick but they still don't know with what. She has headaches and seizures, and her brain sometime just doesn't want to work right. In order for her to get the care she needs they need money. So Lena makes a decision. Her degree in art history can wait. It's not like school is going anywhere. She will become the breadwinner in the family. The problem is the only real job offer she's had is to be a sexy mascot at a taco restaurant opening up, and that isn't exactly going to pay much. But then she gets an invitation in the mail to join a medical study supposedly on memory. She'd have to sign an NDA and understand no one would be allowed to know what she is really doing. They'd set it up to make it look like she is just doing normal office work and all her and her mother's medical bills would be covered. Plus, Lena could start building a nest egg for herself and her mother. First she has to complete a week long series of tests. They are harrowing. Lena doesn't remember much except lots of doctors and needles and talking. But at the end of the week she's a few thousand dollars richer and realizes that because of her position, if she's lucky enough to be offered a place in the study, she will take it with no hesitation. Which is how Lena ends up in the town of Lakewood. There she reports everyday to a normal office and is handed a sheet of paper that tells her what her day consisted of. This is a well fabricated lie about dirty microwaves and stolen yogurt. In reality she and her colleagues undergo various tests. At first they seem benign. But then the "secretary's" teeth all fall out and Lena is locked in a cabin for she doesn't know how long. And then it gets worse. Also, why are there no white participants? And what is happening on other floors? And what will happen to Lena's mother if she leaves? Or worse, if Lena doesn't survive the study? Only time will tell if the mysteries of Lakewood get revealed.

The thing I love about my book club is that we all have such drastically different tastes that I read books I would never pick up on my own. And no, we never read books that the internet would designate as "perfect for your book club." Have you ever noticed those books are just... well, I could see the older women in my mom's old book club reading them, but never me. We read speculative science fiction, biographies, mysteries, YA, we are all over the place. I have to admit that the last few picks prior to Lakewood were not my cup of tea. So I was hesitant going in but also hopeful that it would break the cycle of, what I deemed, schlock. Lakewood delivered. The book was sold as "part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks." While I get the whole reason for comparing books to other books to get people to pick them up, it sometimes annoys me, and in this instance I think they sold Lakewood short, because this is The Circle meets Get Out with a dash of The Office and a final helping of Annihilation and Stranger Things. It's got EVERYTHING! There's this day to day grind of what horrors will happen to Lena today. What will happen while she plays at having an office job? There's this veneer of normalcy that made me think of The Circle. The fact that this could be all above board except for this feeling that something is lurking beneath the surface. And while Lakewood would have been good at anytime, I think that when it was released led people to appreciate it all the more because it resonated with what was happening in the world, from the pandemic to BLM. This country has a horrible history of how it has treated people of color, and specifically in regard to medical trials, seeing them as nothing more than lab rats. Just look to the television commercials targeting people of color to get vaccinated featuring Spike Lee and the Obamas. The reason these ads are even necessary is because they have EVERY REASON not to trust. Years and years of medical experimentation have made them rightly wary. This book shines a light right on that and on the fact that people will only pay attention once white people start getting hurt. Things need to change and I hope this book, besides being entertaining, will get people to actually think.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Annihilation, BLM, Book Club, Get Out, Going Gothic, Lakewood, Medical Trials, Megan Giddings, Racism, Stranger Things, The Circle, The Handmaid's Tale, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Office, Vaccine

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Addams Family, Charles Addams, Christmas, Going Gothic, Gomez Addams, Gothic, Merry Christmas, Morticia Addams, Pugsley Addams, Wednesday Addams

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: July 2nd, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 381 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Jules's life has gone spectacularly to shit. But a new job opportunity might just give her the breathing room to get it back on track. She's willing to take it, caveats and all. And there are a lot of caveats. She would be an apartment sitter at the tony Bartholomew. This apartment is one of THE most famous in all of Manhattan. All the residents are rich and famous, some even infamous. So obviously one of the caveats is to not disturb them. She is to come and go and do nothing else. She must never leave the apartment unattended overnight and she must never invite a guest over. Given the opportunity and the life of luxury she would be living, the rules don't seem untoward. Plus, she would be PAID to live a life she could never even dream of. Floor to ceiling windows overlooking Central Park! Views to die for. Only, maybe people did die for them... There are actually a few other apartment sitters in residence and Jules starts to befriend Ingrid, the sitter taking care of the apartment right below Jules that has a convenient dumbwaiter so they can communicate with each other. Ingrid reminds Jules painfully of her sister she lost eight years earlier. So when Ingrid disappears, Jules isn't going to rest until she finds her. She might have forever lost her sister to the wide world, but Ingrid can't just be gone as well! Plus, Ingrid had some very dark theories about what is actually going on at the Bartholomew. The building has a history. A dark history. Also, the building feels as if it's watching and waiting. With Ingrid missing Jules decides to dig deeper. Not just into the Bartholomew's history, but into her fellow residents. She learns that the turnover rate for apartment sitters is quite high. They all jump at the chance to make $12,000 but then rarely do they stay for the length of the job. They disappear in the middle of the night, just like Ingrid. Also, looking back, it seems odd that Jules was asked so much about her lack of family and friends in her job interview. Why would her lack of connections matter? Unless of course the Bartholomew doesn't want anyone looking for you... Jules knows she's probably in danger just looking for Ingrid, but she's been in danger since she took the job. What's one more foolhardy risk at this point?

I remember the first time I walked past The Dakota in New York City. At the time I didn't even register that that was where I was. I had been walking around the Upper West Side and I felt this chill in the air and I noticed that the building I was passing had actual gas lamps around the entrance. Who would have actual gas lamps in this day and age, which admittedly was a few decades back, but still!?! They're so impractical and of another era I was flabbergasted. It didn't even sink in that the entrance they were surrounding was where John Lennon was killed. I just got a creepy vibe off the building and moved quickly to Central Park where I would no longer be in the shadow of this building. Later that day I put two and two together. And oddly enough it wasn't finding myself in Strawberry Fields that did it but talking to a friend of mine about her first experience of New York and what were the sights she most remembered and everything clicked into place. And the vibe I got made sense. John Lennon's death aside, there's a reason Roman Polanski chose this building to be the "Bramford" in Rosemary's Baby. This building feels off, yet at the same time, it feels quintessentially New York. Lock Every Door is Riley Sager's ode to this duality of New York and The Dakota and in extension Rosemary's Baby. The Bartholomew gives you this feeling of what you imagine New York to be but that it never is. Or at least it never will be for you. It's luxury and class, but then, there's the sting. New York is an old city with old money and people set in their ways and the "other" New York is what lurks beneath. What is behind an apartment that is too good to be true? What are you inadvertently sacrificing to "live the dream?" What will be revealed if you dig deep enough? Also there's that pull to not dig, to not look, to just blindly ignore everything and just remember to not pinch yourself in case you wake yourself up. Because why would you want to? You're being paid to live the dream with a hansom doctor, exuding a season two Dynasty Nick Toscani vibe, right next door. I'd be tempted to ignore my sixth sense, wouldn't you?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Central Park, Dynasty, Going Gothic, John Lennon, Lock Every Door, Missing, New York City, Nick Toscani, Riley Sager, Roman Polanski, Rosemary's Baby, The Bartholomew, The Bramford, The Dakota, Upper West Side

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: October 8th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Alex Stern has been given an opportunity she never thought she'd get. At the age of twenty she is the going to be a freshman at Yale with a full ride. But how did she even get to New Haven? She had thrown her life away, living among the dregs and the drug dealers. Then she miraculously survived a gruesome multiple homicide that claimed the life of her best friend and her boyfriend of which she was a prime suspect. While recuperating in the hospital she was approached by Dean Sandow. He wants her to tell him about the Grays. It turns out Alex has been able to see ghosts her entire life. Her "job" will be to join the Ninth House, Lethe, it is a regulatory house for the other eight secret societies at Yale, Skull and Bones being the only one that the general populace believes exists. She accepts Dean Sandow's offer and is eastward bound. To a girl christened Galaxy by her hippie mother just the prospect of Yale's cafeteria is a dream come true, but being thrust into the world of the elite could take some getting used to. Take Darlington for example. He is there to mentor her and shepherd her in her duties to the other houses because once he graduates she will take over his duties. Darlington is the epitome of a Yale student. Like the members of the other houses, he is a golden boy raised by the right family with expectations. While the two of them are exact opposites, when Darlington disappears Alex realizes that she might be in way over her head. Now Alex has two major mysteries in her life, Darlington, and whatever happened that day when Hellie and Len died. And then she lands in the middle of a third when she starts investigating a murder that happened near the outskirts of campus. Her investigation brings up no untoward evidence until a Gray attacks her. Only once before has a ghost been able to touch her, and that was when she was almost raped by one on a school field trip. Oddly enough another Gray saves her and she realizes that something far deeper is at play at Yale. She will get to the bottom of it and find Darlington, though it might just kill her.

I find the worst thing in the world is when a book you've been waiting for with baited breath turns out not to even be worth the breath to discuss it. I mean, just thinking about writing this review is making me tired. I slogged my way to the bitter end of this dreck, I guess given how many people love this book I can rise to the occasion to explain why they are so so wrong. So, secret magical societies at Yale right? Should be magical yeah? Nope, it's just horrid. And what's interesting is that people who've liked it kind of agree with me once I start to innumerate my issues. So let's start! My problems, and they are nearly innumerable, can be summed up with the dismissive way rape culture is handled in this book. Leigh Bardugo seemed to want to include issues that are topical to colleges within her fantastical framework, IE rape culture, but instead she just pays it lip service. Magic is literally used to rape Alex's roommate Mercy and instead of handling this in a mature and helpful manner, Alex thinks up something so immature that I can barely even discuss it. I mean, ugh, seriously, this is a viable solution? Because her roommate's rape goes viral Alex decides to make the rapist Blake the star of his own viral shit eating video. She literally uses magic to make Blake eat shit and records it. And then her roommate is just fine because, well, no one remembers the girl who was raped when there's someone eating shit! Um no. This isn't how trauma and survival work. I am literally so mad thinking about this that I have to stop writing this for awhile. I'm back but still mad. I have literally been trying months to finish this review and every time I get angry so I try to pretend I'm just not bothered to exert any effort. But the truth is I'm just so bothered I just can't. How did the creator of the Grishaverse write this!?! Since I started this review and since now when I'm typing this I re-read the Grishaverse in it's entirety, and it handles abuse so thoughtfully and yet here!?! And don't get me started on the fact that the best character is just not there. Or that the ending is lame. Or that this series is taking away valuable time when Leigh could be writing another series! Ugh!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alex Stern, Darlington, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Going Viral, Grays, Grishaverse, Leigh Bardugo, Lethe, Murder, New Haven, Ninth House, Rape, Rape Culture, Secret Societies, Sexual Assault, Skull and Bone, Survivor, Yale

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
Published by: Gallery/Scout Press
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Rowan is in prison. Yes, she's the nanny who had the worst thing that could possibly happen happen. The police won't listen. No one will listen. Her fate has already been decided due to a few bad decisions on her part. She thinks if she could just get her story completely told to one person that person would understand and help her. Because no one gets what it was like at Heatherbrae House. The lack of sleep, the feeling of going mad, constantly being pushed beyond her limits. She was thrown into the deep end and she sank. She might be a flawed human being, but she is no murderer! It all seemed like a dream until it became a nightmare. The job in the middle of nowhere, the ridiculous salary, the perfectly behaved children, the chance to get away from her current job at Little Nippers, and the house. Oh, Rowan would have given anything to live there and to be a part of that family, and in the end she did. She should have known it was too good to be true. But the impeccable references got her in the door and she did the best job of selling herself she ever had and somehow she achieved the impossible, her dream job. But the interview gave her a glimpse into a nonexistent world. The smart house with it's omniscient technology might sound appealing, but it's just a means of control. Of forcing the modern and the old to coexist in a way they shouldn't. Also the remodeling of the house was just a means to scrub the past away. But that past is buried deep, like the roots of the plants in the poison garden out back. A garden conceived by a man who lost his daughter due to the very poisons he cultivated. Then there's Jack. He's the handy man. And he is very handy. Maybe too handy. He's always there when Rowan needs him but she doesn't question this until it might be too late. She should have questioned everything. She should have done better. She should have come clean sooner. Maybe then things would have turned out differently. Or maybe she was always supposed to be the catalyst for this tragedy, just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

I have issues with The Turn of the Screw. Many, many issues. While many people have written copiously on all the plurality of meanings in The Turn of the Screw I could probably write a dissertation on why I hate it. There'd even be footnotes! But I think spending all my time dwelling on something I dislike wouldn't be the most beneficial to my health, though as I've said before, it's easier to write about something you hate than something you love. You can pinpoint with unerring accuracy everything that gets under your skin while that which makes your heart sing is almost impossible to describe. At this point you're wondering, well, then why did she pick up a retelling of The Turn of the Screw if she hates it so much? The answer is simple, I can see that this story has potential written by anyone other than Henry James and therefore I wanted to see where Ruth Ware would take it. The answer is a lot further and more futuristic than Henry James! Aside from the fact that she uses the built in horror tropes of a smart home perfectly, a home I would never live in because even my phone stopped reading my fingerprint, the bones of this version make it the best version of The Turn of the Screw I have yet read. Notice I am not mentioning The Haunting of Bly Manor, because that was watched, and that is now the pinnacle of perfection all retellings of The Turn of the Screw should be aiming for. What this retelling did so well is make us actually care about the characters and the family dynamic. Plus, with double the number of children, it's like Russian roulette, at least one of them is going down, and you can't be sure which one! So not only did I care if these characters lived or died, the fact that they were all in jeopardy made me turn the pages at breakneck speed. I was totally invested in a story that I thought would be just a mild diversion. Because of this I really started to over-analyze everything. There are weird little errors throughout the book. Rowan purposefully picks up an iPad when leaving the kitchen to watch the children but then ends up using her phone instead. The dog beds move from the weird servants pantry to the kitchen. There are all these little things that add up and I wonder, was it purposeful to highlight the fact that Rowan is an unreliable narrator? Or accidental? If accidental, this is the first time a lack in editing has paid off.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Going Gothic, Heatherbrae House, Henry James, Jack Grant, Murder, Nanny, Poison Garden, Retelling, Rowan Caine, Ruth Ware, Scotland, Smart Home, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Turn of the Key, The Turn of the Screw

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
Published by: Gallery/Scout Press
Publication Date: May 29th, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Hal is destitute. She has been eking out a living reading Tarot cards for the punters on Brighton Beach but she's nowhere near as good as her mother Maggie was at this. But Maggie died tragically before Hal's eighteenth birthday and Hal had to take out some loans from some disreputable people and they won't let her forget that. Even if she's paid it all back, with interest. Then a letter arrives that could change everything. Hal has somehow been "identified" as the granddaughter of a Mrs. Westaway and stands to inherit, well, something. Really, anything would be fine. Only, Hal knows this woman couldn't possibly be her grandmother. Her whole family was Maggie and Maggie is gone. But what's the harm in getting out of town for a few days and seeing if she can convince the family that she's a Westaway long enough for her to make off with a few hundred pounds. Just enough to help ease her situation. Maybe relocate away from Brighton? It's not like she'd be taking advantage of them, they're probably wealthy and what's a few hundred pounds to them when to her it could change her life? The only problem is she hasn't been left a few hundred pounds, she's been left everything. Knowing that she isn't the missing granddaughter Mrs. Westaway was looking for Hal is ready to pack it all in until she is given a picture. A picture that proves that her mother knew the Westaway siblings. Could she really be related to Mrs. Westaway? Could the inheritance be rightfully hers by some quirk of fate? But the grand estate of Trepassen has many secrets. Maggie came to Trepassen an innocent and ended up pregnant with Hal. Unwilling to divulge the name of Hal's father, whom Hal was always told was a one-night stand, Maggie was locked away in the attic. She was in fact locked up in the same room that Maggie is staying in. That can't be a coincidence. What was the reason Maggie never returned to Trepassen and does that put Hal in danger now?

Tarot cards, check. Mysterious letter bequeathing an inheritance, check. Stately, if slightly run down, manor house, check. Right there are the official bullet points that made me sit up and take notice of The Death of Mrs. Westaway. Well, that and the fact that it kept being compared to Daphne Du Maurier, a trap I fall for way too often. She is without equal and I need to keep reminding myself of that. But while none of those bullet points are wrong, they are also very misleading. This book isn't the least bit charming or Gothic, it's prosaic. Hal barely makes a living reading Tarot cards for the tourists. She gets a letter about an inheritance that she's sure is mistaken while obviously it's not. But she assumes she can pull off the con because she's so good at reading people. It's like a boring heist but with snow. I'm sorry, but if you're going to go for the grab bag of Gothic goodies could something have been at least slightly menacing? Even throwing Hal up into the creepy neither regions of the house elicited barely a shudder from me. What's more is that I figured out everything too easily. I'm not saying I'm a savant when it comes to crime solving, but I am knowledgeable enough that if you're a writer who isn't very good at disguising your clues, leaving them a little too open to the elements, well, I'll pounce on them like a cat on catnip. I had the killer down within five minutes of them appearing on the scene. What's more, I was able to pick out the motive way too easily. There are some "tricks" that work only in literature because there's wiggle room for mistaken identities that aren't there in a visual medium. The most successful use I've seen of this in recent years was in Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper. She nailed it. This, this doesn't nail it. What's also annoying is that during the reveal there is a major blunder. Hal's mother Maggie is trying to escape a dangerous situation in a flashback and runs out onto the iced over lake. In July. Yes, watch out for that dangerous July ice everyone. And there's no way it could have been a mistake because the whole scene is set in summer and there's flowers and a picnic and ICE! Yeah... just... whatever. In fact, whatever is kind of my general feeling for this book overall. I was entertained but that was all.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Brighton, Cornwall, Country House, Daphne Du Maurier, Going Gothic, Gothic, Inheritance, Kate Morton, Loan Shark, Money, Murder, Ruth Ware, Tarot, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, The Secret Keeper, Trepassen, Whodunit

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: February 12th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Since their Oxford days a motley group of thirtysomethings have rung in the New Year together. Though this year they aren't all festive holiday joy as they arrive at the idyllic and isolated estate, Loch Corrin, in the Scottish Highlands. Mark's newish girlfriend Emma has arranged the trip for his college friends down to the very last detail. Of course, she couldn't control the weather, the fact that there is another group at the lodge, or all the secrets the group is concealing from one another. But this group has survived this long, what's one more New Year's Eve? Miranda has always been the leader of the group. The life of the party. But her supposedly perfect life is starting to careen out of control and her husband, Julien, has many secrets, only a few that she knows. She thinks a baby would solve everything. Boy is she wrong. Katie, who is a successful lawyer, has been putting her career ahead of her life for too long and while Miranda might think she's Katie's best friend, more and more she's been turning to Nick, who is there with his boyfriend Bo. As for Samira and Giles, they are so wrapped up with their newborn and the fact that they haven't slept since the birth that they barely notice they are on vacation. But when trapped together how long will fake bonhomie and champagne get you? How long can you reminiscence about the past? They have all changed over the intervening decade since they graduated college and not everyone is willing to accept the change. Not everyone is who they say they are. And what of the staff at Loch Corrin? Can they be trusted? Being trapped in the wilderness with your supposed best friends might be a nightmare, but trapped in the wilderness with strangers could be the most dangerous thing that could happen to this group. Trapped by the blizzard they have no way of escaping each other and one of them will die at the hands of another. But who will die and who will kill? Only the New Year will reveal all.

This is a book that pulls a bait and switch, in that your read the blurb, you see it compared to Tana French and Ruth Ware and Agatha Christie, you look at the cover, you think, country house in the Scottish highlands, a blizzard, a betrayal, and murder! YAS! I will read that! Instead you get a modern glass building with cabins for all the guests and no suspense at all. I figured out the killer in about two seconds because of the limited choice of narrators. It was like a vicious Peter's Friends, wherein you actually hope they all kill each other, mixed with that stupid Kevin Bacon house movie that got all those rave reviews, but it should be noted that this doesn't have the supernatural twist. It had no twist. Now I'm not saying that this couldn't have worked in the glass hunting lodge or with this cast of characters, I'm saying that it needed to be better written to work with the environment and suspects. Also it totally needed a different cover. I mean, seriously, did the designer even read the book or was it designed off the deceptive blurb? OK, I need to STOP bitching about the cover so let's concentrate on what annoyed me the most, and yes, I'm totally going to ignore the stupid secondary plot about what's going on at this resort because it doesn't even deserve a mention, what annoyed me was the choice in narrators. So we have four females told in first person and one male told in third person, which, yes, I'm groaning at the cliche of switching narration styles even as I type this. But the problem with this is it narrows the events from this motley cast of twelve or so characters to four. Because obviously the killer and the victim are among these four first person narrators. Why Lucy Foley would show her hand in such an obvious manner is beyond comprehension to me. What's more one of those narrators has no connection to the group, so she's immediately eliminated. So you can see why I think this is the biggest failing of the book. What's worse though is that every woman sounds the same. If each section didn't have the character's name at the start you would have no idea who was talking at you. The characters are just cardboard cutouts that all sound the same. Do yourself a favor and just steer clear of this party.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Blizzard, College Friends, Design Fail, First Person, Going Gothic, Lucy Foley, Murder, New Year's Eve, Peter's Friends, Ruth Ware, Scotland, Secrets, Tana French, The Hunting Party, Third Person

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

Kill Creek by Scott Thomas
Published by: Inkshares
Publication Date: January 21st, 2020
Format: Kindle, 432 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Sam McGarver's career could use a little help. He has gotten nowhere on his new novel, spending hours watching the cursor blink on his computer screen. Sam tells himself, and his agent, that he's concentrating on his teaching and healing from his separation, but really it's because he's rattled by the past and the present making it so that he just can't move forward. In desperation he agrees to a PR stunt for the streaming service WriteWire. The founder, Wainwright, is a billionaire's son who is desperate to make his own mark on the world. He's famous for "events" that he elaborately stages and streams to his millions of viewers worldwide. Yet he longs to be taken seriously and to that end his newest endeavor is a little more pared down yet artistically thematic. He has invited four of the most distinguished horror authors to partake in a roundtable interview on Halloween in the notorious haunted house on kill creek, last owned by the Finch sisters, and immortalized in the book Phantoms of the Prairie: A True Story of Supernatural Terror. Like Sam, the three other authors have their reasons for being there, Sebastian Cole is a legend past his prime and facing irrelevance, Daniel Slaughter is losing ground with his Christian fanbase who used to devour his teen tales of terror that always ended with a morality lesson, and T.C. Moore has been cut as screenwriter from her own book's adaptation, a book ironically called Cutter. They all expect Wainwright to pull some kind of stunt. Yet despite the cutting questions it's all above board and they leave the next morning. What happens next will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

H.P. Lovecraft, R.L. Stine, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Stephen King get together at a haunted house for a PR stunt. A clever conceit that if hewed to, instead of ending up a gore filled version of Burnt Offerings, would have set a new meta benchmark in haunted house horror. But the promise of the first few chapters, of Sam's lectures being the literary equivalent of Scream, are all but forgotten as you force yourself to just get the book over and done with. All the witty banter and badinage between the four authors is so delightful that every time the book strays from the quartet Thomas's editors should have told him to cut it because anything beyond that grouping is extraneous. I started to think that being run over by a bus wouldn't be that bad a fate because then my part in this story would be over. My main problem was that while the house is the epicenter of the evil Thomas lets the evil wander a little too far afield. The house almost becomes an afterthought while it should be the focal point, the fulcrum on which the whole book hinges. When they literally just left the house halfway through the book I was yelling at them that this isn't how it's supposed to happen. Yet while this is my main problem it is far from my only problem. You can tell this is the first book Thomas has written because it feels at times so amateurish and heavy-handed. Sam's dark secret? The mystery of the third floor bedroom? I knew what was going on the second they were mentioned. And as for the number of horror films and books he just straight up rips off? If he had kept the light, meta approach, this could have been humorous, instead it felt lazy. And as for a professional photographer using an HP PhotoSmart Printer, I'm not even going to go there.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Burnt Offerings, Going Gothic, Gothic, H.P. Lovecraft, Haunted House, Kansas, Laurell K Hamilton, Meta, PR Stunt, R.L. Stine, Scream, Stephen King, Supernatural

Rules For Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
Published by: Viking Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 24th, 2019
Format: Kindle, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

In the town of Briar Glenn the kids play a game. The game is innocent enough. You hold someone's hand, close your eyes, and take thirteen steps. Then a road will appear in the woods and you'll see the ghost of Lucy Gallows. Everyone thought it was just an urban legend. Everyone except Sara's sister Becca. A year ago Becca snuck out to play the game and disappeared. Since then Sara has become withdrawn and preoccupied with the origins of Lucy Gallows. She has pushed away all their mutual friends and obsesses about finding Becca. A few days before the anniversary of Becca's disappearance everyone gets an anonymous text to find a partner, find a key, find the road. In other words, to play the game. The REAL game. This could be what reunites the group. A chance to find Becca. Anthony has been Sara's best friend longer than she can remember and he's secretly in love with Becca, so he agrees to help Sara pull this off despite them barely talking for a year. Then there's Trina and her younger brother. Nick and his girlfriend. Anthony's douchebag best friend. And Sara's crush, Mel. Though Mel has apparently brought not just one but two dates along with her! After one of Mel's dates takes offense to the menage, the group is ready to take the first step. The only problem is, they're an uneven number. The game states you HAVE to have a partner. At this point Sara doesn't care, she's willing to bend or break this rule to find Becca and get on that road and once that road appears, things get real. As real as the stones beneath their feet. From Becca's notes they have to pass through seven gates to get to the end of the road and they are returned home, hopefully finding Becca along the way. The first gate though takes a toll. They lose two people. Because they broke the rules. Which means they can not break any more. But that gets harder and harder as the tasks required of each gate get more complex and dangerous. The road might be asking too much, but if they save Becca and Lucy too, is the price worth it? Only those who love Becca most could say that for sure...

Rules For Vanishing is a YA version of Annihilation. There's even a scene in a lighthouse for Pete's sake. That is the crux of my problem with this book, it's too much other things and never it's own thing. The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking, this reminds me of something but I just can't place it. Probably because the author draws from so many sources you'll see what you connect to most. Here's a bit of Dungeons and Dragons, here's a bit of The Goonies, here's a bit of The Neverending Story, here's a bit of Labyrinth, here's a bit of some other eighties movie that didn't let you sleep for months. On a side note, what was it about "children's" movies in the eighties that they seemed to be purposefully designed to traumatize us? If the story had leaned into the urban legend part of the setup and veered away from the very Lovecraftian named city of Ys as the road's destination, maybe this would have worked for me. And yes, I know it's actually a legend from Brittany, hence all those French books in the aforementioned lighthouse, but Dahut was doing it with Cthulhu wasn't she? Also, the faux-documentary style likened to The Blair Witch Project in the book's blurb... well, I've seen it done better. I like that they try to incorporate many forms of media from recordings to written transcripts to cellphone footage, it's just, as I said, I've seen it done better. There's something a little clunky about how it's handled here. It's like Kate Alice Marshall is trying too hard to keep certain things hidden and not show her hand that the writing suffers. The story should be first, the gimmicks should be second. But what I did like was the representation in this book. In the gang of teenagers that go into the woods we have at least two LGBTQ characters, two different minorities, and two different disabilities. I felt like that this not only gave anyone reading the book someone to identify with, but it also felt more real. My friends are diverse and it's rare that we get to see this in literature. So while there where things I didn't like, tropes that were overdone, at the same time I want to point at the book and tell others that THIS is what needs to be seen more often! THIS is true representation!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Annihilation, Brittany, Cthulhu, Eighties Movies, Going Gothic, H.P. Lovecraft, Kate Alice Marshall, LGBTQ, Lucy Gallows, Representation, Rules For Vanishing, The Blair Witch Project, The Road, Tropes, Urban Legend

Final Girls by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: July 11th, 2017
Format: Kindle, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Quincy Carpenter is a final girl. Not just because she survived a massacre in the Poconos which left all of her friends dead, but because the press has elevated her to that status officially. She, along with two other women, are THE final girls. The first was Lisa, she survived a knife wielding maniac who attacked her sorority and killed all nine of her fellow sisters. Then there was Sam, she survived the Sack Man who showed up at the Nightlight Inn and killed everyone on site until Sam killed him. Then there was Quincy, she survived Pine Cottage and ran into the arms of her savior, the cop Coop, who gunned down her assailant. Coop's been keeping a protective eye on Quincy for ten years now. He's glad she's leading a normal life. She has a baking blog and is deep in the stages of baking season, that stretch from October to December when baked goods are a must. She has a solid almost-finance in prosecutor Jeff. In fact, from the outside her life looks perfect, and that's what she wants everyone to think. She's not a final girl, she is normal. But below the surface is rage. She pops Xanax with grape soda any time she feels. She is a mess, and events are about to rock her carefully controlled world. Because Coop brings her news that Lisa has killed herself. It's not just that this will bring the reporters out of the woodwork yet again, it's the fact that Lisa had survived so much and to take her own life goes against everything it means to be a final girl. What's more, Lisa tried to reach out to Quincy moments before her death. What did Lisa need to tell her? And if that isn't strange enough Sam shows up on Quincy's doorstep. After the public scrutiny Sam went off grid. She successfully disappeared. She was the mysterious one of the three final girls and here she is wanting to bond with Quincy, claiming that it's what Lisa would have wanted. Only Sam has many secrets and many demons following her. But Quincy wants to do what is best, and she invites her in. Then Sam gets arrested and Quincy realizes that the reason Sam so successfully disappeared is because she changed her name to Tina Stone. Well, whomever Sam/Tina is, she's pushing all Quincy's buttons, trying to get her to open up, to lash out, to embrace what it means to be a final girl. But is this because Sam has another motive? Soon they're on the cover of every newspaper, Quincy is under suspicion for battery of a junkie, and Lisa, well, Lisa didn't kill herself. Which means, is one of them next?

As the forth of July holiday approached I was longing to read Riley Sager's newest book, Survive the Night. He was my author of last summer and I was determined he'd be my author of this summer as well. But I was still waiting on my signed copy from Murder By The Book so I decided to delve into the only other book written under the Riley Sager nom de plume I hadn't gotten around to, Final Girls. Sadly it didn't scratch my itch. This is my least favorite of Riley Sager's books so far. And the truth is, I don't think it was a flaw in the book that made me dissatisfied, because it had so many things going for it, a relevant baking blog, true crime websites, though I disagree that the preponderance of them are run by men, and glorious Twin Peaks references that if you have obsessively watched the show for years like I have will clue you into the twist at the end. No, the problem was with me and my hatred of the "single white female" trope. I was all in for the slasher/cabin vibe, but sadly despite being the event that made Quincy a "final girl" it's more a subplot. Nothing more than background for where she is now, a decade later. And that is dealing with Sam/Tina and her moving in on Quincy's life. So you might be wondering, why do I hate the "single white female" trope so much, because I really can't stand it, so I will try to explain. So the trope is all about a woman coming into your life and incrementally taking it over. For me, the reason I hate this is that if someone tried to do this to me they'd be gone before they knew what hit them. If someone is problematic, if someone gives off a stalker vibe, WHY ARE YOU LETTING THEM IN!?! Admittedly, here Riley Sager is giving us a set of circumstances where it would be wrong to turn that woman away, so points for that, but for me, I can't see opening up my home to anyone who would basically end up being a hurricane. I like my nice, neat, controlled life. I would not tolerate it to ever go "single white female" and so I am annoyed when others let it happen to them. The ONLY time I've enjoyed this trope was in season four of Buffy the Vampires Slayer when Buffy's roommate Kathy is trying to single white female Buffy but Kathy turns out to be a demon and is vanquished. Rightly so if just for her music taste!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Coop, Final Girl, Final Girls, Going Gothic, Horror, Murder by the Book, Pine Cottage, Poconos, Quincy Carpenter, Riley Sager, Single White Female, Slasher, Survive the Night, Twin Peaks