Lars
This was a good book. A good debut novel. I do look forward to Mr. Fram's next book. But, this one was missing a little something for me to go full five-stars. I think the cast of characters was a bit too much. I kept straining my brain to remember who was who and how they knew each other. And the amount of narrators seemed excessive too. I liked the short chapters a lot. Kept me invested. Oh how I dislike long loooooong chapters. The supernatural element was not my favorite. It rarely is in a book tho, so that's definitely my shortcoming. Loved the LGBTQ+ aspect a lot. Especially set around Texas high school football. The relative coming back to their hometown that they hate etc has been done a million times, but that's ok. Just overall it's a four-star read. Really good. Just some stuff that wasn't my favorite.
Just a devastatingly hard book to read. For the content, not the writing! The writing was superb as usual. The plot and characters amazing. Another home run from B.A. Paris. But MAN was this a hard book to read, especially as a parent and a husband. One of her best, might rival Behind Closed Doors, tho that one was easier content wise.
Thank you, Mark Steensland, for sending me a copy of your new play to review!
As you all know from my handle across the social medias- theatretenor - I'm a bit of a theatre nerd! And besides being a massive theatre nerd I'm also an actor and a massive reading nerd, so this script was a natural pair with me!
I have previously had the pleasure of reading two of Mark's books he co-authored with James Newman, The Special and In the Scrape. And let me be upfront about those two - fucking phenomenal books! In the Scrape being easily one of the best reads of 2019 for me!
So, we have The Deception of Kathryn Vask. A play in two acts about grieving parents who lost their 9 year old a few months prior. Mom, Kathryn, is really struggling to accept the loss, thinking it's her fault and needing forgiveness from her now dead son, Timothy. Father, Jonathan, has moved on and is very much against religion and Kathryn turns to religion when conventional mental health doctors aren't doing the job.
The priest and Jonathan essentially concoct a contrived seance to trick Kathryn into thinking she's talking to Timothy and getting his forgiveness so she can move on...and I won't go farther than that! No spoilers here, folks!
In Act One Scene One it's a long drawn out argument at 4am with Kathryn and Jonathan and I got Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf vibes and I was here for it! Loved that scene! Could easily see myself digging in to the Jonathan character!
The play only gets better, ratcheting up the intensity and the horror from there! I was in to it 100% for the entire ride and let me tell you, it takes some turns and I did NOT see them coming!! LOVED that!
Some of the later scenes I see being hard to pull off on stage, BUT I'm not a director, my wife is! I simply act and so that would be the directors problem not mine haha!
I am not sure I've read quite such a dark horror play before and it's a genre I'm now convinced we need more of! I can see this play being really effective in a small black box theatre, ideally three quarter thrust so the audience is in on the action, nice and intimate!
5 stars from me!
Ruth Ware did it again! A home run! Loved this thriller. Reminded me a bit of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None crosses with Shari LaPena's An Unwanted Guest! I didn't call it either. I picked out someone and it wasn't that person. I imagine some people will figure it out, but that's ok. That's how mysteries go sometimes!
Ugh, so good! SO GOOD! It's 12:40am and I had to finish tonight. What to say? I don't even know! It was so dark. So nasty. So good. Tak is crazy. Was crazy in The Regulators but even more so in this! The battle of good vs. evil. It often results in a religious aspect. I'm ok with it here. Lots of people have a problem with it in this book, and I'm ok with that, I get it, but for me it was fine. Didn't detract from the book. The ending is so gut wrenching it really sealed the deal for me if I'm being honest. I was at a 4.5 stars like Regulators but it really pulled me to a solid 5 stars. Brilliantly finished book in my opinion, as as we all famously know, King can shit the bed on endings sometimes. Not here, for me. Idk, is it cause I rolled into this directly after Regulators that I loved it so much? Is it cause I actually read this book straight through without pausing to read other books and also read no other books alongside this like I normally do? I don't know. But this book was GOOD. GOOOOOOOD. Thank you, Steve.
4.5 stars rounded up. It's so crazy! Really crazy. But I dug it. The beginning was amazing, the middle a tad slumpy (which seems to happen for me in longer King books) and the end really picked up again. Tak is a crazy villain. I'm looking forward to what he has to offer in Desperation now! I quite enjoyed this one.
Really enjoyed this “splatter western”! It was gnarly and bloody and revenge-y. A man on a vengeful mission with his trusty Gun (capital G) at his side and an unwillingly sidekick. It was the perfect length. Written well. I'm really looking forward to Death's Head Press's second offering for the new splatter westerns they're commissioning!
I'm gonna go ahead and give this one five stars!
Stephen King is up to his usual tomfoolery alright. I loved every story, truly did. Every one of them struck a particular and different chord and I liked that a lot.
I love new King too. Unashamed. I know a majority, I'd be willing to bet, love old King more than new King and some even hate new King and are staunchly supportive of old King. And that's fine! That's the beauty of books! I like both, to be fair to myself, but I do like new King better.
Let's break down his newest offering, If It Bleeds:
Mr. Harrigan's Phone - 4 stars - I enjoyed it! Nice opener. My least favorite of the four. Fun concept tho. It IS indeed creepy to think of a phone ringing from inside a grave. And I liked the magic paranormal aspect. I won't give anything away.
The Life of Chuck - 4.5 stars - I loved this one! Super story. Super character. Great little surprise. Touching. I love stories that get me in that way. Wasn't expecting a non-horror story! A little something missing, and maybe it's that? Maybe it's the non-horror when I wasn't expecting it? I'm not sure. I'll be interested to do a reread maybe next year and see how I feel!
If It Bleeds - 5 stars - loved this one! Love Holly Gibney. Sue me, I do. I don't care. Loved the concept of the news reporter who is always there and that he is feeding off the despair and sadness of the victims. I don't know, just do! And I love crime novels. I love when King writes crime. And, to be fair to my review, I LOOOOOVE the entire Bill Hodges trilogy. Mr. Mercedes of course being my favorite, Finders Keepers second and End of Watch third favorite. So that clouds my review I'm sure!
Rat - LOVE this one! I think might be my favorite of the four, even above If It Bleeds. This one really just tickled my fancy, if you will. Loved the storyline. The location. The characters. Especially the rat! And man did I get a kick out of when he heard the word “rat” replaced with other words people were speaking when he got back from the cabin. I did literally laugh out loud at a few of them. Really clever to me for some reason! Loved the ending (we know King can struggle there). I don't know, just all around very enjoyable!
So gotta give this book an overall 5 star rating!
Thank you to the author, my good friend Mason, for letting me beta read his first novel! A novel of short stories. “Tales of terror and suspense” as the cover says. And it's true!
It's such an amazing debut, Mason! Truly. Every story delivered. They delivered the horror, the suspense, the scare, the mystery and intrigue. And they were all different and all such new fresh ideas. Every time I got done with a story I just always thought, “huh, well that was clever as shit!”
The writing is on par with every seasoned novelist. I just read the short stories and got lost in them without thinking about it being a debut and whether it was clunky or not, because it wasn't!
Honestly couldn't have asked for more from a set of short stories, almost all of them were 5 star stories for me. I'll detail out the star rankings at the end of this review.
I thought the length of the novel itself was appropriate at 245 pages. I thought the cover was great and pleasing to the eye and to the set of stories collected within. I thought the title was great, I haven't heard it before. A Haunt of Travels. I thought the length of each individual short was really well done. The longest being 45 pages, and worth it, the shortest being the bonus story at the end at 4 pages, but that one not included the shortest was 8, but that 8 pager was a doozy and packed a punch!
Without further ado here's the star rankings in order of how the stories appear in the book:
Lost & Found - 3.5 stars
Retirement - 5 stars
The Space Man - 4 stars
The Shack - 5 stars
Passing Flights - 5 stars
Sunshine & Bullets - 5 stars
The Arm Thief - 5 stars
Twenty Mile Chances - 5 stars
An Afternoon in Amherst - 5 stars
Terror on Central Park - 5 stars
Carentan - N/A, it's a poem and I don't feel I can accurately asses a poem - I really don't like poems
Bonus story: The Keeper of Goldfish - 5 stars
Gosh, I'm not sure what to say about this book! I struggled between 3 and 4 stars and so I have settled on 3.5 stars, leaning towards the 3. I LOVED the first half of this book. Loved it. Gothic and foreboding and beautiful. Then it really took a turn. Became a completely different book. Like COMPLETELY different. And I got through the second half and it wasn't bad by any means, but I devoured the first half and just got through the second half...and that's just not what you want in a book now is it? Sad, cause it's a good book and I'm glad I read it, but it just got too different and fantastical and I guess I just wasn't in to that.
I'm pleasantly surprised! I didn't think I'd like this book. Thought it would be too slow. And in the first 20 pages or so it was and I almost gave up. But, it's a fairly short book and there's lots of spaces and a fair amount of dialogue so I thought, I can do this! Well, the book, I feel, got better and better as it went on. And I also really appreciated the end (can't say I loved it if you know what happens you know why). At the beginning I was gonna give up, then I was gonna give it two stars, then halfway upped it to 3 to 3.5 stars and in the end I'm giving it 4 stars!
I do think Cormac McCarthy is a bit pretentious. I don't enjoy the no punctuation thing, tho I guess I get it. But looking passed that I appreciated the characters, what they were going through, the world they were left with and the dire circumstances they were in. And as a father I think this hit home more and with the current pandemic situation we're in, I think that helped too!
The more I think about it I might be persuaded to five stars, but I think I'll stick to 4 for now!
Really glad I read this and I'd love to have the Suntup Editions copy of this, but that's WAY too expensive.
I just TORE through this book! Basically read it all in two or three sittings! I love love love a nice juicy thriller whodunit! This one delivered for me big time! I was into the characters and the plot. The shifting time frame and the shifting narrative worked for me too. Sometimes that works for me, sometimes it doesn't. Definitely worked here! Just a fun thriller full of lots of twists and turns and scornful people!
This was a twisty messed up masterpiece! I just didn't see all the twists coming. Loved that truth be told I didn't know who the “bad guy” was, was it the daughter or was it the mom?! And when one of them says something are they telling the truth or telling a lie? I ate it up! Loved the story, haven't heard of that type of plot before, so that was such a wonderful surprise because of all the books I read, to read something fresh!
This book was absolutely riveting, from start to finish. I couldn't get enough. Sneaking in chapters and pages wherever I could whenever I could! And reading the last 40% in one day because I had to know what was going to happen! Devastating at times, frustrating at times, happy at times. It really runs the whole gambit.
My third read from Wendy Walker and all three have been five star reads! She's an amazing author!
What.a.RIDE! Phew! I was fully into this book 100% of the time. I badly needed this after the slow books I read before this. I am a thriller lover at heart so I can't stray too far away before so have to come back lol
Did I figure out the twists? Almost none of them! Just one little tiny one did I figure out ahead of time. Otherwise the major twists just slapped me in the face as they came!
This was a read-so-fast-you-skip-words-because-you-need-to-know-what's-coming book!
And, for what it's worth, I absolutely loved that it was told all through one perspective! Yeah I like multi-perspective books, but it's really nice to read a single perspective book every now and then!
5 giant stars from me!
I really enjoyed this book. I think it did a great job of amping up that suspense slowly. Killing me slowly as I wind towards the end desperate to know who was taking the children and what was up with Cassie's dad. I do agree with others that the ending was very abrupt, but, I also understand that there's an epilogue online. I think I'll go find that now and get a bit more of a wrap up! Overall 4 star read for me. Left me a tad underwhelmed in the end, but is still a great little thriller with a good amount of suspense and nice characters!
I enjoyed this twisty book. I needed to know what happened to Violet and to Yvonne and Lily so there was no way I was DNFing this book! But it did take me longer than usual cause sometimes it was a little repetitive and to be honest a little confusing sometimes but it got there in the end and I was glad I read it.
I enjoyed it quite a bit, and more than I actually expected to! The last two stories I'd read previously, In The Tall Grass I read on its own, and You Are Released I read in Flight or Fright, so I didn't reread those. Here's my order from best to worst:
You Are Released
All I Care About Is You
Late Returns
Faun
In The Tall Grass
Throttle
Twittering from the Circus of the Dead
Dark Carousel
Mums
By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain
Thumbprint
Wolverton Station
The Devil on the Staircase
Absolutely heartbreaking at parts and a truly unputdownable thriller! LOVED Jar of Hearts from Hillier so when this popped up on Netgalley I had to have it and boy was that a great choice!
I absolutely devoured this book. Read in probably three massive chunks because I never wanted to stop, including the last maybe 40% which I read until finishing at 1am even tho I had to work the next day, I just couldn't stop!
An easy 5 star read for me
That being said, for me personally, I think I need to take a break from thrillers involving children. My heart can't take it anymore! I like that the author acknowledges this at the end of her book, and I know she too has a young son, like myself, and it was difficult for her to write. It was an AMAZING book, very well written and an amazing story and characters but man, I need a break from poor children being mistreated. I read so many thrillers and I still am just heartbroken when it comes to children because I can't help but put myself in that situation!
Amazing book. Love Hillier!
I'm so sad my second Roz Nay novel is over. I WANT MORE!
She has done it again, folks. Holy cow. What a thrill ride. I was fully engrossed from the beginning.
The characters are so REAL. So real. I didn't even feel like I was reading a novel at all. I honestly was so into it that I had to stop and tell myself it wasn't real. When certain things happened that I can say here I was in tears. And other times flabbergasted, and other times cheering.
What a plot too. Are there twists? You bet there are! God damn, one of my favorite twists ever in a book. And I didn't see it coming, I really didn't! It was so seamless and so well pulled off that I was shocked.
I wish I could go into details, but I want you to experience it all for yourself!
Get lost in this amazing thriller. Should I call it a domestic thriller? I'm not good with labels, but I'd say it is.
And once more for the people in the cheap seats — I WANT MORE!
Nothing short of five glorious stars! I devoured this book from start to finish! Read the first 60% in one day. Wouldn't have put it down if I didn't have to. Just a thrill ride. I love thrillers and this one was top class. It was hard to read at points being a parent myself and the awful scenarios taking place with children, but it was so good I couldn't stop. I had to know what would happen.
What a concept too! We have your child, you have to pay us and then kidnap someone ELSE'S child and then when THEY pay and play the game properly you'll get your kid back and so on and so on. Genius.
Loved learning about the creators of The Chain in the second half of the book, really added to the overall storyline.
Loved the ending. Really dug the intensity of the end.
Brutal book. Nightmarish book. Nightmarish scenarios. Brilliant.