Perry
It's been ages since I've read Nick Cutter, and I especially loved The Troop. So I was looking forward to some grotty, gooey, gore. There is some of that. TW: There is a turtle in peril, which is upsetting.
Basically, Trent and Rita–along with their small son Milo and his aforementioned turtle Morty–move to a new housing development. It's so new, there's only, like, one house, and there is no lawn. Trent is annoyed at this. There is also a giant crack in his bedroom closet. So he does what any man with something to prove to himself does–he looks it up on Youtube, buys his supplies, and follows the instructions of Handyman Hank.
Naturally (supernaturally), strange things start to occur. Trent finds weird baubles and pink worms. Milo starts building weird creations from junk around the house. There are weird convex nests on the property, and weird voices coming from Milo's weird creations. Milo also seems to have his own Handyman Hank helping him create his little inventions. Meanwhile, Rita doesn't necessarily explicitly experience too many of the incidences, unless she's with her son. But she knows something is lurking there, something dark and awful, something that makes her fear for her son.
Cuz, let's face it. There's some backstory here, and Trent and Rita don't have the greatest relationship. And the house is making it worse and worse.
There was definitely some good grue. You can rely on our authors for that. There were a few things I didn't expect, which made me very happy also. This is easily a bit of a critique on toxic masculinity. A solid, fun read.
Thank you to the authors and publisher for giving me an ARC in a giveaway on line for an honest review.
Thanks to Wicked House, NetGalley, and Blaine Daigle for providing an ARC in exchange for a fair review.
A few places need to be reworded. But this was a damn fine folk horror tale with some very good prose.
We follow Ryne, a man mourning the death of a child, a divorce, and the loss of his father in a car accident. In flashbacks, his past is fleshed out, so we see why he's pulling away from the world, in the company of his two closest friends. But, as we learn his story, we discover, along with Ryne and his friends, the dark legacy of his family in the Yukon.
There's some really good, unnerving scenes in this book. The male friendship is touching, and it's even gruesome and creepy. I look forward to more from Daigle in the future.
A very enjoyable book. There are some word choices that could be cleaned up, but the most glaring one was the misuse of “nonplussed.” I note this only because it is a common mistake.
That being said. This was fun and, sometimes, not fun. In short, we follow Erik and Lara, who are on a trip to get away from life. They recently lost their new-born daughter, who never even got to leave the hospital. They are both traumatized and handling it a bit differently.
In the village where they're taking a holiday, they one day discover a strange egg sac on the beach. When they examine it, they discover a young girl in it. And their life changes.
Not for the better. Erik isn't a great guy, but his grief is palpable. The way he handles his grief helps him for a while resist the new child's charm. Lara, however, desperately wants a child and is particularly vulnerable to the child, Scylla. Scylla ingratiates herself into their lives and begins to play them off each other, in an attempt to isolate Lara. As the relationship between Erik and Lara worsens, Scylla's hold on Lara strengthens. When Lara is very far gone in Scylla's power, Erik meets some villagers who are actively fighting against Scylla and her sinister sisters of the sea.
There are some brutal scenes of abuse. Since Scylla can easily control the couple, in particular Lara, who is her mark, she causes the two to literally beat each other. And then they don't remember what happens later. This is hard to read because they are both innocent of the abuse. They are puppets whose strings are being pulled by Scylla. There's also some nice gore in places. Scylla herself is a sinister little brat, and that's great. There are many discussions of grief, and there are some scenes that might be hard for some readers. The ashes of Erik and Lara's daughter are an important element, both to the plot and to the characterization of especially Erik.
My main issue, besides nonplussed, was that Erik and Lara seemed pretty gendered to me in how they react to Scylla, and how Scylla can target them. Erik also isn't a very likable character, in all honesty. But I didn't mind that. It made it far more interesting to not totally like the guy, but to empathize with his situation. And some of that was certainly Scylla's influence, but not all of it.
In all, a stellar piece of folk horror. The grief is palpable throughout the novel, and the characters sufficiently flawed to feel pretty darn realistic. I don't doubt their grief for a second, even when they can't understand each other. There's some amount of gore, and the prose is pretty solid. The setting really adds to the atmosphere, and the important side characters are fun. I also fully believe how the small town acts. IYKYK.
Thank you to the author and publishers for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to author Drew Starling for hooking a girl up with the ARC.
Review to come.
Review here now.
So, this was fun enough. It wasn't great. But it wasn't boring. I was expecting supernatural, and it's more thriller. So there's lots of overthinking and paranoia and strange deductions because of the paranoia and overthinking. In the Rockies. In the winter. So major isolation thriller. Winter isolation horror is my catnip. This, again, was more thriller, but it was still fun and had some nice grue. I approve of the violent, horrible murders–fictionally speaking, I mean. Exactly what I wanted.
Basically, our hero Christa is traumatized and dragged on a winter trip by her boyfriend, whom she adores. There are 11 people plus the tour guide on the bus as it chugs through the Rockies. In the winter. In the snow. A tour bus. The Rockies. Yep. The road to their lodge ends up blocked by a big tree, so they all get out of the bus to see if there's anything to do about it. Whilst the tour guide is pondering the tree, Christa's boyfriend drags her on a walk. Along ledges. In the Rockies. In the winter. In a snowstorm. In enough feet of snow that when she falls, she's not broken to bits, just a bit sore and frost-bitten.
When she climbs out of the snow, her bf has disappeared. She manages to bungle to a cabin, where she finds the other passengers–but no boyfriend. And then people start dying. And decorating the big old pine outside like so many Christmas ornament glass orbs. Who is doing this? Why? And how can the survivors trust each other?
Christa, gods love her, just isn't that smart. She fits the traumatized thriller heroine to a T. She's not that interesting, but she's an all right person. The characters all feel fairly tropey, but they aren't cardboard cutouts. But there were a couple characters I could have told her from the very beginning she should trust. Her judge of character is lacking. Sure, maybe it's the circumstances, but I'd argue that she just isn't good judging people at all for her whole life.
Still, that sounds like I hate her. I don't. I was just frustrated by her thought processes. I quite liked some of the characters, like nice guy Hutch. He's actually pretty decent and datable. I also liked Denny, to an extent.
But adding to Christa's distress is not only the murders and murder displays, but the fact that her boyfriend has disappeared in the storm. Then...spoiler...they find his body, with an engagement ring in the pocket. Poor Christa cannot catch a break.
There's mistaken identity, gore, murder, improbabilities found only in thrillers, and some fun frozen isolation distress. No matter the flaws, this was a grand time. If you actually LIKE thrillers, you'll probably like this quite a bit. It goes down very easily, although some might balk at the Christmas ornament heads–but I'm a horror girl, so I like that.
Even for me, who reads thrillers and almost always hates them–with a few rare exceptions–enjoyed reading this. Probably because Ms. Coates can write horror too. My main issues are mostly because of the genre itself, not because of Ms. Coates. I think she succeeded with the expectations of the thriller genre. The horror elements I loved. The thriller elements will never be my favorite, but again, that's not her fault. She succeeded in characterization, mystery, and action. She succeeded in improbably thriller plot whilst juggling multiple characters.
There were a couple grammatical errors that would just need to be corrected. Nothing major. The main issue would be actual travel through the Rockies in winter. There are places where it's impassable. I'm guessing wherever this takes place would also be impassable. Even in New England, there were places growing up in the White Mountains where the roads would be closed for the winter, because travelling was too dangerous. You would legit need a Snowcat, just like in The Shining. Which is not what they had. I'm guessing they would never have made it as far as they did in the winter in a bus. So logistically, this doesn't work. Nor is it that easy to decapitate someone, drag their carcass through feet of snow to a whole new place, and shove their decapitated head onto a tree branch. But I like the visual.
So good for thriller fans. For this not-fan of thrillers, still incredibly entertaining. Goes down easy, provides some grue, reads fast.
Thank you to the publisher and author for providing a digital ARC in exchange for a fair review.
3.5 stars
Yes, Chef Davis in real life would actually be terrible to work for. Then again, restaurants are really weird places to work. Especially, from what I can tell, independent ones.
The art was definitely manga-influenced. It was cute and pretty and really well rendered. Food looked and sounded tasty. Characters were likeable. I really loved the main quartet of friends and would read a story just about them.
And Watson the pig. Believe in him. Pigs are smart. I particularly love the panel where he's squaring, much to the horror of Chef Davis, the piggy daddy.
Mild spoilers.
So this was fine. It needed some editing for continuity and tightening up. Sadly, it does not deserve the high ratings it has, because it is pretty sophomoric. Yes, it's a debut novel. But it told me more than showed me. For instance, Amy claims multiple times that Liz is basically the heart of their group, but we never really see that. We never really get to know Liz.
Also, there is no demon possession. It's a ghost given demonic attributes because apparently there's no difference.
I did like Jess. She was probably my favorite. But I'm not sure why Melissa was friends with any of them.
I think Kilmer has great potential, but the author's writing needs to mature, and she needs to learn the difference between ghosts and demons. That being said, I was never bored, I was entertained, and I think there's some good ideas here.
In all, a fun park–? BOOK, autocorrect!– that needed to fill out it's darker elements better; leave out bunny trauma, thank you very much; and understand its narrative better. I think the writer has potential with the cozy horror thing, since it's not a huge subgenre. I'll be interested to see what's next.
I'm really glad I am childless and NOT in the suburbs.
3.5 stars
Thank you to the publisher for making this available on line.
Adorable. The art is so pretty, and the girls are just trying so hard to figure life out.
Grace and Lola are bffs who are confounded by love. They decide to interview people and take notes to try to figure love out. Meanwhile, Grace has things going on at home she doesn't tell Lola about; Lola likes a boy who avoids her. Until he doesn't. And then he does again.
This is basically an adorable story of female friendship and learning to see beyond what everyone else believes is true. It's about girls learning to be themselves and to be confident and going to each other for love and support.
It was just. Adorable. I'll certainly happily read the second volume.
Shorts
3.5 stars. Modern stories, complicated feelings, complex relationships. If you like Rachel, you'll most likely like these stories. I always read her, so I guess I like her.
Merged review:
Shorts
3.5 stars. Modern stories, complicated feelings, complex relationships. If you like Rachel, you'll most likely like these stories. I always read her, so I guess I like her.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I love horror, and I love comics, so I was excited to read this one. It was a very fun romp with fun, cartoony art. The art actually worked very well for the tone, which is a slapstick buddy story that turns into a roadtrip adventure with an ensemble cast. It's silly and fun, with some grue. There are a couple elements I'm reserving judgment on (use of Indigenous mythology, comedic insertion of the KKK, although they deserve what they got), but on the whole, a good time was had by all. 3.5 stars.
Thank you to Dark Horse Comics for the ARC.
Been sitting in this a while, and finally demanded I had it. I have not read any if the YOUNEEK comics before, do I was just jumping into the world. And, honestly, even though I was confused at first, the WindMaker team does a great job if explaining the world enough to keep it engaging and understandable. The art is quite good, and there are some surprises. I'd certainly read more in this universe and the next volume of WindMaker.
Hm.
This short novel is almost a tragicomedy, except any humor is internal to the characters. It is a bleak little number about a crew of content mediators who work for a fictional social media company. If follows our protagonist Kayleigh in her brief employ and even briefer relationship with a co-worker named Sigrid.
I plowed through it, interested–this isn't really a novel to enjoy so much as to question humanity–until the abrupt end. It's all work and relationship trauma, and hood human cruelty affects is all, in sometimes incalculable ways.
Thank you too Mr. Starling for an ARC in exchange for a review.
I got the chance too read the ARC for Sentinel and imported art the chance for Nothus. And if did not disappoint. We spend time with some different characters in this one, like Cheryl's daughter Skylar and boyfriend. If you were uncertain about her in the first one, rest assured she's actually awesome. Ellen continues to be a BAMF. And we learn the origin of the Night Bastard. Mysteries abound, as does some mild body horror, and there were genuine surprises that made my jaw drop–which is hard to do!
I love Ellen. She's strong but warm and compassionate. And I love Skylar. I was really happy with some good teen girl representation. And I feel like we've not seen the last of Bensalem, and I'll be happy to visit it again.