Carla

This is an incredibly fascinating deep dive into another world, that of an insane asylum in Czechoslovakia, housed in an ancient and storied castle. This hospital is for the worst of the worst, and a doctor has arrived specifically to examine each of the six patients carefully housed there, the Devil's Six. He has just come from studying under [a:Carl Jung 20417732 Carl Jung https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], and he is looking in these tortured and extremely violent psyches for evidence of his theory of the “Devil's Aspect”, the element in common that makes people evil. And away we go...I normally shy away from books set around or in World War II, because I think it's often used too tritely as a setting, given the true horror of what occurred–a romance or the story of someone seeking their birth parent, what-have-you, is sent against World War II only for drama's sake, which can border on the bounds of taste. But the looming sense of doom as Hitler's little bit of power starts to grow is a crucial element in this story, a dark umbrella over the darker castle, and over the truly vile and shocking acts of the Devil's Six and they are revealed one by in psychotherapy, and as hidden racism is revealed in staff in the asylum through comments. Permission is given to speak freely as global events slowly change and the leader acts more aggressively, a parallel to the ugliness in the US over the last four years.Intertwined with all this is Slavic and Czech folklore and fairy tales. The total effect is truly stunning.The narrator, Julian Rhind-Tutt, was new to me, but he was perfect. I am extremely picky with my narrators, and I loved him. He was able to perform accents without being too heavy, and to do so while distinguishing between characters. 15 hours of dark forests and darker secrets. If you love horror, mythology, and the original versions of fairy tales, this is for you.

It was probably not the best idea to read this in the waning days of 2020. Several sentences were strikingly prescient of a pandemic.

Perfect.

“‘We're a book club,' Maryellen said. ‘What are we supposed to do? Read him to death? Use strong language?'”

It's a return to the neighborhood of My Best Friend's Exorcism, and I want even more, thank you, Grady.

Excellent character development, bizarre story (alien origin? That takes away from the charm of her being a Muslim kid from Jersey City.)

If you are interested in a true crime book, this is probably not for you. This is an autobiography—a strange one. Even when the author is talking about someone's murder, there are so many I-statements...So. Many. I. Statements.
Plus so many inappropriate actions. As a former therapist, I cringed many times. Befriending victims. Bringing victims and victims' families into his family. Giving victims' family members information about the crime that he did not have permission to do so, in his family's hotel's room.
Then, after all this: the final chapter is a recap of the entire book from a more intense version of his viewpoint: more ME and I. I was so stressed, I solved these crimes, I have a lot of pets...I read this book because I wanted to learn about, with respect, crimes that have occurred, how they had been solved (or not), and to honor how the victims had suffered. As I type this, I am listening to the last chapter and the author is describing in detail about how he had knee surgery. It is taking all of my willpower to finish this last chapter—sheer stubbornness.
As a therapist who worked with children and adolescents in dire situations, who understands compassion fatigue and secondary traumatization, I am still deeply put off—disgusted—by this author's navel gazing, by his making others' suffering about him. Example: he claims that nurses say that everything he comes out of anesthesia, they tell him he screamed a certain murder victim's name, all these years later. Poor FBI agent. That child died friendless and alone, terrified, sexually violated by the only people he spent time with. But by all means, it's about you.
Never mind, I am not finishing this last chapter. I can't.

The art style changed strikingly from volume 1 to 2, and not for the better at all, with much harsher lines obscuring action and changing the way characters looked. Many of the men looked extremely similar, even those very different in age, like Rick and Hershel.

I received a copy of this book from WildBlue Press In return for an honest review:
Jackson revisited the case of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Brandy DuVall, a case so brutal that he considered no longer writing true crime. It's a sobering and violent read; DuVall was raped, tortured and murdered by a group of other teenagers. Jackson does a fine job of balancing sharing the details in order to honor Brandy's suffering and not lingering over them in the service of salaciousness. I think knowing what a victim suffered is important; when true crime consumers hear “raped and murdered” over and over, it loses its meaning. What happened to DuVall at the hands of seven boys and young adults is not encompassed by that throwaway phrase, and Jackson understood this, but also did not overwhelm the reader—the details were dealt with sensitively and powerfully over the period of the book, which also gives the reader a fascinating insight into gang culture, which also led to the related murder of young Venus Montoya.

“They exaggerate the weather reports, you know that. They turn six inches of fresh powder into the “Storm of the Century”.

“a satisfactory burst of Caucasian music”

“the lamentation of vacuum cleaners”

“the uproar of a cocktail party that has overshot its mark”

I am now a huge fan of Cheever.

Also, I want Meryl Streep (and her daughters, Mamie Gummer and Grace Gummer) to read all the things to me.

The book on the doctor's nightstand is Middlemarch. The themes of that novel are the nature of marriage (who deserves to marry whom), morality, hypocrisy, self-interest, and the status of women. Well played, Greer and Sarah. I see you.

As if you dreamed once of Gormenghast and the manor in The Turning of the Screw built by Bosch, and Jeremy got into your dream and wrote it all down. If you love ghost stories, this is your novel.

If you grew up with 70's and 80's horror like I did, especially the killer kid subgenre, you will love this book.

What did I just read.
I finished it out of stubbornness, to find out what happened. An extra star for originality, because I have definitely never seen that before.

Chet Williamson, the horror author, (and my friend—full disclosure) carries this story so beautifully, juggling the sounds of so many different voices with ease with his lovely deep voice. And he remembers the precise sound for each character, something I can't imagine how to do. He needs to narrate more books.

The story is a true epic, down in the dirt and up the heavens with creation and sex and the nature of the world(s), and I am so looking forward to reading its sequel, Everville, also narrated by Williamson.

The character actor Kathleen Wilhoite's narration was exquisite, and truly made the different layers of this complicated (and morally ambiguous) story come alive. As of now she has only narrated Senple's two novels; she must narrate more audiobooks.

2 1/2 stars. I'm not sorry I read it, but. I read once that Rowling regrets the epilogue to Deathly Hallows, that she wrote it to please fans. So this script surprises me, because it's an extension and justification of that epilogue.
And it doesn't ring true, especially with regards to Ron and Hermione. Ron took on Fred and George's joke shop, and their personalities. “Oh no we're going to get in trouble” Ron is now practical joker extrovert Ron. It feels off. Also, Ron is super kissy-smoochy with Hermione in a way that feels forced in the script, and doesn't feel reciprocated to me. In almost every scene they are in together, Ron is either declaring his love randomly to her, kissing her, or blowing her a kiss...it's odd. They don't have chemistry, not in my opinion.
The story itself, saving Cedric Diggory, the major guilt of Harry's life, is an interesting device. Add to that what happened to Bellatrix, and this could have been much more than it was.

Audiobook narrated by Dianne Lake herself. Fascinating look inside the Manson Family given by the youngest member. Star deducted for the long beginning—she focuses on her parents for a good while, and her early relationship with them, before ever starting to talk about her meeting up with the Family. I understand that her own family's treatment of her, introducing her to drugs and making her unwelcome at several junctures, set her up to need Charlie Manson, but this first section was so long that I actually wandered away from this audiobook for a while. (Part of the problem, admittedly, was that I was disgusted with her parents' treatment of her, and didn't want to hear any more about it in detail.)

I have read this brilliant and chilling short story before, but having known him, I had to hear the author read it to me. And it was marvelous. And the multi-layered last line still packs a punch.

Prince is Stevie's muse, to this day. I didn't realize I needed to know that. Only makes me love her more.

Really enjoyable exploration of a cult and its aftermath. I think I found a continuity error (I don't think the isolated members would know about the movie The Revenant?), and I would have liked to have known more about the “reckonings”, but otherwise, a quite fascinating what-if.

3.5 stars: This is an interesting collection of not-well-known cases, as always smoothly and respectfully narrated by Kevin Pierce (my most recommended true crime audiobook narrator), and is written by talented authors (two of which are friends of mine—disclaimer.) I only rate this down because this is really a bits-and-bites true crime collection: this is what happened, and that's it. No insight into why, no delving deep. There was a shockingly short case study about a mother who killed some of her children rather violently: it described the day it occurred, and then ended. I felt more like a voyeur reading this than the student of psychology I am.no really, BA psy and MEd counseling. I reread this review and saw that last part read as really flippant. Sorry about that. I intensely want to know all the whys all the time. It's a curse.

Both the art and the storyline are improving, book by book. I am intrigued to see where this is going to go, because it is far darker than I ever expected.

One mistake...

She's not supposed to speak after daybreak, but all she does is speak, on and on.
I do like how this issue acknowledges that Sabrina's classmates are on to the fact that something is odd about her. I want to see that develop further.

Delightfully horrifying, just as You is...but I was brought up short by the ending. Is there going to be a third in the series, or is this it? Because if this is how it all ends, it's an extremely odd and abrupt ending.

After I finished this. I realized that there is a major plot hole that cannot be ignored, and that the denouement feels, independent of that realization, like a bit of a cheat gotcha. I expected far better from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts, a book which actually haunted me.