It looks like people were somewhat split on this one, but I found it to be a really fun read. One that I could have finished in one sitting if I hadn'It looks like people were somewhat split on this one, but I found it to be a really fun read. One that I could have finished in one sitting if I hadn't started it so late the other night.
It's a quirky horror read - strange, not quite scary - that plays on the haunted house trope. A family moves into their dream home but things are not what they seem.
The wife, Sabrina, begins to see and hear things that she cannot easily explain and, like most normal people in weird situations, attempts to rationalize them away until she can't - a strange man appears on her basement steps and carries a box of her husand's sports stuff down into the basement then disappears into the crawl space; she heads upstairs to run a hot bath only to find someone has already done it though she's the only one home; she turns on the TV and sees herself in every show... Unfortunately, she's the only one experiencing it and her family is starting to think she's mentally unravelling. By the time her kids start to catch on to the fact that something is not quite right, they may be just a little too late...
I think the less you know going in, the better off you are, because it's an interesting spin on the genre. If you pick it up, I'd love to know what you think!!...more
I listened to this one on audio and was immediately sucked in. It's atomspheric, haunting, and unsettling... and I really dug it.
It's the dark creepyI listened to this one on audio and was immediately sucked in. It's atomspheric, haunting, and unsettling... and I really dug it.
It's the dark creepy tale of a married couple, Juliette and Richard, who are grieving the recent loss of their five year old son after having moved out to Starve Acre. The house, which gets its name from the field beyond the backyard, had belonged to Richard's father, who had passed not too long ago after suffering a bout of madness. As Richard fingers through a box of old books in the basement, he comes across one that details a rather gruesome hanging of three young boys from a great old oak that used to grow in the middle of the field. To help him process the loss of his son, Richard takes to excavating the field, and locates not only the roots of that old tree, but the bones of a long dead hare.
As the story rocks backward and forward in time, we learn that their son Ewan believed he could see the old oak from time to time while playing in the field. Juliette and Richard also began to notice frightening changes in him, violent tendencies that involved him inflicting harm on animals and other children.
As the parental terror and concern for Ewan's mental well-being builds in the past, Richard and his wife also face strange terrors in the present - remember those hare bones? Welp, Richard brought them into the house to study them and noticed almost immediately that they began to reconnect themselves with fresh cartilage, and muscle, and veins. Meanwhile, Juliette swears she can feel Ewan still, and invites a small group of occultists over to try to make contact with him.
Nothing good comes from any of this and let me tell you... the final scene, and that last line... oh. my. god. This book goes from creepy to absolutely cray-cray! I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a wild rabbit the same again.
Tordotcom is knocking it out of the park this year. Another awesome book devoured in nearly one sitting while home sick with the headcold from hell.
WTordotcom is knocking it out of the park this year. Another awesome book devoured in nearly one sitting while home sick with the headcold from hell.
What a cool twist on the zombie apocalypse.
Imagine you're minding your own business, washing dishes in the backroom of a restaurant and one of the waitresses rushes into the kitchen freaking out and asking how to lock the swinging doors. You shrug and ask her why, and she tells you that the customers and staff have suddenly started attacking each other. Like, they've become monsters and are actually EATING each other. And then one of the cooks who was outside having a smoke comes in with a peice of their arm bitten out, claiming the head chef did it. Imagine that those of you who are seeing this, hearing this, quickly devise a plan to blow the place up, to stop the monsters or others or z-z-zombies or whatever from spreading their disease any further. To protect yourself from being one of their meals. And so you do it. You blow the place up! Boom!
Then imagine being told months later, after you've killed everyone in that restaurant and countless others in an attempt to survive this mad new world you've found yourself in, that YOU are the ones who were infected, that there were never any monsters or others or z-z-zombies, but that YOU were the ones who were under the influence of a disease, and that you weren't responsible for the lives you took while you were under its influence, not responsible for the actions you took while under the influence of the 'narrative', and that the true survivors are actually the people who managed not to get killed by YOU.
This book started appearing all over my bookstagram feed and sounded like something I thought I would really enjoy. So when I fo#Bookstagrammademedoit
This book started appearing all over my bookstagram feed and sounded like something I thought I would really enjoy. So when I found myself face to face with it while browsing the bookshelves at a B&N as I waited for the hubster to get off work and meet me for our dinner date, I decided to bring it home with me.
And you know... I'm not fully certain how I feel about it yet. I've let it simmer in my brain for a few days and I'm still asking myself whether Oshetsky meant for it to be an allegorical story about motherhood or straight up magical realism or if it's just about a woman who lost her fucking marbles and is in serious need of immediate medical attention.
Tiny is pregnant and believes her husband is not the father. She obsesses over the certainty that she was impregnanted by a mysterious female owl-lover and wouldn't you know it, what does she give birth to? An owl-baby. A child with chitinous scaling, yellow eyes, ambigious gentials, whose appearance is consistent with strigiformes. WTF, right?
She loves and accepts Chouette as she is (whose name, btw, is regularly mistaken as Charlotte), often encouraging her feral and animalistic nature. Her husband however, after months of retreating from Tiny and the baby, suddenly overcomes his disgust at the sight of his poor deformed little girl and becomes hell bent on "fixing" her. And, just in case it wasn't clear that giving birth to an owl-baby had unhinged Tiny, the husband's new interest in normalizing Chouette pushes Tiny right over the edge.
It's an incredibly lyrical, beautful read that also tends to be somewhat unnecessarily repetitive. And that repetitiveness, while not entirely intrusive, sometimes pulled me out from under the spell the book was weaving on me.
Gosh you guys, this was a tough one for me. I was dipping in and out of it for daaaays. It's slow and meandering, a story within a story within a storGosh you guys, this was a tough one for me. I was dipping in and out of it for daaaays. It's slow and meandering, a story within a story within a story - I was getting serious House of Leaves flashbacks while reading this one - but I was ok with it while I was actively reading it. The struggle came once I put it down. I had to remind myself, almost force myself, to pick it back up.
In theory, I should have really liked this one. It's a book that plays heavily on nostalgia. Granted, my memories aren't tied to a murder house like those of our main narrator, but reading about the three teens who stake their claim in an abandoned porn store definitely brought to mind some of the stuff my friends and I got ourselves into during our own high school years. We did our fair share of stupid shit, hanging out in rusted old mobile homes in a Florida trailer park, leaving chalk murals on the roof of a coffee shop... so yeah, there's something familiar about these kids, we've hung out with someone like them, we KNEW them, we WERE them.
But it just didn't call to me, it never completely captured me, it kept missing the mark, and I got close to DNFing it a couple of time. But this book is the perfect example of why I hate doing that... because last few pages of the final section changed the entire experience for me.
There's no doubt Darnielle can write. I just haven't figured out if I'm the right reader for it. ...more
For starters, I need you to know that Come Closer is one of my all time favorite paranormal horror novels. AndHooo boy! Where to begin with this one?
For starters, I need you to know that Come Closer is one of my all time favorite paranormal horror novels. And it makes me so happy to see soooo many people still discovering and reading it!
I also need you to know that I don't usually go in for books that contain a high ratio of the erotica. Full disclosure: when written on the page, sex scenes tend to have the opposite effect on me than the writer intends. Most of the time, I find the descriptions to be kind of cringe inducing. (Case in point - I will never EVER wipe the image of breasts that looked like "quivering puppies" from my mind, thanks to Charlaine Harris and her Sookie Stackhouse books. Those things scarred me for life).
That said, while the main focus of her latest novel surrounds a very rare handwritten manual on sex magic and the sexual acts many of the previous owners and current seekers of said manual have completed in an attempt to unlock that magic, I'm incredibly thankful that Gran doesn't spend a lot of energy describing all of it in great detail... trying to make us picture penises as stiff members (or pink cigars or heaven forbid mushroom headed f**k sticks), or vajayjay's as pink tacos (or cock pockets or ewwww fur burgers).
Because, ultimately at its core, The Book of the Most Precious Substance is just that... a book about sex. Well, in all fairness, it's a book about a very dark and powerful book that promises its readers that which they most desire if they sucessfully perform five very specific sexual acts, one of which is to generate "the most precious susbtance" (female ejaculate).
So you've got Lily and Lucas, two rare book dealers who stand to make a killing if they can locate it because some of the wealthiest people in the world are dying to get their hands on it. The hunt for the book leads them into the strange world of dark arts - witchcraft, dominatrix, creepy occult stuff - and just as they begin to find themselves falling under the book's spell, some of the highest bidders start turning up dead. Lily and Lucas aren't sure if the murders are meant to knock out the competition, but they know one thing for certain, they have to locate that book before the killer catches up to them.
Gran turns up the heat and keeps the suspense on a high simmer the whole way through. A thoroughly enjoyable, fast paced story with entertaining characters that is totally worth your while (if you can forgive a little erotica in your literary fiction)....more
Having read and enjoyed Horseman, I had high hopes for this one.
It sounded amazing - Alice, ten years after having escaped the Rabbit, now escapes frHaving read and enjoyed Horseman, I had high hopes for this one.
It sounded amazing - Alice, ten years after having escaped the Rabbit, now escapes from the asylum that has held her behind its walls. The building is burning to the ground and her fellow inmate, a madman who goes by the name of Hatcher, informs her that the Jaberwock is now also on the loose. Though they both remember little of the events that led them to the hospital, they walk the streets of Old City - a dark and dangerous maze of crumbling buildings run by warring criminal bosses by the names of Cheshire, The Walrus, Catapillar, and oh yes, The Rabbit - in search of the monster that devours anyone and anything that crosses its path.
While Alice is dark and intriguing, it definitely lacks meat on its bones. It reads like lightning, but it brushes over the most haunting parts of the story, and I can't figure out if that was intentional - I imagine had Henry gone deeper into the trauma of both characters she may have risked isolating her readership due to triggering content and danced too far away from the tale she was retelling. But I was personally longing for more.
A solid, if slightly disappointing, read. While I'm glad to have read it, I don't think I'll be picking up the other books in this trilogy. I'll let Alice and Hatcher finish their journey without me...
Is it me or does Sarah Gailey reinvent themselves in all the best ways every! single! time! they write a new book?!?!
This time we're treated to a horIs it me or does Sarah Gailey reinvent themselves in all the best ways every! single! time! they write a new book?!?!
This time we're treated to a horror-house story with Just Like Home, when Vera Crowder is called back to her childhood home to watch over her estranged mother as she lay dying. We immediately sense that there is some horrible family secret we're not yet clued into, and that the itself house holds some exhilarating, and terrifying, secrets of its very own.
As Gailey slowly wraps us in their tantalizing web, peeling back the familial trauma and gory ongoings in the basement through flashback chapters, we begin to understand that Vera and her mother are not alone in the Crowder House...
Honestly, I'm surprised to see it shelved in the regular fiction section at the bookstores because of the suspense and horror components it contains. An absolute page turner if for nothing other than the SHEER NEED TO KNOW just wtf is going on! And holy crap does it get CRAAAAZY in the last 3/4s of the book! ...more
Don't you just HATE when you see things coming from a mile away? You're all like c'mon girl... I know you're not that stupid and clueless. Wake up. WaDon't you just HATE when you see things coming from a mile away? You're all like c'mon girl... I know you're not that stupid and clueless. Wake up. Wake Uuuuuuppppp!
Girl grows up in a cult run by Mothers. Girl escapes cult. Girl pines for her best friend. Best friend finds Girl twenty years later. Best friend and Girl begin to hang out and it's like old times but they don't talk about old times. Bad things start to happen in Girl's life. Best friend invites Girl to stay with her till she gets back on her feet. Girl gratefully takes her up on the offer because Girl is a dumb stupid Girl.
If this had been a print copy, I totally would have wall-chucked it a handful of times.
That said, the book was highly engaging and messed up on so many levels, so I forgave it for being so blantantly obvious. If you're into cult fiction, you may really dig this one....more
A secret species of people, who may or may not be of alien lineage, live amongst us in relative peace and isolation in grand old castles. They look liA secret species of people, who may or may not be of alien lineage, live amongst us in relative peace and isolation in grand old castles. They look like humans, they talk like humans, but they are not human. Most of their kind are born with book teeth and eat our literature for sustanance, absorbing the words as knowledge. Others are born with probiscus tongues and are referred to as "mind eaters" or dragons. They feed on human essence and absorb their victims memories and personalities.
Female book eaters are becoming rarer as the Families continue to arrange marriages between themselves in an effort to keep their kind from going extinct. Mind eater children are sent off with the Knights to be trained as guard dogs, for lack of a better term. Except Devon is not having it. Having been sent off to her second marriage, and having given birth to her second child, a beautiful mind eater boy, Devon refuses to give up her son and becomes hell bent on escaping from that way of life.
You would think a book about a humanoid species that eats books and absorbs its content as knowledge would be right up my alley. Yeaaaahh, apparently not so much. As much as I wanted to like it, I could tell within the first 25 pages or so that it was going to be a struggle. I ended up talking myself out of DNFing it a few times, and I'm mostly ok with the fact that I didn't. Don't get me wrong, it's not horrible. It was just a little too fantasy-ish for me.
While it wasn't my cup of tea, you may certainly fall in love with it, if for no other reason than it being an interesting exploration of motherhood, family dynamics, and queer identity.
This was sent to me by the publisher. Not a book I would have requested on my own but one I'm definitely glad they put on my radar.
It's a strange litThis was sent to me by the publisher. Not a book I would have requested on my own but one I'm definitely glad they put on my radar.
It's a strange little thing, easily devoured in a matter of hours. I started this on the couch while I was waiting for my husband to finish packing for our weekend trip to Sleepy Hollow NY, and finished it in the car on the way there.
Catherynne pulls the reader along teasingly, keeping us guessing right up until the very end. Although once you know, you realize you've kinda sorta known since the beginning. I've seen it compared to The Stepford Wives, and Gone Girl, and while there are aspects of each bubbling within this story, it's very much an animal all of its own....more
Tender is the Flesh is set in a dystopian world where animals catch a virus that makes them completely inedible. Just one bite or scratch could be deaTender is the Flesh is set in a dystopian world where animals catch a virus that makes them completely inedible. Just one bite or scratch could be deadly. Pets are euthanized, zoos are emptied. But before people turn to full out cannibalism, the goverment acts quickly and legalizes the breeding and slaughtering of humans, known as "heads" or "product", to meet the need for meat. Strict policies for handling, raising, and selling "head" are put in place. Those who break the rules risk being issued a death sentence - to be processed and eaten.
Marcos is second in command at a large processing plant. He gives the perception that he is numb to the Transition. Processing "head" should be no different than when he and his father processed livestock in the time before the virus. But Marcos is not in a good place. His wife left him after the death of their young child, his father is quickly losing his battle with dementia, and he struggles to separate the human from the "head". So when a supplier gifts him with a First Generation Pure female, Marcos - a man of normally high morals and an enforcer of the rules - makes a rash decision that pushes him down a very slippery slope.
An incredibly disturbing twist on our capacity to overlook what was once unethical in order to maintain standards of normalicy. It's a horrifying concept - eating meat we know is human - but also one that doesn't shock me. How often do we picture the face of the cow or chicken or pig that lost its life to nourish us? How often do we think about the life it lived, the torment it endured, all to fill our stomachs? How long, then, do you think we would worry over the "special meat" that now graces our plates?...more
Undertow Publications is one of my favorite presses when it comes to dark fiction. They simply can do no wrong. And now they've upped the stakes with Undertow Publications is one of my favorite presses when it comes to dark fiction. They simply can do no wrong. And now they've upped the stakes with The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie. It's dripping with atmospheric tension, right from the very first page, and contains a deliciously unreliable protagonist.
Quark, so named for a strange hypothetical star, is a bumbling giant of a man who's returned to his hometown in an attempt to locate his Old Man who was recently reported missing. Upon Quark's return, his old friends and neighbors start wondering what role his presence is playing in the sudden deaths of some of the townfolk.
Set in a sea-fairing town said to have been built from the very bones of ships that crashed into its rocky cliffs, it's oozing with local legend, haunted by ghosts of the past, and prickling with deciet and deception at every turn.
Was listening to this on audio and got to the fifth story Mix Up At the Zoo and just. could. not. do. it. anymore. I tried hanging in there. I really Was listening to this on audio and got to the fifth story Mix Up At the Zoo and just. could. not. do. it. anymore. I tried hanging in there. I really did. And DNFing is so damn hard for me, I wanted to chuck it much earlier but I talked myself into giving the book a fighting chance. The strangest part is... I don't think I could explain what wasn't working for me. It just... wasn't.
I have a weird relationship with Josh's work. I either really love it or really dislike it. I loved Birdbox, and Malorie, and House at the Bottom of the Lake, while Unburying Carol and Black Mad Wheel left me feeling less than lukewarm. The thing I struggle with most is that I really dig the guy himself. He's fascinating to listen to and has such a wonderful social media presence.
This is the kind of fucked up shit you find youself reading, thinking 'why the fuck am i reading this. this is so fucked up". And yet, you don't stop This is the kind of fucked up shit you find youself reading, thinking 'why the fuck am i reading this. this is so fucked up". And yet, you don't stop reading it. Because as fucked up as it is, you're hooked. You want to know where it will go and how it will end, and it's just this short little thing that you can inhale in a matter of a couple hours, so you keep turning the pages.
It starts innocently enough when a young woman posts an ad in an online message board to sell her grandmothers vintage apple peeler. Another young woman responds and they strike up a bizarre long distance relationship that increasingly becomes more bizarre by the day. And it's told entirely in emails and direct messages.
It's not i-think-i'm-going-to-be-sick fucked up. It's not exactly gross-gory-horror fucked up either. But, yeah, it's pretty fucked up. If you're hestitant to pick it up, you should know that it's on the lighter end of the splatterpunk spectrum and falls smack into the middle of body horror.
What have YOU done today to deserve your eyes? Hmmm?...more
Gosh I wanted to like this more than I did. It sounded like something I would totally dig.
Set in space, a human-ish woman named Quiver and her robot Gosh I wanted to like this more than I did. It sounded like something I would totally dig.
Set in space, a human-ish woman named Quiver and her robot sidekick Mic work to harvest valuable minerals and materials from asteriods that I believe are the remanents of a now obliterated Earth. Onboard their ship, when not sifting through the detritus, they appear to spend their downtime bonding and obsessing over dead Earth records, studying and critiquing its culture and coutoure.
While clever in theory, the futuristic language applied by Ducornet was quite frustrating, and felt as though she was simultaneously trying to dazzle and confuse us. Right from the get-go, she began tossing about terms without any context, some of which we are able to make educated guesses at, like the "Swift Wheel" that Mic relies on for all of his earthly knowledge which I assume is like a computer database; the "Wobble" which I believe is their spaceship? And the "Plonk Sidereal Atlas", which may be the ship's interactive computer-slash-navigator? But who the hell really knows...
And then there's the references to things like The Burnout, The Washout, The Scouring, The Scaliding, The Noise, and the Scattering, which I wonder if those might be plague like, apocalyptic events that slowly but surely brought Earth to the end of its existence. But they are never explained in any real sense, so I supposed we're left to let our imaginations run wild.
While I'm usually all for a quick impactful read, I think in this case the book's brevity worked against it. If Ducornet wasn't interested in helping us understand her strange post-apolcalyptic slang while we're reading it, then at least throw a glossary of terms at the end of it!
Oh man, I was super unsure about this as I first started it due to the strange set up but holy crap, once I got used to the ebb and flow I fucking lovOh man, I was super unsure about this as I first started it due to the strange set up but holy crap, once I got used to the ebb and flow I fucking loved it. A psuedo biographical retelling of two twin brothers and their dark family issues, hosted online by an anoymous webmaster, through the use of copyright infringed republications of an unreleased screenplay, public domain documents, and the family's own memoirs, with clever use of footnoting (which I usually H.A.T.E.).
Kudos for how Joshua manipulated novel-norms! Everything is questionable, no one is reliable, and there may or may not be some unexplained phenomenon taking place here.
Brillantly executed, once you learn how to follow along.
Though I've found myself uncharacterstically purchasing and reading a few non-small press titles recently, it's rare that a big five title catches my Though I've found myself uncharacterstically purchasing and reading a few non-small press titles recently, it's rare that a big five title catches my interest in the way Eartheater did. From the smeared and dripping cover to the breathy, clipped prose, I was a sucker for it from the very start.
As you'd expect, the book focuses on a young unnamed argentinian girl who develops the habit of eating dirt at her mother's funeral. When she ingests the earth that has been touched by women and children who have died, or gone missing, it releases its secrets to her. As the people in her barrio learn of her gift, they begin leaving bottles of earth with photos of lost love ones in the hopes that Eartheater will help locate them.
Trying to explain this book to my husband earned me a curious look.
But oh my gosh you guys, it's really such a gorgeous read. It brings to mind Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford, and The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter, as they all share the same sense of awe and disgust at their bodies, of what their bodies are capable of, of what makes them Them.
Eartheater is a quiet and mystical debut that, while written as magical realism, shines a spotlight on the very real issue of femicide, and violence against women, and the lack of effort the "cuffs" put into the recovery of those who have gone missing.
This is a book that had lingered for a long time on my to-buy list and when I finally purchased a copy quite a few weeks back, I continued to let it lThis is a book that had lingered for a long time on my to-buy list and when I finally purchased a copy quite a few weeks back, I continued to let it linger in my tbr stacks until I saw Messy_Aussie_Reader review it on instagram.
Set in an small unnamed Southern town, a family attending church one Sunday morning finds a stranger of indeterminate age and gender napping on their preferred pew bench interprets it as a sign and decides to take them in. Although their presence and refusal to speak rattles the townfolk a bit, everyone is eager to meet them. In lieu of a name, the town calls them Pew. The sense of unease that followed them into the community is compounded by Pew's continued silence, and as everyone prepares for the upcoming and eerily foreboding Festival of Forgiveness, some decisions need to be made on what risks Pew may introduce to their way of life and what role, if any, they may play.
While Pew may choose not to speak with the townsfolk, to us, dear reader, they are a verbose narrator whose mind never seems to stop assessing, critiquing, and exploring. They appear to be hyper sensitive to the inner workings of others, bothered by their own body, and upset at the lack of memories they carry. And they remain a world of curiousities and secrets, because even leading up up to the few final pages of the novel, we know nothing more about them than when we first started.
An enjoyably weird novel that, while having fun with itself, also deals quite seriously with the way we react to and tolerate ambiguity and social disengagement. ...more
