C. J. Daley

Huge thanks to Scholastic Press for the physical arc of this one! I was drawn right in with the cover art.

This was fantastic. I expected to like it, as middle grade horror is usually a hit for me, but I really loved this. It’s a novel told in verse, which I did not know until I got it in the mail! It really cuts down on things we usually find necessary and proves that they aren’t always. Really concise, engaging, and moving.

Vee, after getting into trouble at school, is left to spend the summer with her neat-manners-and-all-other-things-freak grandmother, Jojo. As Vee is different, neurodivergent and trying to find her own way, she’s always butted heads with Jojo, so being left feels like torture. Especially when Vee finds out her older cousin, Cat, who also doesn’t get along with Jojo, isn’t allowed over. You see, jojo wants everything perfectly prim, otherwise, what would the neighbors think? Yet Vee just wants to make art and wear silly, fancy socks. Most of all though, Vee wants to be accepted and understood.

So when Vee finds a ghost of a girl living in Jojo’s walls, one who has been stockpiling her grandmother’s secrets, she finds it hard to say no to playing pranks with her. Even when the girl presses for darker and more intense pranks, disagreements between them push Vee toward giving in to the anger. If Jojo thinks so low of Vee, why shouldn’t she get back at her?

Although the ghost ties back into the storyline itself in a ‘history coming back to haunt you’ way, I found that she served as a really good voice for Vee’s fears, angers, anxieties and even darker processing. Because of how in your face her harsh pranks are, she begins to serve more and more as the big meanie for young readers, doubling down on how wrong anger can be. And while the short pay off may feel good, what Vee really wants is her grandmother’s love.

I found myself actually connecting things the grandmother said and did behaviorally to someone I’ve dealt with in the past. Especially the part about appearances. And this was a really unique way to see different sides to someone that maybe I didn’t think possible in real life. Everyone is multifaceted, and everyone has a past that influenced their present. It actually hit home for me, as I wasn’t allowing myself to view them as what they are just like Jojo didn’t view the real Vee. This one is light on the scary/horror side of things and real heavy on the emotional family turmoil side.

Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Tor Nightfire for the audiobook arc.

Halley, a young woman on the run, takes a job off a sketchy forum. The offer is for far below the established minimum wage, which will force her to work for longer just to scrape up enough for passage somewhere, but at least it’s on a ship that’s so unlikely to be visited that it’s almost a home run. And where her boss is unlikely to come face to face with her, and the people that may or may not be after her are unlikely to find her, there’s no way she can refuse.

The job seems easy, patrol the corridors, keep things need, clean, functional, and press a single button every three hours—every three on the dot. If she doesn’t, a warning alarm will go off and her boss’s superiors may visit to see why HE wasn’t pressing the button. She’s to remain a complete secret. You can sleep for two hours and fifty minutes every three hours, but you’ll never sleep through the night. I guess I didn’t really think about it while reading, but could you imagine the pressure of that? It would start as an annoyance, maybe a small headache or pain behind the eyes, then over time it would change into irritability, outright anger, paranoia—perhaps hallucinations? That sort of aching, growing atmosphere in the background was almost like The Shining to me. Creeping-insanity-esque.

Outside of atmosphere, I really liked how quickly this one got off the ground. Halley’s past is left unresolved enough to be intriguing and her immediate scare on the new ship draws the reader right in. The AI projections are startlingly creepy at times, and although I wouldn’t liken them to M3gan (especially as they aren’t solid) it was a somewhat unique and futuristic addition to the book. I also enjoyed that they were not just thrown in, their inclusion is tied directly to the story.

As for the twist, which I will not ruin, it worked for me. It was eerie and unique and ultimately paid off in a way I found more enjoyable than Ghost Station. I did feel like it could have gone on for a tad longer, but that’s okay. In a story that felt like a creepy haunting or even creature story, the landing was a bit different.

When I saw this was releasing, I was already a couple of books into the series and a big fan. I bought the first book on kindle to get the newly included novella, but something didn’t feel right, and I didn’t end up reading it. Finally, I realized it was because I went with the audio for the series, and the narration from R.C. Bray is simply too good to just switch to reading the text. So I bought the audiobook for this one separately… IYKYK.

While the Hell Divers world is filled with badasses, no one even scrapes the surface to how intense X is. Almost 100 dives, a feat that no diver is even close to, and now he’s survived what the others considered to be certain death. Some may say he’s just too stubborn to die, but even so, he’s my favorite.

So what took place on earth while Tin was growing up? For the first time ever, we finally know! Well, part one of it at least. X survives the fall back down to land, and if that wasn’t harrowing enough, now he has to survive in a wasteland that’s not meant to be survived in. He’ll need batteries for his suit—or at least a charger, medical supplies, ammo, shelter, and most importantly, safe food and water. But how will he find anything safe in a red zone? How will he sleep at night with the monstrosities fighting for flesh? This is something that only X could figure out.

I was a little saddened by how long it took for readers to first meet Miles, but I’m pleased to see that it’s only a part one. And while being stranded can seem like a lot of searching and waiting, this still packed in an awful lot of scifi, post apoc goodness.

“This is commander Xavier Rodriguez, I’m still alive you motherf**kers.”

Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for the audio of this one!

Considering my deep love for all things zombies, I’m actually a bit embarrassed to admit this is my first read from the Father of the Zombie Film. But I do find it to be incredibly cool that Kraus found this half-finished manuscript in the archive and was able to give it public life. That must be a daunting thing, and even though he had already done so with The Living Dead, this was definitely different for both of them.

In the Louisiana bayou, a supernatural entity known as the Piper has been disappearing children for generations. The slayings made me think of my own writing, and yet those delivered here are somehow more gruesome. This definitely made me wish I had included some of the young perspectives in my own novel. I really enjoyed the opening of the story, as I found the less I knew of the Piper made it eerie and almost nightmarish as it filtered through personas coming after a couple people. If those refusing to leave don’t accept the past, they may just end up paying the piper.

Now there was a scene between the Piper, cloaked as the school teacher and the young girl, Pontiac, that I found incredibly uncomfortable. But as a horror scene, it was certainly horrific, I just asked myself why—it did not really tie back into anything making it necessary.

As others have pointed out, I did agree that the ending felt a bit rushed, or maybe that it could have gone a bit deeper. However, I found the buildup to be really strong, and from what I understand, the social commentary was something Romero was known for. Tying the supernatural entity back to the slave trade, the story takes on race and class and carrying the sins of the father. I also found the entire cast to be interesting and engaging, especially how they all interacted and clicked (or didn’t!) together. This one’s different but definitely worth checking out.

I had a copy of this for too long, so apologies, but thanks to the author for the copy! My friend, Richard, really praises this one!

This is a reluctant hero story that is just as lighthearted at times as it is clever. Our lead, Zercian, a teacher, finds himself drafted into the Entervian military through no fault of his own (or is it?). His mind is being commandeered by an ancient legendary hero, and that hero, simply will not leave him alone. But the thing is, over time, Zercian’s fear dissipates, his anticipation rises, and suddenly, he’s not so reluctant anymore. Is this solely because of his being fogbound, or was the inner hero—not the actual legendary being inhabiting his mind—there all along?

This played with the idea of choice in a cool way. While Zercian is most definitely compelled, afraid of the danger, in the middle of teaching, and is in love and hasn’t proposed yet, hasn’t his life become just like the stories he teaches? And surely he won’t miss out on the chance to save kin and country? But still there’s the underlying debate on choice. Not only what would happen if he wasn’t compelled, but while he is, is he even the one steering the wheel anyway? It felt like a very old school trope coming to life. Making me think of Gandalf directing Frodo as they leave Rivendell in the movie, or Eragon telling Brom, "I didn't ask for any of this.” Why do we torture our fantasy folks with such journeys? What I love was the fact that Zercian has so many reasons to stay and so many to go.

The cast of characters has great banter, differing skills, personalities, and connections, and all service the novel in their own unique way. There’s tidbits of intrigue, mentions of the world beyond, and setup galore for the coming series. This is an underrated indie release for sure, bump it up in your TBR if you respect my opinion at all!

As always, my infinite thanks to Shortwave Media for the physical arc!

A novel that tackles grief and aging as much as the terrors within the small town of Fairview Acres. Jerry Campbell is a recent widower. He hopes that the sale of his family home for a new and smaller location will help him with accepting the loss. But when his realtor notifies him that his offer was accepted almost simultaneously with a buyer wanting his old place, the strangeness just keeps stacking. Welcoming neighbors, but nightly parties that always seem to start after sundown and last through the night, strange noises across his roof as he tries to sleep, a mid night warning from Katherine Dunnally that may be more than dementia delusions, and worst of all, Arthur Peterson, the association lead, giving off almost Nosferatu-level weird vibes.

This novel falls under what some may call “old people horror.” The lead is elderly, as is a majority of the cast, and it certainly contains the aches and pains of those getting on in years. I don’t have a slew of experience with this (if you’d call it) sub-genre, but it did bring to mind the likes of Mark Towse’s Nana, with its oddly over-aged community members and its cosmic twists. Sundowner’s is imbued with terror and heartfelt moments, like the tenderness that forms between Katherine and Jerry, and disfigured horrors that push cosmic into the realm of creature feature. With fantastic parallels that seamlessly blend the horrific nature of dementia with an alien withdrawal that mimics its memory losing effects.

But what I truly loved the most about the novel was Jerry. A lead that appears to be a grumpy old loner, is actually just a grieving, socially awkward and anxious man. So used to having his wife with him as a salve, he’s unsure of how to tackle this last stage of life. Not only is he dealing with the loss, his aches and pains, his uprooted life, the attempted continuous communication from Arthur, but also the absolute preternatural atmosphere of the Fairview community. And while the novel delivers on the small town feel, there’s much bigger things happening to turn the wheels. I found Jerry to be incredibly grounding throughout the read because you too may be a little grumpy and standoffish if your entire new town was giving off funky vampiric vibes. I really appreciated how he was witty, intelligent, still strong, and a cohesive lead that broke a lot of the conventional elderly tropes.

A first for me from the author, but I truly enjoyed it.

Thank you to Angry Robot for the physical review copy!

A group of four have been genetically and surgically modified with traits and scales from our prehistoric apex predators. This is meant to be the next step in warfare, a way to up the ante, but also a way to ultimately protect lives. Naturally, there are so rather strange side effects when you attempt to turn humans into something else.

As the blurb mentions, the novel opens up with a bit of a mishap. Eddie Boka, the poster boy for Project Saurian, has accidentally given into his T-Rex-infused DNA and cannibalized an enemy solider during his first live mission. In the fear of the information leaking, or the project missing its launch date, extreme therapist Addi LaTour is brought in. The hope is that her method of shock therapy will be enough to train Eddie out of it. But Eddie’s upbeat, overcome-it-all attitude has created a spark that transcends typically patient-doctor transference. There’s something more between them, and although romance isn’t the focal point, it does propel this journey.

To be honest, other than the use of dino DNA, I think the “perfect for fans of Jurassic Park” may be a bit out there. It doesn’t go so heavy on the actual science it took to get the dino-humans to the stage their at, so this falls more into the realm of thriller. Although the later fights definitely have the vibe. But also, how do you even classify something like this? It doesn’t even really follow the natural flow of a novel at times either, and yet I found it works. It is intriguing enough that even when it isn’t fast it’s good, and when it took off it didn’t stop until it ended. Fast, brutal, and with intriguing deception I really was not expecting.

A military thriller meets science fiction. A blend of billionaire gone wrong and medical/scientific advancement. I really wondered how the science would make it all work. Like wouldn’t their bodies refuse the foreign changes? Never a bad job when a book intrigues you!

This novel also opened up the debate of cannibalism. The dino-humans started as naturally born human males, but since the transfusions and surgeries, they are kind of classified as something other. That includes in the public eye, with many labeling them as freaks. So it just kept standing out every time I read the word—if they aren’t being considered humans anymore, is it even really cannibalism? While it remains disturbing and unacceptable regardless, I wondered what it would be called otherwise. Where does science take that step past alteration and actual end up making something new?