Kristie
Disappointing. I enjoyed Silent Night, so the bar was kind of set, but this one feels sloppy and weird. Almost the entire book is bumbled kidnapping attempts. There is no real fear factor. Also, no supernatural elements again. Most disappointing is the constant message that poor people will become criminals, especially around the holidays. That message was loud and clear in the first book and gets doubled-down in this one: poor people will commit crimes for Christmas money. It's capitalist brainwashing for the youth of America, I guess.
Shout out to the mention of Sassy magazine!
This was not terrible! I don't think I've ever read R.L. Stine, except for his short fiction. I did expect supernatural elements (denied!) and I loved to hate Reva. What a bitch! Literally, nothing she thinks is funny is actually anything but mean. Bored rich kid.
However, we have a needle in the lipstick (ew!), a bottle of blood, and a dead body wrapped up like a present. My favorite part was when Hank explained why he felt sorry for Reva.
Despite a clunky start, this one gets nutty (which is the goal, imho).
We meet Alice, who for no reason I can figure out, starts to tell Jane's story from Jane's POV, and Jane's story is lame. She writes fantasy diary entries, and one of the smexier entries gets photographed and passed around school, making Jane a laughingstock and her boyfriend a hero.
Then Jane decides to fake her own death, and that is where this novel really takes off.
It's the classic: here is the plan and all of the details, and then the plan does not go according to plan because while Jane is playing around with faking a murder, someone really wants her dead. And for the most insane reason ever. Lol.
We have all of the best Pike elements here: raging hormones, Vietnam references, teenage criminal masterminds, and useless adults. OMG, the guidance counselor! Oh, we also have a pet bunny who almost suffers a horrible fate. I would have laid money on the rabbit almost dying having something to do with the evil plan, but I think I was probably overthinking that.
I'm not sure I get the bad reviews on this one. The Harrowing showed up on a list of awesome horror you may have missed list (Bookriot, most likely, but don't quote me). I threw it on the TBR list. I'm kind of a sucker for isolated tales of horror. I was also in the mood for something that did not, a la most Scooby Doo, turn out to have a human Big Bad.
What I loved about this is the mid-90's/early 2000's setting (clear from the lack of smartphones and the sheer shock of one character's “idea” of looking stuff up on the world wide web. Lol. We have a pretty decent character in Robin- she is clearly depressed, suffering from imposter syndrome, and dealing with a hell of a home life. The setting was pretty damned gothic, the historical details about the ouija board were awesome, and I thought this was pretty fast-paced. I, like other readers, thought the characters were going to be isolated for the whole book and was surprised to find out that wasn't the case, but small potatoes.
This description: “Waverly Todd was beautiful. Apart from that, she had no redeeming qualities.” pg 12. Bwah! Excellent!
I mean, it was exactly what I was in the mood for: demon-summoning seances, a gothic setting, characters who actually take the time to research their situation, and who do not run from a fight. They could have taken off but they ran BACK into the action to try and reset what had begun. We are talking about trying to study for finals while also dealing with demonic rape and possessions all over the place.
This was a solid, 4-star horror read.
More like 4 and a half stars. Funhouse is sort of what I remember about Point Horror- off the wall, teen angst, and scary “accidents”. Tess is the only one in tune with the idea that someone is trying to pick off her friends, one by one, and that she is probably next. Of course, no one believes her because she is a “hysterical female” but mad props need to be given to Tess as she, multiple times in this book, stands up for herself against gaslighting and patronizing (mostly from her ex-boyfriend, who shows up stalker-style at the exact moment after she is done facing an attack alone). I mean, this is a kid who is smart enough to choose to live with her step-mother and get the hell out of her domineering father's house.
The cat part got me. Eh.
My money was on a different character as the killer, and I usually prefer some sort of supernatural element to my horror, but I plowed through Funhouse in a couple of hours and never got bored with it or felt like it stalled out.
I actually own this one and love the creepy cover and the hot pink, thriller font.
I also loved that she was jamming out to George Michael on her Walkman while searching the house for her old yearbooks.
I discovered that I had accidentally completed the Modern Mrs. Darcy reading challenge for 2020, except “read a local author” so I put my librarian skills to the test and searched for an NJ author who writes horror who is not a white, CIS male and ta-dah! found Sabrina Ramoth. The Curse was checked in at my library branch, so....fate?
Anyway, I really enjoyed this. It's like True Blood and Beautiful Creatures had a baby. A sad, grieving baby who just came into her witchy powers. Honestly, I'm not the world's biggest urban fantasy fan but I really like Vivienne and I love the Frech Quarter. This would have been fun to read while on our trip last year.
That said, is it perfect? No. I really like Ramoth's voice. I wasn't prepared to have a ton of characters thrown at me all at once, and many of them don't have time to be developed. Nemma, for example, is not the grandmother character one expects to find in a book, and I liked her immediately just for that. It's more like I can see the foundation of where this is going and I am all in.
What it always comes down to, with me, is whether or not I am in a race to get back to the story when I put the book down (because stupid life has not yet allowed me to just non-stop read) and I found myself speeding up my chores, etc to see where this was going next. That, for me, is the mark of a good read.
Sadly, I thought I would enjoy this waaaay more than I did. I felt like the characters were so vaguely described I didn't really get to know any of them and I felt bludgeoned to death with “clever”. Isn't this clever? It's so clever! The author is so smart that you will never really get this!
And I did not get it. I wasn't on board with the heist, I didn't understand the extreme foreshadowing that sucked all of the tension out of the plot and I consistently felt like the chickens were safer where they were.
I read this in small chunks over a week and never had a problem setting it back down to read something else. In the beginning, I wanted to be Janey's biggest cheerleader. I loved the idea of two Janeys and imagining what the other, East Coast Janey, was doing. But then Janey just kind of falls into the background and falls flat. Feeling like it was tacked on, we get glimpses of the future of these characters via flashforwards.
Maybe this is a case of you have to be there? Maybe if I had a toe in the world of animal activism or a chicken best friend this would mean more to me.
I thought this would read more like a thriller, but it reads more like connected short stories. That was fine, but like any short story collection, some of the chapters are stronger than others. Karla, for example, was amazing and could stand alone. Overall, I thought this was excellent but I found myself getting impatient to get back to Mary Rose or Glory in order to get back to the main story.
Ah, this is like everyone else's favorite book of the year but it was just an okay read for me. Honestly, I was ON BOARD for Jude and Reese's story but I had to force myself through Stella and Kennedy's bits. I listened to the audio and am now seeing a difference in reviews- people who read the book seem to like it more than those that listened to it? I'm not making excuses, it is what it is. This didn't seem powerful or literary to me. Maybe I went in with the wrong mindset. It felt very mainstream. I was reminded of the way I felt when I read The Help or The Secret Life of Bees- and that feeling is meh. I tried really hard not to compare it to [b:Passing 349929 Passing Nella Larsen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388214730l/349929.SY75.jpg 2369306] because it can't measure up.
So, no, this is not a mistake. I read this because I kind of wanted to see what the big deal about these little Christmas books is. I know it is unfair to just read one and have it represent the whole genre, but this one appealed to me because the main character supposedly dislikes Christmas as much as I do.
What I went in expecting:
That similar feel to episodes of Gilmore Girls when it is the first snow in Stars Hollow, a similar experience to eating a milk chocolate bar (enjoyable but fleeting), and maybe a laugh or two. I also just read an article that said this genre focused on “the holiday spirit”, the non-religious aspect of the holiday that brings “joy” to what I view as a commercialized, capitalist nightmare of a holiday.
What I got:
Female characters who are identical except for extreme descriptions of their physicality (this one is voluptuous! This one does yoga!) They are all (and I'm including the old lady and the teen girl here): smart, calculating, have the best interest of the town at the center of their very core, clumsy, need to be saved every five minutes and hard-headed.
I almost vomited during the hot tub sex bit, and I almost quit with the scene when the Alpha Male wipes makeup off the main character's face because she does “not need to wear that crap”. Controlling much? How about when he blatantly starts bossing her around towards the end of the book and making decisions about their relationship without discussing it with her first?
Sexy!
If Madison would have pulled a new business deal that saved the town out of her ass at the end of this book, I would have liked it more. BUT NO! We get a convoluted kidnapping plot! We have a clear message that people who are having money trouble are “desperate” and will resort to scams!
If anything, this is not my kind of book. I probably just need to read one every couple of years to remind myself. I do the same thing with cozy mysteries. Another genre I just...can't do.
I put this one off because a couple of reviewers who I usually agree with were not fans. Also, there is something with me and award winners- I usually don't enjoy them. Then again, they are rarely as imaginative as this.
I spent Saturday with Interior Chinatown (audio version, in bits, over the entire day), and I loved it. I think I actually snorted coffee out of my nose at one point. I went through a giant range of emotions. It was when he got to Phoebe that I realized he had tied my heart into a bow and handed it back to me. I cannot believe how much he accomplished in a four hour read.
I have to go find more of his work.
Note: The last hour of the audio book is author interview.
I ended up being really impressed with My Dark Vanessa. I had two thoughts running through my head when I read this:
Would my younger self would have learned anything by reading this or just been disgusted (as I was when I went to see a showing of Lolita in my late teens)? Possibly. But adult me understood Vanessa-maybe too well. Everyone is guilty, especially at 15, of wanting to feel special. One is in a crowd just trying to find the one thing that makes us stand out. Maybe we are the future skate board star, the future drug king pin, the star of the stage, the star of the backseat of a car. Vanessa was the star of a forbidden love story (or at least, that's how she spins the tale to herself). She searches for others like her, in literature in movies and in the faces of other teen girls. Russell really made Vanessa real to me, as a reader- with one missing bit. I find it unrealistic when female characters in books do not worry about their physical selves. So much prep goes into being a woman, it seems unrealistic that she never worried about shaving her legs or how her lovers would handle her menstruating. But the book was long enough so I guess some things couldn't be covered.
Secondly, we are watching Dexter (he for comfort viewing, me for the first time) and Vanessa, like Dexter are both self-described “monsters”. Both characters are full of muddled values. Vanessa is a mess, but she is strong. She is brilliant. She is a coward, but also smart enough to get herself some help, to identify the need to heal. She is using her voice, in an anonymous blog- a cry for help that goes ignored by a hero. There's an English essay topic in there somewhere.
Lastly, it loses a star because I thought it could have been tighter if it had been 50 pages shorter. I felt repetition, I didn't care about the Henry plotline that seemed like a giant setup for a scene we didn't even get to witness as readers (just heard about later). I thought too much attention was given over to the journalist and the article being written- just for it to not go anywhere.
Overall it is an emotional read- it puts the reader through the paces. I found the ending to be super satisfying (and I don't say that very often).
This one has been on my scope for months, but it made the TOB longlist so I decided to start it and I couldn't put it down. My main concern is that it is poverty porn. I grew up poor, but the American standard of poor is nothing compared to this. Nothing. I acknowledge my privilege. I was entranced by these intersecting stories of 3 people in Kolkata, India who are connected to burning of a train. The novel opened up a world to me that I knew nothing about. The school system, the Hijira, the legal system: we get a taste of this world. I adored Lovely, I understood PT Sir, and my heart broke for Jivan.
More realistically: 4 and a half stars.Some books you see play out like a movie in your head. For me, Leave the World Behind was a stage play (as most of the story takes place over a day or two in the same setting) with an incredible cast of actors. It's a story fueled by tension- and it wears the reader's nerves to shreds. Who is the victim here? Who is in the right? Most importantly, what is happening? It's a slow build to answers and none of the resolutions are laid at the reader's feet. You must infer and infer. I suspect this book will mean different things to different readers as if we all followed a customized path (a la a Choose Your Own Adventure book). I immediately identified with Ruth, as I too would want the safety and security of being home in an emergency. Once my brain had decided that Ruth was my champion, how I saw the rest of the novel was pretty much set in my head. I bet I would find a totally different experience if I spoke to a reader who felt Amanda or Clay or GW was the soul of the story. I have read a ton of end of the world fiction. It breaks down into 3 categories: as the event is happening, right after the event (the rebuild), and a generation or 2 from the event. Leave the World Behind is in the first category and so information is sparse, tense, and easily compared to life before the event because, in essence, it is still that life too (or the very end of it). I started reading this during election week. My nerves were already shot and I realized that I was going to have to put it down and read it at some other time in my life. The writing was gorgeous and deserved my full attention. When it came back in for me (via Libby), I was ready. I backed up a couple of chapters and dove back in. I was going to read this no matter what, but now it is on the TOB longlist and I'm curious to see if makes it onto the shortlist. Truthfully, it is not a new idea. I'm thinking of [b:On the Beach 38180 On the Beach Nevil Shute https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327943327l/38180.SY75.jpg 963772] or [b:Into the Forest 86236 Into the Forest Jean Hegland https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1479868647l/86236.SY75.jpg 595978] or [b:How I Live Now 161426 How I Live Now Meg Rosoff https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327870252l/161426.SY75.jpg 1132968]. What sets it apart is the writing, the characters, and the situation (an isolated Airbnb with no connection to the outside world). It's a hell of an experience to read it.
I really enjoyed this. A woman who works for a disaster travel agency gets sent on one of the company's travel packages to review it. I went in cold and had no idea what was going to happen and I think that's the best way to approach this. Now, I'm going to hide the rest of this review so I can get some thoughts out in a way that doesn't cause spoilers.
I was hooked right away with the opening bit about Yona Kim's manager. What a pig! Could you imagine working for a company with other employees protesting abusive behavior in the lobby of the building and no one doing anything about it? I thought the idea of a vacation built around a disaster very interesting (I'm also guilty of this, having planned a trip around a visit to the Lizzie Borden house). When it slowly gets revealed what the manager's secret plan is to upgrade the vacation package for Jungle, I was kind of cheering them on. When I found out they were not just using the "mannequins", I was horrified. What this says about me...I'm scared to know. I wish we had gotten to know Luck a little better, he seemed like a stand up guy, but I have a feeling a lot more was going on there. I like to think that he walked into that mangrove forest and found Yona Kim. Even though Yun Ko-eun told us she was dead. She showed us Yona Kim die. But the lack of body gave me some hope. There's a lot to say about The Disaster Tourist. It would make a great book club pick. Will it make the TOB shortlist? Who knows? It has a total Black Mirror vibe.
I'm sorry to say that I knew very little about Kamala Harris before the election so I wanted to correct that. I ended up really enjoying this memoir, especially the bits about her childhood. As I know very little about criminal justice, those cases and their battles were interesting to read about too.
I grabbed quite a few quotes that really resonated with me.
To be fair....
This was going to be a 4 star read (at least!) before I even opened the cover on it because I love T. Kingfisher's writing, The Twisted Ones was my favorite book of last year and because I really didn't care what the plot was because I knew I was in good hands.
I was right. I loved it. I didn't 5 star love it, but I loved it a lot. I did no prep work on this book so that I went in cold and I think that may have been what hurt me. I knew nothing about Algernon Blackwood or The Willows. If you don't know there is source material, you cannot appreciate the cleverness it takes to create a whole new story. So, a lot of the clever was lost on me.
Still The Hollow Places is creepy AF and parts of it will stay with me every time I close my eyes. I was enchanted with Beau (is this a Kingfisher/Vernon thing?). I swear no one writes better animal sidekicks.
So, why not 5 stars? It may be me. Cara's crying got on my news. She cries a great deal. Also, the constant complaining about the leg kind of serves one brief, small purpose but it got old reading about how painful it was over and over. Also, Simon shows up at really convenient times and we all know I don't like to see my female protags survive because some man saves her,and it happens multiple times. Also the ex-husband bit did nothing for me, except show character growth? Maybe? I'm being generous here.
That said, The Hollow Places is awesome. I swear, on an animal that has been stuffed and chemically treated, that I will reread this in a calmer year and see if I can amend my review.
It's not Monster, it's me. A book about outer space vampires should have been way more exciting to read than it was. It's me, though. I'm pretty sure.
That said, this one starts off with a bang (several bangs, actually) and then stalls out with a really uncomfortable crush on a really strange guy, some Nam flashbacks, a teenage Hannibal Lector/Clarise Starling jail cell scene and ends up out on the res to speak to a “wise old Indian” stereotype who, from his death bed, is expected to solve a white girl's problem. Which he does. Sigh.
There is a book-on-literal-tape-fan librarian and the most unbelievably horny male best friend who is so friend-zoned he actually has his own zipcode.
Trigger warning: violence to dogs (including naming a dog something as stupid as “Plastic”)
Why this took me so long to get through is beyond me. I just kept putting it down.
I have a bar level set when I read Christopher Pike and this one is above THAT bar. It was definitely better than Slumber Party but not nearly as messed up as Whisper of Death.
I listened to this one on audio and it was fantastic. And I know, I know. I said I was over end of the world stories, but this one was on my TBR for forever and that's what I seem to be doing this November:knocking titles off the TBR list.
Evan and Nicole are relationship goals. I don't think I've seen such a positive couple presented in years, I don't mean they are particularly positive (how could they be, given the current situation?) but they are clearly still in love with each other after many years and they are a united front on maintaining home, community, and family values. It was so freaking refreshing to read. It doesn't even matter that Evan and Nicole are not “officially” married. Who cares? They are perfect.
As I am a sucker for a survival novel, I was all in from the get go with Moon. I fell in love with the many characters in the community and was literally sitting there entranced when the boys told the story about their escape from the college.
I was sad when the novel ended.
I don't know how to rate this. It's...bad. But! It's Pike's first book and I KNOW he gets better so I can kind of think of it as training wheels. You can see the mind that will later pump out [b:Whisper of Death 137964 Whisper of Death Christopher Pike https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1378900166l/137964.SY75.jpg 1546535] is already rolling with the craziness. So we have some interchangeable characters, a teen bitch, and old friend all snowed in at a chalet in the woods. This one is all set to send women's lib progress back a few years. They are all just boy crazy! Also, they are all harboring memories of a slumber party from the past that ended very, very badly. I figured this one out by page 4 and had to read through some weird attempts at teen romance and a character that was dropping napalm in Germany in the 80's? This is the kind of stuff that comes up in Pike books. Also peeing on your hands in order to unfreeze your fingers long enough to fire off a flare gun.I had this book out for months. I figured I would just quick read Weekend and get it back to the library. Weekend is bad. I'm not even sure Pike wrote it. The lines didn't sound like him. The story made almost NO SENSE and quite honestly, lost me with the paper underwear thing. Whoo. No other notes, I think I just want to wipe this one from my mind and focus on his other works.
This is an example of a book I was going to give up on, but hung in there and ended up really, really appreciating. That doesn't happen to me too often. Also, I read this at a bad time-a really bad time. I woke up on November 3rd and, for the first time in my life, could not read a word. I tried 6 different books. I ended up reading the same sentences over and over again. This continued until the 9th.
Now, about Memorial, and a little less about me. Wait. I have to say this. I hate infidelity. Like, really hate it. I put novels down all of the time if that is the plot. So my early thoughts about Memorial were: fights so bad that someone gets a black eye? Cheating! Benson is a cold fish.
But I hung in there for one reason, Mitsuko. I was fascinated by her. I kept thinking, what the hell would I do in this situation? Then I came to love Lydia and the crew at the daycare center and then Mike took us to Japan and I realized this book was EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT REAL LITERATURE:
it was taking me to a place I have never been, with people who have a different lifestyle than my own, and allowing me into their heads. This book became an exploration of What is a family? What does a family look like? Also: what is a community? What is a person's role in that community? What does a citizen OWE their community?
And Washington's writing is so, so beautiful. It's real and raw and hits you with waves of emotion. He's so perceptive. Fantastic.
So, Memorial for the win for getting me out of my reading slump.
This was probably the most exciting book I have read in months. There is edge-of-your-seat action in every chapter and I think it was exactly what I needed at this moment in time. I enjoyed the hell out of it!!! I did a mix of reading the book and listening to it on my commute on audio and Channie Waites is awesome. Her version of the Butcher was about 3000 times scarier than I had in my head. I still get chills just thinking about it.
Fingers crossed for more adventures with Maryse and Chef (my not so secret favorite character).