Category: Kate’s Reviews

Kate’s Review: “The Insane God”


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Book: “The Insane God” by Jay Hartlove

Publishing Info: Water Dragon Publishing, May 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the author’s publicist.

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Nightmare on Elm Street meets The Stand. A meteorite fragment cures a teenaged trans girl’s schizophrenia but leaves her with visions of ancient warring gods annihilating each other in space. As the Earth hurtles toward the cloud that is the shattered bodies of those eternal enemies, their eons-old conflict is rekindled on Earth to divide and destroy humanity. Can she and her brother stop the spread of global disaster?

Review: Thank you to Beverly Bambury for sending me a print copy of this book!

I mean, honestly, you are just tantalizing me when you say that something is “Nightmare on Elm Street” meets “The Stand”. Given that “The Stand” is an all time favorite of mine and I just love a good slasher movie, when I saw that comparison mix for “The Insane God” by Jay Hartlove, I just HAD to see what that meant. I knew I was throwing a bit of caution to the wind, as it was pretty clear that this story, while having those comparisons, was going to be a bit heavier on the Science Fiction than I am used to. But I’m game to experiment when the mood strikes me, and strike me it did.

There are some interesting ideas here to be sure! I loved the idea of space rocks giving people powers and interfering with biological functions like mental illness, and I liked the idea of how people that are touched by these things can have new powers awakened within them. Hartlove has set the stage for some well done suspense and some pretty solid consequences, with cosmic horror elements as well as some trippy surreal horror, like the ability to manipulate and bring things from dreams into the real world (THAT was so “Nightmare on Elm Street”). We also have some good old fashioned suspense regarding people who are raging bigoted assholes, and people who are true believers in one side of a space set feud and who want to bring about destruction on Earth. This leads to a lot of content warnings (specifically some pretty upsetting scenes of transphobia, Islamaphobia, violence due to both these things, and difficult moments involving mental illness and the stigma that can come with it). But we also get a coming of age story in which a teenage girl finds herself a potential savior of mankind, all while grappling with her own identity as a trans woman, a recently cured schizophrenic (due to otherworldly influence), and as a sister. Hartlove melds them all together into a fast paced narrative that has a lot of ideas, and it mostly comes together pretty well!

There is also the fact that our protagonist Sarah is a trans woman, a representation that we are finally seeing more and more of in genre fiction and horror. It’s important to note that Jay Hartlove is not trans, and that as a cis woman I can’t really tell you if Sarah is a good representation of a trans character. That said, I did look into Hartlove’s background and various interviews, and he does have a trans child and a non-binary child, and it’s pretty clear that he has written this story with a hope of giving trans people characters they can seen themselves in. Sometimes it comes off a little clunky and hamfisted, at least to me, and again, I’m not really someone who can judge how well representative Sarah was and whether her experiences ring true or false. But it really does seem like Sarah’s characterization has all the best intentions, and as a character I thought that she was complex and interesting, and was very easy to root for. At the end of the day I liked her a lot. And I hope that we get more trans characters in genre fiction, and more trans authors in the mix to tell those stories.

I think that ultimately this was more heavily Science Fiction in a cosmic sense, which I knew going into it. I always like to give genres that I’m not super into a try, especially if it seems like there could be some crossover interest, and as I mentioned above, describing it as “Nightmare on Elm Street” meets “The Stand” would imply a lot of crossover! And I do get the comparisons, given the creative ways that Hartlove toys with dreaming and cosmic and existential end of world elements with warring factions within the chaos. Still and all, it did get into the Sci-Fi weeds a bit, which will probably work for a lot of people!

“The Insane God” is a bit of an out there Sci-Fi/horror story that I thought was pretty creative. Sure it has some stumbles here and there, but there is so much that feels unique, and it has its heart firmly in place.

Rating 7: Super creative and outside of the box, though maybe a little too heavy on the Sci-Fi for this reader.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Insane God” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but I think it would fit in on “Cosmic & Lovecraftian Horror”.

Kate’s Review: “Measuring Up”

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Book: “Measuring Up” by Lily LaMotte & Anne Xu (Ill.)

Publishing Info: HarperAlley, October 2020

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Twelve-year-old Cici has just moved from Taiwan to Seattle, and the only thing she wants more than to fit in at her new school is to celebrate her grandmother, A-má’s, seventieth birthday together.

Since she can’t go to A-má, Cici cooks up a plan to bring A-má to her by winning the grand prize in a kids’ cooking contest to pay for A-má’s plane ticket! There’s just one problem: Cici only knows how to cook Taiwanese food.

And after her pickled cucumber debacle at lunch, she’s determined to channel her inner Julia Child. Can Cici find a winning recipe to reunite with A-má, a way to fit in with her new friends, and somehow find herself too?

Review: We have once again come upon a whim book, as I was wanting to read more graphic novels on the day that I requested “Measuring Up” by Lily MaMotte and Anne Xu. One of the other graphic novels I read recently was food based, and given how I enjoyed that one I thought I would give this one a try! Especially since it sounded like it had some other themes that it was going to tackle, along with the food.

The coming of age story at the heart of “Measuring Up” is very sweet and gentle. Cici is a preteen girl who finds herself in a new country and culture, and who is nervous about what that means for herself and for her place in the world around her. Her desperation to see her A-má again, who stayed behind in Taiwan, motivates her to sign up for a junior cooking contest, as cooking with her grandmother was a true joy and she is pretty good at it. The story is fairly simple, which makes sense for the middle grade audience, and I thought that Cici’s initial struggles with making friends and her conflicts with her parents regarding her priorities (cooking contest vs studying) were well conveyed in a middle grade narrative. At times it may have felt perhaps a little too simplistic for me, but I’m absolutely not the audience for this story so that doesn’t reflect the story as a whole. As Cici works through the cooking contest and starts to feel more at home, she is also repressing her identity because of how Taiwanese food and culture is viewed in a Western culinary world (more on that aspects in a bit), which drives her to experiment with more Western foods. This is also because of her cooking partner Miranda, whose Italian restaurant owning father has basically told her to focus on Italian food. The contrast between Miranda and Cici could be pretty start, but LaMotte finds ways to show that they may have more in common than they initially realize. Again, simplistic, but ultimately sweet.

Along with the coming of age story we get a tale about a girl who is adjusting to a new culture, while trying to keep her identity as well as finding a new one. As Cici starts to acclimate to her new home, she feels a need to keep her Taiwanese identity close to the vest, partially because of micro aggressions or flat out racism, but also because of her insecurities about herself as a tween girl. LaMotte touches upon preconceived notions of Asian food, from classmates telling Cici her lunch is ‘stinky’ to adults writing it off as low brow or cheap. I thought that LaMotte did a good job of balancing the broader themes within the story itself, and I liked that Cici had moments of pushing back, as well as moments of Cici being pleasantly surprised beyond her expectations. The important moments of Cici having to deal with micro aggressions are explained in a way that will resonate with the target audience, and I liked how Cici not only got to push back against it, but also got to pursue her own identity that may not line up with the one that her parents have laid out for her. It just felt like it all handled some complex issues in an accessible way.

And the drawing style is cute and fits the tone. I liked the way that Anne Xu could bring out emotional moments and feelings even in the simplistic art style that will probably resonate with the target audience. And it also just made me so hungry for basically all of the foods that we were seeing on the page.

(source)

“Measuring Up” was cute and a good fit for middle grade audiences! I know exactly who I would recommend this to, and it will make the reader ready to take on some culinary adventures of their own!

Rating 7: A cute story about cooking, friendship, culture, and finding oneself.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Measuring Up” is included on the Goodreads lists “Comics About Food”, and “Culinary Fiction – Middle Grade”.

ALSO

If you are as disgusted as I am about the striking down of Roe, I’m going to post some links here that will give you information and resources to donate to.

National Network of Abortion Funds

Rewire News Group

National Abortion Federation

Plan C

Kate’s Review: “Men, Women, and Chainsaws”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” by Stephen Graham Jones

Publishing Info: Tor.com, April 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: Tor.Com | Amazon

Book Description: It’s been two years since Jenna’s ex-boyfriend left her alone in East Texas heartbroken. Now he’s back in town and she wants to payback. One night, she stumbles upon a bloodthirsty Camaro that may be the key to carrying out her revenge.

Review: So I’m highlighting something a little different today for my review. The reason is that I have been picking away at some of the short stories by Stephen Graham Jones, one of my favorite authors, and I found one that is so accessible and such a quick read that I want to spread the word of this awesome author. Seriously if you haven’t read Jones yet, this will make it easy! “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” is a short story that is available on Tor.com! I myself bought it for my Kindle, which is also an option, but above there is a link right to it! And it’s a story about a revenge seeking woman who has the help of a bloodthirsty car! The obvious reference here is “Christine” by Stephen King, but I got more of a “Little Shop of Horrors” vibe from this story and I was one hundred percent here for it.

What do you want from me, BLOOD?! (source)

Our main character is Jenna, a woman who has had to deal with a fair amount of loss in her life, the most recent one being that of her boyfriend Victor, who went to work on oil rigs and sent her a break up letter. Earlier was the death of her bio parents in a tragedy involving a car. Jenna’s last happy moment with Victor was recreating a photoshoot at a local junkyard involving a junked out Camaro and Caroline Williams of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” fame, and when Jenna finds the Camaro later, the same night Victor comes home and her rejection is flaunted for everyone, things take a turn for the supernatural. It involves bloodletting, a rebuilt car, and a scorned lover’s revenge. But it’s also a story of a woman who has suffered some pretty terrible loss in her life, and how a bloodthirsty car not only can help her seek revenge but also closure.

And it’s the sense of melancholy that permeates the pages that made this story one of the more bittersweet tales that Jones has written. Jenna has seen some shit and been through some shit, and I just wanted her to have some kind of happiness, or at least peace. As she finds out some ugly truths about Victor, as well as some hidden truths about what happened to her biological parents, my heart broke for her as she seeks out a connection, seeks out not only the hope of taking out a user and abusive prick, but also the hope of finding a connection to the parents she never knew, and finding not only meaning in their loss, but also perhaps an otherworldly reunion. I’m being a bit vague, and I kind of have to be because the story is filled with emotional beats that are best experienced with no prior knowledge. But on the flip side, there are also some really fun horror moments, and some really awesome homages to horror stories, be it the aforementioned “Christine” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2”, as well as the nostalgia of hitting up a scary movie at the drive in. Jones just loves horror stories and he writes them with such a fondness that you can’t help but grin form ear to ear when you read them.

Short stories are generally hit or miss for me, but Stephen Graham Jones is always on point within this format. He knows how to build a world and an arc and make it feel well thought out and explored in less than fifty pages. “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” is weird and emotional, and I really enjoyed it on every level.

Rating 9: Strange and eerie but with undercurrents of pathos, “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” is a delightful short story by one of my favorite authors.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Men, Women, and Chainsaws” is included on the Goodreads list “2022 Horror and Sci Fi Releases”.

Kate’s Review: “The House Across the Lake”

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Book: “The House Across the Lake” by Riley Sager

Publishing Info: Dutton, June 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: It looks like a familiar story: A woman reeling from a great loss with too much time on her hands and too much booze in her glass watches her neighbors, sees things she shouldn’t see, and starts to suspect the worst. But looks can be deceiving. . . .

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. Everything about the Royces seems perfect. Their marriage. Their house. The bucolic lake it sits beside. But when Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she discovers the darker truths lurking just beneath the surface of the Royces’ picture-perfect marriage. Truths no suspicious voyeur could begin to imagine–even with a few drinks under her belt.

Like Casey, you’ll think you know where this story is headed. Think again. Because once you open the door to obsession, you never know what you might find on the other side.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

One of the things that is a complete tell that I’m a Minnesotan is that I LOVE going to a lake house for a getaway. There is nothing more relaxing to me than sitting on a lounge chair on a deck with lake water lapping a few yards away (loon calls optional but even better). But as a consumer of horror and thriller media, I am also well aware that sometimes a lake house setting can be looming and dangerous (most recently the film “The Night House” has really hit that point home), and I kept thinking about that movie as I read Riley Sager’s newest thriller “The House Across the Lake”. You know me, as much as I love the relaxation a situation can bring, I also love seeing that situation skewed into something a bit more menacing in the stories I consume, and Sager definitely made that happen by way of shades of “Rear Window” and “The Girl on the Train”.

One of the things I like best about Riley Sager is that, for me, his generally always female protagonists almost always ring true in how he portrays and writes them. I remember being surprised when I found out that Sager is not, in fact, a woman author, because his protagonists do feel realistic to me in their behaviors and experiences. Our newest is Casey, an actress and recent widow who has turned to diving into a bottle to forget about what happened to her husband Len, and who has retreated to the family lake home to escape the tabloid spotlight of her booze fueled antics. While she drinks, she watches the sparse neighbors through a pair of binoculars, focusing on other people’s potential secrets so she can forget her own. Casey is supremely damaged with a well thought out backstory and tenuous relationships, so her reclusive lake house voyeurism is pretty easily believed. After befriending new neighbor Katherine, a model and wife to a tech start up mogul, who almost drowned in the lake had Casey not been there to save her, she is drawn to Katherine’s seemingly perfect life… Especially when it seems that her veneer, too, is cracking. What follows seems like a pretty standard thriller trope: an unreliable protagonist thinks that her neighbor has been murdered by her husband, and starts to obsess over it. Sager is so good at taking a pretty well worn story (again, “Rear Window”-esque, which is referenced in this book as if acknowledging the inspiration) and making it feel fresh. Casey is a very messy character, but I found her to be sympathetic and explored enough that she doesn’t seem melodramatic or treading towards unrealistic and sexist tropes. Her friendship with older neighbor Eli is a nice grounding force, and while her potential budding romance with new neighbor (and sober) Boone is a bit cloying, it has its place and adds a non judgmental foil to her very ingrained issues without deriding them. Their investigation of Katherine’s disappearance and potential murder is suspenseful and full of some well done beats and plot twists.

But we are once again in a situation where one of the things I liked best about this book is something that I can’t talk about because it’s a pretty significant spoiler that needs to be kept under wraps for the full effect to be appreciated. So I’m going to gush about Sager’s slight of hand and earned twists in the vaguest terms possible. Sager has had various twists in his books that have had a varying degree of success in surprising me, and the big surprise in “The House Across the Lake” really caught me off guard. I thought that I had figured out what he was doing, as a matter of fact, scoffing to myself and saying ‘oh I know what’s going on, ho hum’ and feeling pretty good about myself and my twist sniffing prowess. But then I was completely fleeced, and when the ACTUAL thing was revealed, I actually hooted in glee. I even went back to look and see if the set up was there, and it was. It was super well disguised, but it was, indeed, there. You got me!

You sly dog, Mr. Sager! (source)

“The House Across the Lake” was yet another fun thriller from Riley Sager, and the PERFECT read to take to the lake with you this summer!

Rating 8: Entertaining, surprising, and unsettling, “The House Across the Lake” is another page turner from Riley Sager!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The House Across the Lake” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery & Thriller 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “Never Coming Home”

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Book: “Never Coming Home” by Kate Williams

Publishing Info: Delacorte Press, June 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: The beach read you have been dying for! When ten of America’s hottest teenage influencers are invited to an exclusive island resort, things are sure to get wild. But murder isn’t what anyone expected. Will anyone survive?

Everyone knows Unknown Island—it’s the world’s most exclusive destination. Think white sand beaches, turquoise seas, and luxury accommodations. Plus, it’s invite only, no one over twenty-one allowed, and it’s absolutely free. Who wouldn’t want to go?

After launching with a showstopping viral marketing campaign, the whole world is watching as the mysterious resort opens its doors to the First Ten, the ten elite influencers specifically chosen to be the first to experience everything Unknown Island has to offer. You know them. There’s the gamer, the beauty blogger, the rich girl, the superstar, the junior politician, the environmentalist, the DJ, the CEO, the chef, and the athlete.

What they don’t know is that they weren’t invited to Unknown Island for their following—they were invited for their secrets. Everyone is hiding a deadly one, and it looks like someone’s decided it’s payback time. Unknown Island isn’t a vacation, it’s a trap. And it’s beginning to look like the First Ten—no matter how influential—are never coming home.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I have various weaknesses in my entertainment, and one of those weaknesses is how I love to revel in schadenfreude of people who are kind of assholes. Especially if said assholes have influence and power and could stand to be knocked down a few pegs. I absolutely devoured both Fyre Festival documentaries and thoroughly enjoyed watching start up scam dramas like “The Dropout” and “WeCrashed”. So when I read about “Never Coming Home” by Kate Williams, and how it was taking a number of influencers, luring them to a remote island with a promise of luxury and a status resort, and then picking them off one by one because of their secrets, I was so interested. But once I started reading it, I realized that this wasn’t going to be what I wanted it to be. Which was super disappointing.

I’ll start with the positives. Namely, as someone who appreciates a good slasher movie with some creativity under its belt, “Never Coming Home” has some really gnarly kills. Why limit oneself to mere poisonings and moments that could be accidents when you could use bees (VERY “Sleepaway Camp”), or full on mutilation, or explosive bodily fluids out of various orifices (admittedly, I did not care for this one as it was way gross)? Williams clearly had a fun time thinking of nasty deaths for the various nasty players, and that I can and will tip my hat off to. And there is so much potential here. The whole concept of Influencers being taken to a Fyre Festival-esque hoax that is really a trap to pick each of them off is just SO tantalizing!

God DAMMIT I wanted this to rock SO BADLY! (source)

But now let’s talk about the negatives. Firstly, the characters. I know that there are definitely limitations on how much attention you can pay to each character in a “And Then There Were None” kind of story, since you have a big victim pool and only so many pages unless you want to go “War and Peace” in terms of length. But in “Never Coming Home”, I didn’t feel like I got to know anyone very well, and what we did see were very two dimensional and tropey characterizations for almost everyone. You had the cartoon villainy of a scheming CEO to the poor little princess rich girl to the superstar with more depth than people realize, and with maybe one or two exceptions, none of them stretched beyond their archetypes. No one was very likable or even fun to hate, and since they all get picked off one by one it felt like a slasher movie cast but without the suspense. Even a good slasher movie will give you something in SOME of the characters so that you have investment in them while others are just there to be meat sacks. This book didn’t give us much of that. I know that I’m absolutely not the target audience, but I would like to give teen readers a little more credit than this.

I also had a hard time suspending a lot of my disbelief when it came to some of these characters and their influencer, well, influence. They’re all under twenty but are wunderkinds in one way or another in ways that feel half baked. Be it the woman-centric email start up to the character who was listed as being a former Minneapolis City Council member on the ‘cast of characters’ reference page (and he’s under twenty?! IN WHAT WARD I ASK YOU? There’s been a LOT about the Minneapolis City Council and its dynamics and members in the news here in the Metro as of late and I just don’t believe this kid pulled a Ben Wyatt in MINNEAPOLIS), I couldn’t swallow it. I just couldn’t. Perhaps had they been aged up a bit it would have rang more true, but then it wouldn’t fit as a YA novel, I suppose.

And finally, I hate it when a book feels a need to just write the entire solution out instead of showing us the way. And “Never Coming Home” has an entire last section that does exactly that. It just spells out who the killer is, how they got away with it, and what their motivation was. I’m not saying that I needed a villain monologue or anything like that, but this is the second “And Then There Were None” retelling that did this. Given that I haven’t read “And Then There Were None” I could be missing something. Is that how the solution comes through in “And Then There Were None”? That could be more forgivable if so, but the problem is that it still feels like a great big info dump that brings the story’s pacing to a screeching halt.

“Never Coming Home” was a big ol’ let down. Again, I’m not the target audience so I very well may be missing the mark here, and it may go over better with others. But I was just disappointed by this one.

Rating 4: This just didn’t work for me. Between the underdeveloped characters and the overdone premise it failed to capture my interest.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Never Coming Home” isn’t on many Goodreads lists yet, but it would fit in on “‘And Then There Were None’ Trope Novels”.

Kate’s Review: “56 Days”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “56 Days” by Catherine Ryan Howard

Publishing Info: Blackstone Publishing, August 2021

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: No one knew they’d moved in together. Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder?

56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in with him. She sees a unique opportunity for a new relationship to flourish without the pressure of scrutiny of family and friends. He sees it as an opportunity to hide who – and what – he really is.

TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Will they be able to determine what really happened, or has lockdown provided someone with the opportunity to commit the perfect crime?

Review: Let’s talk a little bit about the synchronicity of the universe. I’ve had “56 Days” sitting on my book pile for a few months, as it was an impulse purchase at a book store on a solo trip up north. I knew I was going to get to it, though part of me was like ‘eughhhh, I don’t know, we’re still in this pandemic, am I really ready to read a book about COVID?’ But I cast my doubts aside, as it was goading me just sitting there, and I picked it up….

And not two days later, upon returning from a business trip where he took every precaution he could, my husband brought home COVID and infected the whole house.

To say I was livid is an understatement. (source)

Luckily it was pretty mild for me, the husband, and the toddler. But as I was wallowing in my anxiety I read “56 Days”, thinking that sometimes things come full circle in the stupidest ways. That said, my own COVID experience didn’t dampen my reading experience! “56 Days” was a fun read, in spite of my real life mirroring of it.

Catherine Ryan Howard’s thriller has the perfect setting for a mysterious murder: in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic during lockdown in Dublin. Oliver and Ciara have only been dating for a short while, but when the threat of not seeing each other for two weeks looms he asks her to move in. All we know at first is that a decomposing body is found in their shared apartment. We don’t know who it is. Then we jump around in time and perspectives, going back to when Oliver and Ciara first started dating, to the midst of lockdown as paranoia and stir craziness may be kicking in, to the investigation itself. As we jump from Ciara’s perspective, where she is tentative about her getting closer to Oliver but a little excited to, to Oliver’s, who has things that he’s hiding from her, we slowly peel back a larger mystery and a few potential motivations for murder. Now in the U.S. we didn’t have full on lockdowns like Europe did; Minnesota had a ‘stay at home’ order, but it wasn’t a strictly enforced mandate. So while I can’t REALLY speak to the stir craziness that Howard was trying to convey, I get the sense that it was probably aptly portrayed. And as you’re reading the story and know that SOMEONE is going to end up dead, well, that just adds to the tension. Especially when you aren’t totally certain as to why.

And there were a few twists and turns that truly caught me off guard! I was so surprised by one in particular that I had to go back and see if Howard had pulled it out of thin air, or if she had done the due diligence and I had just missed it because her deflection was so well done. It was definitely the latter, and it’s a masterful example of how to pull off such a misdirect in this kind of story. I also think that some of the surprises and twists did a little subverting of what was expected, which I really liked. I’m obviously not going to elaborate, but I will say that some of the pivots from my general expectations were welcomed (while one was maybe a little too much; you all know how I feel about too many pivots or too many twists, I have a hard time getting on board).

And honestly, going back to the beginning of this post, reading this book while having COVID was surreal, but kind of interesting. Again, whatever cases we had were pretty mild, so I was lucky that I am able to say that this felt more like an exercise in novelty and nothing worse than that. But don’t go get COVID just to read this book and have the same experience. I can’t imagine it enhances it too much!

“56 Days” is a fun mystery thriller with a structure I liked and some pretty good surprises. While it was frustrating that COVID did come for my house before we were totally ready for it, at least I had an interesting book to read in those early moments.

Rating 8: Twisty and told in an interesting structure, “56 Days” was the perfect read for being holed up with COVID. I don’t recommend the COVID aspect, but I recommend the book.

Reader’s Advisory:

“56 Days” is included on the Goodreads lists “COVID-19 Pandemic Books”, and “Popsugar 2022 #25: A Book About A Secret”.

Kate’s Review: “From Below”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “From Below” by Darcy Coates

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press

Where Did I Get This Book: I received access to an eARC via NetGalley from the publisher.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: No light. No air. No escape. Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean’s surface, a graveyard waits…

Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course…a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean’s surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life. Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia’s rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished.

But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them. Because once they’re trapped beneath the ocean’s waves, there’s no going back.

Review: Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for sending me an eARC of this novel!

Minnesota may not be on any oceans, but we do have Lake Superior, which is so vast and unruly at times that it kind of acts like the sea. Hell, it’s big enough and has enough commercial traffic on it that there have been a fair amount of shipwrecks in its waters, so many that I have a framed poster in our den of the various wreckages on a map of the Great Lakes. I got that poster when I was a tween, so clearly shipwrecks have fascinated me for awhile (fun fact, on a day where the conditions are right, you can see a shipwreck in the waters at the Split Rock Lighthouse, north of Duluth. I ALWAYS try to see it when I go). I was thinking a lot about the shipwrecks in Superior as I read “From Below” by Darcy Coates. But I also knew that, while similar, the wrecks I was thinking of weren’t comparable. The biggest reason is the actual ocean has A LOT more secrets than ol’ gitchi-gami does just by it’s vast unknown depths. The other, more fiction based one is that this shipwreck has some supernatural nonsense going on.

This story is told in two timelines that slowly come together to reveal what happened on the S.S. Arcadia, a ship that disappeared during a voyage sixty years prior and whose wreckage was just discovered way off course. The first timeline is in the present, with a dive team that has been selected to go in and document the wreckage. The other is on that doomed voyage, following the crew and the passengers as things slowly start to go wrong and a strange, choking fog stalks the ship. Which is just the beginning. In the present we have leader Cove and her crew going into the wreckage and finding clues as to what went on…. and as things go from solemn to strange to terrifying, they don’t feel like they can stop because they need the money the dive will bring in. Both timelines build up the dread at a languid pace, tightening the tension bit by bit until things suddenly snap. It goes on a little long and extends a bit more than it needs to, but it has moments of high tension and horror. I enjoyed the present timeline more than the past one, but both use different elements to achieve some well done scares. In the past it’s a frenzy of paranoia and desperation for the crew and passengers as things spiral out of control, and in the modern time it’s a realization that there are things left in this ship that should not be there. Cove is the most interesting character of them all, as she is trying to be a good leader, but also knows that they all need the compensation. It’s a legitimate factor that kept me from wholly disbelieving their choices in staying on (there was another issue near the end that I didn’t buy, but that’s just another byproduct of it going on a little long, which is mostly forgivable).

But Coates doesn’t only rely on the supernatural side of things when it comes to the horror moments in this book. I mean sure, a long lost shipwreck with a mysterious disappearance, and then horrors within, are great themes for a horror novel, and themes I don’t see TOO often (though interestingly enough Serena and I reviewed a novel this year that had those exact themes but in space). And these themes work really well here. But it’s more the real life and realistic moments that had my pulse pounding. Coates goes into some really good detail about deep sea diving, and just how dangerous it is, and a lot of the suspense was built up around a slowly running supply of oxygen, as well as the very real threats of the bends and pressure damage should one try to ascend too quickly. And when you are exploring an underwater ghost ship and find really horrific things inside, how are you NOT going to suck through your oxygen, or try to speed out of there just a little too quickly? Ugh, that really was the stuff that set me on edge. And Coates did a great job of explaining all of it for a layperson so I understood some of the dangers when I may not have initially.

So it seems I may have to go back through Darcy Coates’s catalog to see what else she has written, as “From Below” was super entertaining and definitely freaky. I wasn’t exactly in a rush to go deep sea diving at any point in my life, but this just clinches it.

Rating 7: A claustrophobic and eerie (and at times a bit drawn out) tale of ghost ships and exploration, “From Below” will surely chill horror fans to the bone.

Reader’s Advisory:

“From Below” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror to Look Forward to in 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons”

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Book: “A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons” by Kate Khavari

Publishing Info: Crooked Lane Books, June 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Saffron Everleigh is in a race against time to free her wrongly accused professor before he goes behind bars forever. Perfect for fans of Deanna Raybourn and Anna Lee Huber, Kate Khavari’s debut historical mystery is a fast-paced, fearless adventure.

London, 1923. Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh attends a dinner party for the University College of London. While she expects to engage in conversations about the university’s large expedition to the Amazon, she doesn’t expect Mrs. Henry, one of the professors’ wives to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin. Dr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect, having had an explosive argument with Dr. Henry a few days prior. As evidence mounts against Dr. Maxwell and the expedition’s departure draws nearer, Saffron realizes if she wants her mentor’s name cleared, she’ll have to do it herself.

Joined by enigmatic Alexander Ashton, a fellow researcher, Saffron uses her knowledge of botany as she explores steamy greenhouses, dark gardens, and deadly poisons. Will she be able to uncover the truth or will her investigation land her on the murderer’s list?

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I’m not really a plant person. Every year I have the best intentions when it comes to the landscaping that came with our house, as there is lots of room and lots of nice flowers… but I’m never motivated to clean it up or make it look pretty (though I have taken in irises, peonies, and a bleeding heart from friends and family, which are all lovely and stick out amongst the weeds). But poisonous plants are a whole other thing, given that I would LOVE to go on a tour of a poisonous garden at some point in my life, with the proper precautions in place. So when I saw the description of “The Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons” by Kate Khavari, I jumped at the chance to read it, for whatever reason getting into my head it was going to be a thriller level mystery about academia and poisons. Thriller level, not so much. Honestly this is probably more along the lines of the kinds of mysteries Serena reviews on her, but here we are and I still liked it, so I’m taking it on!

In similar themes and fashions that I have associated with historical mysteries, “A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons” is engaging, swift entertainment with a fun protagonist and a fascinating setting. Set in post WWI London, Saffron Everleigh is one of the only women research assistants/academics at the University of London, where she works in botany to the well respected Dr. Maxwell. So when he is accused of trying to poison a colleague’s wife at a university soiree as revenge, Saffron is determined to clear his name and find the real culprit. As far as the mystery goes, I thought that Khavari has a workable list of suspects who all have their reasons, as well as some good red herrings and misdirects. And who doesn’t like the potential murder weapon being an exotic and dangerous poisonous plant? I especially liked all of the talk about the deadly plants, and how Khavari created one especially for the story that sounded perfectly plausible. It’s not a super complex mystery and while there are twists they’re pretty standard. I was more interested in our characters, particularly Saffron and her recruited sidekick Alexander Ashtonm a biology researcher who is serious but swoony all the same. They play off of each other very well, and their chemistry is at a nice simmer for their will they or won’t they dynamic. I also liked Saffron’s best friend and roommate Elizabeth, whose spunky and winsome personality makes her a fun foil. Most of the other characters are pretty two dimensional, but my guess is that casts of characters will rotate in and out and therefore the main players are really the only ones that need the most depth.

I also found the World War I themes in this book make it stand apart from the other mysteries in this subgenre that I am accustomed to. WWI is a war that was just awful and devastating, as wars are, but it tends to get a bit overlooked within popular culture and literature. Khavari has its presence in the background, as Saffron and other characters have been affected by it in very sad ways. For Saffron, she lost not only her childhood friend/assumed future husband Wesley to the war, as well as her father, a brilliant scientist who felt the need to enlist, and died due to mustard gas in a trench. This early in the series we have the background set up for this personal pain, and while Saffron and others touch upon the grief of all these men lost, it never overwhelms the story. There is also Alexander, who is a veteran turned researcher, whose reputation of being perhaps hot tempered at times is more a reflection of his PTSD due to his experiences. Khavari makes a note at the end of the book that she wanted to be as true to the ‘shell shock’ experience as she could be, and I felt that Alexander was a responsible look into the aftermath of such a trauma. There are a fair amount of potential content warnings that could apply here (as well as instances of harassment and one moment of potential sexual assault), but Khavari is careful with all of it. Again, it’s early in the series, and I’m sure there will be more exploration of such themes. We had a good set up here that balanced well with the larger mystery.

Though it wasn’t the tone I expected, I enjoyed “A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons”. I plan to keep up with Saffron’s ongoing adventures, especially if there are more poisonous plant shenanigans.

Rating 7: A charming mystery with some enticing themes, “A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons” will please those who like jaunty historical mysteries with plucky heroines.

Reader’s Advisory:

“A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons” is included on the Goodreads lists “ATY 2022: Flora & Fauna”, and “Historical Mystery 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “The Book of Cold Cases”

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Book: “The Book of Cold Cases” by Simone St. James

Publishing Info: Berkley, March 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect–a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.

Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases–a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.

They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she’s not looking, and she could swear she’s seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn’t right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?

A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel.

Review: I am now at the point in my librarian and blogging career that I lose titles that I would normally be super into amongst the books that I want to read. Whether it’s for blog purposes or keeping my RA skills up, I am always looking for books to add to the pile, and then others tend to shuffle through long past their release date. This is what happened with “The Book of Cold Cases” by Simone St. James, and author that I generally like and would normally be putting on my radar earlier than a few months past the release date. Well thank you, Book of the Month Club, because had you not had this book as a selection of that month I probably would have ended up on a hold list and then not gotten to this book until much later. Which would have been a bummer, because “The Book of Cold Cases” combines true crime blogger themes with a 1970s murder case that scandalized a town, as well as a perhaps supernatural presence within the accused murderess’s house. All things that I’m super into.

The story is told through the perspectives of present day Shea, true crime obsessive due to her processing (or not processing) of her own traumatic incident in her past, and past Beth, an accused murderer who was acquitted and who is more than the media and the community sees her as. When Shea meets Beth randomly and asks to interview her for her armchair sleuthing blog, Beth surprises her with a ‘yes’, and then Shea starts to investigate the Lady Killer Murders that Beth seemingly got away with. I liked seeing Shea go on her own investigation and how it is supplemented by the slow reveals of Beth’s past as we see what she was going through during the scrutiny and police investigation/trial back in the 1970s. It’s a device we’ve seen before but St. James does it well. We slowly get more and more information about both women and what their motivations are, and they are both interesting and complex enough that I was invested in finding out what Beth was hiding, and if Shea was going to find herself in trouble as she starts to unravel it all. I found Shea especially fascinating as a character, as while it may have been easy to just paint her as a true crime weirdo, St. James instead brings her own victimization into the formula and makes it less a morbid hobby and more of a coping mechanism (and honestly, I think that for a number of true crime fans there is a bit of anxiety processing and trauma processing that goes into the fascination with the genre). And as for Beth, I liked how St. James picks apart misogyny of the media and society when it comes to the portrayals of women in crime cases like this.

Though there were some things that didn’t really work for me. The problem is, I can’t really talk too much about them here without going into serious spoiler territory. What I will say is that we get a device about half way through the story that made it a bit less interesting for me, as it makes Beth a little less interesting as a whole. And the other issue is that, like other Simone St. James books, there is an element of the supernatural here. I generally like how St. James incorporates ghost stories into her books, and it isn’t that I didn’t like it here, because I did. I think that the problem is that in this story it didn’t really feel like it was needed, and because of that it felt a bit forced into it. It doesn’t make it any less suspenseful, and I still tore through this book over the course of two days. But this time around it may not have been necessary to have that element to it.

At the end of the day, I was supremely entertained by “The Book of Cold Cases”! It’s summer now, and I do think that this would be a great beach or cabin read. It may even send a chill up your spine on a hot summer day.

Rating 7: Though some of the plot choices didn’t hit as hard for me, overall Simone St. James once again puts together a twisted and suspenseful horror-thriller story that I couldn’t put down!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Book of Cold Cases” is included on the Goodreads lists “2022 Horror Novels Written By Women and Non-Binary Femmes”, and “The Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “Chloe Cates Is Missing”

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Book: “Chloe Cates Is Missing” by Mandy McHugh

Publishing Info: Scarlet, February 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: The disappearance of a young internet celebrity ignites a firestorm of speculation on social media, and to find her a detective will have to extinguish the blaze.

Chloe Cates is missing. The 13-year-old star of the hit YouTube series, “CC and Me,” has disappeared, and nobody knows where she’s gone — least of all ruthless momager Jennifer Scarborough, who has spent much of her daughter’s young life crafting a child celebrity persona that is finally beginning to pay off. And in Chloe’s absence, the faux-fairytale world that supported that persona begins to fracture, revealing secrets capable of reducing the highly-dysfunctional Scarborough family to rubble.

Anxious to find her daughter and preserve the life she’s worked so hard to build, Jennifer turns to social media for help, but the hearsay, false claims, and salacious suspicions only multiply. As the search becomes as sensational as Chloe’s series, Missing Persons detective Emilina Stone steps in, only to realize she has a connection to this case herself. Will she be able to stay objective and cut through the rumors to find the truth before it’s too late?

Told from multiple points of view including Jennifer, Emilina, and pages from Chloe’s lost diary, Chloe Cates Is Missing is a suspenseful novel of a child pushed to the brink, and of the troubled family that desperately needs her back.

Review: Have you ever been in a situation where you have a book on your radar that you are super interested in, and are super looking forward to, but once you do get your hands on it it just keeps getting bumped in favor of more pressing books? This is what happened with me and “Chloe Cates Is Missing” by Mandy McHugh. It seriously has so many tidbits and plot points that are my catnip. You have a missing girl, you have a ‘social media is a dangerous sea’ theme, you have an overbearing perhaps insidious mother figure, and you have a dour lady cop with baggage and a secret. Like, holy cats, so many things! So when I finally sat down and said to myself ‘IT IS TIME!’, I had high hopes due to building anticipation due to my own poor book time management and rambling promises of finally getting down to it.

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When all is said and done, I found “Chloe Cates Is Missing” to be an addictive read. I basically sat down and read it over a couple of nights, or during my kid’s nap time, becoming fully and totally immersed in the mystery and the layers and layers of drama. We follow multiple perspectives to tell the story of the missing influencer/blog personality, thirteen year old Chloe Cates, real name Abby Scarborough. The first is that of her mom/momager Jennifer, whose obsession with the blog and how it has made her daughter Internet famous has caused severe damage to her family relationships. The second is Jackson, Jennifer’s husband/Abby’s Dad, who has gone along with the blog due to not wanting to anger his wife, no matter how much Abby is being hurt by it. The third is Emilina Stone, the detective assigned to the missing child case, who also has a distant connection to Jennifer (and a shared secret they both want to keep hidden). And finally we also get the perspective of Abby/Chloe herself, through diary entries. It’s a tried and true device, but I enjoyed how McHugh would use it to jump a little bit through the timeline, either to a few minutes before where one perspective left off, or back years and years, and how that added to the breakneck pacing. It was also a good way to misdirect or distract the reader, as we’d cut off one moment and jump to a whole new one, and I liked that strategy.

The characters themselves are a bit familiar in terms of the archetypes they represent. Emilinia is probably the most fleshed out, as her job as a detective means she has to deal with a lot of bleak and dark things, which has made her question the goodness of the world around her, as well as whether or not she would want to foist the darkness of the world on those she loves and cares for. But there is also a whole other dynamic of her having this job, which comes back to her relationship with Jennifer. No spoilers here, but I will say that the two of them share a secret, and Emilina’s choice of work may be a way of trying to atone. Jennifer, on the other hand, is pretty over the top villainous here. At first it seemed that there may have been a little bit of nuance to her character, giving her perspective of how alienating and uncomfortable being a new mother can be, but that went out the window pretty quickly. I don’t have a problem with having an antagonist you love to hate, as it’s entertaining as hell and makes for even more addictive reading, so it worked for me in the end.

I will say, however, that there was another big twist right at the last minute, as has been seen in so many thriller novels and always bugs me a bit. This almost certainly comes down to personal preference in storytelling, but it still made the read end on a bit of a sour note just because it shifted things so quickly right before the last moments. We don’t need to have one final gotcha! There were plenty of satisfying gotchas!

So outside of an ending that frustrated me, I found “Chloe Cates Is Missing” to be a very quick and fun read. I waited so long, and it was worth the wait.

Rating 7: The ending was a little bit of a dime’s turn switch for me, but man was I along for the ride up until that point.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Chloe Cates Is Missing” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery & Thriller 2022”.