Category: Kate’s Reviews

Kate’s Review: “Echo”

Book: “Echo” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, February 2022

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

Book Description: Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick’s own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying. His face wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, Nick claims amnesia—but he remembers everything.

He remembers how he and Augustin were mysteriously drawn to the Maudit, a remote and scarcely documented peak in the Swiss Alps. He remembers how the slopes of Maudit were eerily quiet, and how, when they entered its valley, they got the ominous sense that they were not alone. He remembers: something was waiting for them…

But it isn’t just the memory of the accident that haunts Nick. Something has awakened inside of him, something that endangers the lives of everyone around him… It’s one thing to lose your life. It’s another to lose your soul.

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT comes a thrilling descent into madness and obsession as one man confronts nature—and something even more ancient and evil answers back.

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

It’s been awhile, a long while, and I’ve been long anticipating a new book by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I loved his last book “Hex”, the story of a small town cursed by the ghost of a witch that wanders the community and makes everything scary and awful for the townspeople. Like, it scared the hell out of me, truly scared me to my bones, which I always love to encounter in my books. So when I saw that he finally had a new book coming out in the U.S., called “Echo”, I was AMPED!!! Because if there is going to be an author who genuinely, GENUINELY scares the living daylights out of me, it’s going to be Thomas Olde Heuvelt.

Bring on the nightmares. I know they’re coming. (source)

And let me tell you, “Echo” has many moments that absolutely filled me with dread. The first chapter alone was enough for me to say ‘okay that’s enough for one night’ and close my Kindle. Heuvelt combines elements of survival horror, possession horror, body horror, folk horror, and a good old fashioned ghost story to tell his newest scary tale, one that is perfect for a cold winter’s night (we’ve had a couple of those this winter!). Heuvelt really knows how to slowly build up the slow creeping dread. As our protagonists Nick and Sam have to contend with what is happening to Nick post mountaineering disaster that left him disfigured, and his friend Augustin dead, we slowly see how things are so very wrong, and how both men are caught up in the supernatural danger in their own ways. With Nick, his body has been potentially inhabited by a malevolent force he can’t control. With Sam, his initial repulsion at his lover’s disfigurement turns into an unwavering obsession with keeping Nick close, keeping him safe, and trying to fix whatever it is that is wrong… even if it isn’t fixable. We get both of their perspectives through various means, be it personal journals, notes, or flashbacks, and as the truth as to what happened slowly comes to light, we also get introspection into their relationship as well as their core wants and fears. They are well conceived characters that I ended up caring about.

And as mentioned. The SCARES. OH THE SCARES. That first chapter scared the piss out of me, and Heuvelt sprinkles in a lot of horror moments that range from the somewhat unsettling to absolute nightmare fuel. By taking elements of a traditional possession story but making the origin of the possession more nature based than religious based, Heuvelt has breathed new life into the subgenre that I really appreciated. Anyone can be possessed by a demon, but who can say that they’ve been possessed by a piece of the natural world (I’m trying to be vague here, though other reviews have kind of unpacked it a bit more)? It’s very unique in its creepiness, and I liked that quite a bit. And his descriptions are still so vivid and visceral, knowing how to take basal, primal fears and translate them to the page. Goddamn this book is scary.

I will say that “Echo” does have some stumbles here and there. The first is something that I kind of mentioned above: there is a LOT going on. There are a lot of subgenres at work here, and while combining a couple could work wonders, when you throw a lot into the mix it becomes too much. I think that this is mostly because to do due diligence to all of these subgenres or tropes, it means that you have to spend a fair amount of time on each of them. And that makes for a long read, one that goes on a little too long. Especially since some of the elements invariably do feel under-explored. There was one offshoot during the last fourth of the novel in particular that I thought felt a bit tacked on, as while it absolutely did tie back to other parts of the book (and had a VERY upsetting moment that set me on edge), it felt like we had let this moment stay off to the sidelines for a bit too long before we do reconnect to it. Ultimately I think that it just felt overstuffed. Not enough to turn me off, mind you! It just could have used some trimming.

Ultimately, “Echo” delivered the scares. Thomas Olde Heuvelt once again messed me up and created a story that has disturbing elements that got under my skin.

Rating 8: Deeply disturbing and another solid winter horror story, “Echo” runs a little long and is overstuffed but has many scares along the way.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Echo” is included on the Goodreads lists “Best Wilderness Horror Stories”, and “Horror To Look Forward To In 2022”.

Find “Echo” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Locke & Key (Vol. 5): Clockworks”

Book: “Locke & Key (Vol. 5): Clockworks” by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez (Ill.)

Publishing Info: IDW Publishing, 2013

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: Tyler and Kinsey Locke have no idea that their now-deceased nemesis, Lucas “Dodge” Caravaggio, has taken over the body of their younger brother, Bode. With unrestricted access to Keyhouse, Dodge’s ruthless quest to find the Omega Key and open the Black Door is almost complete. But Tyler and Kinsey have a dangerous key of their own — one that can unlock all the secrets of Keyhouse by opening a gateway to the past. The time has come for the Lockes to face their own legacy and the darkness behind the Black Door. Because if they don’t learn from their family history, they may be doomed to repeat it, and time is running out!

Colonel Adam Crais’s minutemen are literally trapped between a rock and a hard place; in the first days of the Revolutionary War, they find themselves hiding beneath 120 feet of New England stone, with a full regiment of redcoats waiting for them in the daylight… and a door into hell in the cavern below. The black door is open, and it’s up to a 16-year-old smith named Ben Locke to find a way to close it. The biggest mysteries of the Locke & Key series are resolved as Clockworks opens, not with a bang, but with the thunderous crash of English cannons.

Review: As we know I’ve really been enjoying this re-read of Joe Hill’s dark fantasy horror series “Locke and Key”, though I’ve been saying the whole time ‘I don’t remember when and how a lot of this is all going to come together’. The exposition has been building and building and it’s been getting close to the end of the series and there are still a lot of questions to be answered. I remembered really loving the series overall, but I think that the first time I read this I was like ‘okay, I have two books left and few answers, is this going to pay off?’. Because it has to pay off.

And my God, does it pay off. Everything comes together so perfectly and with such thoughtfulness and intricacy that I was just blown away, even though it is my second time reading this book. Joe Hill’s storytelling prowess is at its best in this volume.

(source)

There are two major reveals in this story right when things have started to get dire for the Lockes (even if they don’t realize how dire). Given that Kinsey killed Dodge, and Dodge (or whatever it is) moved its consciousness into Bode’s body without them knowing it, the race is on for the Lockes to discover the truth before Bode/Dodge can find the Omega Key. The first reveal that we see we jump into right away, which is the origin of the keys, Keyhouse, the demon, and how the Lockes are connected to it. And we go all the way back to the Revolutionary War, in which we meet a young locksmith named Ben Locke, who discovers that hidden Minutemen have opened a door deep in a cave that has let an evil out that they are trying to put back and contain. The first time I read this I remember thinking that it went on a little long, but this time I thought that this origin story of the Black Door and the keys was pitch perfect. I loved the setting, I loved the connection to the Locke Family (and the backstory for the Lockes, who were victims of Red Coat tyranny), and I loved how Hill sprang this all on us but still managed to make it feel in depth and well explored. He lays his magical system out bare, and it falls into place with ease.

Our second big reveal is we finally, FINALLY, get to see how Rendell Locke and his friends ran afoul Dodge, as well as explanations as to how back in the day Dodge Caravaggio became the Dodge that we know now, how Ellie Whedon became so broken, and how Erin Voss lost her memories and her consciousness, and how ALL of it relates to the keys. And it’s done in a way that doesn’t feel super exposition-y, as we get another key reveal that allows for Tyler and Kinsey to go back in time to see everything happen, and to get a new perspective on their late father. While I do think that we didn’t get enough exploration of all of Rendell’s friends (specifically his girlfriend Kim; I appreciated that Hill tried to make her complicated, but she just came off as cruel and privileged more than anything else), the backstory itself is so fantastic, so heart wrenching, and so SCARY as a bunch of kids who have been bestowed a monumental responsibility of guarding keys get too complacent… and all hell breaks loose. Good God is this an emotional story arc, as we know how things turned out for a few of our characters, but we didn’t know how they got to that point. Hill makes it so complex, satisfying, and devastating, and it adds compounded grief as two kids who lost their father in a terrible act of violence have to see his biggest mistake that ruined lives as it unfolds. Goddammit, it hurts, and it’s beautiful.

And the artwork continues to be great. I can’t praise Gabriel Rodríguez enough, and he has this way of creating the most grotesque and disturbing images as well as the most tender and joyous.

This image specifically took my breath away. (source)

This penultimate volume is fantastic. We will finish up this re-read with the next and last volume, “Omega”. I’m not sure I’m ready to be emotionally destroyed by it, but it’s time regardless.

Rating 9: Fantastic pay off for all the build up before it, “Locke & Key: Clockworks” is the strongest in the series so far.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Locke & Key (Vol. 5): Clockworks” is included on the Goodreads lists “Best Horror Comics/Graphic Novels!”, and “Best Coming-of-Age Horror Novels”!

Find “Locke & Key (Vol. 5): Clockworks” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Previously Reviewed:

Kate’s Review: “The Violence”

Book: “The Violence” by Delilah S. Dawson

Publishing Info: Del Rey Books, February 2022

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

Book Description: A mysterious plague that causes random bouts of violence is sweeping the nation. Now three generations of women must navigate their chilling new reality in this moving exploration of identity, cycles of abuse, and hope.

Chelsea Martin appears to be the perfect housewife: married to her high school sweetheart, the mother of two daughters, keeper of an immaculate home. But Chelsea’s husband has turned their house into a prison; he has been abusing her for years, cutting off her independence, autonomy, and support. She has nowhere to turn, not even to her narcissistic mother, Patricia, who is more concerned with maintaining the appearance of an ideal family than she is with her daughter’s actual well-being. And Chelsea is worried that her daughters will be trapped just as she is–then a mysterious illness sweeps the nation.

Known as The Violence, this illness causes the infected to experience sudden, explosive bouts of animalistic rage and attack anyone in their path. But for Chelsea, the chaos and confusion the virus causes is an opportunity–and inspires a plan to liberate herself from her abuser.

Review: Thank you to Del Rey for providing me with an eARC of this novel via NetGalley.

As this seemingly never ending pandemic goes on, there has been a pattern in my reading and other media consumption that has been consistent: I have been having a hard time with anything that has to do with mass illness and epidemic plotlines. It has tainted my reading experiences, it has made me put off shows I would normally be interested in (“The Stand”? “Station Eleven”? Not right now, thanks!), and I just don’t want to think about it in my reading or viewing things. So when “The Violence” by Delilah S. Dawson ended up in my inbox, I was hesitant. I eventually relented, expecting it to be an entertaining but probably difficult read.

But apparently all a pandemic story needs for me to be completely and utterly in love with it is professional wrestling?

By the way I’m still bitter that this show was cancelled before the last season could happen. (source)

Okay that’s not the only reason that I absolutely adored “The Violence”, but it was definitely one of many lovable aspects of this angry, snarky, and highly entertaining pandemic book. Dawson has created a scary virus mythology that she tackles with suspense, humor, and believability as to how it would unfold, given everything we’ve seen in the past two years. A strange virus causes people to completely disassociate and turn lethally violent, and we follow three generations of women in one family as they experience this new disease through the lens of their own experiences of victimhood and generational trauma. Our first is Claudia, a housewife who has been in a picture perfect but deeply abusive marriage to her nasty husband David. The second is Ella, Claudia’s oldest daughter who has seen the pain her mother has gone through, has protected her younger sister Brookie, and has found herself in a similar relationship with her seemingly wonderful boyfriend at school. And then there’s Patricia, Claudia’s narcissistic mother who is in her second marriage as a trophy wife and lives in privileged wealth. When The Violence strikes, and Claudia sees a potential out from her abusive marriage, all three have their lives change dramatically.

And I loved all three of these characters in all of their well rounded, complicated, and messy glory. Dawson explores all of them and all of their depths, and she has created strong, sometimes maddening, always relatable characters who I ended up caring about very deeply. I also loved how she draws out explorations of trauma and abuse and how victims of abuse find themselves in terrible cycles that they can’t escape from so easily, and how that in turn can make them do things that are harmful. It’s all so sympathetic and raw, and even when I thought that I was going to feel one way about a character, Dawson would surprise me with how I would end up feeling about them. I loved everyone in this book. I loved all of their journeys, be they literal ones or ones within themselves, and how they all changed and grew. And yes, without spoiling too much, I will say that Claudia ends up as part of a pro wrestling league during her storyline, so she absolutely became Betty Gilpin in my head during my time with this book.

And what of the Violence itself? I really enjoyed this virus mythology in this book, as Dawson creates something that feels as scary as it should without becoming overwrought with aspects that would make it ultimately untenable in a real world setting. The transmission of The Violence, the way that people try to study it, the things they discover about it, and the way that the public reacts to it all feel correct after all we’ve seen these past few years dealing with COVID. Dawson doesn’t feel a need to over explain, but she does find ways to make it seem believable in terms of transmission and origin, as well as how society would deal with it (there is a whole plot point about vaccine hoarding and how the privileged can deal better with pandemics than lower income people can, and man oh man do we know that that’s absolutely correct after everything). And while it’s all dark, it’s also supremely entertaining. As our characters find themselves in dangerous situations, and they certainly do, the tension is always on point and is paced in a way that it reads quick while still keeping the reader into what is coming next. There were plenty of moments where I was on the edge of my seat, and the tone definitely goes to twisted places, but still inspires a lot of hope. And I absolutely needed that hope in this story, since hope has felt hard to come by in the face of the inevitability of Omicron. Seeing these relatable and likable characters find hope in the hopelessness really, really resonated.

“The Violence” is my first 10 read of the year. It’s phenomenally entertaining and cathartic in this moment. Just great.

Rating 10: So. Much. Fun. Not to mention twisted, hopeful, and cathartic.

Reader’s Advisory

“The Violence” is included on the Goodreads lists “Anticipated 2022 Horror/Thriller Releases”, and “Books Containing One of the “Clue” Game Weapons On the Cover Or in the Title” (I had to, the concept is too good).

Find “The Violence” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Road of Bones”

Book: “Road of Bones” by Christopher Golden

Publishing Info: St. Martin’s Press, January 2022

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

Book Description: A stunning supernatural thriller set in Siberia, where a film crew is covering an elusive ghost story about the Kolyma Highway, a road built on top of the bones of prisoners of Stalin’s gulag.

Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Under Stalin, at least eighty Soviet gulags were built along the route to supply the USSR with a readily available workforce, and over time hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the midst of their labors. Their bodies were buried where they fell, plowed under the permafrost, underneath the road.

Felix Teigland, or “Teig,” is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he’s stumbled upon untapped potential. Accompanied by his camera operator, Teig hires a local Yakut guide to take them to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. Teig is fascinated by the culture along the Road of Bones, and encounters strange characters on the way to the Oymyakon, but when the team arrives, they find the village mysteriously abandoned apart from a mysterious 9-year-old girl. Then, chaos ensues.

A malignant, animistic shaman and the forest spirits he commands pursues them as they flee the abandoned town and barrel across miles of deserted permafrost. As the chase continues along this road paved with the suffering of angry ghosts, what form will the echoes of their anguish take? Teig and the others will have to find the answers if they want to survive the Road of Bones.

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

So many horror subgenres, so little time. I have always had a hit or miss relationship with folk horror, but I’m always up to try out books that catch my eye or get a lot of hype. So I was drawn to “Road of Bones” by Christopher Golden for a couple of reasons. The first was that I’ve been meaning to check out Golden for awhile, but haven’t done it yet. The second was that “Road of Bones” kept popping up on my various timelines with a lot of praise. So folk horror or not, I was down to jump all the way in. And the fact that it takes place in the cold wilderness of Siberia was just an added bonus, since I was reading it over some frigid winter days and nights here in Minnesota.

As cold as Siberia? Probably not. But it was recently -21 without windchill here, so…. (source)

“Road of Bones” does the ingenious thing of taking a real life horror and using it as the context and setting for a horror story steeped in folklore, history, and supernatural creepiness. The action of our tale takes place along the Kolyma Highway, a federal road that was built by and upon the bones of gulag prisoners during Stalin’s rule. It is estimated that perhaps at least half a million people died during construction, their bodies just paved over by permafrost and infrastructure. So, good lord that’s horrifying on its own, but Golden manages to take the location and make it all the more creepy and upsetting vis a vis Russian folklore. Our main characters are Teig and Prentiss, two filmmakers who have been friends forever and who are chasing one last dream (mostly Teig’s) of trying to create a ghost hunting show. Teig has his own reasons for wanting to chase ghosts that he doesn’t necessarily believe in outside of monetary ones, and Prentiss is there because he loves his friend, even if he’s exasperated by him. Their dynamic is a familiar one, but Golden makes you care about them as people and as friends. As they drive through the ice cold and desolate wilds of Siberia on a lonely highway, they find themselves suddenly in supernatural danger, and by the time we get to that point we care enough about them that anything that comes next is going to be high tension and high stakes. The other characters we meet have similar roles to play, from their brash local guide Kaskil to a stranded driver named Nari, and once they reach the small village they hope to rest in, it’s clear that things have gone very wrong. I liked all of our characters, so they were more than just fodder for angry spirits by the time shit started to get real.

But it’s the horror elements that really sold me on this book. I initially assumed that the supernatural element would be a traditional ‘angry ghosts’ kind of story, given that the Kolyma Highway has such a dark and violent history, but instead we go full folk horror with it, and hoo boy is it effective. From an abandoned village to shadows in the distant treelines to shamanism and forest spirits, “Road of Bones” runs a gamut of creepy elements that make for some really, REALLY scary moments. The isolation of a deadly tundra is scary enough on its own, and Golden makes that threat just one of many others that is always there to compound the other issues at hand. Golden taps into folklore and involves forest spirits, potential demonic possession, transformative body horror, and the fear of the missing and unknown. The descriptions of the abandoned village, of many sets of footprints wandering through the snow and into the woods, actively gave me shivers as I was reading (definitely had another ‘oh Jesus CHRIST’ muttering moment during one moment in particular), and let me tell you, the things that Teig, Prentiss, and the others encounter freaked me out, and a lot of that is based in folk horror tropes and imagery. Golden made it work for me, and how. The horrors of nature and the things that dwell within it combine super well with the location and terrible history that resides there.

“Road of Bones” is scary and highly enjoyable. I’m so glad that this was the Christopher Golden book that served as my first experience with his writing, as I really, really liked it.

Rating 9: A scary folk horror tale perfect for a cold winter’s night.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Road of Bones” is included on the Goodreads lists “Books of Horror FB Group”, and “Most Anticipated 2022 Thriller Books”.

Find “Road of Bones” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “The Red Palace”

Book: “The Red Palace” by June Hur

Publishing Info: Feiwel & Friends, January 2022

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

Book Description: Joseon (Korea), 1758. There are few options available to illegitimate daughters in the capital city, but through hard work and study, eighteen-year-old Hyeon has earned a position as a palace nurse. All she wants is to keep her head down, do a good job, and perhaps finally win her estranged father’s approval.

But Hyeon is suddenly thrust into the dark and dangerous world of court politics when someone murders four women in a single night, and the prime suspect is Hyeon’s closest friend and mentor. Determined to prove her beloved teacher’s innocence, Hyeon launches her own secret investigation.

In her hunt for the truth, she encounters Eojin, a young police inspector also searching for the killer. When evidence begins to point to the Crown Prince himself as the murderer, Hyeon and Eojin must work together to search the darkest corners of the palace to uncover the deadly secrets behind the bloodshed.

June Hur, critically acclaimed author of The Silence of Bones and The Forest of Stolen Girls, returns with The Red Palace—a third evocative, atmospheric historical mystery perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Kerri Maniscalco.

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

I was amped to see that June Hur had another historical mystery/thriller coming out this year, and I was very lucky to get an eARC from Hur herself through NetGalley. Given that Hurs books, which take place in historical Korea, are always a hit with me, I was eager to check out “The Red Palace”, a mystery involving shady royals, a palace nurse, and a creepy moment in Korean history involving murder.

The story itself is at times creepy and always suspenseful, given that someone is murdering palace nurses and it may well be the Crown Prince himself. As our characters Palace Nurse Hyeon and Inspector Eojin investigate, the puzzle pieces fall into place, but as they do so the stakes raise higher and higher. I liked both of them so much (and I loved their chemistry as they investigated together) that I was fully invested in their safety, almost as much as I was invested in their romance. Maybe that should be switched around in terms of priorities, but whatever. I thought that Hur did a really good job of putting all the clues in place and revealing them at just the right times, and I was genuinely surprised by some of the reveals. They all made perfect sense upon reflection, and I enjoyed going on the investigation with our protagonists. It feels a lot like a procedural formula that you could see in modern times, of the medical person assisting the police officer, and it is a tried and true trope that works here too.

And I really loved the protagonists, specifically Hyeon. Her backstory has a good balance of angst and determination, and I completely bought her motive for wanting to solve this mystery given her close relationship with Nurse Jeongsu, her mentor and mother figure (as he own mother is cold and their relationship is complicated) that has been accused of the murders of their fellow nurses. We didn’t see as much of Jeongsu as I would have liked, and there was more telling as opposed to showing their relationship, but we DID get to see the complicated one between Hyeon and her concubine mother, while her Lord father has denied her acknowledgement and care. It’s established that while Hyeon has a lot to lose by investigating, but we completely believe why she pursues it, doggedly so. And as I mentioned above, I really loved her working (and romantic tension filled) relationship with the young inspector Eojin. He, too, has a lot to prove and a lot to lose, and it means that they work as good foils for each other.

And finally, the time and place is great. Given that “The Red Palace” is partially inspired by the notorious life and death of Crown Prince Sado (a prince who did, indeed, murder a number of people and then was executed at the behest of his father), we get a look into a dark footnote in Korean history and get some expansion on the themes it harkens to. Hur’s books are always so great for time and place, jumping through various centuries in Korea, and this one had some good insight into the workings of the Palace culture and hierarchy for those who serve it. I also liked the fact that she put an author’s note in about Crown Prince Sado, which contextualized the story at hand and gave it a bit more depth. Man do I love me an author’s note that has to do with historical context!

I quite enjoyed “The Red Palace”. I implore historical mystery and thriller fans to pick up June Hur if you haven’t already.

Rating 8: A creepy and tense historical mystery based in notorious fact, “The Red Palace” is another fun thriller from June Hur with very likable characters and a unique time and place.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Red Palace” is included on the Goodreads lists “Historical Fiction w/ POC”, and “ATY 2022: Asian or Pacific Islander Author”.

Find “The Red Palace” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Reprieve”

Book: “Reprieve” by James Han Mattson

Publishing Info: William Morrow, October 2021

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room—a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment.

On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize—a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.

Those who were present on that fateful night lend their points of view: Kendra Brown, a teenager who’s been uprooted from her childhood home after the sudden loss of her father; Leonard Grandton, a desperate and impressionable hotel manager caught in a series of toxic entanglements; and Jaidee Charoensuk, a gay international student who came to the United States in a besotted search for his former English teacher. As each character’s journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe.

An astonishingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism to present an unsettling portrait of this tangled American life.

Review: You all know what a big fan I am of Halloween, and while for various reasons I haven’t done this in a long time I also really enjoy doing haunted hayrides, and living in Minnesota it’s not hard to drive outside the city limits to find such shenanigans. But I’m not as big into walk through haunted houses, and am certainly NOT into any ‘extreme’ haunted houses. Locally we had something called The Soap Factory, which made you sign a waiver before you went through, but they closed a couple years ago. The most infamous ‘extreme’ haunt, however is almost assuredly McKamey Manor, a combined haunted house escape room puzzle experience that is notorious in the haunt industry. Yes, you sign a waiver, and you may be subjected to physical and psychological torture for hours on end all in the name of thrills. There is no question in my mind that “Reprieve” by James Han Mattson is partially inspired by McKamey Manor, and that made an already enjoyable reading experience that much better. This book seems to be polarizing. I’m firmly on the ‘love’ team.

“Reprieve” is a deeply layered and multidimensional horror story that comes to life through literary structure. The guts of the tale involve a slowly revealed violent incident at Quigley House, a hardcore escape room/haunted house that offers players serious money if they can solve the puzzles in all the ‘cells’ while actors inflict psychological terror upon them. What exactly happened is slowly revealed through court room transcripts, flashbacks through character perspectives, and the straight narrative of the timeline of what happened in each cell up until the moment in question. I liked the slow build up and the combined story telling techniques, and how all of them combined to make a building tension of dread while also getting to know each character and what role they play. I’m sure that it’s the literary structure that threw readers for a loop, as I can definitely say that the creative choices made here are probably not for everyone. Which is totally okay. I, however, really liked it. I’m not the kind of person who thinks that horror needs to be elevated or classed up by any stretch of the imagination, but “Reprieve” does this without feeling pretentious or disingenuous. The scares are knowing what is coming (even if only in part), seeing it all unfold, and seeing the way that the REAL horror is in the bad behavior of villainous people, unwitting or not.

This is also a really well done commentary on capitalism, the weaponization of entertainment, and race in America. Many of the characters are POC, some are LGBTQIA+, and many of them feel lost, isolated, or Othered. Kendra is a new resident of this small Nebraska community and one of the few Black people (outside of her family) and finds herself working at Quigley House. The ‘we’re family here’ mentality definitely pulls her in deeper when she feels isolated in other ways. Contestant Jaidee is an international student from Thailand who is also gay, and feels scrutiny from his college peers because of both of these facts. And then there are the characters of Leonard, a hotel worker who feels inadequate in his personal life, and John, who owns Quigley House. Their friendship is a toxic concoction that encapsulates misogyny, xenophobia, and aggression, and sets off the first domino that leads to tragedy. Mattson knows what he’s doing with these characters, and while they easily could have felt like two dimensional villains, we get into their minds a bit, and it makes them fascinating, and all the more upsetting.

Boy did I enjoy “Reprieve”. It’s one of the more unique horror novels I’ve read lately, and it finds the horrors in both an extreme haunted house, and the darker side of American cultural consciousness.

Rating 9: A stunning literary horror thriller, “Reprieve” is mesmerizing, blistering, and deeply sad.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Reprieve” is included on the Goodreads lists “Deliciously Chilling Horror”, and “If You Like ‘Squid Game’, You Should Read…”.

Find “Reprieve” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Such A Pretty Smile”

Book: “Such A Pretty Smile” by Kristi DeMeester

Publishing Info: St. Martin’s Press, January 2022

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

Book Description: A biting novel from an electrifying new voice, Such a Pretty Smile is a heart-stopping tour-de-force about powerful women, angry men, and all the ways in which girls fight against the forces that try to silence them.

There’s something out there that’s killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don’t know when to shut up.

2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she’s seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother—the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice—until she is punished for using it.

2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape—both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waves her “problem” away with pills. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can’t understand.

As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.

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

I’m sure that this following statement is probably relatable for a lot of people: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like I’ve been dismissed because of the fact that I’m a woman. While I absolutely know that I have a lot of privilege that others don’t, there are still times that I’ve felt like I’ve been talked down to, condescended to, or flat out sneered at because of underlying currents of misogyny in our culture. Throw in the fact that I have diagnosed mental illnesses, and I find myself not only feeling bad about these moments of being belittled, but then I start to question my own perceptions because of my anxiety. Enter “Such A Pretty Smile” by Kristi DeMeester, a new horror novel that uses these themes as the foundation of a genuinely disturbing and trippy tale of terror involving missing and murdered girls, mothers and daughters, and the way that all these women are victimized by society and many of the men around them.

It’s basically this. But also horror. (source)

“Such A Pretty Smile” as a title tells you a lot about what you are going to read. Lord knows that in “Little Red Riding Hood” a canine foe has his mouth and smile commented upon, but there is also the ‘you’d be prettier if you smiled’ bullshit that women hear (let me tell you, working in a public library at the desk made this a common occurrence). Our story is told in two perspectives over two timelines. The first is that of thirteen year old Lila, a girl in 2019 who is dealing with a lot of the awkward coming of age issues: she has a crush on her beautiful (but manipulative) best friend Macie, her father has moved on to a new family and has little time for her, and her mother Caroline is a good mother but has secrets of her own. When girls her age start disappearing and turning up dead, with a mysterious killer named “The Cur” being theorized as the culprit, Caroline starts to get more paranoid, and Lila starts to feel something strange and almost feral awakening inside of her. The other two perspectives are Caroline’s the modern day one trying to keep Lila safe from harm as things escalate, as well as one in Caroline’s past, which centered around her terminally ill father, her jealous of her talent boyfriend (Lila’s father), and seeming hallucinations involving barking dogs. Oh, and also a string of teenage girls disappearing and turning up murdered in the same way that the girls in the present are. The way that Demeester pulls all of these stories together takes time, but it’s done in a way that feels very deliberate, even if it sometimes leaves it up to the reader to parse out their own thoughts and feelings. The slow build dread of Caroline’s past trauma mirroring with Lila’s present situation is tense and well executed, and it all builds to a strange and haunting climax that is genuinely disturbing. Sometimes the jumping around is a little hard to follow, and I definitely found the Caroline POVs more interesting than Lila’s, but in the end it all blends to create a well done whole.

But its greatest strength is the solid ‘fuck you’ to patriarchy that “Such A Pretty Smile” spits out as much as it can. From ‘bad girls’ being victimized but not as valued in society’s eyes, to Caroline dealing with a condescending therapist, to Caroline ALSO dealing with a petty and jealous boyfriend who gaslights her out of envy, this book has so many moments that had me seething in rage. Demeester translates these reality based horrors into something supernatural and strange, and it really worked well for me. We have people like the murder victims being brutalized and objectified before and after death, but we also have the smaller but hurtful moments of one girl being reprimanded for lashing out at a boy who groped her in the lunch line, or another girl being groomed by an older boy in hopes of being accepted, or Caroline herself being told that her genuine and real fears are hysteria by people she is supposed to trust. It’s heartbreaking and terrifying, and Demeester taps into all of it and finds horror fuel at the root.

“Such A Pretty Smile” is upsetting and compelling, and I will definitely be checking out what Demeester has to offer in the future.

Rating 8: All too relevant and relatable as well as creepy and haunting, “Such A Pretty Smile” was a disturbing read that will be familiar to a lot of women who have been silenced by misogyny.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Such A Pretty Smile” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Surreal Horror”.

Find “Such A Pretty Smile” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Mestiza Blood”

Book: “Mestiza Blood” by V. Castro

Publishing Info: Flame Tree Press, January 2022

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

Book Description: From the lauded author of The Queen of the Cicadas (which picked up starred reviews from PW, Kirkus and Booklist who called her “a dynamic and innovative voice”) comes a short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desire and visions focused on the Chicana experience. V.Castro weaves urban legend, folklore, life experience and heartache in this personal journey beginning in south Texas: a bar where a devil dances the night away; a street fight in a neighborhood that may not have been a fight after all; a vengeful chola at the beginning of the apocalypse; mind swapping in the not so far future; satan who falls and finds herself in a brothel in Amsterdam; the keys to Mictlan given to a woman after she dies during a pandemic. The collection finishes with two longer tales: The Final Porn Star is a twist on the final girl trope and slasher, with a creature from Mexican folklore; and Truck Stop is an erotic horror romance with two hearts: a video store and a truck stop.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this short story collection!

I wrapped up 2021’s Horrorpalooza with a review of V. Castro’s “The Queen of the Cicadas”, and while I thought it had some great moments I found myself wanting more. So when I saw that Castro had a new collection of short horror stories coming out called “Mestiza Blood”, I was more than willing to jump past my hot and cold relationship with short story anthologies to give her another chance. And I’m glad that I did, because “Mestiza Blood” had a lot of really great stories that cover a huge variety of horror themes! I’m going to do the usual format I do with short story collections, by showcasing my favorite three stories first, and then doing a wrap up of the collection in general (but I MUST say that I had a hard time choosing just three favorites… Yep, that’s how strong this collection is).

“Donkey Lady Bridge”

The set up grabbed me from the jump: A woman named Jackie is walking home drunk from the bar, and finds herself crossing a notorious local bridge that has the urban legend of the Donkey Lady attached to it. A deformed and screaming spectre, the Donkey Lady has a lot of potential origin stories, and lots of people who hope to see her. Jackie has never believed in her…. until she has an encounter with The Donkey Lady that changes the course of her life. I’m a huge sucker for urban legend horror as we all know, and there was one particular moment in this story where I said out loud ‘Jesus CHRIST’ because it was so unsettling and scary. Castro’s descriptions of the Donkey Lady are terrifying and disturbing, and the story goes in a direction that I totally didn’t expect. For me this was probably the scariest story in the book.

“The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

Christmas wasn’t so long ago, and I found myself relating a LOT to this story about a stressed out mother during the holidays who finds herself propositioned by a demon to make her life easier. At a price, of course. This past Christmas was a stressful one for me, between getting back together with family, taking on a number of cooking tasks, and having to coordinate rapid testing to keep my ineligible to be vaccinated kid as protected as possible in a sea of uncertainty about Omicron. So yeah, I REALLY felt how the Mother in the story would be tempted by a demon who promises lofty things. There are also a lot of really funny moments in this tale, as well as vulnerable ones that really nail how hard motherhood can be during a time of year where everything has to be magical. This story definitely feels more heartwarming than I expected, which fit pretty well since it’s a Christmas story. Even if it looks at Christmas like it’s the flawed and high stress holiday that it is.

“The Final Porn Star”

A little bit of a ‘cabin in the woods’ tale, a little bit of Mexican folklore, and a lot of slasher fun come together to make “The Final Porn Star”. Thalia Sanchez is a well loved and popular porn star who is nearing retirement, hoping to spend more time with her daughter and to settle into a less harried life. Her last shoot is in a large, glamorous house in the middle of nowhere, and it seems like a standard shoot with colleagues she loves. But then they start finding mutilated animals on set. And it becomes clear that none of them are safe from a creature that is stalking them. I loved Thalia as our protagonist, and I loved seeing the cast and crew slowly realize that they are in danger as something hunts them. Castro hits a lot of fun slasher tropes but makes them feel fresh by using La Lechuza, a monstrous bird with the head of a crone, as the monster in the tale. It’s bloody, it’s fun, it’s sex positive, and it achieves everything it wants to.

And as mentioned above, there were lots of great stories to pick from! Even the ones that didn’t quite connect (there were only two or three at most) were more because of the genre choices as opposed to the storytelling itself. Castro has a really diverse collection here that truly has something for just about any horror fan.

“Mestiza Blood” is a lot of gory and scary fun. If you are a horror lover and haven’t looked into V. Castro yet, this may be the moment to do so.

Rating 8: A varied and creepy collection of stories that range from scary to funny to touching, “Mestiza Blood” is an enjoyable compilation by V. Castro.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Mestiza Blood” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror To Look Forward To in 2022”.

Find “Mestiza Blood” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “The Route of Ice and Salt”

Book: “The Route of Ice and Salt” by José Luis Zárate

Publishing Info: Innsmouth Free Press, January 2021 (originally published in 1998)

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: A reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, filled with Gothic imagery and queer desire.

It’s an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.

He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides. Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.

The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles and with an accompanying essay by noted horror author Poppy Z. Brite, it reveals an unknown corner of Latin American literature.

Review: I think that for a lot of people, if they hear the phrase ‘homoerotic vampire fiction’ they are going to immediately think of Anne Rice (may she rest in peace). After all, “Interview With the Vampire” is at its heart the story of two guy vampire lovers who have a bad marriage and make the mistake of having a baby to try and save it (I am NOT wrong). Louis and Lestat have an undercurrent (and overcurrent) of sexual tension that Rice explores more through Lestat in later books, but it was definitely the formative relationship for gay vampire fiction in modern times. And to be fair, vampire lore is usually pretty charged with sexuality, even going back to Bram Stoker’s grand daddy of vampire tales “Dracula”. That book is horny as hell, something that Francis Ford Coppola took FULL advantage of in his 1990s adaptation. So it’s not really surprising that “The Route of Ice and Salt” by José Luis Zárate takes a mysterious element of “Dracula” and gives it a shot of homoerotic adrenaline, and pulls it off with ease.

I’ll let you decide what that ‘one thing’ is. (source)

“The Route of Ice and Salt” is the story of the Demeter, the ship that transported Count Dracula and his many boxes of Wallachian soil to London, and arrived aport with no crew left and a dead captain, tied to the mast with a rosary in hand. It’s a moment in the original source material that’s really just there to show that Dracula is brutal and has had his fill, so is at full strength when he arrives in England. But Zárate lets us have a look into what happened on the doomed voyage, and creates a story that is both horrifying and absolutely heartbreaking. It’s told through both the Captain’s own thoughts and experiences as well as his ship log, and the first half of the story is a LOT of him fantasizing about the men on his crew, but unwilling to act upon it as he finds his same sex attraction repulsive and monstrous. We slowly find out that he has his reasons to feel that way, as a man he once loved was treated as a monster after being accused of a crime he did not truly commit, which had to do with his sexuality. As the Captain grapples with his attractions, something else, an ACTUAL monster, is stalking the ship, feasting upon the crew in a far more literal and violent way.

Though it took a bit to get there, once we got to the slow progression of crewmen disappearing, while the others slowly realize they are being hunted, I was fully invested not only in how we get to where we end up in the original tale, but how The Captain is going to ultimately make his sacrifice. As well as if he’s going to be able to forgive himself for his perfectly natural attractions (though certainly not at the time; Stoker himself has lots of rumors about his own sexuality that may have subconscious laid out hints within “Dracula”. Like I said, that book is horny as hell). Zárate made the Captain very believable and sympathetic, and once he realizes that he is alone on the boat with a monster, an ACTUAL monster, even though I knew the ending, I still felt a deep attachment to him, in spite of myself. And while MAYBE I thought that I was going into a story that had Count Dracula and the Captain getting it on over and over (please don’t judge me, I will say it again, “DRACULA” IS A SEX FUELED BOOK!!!), what I got was far more satisfying, emotional, and terrifying. The descriptions of the ship at night in the fog, with crewmen’s screams starting and then stopping…. GOD, it set me on edge, and it’s the perfect companion to one of my favorite vampire stories. And not for nothing, this updated version has a FANTASTIC Afterword by Poppy Z. Brite that addresses the transgressive nature of this book, and it gives a lot of great context that I thought was SUPER interesting.

“The Route of Ice and Salt” is sexually charged and scary as hell. It now lives on my shelf next to the source material (all three versions I own), and in my mind it absolutely belongs in the “Dracula” canon.

Rating 8: Haunting and erotic and oh so creepy by the end, “The Route of Ice and Salt” takes the voyage Dracula takes across the sea and turns it into a creepy (and horny) nightmare.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Route of Ice and Salt” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Horror”, and “Books About or Consisting of Vampires”.

Find “The Route of Ice and Salt” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Locke & Key (Vol. 4): Keys to the Kingdom”

Book: “Locke & Key (Vol. 4): Keys to the Kingdom” by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez (Ill.)

Publishing Info: IDW Publishing, July 2011

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key unwinds into its fourth volume in Keys to the Kingdom. With more keys making themselves known, and the depths of the Locke family’s mystery ever-expanding, Dodge’s desperation to end his shadowy quest drives the inhabitants of Keyhouse ever closer to a revealing conclusion.

Review: After I set “Locke & Key (Vol. 4): Keys to the Kingdom” down, I realized that I only had two collections left until the end. This re-read has gone by pretty quickly, and it had been long enough that I feel like I’m finding brand new things with each moment I turn the pages. I had been talking a bit about how patient and deliberate Joe Hill has been up until this point, but in “Keys to the Kingdom” things have started to speed up, which means that the intensity has started to build as well. And that has mostly been a positive thing.

Plot progression has picked up again in this volume, and boy does it ever! Hill covers a lot of territory in this collection, but he manages to do it in such a way that it doesn’t feel like it’s bloated, nor does it feel like things are being rushed. He opts to focus on certain things, but does show snippets of the Locke kids battling it out with Dodge over keys, as well as conflicts they are having with each other in the story arc “February”. I liked how it puts in the effort to have development for our characters, but doesn’t get bogged down in EVERY conflict they have with Dodge. We also get to see more backstory to Rendell and his high school friends, as Kinsey, Tyler, and Dodge run into Erin Voss, Rendell’s childhood friend who is now committed to a mental asylum. Kinsey is desperate to know what the connection is to Rendell, Voss, and the secrets they were keeping, while Dodge wants to keep Erin’s mouth shut since in her addled state she still recognizes him as her childhood friend. This also led to a kind of awkward within present context optics plot point, in which Kinsey and Bode use one of the keys to change their race so they can visit Erin, as her rantings make it seem like she is super agitated by the presence white people (let me just say that this isn’t the case, though I won’t reveal what I mean). I definitely understand the way that Hill used it to make a greater point about how Black people are perceived by white people in American society, and there is a moment that I thought was genuinely poignant at the end of the issue, but pretty much putting Kinsey and Bode into magical black face so they can learn a lesson about the humanity of Black people didn’t really land for me. It just felt a bit patronizing. But by the end everything had made a comeback for me, as a significant plot development that signals the last third of this series knocked my socks off. I knew it was coming, but it was still VERY well done, and ups the stakes to the highest levels they’ve been thus far.

And in terms of character development this volume was top notch. For Tyler, he is starting to feel the weight of all the difficult things in his life, and it’s making him overwhelmed and under severe pressure. His only solace is his girlfriend Jordan, whom he is head over heels in love with, and while Jordan obviously cares deeply for Tyler, she is pretty damaged. Which, of course, leads to problems down the line, and Tyler starts to think that being strong is something he can achieve through magic, much like Kinsey tried to extract her fear through the same means. It’s a pretty heavy moment when Tyler feels enough despair over everything that he turns to something that may not work out the way he wants it to. And speaking of Kinsey’s issue, we see all of that coming to a head now too, as having a lack of fear and grief has not only affected her relationship with Nina, it has also started to affect her friendships. Funnily enough, having no fear and no grief has made Kinsey a pretty shitty and selfish friend, and the most interesting part of this entire arc for me is that she recognizes this, but literally cannot bring herself to care because of her actions with the Head Key.

And finally, the art continues to be visceral and gory, but with a bit of a nostalgic twist in one of the stories. The first story, “Sparrow”, involves Bode trying to make friendships but preferring isolation, and he eventually puts himself into the body of a sparrow for a bit of time. And this is all drawn and written in a way that is in tribute to “Calvin and Hobbes”, a comic that has been near and dear to my heart since I was a small child. While it’s true that some of the juxtapositions of the nostalgic and bright Watterson style mixed with the gore and violence of “Locke & Key” is unnerving, I honestly thought that it was super charming and fun to give Bode this kind of adventure with a loving tribute to a cartoonist and storyteller that clearly inspired the Hill and Rodríguez.

(source)

“Locke & Key (Vol. 4): Keys to the Kingdom” has left us two thirds of the way into the story of the Locke family, and we are now heading for the final showdown between them and Dodge over the keys in Keyhouse. I know where we are going, and I’m still a little nervous to tread into the places that I know are coming up. But Hill and Rodríguez have something truly wondrous in store, and I’m ready.

Rating 8: Some things come to a head in this volume plot wise, with some social commentary and “Calvin and Hobbes” love thrown into the mix, which is a pretty good combination for the start of the final issues of this series.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Locke & Key (Vol. 4): Keys to the Kingdom” is included on the Goodreads lists “Best Coming of Age Horror Novels”, and “Required Reading Graphic Novels”.

Find “Locke & Key (Vol. 4): Keys to the Kingdom” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Previously Reviewed: