Category: Kate’s Reviews

Kate’s Review: “The Dead and the Dark”

Book: “The Dead and the Dark” by Courtney Gould

Publishing Info: Wednesday Books, August 2021

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

Book Description: Courtney Gould’s thrilling debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places―and people―you didn’t expect

The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won’t stay hidden any longer.

Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV’s ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there’s more secrets buried here than they originally let on.

Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.

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

Given that I am a HUGE sucker for the ‘small town with terrible secrets’ trope, I am always on the lookout for books and stories that showcase it, and showcase it well. In the past few years there have been books that have hit the mark and missed the mark, and when I requested “The Dead and the Dark” by Courtney Gould I didn’t really know what to expect. All I knew was that it was a YA horror novel that not only had that highly enjoyable theme, but it also had a sapphic romance to go with the scares. Since I was a bit let down by a previously hyped book with these themes, I was hoping that this one would give me what I wanted, and for the most part it did!

“The Dead and the Dark” is told through two third person perspectives. The first is that of Logan, a teenage daughter of Brandon and Alejo, the hosts of the ghost hunting show “Paraspectors”. Her Dads were raised in Snakebite but never fit in, and Logan has a strained relationship with Brandon that she hasn’t been able to really figure out. Ashley, on the other hand, is a local teenager who is basically a member of Snakebite royalty, but ever since her boyfriend Tristan disappeared she’s felt like something is off. When Logan’s dads are suddenly suspects in Tristan’s disappearance, Logan and Ashley have to work together to try and figure out what happened, and what secrets the town is hiding. Both characters were well explored and given depth, and I found myself eager to get to each perspective as the book went on. They are both good characters on their own, but Gould is sure to make their interactions as they become allies, then friends, then maybe something more, enjoyable. But Gould doesn’t stop there, as the supporting characters are also interesting and do more than just furthering the plot that Logan and Ashley work within. I liked getting to know Brandon and Alejo, as well as the other teens in the town who range from helpful to downright hostile. Snakebite as a town is also well explored, as the small town with a secret theme has layers of small town angst and pain for outsiders that come to the surface.

As for the plot and the horror elements, “The Dead and the Dark” did some new things that I really liked. I don’t want to give too much away, as there are definitely things here that I want readers to discover without the potential for being spoiled. But, like many good horror stories, there is thought and purpose behind the dark fantasy and horror elements. As Logan and Ashley start to find clues to the evil that is hurting local teens, they also start seeing the every day rot, be it due to sexism, or homophobia, or just plain resentment of anything different from what is known. This ties into the big reveal as to what is going on, and then another reveal within that reveal that legitimately caught me off guard. And it was done in a way that built it up, made it believable, AND socked me right in the feels. So much so that I found myself crying a bit, and I’m not really used to crying while reading YA horror novels.

I had a really good time reading “The Dead and the Dark”. The horror elements were creepy, the sapphic elements were very satisfying, and I will definitely be checking out what Courtney Gould has to offer the genre in the future!

Rating 8: A creepy and suspenseful YA horror story with enjoyable characters and a small town with secrets setting, “The Dead and the Dark” is a fun read with a nice romance to boot.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Dead and the Dark” is included on the Goodreads lists “2021 Sapphic Releases”, and “Monsters and Magic Society”.

Find “The Dead and the Dark” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Just One Look”

Book: “Just One Look” by Lindsay Cameron

Publishing Info: Ballantine Books, July 2021

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

Book Description: Eyes aren’t the windows to the soul. Emails are.

Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking–love, friends, stability–and leaves her with too much time on her hands, which she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point. While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender (and totally private) exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. Cassie knows she shouldn’t read them. But it’s just one look. And once that door opens, she finds she can’t look away.

Every day, twenty floors below Forest’s corner office, Cassie dissects their emails from her dingy workstation. A few clicks of her mouse and she can see every adoring word they write to each other. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness, reveling in their penchant for vintage wines, morning juice presses, and lavish dinner parties thrown in their stately Westchester home. There are no secrets from her. Or so she thinks.

Her admiration quickly escalates into all-out mimicry, because she wants this life more than anything. Maybe if she plays make-believe long enough, it will become real for her. But when Cassie orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something that throws the state of his marriage into question, the fantasy she’s been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn’t simply admire Annabelle–she wants to take her place. And she’s armed with the tools to make that happen.

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

Given that Caroline Kepnes is one of my favorite authors, anything that she recommends I am going to jump all over. So when I saw that she had put a blurb on a book called “Just One Look” by Lindsay Cameron, I was definitely interested to see what it was about. If the blurb piqued my interest, the description totally reeled me in: a woman who is overseeing emails for a large fraud issue stumbles upon personal emails between a married couple, and starts to obsess about them and covet their life. Oh hell yeah, that sounds right up my alley! I figured I knew what I was in for. But boy, I was wrong. And in this instance that was a good thing.

“Just One Look” is a slow burn of a creepy tale of obsessive love and wanting, as a woman who has lost everything starts to covet a life that is laid out in front of her in emails. Cassie lost a very prestigious position at her previous firm, and her downfall was viral and well known enough that she has been reduced to humiliating drudgery. We slowly get to see just what Cassie did, and we do this as we watch her start to obsess over Forest and Annabelle Watts thanks to private emails between them that have been caught in this email review. As Cassie obsesses more and more and starts building up a narrative of their lives in her head, she starts to see herself there as well, and creeps ever closer to Forest as she pieces his life together. But I can tell you that this plot isn’t what you think it is. Cameron does a really good job of building up a lot of tension along with a very unreliable protagonist, so anything she says could be completely false, even if she doesn’t know it. I thought that this story was going to be one thing, but it took many different directions that I didn’t expect, and I really, really enjoyed being surprised at a new moment or reveal. It’s so unsettling watching Cassie seep more and more into Forest and Annabelle’s life, and Cameron yanks it so taut that it could easily snap. Especially when she pulls the rug out from under you.

But what I liked the most about this book was our protagonist, Cassie. I went into the book with some preconceived notions about how it was going to go, and just what kind of person Cassie was going to be. I mean, in my defense, since Kepnes was used as a blurb on the cover, I figured ‘okay, so it’s gonna be like ‘You’ but with a woman creepazoid’. And hey, I was here for that, don’t get me wrong! But Cameron has other tricks up her sleeves, and Cassie is a very interesting protagonist with a lot of layers. Some of those layers are incredibly sympathetic, and others are very, very disturbing. In some ways, there are definitely similarities to Joe Goldberg, but Cassie has more of a broken feeling to her, and in some ways that makes her all the creepier. But along with that, Cameron affords her some interesting exploration that female characters don’t often get. While it’s true that the things that Cassie does in this book are super, super unethical and also absolutely stalker behavior, it was kind of nice to see the background as to why she is this way, without excusing any of her behavior or making it okay. Cameron walks that fine line between romanticizing a dangerous obsessive, and making her a cartoonish caricature.

I really enjoyed “Just One Look”. It got under my skin, and surprised me in a lot of ways. Don’t sleep on this one, thriller fans! And be careful about what you put in emails that others can potentially see..

Rating 9: A slow burn of a suspense thriller with a creepy protagonist and some really well done twists!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Just One Look” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery and Thriller 2021”, and would fit in on “Thrillers ft. Stalkers or Obsessive Love”.

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

Kate’s Review: “The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives”

Book: “The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives” by Kristin Miller

Publishing Info: Ballantine Books, July 2021

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

Book Description: Meet the trophy wives of Presidio Terrace, San Francisco’s most exclusive–and most deadly–neighborhood in this shrewd, darkly compelling novel from the New York Times bestselling author of In Her Shadow.

Mystery writer Brooke Davies is the new wife on the block. Her tech-billionaire husband, Jack, twenty-two years her senior, whisked her to the Bay Area via private jet and purchased a modest mansion on the same day. He demands perfection, and before now, Brooke has had no problem playing the role of a doting housewife. But as she befriends other wives on the street and spends considerable time away from Jack, he worries if he doesn’t control Brooke’s every move, she will reveal the truth behind their “perfect” marriage.

Erin King, famed news anchor and chair of the community board, is no stranger to maintaining an image–though being married to a plastic surgeon helps. But the skyrocketing success of her career has worn her love life thin, and her professional ambitions have pushed Mason away. Quitting her job is a Hail Mary attempt at keeping him interested, to steer him away from finding a young trophy wife. But is it enough, and is Mason truly the man she thought he was?

Georgia St. Claire allegedly cashed in on the deaths of her first two husbands, earning her the nickname “Black Widow”–and the stares and whispers of her curious neighbors. Rumored to have murdered both men for their fortunes, she claims to have found true love in her third marriage, yet her mysterious, captivating allure keeps everyone guessing. Then a tragic accident forces the residents of Presidio Terrace to ask: Has Georgia struck again? And what is she really capable of doing to protect her secrets?

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

Soapy trashy stories about potentially villainous men and women who are hiding and spilling secrets is something of a guilty pleasure of mine, and I mostly try to own that fact. I loved the first few seasons of “Desperate Housewives” (after season 4 it went downhill VERY fast, in my honest opinion), and while I haven’t been able to bring myself to consume reality TV like “The Real Housewives” or anything like that, I do enjoy watching drama porn like “Untucked” when watching “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. So a book with the title and description of “The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives” by Kristin Miller absolutely caught my attention. I’ve found some really fun books involving bored housewives behaving badly (Hello, “Big Little Lies”!), and if you have some potential murder and whodunnit elements to go with it, I am absolutely there! I went into this book with high hopes for soapy thrills. And I got that. But I also remembered why sometimes that isn’t enough.

But, as I always try to do, I will start with what I did like about this book. It was a very fast, very entertaining read in the moment. I picked it up over the Fourth of July weekend, and basically read it over the course of two days. It has some really good moments of sudsy drama, and there were pretty well done moments of shocking reveals as well as a build up to a nutty and soapy climax that is hinted at right at the start. So it tantalized me as a reader, and definitely gave me that “Desperate Housewives” vibe of manipulation, bitchiness, and over the top whodunnit/who are these people really and what are they hiding. A breezy read it always a plus in my book, as it makes the experience enjoyable in the moment.

But there were a few things that really bogged down “The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives” and made it a pretty meh book once all is said and done. The first is the cast of characters. Our main focus are on the perspectives of Erin, the neurotic and (horror and shock!) aging news anchor who is trying to keep her allure and lost youth at the forefront, lest her husband Mason stray, and Brooke, a mystery writer who is trying to keep up appearances for her much older husband, but is sniffing out a potential new plot with Georgia, the supposed Black Widow. Both Erin and Brooke have things that they are hiding, but getting into their heads doesn’t make them all that interesting, nor does it let them branch out from their two dimensional character tropes (admittedly there is a bit of a twist here, but I’m not going to go into that because spoilers). We see Georgia through their eyes, and while we do learn a bit about her through various reveals that each character has through action in the moment and past actions, she TOO is very flat and predictable. On shows like “Desperate Housewives” this kind of thing can work for awhile, but that is because we also get to see characters complexities come out as stories go on (well, in some cases; Teri Hatcher’s Susan was always two dimensional). But in this book, we don’t really get to see any growth. Even aforementioned twist couldn’t save it in the end. The other issue is that once I was done and I was no longer in the moment, upon reflection there wasn’t really much new or interesting to the story and how the mystery all shook out. It felt a bit like it was trying to be similar to “Big Little Lies”, but never really hit the emotional plot beats that that book did. The problem with gooey sudsy tales is that in the moment I really enjoy them, but without some solid foundation and substance to keep it up I look back and realize that there wasn’t really much to work with.

“The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives” could be a good read if you just need something to pass the time. Pass the time it will! But I found it to be middling when all was said and done.

Rating 5: The read itself was quick and breezy, but the characters were middling and the story upon reflection was a bit ho hum.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives” is included on the Goodreads lists “Mystery & Thriller 2021”, and I think it would fit in on the list “Desperate Housewives”.

Find “The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “For Your Own Good”

Book: “For Your Own Good” by Samantha Downing

Publishing Info: Berkley, July 2021

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

Book Description: Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest. He says his wife couldn’t be more proud—though no one has seen her in a while.

Teddy really can’t be bothered with the death of a school parent that’s looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is on pushing these kids to their full academic potential.

All he wants is for his colleagues—and the endlessly meddlesome parents—to stay out of his way. It’s really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.

USA Today bestselling author Samantha Downing is back with her latest sneaky thriller set at a prestigious private school—complete with interfering parents, overeager students, and one teacher who just wants to teach them all a lesson…

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

I don’t know about you, readers, but I definitely had a high school teacher who probably had no business teaching students. He was the type that would stand at the cafeteria door, hands behind his back in full blocking stance, and then would inspect kids to make sure they weren’t taking food out of the lunch room. He once fully kicked me out of class for the day because I realized that I left my homework in my locker. Another run in involved him taking down signs for a student band for Battle of the Bands, and when I asked him why he said that it was a vulgar picture. It was a picture of a kid with a bag on his head, and his hand maybe sort of in the vicinity of his crotch, but just kinda resting on his thigh. I told him I didn’t see it, and I got screamed at for being deliberately obtuse (though frankly, HE was the one projecting masturbation connotations onto that of a minor, but hey, what do I know?). As I was reading “For Your Own Good”, I kept thinking back to good ol’ Mr. E, sociopathic bully that he was. But even Mr. E never went so far as to commit murder. At least, not that I know of. Given that soapy thrillers that take place at elite public schools usually involve students behaving badly, this was a fun change of pace!

“For Your Own Good” is a soapy and murderous new thriller from Samantha Downing, and like her other works it hits all the right notes without straying too far from well worn territory. We have a few different third person perspectives we are following, the most significant being that of Teddy Crutcher, Teacher of the Year and psychopath, who tells himself he only wants his students to be the best they can be as he wreaks havoc in their lives. He hides behind a mask of tough but fair mentor, though he targets those that he thinks are undeserving or smug. And given that he’s a teacher at a wealthy prep school, well, he feels that way a lot. He’s a fun character in his villainy, and it’s entertaining following him around and watching him plot and scheme. Other perspectives include that of Zach, one of his students that he has been especially cruel to (in subtle, unprovable ways), as well as other teachers and past victims. Teddy is definitely the person that we get to know the best, and while Zach is a close second, the rest have their parts to play and don’t really go outside their intended tropes and foil moments. And that being said, while Teddy is fun to read, he too isn’t very complicated in his psychopathy. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you, as sometimes you just want to read an over the top sudsfest with murder and asshole characters without having to think about it. In that way, “For Your Own Good” succeeds.

The plot itself is also a bit predictable, at least in how you see things playing out for various characters. Sure, there were some surprising moments and reveals here and there, and I enjoyed the ride of getting from start to finish. But it’s kind of things that we’ve seen before. And since our characters are pretty run of the mill, there isn’t as much tension because we aren’t as invested in them, and therein aren’t as invested in how things shake out for them. It is, however, a very readable book, and I definitely had a hard time putting it down because of that. And this is why I don’t really want to knock books that don’t think outside the box, because sometimes familiarity is a really good thing for the reading experience. Downing definitely as written a book here that I kind of knew what to expect as I read through, and I found it to be a fun experience because of that. And again, how fun was it to see the teachers being the assholes this time around?

“For Your Own Good” isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it’s super entertaining and addictive. It’s the kind of book you should take to the pool or beach in these waning summer months.

Rating 7: Entertaining, if a bit predictable at times, “For Your Own Good” is a breezy page turner that kept my interest until the end.

Reader’s Advisory:

“For Your Own Good” is included on the Goodreads lists “Dark Academia”, and “Mystery and Thriller 2021”.

Find “For Your Own Good” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “The Book of Accidents”

Book: “The Book of Accidents” by Chuck Wendig

Publishing Info: Del Rey, July 2021

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

Book Description: A family returns to their hometown—and to the dark past that haunts them still—in this masterpiece of literary horror by the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers.

Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there.

Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures.

Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania.

Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic. This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another. 

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

After reading Chuck Wendig’s post-apocalyptic tome “Wanderers” back in 2019, I told myself that I wanted to give him another go, even if there were bits of that book that didn’t work for me so well. After all, while I had my issues with the book, I ultimately liked the writing style that Wendig has, as well as a few of the characters that he created. So when I found out that his next novel, “The Book of Accidents”, was being touted as straight horror with a creepy house on the cover, I was absolutely game to hop right back into one of his stories. Sure, I was a little nervous about having issues with the story overall again, but definitely was willing to take the risk. And hey, as it turns out, that risk mostly reaped rewards this time around!

“The Book of Accidents” is touted as a horror novel by a lot of people, and while it definitely has horror elements, I would say that it’s also a bit of a dark fantasy. These genres can happily coexist, and Wendig combines them into something pretty unique. While there are elements of a haunted house story to be sure, we also have magic, inter-dimensional timelines, and a little bit of cosmic horror to top it all off. It’s a lot to cover, thematically, and you can see that in the length of the novel. It’s a bit of a double edged sword, because while I do think that Wendig did a good job of balancing all of it, it also made the read to be a little long at times. But a slight case of bloat aside, I found “The Book of Accidents” to be rewarding in all of the marks that it hits, and it still felt like a fast read overall when I got past some of the laggy parts. Wendig has a good sense for intricate plotting and build up, and he lays out clues that come to fruition and make sense when joined together. He also knows how to create a creepy scene, be it because you know that someone has ulterior, dangerous motives, or because he is putting you in the shoes of someone who has experienced something that is unsettling, or simply unexplainable, even if it isn’t immediately horrifying. It was moments like these that hit hardest as I was reading, and I found them to be pretty darn effective.

But what I liked most about “The Book of Accidents” is the family at the heart of it, Nate, Maddie, and Oliver. I felt that Wendig really developed all of these characters with care and meticulousness, and I found myself adoring all of them in similar amounts, something that doesn’t happen too often for me in books with multiple perspectives. Sure, I could like all of them, but there would be one stand out, and yet Nate, Oliver, and Maddie all had sections and moments that I was always chomping at the bit to get to. Wendig makes you care for all of them, and while he makes sure that they all have their flaws or bits that are rough around the edges, it’s easy to relate to all three. It’s easy to invest in this family, so when they find themselves in grave danger, the stakes for all of them are high and you need to know what happens to them. There were supporting characters who also stood out (I’m thinking mostly of Fig, Nate’s partner in the Fish and Wildlife Department, who is no nonsense and really enjoyable), but the heart is definitely the Graves family. The villainous characters are a little less drawn out (I found Oliver’s friend/foe Jake in particular to be a little cartoony), but in the case of this book I wasn’t too put off by that if only because so many of the others were well done.

“The Book of Accidents” is enjoyable and creepy! It’s a great choice if you are looking for horror with some kind of unique elements to the genre. Chuck Wendig has officially landed on my ‘gotta read what he comes out with next’ list with this one.

Rating 8: An entertaining horror/dark fantasy novel with enjoyable characters, “The Book of Accidents” is a quick read with some great unsettling scares.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Book of Accidents” is included on the Goodreads lists “Horror To Look Forward To In 2021”, and “Celebrate Horror 2021”.

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

Kate’s Review: “Falling”

Book: “Falling” by T.J. Newman

Publishing Info: Avid Readers Press/Simon & Schuster, July 2021

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

Book Description: You just boarded a flight to New York. There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard.

What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped. For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die. The only way the family will survive is if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane.

Enjoy the flight.

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

So it’s not a sub-genre of action movies that I find myself watching too much, but I do enjoy a good ‘a plane is in peril’ kind of movie. My favorite is 100% “Con Air”, though I recently experienced “Air Force One” for the first time and thought it was a hoot. Understandably these kinds of films aren’t really a thing anymore, but they can be a lot of fun, if a little mindless. I kept thinking about this genre when I picked up “Falling” by T.J. Newman, and figured that I would pick at it over a couple days and then go rent “Con Air” or something. Well, the Soupy Brain was back, because I read the entirety of “Falling” in one night, staying up way too late to do so.

Me as I read this around 11pm, caring not for the fact I had to wake up to care for a toddler the next morning. (source

“Falling” is a highly addictive thriller that sucked me in from the get go. Bill is a pilot who has picked up a shift, much to his wife Carrie’s chagrin, as he had plans with her, their son Scott, and their baby Elise. But almost the moment Bill leaves, Carrie finds herself and her children held hostage, and Bill is soon relayed a message by their kidnapper: crash the plane, or his family dies. From there, we jump from perspective to perspective as Bill has to try and figure out if he can have his cake and eat it too, while contending with the fact that there is another terrorist on board who is perhaps keeping tabs to make sure he doesn’t do anything. We have settings for Bill, for Carrie as she is interacting with her kidnapper, as well as flight attendant Jo, and various people on the ground who get leaks of information and try to track down the culprit. In a lot of ways it feels like “Speed” in the air, and frankly, the works for me on basically every level. “Falling” keeps the pace and tension going and rarely lets up, as every breakthrough of good news can potentially lead to a new problem, and every reveal can have something lurking that you don’t see coming. As mentioned above, I kept reading far later than I should have until I had finished. It’s entertaining as hell.

Character wise, it was a little bit of a mixed bag. By far my favorite people to follow were those of the flight attendants, led by the fearless Jo, as they try to figure out how to keep the passengers safe when things start to take turns. What I loved most about Jo is that she and Bill have a very close relationship, but Newman never falls back on hackneyed ‘there could have been something there’ nonsense which would motivate her to trust him so much. Bonus, she had great interactions with her coworker Big Daddy, another no nonsense flight attendant who was always good for a laugh. I also liked seeing Carrie interact with her kidnapper, and seeing her slowly pull out not only information from him, but how she also connects with him and builds a bond that could keep her and her children more likely out of harms way. I love seeing compassion used as a weapon, for lack of a better term, as sometimes it isn’t valued as much. Oddly enough, the least interesting character was Bill himself, as the main action and how it’s affecting him in the moment is really the only thing we learn about him. He’s a good man in an impossible situation, which was a bit bland, but ultimately, that’s really what you get in stories like this (hello, Nic Cage in “Con Air” and Keanu Reeves in “Speed”!).

But what I found to be one of the most compelling aspects of this novel (and a bit of a relief as well) is the character of Sam, who has taken Carrie, Scott, and Elise hostage and is making Bill make the choice between his family and his passengers/crew. I’ve been talking about airplane action movies a bit, and for the most part the bad guys are terrorists, criminals, psychopaths, and a lot of the time they are very two dimensional and chew the scenery until there is little left. That can be fun, but it can also be very problematic, and in the aftermath of September 11th terrorists taking over planes has become more of a touchy subject. In “Falling”, Newman manages to walk a very fine tightrope with Sam (mild spoilers here, in regards to a bit of his motivation, just so you know!). Sam is definitely doing something very bad, in which innocent people are going to die. But Newman slowly shows us Sam’s background through flashbacks, and his own words. I was super worried that he was going to be a Middle Eastern terrorist, but instead he is Kurdish, and through horrific trauma and loss he has lost himself in the desperation of both wanting revenge, but also to just be seen when he feels like the atrocities that his people are constantly falling victim to are not only preventable, but due to American jingoism as well as American indifference. Does it always land? No. Are there still some sticky elements that we’re treading into by making him a terrorist? Sure. But I thought that he was supremely compelling, and he was the character that I felt for the most.

“Falling” is a REALLY fun thriller, and if you haven’t picked it up yet this summer, do so! If you have some pool or beach time ahead of you, this will be a GREAT read to complement it! Though proceed with caution is air travel goes along with that…

Rating 9: SUPREMELY addictive and suspenseful, “Falling” feels like an airplane disaster movie of the 20th century, but with more rumination on how devastation can lead to violence.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Falling” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery and Thriller 2021”.

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

Kate’s Review: “The Final Girl Support Group”

Book: “The Final Girl Support Group” by Grady Hendrix

Publishing Info: Berkley Books, July 2021

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

Book Description: A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who’s left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she’s not alone. For more than a decade she’s been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette’s worst fears are realized–someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

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

I’ve mentioned it many a time before, but I really enjoy slasher movies. They’ve been my jam since I was a middle schooler who was way into the likes of “Scream”, “Friday the 13th”, and “Halloween”, and as time has gone on I’ve explored many a franchise, many a slasher killer, and many a Final Girl. It’s a trope that’s a bit rooted in sexism and misogyny, as the virginal ‘good’ girl is usually the one to live to the end, though that’s been subverted a number of times in the past couple decades (“Scream” was probably the first to really do it right). Problematic or not, I do love a good Final Girl. A few books in the past few years have decided to explore what life would be like for a character like this after the monster movie has ended, and the newest foray into such exploration is Grady Hendrix’s “The Final Girl Support Group”. Because no one can deny that any Final Girl who survives a slasher killer, sometimes over multiple movies, would undoubtedly need therapy.

So much therapy…(source)

“The Final Girl Support Group” has a number of members, all of whom are middle aged women who have survived horrific, traumatic attempted murders that were then turned into film franchises. While the characters are technically original characters by Hendrix, all of them are clear analogs for some of the most popular Final Girls ever seen on screen (and their first names are usually the same as the actresses that portrayed these characters, with a couple subversions. It’s super, super fun). Marilyn (the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” analog) has married rich and dove into charity work; Dani (the “Halloween” analog, though a reference to Danielle Harris in later movies as ‘Jamie’ would probably be too on the nose) has become a gun hoarding hermit whose only companion is her wife, Michelle; Heather (“Nightmare on Elm Street”) has dived deep into conspiracy theories and addiction, as no one believes that her monster is, indeed, supernatural; Julie (“Scream”- another name change but her last name is Campbell) is wheelchair bound and now an activist; and Adrienne (“Friday the 13th”) has turned the summer camp of her trauma into a mental health wellness organization for women who have been affected by violence. But our first person protagonist is Lynette, who survived an attempted murder by a man whose dark obsession with Santa Claus drove him to kill people while wearing a Santa Suit (a la “Silent Night, Deadly Night”), and she is the one who probably needs the group more than the other members. When the other group members are wanting to disband, Lynette clings to the group, and when Adrienne is murdered she immediately believes that they are all in danger. It was an interesting choice to have our protagonist be Linnea Quigley’s character from “Silent Night, Deadly Night”, as technically, she isn’t a final girl- in the movie, she doesn’t survive, much less fight back against her would be killer. So in this, as a ‘real world’ version, Lynette has been kind of thrown to the wayside since she was too incapacitated to earn her Final Girl stripes. But it opens up a wealth of possibilities, and it makes Lynette somehow more vulnerable than the others in her insecurities and need to belong since she isn’t seen as a ‘fighter’. And in turn, that makes the story and the desperate choices she makes as they all try to survive once again compelling and frustrating, as well as very, very sad in some ways. While I think that Hendrix could have done more with her, and perhaps it would have been more interesting to follow another of the Final Girls (honestly, I want an entire book about Marilyn. I LOVED her), it felt correct that Lynette was the one we got, because she’s almost the one we could trust the least (outside of Heather. DAMN, poor Heather).

In terms of the plot as Lynette tries to figure out how to keep herself and her group mates alive, and to figure out who is targeting them, I was able to predict a few things here and there. I wasn’t as invested in that aspect of the story, as it’s pretty run of the mill. What makes this book work is that Hendrix has penned both a love letter to slasher movies, and found a way to deconstruct them and take them down a few notches without being smug about it. The slasher genre absolutely has problems with sexism and exploitation, and Hendrix makes us confront that by seeing just how incredibly messed up and traumatized these women are. Final Girls are seen as heroic in the movies because of their resilience and ‘goodness’, but in this book all of these women were basically brutalized by men, and then their lives were ruined because of it. However, that point doesn’t make it any less fun to see him play with these characters, and leave in all the fun easter eggs and treasures for readers who love the movies that their characterizations come from. I was grinning ear to ear throughout a lot of this book. And Hendrix, while making our Final Girls a little tragic and traumatized, also makes a few of them VERY funny. Marilyn had me in stitches half the time, and Heather has some hilarious snipes and sarcastic moments. Hendrix is still having fun, and the reader knows that you are allowed to have fun as well as confronting what the actual fallout of this kind of character would have be face.

“The Final Girl Support Group” was a really fun read for this slasher movie fan! It’s horror with heart and humor, and fans of the genre really need to check it out.

Rating 8: A fun love letter to one of my favorite horror movie genres, “The Final Girl Support Group” will be a blast for fans of slasher movies everywhere!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Final Girl Support Group” is included on the Goodreads lists “Slasher Fiction”, and “Horror To Look Forward To in 2021”.

Find “The Final Girl Support Group” at your library using WorldCat, or a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Bubble”

Book: “Bubble” by Jordan Morris, Sarah Morgan, & Tony Cliff (Ill.)

Publishing Info: First Second, July 2021

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

Book Description: Based on the smash-hit audio serial, Bubble is a hilarious high-energy graphic novel with a satirical take on the “gig economy.”

Built and maintained by corporate benevolence, the city of Fairhaven is a literal bubble of safety and order (and amazing coffee) in the midst of the Brush, a harsh alien wilderness ruled by monstrous Imps and rogue bands of humans. Humans like Morgan, who’s Brush-born and Bubble-raised and fully capable of fending off an Imp attack during her morning jog. She’s got a great routine going—she has a chill day job, she recreationally kills the occasional Imp, then she takes that Imp home for her roommate and BFF, Annie, to transform into drugs as a side hustle. But cracks appear in her tidy life when one of those Imps nearly murders a delivery guy in her apartment, accidentally transforming him into a Brush-powered mutant in the process. And when Morgan’s company launches Huntr, a gig economy app for Imp extermination, she finds herself press-ganged into kicking her stabby side job up to the next level as she battles a parade of monsters and monstrously Brush-turned citizens, from a living hipster beard to a book club hive mind. 

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

In terms of podcasts, while I’ve dabbled outside the non-fiction realm, I really haven’t listened to many fiction series. I did “Welcome to Nightvale” for awhile, I listened to “The Black Tapes” (probably my favorite of the fiction ones I’ve listened to), and I tried out “Limetown”. But overall, it’s gotta be true crime, movies, or books for the topics I wanna listen to. So I had never heard of the podcast “Bubble” when I saw that it had been adapted into a graphic novel by Jordan Morris and Sarah Morgan, the creator and a writer for the show itself. While I wasn’t certain about what to expect, the premise was promising and intriguing: a dystopian world, a stunted society that seems perfect, and a dangerous wilderness of creatures that could kill you? That all sounds great. Throw in some humor and it sounds even better. So I gave it a go, because I hoped it would stand on its own two feet, outside of a podcast shadow. And I don’t think that it quite did.

That isn’t to say that this is “Welcome to Nightvale” levels of inability to stand on its own. Here is what I liked about “Bubble”: the premise really is a good one. I liked the idea of Fairhaven, a typical city that runs on capitalism and the gig economy, and the people who live there and work within that economy. Satire about the drawbacks and pitfalls of a late stage capitalist society is kind of ripe for the picking, but “Bubble” does it well. Our main character, Morgan, is a woman living in Fairhaven now, but was raised in the surrounding wild area called The Brush, which is inhabited by creatures called Imps that are dangerous and prone to attack humans. Morgan knows how to deal with them, and when an Imp gets into Fairhaven she will kill it and bring it to her roommate Annie who will make it into drugs. Morgan’s company, however, starts up a social media gig app (think Task Rabbit) that will give people the ability to go kill Imps for profit. Throw in a hapless Postmates delivery guy named Mitch who is attacked by an Imp and given powers, and you have some fun main characters who are just trying to get by in a gig economy whose stakes are pretty damn high. I liked Morgan and Annie, and Mitch feels very Chris Pratt in “Parks and Rec”, so he’s pretty charming. And really, the entire idea is fun, especially when they all have to go into the Brush on a mission, involving a mysterious stone and the Brush living father Morgan left behind. SO much potential, right?

The problem I had was that “Bubble” never quite explored the potential enough for me. This is a story that really should have some pretty wide and complex world building to it, both inside Fairhaven and outside in The Brush. And we see bits and pieces of both when our main characters are interacting within. But we don’t really have the time to explore backgrounds, histories, or dynamics, as the plot is constantly moving forward. It’s entertaining, it’s quite funny at times, and the characters have lots of fun things to say to each other. But I never really felt like I got a true feel for the setting they are in. And the only character that I feel really got a lot of depth was Morgan, while everyone else, outside of a few hints and tidbits here and there, really kept in static place as the tale went on. There just wasn’t much room to breathe, and I don’t know if that is because that’s how the podcast goes, or if it’s more a limitation when translating the podcast story to a graphic novel. I suppose that I could go listen to the podcast to find out, but the story we have at hand isn’t really compelling enough for me to go and do so.

That said, I really liked the art! Tony Cliff has some vibrant color schemes that feel sleek and futuristic, and I enjoyed the character designs as well. The Imps in particular are pretty cool.

(source: First Second)

“Bubble” has its moments and some great ideas. I just think that it could have gone further.

Rating 6: A lot of entertaining moments, witty banter, and cool imagery. But it feels very rushed and not well expanded upon, world building wise, and some of the characters fall flat.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Bubble” isn’t on many Goodreads lists yet, but I think it would fit in on “Podcast Books”, and “Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Graphic Novels”.

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

Kate’s Review: “Firekeeper’s Daughter”

Book: “Firekeeper’s Daughter” by Angeline Boulley

Publishing Info: Henry, Holt, & Co., March 2021

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother.

The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, certain details don’t add up and she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into the heart of a criminal investigation.

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, but secretly pursues her own investigation, tracking down the criminals with her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. Now, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

Review: Sometimes, when you are reading a book, there is a moment where you just know that it is going to knock your socks off. I couldn’t pinpoint where it was in “Firekeeper’s Daughter” by Angeline Boulley, but I know it was early. I know there was a moment where there was a switch that flipped, and I said to myself ‘this is going to be fantastic’. I bought it after hearing a bit of buzz, but it admittedly sat on my pile for awhile. I happened to pick it up the same day that I had the pleasure of seeing Boulley talk during a virtual conference, and what began as ‘oh, that’s cool serendipity’ shortly thereafter morphed into something more.

It was very this. (source)

I loved this book. I LOVED it. Angeline Boulley is a fantastic writer who has a gift for imagery, characterization, and plotting, and the result is a hell of a debut novel. The mystery at hand as so many layers, and not just in terms of evidence and components, but also in terms of the consequences and difficult realities that it has because of the community it is affecting. Our main character, Daunis, is such an effective and complicated but easy to root for protagonist, and she is completely believable in every step she takes based on her experience, background, and personality. We slowly learn her backstory while we are meeting her in the middle of a huge traumatic change, as her maternal grandmother has just had a stroke and months previously her maternal uncle was found dead of a meth overdose. Daunis is feeling adrift, even when she has already felt a bit adrift, being the biracial daughter of a white mother and an Anishinaabe man, so her very existence was a huge scandal (parentage aside, her mother was a teenager when she became pregnant, and shortly thereafter he left her for another girl he’d also gotten pregnant). Daunis has had to straddle the privileged white identity as well as her Indigenous one, and has never felt truly and fully accepted by either side of the family, no matter how much love she feels from both sides. Her need to find herself, and her need to avenge the death of her best friend Lily (whose murder she witnessed), as well as her uncle, drives her even more. Daunis is such a compelling main character, I just loved her and loved everything about her. When I saw Boulley speak during the Virtual U.S. Book Show, she described Daunis as a ‘Native Nancy Drew’, and while meth is a bit more high stakes than secrets in old clocks, her pluckiness and likability is totally an homage to young women detectives in literature. And yes, her chemistry with Jamie is…. it’s just wonderful, and heartbreaking, and beautiful, and that’s all I am going to say about her and Jamie. Because you gotta read the book.

But Daunis’s Indigenous cultural identity plays a huge part in this story, and Boulley weaves it all in spectacularly. I think that in a lot of YA thrillers in which a young adult protagonist would be asked to be a CI for the government, it may be a hard and dangerous decision, but on that they would ultimately do for ‘the greater good’ without many personal qualms outside of danger. But that isn’t so in Daunis’s case, nor can it be. Her decision to work with the FBI and the BIA is certainly not one to take lightly, given the terrible history both organizations have with Indigenous people in this country (really, the United States Government in general has just been awful in this regard). But once she’s in it, we get a gritty and suspenseful, as well as critical, look at what it means to be a CI, as well as the way that the FBI and BIA approach communities with such systemic and cyclical oppression. Daunis approaches this as ‘the greater good’, but never truly trusts Ron, the FBI agent, as his motivation is to stop the criminals, as opposed to helping the community that is being affected by the meth supply heal and get better.

There is also the complicated relationship that Daunis has with her maternal side, in particular her Grandmary, who absolutely loves her granddaughter, but is racist towards the Indigenous population in the community as seen through flashbacks and second hand accounts. While it could be written that Daunis either completely excuses her grandmother, or completely shuns her grandmother, instead we find a very realistic and complicated middle ground for her. Along with both those really complicated examinations, every time we get information about Daunis’s culture, be it through conversation, demonstration, or flat out explanation, it is done in a way that is so natural that it always fits the moment. It feels strange to say that it’s ‘unique’, as the uniqueness of it probably comes from the fact that Indigenous voices in literature have been underrepresented for far too long, but it was certainly a fair amount of new information to me, someone who grew up on Dakota Land and has spent a lot of time north on Ojibwe/Anishinaabe Land.

AND, as if I haven’t gushed on long enough, BUT I’M GOING TO CONTINUE, the mystery is also great. I may have guessed some parts of it, but that didn’t even matter to me because it was well crafted, complex, and it was really able to hit home the tragedies of meth running in this community and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women that are at the center of the mystery. There is so much power in this story. As well as a lot of darkness (content warnings here an there, from domestic abuse to murder to a sexual assault that happens off page, but is definitely upsetting). But the darkness always has a bit of hope and resilience to go along with it, and that made all the difference.

“Firekeeper’s Daughter” is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Do yourself a favor and read this book. It is almost assuredly going to be on my Top Ten list this year.

Rating 10: It’s just fantastic. A healthy and powerful mix of a well done mystery and a meditation on being Indigenous in the 21st century, “Firekeeper’s Daughter” blew me completely away.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Firekeeper’s Daughter” is included on the Goodreads lists “Books by Indigenous Women”, and “Hello Sunshine YA Book Club Book List”.

Find “Firekeeper’s Daughter” at your library using WorldCat, or a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “Sheets”

Book: “Sheets” by Brenna Thummler

Publishing Info: Oni Press, August 2018

Where Did I Get This Book: The Library!

Book Description: Marjorie Glatt feels like a ghost. A practical thirteen year old in charge of the family laundry business, her daily routine features unforgiving customers, unbearable P.E. classes, and the fastidious Mr. Saubertuck who is committed to destroying everything she’s worked for.

Wendell is a ghost. A boy who lost his life much too young, his daily routine features ineffective death therapy, a sheet-dependent identity, and a dangerous need to seek purpose in the forbidden human world.

When their worlds collide, Marjorie is confronted by unexplainable disasters as Wendell transforms Glatt’s Laundry into his midnight playground, appearing as a mere sheet during the day. While Wendell attempts to create a new afterlife for himself, he unknowingly sabotages the life that Marjorie is struggling to maintain.

Review: Who says that ghost stories need to be scary? I know that when I cover them on this blog, they usually are. But there are also kind and friendly spirits, not just ones that want to make peoples lives miserable. “Sheets” by Brenna Thummler is one such tale, a ghost story for kids, but instead of focusing on scares and bumps in the night, it takes on friendship, loss, and moving on from tragedy. All themes that can fit within a ghost story pretty well. I had high hopes for this story, as ghosts are definitely my jam. “Sheets”, however, didn’t really give me what I wanted from it.

But let’s talk about what I did like first. The themes I mentioned above are all very well done in the narrative. We have two main characters, both of whom are dealing with these themes in different ways. For Marjorie, a thirteen year old girl running the family laundromat, she is still mourning the loss of her mother and adjusting to her new life. Her father has been so depressed that he doesn’t leave his room, and Marjorie is left to care for her brother, the family business, and to take care of herself. On the other side of the coin is Wendell, a ghost who lives in a world of other ghosts (who all wear sheets) who died when he was very young. He doesn’t really feel like he fits in in his new afterlife, and decides to hitch a ghost bus (loved this idea!) back to the living world. Where he finds himself in Marjorie’s laundromat, and their worlds collide. Both characters are dealing with loss and sadness, and I thought that Brennan did a really good job of exploring grief in ways that kids could understand without being condescending or grim. I especially liked her take on what the Ghost world is like, with lots of different designs for a bunch of stereotypical sheet wearing ghosts and some really humorous moments.

My biggest qualms with this story, however, really dock the points that I would have given it. Namely, the complete lack of any empathetic, responsible, and caring adults in Marjorie’s life, bordering on complete criminal negligence. I understand that this is a book written with a kid protagonist, and as such needs to give the protagonist more agency and independence than a regular kid would have in the real world. But I really struggled with it in “Sheets”. Marjorie is a thirteen year old girl who is running the family business herself, as after her mother died her father has been completely overtaken by depression and barely leaves his room. And if that had been the extent of it, I might have been able to swallow it down. Depression can absolutely be completely hobbling, and it’s not unrealistic for him to fail his children and to have Marjorie feel like she needs to pick up the pieces. My BIGGEST problem is that the customers she does have aren’t asking ANY questions as to why this child is running this place! Hell, they even get mad at her when Wendell messes things up, more inconvenienced about their laundry than they are concerned about a child, a CHILD, having to run the business in which they are patronizing! We get a couple adults who do question her life and how she’s doing here and there, but it’s never pursued. Perhaps it is strange for me to be questioning this in a story about literal ghosts, but I couldn’t get past it. It seems really farfetched, and spoiler alert, it isn’t really resolved! We get a deus ex machina at the end and Marjorie is STILL running the darn laundromat instead of, you know, living her life as a child. I’m just not sure about what this tells kids about Marjorie’s circumstances. Because oh man, her Dad really needs to get his act together.

And this could possibly be because of the fact the story itself feels a bit half baked. Marjorie interacts with Wendell here and there, they never really have super in depth moments, but we just kind of have to believe that the way it all wraps up is because of their friendship, which I never felt like was really explored. There is a connection that Marjorie and Wendell share even before he became a ghost, but it feels convenient and twee, and not used enough that it really felt important. Had their connection been stronger, both before and after his death, it would have been a more enjoyable relationship. As it was, it was hard to invest in the two of them as friends.

I did like the artwork though! It’s quite unique, and the designs of the ghosts are pretty darn cute. And as someone who appreciates a nice color scheme, I really liked the palette in this one.

(source)

“Sheets” didn’t give me the feel good ghost story I was anticipating, but I absolutely can see myself recommending it to kids who are looking for something ghostly, though maybe not too scary.

Rating 6: A really good examination of different kinds of grief, but ultimately felt half baked and unrealistic (even taking into account we’re dealing with ghosts!).

Reader’s Advisory:

“Sheets” is included on the Goodreads lists “Spooky Graphic Novels for Kids”, and “Friendly Ghosts”.

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