Tag: 6 Rating

Kate’s Review: “This Girl’s A Killer”

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Book: “This Girl’s a Killer” by Emma C. Wells

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, September 2024

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

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

Book Description: Meet Cordelia Black. Cordelia loves exactly three things: her chosen family composed of her best friend Diane and her goddaughter; her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip); and killing bad men.

By day she’s a successful pharmaceutical rep with a pristine reputation and a designer wardrobe. By night she’s culling South Louisiana of unscrupulous men—monsters who always seem to evade justice, until they meet her. It’s a complicated yet fulfilling life that requires complete and total control at all times. But when the evening news starts throwing around the words “serial killer,” pressure heightens for her in the South, and it’s only exacerbated when Diane starts dating a man Cordelia isn’t sure is a good person—someone who might unravel everything Cordelia has worked for. Soon Cordelia’s world spirals, and she loses her grip on those tightly held threads that keep her safe.

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

Horrorpalooza is over, and now I start to work back towards the books that I read before October that didn’t fit a horror theme to fit within that month’s review schematics. We had a cartel thriller on Saturday, and now we get back to good old fashioned women’s centric thrillers with Emma C. Wells’s novel “This Girl’s a Killer”. This has been on my list for awhile now, and now the time has finally arrived. With admittedly mixed results.

There were definitely things that did work, however. Most obviously to me is that I do love stories like this, with sarcastic and quippy morally grey narrators doing pretty terrible things but for fairly understandable reasons. I enjoy the idea of a pharma rep named Cordelia (I just kept thinking of Cordelia Chase from “Buffy”) being professional and put together by day, and then murdering abusive and violent men by night after the legal system fails to do anything about them. I enjoyed the story arc at hand, with her having an ‘oh shit’ moment when finding out that her company is recalling the drug she uses for her schemes (as it works SO WELL to knock men out you see), and then things slowly falling more and more out of control. Partially because she kind of starts dating a cop, partially because she really hates her best friend Diane’s new boyfriend. The thriller aspects are more about how and whether she will get away with her crimes, but it’s also a little tongue in cheek which gives it a bit of zip.

But on the flip side, it isn’t really anything that I haven’t seen before in the women’s centric poppy serial killer tale. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I did find this book to be a very quick read and an entertaining one at that. After all, who doesn’t like to read about terrible predatory men getting justice doled out from a pissed off woman with a serial killing habit to feed? The problem is that Cordelia as a protagonist is trying to be “Promising Young Woman” vis a vis “Dexter”, but I didn’t feel like she had the complexities to back it up and is instead a bit of a caricature without the depth I was hoping for. Girlboss serial killer who loves her bestie and her high fashion labels and aesthetic is fine, but I was really hoping that she’d be a bit more interesting. I have similar criticisms for the supporting characters, with said bestie Diane being a little on the saccharine side and her daughter Samantha being precocious as hell bordering on a little unbelievable. As an escapist bloody romp this works, but I think that had the characters been stronger it really could have knocked it out of the park, and it didn’t quite get there.

It’s kind of strange to refer to a story about a serial killer in designer clothes as ‘cozy’ reading, but if you like thrillers you will probably feel that same vibe. Overall “This Girl’s a Killer” is pretty fluffy thriller fun that doesn’t take itself super seriously. I can dig that vibe this time of year.

Rating 6: Fun for what it is, but none of the characters moved outside of static two dimensional personalities and the story suffered for it.

Reader’s Advisory:

“This Girl’s a Killer” is included on the Goodreads list “Best Serial Killer Books”.

Kate’s Review: “The Demon”

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Book: “The Demon” by Victory Witherkeigh

Publishing Info: BookBaby, October 2024

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

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

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

I can’t believe that we are about two thirds of the way through October already. We’ve tackled a few sub genres this Horrorpalooza, from vampires, to ghosts, to serial killers, to the apocalypse, and now we are taking on another popular horror trope: demonic possession. It’s not a trope that I read that much, but if there is a generally tantalizing hook with a story I will give it a go, and “The Demon” by Victory Witherkeigh has that hook: A creature called the Demon has recently possessed the body of the Girl, but cannot remember why it has done so, and now has to figure out what it’s mission is, while also dealing with a true human horror: freshman year of college.

The horror… the horror… (source)

It was a roll of the dice, as it’s a sub genre I’m wary of and it was a book I hadn’t heard of, but that hook, man. I couldn’t pass it up. And the hook was everything I wanted it to be! There were other aspects, however, that didn’t work as well.

First thing I will do is talk about what I did like about this book, and that is the fact that the premise is strong as hell and that a lot of the time we got some really solid moments with this premise in mind. I have always loved a story about an otherworldly being taking on the body/identity of a human and having to learn to live like a human, from Jeff Bridges in “Starman” to the demi goddess character Illyria on the show “Angel” (absolutely rotten than the show was cancelled so shortly after her character debut; I just loved her). So I absolutely loved the way that The Demon is having to not only adjust to living in a human body, but also having to maneuver through college of all things. So many great moments happened with this concept, whether it was the Demon dealing with roommates, student groups, or having to get a prescription for birth control. I also liked seeing the Demon make connections with other humans, be they awkward and romantic, or gentle and familial with one of the few actually okay people in The Girl’s family, namely her grandmother. All of these beats worked really well for me, being a huge sucker for this kind of trope. I also liked the way that Witherkeigh addresses themes like colonialism of the Philippines and racism that comes with that.

On the flip side, I wasn’t aware that “The Demon” was a sequel to another book called “The Girl” until I had started reading it and began to wonder if I was missing some context due to how much info wasn’t really established. Since I hadn’t read the first one in the series, I was definitely missing some context as to the Demon’s motivations, her relationship with Death, and the ins and outs of The Girl’s family and her relationships and their motivations. It was like diving into a story starting in the middle, and that made things confusing. Admittedly this isn’t really the fault of the book as the assumption would obviously be that I WOULD have that context, but in this situation I didn’t. So that isn’t necessarily a ding on the story as a whole, but it did affect my personal experience with it. The other thing was that at times this book did feel a little meandering and unfocused, with a structure that felt a bit like a set of vignettes that had a thread through that could have been stronger and more taut.

So this was a bit of a unique situation and I don’t know if I can fully review “The Demon” as I didn’t approach it with the context that is assumed to be had by a reader. But I did really enjoy the moments of a fish out of water as the Demon tries to survive college.

Rating 6: A really cool premise with some really fun moments, but I definitely missed some context and some of it felt unfocused.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Demon” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on the list “Demonic Possession”.

Book Club Review: “Attachments”

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We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing book club running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. This June we celebrated our 10 year anniversary of book club. So in celebration of that milestone, we are re-visiting authors we read way back in those first few years of our book club. For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “Attachments” by Rainbow Rowell

Publishing Info: Dutton, April 2011

Where Did We Get This Book: The library!

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

Repeat Author: Rainbow Rowell

Book Description: “Hi, I’m the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you…”

Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It’s company policy.) But they can’t quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.

Meanwhile, Lincoln O’Neill can’t believe this is his job now—reading other people’s e-mail. When he applied to be “internet security officer,” he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers—not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.

When Lincoln comes across Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can’t help being entertained—and captivated—by their stories.

By the time Lincoln realizes he’s falling for Beth, it’s way too late to introduce himself. What would he say . . . ?

Kate’s Thoughts

This was one of the book club choices that I was most intrigued by this cycle, as I have read a fair number of Rainbow Rowell stuff, but I haven’t read any of her adult novels (“Fangirl” may fall into this? I think I was told it was New Adult when I read it for grad school). So going in to read not only and adult one, but also her first novel, was interesting to say the least! I also found it to be VERY of the time it came out, while still having some enjoyable things that held up in the modern day.

For one I really liked the email banter between Beth and Jennifer, as I have had work friendships like this where we just bullshit all day to offset the drudgery of being on the clock (admittedly my experience with this was working on the floor of a museum and finding other floor staff to chat with). Rowell has always had a zippy charm in her dialogue, and I really believed that Beth and Jennifer were best friends and work besties to boot. There were plenty of laugh out loud moments for me with these two, as well as some really well done bits of pathos in regards to Jennifer’s pregnancy journey as it has its ups and downs (definitely know there’s a content warning in this regarding miscarriage). If this book had been all about their friendship laid out in epistolary form, I’d have been wholly sold.

However, this is a romance novel, and when it comes to our male romantic interest Lincoln I just didn’t click with him as well. I’m not going to say that he’s a Joe Goldberg type like some people do, as I really don’t see his inadvertent stalking as malicious or devious, but it was interesting seeing it play out as cute when nowadays we are a little more sensitive to these kinds of things (I also would be a huge hypocrite to call it out as I absolutely LOVE “You’ve Got Mail” and Tom Hanks is kind of doing this to Meg Ryan in that movie). But my biggest gripe was just that I didn’t find Lincoln super interesting, as he falls into a lot of well worn tropes now, like the fact that he’s a HUGE CINNAMON ROLL NERD while also being INCREDIBLY ADONIS HOT. I also think that I needed a bit more direct interaction between Beth and Lincoln to really feel like the pay off at the end was real.

All in all, “Attachments” was fine. It was a quick read and it was a fun book club discussion!

Serena’s Thoughts

My experience reading Rainbow Rowell is pretty much identical to Kate’s. I believe we were both first introduced to the author in library school and then both proceeded to be assigned and read the same two books from her. I enjoyed them both, for the most part, but they also fall well outside my usual reading preferences, so I’ve never returned to the author. That being the case, I was excited that this was a bookclub pick which essentially forced my hand on the matter!

I also agree with much of Kate’s assessment, however. I, too, was much more invested in the female relationships and the themes of friendship, grief, and support that were explored throughout the story. Not only was the dialogue between them hilarious, but through their relationship, the story dives into the deeper elements of the story. Dialogue has always been a strong suit of Rowell’s, so perhaps this was no surprise. But it was a nice reminder of what I enjoyed most about her other books!

Like Kate, however, I was less invested in the romance. Which was a bit of a problem, as the book is first and foremost a love story. I, too, struggled to truly buy Lincoln as a character. Much of his characterization seemed to directly contradict itself. On one hand, he was presented as this nerdy guy who lived at home. But on the other hand, he’s this super hot guy who comes across as very charming. Obviously, nerdy guys can be attractive as well, but the entire premise of the book seemed to rely on the fact that he’s existed on the periphery of people’s lives, going unnoticed. Which…I just find hard to buy.

Nothing about this book was outright bad, but it did feel very average throughout most of it. I found myself struggling to want to finish it and simply not that invested in the romance at its heart. Part of this could just be the fact that I don’t typically enjoy contemporary romcoms, however, so take my review with a grain of salt!

Kate’s Rating 6: It’s cute enough and I liked the banter between Beth and Jennifer, but I wasn’t as invested in Lincoln and the romance didn’t really click for me.

Serena’s Rating 6: Same, same. There were bright moments, but it’s hard to truly rate a romance highly when you didn’t really care about the love story itself.

Book Club Questions:

  1. How did you relate to the time period setting of this book, as it takes place during Y2K? If you remember this time, what were you doing on New Year’s Eve before 2000?
  2. What were your thoughts on the romance between Lincoln and Beth? Did it work for you? Why or why not?
  3. What did you think about the two different writing styles, one being epistolary the other being more traditional narration?
  4. What were your thoughts on Jennifer’s pregnancy storyline?
  5. How do you think this story would change if it were taking place in the 2020s?

Reader’s Advisory

“Attachments” is included on the Goodreads lists “Internet Rom Coms”, and “Nerdy Guys Are Hot!”.

Next Book Club Pick: “Spells for Forgetting” by Adrienne Young

Kate’s Review: “Nightmare of a Trip”

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Book: “Nightmare of a Trip” by Maureen Kilmer

Publishing Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, September 2024

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

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

Book Description: A horror-tinged National Lampoon’s This is one family getaway they’ll never forget… Leigh Somerset wants to spend some quality time with her kids before they grow up, and her husband has always fancied himself sort of a Clark Griswold figure. So the Somersets will be spending their family vacation on the road, driving from suburban Milwaukee to Orlando, Florida. Already off to a rocky start, when they stumble upon an abandoned, half-burned farmhouse in Indiana, the Somersets inadvertently unleash an eerie past that will follow them the rest of their trip. From creepy indoor waterparks to paranormal-activity plagued Cracker Barrels, it’s one thing after another in the pursuit of the great American summer road trip. Will the Somersets be able to shake these bad vibes and get on with family bonding, or will the road less traveled become the highway to hell?

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

My family never did a huge cross country road trip when I was a kid, though we did take four-five hour trips to visit relatives in Iowa or drive to the Apostle Islands on occasion. I think that my parents knew that none of us had the wherewithal to do the long drives across multiple states, and since we could afford plane tickets, that’s what we did. But even with the smaller road trips I was compelled to pick up “Nightmare of a Trip” by Maureen Kilmer. I had enjoyed another of her books, and the promise of a haunting story mixed with “National Lampoon’s Vacation” is hard to resist. Unfortunately, my high hopes were a bit dashed this time.

First what I did like. The entire concept of a stereotypical American family road trip being waylaid by supernatural hijinks is a pretty fun idea. Given that I found Kilmer’s book “Suburban Hell” to be a fun satire on American suburbia I was hoping that “Nightmare of a Trip” would have a similar execution and also be a fun satire. And there were definitely some fun things about this book. The idea of a Cracker Barrel being thrown into chaos due to poltergeist activity is hilarious, and I also enjoyed the stress and exhaustion of Leigh and Nick as they are trying to take their kids on a memorable family vacation while also keeping their shit together. Because there were a couple nights at Disney World this past Spring where once the kid was in bed my husband and I just collapsed in a puddle of burn out, and Kilmer nails the feel. It’s also the kind of spooky story that I would be more than confident to recommend to people who want something a little scary to read for Halloween, but not TOO scary. I definitely think it’s important to have varying degrees of horror stories for readers, and “Nightmare of a Trip” would be a pretty safe choice that still gets the reader in a scary story mood.

On the flip side, however, “Nightmare of a Trip” didn’t have the same oomph that “Suburban Hell” did, as I wasn’t nearly as invested in the characters this time around. Sure I found some of them realistic, as mentioned above, but Leigh as our narrator was pretty bland. I appreciate a harried mother character, but I was hoping that we would get a bit more exploration beyond a harried mother, especially since I find the greater strengths in books like this to be the characters when the horror is muted a bit. Along with this, the humorous/satirical elements of this book, which should have been the biggest narrative strength, just didn’t land as well as I had hoped it would. It isn’t BAD. It just isn’t very interesting. Pretty middle of the road. And that’s fine! I had just hoped for more.

“Nightmare of a Trip” is a quick read that is light on scares but still entertains. I had hoped it would be as enjoyable as “Suburban Hell”, but even if it didn’t live up to my expectations I still found it mostly fun.

Rating 6: It’s fun and frothy and probably a good choice for someone looking for some lighter horror this Halloween season, but it was pretty middle of the road.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Nightmare of a Trip” is included on the Goodreads list “All the New Horror, Romantasy, and Other SFF Crossover Books Arriving in September 2024”.

Book Club Review: “Summer Days and Summer Nights”

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

We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing book club running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. This June we celebrated our 10 year anniversary of book club. So in celebration of that milestone, we are re-visiting authors we read way back in those first few years of our book club. For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories” by Stephanie Perkins (Ed.)

Publishing Info: St. Martin’s Griffin, May 2016

Where Did We Get This Book: The library!

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

Repeat Author: Stephanie Perkins

Book Description: Maybe it’s the long, lazy days, or maybe it’s the heat making everyone a little bit crazy. Whatever the reason, summer is the perfect time for love to bloom. Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, written by twelve bestselling young adult writers and edited by the international bestselling author Stephanie Perkins, will have you dreaming of sunset strolls by the lake. So set out your beach chair and grab your sunglasses. You have twelve reasons this summer to soak up the sun and fall in love.

Kate’s Thoughts

WAAAAY back during our first cycle of Book Club get togethers one of our members chose the anthology “My True Love Gave To Me”, which had a bunch of then in demand YA authors writing holiday themed romance short stories. We all generally enjoyed it, with some authors standing out quite a bit. So it was fun when one of our other members picked the summertime follow up “Summer Days and Summer Nights”, harkening not only to a repeat author, but also continuing into the quasi-sequel. And much like the previous book in the series, I had some authors who really stood out this time, while others kind of fell back to the wayside.

Unsurprisingly it was the works by Leigh Bardugo, Libba Bray, and Brandy Colbert that I enjoyed most, as I do like those authors in general and I liked their own interpretations of a summer romance short story prompt. You have some fantasy bittersweetness from Bardugo’s “Head, Scales, Tongue, Tail”, you had some horror humor from Bray’s “Last Stand at the Cinegore”, and you had some genuine teenage love story and ache from Colbert’s “Good Luck and Farewell”, and they ran such tonal gamuts and yet completely fit into the prompt it was charming as hell to see. That said, many of the other stories in this anthology were hit or miss for me, some being enjoyable, others just falling flat. Which is probably just due to the fact that romance isn’t really my thing unless it meets certain parameters. Also something to note is this book came out in 2016, and it’s kind of a fun snapshot into which YA authors were being approached with these kinds of ‘let’s cover a broad range of in demand voices’ anthologies.

Overall, it was a perfectly fine summer read for our Book Club, with some strong stand outs from authors who have maintained their popularity over the years. If you want to cling to summer for one last hurrah, this could be a good fit!

Serena’s Thoughts

As readers of this blog know, neither Kate or I read tons of short story collections. I’m perhaps more on the record for usually actively avoiding them. And yet, somehow this is the first of THREE short story collections that I am reading and reviewing this month! You’ll see two back-to-back short story reviews coming from me next week. I had some control obviously over those, but it’s just fate that the bookclub book also fell in this rare category!

And I agree with much of what Kate said. For me, this collection really lived and died on the strength of the individual authors of each story. And, like Kate, I found myself naturally gravitating towards the authors I enjoyed outside of short story collections. I, too, very much enjoyed the Leigh Bardugo story, as it neatly highlighted so many of the strengths of her writing: bittersweet fantasy stories, complex characters, and beautiful turns of phrase.

I also really enjoyed Veronica Roth’s entry. Like so many of her books, her story was incredibly unique, pushing the boundaries of fantasy and science fiction in new and fresh ways. My one critique of this story is that as much as I love a happy ending, I do think this is a case where Roth was held back by the prompt of a love story collection which required happy-ever-after endings. From my experience, Roth has zero qualms about ending her books in tears, and I think this short story would have actually been stronger had it been allowed to be a bit darker towards the end.

There were also a number of authors who had fallen completely off my radar! Libba Bray being one of them! I read and reviewed her YA fantasy trilogy on the blog years ago, but as I hated (HATED) the way that trilogy ended, she’d fallen completely off my list of authors to follow. I did enjoy this story from her, however.

All this said, as a whole, I did struggle with this book. Other than the few stories I’ve mentioned here, I didn’t connect with many of the tales in this book. I’m not really the target audience for many of them, and obviously, I have my own personal hang-ups with short story collections. When your go-to read is epic fantasies that often come in around 55o pages, you really do struggle with the entire concept of a short story. But even putting that aside, I do think that a large chunk of these stories fell solidly in the “just ok” category. Many of them weren’t offering much new to readers and some of them employed “neat little stylistic tricks” that were frankly just annoying. If you’re a love of short stories and romance (and maybe check out the author list ahead of time to see how many of them you already enjoy), you may like this one.

Kate’s Rating 6: The stories I liked I REALLY liked, the others were pretty hit or miss bordering on meh.

Serena’s Rating 6: A few stands outs weren’t enough to save this reading experience for me, unfortunately. But fans of the individual authors involved may want to page through it and selectively read those stories!

Book Club Questions

  1. Did you have a story in this collection that you connected with the most? What about the least?
  2. Were there any authors in this collection that you were unfamiliar with before you picked it up? If so, did you discover any new authors you definitely want to read more from?
  3. In terms of authors you did know from this collection, did any of them surprise you with what they put forth as their story?
  4. Were there any stories in this collection that you would like to read more of, perhaps in a series of short stories or in novel form?
  5. This collection came out in 2016 with popular YA authors from that period making up the story set. If they were going to do another collection like this with present day popular Young Adult authors, who do you think would be part of that collection?

Reader’s Advisory

“Summer Days and Summer Nights” is included on the Goodreads lists “Summer Themed YA”, and “YA Anthologies”.

Next Book Club Pick: “Attachments” by Rainbow Rowell

Kate’s Review: “This World Is Not Yours”

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

Book: “This World Is Not Yours” by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, September 2024

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

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

Book Description: This World is Not Yours by USA Today bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the perfect blend of S.A. Barnes’ space horror and Cassandra Khaw’s beautiful but macabre worlds. An action-packed, inventive novella about a toxic polycule consumed by jealousy and their attempts to survive on a hostile planet.

After fleeing her controlling and murderous family with her fiancée Vinh, Amara embarks on a colonization project, New Belaforme, along with her childhood friend, Jesse. The planet, beautiful and lethal, produces the Gray, a “self-cleaning” mechanism that New Belaforme’s scientists are certain only attacks invasive organisms, consuming them. Humans have been careful to do nothing to call attention to themselves until a rival colony wakes the Gray.

As Amara, Vinh, and Jesse work to carve out a new life together, each is haunted by past betrayals that surface, expounded by the need to survive the rival colony and the planet itself.

There’s more than one way to be eaten alive.

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

When “This World Is Not Yours” by Kemi Ashing-Giwa ended up in my inbox, the cover alone caught my attention. I mean dang, look at that cover. The expression on that person’s face! And looking more into the story itself, I was absolutely intrigued by the premise of a space colony with a strange ecosystem, and a ‘toxic polycule’ (we all know that I LOVE that kind of drama). And the phrase ‘There’s more than one way to be eaten alive’? GIVE IT TO ME NOW. Suffice to say, I was going into this novella with some high hopes.

First the highlights. I am always game for a sci-fi/space horror tale that brings up some of the perils of colonialism, especially on an unfamiliar planet with an unfamiliar ecosystem and with mechanisms that aren’t fully understood. This is one of the reasons I loved “Annihilation”, and the Gray and New Belaforme colony really reminded me of that novel in a number of ways. Secondly, the space horror in this book is unrelenting, it builds some good tension, and when the tension breaks it is GORY AS HELL and in the best and most horrifying ways possible. First with the tension bit. There was one moment where someone was literally swimming in The Gray and I am pretty sure I clamped my hand over my mouth because I knew that could NOT be a good idea, but Ashing-Giwa takes her sweet time in pulling out all she can from the suspense. And then when we do finally get a pay off for it, and the tension breaks into a gory, terrifying mess?

It was disgusting and absolutely nasty. Which is exactly what I want from space based body horror. ( source)

All of this was spot on.

That being said, and this is in a lot of ways a ‘me’ issue, I wasn’t as enthralled with the Science Fiction stuff. I am at the point where I need to just tell myself ‘look Kate, even if it’s Space Horror, Sci-Fi isn’t your thing’ and maybe not take it on. And in “This World Is Not Yours” we get a lot of that, with colonies, space intrigue, Science Fiction scenarios involving populations and ecology, and lots of references to tech that kind of made me skim the pages a bit. I will reiterate that these are all things that are to be expected in this genre, and people who like that will probably like how it is done in this. So that negative aspect is probably on me. But along with that I didn’t feel like I really got to know our characters as much as I would have liked, especially Jesse, one of the cornerstones of the polycule that has been forced upon our main characters. I understood his connection to Amara, but the connection to Vinh was more talked about than really demonstrated. I think to buy some of the high stakes moments at the end I needed more from Jesse. I also needed more development of Vinh’s assigned husband Henry, because Amara REALLY hates him and I understood why she would hate him as a jealous wife, but he seemed pretty bland until there were a couple of hail Mary moments of terribleness that felt like they were there to be like SEE THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD HATE HIM that didn’t feel super earned. On top of that, Amara and Vinh as the couple we are supposed to be rooting for didn’t really click with me. But this could have been solved had we explored them more, and I think that we probably needed more pages to do so.

So all in all “This World Is Not Yours” was a bit mixed for me. The space horror at its peak was fantastic. But it wasn’t as centered as I had hoped it would be.

Rating 6: When the space horror was in full force it was terrifying. But a lack of character development and a little too much Sci-Fi made this not the home run I had hoped for.

Reader’s Advisory:

“This World Is Not Yours” is included on the Goodreads list “Queer Polyamory”.

Serena’s Review: “The Cursed”

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

Book: “The Cursed” by Harper L. Woods

Publishing Info: Bramble, September 2023

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Betrayal.

He was the deception waiting in the night; the truth I never saw coming. After a lifetime of manipulation, I finally learned the truth. I was his puppet―even if I never saw my strings.

Even knowing how deep his betrayal runs, I can’t shake the undeniable connection between Gray and I―the way a single glance from him sets my soul on fire. We are not the same. We’re enemies, poised to battle for the future of the very thing I’d wanted to destroy.

With the Covenant gone, the revenge I thought I wanted is no longer my priority. The witches that remain played no role in my aunt’s death, and the only person standing in the way of righting those wrongs is the very man determined to keep me in his bed.

But the remaining members of the Coven will never forgive me for the role I played in their demise and subjugation, and the worst part of all is that I can’t even blame them for it. I’d been naive, believing my own delusions of grandeur when destiny clearly had other plans for me. Plans that had been set in motion centuries before my birth.

But even that had been a lie, and now it is my duty to do everything in my power to undo it.

To protect my Coven from my husband’s hatred―no matter what the cost.

Previously Reviewed: “The Coven”

Review: As readers will see if they check out my review of “The Coven,” I had a fairly middling reading experience with the first book in this duology. However, as they were being published back to back, essentially, I had placed a review request for both books initially. So, unless I had DNF’d the first book, I was fairly committed to reading and reviewing the second. Alas, here is a case where this commitment sadly lead me astray and into an even more frustrating reading experience.

I’ll begin this review by admitting that this book started off on the wrong foot for me. I, personally, struggle with a few different romance tropes. One of them is the “miscommunication/misunderstanding” trope, and the other is the “betrayal” trope. The latter is particularly egregious when the “betrayal” in question is so obviously not what it seems and then the reader is forced to deal with a lead character who seems to twist their brain in two simply to maintain the righteous indignation of how terrible the betrayal was in the first place. And while the actual betrayal in this book had more substance than other examples that come to mind, it was still a frustrating read. Made all the more so since we spent more time in Gray’s head in this book, so the reader had insights into his feelings and motives that Willow then didn’t have. Making the switch back to her own POV frustrating at times, when she was behind on things the reader already knew.

The plot of this one was also severely lacking. In that if I sat down right now and tried to actually put the events of this book down on a plotting structure, I couldn’t. The first half to three quarters of the story is severely lacking in any plot whatsoever (which is a surprise given some of the massive reveals that came in the first book), and then the final quarter is jammed pack with action. But it was action that was completely disconnected from character motivation or arc. Willow spends the majority of the book hating Gray but then seems to do a complete 180 on him towards the end, for very little real reason.

I also struggled with the romance itself. This book leans in hard to the concept of the “body betraying you” idea. In that many of the romance scenes between Willow and Gray are a bit fraught with mixed messages on her part. Now, I give a lot of leeway to romance books on this front, as this sort of romantic tension is standard for the genre and, frankly, often quite enjoyable to read. But it didn’t work as well here simply because Willow’s stated feelings towards Gray were so extreme. Usually you have the sort of tension when characters are “enemies” in the sense that they profess to just not like one another (or are annoyed/competitive with/etc.). But it works less well when one of the characters is literally saying she wants to kill the other. It’s the kind of extreme contrast that undercuts both sides. On one hand, she’s clearly into him so saying she wants to “kill him” reads as ridiculously out of touch with herself. And on the other hand, if she does want to actually kill him, it makes no sense whatsoever for her to be getting into these romantically physical situations with him.

I really struggled with this book. The first book was notably weak on world-building and had some plotting struggles, and this one doubled down on both of these areas. Both the characters and what should have been exciting plot stakes seemed to drown beneath a frustrating amount of romantic angst and tension. For those who really loved the first book, this may still be a satisfying read. But if you struggled with the first, I think this one will be an even greater let-down, unfortunately.

Rating 6: A severe lack of world-building and plotting leaves this one to wallow in rather shallow characters and a frustrating romance.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Cursed” isn’t on any relevant Goodreads lists but it should be on Hero Betrays His Heroine.

Kate’s Review: “Strange Folk”

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Book: “Strange Folk” by Alli Dyer

Publishing Info: Atria Books, August 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher at ALAAC24.

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

Book Description: A woman returns to her estranged, magical family in Appalachia but when a man is found dead in the woods nearby, it seems the family has conjured something sinister in this lush, shimmering, and wildly imaginative debut novel that is perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Deborah Harkness, and Sarah Addison Allen.

Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her new life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva.

Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have summoned something dark.

As she and her family search for answers, Lee travels down a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets that force her to reckon with herself and rediscover her power in order to protect her family and the town she couldn’t leave behind.

Review: Thank you to Atria books for providing me with an ARC of this novel!

One of the panels I attended at ALAC24 was a preview of upcoming thriller titles with the authors at hand to describe their books. One of the books that caught my attention was “Strange Folk” by Alli Dyer, which had not only a fantasy element to the thriller story, but also involved a family of healers in the mountains of Appalachia that has used nature and their powers to help those around their community, as well as stirred up some trouble here and there when using those powers. We all know that this is the exact kind of story I am an absolute sucker for, so I was very excited to read this book, my hopes being pretty high.

In terms of the witchiness themes and lore I did find a lot I liked in this book. I was definitely getting some hints and homages to “Practical Magic” as a reluctant woman from a line of healers and supposed ‘witches’ returns to her Appalachia home with her children after a nasty divorce. Lee’s homecoming and reintegration into the town was really fun to watch unfold, as she starts to reconnect with her grandmother Belva, a well respected healer, and starts to interact with the land again and how it can bind and heal, and sometimes take and harm. I absolutely loved the descriptions of the spells, charms, tinctures, etcetera of the women in this family, and the various rituals that they would partake in in hopes of helping and healing. And the Appalachia setting makes for an even more unique lens, with Lee’s family being mountain folk who have hidden away from general society and made their own way, being trusted by some and feared by others. I honestly kept thinking about Misty Day in “American Horror Story: Coven” with her connection to nature and her more ‘folksy’ (for lack of a better term) traditions. This interpretation of witches really worked for me in this story, as I love a story with powerful women doing magic, or something like it.

But that kind of leads to why this didn’t work as well for me, and that is because unlike in “Practical Magic” I didn’t really become attached to any of the characters at hand. A lot of them had some promising backstories, traits, and personalities, but I never fully enjoyed them and never quite believed that they got to what I was hoping they would be. Whether it was our main character Lee, who had some great build up but then didn’t quite get past the building blocks of her character except to be like ‘oh no I guess we will stay because this is my home’, or her mother Redbud, who was consumed by a guilty conscience and then became a drug addict and traumatized her daughter, we had so many things that could have been explored…. but then just didn’t quite get the exploration I was hoping for. I don’t really need characters like this to be likable, but I at least want them to be interesting even if I can’t really root for them. And I had a VERY hard time with the dynamic between Lee and Redbud, and how it felt like there was probably a lot of grace and forgiveness when all was said and done without the amount of atonement that I REALLY needed from her. And by the time we got some answers and reveals about what was going on, I was more happy that we were wrapping up as opposed to actually getting fulfilling answers.

I had higher hopes for “Strange Folk”, and while the concept, setting, and lore worked for me, I wanted from from our cast of mountain witches and their loved ones. I think it would be a good choice for the upcoming Autumn, however.

Rating 6: A strong premise and some interesting folk lore makes for a cool concept, but I wasn’t as invested in the characters.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Strange Folk” isn’t on many specific Goodreads lists but I think if you like books like “Practical Magic” and other magical family sagas this could be a good match.

Kate’s Review: “49 Miles Alone”

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Book: “49 Miles Alone” by Natalie D. Richards

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Fire, July 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher.

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

Book Description: Four days alone in the desert. Except they’re not as alone as they think.

A year ago, Katie and her cousin Aster survived a night that left their world and easy friendship fractured. Desperate to heal and leave the past behind them, they tackle four days of hiking in the Utah backcountry. But the desert they’ve loved for years has tricks up its sleeve. An illness, an injury, and a freak storm leave them short on confidence and supplies. When they come across a young couple with extra supplies on the trail, they’re grateful and relieved―at first. Riley exudes friendliness, but everything about her boyfriend Finn spells trouble.

That night, after some chilling admissions about Finn from Riley, Katie and Aster wake to hear the couple fighting. Helpless and trapped in the darkness, they witness Riley’s desperate race into the night, with Finn chasing after. In the morning, they find the couple’s camp, but Riley and Finn? Vanished. Katie is sure Riley is in trouble. And with help a two-day hike away, they know they are the only ones who can save her before something terrible happens. The clock is ticking and their supplies are dwindling, but Katie and Aster know they have to find Riley before Finn―or the desert―gets to her first.

Review: Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an ARC of this novel!

I truly think that Summer, while not a favorite season of mine, has a book vibe that I really like to adhere to. Much like Fall feeling like the perfect ambiance for a horror story or a cozy fantasy, for me Summer feels like the best time to tap into various kinds of thrillers. One of those sub-genres is survival thrillers, especially if they are set in the wilderness. So I was very excited to read “49 Miles Alone” by Natalie D. Richards, which follows cousins Katie and Aster on a wilderness hike that goes pretty sour and they are suddenly in the web of a killer. This is my FAVORITE kind of wilderness survival tale, and I hopped on in ready for a wild ride!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not an outdoorsy kinda person outside of the occasional hike through a state or national park, or for some landscape photography excursions. Certainly not multiple days of camping or hardcore hiking and off trail backpacking. But I do love seeing that premise used in a survival/wilderness thriller, and “49 Miles Alone” does a great job of highlighting the real dangers of the wilderness even without having a killer in the vicinity. As Katie and Aster start their journey, it’s already tense due to an incident in the near past that left Aster wracked with guilt and Katie traumatized, and things just keep going wrong and make the tension build all the more. Whether it’s weirdos on the trail, or a storm that manifested out of nowhere and makes the trail that much more unpredictable and dangerous, or Aster suddenly falling ill, many small things keep piling up to turn into one big troublesome and dangerous situation. I’ve known people who do this kind of hiking and camping who have BEEN in these sudden life or death situations where you have to make quick decisions that could end very badly, and watching Katie and Aster have to contend with these things on top of Katie’s trauma and Aster’s guilt made for a lot of really well done suspenseful beats.

But the main point of suspension, when Aster and Katie meet a couple on the trail and Katie suspects the man, Finn, to be dangerous, didn’t hit as hard as i had hoped it would. I normally really like this trope of wilderness savvy people meeting dangerous psychos and having to navigate the wilderness with them, as when it’s done well (like in “The River Wild” or “Desolation”, two films I really like) it can be SO nerve wracking. But I think that in this one it gets a little tripped up, partially due to the timing of meeting Finn and his hiking partner/girlfriend Riley, and partially due to not really getting much insight into the two of them outside of some interactions from Aster’s and Katie’s POVs. To make things worse, by the time we do get to the main driving conflict of potentially being hunted down, it felt a bit more rushed as opposed to the slow build of the earlier parts of the book. I also kind of called one of the big twists pretty quickly, which always kind of pulls the wind out of the sails of a thriller.

So it was a bit of a mixed bag. But that said, “49 Miles Alone” has some really good bits of realistic wilderness survival thrills. It’s a good summer read to be sure!

Rating 7: I loved the tense build up of the perils of an unpredictable hike between tension filled cousins, and I wish it had stayed more in that realm as the dangerous killer on the trail was a little underwhelming.

Reader’s Advisory:

“49 Miles Alone” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Novels of 2024”.

Kate’s Review: “Ladykiller”

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Book: “Ladykiller” by Katherine Wood

Publishing Info: Bantam, July 2024

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

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

Book Description: When an heiress goes missing, her best friend races to unravel the secrets behind her disappearance using clues left behind in an explosive manuscript…

Gia and Abby have been best friends since they were girls, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. In the aftermath, bookish Abby threw herself into her studies while heiress Gia chronicled the events of that fateful summer in a salacious memoir.

Twelve years later, Gia is back in Greece for the summer with her shiny new husband and a motley crew of glamorous guests, preparing to sell the family estate in the wake of her father’s death. When Abby receives an invitation from Gia to celebrate her birthday in September beneath the Northern Lights, she’s thrilled to be granted the time off from her high-pressure job. But the day of her flight, she receives a mysterious, threatening email in her inbox, and when she and Gia’s brother Benny arrive at the Swedish resort, Gia isn’t there. After days of cryptic messages and unanswered calls, Abby and Benny are worried enough to fly to Greece to check on her.

Only, when they arrive, they find Gia’s beachfront estate eerily deserted, the sole clue to her whereabouts a manuscript she wrote detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. The pages reveal the dark truth about Gia’s provocative new marriage and the dirty secrets of the guests they entertained with fizzy champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun. As tensions rise, Gia feels less and less safe in her own home. But the pages end abruptly, leaving Abby and Benny with more questions than answers.

Where is Gia now? And, more importantly, will they find her before it’s too late?

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

We are now smack dab in the middle of summer now, and I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I have a LOT of pool time coming up as the temps go up and the family wants to cool off. While I spend a fair amount of time at the pool keeping an eye on my kid, if the husband is there too we split the time, which means I get to read when I’m not on swim duty. Which in turn means that I’m looking for good poolside reads that keep me entertained and keep my interest, the more scandalous the better. “Ladykiller” by Katherine Wood was one such book. You have a missing woman, a Grecian backdrop, a potentially shady new husband, and some long hidden secrets. All of this is the perfect mix for the kind of thriller I want poolside! And while it definitely scratched some itches, overall, unfortunately, I found this one to be a bit hit or miss.

The story structure of this novel is told from two different perspectives, one from the perspective of Abby and the other from Gia. Abby is Gia’s long time friend, who has worked incredibly hard to become an attorney and who had a falling out with the heiress newlywed Gia due to her not approving of the whirlwind romance and fast marriage. Abby and Gia’s brother Benny are supposed to meet Gia for her birthday, but find her missing and not answering her phone. The other perspective is the manuscript from Gia’s newest memoir, which is a record of what was happening on her estate in Greece with her husband Garrett, two strangers they befriended, and the slow realization that Garrett is perhaps not what he seems. Both perspectives round out the mystery, with the reader being able to follow along and to learn things that perhaps one woman may not know of the other, which I always enjoy. It’s also interesting getting their varying perspectives on some of their shared secrets, as Abby has some guilt for past actions, and Gia’s memoir starts to veer into ‘is this unreliable’ territory. I greatly enjoyed these aspects of this book.

All that said, I think that while it’s entertaining in structure, I wasn’t super invested in any of the characters, and wasn’t terribly surprised by many of the twists and reveals as the mystery went on. It follows a pretty well explored formula, and it doesn’t really go outside the expected norms. I found it entertaining as it was going, and I was interested to see how things were going to shake out, but I wasn’t terribly invested in many of the characters and what their outcomes were going to be. I also found some of the choices made by the characters, Abby in particular, to be a bit galling. It just had a lot of potential to really bowl me over as the recipe for that is there. But it never quite came together. But hey, I did find it to be entertaining for the most part, and one I could easily pick up and put down as needed.

“Ladykiller” is a poolside read through and through and one I would recommend to those who are looking for such a thing. There’s still lots of summer left! Add it to your pile you keep in the swim bag.

Rating 6: It’s entertaining for the most part, but the twists and turns were pretty obvious and I wasn’t interested in many of the characters.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Ladykiller” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery and Thriller 2024”.