Bark at the Ghouls

Stay chill, it's only a silly book review.

I read the good, the awful & all of the "meh" in the middle. Mostly horror & romance of all kinds.

Goodbye Booklikes

I've been gone for ages but this is the official post to say goodbye. I sure am going to miss this place but I can no longer sit around waiting for someone (anyone, god please) to answer our questions and fix all of the problems. None of us have time for this bullshit.

 

You can find me on my blog:

 

https://barksbooknonsense.blogspot.com/

 

I hope you'll visit.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones

I kept hearing whispers about this book. People were SO excited and wanted it so badly and those whispers stuck in my head but I hadn’t read the author and I REFUSED to visit Netgalley because I have absolutely zero willpower when it comes to their offerings. But then a few super early reviews came in and naturally I had a weak moment and hit up NetGalley and I am not at all sorry. Well, perhaps a wee bit because there was some animal stuff in here that was hard to read (prepare thyself) but trust me when I say this book is an experience that has the power to take your damn breath away. I don’t say that about a lot of books, hardly any at all actually, but this one managed to do it several times.

It’s about a horrifically bleak and terrible dark deed done by a few over-zealous young punks on a part of the reservation that did not belong to them. This memory will follow and haunt them (as well it should if you ask me). This book is painful to read but truly hard to put down at the same time. Whenever I had to put it aside to return to reality it lingered at the edges of my brain.

“When the whole world hurts, you bite it, don’t you?”

I struggled with this review. I kept starting it and stopping it fearing I’d never be able to do any kind of justice to it without spoiling the hell out of it and I am not going to do that. This book shocked me even though I was warned that it was going to do just that. I figured, “Nah it’s not going to get ME” but I was wrong. The writing is engaging and harrowing, the characters flawed and hard to look away from and it’s simply a beautifully tragic masterpiece of horror on so many levels with anguish so strong you can feel it stain your soul. Read it if you want your heart ripped out of your chest, chewed up, spit out, rubbed in the bloody dirt, and then super glued back together with your tears.

Brilliantly breath-stealing. Just go read it if this is at all something that you think you’re into. I'm giving this one a rare five star because it is deserving and this book is the reason why I am so miserly with my five stars!

Whispers In The Dark by Laurel HIghtower

Whispers In The Dark - Laurel HIghtower

I’m going to be honest here and say that I’m not a major fan of police procedural type books, movies or tv but I’ll always make an exception when several someones tell me I need to pay attention to something and that’s why I decided to read Whispers In The Dark. People on my Twitter feed would not shut up about it and now that I’ve read it I can understand the positive buzz.

Rose is a sniper with a painful past and when the book begins she is in a standoff with an irrational man. The scene is intense and shows Rose is calm, cool and knows what she’s doing but this event is more than it seems. Rose is also more than she seems and soon after finds herself and her family embroiled in a battle for their lives. The stakes are high and the revelations are chilling. You’ll have to read the book to discover them though because I am not a spoiler of books.

The best thing about this story, besides the history and the creep-factor and the ever-lurking dread, were the characters and their very complicated relationships with each other. They’re flawed, realistic, relatable - all of those things, and I really enjoyed reading their stories and reactions to events. Life is often messy, imperfect, frustrating, and disappointing and this book felt real to me because of the character’s interactions with each other and the realism and emotion written into the scenes. I still find it difficult to believe this novel was a debut. That sort of blows my mind.

I’m glad I listened to my horror people and gave this book a chance. I can easily recommend it to anyone looking to escape reality for a while and fall into a tension-filled novel with unforgettable characters.

THe Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel - Grady Hendrix

I’m a little late to this one so I’ll only add my one cent instead of my usual two. You’re welcome, lol. Also, everyone else has already said all the things and said them better than I ever could at this point.

 

So I'll start off with my complaint because, sorry for those who don’t know, I’m kind of a jerk. This book about proper southern housewives and the possible pasty-ass vampire in their midst is set in the ’90s and I continually felt as if I were reading a book set in the ’70s. It might be because the whole housewife under the thumb of her man is rather foreign to me and it feels  outdated in the ’90s but I could probably chalk this up to different life experiences. Anyhow, I pretended it was set in the late ’70s and it was easier to swallow the fact that these ladies were feeling so beholden to their menfolk. And, argggghhh, these men. They are all so TERRIBLE. Terrible, horrible, evil, selfish creatures who were rude and condescending and infuriating whenever they were on the page.  I’m not even talking about the vampiric one either. He’s even worse but at least he has a bit of an excuse. He IS a monster. He is expected to behave like a monster (and damn does he ever!) The rest of these dudes are simply vile humans and I’m so glad all men weren’t like this in the ’90s and that’s all I have to say about that.

 

Whew, sorry about that. The rest of the book is fantastic. It’s full of dark humor and takes its time with the horror. The opening chapters set the scene and bring the characters and their daily struggles to life but when the horror happens hold on tight because things get creepy, disturbing, and gross. These ladies are smart and when no one will listen to them (see above) after children start disappearing and other horrible things happen, they have to take matters into their own hands and things get gloriously grisly. 

 

“Let me tell you something there’s nothing nice about Southern Ladies.”

 

I’d like to see a sequel where the husbands are taken care of properly in the end. And when I say taken care of properly, I mean served up on a platter instead of being waited on by their ladies. Sorry, but I can only speaketh the truth.

You Are Not Alone

You Are Not Alone  - Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
I've read both THE WIFE BETWEEN US (5 stars) & AN ANONYMOUS GIRL (4 stars) and love/liked them but this one didn't manage to hit as hard with me. The secrets didn't thrill or disturb me very much but that doesn't mean you won't love it. I also listened on audio which comes with its own set of challenges.

Things start off when a young woman named Shay witnesses a woman jump to her death right before her eyes. Shay decides to look into this lovely mysterious woman and it leads her to more lovely mysterious women and eventually she believes she's become one of these lovely mysterious women but nothing is as it seems. And that's all I'll say. This is a mystery, after all, and I am not a spoiler or books.

I should've been a blurb writer with this talent, right?

My problem with the story is the lead character of Shay. I've glanced at a few reviews and I do believe this is a matter of taste and probably mood because no one has mentioned this but me. So I will be the jerk today. What else is new? Anyhow, I'm just going to come right out and say it. Shay was a bit of a sad sack. I found it difficult to understand her or to empathize with her. She makes many poor choices and sometimes comes across as impossibly naive when it comes to the "mysterious women" as well as other things in her life. To be completely honest, she drove me a little nuts.

There's another thing too. I listened to this book as an unabridged audio and it features many female characters and none of them were fleshed out enough for my liking so I continually mixed them up. The timeline also switches around and there was a time or ten when I found myself confused. Who is this person? What is her deal? What year is this? Who am I again? I'd recommend reading this one as a paperback if you are as easily befuddled as myself.

I sound so negative. Maybe this one should be more of a 2 3/4's star? I don't know. This is why I despise numeric ratings But I do know that I didn't hate it or "not like it". The revelations were not earth-shattering but it was entertaining enough to keep me going so I'm sticking with the three. A low three but a three nonetheless. Perhaps I have finally died inside and you should probably listen to the other reviews instead! That's my recommendation anyway.
 

 

The Festering Ones by S.H. Cooper

The Festering Ones - S.H. Cooper

If you like your horror with creepy many armed lady monsters who jump out of a hidey-hole in the woods and grab a man and drag him down to their lair where he’s never seen or heard from again, you’re going to love this one! I might know a few folks I’d like to lead down that path myself, haha (I, eh, kid?).

Anyhow, if you’re looking to escape our dreadful reality for a little bit this book will help you out. It’s full of adventure and monsters and a main protagonist attempting to make sense of her past and prove that what she witnessed as a child was not all in her imagination. Faith was only 9 when she was allowed to go on her first hunting trip with her dad but the trip took a nightmarish turn and she’s spent the rest of her life wanting to uncover the truth. What she finds delighted me. Things get weird very early on and continue to escalate as truths and secrets are revealed. I love a good secret, especially a monstrous one! I’ll keep this short because I don’t want to ruin it for you and it’s 120 something pages.

Faith is a great character. She’s strong-willed, she’s nosey and determined and fearless. I hope there is a book 2 because there are things I NEED to know because I am nosey too and I would love to read it!

 

 

On The Night Border by James Chambers

On The Night Border - James  Chambers
On The Night Border is a collection of dark stories that has a little something for everyone fond of horror fiction. Oftentimes a collection like this can feel repetitive and fatigue me so much that I need a break from it but that didn’t happen here. I never knew quite what I was getting into with each story and that’s the best feeling!

I’m not going to summarize every story because we are currently in an apocalypse and who has the time to read all that when you could be reading the book?! Also? Still lazy over here.

There were no badly written stories here nor were there any duds. There was only one story, the last one actually, that didn’t thrill me because it was about infectious disease and quarantine camps and death and this is all something I’m trying my best to avoid reading about right now. Totally not the story’s fault though.
 
My favorite stories are these:

Marco Polo: This one was pure grisly fun and I loved it. It reminded me of that old show Tales from the Darkside. Anyone but me remember that show with its wonderfully ghastly tagline: ‘there is, unseen by most, an Underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit, a Dark side. The Dark Side is always there, waiting for us to enter, waiting to enter us.’? Mwahaha. This story and many of the stories in this book would fit right in on that show. If someone rich and famous is reading my dumb reviews PLEASE REBOOT TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE. This story, in particular, is dark and twisty and a little manic. The perfect type of story to escape into.

Sum’bitch and the Arakadile This story is a tale of monsters and monstrous mothers and it made me sad for a few reasons I will not spoil. It’s short and to the point and might just poke you in the heart if you have one.

Mnemonicide: My notes say only YIKES! Haha, so I’m going on memory here. This one is about the purging of memories. We’ve all likely said and/or done things, maybe seen a few things, or met some people that we’d like removed from our brains. One dude decides to go for it in the most selfish way possible. This one BOTHERED me so much! You must read it and get bothered too!

What’s in the Bag, Dad? The setting is a traveling circus and ever since falling in absolute love with Katherine Dunn’s GEEK LOVE, I have a huge soft spot for those. There’s magic and pain and again some sadness here. It also kept me guessing which kept me reading because I am nosy and had to know what the hell was in the bag!

The Driver, Under A Cheshire Moon: Well, this sucker packs a punch. It’s dark but it is the best kind of dark. It lulls you into thinking one thing and then it sideswipes you with the truth of the situation. I ♥ it.

Living Dead: is a lighter-hearted story about the lovelorn and the living dead. This is my kind of story. And if you like this one you should also read Terry Maggert’s COOL TO THE TOUCH as a nice little companion piece. You will thank me later, haha.

I’ll stop here before I end up carrying on about all of the stories. Do yourself a favor and read this one if you need some fiction that’ll transport you to another world for a little bit. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
 
 
 

 

Dead to Her by Sarah Pinborough

Dead to Her  - Sarah Pinborough

Dead to Her is Sarah Pinborough’s follow up to her pitch-black perfection of a thriller ‘Behind Her Eyes’. I LOVED that book so much. It was moody and evil and filled with horrible, selfish people doing horrible things to each other. Dead to Her is filled with an equal amount of evil and selfish people too but it took me a long time to warm up to the story because they were all beautiful, wealthy second wives and I was just “eh, who gives a cats bum about these witches and their inner thoughts”. This is where you call me a jerk and I totally agree.

“They were all poison one way or another and maybe she was the only one honest enough to see it.”

But somewhere along the line when the lusty interludes and evil goings-on began, my attention was caught and I couldn’t wait to see the devastation hit them all hard. This is the part where some people might want to tune out but I was there for it. I’m not going to pen a detailed review, this is a lurid thriller and the fun of them should be experienced by the reader and never spoiled beforehand.

This wasn’t a perfect read for me but I enjoyed it once it hooked me and I got over my dislike of the grasping second wife trope. There is a little voodoo, a little passion, a whole helluva lot of betrayal, delectable villains, and some nicely haunting turns of phrase as well as my favorite thing: secrets!

“Even in the sunshine, it seemed ghosts fought for breath.”

Theme Music by T. Marie Vandelly

Theme Music - T. Marie Vandelly


“Come on. Run screaming into the night with me.”

Theme Music is my kind of book. Admittedly, my kind of book changes with the wind but today my kind of book is snarky and bloody and emotional and a rollercoaster of “what the hell is happening here?!!”

The prologue was HORRIFYING and it completely hooked me. Read it, if you love it I think you’re going to love the book. If it’s too much to take, read the book anyway but don’t blame me! This book contains one of the best prologues I’ve read in maybe forever. It made me cringe, laugh and question my sanity for the laughter. That’s some skill right there and it continues throughout the book. I LOVED the dark humor of the heroine so much. Words cannot express how much. Without it, this book may have been entirely too dark to handle at this point in my life. As written, it was my kind of perfection.

I don’t want to spoil the book for you so I’m going to be my typical lazy self and tell you very little. Win/win, right? You should be spending your time reading the book instead of my stupid review, anyway. So here’s the plot. It’s a simple one on the surface but it’s really not simple at all. Dixie rents a house. It is probably haunted. This is why she moves in despite a brief moment where she thinks perhaps this maybe isn’t the best of plans.

“I don’t think it’s right for me... To disturb the dead”

But she does it anyway, haha! See why I love Dixie? She begins to investigate the decades-old murders and discovers the truth may not be the truth she’s always assumed was the truth. How’s that for a sentence?! Ha, reviewer of the year award right there. Anyway, that’s all I’m saying and it’s likely too much.

This book has echoes of The Amityville Horror and The Haunting of Hill House and all of those chilling and blood-splattered haunted house stories we all love so much but it is told from Dixie’s point of view and as much as we might love her, we’re not always sure we can trust her but through it all, I never doubted my kinship with her. She’s morbid and she’s obsessed and she keeps the reader, as well as everyone around her, a little off-kilter.

“I only lied to you because I didn’t want to tell you the truth”

 

This is no doubt a wonderfully obsessive, creepy haunted house tale but it’s absolutely captivating and immersive because of the writing. Dixie drags you into her head and her whacked out world and you fall right in never quite knowing if Dixie is telling herself the truth. She also has a beautiful way of attributing scents to people, one that isn’t included nearly enough in the horror novels I typically read. “There was a warm, somnolent maple scent filling the air around him. Garrett smelled like that sometimes, too, as though he had been baking all night at a low temperature.” I don’t why but I LOVED that lovely sensory description so very much.

I loved this book with all that’s left of my heart if I haven’t made that clear enough yet. I will not say a negative thing. It kept me guessing throughout. My notes are filled with all the wrong guesses and here I was thinking I was getting better at this mystery game having read way too many lurid thrillers of late! The author was able to pull me in at a time when my brain was terribly distracted by - oh everything. She caught my attention with the creeps and the humor but she kept me with the strong emotional ties and the originally written heroine.

Amazing stuff. Go read it! And then make all of your horror pals read it.
 

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica

The Other Mrs. - Mary Kubica

Hmm, I think I liked this one. I'm giving it a 3 1/2 and am not bumping up to a 4. This is not going to be a review. I am going to spew out thoughts as they come to me because I don't have it in me to write up anything remotely clear-headed at this moment in time.

I didn't like the main character, Sadie, very much at all. She was the definition of an unreliable narrator and her behavior drove me to the edge but because I am so damn nosy I had to keep reading to figure out all of the secrets (or have them told to me because I wasn't able to figure them all out). I DID like the fact that her behavior was pretty much explained in the latter half (see, I do like things!) but I'd be lying if I said her character was someone I sympathized with throughout. I did not. I sympathized more with the teenage girl whose house Sadie and her family invade. The girl they have little patience for. The girl who just lost her mother to suicide. I felt they didn't care to understand her grief and her anger and her rebellion. That bothered me quite a bit.

There were some things I felt were dropped/not explained well enough but it held my attention for the most part and the last 1/4 was excellent.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

I will admit straight off that I’m not a huge fan of action and sci-fi stories. I know, I am terrible. There's no need to tell me. I don’t know why I am the way that I am but that’s how I am. So I went into this after hearing over and over again that it was one of the best books of 2019, and hoping with every hope in my being that the creep factor would be enough to keep me going. If it wasn’t enough and I had to DNF this book I would have to be the lone voice of negativity and I don’t like being that person and truly it would’ve been my own fault. Fortunately for me, the horror vibe was creepy enough to keep me going through all of the action/adventure/sci-fi bits when I otherwise might've noped out but what truly surprised me was how much I wanted to keep reading to find out how everything ended for the two characters in the story. The complicated relationship that develops ever so slowly between caver Gyre and her guide Em was more than enough for me. I’m a sucker for flawed and complex relationships and this is a great one. There’s a lot of pain and hurt and backstory and damage here and I loved getting down into it and watching it all get picked apart and brought to the surface.

 

This book is overwhelmingly claustrophobic and the atmosphere is painstakingly put down on the page. There may even be a monster lurking in the cave! I almost forgot about that bit of added terror. Trust me, you’ll want to read this book somewhere bright. Somewhere with a lot of air. Maybe somewhere you can hear the birds sing a lovely song to you. It is that intense. There is also some squirm worthy and delightful, depending on your level of weirdness, body horror that happens here. Gyre, the caver, has been fitted and physically modified into her suit as were some other folks we meet along the way but I won’t say anything more about that, nor will I tell you about the plot because I don’t want to spoil and maybe I’m a little lazy. But I will tell you that some of that stuff really made me cringe a bit in horror and I love it when a book hits me that way.

There are many 5 star reviews for this book and I’m going to be here giving it a four and ½ and I won’t be rounding up because of my personal preferences and because some of it was a little bit of a slog for me, if you want to know the honest truth It is not a book I’d reread again but I wasn’t disappointed with the horror bits and the emotional wringer the characters put me through. Definitely recommended and an incredible debut.

Full Brutal by Kristopher Triana

Full Brutal - Kristopher Triana

This book will not be for everyone but it was definitely for me. It managed to take my mind off of the current hellish timeline we’re caught up in and thrust me into someone else's for a few hours.

But, yeah, this book is not for everyone. It is extreme horror and by extreme I mean extremely gross and violent. Prepare thyself.

“I want to fuck you with a frozen dog turd.”
(note to myself: remove this most excellent line before the cross-post to those prudes at Amazon!)

It’s funny too, sometimes. Or at least I thought so. And I desperately needed some pitch black humor in my life at this moment in time.

Things start out normally enough. Kim is one of those spoiled little rich cheerleader types that most of us love to hate and by us I mean me, and maybe you too if you’re busy reading a review of a book called Full Brutal but I’m not here to judge. Her daddy gives her whatever her black heart desires, as well as all the freedom in the world but she is deeply unhappy. She can’t feel things like the other girls do. Boo-hoo. Woe is her. Blah, blah, get over yourself and who cares, right? Well, this girl decides to be proactive and tries to fix her ennui and her whining and believes life will be worth living once she finds the thing that gives her a thrill. You can't fault her for that, right? She thinks that thing might be losing her virginity but soon enough she discovers that sex is blah like everything else but she’s a girl who learns from her mistakes. She learns that it’s the thrill of the dark and the dangerous that make her heart and other body parts race.

I’m going to keep from spoiling the ugly surprises that await within these pages because I think the impact will be stronger if you don’t know what’s coming. I spoiled myself because I read the blurb and skimmed a review or two before stopping my nosy self. You should know that this story features a whole heck of a lot of trigger warnings. Quite possibly all of them with the exception of prolonged animal torture (but don’t quote me on that because my brain is not working okay right now). Sometimes things bother me depending on my mood, the day, or the color of the sky but there was nothing here that made me ever want to shut it off and pour bleach in my ears.

I enjoyed this immensely despite knowing I probably shouldn’t. Kim is a monster. One of those human monsters that walk around looking like everyone else and pretending to be like the others. Full Brutal is cruel and evil and so very wrong but the fact that the perpetrator of all of these horrible misdeeds is a beautiful teenage girl worked for me. I’m not even going to pretend to lie, if it had been a grown man telling this story and finding such joy and glee in these atrocities I might’ve pulled the plug, I refuse to think about that too much or attempt to explain myself so please don't ask. You like what you like, you know? And this book held me in its gore-filled grasp until the very last word.

Narration Notes: Dani George does a decent job with the narration. A few of the guys sounded a bit rough but they didn’t really matter anyway, lol.

The Other People by C.J. Tudor

The Other People - C.J. Tudor

“We’re all capable of good and bad. Very few of us show our real faces to the world for fear that the world might stare back and scream.”

 

Well isn't that the truth, ha!


This is a book that needed my full attention. Due to the world being turned upside down and inside out, my brain is a bit of a mess and thus this review will likely be messier than most because I’m already forgetting so very much.

Basically it’s about a grieving man. He lost his wife and his young daughter in one fell swoop. He cannot move on because he believes he saw his daughter pass by in a car the day she was murdered. He is certain the child was his daughter and he believes she’s been kidnapped and he spends every breathing moment attempting to find her. It’s eating him alive. His searching leads him to the dark web and to say more is to say too much.

This was a well written, twisty turny thriller with protagonists I didn’t hate. These people were so desperate that the desperation nearly leaped off the pages and stabbed me in the heart. This book gets a lot of points for taking care to create and maintain a strong sense of desperation and emotion and endless pain and regret all the while keeping the stakes high and forcing me to keep guessing at just what the heck was going on. I would’ve never figured this all out even if I’d been able to give it my all.

However, there’s a LOT going on here. At times I felt my brain scream for mercy. I think I tried to read this at the worst possible moment in time and that’s not the fault of the story.

Flowers In the Attic by VC Andrews

Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

 

I haven’t read this book since I was a teen. When I was a kid my morbid friends and I would buy these books and pass them amongst each other until the pages nearly fell out. I think one of us might’ve even used her church collection fund to buy a few after skipping out on church and going roller skating instead, oops. I have to say it was money well spent. I still have my original (now moldy) copy that has writing inside from those friends and I will likely keep it forever for that reason alone. It’s one of the few items that survived my tumultuous childhood and only because I hid it and wouldn’t let it go. This revisit brought back a lot of memories and I credit this book for creating my thirst for dysfunctional stories about beautiful people keeping secrets and doing horrible and atrocious things to each other. To this day I cannot get enough of that sort of thing! So thank you, VC Andrews. I sure wish you had been able to live a long and healthy life.

 

So yeah, let’s get this out of the way. The writing is fantastically over-dramatic and if I heard “golly lolly” or “lolly day” or even plain old “golly” one more time I thought my eyeballs were going to get stuck somewhere up in my brain. Whoever on this planet ever said that?! No one in my circle of sometimes naughty friends but I don’t remember that sticking out to me as a kid. What I do remember (and who on earth could ever forget?) was the love between the kids, the abuse, the loss and, oh loard, the incest! I don’t care how cute brother Chris was, you do NOT kiss your brother but then again I wasn’t trapped in an attic with my siblings so who am I to judge? Anyhow, it’s all here and the rollout is slow so hold on to your heart. It is as awful and chilling and horrifying and painful to read now in 2020 as it was back in the ’80s when this book was everywhere. 

 

The adults in this story are human monsters. Or they’re dead and perfect angels. There really isn’t any middle ground. I think this is what attracted me so much to this story. My home life was a nightmarish stew of anger and grief and unpredictability until I got out and this book made things look pretty damn normal. These kids were living with fear and anxiety and out of control emotions too and so much worse. Their emotions were raw and real even if the dialogue was ridiculous at times (most times!)  At least I wasn’t stuck in an attic with my three siblings while my greedy and weak monster of a mother bought jewels and plotted . . . well, I won’t spoil that!

 

Anyhow, if you haven’t ever read this book and you like horror (and this is indeed horror - this is a hill I will die on) do yourself a favor and give this one a read. It lingers around for a reason. I’d take off half a star for that awful dialogue but I can’t bring myself to do it because I have such undying love for this book for helping a messed up girl through some very rough times.

 

Content Warnings: Oh there are so many but child abuse and dubious con sex might be the two biggest if you don’t count the incest!

 

This quote. Oh, how I love this quote:

 

“My anguish was always like a mountain of rage.”

 

 

The Worst Is Yet To Come by S.P. Miskowski

The Worst is Yet to Come - S.P. Miskowski

I wrote a review. It's a freaking miracle.

“This is the one. She’s no good, you’ll see.” (Ooops, I feel called out, lol)

Tasha doesn’t have any close friends. She doesn’t fit the mold of the overly tanned and waxed crew in her school and when she catches the eye of new girl Briar, she feels an instant kinship and steps in when she spies her getting harrassed by the class bully. They soon start hanging out in a whimsical and overgrown garden (where I’d like to live forever) but the bully finds them and things take a sinister turn. There are things in their tiny town that lurk and feast on pain, suffering and darkness and it seems they are just getting started.

I never quite knew where this story was headed and I loved that. I loved the off-kilter feeling of this book. There’s a feeling of inescapable dread that blankets everything past and present and I absolutely loved that too. I mean, you know the worst is coming but how bad is the worst going to get? And will any of them ever be okay again? I had to know because I was worried for these kids.

Teen girls and high emotions and secrets all make for a potent mix that is irresistible to malignant spirits and to myself, apparently. The two teens, Tasha and Briar, are fantastically, messily flawed and their parents aren’t any better. There is so much dysfunction in this story that feeds right into the malignant forces hiding in the corners. It all meshes so well.

As I was reading, I discovered this book is only one piece of a world created by the author in several other books. I think I would have benefited from reading those stories first because #1 I am nosy and #2 there are a few loose ends and comments in regards to previous events mentioned here that I didn’t fully comprehend. Maybe it was my distracted brain? That’s entirely possible these days but I can’t answer that because *cries* I READ THINGS OUT OF ORDER AGAIN! Anyhow, this book does stand decently all on its lonesome and I’m going to read the other books whenever I get my life back to some state of normal (fingers crossed).

If you’re looking for an intoxicating read that doesn't throw all of its scares in your face (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) than I feel pretty good about saying this is the book for you. Look out for the slow creep because that’s what’s gonna get you here!

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston

I apologize in advance to this book because I have no mental energy left today to compose a thought. I read this book to escape from the world and let me tell you it worked. This is the most adorable, sexy-sweet romance and I LOVED it. It's set in some sort of alternate world where a woman is the president and her son falls in love with a prince and there isn't a lot of pain and suffering (not that there's anything wrong with the pain and the suffering!) but seriously, right now, I could read this sort of thing all the live long day.

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