Not sure what got in the way, but this was a low reading month for me overall, with a total of 9 books completed and one read for publicity purposes (which I won't include here.)
Maybe it was the change in weather, maybe it was just the page counts this time around. And sadly there were no 5 star reads....
Either way, come check out which books I spent my time with September!
The Monsters are Here by Lori D'Angelo
This is a wonderful #forthcoming collection of flash and short stories about monsters of all kinds - #vampires #werewolves #witches #ghosts #ghouls #aliens and of course, the worst monster of all... humans!
Lori's debut contains some of the most human monsters and monstrous humans I've read in a while. The relatability factor is high with this one.
The Monsters Are Here is a unique mix of horror and urban fantasy with a little bit of sci-fi thrown in for fun and that makes it the perfect halloween sidekick.
And seriously, have you seen this cover?!
I can't remember who I saw reading or recommending this one but I grabbed it when I was out book shopping last week because it sounded really good and the cover certainly doesn't hurt.
Though it's set on a sheep farm in 2001 in Northern England at the start of a foot and mouth outbreak, The Borrowed Hills reads like a western. Men lose entire flocks of sheep and are in financial ruin. Desperate times call for desperate measures and a group of men make a decision that will alter the course of their lives.
Within these pages you will encounter endless violence, both of the animal and human kind, botched robberies, thwarted love, and endless rolling green landscapes. The writing makes for a stunning debut, even if the story gets a little lopsided at times.
Those poor poor sheep...
The Graveyard Shift by ML Rio
When you work the night shift and need a smoke, you end up at the local graveyard because it's the closest place off campus to sneak a cig. You meet other nicotine addicted, sleepless, late night weirdos there too and develop a kind of unspoken insomniac club. All's cool until the night you all notice a freshly dug hole in the ground and let Occam's razor take care of the rest.
This fungal thriller is a really quick read that flows fast off the page but with all loose ends and no resolution?! Are you being serious right now? That's how this book is going to end?!
I think my digital review copy is missing a couple chapters because there is no possible way it just hangs there like that. Send it back to the author. They have more work to do. They failed to understand the assignment.
Arrrrrgh!
Creatures by Crissy Van Meter
I kept eyeing this one in the bookstore, the cover was gorgeous but the jacket copy felt eh, so I would pick it up and put it back, until I saw it in a used book store for a couple of bucks a few weeks ago, and thought, this is a sign.
The book opens with a woman waking up the day before her wedding to find a dead whale beached on the island. She can't help but believe it's an omen. Her husband to be, a fisherman, has been out at sea and there's been no sight of his boat and her estranged mother has arrived at her doorstep unannounced. From there, we're rocked back and forth in time as she recounts the lessons she learned while living with her drug dealing dad and the painful longing for a mother who was never around, while she tries to move forward in the grip of grief and uncertainty in a relationship that never quite seems to be what she needs it to be.
I loved the writing and Meter's overall approach to the storyline until the infidelity came in. I wasn't expecting it, though as I reread the jacket copy, I can see how it's kind of written between the lines there. I'm just not a fan of that as a plot device and it can be kind of triggering for me. Co-dependency and the lasting damage of bad parenting are also themes that ebb and flow throughout.
Looking over other reviews, I see that this book is quite polarizing. And I agree with both sides - it's kind of dreary and frustrating, but I also found the book to be quietly beautiful.
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
This book was sent to me by @sherrystaceybg5 quite a few years ago, who felt strongly that I would like it and I'm embarrassed to say that I am only just now getting to it but man was she right. This was right up my alley.
Narrated by a son named Daniel, the book starts at the end, with him searching for his sister, though we aren't yet privy to how or why they've been separated. But we soon come to understand that his father brought him and his sister out into the middle of an undeveloped forest, close to where their mother used to live, and together, they've built a home of their own. They live an isolated life and are taught to live off the land and to fend for themselves. The dad makes money bare knuckle fighting and cashing in on favors owed until the owner of the land he's living on discovers him and comes to collect his due.
It's a quietly violent and atmospheric book about family that plays around with gender biases, while also hinging heavily on themes of survival and revenge. It's definitely a must read for fans of books like Andrew Kivak's The Bear and Eden Lepucki's California.
William by Mason Coile
I listened to this on audio and quite enjoyed it in that format. The pacing and narration were spot on and made for a fun travel companion on my ride back and forth to work.
A strange haunted house novel in which AI is the ghost? Oh yes, please.
A robot who believes something dark has infiltrated his system and causes him to terrorize Henry, his pregnant wife Lily, and their two guests? Hello darkness my old friend!
Bloody and violent deaths in a state of the art house that has locked you in with no means to escape? Uhm, bring on the body count!
A twist you don't see coming that turns everything onto its back? Jaw. Say hello to the ground!
Well played Coile. Well. Played.
Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis - Goff
A zombie apocalypse in Ireland. Orpen, a young girl who was raised on an isolated island, is now escorting her mother's ill girlfriend in a wheelbarrow through a barren, haunted landscape seeking the last known safe haven, a city of potential hope and home to a rumored female force called the Banshees.
More heart than horror, Last Ones Left Alive is a solid and engaging read but it isn't bringing anything new to the genre. A similar vibe to Megan Hunter's The End We Start From, the protagonist's optimism and tenacity shine brightly through the dark and sloggy terrain. Orpen's inability to give up, her maddening desire to locate the city, and the rigorous training she received back home make it impossible not to root for her.
The pacing is slow but tolerable, with alternating chapters that bounce between Orpen's current journey on the mainland and the circumstances on the island that led her to flee its relative safety.
I'm ready for a 5 star read, you guys. These 3 and 4 star books I've been reading lately are ok and all but I'm ready to be wowed. (Sigh).
I read Davidson's In the Valley of the Sun and love love LOVED it! So I had ridiculously high hopes for this one. And it started out with so much promise, too.
It had the perfect 'wtf is going on here' energy, and took its time setting everything up, nice and slow, bouncing back and forth between two timelines, giving us the history of Redfern Hill, the property our protagonist inherits from her estranged grandfather.
And when the weirder shit started ramping up, I was still into it, and found it harder and harder to put the book down. I wanted to know what was up with the whispers and the vines and locked coal closet.
But then the book just lost its shit and went all cosmic ancient entity on me, and felt a bit Poltergeist / At World's End / Nope-ish there at the end, don't you think?
And hello... I mean damn people, never go back into the house once you leave it. Especially when the thing you're running from is hungry and angry. Don't you watch the movies? It never ends well.
Not gonna lie. There were more than a few eyerolls during the grand finale there.
I was excited to land a review copy of this one and had high hopes for it, and boy did it live up to the hype.
Oooh so many echoes of Follow Me to Ground and Eartheater in this deeply atmospheric Appalachian folk story of a secluded family who, for generations, spend their lives tending to the cranberry bog on their property. And the bog, in return, is supposed to bless the eldest son with a bog-wife, a vegetal human-like being that will assist them in carrying on the family line.
The Haddesley children maintain the ritual, but the bog fails to deliver, and everything the siblings believed to be true is coming into question, crumbling around them like the walls and ceilings of the ancestral mansion they call home.
The polar opposite of her sun-blanched western novel, Desert Creatures, but just as intense and strange, The Bog Wife swims within a variety of genres - historical, gothic, fungal/eco, body horror - while sinking its fingers and toes into odd family rituals and claustrophobic landscape and legacies.
No comments:
Post a Comment