I know everyone says this but I wholeheartedly agree... why does January always feel like the month that's never going to end?! It's funny, because the last few months of the year fly by at lightening speed, here and gone before you can even acknowledge them, and then January comes in and it's like that houseguest who doesn't get the hint and never wants to leave.
And of course, this past month was one of my worst reading months in a long time! Not the way I had hoped to kick off the new year. I read a total of 6 books, but I also have to cut myself some slack because my publicity workload picked up again and as my client workload increases, my free time for reading always decreases.
Plus, we all know it's not HOW MUCH you read, but WHAT you read that really matters so let's take a look and see if I made smart choices with the books I chose to spend my time with....
My Husband by Maud Ventura
Good lord this book.
It was cute at first. The whole woman married 15 years and still obsessing over her husband thing was a little relatable. Like, look how handsome he is. And I can't believe I haven't lost an ounce of love for this man, honestly I think I love him more today than I did when we first got married. So adorable it kind of makes you want to vomit.
But then you read a little more and you realize, ok, yup, sooooo this lady is clearly a little unhinged and is convincing herself of all this horrible shit she's made up in her head about how she thinks her husband doesn't love her as much as she loves him and she's tracking all the things she believes is proof of this in her little journals and she's comparing their relationship to all the crap she reads online and in magazines and she's faking being perfect to make sure he doesn't try to leave her and now I'm thinking to myself why I am still reading this? I should totally put it down. I don't think I can read an entire book of this crap. And then she just starts losing her shit completely, like going full out nutter.
And so now I'm reading it just to see where it's going to go because it's gotta go SOMEwhere right? And then whoa... that ending?! Ok book. You redeemed yourself.
You're a fucked up little thing for sure.
Grasshands by Kyle Winkler
Oh hell no. Do not recommend. This was not good despite the fact that it sounded right up my alley. Librarians identify a strange moss growing on the books in their basement and when people eat it, they have immediate knowledge of the information contained within. But the moss, that nefarious weird ass moss, is working its evil magic on them when they do. There's a big bad moss monster called Grasshands and these little tippy tap tickling spiders that crawl into your mouth and kind of... I don't know... hibernate in there and attack you when provoked. Sounds interesting, right?
The writing was really rough. It's trippy and weird but not in a good way. I wanted to DNF it a couple times but I bought it at full paperback price so I was determined to get my money's worth. It was so not worth the money or the time.
I know it's early in the year still but I'm pretty sure this will end up on my worst-of list for 2025. Sigh.
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace by Matthieu Simard
This is one that #bookstagrammademedoit got right!
"Peace is a momentary void between two conflicts."
Throwing all the stars at this grief fueled novella in which a couple buys a house in the country in an attempt to start over and move beyond their haunted past. Only, their new small town is not so welcoming and the townsfolk appear to be fighting a history that won't release them from its clutches either.
It's bleak and beautiful and eerily atmospheric. It's full of lies and secrets, disappointments and hostilities. It's about the things that keep people together while also actively pulling them apart. And it's surprisingly kind of ballsy, hiding the end in its beginning.
This book haunted me as I read it. I can only imagine what it will do to me now that it's over.
Grief fiction is definitely becoming a favorite genre of mine.
Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism by Mike Mignola
There are few things that scare the beejezus out of me but puppets, especially marionettes, are creepy as fuck and make my skin crawl something fierce so tucking them into a horror novel... oh lordy! But I really like Bad Hand Books so I took the plunge.
And I'm glad I did because I really, really enjoyed it!
Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism starts off slow and atmospheric. It's set in a church rectory in a small town in Sicily that's been ravaged by war. A group of orphaned children were taken in by the nuns of the church and then suffered the unexpected loss of their priest. So in comes Father Gaetano. A young man of the cloth who agrees to take on the temporary work of teaching the children the Catechism. Many of their hearts have been hardened by the brutal loss of their parents at such a young age and they actively challenge the young priest, questioning God and his allowance of such horrible events. Gaetano realized he has his work cut out for him but it's while he befriends the shy nine year old Sabastiano that he learns of an abandoned puppet theatre in the basement of the rectory. The puppets, he hopes, will help him teach his bible lessons and reconnect the children to God in a fun and interactive way.
But the puppets... well... they have other ideas.
I'm sure you can guess where things go from here. A heavy wooden box long hidden in the basement. Stuffed full of handcrafted creepy ass dolls. Just waiting for someone to come along and release them? It's all fun and games until the sun goes down and the strings come loose.
It's a quick, engrossing read that's really well written. It's dark and chilling and sure, there's a lot of set up and exploration into the church and the nuns and Father Gaetano before the good stuff really starts to kick in but there's enough build up and tension working its way through the storyline that I was ok with the whole thing. Oh, and... I'm only just now learning that the author is the dude behind Hellboy.
Julia by Sandra Newman
Sandra Newman's Country of Ice Cream Star is one of my all time favorite books. Nothing she's written since has come close in my opinion but I'm always excited when I see a new book from her. And somehow this one passed under my radar for a while. I was browsing our new B&N in the science fiction section and nearly whooped when I saw it sitting there.
Julia is a feminist retelling of Orwell's classic novel told through the lens of... well... Julia, where Winston is almost relegated to a full fledged background character, and I have to admit... I wasn't really the biggest fan of 1984. I read it more than 20 years ago and gave it a low rating but didn't write a review for it and god help me if I can remember what I didn't like about it or the specifics outside of the obvious - big brother is always watching and privacy is a thing of the past and people will get tortured and killed for getting caught just thinking anti-BB thoughts - ... but honestly, I quite enjoyed this modernized version.
I see a lot of people bashing it and finding fault with it but I thought it was creative as hell and kind of fun too. I mean, I just admitted that I had mostly forgotten what was in the original and 100% can't remember how it ended so ... what am I really comparing it to, you know? For me, it's totally it's own thing!
You should give it a shot. Maybe you can help remind me of the ways in which it deviated from Winston's POV.
When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy
The deeper into the book I got, the more certain I was that this was going to be a 5 star read for me but the ending messed with the pace of the book and felt a little too rushed. I was one hundred percent strapped in and hanging on for dear life until those final pages. Did Cassidy always know that was how it would end, or did he sit there after the big boss fight and wonder "what now"? You know that meme /tik tok thing that's been going around where the person's looking at things and deciding "hmm, no... eh... oh hehehe yeaaah", saying yes to the worst possible choice. I dunno, I kinda felt like that's what he did there at the end.
Don't let my reaction to those final pages scare you aware though. The book as a whole was pretty bad ass. You think it's going to be your typical scary werewolf story but it's so much more than that while also not that at all. It's about jerk fathers and lonely kids and making bad choices and living with their consequences. It's part Twilight Zone, part survival horror, and a whole lot of omg I can't stop turning the pages to see what's going to happen next.
I love what Cassidy's been doing and how he kind of reinvents himself with every book he writes. Can't wait to see what's next.
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