Hey book nerds!
This month I’ve been going back to some of my early NetGalley approvals to try to increase my feedback ratio and finally give feedback to the publishers who gave me a chance when I was just starting out in the reviewing world. Back in the early days I was so excited about the idea of reviewing that I gave little thought to how many books I could get through in a reasonable time. It feels good to be chipping away at some books I’ve wanted to read for years.
I’m also looking forward to some future reads. In particular, I can’t wait to read my first Stephen Graham Jones book.
I’m currently keeping the people I know in Sydney in my thoughts as they face at least another four weeks in lockdown. I know some really incredible people who are all doing the right thing, like most people, but whose efforts are being undermined by the minority. My heart hurts for them.
I’d also like to personally thank our premier, Gladys, for the cancellation of my COVID vaccination appointments, which I’ve been waiting for for two months. There are plenty of angry people in regional NSW today; our vaccines are being given to Sydney Year 12 students. I could rant about how if the powers that be had acted decisively at the very beginning of this current outbreak, we would not be in this position now. But NSW doesn’t have Victoria’s premier … and that has made all the difference.
I found this YouTube video today that explains the situation here in Australia perfectly. Heads up: there’s plenty of swearing. It’s too good not to share, though.
Until next month, happy reading!
July Reads
- The Final Girl Support Group (SO. MUCH. FUN. My first Grady Hendrix read!)
- Kasey & Ivy (Kasey has to spend a month in hospital and she’s surrounded by old people)
- Snowflake (an exploration of mental health and a coming of age story)
- Dark Screams Volume Nine (one of the better horror anthologies I’ve read)
- The Haunted Heart of America (I wasn’t creeped out reading this alone in the dark)
- The Right Amount of Panic (there doesn’t appear to be a right amount of panic where women’s safety work is concerned)
- The Ugly Stepsister #1: The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back (I read a romance novel)
- Me Mam. Me Dad. Me. (domestic violence through the eyes of a child)
- Faithless (a father who has nothing left to lose is lost in his grief)
- The Astonishing Future of Alex Nobody (book of the month)
- Skydragon #1: Take to the Skies (I meant to start this series about a year ago)
- Skydragon #2: Fly Free (Skydragon and Firefighter are back)
- The 22 Murders of Madison May (a creepy guy stalks a woman across parallel universes)
Book Mail
A hilarious new adventure from the mega-bestselling author of Wolf Girl and Ninja Kid.
Hi there! I’m Pow Pow Pig!
Me and my friends didn’t make the A team … or the B team … or the C, D or E teams ….
We made the Z team!
How are we going to save the world when we were the last ones picked?!
Young reporter-in-training Kate and her mouse-accomplice Rupert are on board a train, to visit Kate’s mum in the Arctic.
But as soon as the train departs, mysterious things start happening.
A packet of ginger nuts goes missing…
A collection of gymnastics trophies are stolen…
And some ancient scrolls disappear…
Fellow passenger Madame Maude seems the most likely culprit, until a surprising – and delicious – twist turns the whole investigation on its head.
Come with Ollie and Bea on a HARE-raising adventure with a HOPPY ending!
Ollie is an owl who wears glasses. And Bea is a bunny with very big feet. They don’t know it yet, but they are about to be best friends. Can they help each other to find their OTTER-LY awesome inner superhero?
Join Ollie and Bea in this charming, funny, cute story about the joys of making friends and having fun. The perfect book for young readers who love to laugh.
Q. What’s the hardest part of learning to skate?
A. THE GROUND!
Ollie is having a HOOT on his rollerskates, but Bea is full of excuses for why she can’t join in. Will she realise that sometimes it’s okay to look silly, and that real friends don’t CARROT all if you have very big feet?
Ollie and Bea continue to charm in this super-cute series about the joys of friends and fun and lots of puns. The perfect book for young readers who love to laugh.
NetGalley
How do you survive hearing your family being brutally murdered over the phone? For Father Raul Figeuroa, all faith and hope are lost. Turning away from the priesthood behind, he retreats to his aunt’s empty farmhouse in upstate New York, hoping to drink himself to oblivion. But he’s not alone in the house. Something is trying to reach out to him. Or is he losing his grip on reality? When his childhood friend Felix comes to visit, things take a darker turn. The deeper they dig into the mystery, the closer they get to hell literally breaking loose.
They thought the island was the end. It was only the beginning…
Having survived the horrors of Savage Island, Grady is now stuck working for Gold, the psychopath who masterminded the gruesome competition. Sent on a “team-building exercise” in a remote castle, he starts to plot his escape.
Ben and Lizzie are in hiding, presumed dead after escaping the island. If they’re ever to return to their families, they need to bring Gold down. So they secretly join Grady in the castle. But as the doors slam shut and the series of deadly challenges between them and freedom are revealed, it looks like history is going to repeat itself…
A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by, and in tribute to, Shirley Jackson.
Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers.
This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, will bring together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.
Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, and Genevieve Valentine.
When Tess and Eliot stumble upon an ancient book hidden in a secret tunnel beneath their school library, they accidentally release a devil from his book-bound prison, and he’ll stop at nothing to stay free. He’ll manipulate all the ink in the library books to do his bidding, he’ll murder in the stacks, and he’ll bleed into every inch of Tess’s life until his freedom is permanent.
Forced to work together, Tess and Eliot have to find a way to re-trap the devil before he kills everyone they know and love, including, increasingly, each other. And compared to what the devil has in store for them, school stress suddenly doesn’t seem so bad after all.
Jade is one class away from graduating high school, but that’s one class she keeps failing local history. Dragged down by her past, her father and being an outsider, she’s composing her epic essay series to save her high school diploma.
Jade’s topic? The unifying theory of slasher films. In her rapidly gentrifying rural lake town, Jade sees the pattern in recent events that only her encyclopaedic knowledge of horror cinema could have prepared her for. And with the arrival of the Final Girl, Letha Mondragon, she’s convinced an irreversible sequence of events has been set into motion.
As tourists start to go missing, and the tension grows between her community and the celebrity newcomers building their mansions the other side of the Indian Lake, Jade prepares for the killer to rise. She dives deep into the town’s history, the tragic deaths that occurred at camp years ago, the missing tourists no one is even sure exist, and the murders starting to happen, searching for the answer.
As the small and peaceful town heads towards catastrophe, it all must come to a head on 4th July, when the town all gathers on the water, where luxury yachts compete with canoes and inflatables, and the final showdown between rich and poor, past and present, townsfolk and celebrities slasher and Final Girl.
I never wanted to be a vampire queen.
But on the bright (if not sunny) side of the debacle, I’ve got a super-hot new boyfriend. And he just might be the perfect guy.
Well, if the perfect guy ghosts you for a month and then comes back to school with a new look, a pack of friends, and a secret. But we have bigger problems.
The Drainers are back. They’re singing a different song, but have they really changed?
Even worse, werewolves’ hearts are being ripped from their bodies – which is putting the people I love in danger. I need to figure out who is behind the murders before there’s an all-out vampire-werewolf war.
No one is going to mess with my friends, even the ones who like to get wild and howl at the moon.
Sometimes, all a girl can do is grab her tiara and start kicking some supernatural ass…
Schizanthus Nerd 