While I love the artwork in Raina’s graphic novels this is the first of her Smile series that I’ve actually finished reading.
Given how popular her graphic novels are I think my not falling in love with them is probably an ‘it’s me, not you’ thing.
Even though I don’t have emetophobia I’m so glad I didn’t read this graphic novel while I was eating, as it definitely depicts a significant amount of vomiting, fear of vomiting and other stomach upsets.
While I’m not keen to reread this graphic novel I did really love the illustrations. I also learned something new: if you drink water after eating artichokes it takes sweet. I found that tidbit really interesting, but I wasn’t quite as smiley when I found out it also works if you reverse the process.
I loved the message that it’s perfectly okay to need therapy and I thought anxiety was portrayed realistically.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mum has one, too, so it’s probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she’s dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina’s tummy trouble isn’t going away … and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What’s going on?
Raina Telgemeier once again brings us a thoughtful, charming, and funny true story about growing up and gathering the courage to face – and conquer – her fears.
I’d never given much thought to the history of emotions so when I came across this “work of emotions history” I was intrigued.
This study seeks to sum up most of the existing historical findings, with related insights from other disciplines, while also extending historical analysis particularly around developments in the United States over the past two centuries.
In exploring the history of shame, the author touches on its psychology and includes references to sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are all mentioned.
In China, it has been estimated that up to 10 percent of Confucius’s writings center around the importance of shame.
This book differentiates between guilt and shame throughout history, contrasting guilt-based and shame-based societies. It focuses on shame and shaming in a number of contexts, both public (from stocks to Jerry Springer) and private. Anticipatory, reintegrative and punitive shame are addressed, with examples given from around the world. The focus, however, is on Western society.
Precisely because shame takes root in a fear that others will turn away from us and find us wanting, we keep our shame to ourselves – we fear that revelation will actualize the very rejection we worry about.
I found the information connecting shame and the criminal justice system particularly interesting. The role that parents, schools, religion, sports, politics and the media have played over time in redefining shame were also addressed. The disparity that has existed as a result of gender, race, culture, sexuality, disability, poverty and social status were discussed. The anonymity of the internet along with the history and current prevalence of slut shaming and fat shaming were also mentioned.
One of my pet peeves, that I mostly come across in textbooks, is when the author spends a significant amount of time outlining what will be explored later in the chapter or subsequent chapters, or recapping what’s already been explained. When I first picked up this book I gave up before I reached 10% because I was so frustrated by constantly reading passages that included:
The third major section of this chapter explores
The overall goal of the chapter
As Chapter 3 and 4 explore
It got to a point where it felt like their main purpose was to add to the word count and I came close to discarding the book a second time because of it. When the actual information was provided I found it quite interesting, despite some sections that were very dry. It definitely had that textbooky feel throughout the book (it’s published by a university, after all) but when I came across passages that weren’t telling me what I was going to read about later I enjoyed them.
I disagree with the author when they claim that shame is only a human emotion, that animals “lack appropriate awareness of hierarchy”. If you’ve ever caught a dog doing something they know they shouldn’t have been, then I think you’d also beg to differ.
The footnotes, which include references, are quite extensive, making up over 10% of the book.
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Illinois Press for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Shame varies as an individual experience and its manifestations across time and cultures. Groups establish identity and enforce social behaviours through shame and shaming, while attempts at shaming often provoke a social or political backlash. Yet historians often neglect shame’s power to complicate individual, international, cultural, and political relationships.
Peter N. Stearns draws on his long career as a historian of emotions to provide the foundational text on shame’s history and how this history contributes to contemporary issues around the emotion. Summarising current research, Stearns unpacks the major debates that surround this complex emotion. He also surveys the changing role of shame in the United States from the nineteenth century to today, including shame’s revival as a force in the 1960’s and its place in today’s social media.
Looking ahead, Stearns maps the abundant opportunities for future historical research and historically informed interdisciplinary scholarship. Written for interested readers and scholars alike, Shame combines significant new research with a wider synthesis.
Robin has a mohawk, a cherished fifteen year old stuffed mosquito called Mr. Nosy and a popular YouTube channel called ‘MalusDomestica’. Her subscribers think what they’re watching is fake, but it’s anything but. [If you’re wondering, ‘malus domestica’ is Latin for “the common apple tree”. You’ll learn the significance of this name during the book.]
Robin travels around the country in her van hunting witches. Robin’s father was convicted of killing her mother but Robin knows the witches were responsible. Now, after spending time in a psychiatric facility and subsequently honing her witch slaying skills, she’s returned home to Blackfield to face off with the local coven.
“You witches killed my mama!”
Witches. Demons. Ancient sigils. The quest for immortality. Cats that aren’t just cats. Murder. A pizza guy. A “big blond Viking dude”. Sound effects – “grum-grum-grum-grum”.
Before I began reading I saw several comparisons made between this book and Buffy, so I expected to witness a lot more slaying. Witches are dispatched of in flashbacks but I don’t recall any scenes where a witch meets their maker taking place in the present. I expect the sequel to well and truly make up for this.
A fair amount of time is spent on characters’ backstories and explanations of the supernatural aspects of the story. While it is well written I did spend a lot of the first half of the book anxious for some present day action scenes.
There were plenty of pop culture references in this book, from Batman to Indiana Jones and The Simpsons. Had I realised there would be so many of these references I would have made a list and asked other readers to let me know which ones I’d missed.
I liked most of the characters but the one that I was most interested in, Heinrich Hammer, Robin’s mentor, didn’t appear in person until the very end of the book. I’m looking forward to seeing them in action in the sequel.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor Books for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Robin is a YouTube celebrity gone-viral with her intensely-realistic witch hunter series. But even her millions of followers don’t know the truth: her series isn’t fiction.
Her ultimate goal is to seek revenge against the coven of witches who wronged her mother long ago. Returning home to the rural town of Blackfield, Robin meets friends new and old on her quest for justice. But then, a mysterious threat known as the Red Lord interferes with her plans …
A book about books is always going to suck me in. I can’t help it. I’ve been obsessed with books for as long as I can remember, even before I could read myself. I’m so thankful to my mother for introducing me to the magic of reading. Thanks, Mum!
This picture book asks the question:
Why do we need books?
Now if I was going to answer that question you’d likely be reading an essay but Alessandro Sanna has managed to capture the basics in fewer words than I’ve used to write this review so far.
Two children gradually discover some of the wonders that books have to offer.
Would I have wanted to read this book over and over as a child? Probably not. I discovered all of the reasons why I specifically need books as I grew up and I’m still learning new reasons as an adult. As an adult, though, I want to read any book that is essentially a love letter to books.
I’m so happy my library has a copy of this book. I hope it serves as a catalyst for some future bookworms.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Everything starts with a question, like this one: Why do we need books?
In Castle of Books, two children go on a creative journey to discover the answer to the question “Why do we need books?” As they pore over piles and piles of books and discover the incredible worlds and words within, they find lots of answers to this question: to observe, to discover, to imagine, to understand each other, and so much more.
It was terrifying to know nightmares didn’t wait for the sun to fade – or for sleep to come.
Jimmy and Kelly knew fear and uncertainty from a young age. Their parents fought regularly and violently, drank excessively and abused drugs. Living in poverty and neglected, Jimmy did whatever he could to protect his younger sister. When their father dies by suicide, their mother becomes increasingly abusive.
In the Lansford home, normal was not an option, and Jimmy faced two choices: Let life eat him and Kelly alive, or shoulder more of the burden than any child should.
Although he remains haunted by his childhood, Jimmy’s adult life is outwardly normal. He has a nice home, is employed and has a loving wife and children. Jimmy does everything he can to ensure his children never experience anything approximating what he and his sister did when they were children.
Things change, and not always for the better.
Jimmy’s daughter is now the same age his sister was when their father died and Jimmy’s carefully constructed world is coming undone. He begins to experience things he can’t explain as painful memories resurface.
As this book was marketed as horror I expected to encounter lots of things that go bump in the night. Although there are supernatural elements to this story that I won’t explain because that would take us into spoiler territory, the main horror I experienced was as a result of more natural (if you can call them that) occurrences.
Child abuse is its own horror and when you consider the legacy of childhood trauma, its impacts on the person who has experienced it and by association everyone who loves them, that’s true horror right there.
PTSD and survivor’s guilt are explored in this book. Because the impacts of these are so pervasive it became difficult to distinguish whether specific events in this book were supernatural in origin or a symptom of one or both of these. This could irritate me in different circumstances but here it made me feel like I was getting a glimpse of what Jimmy was experiencing. I did wonder whether some of Jimmy’s experiences were dissociative in nature; another explanation was provided but I could make the case for both possibilities.
Given some of the content of this book I expected to feel sad and hopeless overall but there was some light pushing back the shadows. Jimmy’s bond with his sister and his repeated attempts to protect her from the harshness of their lives was heartwarming. Detective Mike Carlisle, the only responsible adult in the Lansford kids’ lives, was someone I looked forward to spending time with. He modelled unconditional love and was a positive role model, particularly for Jimmy, whose life could have been vastly different without his influence.
I was left with a couple of unanswered questions. I still don’t understand why Jimmy’s daughter bit his neck. I know his sister did that to their father but I would have thought, if this was Kelly’s influence, she would have chosen a shared memory that was less violent to get her message across. Also, if Kelly had the ability to leave a handprint then couldn’t she find a way to let her brother know it was her? Cliché or not, it doesn’t seem far fetched to me that she could have written a message on a foggy bathroom mirror or something similar.
Pop culture and this book: There were plenty of references to TV series, including Friends and Stranger Things, and music, in particular Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time. (I love that song!) However, there were so many references to Stephen King’s stories that I made a list. Keep in mind that I am by no means an expert on the King-dom so I expect some references flew straight over my head. Having said that, here’s what I found:
Jimmy stays in hotel room 237
The dairy farm the family lived on for a while is owned by the Torrance family and it’s located on Torrance Road
The ice cream shop is called Derry’s
There’s mention of “the neighborhood Cujo”
Jimmy’s daughter watches IT.
If you read this book and find references to anything Stephen King related that I’ve missed, please feel free to let me know.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
As a child Jimmy Lansford and his sister Kelly suffered crushing poverty, their father’s unexplained and frightening suicide, and their mother’s constant abuse and cruelty. Having grown to be a successful adult, Jimmy must contend with the sudden re-emergence of memories from his childhood in Oklahoma and unexplainable events occurring inside his own home. Is it more than memories that haunt Jimmy? Did his parents suffer from mental illness and addiction, or were they possessed by something even worse – and has that presence arrived to take Jimmy?
The first horror novel from acclaimed author and journalist Dustin McKissen explores the nature of hauntings, the ghosts from our past that haunt our present, and the unbreakable bond between siblings who learn early on they can only rely on each other.
You know the feeling you get when you’re approaching a car accident? The traffic has slowed down, emergency services are already on the scene and you don’t want to look. You know if you were involved in that accident you wouldn’t want a whole pile of strangers gawking at you as they passed, yet you can’t help it. You look, even as you’re wishing you hadn’t.
That was how I felt the entire time I was reading this book. I wanted to look away and move on to something lighter, happier, less vindictive, but I kept reading. Why? Because, despite how uncomfortable I was, I still wanted to know. It was compulsive.
I’ve never understood why victims choose to become offenders. Surely if you’ve experienced something painful enough that you could be labelled a victim as a result, you know how bad that feels and wouldn’t want to inflict that pain on anyone else, right? Apparently not.
Beth was bullied at school and now she targets “Beautiful People” online. If she’d simply had some imaginative revenge fantasies featuring some of the worst offenders in her life I probably would have cheered her on but that’s not her game.
Instead she revels in trolling people she wants to be, people who have never done anything to her and who she knows nothing about outside of their likely Photoshopped online presence. It’s a victory for Beth if her victims shut down their social media accounts, and the hatred she receives from her victims’ supporters? Bring it on! It’s like a drug to her.
Here I’m not a loser. Here, I reign supreme. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you fall down on: lover, hater, you’re still focused on me, talking about me, making me the topic of conversation.
While I never liked Beth I did find some of her commentary about being overweight authentic, from not wanting to eat in public to the shame of standing in a retail store that doesn’t stock clothes in your size. Had she not also been a troll I probably would have found her character fairly relatable. Well, except for the fact that she bought into some infuriating myths surrounding sexual assault and self harm, and her propensity to blame pretty much anyone other than herself. Okay, so maybe there’s not as much relatability happening here as I thought. I did want her to make an appointment with a psychologist rather than study psychology though.
I initially liked Amy, adorable, quirky Amy. She was a bit too sweet to feel realistic but the contrast between her and Beth, who mostly only approximated sweet when she was eating chocolate, felt necessary. (While I’m thinking about sugar, I have to say that I absolutely loved the phrase “chain-eat chocolate” and expect I will probably both do this and use it in a sentence within a week.)
I wanted to hold onto the time I had with sweet Amy and bask in the warmth of the sunlight that appeared to be originating from her pure heart. While I understood her confusion, pain and anger when she learned some truths about Beth, whenever she yo-yoed between anger and forgiveness her personality seemed to change, almost as if there were three distinct Amy’s.
There were a couple of reveals that I’d figured out early on and unfortunately the blurb gave too much away. While the ending felt too neat overall, I liked that there were some questions that remained unanswered. It would have been nice to know who Tori really was but not knowing was even better.
If you have a problem with swearing, this is probably not the book for you. Because I’m me, I got curious. Give or take a couple because my maths isn’t perfect, I counted “shit” and its variations, not including “shite” 77 times and “fuck” and its variations 231 times!
P.S. I wasn’t offended by the swearing. It just made me think of this scene from Supernatural. 😊
Thank you to NetGalley and Carolrhoda Lab, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
In real life, eighteen-year-old Beth is overweight, shy, and geeky. She’s been bullied all her life, and her only refuge is food. Online, though, she’s a vicious troll who targets the beautiful, vain, oversharing It Girls of the internet. When she meets Tori, a fellow troll, she becomes her online girlfriend-slash-partner-in-crime.
But then Tori picks a target who’s a little too close to home for Beth. Unsettled, Beth decides to quit their online bullying partnership. The only problem is, Tori is not willing to let her go.
When I read this graphic novel a couple of months ago I didn’t find it anywhere near as funny as I’d expected. I thought the first two Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy adventures were very giggle-worthy when I discovered them two years ago so naturally I needed to reread them. Now that I’ve reintroduced myself to my favourite moose that shoots lasers out of his eyes and his sidekick rabbit I wanted to reread Time Trout.
In The Traveler we meet, well, the traveler. Obviously! They’re human and pretty happy to have succeeded in their mission to travel back in time.
Their awe at the beauty of their surroundings quickly morphs into panic as they fall into the water, losing their futuristic flux capacitor in the process. Naturally a trout swallows this time travel device and almost immediately travels through time.
If future guy had bothered to watch Back to the Future they’d know that Deloreans are the only way to time travel (unless you have a spare train laying around) and have the advantage of being too large for anyone to accidentally ingest.
Anyway, our trout finds himself in the past, just before the time he became an important part of a disco ball chain reaction. This chain reaction was possibly caused by an evil chickadee, if in fact he is as evil as Laser Moose suspects.
Meanwhile, Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy are taking Frank to Doc because Laser Moose zaps his leg off (again!) before the story officially began. Poor Frank! For the first time in the series we actually get to meet the doctor who sews all of Frank’s accidentally amputated limbs back on.
On another one of the trout’s time jumps he accidentally brings Aquabear with him to the present. Eventually Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy join the trout in the future, just in time to witness the aliens from The Invasion arriving for their return visit. They’ve brought some friends with them this time. Our time travellers come up with a plan to hopefully fix everything that’s gone wrong so far and jump back into the time stream.
In The Aquabear the plan doesn’t go how it’s supposed to but it does result in Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy meeting Frank for the first time. Again. Poor Frank! Off to Doc we go! Despite everything that keeps going wrong the trout decides he likes this time travel business and wants to keep doing it, which leads us to The Falls where we almost get to witness Laser Moose’s origin story. Things go very wrong again before possibly going somewhere in the vicinity of right. During the course of events Laser Moose meets a new friend, Gonk the dinosaur,
who I hope will make their way into future adventures.
I definitely enjoyed Time Trout much more during my reread. Without the necessary context provided by the two previous graphic novels, repeated jokes and background details don’t have any significance. I also appreciated the cameos made by the eagle, the evil chickadee, Mechasquirrel and Gus in this graphic novel more the second time around. Disco Fever remains my favourite read of the series.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the opportunity to read this graphic novel.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy return and just in time to save the day!
A time-traveling fish is causing trouble for Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy in the past, present, and future. When the well-meaning Trout inadvertently changes the forest’s history, Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy need to set things right, with a little help from a raccoon doctor and a newly three-legged Frank the Deer. Along the way, they confront old enemies, new enemies, future threats, and Laser Moose’s own mysterious past. Get ready for an action thrill ride of time-bending fun!
“Bond. James Bond.” I got roped into watching a whole bunch of these movies as a kid. I loved watching the gadgets in action, was oblivious to the innuendos soaring over my head and was terrified by some of the baddies. Yes, Jaws, I’m talking about you!
Rewatching a few of the early movies as an adult made me aware of some of the more problematic aspects of his character but aside from those particular niggles I still enjoy movies with big action sequences, gadgets and oodles of baddies. I haven’t watched a Bond movie in a few years but thought it would be fun to test drive a Bond graphic novel, and it was.
Black Box gets straight into the action
and introduces our potential leading lady (who incidentally isn’t immediately charmed by 007)
before the theme song earwig has had a chance to burrow its way into your brain.
007’s latest mission, Operation Black Box, requires him to travel to Tokyo to track down a “cache of digital secrets”. Evil hackers are ready to release your deepest, darkest digital secrets to the world! Let’s go get ‘em!
Yes, James does have a Licence to Kill. In fact, it’s expected. The big bad in this story is Saga Genji, who is responsible for the cyber theft, but my favourite character was his difficult to kill henchman, No Name, who makes up for his dodgy moniker with his creepy collection of death masks.
Armed with mission appropriate fancy gadgets and some even fancier new wheels
Bond is ready to face off with some baddies, but not before asking Boothroyd, the gadget guy (Q, I presume), to do some cyberstalking for him. Potential leading lady (she does have a name. It’s Selah Sax) isn’t getting away from 007 as quickly as she had hoped. Or perhaps it is Selah that is stalking James …
The usual Bond stuff happens. There’s gambling, alcohol, sex scenes, fight scenes where people get The Living Daylights beaten out of them, an explosion and a high speed pursuit, catchphrases, double entendres and a good ol’ villain monologue. Bond utilises his cool gadgets but also manages to improvise when the need arises. Who knew a selfie stick would make such a good weapon?!
I’m glad I read this graphic novel. After all, You Only Live Twice. 😜 It was a fun, quick read with plenty of action.
Thank you so much to NetGalley, Dynamite Entertainment and Diamond Book Distributors for the opportunity to read this graphic novel.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
In the snowbound French Alps, James Bond finds himself in the crosshairs of an assassin who targets other assassins. This is the first puzzle piece in a larger adrenaline-fueled mystery that will send Bond across the globe to infiltrate the underworld, risk everything in high-stakes casino gambling, evade deadly pursuers, and root out a digital breach threatening global security.
This is my first Big Nate read. Nate is a sixth grader who is well acquainted with detention.
I had no idea who was who before I started reading but I got a sense of each characters’ personality within this collection. While Nate annoyed me in the beginning, he began to grow on me towards the end of the collection. If I kept reading this series I think my favourite character would end up being one of Nate’s classmates rather than Nate himself, but I can see why kids would enjoy this series.
In this collection, Nate wants to be an undercover reporter for ‘The Bugle’. He also assists the school picture day photographer and discovers that students aren’t the only ones flashing their pearly whites.
Nate decides he wants to win the Student of the Month award, to the amusement of his long suffering teachers.
Gina and Francis face off in the Fact Town Smackdown, which ends with a cliffhanger.
Outside of school, Nate goes trick or treating, exchanges Christmas presents with his family and attempts to hide his report card from his father. He also surprises his father by doing some gardening. Sort of.
The comics were a mixed bag for me; some made me chuckle and others made me wish I was reading Peanuts instead. I understood the pop culture references but only because I’m old; I doubt kids would have even heard of Magnum P.I.
These strips appeared in newspapers from October 6, 2013, through March 29, 2014.
Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the opportunity to read this graphic novel.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Whether he’s showing the ropes to a detention rookie, campaigning for the Student of the Month Award, or writing hilarious movie reviews for The Weekly Bugle, Nate Wright never fails to make his mark at P.S. 38. But middle school’s no bed of roses. In fact, sometimes it just plain stinks. Just ask the Great Nose-ini! Nate’s alter ego with a sense for scents can smell trouble a mile away … or at the very next desk. Was that you, Gina?
“You crazy kids want to die tonight, is that the idea?”
After a poorly timed sore throat caused her to miss out on attending last year’s Mother’s Day massacre, Kelly Boone is preparing for her own Camp Crystal Lake slaycation. Jason Some random hunter wearing Jason’s mask killed her older brother in Book 1 and she’s ready to take action.
Unfortunately Jason isn’t the man behind the mask in this book either. I’m guessing he’s still hanging out in Hell; the first book appeared to take place sometime after Jason Goes to Hell in the Voorhees-verse timeline. Jason does have a very brief cameo of sorts in this book; it’s possible he was hallucinated by someone who’d lost a significant amount of blood but I’d prefer to believe it was him somehow briefly reanimated as mist. Since Jason is currently mostly unavailable we have yet another new hockey mask wearer.
So, who are potentially nearly departed?
Kelly Boone – Our hero with the tragic past. Now 18, Kelly has gone from captain of the varsity basketball team to someone who didn’t even apply for college. She has a lot of nightmares and migraines, and is depressed. When she’s not busy smoking she’s in the library researching Crystal Lake. She has a plan. She has a hunting knife. She should be a shoo in to survive. However, she is also the first person to suggest the group split up so my Horror 101 alarm bells are ringing. But someone has to survive, right?
“I mean, our whole lives are at stake, okay? In case you want some motivation.”
Doug Sanderson – Kelly’s boyfriend. This “cool and relaxed” 23 year old drives a beat up Volvo and consistently flunks courses at the local community college. Not the brightest of contestants, he’s a serial flirt and cheater so there’s no way he’s making it out of Crystal Lake alive.
Tina Chen – Miguel’s girlfriend. She’s 17, smart and planning on studying psychology at NYU. Her psychobabble and willingness to cheat on her boyfriend don’t bode well for her.
Miguel Hernandez – Tina’s boyfriend. He’s 18, works at a karate school and is excited to be going monster hunting. His martial arts training could potentially be useful but his annoying Beavis and Butthead impressions may make you wish hockey mask guy would shut him up. His arrogance may be his undoing:
“Actually, mister, we’re going to stick around, see, and kill Jason for you, since no one around here seems like they can do it themselves.”
Big Red – the man behind the mask. I felt for this 45 year old with the artificial leg, glass eye and permanent indentation in his bald head. He’s survived a bucketload of awfulness in his life and I probably would’ve still wanted to give him a hug while he was swinging a machete at me. It doesn’t matter how much I want him to be okay though. He’s the guy wearing the hockey mask. He’s toast!
Ma and Pa – Big Red’s parents. Depending on what their backstory is they probably have a 50/50 shot of surviving (at best).
Tuck – Pa’s drinking buddy who runs the fishing store. Horror 101 taught me that alcohol intake is usually enough to warrant a death scene so it’s probably not looking too promising for good ol’ Tuck.
Bud – Pa’s other drinking buddy. He has a son (Bud Junior), daughter-in-law (Jessie) and three grandkids, Cassie (6), James (4) and Little Billy (a baby). The adults are fair game but surely the children will live long enough to grow up to be adults that a new generation hockey mask killer can slaughter.
Darlene – The new waitress. She wears the name tag of the diner’s last waitress, who was previously sliced and diced. This doesn’t seem like a good omen.
Officer Donner – Law enforcement types don’t usually fare so well in slasher type encounters so I’m not holding my breath for this one.
This was a fun read but I didn’t get into the characters as much as I did in the first book. A lot of the death scenes took place off page and as I’ve already mentioned, Jason isn’t the slasher in this story so that was a let down.
Jason’s mask has some weird but kind of cool, leave-your-brain-disengaged powers. After donning the mask, Big Red’s glass eye begins to somehow show him scenes from the past, including one he would have been too young to remember himself. There’s also some unexplained magical connection between the hockey mask and Big Red’s artificial leg.
While I wanted to believe the hockey mask magic was possible, the story pretty much left me behind when Boone (Kelly’s brother), who came back as a sort of ghost, sort of corporeal evil dead guy, started helping out the hockey mask guy! I thought for a while that he may have been Kelly’s sleep deprived hallucination but he didn’t seem to be. Surely Kelly, who’d risked everything to avenge her brother’s death, deserved at least a “thanks for that, little sis” before Boone turned evil, if he absolutely had to.
Body count – 14 people and 1 grasshopper, if I’ve counted correctly. Most, but not all, of these deaths were orchestrated by our Jason wannabe.
Cover image: While this picture is cheesy horror fun, it doesn’t exactly line up with the story. None of our couples take a boat trip together, the guy in the hockey mask is supposed to be bald and wearing overalls, and even he would know better than to hang out in the lake, considering the abundance and size of the leeches that live there.
From the bizarre coincidences department: This book was my 169th read so far this year. The square root of 169 just so happens to be 13. Coincidence or X-File?!
I found the awesome artwork near the beginning of this review at dandingeroz.deviantart.com.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Obsessed by the murder of her brother at Camp Crystal Lake, Kelly Boone sets out to put to rest forever the evil legacy of Jason Voorhees, but the curse is reawakened when a backwoods fisherman hooks a surprising catch, Jason’s hockey mask.
Schizanthus Nerd 