I enjoyed the first book in this series so I’m disappointed that I can’t get into this one. Other reviewers have loved it so I feel like I’m missing out on something potentially wonderful.
I think this is either a case of it’s not you, it’s me, or it’s not the right book for me at the moment. Rather than continuing to struggle I’m going to set it aside for now.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor Books for the opportunity to read this book.
Once Upon a Blurb
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets Joe Hill in S. A. Hunt’s I Come with Knives, a horror-tinged action-adventure about a punk YouTuber on a mission to hunt witches, one vid at a time.
Robin – now armed with new knowledge about mysterious demon terrorising her around town, the support of her friends, and the assistance of her old witch-hunter mentor – plots to confront the Lazenbury coven and destroy them once and for all.
Meanwhile, a dangerous serial killer only known as The Serpent is abducting and killing Blackfield residents. An elusive order of magicians known as the Dogs of Odysseus also show up with Robin in their sights.
Robin must handle these new threats on top of the menace from the Lazenbury coven, but a secret about Robin’s past may throw all of her plans into jeopardy.
“Don’t you want to know what’s really going on, Mayhem?”
Mayhem and Roxy, her mother, have recently moved in with Elle, Roxy’s twin sister, and her foster children. Roxy always swore she’d never return to Santa Maria but Mayhem doesn’t know why. It turns out there’s a lot she doesn’t know about being a Brayburn.
This book covers a lot of ground: family legacies, the secrets we keep from ourselves and others, the impacts of trauma and the ways we try to reclaim our power.
I was only three. Lyle saved us. That’s the story.
The portrayal of what it’s like for a child living in a home where domestic violence is the norm was painfully authentic. I could feel what it was like for Mayhem as the abuse was happening to both herself and her mother, the impacts of which were evident throughout the story.
I particularly appreciated the fact that once there was some physical distance between the abused and abuser, life didn’t automatically become sunshine and roses. The abuse wasn’t sensationalised but it also wasn’t sugarcoated.
Roxy doesn’t cry. Neither of us do. We don’t talk about it, even to each other, like if we never say it out loud, it will stop.
There were some sentences that resonated with me so much that I had to reread them immediately and then pause while I absorbed them. I anticipate these quotes will be staying with me for quite a while:
“Don’t let the idea of people overshadow truth.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to hear things, because then you have to admit other things and the story you’ve been telling yourself unravels so fast you can barely handle it.”
I found the names of several businesses in the story absolutely delightful. I’d stop reading when I came across those as well, but only long enough to say to the nearest person, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’. My favourite was We’ve Got Issues, a comic book store. Brilliant!
Then there were the parts of the story that hovered over my head, just out of reach. In particular, I wasn’t always entirely sure what was happening during the scenes where magic happens. There often wasn’t enough detail given to allow me to ‘see’ what was going on.
There was one scene involving the serial killer where this was especially evident; I didn’t even know what happened until I was given more information a few pages later. Incidentally, I had hoped the serial killer would have more page time than they did. The resolution of their part of the story was much too quick and easy for my liking.
I began to read some reviews to find out if I was the only one who wasn’t always getting it. Plenty of reviewers have mentioned the similarities between this story and The Lost Boys. I’ve never seen that movie and I’m still not sure if it was an advantage or disadvantage coming into this book uninitiated.
It has made me wonder if some of the more magical components of this story were written using a kind of shorthand, where if you were familiar with the movie you’d know exactly what the author was talking about without needing the additional descriptions that would have been beneficial for me.
The person I most wanted to get to know was Neve but she remained somewhat of a mystery to me. I wanted to find out more about her life before she lived with Elle but I only caught a couple of glimpses.
“They do not mess with us,” Neve murmurs, almost to herself. “For good reason.”
I’ve never been a fan of insta-love although sometimes it grows on me as a story progresses. It didn’t here. I also became frustrated as the story never really came together for me, even though there were plenty of elements that I should have loved.
Aspects of the story didn’t have the depth I was looking for and neither did some of the characters. I wanted to come away having a detailed understanding of the way the magic worked but I could only explain it to you in vague terms. I don’t even really know how to explain it but it was like I got a taste of many things but never the entire experience.
“People want to keep secrets from you, but it’s not right. You need to know everything.”
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
It’s 1987 and unfortunately it’s not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy’s constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem’s own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren’t like everyone else.
But when May’s stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem’s questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.
But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.
“You never go into those woods, you hear? There’s evil in them.”
Immanuelle is a shepherdess who lives in Bethel with her family. She was raised by her grandparents, Abram and Martha, having never known her parents. Also living in the home are Anna, Abram’s second wife, and their two children, Glory and Honor.
The Moore family follow the Prophet and the Holy Scriptures faithfully, although their fellow Bethelans will never forget what Immanuelle’s mother, Miriam, did. Her sin continues to cast a shadow over her entire family.
Bethel is a community where polygamy is the norm, the Prophet’s power is absolute and indiscretions, actual or perceived, can be punished by pyre. Men have taken and abused their power, but some of the women are also complicit. Faith is polluted by fear and repression.
Bordering Bethel is the Darkwood, the home of Lilith and her coven of witches, a place to be feared and avoided at all costs. Except the Darkwood is calling Immanuelle and if she heeds the call she will be putting both her life and soul on the line.
Even now, their ghosts still haunted the Darkwood, hungry for the souls of those who dared to enter their realm.
Or so the stories said.
There will be blood.
Once upon a time I spent several years studying the Bible and one of the things that fascinated me at the time was discovering the original meaning of specific words I was reading. Sometimes it wouldn’t make a difference but there were also times where the entire meaning of a passage could change once I knew one word’s origin. Why am I telling you this in the middle of my review? Well, I’m glad you asked.
As I was reading I kept noticing specific names whose etymology seemed perfectly matched to their characters and while I could be wrong, it felt intentional. I won’t go into all of the connections by brain made while I was reading here but I will mention a couple that stood out to me.
Bethel may mean ‘house of God’ but the current Prophet is anything but godly. In a sea of biblical names, the current Prophet’s name is Grant. Revered by his followers, this Prophet claims to speak for the Father. Visions of the Prophet are treated as gospel and given how isolated Bethel is, there aren’t outside influences challenging the status quo.
Given his predilections, perversion of power and the I want to punch that guy urges I experienced as I got to know him, it felt right that Grant wasn’t named after someone in the Bible, or anything associated with biblical teachings, like Glory and Honor.
Ezra, the name of the Prophet’s son and successor, means help or helper.
In what was quite possibly my favourite association, Immanuelle stepping foot in the Darkwood was Judas’ fault. Naturally.
Now, I acknowledge I could be seeing things here that were not intended but I also noticed that, prologue and epilogue aside, this book contained forty chapters. Forty in the Bible usually denotes a period of testing, trial or probation.
Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter.
I really enjoyed this book but, although I was sure I was becoming emotionally invested in the characters as I was getting to know them, I don’t think I really did. Although the characters experience a lot of high stress situations I never felt the urgency. I didn’t worry about them when they were in danger and when they experienced something that could have triggered an ugly cry I was left unaffected.
There were accused witches, girls and women who broke some arbitrary rule set forth by man and/or religion, and those that maybe didn’t break a rule at all but were accused of a crime.
To be a woman is to be a sacrifice.
From the writings of Teman, the first wife of the third Prophet, Omaar
Then there were the actual witches, the characters I was most looking forward to getting to know, whose dark presence casts a shadow on the apparent light of this religious community. The Unholy Four make an impact when they appear but they didn’t get nearly as much page time as I had hoped they would. I didn’t feel I got to know them at all.
This book nudged up against one of my pet peeves, where someone who has recently obtained new powers doesn’t need to spend weeks, months or years in training learning how to wield them. While the character I’m referencing here doesn’t entirely violate this pet peeve, there was definitely some instinctual knowing how to use them involved.
I wondered why the events that activated the final two plagues were different than the first two. I may have missed something or not have thought about it enough but it seemed to me that the first two were forming a pattern.
Why did the forest call to her?
I’ll be look out for this author’s future releases.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Born on the fringes of Bethel, Immanuelle does her best to obey the Church and follow Holy Protocol. For it was in Bethel that the first Prophet pursued and killed four powerful witches, and so cleansed the land.
And then a chance encounter lures her into the Darkwood that surrounds Bethel.
It is a forbidden place, haunted by the spirits of the witches who bestow an extraordinary gift on Immanuelle. The diary of her dead mother …
Fascinated by and fearful of the secrets the diary reveals, Immanuelle begins to understand why her mother once consorted with witches. And as the truth about the Prophets, the Church and their history is revealed, so Immanuelle understands what must be done. For the real threat to Bethel is its own darkness.
Bethel must change. And that change will begin with her …
Do you remember how I told you last week that because this was the second week of some serious bill paying necessity I was not allowed to buy any books unless there was an unmissable sale? Um … I possibly shouldn’t have given myself that loophole.
So, there was kinda a Stay Inside Saturday 50% off sale at Angry Robot. And it covered every eBook on their website. And there were sort of a fair few that I’d been needing for a while. And they were so much cheaper than I’ve ever seen them. And I’ll read them one day. Promise!
So, after my bills have been paid, that’s me pretty much done for the week. Oops. But, books! I managed to find a free eBook as well this week, so that makes my binge okay, right?
In an extraordinary display of self restraint, I did stop myself from purchasing the Image comics bundle at Humble Bundle. Well, I restrained myself from buying it this week. Thankfully there are still enough days left that it will still be available when I get paid next. If you haven’t already overspent your book allocation this week and want to buy it before I can, here’s the link.
Word of the Week: oeuvre, “the complete works of a writer, painter, or other artist” (from Cambridge Dictionary)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: FREE BOOKS!!! I glanced outside my front window early this afternoon and saw a neighbour across the road doing something extremely interesting. They had placed a bookcase in their front yard and were making many trips up their driveway with books! I wondered if they were setting up a neighbourhood library but it didn’t look right as there weren’t any enclosed sides on the bookcase. Concerned about the possibility of books getting damaged by the elements and with my curiosity well and truly piqued, I ventured across the road to investigate.
You’d know what a huge deal this was for me if you knew me. I’m pretty much off the chart on the introvert scale and am almost positive I have social phobia. I don’t approach people I don’t know and I definitely don’t initiate conversations with them. I guess this is the power of books though. My need to see what books she had placed in that bookcase and my concern for their wellbeing overrode my neuroses.
I learned that most of the books were her daughter’s. Apparently at 19 she has grown out of YA. All the better for me! My neighbour gave me a really weird look when I mentioned that I, too, had grown out of YA but had since grown back into them.
Long story only slightly shorter (sorry), there were so many gems on offer. While most of the ones I haven’t read yet are already patiently waiting for me on my Kindle, there were also some that have been on my need-to-buy list for too long. And now I don’t need to! So, more money for other books! Woohoo!
Rather than list them twice, you can find my newly acquired freebies under the From Across the Road and Into My Bookcase section below.
Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she’d ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their biggest threat; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady plunges into a web of data hacking to get to the truth, it’s clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: Ezra.
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents – including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more – Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.
Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.
The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.
Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia – and possibly the known universe – is in their hands.
But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.
Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza – but who knows what they’ll find seven months after the invasion?
Meanwhile, Kady’s cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza’s ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys – an old flame from Asha’s past – reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heros will fall, and hearts will be broken.
Prue McKeel’s life is ordinary. At least until her brother is abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland. No one’s ever gone in, or at least returned to tell of it. So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend, Curtis, deep into the Impassable Wilderness.
There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval, a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater, as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.
It’s a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone.
Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.
Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other’s arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder – would they be better off staying here forever?
Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won’t be the same people who landed on it.
The Starbound Trilogy: Three worlds. Three love stories. One enemy.
Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.
Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet’s rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.
Rebellion is in Flynn’s blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.
Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.
A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness for their planet, and protect them from destruction. Some say Flynn’s a madman, others whisper about conspiracies. Nobody knows the truth. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were rescued from a terrible shipwreck – now, they live a public life in front of the cameras, and a secret life away from the world’s gaze.
Now, in the center of the universe on the planet of Corinth, all four are about to collide with two new players, who will bring the fight against LaRoux Industries to a head. Gideon Marchant is an eighteen-year-old computer hacker – a whiz kid and an urban warrior. He’ll climb, abseil and worm his way past the best security measures to pull off onsite hacks that others don’t dare touch.
Sofia Quinn has a killer smile, and by the time you’re done noticing it, she’s got you offering up your wallet, your car, and anything else she desires. She holds LaRoux Industries responsible for the mysterious death of her father and is out for revenge at any cost.
When a LaRoux Industries security breach interrupts Gideon and Sofia’s separate attempts to infiltrate their headquarters, they’re forced to work together to escape. Each of them has their own reason for wanting to take down LaRoux Industries, and neither trusts the other. But working together might be the best chance they have to expose the secrets LRI is so desperate to hide.
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie – magical, comforting, wise beyond her years – promised to protect him, no matter what.
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
A dinosaur detective in the land of unwanted ideas battles trauma, anxiety, and the first serial killer of imaginary friends.
Most ideas fade away when we’re done with them. Some we love enough to become Real. But what about the ones we love, and walk away from?
Tippy the triceratops was once a little girl’s imaginary friend, a dinosaur detective who could help her make sense of the world. But when her father died, Tippy fell into the Stillreal, the underbelly of the Imagination, where discarded ideas go when they’re too Real to disappear. Now, he passes time doing detective work for other unwanted ideas – until Tippy runs into The Man in the Coat, a nightmare monster who can do the impossible: kill an idea permanently. Now Tippy must overcome his own trauma and solve the case, before there’s nothing left but imaginary corpses.
In the far future, chocolate is Earth’s only unique commodity one that everyone else in the galaxy is willing to kill to get their hands, paws and tentacles on.
Latina culinary arts student, Bo Benitez, becomes a fugitive when she’s caught stealing a cacao pod from one of the heavily-defended plantations that keep chocolate, Earth’s sole valuable export, safe from a hungry galaxy.
Forces array against her including her alien boyfriend and a reptilian cop. But when she escapes onto an unmarked starship things go from bad to worse: it belongs to the race famed throughout the galaxy for eating stowaways! Surrounded by dangerous yet hunky aliens, Bo starts to uncover clues that the threat to Earth may be bigger than she first thought.
In a galaxy where chocolate is literally addictive, one celebrity chef is fighting back, in the delicious sequel to Free Chocolate.
To save everyone she loves, Bo Bonitez is touring Zant, home of the murderous, shark-toothed aliens who so recently tried to eat her. In the midst of her stint as Galactic paparazzi princess, she discovers that Earth has been exporting tainted chocolate to the galaxy, and getting aliens hooked on cocoa. Bo must choose whether to go public, or just smile for the cameras and make it home alive. She’s already struggling with her withdrawal from the Invincible Heart, and her love life has a life of its own, but when insidious mind worms intervene, things start to get complicated!
Mummies, grave-robbing ghouls, hopping vampires, and evil monks beset a young archaeologist, in this fast-paced Indiana Jones-style adventure.
Saqqara, Egypt, 1888, and in the booby-trapped tomb of an ancient sorcerer, Rom, a young Egyptologist, makes the discovery of a lifetime: five coffins and an eerie, oversized sarcophagus. But the expedition seems cursed, for after unearthing the mummies, all but Rom die horribly. He faithfully returns to America with his disturbing cargo, continuing by train to Los Angeles, home of his reclusive sponsor. When the train is hijacked by murderous banditos in the Arizona desert, who steal the mummies and flee over the border, Rom – with his benefactor’s rebellious daughter, an orphaned Chinese busboy, and a cold-blooded gunslinger – must ride into Mexico to bring the malevolent mummies back. If only mummies were their biggest problem …
A mysterious explorer hires a team of adventurers to join him in a hunt for a monstrous beast, in this rip-roaring sequel to Fury From the Tomb.
When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, a wealthy big game hunter has offered a staggering reward for its capture, and Rom’s patron – the headstrong and brilliant Evangeline Waterston – has signed the team up for the challenge. Awaiting them are blizzards, cold-blooded trappers, remorseless hunters, a mad doctor, wild animals and a monster so fearsome and terrifying, it must be a legend come to life.
FLEX: Distilled magic in crystal form. The most dangerous drug in the world. Snort it, and you can create incredible coincidences to live the life of your dreams.
FLUX: The backlash from snorting Flex. The universe hates magic and tries to rebalance the odds; maybe you survive the horrendous accidents the Flex inflicts, maybe you don’t.
PAUL TSABO: The obsessed bureaucromancer who’s turned paperwork into a magical Beast that can rewrite rental agreements, conjure rented cars from nowhere, track down anyone who’s ever filled out a form.
But when all of his formulaic magic can’t save his burned daughter, Paul must enter the dangerous world of Flex dealers to heal her. Except he’s never done this before – and the punishment for brewing Flex is army conscription and a total brain-wipe.
Love something enough, and your obsession will punch holes through the laws of physics. That devotion creates unique magics: videogamemancers. Origamimancers. Culinomancers.
But when ‘mancers battle, cities tremble …
ALIYAH TSABO-DAWSON: The world’s most dangerous eight-year-old girl. Burned by a terrorist’s magic, gifted strange powers beyond measure. She’s furious that she has to hide her abilities from her friends, her teachers, even her mother – and her temper tantrums can kill.
PAUL TSABO: Bureaucromancer. Magical drug-dealer. Desperate father. He’s gone toe-to-toe with the government’s conscription squads of brain-burned Unimancers, and he’ll lie to anyone to keep Aliyah out of their hands – whether Aliyah likes it or not.
THE KING OF NEW YORK: The mysterious power player hell-bent on capturing the two of them. A man packing a private army of illegal ‘mancers.
Paul’s family is the key to keep the King’s crumbling empire afloat. But offering them paradise is the catalyst that inflames Aliyah’s deadly rebellious streak …
America’s long sent its best SMASH agents overseas to deal with the European crisis. As of today, they decided dismantling your operation was more important than containing the Bastogne Broach. Now you’re dealing with the real professionals.
PAUL TSABO: Bureaucromancer. Political activist. Loving father. His efforts to decriminalize magic have made him the government’s #1 enemy – and his fugitive existence has robbed his daughter of a normal life.
ALIYAH TSABO-DAWSON: Videogamemancer. Gifted unearthly powers by a terrorist’s magic. Raised by a family of magicians, she’s the world’s loneliest teenager – because her powers might kill anyone she befriends.
THE UNIMANCERS: Brain-burned zombies. Former ‘mancers, tortured into becoming agents of the government’s anti-‘mancer squad. An unstoppable hive-mind.
When Paul accidentally opens up the first unsealed dimensional broach on American soil, the Unimancers lead his family in a cat-and-mouse pursuit all the way to the demon-haunted ruins of Europe – where Aliyah is slowly corrupted by the siren call of the Unimancers …
It’s Supernatural meets Men in Black in a darkly humorous urban fantasy from the author of Nekropolis.
When you dream, you visit the Maelstrom. Dream long enough and hard enough, and your dreams can break through into the living world. So, alas, can your nightmares.
And who’s there to catch the dreams and nightmares as they fall into reality? Meet the Shadow Watch.
Pray you never need them …
A new drug – Shut-Eye – has been developed in the dreamland, and smuggled into our world. It’s addictive, and dangerous, and Shadow Watch agents Audra and Mr Jinx are on the case, preparing new recruits to deal with the problem.
Meanwhile, a wave of ancient, bodiless Incubi are entering the dreams of humans in an attempt to possess them and live new lives. Only the criminally insane would ever risk a confrontation with them.
Stan Markowski is a Detective Sergeant on the Scranton PD’s Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit.
Like the rest of America, Scranton’s got an uneasy ‘live and let unlive’ relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that’s when they call Markowski. He carries a badge.
Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
A series of seemingly motiveless murders of supernatural creatures points to a vigilante targeting the supe community. Markowski wouldn’t normally have much of a problem with that, but his daughter may be next on the killer’s list …
“My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
“A new supernatural gang is intent on invading Scranton and it looks like I’m going to have to work with the current mob to prevent a demonic gang war.
“If there’s one thing I hate more than living with supernatural scumbags, it’s working with them! But you know that they say, better the devil you know …”
Tony Prosdocimi lives in the bustling Metropolis of San Ventura – a city gripped in fear, a city under siege by the hooded supervillain, The Cowl.
When Tony develops super-powers and acts to take down The Cowl, however, he finds that the local superhero team Seven Wonders aren’t as grateful as he assumed they’d be …
It was a typical all-American backwater – until the night the monsters came.
When four employees of KMRT Radio investigate an unearthly light that cuts off communication with the outside world, they discover that something has taken the place of their friends and fellow townfolk, and imbued them with malign intentions.
Little do they know, the phenomenon is not unique to the town of Jesman’s Bend …
After accidentally summoning a demon while playing poker, the normally mild-mannered Chesney Anstruther refuses to sell his soul … which leads through various confusions to, well, Hell going on strike. Which means that nothing bad ever happens in the world – and that actually turns out to be a really bad thing.
There’s only one thing for it. Satan offers Chesney the ultimate deal – sign the damned contract, and he can have his heart’s desire. And thus the strangest superhero duo ever seen – in Hell or on Earth – is born!
Chesney’s efforts to ‘Save the Day’ and ‘Win the Girl’ make slow progress. This superhero lark is a bit more complicated than he thought.
But even as Chesney is trying to learn the ropes, Boss Greeley has made a deal with the Devil. A deal that is making Greeley stronger by the minute. Soon he will be untouchable. Meanwhile Reverend Hardacre digs deeper and finds that not everything in reality is quite what it seems …
Now Chesney, the one-time actuary-turned superhero must continue the fight.
Meet Chesney Arnstruther. Once a mild-mannered insurance actuary, now a full-time crime-fighting superhero, it’s all he can do to kick bad-guy ass while at the same time holding down a steady relationship with the gorgeous Melda. Something is going on.
Meet Xaphan, wise-cracking demon and the source of (almost) all of Chesney’s powers. He’s been asked by his infernal master to give Chesney whatever he needs … but surely stopping bad guys is not in Hell’s plan? Something is definitely going on.
Meet Arthur Wrigley, a modest yet charming older gentleman whose nasty little hobby is fleecing innocent widows. Meet Simon Magus, ancient mystic and magician from Biblical times now very much enamoured of Vegas, baby. And pray you never meet the Chikkichikk, a proud and ancient race of, well, warrior dinosaurs, from the universe that God made then rejected before He started monkeying around with this one.
There is no Whispering Girl. She doesn’t exist. Marieka Evers knows this for a fact because she was there when Miles Faber created her. The cellphone photograph, the melodramatic tale of his encounter in the woods – all fake. The elaborate family history, the found diary – pure fiction. It was all an experiment, part of a study on belief and gullibility and the behaviour of crowds. He wanted to see how far it would go. Only now it seems his experiment has gotten out of hand. Real people have gone missing in the Georgia woods, and every day, more and more followers of whisperinggirl.com report their own encounters with the fabled Ghost of Jasper County. Is it possible that the fiction isn’t fiction anymore?
When a body turns up in the woods, brutally murdered, and one of his followers begins posting under the name of Whisper Blue, Miles loses his grip and it falls to Marieka to try and save him from his own paranoid delusion. But is it a delusion? There’s a real mystery in the woods, and the closer Marieka gets to the heart of it, the more she may wish she’d never started.
Amber Hawthorne and Jolene Morris, business partners and roommates at the Hawthorne Funeral Home, are drowning in debt. People are complaining about the makeup jobs they’re giving deceased loved ones – the word clownish has been used – and both young women have a little trouble keeping their partying habits in line.
When they start selling body parts on the black market to keep their business alive (Jolene much more reluctantly than Amber), their new buyers seem friendly and trustworthy enough at first. That is until the dead gangster they’ve recently parted up turns out to have been full of disease. Now Amber and Jolene’s buyers want something else to make up for lost profits, leaving the two undertakers to learn sometimes running your own business can cost you an arm and a leg. Literally.
NetGalley
How can we make sense of our lives when we do not know where we come from? This was a pressing question for the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, whose prewar memories were vague or nonexistent. In this beautifully written account, Rebecca Clifford follows the lives of one hundred Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict through their adulthood and into old age.
Drawing on archives and interviews, Clifford charts the experiences of these child survivors and those who cared for them – as well as those who studied them, such as Anna Freud. Survivors explores the aftermath of the Holocaust in the long term, and reveals how these children – often branded “the lucky ones” – had to struggle to be able to call themselves “survivors” at all. Challenging our assumptions about trauma, Clifford’s powerful and surprising narrative helps us understand what it was like living after, and living with, childhoods marked by rupture and loss.
Have you ever given any thought to pre-exposure rabies vaccination? As you travel at a safe distance alongside Ramola and Natalie it may very well cross your mind, probably more than once. You see, this timeline is pretty bitey.
Natalie is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. She’s 38 weeks pregnant. Her husband has just been murdered. By a zombie. She’s been bitten by the zombie. And that’s just the beginning of her story.
Natalie, A.K.A., Nats, A.K.A., Rabies Yoda
Strengths:
Has read all YA novels featuring an apocalypse, so she’s probably absorbed some useful survival tips
Fluent in sarcasm
Weaknesses:
Was very recently bitten by an infected person
Grieving the death of her husband, so there’s potential for distraction
Pre-apocalypse attitude to apocalyptic scenarios: the system will definitely fail.
Now Ramola, a paediatrician and Natalie’s friend, is in a race against time to seek medical treatment for Natalie and her unborn child before it’s too late. If it’s not already.
Ramola, A.K.A, Rams, A.K.A., Doctor Who
Strengths:
Doctor
Loyal to her friends
Weaknesses:
Bad liar
She’s consistently within biting range of someone who is infected
Pre-apocalypse attitude to apocalyptic scenarios: “Life finds a way.”
With the story more The Walking Dead than Zombieland, you know early on that you’re not here for the laughs. There’s going to be blood, gore and frothing at the mouth.
The first kill happens early; props to the author for killing off their namesake! Poor Paul never had a chance (not a spoiler – it’s in the blurb) and “from here on out, anything can and will happen.”
This is a stressful read. The kind of stressful where, whenever Natalie wanted to check her temperature I wanted to check my blood pressure. What can I say? Paul Tremblay books are stressful.
Okay, so maybe this is only the second one I’ve read but the first one I read was The Cabin at the End of the World and I own the rest, so that counts as somewhere adjacent to being an authority on the subject, doesn’t it? It’s like how I intuitively know that John Marrs is going to bring terrifying women into my life and Courtney Summers is going to devastate me with the ugliest of ugly cries.
These zombies –
“There are no zombies! This is not the apocalypse! You must stop saying that. It’s not helping.”
Okay, technically not zombies. Even though that’s what they’re called for most of the story. They’re infected with rabies, but not your garden variety rabies. This strain has seriously levelled up!
All of the biting aside, this is a story about friendship. Doctor Who struggles to maintain her confidence in her ability to save her friend but she’s going to do everything in her power to ensure Rabies Yoda survives the worst day of her life. Rabies Yoda trusts Doctor Who with her life (literally) and that of her soon to be born child.
I found it interesting to observe, from far enough away that I couldn’t be bitten, the different ways characters coped with what may or may not be the apocalypse. Some were determined and focused on their goal and some were more emotional. Conspiracy theorists came out to play while others tried to sort through misinformation for snippets of facts that could mean the difference between life and death. Then there was this stellar coping mechanism …
It would be easier to pretend they are in a zombie movie. He will still pretend.
I’m with denial guy! Even though there’s a lot of ‘everything’s going to hell in a hand basket’ going on, there’s still enough time left to discuss the important things in life. Like what movie everyone loved but you and what Disney’s problem is with mothers.
I found Josh and Luis fairly interchangeable but really warmed to them, despite their insistence on annoying me with their constant companion, the catchphrase “You are the bad.” I actually became more emotionally invested in their lives than with Doctor Who and Rabies Yoda’s.
I absolutely loved the inclusion of an asexual character; this was never going to be the focus of the story but its mere mention made my heart happy.
For those who need to know ahead of time, rabid animals were most definitely harmed within the pages of this story. So were rabid humans. It was bound to happen and although I usually avoid stories where animals die, this story wouldn’t have been believable if it wasn’t included.
On reading about a potential apocalypse during our own apocalypse pandemic: It’s weird. Some passages are so prescient that they could easily be written about our current reality. If I’d read this book in 2019 I would have had an entirely different reading experience:
I would have had to Google what an N95 was. Pre-COVID I was blissfully unaware of both their name and importance.
I wouldn’t have nodded at some of the scenarios that now feel familiar rather than fiction.
I wouldn’t have been wondering if the people I met here also encountered toilet paper hoarders.
To add to the ambience of my reading experience today, the sounds outside (or lack thereof) were eerily appropriate. The birds that usually chatter and chase one another through the neighbourhood almost entirely disappeared. It was hard not to wonder if they might know something I don’t. Hopefully they’ll come back tomorrow and their behaviour today isn’t actually a harbinger of doom.
Sassafras and lullabies.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government’s emergency protocols are faltering.
Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant. Natalie’s husband has been killed – viciously attacked by an infected neighbour – and in a failed attempt to save him, Natalie, too, was bitten. Natalie’s only chance of survival is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible to receive a rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and for her unborn child.
Natalie’s fight for life becomes a desperate odyssey as she and Rams make their way through a hostile landscape filled with dangers beyond their worst nightmares – terrifying, strange, and sometimes deadly challenges that push them to the brink.
Paul Tremblay once again demonstrates his mastery in this chilling and all-too-plausible novel that will leave readers racing through the pages … and shake them to their core.
So, here I am again, having read an entire anthology just because there’s a contribution from Seanan McGuire. I always think this is a brilliant idea when I first stumble across the book but my excitement generally turns to dread when I remember that short stories and I have a love-hate relationship. I love some and I hate some. Sometimes the love outweighs the hate but more times than I can count it’s the other way around.
Taking on faeries (“Yes, but we don’t like to use that word.”) are fourteen authors. Included in the mix are stories of love and betrayal, a unicorn named Kevin, changelings and a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure that knows when you’re cheating.
The Tooth Fairies: Quest for Tear Haven by Glenn Parris
Night always invited wayward blood thirst in one form or another.
Glamour by Grey Yuen
“The door! We saw the door. I swear it! It had a mouth and it screamed!”
See a Fine Lady by Seanan McGuire
“It’s always so much easier to do our shopping when someone can see us.”
Or Perhaps Up by C.S.E. Cooney
“Family does not pull family under. We pull each other out.”
Don’t Let Go by Alana Joli Abbott
“You shouldn’t have seen that.”
The Loophole by L. Penelope
“Seems like my last meal isn’t agreeing with me.”
The Last Home of Master Tranquil Cloud by Minsoo Kang
“Even as we speak, the fate of the man who has done me wrong is being sealed.”
Your Two Better Halves by Carlos Hernandez
“Your choices are your opportunities.”
Take Only Photos by Shanna Swendson
“What else that’s supposed to be imaginary is actually real?”
Old Twelvey Night by Gwendolyn N. Nix
It happened the same way every time.
The Seal-Woman’s Tale by Alethea Kontis
Ah, humans. My guilty pleasure, my fatal flaw. They were always just so … fun.
The Storyteller by David Bowles
“Would you like to hear a story?”
Summer Skin by Zin E. Rocklyn
It would be nice to be noticed.
Colt’s Tooth by Linda Robertson
“You’re not going anywhere ‘til I get those teeth!”
All of the anthologies that came before this one are now collectively pointing at me and sneering, ‘Have we taught you nothing about yourself?’ While this book already boasts multiple five star reviews, I wandered through it underwhelmed. I’d encourage you to read some of these five star reviews before deciding whether or not this is the book for you.
I loved Anna Dittmann’s cover illustration but unfortunately I didn’t come away with any favourite stories.
Thank you to NetGalley and Outland Entertainment for the opportunity to read this anthology.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
These are not your daughter’s faerie stories …
Around the world, there are tales of creatures that live in mist or shadow, hidden from humans by only the slightest veil. In Where the Veil Is Thin, these creatures step into the light. Some are small and harmless. Some are bizarre mirrors of this world. Some have hidden motives, while others seek justice against humans who have wronged them.
In these pages, you will meet blood-sucking tooth fairies and gentle boo hags, souls who find new shapes after death and changelings seeking a way to fit into either world. You will cross the veil – but be careful that you remember the way back.
This book is a difficult one for me to review. It’s been on my radar for nearly a year and I loved the writing style and how well I felt I knew many of the characters, but it also had some problematic moments for me.
I loved hearing all about the history of this family, tragedy and all. I liked getting a feel for the dynamics between its members and the ways they individually coped with the pain that they’d experienced. The more I learned about their complexities as individuals and as a whole, the more I wanted to delve deeper. The unlikeable parts of certain characters made them even more real to me.
“How often do I get a chance to live out a true-life nightmare?”
I couldn’t get enough information about the Tomb and The Wandering Dark. I could easily visualise each room and I was eager to experience them for myself. I was even plotting new rooms that I could add to those the family had created and wondered how I could get involved behind the scenes to bring the scares to life.
I even loved it when the monster was introduced. I love monster stories so I was looking forward to getting to know this one but certain aspects of the monster’s behaviour didn’t work for me at all. Now, this is where my review becomes a spoilery rant, so you may want to skip the next four paragraphs. Sorry, my rants get kinda wordy.
Okay, if you’re still with me, I’ll assume you have either read the book already or spoilers don’t bother you. So, the monster. As Noah started spending more time with the monster I wondered about its why, how and what. When some vital information about the monster was revealed my curiosity quickly turned to ‘I no longer want to read this book’ and I would have DNF’ed at this point if I hadn’t committed to reviewing it.
The monster had been grooming Noah since he was six years old. This meant that when they eventually began having sex (apparently fairly regularly), my brain immediately went to ‘ewww!’ and I felt decidedly icky reading about it. If these scenes had involved a female child and male monster/adult, there would likely be an uproar and I don’t see why it should be any less abhorrent because the genders have been switched here. Thankfully, this is eventually called out for what it was by a minor character. Briefly.
Then there was Sydney, who thought she was having a relationship with a man, but there was a huge power imbalance as he was her teacher. Depending on where you live, legally this may or may not be called statutory rape, but even if it isn’t the power balance alone is enough to make alarm bells echo in my head. This whole thing is effectively silenced. Noah keeps the secret. Sydney gets put out that her ‘relationship’ is over. It’s never called out for what is really is. Even near the end of the book it’s described as a man who fell in love with a teenager.
I acknowledge that my experience of sexual assault could be colouring my perceptions of both Noah and Sydney’s experiences to a certain degree, but I still can’t imagine ever being okay with either situation. I do need to say that the minor character naming Noah’s experience redeemed that part of the narrative for me to an extent, although it will never be anything but icky to me. Sydney didn’t have anyone dismantling the truth she’d lived with and that wound up tainting some of my enjoyment of the book as a whole.
“It’s seen us. It has our scent.”
While I don’t generally have a problem with endings where the bows aren’t all tied, I did want to know more about the City and the history of the monsters. I was fine with not knowing exactly what was next for some of the human characters, although I could see the way the story resolved for Noah a mile off.
Loss, grief and the experiences that haunt us are central to this book. In exploring those through Noah’s story, the horror in part becomes about the parts of yourself that you hide and those that feed on your pain. I didn’t have to work at all to get into this book and the characters became real almost immediately. It wasn’t the horror I was expecting but I was sucked in and am interested in reading more books by this author.
“Noah, there is no such thing as a happy ending. There are only good stopping places.”
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Noah Turner’s family are haunted by monsters that are all too real, strange creatures that visit them all: His bookish mother Margaret; Lovecraft-obsessed father Harry; eldest sister Sydney, born for the spotlight; the brilliant but awkward Eunice, a gifted writer and storyteller – the Turners each face their demons alone.
When his terminally-ill father becomes obsessed with the construction of an elaborate haunted house – the Wandering Dark – the family grant his last wish, creating themselves a legacy, and a new family business in their grief. But families don’t talk about the important things, and they try to shield baby Noah from horrors, both staged and real.
As the family falls apart, fighting demons of poverty, loss and sickness, the real monsters grow ever closer. Unbeknownst to them, Noah is being visited by a wolfish beast with glowing orange eyes. Noah is not the first of the Turners to meet the monster, but he is the first to let it into his room …
Word of the Week: Weltschmerz, a German word literally meaning ‘world pain’. “Sadness or melancholy at the evils of the world; world-weariness.” (Collins English Dictionary)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: After dragging myself through a highly anticipated read last week, I managed to get my reading joy back this week. I smiled my way through Gabby Hutchinson Crouch’s second book in the Darkwood series, Such Big Teeth.
Until next time, happy reading!
Edelweiss
The essential guide to Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II! Exploring everything from the pioneering special effects to the set design and the unforgettable soundtrack. This authorised book tells the exhaustive behind-the-scenes story of how Dan Aykroyd’s original concept evolved into a movie phenomenon.
The guide is packed with hundreds of fascinating production photos, concept art and rare behind-the-scenes images, while new interviews with the cast and crew, including Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Annie Potts, Richard Edlund and many more, reveal how they overcame numerous challenges to create one of the best-loved movie franchises of the 1980s.
NetGalley
In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government’s emergency protocols are faltering.
Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant. Natalie’s husband has been killed – viciously attacked by an infected neighbour – and in a failed attempt to save him, Natalie, too, was bitten. Natalie’s only chance of survival is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible to receive a rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and for her unborn child.
Natalie’s fight for life becomes a desperate odyssey as she and Rams make their way through a hostile landscape filled with dangers beyond their worst nightmares – terrifying, strange, and sometimes deadly challenges that push them to the brink.
Paul Tremblay once again demonstrates his mastery in this chilling and all-too-plausible novel that will leave readers racing through the pages … and shake them to their core.
If you are courageous enough to venture into the Darkwood today, you’ll find witches and beasties. The people of Myrsina have been terrified of its inhabitants for a very long time. The huntsmen have encouraged this fear, as well as ensuring the list of abominations that keep the non-magical folk of Myrsina on a short leash continues to grow. Gretel used to fear the Darkwood as well, until she was banished there for being a witch.
Having now lived amongst Darkwood’s witches and beasties, she realises they’re not all as scary as she was led to believe. Although, to be fair, Bin Night is actually pretty scary. Gretel has been welcomed into a sort of functional/dysfunctional found family and they’re about to brave the north to try to recruit help for their upcoming battle against the masked huntsmen.
Witches live in this house. With a spider. Oh, and it’s haunted.
Travelling from their partially edible home in the woods are:
Gretel, who I’ve already mentioned. She’s the Mudd witch (not actually a witch).
Buttercup, who cakeifies inanimate objects when she touches them, usually accidentally.
Jack: botanist extraordinaire.
Snow, an axe-wielding, armour wearing princess.
Dwarves. “Yummy!”. No, they’re not edible. You need to read the book to understand why they’re so yummy.
Patience, who once upon a time was a huntsman, but is now a ghost.
Trevor: talking spider, spy and all round master of disguises. We love Trevor!
‘And then there’ll be a masked ball and I’ll go in disguise and all the ladies will be like “who is that dashing man?” And I’ll be all “ha ha! It’s me! Trevor the spider and not a man at all!”’
Meanwhile, Hansel, Gretel’s twin brother, and Daisy, Gretel’s friend, are on their own journey. Hansel didn’t have a great deal of page time in the first book and it was really fun getting to know him.
Holding up a mirror to the world both inside and outside of Myrsina (oh, there’s also a character called Mirror, who is … a mirror), this sequel uses humour to address divisiveness and discrimination in society, highlighting ways that social and legal frameworks attempt to demonise anyone that’s considered ‘other’. It also gives voice to those who aren’t in positions of power, while encouraging magical and non-magical folk alike to fight back against injustice and change the system.
‘We have to stop listening to the stories telling us to fear what’s in the Darkwood. We are the Darkwood.’
As soon as I opened this book my brain delighted in shouting, “Bin Night!” Yes, I know we’ve established that Bin Night isn’t exactly something to be delighted about, but it was one of my takeaway phrases from Darkwood. Like so many elements in that story, including fairytale characters that I thought I knew well enough that they couldn’t possibly have the capacity to surprise me, Bin Night was not what I imagined when I first learned of its existence. It had humour, some danger and what I thought I knew before I began reading was turned on its head.
Although I hadn’t heard that it was on its way, as soon as I spotted David Wardle’s cover image I knew it could only be heralding the Darkwood sequel I had been waiting for. While I met plenty of new characters in both the north and the Citadel, they strode into my imagination almost fully formed. I didn’t have to work to get to know them or to visualise the new locations I travelled to.
Although the north was not what I’d been expecting, that wasn’t a bad thing and it was certainly worth the wait. I’m already anticipating learning more about the Glass Witch, who I’ll need to cross the river and travel to the eastern woods to meet. Trousers! This wait is going to be a “pain in the gooseberries.”
I definitely recommend reading this series in order, lest you unknowingly wander into spoiler territory. You really need the foundations that Darkwood provides for a lot of the humour in this book to work best and for the ways the characters interact with one another to make sense.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Farrago, an imprint of Duckworth Books, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise.
The Battle of Nearby Village is over, and deep in the Darkwood, Gretel and her friends journey into the hostile mountains of the north, seeking new allies in their fight against the huntsmen. There they find Gilde the Bear Witch, along with a Werewolf named Scarlett and a winged man named Hex. Meanwhile, Hansel and Daisy set off on a dangerous trip of their own to the Citadel, where they end up in the middle of a political battle for the future of the whole country.
Can Gretel and her friends persuade Gilde to join forces, or at least stop fighting them at every step? Can Hansel find a way to heal the land’s divisions and make the huntsmen change their ways before disaster strikes them all? And how did Trevor the spider get hold of a wig? Discover the answers to all these questions and more in Such Big Teeth. Venture into the Darkwood in this modern fairy tale that will bewitch adults and younger readers alike.
Ugh! This reading week sucked! It felt more like a fortnight. Do you ever start reading one of your most anticipated reads and discover it wasn’t the highlight of the year you’d hoped for? That was me this week.
I had been looking forward to Veronica Roth’s Chosen Ones for months and ended up dragging my feet. It took me ten days to read so now I’m behind on all of my other June reading commitments. I don’t always fare so well with bestsellers, which makes me wonder what’s wrong with me, but this book’s reviews pretty much cover the spectrum so it’s not just me this time.
I’m someone who expects every read to be a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ one and tend to become various shades of bewildered when this isn’t the case. I’m looking forward to my next couple of reads, so here’s hoping …
Word of the Week: pelagic, which means “of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea”. I came across one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen washed up on the beach this week. Google told me these little creatures growing from this once upon a tree are called pelagic goose barnacles. I also found ‘pelagic’ in this week’s read so it had to become the word of the week.
Bookish Highlight of the Week: My NetGalley request for Edith Eger’s upcoming release was approved. I haven’t read The Choice yet but plan to read it before The Gift.
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
It is mankind’s most abominable crime: murder. No one is better acquainted with the subject and its wrenching challenges than John Douglas, the FBI’s pioneer of criminal profiling, and the model for Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs.
In this provocative and deeply personal book, the most prominent criminal investigator of our time offers a rare look into the workings not only of the justice system – but of his own heart and mind. Writing with award-winning partner Mark Olshaker, Douglas opens up about his most notorious and baffling cases – and shows what it’s like to confront evil in its most monstrous form.
Two hearts. Twice as vulnerable.
Manhattan, 1850. Born out of wedlock to a wealthy socialite and a nameless immigrant, Cora Lee can mingle with the rich just as easily as she can slip unnoticed into the slums and graveyards of the city. As the only female resurrectionist in New York, she’s carved out a niche procuring bodies afflicted with the strangest of anomalies. Anatomists will pay exorbitant sums for such specimens – dissecting and displaying them for the eager public.
Cora’s specialty is not only profitable, it’s a means to keep a finger on the pulse of those searching for her. She’s the girl born with two hearts – a legend among grave robbers and anatomists – sought after as an endangered prize.
Now, as a series of murders unfolds closer and closer to Cora, she can no longer trust those she holds dear, including the young medical student she’s fallen for. Because someone has no intention of waiting for Cora to die a natural death.
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilisation the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil.
And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable novel about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”
NetGalley
Determined to be the world’s greatest detective, Zaiba is always on the lookout for a crime to solve!
Zaiba can’t wait for the school summer fair where she’s going to run a detective trail to help train other potential agents! But when the head teacher is poisoned during the highly competitive cake competition, Zaiba’s own skills are put to the test. With a whole host of suspects and a busy crime scene, Zaiba needs to stay focused if she’s going to get to the bottom of the cake catastrophe …
This practical and inspirational guide to healing from the bestselling author of The Choice shows us how to release your self-limiting beliefs and embrace your potential.
The prison is in your mind. The key is in your pocket.
In the end, it’s not what happens to us that matters most – it’s what we choose to do with it. We all face suffering – sadness, loss, despair, fear, anxiety, failure. But we also have a choice; to give in and give up in the face of trauma or difficulties, or to live every moment as a gift.
Celebrated therapist and Holocaust survivor, Dr Edith Eger, provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the imprisoning thoughts and destructive behaviours that may be holding us back. Accompanied by stories from Eger’s own life and the lives of her patients her empowering lessons help you to see your darkest moments as your greatest teachers and find freedom through the strength that lies within.
Schizanthus Nerd 