Tag: Novella

Elevation – Stephen King

Illustrations – Mark Edward Geyer

The awesomeness? Scott is living every metabolism challenged person’s dream; he’s consistently losing a steady amount of weight while eating whatever the heck he wants to. He can eat breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner/supper and round it all off with a double helping of dessert, and the scales still smile on him. What a dream!

The downside? No matter how much weight the scales say he’s lost Scott still looks exactly the same, protruding belly and all. All of that weight loss and you don’t even get to see the difference? No fair!

The downright weird?

‘No one weighs the same naked as they do dressed. It’s as much a given as gravity.’

This is a Stephen King novella; nothing is a given.

Set in Castle Rock, Elevation was a compulsive read for me. I loved the people I met. I loved the friendships. I loved that the homophobia expressed by some of the townsfolk was challenged. I loved the reminder that one person can make a difference in other peoples’ lives and their community as a whole, even in the current political climate and even a town where a fairly considerable amount of bigots reside.

‘Sometimes I think this is the world’s greatest weight-loss program.’

‘Yes,’ Ellis said, ‘but where does it end?’

I’ll tell you where it ends. In tears! I enjoyed Gwendy’s Button Box but I loved Elevation. I didn’t expect to feel so much for characters that I only knew for just over 130 pages but I smiled, I laughed and I wanted to have dinner with these people. Then I smiled some more while I ugly cried for the final 10% of the book. I’d tell you how many tissues I used but I didn’t; I was too busy reading through the waterfalls cascading down my face to reach over to grab a Kleenex.

There’s something about Stephen King in my mind that makes him exempt from the eye rolling and accompanying groan when I find references to an author’s other books in the one I’m reading. With anyone else I’d be rambling to myself about ‘blatant self promotion’ but in the King-dom I find the Easter eggs charming and amusing, and I think I’m so smart each time I find one. My knowing smiles in this book included a reference to the Suicide Stairs and a garage band that temporarily rename themselves ‘Pennywise and the Clowns’.

I’m one of those irritating there/they’re/their fanatics and another one of my reading quirks is picking up on inconsistencies between what the author has written and what the illustrator has drawn. It’s not a deliberate thing; it just seems to happen and once I see it I can’t unsee it. In chapter 3 of Elevation we’re told that two characters put their numbers for the Turkey Trot race on the front of their shirts. In chapter 4’s illustration both characters are shown from behind; their numbers are on their backs.

Does this matter in the scheme of things at all? Not one iota. Why do I mention it? Because my brain’s stupid and won’t shut up about it. That said, I really did love Mark Edward Geyer’s illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. They were gorgeous; naturally my favourite was the creepy Halloween pumpkin.

I need an entire series of novellas set in Castle Rock. I need to meet more of these weird and wonderful people.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis.

In the small town of Castle Rock, the setting of many of King’s most iconic stories, Scott is engaged in a low grade – but escalating – battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face – including his own – he tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scott’s affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.

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The Atrocities – Jeremy Shipp

How can a novella with such a brilliant concept and deliciously creepy execution wind up with such a blah ending?! I feel like I was taken on a trek up a treacherous mountain with the promise of an incredible view at the summit only to find out that someone built a wall blocking the view.

I was hooked from the first two sentences:

Turn left at the screaming woman with a collapsing face. Turn right at the kneeling man with bleeding sore the size of teacups.

What a wonderful hedge maze! What an amazing house, with its artwork of silent screams, wings of human fingers, headless figures on stained-glass windows, faces distorted and malformed.

What an intriguing story! A governess who is hired to teach a young girl who “isn’t coping well with this new phase of her existence.” A governess who comes with her own baggage.

I came to this house to escape empty rooms.

A generous employer who ensures their employees’ comfort with luxuries including eighty-four-inch high definition televisions in their rooms. Parents who catered to their daughter’s every whim.

There was such a foreboding atmosphere permeating this novella. There’s something not quite right with the characters and with the information the governess is given. There’s a sort of queasy uncertainty throughout the story, where the line between what’s real and what isn’t blurs for the governess and the reader alike, exacerbated by the unsettling dream sequences.

I was captivated by this story until the very end when I realised that not one of my bazillion outstanding questions were going to be answered for me. I know there are authors that don’t like to spoon feed their readers, preferring them to actually use their brain and imagination to reach their own conclusions, and I’m okay with that up to a point. This didn’t feel like that sort of ending. This felt like there was a strict deadline and about ten minutes before the deadline, realising that there was no way all of the questions could possibly be answered satisfactorily, the author just said, “Yeah, that’ll do.”

I wanted to learn more of the backstories for each character. I wanted more emotion when outrageously weird things happened rather than a ho-hum response. I wanted to know minor, possibly insignificant things like why Mr and Mrs Evers shouldn’t be phoned after 7pm. I wanted to know the details of the ‘accident’. I wanted to know what it was that Mrs Evers was really experiencing throughout the story. I wanted to know the significance of some of the details of the dreams. I want to know which characters are currently alive. I wanted to know what happened after the final sentence! And so much more.

I can’t remember the last book that had me so psyched and then stole the hope of a satisfying resolution from me. Based on the ending alone I’d be giving this novella 2 stars because I was so disappointed. Based on everything that lead up to it I’d be inclined to give it 5 stars but that was when I thought the questions I had would wind up with weird and wonderful answers. So I’m splitting the difference and rounding up to 4 stars with the hope that at some point the author will do a Q&A session to fill in some blanks. I came really close to giving it 3 stars but I loved too much of the story to able to go through with it.

I also have to say that the creepy hedge maze and that amazing house were so extraordinary that I need to move in immediately (after evicting the current tenants, of course). I would also buy and read an extended version of this story if it ever became available and I am keen to read about more of the weird and wonderful things living in this author’s imagination.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

When Isabella died, her parents were determined to ensure her education wouldn’t suffer.

But Isabella’s parents had not informed her new governess of Isabella’s … condition, and when Ms Valdez arrives at the estate, having forced herself through a surreal nightmare maze of twisted human-like statues, she discovers that there is no girl to tutor.

Or is there … ?

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Eternal Victim – Dexter Morgenstern

Game Name: Eternal Victim

Creator: Dexter Morgenstern

Player 1: The Witness

Instruction Manual: Missing. Please work it out as you go along.

Level Bosses:

  • Level 1 – The Whistler
  • Level 2 – The Constrictor
  • Level 3 – The Director
  • Level 4 – The Father

PRESS START

The most important thing you need to know going into this novella is that you only know what the Witness knows, which in the beginning is very little indeed. This made for a serious amount of confusion on my part and significant helpings of “What the hell did I sign up for?!”

If this story is of interest to you please don’t give up when you get the feeling you’re hallucinating; when every time you think you know where you are the scene changes on you and you don’t know how you got there. Your patience and attempt to retain your sanity will be rewarded if you stick with it. Know that things will fall into place. I graduated from confusion to intrigue and then to fascination and compulsion. I had to know what was coming next and how it would all come together in the end.

Dexter Morgenstern writes at the start of the novella that he wants to write stories for games and as I read I could see this story translating into the gaming world quite easily. I viewed the story much like a game as I progressed and ultimately came to see the story as having four main levels, each with a level boss to face at the end. While there was a cyclical nature to what the player needs to accomplish within the level, each level takes place in a different time period and with different characters.

During each level the Witness gains information, mostly fairly cryptic at the time, which they hope will eventually help them make sense of who they are and what their connection is to the characters they encounter within the game. The characters that remain consistent throughout the levels (besides the Witness) are the girl in the mirror and the Preta, which is translated from Sanskrit as ‘hungry ghost’.

Because characters come and go you get to know their stories but I didn’t find I had the time to connect emotionally with them. Having said that, there’s so much action and running around that it’s not as though any of the characters have time to sit down and have a chat over a cuppa with you anyway. If it helps you to put all of this into context, Dexter describes it himself as a “chaotic trifecta of Buddhism, history, and ghost-zombies”. Intriguing, huh?!

Because I seem to be fairly immune to feeling fear while reading, I wasn’t scared reading Eternal Victim. I was unsettled by it though and for me, feeling unsettled over a period of time is more uncomfortable to sit with than scary moments that come and go. I haven’t been this unsettled by a book in a long time so I was suitably impressed by that.

If you’re squeamish and/or the content warnings apply to you then you may want to skip this book or at least approach it with caution. If you can handle graphic details of tortuous murders committed by deranged serial killer types you should be okay, but you’d be forgiven if you cringe at certain points as your already overactive imagination works overtime. If you can eat while watching a Saw movie you should be fine too.

This novella is certainly not going to be for everyone as it truly is one of the strangest books I’ve read, but it happily transformed for me from being close to ditching it for the first 10% to being glad I persevered fairly soon after. I’d like to reread Eternal Victim to see how the reading experience changes now that I know how it all fits together. I’m definitely interested in reading more books by this author.

Beware the fog!

GAME OVER

Credits: Thank you so much to NetGalley, Dexter Morgenstern and BookBuzz.net for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Follow the Witness as she travels through a perpetual series of nightmares, haunted by a mixture of pernicious serial killers and their imprisoned, undead victims, known as preta. As she wanders through time and memories shared by the killers and their victims, she fights to solve the puzzle of their connection to each other and to herself. Her only hope of salvation lies in connecting key victims to the souls who can rescue them, thus waking her from the nightmare, but one killer follows the next, bringing forth a new set of victims, a new score of preta, and immediately landing her in a new terror.

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Peach – Emma Glass

I hate giving a low rating to any book. I have such admiration for authors – for the blood, sweat and tears that go into writing a book in the first place, then having to navigate the publishing world and subjecting themselves to readers who can lift them up or tear them down with their words.

If you are interested in reading this book, please don’t just go by my review. There are a lot of 5 star reviews for this book as well, and who knows, maybe you’ll be adding one yourself after reading it. My review comes from a place of confusion and ‘this wasn’t the book for me’ rather than malice. I applaud the author for successfully navigating the publishing world and for the many positive reviews I’ve read.

Having said that … my brain hurts! Had I borrowed this book from the library instead of requesting an ARC I would not have finished it.

You know those books that hoity-toity book clubs rave about with their “literary masterpiece” this and their “author stunned with their use of [some big fancy word that the general population can neither spell nor use in a sentence]” that? You may listen to these people and smile and nod, but on the inside you’re thinking, ‘How did you get that from this book?’ and ‘I must be completely stupid. I have no idea what you’re going on about.’ I think that’s going to be the unfortunate fate of this book; a polarising “most exquisite piece of writing ever!” or “what the hell did I just read?!”

Reading like a stream of consciousness, Peach (the novella) opens with Peach (the person) having just been brutally sexually assaulted and follows her down the rabbit trail of its physical, emotional and psychological aftermath. I came away from Peach having very little grasp on which words were literal, fantasy, hallucination, nightmare or flashback – and I’m not sure I was supposed to. I can handle gruesome, triggery books, I understand the internal turmoil following sexual assault and revenge fantasies, but I. don’t. UndErsTand. This. book.

Which brings me to the writing style. There are so many one word sentences, some sentences start with a capital letter and others don’t, words have randomly capitalised letters scattered through them. I expect it was deliberate, intentionally messy and disjointed to reflect the emotional state of Peach and her internal dialogue, but I just found it messy. I understood what was happening (sometimes) but I couldn’t figure out if the author was going for prose, poetry, some combination or something else entirely.

There’s the use of food to describe people, including:

  • The rapist / stalker / maker of creepy hand delivered notes with words cut out of magazines, Lincoln, is sausage, pork, oily, greasy, slimy
  • Mr Custard, college biology teacher made of custard
  • Baby, Peach’s brother who remains unnamed is icing sugar, jelly.

Mam and Dad are overtly sexual, so much so that I found it as uncomfortable to read as I did the sexual assault. Speaking of Green, Peach’s boyfriend, the same evening of his daughter’s sexual assault –

“You make such a cute couple, and the sex sounds amazing, says Dad.”

Immediately following his daughter’s face flushing red with embarrassment,

“It’s okay, Peach. Sex is a good thing. Me and Mam do it all the time. We just did it now on the kitchen table. It’s human nature, Peach, don’t be embarrassed. Green is a lucky guy. Most girls won’t put out until they’re married. But not our Peach. and we’re proud of you.”

I’m sorry, what??? Then good ol’ Mam and Dad, along with boyfriend Green remain oblivious to what Peach is going through for the entire novella.

So, just two of my multitude of unanswered questions:

  • Why does Peach’s stomach continually grow larger and larger and larger?
  • What really happened in the end?

Colour me confused!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Circus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Slip the pin through the skin. Start stitching.
It doesn’t sting. It does bleed. White thread turns red.
Red string. Going in. Going out. I pull. Tug. 
Tug the pin. In. Out. Out. Out. Blackout.

Something has happened to Peach. Blood runs down her legs and the scent of charred meat lingers on her flesh. It hurts to walk but she staggers home to parents that don’t seem to notice. They can’t keep their hands off each other and besides, they have a new infant, sweet and wobbly as a jelly baby. 

Peach must patch herself up alone so she can go to college and see her boyfriend, Green. But sleeping is hard when she is haunted by the gaping memory of a mouth, and working is hard when burning sausage fat fills her nostrils, and eating is impossible when her stomach is swollen tight as a drum. 

In this dazzling debut, Emma Glass articulates the unspeakable with breath-taking clarity and verve. Intensely physical, with rhythmic, visceral prose, Peach marks the arrival of a visionary new voice.

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Broken Shells – Michael Patrick Hicks

GOREFEST!!!

I had planned on skimming the first couple of pages of this novella before putting it back in line behind other reads that are being released earlier, but I couldn’t help myself. I got sucked in by the mystery of what’s living beneath the surface and once I caught a glimpse of the nightmare I had to continue, because upon Googling ‘leatherback turtle’s mouth’ you’ve passed the point of no return.

While Antoine DeWitt is almost positive that the Money Carlo ticket promising him winnings of $5,000 is a scam, he’s having a bad day and hey, what’s the worst that can happen by checking it out. Arriving at the Dangle car dealership Antoine meets Jon Dangle, who confirms that Antoine is indeed a lucky winner.

Dangle and the generations of men before him have been keepers of an important secret, one Antoine is about to learn firsthand. The latest in an immeasurable offering of sacrifices, Antoine finds himself trapped in a subterranean nightmare.

When Antoine awakes at the beginning of the fight of his life, the description was scarily close to an account of hell I read a number of years ago. And then Antoine’s day gets worse.

If you’re highly offended by expletives and you don’t do well with gore or claustrophobia, then perhaps this is not the book for you. However, if you love getting creeped out by creatures that scratch around, felt but unseen, in the dark and the idea of something unknown tearing chunks of flesh from living people makes your heart race and an internal cheer bubbles up inside you, then my kindred spirit, this book was written with you in mind.

What commences as a certain death trap paradoxically twists into a tale of hope in the darkest of places, yet you’re constantly wondering if your hope is in vain. Knowing this is a horror novella, should our protagonist (and by default the reader) even hold onto this possibly futile hope? How much do you fight against what appears at first glance to be inevitable?

Broken Shells is a visceral experience, with oodles of ooze, gore galore, dry heaves and vomit, and some Alienworthy introductions to razor sharp creepy crawlies. With plenty of graphic imagery of the icky variety and a body count too large to number, our down on his luck hero faces an onslaught of bug monsters.

Michael Patrick Hicks capitalises simultaneously on our fears of the unknown and the dark. The atmosphere throughout the novella was a fun blend of suspense, dread and bloodthirsty anticipation. You’re likely to have some involuntary moments of squirming as you find yourself up close and personal with all of the stabby, slimey, ouchy and itchy details.

What if there were a creature above us on the food chain and that by delivering regular sacrifices to them you could potentially protect millions of others? Would those delivering the sacrifices be the heroes or the villains of the story?

What kind of mind comes up with a scenario so gruesome?! Ha! Who am I judge! I was the one simultaneously cheering on Antione and the subterranean creepy crawlies. As only Lydia from Beetlejuice can declare with the right level of creepy,

This, my friends, is horror done right! I can’t wait for my imagination to be happily grossed out again by this author.

New favourite word: ichor.

My takeaway moral of the story: Never ever trust car salespeople.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and High Fever Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Antoine DeWitt is a man down on his luck. Broke and recently fired, he knows the winning Money Carlo ticket that has landed in his mailbox from a car dealership is nothing more than a scam. The promise of five thousand dollars, though, is too tantalizing to ignore.

Jon Dangle is a keeper of secrets, many of which are buried deep beneath his dealership. He works hard to keep them hidden, but occasionally sacrifices are required, sacrifices who are penniless, desperate, and who will not be missed. Sacrifices exactly like DeWitt.

When Antoine steps foot on Dangle’s car lot, it is with the hope of easy money. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a deep, dark hole, buried alive. If he is going to survive the nightmare ahead of him, if he has any chance of seeing his wife and child again, Antoine will have to do more than merely hope. He will have to fight his way back to the surface, and pray that Jon Dangle’s secrets do not kill him first. 

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The Murders of Molly Southbourne – Tade Thompson

Spoilers Ahead!

💉 Halloween Haemorrhage Book! 💉

Molly Southbourne’s parents teach her four very important rules:

“If you see yourself, run. Don’t bleed. Blot, burn, bleach. Find a hole, find your parents.“

Sorry, but that’s about all you’re getting from me about The Murders of Molly Southbourne. If I tell you any more than what you read in the book’s blurb I’m going to spoil the story for you.

This novella is a quick read and I needed to keep reading to find out how it was all going to be resolved. There’s a nice twist and potential for another book. I’m usually a fan of endings that don’t form question marks above my head but for Molly I really feel the ambiguity of what happens after the final sentence works in its favour. Having said that, should there be another Molly/molly book I would be interested.

Despite rule #2, there is a fair bit of bloodshed in this book so if you’ve got a case of haemophobia and an overactive imagination, buyer beware. It’s in context with the storyline and I didn’t feel it was gratuitous at all.

There was one section that really annoyed me because it didn’t feel like it belonged in or added any value to the story. I didn’t see why there had to be a threesome with Molly, the professor and a molly. Call me a prude if you want but I just don’t see why you’d be interested in having sex with your doppelgänger and if for some reason you were, why you would when you know you’re going to kill them in a few hours time.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

The rule is simple: don’t bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

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Rogue Justice #1: Twisted Truth – Melinda Leigh

Having never heard of Melinda Leigh (I know … shame on me!) this novella seemed like a perfect taste test of her writing. A double homicide with a surprise find, a child chained in the basement, this sounded like my kind of book. So I ignored the fact that it’s listed as a romance (ARGH! Get it away from me!) and instead focused on the mystery and thriller categorisation (WOOHOO!) and dived in. This was fun!

I don’t know about you but I innately trust a book that has a sentence like “Small Town Rule #1: There’s always room for pie.” If an author understands dessert, then they’ve gotta be OK.

Twisted Truth is told in alternating chapters by Rogue County Detective Seth Harding and his county social worker wife, Carly. Seth and Carly have an eight year old daughter, Brianna, who has a pygmy goat called Prince Eric and a pony called Maximus.

Now, it seems to me that this town would be lost without Carly’s family as they practically run the whole show. Are you ready???

  • Carly’s mother, Patsy, is an emergency foster carer and the family farm also takes on the overflow from the county animal shelter. Patsy has an Irish Setter called Trina.
  • Carly’s late father had been the police chief of Solitude, their hometown.
  • Carly’s younger brother, Bruce, is the new rookie in the sheriff’s department and is adorable!
  • Carly’s older brother, James, is the mayor of Solitude.
  • Carly’s sister, Stevie, is a Solitude patrol officer and is married to Zane Duncan, Solitude’s police chief.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It felt like the words were flowing around me and I could imagine it as a great beach read. There was always something happening to move the story forward. There was enough information about the characters to make you care about them and hope they didn’t get killed. There was a close family but they still had problems so you could relate to them and admire their closeness without them coming across as idealistic.

I really liked that Carly was haunted by a previous case as that gave her character more depth and gave me something to chew on while I was digesting the details of the main story. My only niggle was that there were a few loose ends about the baddie/s that weren’t neatly wrapped in a bow for me. However, book 2 is coming soon so I expect my questions may be answered in time.

Favourite Character: Prince Eric. This little pygmy goat escape artist has horns and knows how to use them. A close second was Patsy. A woman adept at pie making and knows her way around a shotgun? What a cool grandma!

You know that classic Raiders of the Lost Ark scene when Indy goes up against the swordsman?

Remember that when you’re reading and you’ll understand why I cheered towards the end of this book.

Oh, and naturally the FBI rock up after the action’s all over. Yay FBI guys!

So, the biggest negative of this book? The fact that I have discovered Melinda Leigh so late in the game, so I have about a bazillion of her books to catch up on. Ha! Like reading has ever been a chore! 😜

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Montlake Romance for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

When Detective Seth Harding responds to shots being fired, he faces a familiar sight: a double homicide. However, he is shocked to find a young boy chained in the basement. The terrified child refuses to speak, but Seth knows he is the key to something sinister.

Reluctantly, Seth calls the only social worker he trusts with the traumatised boy — his wife. Carly is recovering from her own trauma suffered on the job, but she can’t turn away from this case, not from another child in trouble. With torrential rain bearing down, threatening to isolate their little town in a killer flood, Seth and Carly know the best way to keep the boy safe from danger is to take him back to their farm.

But danger is as relentless as the storm. And it’s following them all the way home.

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