Let me just start by saying this book was everything and more than I was expecting. I really enjoyed the last book I read by Rachel Hawkins, and the spooky vibes the synopsis for this one gave off were enough to convince me I HAD to read this one. Part of me was nervous however, because spooky murder mystery type stories with alternating timelines can go so wrong. But I am nothing if not a sucker for alternate timelines. And this one was done so well and was so enthralling.
Continue reading The Villa by Rachel Hawkins is a well crafted thriller
Author: Danielle Plant
Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix- Book Review
Where to start with this one. I love horror, but for someone who has always loved a good horror movie, I haven’t read a whole lot of horror books. In fact, for the most part it’s a genre of books that I’ve only recently started diving into.
This was my first book by this author, though there are a few of his books I’ve had on my TBR for a while now. As a result, going into this I really didn’t know what to expect from it as I had no clue on the authors writing style or anything. But the title alone caught my attention enough for me to take a look at the synopsis, and I decided with it being October and spooky season, this sounded like the perfect read to set the tone for the month ahead.
I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I liked the writing style, I even liked the characters and their depth. All of the final girls were unique personalities who dealt with their trauma in vastly different ways, and managed to stand out as their own beings rather than falling into a generic slump. I expected Lynnette’s paranoia and hermit tendencies to annoy me but they made enough sense with her experiences and she actually made huge leaps at dealing with this and working through it over the course of the book that it never got to that point.
I love good character growth and Lynnette really grew by the end of the book, becoming less selfish and less of a shut-in as she tried to work out who was coming after the group of final girls and why. The book even managed to have some plot twists in the end that kind of stood out for me in the context of a horror novel simply because the horror genre can have the tendency to be fairly obvious.
I learned about the connections the characters had to classic horror films after reading the book, which added an interesting little bit of context and fan service for the die hard horror movie fan.
All in all I really enjoyed this book and I will definitely be picking up more of this authors books. Beyond that, it has definitely sparked my interest in getting much more into the horror genre as far as my reading goes, and I will be keeping an eye out for more, particularly leading up to Halloween.
These Wicked Stars by Catelyn Wilson- Book Review
The synopsis for Catelyn Wilson’s new book These Wicked Stars immediately caught my attention as it reminded me of Caraval, another series that I love. The description of the Bazaar sounded like it could be along the same lines, and I knew I had to read it. I wasn’t disappointed in the sense that the Bazaar has a very similar atmosphere, but I was much more pleasantly surprised by how different the story really was and the fact that it took a very different route than I was expecting.
Continue reading These Wicked Stars by Catelyn Wilson- Book Review
The Cloisters – Kathy Hays
My attention was immediately caught by this book at the mention of tarot with the ability to tell the future. It didn’t end up being quite what I expected, as this bit of the blurb had me expecting there to be a supernatural twist to the book, but it did not disappoint at all despite the fact that this didn’t end up being the case. Though there was no real hint of the supernatural as I had expected, this book ended up being so good in a very different way.