Review: Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Posted on February 20, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

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Synopsis:

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep.

Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go.

Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.

Review:

“Memory is a difficult thing to navigate, especially traumatic memory. It splinters. You can cut yourself on the edges of it so easily.” p. 206

Last night I set my alarm for 2 AM to finish reading Tell Me I’m Worthless before the kids woke up. I had time to take a nap for an hour or two before they started their day and their demands of my attention. During that nap, I kept having bad dreams about the end of the world and everything falling apart. This is really the message at the core of Tell Me I’m Worthless. The world is falling apart because evil and hate lives and it will never fully be killed because we will always give it room to breathe and flourish. 

The story follows Alice, a transwoman, Ila, her ex-lover and TERF spokesperson, and The House, who is trying to lure them back into it’s clutches. Three years before, Alice, Ila, and their friend Hannah went into this House because they had heard it was haunted. Hannah never came out, and the other two came out scarred (literally and metaphorically) for life. Alice and Ila split up and hate each other after this, taking their lives in separate trajectories. When Ila asks Alice to return to house, they decide to do it together.

This is a very uncomfortable book to read. There is a lot of violence, suicide, sexual assault, and grimy people doing awful things to one another. Alice and Ila are not happy people. We do not really know if they were happy people before they encountered the house, but what we get are two people who cannot outrun their trauma. I do not want to compare books, but the last time I was this uncomfortable reading a novel it was The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. There is something unsettling about every character in this book, and they are not exactly people I would want to spend time with.

I like that Alison Rumfitt uses so different perspectives and timelines. She even breaks the fourth wall a few times before turning this novel and this evil house into a complete metaphor for society. Tell Me I’m Worthless uses a haunted house to tell a horror story but the bones of this story, the true nightmare at the core, is society and the way that we treat one another. Any time the mirror is reflected on us, the conversation is never easy.

I love this book because it really is unsettling. Even though it is a horror novel, it is also has deeper meaning. The way that it is structured with chapters that do not line up, with sentences that are short and sharp, with narrators that are as unreliable as their memory, all it makes for a novel that I cannot stop thinking about. This is one of those books that make you mull over the meaning long after, and even though it is uncomfortable, this is one of those books that you sometimes need to read.

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Review: The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar by Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris

Posted on February 18, 2023 by ghostvillehero

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Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A definitive and surprising exploration of the history of Black horror films, after the rising success of Get Out, Candyman, and Lovecraft Country from creators behind the acclaimed documentary, Horror Noire.

The Black Guy Dies First explores the Black journey in modern horror cinema, from the fodder epitomized by Spider Baby to the Oscar-​winning cinematic heights of Get Out and beyond. This eye-opening book delves into the themes, tropes, and traits that have come to characterize Black roles in horror since 1968, a year in which race made national headlines in iconic moments from the enactment of the 1968 Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April. This timely book is a must-read for cinema and horror fans alike.

Review:

As a white guy in a 100% white town, I grew up not thinking much about how black people were portrayed in horror movies. I loved Candyman and The People Under the Stairs, but I did not think of them as black movies or the impact they had in the community. It was not until I was older, when I was listening to a lady at the video store yelling at the worker because she accidentally rented Tales from the Hood instead of the Disney movie Tall Tale that I was aware of black movie makers making horror for black audiences. This was an eye opening experience I had in 1995. Many people had this same experience with Get Out in 2017. The reaction to Get Out and the rise of horror that does not have straight white guys as the target audience has grown since Get Out. It is interesting to read a book like The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar now because you can see the change in the sheer amount of examples from the past five years versus the previous four decades. 

Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris start with the first two real examples of black people in horror, Spider Baby and Night of the Living Dead, to the present day films like Us, Candyman (2021), and Bad Hair. Harris runs the website, blackhorrormovies.com, and some of this book, particularly the first 100 pages, feels like a long blog post. There are many lists that break up the introduction, and this feels like it is intentional to let us know that even though there are some very important, uncomfortable conversations they are going to bring up about race in horror movies, they want the reader to be disarmed. It is interesting because one of the first topics that they mention is how black people in early horror movies were used as comic relief, ways to cut tension in the scenes. They use some of these tactics in their writing.

Some of the early films are repeated over and over because they match many of the subjects discussed, but also because many decades, particularly the 80s and 90s were not very rich with black horror cinema. I would like to see a follow up to this book in another 10 years, because we are in a golden age of inclusive horror, with more cinema including people of color and other marginalized groups in lead roles in horror movies. Personally I think this is a good thing. The more films I watch and the more books that I read that I feel like I am not the target audience, the more I know that other people are getting films that mean more to them. 

The Black Guy Dies First is an interesting, well researched study. I have seen many of the films mentioned, but there are a few that I now want to revisit, and a few I never really considered watching before now (like Surf Nazis Must Die). There are a few times when this book feels repetitive because there are so many of the films that fall into several different categories, but as a whole this is a good, well research study. I really want to visit blackhorrormovies.com and use it as a resource for movies I need to watch.

I received this as an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: The Family Game by Catherine Steadman

Posted on February 14, 2023 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

A rich, eccentric family. A time-honored tradition. Or a lethal game of survival? One woman finds out what it really takes to join the 1% in this riveting psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water, Mr. Nobody, and The Disappearing Act.

Harry is a novelist on the brink of stardom; Edward, her husband-to-be, is seemingly perfect. In love and freshly engaged, their bliss is interrupted by the reemergence of the Holbecks, Edward’s eminent family and the embodiment of American old money. For years, they’ve dominated headlines and pulled society’s strings, and Edward left them all behind to forge his own path. But there are eyes and ears everywhere. It was only a matter of time before they were pulled back in . . .

After all, even though he’s long severed ties with his family, Edward is set to inherit it all. Harriet is drawn to the glamour and sophistication of the Holbecks, who seem to welcome her with open arms, but everything changes when she meets Robert, the inescapably magnetic head of the family. At their first meeting, Robert slips Harry a cassette tape, revealing a shocking confession which sets the inevitable game in motion.

What is it about Harry that made him give her that tape? A thing that has the power to destroy everything? As she ramps up her quest for the truth, she must endure the Holbecks’ savage Christmas traditions all the while knowing that losing this game could be deadly.

Review:

The Family Game starts with Harriet Reed, a novelist on the brink of stardom, getting engaged to marry Edward Holbeck. Ed comes from old American money, ruthless American money. He has estranged himself from his father, mother, and siblings, but when they learn about Harry and their engagement, they start to use her to get him back into the fold. What Harry finds when she meets the Holbecks is a family that holds a great deal of power, money, and influence. She also learns that is a very dangerous undercurrent to everything that they do.

Many things work really well in this novel. Harry is from England, and the Holbecks use some of her cultural ignorance against her, like inviting her and Edward over for a dinner without telling her that it is Thanksgiving. These kinds of little tricks that the Holbecks pull really set up the book for bigger tricks, and we can believe that Harry is a little behind in her understanding while trying to navigate this family. This also makes Harry a strong character, one that shows her adaptability and has a very good chance of beating them at their own games. Another thing that works really well in the novel is the way that the structure of the Holbeck family is presented. We feels from Harry’s very first meeting with any of them that there is an undercurrent to their knowledge, like they have already vetted the situation and that they can get away with whatever they want because they have money and power. The father and patriarch of the Holbecks, Robert, is the biggest example of this. He is to be feared. The way that he conducts himself makes him frightening. At one point, an entire family dinner is canceled specifically because he is in a mood and will not join them. The power that he has not only as the head of his family but as a wealthy white guy in America that can escape whatever problem that arises, is on full display. He knows that he has enough money and influence to cover up any sort of unlawful action. This puts Harry in danger, and we feel the tension Harry feels. We sense the danger that she is in, even before she senses it herself. 


I like that this book is set between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that this is not only a thriller but it is a holiday book as well. Harry spends the holiday season with the Holbecks, and it is definitely one that she will never forget. Even though I was able to predict the ending about half way through the book, I enjoyed The Family Game, and it is a great deal of fun to read. The story moves quickly, and in the end, it is a novel that I can recommend to anyone who likes stories about rich families and the secrets they have kept simply because they have money.

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Review: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Posted on February 12, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Where to Buy:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

In this gripping debut tinged with supernatural horror, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow’s head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too–a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina–Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams–and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?

Review:

Bad Cree is the story of MacKenzie, a woman living in Vancouver after leaving her Cree family behind to pursue her own life. When she starts having vivid dreams and crows start to follow her everywhere, she knows that she has to go back to a small town in Alberta to find the answers. There are some things that this novel does right, but there are more things that it does wrong. 

I like that Mackenzie goes home to her family to help solve her problem and the family that help her are the women. Her sister, her cousin, her mother, and her aunts all pitch in to help Mackenzie figure out why she is having these dreams and what they mean. The men are in the house or coming home from work, but they do not count. They are not part of this story. This comradery also leads to secrets that are revealed between the women. This is a story that has deep ties to indigenous belief, superstition, and lore. The bond between the women in the house shows that they are all from the same lineage and0 that there are special powers in being Cree and in being a woman. This lesson is definitely learned by Mackenzie through her journey.

The problem is that this book is too long, even at 250 pages. It almost feels like this was a 200 page manuscript, and the publisher asked the author to add another 50 pages to the middle. The first 120 or so pages are decent, and the last sixty is where the story really starts to form. The seventy pages in the middle are forgettable except that it took forever to get through them. I struggled to finish these pages. It did not help that the writing is not too great. There are certain things Johns uses repeatedly to describe her characters and their emotions. They all “laugh slightly.” They all “gulp to breathe.” They all “laugh” again. They all “breathe” again. I am fairly certain that Mackenzie does the same thing in about six of her dreams. This really feels like an early draft of a book, and the writing is very limited. The final showdown, after 220+ pages lasts about two pages, so it is pretty disappointing, and the buildup does not seem worth it. In the end, Bad Cree feels like Jessica Johns has written a much better book about family relationships than a horror novel.

I did not hate this book, but it was hard to finish the last half. I do like that it is very much focused on the women in the story and the men are barely worth a mention, and maybe women get more value out of this prodigal daughter story. It just did not have much for me.

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Review: Nightmare Fuel by Nina Nesseth

Posted on February 6, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Nightmare Fuel by Nina Nesseth is a pop-science look at fear, how and why horror films get under our skin, and why we keep coming back for more.

Do you like scary movies?
Have you ever wondered why?

Nina Nesseth knows what scares you. She also knows why.

In Nightmare Fuel, Nesseth explores the strange and often unexpected science of fear through the lenses of psychology and physiology. How do horror films get under our skin? What about them keeps us up at night, even days later? And why do we keep coming back for more?

Horror films promise an experience: fear. From monsters that hide in plain sight to tension-building scores, every aspect of a horror film is crafted to make your skin crawl. But how exactly do filmmakers pull this off? The truth is, there’s more to it than just loud noises and creepy images.

With the affection of a true horror fan and the critical analysis of a scientist, Nesseth explains how audiences engage horror with both their brains and bodies, and teases apart the elements that make horror films tick. Nightmare Fuel covers everything from jump scares to creature features, serial killers to the undead, and the fears that stick around to those that fade over time.

With in-depth discussions and spotlight features of some of horror’s most popular films—from classics like The Exorcist to modern hits like Hereditary—and interviews with directors, film editors, composers, and horror academics, Nightmare Fuel is a deep dive into the science of fear, a celebration of the genre, and a survival guide for going to bed after the credits roll.

“An invaluable resource, a history of the horror genre, a love letter to the scary movie—it belongs on any horror reader’s bookshelf.” —Lisa Kröger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Monster, She Wrote

Review:

I was very excited when I heard the announcement for this nonfiction book. I mean who wouldn’t want to read something about why horror movies scare us? I know I have people around me that ask me why I spend so many hours watching and reading horror, why I like to be scared and watch blood and guts all of the time. I really do not have any of the answers. I was hoping that this could give me some ammunition to the questions, but alas, it is not the case.

Nightmare Fuel is a deep dive into the science of why movies scare people, why people want to be scared, what is happening in our brains when we watch scary movies. Nina Nesseth explores many topics, including the formatting of jump scares, the ways people are scared, and how sound plays an important role in our fear. There are explorations and analysis of several studies that question if violent content makes people violent, why there are things that we see at a young age that scare us our entire lives, and how many psychological studies are flawed. These studies are torn apart and many are slanted toward getting the results that the researchers wanted. A majority of the book seems to be in the defense of horror movies because the research studies against them are usually bogus or skewed. The point is that there is not a scientific reason not to like horror. 

I found the idea of this book more interesting than the book itself. I am not into deep science writing, and sometimes I felt little interest in the depth that Nina Nesseth was going. Even though I appreciate the things that this book does, it really is not a book I would read again. I have recommended this to people who are interested in how the brain works more than how horror works. There are some highlights in the book though. I really enjoyed some of the in depth looks at certain classic films like Jaws and The Thing. I also like the short interviews, particularly the one with John Fawcett, the director of Ginger Snaps, because it is one of my favorite horror movies and it is interesting to get some of his story. There are also a few films mentioned that I need to see or revisit, but the actual takeaways from this discussion are not as useful as I hoped.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Satin Island by Tom McCarthy

Posted on February 2, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From the author of Remainder (the major feature-film adaption of which will be released in 2015) and C (short-listed for the Booker Prize), and winner of the Windham Campbell Prize, a novel that promises to give us the first and last word on the world–modern, postmodern, whatever world you think you are living in.

When we first meet U., our narrator, he is waiting out a delay in the Turin airport. Clicking through corridors of trivia on his laptop he stumbles on information about the Shroud of Turin–and is struck by the degree to which our access to the truth is always mediated by a set of veils or screens, with any world built on those truths inherently unstable. A “corporate ethnographer,” U. is tasked with writing the “Great Report,” an ell-encompassing document that would sum up our era. Yet at every turn, he feels himself overwhelmed by the ubiquity of data, lost in buffer zones, wandering through crowds of apparitions. Madison, the woman he is seeing, is increasingly elusive, much like the particulars in the case of the recent parachutist’s death with which U. is obsessed. Add to that his longstanding obsession with South Pacific cargo cults and his developing, inexplicable interest in oil spills. As he begins to wonder if the Great Report might remain a shapeless, oozing plasma, his senses are startled awake by a dream of an apocalyptic cityscape. In Satin Island, Tom McCarthy captures–as only he can– the way we experience our world, our efforts to find meaning (or just to stay awake) and discern the narratives we think of as our lives.

Review:

I have been intrigued by Tom McCarthy’s books since I read some reviews about his novel C (2010) when it first came out. It received some glowing reviews that heralded it as dense, complex, and unique. I bought a copy, and it has been on my shelf since. For some reason, one of his other books, Satin Island, started showing up lately on Amazon as a book I would probably like. I figured it was his newest book since it was being promoted. I was a little shocked to find that it was the follow up to C and published in 2015. With the book being under 200 pages, Satin Island was a good introduction to an author I have been wanting to read.

The story is narrated by U. He is a corporate anthropologist, which is someone who helps companies understand where they fit into the culture while starting a marketing campaign. I think. Many of the pages of Satin Island turn into paragraphs that go down rabbit holes of U’s thinking, and there are times that by the end of his musings, I am not certain I understand the point he is making. I do know that when he is not working at this job, he collects dossiers on other parallel events, like information on the history of oil spills and statistics on buffering. He gets sucked into a news story about a man who is parachuting and when he pulls the cord to open the parachute, the ropes are cut. U spends a great deal of time gathering articles from around the world about people that have died parachuting. These events are things that he obsesses over, researches heavily, and tries to find patterns. Some of the small things that keep him obsessively focused can be innocuous like watching a manager during a meeting as she plays with one shoe with her other shoe, but there are other things that he cannot stop dwelling on that strains his relationships, like why Madison, the woman he is having a fairly casual relationship with, was in the Torino airport at one time in her past. Many of these things seem insignificant but much of this is what makes U the person that he is. 


Tom McCarthy’s writing is very good, but sometimes I feel like I have been a little outsmarted. Some of his long paragraphs that last a page or two start at point A and meanders toward point B. By the time he gets me to the point, I am lost. I seemed to have a great deal of trouble focusing on some of these journeys, and my mind would wander off the path to other things. This does not mean that I will not read Tom McCarthy’s other books (it might be time to dust off my copy of C), but it means I have a hard time recommending others to read Satin Island without telling them that they are in for a bit of a chore.

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Review: Why Read: Selected Writing 2001-2021 by Will Self

Posted on January 30, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed “the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation” by the Guardian, Will Self’s Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback, and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell, and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald’s childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs’s Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers, how, what, and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self’s trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humor infuse every piece.

A book that examines how the human stream of consciousness flows into and out of literature, Why Read will satisfy both old and new readers of this icon of contemporary literature.

Review:

Will Self is one of those authors that I have bought his books but have yet to read much of his work. It all started from the hardback cover of Great Apes. I saw it in the store and knew that I had to have a copy. The name Will Self is also aesthetically pleasing, even if, according to some of examples in this collection, it leaves the internet with ammunition to use for when he says something disagreeable. And some of his opinions are disagreeable, especially when it comes to some of his opinions 0on reading. 

In any essay collection that spans twenty years of writing, there are changing opinions. Most of his essays on reading are about digital reading and how it is not as good reading from a screen as it is holding a hardback. He also says early on that if you want to be a serious reader and writer, you have to read and write serious books. He backs down on some of this toward the end of the collection, written in that past few years. The last essay, “Reading for Writers” he states that readers should read whatever they want. He also mentions that readers should read “promiscuously” and how he has several books going at one time. If he reads promiscuously, he chooses to write about white, male writers. It takes the collection 275 pages for him to examine a female writer, Rachel Cusk, in the essay, “On Writing Memoir.” He does mention books by women and marginalized groups in a generic way, but he does not spend the time on any of them. He spends his time discussing Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, Karl Ove Knausgaard, J.G. Ballard, Norman Mailer, George Orwell, William S. Burroughs, W. G. Sebald, and a sprinkling of many other male authors. I do not know if this is specific to this collection, but there does not seem to be many indicators that the reading life that Will Self proclaims to be important is very diversified. 

I do like many of the essays, even if some of them seemed a bit like a dinosaur yelling at the meteor, but most of them are fairly interesting. Will Self does write with the authority of someone who stands behind his opinions and essays, even if they are not the most popular perspective. I liked reading his essays about writers and famous works, but I did not care as much for some of his personal essays.  He has completely forgettable essays about skyscrapers and shelving units. In any collection that spans this many years, there are going to be some essays that work better than others, and I would say that for me, this ratio is about half and half. Reading this does make me want to find my copy of Great Apes and see if it is more interesting of a book than Why Read because I feel like I am still supposed to read books by Will Self. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

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Review: Inspection by Josh Malerman

Posted on January 27, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world.

J is one of only twenty-six students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know—and all they are allowed to know.

But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, in a school very much like J’s, a girl named K is asking the same questions. J has never seen a girl, and K has never seen a boy. As K and J work to investigate the secrets of their two strange schools, they come to discover something even more mysterious: each other.

Review:

Inspection is the fourth Josh Malerman book that I have read, and I will say that I did enjoy this novel more than some of his others. The novel starts with a weird premise, the Alphabet Boys are living in a turret in the middle of the Michigan forest without knowledge of certain things beyond the woods, including society and females. There are 24 of the boys, because two have already been spoiled rotten and sent to the Corner (which is a death sentence.) When J starts to ask questions about the structure of his life and what lies beyond the woods, things start to become more dangerous and the clearer his vision becomes the more things spin out of control.  In the novel synopsis, it tells of a second turret, the Letter Girls, 25 girls (with one spoiled rotten) living the opposite existence. Eventually the Alphabet Boys and the Letter Girls will come into contact with one another and their world will stop. 

I did not know anything about this book going into it. I did not read the synopsis. I did not know about the second turret either. Maybe this is what made me enjoy Inspection more than other readers. If I would have read the synopsis, I would not have been so blindsided when the second turret and the second set of children showed up. I liked the way that it was going, with the resident boy’s writer, Warren Bratt, deciding that to recapture his integrity, he is going to blow the top off of the Alphabet Boys lives and their leader, D.A.D. This whole novel felt like a huge unsettling experiment, like the film, Dogtooth, where children are getting gaslighted by adults. Some people find these types of stories disgusting and unethical, the mental abuse being something that they find too disgusting to read and enjoy. I find these stories disturbing but also fascinating, like what kind of adult wants to make a child think in a certain way about the world? Why would someone want this so much that they are willing to build a whole life on lies? I wish there was more pages dedicated to the reasoning behind these experiments, why D.A.D and M.O.M really wanted to run this experiment on children for so long. 


The entire novel was deeply engaging and fascinating for me. I did not find there to be too many parts that dragged the narrative down. I like the way that the society was structured, and how all of the action unfolded. The character and their motivations are clear and their disappointment in one another is disheartening. I felt sorry for the children who are caught up in this novel, and it would be interesting to get a sequel, one that tells how the kids struggle to adapt to life after learning about each other. I would be excited about this novel, but I also am really starting to get a good idea of the nuances of Josh Malerman’s work. I know that I have not read the major one yet (for some reason I keep avoiding Bird Box), but Inspection is my favorite so far.

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Review: Death of a Dancing Queen by Kimberly G. Giarratano

Posted on January 24, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Preorder it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

After her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Billie Levine revamped her grandfather’s private investigation firm and set up shop in the corner booth of her favorite North Jersey deli hoping the free pickles and flexible hours would allow her to take care of her mom and pay the bills. So when Tommy Russo, a rich kid with a nasty drug habit, offers her a stack of cash to find his missing girlfriend, how can she refuse? At first, Billie thinks this will be easy earnings, but then her missing person’s case turns into a murder investigation and Russo is the detective bureau’s number one suspect.

Suddenly Billie is embroiled in a deadly gang war that’s connected to the decades-old disappearance of a famous cabaret dancer with ties to both an infamous Jewish mob and a skinhead group. Toss in the reappearance of Billie’s hunky ex-boyfriend with his own rap sheet, and she is regretting every decision that got her to this point.

Becoming a P.I. was supposed to solve her problems. But if Billie doesn’t crack this case, the next body the police dredge out of the Hudson River will be hers.

Review:

Billie Levine is a main character torn between her demanding work like and her demanding home life. Living with her brother, grandfather, and mother who has early onset Alzheimer’s, not only is she trying to make sure her mother is safe, she is trying to solve a case of Jasmine, a murdered college girl and true crime podcaster who was doing a series on a local unsolved murder outside of a strip club in 1991. Billie is hired by Tommy Russo, Jasmine’s junkie boyfriend who is also rich enough to give Billie whatever money amount she asks for, as long as she can prove his innocence. 

What follows is a mystery that pits Billie against the local mob, the local skinheads, the local police, and her own family. She gets warned repeatedly that she needs to stop the investigation, by all sides of the story, but her tenacity and clever investigation skills keeps her ahead of those that are trying to scare her or murder her. In the end we get a main character that is strong and smart but also has her flaws. She knows she needs to stop. She knows she needs to be home so her mother does not wander off, that most of the burden of watching her has fallen on her retired grandfather, who deserves to go to the deli and the bar with his friends and day drink because he has earned it, and Billie’s brother, a nurse doing his best to control his bipolar disorder while trying to date and move out of the house. She feels the guilt of given these two more of the burden while she tries to solve the case, but she also knows that she cannot stop the case. The tension between her and the rest of her family is palatable, and we understand Billie has to take care of her mother but she also needs to make money to be able to take care of her mother. This family dynamic added to the danger of the investigation gives Death of a Dancing Queen elements that make this a good mystery thriller.

Kimberly G. Giarratano does not reinvent the genre with this novel, but there are enough good elements in this that I will be more than happy to read another book that involves Billie and her investigations. She is a well-written character and the story has a good plot and good pacing. Some of the twists and reveals seem less organic and more like a one hour Law and Order episode, but as a whole, this is worth spending your time with. This is the first book by Angry Robot’s new crime imprint, Datura Books, and I am excited to see what comes of this new label. Death of a Dancing Queen is a solid, if not a little safe, start.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

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Review: Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

Posted on January 21, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

In the tradition of modern fairytales like American Gods and Spinning Silver comes a sweeping epic rich in Eastern European folklore–a debut novel about the ancestral hauntings that stalk us, and the uncanny power of story.

The Yaga siblings–Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist–have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive a mysterious inheritance, the siblings are reunited–only to discover that their bequest isn’t land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.

Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas’ ancestral home in Russia–but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine’s blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family’s traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide–erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is an immersive modern fantasy saga by a bold new talent.

Review:

The concepts that start Thistlefoot, the debut novel by GennaRose Nethercott, are based on the folklore character Baba Yaga, who lives in the forest in a cabin that stands on chicken legs. In the folklore, she can be friend or foe, her role being ambiguous depending on what is in the mind of the person seeking. This type of legend gives Baba Yaga all kinds of power. The story of Thistlefoot, is the story of Ballentine and Isaac Yaga. It starts with them inheriting the chicken-legged house, brought to America in one giant shipping container. This shipment is also followed by Longshadow Man, who chases them across the eastern half of America, with intentions of destroying them and the house. The huge fantasy adventure story starts with good concepts, but the execution was just average. 

The characters of Isaac and Ballentine are interesting enough. They both possess powers that seem mythical to those around them. Isaac is called the Chameleon King because he can mirror and transform into anyone. Ballentine has the Embering, which brings objects, whether dead or never alive, to life. Even though Isaac is written as a scammer and a charlatan, there is something about him, a charm that makes people like him despite themselves. Ballentine is the opposite. Everyone likes her because she is a good person, trying to do the right thing, trying to live a small existence. They are both part of descendants of Baba Yaga, who’s motivations in every story is never completely clear.

When the the brother and sister meet up to get the house, they could not be more opposite, and by the end of the story, they grow as people because of each other. This is not from a desire to do so. Isaac wants to tour a puppet show with the house, an old routine called The Drowning Fool, simply to make money. Ballentine wants to resist, but he promises to give her the house when they are done with the tour. So her only motivation is the house. The two of them reluctantly go on an adventure together with this walking house on chicken legs. The setup and the uniqueness of these characters and this story gets bogged down in the writing. 

I made it through the 435 pages, but those last 100 were a struggle. I wanted to do anything but finish the novel. It was not because I did not like the story and ideas, but it was because the story slowed to a crawl and then to almost a stop. I had to work harder to get to the end of this book than any book in recent memory. This makes it difficult for me to recommend reading this for other people. If they cut a hundred pages out of the novel, it might be one of the best novels all year. The language and the writing is breathtaking in some spots, but it just drones on for way too long. Even though this ultimately does not exactly work for me, I am interested in what Nethercott writes next, because she is immensely talented. The second half of the book just slows down way too much for it to be enjoyable.

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