Review: The Sluts by Dennis Cooper

Posted on July 23, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort’s date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author’s signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper’s most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.

Review:

Oh Boy.

I have been repeatedly hearing for the past few months about The Sluts and everyone who reads it, loves it. Written in an epistolary style, mostly through chat rooms and emails, The Sluts tells the story of Brad, a young prostitute, and Brian, a person who has a toxic relationship with him. But Brad might be an old ex-porn star, Brian might be a killer, and all of the reviews and posts on an online forum where the Brad and Brian saga unfolds might all be fake. This kind of feels like the movie Rashomon, where the same event is told in four different ways by four different eye witnesses. Except some of the narrators here might not have seen Brad or Brian at all. They might be making up parts of the story for amusement. Or not. The unreliable telling of the story of Brad makes the other characters who reads these web postings obsessed with him, either to have sex with him or kill him.

As the novel progresses, it grows darker and darker. The story of Brad, who eventually might not even be Brad, and Brian, who eventually might not even be Brian, becomes a story of violent sex, torture, mutilation, and death. The story spirals so far down into the pits of ugliness and ruthlessness that some of it becomes difficult to read. There are extreme horror books out there that are supposed to make you feel sick, and I have read and reviewed some of them, but nothing really matches The Sluts. The depravity, not only of the main participants, but also those around them, cheering them on and encouraging this poor behavior, makes me wonder if anyone has good intentions. In the end, the answer is no. 

I read this book in one day. I could not put it down. Dennis Cooper uses simple strong language to pull up in and never let go. Even when he switches the formatting, from reviews on an escort site to emails sent back and forth, there is no letting up. This novel feels like we are trapped in a car and the brake lines have been cut and we are going faster and faster toward a brick wall, and Dennis Cooper is standing there next to the wall, shrugging his shoulders, saying, “There’s nothing I can do about it.” I honestly have never been terrified by a book like this book. If you are someone who enjoys the extreme and stories of how dangerous people can be, do not hesitate to read The Sluts. 

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Review: A Sliver of Darkness by C.J. Tudor

Posted on July 21, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

The debut short story collection from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man, featuring ten bone-chilling and mind-bending tales

Timeslips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor’s novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A Sliver of Darkness, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination.

In Final Course, the world has descended into darkness, but a group of old friends make time for one last dinner party. In Runaway Blues, thwarted love, revenge, and something very nasty stowed in a hat box converge. In Gloria, a strange girl at a service station endears herself to a cold-hearted killer, but can a leopard really change its spots? And in I’m Not Ted, a case of mistaken identity has unforeseen, fatal consequences.

Riveting and explosively original, A Sliver of Darkness is C. J. Tudor at her most wicked and uninhibited.

Review:

Since 2018, C.J. Tudor has released a new novel every year. I have heard really good things about her last novel, The Burning Girls, but I had not read it. As she notes at the beginning of A Sliver of Darkness, her novel for this year just was not working right so as an emergency move, Tudor decided to release this collection of short stories. Writing short stories is much different than writing a novel. You have to build characters, setting, tension, and plot in a much smaller space. Some authors can really pull off both forms, but some excel in one form or another. I do not have any of Tudor’s long works to compare her short stories to, but I feel like she might be a little better at writing novels than short stories. 

I say this on the strengths of this collection. The three stories that really stick out for me, that are the most developed and have the best story are also the three longest. The book opens with “End of the Liner”, a story about the end of the world and the only population still alive are on cruise ships. This world building and plot are fantastic, and this is a five-star story. I love every minute of it, and if there were any of these stories that I would read again as a novel form, this would be the one I would be most excited about reading. “Final Course” is the second best story. Another apocalypse story, the world has gone dark, and Tom and his daughter are invited to a dinner party with some old schoolmates. When they get there, nothing is as it seems, and the scene unravels quickly. “Butterfly Island”, the last story in this collection, is about a group of people who travel to an uninhabited island and get more than they bargained for. All three of these stories have the end of the world as a theme, and it is interesting the differences that C.J. Tudor uses with each apocalypse. 

This is not the say that the rest of the stories in A Sliver of Darkness are bad. I enjoyed all of them to some degree, but the longer ones seem to show off Tudor’s writing strengths more than the shorter pieces. All of them are pretty good, even the very short ones like “Copy Shop”, but as a whole, this collection makes me more interested in catching up on Tudor’s novels than anything. If they are nearly as good as “End of the Liner” then I am in for a treat. This is a good introduction to Tudor’s work, but her fans might enjoy this more than those who are reading her for the first time. 

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

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Review: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets

Posted on July 19, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

For readers of Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny or Ling Ma’s Severance: a tight, propulsive, chilling novel by a rising international star about a group of young colleagues working as social media content monitors—reviewers of violent or illegal videos for an unnamed megacorporation—who convince themselves they’re in control . . . until the violence strikes closer to home.

Kayleigh needs money. That’s why she takes a job as a content moderator for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing terms of service while a supervisor sits behind them, timing and scoring their assessments. Yet Kayleigh finds a group of friends, even a new love—and, somehow, the job starts to feel okay.

But when her colleagues begin to break down; when Sigrid, her new girlfriend, grows increasingly distant and fragile; when her friends start espousing the very conspiracy theories they’re meant to be evaluating; Kayleigh begins to wonder if the job may be too much for them. She’s still totally fine, though—or is she?

Review:

We Had to Remove This Post has been suggested to me several times in various places, and honestly I thought these suggestions were right. The story is about Kayleigh who works for a company that screens social media content for decency. The first line of the novella, “So what kinds of things did you see?” is really what I was wanting to know when the book started. For some reason, I expected there to be descriptions of horrible internet stuff and a plot about really damaged people who have to deal with the mental strain of watching hours of these types of videos for work. What I read was not quite close enough to expectations.

When we first meet Kayleigh, she is starting the job watching videos because she needs money. She becomes friends with her coworkers, and they go out drinking almost every night after work, mostly because there is nothing that can describe what they were feeling after a long day of watching terrible internet content. They are destined to be friends outside of work because nobody besides one another will understand what happens in the videos that the public does not see. This also makes this group of coworkers act in ways that they don’t exactly always know they are doing. The focus of the book is more about the workers than the content. There is psychological damage and jagged breaks from reality when a person watches so much violence, hate, gore, and ugliness, that he cannot help but be affected, even if he doesn’t realize it. 

Hanna Bervoets is a popular author in the Netherlands, and this is her first book translated into English. I have read a few other Dutch novels, particularly those written by Maria Dermout and Herman Koch, and there seems to be a weird vibe that Dutch literature seems to possess. It is almost like no matter how cheery the story, there is an undercurrent of filth that is alluded to but not explained. Bervoets lets us know from the beginning that there is no cheer to be found here. She does this with the original question, “so what kinds of things did you see?” Even without many passages about the gore and violence, the true answer to that question lies in the actions of Kayleigh and her coworkers. This makes real life these characters are living more devastating than anything they screen that is submitted to a social media site.

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Review: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Posted on July 17, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.

Review:

I have several confessions when it comes to reading, and my relationship to Grady Hendrix novels is one of them. I have every book he has released, I have listened to him in multiple interviews, follow him on social media, can recognize him in any photo, and I had not read a single one of his books. I pulled The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires from the thousands of books in my TBR pile because I had just bought the paperback a week or two ago, and since it was a thicker than many of the others, I wanted to free shelf space. This is how I finally a Grady Hendrix novel. 

The story starts in 1988 when Patricia Campbell joins a book club to =socialize with her neighbor ladies in a South Carolina town. When the book club switches from reading classic literature to reading true crime and classic horror, her friendships grow, and it becomes the thing that helps her live and thrive as a Southern housewife with two rambunctious kids and a husband who is at work all of the time. Her book club life and the life of the neighborhood changes when the mysterious stranger, James Harris, shows up and becomes a friend of the family. Patricia has clues that something is just not right with James, but her suspicions are chalked up to her reading crime novels and gossiping about “good men”. Of course she is right all along. 

The way The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires unfolds is that it becomes several intertwined parts and harks to a strong tradition of stories about white neighbors in white neighborhoods where people write down the license plate numbers of any strange vehicle and find it rude when someone does not welcome them into their home. The setting and the feeling of this novel reminds me of some of the great southern classic literature like To Kill A Mockingbird or A Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The horror parts of this story feels like a throwback to old Stephen King, from the 80s and 90s, particularly ‘Salems Lot and Needful Things, where it is an entire town that is in danger, but only a few people see this and are trying to stop it. In this case, it is the ladies from a book club. Mixing these two elements makes for a novel that I really enjoy, and I can see as a great new classic in Southern and town horror novels.

I tore through this novel in only a few days, reading huge chucks at a time. To me this feels like a true throwback horror novel, like it could have been written in the 80s or 90s. Like all horror at the time, this story is good even though it is a little clunky, a little disturbing, and a little coincidental. In the end, the final solution is oddly satisfying. I like the structure, the characters, and that I could feel the danger that James Harris imposes on the town that the men are too stupid to see but the women are keen to. Some of the scenes could be a little too much for readers that have child harm triggers, but if this is something you can get past, I suggest that you do not hesitate like I have. I will not be sleeping on Grady Hendrix anymore, and I am putting his other novels to the top of my TBR pile.

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Review: The Lifestyle by Taylor Hahn

Posted on July 7, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

Don’t miss the beach read of the summer! A heartwarming and hilarious novel about swinging, marriage, and complexities of the heart.

Georgina Wagman has it all—a great marriage, a great job at a prestigious law firm, and great friends. She’s living the life she always wanted, and everything is perfect. Until, that is, she walks in on her husband Nathan in a compromising position with a junior associate. Georgina has a moment of crisis. But divorce is not a part of the five-year plan, so she comes up with an idea to save her marriage and recapture the spark. She and Nathan are going to become swingers.

Georgina isn’t going to embark on this adventure alone, though. Her friends Felix and Norah and their respective partners decide to tag along for the ride. They’ve got relationship woes of their own that swinging just might fix. Georgina, convinced Felix and Norah belong together, is thrilled. What better place to reignite romance between two people destined to be together than a swingers’ party? Her plan is foolproof, until she runs into a college ex at the first party. When they reconnect, Georgina will find herself torn between her head and her heart, with her very happiness hanging in the balance.

Review:

I picked this novel as my Book of the Month selection last month. It was not something I normally read and review, but I it looked interesting and I sometimes want something light to read. The novel starts with Georgnia, a powerful lawyer with a strong marriage, finding her husband after hours with one of the junior associates. She thinks she can save her marriage by becoming a swinger with him. She has a few friends tag along, and what she finds out is the lifestyle is much different than she imagined.

This is a book I expected to breeze through it without much thought. I would turn the pages, read about swinger parties and clubs and I would probably not think much about it after I was finished. I figured it would be a book I read without much participation. Like I was leaning against the wall of one of these parties and just watching, going home afterward to my regular life. Instead I found that Taylor Hahn has written a novel that has a great deal of depth, relationships that I grew attached to, and even some moments that made me feel emotional about these characters. There were a few of the situations that were thought provoking, and Hahn seems to have varied the nuances of the marriages between all of the couples just enough to make readers latch on the different aspects. For me, the relationship with Norah and Ari and the way that the truth come out about Ari is the one that strikes me the hardest. Sometimes people really live unhappy lives because they are afraid of what their spouses might think. I really enjoyed the characters and many of the situations and relationships.


There are things to complain about if you want to complain. There is not a great deal of sexual diversity. Because of swinging, the marriages become complicated but not messy. It seems like everyone has a positive outcome to their lives by becoming swingers. I am sure there are some people who do this to explore their sexuality, some who do not gain any benefit in swinging, and somewhere swinging has turned a marriage into something awful. We do not really get these types of actions or outcomes. We get everything solved, not problems gained. This keeps the book pretty cheery but also a little Disney innocent. Sometimes this type of innocence is something a reader needs. I did not start reading The Lifestyle to pick out the flaws and take it very seriously as much as to read a story that is just fun to read. With this in mind, The Lifestyle was a good choice.

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Review: Hide by Kiersten White

Posted on July 3, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.

The prize: enough money to change everything.

Even though everyone is desperate to win–to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts–Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.

It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.

But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.
Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

A high-stakes hide-and-seek competition turns deadly in this dark supernatural thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kiersten White.

Review:

Hide is one of those books that starts with a great premise but just does not deliver. The story starts with fourteen contestants competing for $50000 in a game of hide and seek in an abandoned amusement park, two of the contestants being caught and eliminated each day. This hits all of the buttons for me. Not only is the book is physically lovely, with map of the amusement park on the front and back binding, and the dust jacket is a very nice design, but the synopsis is exciting. The setting in an abandoned amusement park, children’s games played with high stakes, and the contestants getting killed if they lose, moved this to the top of my TBR pile. There is no way that this book can stink. Yet it does. 

Most of the things I dislike about this book are the structure of the paragraphs and chapters. The book is written in third person but the perspective is not steady. With a cast of fourteen contestants, there has to be some consistency in the perspective but instead the perspective shifts between characters at any given paragraph. All of the characters have their backgrounds and motivations sprinkled throughout the pages, not exactly like a mosaic of histories intertwined as much as broken glass lying in a pile. We are picking up random pieces and trying to see if we even care to finish putting it all back together. It is not as confusing as it is unnecessarily annoying. White switched perspectives of characters quicker than we can register which character the perspective has been switched to. And because of this style, the characters do not seem very well developed. I did not feel a connection with any of the fourteen contestants so I was not rooting for any particular one to win the game. This means I was not invested in the outcome of the game. It did not matter who won. Other stories like this, like The Hunger Games or Squid Games, are successful because they make us really care about the characters.

The choices in the plot reveals and writing could have been better as well. The history of the game is laid out through entries in a diary that the contestants find. This feels like such a cheap and lazy way to explain the history and nature of things. Instead of spending any time developing it organically, maybe even having the people who are running the game have more development and page time, we get a diary.

I really started this book with very high expectations, and I left this book with a headache. The end was decent but getting to the end was such a chore that I could not wait for it to be over. The potential was there, but the execution was lacking.  I could not run fast enough away from this amusement park.

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Review: Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Posted on June 16, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

“Mysterious, fascinating, and deeply moving—exploring the very nature of what it means to be human.”—ALEX MICHAELIDES, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient and The Maidens

“You don’t so much sympathize with the main character as live inside his skin.”—DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

“Walks the fine line between page-turning thriller and smart sci-fi. Another killer read from Blake.”—ANDY WEIR, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary

The mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

Review:

It is easy to categorize Blake Crouch’s novels as sci-fi thrillers. At the heart of his new novel, Upgrade, the story is more action than science fiction, with Logan Ramsay, our narrator, working with the Gene Protection Agency to stop people from illegal gene modifications. The novel is set in a future where scientists and criminals might be the same person. His mother was one of these people, and it feels like Logan has chosen his job as penance for the mistakes his mother made. 

While on assignment with the GPA, he is injured, and shortly after, some strange things start to happen. He is getting smarter, stronger, faster, and has recollection of absolutely every piece of information he has ever received. This injury might not have been an accident at all. To quote an old adage, “With great power comes great responsibility,” so he is trying to keep doing the right things with his new powers, even when others are trying to use him for their own plans.

Blake Crouch’s novel does have some sections of heavy science elements, like when he is explaining DNA and what criminals are doing with it, but he is masterful with his pacing. There is not one time when the pages of information about what is going on at the science level get too long before he turns it off quickly with an action scene. While reading Upgrade, I knew that there was always some danger right around the corner, so if I needed to work through a couple of pages of information, the action would be right back. This kept me engaged in the story throughout the novel and made for a novel that is truly built like a page turner. 

I also like that even though the structure of the novel leans toward action and danger, there are moments of cinematic and environmental intrigue. Logan travels around the United States, but this is kind of a post-environmental disaster version of the US. There are times that he travels to the bigger cities, like Las Vegas and Manhattan, and his descriptions of them and the way people live now in this new future is enough to where I want more Blake Crouch novels set in this world, I like that there are not only sections that have become inhabitable but also people who have not given up on these areas. It is as if we still find a way to overcome the adversities of our environmental woes, regardless of how bad it gets. The environmental climate aspects are not a focal point of the story, but in the end it is the backbone to everyone’s motivation. This dark backdrop makes the actions of Logan, regardless of the outcome, feel pretty bleak. Blake Crouch does not shy away from the science of how the world is changing for the worse in this novel, but at the central core, the story is about humanities continued hope for a better future.

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

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Review: Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel

Posted on June 2, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

A girl would be such a blessing…

The last time Maeve saw her cousin was the night she escaped the cult they were raised in. For the past two decades, Maeve has worked hard to build a normal life in New York City, where she keeps everything—and everyone—at a safe distance.

When Andrea suddenly reappears, Maeve regains the only true friend she’s ever had. Soon she’s spending more time at Andrea’s remote Catskills estate than in her own cramped apartment. Maeve doesn’t even mind that her cousin’s wealthy work friends clearly disapprove of her single lifestyle. After all, Andrea has made her fortune in the fertility industry—baby fever comes with the territory.

The more Maeve immerses herself in Andrea’s world, the more disconnected she feels from her life back in the city; and the cousins’ increasing attachment triggers memories Maeve has fought hard to bury. But confronting the terrors of her childhood may be the only way for Maeve to transcend the nightmare still to come…

Review:

Andrea and Maeve are cousins who grew up in a cult called The Mother Collective until it was raided by the government when Andrea was eleven and Maeve was eight. They were split apart at this time, and it takes years later to find each other again. Maeve is excited to start this rekindled relationship with her cousin. She immediately sees that Andrea is a successful business woman, and when they start to meet, Maeve trusts her, even though they had not seen each other in years. This trust is put into the wrong person, of course, and in the end, Just Like Mother is a novel of psychological horror, family that is evil, and a past that cannot be outran.

Most of the book is a great amount of waiting and build up to the final quarter of the novel. This buildup is sluggish at times, and I wish that there was more of this time spent exploring their childhood in the cult. There are strong themes and arguments on motherhood, raising children, and contemporary views versus traditional roles on the fulfillment of womanhood through bearing children. I did not hate the scenes where Maeve and Andrea are arguing about having and raising children, but I wish this time was spent on their childhood at the cult instead. The roles of the men in this novel are also interesting. They are purposefully sitting in the backseat, obediently following their strong willed spouses while they dp most of the hard work. There is a reverse Stepford Wives vibe to the the actions of the men in this novel, like they are built to be a minor character in the lives of all of the powerful women. Each man in this novel is written this way, almost as a bothersome accessory. This is not so much something I see as a complaint as much as something I see as a very heavy handed foreshadowing. 

There are elements of Just Like Mother that are not as sharp as they could be, and there are times when Anne Heltzel gets a little deep into her arguments between the women about the pros and cons of motherhood. It does move a little slow through the first two-thirds, but the end turns very quickly, the danger ties everything together pretty well, and it’s a good novel.

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

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Review: Black Tide by KC Jones

Posted on May 14, 2022 by ghostvillehero

To be released May 31, 2022

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Synopsis:

KC Jones’ Black Tide, a character-driven science fiction/horror novel that explores what happens after a cataclysmic event leaves the world crawling with nightmares, will be published by Nightfire in May 2022!

A story with a cinematic feel, Black Tide is Cujo meets A Quiet Place.

It was just another day at the beach. And then the world ended.

Mike and Beth didn’t know each other existed before the night of the meteor shower. A melancholy film producer and a house sitter barely scraping by, chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together, and a shared need for human connection sparked something more.

After a drunken and desperate one-night-stand, the two strangers awake to discover a surprise astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only a part of something much bigger, and far more terrifying. When a set of lost car keys leaves them stranded on an empty stretch of Oregon coast, when their emergency calls go unanswered and inhuman screams echo from the dunes, when the rising tide reaches for the car and unspeakable horrors close in around them, these two self-destructive souls must find in each other the strength to overcome past pain and the fight to survive a nightmare of apocalyptic scale.

Review:

Black Tide starts with Beth house sitting for a friend. She sees the next door neighbor, Mike, and one a night he is outside drinking, she decides to introduce herself. Mike is a film producer and alone, so Beth asks to join him. While they get drunk and learn more about each other, things start falling from the sky. They think that it is a meteor shower, not realizing they are watching the end of the world. What starts as a fun night ends the next day in a world of terror and gore.

KC Jones does a lot of good things in his debut novel. I enjoy the characters he has created. Beth is someone who does not really had much going for her, someone whose mother has told her that she will ruin everything she touches, and someone who has fallen into a life of drug abuse and low self esteem. Mike is someone who is living through the sadness of the loss of his marriage and a career that is waning. Two sad and lonely people meet on a night and the next day the book has thrust them into the role of unlikely heroes. We genuinely want them to succeed, but Jones also does a great job of putting them into a situation that does not show very much promise. The synopsis says that there are tones of Cujo by Stephen King in this book, and I could not thinking this while reading. I read Cujo at a young age and remember the same feeling of the mother and son being trapped in the car with the rabid dog outside trying to get to them. This book spends a great deal of time with two of them being trapped, being stalked by these creatures, and trying to figure out what they are going to do before they die from the elements.

The biggest weakness in this novel is the monsters. I never really get a firm grasp of how they operate and their physical structures because it seems to progress every time they have an encounter with them. If we just had monsters with sharp claws, teeth, and were frightening to look at, we would not be so bogged down in the details. In the end, many of the characteristics that Jones gives them do not matter as much as they mattered in the moment. Claws and teeth, and speed are enough. If the monster design was a little more simplistic, we could have also gotten a better picture of them in our heads. Instead I really still do have have the clearest picture of what Beth and Mike were fighting.  

Overall Black Tide is a fun, tense, horror novel, and even despite the monsters, it deserves to be read. The tension of the situation makes the second half of the novel just speed passed, and this is what we always want from any novel.

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

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Review: Made for Love by Alissa Nutting

Posted on May 11, 2022 by ghostvillehero

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Synopsis:

Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane–his sex doll companion. Life with Hazel’s father is strained at best, but it’s got to be better than her marriage to dominating tech billionaire, Byron Gogol. For over a decade, Hazel has been quarantining in Byron’s family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. So when Byron demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips, turning Hazel into a human guinea pig, she makes a run for it. Will Hazel be able to free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches before he finds her?

Review:

I have owned Alissa Nutting’s novel Made for Love since it came out. After reading Tampa and reading the synopsis to this book, I knew that this was going to be something I needed to read immediately. So it sat on the shelf for four years. The first season of the show on HBO came out, and the novel sat on the shelf for another year, long enough for the second season to start. I honestly do not know why I waited so long to read a book I was so excited to start when it came out, but this seems to be something I do often. I have a shelf filled with preorder books I have not read.

The plot of the story is bonkers, and I had forgotten most everything about it except for a guy in love with a dolphin. I had not started the TV series so I really did not know what I was getting into. The book starts with Hazel leaving her husband and showing up on her father’s doorstep, a father who has just received his sex doll, Diane, in the mail. Hazel has to balance her disgust with her father having a sex doll and asking him if she can move in indefinitely, the type of tight rope walk she has to make several times throughout the novel. On the eight page, when she says, “You sold the station wagon to buy a sex doll?” I knew that I was going to love this book. Throughout the rest of the book, everything goes wrong. Most of the situations are hilarious and ridiculous. Unlike the serious tone of Tampa, the humor is not nearly as dark, and the story is a little easier to enjoy.

Made for Love is not a perfect book, but it is definitely one that I recommend. Nutting is an author that has written stories that are not always easy to digest, but they are good. The characters in Made for Love might be severely flawed, but they are a reflection of the situations that they have been drawn into. Hazel is doing her best to rid herself of a husband while being paranoid that he is going to kill her at any moment. Even though there are absurd reasons why she feels that way, the sentiment is real. There are many women who have left abusive relationships who feel like there is no way to escape their exes without being killed. The seriousness of Hazel’s situation is covered by follies, sex dolls, drunken escapades, and tech implants, and sometimes instead of feeling sorry for her and yearning for her safety, we enjoy seeing her as a sitting duck, waiting for her husband to finally catch her, because we wonder what is going to happen next. Hazel could be a character we sympathize with, but we really don’t. We don’t like her husband at all, but the danger that he represents is downplayed by the more bizarre aspects of the plot. In the end, this barrier is what keeps Made for Love from being from great to classic. This does not mean that I will not be buying Alissa Nutting’s next book as soon as it comes out. Hopefully it does not sit on the shelf for five years this time.  

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